Steven Saylor - Catilina's riddle

I found my thoughts racing in the same rutted circles they had worn since we discovered Nemo. Had I always been so helpless at thinking things through, and was Meto right to imply that I had become dull and careless? I was not a young man any longer, and while there are those whose minds grow sharper with age, there are plenty of people for whom the opposite is true.

I realized I had been staring intently for several moments at the purple mark on the corpse's hand. I looked up to see that Meto was watching me, his arms tightly crossed, his eyes narrowed, his foot tapping the ground, waiting for me to respond.

'For now,' I said quietly, 'we shall assume that Ignotus is Forfex. If

Gnaeus Claudius is responsible, we may expect that he will disclaim responsibility, so first we should attempt to get the truth from his slaves, if we can.'

I had not realized how tense Meto had been until he loosened his shoulders and stopped clutching his arms. I thought he might smile at his little triumph, but instead he looked closer to tears. 'You'll see, Papa,' he said in a very earnest voice. 'You'll see that I'm right and I do remember.'

'I hope so,'I said, but I still doubted.

XXV

"We could confront him directly,' suggested Meto, as he climbed onto his horse.

'Not before we try getting the truth from his slaves,' I said, gripping the reins and calming my mount.

'But how shall we avoid him? There's only the one road that leads from the Cassian Way onto his property. If Gnaeus is there, he may see us ride up, or else one of the slaves may run and inform him. He didn't seem like the sort of master whose slaves would let strangers onto the estate without telling him.'

'No? Forfex allowed Catilina and us to climb all over the mountain.'

'Yes, and now you see what's happened to Forfex.'

If indeed the corpse is Forfex, I thought. We rode away from the stable on the long, straight road to the highway. 'As for our approach,' I said, 'I have an idea. We won't take the main road that leads to the house of the goatherds and Gnaeus's villa.'

'What then? The rocky hills alongside the Cassian Way are too steep and rough to take our horses, and hard going on foot'

'But there's another way. Do you remember when we were on the hillside watching Catilina and Tongilius?'

'And Claudia came up and joined us?'

'Yes. Catalina knew from Forfex that another path, long disused and hidden from sight beneath the trees, cuts from the Cassian Way and winds up the mountainside. He must have found it, for after a bit of searching he disappeared and then reappeared high up on the hill. I think I remember where he disappeared among the rocks and trees.

I think we can find the path he took. We can avoid Gnaeus's house altogether and go hunting for a lonely goatherd among the rocks and brambles.'

We came to the Cassian Way and turned not left, which would have taken us to the main gate to Gnaeus's land, but right, towards Rome. We passed the ridge on our right, and I felt curiously vulnerable, knowing how visible we were to anyone up on the hill where I so often sat and gazed over the landscape. But no one would be there to see us, of course, except possibly Claudia, and Claudia would know what had transpired quickly enough if I discovered that Gnaeus had put Ignotus down my well.

There was no traffic at all on the Cassian Way. At the high point of the saddle where the road passed between the foot of the mountain and the foot of the ridge, I paused and looked around. Before us I saw nothing but the long ribbon of road disappearing towards the south. Behind us there was a smudge on the horizon that might have been a team of slaves or cattle being driven towards Rome, but it was too far away to worry about. We moved on. The ridge fell away on our right, but low hills still hid our view of Claudia's farm. On our left the land rose sharply. High trees and tumbled rocks obscured any view of the steep mountainside looming above.

'Somewhere close…' I murmured. We slowed our horses and together gazed into the underbrush. The tangle seemed impenetrable and undisturbed. We rode slowly on until I was certain that we had passed the place where Catilina and Tongilius had disappeared. The low hills on our right had fallen away, and I could see the slaves at work in Claudia's fields.

'We've gone too far,' said Meto.

'Yes. We'll double back.'

The view on our return was no different from before, and I began to think that we would have to give it up, or else go thrashing through the underbrush as Catilina had. Then I heard the clatter of hooves on paving stones and looked up to see a young deer on the road ahead. A swaying branch showed where it had emerged from the woods at the base of the ridge. It saw us and for a long moment stood as still as a statue, then bounded towards the mountainside. Off the road, its hooves made a crackling noise in the dry grass. It passed between some scattered young trees into a zone of dappled shadow and sunlight, then seemed trapped against a wall of dense brush. Nonetheless it disappeared into a narrow space between a great boulder and the thick trunk of an ancient oak. Had I blinked I would have thought it vanished in a beam of sunlight. It was a sign such as the poets speak of, a portent.

'Where the deer go,' I said quietly, 'there often is a trail.'

We rode to the boulder and dismounted. The passage was just wide enough for us to slip through and to pull our horses after us. A narrow, open space curved around the boulder and opened onto a small clearing behind it, completely hidden from the road. From this spot we were able to see traces of an old path that headed steeply up the lull.

'The boulder must have fallen at some time,' I said, 'loosened by rains or an earthquake, blocking the end of the path and hiding it completely from the Cassian Way. The path itself is strewn with rocks, suitable for deer perhaps, but not for horses. We shall have to tie the horses here and proceed on foot.'

The way was steep and rugged. Disused as a path, it had reverted to a runnel, and over the years the scouring water had left much debris and damage in its wake. In places the way was overgrown so that we had to stoop and bend and push branches out of the way. Here and there, small branches had recently been broken; someone else had been using the trail.

The path was steep at its beginning and then became absurdly steep. The rocks in the runnel were like steps carved for a Titan. Even Meto began to breathe hard and to sweat, though I could tell that he was holding back and could have been far ahead of me had he proceeded at his own pace. As it was, my heart was pounding and my feet had turned to lead by the time we came to the open space where I had first seen the path from its opposite end and Forfex had explained its existence. We were now on the road we had taken before with Catilina and Tongilius. To our left the narrow road would lead downwards back to Gnaeus's house and the house of the goatherds. To our right the footpath proceeded up the mountain, past the waterfall, and up to the mine.

My body protested the folly of taking another step uphill, but it was there that we would most likely find a wandering goatherd, preferably alone and off his guard.

It did not take long. As we approached the steep stone steps that led up to the head of the waterfall, amid the sound of rushing water I heard the bleating of a kid, and in counterpoint to it the voice of a goatherd calling in gentle tones. We stepped off the path, towards the sound of falling water. The splashing of the falls grew louder, but so did the bleating and the voice of the goatherd.

We stepped through a mass of hanging vines and leaves and found ourselves at the base of the waterfall, on the bank of a foaming green pool. The place was deeply shadowed by high trees and the cliff above. Scattered about in rocky crevices and caught in the tangles of great tree roots were the skulls and bones that we had previously seen from above. A shiver passed through me; the place was dank and cool, even on a hot summer day.