I stared into the man's dark, sunken eyes for a long moment, then broke from his gaze. "A friend calls me," I said, nodding for the slave to go on.
"But neighbor, you can't abandon me. I was a soldier for Sulla! I fought in the civil war to save the Republic! I was wounded-if you'll step inside you'll see. My left leg is no-good at all, I have to hobble and lean against a stick. While you, you're young and whole and healthy. A young Roman like you owes me some respect. Please-there's no one else to help me!
"My business is with the living, not the dead," I said sternly.
"I can pay you, if that's what you want. Sulla gave all his soldiers farms up in Etruria. I sold mine-I was never meant to be a farmer. I still have silver left. I can pay you a handsome fee, if you help me."
"And how can I help you? If you have a problem with lemures, consult a priest or an augur."
"I have, believe me! Every spring, in the month of Maius, I take part in the Lemuria procession to ward off evil spirits. I mutter the incantations, I cast the black beans over my shoulder. Perhaps it works; the lemures never come to me in spring, and they stay away all summer. But as surely as leaves wither and fall from the trees, they come to me every autumn. They come to drive me mad!"
"Citizen, I cannot-"
"They cast a spell inside my head."
"Citizen! I must go."
"Please," he whispered. "I was a soldier once, brave, afraid of nothing. I killed many men, fighting for Sulla, for Rome. I waded through rivers of blood and valleys of gore up to my hips and never quailed. I feared no one. And now…" He made a face of such self-loathing that I turned away. "Help me," he pleaded.
"Perhaps… when I return…"
He smiled pitifully, like a doomed man given a reprieve. "Yes," he whispered, "when you return…"
I hurried on.
The house on the Palatine, like its neighbors, presented a rather plain facade, despite its location in the city's most exclusive district. Except for two pillars in the form of caryatids supporting the roof, the portico's only adornment was a funeral wreath of cypress and fir on the door.
The short hallway, flanked on either side by the wax masks of noble ancestors, led to a modest atrium. On an ivory bier, a body lay in state. I stepped forward and looked down at the corpse. I saw a young man, not yet thirty, unremarkable except for the grimace that contorted his features. Normally the anointers are able to remove signs of distress and suffering from the faces of the dead, to smooth wrinkled brows and unclench tightened jaws. But the face of this corpse had grown rigid beyond the power of the anointers to soften it. Its expression was not of pain or misery, but of fear.
"He fell," said a familiar voice behind me.
I turned to see my onetime client, then friend, Lucius Claudius. He was as portly as ever, and not even the gloomy light of the atrium could dim the cherry-red of his cheeks and nose.
We exchanged greetings, then turned our eyes to the corpse.
"Titus," explained Lucius, "the owner of this house. For the last two years, anyway."
"He died from a fall?"
"Yes. There's a gallery that runs along the west side of the house, with a long balcony that overlooks a steep hillside. Titus fell from the balcony three nights ago. He broke his back."
"And died at once?"
"No. He lingered through the night and lived until nightfall the next day. He told a curious tale before he died. Of course, he was feverish and in great pain, despite the draughts of nepenthe he was given…" Lucius shifted his considerable bulk uneasily inside his vast black cloak, and reached up nervously to scratch at his frizzled wreath of copper-colored hair. "Tell me, Gordianus, do you have any knowledge of lemures?"
A strange expression must have crossed my face, for Lucius frowned and wrinkled his brow. "Have I said something untoward, Gordianus?"
"Not at all. But this is the second time today that someone has spoken to me of lemures. On the way here, a neighbor of mine-but I won't bore you with the tale. All Rome seems to be haunted by spirits today! It must be this oppressive weather… this gloomy time of year… or indigestion, as my father used to say-"
"It was not indigestion that killed my husband. Nor was it a cold wind, or a chilly drizzle, or a nervous imagination."
The speaker was a tall, thin woman. A stola of black wool covered her from neck to feet; about her shoulders was a wrap of dark blue. Her black hair was drawn back from her face and piled atop her head, held together by silver pins and combs. Her eyes were a glittering blue. Her face was young, but she was no longer a girl. She held herself as rigidly upright as a Vestal, and spoke with the imperious tone of a patrician.
