Though we arrived at Bovillae before the fourth hour, the midday meal was already being prepared. Smoke rose from the cookhouse behind the inn, carrying smells of baking bread and roasting meat.
"I'm starving!" said Eco. Davus's stomach growled in sympathy.
"Good," I said. "We won't have to invent any pretences for why we're stopping at the tavern."
It was a two-storey building made of much-weathered stone. The land all around was cleared and trammelled by the passage of many feet over many years. It was to this place, according to Fulvia, that Clodius had fled when Milo's men overwhelmed him. He had taken refuge in the tavern. Milo's men had stormed the place. Fulvia knew no details of the battle, only that eventually a passing senator on his way to Rome had come upon Clodius's body lying in the road outside the tavern, and had sent it on to Rome in his litter.
Davus walked the horses to a hitching post beneath a nearby stand of trees. There was a trough with water for the horses and a bench for Davus to sit on while he watched them.
Before we went inside, Eco and I took a quick look at all four sides of the building, to see how defensible it looked. There were large, shuttered windows in the upper storey, inaccessible as there was no way to climb up to them. The shuttered windows in the rear and side walls of the lower storey were small and set high up. A man might have been able to wriggle through one, but only if given a boost and if there was no one inside to stop him. The back door, made of solid wood, opened onto a covered walkway to the cookhouse. The front door, which at the moment stood open, was also made of solid wood. The doorway was so narrow that Eco and
I had to turn sideways and step inside one at a time. The windows on either side of the front door were slightly larger and situated a little lower than the other windows on the ground floor, but a man would still have had a difficult time scrambling in or out of them.
All in all, the inn appeared to be a reasonably defensible building. Still, I saw the signs of a recent, losing battle.
So did Eco. "Did you notice the difference in the shutters, Papa?"
"Yes."
"The ones on the upstairs windows are all made of old, grey wood-"
"- while the shutters on every one of the downstairs windows are conspicuously new, as are both the front and back doors. There's a lot of new plaster around the doorway, as well. You and I know all too well how doors can be broken and need replacing."
"Where do you suppose everyone is, Papa?"
"Who would you expect to be here? There were no other travellers on the road this morning. We're probably early for the regular midday clientele." As my eyes adjusted to the dim light I saw a plain, rustic room with a few tables and benches. A steeply angled stairway to the upper floor began at the far left corner. Underneath the stairway a counter blocked off the back portion of the room. In the wall behind the counter there was a little archway with a cloth curtain tied back to show a shadowy storage room that led through to the rear door. After a moment the door rattled and opened to show the silhouette of a large woman outlined by bright sunlight. She closed the door behind her and waddled up to the bar, wiping her hands on the front of her coarse gown. She smelled of baking bread and roasting meat.
"I thought I saw someone come in." She peered at us with a squint that I took to be almost hostile until I realized she was waiting for her eyes to adjust to the dimness. She was a strong-looking woman with meaty arms and a round, open face surrounded by a tangle of greying red hair. "That's your fellow with the horses over by the trough?"
"Yes," I said.
"Three altogether, are you?" "Yes, travellers."
"Hungry travellers," added Eco, leaning against the bar.. She showed the hint of a smile. "We can take care of that, as long as you have something that jingles." Eco produced his coin purse.
She nodded. "I've got a couple of rabbits roasting. It'll be a little while before they're done, but I can bring you some bread and cheese in the meantime." She reached under the bar and produced two cups, then went back to the storage room and returned with a pitcher of wine and a pitcher of water.
"Could you take some food out to the fellow under the trees, too?" I said. "I can hear his stomach growling from here."
"Certainly. I'll send one of my boys to take care of him. They're out in the cookhouse watching the fire. With my husband," she added, as if making of point of letting us know that she was not a woman alone. "Travellers, you say. Headed north or south?"
"South."
"You've come from Rome, then?" She poured out generous portions of wine, then added splashes of water.
"We left early this morning."
"What's it like up in the city?"
"An awful mess. We're glad to be away from it."
