The Sacrilege

Then I was past the basilica and down its steps and onto one of the wooden trial platforms in front of it, And, just my luck, there was a trial in progress. I knew that because it was crowded with men and a barrister was in mid-gesture, his beringed hands raised dramatically as he made the crowning point of his argument. I will never forget the look of horror on his face when I ran into him. We went sprawling across the platform, his snowy toga billowing about us like the sail of a ship carried away in a storm.

I came up in time to see Clodius bearing down on me, his face distorted with transcendent rage, purple as a triumphator's robe. In one hand he brandished a curved short sword. So he was the one who had cut me. I was swept up with the urge to do the same to him, only worse. The sword came down at me with a wild slash, which I managed to deflect with my caestus. I stabbed straight for his throat, but he lunged forward and ducked, throwing a shoulder into my belly and wrapping his arms around my waist. I went over backward, and this time we both rolled over the unfortunate lawyer. I struggled to keep Clodius from getting his sword arm free while he concentrated on biting my face off. I kneed him in the balls and that, at least, made him open his mouth, freeing my nose. Another good one to the cods and he squealed like a gelded pig. I broke his hold and scrambled out from beneath him, dealing a weak, backhanded blow to the side of his neck as I did so. It was enough to half-stun him and send him sprawling on his belly. I clambered onto his back and seized a handful of his thick, curly, greasy, goatlike hair and yanked his head back. I placed my dagger beneath his neck and was poised to cut his throat from larynx to spine when both my arms were grabbed and all but wrenched from their sockets. A lictor's fasces was placed across my throat and locked there by the official's arm in a unique variant of the common wrestling hold. The bundle of rods nestled into the crook of his elbow while his hand, on the back of my head, pressed my throat against the rods until the breath whistled in my nostrils. Another team of lictors applied the same treatment to Clodius.

The jury and spectators whistled and stamped at this rare entertainment. The lictors hauled us before the praetor like reluctant sacrifices.

"Who dares offend the majesty of a Roman court in this fashion?" The man in the curule chair wore an expression of cold fury. It was the distinguished praetor Caius Octavius, famed jurist and soldier and, incidentally, the true father of our esteemed First Citizen, who was still a burping baby in that year.

We croaked our names, the pressure of the fasces making it very difficult to articulate the simplest sounds. This raised a good laugh. I must admit that my voice sounded rather comical.

"And what prominent person has died," Octavius said, "that we have funeral games in the Forum?"

"Clodius and his thugs attacked me!" I said. "I was ru

"Just going about your business, eh?" said Octavius. "Just like any other citizen, with a caestus on one hand and a pugio in the other? Bearing arms within the pom-erium is another punishable offense."

"At least they're respectable weapons," I pointed out. "He was carrying a sica!"

"A pertinent point!" said one of the lawyers, unable to help himself. The distinction between honorable and dishonorable weapons was a strict one in Roman law. The glare Octavius gave the lawyer boded ill for the progress of the trial.

"What have you say for yourself, Publius Clodius?" the praetor demanded.

"I am a serving Roman official and ca

Octavius gestured with his baton toward a white-gowned figure seated near him. It was one of the Vestals. "You realize," he said, "that had one of you killed the other in this lady's presence, the survivor would have been taken outside the walls to the execution ground and there flogged to death with rods. There are few capital offenses left on the tables, but that is one of them."

"In that case," I said, nodding to the lictors, "I wish to thank these fine citizens for preventing me from killing that loathsome and deranged reptile over there."

"It is lucky for you," Octavius said, "that you intruded upon a court for extortion. Had this been the court for crimes of violence, I might have had you charged, tried and judged on the spot." He exaggerated. Actually, there was a good deal of oath-taking and posting of sureties before a trial could begin. "This is not the first time the two of you have been charged with public riot. You are a menace to the safety of all citizens."

"I protest!" I cried. "I was just minding my own-"

"Silence!" Octavius barked. He raised his eyes and gazed out over the Forum. "Where is the Censor Metellus?" He gestured to a lictor. "There he is, over by Sulla's monument. Fetch him." The man ran off and a few minutes later returned with my father. I could tell by the way he was glaring at me that the lictor had been giving him a colorful account of recent events.

"Noble praetor, what is your wish?" Father said.

"Cut-Nose, I am going to charge your son with public riot and bearing arms within the pomerium. I am also going to check the law books and see if a charge of crime against Maiestas is appropriate. I would like to do the same for Publius Clodius, but there is some question whether his quaestorship protects him. Will you stand surety for Decius the Younger if I release him to you?"

"I will," Father said.

"Then take him away. I will send to Pompey's camp for Clodius's elder brother, Appius. Perhaps if we can keep these two separated, we need not fear for the destruction of Rome and the sanctity of her courts." He truly had a gift for sarcasm.

"I will see to it that my son arrives for trial on the appointed day. No Roman is above the law."

"These two least of all," Octavius said wryly.

The lictors released me and I stooped to pick up my weapons. The charge had been made, so it didn't matter if I had them in my possession now. Clodius and I exchanged a final, mutual glare, and I turned to walk away with my father.

"You have always been an idiot," my father began as we walked across the Forum, "but this surpasses your previous enormities by a wide margin. Whatever possessed you to try to murder Clodius in a Roman court under the nose of the senior praetor?"

"I thought I might never get another chance!" I said.

"You were specifically instructed to keep away from him."

"I've done my best," I protested. "He sought me out. He set a dozen men on me. I had to run and I had to fight."

"Am I to take it, then, that the blood on your dagger is neither yours nor Clodius's? I thought it best not to ask in front of the praetor."

I shrugged, sending a dart of fire through my wounded shoulder. "Oh, there may be a body or two in the streets back there. Nobody who amounts to anything, just Clodius's hired scum."

"Good. I would hate to think I had raised a coward as well as a fool. How bad is that shoulder?"

"Kind of you to ask. It's painful and bleeding freely. I think it will need stitching. I'll go see Asklepiodes in the Trans-Tiber. He's sewed me up before."

"The question is, can I trust you to go there without getting into more trouble?" Of course, it never occurred to him to accompany me there.

"One fight a day is enough even for my glory-lusting spirit, Father." We were out of the Forum by this time, and passersby ogled at my wild appearance.

"I think you should leave the city for a while," Father said.

"But I just got back!"

"Rome can take only so much of your presence. A stint managing the estate at Beneventum might settle you a bit. The realities of farm work could only improve you."