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PART I: 62 B.C.
prologue; the wedding of claudius and fulvia
Fulvia married Publius Claudius Pulcher on a steamy summer’s day, when the oppressive heat descended upon the mob and incited them to madness, when Sol Indiges’ unforgiving glare blinded those foolish enough to stare into his blazing eyes, when Fulvia, head covered by her bright orange veil, felt hot enough to burst into flames.
She had been told time and time again that a bride must be modest, that she should not be bold or rude or too forthcoming, that she must not meet his gaze. She was virginal, she was pure, she had been prepared for this moment her whole life and she must not spoil it with her infamous temper.
The advice was laughable. After all, Fulvia was marrying Publius Claudius Pulcher of all people, and she doubted very much he gave a fig about her temper; in fact, from what she’d heard, he enjoyed such qualities in women.
Fulvia had met Publius Claudius several times, during which he’d praised her beauty with a glint in his eye and a careless smile upon his lips. He had bent down over her shoulder and raised an eyebrow at what she was reading. He had listened seriously to her critique of Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi and she had laughed uproariously at his wild stories of being captured by pirates. They had both made several jokes at Lucius Licinius Lucullus’ expense. She had, overall, found his company most enjoyable, and decided that if she must marry, that he would make an acceptable husband.
So it was that Fulvia disregarded the advice given to her by her nurse and her friends and her aunts. She, upon the veil being lifted from her eyes, stared straight at Publius Claudius and cocked an eyebrow and stifled laughter at the more boring parts of the ceremony, much to his delight. As they half-skipped, half-ran to his house, surrounded by obscene jokes hurled by the wedding procession, they laughed and shouted equally rude things back. As he carried her over the threshold of his house, he pressed a loud kiss to her grinning lips, much to the mirth of the men and the horror of the ladies. And as she spoke the final prayers of the ceremony, Publius Claudius gazed at her with open adoration, even though she was hot and dishevelled and sweaty.
Of course, after the revellers left the house, Publius Claudius stirred an entirely different kind of heat within her at once.
1. meeting clodia metelli
The following morning, Fulvia woke early. The room was dark, Publius Claudius a warm prescence beside her. A soft snore, a rise and fall of his chest. Fulvia grinned for a second as she took it all in; sharp and gleeful and triumphant.
This, she thought, this no one had ever prepared her for, not completely. They had told her to play the noble, pious Roman matron, that she was not to go out unaccompanied, that she was to please her husband and nothing more - but Fulvia had never know that this was how it was to be married, this power, this brilliant sun; she was the sun, they were the sun, and they would bathe all of Rome in their light.
Publius Claudius awoke late. He had drunk quite a lot the previous night and so he moved slowly, shaving his beard, pulling on a tunic, eating breakfast - bread dripped with honey, a cup of watered wine - and all the while gazing at Fulvia as though she were the most precious object in the world.
Fulvia didn’t like that. She was no object, and she told him so.
He grinned. “Of course, Fulvia.”
She had eaten far earlier than he and so she waited idly, feet swinging, as her husband ate. They spoke a little, but neither could say much for they were both smiling so hard, chests so full they thought they would burst.
“My sister has asked us over,” says Publius Claudius, and he got up and kissed Fulvia, his mouth honey-sweet.
“Which one?” asked Fulvia.
“My favourite,” said Publius Claudius, “my dear Quadrantaria, wife of Metellus Celer.”
Fulvia blanched.
Fulvia’s sister-in-law was very rich, and she was married to Quintus Caecilius Metellus Celer, and she was famed for having the most lovers of any noble lady in all of Rome. “She enjoys her pleasures,” Publius Claudius had said, laughing, when Fulvia commented on it.
The sister in question was quite tall, and very beautiful for a lady of thirty, and she lounged on a couch when Publius Claudius and Fulvia were ushered into the room, draped in scarlet, feet bare - Fulvia’s mouth tensed a little at that - and drinking wine. Fulvia inhaled the scent - unwatered, she guessed - and watched the sister’s large black eyes, liquid, ox-like, flicker up to meet them, and watched slender fingers push a grape between her lips and Fulvia shivered.
