The House of the Vestals rsr-6

by Steven Saylor

  "Have you lived in this house long?" I asked.

  "For three years. I cashed in the farm Sulla gave me and bought this place. I retired before the fighting was finished. My leg was crippled. Another wound made my sword arm useless. My shoulder still hurts me now and again, especially at this time of year, when the weather turns cold. This is a bad time of year, all around." He grimaced, whether at a phantom pain in his shoulder or at phantoms in the air I could not tell. "When did you first see the lemures?" I asked. Since the man insisted on taking my time, there was no point in being subtle.

  "Just after I moved into this house."

  "Perhaps the lemures were here before you arrived."

  "No," he said gravely. "They must have followed me here." He limped toward the brazier, stooped stiffly, gathered up a handful of leaves and scattered them on the fire. "Only a little at a time," he said softly. "Wouldn't want to be careless with a fire in the garden. Besides, it makes the pleasure last. A little today, a little more tomorrow. Burning leaves reminds me of boyhood."

  "How do you know they followed you? The lemures, I mean."

  "Because I recognize them."

  "Who were they?"

  "I never knew their names." He stared into the fire. "But I remember the Etruscan's face when my sword cut open his entrails and he looked up at me, gasping and unbelieving. I remember the bloodshot eyes of the sentries we surprised one night outside Capua. They'd been drinking, the fools; when we stuck our swords into their bellies, I could smell the wine amid the stench that came pouring out. I remember the boy I killed in battle once-so young and tender my blade sliced clear through his neck. His head went flying off; one of my men caught it and cast it back at me, laughing. It landed at my feet. I swear, the boy's eyes were still open, and he knew what was happening to him…"

  He stooped, groaning at the effort, and gathered another handful of leaves. "The flames make all things pure again," he whispered. "The odor of burning leaves is the smell of innocence."

  He watched the fire for a long moment. "They come at this time of year. The lemures, seeking revenge. They cannot harm my body; they had their chance to do that when they were living, and they only succeeded in maiming me. It was I who killed their bodies, I who triumphed. Now they seek to drive mad. They cast a spell on me. They cloud my mind and draw me into the pit. They shriek and dance about my head, they open their bellies over me and bury me in offal, they dismember themselves and drown me in a sea of blood and gore. Somehow I've always struggled free, but my will grows weaker every year. One day they'll draw me into the pit, and I'll never come out again."

  He covered his face. "Go now. I'm ashamed that you should see me like this. When you see me again, it will more terrible than you can imagine. But you will come, when I send for you? You will come and see them for yourself? A man as clever as you might strike a bargain, even with the dead."

  He dropped his hands. I would hardly have recognized his face-his eyes were red, his cheeks gaunt, his lips trembling. "Swear to me that you'll come, Finder. If only to bear witness to my destruction."

  "I won't make an oath-"

  "Then promise me as a man, and leave the gods out of it. I beg you to come when I call."

  "I'll come." I sighed, wondering if a promise to a madman was truly binding.

  The old slave, clucking and shaking his head with worry, ushered me to the little door. "I fear that your master is already mad," I whispered. "These lemures are from his own imagination."

  "Oh, no," said the old slave. "I have seen them, too."

  "You?"

  "Yes, just as he describes."

  "And the other slaves?"

  "We have all seen the lemures."

  I looked into the old slave's calm, unblinking eyes for a long moment. Then I stepped through the passage and he shut the door behind me.

  "A veritable plague of lemures!" I said as I reclined upon my couch taking dinner that night. "Rome is overrun by them!" Bethesda, who sensed the unease beneath my levity, tilted her head and arched an eyebrow, but said nothing. "And that silly warning Lucius Claudius wrote in his note this morning! 'Do not bring the boy, the circumstances might frighten him.' Ha! What could be more appealing to a twelve-year-old boy than the chance to see a genuine lemur!" Eco chewed a mouthful of bread and watched me with round eyes, not sure whether I was joking or not.

