The Venus Throw (46 page)

I glanced at Catullus, for it seemed to me that from the corner of my eye I had seen his lips moving, as if he was reciting Cicero’s speech along with him. He noticed my scrutiny, flashed something between a smile and a wince, and turned away. I looked at Clodia and caught a glimpse of her pale, rigid face before the crowd blocked my view.

Cicero went on. “If Caelius was as intimate with Clodia as the prosecutors maintain, then surely he shared with her the purpose to which he intended to put the gold. On the other hand, if the two of them were
not
on such intimate terms, then surely she never gave him the gold at all! Which is it, Clodia? Did you lend a man money to commit an unspeakable crime, making a criminal of yourself? Or is the truth that you never lent him the money at all?

“The accusation simply will not stand up, and not just because the character of Marcus Caelius is wholly at odds with such a loathsome, skulking plot. He’s too smart, for one thing. No man with any sense would entrust a crime of such magnitude to the slaves of another man! On purely practical grounds, I have to ask: how is Caelius supposed to have made contact with these slaves of Lucius Lucceius? Did he meet with them directly—very rash—or through an intermediary? May we have the name of this go-between? No, because no such person exists. I could go on and on with such questions. How many must I ask to show how totally implausible the whole charge is, and how utterly without proof?

“To put the matter to rest, let us hear from Lucius Lucceius himself, who has provided a sworn deposition on the matter. I remind you that he was not only Dio’s good friend and dutiful host, but a man who pays scrupulous attention to detail, as anyone familiar with his historical writings can attest. Surely if Lucceius had discovered that slaves belonging to him were plotting with an outsider to murder his guest, if he ever had even the least suspicion of such a thing, Lucceius would have gotten to the bottom of it. What citizen could do less, with his own honor at stake? Listen, then, to what he has to tell us.”

A clerk came forward to read the deposition. Cicero walked to the defendant’s bench, where his secretary, Tiro, handed him a cup of water. I thought back to my interview with Lucceius, how adamantly he had refused to acknowledge the slightest possibility that something had been amiss in his house, how his wife had known better, how the kitchen slaves who must have known something had been sent off to the mines and would never tell anyone what they knew.

The clerk cleared his throat, “I, Lucius Lucceius, under solemn oath, make this statement on the Kalends of Aprilis: That for a period in the month of Januarius, Dio of Alexandria, my esteemed friend, was a guest under my roof; that
while he was my guest, nothing occurred to endanger his safety; that any rumors to the contrary, particularly rumors asserting a breach of loyalty among my household slaves, are completely scurrilous; that Dio left my house of his own choice and in good health; that I myself know nothing which might shed light on the circumstances of his death.”

Cicero stepped before the judges. “There you have it: a wild, wholly unfounded accusation that emanates from a household of wanton debauchery and wickedness; and a level-headed, sober response, from a household of impeccable standards. On one hand, we have the word of a foul-tempered, raving, sex-crazed woman; on the other, the sworn affidavit of one of the most respectable men in Rome. Need we hesitate about choosing whom to believe?

“On then to the accusation that Caelius plotted to poison Clodia. I confess, I can’t make heads or tails of this story. Why should Caelius want to do such a thing? To avoid paying back the alleged Joan? But did Clodia ever ask to be repaid? To keep Clodia from telling what she knew about the attempt on Dio’s life? But there was no such attempt, as we have just established. Indeed, I would suggest that this nonsense about gold and a plot against Dio was fabricated precisely to provide a motive for this other fabrication, that Caelius tried to poison Clodia. One fabrication is invented to provide a motive for another fabrication! Lie builds upon lie, slander upon slander.

“The prosecution alleges that Caelius once again attempted to commit murder by bribing someone else’s slaves—this time, Clodia’s slaves, to do in their mistress. And this, after having failed to pull off the same kind of plot with Lucceius’s slaves! What kind of man puts his whole fate into the hands of another person’s slaves, not once but twice? At least credit my client with having a brain!

“And just what sort of slaves are we talking about? In the case of Clodia’s household, this is an important point. As Caelius must have known if he ever visited her house,
the relationship between Clodia and her slaves can scarcely be described as normal. In a household like that, headed by a woman who behaves like a prostitute, where abnormal lusts and unheard-of vices are practiced on a daily basis, where slaves are invited to share an inordinate amount of intimacy with their superiors—well, those slaves are slaves no longer. They share
everything
with their mistress, including her secrets. They become her companions in loose living. In a household like that, the people on the bottom are sometimes quite literally on top.”

