The Tribune's curse

8

"Do you think she got my hair right?” Julia asked.

“You look superb, my dear,” I assured her. In fact, she was better than superb as we rocked along in our hired litter to the admiration of all eyes. The sides were rolled up to give those eyes the best possible view. Julia, dressed in her half-silk gown and decked in her emeralds and pearls, her face made up by an expert and her hair dressed in a high-piled lattice of curls, could have modeled for one of the goddesses. I didn’t look so bad myself, with my bruises fading and wearing my best toga. The winter sun of late afternoon, low in the south but shedding a clear light, flattered us both. Behind us, as usual, walked Hermes and Cypria.

“I am so excited,” she said, fanning herself unnecessarily.

“I don’t see why. You’ve attended the festivities at Ptolemy’s own court. This won’t be nearly so lavish.”

“You know it’s not the same. In Alexandria, I could only stay for the first part of the evening. For the sake of my reputation, I had to leave before things got really scandalous. Besides, those were the revels of a barbarian court, full of half-mad Egyptian nobles and Persian degenerates and Macedonian brutes. Lisas’s entertainments are attended by the cream of Roman society.”

“I’ve seen the cream of Roman society behave like a shipload of drunken pirates plundering a coastal villa,” I told her. “Part of a diplomat’s art is getting people to loosen up, and Lisas really knows how to do it.”

“Then you will have to protect me,” she said.

The Egyptian Embassy was situated on the lower slope of the Janiculum, in the relatively new Trans-Tiber district. Free of the cramping walls of the City proper, the estates on the Janiculum sprawled amid generous grounds, and much of the property was the domain of wealthy foreigners. At the top of the hill was the pole, from which fluttered a long, red banner, which was taken down only if an enemy approached.

We were carried across the Sublician Bridge, pushing past the throngs of beggars who always haunt bridges, thence up along the line of the old wall built by Ancus Martius to connect the bridge and the Servian Wall to the little fort surrounding the flagpole. Both the wall and the fort were in ruins, despite occasional calls for their restoration.

At length we arrived at the embassy, where flocks of slaves doused us with flower petals, sprinkled us with perfume, and generally behaved as if we had just stepped down from Olympus to let mere mortals bask in our radiance. They even draped our slaves with wreaths.

The place was a marvelous jumble of architectural styles, decorated with the most extravagant paintings, frescoes, and picture mosaics, the buildings and grounds populated with Greek and Egyptian statuary and planted with ornamental shrubs and trees from all over the world.

Lisas himself came to greet us, swathed in a tremendous, gauzy robe dyed with genuine Tyrian purple, his face plastered with heavy cosmetics to disguise the ravages of his legendary degeneracies.

“Welcome, Senator Metellus! And this must be the niece of the great conqueror, the beauteous Julia of whose innumerable graces and accomplishments His Majesty and all the royal princesses have sung praises. King Ptolemy was devastated that you had to depart his court. Princess Berenice has been sunk in melancholy since your departure; young Princess Cleopatra asks daily for your return. Welcome, welcome, goddess-descended Julia!” He took her hands but, to my relief, did not kiss them.

“I am so charmed and flattered. I count your king and his princesses among my dearest friends, and I cannot express how highly my uncle, Caius Julius Caesar, esteems them.”

“I am enraptured by your words,” he said, seemingly about to faint from sheer ecstasy. Then he snapped out of it. “But the consul Pompey arrives! I must fly to him! Be free of my house and all it offers, however humble. Enjoy my esteem and affection forever, my friends!” And off he went, gauze flapping.

“You see now what makes a truly great diplomat?” I said.

“It’s breathtaking! I’ve never felt so much like royalty. I never saw Ptolemy sober enough to remember me the next day, and Berenice is a bubblehead, but Cleopatra was a sweet child, with more brains than the rest of the royal family combined. Give me the tour.”