“Fulvia,” said Publius Claudius, “meet my favourite sister, Clodia.”
Fulvia looked at him quizzically, but Clodia rose to greet her, smiling a little, and said “Fulvia, my dear, I’m sure we’ve met before.”
“We have indeed,” said Fulvia, a little coldly. Clodia was smooth and shimmering, seemed to ripple like water, and Fulvia did not trust her, one bit.
Clodia didn’t blink. “My most sincere apologies for not attending your wedding,” she said, “Metellus regretted it terribly, but he wished to host Pompey last night and he requested that I be there, so…” and her voice trailed off and she grinned, white teeth gleaming, eyes shining, and she was remarkably similar to Publius Claudius, Fulvia thought.
“Your name,” said Fulvia, “you pronounce it as if you lived in the Subura.”
“My dear Clodia is laying the groundwork for something I intend to do within a few years,” said Publius Claudius, and he smiled exactly like his sister. “The pronounciation of her name is absolutely vital to my plans.”
Something Fulvia had learnt about Publius Claudius during their courtship; it was nigh impossible to tell if he was joking or serious, especially because he said everything with a laugh and a wink and a shrug of the shoulders. She stared at him, and stared at Clodia, and stared at him again, and determined that it was extremely unlikely she’d determine the nature of that statement.
“Let us lie down,” said Clodia, “and dear Fulvia, you must share a couch with me - we have so much to tell each other!” She grasped Fulvia’s hand and pulled her over to the couch, where she curled up in her previous position. Fulvia lay down on the other side, as far away as possible, ensuring not to touch her sister-in-law in any way - much to Publius Claudius’s amusement.
Clodia smiled and entwined her legs with Fulvia’s. “My dear,” she said, “I’m sure we’re going to be very good friends.”
2. bona dea
Having Clodia as a sister-in-law was hellish. She was mercurial, exhausting, drank too much, slept with too many people, fought bitterly with her husband, and it was common for her to storm into Publius Claudius and Fulvia’s house after an argument at least once a week.
And yet, Fulvia bemoaned, Clodia was charming and clever and loving; loved too much and too fast. She had a wit like her brother and cursed like a common soldier. She followed Fulvia around the house, jabbering away or mooning over a lover or insisting that she come to some dinner party or the other - Cicero will be there, my dear, and you know how you love to antagonise him - pearls and veils trailing behind her. She and Publius Claudius held belching contests and planned parties and drove Fulvia insane.
And Clodia was an absolute nightmare to attend any important events with, as Fulvia was currently discovering.
“What an old hag,” said Clodia, nodding toward Aurelia.
Fulvia was privately inclined to agree, but as Aurelia and her daughter-in-law Pompeia were hosting the rites of the Bona Dea this year, she thought it best not to offend the great lady, mother of the up-and-coming Caesar.
“I’m so bored,” muttered Clodia. “I hate this thing. We aren’t even allowed to drink.”
“Not a believer in the Bona Dea?” Fulvia said, smirking.
“Are you?”
They stood at the edge of the room. Clodia scratched her nose. “Should I go and talk to Aurelia and all her matronly friends?”
“For the love of Hera, no.”
Aurelia turned abruptly away from the women she was conversing with, and called out, in her booming voice, that the rites were to begin and all women in the house were to make their way into the atrium.
“Here we go,” sang Clodia under her breath.
Suddenly, a scream echoed from upstairs.
“A man!” cried the voice, shrill and sharp and piercing. “A man has entered the building! A man has polluted the rites!”
Aurelia’s face was horrified, and then confused, and then furious. A wild, feverish chatter spread throughout the room. Out of the corner of her eye, Fulvia saw Clodia shove her fist into her mouth to contain her laughter.
“Search the building!” bellowed Aurelia. “Turn out the intruder!”
A flurry of confusion, of thumping feet, of colourful dresses and shawls. Some of the women raced upstairs; others fled into adjacent rooms; a whole group shoved Fulvia and Clodia out of the way and barricaded the door. Clodia looked as if she were about to collapse. Fulvia rather wanted to go upstairs and fight off the intruder, but at the same time, her sister-in-law looked to be having a fit of hysterics and seemed in danger of explosion. She settled for staying by her side and glaring.
