Murder on the Appian Way (39 page)

"I know, Papa. I'm frightened for them too."

"We've been gone so very long now. They must think we're dead. Can you imagine Bethesda grieving? I can hardly bear it."

"I know what you mean. I imagine Menenia weeping, and it tears my heart. Women grieving—remember Fulvia and Clodia,. that night we saw Clodius's body? He was really quite an awful fellow, wasn't he, Papa?"

I shrugged. "It all depends whom you ask. He was ruthless to his enemies, that's for sure. He caused more than his share of suffering in this world. But he also gave a great deal of hope and some real power to a great many people who had neither, not to mention the guarantee of enough bread in their bellies. To those people he's a hero."

"But still a vain, power-mad, greedy man. You can see that just by looking at the houses he built." "I suppose."

"And yet, when he died, his sister wept. And Fulvia - do you remember the way she tried to show nothing when we were in the room? But afterwards, in front of that crowd, the way she shrieked and wailed. I thought it was an act at the time, but now-I think she was truly suffering, lost, hopeless. I think of Menenia and Bethesda, grieving for us, frightened of the future, and I think of Clodia and Fulvia, and I feel a great sadness for them all." He wrinkled his brow and turned his eyes upward to the patches of sunlight that showed through the bars and the roof. "But we're still not talking about the real worry, are we? We're talking about them grieving for us. What I really meant is —"

"What if something has happened to them?"

"Yes."

I sighed. "It all comes back to Pompey. He promised he would see that they were kept safe while we were gone. Pompey is a man of his word."

"But we've been gone far longer than he could have expected. He probably thinks we're dead, too."

"Yes, probably. If he thinks about us at all."

"And what if Pompey isn't in control of the city? What if he's been assassinated? Or what if something totally mad has happened, a civil war with Caesar, and Pompey's gone off to Spain to rally his army there?"

"We have no way of knowing, Eco No way of knowing ..." I put my face in my hands.

The stable door rattled and opened. Eco took a deep breath.

The basket for bread was raised and lowered, along with a bucket of fresh water.

"What's wrong with that one?"

"My father, you mean. Why can't you say, 'What's wrong with your father?’ " Eco sounded genuinely angry. I kept my head lowered and clutched myself Despair was what I felt; it was simple enough to feign distress.

"All right, what's wrong with your father?"

"He's not feeling well."

"Seems to be eating the same."

"He's hardly eating at all."

"Then what happened to all the bread I brought yesterday?

Did you eat it all yourself? Taking food from your sick father's mouth?"

"I ate what I needed The rats took the rest of it last night, if you have to know."

The man grunted. "So, do you need the bucket emptied again today?" "No."

"Are you sure?"

"Just go away now, if you don't mind. I think you're only making my father feel worse."

"Why don't you let me empty it anyway? Get rid of the smell for you."

"Just go away!"

Eco bent over me, much as he had bent over me when he woke me from my dream that morning. There was a long pause, then footsteps retreated and the door swung open and shut. I strained to listen and thought I could hear a murmur of discussion outside the stable.

We had not been able to catch another rat that day, after all

The next day, however, Fortune smiled on us, and not on a certain especially plump, especially curious and (most important for us) especially slow fellow-inhabitant of the pit. This was good, since our keeper insisted on emptying the bucket that afternoon. Eco assured me that his face showed great displeasure at seeing so much blood amid the urine. Once again there was a discussion outside the stable. The voices were raised noticeably louder than before, and both carried a distinct tone of recrimination. The keeper's seldom-seen companion came in and had a look at me himself. "Where do you hurt?" he asked gruffly. I grunted.

"His belly, you fool," said Eco, managing to sound as if he were both angry and anxious and trying hard to show neither.

Our keepers withdrew in silence, but there was another heated discussion outside the door, receding into the unseen, unknown distance.

"Since we'll be getting out of here soon" I began.

Why not be madly optimistic? It was the forty-fourth day of our captivity, seven days before the Ides of Martius, the fourth day of my feigned malady. Eco had again succeeded in capturing, killing and bleeding a rat. "His craving for a bit of bread outweighed his better judgment," to quote the solemn eulogy which Eco delivered as we buried the creature in a corner out of sight, and hopefully out of smell.