"Well, it's been an awful mess around here, too, let me tell you. Ever since that accursed day…" She sighed and shook her head.
"Ah, yes, we must be close to where it happened – the skirmish up the road."
She snorted. "Call it a skirmish if you like, but I'd call it an all-out battle, to judge from the damage that was done and the dead bodies lying all about. And it may have started up the road, but right here's where it ended." She slapped the top of the counter.
"What do you mean?"
"Aren't we talking about the same thing? Milo and Clodius and all the blood that was spilled?"
I nodded. "No one in Rome talks about anything else these days. But everything is so confused and jumbled. Every new version contradicts the last one. Something happened on the Appian Way and Clodius ended up dead – that's about the only thing all the stories agree on. Where, when and how, nobody knows for sure."
She rolled her eyes. "So much suffering and destruction, you'd think people would at least bother to find out what really happened, if only to be glad it didn't happen to them. But you said you were hungry. I'll get you some bread, hot from the oven."
Eco opened his mouth to call her back, but I squeezed his arm and shook my head. "The woman is eager enough to tell us what she knows," I said in a low voice. "Let her do it at her own pace."
She returned with a steaming loaf of bread in a basket and a piece of cheese the size of a brick, then went back to the storeroom and returned with a heaped bowl of black and green olives. She put her elbows on the bar, leaned towards us and resumed her tale without any prompting. "It was my brother-in-law who owned this tavern, my little sister's husband. A hard-working fellow, from a long line of hard workers. Inherited the place from his rather; the family's owned this inn for generations. He wept with joy the day my sister gave him a son to leave it to." She sighed. "Who could have known how soon he'd be passing the place along? The boy's still a baby, and now that his papa is dead there's not another grown man on either side of the family to run the place. So we've taken it over, my husband and I, with our boys helping us, while my poor widowed sister stays with her baby. Ah, poor Marcus! That was her husband's name. There's always some danger when you run a place like this on the road, always the risk of being raided by bandits or runaway slaves who'd slash your throat without a thought. But Marcus was a big, stout fellow, not afraid of anything, and this inn was his whole life. Always had been, since he was a child. I think he didn't realize the danger that day when Clodius's men came running in, all bloody and out of breath. He didn't turn them away, he just asked them what he could do to help. Clodius staggered inside, wounded and bleeding, and told him to bolt the doors. Then they laid Clodius right here, flat on his back." She slapped the counter, hard enough to cause ripples in our cups. By the dim light I studied the mottled, stained surface of the old wood. A lot of wine must have been spilled on that counter over the years, I told myself but there were stains which might have been something else.
"Marcus should have sent them all right back out into the road, that's what my husband says. But what does he know? He wasn't here. But my poor sister was. She told me all about it. She'd left her baby with me that day. Oh, how she loved working in this tavern, as much as Marcus did; nothing could keep her away. When Clodius and his men showed up, she was upstairs, shaking out blankets and sweeping the floors. If only her little boy had been sick; if only something, anything, had kept her at home that day. The shock of what happened to Marcus was bad enough, but for her to have been here, to have seen and heard – it's broken something inside her. Ah, well, that's why we have to do everything we can to keep the place going until little Marcus is big enough to take his father's place."
I nodded. "So the skirmish – the battle – began up the road, but Clodius ended up here. Had he ever been in the tavern before? Did he know your brother-in-law, Marcus?"
"Oh, certainly. Publius Clodius stopped in here plenty of times, on his way to that villa of his up on the mountain. I met him myself a few times over the years. So charming – you could tell right away that he was highborn, there was no hiding that. Just a certain way he had of carrying himself, and always such fine clothes and fine horses, and how his hair and fingernails were always so nicely groomed. You don't often see a man who keeps his fingernails so well cared for. But he was never aloof. He always remembered Marcus's name, always asked him how little Marcus was coming along. He had a young son himself."
"So I've heard."
"Of course, not everybody liked Publius Clodius. He stirred up some hard feelings around here, back when he started building his villa." "Hard feelings?"
