Catilina's riddle rsr-3

by Steven Saylor

  'Oh, certainly. I dare say that's another reason it was built, so that slaves bought at market in the city could be driven up to the mine as directly as possible. It's a very steep path, you see, and very rough — I remember taking it once when I was a boy. A road fit only for mine slaves, too steep for horses; no one would take it by choice so long as there was an easier way. But as I say, it's been disused for many years. I doubt you can see much evidence these days of where it used to branch off from the Cassian Way.'

  Catilina nodded. Forfex turned away, to tend to his mule. Under his breath, I thought I heard Catilina murmur, 'Good, very good.'

  XII

  We proceeded on foot. The narrow path was so steep that in places the stones underfoot had been cut into steps. Within the woods the air was still and hot, but the shade at least provided protection from the lowering sun. I found myself breathing hard and struggling to keep up. Meto seemed not to suffer at all from the heat and the steepness; he would run ahead of the party, double back, and run on again. Tongilius likewise showed no discomfort. But they were both young, I told myself, while Catilina was nearly my own age. Yet he seemed not to suffer at all. He picked up a fallen limb to use as a staff, sang a marching song under his breath, and kept up a steady rhythm. Where did he find such energy, especially without a full night's sleep?

  While on the main path, we had moved away from the stream on our left, but now we seemed to be converging with it again, for I began to hear the sound of trickling water. To ascend much higher we would have to cross the stream eventually. I wondered what sort of state the bridge would be in. Given the general condition of the path, I feared it might be no more than a rope wound between tree trunks on the opposing banks. The sound of trickling water grew louder and more insistent.

  But there was no bridge. Instead, we came to a vertical stairway of sheer rock, some thirty or more steps cut into the solid stone. Meto ascended first, running up the steps with the surefootedness of a goat. Tongilius followed him, and then Catilina, who planted his staff in the crevices between each step and pulled himself up by it. Our guide, out of breath, allowed me to pass him. By the time I reached the top my heart was pounding and my brow was covered with sweat.

  The steps emerged into a clearing above a high waterfall. Here the stream flowed across a wide, flat bed of rock cut with fingerlike rivulets. We hardly got our sandals wet crossing to the other side. While I scooped up a handful of water to cool my face and wet my lips, Meto scurried to the edge of the cliff, where the water gathered against a lip of rock before spilling over. He picked his way among stones covered with treacherous moss and peered over the abyss. He looked so slight standing against the empty sky that 1 imagined a puff of wind could blow him over the edge. I followed after him and grabbed his tunic.

  'But, Papa, look!'

  The tops of high trees shivered below us. The slope of the mountain reared on our right, but to the north the view was wide open. I could see the Cassian Way disappearing into the dusty horizon, its paving stones shimmering like a white ribbon. Away to the west the sun was a blood-red globe hovering above the dark hills. High trees obscured the view of my farm, but I could see quite clearly the ridge where I sometimes retreated and talked with Claudia.

  'Yes,' I said, 'a pretty view.'

  'No, Papa, at the foot of the waterfall!'

  The lip of rock made it impossible to look down without leaning over the edge. I stepped cautiously forwards and peered downward. Heights have never particularly intimidated me, but the sheer drop made me catch my breath. The waterfall ended some thirty feet below, where the thin trickle spilled into a shallow pond covered with green scum. The pond was ringed by jagged boulders, and the boulders by high trees with thick, bark-covered roots that coiled among the stones and disappeared in the water. But it was not the stones or the trees that caused me to shiver. It was the skeletons.

  Some were all in pieces scattered amid the rocks — a splintered rib cage here, a broken skull there, and farther away a leg bone or a bit of spine. Others were very nearly intact and immediately recognizable as the remains of a whole body, as if a man had been wedged amid the rocks and then been blasted by the gods until only his bones remained. Altogether I saw many more scattered bones among the roots and rocks than I could count.

  Forfex, having at last made his way up the steps, walked up to us, huffing and puffing. He peered over and saw what we were looking at.

  'Oh, yes,' he said. 'You'll see plenty more like them before we're done.'