I caught sight of Clodia, who seemed to physically shrink from the gales of laughter that roared through the Forum. Cicero held up his hand to quiet the crowd. “Keeping slaves in that fashion has one virtue, at least: such corrupted, pampered slaves must be almost impossible to bribe. Caelius must have known that, if he was as intimate with Clodia as we’ve been led to believe. If he knew the situation, surely he would have known better than to try to insinuate himself between such a woman and her slaves—a tight spot for any man to wriggle into! If he didn’t realize the situation, then how could he have been so intimate with the slaves that he would consider bribing them? The allegation contradicts itself.

“Now, about the alleged poison—where it came from, how it was to be handed over, and so on. The prosecutors tell us that Caelius had it in his house. He wanted to test it, so he bought a slave for just that purpose. The poison was effective. The slave died very quickly. The poison . . .”

Cicero’s voice was suddenly choked by a sob. He clenched his fists and rolled his eyes upward. “Oh, immortal gods! When a mortal commits a terrible crime, why do you close your eyes to it? Why do you allow the villain to go unpunished?” He gasped and shivered, as if struggling to hold back tears. The rollicking speech came to an abrupt halt. The crowd was jolted into uneasy silence.

Cicero stood absolutely still, like a man paralyzed by
emotion and fighting to regain control. “Forgive me,” he finally said, in a hoarse, trembling voice. “But the very mention of poison . . .

“Let me explain myself, judges. It was the bitterest day of life, that day when I saw my friend Quintus die before my eyes. Quintus Metellus Celer, I mean, the man whose death made that woman a widow and freed her to do as she pleased. Such a fine man he was, dedicated to serving Rome and full of the strength to do it! I remember the last time I saw him here in the Forum, going about his business, in excellent health and high spirits, full of plans for the future. Two days later I was called to his deathbed, where I found him racked with pain, barely able to breathe. His mind had begun to fail, but at the very end he became lucid again. His last thoughts were not of himself, but of Rome. He fixed his gaze on me as I wept, and in broken words he tried to warn me of the storm that hung over my head, the tempest that was brewing for the whole state. ‘Cicero, Cicero, how will you hold out against them without me to hold them in check?’ He wept then, not for himself, but for the future of the city he loved, and for the friends who would no longer have his protection. I often wonder how differently things might have turned out had he lived. Would his cousin Clodius have succeeded with a tenth of his mad schemes if Quintus Metellus Celer had been alive to oppose him? Would his wife Clodia have fallen into the downward spiral of disrepute that has ultimately brought us here today?

“And now that woman has the audacity to speak of fast-acting poisons! How much does she know about the subject? Enough, apparently! If she goes ahead with her testimony, perhaps she will tell us
exactly
how much she knows about poison, and how she came to know it. When I think that she still lives in the house where Celer died, when I think of what she has since turned that house into, I wonder that the walls themselves had not rebelled in disgust and come toppling down around her!”

Cicero bowed his head for a long moment, seemingly overcome with emotion. As for Clodia, one would never have known what a famous beauty she was, from the way she looked at that moment. The bones of her face seemed ready to break through the skin. Her eyes smoldered like coats. Her mouth was a hard, straight line showing a glint of teeth between bloodless lips.

“Excuse me, judges,” said Cicero, recovering himself. “My memories of a noble and valiant friend have greatly upset me, I fear. And some of you, too, as I can see. But let us persevere with this distasteful, petty business, and be done with it.

“Very well: the story goes that after testing the poison on a hapless slave, Caelius handed it over to a friend of his, Publius Licinius. You see him here today, sitting proudly among Caelius’s supporters, not the least bit ashamed to show his face despite the slander against him. Licinius, they say, was to give the poison to some of Clodia’s slaves at the Senian baths, in a little pyxis. Ah, but the slaves had betrayed the plot to their mistress, so she sent some friends to lurk on the premises and seize Licinius in the act of ‘landing over the poison. So goes the story, anyway.

