My father, naturally, was already there. “Slept late enough, did you?”
“We still beat the crowd to the Forum,” I answered.
Gradually the light grew, and the crowd duly arrived: my own supporters and a miscellaneous pack of idlers, country people just arrived to take part in the elections, vendors, mountebanks, beggars, and senators.
Juventius came trudging up the steps in his purple-bordered toga, preceded by his lictors.
“I see the Metellans are here in force,” he said, as he reached the top. “Where are Fulvius and his people?”
“Waiting to make a grand entrance, no doubt,” I said. “Now what—”
“This man is dead!” someone shouted. I looked down the steps to see a little group of people gawping at an inert form on the steps. It seemed that the drunk was actually a corpse. Now that the sun’s rays were slanting into the Forum, I could see that the dark cloak in which he was wrapped was actually a heavily bloodstained toga.
“Here’s a fine omen,” Juventius said, annoyed. “We may have to meet outdoors if the building has to be purified.”
“It looks like he died on the steps,” I pointed out. “It isn’t as if he died inside.”
“If this were a temple,” Father mused, “a purification would be necessary if one drop of blood struck any stone of the building. I’m not sure if that holds true for a basilica though. We may have to consult with a pontifex. Where is Scipio?”
“It’s all a great bother anyway you look at it,” Juventius said. He turned to one of his lictors. “Let’s have a look at him.”
The lictor went down the steps and carefully raised a flap of the toga with the butt end of his fasces.
“Does anyone here know this man?” Juventius demanded of the crowd in general. We all went closer to see.
“I think we all know him,” I said, feeling a bit queasy, not at the sight, which was a common one, but at its implications. “I’ve only seen him once, and that briefly, but I believe this is Marcus Fulvius.”
3
LOOKS LIKE THE TRIAL’S OFF,” SAID someone, sounding disappointed. Probably, I thought, one of the jury, who had been hoping one of us would offer him a bribe. We went back to the top of the steps to talk this matter over.
Word spread through the Forum with bewildering speed and within seconds the whole mob had flocked to the western end, at the foot of the Capitoline, to get a look at the body and at us.
“This could get ugly,” Juventius said.
“Why?” I asked him. “The man is—was—all but unknown. It’s not like he was Tribune of the People or a gang leader like Clodius.”
“You know how it works,” Juventius said. “He was a nobody. He dared to challenge one of the great families. He ended up dead. How do you think they’re going to interpret it?”
“The man was an impertinent scoundrel who must have had plenty of enemies,” Father said. “Anyone could have killed him.”
“Would just anyone,” Juventius replied hotly, “have killed him and left his body on the steps of this basilica on the morning his case was to be heard in my court?”
“Lower your voice,” I advised him. “You’re encouraging a bad mood here yourself.”
“Oh, I am? I do hope you had plenty of witnesses as to your whereabouts last night, young Decius Caecilius, because you now face charges a good deal more serious than skinning some pack of provincials and tax-gouging publicani.”
“Are you calling me a suspect in this man’s murder?” I shouted, forgetting my own advice. Among other things, I hated being called “Young Decius,” even when my father was there.
“Uh-oh,” Hermes said, touching my arm and pointing to the southeast. A pack of determined men were pushing their way through the crowd. In their forefront was a man with a swollen nose and two blackened eyes. He was the one Hermes had punched the previous day. They shoved everyone out of their way until they stood over the body of Fulvius. At the bloody sight, they cried out in dismay.
“We met this morning at the house of Marcus Fulvius,” said the black-eyed man, his voice slightly distorted by his swollen nasal passages. “We waited for him to come out so we could accompany him to court. When he did not come out by gray dawn, we made search for him. He was nowhere to be found. We came to the Forum expecting to find him here, and when we reached the Temple of the Public Lares, at the north end of the Forum, we heard that someone lay murdered in the basilica.
“Now,” he roared, playing to the mob, “we find our friend Marcus Fulvius lying here, drenched in his own blood, and his murderer”—he jammed a dirty finger toward my breast as if he were throwing a javelin—“standing over him!”