'What, Eco? Have you found them?'
'No, Papa. Not Bethesda or Diana. But in the foyer — you should come and see for yourself…' 'See what?'
Before he could answer, a voice from the sky called both our names. I looked up and saw Diana peering over the edge of the roof. My throat constricted and I almost sobbed with relief.
'Diana! Oh, Diana! But what — how did you get up there?'
'The ladder, of course. Then we pulled it up after us. And then we kept out of sight and stayed quiet. The thieves never even knew we were here.'
'Your mother as well?'
'Yes. She wasn't afraid to climb the ladder at all! And the slaves, too. It was my idea.'
'And a brilliant idea it was.' Tears welled in my eyes until Diana became a blur.
'And look, Papa! I even thought to save my jewellery box.' She held it proudly before her.
'Yes, very good. Go get your mother now,' I said, impatient to see with my own eyes that Bethesda was safe. 'Tell Belbo to come, too.'
Eco spoke softly in my ear. 'Papa, come to the foyer.' 'What?'
'Come.' He took my arm and led me there.
When I first rushed into the house, I had tripped over something large and heavy. The thing I had tripped over was a body. Eco's men had rolled him onto his back and pulled him into the light.
Belbo's face, normally so bovine and amenable, was frozen in a grimace of fierce determination. In his right hand he clenched a dagger with blood on it. The front of his pale tunic was spotted with great blossoms of red.
He had died just inside the broken door, defending the breach, striving to keep them out. His dagger testified that he had inflicted at least one wound, but he had taken many more.
The tears which I had been holding back, which I had begrudgingly released in my relief at seeing Diana, now came in a blinding flood. The simple, cheerful man who had been my loyal companion for twenty-five years and the protector of my loved ones, who had saved my life more than once, who had always seemed lit from within by a steady flame which nothing could extinguish, lay lifeless at my feet. Belbo was dead.
Part Two
X
The looting and burning went on for days.
Rome was utterly without order. Fires broke out or were deliberately started all over the city. A haze of smoke settled into the valleys between the seven hills. Teams of slaves and hired freedmen, their clothes and faces smeared with soot, rushed from crisis to crisis.
I heard women screaming in the night, hoarse cries for help, the clash of steel against steel. There were wild rumours of every sort of outrage — rapes, murders, kidnappings, children trapped in houses and burned alive, men hung upside down by their feet at street corners, beaten to death with clubs and left hanging like trophies.
The day after Belbo was killed, Eco and I braved the streets to deliver his body to the necropolis outside the city walls. Two of my household slaves pulled the cart bearing his corpse. Eco's bodyguards flanked our procession. Though we passed several gangs of looters, no one disturbed us. They were too busy plundering the living to bother with the dead.
At the grove of Libitina we entered Belbo into the registry of the dead. The cremators were very busy that day. Belbo was burned along with several others on a flaming pyre, and then his ashes were taken to a common grave. It seemed too small an end to such a robust life.
Eco and I debated whether my family should go to his house, or his family should come to my house, so as to join our defences. In the end, we decided to leave his household slaves at the house on the Esquiline, so as to guard the place, but to move Menenia and the twins into my house, which, once the door was repaired and strengthened, was arguably more defensible. The Palatine was dangerous, but there had been numerous fires and reports of atrocities on the Esquiline as well, and down in the Subura there was no semblance of order at all. Besides, my house had already been ransacked. There was no reason for the same looters to come back a second time.
As is wont to happen in such circumstances, the air of crisis actually lent a comforting solidarity to the household. Bethesda, Menenia and Diana all worked together, seeing to the repair of the damaged furniture, making lists of the things that needed to be replaced, finding ways to keep the household fed when most of the markets were shut down and the rest were open for only a few unpredictable hours each day. The twins, Titus and Titania, sensing the gravity of the situation, were eager to help and behaved with a maturity beyond their seven years. I felt safer in the company of Davus and the other bodyguards, and it was good to have Eco beside me. But the ransacked house itself was a constant reminder of our vulnerability. Whenever I passed through the garden, I saw the Minerva lying broken on the ground. Whenever I passed through the foyer, I remembered Belbo as we had found him. I felt his absence acutely. Sometimes I called his name aloud before stopping myself He had been at my side every day for so long that I had come to take him for granted, like the air; and like the air, once he was gone I realized just how much I had needed him.
One interrex gave way to the next, and the next, and there were still no elections or even the prospect of elections. How could there be, in such a state of chaos? Day by day and hour by hour the sentiment seemed to be growing that Rome needed a dictator. Occasionally the name of Caesar was mentioned. More often, and more vehemently, it was Pompey who was invoked, as if the Great One's name were some magical incantation that could put all wrongs to right.
Each day I thought that I might hear from Cicero again, but there were no more summons from Tiro, no hushed meetings with Milo and Caelius. I almost wished that Cicero would call for me, so that I could get some idea of what he and his circle were up to in the midst of the disorder.
It was another who came calling for me instead.
It was a cold, bright Februarius morning. Eco had gone to check on affairs at his house, so I was alone in my study. Despite the chill, I had opened the shutters to let in some sunlight and fresh air. Perhaps the many fires all over the city had at last been quenched; I could smell only a faint tang of smoke. Davus came into my study to say that a litter accompanied by a train of slaves was camped outside my front door, and that one of the slaves had a message for me. litter?'
'Yes. Quite a grand vehicle. It has — '
'Red and white stripes,' I said, with a stab of intuition.
'Why yes.' He raised his eyebrows and I was reminded, with a pang of sadness, of Belbo. Young Davus looked nothing like him, being dark and considerably more handsome than Belbo had ever been, but he was of the same size and bovine demeanour. He wrinkled his brow. 'It looks familiar.'
'Could it be the same litter we saw arrive at the house of Clodius, on the night of his death?'
'I think it must be.'
'I see. And there's a slave with a message, you say? Show him in.'
The man was typical of Clodia's male servants, young and impeccably groomed with a striking profile and a muscular neck. I would have known who sent him even if Davus had not told me about the litter, for there was a hint of her perfume about his clothes. I had never forgotten that scent, with its blend of spikenard and costly crocus oil. He must have been a very favoured slave to smell so strongly of his mistress.
His status was confirmed by his haughty manner. He sniffed and peered about my study as if he were thinking of buying the house, not just delivering a message. 'Well,' I finally said, 'what does Clodia want from me, young man?'
