A Point of Law (22 page)

“She didn’t hear any details of their conversations at all?”

“None she was willing to talk about. Remember, she is still a slave.”

A slave’s lot is not a happy one in cases of this sort. They can only testify under torture, and a slave who voluntarily testifies against his master can look forward to a short and miserable life. I recalled that, after the killing of Clodius, Milo freed all the slaves who had been
with him, ostensibly as a reward for saving him from Clodius (as if Titus Milo ever needed saving from anybody) but actually so that they could not be put to torture in the trial he knew was coming.

“Well, what
did
you learn?” I demanded impatiently.

“Three days ago, late in the evening, a slave came from the home of Caius Marcellus and told the slaves in Fulvius’s house that they were to gather whatever personal belongings they had there and return to their master’s house at once. Fulvius wasn’t there, and neither was anyone else.”

Three days ago meant the night before we had found Fulvius murdered. “You say a slave summoned them? Was it the steward?”

“No. She said it was one of Octavia’s staff, a man from her old household before she married Marcellus.”

“Were the other slaves part of Octavia’s staff or dowry?”

“From the way she talked, they were all Marcellus’s property. Do you think it’s important?”

“Hermes, in this case,
nothing
is too trivial to have significance. Octavia is neck deep in this matter, I’m sure of it. But that doesn’t mean she is playing the same game as her husband.”

The Greek sighed. “Sometimes I wish I were a playwright. This has the dimensions of high tragedy and the complications of low farce.”

“Yes, well, that’s politics for you,” I muttered, half distracted. We were getting near the Forum, and I drew a curtain aside to see what was ahead. There was certainly a lot of noise coming from that direction.

We had taken the most direct route from the
ludus:
across the Sublician Bridge and through the Forum Boarium, and along the Vicus Tuscus to where it crossed the Via Nova and ended between the Basilica Sempronia and the Temple of Castor and Pollux, near the western end of the Forum. Ahead and to our left I could see the greatest concentration of the crowd, and from that direction came the greatest noise.

“Is that the lady?” Asklepiodes asked.

“The one and only Fulvia,” I said with a sinking heart.

She was on the Rostra, a tiny form still clad in black, gesturing wildly. I saw white-clad men, most likely senators, trying to scale the platform, but other men were pushing them back. I wondered who, with the old gangs broken up, had the insolence to manhandle the Senate.

“I need to get closer,” I said.

“Get us up to the Rostra, lads!” Asklepiodes cried.

“Whatever you say, Doctor!” yelled one. “Let’s go!” And in a blur of flying fists and elbows, the crowd parted magically before us. Within what seemed like only seconds, we were before the railing of the Rostra, its age-darkened ships’ rams looming ominously above. In front and to both sides stood a cluster of senators, lictors, and other attendants trying to shout down the furious woman who harangued the mob from above. I now saw that the men who controlled access to the speaker’s platform wore military belts and boots.

“Oh, no!” I cried, appalled. “She’s got Caesar’s soldiers supporting her and laying hands on the Senate!”

Up on the platform, Fulvia was putting on an amazing show. Her pale hair streamed wildly, tears flowed down her swollen cheeks, her face was scarlet with rage, her mouth was drawn into a long, vertical rectangle, like that on a tragic mask. Also, her sheer, black clothing was in such disarray that she was in imminent danger of losing the upper half entirely.

“Slaves! Cowards! Spineless slugs!” she screamed. “How can you call yourselves Romans? They came to slaughter the man who would be your tribune! They feared him because they knew he would be the defender of your liberties! They fell upon him and now he lies at death’s door because he wanted to be
your
champion! How can you allow them to live?”

Cato made his way to the litter. Hermes and I stood outside,
Asklepiodes remained within. The gladiators stood around us in a protective circle. They made way for Cato’s senatorial insignia.

“Quite a show, eh, Decius?” he said disgustedly. “Just when we had the City about cleaned up, this had to happen.”

“Does anybody know what’s going on?” I asked him.