  'What do you mean?' 'Plenty more bones.' 'The bones of men?'

  'What else does a mine owner use to work the pits?' He shrugged. 'I suppose you might see the remains of a goat here and there, but goats are generally more surefooted — and if one falls and breaks its neck, you go after it and fetch the carcass so you can eat it, don't you? Whereas the body of a dead slave isn't much worth going after, is it? You might break your own neck hopping from rock to rock and end up like one of these,' he laughed. He uncorked the wineskin slung across his shoulder, then sucked at the spout.

  'You mean all these men fell?'

  He shrugged. 'Some of them, probably. A man carries a heavy load of silver up out of the mines and down the hill, comes to this place, and then has to cross the water — it's higher than this, most times of the year. Well, you can see how he might stagger a bit and lose his balance. And then of course this stream drains the whole of the slope below the trail up ahead. A man falls down the hillside and breaks his neck, the vultures get to him first, but then the rains come and wash him down. A few years later, after a big storm, you'll see his skull come bobbing along on the water and shooting over the waterfall.' He laughed again.

  I looked at his seamed, leathery face. At least half the teeth were missing from his grin. It was no mystery that he should laugh at such an image. Forfex was a slave himself, at the mercy of his master and with no means to escape his fate. To such a man, another slave's misfortune is only a measure of his own good fortune.

  'And then of course there were those who were pushed,' he said.

  'Deliberately?'

  He mimed a shoving motion, pressing both palms flat against an invisible phantom at the cliffs edge. 'Murdered?'I said.

  'Executed. I remember seeing it once when I was a very young boy and happened to come this way with my flock. That was back in the days when young master Gnaeus's grandfather was still alive and running the mine, just before it was finally closed for good. It was a way he had of punishing the troublemakers, you see. Slaves sold for the mines, they're mostly murderers and thieves, aren't they? The scum of the earth with nothing to lose — the mines are their death sentence, everybody knows that. So a master has to wield a heavy hand to keep them in line. Whips and manacles go only so far. You've still got the wild ones who just won't behave, or the lazy ones who won't carry their load. So the old master would make a public punishment of it. The strong-armers would line up the misbehavers on this very spot and push them over the edge while the others watched. Sort of an example, to show the rest that things could be even worse if they didn't do as they were told.'

  He took another swallow of wine and shook his head. 'And then, in his later years, the old master was a little crazy. It runs in the family, you know. The mine was running out of ore, and he kept blaming the slaves for not digging deep enough. What he needed was a wizard to turn worthless rock into silver, and not a bunch of broken-back slaves. But the slaves took the blame, and the punishments happened more and more often until they were a regular event. A lot of slaves were pushed over this cliff in the final years. Then the old master took sick. The mine was finally shut down. Well, thank the gods I was born to be a goatherd and not a miner, eh?'

  We stood for a moment, gazing down at the scattered bones. Forfex turned to go, but Meto clutched the sleeve of his tunic.

  'But the lemures!' he said.

  The old slave gave a shudder and pulled his tunic free. 'What of them?'

  'The spirits of the
dead — with so many bodies left unpurified, neither burned nor buried, surely their lemures have never been put to rest. They must be everywhere around us.'

  'Of course they are. But they were slaves in life, broken and weak. Why should they be any more powerful in death?'

  'But in life they were murderers and—'

  'You're a citizen, young fellow, and besides that you're quick and strong. What have you to fear from the tired, broken lemures of dead slaves? Besides, it's still daylight. At night's when they stir, rising like mist from the earth. They come here and play with their old bones, tossing each other's skulls like balls and using their finger bones for dice.'

  ‘You've seen them?' said Meto.

  'Well, not with my own eyes. One of the other goatherds, the mad one who can't sleep at night, he comes here sometimes and keeps company with the lemures, or says he does. Oh, no, you wouldn't catch me on the mountainside after dark.' He squinted towards the lowering sun. 'Come, let's hurry and see the mine, since that's what you came for.'