"Well, there were some who said that the way he got hold of the surrounding land wasn't completely honest, and others who complained that some of the trees he cut down were part of the sacred grove of Jupiter. And the Vestals had to move out of their old house. But Clodius gave them money to build their new house, which is only a little farther from the Temple of Vesta than their old one, so I could never see what all their complaining was about." She shook her head. "But I'll speak no ill of the dead, especially when the poor man's lemur left his body within the sound of my voice."
"So your brother-in-law was friendly with Clodius, despite any hard feelings that some of your neighbours might have had?"
"Oh, yes. I suppose that's why Clodius ran to this place when he found himself in trouble. If only he hadn't brought the trouble with him! But I don't blame the dead. I blame the other."
"The other?"
She picked up a rag from behind the bar and began twisting it, clenching her fists until the knuckles turned white. "The one whose men were after Clodius that day. He's the bastard to blame for what happened here."
"Titus Annius Milo, you mean."
She made a noise in her throat as if she might spit. "If you want to call him that. Milo! He chose that name for himself, didn't he? What a vain fellow, thinking he takes after some great Olympic hero. Well, no one is overawed by your so-called Milo in these parts. He's just another fellow from the far side of the mountain who went off to Rome to make his fortune. He comes from Lanuvium, did you know that?"
"Yes, I think I'd heard that."
"Titus Annius Milo, you call him. He wasn't born with that name either. He wasn't even born with the name Titus! The fellow was born plain Gaius Papius, like his father before him, and let me assure you that the Papii of Lanuvium never did a single thing of importance that anyone can remember. By birth he's as common as dirt But when his father died, his grandfather adopted him. That was his mother's father, Titus Annius, the one with the noble ancestors. So Milo took the old man's names and added a name of his own, and Gaius Papius turned into Titus Annius Milo. Now everyone's heard of him. He inherited his grandfather's money, too, when the old man died, but they say he's squandered it all on those fancy funeral games he put on to impress the voters in Rome. The things a man will do to get himself elected to high office! Well, no man among my relatives would ever vote for the fellow. Always pretending and putting on airs, as fake as all three of his names. No, we never had any use for Milo."
She paused for breath and began to wipe the counter with her rag, as if she could rub away the bloodstains. "Oh, Milo would stop in here from time to time on his way home to Lanuvium, buy a round of wine for everybody, say a few pretty words, make sure everyone noticed him. The local boy who'd become such a powerful fellow in Rome, friend of Cicero, ally of Pompey, sure to become consul one of these days! But if you ask me, Milo hasn't got a speck of Clodius's charm. Clodius would come into this room and it would be as if someone had lit candles all around – everything suddenly had a glow to it. Milo would come in, blustering and grinning, and it was like someone blowing bad breath in your face. His charm was all for show. You could practically see him gritting his teeth at having to mix with the common folk he'd left behind. As for that wife of his, what's her name -"
"Fausta, I believe," said Eco.
"Ah, yes, Fausta Cornelia – well, there's a case of a man marrying upward if ever there was one! Now how did the old dictator Sulla's daughter ever end up hitched to Gaius Papius from Lanuvium? All a game of money and politics, I suppose. Marriage between people like that always comes down to a cold calculation, doesn't it? They say it hasn't stopped her from having all the lovers she wants. They say Fausta's more of a slut now than she was with her first husband. For all that, let me tell you, she never pretended to have the common touch. When she and Milo would come parading up the Appian Way and he'd stop in here to buy drinks for everyone, the great Fausta
Cornelia would stay most firmly ensconced in that fancy carriage of hers, rigid as a statue, staring straight ahead, as if it might give her a gas pain just to look at a person like myself Well, I could understand her staying out of the tavern, a lady like that – Clodius's wife, Fulvia, was the same, she and her women would always keep to themselves when Clodius stopped in, but you'd see her on the grass under the trees, playing with her little boy or nursing the little gid, behaving like a normal person. Not like Fausta Cornelia, too good to even exchange a glance with the likes of myself. But there was one time, one time -"
The woman suddenly shook and choked with laughter. "Nature gets the better of everybody in the end, eh?" she managed to say, regaining herself. "I remember the time – oh, she must have needed to relieve herself very badly, because she actually sent a slave to ask me where the toilets were. So I sent a girl to show her the way to the little building over by the stream, past the stables. And the girl came back, saying that Fausta Cornelia hadn't found the toilets to her liking and that she'd refused to use them. You can bet that Milo left the tavern and set out pretty soon after that. I suppose she held it in all the way to Lanuvium! But how? Even the Appian Way has a few bumps in it. We all talked about it afterwards, wondering whether she'd had an accident in the carriage, and how Milo would react. Oh, can you imagine the look on the man's face -"
She burst out laughing again, until tears flowed down her cheeks. Finally she recovered and stood wiping away the tears with the backs of her hands. "Ah! The rabbit! It'll be done by now, surely."
