Murder on the Appian Way (55 page)

"Yes. They were leaning over him."

"And you knew it was Clodius?"

"Yes."

"How?"

She shrugged. "By his face."

"You could see his face? He must have been lying on his back, then."

"Yes, he was. On his back, looking up at them."

The skin prickled at the base of my skull. "What did you say?"

"Clodius was on his back, looking up at the senator and his daughter."

"You mean his eyes were open and staring in death?"

"No. I mean what I say. He was looking at them, and they were looking at him." She frowned, trying to remember. "They talked a bit, back and forth. Then Tedius and his daughter helped Clodius stand up and get into the litter."

I looked down at the road, picturing the scene, then turned to the widow. It was possible, of course, that grief had made her mad. "Are you saying that Clodius was alive?"

"Yes. Only barely, I suppose."

"But your sister made it seem that Clodius was dead when Tedius found him. That was the way she told it, to me and to the court. She said that you saw the senator and his daughter put Clodius into their litter, but she said nothing to indicate that Clodius was still alive." I tried to remember exactly what she had said ...

"He was alive," the widow said. "Probably she misunderstood me. I was raving when I told her what had happened, what I'd seen. I hardly knew what I was saying. Perhaps the way I told it to her, it was unclear."

"Perhaps. You and your sister seem to have been unclear with each other on a number of points. But Sextus Tedius told the story the same way. He made no mention of Clodius being alive when he found him."

"But Clodius was alive. He was stiff and limping and bloody, and • they had to help him into the litter — but he was alive, I assure you, unless dead men can walk and talk. He was still alive! And my husband was dead, lying at the foot of these stairs. Why are you doing this to me?" Suddenly she turned and ran down the stairs, weeping at last

I looked out the window, staring hard at the empty road, as if by concentration alone I could conjure up the lemures of the dead to re-enact their final moments of life. Oh, what a grand and terrible power that would be!

XXXV

It was twilight when we arrived at the house of Sextus Tedius. I was very hungry and very tired of riding. I told the boys to watch the horses and sent Davus ahead of me to rap on the door.

The doorkeeper took a long time to answer, and even longer to confer with his master and return. At last I was invited inside.

Sextus Tedius received me in the same room as before. The windows were opened to show the town of Aricia below, a pool of pale blue shadows surmounted by rooftops glinting with the last of the day's sunlight. Tedius sat upright in his old-fashioned backless chair. Despite the warmth of the day, a blanket was thrown over his legs. It was the left leg that was crippled, I remembered. He ran a dark, leathery hand through his white hair and appraised me shrewdly.

"I remember you," he said. "Pompey's man. The one who came around asking all the questions."

"Not all the questions I should have asked, apparently."

"Have you come here again, 'on behalf of the Great One', as I believe you put it before?"

"In a way, yes. Pompey hired me to find out everything I could about the incident on the Appian Way. I thought I had done that, but I appear to have been mistaken."

"Speak plainly."

"I intend to. I hope you'll do the same, Sextus Tedius." He raised an eyebrow at this, but said nothing. "Is your daughter here?" I asked.

"I can't imagine that my daughter's whereabouts could be of any concern to you."

"Nonetheless, I should like very much to speak to both of you together."

He lowered his white brows and studied me for a long moment. "You know something, don't you?"

"I know more now than I did an hour ago. I should like to know everything."

"Ah, to know everything! What a curse that would be for a mortal. Tedia!" He raised his voice. "Tedia, come into the room and join us."

His daughter emerged from the hallway. She was dressed as I had seen her before, without jewellery or makeup and wearing a white linen mantle over her head, tied with a blue ribbon at the back. She stood rigidly upright with a grim look on her face.

"Tedia always eavesdrops on my conversations," said Sextus Tedius. "It makes it much easier for me to remember all the details afterwards."

"My father and I have no secrets from one another." She stood behind him and laid her hands on his shoulders.

"I saw your father testify at the trial, repeating the same story he told to me. I thought you were determined to keep him away from the trial, Tedia."

"In the end it seemed better to make an appearance," she said. "Clodius was sent back to Rome in our litter, after all. To have refused to explain how that occurred could have excited ... comment."