  "The whole affair seems quite absurd to me," ventured Bethesda. She crossed her arms impatiently. As was her custom, she had already eaten in the kitchen, and merely watched while Eco and I feasted. "As even the stupidest person in Egypt knows, the bodies of the dead cannot survive unless they have been carefully mummified according to ancient laws. How could the body of a dead man be wandering about Rome, frightening this Titus into jumping off a balcony? Especially a dead man who had his head cut off? It was a living fiend who pushed him off the balcony, that much is obvious. Ha! I'll wager it was the wife who did it!"

  "Then what of the soldier's haunting? His slave swears that the whole household has seen the lemures. Not just one, but a whole swarm of them."

  "Fah! The slave lies to excuse his master's feeblemindedness. He is loyal, as a slave should be, but not necessarily honest."

  "Even so, I think I shall go if the soldier calls me, to judge with my own eyes. And the matter of the lemur on the Palatine Hill is worth pursuing, if only for the handsome fee that Cornelia promises."

  Bethesda shrugged. To change the subject, I turned to Eco. "And speaking of outrageous fees, what did that thief of a tutor teach you today?"

  Eco jumped from his couch and ran to fetch his stylus and wax tablet.

  Bethesda uncrossed her arms. "If you do continue with these matters," she said, her voice now pitched to conceal her own unease, "I think that your friend Lucius Claudius gives you good advice. There is no need to take Eco along with you. He's busy with his lessons and should stay at home. He's safe here, from evil men and evil spirits alike."

  I nodded, for I had been thinking the same thing myself.

  The next morning I stepped quietly past the haunted soldier's house. He did not hear me and call out, though I knew he must be awake and in his garden; I smelled the tang of burning leaves on the air.

  I had promised Lucius and Cornelia that I would come again to the house on the Palatine, but there was another call I wanted to make first.

  A few questions in the right ears and a few coins in the right hands, were all it took to find the house of Furius's mother on the Caelian Hill, where his survivors had fled after he was proscribed, beheaded and dispossessed. The house was small and narrow, wedged in among other small, narrow houses that might have been standing for a hundred years; the street had somehow survived the fires and the constant rebuilding that continually change the face of the city, and seemed to take me into an older, simpler Rome, when rich and poor alike lived in modest private dwellings, before the powerful began to flaunt their wealth with great houses and the poor were pressed together into many-storied tenements.

  A knock upon the door summoned a veritable giant, a hulking, thick-chested slave with squinting eyes and a scowling mouth-not the door slave of a secure and respectable home, but quite obviously a bodyguard. I stepped back a few paces so that I did not have to strain to look up at him, and asked to see his master.

  "If you had legitimate business here, you'd know that there is no master in this house," he growled.

  "Of course," I said. "I misspoke. I meant to say your mistress-the mother of the late Furius."

  He scowled. "Do you misspeak again, stranger, or could it be that you don't know that the old mistress had a stroke not long after her son's death? She and her daughter are in seclusion and see no one."

  "What was I thinking? I meant to say, of course, Furius's widow-"

  But the slave had had enough of me, and slammed the door in my face.

  I heard a cackle of laughter behind me and turned to see a toothless old slave woman sweeping the portico of the house across the street.
"You'd have had an easier time getting in to see the dictator Sulla when he was alive," she laughed.

  I smiled and shrugged. "Are they always so unfriendly?"

  "With strangers, yes. You can't blame them-a house full of women with no man around but a bodyguard."

  "No man in the house-not since Furius was executed."

  "You knew him?" asked the slave woman.

  "Not exactly. But I know of him."

  "Terrible, what they did to him. He was no enemy of Sulla's; Furius had no stomach for politics or fighting. A gentle man, wouldn't have kicked a dog from his front step."

  "But his brother took up arms against Sulla, and died fighting him."

  "That was his brother, not Furius. I knew them both, from when they were boys growing up in that house with their mother. Furius was a peaceful child, and a cautious man. A philosopher, not a fighter. What was done to him was a terrible injustice-naming him an enemy of the state, taking all his property, cutting off his-" She stopped her sweeping and cleared her throat. She hardened her jaw. "Who are you? Another schemer come to torment his womenfolk?"

  "Not at all."