“Just that Curio’s been seriously wounded. That wild woman got up on the Rostra and started screeching less than an hour ago. A pack of Caesar’s boys were here in the Forum, and they appointed themselves her bodyguard because Caesar’s told them Curio is his man and they were to vote for him. Now she has them so wrought up they’re putting violent hands on senators and lictors who are trying to silence her. How are we going to get this ugly mob calmed down?”

I looked all about and thought fast. Fortunately, thinking fast was one of my specialties. “Where are the consuls?”

“Nowhere to be found, naturally,” Cato said.

“I see a cluster of twelve lictors over there,” I said, pointing toward the southern end of the Rostra. “Are they Pompey’s?” Only consuls and proconsuls were entitled to twelve lictors.

“Yes, he got here a few minutes ago.”

“Good. The crowd will quiet down enough to listen to him. Tell him to call attention to me—send his lictors to arrest me or something. I think I can get them calmed.”

Cato rushed off in the direction of the lictors. I hoped Pompey would move quickly, because Fulvia was reaching the flamboyant climax of her oration.

“Romans! Look at me!” Here she seized the neckline of her sheer, black gown and ripped downward. The flimsy cloth shredded away from her and left her nude from the waist up. The shouting died down to a murmur, punctuated by groans and a few low whistles. My own jaw dropped along with the rest. This was a spectacle worthy of traveling a long way to see. She began to beat with her tiny fists against her by no means tiny breasts.

“Do you not know who your enemies are? These cruel and selfish aristocrats murdered your greatest defenders, the brothers Gracchi! Caius Gracchus was my own grandfather!” Like many another good rabble-rouser, she spoke of the aristocrats as if she weren’t one herself.

“They murdered my husband! Milo and his gang, protected by their friends in the Senate, slew my darling Clodius, who championed you like a god! Yet Milo lives! His followers slunk from the city like chastised children instead of being hurled from the Tarpeian Rock!” Here she swung her arm to point at that prominence atop the Capitol, throwing her own prominences into bold relief. “They walked away alive, and you did nothing! And you call yourselves Romans!” Her face flushed so dark I expected her to go into seizures.

“Now,” she went on, “they have struck down my betrothed, as if they must widow me twice! How long will you allow your champions to be murdered, Romans? How long before you see who your enemy is and burn this corrupt city to ashes? Tear down this rotten sink of murder and greed and plow up the ground and sow it with salt so that nothing will grow here again, as my great grandfather did to Carthage back when there were
men
in Rome!”

Now I could understand how she had induced Clodius’s supporters into using the Curia for his funeral pyre. I was about ready to torch a temple for her myself. Actually, it was her great-great-grandfather’s adopted son who wrecked Carthage so thoroughly, but she wasn’t going to pass up a chance for a fine rhetorical flourish over a carping detail like that.

The crowd was about to go into full roar once more when Pompey ascended the steps at the north side of the Rostra, alone, not even a single lictor with him. The soldiers at the top of the steps looked at one another, suddenly uncertain what to do. Tossing an ordinary senator off the platform was one thing. Laying hands on Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus was quite another. He stopped near the top and jabbed a finger toward Fulvia.

“Get down from there, you shameless, indecent woman! I’ll not
have—” Then he pretended to catch sight of me for the first time. His eyes went wide and his scandalized expression gave way to one of rage. The change of expression was broad and obvious, just as we were all taught to do in the schools of rhetoric. His accusing finger swung, slowly and deliberately, toward me. Just as he planned it, every gaze in the Forum swung away from Fulvia and toward me.

“Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger!” he shouted, that parade-ground voice echoing back from every public building for a quarter mile in all directions. “What do you mean coming to this place with a pack of killers? I expelled all such gangs from the City and forbade them to return upon pain of death! Answer me if you value your life!” The silence in the Forum was now total. Even Fulvia looked stunned, about to collapse from her excess of passion.

“Give me a boost, boys,” I said quietly. Two of the gladiators stooped, grasped me about the knees and raised me to their shoulders as easily as lifting a wineskin. With my feet planted firmly on their brawny shoulders, I made a rhetorical gesture as broad as his own, easily visible in the farthest reaches of the Forum, one arm extended, the other hand clasped to my breast, fingers spread, as if I were clutching a heart stirred to the highest pitch by the terrible events of the moment.

