and conquered it all by themselves! No, they weren't the only ones. A whole army came down behind them.'
'An army?'
'Perhaps I exaggerate.'
'How many men, then? Ten, twenty?'
'Maybe more than that.'
'Then Clodius was greatly outnumbered?'
'You could say that'
'And the siege at the inn — did you see that as well?' 'Well, not exactly. Not while it was happening. I stayed at the altar, of course, to protect it.' 'Of course.'
'But everyone knows how it turned out. Marcus the innkeeper slaughtered, and that scoundrel Clodius and his men lying dead in the road.'
'Scoundrel?'
The priest looked up at me sidelong and clicked his teeth. 'I mean no offence, citizen. You were a partisan of the fellow?'
'No. Our hostess at the inn had a different opinion of Clodius, that's all. Say what you please about him.'
'Then I'll go ahead and call him a scoundrel, if you don't object.'
'You preferred Milo?'
Felix raised an eyebrow. 'I'm a priest of great Jupiter. I keep my thoughts on higher things than the squabbling of petty politicians up in Rome. But when a man commits sacrilege as blatantly as Clodius did, the gods are bound to strike him down sooner or later.'
'Sacrilege? You mean the time he disguised himself as a woman to sneak into the rites of the Good Goddess in Rome, with the objective of making love to Caesar's wife even as the rites were being performed?' This had been one of Clodius's most infamous escapades.
'That was indeed a terrible sacrilege,' said the priest. 'Clodius should have been stoned for that, but he managed to bribe the jury.'
'A failure of earthly justice,' said Eco, nodding in agreement but with a mischievous twinkle in his eye. 'And a lapse of heavenly justice, too. When I was a boy, everyone told me that any man who dared to violate the rites of the Good Goddess would be struck deaf) dumb and blind. But Clodius was the same after he sneaked into the rites as he was before. I wonder why the Good Goddess spared him. Did his gown and makeup fool her? Or was she as charmed by Clodius as Caesar's wife was?’
The priest refused to be needed. 'Of course she spared him — so that he could meet a more horrible fate these ten years later, here at Bovillae! Do you think it's only a coincidence that the battle began right in front of the Good Goddess's shrine on the Appian Way? Fauna had a hand in his fate, you can be sure.' The priest nodded gravely, daring Eco to refute his logic. 'But that wasn't the man's only sacrilege, or even the wont. Up in Rome I don't suppose you've heard much about what Clodius did to the grove of Jupiter here on Mount Alba, or the way he treated the local Vestal Virgins.'
'Our hostess at the inn mentioned something about it,' I said, 'but the story's new to me.'
Felix shook his head. 'You'd think such crimes would be brought to light when a man runs for public office, but I suppose people were ready to elect Clodius praetor without giving a thought to his religious offences in these parts. I'll tell you, then. It all had to do with that gigantic villa of his up on the hill. It was a simple enough place to start with, but that wouldn't do. He had to keep expanding it, turning it into his private fortress. His property came right up against some of the most sacred parts of the mountain — the grove of Jupiter, the Temple of Vesta, the House of the Vestal Virgins. When he needed more land, Clodius somehow got the property lines redrawn. He claimed a large part of the sacred grove — which he then proceeded to chop down for lumber! And he had the Vestals evicted from their house, which he then dismantled stone by stone to add a wing to his own villa — using the old mosaics and statuary for decorations! Look, there's the new house of the Vestals over there, on the left; you can just glimpse it through the trees. At least he left the Temple of Vesta alone, but that's small recompense for what he did to the grove. To my mind there's no more impious act than doing harm to a sacred tree, and Clodius ordered them cut down by tens and twenties!'
'But how did he manage to lay claim to these sacred properties?'
'How should I know? I'm only a simple priest, assigned to a single altar. Who knows what sort of threats and bribes he made? Men like that will stop at nothing to get what they want.' He looked at Eco. 'Do you doubt me now, young man, when I say that the gods were at work when Clodius was struck down?'
' 'The gods are at work in all things,' I said, to mollify him, 'even in our chance meeting, and this conversation. So, you saw the flight to the inn, but not the battle itself'
'But I could hear it from the altar. Cracking and crashing and screaming!'
'How long did this go on?'
'Hard to say. Not too long. Then a lot of yelling, and things fell quiet for a while. Then the old senator and his daughter came down the hill in their litter.'
'You mean, after Eudamus and Birria and Milo's men had gone back up the hill,' I said.
'No. The senator went by, and it wasn't until quite a bit later that Milo's men started back up the hill with the prisoners.'
'Prisoners?' I frowned.
'Five or six of them, I'd say.'
'How could you tell they were prisoners?'
'Because their hands were bound! They were all huddled together, looking scared out of their wits, with Milo's men surrounding them and Eudamus and Birria prodding them on with an occasional jab to their behinds.'
'But who were these prisoners? Clodius's men?'
Felix shrugged. 'Who else?'
'But I thought that the five or six men defending Clodius at the inn were all killed.'
'Yes, I suppose they were. Maybe these were some of his men rounded up from the woods.'
'Were these prisoners wounded? Were they bloody?'
He looked puzzled. 'Now that you ask me, no, I don't think they were.'
I shook my head. According to Fulvia, at least half of Clodius's men had scattered and fled into the woods early in the battle — these were the few survivors who had eventually come back to her with fragmentary reports of the disaster — and all the rest had died, either along the road or protecting Clodius at the inn. According to her, no one in Clodius's entourage was missing or unaccounted for. Who then were these prisoners the priest spoke of? And if Senator Tedius had come along in his litter before Milo's men departed, not after, how was it that when the innkeeper's wife ventured to look out of the window after the battle, she saw only Senator Tedius and his daughter standing over Clodius with their retinue, and no sign of Milo's men? The precise sequence of events was suddenly muddled in my mind. What exactly had the innkeeper's wife seen with her own eyes? Her sister-in-law was only a secondhand witness, and might have inadvertently changed some detail or left something out. If only the woman was not so far away, in Rhegium…
'Well, this is the spot!' announced the priest, a little out of breath from the uphill climb. 'There's the shrine of the Good Goddess, up ahead on the right.' He pointed to a miniature temple with a round roof just off the road, ringed by oak trees. 'This is where the battle started. Clodius and his men were coming down the hill, and Milo and his men were heading up.'
Was that how it had happened — two parties simply happened to pass on the road and somehow came to blows? Or had there in fact been an ambush, no matter how ill conceived on the part of Clodius and his smaller force? The spot was perfect for it; the trees were dense enough on either side to provide hiding places and the slope of the land would have favoured an attacker corning from above.
But who, excepting the parties involved, had actually witnessed the event?
'Felicia!' cried the priest to a tall, lithe figure in a white gown who had stepped out of the woods surrounding the shrine of the Good Goddess. As she approached us she raised her hand in greeting and smiled, and I saw that she was older than I had first thought. There was a luminous quality about her pale face and a gracefulness in her step that at a distance projected the illusion of youth. Clearly, she had once been a stunningly beautiful woman. She was still very pleasing to look at.
The priest stepped towards her and put his hands on his hips. 'Kindly wait your turn, Felicia. I am escorting
