Steven Saylor - Catilina's riddle

'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 missingfrom 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.