And with that she disappeared again through the back door.
Eco raised an eyebrow. "It seems that Clodius and Milo were both rather well known in these parts."
"Yes, the ambitious local boy, and the aristocratic outsider with money and charm. Two types bound to excite strong reactions in people. Admiration, respect -"
"Envy, hatred…"
"Yes," I said, "and both of them politicians, not shy about putting themselves forwards. We know how skilful Clodius was at laying on the common touch; he made an art of it. Milo, who really did have common roots, seems to have been rather clumsy at it."
"So our hostess says, Papa, but she's obviously biased. And what's this about Clodius cutting down sacred trees, displacing the local Vestal Virgins-"
Kicking open the back door, out hostess returned bearing a steaming platter. A tall, hulking figure came in after her, carrying a steaming bowl. The fellow was so large that I felt a little apprehensive until I realized who it was.
"Davus! What are you doing? You're supposed to be watching the horses. A fine thing if we were to finish our meal and find them gone. I don't care to walk the twelve miles back to Rome."
"Don't worry," said the woman. "I sent one of my boys to take his place. Your horses will be safe, you have my word for it. Isn't it all right for your slave to come inside? The clouds are starting to creep down from the mountaintop, and a fellow can catch a chill, sitting out in the open air. Let him warm up a bit." She cast a look at Davus such as women, alas, have all too rarely cast at me. Just because a fellow happens to be nineteen, has wavy black hair, oxlike shoulders and a profile like a Greek statue…
"She's brought him inside so that she can look at him!" said Eco from the corner of his mouth.
"Obviously," I agreed. "This is the woman who preferred Clodius to Milo, remember."
The woman put plates and-utensils before the three of us and filled our cups. The steaming platter turned out to be the roasted rabbit. Rabbit is not my favourite flesh – too greasy and bony – but it was well cooked and I was too hungry to quibble. The steaming bowl was full of glazed turnips. I complimented our hostess on the sauce.
"Oh, it's simple enough. A bit of cumin, a little garlic, some honey and vinegar and olive oil, a pinch of rue. A root vegetable calls for a spicy sauce, my mother always said."
. "It's really quite excellent," I said, and meant it. But it was time to bring her back to the death of Clodius. "Did you do much of the cooking here at the tavern before that unfortunate day?"
"Oh, every now and again, especially after my sister had her boy."
"But you weren't here that day?"
"No, as I said, there was only my sister, working upstairs, and Marcus."
"Had Clodius come through Bovillae the previous day?"
"So my sister told me, but he didn't stop in. She saw his entourage come marching through, but they passed so quickly that she only caught a glimpse of Clodius, riding at the head with his little boy beside him and a couple of friends."
"And on the day of the incident, Milo must have passed through here not long before the battle."
"Oh, yes, my sister remembers that vividly – remembers everything that happened that day, like a bad dream you can't forget. Milo did stop for a while, to water his horses, but none of his men came into the tavern. Still, she says you couldn't miss his entourage. It went on and on, like one of those triumphal processions in the city. That's how he usually travelled, at least when she was with him."
"Fausta Cornelia, you mean."
