John Roberts - The Tribune's curse

The woman’s eyes narrowed when they caught sight of my senator’s stripe. “I’m doing nothing wrong here, Senator,” she protested before I said a word. “You’re not an aedile, anyway.”

“No, but I will be next year, so you may as well cooperate, or I’ll make your life miserable.”

“Well, what do you want, then?”

“Were you here when Crassus left the City a few days ago?”

“I was, and it was quite a show, too. We missed the best of it out here. Couldn’t see that crazy man laying his curse on the whole City.”

“I was on the other side and saw it. But then he disappeared in this direction. Did you see him?”

“Couldn’t miss him. He was wearing that robe, looked like a Babylonian whore’s tent at a country fair.”

At last, an eyewitness. “How did he get down from the gate?”

“Had a ladder, over there.” She pointed to the wall just to the west of the gate. “It’s not there, now.”

“Did you see him go up?”

She thought. “Maybe. The ladder was there when I got here before dawn that morning. Sometime after dawn there was two or three men using the ladder. I didn’t pay much attention. I thought it was people getting a good spot to watch the show. Everybody knew Crassus was going out that morning. His horsemen were all gathered over there on the road. Made a good show.”

As I had suspected, Ateius had had help. It had struck me from the first that he’d had little time to lug all his gear to the top of the gate and get a fire going. His trappings had been awaiting him when he ran there from the Forum.

“What did he do when he reached the ground?”

“Well, first thing, he skinned out of that robe, stuffed it in a sack. A man came up, looked like he was wrapping a bandage around his arm. I heard the tribune cut his arm as part of his curse.”

“Where did he go after that?”

She pointed to the west, where the wall made a great curve to the south to go around the base of the Aventine before turning north again to meet the river. “They took off that way. I didn’t see them after they passed those horse stables.” Much of the land just outside the wall in that area was still pasture, but there were numerous houses and stables as well.

“Thank you. You’ve been the first real help I’ve had in days.”

“You won’t give me a hard time when you get to be aedile, will you?”

“I’ll be far too busy.” I asked a few more people, but most hadn’t noticed anything in all the uproar, and the few who had confirmed the bird-seller’s story.

So they had fled westward, two and possibly three of them. There were three more gates before the wall reached the river. They might have reentered the City at any of them, unnoticed. Or they may have gone on to the river and taken a boat across, or trudged up the embankment to cross one of the bridges. Sometime shortly after that, Ateius had been murdered and his body dumped on the western bank of the river.

As always, questions arose. Who were the other men? Were they some of his supporters, such as I had met at his house, or were they other men entirely? Why had his body been deposited on the bank, instead of in the river? Above all, who had killed him?

It did seem that he had not been immediately attacked by indignant Friendly Ones . And it occurred to me to think, what would have happened if his body had been thrown into the river? To begin with, it might have floated all the way to Ostia and gone out to sea, there to feed the fish. And the woman had seen him stuff the robe into a sack, whereas the body had been wearing it. Brilliant philosophical deduction: the killers wanted the body to be found, and by wrapping it in the incriminating robe, they wanted to make sure that it was properly identified, despite its untidy state.

Feeling rather pleased with myself, I began to walk toward home. I was making progress. The problem was, would I progress all the way to the end of this riddle before the funeral obsequies of Ateius and the subsequent dismantling of the City by a rioting mob?

It was a long walk to my home. I came to the rounded southern end of the Circus Maximus and turned up the Triumphal Way, one of the broader of Rome’s narrow streets. The day was fading; Rome was shutting down for the night. Doors were closed, shutters latched, awnings lowered. The hammering of carpenters and smiths was stilled; people were sitting down to their evening meal. Somehow, it didn’t seem like a city poised on the edge of riot and destruction, but Rome is deceptive.

Where the Triumphal Way intersected the Via Sacra, I encountered Hermes.

“I thought I might catch you here. Julia’s been asking about you. I’ve been hanging around the Forum most of the afternoon. She’s worried about you.”

“I can’t imagine why. She knows I am on a special investigation, and I can’t keep regular-”

“No, she’s worried you’re lying around drunk someplace.” The little wretch was enjoying this.

“See what I must put up with? The woman has no faith in me.” I glanced toward him, but he averted his face, hiding his expression.

We went northeast past the fine houses of the Carinae, and then were in the crowded warren of the Subura, where I had lived most of my adult life. My head was beginning to throb from too much wine too early in the day. But I was almost home.

We were no more than two streets from my house when I saw the two men strolling very slowly ahead of us: squat brutes in coarse tunics, their massive shoulders almost spanning the narrow street, looking around idly in every direction except toward us. Their steps kept slowing so that we drew unavoidably closer. No way past them without getting within touching distance. Dusk was drawing on, but I could see them clearly.

“Uh, Master-” Hermes rarely used that address in private unless he had something important to say.

“I see them,” I told him. “Right ahead. Well, we’ll just have to-”

“Actually,” he said, “I was going to tell you about the two coming up behind us.”

“Thank all the gods I’m not wearing one of my good togas. Got your stick?”

“Right here.”

“Then we’re about to find out if I’ve wasted my money sending you to the ludus .” My hands dipped into my tunic, and the left came out with fingers slipped through my caestus , the right gripping my dagger. Hermes took out his stick-a hardwood club a little longer than his forearm, the same length and weight as the practice sword used for training in the ludus .

“Take the two in back,” I said. The caestus allows limited use of the hand it adorns, and with that hand I whipped off my everyday toga. It had lead pellets stitched into its corners, which improved the drape, kept it from flapping in the wind, and allowed for more-imaginative uses.

The two in front whirled, crouching, daggers in their fists. I was not interested in talk or negotiation, not at two-against-one odds. The man on the left caught the lead weights in the face before he had properly gotten himself set. I let the toga go, its loose folds enveloping his head as I attacked. I have always found that there is little use in fencing when outnumbered and in conditions of uncertain light. An immediate, unrelenting attack is the best tactic then, unless you have a good escape route, which was distinctly lacking in this instance.

The man to the right was a veteran street fighter and came in fast, undistracted by the other’s plight. He feinted high with his short, curved knife, then came in low, sending a gutting stroke at my belly below the ribs. I blocked with my left forearm, felt the very tip of his blade nick the skin over my left hip, sent my dagger into his chest as the fingers of his left hand clawed at my eyes. We smashed together, and I brought my knee up into his groin as his knife hand sought weakly to carve me and I drew out my dagger and stabbed upward beneath his chin.