A Point of Law(16)

They all took on the look they got when I spoke of my methods of ferreting out the facts of a case. I had won many prosecutions my way, but it never convinced them. They thought the proper way to win a case was to get prominent people to swear to your innocence and the vileness of your opponent. Then you bribed the jury.

A litter made its way across the Forum and stopped at the basilica. Hortensius Hortalus emerged, accompanied by the aged Claudius Marcellus. Still augur-robed and leaning on his lituus, he trudged up the steps to where we stood.

“What’s all this?” he asked, looking down at the body. His friends filled him in on the morning’s doings while I examined the steps. I hoped to find signs of whether the body had been dragged or carried to the basilica, but the crowd had gathered too quickly. If there had been bloodstains, they were now on the bottoms of a thousand pairs of sandals. I was, however, certain that the murder had not been committed on the spot where the body was found. There would have been a small river of blood running down the steps, more than could have been obliterated by a legion tramping through.

“Did you perceive any omens?” I asked Hortalus.

“Not a thing,” he admitted. “It was too cloudy to see the stars, no birds flew in the night, and we heard no thunder from any direction. Of course, since there’s to be no trial, omens were scarcely called for. Marcus Fulvius was no prince, so comets and bloody rains are hardly to be expected.”

“It would have been convenient,” Cato said, “if you’d seen something to stop this convening of the Plebeian Assembly.”

“Actually,” Father put in, “some good legal advice is what is called for now.”

Hortalus turned to me. “Decius, I think you should find out whatever you can to blacken the reputation of Marcus Fulvius. Treason would be nice.”

I managed to shake my way free of Sallustius and the others and made my way to the Temple of Venus in her aspect as death goddess. It had recently been handsomely restored by Caesar. Although his family traced their descent from Venus Genetrix, Caesar had been generous to any temple of Venus in need of refurbishing.

Asklepiodes arrived shortly after I did, carried on a fine litter by a team of matched Nubians. Hermes and two of the physician’s Egyptian slaves followed. He had grown quite wealthy over the years, and, unlike most of his profession, he did it through sound medical practice not by selling quack cures. He was the only physician to whom I entrusted my lacerations.

“Greetings, Decius Caecilius!” he said, alighting from his conveyance. “Rejoice! So lately returned to Rome; so soon involved in a murder!”

“Not just involved. Accused.”

“And not for the first time. Let’s have a look at the departed.”

The body had been laid out on a bier and washed. With the blood off him Marcus Fulvius looked, if anything, even more ghastly. There is something especially grotesque about a body that has had all the blood drained from it. He was white as a cauliflower, except for the relatively colorful bulges of viscera. Even the gaping wounds were pale pink instead of scarlet. Adding to the strangeness of the scene was the contrast between the ravaged body and the untouched head and limbs.

Asklepiodes made a gesture and the Egyptians came forward. One carried, by a strap over his shoulder, a box elaborately decorated with mother-of-pearl and lapis lazuli. This man opened the box and the other, at Asklepiodes’ murmured instructions, removed surgical instruments and began to probe at the wounds. In his own surgery, Asklepiodes might have wielded the instruments himself, but he would never allow the priests of the temple to see a haughty physician using his hands like a common surgeon. As each wound was spread wider he leaned over, examined it, and made wise sounds. Finally, he stepped back.

“Well?” I said.

“No doubt about it, this man is dead.”

“It is good to be in the presence of genius. What else?”

“Someone was being—how shall I put this?—rather delicate about this murder. We have the marks of at least three different blades, any one of which would have been quite sufficient to cause death, but they were used to deal wounds that were grievous, some of them fatal over a matter of hours or days, yet not causing immediate death.”

“Cato noted the inefficiency of the blows,” I said, “and he is not a particularly observant man.”

“The cut to the great vessel of the neck”—Asklepiodes pointed to the wound below the left ear—“would have been fatal within seconds, yet I believe it was dealt last, as if the man were being too leisurely about dying. All these stabs to the abdomen for instance. A single stab here,” he pointed to the apex of the rib arch just below the sternum, “angled slightly upward, would have pierced the heart and brought about immediate death. I have the distinct impression that these men did not want their victim to die quickly.”