"Yes. You'd think she couldn't leave the house without ten slaves to make up her face in the morning and ten slaves to tuck her into bed at night. And I suppose Gaius Papius – Milo, if you must – simply liked showing off all those slaves and bodyguards to his friends and family back in Lanuvium. 'Look at me! I just can't seem to leave the house without having a hundred minions trailing behind me!' "
"A hundred? Were there that many people in his entourage that day?"
She shrugged. "Oh, I don't know the number. As I say, I didn't see it myself, my sister did. But she says that while Milo was watering his hones at the stable, with his people milling about, they filled up the road, like a crowd in the Forum in Rome, and when they finally got going again, the procession just seemed to go on and on. Marcus made a joke of it, she said. If only Milo had watered his slaves as well as his horses, they could have sold every drop of wine in stock and paid for a new roof!"
"So Milo's party was bigger than the group that Clodius passed through with on the previous day?"
"Are you a simpleton, or are you just not listening? Yes, definitely. Much, much bigger."
"But Clodius's party was made up entirely of armed men – so I've heard – whereas you make it sound as though Milo travelled with hairdressers and cosmeticians."
"Fausta's slaves were in the party, yes, but Milo always travelled with plenty of gladiators, some of them pretty famous. Ever heard of Eudamus and Birria?"
"Of course. They were in Milo's party?"
"He owned the two of them. Isn't that just like him – to buy a pair of famous gladiators just so he could show them off? Even I've heard of Eudamus and Birria, and I have about as much interest in seeing men kill each other in an arena as I do in watching a beetle roll a piece of dung across the road. Though some of those gladiators aren't hard to look at…" She cast a glance at Davus, who busied himself with tearing a bit of rabbit flesh off the bone. "Eudamus and Birria, on the other hand – now those two are about as pretty as a donkey's hincl end, and about as hard to miss. They always brought up the rear of Milo's entourage. Huge, like walking trees. You never see one without the other. My husband says they used to fight as a team in the arena."
"Yes, two against two, sometimes two against four," said Davus, pulling a rabbit bone from his mouth. Eco and I both looked at him in surprise.
"Go on, Davus," I said.
He cleared his throat. "It's just that when I was a boy my old master used to take us all to watch the fights," he explained. "He owned a few gladiators himself. Thought about training me for the arena, but finally decided I was too small and he could make a better deal selling me as a bodyguard. He always said that no man ever lost money betting on Eudamus and Birria. It didn't matter what sort of weapon they used, or in what combination – trident and net, short sword, axe, with shields or without. They could paralyse a man with fear, just by staring at him. The two scariest men who ever lived, that's what my old master used to call them."
I speared a turnip with my fork and dabbed it in the sauce. "And these gladiators were with Milo when he passed through that day?"
The woman nodded. "Of that I'm certain, because they were the first of the men who came running after Clodius. My sister saw them from an upstairs window."
"Is that where she stayed during the attack, upstairs?"
"This is how she tells it: she heard the noise when Clodius and his men rushed in, and she started to come down. She just caught a glimpse of them, then Marcus yelled at her to go back upstairs."
"How many men did she see?"
"Not very many. Five or six, she said, and Clodius lying on this counter, gripping his shoulder and gnashing his teeth, giving orders to the rest."
"Giving orders?"
"Yes, telling them to close the shutters and so forth." "Then he was wounded but still conscious." "Very much so. Determined, my sister said – His men were looking to him for directions. But the looks on those men's faces…" "What sort of look?"
"Like men with death on their heels, bracing themselves to turn and look it in the fece. That's just how she put it. Panic-stricken, gasping for breath. When they heard her on the stairs, they all gave a start and looked up at her like startled rabbits. All except Clodius, she said. He smiled at her. Smiled! Then Marcus yelled for her to go back, and she ran up the stairs." "Then what?"
"She ran to a window to see what they were running from. Just a little up the road a man had fallen. Two men stood over him, hacking at him with swords – blood flying all over the place. The fallen man must have been with Clodius. The other two were Eudamus and Birria. She recognized them right away – like demons from Hades, she said, like monsters from an old story. Farther up the road she could see more fallen men, and what looked like a whole army of gladiators heading for the tavern. Imagine how she felt! Eudamus and Birria finished hacking at the fallen man and came lumbering towards the tavern. The others came rushing up behind them. Oh, it makes me sick to think of it. My baby sister…" She shook her head and patted her hand against her breast.
