‘Ah, youth!’ I sighed.
She blushed faintly. ‘And we stayed in my room to eat our midday meal. So you see, you must have the days mixed up, or else – ’
‘Yes?’
‘Well, it’s the oddest thing. Some of Asuvius’ freedmen were by the Palace only yesterday, asking for him. They seemed not to know where he was. They seemed rather worried.’ She looked at me, suddenly suspicious. ‘What is your interest in Asuvius?’
‘I’m not really sure,’ I said truthfully. ‘Does it matter?’ I took a coin from Lucius’ purse and slid it across the table to her. She looked at it coolly, then slipped her tiny white hand over it.
‘I should hate it if anything has really happened to Asuvius,’ she said quietly. ‘He really is a sweet boy. Do you know, he told me it was his very first time, when he came to the Palace a month ago? I could believe it, too, with all the fumbling, and all the – ’ She broke off with a wistful sigh, laughed sadly, then sighed again. ‘I shall hate it if it’s true that’s he taken sick and died so suddenly.’
‘Oh, but he hasn’t,’ said Lucius. ‘That’s why we’re here; that’s what we don’t understand. I saw him alive and well with my own eyes, this very morning!’
‘But then, how can you say he was deathly ill two days ago, and that the landlord saw his body taken away in a cart?’ Columba frowned. ‘I tell you, he was with me the whole morning. Asuvius was never sick at all; you must be confused.’
‘Then you last saw him on the day before yesterday, the same day that Lucius Claudius was called up to witness the lad’s will,’ I said. ‘Tell me, Columba, and this might be very important: was he wearing his seal ring?’
‘He was wearing very little at all,’ she said frankly.
‘Columba, that is not an answer.’
‘Well, of course, he wears his ring always. Doesn’t every citizen? I’m sure he was wearing it that morning.’
‘You seem awfully certain. Surely he wasn’t signing documents here in your room?’
She looked at me coolly, then spoke very slowly. ‘Sometimes, when a man and woman are being intimate, there is cause to notice that one of them happens to be wearing a ring. Perhaps one feels a certain discomfort … or a bit of a snag. Yes, I’m sure he was wearing his ring.’
I nodded, satisfied. ‘When did he leave you?’
‘After we ate our midday meal. Of course, after we ate, we … shall we say it was two hours after noon? His friends from Larinum came to collect him.’
‘Not his freedmen?’
‘No. Asuvius doesn’t have much use for servants, he says they only get in his way. He’s always sending them off on silly errands to keep them away from him. He says they’ll only carry gossip back to his sisters in Larinum.’
‘And to his parents, as well, I suppose?’
‘Alas, Asuvius has no parents. His mother and father died in a fire only a year ago. It was a hard year that followed, having to take on his father’s duties in such a hurry, and after such a terrible tragedy. All the big farms he owns, and all the slaves! All the paperwork, counting up figures so he’ll know what he’s worth. To hear him talk, you’d think a rich man has more work to do than a poor one!’
‘So it may seem, to a young lad who’d rather be footloose and carefree,’ I noted.
‘This trip to Rome was to be his holiday, after such a hard year of grieving and labour. It was his friends who suggested the trip.’
‘Ah, the same friends who came for him the day before yesterday.’
‘Yes, crusty old Oppianicus and his young friend, Vulpinus.’
‘Vulpinus? A peculiar name. Has he a snout and a tail?’
‘Oh, his real name is Marcus Avillius, but all the girls at the Palace call him Vulpinus on account of his foxy disposition. Always nosing into things, never seems to be completely honest, even when there’s no point in lying. Quite a charmer, though, and not bad looking.’
‘I know the sort,’ I said.
‘He plays a sort of older brother to Asuvius, since Asuvius has no brothers – brought him to the city, arranged for a place for him to stay, showed him how to have a good time.’
‘I see. And two days ago, as they were leaving Priapus’ Palace, did Oppianicus and the Fox give any hint as to where they were taking young Asuvius?’
‘More than a hint. They said they were off to the gardens.’
‘What gardens?’
‘Why, the ones outside the Esquiline Gate. Oppianicus and Vulpinus had been telling Asuvius how splendid they are, with splashing fountains and flowers in full bloom – Maius is a perfect month to visit them. Asuvius was very eager to go. There are so many sights here in the city that he hasn’t yet seen, having spent so much of his time, well, enjoying indoor pleasures.’ Columba smiled a bit crookedly. ‘He’s hardly stepped outside the Subura. I don’t think he’s even been down to see the Forum!’
‘Ah, yes, and of course a young visitor from Larinum would hardly want to miss seeing the famous gardens outside the Esquiline Gate.’