"I see. And the story you told, Tedius, was entirely credible, after all. You merely left out certain details, such as the fact that Clodius was alive when you came upon him."

"How do you know that?" said Tedia. She began to knead her father's shoulder, in the same way that I had seen her nervously wring her hands at our first meeting. "If one of our slaves has talked —"

"Your slaves are loyal. There was another witness."

"Not at the trial."

"No, the witness was away from Rome that day — down in Rhegium, I was told."

Sextus Tedius winced almost imperceptibly. His daughter had squeezed his shoulder too hard. "Clodius deserved to die," she said.

"Perhaps. Yet I saw you weep when Fulvia testified."

"A woman can feel pity for a widow without feeling sorry that her husband is dead."

"I see. And how, exactly, did Clodius die?" I held my breath. I had no means to compel her to speak, if she chose not to. Her father reached up and clutched one of her hands with a gesture of restraint, but she seemed not to notice. Her face was adamant.

"I killed him," she said.

"But how? Why?"

"Why?" Her voice rose. "Because a more impious man never blighted the earth. You must have learned of his crimes when you were pestering everyone on this mountain. He cut down the sacred grove of Jupiter, merely to add some rooms to his house. Imagine, evicting a god to make room for himself! And what he did to the Vestals was unspeakable, driving them from their ancient house, defrauding them, treating them like common business rivals to be cheated and driven into the dirt. Did he think he could commit such crimes and go unpunished?"

"Publius Clodius had been committing many crimes of many sorts for years, without being punished," I said.

"All the more reason that the time had come," said Tedia sternly.

"He was alive when you came upon him at the inn ..." "Very much alive." "But near death, surely."

"How can you say that? Were you there to judge? I shall tell you how it was —"

"Daughter!" Sextus Tedius scowled and shook his head.

"Father, I have nothing to be ashamed of, and nothing to fear. It began as my father told you - we were on our way to Rome, we came upon. Milo in the aftermath of the skirmish, he lied and told us there were bandits about. I was afraid and wanted to turn back, but my father insisted that we press on, and so we did. The goddess Vesta was guiding us that day, I have no doubt of that. We arrived at the inn in Bovillae and saw the carnage there. I thought I would faint from fright, I felt such a tremor and a coldness inside me. Now I know it was only the goddess stirring in me, preparing me for the task at hand.

"There were bodies scattered in the road, blood everywhere. It was strange, to come to a place one has seen so many times and passed without a thought — such a common, familiar, ordinary place — and to witness such horror and devastation. Everything seemed unreal, as if I were delirious with fever. I helped my father from the litter and we walked among the bodies. There was no one to be helped; they were all dead.

"Then we heard a voice from inside the tavern, a thin, weak cry for help: Clodius appeared at the door. His clothes were torn. He was wounded. He clutched a blood-soaked rag to his shoulder. He spoke through gritted teeth. 'Help me,' he said."

"All the others had died defending him, you see," said Sextus Tedius. "His men were loyal, no one can deny that."

"He staggered out of the tavern," Tedia continued, "He tripped and dropped to his knees, then rolled onto his back, groaning and keeping his shoulder from touching the ground. He seemed comfortable that way, lying on his back. We leaned over him. His voice was hoarse and strained, hardly more than a whisper. 'Take me home,' he said. 'Not back to the villa - they'll look for me there. Take me to Rome in your litter. Hide me from them!' 'From the bandits?' said my father. And Clodius laughed! A hissing, hateful laugh - what perfect white teeth he had! "The only bandits on this road are Milo's gladiators,' he said. 'They chased me here and tried to kill me, but something scared them off Quickly, hide me in your litter!' So we helped him to his feet and then into the litter. I could see that my father was uncertain what to do next. I drew him aside, where the slaves couldn't hear."

Tedius grunted. "I'd have sent him back to his villa, whether he wanted to go there or not, but Milo was in the way. I had no intention oftrying to slip by Milo, making myself a spy in the service of that jackal Clodius. Nor did I wish to hand Clodius over to that liar Milo. Perhaps if we'd left him there, he'd simply have bled to death, or Milo's men would have come back and finished him off. But there he was in our litter, getting blood on the pillows ..."