Eco pushed his plate away, looking slightly queasy. Davus stared intently at the woman and used his teeth to tear a shred of rabbit flesh off a bone.
"And then what?" I said.
"Marcus had barred the doors and the shutters downstairs. The attackers got closer and closer, and then they were at the door. Bang, bang, bang! Beating at the door, at the shutters, with their fists, with the pommels of their swords. The racket was terrifying. She covered her ears and still she could hear it. It went on and on-men crying out, the crack of splintered wood and broken hinges, screams and yells, clanging steel." The woman rolled her eyes up. "Sometimes I can't sleep at night, imagining what she must have gone through, trapped up there, alone and helpless. She finally gathered up all the blankets, crouched in a corner and piled the blankets on top of her. She says she can't even remember doing it, but she must have, because finally she realized that all the noise was over and there she was, sweating under all those blankets but shivering as if she were naked."
"How much time had passed?"
"Who knows? A few moments, an hour? She couldn't say. Finally she got up the courage to peek through the blankets. She was still all alone upstairs, and there was only silence from down below. She went to a window and looked out. She saw bodies scattered here and there along the road, and the strangest thing – right in front of the tavern, a litter with a group of people standing around it."
"A litter?"
"Yes, not a carriage or a wagon, but a litter, the kind that's carried by a team of slaves, with curtains for privacy. The litter had been put down, the bearers were standing by. An old man in a senator's toga and a woman were standing over one of the fallen men in the road with their heads together, talking."
"Did your sister recognize the senator?"
"No, but she knew the litter. We've seen it for years, heading up to Rome and coming back again. It belongs to an old senator who owns one of the villas on the mountain, Sextus Tedius. I've never seen his face. He's not the sort to come into a place like this."
"And the man they were leaning over?"
"Clodius."
"Your sister was able to recognize him, even at a distance?"
"I suppose so. That's what she said, that it was Clodius."
"How did he get from the tavern into the road?"
"Who knows? Probably Eudamus and Birria dragged him out there, like dogs with a rabbit." I thought of the marks around Clodius's throat. Perhaps he had been Uterally dragged by the neck.
The woman looked at our plates. "Why, you two haven't finished your meat! On a chilly day like this, a man needs plenty of hot food in his belly, to keep up his strength. This one knows how to eat!" She cast a toothy grin at Davus, who finished sucking the last bit of marrow from a bone and cast a lingering glance at the uneaten meat on our plates. "Wasn't it good?"
"Excellent," I assured her. "Roasted to perfection. I'm afraid we stuffed ourselves with too much of your fine bread and cheese beforehand." I slid my plate and Eco's towards Davus. "You say your sister saw bodies scattered along the road and Senator Tedius and his wife -"
"Not his wife. Senator Tedius is a widower. The woman would have been his daughter, I imagine. His only child; she's never married and is very devoted to him."
"I see. Then she saw Senator Tedius and his daughter with their litter out front, discussing what to do with Clodius. Where were Milo's men?"
"Vanished. They'd won the battle, hadn't they? What reason did they have to stay? My poor sister finally found the courage to creep down the stairs. I know what she saw, because I saw it myself later – eveiything overturned and broken, the door off its hinges, all the shutters smashed. It was as if the Furies themselves had been unleashed in this room. And worst of all, right at the foot of the stairs, poor Marcus, pierced all over with wounds and not a breath left in his body. At the foot of the stairs, don't you see – defending her. She must have lost her senses for a while, because the next thing she remembers is arriving at my house up the hill. She could barely talk for weeping. Oh, how she wept!" -
"And the people outside the tavern," I said quietly. "Senator Tedius and his retinue?"