A number of shouts upstairs, an enormous crash and a thud-thud-thud as somebody rolled down the stairs, clad entirely in yellow, like the flute-girls dotted around the room. Fulvia started forward - there was something familiar about them, but it was no use; a gaping crowd gathered around the groaning body slumped at the foot. A gasp rippled throughout the group.
They all turned and looked at Fulvia.
The flute-girl emerged from the crowd, limping - but it was no flute-girl at all. It was Publius Claudius; bleary-eyed and confused.
“You,” hissed Aurelia.
“How embarrassing,” whispered Clodia. “Only drunk, no knife-fights or lovers to speak of. Not even a hint of scandal. My brother’s losing his touch.”
And before Fulvia could do anything to stop her, Clodia stepped forward and cried, “Pompeia? Caesar’s wife? Really, brother? Oh, the shame! The shame!”
Fulvia learnt that night, and the nights afterwards, that death was in fact preferable to humiliation.
PART II: 59-56 B.C.
3. publius clodius pulcher
“I hate being a patrician,” said Publius Claudius thoughtfully one day, in the middle of a dinner party, sharing a couch with Fulvia, directly opposite Clodia and an unknown, irrelevant man absorbed with walking his fingers up and down her mauve-draped thigh.
“My brother has developed a social conscience,” said Clodia, laughing.
“No,” he said, “I want to run for tribune for the next year.”
“Oh,” said Fulvia. “So it’s not the sudden realisation that your social class is one that directly benefits off the suffering and oppression of the masses that plagues you. It’s your lack of political power.”
“Fulvia, you know full well you don’t give a damn about the masses, and you’re a plebian yourself.”
“We’ll give a damn when it suits us, my darling.”
He looked very pleased and kissed her. Clodia pulled a face. Publius Claudius threw a grape at her.
“Get yourself adopted by a plebian if you’re so desperate to be tribune,” said Fulvia.
“Ah!” cried Clodia, “and the ball drops!”
Fulvia stared at her.
“We have been looking for someone to adopt my little brother for years now, but no one will risk it, you see - look how volatile he is, how crude, how pleasure-seeking! And he will take my name - Clodius, when he is adopted, plebian pronounciation and all, and present himself as a man of the people,” and she picked up the grape and threw it expertly into Publius Claudius’s open mouth.
“Ridiculous,” scoffed Fulvia. “You know full well he’d have to take the name of his new father.”
“We decided to bypass that,” said Publius Claudius, taking a gulp of wine. “We prefer to keep our brand alive.”
“Which is partially why we’re having such trouble finding him a father.”
Fulvia rolled her eyes. “If you’re so desperate, just take him -” she pointed at the young man by Clodia’s side “- and get him to adopt my husband in exchange for a chance with you.”
They burst out laughing. Publius Claudius laughed so hard that wine began spilling out of his goblet onto the floor, and a slave had to come running to clean it up.
“I’d take that chance,” piped up the man.
“How old are you, boy?” asked Fulvia scornfully. “Nineteen?”
“Twenty,” he said, and gazed at Clodia.
“Well,” said Clodius, “who says the son has to be older than the father?”
“The law?” replied Fulvia.
“Darling,” said Clodia, “we’re Claudians. We stopped obeying the law a long time ago.” She turned her head to the young man, and, soft and sultry, said, “What’s your name?”
“Fonteius,” he said, “Publius Fonteius.”
Clodia’s lips curved. “Well, I’m up for it if you are, my dear brother.”
Two months later, Publius Clodius Pulcher was elected as a tribune for the following year.
4. metellus very ill
Quintus Caecilius Metellus Celer was no kind man, but now that he was ill, the entire Senate seemed to be in his house to wish him well. The atrium was packed with men in their blinding white togas, a stripe of purple on each shoulder, senatorial rings on fat, wrinkled fingers. The smell of sweat hovered in the air. One by one, men filed in to the room of the great man himself to pay their respects to him as he lay comatose in his bed, face sunken and grey. Fulvia had seen him a few times over the months he had gotten steadily sicker, and found him even ghastlier silent than he was speaking.