"This," said Lucius, "is Gordianus, the man I told you about." The woman acknowledged me with a slight nod. "And this," he continued, "is my dear young friend, Cornelia. From the Sullan branch of the Cornelius family."
I gave a slight start.
"Yes," she said, "blood relative to our recently departed and deeply missed dictator. Lucius Cornelius Sulla was my cousin. We
The Lemures were quite close, despite the difference in our ages. I was with him just before he died, down at his villa in Neapolis. A great man. A generous man." Her imperious tone softened. She turned her gaze to the corpse on the bier. "Now Titus is dead, too. I am alone. Defenseless…"
"Perhaps we should withdraw to the library," suggested Lucius.
"Yes," said Cornelia. "It's cold here in the atrium."
She led us down a short hallway into a small room. My sometime client Cicero would not have called it much of a library-there was only a single cabinet piled with scrolls against one wall-but he would have approved of its austerity. The walls were stained a somber red and the chairs were backless. A slave tended to the brazier in the center of the room and departed.
"How much does Gordianus know?" Cornelia asked Lucius.
"Very little. I only explained that Titus fell from the balcony."
She looked at me with an intensity that was almost frightening. "My husband was a haunted man."
"Haunted by whom, or what? Lucius spoke to me of lemures."
"Not plural, but singular," she said. "He was tormented by one lemur only."
"Was this spirit known to him?"
"Yes. An acquaintance from his youth; they studied law together in the Forum. The man who owned this house before us. His name was Furius."
"This lemur appeared to your husband more than once?"
"It began last summer. Titus would glimpse the thing for only a moment-beside the road on the way to our country villa, or across the Forum, or in a pool of shadow outside the house. At first he wasn't sure what it was; he would turn back and try to find it, only to discover it had vanished. Then he began to see it inside the house. That was when he realized who and what it was. He no longer tried to approach it; quite the opposite, he fled the thing, quaking with fear."
"Did you see it, as well?"
She stiffened. "Not at first…"
"Titus saw it, the night he fell," whispered Lucius. He leaned forward and took Cornelia's hand, but she pulled it away.
"That night," she said, "Titus was brooding, pensive. He left me in my sitting room and stepped onto the balcony to pace and take a breath of cold air. Then he saw the thing-so he told the story later, in his delirium. It came toward him, beckoning. It spoke his name. Titus fled to the end of the balcony. The thing came closer. Titus grew mad with fear. Somehow he fell."
"The thing pushed him?"
She shrugged. "Whether he fell or was pushed, it was his fear of the thing that finally killed him. He survived the fall; he lingered through the night and into the next day. Twilight came. Titus began to sweat and tremble. Even the least movement was agony to him, yet he thrashed and writhed on the bed, mad with panic. He said he could not bear to see the lemur again. At last he died. Do you understand? He chose to die rather than confront the lemur again. You saw his face. It was not pain that killed him. It was fear."
I pulled my cloak o
ver my hands and curled my toes. It seemed to me that the brazier did nothing to banish the cold from the room. "This lemur," I said, "how did your husband describe it?"
"The thing was not hard to recognize. It was Furius, who owned this house before us. Its flesh was pocked and white, its teeth broken and yellow. Its hair was like bloody straw, and there was blood all around its neck. It gave off a foul odor… but it was most certainly Furius. Except…"
"Yes?"
"Except that it looked younger than Furius at the end of his life. It looked closer to the age when Furius and Titus knew one another in the Forum, in the days of their young manhood."
"When did you first see the lemur yourself?"
"Last night. I was on the balcony-thinking of Titus and his fall. I turned and saw the thing, but only for an instant. I fled into the house… and it called after me."
"What did it say?"
"Two words: Now you. Oh!" Cornelia drew in a quick, sharp breath. She clutched at her wrap and gazed at the fire.
