The House of the Vestals rsr-6

by Steven Saylor

  The creature shambled and lurched over the rubbish heaps and drifts of dirty sand. We strode deeper and deeper into the wastes. The heaps of ash and rubble rose higher around us, hid' ing us from the road. The creature led us around the flank of a low sandy hill. An orange haze engulfed us. An acrid cloud of smoke swirled around us. I choked. Lucius reached for his throat and began to cough. The hot breath of an open flame blew against my face.

  Through the murk I saw the derelict silhouetted against the fire. He bobbed his head up and down and pointed at something in the flames.

  "What is it?" I wheezed. "I see nothing."

  Lucius gave a start. He seized my arm and pointed. There, within the inferno, amid the indiscriminate heap of fiery rubbish, I glimpsed the remains of a human body.

  The flaming heap collapsed upon itself, sending out a spray of orange cinders. I covered my face with my sleeve and put my arm around Lucius's shoulder. Together we fled from the blazing heat and smoke. The derelict scampered after us, his long brown arm extended, palm up.

  "There is no proof that the body the derelict showed us was that of Asuvius," I said. "It might have been another derelict, for all we know. The truth is beyond proving. That is the crux of the matter." took a long sip of wine. Night had descended on Rome. Crickets chirred in my garden. Bethesda sat beneath the portico nearby, beside a softly glowing lamp. She pretended to stitch a torn tunic, but listened to every word. Lucius Claudius sat beside me, staring at the moon's reflection in his cup.

  "Tell me, Gordianus, how exactly do you explain the discrepancies between what I saw and the tale that Columba told us? What really happened the day after the Ides of Maius?"

  "I should think that the sequence of events is clear."

  "Even so-"

  "Very well, this is how I would tell the story. There was once a wealthy young orphan in a town called Larinum who chose his friends very poorly. Two of those friends, an old rogue and a young predator, talked him into going to Rome for a long holiday. The three of them took up residence in one of the seedier parts of town and proceeded to indulge in just the sorts of vices that are likely to lull a green country lad into a vulnerable stupor. Away from the boy's watchful sisters and the town gossips in Larinum, the Fox and old Oppianicus were free to hatch their scheme.

  "On a morning when Asuvius was dallying with his favorite prostitute, the Fox pretended to be the boy and took to his bed, feigning a mortal illness. Oppianicus summoned strangers off the street to act as witnesses to a will-people who wouldn't know Asuvius from Alexander. Oppianicus made at least one mistake, but he got away with it."

  "What was that?"

  "Someone must have asked the dying man's age. Oppianicus, without thinking, said he was not yet twenty; you told me so. True enough, if he meant Asuvius. But it was the Fox who lay on the bed pretending to be Asuvius, and I gather that the Fox is well beyond twenty. Even so, you yourself ascribed the discrepancy to illness-'haggard and lined,' you said he looked, as if terribly aged from his sickness. The other witnesses probably thought the same thing. People will go to great lengths to make the evidence of their own eyes conform to whatever someone tells them is the truth."

  Lucius frowned. "Why was the will in two different handwritings?"

  "Yes, I remember you mentioning that. The Fox began it, feigning such a weak hand that he couldn't finish it; such a ploy would help to explain why his signature would not be recognizable as the hand of Asuvius-anyone would think it was the scrawl of a man nearly dead."

  "But the Fox pressed his own seal ring into the wax," protested Lucius. "I saw him do it. It couldn't have been the true seal of Asuvius, who was with Columba, wearing his ring."

  "I'll come to that. Now, once the will was witnessed all around, you and the others were shunted from the room. Oppianicus wound the Fox up in a sheet, tore his hair and worked tears into his eyes, then called for the landlord."

  "Who saw a corpse!"

  "Who thought he saw a corpse. All he saw was a body in a sheet. He thought Asuvius had died of a sudden illness; he took no pains to examine the corpse."

  "But later he saw two men taking the body away in a cart."

  "He saw Oppianicus and the Fox, who had changed back into his clothes, carrying out something wrapped up in a sheet- a sack of millet, for all we know."

  "Ah, and once they were out of sight they got rid of the cart and the millet and went to fetch Asuvius from the brothel."