“I am eagerly waiting to discover the identities of the upstanding witnesses who are supposed to have seen, with their own eyes, the poison in Licinius’s hands. So far, their names have not been mentioned, but they must be very reputable fellows indeed. In the first place, they are intimates of such a lady. In the second, they agreed to lurk about the baths in the middle of the day, a job suitable only to the most respectable of men.”

I felt the skin prickle on the back of my neck. Cicero was talking about me, among others. Even without hearing my name mentioned, I felt cut by his scorn, exposed and flustered. What then was Clodia feeling at this moment?

“But don’t take my word for the worthiness of these witnesses, these midday bathhouse skulkers,” Cicero continued.
“Their actions speak for them. We are told, ‘They hid out of sight and watched everything.’ I’m sure they did. That type loves to watch! ‘They bolted out of hiding accidentally Oh dear, premature ejaculators—what a deplorable lack of manly self-control! The story goes that Licinius made his entrance and was just about to hand over the incriminating pyxis but had not quite done so, when these superb, anonymous witnesses burst forth—whereupon Licinius drew back the pyxis and took to his heels in flight!”

Cicero shook his head and made a face of disgust. “Sometimes, no matter how badly a tale is told, a shred of truth shines through. Take this shabby little drama, for instance, authored by a lady with so many other tawdry tales to her credit. How devoid of plot, how sorely lacking for an ending! How could all these fellows have let Licinius slip from their grasp, when they were posted and ready, and he suspected nothing? What was the point of capturing him as he handed over the poison, anyway? Once it passed out of his hands he could claim he had never seen it before. Why not seize him the moment he entered the baths, hold him down and force a confession from him with all those bystanders for witnesses? Instead, off Licinius goes, with the lady’s gang in hot pursuit, bumbling and tripping all over each other. In the end, we are left with no pyxis, no poison, not a single shred of evidence. Really, what we have here is the finale of a mime show, not a proper play but the soft of silly farce that sputters to an unsatisfying end—no climax, just a bunch of clowns bumbling off the stage.

“If they come forward to testify, I look forward to seeing the cast of this little mime show. This trial could use some comic relief! Let’s have a look at these young dandies who enjoy play-acting as warriors under their mistress’s command, scouting the familiar terrain at the Senian baths, laying an ambush, crowding into a bathtub and pretending it’s the Trojan Horse. I know the type: all glib and witty at dinner parties, and the more they drink the wittier they become.
But idling on soft couches and chattering by lamplight is one thing; telling the truth beneath the hot sun in a court of hard wooden benches is something else again. If they can’t even find their way around the baths, how will they find the witness stand? I give these so-called witnesses fair warming: if they decide to come forward, I will turn them upside down and shake the foolishness out of them, so that we can all see what’s left. I suggest they keep their mouths shut and find other ways to curry their lady’s favor. Let them ding to her, do kicks and compete to gravel at her feet—but let them spare the life and career of an innocent man!

“And what of that slave to whom the poison was to be handed over, who is also to appear as a witness?” I searched the faces of those on the prosecutors’ benches—a glum lot of faces, at the moment—and spotted Clodia’s man Bamabas, looking as if he had swallowed something unpleasant. “I am told that he has just been freed by his mistress, made a citizen by her hand—or by her brother’s hand, since a woman cannot legally manumit a slave on her own. What was behind this act of liberation? Was it a reward for loyalty and services beyond the normal call of duty? Or was there a more practical consideration? For, now that he’s a citizen, the fellow cannot be subjected to the normal means of obtaining evidence from a testifying slave. Torture tends to bring out the truth; no amount of rehearsal can prepare even the best comic actor to recite falsehoods to a hot poker.

“Incidentally, we should hardly be surprised that all this bother about a pyxis has given rise to an extremely indecent story concerning another pyxis and its contents. You know the story I mean, judges. Everyone’s talking about it. Everyone seems to think it’s true. Why not, since it fits so well with the lady’s indecent reputation? And everyone finds the story hilarious, despite the obscenity of it. The gift could hardly be’ called inappropriate, when one considers the receptive nature of the butt of the joke. There, you see, you’re all laughing even now! Well, true or not, obscene or
not, funny or not, don’t blame Marcus Caelius. The joke must have been pulled by some young wanker with a Clever hand and a wayward bent.”