"I made the decision," said Tedia. Her voice was like cold iron. "It came to me all at once. I happened to look up at the inn, and saw her in the window of the upper storey. Her face seemed to hover there, like a portrait in a frame. I saw the face of Vesta and I knew what to do."

I shook my head. "The face you saw was the poor, terrified widow of the innkeeper."

Tedia looked at me disparagingly. "How do you know what I saw? Were you there?"

I saw no point in contradicting her. "How did you kill him?"

She removed her hands from her father's shoulders and reached up to undo the blue ribbon that secured the linen mantle at the back of her head. She wound the ends of the ribbon around her strong, supple hands and pulled it taut. "I killed him with this. I only wish the goddess could have watched, but I had to do it inside the litter, out of sight. The slaves were there; they had no business seeing. I climbed into the litter and moved behind him. Father climbed in after me and we let the curtains drop. I slipped the ribbon over his neck. Father held him from the front."

"We could never have managed it if he hadn't already been weakened by his wounds," said Tedius matter-of-factly. "Look at us - an old, crippled man and a woman. But we managed it."

"I saw the body," I said. "The wound at his shoulder was deep. He probably would have died anyway."

"Don't be so sure," said Tedius. "I've seen plenty of battles, and plenty of soldiers who looked to be in worse condition than Clodius did, who nonetheless recovered. There was a surprising amount of life still left in that jackal. I know; I watched the last of it leave him. Unmolested, he might very well have survived the trip back to Rome. He would still be alive today."

"You claim credit for his death, then. You seem to be proud of it."

"I'm proud of my daughter, yes! You have a son, don't you, Gordianus? I remember, he was with you when you last came here. Well, I'm like every other man - I would like to have had a son, to watch him grow to manhood, to see him prove his courage in battle and show his convictions in the Forum, But I had no son. I only had a daughter. But that daughter has always been faithful to me and never disappointed me, and when her mother died, she willingly took her place. No man could ask for a better daughter. And now look what she's done! She accomplished what no man was able to do either by battle or by using the law: she put an end to Publius Clodius. An enemy of the state, a menace to decency, a blight on the Republic, a disgrace to his ancestors. And it was my daughter who finally put an end to him! The gods and goddesses manifest their wills in mysterious ways, Gordianus. They'd had enough of Publius Clodius, and snuffed him out. Who am I, an old, lame senator, to question their choice of a vessel?"

I studied the two of them, so grimly self-satisfied, models of stern Roman virtue. "Why didn't you push his body from the litter and leave him by the road, then? Why did you send him on to Rome?"

"The litter was polluted by his blood and offal," said Tedia. "I could never enter it again."

"It was his last request of us, to send him home," her father said. "It's as I said to you before: once a man is dead, what use is there in despising him? No, I wouldn't leave him lying in the road, like a dead dog. I sent his body on to Rome, and told the bearers to deliver it with great respect into the care of his widow."

"His ring," I said, remembering. "His body arrived without his ring. Did you take it from him?"

Tedia lowered her eyes. "That was a mistake. I thought it would be pleasing to the goddess."

"You were the woman who went to the House of the Vestals and offered Clodius's ring for a prayer of thanksgiving?"

"Yes."

I suddenly understood the strange look I had seen on Philemon's face in the Salacious Tavern. I had asked why he had not appealed to Tedius's daughter for help when he was herded in bondage up the Appian Way, past the place where Tedius was resting below the House of the Vestals. What I had taken for offence was merely puzzlement. Philemon had never seen Tedia, for Tedia had been up at the House of the Vestals.

"You hid your face from the Virgo Maxima," I said. "You disguised your voice."

"Yes. Otherwise the Vestals would have known me."

"Weren't you proud of what you'd done?"

"I felt no need to boast or show, my face. I was a mere vessel for the goddess, and it was to the goddess alone that I wished to offer the ring. But the Virgo Maxima refused to take it. She said that such an offering would be impious."