  "Because I'll tell you right now that you'll never get in to see his mother or sister. Ever since his death, and after that the old woman's stroke, they haven't stirred out of that house. A long time to be in mourning, you might say, but Furius was all they had. His widow goes out to do the marketing, with the little girl; they still wear black. They all took his death very hard."

  At that moment the door across the street opened. A blond woman emerged, draped in a black stola; beside her, reaching up to hold her hand, was a little girl with haunted eyes and black curls. Closing the door and following behind was the giant, who saw me and scowled.

  "On their way to market," whispered the old slave woman. "She usually goes at this time of morning. Ah, look at the precious little one, so serious-looking yet so pretty. Not so much like her mother, not so fair; no, the very image of her aunt, I've always said."

  "Her aunt? Not her father?"

  "Him, too, of course…"

  I talked with the old woman for a few moments, then hurried after the widow. I hoped for a chance to speak with her, but the bodyguard made it plain that I should keep my distance. I fell back and followed them in secret, observing her purchases as she did her shopping in the meat market.

  At last I broke away and headed for the house on the Palatine.

  Lucius and Cornelia hurried to the atrium even before the slave announced my arrival. Their faces were drawn with sleeplessness and worry.

  "The lemur appeared again last night," said Lucius.

  "The thing was in my bedchamber." Cornelia's face was pale. "I woke to see it standing beside the door. It was the smell that woke me-a horrible stench! I tried to rise and couldn't. I wanted to cry out, but my throat was frozen-the thing cast a spell on me. It said the words again: Now you. Then it disappeared into the hallway."

  "Did you pursue it?"

  She looked at me as if I were mad.

  "And then I saw the thing," said Lucius. "I was in the bedchamber down the hall. I heard footsteps, and called out, thinking it was Cornelia. There was no answer and the footsteps grew hurried. I leaped from my couch and stepped into the hall…"

  "And you saw it?"

  "Only for an instant. I called out; the thing paused and turned, then disappeared into the shadows. I would have followed it-really, Gordianus, I swear I would have-but at that instant Cornelia cried out for me. I turned and hurried to her room."

  "So the thing fled, and no one pursued it." I stifled a curse.

  "I'm afraid so," said Lucius, wincing. "But when the thing turned and looked at me in the hallway, a bit of moonlight fell on its face."

  "You had a good look at it, then?"

  "Yes. Gordianus, I didn't know Furius well, but well enough to recognize him across a street or in the Forum. And this creature-despite its broken teeth and the tumors on its flesh- this fiend most certainly had the face of Furius!"

  Cornelia suddenly gasped and began to stagger. Lucius held her up and called for help. Some of the household women escorted her to her bedchamber.

  "Titus was just the same, before his fall," sighed Lucius, shaking his head. "He would faint and suffer fits, grow dizzy and be unable to catch a breath. They say such afflictions are frequently caused by spiteful lemures."

  "Perhaps," I said. "Or by a guilty conscience. I wonder if the lemur left any other manifestations behind? Show me where you saw the thing."

  Lucius led me down the hallway. "There," he said, pointing to a spot a few steps beyond the door to his room. "At night a bit of light falls just there; everything beyond is dark."

  I walked to the place and looked about, then sniffed the air. Lucius sniffed as well. "The smell of putrefaction," he murmured. "The lemur has left its fetid odor behind."

  "A bad smell, to be sure," I said, "but not the odor of a rotting corpse. Look here! A footprint!"

  Just below us two faint brown stains in the shape of sandals had been left on the tiled floor. In the bright morning light other marks of the same color could be seen extending in both directions. Those toward Cornelia's bedchamber, where many other feet had traversed, quickly became confused and unreadable. Those leading away showed only the imprint of the forefeet of a pair of sandals, with no heel marks.

  "The thing came to a halt here, just as you said; then it began to run, leaving these abbreviated impressions. Why should a lemur run on tiptoes, I wonder? And what is this stain left by the footsteps?"

  I knelt down and peered closely. Lucius, shedding his patrician dignity, got down on his hands and knees beside me. He wrinkled his nose. "The smell of putrefaction!" he said again.