So I conducted her through the labyrinth of rooms, all of them full of guests, entertainers, servants, and tables laden with delicacies. Lisas did not believe in formal dinners except when entertaining small, restricted groups like serving Roman magistrates and ambassadors from other countries. Instead, he let people wander as they pleased and made sure there was plenty to divert them wherever they happened to be. Naked nymphs disported themselves in the many pools. At least they looked like nymphs. Close enough for my eyes, anyway.

I showed Julia the infamous crocodile pool, full of the ugly, torpid reptiles and presided over by a marble statue of the crocodile-headed god, Sobek. No nymphs in that pool, naked or otherwise. Romans were always telling their slaves that, should they run away, they would be sold to Lisas to feed his crocodiles. I doubt that it ever happened, but I could not discount it entirely. He was a man of decidedly unusual tastes.

“What a monster!” Julia cried, pointing at a twelve-foot specimen that lounged sleepily on the bank of the pool. His back was laced with scars of many battles with the other crocs. “Does he have gold in his mouth?”

I leaned forward and saw that the brute had gold wire wrapped around the top of one of the fangs of his upper jaw. “Amazing. The Egyptians have marvelous dentists. I’ve known men who had false teeth laced to their own adjoining ones by Egyptians, using fine gold wire. I knew they mummified crocodiles after they died. I didn’t know they took such care of their dentition.” One more Ptolemaic extravagance.

We encountered a number of friends and started the inevitable round of socializing. Besides prominent Roman statesmen and their wives, Lisas had invited exotics like the ambassador of Arabia Felix and a wealthy merchant from India. Lisas had brought in some poets and playwrights, chosen for their wit and conversational skills, and some courtesans chosen for exceptional breeding and beauty. He knew how to create a well-balanced crowd, and throughout the evening he circulated, making sure that everyone met everyone else and that nobody got bored.

Pompey was there (Lisas had to invite the consul, naturally), and so were Milo and several of the other praetors, but not Clodius or Antistius or anyone else likely to start a flaming argument to mar the festivities. He neatly avoided inviting deadly enemies on the same evening. The man was the soul of diplomacy.

I endured many congratulations and backslaps for my feat in carrying the sacrificial litter. The congratulations were all right, but the backslaps were quite painful. We were in the main room of the villa (I am not sure what you would call such a room; it rather resembled Ptolemy’s throne room, but was smaller) when there was a disturbance. From the direction of the entrance came a pair of lictors, flanking a public slave wearing the brief tunic, high-strapped sandals, and cap of a messenger. He carried the white wand that opened all gates and doors and gave him the right to commandeer any horse or vehicle.

“Is he a Senate messenger?” Julia asked me in the sudden hush.

“Of praetorian rank,” I told her. “The highest.”

The man went straight to Pompey and spoke to him in a low voice. The consul’s face was a study in consternation.

“Do you think it’s a battle report?” Julia said breathlessly. “A disaster?”

“He’s not carrying a dispatch case,” I pointed out. “Whatever his message is, it’s a short one.”

Pompey raised a hand and snapped his fingers, a military signal you could hear through the whole villa. “All senators to me!”

“Wait here,” I told Julia. I hustled over to him along with about two dozen others. Milo already stood next to Pompey, and we gathered close to him, knowing that it boded no good. Like an ebbing tide, those of no official standing drew back toward the walls, leaving the men in the variously striped tunics and togas standing as it were on an island in the center. Lisas looked on with anxiety, but also with a sort of gloating anticipation. A real catastrophe would be the perfect capstone to his party.

“Senators,” Pompey said, “I have just received news of the gravest importance. The Tribune of the People Caius Ateius Capito has been discovered, murdered.”

“Hah!” said a vinegary old senator named Aurunculeius Cotta. “Serves the bugger right!” He was a well-known adherent of the aristocratic party. There were many murmurs of agreement.

“My sentiments to perfection,” Pompey said, drily. “But the man was a tribune, and at this moment the commons are in a frenzy, assembling in the Forum and ready to burn the City down. We have to go there at once and calm them, or there will be a riot such as Rome hasn’t seen in a generation.”