  "Yes, for their appointed stroll through the 'gardens.' The derelict witnessed the rest, how they ushered the confused boy to a secluded spot where the Fox strangled him to death, how they stripped his body and hid his corpse amid the rubbish. That was when they stole the seal ring from his finger. Later they must have rubbed the Fox's seal from the wax and applied the true seal of Asuvius to the will."

  "There's a law against that," said Lucius, without much conviction.

  "Yes, the Cornelian law, enacted by our esteemed Senate just three years ago. Why do you think they passed such a law? Because falsifying wills has become as commonplace as senators picking their noses in public!"

  "So the man I saw with Oppianicus in the street was indeed the same man whose will I witnessed-"

  "Yes, but it was the Fox all along, not Asuvius."

  Lucius nodded. "And so the scheme is complete; the false will cheats Asuvius's sisters and other relatives, no doubt, and leaves a tidy fortune to his dear friends Oppianicus and Marcus Avillius-also known as the Fox, for good reason."

  I nodded.

  "We must do something!"

  "Yes, but what? I suppose you could bring a suit against the culprits and attempt to prove that the will is fraudulent. That should take up a great deal of your time and money; if you think you suffer from boredom now, wait until you've spent a month or two bustling from clerk to clerk filing actions down in the Forum. And if Oppianicus and the Fox find an advocate half as crafty as they are, you'll likely as not be laughed out of court."

  "Forget the fraudulent will. These men are guilty of coldblooded murder!"

  "But will you be able to prove it, without a corpse and with no reliable witness? Even if you could find him again, our derelict friend is not the sort of man whose testimony would impress a Roman jury."

  "You're telling me that we've come to the end of it?"

  "I'm telling you that if you wish to proceed any further, what you need is an advocate, not Gordianus the Finder."

  Ten days later, Lucius Claudius came knocking at my door again.

  I was more than a little surprised to see him. Having set me on the trail of young Asuvius and having followed me to its end, I expected him to quickly lose interest and lapse into his customary boredom. Instead he informed me that he had been doing a bit of legwork on his own.

  He invited me for a stroll. While we walked he talked of nothing in particular, but I noticed that we were drawing near to the street where the whole story had begun. Lucius remarked that he was thirsty. We stepped into the tavern across from Priapus's Palace.

  "I've been thinking a great deal about what you said, Gordianus, about Roman justice. You're right; we can't trust the courts anymore. Advocates twist words and laws to their own purposes, pervert the sentiments of jurors, resort to intimidation and outright bribery. Still, true justice must be worth pursuing. I keep thinking of the flames, and the sight of that young man's body, thrown into a rubbish pit and burned to ashes. By the way, Oppianicus and the Fox are back in town."

  "Oh? Did they ever leave?"

  "They were on their way back to Larinum when I saw them that day, before I came to you. Oppianicus made a great production of showing Asuvius's will to anyone who cared to look, then filed it with the clerks in the forum at Larinum. So my messengers to Larinum tell me."

  "Messengers?"

  "Yes, I thought I would get in touch with Asuvius's sisters. A band of his freedmen arrived in Rome just this morning."

  "I see. And Oppianicus and the Fox are here already."

&nbs
p; "Yes. Oppianicus is staying with friends in a house over on the Aventine Hill. But the Fox is just across the street, in the apartment where they played their little charade."

  I turned and looked out the window. From where we sat, I could see the ground-floor door of the tenement and the window above, the same window from which Lucius had been summoned to witness the will. The shutters were drawn.

  "What a neighborhood!" said Lucius. "Some days I think that almost anything could happen in the Subura." He craned his neck and looked over my shoulder. From up the street I heard the noise of an approaching mob.

  There were twenty of them or more, brandishing knives and clubs. They gathered outside the tenement, where they banged their clubs against the door and demanded entrance. When the door did not open, they broke it down and streamed inside.

  The shutters were thrown back. A face appeared at the window above. If the Fox was handsome and charming, as Columba had told us, it was impossible to tell at that moment. His eyes were bulging in panic and all the blood had drained from his cheeks. He stared down at the street and swallowed hard, as if working up his courage to jump. He hesitated a moment too long hands gripped his shoulders and yanked him back into the room.