Quintus Caecilius Metellus Celer’s wife was surrounded by both men and women, and was having the time of her life.
For once, Fulvia noted, Clodia was not remotely intoxicated. She was well dressed, as always, covered in gold and pearls and rubies, flashing her eyes at anyone who caught her fancy. Poised, polished, perfect. Clodia’s sisters, Claudia and Claudilla, almost equally beautiful, leaned against the wall looking rather bored, murmuring to Clodia. Fulvia knew Clodius and his sisters were all remarkably close, even for siblings, and she had never given a second thought to the rumours of incest that surrounded the family, but watching these three interact… she could see how one might come to the conclusion.
She walked toward them, through the throng of the uncaring and greedy and self-important, and Clodia’s face lit up. Two steps and Clodia’s arm was casually linked around hers, tinted lips close to her ear, “Fulvia, I’ve been waiting forever for you to show up, and where’s my dear brother? Thank the gods, it’s been ever so dreary around here,” and she laughed and Fulvia frowned.
“My dear,” she said, “as a a soon-to-be grieving widow, you might want to keep your voice down a little.”
“What’s the point? I don’t give a fig what all those crusty old men think, and besides,” and she pointed a slender finger across the room, toward a young man Fulvia vaguely recognised, “I plan to spend my grieving widowhood celebrating with him.”
Fulvia disliked Clodia’s husband intensely, but something about the situation left a bad taste in her mouth. She said, quietly, “how ill is he,” and Clodia took a sip of wine, twisting the fabric of her chiton between her fingers and said, “very.”
Sharp teeth, Fulvia noticed suddenly, gleaming between Clodia’s lips. And she wondered how any man could fall in love with her when she was so obviously ready to devour him.
“It wasn’t,” she said, quietly. “It wasn’t you, was it.”
Clodia grinned even more. “Of course not.”
And then she laughed. And she laughed, great peals of laughter, and she laughed and laughed some more until Fulvia’s ears rang with it.
5. clodia’s bathtub
Fulvia awoke in Clodia’s guest room in the middle of the night, just hours after one of Clodia’s wild parties, unable to sleep and unable to find a decent equilibrium between hot and cold. She tossed the covers on and off, on and off, writhing around the bed, until the sheets were in ropes around her feet and she was so frazzled and frustrated that she couldn’t possibly stay in that ghastly room any longer.
She got up, clad in just a knee-length chiton, and let her bare feet drag against the floor, and left the room, moving fast, rubbing her eyes. Her hair tumbled from the remains of a bun onto her shoulders. All was silent; the party was over, the slaves were asleep. The rooms looked as if a whirlwind had been through them.
A flickering light around the corner. Fulvia blinked and said “Clodia?” and there was no answer.
She followed the light and turned the corner and it was Clodia’s spacious marble bathroom, several candles burning low on a ledge above what Fulvia knew was the bath and she looked down, down at Clodia’s bathtub and oh gods oh the gods what has she done
Clodia lay in the bathtub, naked, eyes closed, unresponsive to Fulvia’s screams, and the water was a pale red oh gods the water the water and the red, the red was pouring from her mouth, there was a stream of blood steadily trickling out of her mouth and Fulvia fell to her knees, grabbed her sister-in-law, pulled her out of the bath and shook her, screamed for a physician, and cradled her, wiped blood from her lips and clung to her desperately even as the slaves took her away, fought them tooth and nail as Clodia’s prone body was carried to a bedroom and finally, when there was nothing else she could do, stood guard outside Clodia’s door, a lioness snarling at any who dared enter.
The visitors came quickly. Claudia and Claudilla and their friends, and many of the drunken revellers who had collapsed on the floor hours earlier, all flocking and blocking the corridor, twittering like birds. Claudia asked Fulvia if she was quite alright, and inquired as to the whereabouts of Caelius, to which Fulvia replied she had no idea but if he dared come near Clodia again, Fulvia would rip his throat out with her teeth.
“You don’t mean to say -” said Claudia, breathless.
“Clodia would never attempt to kill herself over love,” said Fulvia. “She’s too arrogant to even consider it.”