I stepped closer to the brazier, spreading my fingers to catch the warmth. "What a strange day!" I muttered. "What can I say to you, Cornelia, except what I said to another who told me a tale of lemures earlier today: why do you consult me instead of an augur? These are mysteries about which I know very little. Tell me a tale of a missing jewel or a stolen document; call on me with a case of blackmail or show me a corpse with an unknown killer. With these I might help you; about such matters I know more than a little. But how to placate a lemur, I do not know. Of course, I will always come when my friend Lucius Claudius calls me; but I begin to wonder why I am here at all."
Cornelia studied the crackling embers and did not answer.
"Perhaps," I ventured, "you believe this lemur is not a lemur at all. If in fact it is a living man-"
"It doesn't matter what I believe or don't believe," she snapped. I saw in her eyes the same pleading and desperation I had seen in the soldier's eyes. "No priest can help me; there is no protection against a vengeful lemur. Yet perhaps the thing is really human, after all. Such a pretense is possible, isn't it?"
"Possible? I suppose."
"Then you know of such cases, of a man masquerading as a lemur?"
"I have no personal experience-"
"That's why I asked Lucius to call you. If this creature i in fact human and alive, then you may be able to save me from it. If instead it is what it appears to be, a lemur, then-then nothing can save me. I am doomed." She gasped and bit ha knuckles.
"But if it was your husband's death the thing desired-"
"Haven't you been listening? I told you what it said to me: New you. Those were the words it spoke!" Cornelia shuddered violently. Lucius went to her side. Slowly she calmed herself.
"Very well, Cornelia. I'll help you if I can. First, questions, From answers come answers. Can you speak?"
She bit her lips and nodded.
"You say the thing has the face of Furius. Did your husband think so?"
"My husband remarked on it, over and over. He saw the thing very close, more than once. On the night he fell, the creature came near enough for him to smell its fetid breath. He recognized it beyond a doubt."
"And you? You say you saw it for only an instant last night before you fled. Are you sure it was Furius you saw on the balcony?"
"Yes! An instant was all I needed. Horrible-discolored, distorted, wearing a hideous grin-but the face of Furius, I have no doubt."
"And yet younger than you remember."
"Yes. Somehow the cheeks, the mouth… what makes a face younger or older? I don't know, I can only say that in spite of its hideousness the thing looked as Furius looked when he was a younger man. Not the Furius who died two years ago, but Furius when he was a slender, beardless youth."
"I see. In such a case, three possibilities occur to me. Could this indeed have been Furius-not his lemur, but the man himself? Are you certain that he's dead?"
"Yes."
"There is no doubt?"
"No doubt at all…" She shivered and seemed to leave something unspoken. I looked at Lucius, who quickly looked away.
"Then perhaps this Furius had a brother? A twin, perhaps."
"A brother, yes, but much older. Besides, he died in the civil war…"
"Oh?"
"Fighting against Sulla."
"I see. Then perhaps Furius had a son, the very image of his father?"
Cornelia shook her head. "His only child was an infant daughter. His only other survivors were his wife and mother, and a sister, I think."
"And where are the survivors now?"
Cornelia averted her eyes. "I'm told they moved into his mother's house on the Caelian Hill."
"So: Furius is assuredly dead, he had no twin-no living brother at all-and he left no son. And yet the thing which haunted your husband, by his own account and yours, bore the face of Furius."
Cornelia sighed, exasperated. "Useless! I called on you only out of desperation." She pressed her hands to her eyes. "Oh, my head pounds like thunder. Night will come, and how will I bear it? Go now, please. I want to be alone."
Lucius escorted me to the atrium. "What do you think?" he said.
"I think that Cornelia is a very frightened woman, and her husband was a frightened man. Why was he so fearful of this particular lemur? If the dead man had been his friend-"
"An acquaintance, Gordianus, not exactly a friend."
"Is there something more that I should know?"
He shifted uncomfortably. "You know how I detest gossip. And really, Cornelia is not nearly as venal as some people think, There is a good side of her that few people see."
"It would be best if you told me everything, Lucius. For Cornelia's sake."