  A moment later he was thrust stumbling from the doorway. The mob surrounded him and hounded him up the street. Vendors and idlers scattered and disappeared into doorways. Windows flew open and curious faces peered down.

  "Hurry," said Lucius, throwing back the last of his wine, "or we'll miss the fun. The Fox has been run out of his hole, and the hounds will pursue him all the way to the Forum."

  We hurried into the street. As we passed Priapus's Palace I looked up. Columba stood at a window, gazing down in confusion and excitement. Lucius waved to her, flashing an enormous grin. She gave a start and smiled back at him.

  He cupped his hands and shouted, "Come with us!" When she bit her lip in hesitation, he waved with both hands.

  Columba vanished from the window and a moment later was running up the street to join us. Her master appeared at the door, gesticulating and stamping his foot. Lucius turned and shook his purse at the man.

  Asuvius's freedmen roared all the way to the Forum. The outer circle banged their clubs against walls and passing wagons; the inner circle kept the Fox closely hemmed in. They took up a chant. "Jus-tice! Jus-tice! Jus-tice!" By the time we reached the Forum, the Fox was looking quite run-to-earth indeed.

  The gang of freedman shoved the Fox around and around in a dizzying circle. At last we came to the tribunal of the commissioners, whose most neglected duty is keeping order in the streets, and who also, incidentally, conduct investigations preliminary to bringing charges for crimes of violence. Beneath the shade of a portico, the unsuspecting commissioner for the Subura, Quintus Manilius, sat squinting at a stack of parchments. He looked up in alarm when the Fox came staggering before him. The freedmen, excited to fever pitch by their parade through the streets, all began speaking at once, creating an indecipherable roar.

  Manilius wrinkled his brow. He banged his fist against the table and raised his hand. Everyone fell silent.

  Even then I thought that the Fox would get the best of his users. He had only to stand upon his rights as a citizen and to keep his mouth shut. But the wicked are often cowards, even the coldest heart may be haunted by crime, and human foxes as often as not step into traps of their own devising.

  The Fox rushed up to the bench, weeping. "Yes! Yes, I murdered him, it's true! Oppianicus made me do it! I would never have come up with such a plot on my own. It was Oppianicus's idea from the start, to create the false will and then murder Asuvius! If you don't believe me, call Oppianicus before this bench and force him to tell you the truth!"

  I turned and gazed at Lucius Claudius, who looked just the same as he had always looked-sausage-fingered, plum-cheeked, cherry-nosed-but who no longer looked to me the least bit foolish or dimwitted. His eyes glinted oddly. He looked a bit frightening, in fact, and terribly sure of himself, which is to say that he looked like what he was, a Roman noble. On his face was a smile such as great poets must smile when they have finished a magnum opus.

  The rest of the tale is both good and bad mixed together.

  I wish that I could report that Oppianicus and the Fox received their just desserts, but alas, Roman justice prevailed- which is to say that the honorable commissioner Quintus Manilius proved not too honorable to take a bribe from Oppianicus; that at least is what the Forum gossips say. Manilius first announced he would bring a charge of murder against the Fox and Oppianicus, then suddenly dropped the case. Lucius Claudius was bitterly disappointed. I advised him to take heart; from my own experience, villains like Oppianicus and the Fox eventually come to a bad end, though many others may suffer before they reach it.

  Perhaps not coincidentally, at about the same time that the murder charges were dropped, the fraudulent will went missing in Larinum. In consequence, the property of the late Asuvius was divided between his surviving blood relations. Oppianicus and the Fox did not profit from his death.

  The owner of Priapus's Palace was furious with Columba for leaving the establishment without his permission, and threatened to chastise her by putting hot coals to her feet, whereupon Lucius Claudius offered to buy her on the spot. I have no doubt that she is well treated in her new household. Lucius may not be the endlessly virile young man that Asuvius was, but that has not kept him from acting like a young man in love.

  These days, I see Lucius Claudius quite often in the Forum, in the company of reasonably honest advocates like Cicero and Hortensius. Rome can always use another honest man in the Forum. He tells me that he recently completed a book of love poems and is thinking of running for office. He holds occasional dinner parties and spends his quiet time in the country, overseeing his farms and vineyards.