Claudia swore very loudly and said, “Appius is going to hate this.”
Fulvia, quite frankly, did not care what the oldest of the Pulcher clan would think about the situation, and she went inside to see Clodia, who was lying in bed, white as a sheet and breathing very faintly, while physicians and slaves hurried around her.
“She will live?”
The oldest physician in the room, a man with a head like a tortoise, turned to face her and nodded.
Fulvia collapsed to the floor and lay her head on the bed and held Clodia’s cold, clammy hand and stayed there for a very long time until her sister-in-law woke (at noon the following morning, by which time Clodius was in the room with them) and heard the first words Clodia spoke (“Caelius, is he here, get him away from me!”) and threw her arms around her (“thank every god in heaven and on earth and in the underworld you’re alive!”)
She banished all thoughts of Caelius from her mind and smoothed Clodia’s hair from her sweaty brow and did not mention poison or blood or her sister-in-law’s bad taste in lovers. That conversation could wait until another day.
PART III: 53-52 B.C.
6. blood in the streets of rome
The crowd outside was deafening. They screamed Clodius’s name, cursed the name of Milo, called for blood and revenge.
Fulvia walked away from the window and sat next to Clodia.
“It frightens you?” she asked.
“My brother,” said Clodia - she swallowed, licked her lips, “can let power go to his head.”
“Clodius harnesses the power of the mob like nobody I’ve ever seen,” said Fulvia. “It’s remarkable. He’ll be the next praetor, and Milo will be lucky to be alive before the year is out.”
“No,” said Clodia, “he’s not as clever, or as capable as he pretends to be.”
Silence.
“This sort of thing is what killed the Gracchi,” she said, quieter.
“I thought you didn’t have a limit for this sort of thing. Thought you were both as bloodthirsty as the other.”
“I’m the bloodthirsty one. Clodius is foolish, though. He doesn’t know when to stop. He doesn’t know what he wants.”
“He knows,” said Fulvia defensively. “He knows! The grain reform, legislative reform!”
“He knows because you told him what he wants. Right now? Out there, alone? He doesn’t have a clue.”
Fulvia stared at Clodia, slumped in her seat, twisting her hands together.
“Clodia -”
“I can’t do this,” she said. “Not now, I can’t listen to them screaming out there. Fulvia, I can’t.”
She got up and she walked away, signalling a slave for a litter. Fulvia watched her go. Fulvia watched her bowed head, her thin arms, the drink she tossed back before she was out of sight. Fulvia heard the crowd let out a mighty roar, and she buried her face in her hands.
7. the via appia
The slaves delivered a message with his body, written by a backbencher whose name Fulvia did not recognise. She scanned it - passed Milo and his escort on the Via Appia… wounded by a javelin… murdered on Milo’s orders - and then it was too much and she could not read any more. All she could see was what was in front of her. Clodius. His body, battered and bloodsoaked. She half-expected his eyes to open, his fingers to flex. He should get up and make a joke. He should get up and kiss her and she should shout at him for frightening her. He should. He should. He should.
Clodius did nothing. Clodius was dead.
She began to shake, and tears began to leak from her eyes, but no sound escaped her throat, and she clenched her fists and forced herself to stand straight and exhaled, sharp, through her teeth.
She did not deserve this. No one, no one deserved this.
“Please,” she said, to one of the slaves, “send for a litter. I must inform the lady Clodia of her brother’s death.”
Saying it like that made it less real, she found.
The litter arrived minutes later and as she was carried through the city, up to the Palatine, she focused on the dust billowing up between the gaps in the curtains, the jolting of the litter, the scratchy stitches on the pillows. Did not think of him. Could not.
Clodia’s house was as beautiful and impersonal as ever. She said, “please tell the lady Clodia I must speak to her, it is urgent,” and the slave bustled away, and Fulvia dug her fingernails into her palms until one broke, and looked up at the ceiling and blinked as hard as she could to rid herself of tears.
The slave returned. “The lady is engaged with another guest at the moment,” she said, “but she begs me to tell you she will receive you shortly.”