  "Not putrefaction," I countered. "Common excrement. Come, let's see where the footprints lead."

  We followed them down the hallway and around a corner, where the footprints ended before a closed door.

  "Does this lead outside?" I asked.

  "Why, no," said Lucius, suddenly a patrician again and making an uncomfortable face. "That door opens into the indoor toilet."

  "How interesting." I opened it and stepped inside. As I would have expected in a household run by a woman like Cornelia, the fixtures were luxurious and the place was quite spotless, except for some telltale footprints on the limestone floor. There were windows set high in the wall, covered by iron bars. A marble seat surmounted the hole. Peering within I studied the lead piping of the drain.

  "Straight down the slope of the Palatine Hill and into the Cloaca Maxima, and thence into the Tiber," commented Lucius. Patricians may be prudish about bodily functions, but of Roman plumbing they are justifiably proud.

  "Not nearly large enough for a man to pass through," I said.

  "What an awful idea!"

  "Even so…" I called for a slave, who managed to find a chisel for me.

  "What are you doing, Gordianus? Here, those tiles are made of fine limestone! You shouldn't go chipping away at the corners."

  "Not even to discover this?" I slid the chisel under the edge of one of the stones and lifted it up.

  Lucius drew back and gasped, then leaned forward and peered down into the darkness. "A tunnel!" he whispered.

  "So it appears."

  "Someone must go down it!" Lucius said. He peered at me and raised an eyebrow.

  "Not even if Cornelia doubled my fee!"

  "I wasn't suggesting that you go, Gordianus." He looked up at the young slave who had fetched the chisel. The boy looked slender and supple enough. When he saw what Lucius intended, he started back and looked at me imploringly.

  "No, Lucius Claudius," I said, "no one need be put at risk; not yet. Who knows what the boy might encounter-if not lemures and monsters, then booby traps or scorpions or a fall to his death. First we should attempt to determine the tunnel's egress. It may be a simple matter, if it merely follows the logical course of the plumbing."

  Which it did. From the balcony on the western s
ide of the house it was easy enough to judge where the buried pipes descended the slope into the valley between the Palatine and the Capitoline, where they joined with the Cloaca Maxima underground. At the foot of the hill, directly below the house, in a wild rubbish-strewn region behind some warehouses and granaries, I spied a thicket. Even stripped of their leaves, the bushes grew so thick that I could not see far into them.

  Lucius insisted on accompanying me, though his bulky frame and expensive garb were ill suited for scrambling down a steep hillside. We eventually reached the foot of the hill, then pushed our way into the thicket, ducking beneath branches and snapping twigs out of the way.

  At last we came to the heart of the thicket, where our perseverance was rewarded. Hidden behind the dense, shaggy branches of a cypress tree was the tunnel's other end. The hole was crudely made, lined with rough dabs of mortar and broken bricks. It was just large enough for a man to enter, but the foul smell that issued from within was enough to keep out vagrants or curious children.

  At night, hidden behind the storehouses and sheds, such a place would be quite lonely and secluded. A man-or a lemur, for that matter-might come and go completely unobserved.

  "Cold," complained Lucius, "cold and damp and dark. It would have made more sense to stay in the house tonight, where it's warm and dry. We could lie in wait in the hallway and trap this fiend when he emerges from his secret passage. Why, instead, are we huddling here in the dark and cold, watching for who knows what and jumping in fright every time a bit of wind whistles through the thicket?"

  "You need not have come, Lucius Claudius. I didn't ask you to."

  "Cornelia would have thought me a coward if I didn't," he pouted.

  "And what does Cornelia's opinion matter?" I snapped, and bit my tongue. The cold and damp had set us both on edge. A light drizzle was falling, obscuring the moon and casting the thicket into even greater darkness. We had been hid' ing among the brambles since shortly after nightfall. I had warned Lucius that the watch was likely to be long and uncomfortable and possibly futile, but he had insisted on accompanying me. He had offered to hire some ruffians to escort us, but if my suspicions were correct we would not need them; nor did I want more witnesses to be present than was necessary.