He pursed his small mouth, furrowed his fleshy brow and scratched his bald pate. "Oh, very well," he muttered. "As I told you, Cornelia and her husband have lived in this house for two years. It has also been two years since Furius died."
"And this is no coincidence?"
"Furius was the original owner of this house. Titus and Cornelia acquired it when he was executed for his crimes against Sulla and the state."
"I begin to see…"
"Perhaps you do. Furius and his family were on the wrong side of the civil war, political enemies of Sulla. When Sulla achieved absolute power and compelled the Senate to appoint him dictator, he purged the Republic of his foes. The proscriptions-"
"Names posted on lists in the Forum; yes, I remember only too well."
"Once a man was proscribed, anyone could hunt him down and bring his head to Sulla for a bounty. I don't have to remind you of the bloodbath, you were here; you saw the heads mounted on spikes outside the Senate."
"And Furius's head was among them.?"
"Yes. He was proscribed, arrested, and beheaded. You ask if Cornelia is certain that Furius is dead? Yes, because she saw his head on a spike, with blood oozing from the neck. Meanwhile, his property was confiscated and put up for public auction-"
"But the auctions were not always public," I said. "Sulla's friends usually had first pick of the finest farms and villas."
"As did Sulla's relations," added Lucius, wincing. "When Furius was caught and beheaded, Titus and Cornelia didn't hesitate to contact Sulla at once and put their mark on this house. Cornelia had always coveted it; why pass up the opportunity to possess it, and for a song?" He lowered his voice. "The rumor is that they placed the only bid, for the unbelievable sum of a thousand sesterces!"
"The price of a mediocre Egyptian rug," I said. "Quite a bargain."
"If Cornelia has a flaw, it's her avarice. Greed is the great vice of our age."
"But not the only vice."
"What do you mean?"
"Tell me, Lucius, was this Furius really such a great enemy of our late, lamented dictator? Was he such a terrible threat to the security of the state and to Sulla's personal safety that he truly belonged on the proscription lists?"
"I don't understand."
"T
here were those who ended up on the lists because they were too rich for their own good; because they possessed things that others coveted."
Lucius frowned. "Gordianus, what I've already told you is scandalous enough, and I'll ask you not to repeat it. I don't know what further inference you may have drawn, and I don't care to know. I think we should drop the matter."
Friend he may be, but Lucius is also of patrician blood; the cords that bind the rich together are made of gold, and are stronger than iron.
I made my way homeward, pondering the strange and fatal haunting of Titus and his wife. I had forgotten completely about the soldier until, as I neared my own house, I heard him hissing at me over his garden wall.
"Finder! You said you'd come back to help me, and here you are. Come inside!" He disappeared, and a moment later a little wooden door in the wall opened inward. I stopped and stepped inside to find myself in a garden open to the sky, surrounded by a colonnade. A burning smell filled my nostrils; an elderly slave was gathering leaves with a rake and arranging them in piles about a small brazier in the center of the garden.
The soldier smiled at me crookedly. I judged him to be not too much older than myself, despite his bald head and the gray hairs that bristled from his eyebrows. The dark circles beneath his eyes marked him as a man in desperate need of sleep. He hobbled past me and pulled up a chair for me to sit on.
"Tell me, neighbor, did you grow up in the countryside?" His voice cracked slightly, as if pleasant discourse was a strain to him.
"No, I was born in Rome."
"Ah. I grew up near Arpinum, myself. I only mention it because I saw you staring at the leaves and the fire. I know how city folk dread fires and shun them except for heat and cooking. It's a country habit, burning leaves. Dangerous, but I'm careful. The smell of burning leaves reminds me of my boyhood. As does this garden."
I looked up at the trees that loomed in stark silhouette against the cloudy sky. Among them were some cypresses and yews that still wore their shaggy gray-green coats, but most were bare. A weirdly twisted little tree, hardly more than a bush, stood in the corner, surrounded by a carpet of round yellow leaves. The old slave walked slowly toward the bush and began to rake its leaves in among the others.
The House of the Vestals rsr-6 Page 8