I went to Julia. “We’re in for a riot. Don’t try to go back home tonight. Stay here or with friends in the Trans-Tiber. Hermes!”

“Here, Dominus!” He was this formal only when he knew the situation was serious.

“You have your stick?”

“Right here.” He patted the rather indecent bulge in the front of his tunic. “I’ll guard your back.”

“No, stay with Julia. I want her-”

“Take him,” Julia urged. “I’ll go to Grandmother’s summer house; it’s just a short walk from here.”

“I’d forgotten about that place. Yes, go there. I’ll arrange with Lisas for an escort.” Even if the rioting spilled out of the City and across the river, no mob would ever have the courage to assault Aurelia’s property.

“You’re exaggerating the danger,” she said.

“Not in the least. A tribune has been murdered. That hasn’t happened in nearly thirty years, and the last time the mob rioted for three days without letup.”

“And I thought your life would be a little quieter away from Gaul.” Like the other wives present, she made no motion to embrace or kiss me. Such a public display would have been unthinkable for a woman of her breeding. Sometimes I think we carry this business of gravitas too far.

“Of a certainty,” Lisas said when I spoke to him. “I am already assembling my soldiers. They cannot pass through the gates, but I shall provide my guests an escort to any place they choose on this bank of the river. Of course, the lady is welcome to stay here if she so chooses.”

“I am most grateful,” I assured him. “I shall not forget.” He appeared about to faint at the prospect of receiving my gratitude, and I left him there, my mind set much at ease. The embassy guards were all hard-bitten Macedonians-not an Egyptian in the lot.

“Lictors to the fore!” Pompey shouted as we assembled in the courtyard. With the consular and praetorian lictors in a double file, we made a formidable procession.

“March!” Pompey called, and we set off with Pompey in front, Milo behind him, the other praetors there behind Milo. We lesser senators followed in a gaggle. Behind us strolled a fairly substantial force of bodyguards, mostly ludus-trained slaves like Hermes, forbidden to bear arms but handy with fists and clubs. I was all too aware that they would be little protection against attack by a real mob.

However, I also knew that Milo’s crowd would be there in the Forum, and Pompey’s many clients, and the personal followings of the other important men, and these might be able to hold the mob at bay long enough for us to escape, should worse come to worst.

We passed across the bridge and through the gate, where the guard saluted us. Pompey paused there for a moment.

“Can you see anything?” he called up to the men atop one of the gate towers.

“No fires, Consul,” the man answered.

“Good. Things haven’t properly started yet.” He led us off across the Forum Boarium, past the ghostly bulk of the Circus Maximus, and then around the base of the Capitoline Hill. The Tuscan Street would have been more direct, but this brought us out at the Basilica Julia, which had a more commanding view over the Forum and offered a better escape route up to the Temple of Capitoline Jove, should the worst happen. Either way, the walk was all too short.

“When we get to the basilica,” Pompey said, “I want the lictors in a line halfway up the steps. Senators at the top of the steps, serving magistrates nearest me. Milo, I trust your boys will be there?”

“They have their orders for situations like this, Consul,” he said. “Every man will be there, in place, to give us the best protection. The question is: which way will Clodius jump?”

The same question had been running through my own head. “Clodius won’t want a riot unless he controls it, and nobody will control this mob once it loses its head,” I said.

“Metellus is right,” Pompey said. “Milo, I don’t want anything to break out between you.”

“I won’t start anything,” Milo said.

We had been hearing the roar of the crowd ahead from the time we entered the Forum Boarium. The noise abated as we went into the Basilica Julia through a rear door and crossed its cavernous interior, inhabited only by the night cleaning crew of public slaves who huddled in the corners, wide-eyed with fear. Then we walked out onto the colonnaded portico, and the full roar of the mob struck us.

Beside me I heard a senator mutter, “A white boar to Hercules if I get through this night alive.”