  As the Etruscans used to say, it is an ill will that doesn't bring someone good fortune. The unfortunate Asuvius may not have left a will, after all, but I think that Lucius Claudius was his beneficiary nonetheless.

  THE LEMURES

  The slave pressed a scrap of parchment into my hand:

  FROM LUCIUS CLAUDIUS TO HIS FRIEND GORDIANUS, GREETINGS. IF YOU WILL ACCOMPANY THIS MESSENGER ON HIS RETURN, I WILL BE GRATEFUL. I AM AT THE HOUSE OF A FRIEND ON THE PALATINE HILL; THERE IS A PROBLEM WHICH REQUIRES YOUR ATTENTION. COME ALONE-DO NOT BRING THE BOY-THE CIRCUMSTANCES MIGHT FRIGHTEN HIM.

  Lucius need not have warned me against bringing Eco, for at that moment the boy was busy with his tutor. From the garden, where they had found a patch of morning sunlight to ward off the October chill, I could hear the old man declaiming while Eco wrote the day's Latin lesson on his wax tablet.

  "Bethesda!" I called out, but she was already behind me, holding open my woolen cloak. As she slipped it over my shoulders, she glanced down at the note in my hand. She wrinkled her nose. Unable to read, Bethesda regards the written word with suspicion and disdain.

  "From Lucius Claudius?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.

  "Why, yes, but how-?" Then I realized she must have recognized his messenger. Slaves often take more notice of one another than do their masters.

  "I suppose he wants you to go gaming with him, or to taste the new vintage from one of his vineyards." She tossed back her mane of jet-black hair and pouted her luscious lips.

  "I suppose not; he has work for me."

  A smile flickered at the corner of her mouth.

  "Not that it should be any concern of yours," I added quickly. Since I had taken Eco in from the streets and legally adopted him, Bethesda had begun to behave less and less like a concubine and more and more like a wife and mother. I wasn't sure I liked the change; I was even less sure I had any control over it.

  "Frightening work," I added. "Probably dangerous." But she was already busy adding my fee to the household accounts in her head. As I stepped out the door I heard her humming a happy Egyptian tune from her childhood.

  The day was bright and crisp. Drifts of leaves lined
either side of the narrow, winding pathway that led from my house down the slope of the Esquiline Hill to the Subura below. The tang of smoke was on the air, rising from kitchens and braziers. The messenger drew his dark green cloak more tightly about his shoulders to ward off the chill.

  "Neighbor! Citizen!" A voice hissed at me from the wall to my right. I looked up and saw two eyes peering down at me over the top of the wall, surmounted by the dome of a bald, knobby head. "Neighbor-yes, you! Gordianus, they call you; am I right?" looked up at him warily. "Yes, Gordianus is my name."

  "And 'Finder' they call you-yes?"

  I nodded.

  "You solve puzzles. Plumb mysteries. Answer riddles."

  "Sometimes."

  "Then you must help me!"

  "Perhaps, citizen. But not now. A friend summons me-"

  "This will only take a moment."

  "Even so, I grow cold standing here-"

  "Then come inside! I'll open the little door in the wall and let you in."

  "No-perhaps tomorrow."

  "No! Now! They will come tonight, I know it-or even this afternoon, when the shadows lengthen. See, the clouds are coming up. If the sun grows dim, they may come out at midday beneath the dark, brooding sky."

  "They? Whom do you mean, citizen?"

  His eyes grew large, yet his voice became quite tiny, like the voice of a mouse. "The lemures…" he squeaked.

  Lucius Claudius's messenger clutched at his cloak. I felt the sudden chill myself, but it was only a cold, dry wind gusting down the pathway that made me shiver; or so I told myself.

  "Lemures," the man repeated. "The unquiet dead!"

  Leaves scattered and danced about my feet. A thin finger of cloud obscured the sun, dimming its bright, cold light to a hazy gray.

  "Vengeful," the man whispered. "Full of spite. Empty of all remorse. Human no longer, spirits sucked dry of warmth and pity, desiccated and brittle like shards of bone, with nothing left but wickedness. Dead, but not gone from this world as they should be. Revenge is their only food. The only gift they offer is madness."