“Proconsul!” I cried, pitching my voice slightly lower than his famous bellow. “Word came to me that my good friend, Scribonius Curio, had been attacked and lay terribly wounded! Frantic with concern, I ran to the
ludus
of Statilius Taurus, there to summon the one man who can save our beloved future tribune. In this litter—” here I gestured gracefully toward the little conveyance below me—“is the great Asklepiodes, acknowledged from here to Alexandria as the foremost expert in the world on the subject of wounds made with weapons! These men are no criminal gang, Proconsul. They are
his
escort, come hither at peril of your wrath to speed the great physician’s way to the side of the wounded Curio. Every man of them owes his life to Asklepiodes, who can cure wounds lesser physicians would give up as hopeless!”

The gladiators began to tug their tunics up and down and sideways to show off for general admiration the terrible scars of the numerous wounds Asklepiodes had stitched up for them. People began edging closer for a better look.

“Splendid, Metellus!” Pompey shouted. “I forgive them their intrusion just so they leave as soon as their duty is done.

Citizens!” He threw wide his arms. “Stand not in the way of the great physician! He must fly at once to the side of Curio!”

The crowd began to mill about uncertainly. Most of them had no idea which direction the litter needed to go so they couldn’t very well get out of its way. For the moment their attention was off Fulvia.

“Put me down,” I ordered.

Cato hustled back. “The wretch is at Fulvia’s house. As likely a place as any to be assaulted.”

I leaned into the litter. “That’s where Clodius used to live. You know how to get there, don’t you?”

“All Rome knows that address,” he assured me. “This has been most enjoyable, and if I may be of help, next year’s tribune will owe me a favor.” With that he was hoisted aloft and carried off.

I dashed up the steps. A soldier I knew slightly from the Gallic war recognized me and stepped aside. “Good day, Captain. We kept anyone from disturbing the lady because we thought that’s what Caesar would want us to do. He said to support Curio.”

“I doubt he had this in mind, but it looks like no harm done. You men get back to your carousing.” I rushed to Fulvia’s side, pulled off my toga and draped it over her white shoulders. Her whole upper body jerked rhythmically, as if she were sobbing, but no sobs came from her. Then I understood why she kept quiet while Pompey and I distracted the mob: The moment she stopped screaming she had gone into convulsive hiccups.

I patted her on the back as I led her from the Rostra. After a while the hiccups subsided and she could talk.

“They waited for him outside my house.
My house
, Decius!” As if she would have been less offended had they picked some other street.

“It is because they knew he was to be found there. How badly is he hurt?”

“I left him weak and bleeding badly. I know you think I’m heartless for leaving him there and coming down here, but my personal physician is with him. You needn’t have brought your Greek. It was very thoughtful of you though.”

“It was the least I could do.”

“It was just
too much!
” she went on, getting her breath back as I led her down the steps with an arm about her shoulders. “I mean, first Grandfather and Great-Uncle Tiberius, then Clodius, now Curio! Are they determined to leave me entirely bereft?” It did not escape me that she had not included her late brother among those for whom she grieved.

“Fulvia,” I said soothingly, “you are a high-born Roman lady, and you must learn to accept the fact that, in the course of your life, about half your menfolk are going to die violently.”

I looked around and what I saw wasn’t greatly reassuring. Everywhere there were senators, many of them pointing and glaring at Fulvia. But even more of them were frowning in the direction of the soldiers, and the words I overheard weren’t pretty. They would not soon forget that Caesar’s legionaries had shown such insolence and disrespect toward senators and had handled them violently.

As for the soldiers, those tough, battle-scarred men seemed not at all abashed by this senatorial hostility. They looked as if they had rather enjoyed the little tussle and were now back to basking in the admiration of the populace. The plebs and a few senators who were Caesar’s supporters saluted Fulvia respectfully. It had been a bravura performance. After this, the upcoming elections were sure to be anti-climactic.

“You weren’t entirely candid with me, Fulvia,” I chided her. “You said you had no gift for public speaking.”

“It isn’t from training or inclination,” she said. “It is just that sometimes I get so
angry!
It isn’t rhetorical polish you hear, it’s passion.”