For my part, I was ready to pledge a whole herd of bulls to Jupiter. The Forum was a seething, storm-tossed sea of people, alight with waving torches, further illuminated by the bonfires that, for some unknown reason, mobs always feel compelled to ignite. The fires were fed with furniture and building materials plundered from all the nearby buildings. At least they were burning on the pavement and hadn’t yet spread to the houses and public buildings, but that was just a matter of time. A mindless mob is always happy to burn its own homes and shops, only to wake up when the hysteria has passed and look for someone to blame for its own beastly behavior. That part is usually good for another riot, one with more bloodshed than arson.

The lictors took up their station on the steps, standing shoulder to shoulder, their fasces held at a slant across their chests. Some of the mob caught sight of them, and then of the knot of dignitaries on the terrace at the top of the steps. As word spread, an extraordinary motion, something like the way water moves when it is disturbed, swept through the crowd. A bit at a time, starting at the forward fringes and amid little concentrations here and there, the inchoate, antlike swarming began to assume a common direction, and then the whole mass was surging toward the basilica, except for those who had already secured points of vantage on the bases of monuments or who hung, apelike, from the great statues and monumental columns.

In the fore of the crowd, I saw Clodius, dressed in his work-ingman’s tunic. He was a few steps ahead of the mob and running for all he was worth, not escaping them, but leading.

“Let that man through!” Pompey ordered the lictors, “but no other who is not of senatorial rank.”

From behind us, more senators quietly came from the depths of the basilica. They were the braver members of the order, who had been watching from hiding places around the Forum, waiting for a signal to assemble. To my relief I saw Cicero, along with Cato, Balbus, and some others. With so much courage and prestige present, we might just pull it off. I scanned the crowd, and saw that Milo’s thugs had taken up a position well to the fore, ready to turn and hold off the mob on their master’s order. In fact, the whole section of the mob nearest the steps were his adherents and Clodius’s. I felt a sort of perverse pride in the sight. Romans can even organize a bloodthirsty mob. Let the barbarians match that, if they can.

Clodius rushed up the steps, his face in a wild grimace, gesturing madly with his arms, waving them and shaking his fists as if he were berating Pompey just short of physical attack. But these were broad actor’s gestures for the delectation of the mob behind him. His words were those of a sane, calculating man.

“Pompey! You’re the only man in Rome this night who can quiet this crowd. I’ve done my best, but even I have never seen them like this! Do something quickly!”

Pompey came down the steps with an arm extended, which he draped over Clodius’s shoulders in a gesture of concern and conciliation. The two turned and went back up the steps. Behind them, the noise of the crowd muted a bit, not calm yet, but indecisive.

“A screen, here,” Pompey said. The other senators closed around them, and Pompey, Milo, Clodius, Cicero, and Cato got their heads together for some hasty planning. It was amazing to see how this group of men, among whom there were far more poisonous hatreds than fast friendships, could drop their animosities in an instant and cooperate for the common good. Another aspect of the Roman genius, I suppose: political compromise.

After a few minutes’ conferral, they broke apart. Behind the screen of senators Clodius and Milo worked their way to the edge of the steps while Pompey and Cicero went through the center. Cato came to stand beside me.

“What did they work out?” I asked him.

“A makeshift,” he said, his mouth a grim, tight line. “It might work. Be ready to jump forward when your name is called.”

Oh, no, I thought, my heart sinking. They had involved me!

Pompey strode superbly to the front of the terrace and held up his hands for silence. Gradually, the shouting died down, then the muttering and murmuring, and after a few minutes there was silence. Even the waving of the torches grew less wild until they were held steady, and then the only noise was the not-unpleasant crackle of the bonfires. Clodius had been right: on that night, only Cnaeus Pompeius Magnus could have quieted such a mob. The only other man who could have done it was Caesar, and he was far, far away.