  Beyond the waterfall the way became even more arduous. The trail broke out of the trees and onto a bare, rocky hillside without shade. As Forfex had said, the slope was spotted here and there with human bones, as if we crossed an ancient battlefield. The narrow path coiled back and forth on itself like a snake. Up and up we went, until each step became a greater struggle than the one before. In the full blaze of noon, such a trip would have been enough to cause a strong man's heart to burst.

  We were rewarded with a truly spectacular view, quite dwarfing the view I so treasured from my ridge. Far below I saw my farm laid out like a picture, surrounded by the farms of Claudia and her cousins and other farms, hills, and forests beyond. The ridge that separated my land from Claudia's looked quite small, like a fold in a blanket The stream that ran between my land and Publius's land was a thin green band with a glint of silver here and there where a glimpse of water broke through the dense trees. The Cassian Way stretched out of sight to the north and south. It occurred to me that so long as we could see all these places, we ourselves could be seen from below by anyone with sharp enough eyes.

  We traversed a bare shoulder of the mountain and dipped into a hollow, shaded from the sun at last and no longer visible to anyone in the world below. Ragged trees grew up around us, and fallen stones blocked the trail. The path took us deeper and deeper into the hollow, to the very heart of the mountain. At last we stepped around a boulder and saw the gaping black pit of the mine.

  The entrance was smaller than I had expected, hardly taller than a man, and so narrow that no more than two men could pass through at one time. The scaffolding that had once surrounded it was in ruins, the broken timber lying about in pieces. Rusted picks, chisels, and hammers lay abandoned on the ground, along with cast-off manacles. Here and there flowers grew up through the rusted chains.

  Beneath us the ground fell steeply away towards the winding stream below. Down the rugged hillside was strewn a great mass of bones, mixed in with the tailings from the mine to form a talus of crushed rock and bone. Even here whole skeletons had been preserved, and skulls stared up from jagged crevices in the stone.

  'Have you ever seen a mine in operation?' asked Catilina, so close behind me that I gave a start. 'No.'

  'I have.' His face was sombre in the soft light, with no hint of a smile. 'You can't really understand the value of a precious metal until you've seen its true worth at the source — the agony and death required to extract it from the earth. Tell me, Gordianus, when does the weight of a hundred men equal less than a pound?'

  'Oh, Catilina, not a riddle…'

  'When they are stripped of their flesh and weighed against a single cup made of pure silver. Imagine all those bones down there gathered up and stacked high upon a great scale. How much silver would it take to strike the balance? A handful, no more than that. Think of it me next time you press a silver cup to your lips.'

  He turned towards Forfex. 'At least it should be cooler inside the mine. Tonguius, you brought the torches? Good. Are you corning with us, Gordianus?'

  I had no particular interest in seeing a hole in the ground and would have preferred to sit for a while and catch my breath, but it struck me that an abandoned mine could be a dangerous place, especially for a fifteen-year-old boy. 'Yes,' I said wearily, 'I'm coming.'

  Just within the entrance we came to a shoulder-high wall made of stone. 'Good for keeping out goats,' Forfex explained. And grown men, I thought, though when it came my turn to step into the stirrup of his hands and scurry over the wall, I did so without complaining, following the examples of Catilina and Tongilius. Meto gave Forfex a boost, and then followed last, pulling himself up unassisted.

  Only a little light seeped over the wall, just enough to illuminate our immediate surroundings with a vague twilight. Tonguius knelt and kindled one of his torches, then lit the other and handed it to me. The flames lit a low, narrow chamber that sloped steeply downward into darkness. In such a confined space the burning pitch smelled strongly.

  Catilina took a torch from Tonguius and led the way. Meto followed, and then Forfex, with myself in the rear. This is absurd,' I whispered, thinking how easily one of us might trip and fall into the void. I imagined Meto breaking his neck, and I cursed myself for allowing him to take part in such folly.

  'We needn't go far,' said Catilina. 'I only want to have a look at the general condition of the mine. How far down does it go?'

  'Quite a distance,' Forfex said. 'Consider that there used to be as many as two hundred slaves inside here at one time.' 'Two hundred!' Meto said..

