'Well, I can't speak for Clodia, but if I were distraught, I should have no stomach for facing a huge crowd. I'd want to avoid that if I possibly could. And Clodia could have done so, quite easily, simply by entering through that side door. She could have avoided the crowd completely. Am I right? Her litter could have deposited her and Metella and her nephew Appius at the foot of the steps, and they could have gone up to the landing and into the house without anyone even knowing they'd arrived.'
'I suppose so…'
Diana picked up the thread from her mother. 'Instead, she went through the thick of the crowd in that huge litter — the one with the red and white stripes that everyone knows is hers — with a veritable army of big redheaded gladiators.'
Bethesda nodded. 'Where everyone would be sure to notice her arrival.'
'And talk about it long afterwards,' said Diana. 'What is your point?' I said, looking back and forth between them.
'Well, Papa, only that grief was not the only thing on Clodia's mind.'
'Exactly,' said Bethesda. 'Making an entrance — that was the point.'
'Oh, really!' I shook my head. 'If you'd been there, if you'd felt the mood of the place, the despair, the anguish — '
'All the better to heighten the drama,' said Bethesda. 'I don't doubt Clodia's grief But you see, she must have considered the circumstances ahead of time. She realized that she wouldn't be allowed to appear publicly alongside her brother's body when it was shown to the crowd. That privilege was reserved for Fulvia.'
'So Clodia made an impression in the only way she could — by making a grand entrance,' said Diana.
'I see. You're saying she wanted to upstage her sister-in-law.'
'Not at all.' Bethesda frowned at my obtuseness. 'She only wanted what was hers.'
'To claim the portion of public grief that she feels belongs to her,' Diana explained.
'I see,' I said, not at all certain that I did. 'Well, speaking of doing things for show, of course I was quite struck by the inconsistency of Fulvia's behaviour — '
'Inconsistency?' said Bethesda.
'What do you mean, Papa?'
'I told you how stiff she was in the inner room, how she showed virtually no emotion, even when she put Clodia in her place about cleaning the body. And then her hysterical shrieking in front of all those people when they showed Clodius to the mob!'
'But where's the inconsistency, Papa?' Diana looked at me curiously, as did her mother. I almost thought they were making fun of me.
'It seems to me that a woman should grieve in private and show restraint in public, not — the other way around,' I said.
Bethesda and Diana looked at each other and wrinkled their brows. 'What would be the point of that?' said Bethesda.
'It's not a matter of having a point — '
'Husband!' Bethesda was shaking her head. 'Of course Fulvia didn't want to show her grief to you, a stranger, in the intimacy of her home, and especially not in front of Clodia. She comported herself with dignity to make her mother proud, to show her little daughter how to be strong, to confound her weeping sister-in-law. And for the sake of her husband as well, since you Romans believe that the lemur of a dead man may linger for a while in the vicinity of its vacant corpse. So for you she put on her most dignified manner.
But the crowd outside, that was a different matter. Fulvia wanted to stir them up, as much as she could, just as her husband had stirred them up so many times before. She could hardly do that by standing next to his bloody corpse and behaving like a statue, could she?'
'Then you think her display of public grief was calculated and disingenuous?'
'Calculated, most certainly. But disingenuous? Not at all. She simply chose the most suitable time and place to release the grief that was inside her all along.'
I shook my head. 'I'm not sure you're making sense. I'd rather try to figure out what sort of schemes the politicians in the anteroom were up to.'
Bethesda and Diana shrugged in unison to show that the subject bored them. 'Politicians are usually too obvious to be very interesting,' said Bethesda. 'Of course, it may be that I've misjudged Clodia and Fulvia. I wasn't there to see with my own eyes. I can only go by what you've told me.'
'Am I such an unreliable observer?' I raised an eyebrow. 'Men do call me the Finder, you know.'
'The thing is,' said Bethesda, oblivious to my point, 'that one never quite knows what some people are really up to. Especially with a woman as complicated as Clodia, or Fulvia. How does one ever know what she really thinks, really feels? What she really wants?' Bethesda exchanged a thoughtful look with Diana. Simultaneously they lifted spoonfuls of porridge to their lips, then abruptly lowered them as Belbo came into the room.
For many years the straw-haired giant of a fellow had been my private bodyguard, and had saved my life on more than one occasion. He was still as strong as an ox, but as lumbering as one, too; as loyal as a hound, but no longer fit for the chase. I still entrusted my life to him on a daily basis -1 let him shave my neck — but I couldn't rely on him to protect me from daggers in the Forum. What does one do with a loyal bodyguard who has outlasted his usefulness? Belbo could read only a little and do only the most rudimentary sums. He had no special skills at carpentry or gardening. Aside from performing an occasional feat of prodigious strength — toting a heavy sack of grain or lifting a massive wardrobe single-handed — he served me well enough as a doorkeeper, a job which chiefly required him to sit in a warm patch of sunlight in the atrium for most of the day. Lethargy suited his bovine nature and enhanced that equable temperament which strangers often mistook for stupidity. Belbo's wits might be slow, but they were not dim. It was his way to smile at a joke after everyone else finished laughing. He seldom grew angry, even when provoked. He even more rarely showed fear. As he stepped into the dining room, however, his oxlike eyes were wide with alarm. 'Belbo, what's wrong?'
'Out in the street, master. In front of the house. I think you'd better come see.'
As soon as I stepped into the garden at the centre of the house, I heard the noise carried on the open air — an indistinct mingling of cries and stamping feet. It sounded like a riot. I hurried through the garden and the atrium to the foyer at the front of the house. Belbo pulled open the little sliding panel in the door and stepped aside to let me press my eye to the peephole.
I saw a blur of movement from right to left — a mob rushing by, all dressed in black. I heard the roar of the crowd but couldn't make sense of it.
'Who are they, Belbo? What's going on?' I stared through the peephole. Suddenly a figure broke away from the mob and ran directly up to the door. He put his mouth to the peephole and began screaming, 'We'll burn it down! Burn it down!' He banged his fists against the door. I jerked back, my heart pounding. Through the peephole I saw the man step back, his face frozen in a maniacal grin. Even with the door between us, I shivered. Then, just as suddenly as he had rushed up, the man turned and rushed away, disappearing into the mob.
'What in Hades is going on?'
'I wouldn't advise going outside to find out,' said Belbo earnestly.
I thought for a moment. 'We'll go up on the roof to have a look. Fetch the ladder, Belbo, and bring it to the garden!'
A few moments later I found myself settled precariously on the slanting tiles along the front roof of my house. From here I had a view not only of the street below, but of the Forum beyond, with its temples and public spaces clustered close together in the valley between the Palatine, and Capitoline Hills. Just below me the mob continued to surge through the street. Some of them ran straight on. Others broke away and took the shortcut called the Ramp that leads down to the Forum and empties into a narrow space between the House of the Vestals and the Temple of Castor and Pollux. Some of the rioters carried sticks and clubs. A few brandished daggers, in open defiance of the law that forbids such weapons within the city.
And though it was well after daybreak, a few carried torches. The flames whipped and snapped through the cold air.
The mob eventually thinned, but was soon followed by an even larger, slower group of mourners. If it was a funeral procession, it was certainly a strange one. Where were the mummers doing parodies of the dead man to lighten the mood? Where were the wax effigies of the dead man's ancestors, taken from their places of honour in his foyer to witness his passage to join them on the other side? Where were the hired mourners, weeping and