“Citizens!” Pompey shouted in his parade-ground voice, echoing off the buildings on the far side of the Forum, “a great evil has befallen us! The gods have not yet forgiven us for the sacrilege committed five days ago, when my coconsul, Marcus Licinius Crassus, departed for his proconsular province.” Good phrasing, I thought. Whatever had happened, this would remind people that Ateius had brought his fate upon himself.

“Now another sacrilege has been committed!” he went on. “A Tribune of the People, holder of a sacrosanct office, has been foully murdered! Like all Romans, I fear the anger of the gods! All our animosities must be put aside until justice has been done, and we can once again discern clearly what our gods want of us!”

He went on for a while in that vein, speaking of the gods and conciliation, staying rigidly away from partisanship and faction. It was an excellent performance. Pompey wasn’t much of a politician, but he knew how to harangue the troops. While he was speaking, I saw Clodius and Milo down at the corner of the steps, in a dim spot behind an old monument to Scipio Africanus where they couldn’t be seen, briefingtheir men. One would get his orders and rush off into the crowd. I saw one man there who belonged to neither of their gangs: a well-known Forum loudmouth and malcontent named Folius. He formed a sort of party of one, with no clear political agenda, but always ready to mouth off to the mighty.

After a few minutes, Milo and Clodius rejoined us. “They’re primed now,” Milo said to Pompey. The three conferred in low voices for a moment, and the crowd murmur began to rise again. Then Pompey stepped forward.

“Bring forth the body of Ateius Capito!”

Another surge swept through the mob. From somewhere near the center of the Forum, there was a stirring, then a massive shape rose and began to come toward the basilica. It was an eerie sight, as the thing parted the crowd and its torches, like a ship passing through an unearthly sea, and for a moment I shuddered at its fancied resemblance to Charon’s ferryboat conveying the souls of the dead across the Styx.

Then it was near, and I saw that a group of men bore a corpse laid out on a makeshift catafalque: a platform of scavenged timber atop which they had set a couch, doubtless looted from some house or store. On the couch lay something vaguely man shaped and blood-soaked, wrapped in a weirdly striped robe with which I was all too familiar.

“Pompey!” I saw the man Folius push through the crowd and stop short only at the line of lictors. He pointed at the consul. “The people of this City will have justice for the sacrosanct blood of Ateius! Will you satisfy us, or will we hang every aristocrat in Rome by his own white toga?” At this a great shout went up from the mob.

Pompey pressed a hand against his breast and looked mortally hurt. “My friend! Has Cnaeus Pompeius Magnus, victor on land and sea in all parts of the world, triumphator, and twice consul, ever failed his masters, the Roman people?” Approval and applause from the crowd this time. This was great theater.

“It is not enough to rest on past victories, Pompey!” shouted Folius. “This time the enemy is neither barbarian nor pirate! It must be one of your own little well-born crowd, the Senate!” Roars of agreement. Foreigners are always astonished at the way Roman commoners speak right up to the highest officials. They used to, anyway. Much as I detested him, a man like Folius was worth more than all the lickspittles who fawn on the First Citizen these days.

“Was Quintus Sertorius not a noble Roman and a senator?” Pompey demanded. “And when he offended Rome, did I not hunt him down and slay him?” Leaving aside for the moment the fact that Sertorius bested him in every fight until he was assassinated by his own second-in-command, Perperna. It was Perperna whom Pompey defeated. He got Sertorius’s head secondhand. No matter. The crowd was accustomed to attributing all glory to Pompey, and they cheered mightily.

“Who is to prosecute, Pompey?” Folius shouted. “Who is to investigate?”

“This case,” Pompey cried, “will be handled by the highest judicial authority in Rome, the praetor urbanus, Titus Annius Milo!” He clapped Milo on the shoulder. There was a great roar from the crowd. “I hereby clear from his docket all other business. This murder shall take precedence over all other legal matters before the Roman bar!”

Milo stepped forward. “With the approval of the Senate and People, I will appoint Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger as iudex to investigate this murder. He is to have full praetorian authority, equal to my own, save that I will retain my praetorian imperium.”