‘I suppose not, from the way Oppianicus and Vulpinus described them – leafy green tunnels and beautiful pools, meadows of blossoms and lovely statues. I wish I could see them myself, but the master hardly ever lets me out of the house except for business. Would you believe that I’ve been in Rome for almost two years and I’d never even heard of the gardens?’
‘I can believe that,’ I said gravely.
‘But Asuvius said if the place turned out to be as special as his friends claimed, he might take me there himself in a few days, as a treat.’ She brightened a bit. I sighed.
We escorted her back to Priapus’s Palace. Her owner was surprised to see her back so soon, but he made no complaint about the fee.
Outside, the street darkened for a moment as a cloud obscured the sun. ‘No matter whose account is accurate, young Asuvius most assuredly did not die in his bed the day before yesterday,’ I said. ‘Either he was with Columba, very much alive and well, or, if indeed you saw him lying feverish in his apartment, he recovered and you saw him on the street this morning. Still, I begin to fear for the lad. I fear for him most desperately.’
‘Why?’ asked Lucius.
‘You know as well as I, Lucius Claudius, that there are no gardens outside the Esquiline Gate!’
One passes from the city of the living through the Esquiline Gate into the city of the dead.
On the left side of the road is the public necropolis of Rome, where the mass graves of slaves and the modest tombs of the Roman poor are crowded close. Long ago, when Rome was young, the lime pits were discovered nearby. Just as the city of the living sprang up around the river and the Forum and the markets, so the city of the dead sprang up around the lime pits and the crematoria and the temples where corpses are purified.
On the right side of the road are the public refuse pits, where the residents of the Subura and surrounding neighbourhoods dump their rubbish. All manner of waste lies heaped in the sand pits – broken bits of crockery and furniture, rotting scraps of food, discarded garments soiled and torn beyond even a beggar’s use. Here and there the custodians light small fires to consume the debris, then rake fresh sand over the smouldering embers.
No matter in which direction one looks, there are certainly no gardens outside the Esquiline Gate, unless one counts the isolated flowers that spring up among the mouldering debris of the rubbish heaps, or the scraggly vines which wind their way about the old, neglected tombs of the forgotten dead. I began to suspect that Oppianicus and the Fox had a cruel sense of humour indeed.
A glance at Lucius told me that he was having second thoughts about accompanying me on this part of my investigation. The Subura and its vices might seem colourful and quaint, but even Lucius could find no charm in the necropolis and the rubbish tips. He wrinkled his nose and batted a swarm of flies from his face, but he did not turn back.
We passed back and forth between the right side of the road and the left, questioning the few people we me
t about three strangers they might have seen two days before – an older man, a foxy young rogue, and a mere lad. The tenders of the dead waved us aside, having no patience to deal with the living; the custodians of the rubbish heaps shrugged and shook their heads.
We stood at the edge of the sand pits, surveying a prospect that might have looked like Hades, if there were a sun to shine through the hazy smoke of Hades onto its smouldering wastes. Suddenly, there was a low hissing noise behind us. Lucius started. My hand jumped to my dagger.
The maker of the noise was a shuffling, stooped derelict who had been watching us from behind a heap of smouldering rubbish.
‘What do you want?’ I asked, keeping my hand close to the dagger.
The lump of filthy hair and rags swayed a bit, and two milky eyes stared up at me. ‘I hear you’re looking for someone,’ the man finally said.
‘Perhaps.’
‘Then perhaps I can help you.’
‘Speak plainly.’
‘I know where you’ll find the young man!’
‘What young man are you talking about?’
The figure stooped and looked up at me sidelong. ‘I heard you asking one of the workers a moment ago. You didn’t see me, but I saw you, and I listened. I heard you asking about the three men who were by here two days ago, the older man and the boy and the one between. I know where the boy is!’
‘Show us.’
The creature held out a hand so stained and weathered it looked like a stump of wood. Lucius drew back, appalled, but reached for his purse. I stayed his hand.
‘After you show us,’ I said.
The thing hissed at me. It stamped its foot and growled. Finally it turned and waved for us to follow.
I grabbed Lucius’ arm and whispered in his ear. ‘You mustn’t come. Such a creature is likely to lure us into a trap. Look at the jewels you wear, the purse you carry. Go to the crematoria, where you’ll be safe. I’ll follow the man alone.’
Lucius looked at me, his lips pursed, his eyes open wide. ‘Gordianus, you must be joking. No power of man or god will stop me from seeing whatever this man has to show us!’
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, hiding 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’ 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.’
I 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 favourite 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’ 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 g
reat 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 cold-blooded 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 lose interest quickly 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’ 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 any more. 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’ 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.’
Gordianus The Finder Omnibus (Books 1-4) Page 57