Murder in the Forum

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The man lying outside the basilica was dead. Messily dead, the way a person is apt to be when he has been dragged for miles at the wheels of an official Roman carriage. As this man had obviously been.

This was not a clever deduction on my part. The official Roman carriage in question was standing right in front of me, and the unfortunate victim was still attached to it, his hands bound to his sides, so that he could not protect his face, and the chains just long enough to protract the agony, allowing him to stumble after the cart until his heart was bursting, and then when he tripped — as he inevitably would — dragging him remorselessly headlong. The official Roman who must have given the instructions was still sitting smugly inside his conveyance.

I looked at the hapless corpse and blanched. Not at the battered head and bloodied limbs — I had seen men executed this way before — but at the remnants of uniform which still adhered to the body. That scarlet tunic and golden edging meant one thing only: the wearer was a servant of my patron, Marcus Septimus Aurelius, the regional governor’s personal representative. In fact, I suspected that I knew the victim. It was hard to be sure, of course, after such a death, but I thought it was a rather pompous young envoy whom Marcus had once sent with me when I was investigating a crime: an arrogant, self-important youth, vain of his pretty looks.

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