  'So I was always told. Oh, this was quite an operation in the old days. That's how young Master Gnaeus's ancestors made their fortune, from this silver mine. That's how they came to buy all the land for miles around. Now of course it's split up among the Claudian cousins, but at one time the mountain and all the land you could see from it made up a single great estate, or so they say. Watch your head, young man!'

  Meto, straying from Catilina's lead, had nearly collided with a jagged fist of rock suspended from the ceiling. Forfex laughed. ‘I should have warned you. We call that one the miner's brains, partly because it looks a bit like a brain, all knobby and slick, but more because many a careless miner lost his brains against that stone! Made of something so hard they could never chisel it out, so there it stays, waiting to bash in the skull of any man who walks too close. If you look at it closely you can still see a coating of dried blood on it.'

  'It's no laughing matter,' I said. 'Come,' I called ahead to Catilina, 'you'll agree this is no place to bring a boy. The place is dangerous.'

  Catilina's laughter echoed from ahead, distorted and hollow as if he were calling from a well. 'I'm beginning to wish I'd left you behind, Gordianus! Are you always so fussy and difficult? Have you no sense of adventure?'

  I looked over my shoulder and saw that the opening had dwindled to a dismayingly small spot of grey light. The spot suddenly blinked shut I opened my mouth and almost cried out, thinking that someone had covered it up. But by moving my head I was able to catch glimpses of light, and realized that because of a slight curve in the path the rock called the miner's brains had come between us and the entrance, blocking out the light. After a few more steps I lost sight of the entrance completely.

  'How much farther are we going?'

  'Oh, I think this may be far enough,' said Catilina.

  The path abruptly grew level and we found ourselves in what appeared to be a small, oval chamber hewn out of the solid rock. The air was musty but dry, cool but not chilly. The ground was flat underfoot Low doorways had been carved out of the rock, leading in different directions.

  'It's like a little room, underground,' said Tongilius.

  'Like the entrance to a maze,' said Meto, 'or the Labyrinth of the Minotaur!'

  'This is only one of several such rooms in the mine,' explained Forfex. 'Without a guide, you'd need a map to find your way, or else be willing to spend a day wandering ab
out. For that you'd need more than a couple of torches.'

  'Where does this passageway lead?' said Catilina, ducking beneath one of the rocky lintels.

  'Careful, there,' called Forfex. And under his breath, 'Wouldn't you know, of all the passages he'd choose the most dangerous? Careful, please! They warned me from boyhood about going into that one. There's a sheer drop down into a deep pit. It's one of the oldest parts of the mine. You could easily fall!'

  From beyond the narrow doorway, lit up with shivering shadows from Catilina's torch, there issued a sharp gasp of alarm. Tongilius hurried after him 'Quick, Gordianus, bring your torch!'

  Together we wedged ourselves into the narrow passage. Meto pressed up against my back, peering over my shoulder, and behind me I heard the goatherd clucking his tongue.

  'Lucius, what is it?' said Tongilius.

  'See for yourself,' said Catilina.

  Ringing the pit was a ledge barely wide enough to stand on. The five of us pressed close together, shoulder to shoulder, gazing down. Forfex, who all that day had seemed so inured to the sight of human bones, gave a gasp of shock.

  Catilina looked at him sidelong. 'I thought you knew these mines?'

  'Not this chamber. I told you, as a boy I was always warned away from this part of the mine. I always thought it was just a sheer drop into darkness.'

  'And so it would be, if it weren't for these, filling up the abyss.' Catilina held his torch aloft. By its wavering light the skulls of the dead peered up at us, their empty eyes strangely animated by the flickering play of light and shadow.

  'So many!' whispered Tongilius.

  'I've never seen anything like it,' I said.

  'Nor have I,' said Catilina.

  We had seen many bones that day — at the foot of the waterfall, along the hillside, in the talus that spilled from the mine. But those sights were scant preparation for the vast pit heaped up with skeletons that we now saw below us. There were hundreds of them, perhaps many hundreds, for there was no way to tell how deep the pit was.