I addressed the remaining idlers. “Do any of you know where he was found?”
Vetilius came up to me. “I heard that some night-fishermen found him on the riverbank this evening, just before nightfall. Bodies aren’t all that rare in the river, but after the curse, everybody in Rome knew about that robe. They alerted the gate watch, and pretty soon the word was all over the City.”
“Do you know which bank they found him on?”
He shrugged. “I didn’t hear that, but it was those boatmen you see fishing with nets and torches at night between the Sublician and Aemilian Bridges.”
“Then I know who to ask. Thanks.” I turned to Hermes. “Come along.”
“Where are we going?”
“I’m going home, to bed. You go to Aurelia’s summerhouse and tell Julia that I’m all right.”
“I can’t pass through the gate by myself,” he pointed out. “Don’t worry. She’ll have Cypria sitting on the roof, watching for fires in the City. As long as there are no buildings burning, she’ll know there’s no riot.” The boy had a positive genius for avoiding exertion.
“Oh, I suppose you’re right. Tomorrow morning, when you go to the ludus, tell Asklepiodes to meet me at the Temple of Venus Victrix at his earliest convenience.”
“Right.” He yawned as we trudged toward home. “This is more exciting than Gaul.”
“No rest for a servant of the Senate and People,” I said. Now I had two thorny investigations to conduct. But I knew that, when I found the answer to one, I’d have solved the other.
9
THE STRETCH OF THE TIBER BEtween the Aemilian and Sublician Bridges was rich with history, for these were our oldest bridges and the scene of legendary battles. It was also rich with smell, for the great sewer, the Cloaca Maxima, discharged its effluent into the river at this spot, along with some of the lesser sewers. The adjacent Forum Boarium, together with the Circus Maximus and all its attendant stables, had to be cleaned daily, and the resulting product, if not sold to farmers for fertilizer, was dumped by the wagonload into the murky water between the bridges.
All this enrichment of the otherwise nutrition-poor water resulted in abundant schools of fish, making this intrapontal stretch of river the most desirable fishing ground anywhere near the City. The fishing was dominated by a few families who had for generations defended their territory against all interlopers. They had their own customs, sacrificed to their own gods and to Tiberinus, the personified river. They even spoke in a dialect of their own.
There were, roughly speaking, three groupings of these families: those who fished from the banks and bridges with poles, those who fished with nets from boats during the day, and those who fished at night, with nets and torches.
At dawn on the morning after the near-riot, I waited on the riverbank, grateful that the coolness of winter kept the stench within tolerable boundaries. We Romans are inordinately proud of our sewers, but they came about more or less by accident. The Forum was on swampy ground, so the early settlers dug a ditch to the river to drain it. From the Etruscans they learned how to encase the trench in vaulted stone and cover it. It turned out to be a convenient place to throw all the city’s waste, and now we have a whole system of sewers, although the City always seems to grow a little faster than the capacity of the sewers to keep it clean.
The day-fishermen were readying their boats to go out as the night-fishermen came in, and as the latter began to unload their fish, I accosted an older man who seemed to be in charge of several of the fishing craft.
“I am Decius Metellus, iudex appointed to investigate the murder of the tribune Ateius. I need to speak with whoever found the body.”
The gray-haired fisherman spoke slowly, and I will not try to reproduce here his river-fisherman’s dialect. “Was young Sextus, the one we call Cricket, that spotted the corpse; then we all rowed over for a look. Would’ve left it till morning and reported it then, but the other Sextus, the one we call Mender because he’s so handy mending the nets, he leaned close with a torch and sang out. The dead man was wearing a strange robe and looked like lions had been at him. We’d all heard talk about the crazy tribune who’d cursed Crassus, so I went over to the gate and reported it right away.”
“Admirable. Which bank was he on?”
The man turned and pointed to the far bank, opposite the City. “The Tuscan.”
“Did you carry him in?”
He shook his head vehemently. “No, we don’t touch no corpses. You do that, you’ll never catch no fish till you’re purified by a priest. The gate captain rounded up some night-cleaning slaves from the Forum Boarium, and they carried him through the gate. By that time, word was spreading fast. There was already a crowd waiting at the gate.”