She shrugged. "They were all gone by the time my husband and I got here. So was Clodius, or whatever was left of him. Later we heard that Tedius had sent the body on to Rome in his litter, and hundreds of people gathered at Clodius's house in Rome that night and lit bonfires. His poor widow! But Fulvia's grief couldn't have been any greater than my sister's. There were no gatherings here, no bonfires, just a great mess to be cleaned up. The next day my husband saw that all the bodies were gathered up and laid out in rows over by the stable. A man from Clodius's villa came with a wagon and claimed them. But they didn't clean the blood from the Appian Way – you can still see great patches of it between here and the shrine of the Good Goddess. And nobody's offered to pay a single sesterce towards the repairs we had to make to this place. I told my husband that he should take Milo to court for damages, but he says we should wait and see how things go up in Rome before we get ourselves into more trouble. How do you like that? Honest men suffer in silence while a man like Milo can still put himself forward for consul. It's an outrage!"
I nodded sympathetically. "So you and your husband arrived after everyone else had scattered?"
"Yes. All we saw were dead bodies."
"At what time of day did all this happen?"
"The battle? Well, considering when we arrived, and from all my sister said, I think it must have been about the middle of the afternoon. I'd say Milo arrived in Bovillae at the ninth hour, watered his horses, rounded up his entourage and moved on, and then his gladiators chased Clodius here at the tenth hour."
"Not later? Not closer to sunset?"
She shook her head. "Why do you ask?"
I shrugged. "One hears so many different versions of the story up in Rome…"
There was a noise from the open doorway behind us. I stiffened, but the woman smiled at the men who entered. "Roasted rabbit today, if I can trust my nose," said one of them.
"And turnips with our hostess's special sauce!" said one of his companions, sniffing the air. They settled themselves on some benches in a comer.
"What do we owe you?" I asked the woman. As I counted coins from Eco's purse I leaned towards her over the bar. "Your sister -how is she now?"
She shook her head. "A broken woman, as I told you. I don't know if she'll ever get over it."
"Is there any chance that she could receive a visitor?"
"A visitor?" The woman frowned.
I lowered my voice even further. "Forgive me: I haven't been entirely forthcoming with you, I'm afraid. But now that I've heard you speak, I know I can trust you. I didn't just happen to pass by today."
"No?" The woman looked at me suspiciously, but with growing interest.
"No. I'm here on behalf of Fulvia."
"Clodius's widow?" She raised her eyebrows.
'Yes – please, keep your voice down. I wasn't sure I could trust you before, but now that I've heard your feelings about Clodius, and about Milo and his wife…"
"Roasted rabbit! Roasted rabbit!" The newcomers began to chant and beat their fists against the tables, laughing good-naturedly.
"Just wait your turn!" shouted our hostess, with a gjare that they took for a joke. They laughed and began another chant that quickly disintegrated into laughter: "Tur-nips! Tur-nips! Tur -"
She leaned closer and spoke just above a whisper. "I see! So you're here to help wreck Milo's schemes."
I pursed my hps. "I can't say that's my purpose for being here, exactly, but I can say that Fulvia has asked me to find out what I can about her husband's death."
"Ah!" She nodded knowingly.
"So you can see why I would like to speak to your sister, if I could."
"Of course." She nodded sagely, then frowned. "But it's not possible."
"I realize her fragile condition -" "But it's not only that. She's not here." "No?"
"She's gone off with her son to stay with our aunt down in Rhegium. Everyone thought it would be best, for her to get as far from this place as possible for a while."
I nodded. One couldn't get much farther away than Rhegium, at the very tip of the Italian peninsula.
"Roasted rabbit and turnips and sauce! Roasted rabbit and turnips and sauce!"
The woman shrugged. "I really must see to the others now. But good luck! Anything that helps to bring Milo down a peg or two…" "Oh, but one more question -" "Roasted rabbit and turnips and sauce -" "Yes?"
"Marc Antony – does that name mean anything to you?" She thought for a moment, then shook her head. "Are you sure?"
"Never heard of him. He must not be from around here."
"Roasted rabbit and turnips and sauce -"
Our hostess groaned. "I'd better feed this lot quickly, before we have another riot in this place!" She rolled her eyes and cast a final grin at Davus, then hurried away.