"Yes?" prompted Eco.

"Since we'll soon be out of here, I think we should try to figure out as best we can who had a reason to put us here."

"Perhaps we'll be able to find out from our keepers."

"If all goes well, either we will be running from our keepers or they will be running from us. I doubt that there will be much conversation. Anyway, going over the known facts of our dilemma will give us something to puzzle over for an hour or two."

"Again?"

"Humour me. Unless you have an appointment to be somewhere at a certain time? I thought not. Well then, what did we discover on the Appian Way? Or more to the point, what did we not discover?"

"That's a question fit to give Aristotle a headache, Papa! You might as well ask me to prove a negative."

"You're right. Step by step, then. If we believe the account of the priestess Felicia, Milo and Clodius met on the Appian Way by accident. There was no ambush. The two parties passed without incident until they were nearly clear of each other. Clodius uttered a parting insult to Birria. Birria, on impulse, turned and hurled his spear at Clodius. It was no more premeditated than a brawl in a tavern."

"But it's possible, Papa, that Birria intended to throw the spear all along, on his master's orders. Perhaps Birria hurled an insult at Clodius first and Felicia didn't hear it; Clodius responded and Birria used that as a pretext to begin the attack. It could have been premeditated, or perhaps Milo issued an order to Birria on the spur of the moment, when the two parties met. Milo had the superior force. Perhaps he saw his chance to kill Clodius and seized it."

"A good point, Eco. At any rate, we've seen no evidence whatsoever that Clodius planned or instigated the skirmish in any way, except by hurling an insult at Birria. The conflict probably occurred spontaneously, or possibly at Milo's instigation. What ensues? Clodius's outnumbered men are quickly overwhelmed. Some are killed on the spot, others flee into the woods. The wounded Clodius, without his horse and cut off from his villa by Milo's entourage, is assisted by some five or six of his men downhill towards Bovillae. He takes refuge at the inn, where the innkeeper knows and likes him."

I rubbed my hands together to warm them. The pit seemed especially dank that day. "Milo's men do not follow immediately. Felicia says they ran about like hounds who'd lost a scent, until Milo came up. He was furious at first, especially at Birria."

"Because Birria had attacked Clodius on his own - or because he had failed to finish the job?" said Eco.

"I suspect the first Once Milo calmed down he held a sort of conference, and only then did he dispatch Eudamus and Birria and several others to pursue Clodius. This seems highly significant to me; had Milo planned all along to assassinate Clodius, I think his men would have been prepared to pursue Clodius at once and would have done so, especially since he was wounded and moving slowly on foot. Why did they wait? I think it must be that they needed instructions from their master, who was completely taken aback by what had happened. Why did he upbraid Birria? Because the gladiator had acted rashly and stupidly and without his consent. True, Milo might have been mad at his men for failing to make a clean killing of Clodius, but I favour the idea that the incident was spontaneous and unplanned, and that when Clodius made off on foot no one was quite sure what to do next."

"But they did eventually pursue him."

"Yes, because Milo made a decision to finish what his men had already started, without his consent. Which was more dangerous to him, Clodius wounded, or Clodius dead? Wounded, Clodius could return to Rome, rally his forces, bring legal proceedings against Milo for attempted murder, end Milo's bid for the consulship. If Clodius was dead, Milo would be liable for murder, but at least Clodius's followers might be paralysed with confusion, and Clodius himself wouldn't be around to accuse him. Either way, Milo was facing the ruin of everything he'd worked for. That's another reason I can't believe that the incident was premeditated. To have murdered Clodius by poison or stealth would have been one thing, but to have done so in such a clumsy fashion could only hurt Milo in the end. I wonder if he thought of his namesake Milo of Croton in the forest, trying to split that giant log and getting his hands hopelessly trapped? Did he hear the howling of hungry wolves as he paced there on the Appian Way, fretting over what to do next? It should have been an occasion of triumph for Milo — the end of Clodius, once and for all, within his grasp — but I think it must have been a very miserable moment for him."

"But he finally decided to send his men after Clodius," said Eco. "Once you've wounded a dangerous beast, it's always best to kill it. No doubt it's what Milo of Croton would have done."