“Does this satisfy you, Romans?” Pompey cried.

Now another man pushed forward. I knew him as a supporter of Clodius: a man named Vetilius. He shoved Folius aside, and there was a moment of lively, but fake, scuffling; then Vetilius stretched a pointing hand toward me.

“Everyone knows Milo and Metellus are close as teeth in a comb! Name someone else!”

Yes, please do! I thought.

“And yet,” Pompey said, “is Decius Metellus, one of the Twenty, not known to you all as a great man-hunter, who has brought many a malefactor to justice and revealed more than one plot against the State? He is the son of a Censor, a veteran of many wars, scion of an ancient and distinguished house, and nephew by marriage of our great, conquering general, Caius Julius Caesar!” I could almost hear Pompey’s teeth gritting through his praise of another man’s military glory.

“That is not good enough!” Vetilius shouted. “The People must have a representative here!”

“Then,” Pompey said, “overseeing this investigation on behalf of the People, I name the former tribunes Publius Clodius and Marcus Porcius Cato. Clodius voluntarily gave up his patrician rank to serve as your tribune, and Cato is famed for his honesty and integrity above all other Romans of his generation. Will that satisfy you, Citizens?” Everyone knew how Clodius and Cato detested one another.

Now Cicero stepped forward. There was a little muttering from old Catilinarians in the crowd, but mostly they were respectful.

“Romans! Citizens and Conscript Fathers assembled here on this dire night, listen to me! It is time to put aside politics and faction! In some terrible way we have offended the immortal gods, and we must not fight with one another while our sacred City lies beneath this cloud. I call upon the Pontifical College to review all this year’s ceremonies and festivals, to see if anything was ill done or omitted through oversight or malice.

“In the meantime, I call upon you all to reconcile yourselves while we determine where lies the guilt in this foul murder. I call upon those who stand here upon these steps to demonstrate their reconciliation, putting aside their disputes to serve the gods and the State as Romans used to, in the days of Scaevola and Fabius Maximus.”Good show, Cicero, I thought. Appeals to religion, history, and patriotism all at once.

Well-distributed voices in the crowd began to cry out, “Yes!” and “Show us!”

First, Milo put out his hand. Slowly, reluctantly, Clodius took it. Then both of them grinned, their eyes shooting flames all the while. Pompey put an arm around the shoulders of both. Then Cato and Cicero and I joined the loving little menage, and there was a veritable orgy of hand-shaking, back-patting, and embracing. The crowd loved it. They had never seen so many deadly enemies standing so close together without their swords drawn.

We drew apart and resumed our dignitas. I heard Cicero say, out of the corner of his mouth: “And I thought Plautus wrote implausible comedies!”

“Citizens!” Pompey shouted. “Disperse now to your homes, committing no unlawful acts to further anger the gods toward us. I bid the body of Ateius Capito be taken to the Temple of Venus Victrix, above my own theater. There, on the third morning after this, we shall celebrate for him as splendid a funeral as Rome has ever seen, at my own expense!” At this, a cheer went up.

Slowly, from its corners and fringes, the great mob began to break up. Like streams of light, torches meandered up the side streets, clumps of people broke away and dispersed, until finally only the hard core of the mobs of Milo and Clodius remained, along with the strong-arm supporters of some of the senators.

Pompey let out a gusty sigh. “Well-done, everyone.”

“How much of this was constitutional?” I asked.

“We’ll sort out the legal niceties later,” he said. “The important thing is, we’ve saved the City from destruction.”

“For tonight, anyway,” said Cicero. “By the way, that was an excellent idea, using your theater for the funeral. A funeral mob can turn ugly as any. This way, if they riot, we can close the gates and confine the destruction to the Campus Martius.”

“Of course,” I pointed out, “your theater and temple will almost certainly be destroyed.”

Pompey shrugged. “It needs repair, anyway. Those damned elephants.” He looked at me. “And, Decius, do try to find the guilty man or men before the funeral. It will do wonders to quiet the mob.”

