Steven Saylor - A murder on the Appian way

There was a gentle rapping at the door. A group of slave girls entered with cloths folded over their arms. They carried combs, jars of unguents and pitchers of heated water that sent trails of steam into the air.

"Hand me a comb," said Clodia, reaching out to one of the girls.

Fulvia frowned. "Who sent for these things?"

"I did." Clodia moved to the end of the table and began to comb her brother's hair. The teeth caught on a tangle of dried blood. Her face stiffened. She pulled the comb through, but her hands were shaking.

"You sent for them? Then you can send them away," said Fulvia.

"What do you mean?"

"His body doesn't need to be bathed."

"Of course it does. The people outside want to see him."

"And they will."

"But not like this!"

"Exactly like this. You wanted your friends to see his wounds.

Well, so do I. Everyone in Rome is going to see them."

"But all this blood, and his clothes hanging from him like rags — " "We'll take off his clothes, then. Let the people see him exactly as he is."

Clodia continued to comb, keeping her eyes on her work. Fulvia stepped towards her. She seized Clodia's wrist, snatched the comb and threw it on the floor. The gesture was sudden and violent, but her voice remained as impassive as her face. "Mother is right. This isn't your household, Clodia. And he wasn't your husband."

Eco tugged at my sleeve. I nodded. It was time to take our leave. I bowed my head in deference to the corpse, but the gesture went unnoticed; Clodia and Fulvia stared at one another like tigresses with flattened ears. The slave girls scattered nervously as we made our way to the door. Before I left the room I turned and. took a last look at the women, and was struck by the tableau of Clodius dead upon the table, surrounded by the five females who had been closest to him in life, their ages spread over the range of a lifetime — his little daughter, his niece Metella, his wife Fulvia, his sister Clodia, his mother-in-law Sempronia. I thought of the Trojan women mourning Hector, with the attendant slave girls for a chorus.

The brightly lit outer room seemed like another world, with its fretfully pacing men in togas and hushed masculine voices. The atmosphere was just as tense, but of a different nature — not of mourning but of crisis and confusion, like a military camp under siege or a desperate gathering of conspirators. The room was more crowded than before. Important newcomers had arrived, and with them their retinues of freedmen and slaves. I recognized several well-known senators and magistrates of the populist stripe. Some stood in pairs, quietly conversing. Others were gathered in a circle, listening to a wild-eyed man with unkempt hair who kept striking his palm with his fist.

"I say we mount an assault on Milo's house tonight," he was saying. "Why wait? It's just a stone's throw away. We'll drag him into the street, set the place on fire and tear him limb from limb."

I whispered into Eco's ear, "Sextus Cloelius?"

Eco nodded and whispered back, "Clodius's right-hand man. Organizes mobs, stages riots, breaks arms, slits noses. Not afraid to get his hands dirty."

Some of the politicians nodded at Cloelius's suggestion. Others scoffed. "What makes you think that Milo would dare to come back to the city, after what he's done?" said one. "He's probably halfway to Massilia by now."

"Not Milo," said Cloelius. "He's boasted for years that he'd kill Publius Clodius one day. Mark my words, he'll be down in the Forum tomorrow to brag about it. And when he shows his face, we'll slaughter him on the spot!"

"There's no point in a slaughter," said the handsome, elegantly dressed young man I had noticed on the way in, Clodius's nephew Appius. "We'll press for a trial instead."

"A trial!" cried Cloelius, exasperated. There was a collective groan.

"Yes, a trial," insisted Appius. "It's the only way to expose the bastard and his friends along with him. Do you think Milo alone was behind this? He hasn't the wits to stage an ambush. I smell Cicero's bloody maw! Uncle Publius's enemies didn't kill him on a whim. It was cold, calculated murder! I don't want just revenge; a knife in the back could accomplish that I want to see these men discredited, humiliated, jeered out of Rome! I want the whole city to repudiate them, and their families with them. That means a trial."

"I hardly think it's a matter of choosing whether to stage or not stage a slaughter," said a calm, shrewd-looking young man at the edge of the crowd.

"Gaius Sallust," Eco whispered in my ear. "One of the radical tribunes elected last year."

Heads turned. Having gained the group's undivided attention, Sallust shrugged. "Well, what makes you think we can control the mob one way or the other? Clodius could, but Clodius is dead. There's no telling what will happen tomorrow, or tonight for that matter. A slaughter? Perhaps a bloodbath. We'll be lucky if there's enough organization left in Rome to stage a trial."

At this there was another round of groaning and scoffing, but no one challenged outright what Sallust had said. Instead they turned uneasily away and resumed their argument without him.

"A trial!" Appius insisted.

"A riot first!" said Sextus Cloelius. "The mob won't settle for anything less. And if Milo dares to show himself, we'll chop off his head and carry it through the Forum on a stick."

"Then the mood of the city will surely swing against us," argued Appius. "No. Uncle Publius understood the way to make use of the mob — as a dagger, not as a bludgeon. You're wrought up, Sextus. You need some sleep."

"Don't tell me how Publius used the mob," said Cloelius. "Half the time, I was the one who plotted his strategies for him."

Appius's eyes flashed. They reminded me of Clodia's eyes, glittering and green like emeralds. "Don't try to rise above your station, Sextus Cloelius. Save your vulgar rhetoric for the mob. The men in this room are a little too sophisticated for your style of blustering."

Cloelius opened his mouth to answer, then turned and stalked off.

There was a tense silence, broken by Sallust. "I think we're all a little wrought up," he said. "I'm going home to get some sleep." A large coterie of retainers shuffled out of the room with him, leaving more space for those who remained to carry on with their pacing and gesticulating.

"We should do likewise," I said, nudging Eco. "I need my sleep. Besides, it's as Sallust says: there's no telling what may happen in the streets tonight. We should be home with our families behind barred doors."

The gladiator who had escorted us earlier had been keeping an eye on us. As we moved towards the door he joined up with us and insisted on showing us out. He turned back only when he had delivered us into the protection of Eco's bodyguards on the landing outside the secluded side entrance.

We descended the steps to the street. The crowd gathered outside the forecourt of Clodius's house had grown even larger. Men stood in groups, arguing, like their leaders inside the house, over what should be done, only in louder voices and cruder language. Other men stood alone and openly sobbed, as if their own brother or father had been murdered.

I meant to walk straight on, but the crowd was like a force, an undertow at my feet that held me back. Eco was content to stay and observe, and so we lingered, fascinated by the torchlight, the floating bits of conversations, the shifting mass of humanity, the mood of uncertainty and dread.

Suddenly the great bronze, doors to Clodius's house swung open with a double clang. A hush of anticipation rippled through the crowd. Armed men appeared first. They descended the steps in a cordon, preceding and flanking the men in togas who carried the body of Clodius upon a long, flat bier.