"So he dispatched his men, then waited for news. Rather cowardly of him, not to join the battle himself."

"If you asked him, I imagine he'd say he hung back to stand guard over his wife and household."

Eco snorted derisively, then his face became shadowed. I had said the words sarcastically, but as soon as they were out of my mouth, it was hard not to think of our own loved ones and how vulnerable they were without us.

"Anyway," I said, "not too much later, along comes Senator Tedius and his daughter in their litter, with their own retinue of household slaves and bodyguards. Tedius and Milo recognize one another. Milo tells an outright lie - that he was set upon by bandits — and advises Tedius to turn back. The stubborn old senator instead presses on, despite some demurral on the part of his pious daughter.

"Meanwhile, down in Bovillae, the battle is joined. The innkeeper's wife — whose evidence we have secondhand from her sister — actually sees Eudamus and Birria kill one of Clodius's men on their approach to the inn. There's a terrific assault which destroys all the shutters and doors on the lower floor. The innkeeper is killed, along with Clodius's defenders. Clodius somehow ends up out in the road. We presume that Eudamus and Birria take his gold ring as a trophy, and to deliver proof of his death to their master. And then, for some reason, Eudamus and Birria and their men vanish, for when Tedius arrives a little later, the battle is over and the victors are gone. Tedius finds the inn a shambles. He sees blood and bodies scattered all about, including that of Clodius. The innkeeper's wife emerges from hiding on the upper floor. She looks out the window to see Tedius and his daughter leaning over Clodius. She goes downstairs, discovers her dead husband and loses her senses.

Tedius, despite his dislike of the man and his politics, does the honourable thing and loads Clodius into his litter, then sends the body on to Rome. He still thinks all the killing is the work of bandits, and decides to return to Aricia on foot. He turns about and trudges up the hill. While he stops to rest close to the House of the Vestals, Eudamus andBirria appear on the road and pass him, returning to Milo. How was it that he didn't see them before? Eudamus and Birria have prisoners. Felicia, peering out from the shrine of the Good Goddess, also sees these prisoners. Who are they? Not any of Clodius's men; the ones who fled with Clodius were all killed, and Fulvia told me that none of her husband's men were unaccounted for. So where did Eudamus and Birria come from and who were their prisoners?

"The gladiators return to Milo and deliver Clodius's ring, proof that he's dead. Milo then hands it over to Fausta, who proceeds down the road to make her offering at the House of the Vestals. But somehow Sextus Tedius never sees her. And when Tedius finishes his rest and moves on, by the time he reaches the shrine of the Good Goddess, Milo and all his company are gone.

"We know that Milo and the gladiators headed for the villa, where they killed the foreman and Halicor the tutor when they weren't able to find young Publius Clodius. Why was Milo seeking the boy? Is he really so spiteful and bloodthirsty that he wanted to murder Clodius's son? Or did he intend to somehow use the boy as a hostage? And how did he know that young Publius was staying at the villa?

"These are the questions, then, for which we have no answers." I picked up Eco's marking stick and for each question scraped a numeral in the wall.

"One: Where were Eudamus and Birria when Sextus Tedius arrived at the inn?

"Two: Who were the prisoners Eudamus and Birria herded up the road?

"Three: How did Fausta return down the road to make her offering at the House of the Vestals without passing Sextus Tedius?

"Four: When Milo forced his way into Clodius's villa, he demanded of Halicor and the foreman, 'Where is Publius Clodius?' — but how did he know the boy was at the villa, and what did he intend to do with him?"

I stood back and studied the marks -1, II, III, IV. They elucidated nothing. The longer I looked at them, the more they began to appear to be only an assemblage of upright and slanted lines signifying nothing, not even the numbers in my head. They were random lines etched by an idiot. For one brief, shuddering instant I thought I must truly have gone mad. The captivity, the darkness, the stench, the nightmares and the rats all coalesced like a black fog around my head. Nothing made sense; nothing was real. The whole drama of the murder on the Appian Way was only an elaborate fantasy I had contrived to amuse myself, a madman's epic. Milo and Clodius were figments of my imagination. Nothing existed but the pit.