"It will take only a few moments. I have an urge to go up on the Capitoline, just to take in the view. The air is so clear today, and the sun will be setting in the west." She nodded to Chrysis, who stuck her head out of the curtains and gave instructions to the chief of the litter bearers.
We passed back through the vegetable and cattle markets, crossed the valley between the Palatine and Capitoline hills, and entered the Forum. The day was waning, but a glimpse outside showed me that the squares were still thronged with men in togas going about their business. I appreciated the privacy of a closed litter-how else could a man cross the busiest spot in Rome side by side with a scandalous woman, without anyone seeing him?
Clodia's entourage did not go unnoticed, however. At one point we crossed paths with some of Milo's gang, who must have recognized the distinctive red and white striped curtains of the box.
"Bring out the whore!" one of them shouted. "Are you in there with her, Clodius?"
"Wet the bed again and gone running to your big sister?" "She'll kiss it and make it all better!" "Or bigger!"
There was a sudden jolt as the litter came to a halt. From outside we heard more obscene taunts, then the sounds of a skirmish. The moment had a peculiar, nightmarish quality; inside the box we were hidden, but also blind to the outside world, so that the obscenities seemed to come from disembodied voices and the scuffling noises were all the more alarming, their causes unseen. I heard the slither of steel pulled from scabbards, then more shouts. Beside me Clodia's body seemed to radiate heat. I glanced at her face, which remained expressionless. I thought I saw her ears turn red, but it might have been a trick of the light within the box.
The litter began to move again, then abruptly stopped.
"Turn it over!" someone shouted.
"Make a bonfire of the bitch!"
Staring straight ahead, Clodia reached for my hand and squeezed it. I gritted my teeth and sucked in a breath. From outside came the sounds of clashing steel, along with yells and grunts.
Finally the litter began moving again and rapidly picked up speed, leaving a chorus of obscene taunts behind us. Clodia stared straight ahead. Gradually she relaxed her grip and let go of my hand. She let out a barely audible sigh, then gave a start when a gruff voice called her name from outside.
"The chief of the bodyguard," she said to me, regaining her composure. She pulled back the curtain. A straw-haired gladiator with a crooked nose trotted alongside the litter.
"Sorry about that," he said. "Nothing to worry about. They got the worst of it. Milo's men won't try a stunt like that again anytime soon!"
Clodia nodded. The man grinned, showing rotten teeth, and Clodia let the curtain drop.
We turned sharply to the left and then to the right again, going up the long steep ramp that ascends to the summit of the Capitoline.
We passed by the chief monuments, the Auguraculum and the great Temple of Jupiter, and headed past the Tarpeian Rock to the less built-up southern end of the hill. The litter came to a stop. Clodia donned her cape and we stepped from the box. The spot was deserted and silent except for the sound of wind in my ears.
The sky above us swirled with the orange and purple clouds of a
spectacular sunset. The Tiber was a sheet of gold and the whole western horizon was aflame. "You see?" said Clodia, wrapping herself in her cape. "I knew it would be marvelous!"
I stood beside her, staring at the sunset. She pointed at something directly below us. "If you look straight down, over the edge of the cliff, you can see just a bit of the brick wall that closes off the Claudian burial ground, where we were. You see, there? And just beyond that, the Temple of Bellona, built on the same parcel of land by one of my ancestors, the Appius Claudius who was victorious against the Etruscans two hundred years ago. Instead of holding a triumphal parade, he built a temple at his own expense and dedicated it to the war goddess Bellona, and gave it to the people of Rome to be his monument. Sulla was especially fond of Bellona, you know. He gave her credit for his victories. I remember him once telling Father, 'Thank your ancestor for me, the next time you talk to him, for building Bellona such a fine place to live here in Rome.'
She smiled and turned her back on the sunset, walking slowly until she came to the opposite side of the hill. Across from us the Palatine loomed with its great jumble of rooftops. A little more to the south the view opened up. In the valley between the Palatine and the Aventine hills lay the vast expanse of the Circus Maximus with its long racetrack. Clodia pointed to the regions beyond. "Over there the Appian Way begins, and runs south all the way to Campania and beyond. And there, crossing the Appian Way, joining the wall for a stretch, is the Appian aqueduct, which has been bringing water into the city for almost three hundred years. These works are the legacy of my family. And those men in the Forum dare to call me such names!"
She stared at the view for a while, blinking as if the wind had blown dust in her eyes, then looked over her shoulder. A stone's throw away was the southernmost of the temples that crowd the Capitoline. "I need to go inside, just for a moment," she said. She strode toward the temple steps and left me behind, wondering whether I had just seen a patrician's pious desire to burn a bit of incense for her ancestors, or a woman's need to hide a sudden burst of tears.
The litter bearers rested. The bodyguards threw dice. Chrysis remained within the canopied box. I shuffled about the paved square in front of the temple, staring at the flagstones. Suddenly I realized which temple it was, the Temple of Public Faith, and remembered the inscription that had been added some time ago to the marble parapet in front of the building.
The inscription wasn't hard to find. In the fading light I read the chiseled letters with a feeling of odd detachment:
PTOLEMAIOS THEOS PHILOPATOR PHILADELPHOS NEOSDIONYSOS
When all else was said and done, King Ptolemy was the reason behind everything: Dio's journey to Rome and his gruesome death, the Egyptian machinations of Pompey and Clodius and the rest of the Roman Senate, the impending trial of Marcus Caelius. But as the philosophers point out, the single trunk of a tree, so clear to see at its base, becomes increasingly obscure the farther one proceeds into the branches.
I didn't have to look up to know that Clodia had finished her business in the temple and was silently descending the steps toward me. I smelled her perfume.
Chapter Fifteen
I stepped from Clodia's litter onto the street in front of my house just as the last of the day's light was retreating from the rooftops into the ether. The red and white striped litter departed. The stamping feet of Clodia's bodyguards left a haze of dust in their wake, which made the empty, twilit street even murkier. I rapped on my door, but Belbo was slow in opening it.
Some apprehension-a tap on the shoulder from Fortune, as they say-caused me to glance over my shoulder. Across the street I saw the figure of a man. He wore a toga, and from his pose he appeared to be standing still and watching me. I turned and rapped on the door again. I tried the latch, just in case the door might have been left unbarred. It had not. I looked over my shoulder again.
The figure had moved closer, into the middle of the street. In the dimness and dust I could make out nothing but a silhouette.
Where was Belbo when I needed him? No need to take along the hulking brute, Trygonion had told me when I left the house. You'll be in the litter. It's well guarded. Now I found myself alone on my own doorstep, without a bodyguard, without a weapon. I rapped on the door again, then turned to face the man. If I was to be stabbed, I'd prefer to look him in the eye rather than have my back turned. Of course, the man was probably just some passing stranger, I told myself, even as I went through the catalogue in my mind of all those who might want to put a stop to any further investigation into the murder of Dio – King Ptolemy, Pompey, Marcus Caelius, Clodius's enemy Milo, whose gang had just threatened Clodia in the Forum-men notorious for using whatever means were necessary to snuff out their opposition.