“I hardly know where to start,” I said. “It’s not as if there were a shortage of suspects.”

“Just find us somebody, ” Pompey insisted. “Rome is full of people who aren’t really necessary.” He had a true military man’s disregard for the innocent victims of war, be it military or civil. “Well, let’s have a look at the wretched bugger.”

We walked down the steps. At the bottom, a few thugs lounged around the catafalque. Some of them, already bored, were rolling dice and knucklebones.

A senator let out a low whistle. “Someone did a thorough job. Looks like the lions have been at him.”

The body was indeed an alarming sight. The bizarre robe was in rags, and the remainder of his clothing was little more than bloody ribbons. A huge variety of wounds covered it-everything from round punctures to long, parallel gashes like those made by an animal’s claws. Clodius pointed to one such set of marks.

“I’ve seen gouges like that made by spiked caesti.” He looked up at me and smiled. “That’s your favored weapon, isn’t it, Metellus?”

“You should know,” I said. “You’ve kissed it often enough.” Amid laughs at his expense I took out my own caestus with its bronze knuckle-bar set with stubby spikes and held it against the indicated wounds. “If it was a caestus, it had longer spikes than mine, and they were wider set. Besides, even I could never hit that hard.”

“Milo could,” Clodius said. “Or even Senator Balbus here. We all know how strong they are.”

“Let’s have none of that,” Pompey warned. “We told the people that we’d set aside our differences and cooperate, and we will. Any of you who violates that agreement I’ll hound into exile and then to his death. There isn’t a man here who didn’t want to see this rogue dead, so there’s no sense pointing fingers just yet. I want full reports of this investigation every evening starting tomorrow.”

I could not tell whether Ateius met his fate with fear or anger or resignation, since his face was too lacerated to read any expression. Even the eyes were gone, and you could see every tooth in his mouth. Most of his scalp hung away from the skull in hairy, bloody flaps. It was ghastly, but I’d seen bodies mauled worse after gang fights, and all the damage done by bricks and nail-studded planks.

“Don’t get blood on your best toga!” Hermes hissed in my ear. “Julia will skin both of us!”

“Gentlemen,” Pompey said, “good evening to you. Once again, well-done. This was a good night’s work. We might not have been able to pull it off except that four of the men I named to the commission were seen by everyone carrying the sacrifices for the full three circuits a few days ago. The people still feel good about that. But this is not over yet-far from it.”

Clodius pointed to several of his men in turn. “You men haul this carrion over to the temple. Mind you be respectful.”

I addressed the remaining idlers. “Do any of you know where he was found?”

Vetilius came up to me. “I heard that some night-fishermen found him on the riverbank this evening, just before nightfall. Bodies aren’t all that rare in the river, but after the curse, everybody in Rome knew about that robe. They alerted the gate watch, and pretty soon the word was all over the City.”

“Do you know which bank they found him on?”

He shrugged. “I didn’t hear that, but it was those boatmen you see fishing with nets and torches at night between the Sublician and Aemilian Bridges.”

“Then I know who to ask. Thanks.” I turned to Hermes. “Come along.”

“Where are we going?”

“I’m going home, to bed. You go to Aurelia’s summerhouse and tell Julia that I’m all right.”

“I can’t pass through the gate by myself,” he pointed out. “Don’t worry. She’ll have Cypria sitting on the roof, watching for fires in the City. As long as there are no buildings burning, she’ll know there’s no riot.” The boy had a positive genius for avoiding exertion.

“Oh, I suppose you’re right. Tomorrow morning, when you go to the ludus, tell Asklepiodes to meet me at the Temple of Venus Victrix at his earliest convenience.”

“Right.” He yawned as we trudged toward home. “This is more exciting than Gaul.”

“No rest for a servant of the Senate and People,” I said. Now I had two thorny investigations to conduct. But I knew that, when I found the answer to one, I’d have solved the other.