Steven Saylor - A murder on the Appian way

There was an outcry of triumph from the crowd. Expressionless, Milo rose stiffly from his chair and went directly to the closed litter in which he had arrived. Cicero, looking dazed, followed him. In addition to their own bodyguards, Pompey's soldiers formed a cordon around the litter to ensure its safe passage out of the Forum.

Pompey must be pleased, I thought After a shaky beginning on the first day of the trial, he had managed to establish order, and order, of a sort, had prevailed to the end. The question of Milo had been settled; Milo would trouble him no more, and neither would Cicero, at least for a while. Now the Great One could turn his attention to the Glodian radicals. What punishment would be appropriate for those who instigated the burning of the Senate House? Rome craved law and order, and Rome was about to get it — in the short term, at least.

Taverns reopened as soon as the trial was over. The Clodians would drink to celebrate. Milo's supporters would drink to drown their misery. I decided to stay behind locked doors.

Over dinner, I revealed to the family what I had discovered the previous night regarding Milo's responsibility for abducting Eco and me, and Cicero's knowledge of it. Eco was not surprised. Bethesda and Menenia were outraged. Diana began to cry and left the room.

We discussed the trial, which had done the job of punishing Milo for us; he was already being penalized to the full extent of the law, and there was nothing more that we could do to him. As for Cicero, Bethesda vowed to put an Egyptian curse on him. I myself was less certain about how to deal with him. Certainly, there could be no more friendly commerce of any kind between our houses ever again. I had come close to making a full break with Cicero in the past; now it was done. But beyond that, it was difficult to see what sort of satisfaction we might obtain against him, at least for the time being.

We discussed and argued long into the night. The lamps grew dim and the slaves refilled them. We had eaten our fill, but gradually grew hungry again. Bethesda produced another course. We discussed and argued some more. At some point I realized how inexplicably happy I was. I was safe in my home, in the heart of the city, content with my family, finally out of harm's way. Was everyone else in Rome like myself, heaving a great sigh of relief?

The world had been turned upside down and given a great rattling shake. Soldiers had been given the run of a Roman court, a man who called himself sole consul was acting suspiciously like a dictator, and Cicero — Cicero! — had fallen apart during the most important speech of his life. These were grave omens, surely more meaningful and menacing than the usual run of omens, those dubious fires and strange cloud formations seen in the sky by professional mystics. But now I felt that the world was at last right side up again, and my feet were finally back on solid ground. The immediate, overwhelming problem of Milo had been taken care of) however messily. Things could only get better.

Even Bethesda looked especially beautiful that night. Perhaps some of this was the glow of the wine, or even the glow ofher warm cooking in my belly. Looking at her in the lamplight made me think of Diana. Where was Diana?

I would send Davus to go and find her, I thought, but Davus wasn't in the room either. I would go and find her myself.

I knocked on the wall outside her curtained door. There was no answer. I thought she must be asleep or not in the room at all, but as I pushed the curtain aside there was a shuffling noise. The room was dimly lit by a single lamp. Diana seemed to be in the act of throwing a coverlet off her bed. She slipped back onto the bed and sat against the wall. "Papa, what are you doing here?"

"Daughter, only a few moments ago you were weeping for all that Eco and I suffered. Are you so unhappy to see me now?"

"Oh, Papa, it's not that."

"Then what is it, Diana? You've seemed so unhappy, ever since I came back. I might almost think you weren't glad to see me at all." I said it as a joke, but the look on her face gave me pause. "What's the matter, Diana? Eco thinks it's because you want to get married and leave home, or don't want to get married and leave home…"

"Oh, Papa!" She turned her face away.

"Have you at least talked to your mother about it, whatever it is?"

She shook her head.

"Diana, I know I've been away, and since I came back I've been more preoccupied than I should be, but these are not normal times. I hope things will be better now. But your mother is always here, and I know she cares — "

"Mother would kill me!" Diana whispered hoarsely. "Oh, she's the last person I can tell!"

This took me aback. Was the problem really as great as Diana imagined, or was it a trifle that a young girl had blown out of all proportion? As I wondered how to proceed, I walked around her bed and glimpsed the chamber pot. Though I looked away from it almost at once, the dim lamplight happened to fall on it in such a way that I saw its contents in an instant. "Diana! Are you sick? Have you been throwing up?"

She realized what I had seen and tried, too late, to push the pot out of sight with her foot. At the same time I was startled by another sound behind me and turned to see Davus. How had he entered the room so quietly?

"Davus, what are you doing here? No one called you. Go away. This doesn't involve you."

"Oh, yes," said Diana. "It does."

"No, Diana-"

"But it does involve Davus, Papa. It does!" Then I realized the obvious. So did Bethesda, I imagine, who stood in the doorway wearing a look that could turn a man to stone.

I needed a drink.

More than that, I needed to get away from my house. I could take only so much of Diana weeping, Bethesda stamping her feet, the broken Minerva staring at me. I did not want to overhear the whisper of my slaves saying, "What's to be done with her?" or "What's to be done with him?" or "I knew it all along!"

Where can a man go to forget his cares in the middle of the night?

I had not set foot in the place the poet Catullus called the Salacious Tavern in almost exactly four years, since the final day of another trial, that of Marcus Caelius. Eco and I found it easily enough, tramping through the warehouse district to the northwest of the Palatine Hill accompanied by his bodyguards (without Davus, of course) until we came to the upright pillar in the shape of a phallus, and the door lit up by a phallus-shaped lamp.

The place had not changed a bit. It reeked of smoke from cheap lamp oil and the fumes of cheap wine. The general roar was punctuated every now and again by the rattle of dice and the cries of winners and losers. The few women in the place were clearly for sale. Most of the men appeared to be in a good mood. Insofar as the clientele of the Salacious Tavern had any interest in politics, they were likely to be Clodian sympathizers.

While Eco and I looked for a bench to accommodate ourselves and our bodyguards, I overheard several snatches of conversation.

"Cicero might as well have had his tongue cut out — maybe that'll be next, if Pompey ever has the guts to make himself dictator and starts handing out some real justice!"

"The idea of Milo heading off for Massilia, where he'll stuff himself with mussels and wallow with Gaulish whores — what kind of punishment is that?"

"Did Antony's speech make any sense to you at all?"

"Only a little more than Cicero's!"

"I wept, I tell you, wept when his nephew talked about him dying alone and bleeding on the Appian Way. He was a great man — "

We finally found a place. A serving boy brought us wine at once. The vintage was as foul as the service was quick.

"Eco, what am I going to do with them?"

"A good question, Papa."