Murder on the Appian Way by Steven Saylor Read Free Book Online Page B

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 minglingof 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