There was a couch in the atrium, but Fulvia could not bring herself to sit down. She began to pace, scraping the sharp edges of her broken fingernail against her cheek. One step, two steps, three. Equal distances between each one. She noticed, with a horrified fascination, that her chiton was blood red.
A loud cry from across the house. Fulvia paused, foot poised in the air. The slaves did not seem concerned. She continued pacing.
Another cry, higher, louder. She frowned, stopped. Another, and another, and a series of grunts, and the slaves were beginning to flush red, and Fulvia felt her blood boil. She stood there, in the middle of the atrium, as Clodia moaned and sobbed and sighed at the other end of the house, and a hideous powerlessness washed over her.
“I have to leave,” she said, finally. “Inform the lady Clodia that her brother has been murdered,” and with that, Fulvia left Clodia’s house.
8. the funeral
Clodius’s body was heavy. Physical sensation was all Fulvia could bring herself to focus on; her husband’s cold, slightly swollen hands in her own, the dust on her feet, the tears running down her cheeks. She hauled him further, bit by bit, dragging his body, her back bent, aching. Silence, all around her. Throngs of people lining the streets.
There were no senators out today. They dared not show their faces.
It was effective, she thought, a wife hauling her husband’s dead body from their home to the Forum. She was doing what was right; to avenge Clodius. To punish Milo. To punish the Senate, to punish the magistrates, to punish everyone who had made this happen. She was not punishing herself. She was not punishing herself.
Fulvia looked over her shoulder and thank the gods, the Curia was in sight - she was nearly there. Even the birds dared not caw overhead. An omen, she thought, through the blur of pain. She was so tired. She was so fucking tired.
Clodius was wearing the same things he wore the day he was murdered. He was still coated in dried blood, face still contorted slightly. She dropped his arms. He fell back in the midst of the Forum, and she stepped away.
Fulvia opened her mouth.
“People of Rome!” she screamed. “Here lies your champion! Here lies your voice, dead at my feet! Slain by the man who would keep you silenced and oppressed!”
A roar, deafening. Fulvia raised her arms to quieten them, her exhausted, trembling arms.
“Clodius uplifted you when no one else would!” she continued. “He fought against the corruption of politicians! Against those who would sentence a man to death without trail! Against those who would deny you the basic right to survive!”
The scream the crowd echoed back at her was rage-filled, horror-struck. Fulvia turned and looked at him all - filthy, angry, scheming, eyes dry and fists clenched, and she felt guilty beyond measure.
“Do you see any senators here today?” she screamed. “Do they dare to show their faces?”
The crowd, frenzied and agitated, bellowed something back. Fulvia dropped her arms, kept them tense by her sides. She bellowed: “Then show them! Show them what you think of Clodius’s death!”
The next few minutes were a blur. The mob swarmed toward her and Clodius, and somebody grabbed her, lifted her off the ground and began to run; she gave a scream and struggled until she recognised him; a member of the collegia. He dropped her onto the floor of what she recognised as the Rostra and she leapt up, strained to see Clodius’s body, but it had disappeared beneath the seething, enraged crowd. Her rescuer let her go, stepped back, breathing heavily. “Where are they taking him?” she asked. “What will they do?”
“They plan to burn him,” he said. “Right there, on the steps of the Curia.”
And there, before Fulvia, the crowd was throwing wooden furniture high on the steps of the Curia Hostilia, and flames were burning high and bright, a steady stream of smoke spiralling into the sky. She couldn’t help but laugh, even as her husband’s body was thrown onto the makeshift pyre, even as the flames began to eat away his flesh.
“Fitting,” said a voice behind her.
“Clodia?”
“Beautiful, isn’t it.”
They looked at one another, and Clodia stretched out her hand, and Fulvia took it and gripped it so hard she thought she’d die if she let go.
“Let’s get out of here,” said Clodia.
And so it was that as Publius Clodius Pulcher’s funeral pyre burned down the Curia Hostilia and dyed the sky orange and left a smokey haze lingering in the air for days, his widow and his sister left the Forum clinging to one another, hands and arms and shoulders, heads nestled together, with no secrets between them, and only love left in their hearts.