Steven Saylor - A murder on the Appian way

"There are those who say Milo is quite determined to do me in." "Really?"

"Don't blanch, Finder! I won't assign you to investigate Milo's intentions. I have enough people looking into that already, and you deserve a rest. Still, I rather wish you had been here to help me deal with the episode of Licinius the butcher-priest."

"I beg your pardon, Great One?"

"Licinius; the man's a butcher and a priest. He's a popa, the one who actually cuts an animal's throat when the priests make a sacrifice; this Licinius does the bloody work while the others tend to the chanting and incense. But in his own time, he runs a butcher shop in the arcade along the Circus Maximus. Convenient, eh? I dare say some of the flesh that's been sacrificed to the gods one day ends up being sold to mere hungry mortals the next. But the fellow seems to be fairly respectable, for a priest. My dealings with him started a few days before the Senate voted to make me sole consul. Licinius showed up at my door one night, explaining who he was and begging to see me, for the sake of my own safety, he said. I had to think twice before admitting a professional slaughterer into my presence!"

He took a sip of wine. "Licinius apparently has a regular clientele of bodyguards and gladiators from the Circus — his place is something of a gathering place for big meat-eaters. That day a group came in to gorge themselves on blood sausages and wine. They got very drunk, on the blood as much as the wine, Licinius said, and let it slip that they were part of a plot by Milo to assassinate me. When they realized the butcher was listening, they backed him against a wall and put a knife to his ribs, saying they'd kill him if he told anyone.

"After he closed up his shop for the day he came here, quite distraught. I heard him out, then summoned Cicero, to see what he had to say in Milo's defence. Before Licinius was halfway through his story, Cicero launched into a blistering assault on the man's character. Called him a butcher masquerading as a priest, said he'd drawn more blood with his knife than any of the men he was accusing, said he was likely to be a paid assassin himself because he was bankrupt and desperate for money, and on and on.

"Do you see the lapse in logic, Finder? How was it that Cicero happened to know so much about this obscure butcher from the

Circus Maximus? How was it that he arrived at my house already armed with arguments against him — unless there really was a plot and Cicero already knew something about it? I don't accuse Cicero; I don't believe he would actively take part in a conspiracy to kill me. But I think Milo's gladiators must have warned Milo that the butcher had overheard them, and Milo must have mentioned it to Cicero, so that Cicero wasn't entirely surprised when he saw Licinius. When the butcher lifted up his tunic to show where the gladiator's dagger had been pushed against his ribs, Cicero brayed like a donkey. 'That little scratch? Do you expect us to be impressed with that? You want us to believe a big, strong gladiator made that tiny scratch? You've obviously used one of your wife's hairpins and scratched yourself and even then not much. For a butcher you've awfully squeamish about drawing any of your own blood!'

"Then, while Cicero was still ranting, a man claiming to be a friend of the butcher showed up, wanting to see him. I let Licinius meet the fellow in the anteroom, but of course I had the anteroom watched, and a moment later a guard came in to tell me that Licinius's so-called friend was trying to bribe him to keep his mouth shut. Right here, under my own roof! That was quite enough for one day. I sent Licinius home under guard, I locked up the fellow who tried to bribe him — who was a mere errand runner and knew nothing — and I told Cicero to get out of my sight before I throttled him.''

"And what came of all this?" I said.

"Eventually I put the evidence before the Senate. When Milo spoke he claimed that he'd never seen most of the gladiators in question. Some of them he admitted to having owned at one time, but he said he had manumitted them long ago and was no longer responsible for them. As citizens, they couldn't be tortured for evidence, of course, and they kept their mouths shut. Milo suggested that Licinius the butcher had overheard a drunken fantasy and misunderstood most of it. I had no real proof to the contrary. And that's where the matter rests… for now." Pompey gazed at the city below. "Perhaps I could have used your help to get at the truth of the matter, Finder, but you weren't here."

"Believe me, Great One, I would much rather have been here than where I was."

"Yes, yes, I know that you faced great hardship. I don't dismiss your suffering. But I tell you, some days it isn't easy being Pompey the Great."

I spent the next few days undisturbed. Eco and I passed the time by looking through every scroll arid scrap of parchment in our two houses, trying to find a match to the handwriting in the note to Bethesda. We were unsuccessful, but after a while, sorting through mementos and old correspondence became an end in itself, a nostalgic respite from the world. I needed this period of distraction. I was being reunited with my life. I had thought, falsely, that once I was back in Rome I could get on with my business without missing a step, but the experience in the pit had frightened and disturbed me more than I could acknowledge at the time. I found myself in a sort of twilight state, not yet ready to move on.

From Bethesda I could not have asked for more comfort and support. She never once said a word of blame for my having placed myself in such great danger. She never called me a vain, thoughtless fool, as I had called myself a thousand times while I was in the pit. She saw that I needed her complete attention and unconditional affection, and she gave it to me. I began to think that I had married a goddess.

Diana was more problematic. If she had been angry with me for putting her through so much worry, for making her feel abandoned and bereft, I might have understood, but her behaviour was more puzzling than that. She had always been inscrutable to me, even more so than her mother. Past experience had taught me, sometimes with a rude shock, that she was capable of thoughts and actions I could not possibly anticipate. So I tried not to worry overmuch about her seeming coolness, her brooding melancholy, her new habit of staring into the middle distance.

Davus was equally perplexing. I had thought that my whispered conversation with him in the garden had put everything right and that he would stop skulking about and avoiding my gaze. Instead, this guilty behaviour only became worse. What was wrong with him?

Just when I was beginning to feel fully settled again, and fully engaged in these family concerns, distraction arrived in the form of a red and white striped litter.

It was inevitable that Clodia would call on me sooner or later, just as a summons from Pompey had been inevitable. There was even a part of me that had been looking forward to her arrival with a certain impatience. When Davus showed in the same haughty slave who had summoned me to her litter before, I tried to suppress a smile. Eco was away that day tending to his own affairs; what choice did I have but to go by myself? As I was leaving through the foyer, I met Bethesda coming in from outside. She had surely seen the litter and knew where I was going. I held my breath, but she only smiled as we passed and said, "Take care of yourself, husband." Then she stopped, pulled my face to hers, and gave me a long, deep kiss. She laughed as she walked away. Pompey's politics, Bethesda's sense of humour, my seventeen-year-old daughter's moods: what else did I need to add to the list of things I would never, ever comprehend?

A moment later I was beside Clodia in her litter, moving through the streets of the Palatine. She took my hand and gave me a sidelong, soulful look. "Gordianus, the rumours we've heard about you — so awful! Such an ordeal for your family! Tell me everything."