Steven Saylor - Catilina's riddle

'And is that what you did?'

'Yes, only we didn't cast him off" the cliff. We carried him down here, to the pond. One of the older slaves said we should strip his body and clean the blood off him, to make him fit to enter Hades. The old slave said a few words over the body, a prayer to some god or other. Even slaves have gods, you know, though I don't think any of them live on this mountain, and certainly not your Nemesis. We carried him across the stream, over to that jumble of boulders there, and laid him in a narrow place between the stones. We covered him with a few large rocks, and then we left. It was beginning to grow dark. No one comes here after dark.'

'Poor Forfex!' I said. 'To be left among the lemures he dreaded so much. To join their number.'

'That's why no one wanted to come here today to search for the bleating kid. They've always been afraid of the old spirits that dwell here, and now there's Forfex as well. How can his lemur rest after such a horrible death? He could never take revenge on the Master; the Master is too powerful. But on another slave, alone and helpless…' The boy's voice trailed to a whisper, and he looked across the water at the tumbled boulders and the deep shadows among them. 'It must be here now, watching us.'

'I think not, if his lemur follows his mortal remains. Come, show us where you put the body.'

The boy blanched.

'Come!’ I said.'If I'm right—

Meto cleared his throat.

'If my son is right, the body is long gone. Come, show us!' It was a testament to Gnaeus Claudius's cruelty that the boy could be controlled by a harsh voice alone. A less cowed slave would have required a few blows, or at least the threat of violence, to be prodded to his feet by a man who was not his master and then sent skipping across the stones in the stream to revisit a gravesite he believed to be haunted. The young goatherd obeyed, though he began to tremble violently as we climbed the tumbled rocks.

'Just on the other side of that big stone,' he said, his voice quavering. He pointed the way, but would go no farther.

Meto and I climbed past him and stood atop the jagged stones. We looked down into the narrow cleft and saw what there was to see.

'The body is gone,' I said.

'Gone?' The young goatherd climbed reluctantly after us. He stared down into the empty cleft with a look of superstitious dread on his face.

'Not the work of gods or lemures,' I assured him. 'Men put him here, and it must have been men who took him from this place.'

'The same man who killed him!' declared Meto.

I turned my face away from the goatherd and frowned at Meto. We had no proof yet of what he said. More than that, it is unfair to a slave to gossip about his master in his hearing, for he may repeat what you say, to his regret.

Meto scowled back at me. He had been right about Forfex, after all, despite my doubts. Just to be certain, he asked the slave, 'Was there a marking of some sort on one of Forfex's hands?'

'A marking? — You mean the little purple birthmark on the back of his left hand?'

Meto's face was suffused with triumph.

'But where has the body gone?' said the slave.

'You needn't know, at least not now,' I said. 'You shouldn't know.

You've braved enough danger already, simply talking to us and telling us how Forfex met his end. I should reward you, but I have nothing to give you.'

'There's nothing you could give me,' he said. "The Master lets us keep nothing for ourselves. The man who wanted to see the mine gave Forfex a few coins, but the Master found them and took them all away.'

'This man who saw the mine — has he been back since?'

The boy shrugged. 'I don't know. I never saw him. I was tending a flock on the far side of the mountain when he came.' He narrowed his eyes. 'They say there were others with him. Was it you?'

'I've managed so far not to answer any of your questions,' I said, smiling. 'I don't think I shall start now. The less you know, the better for you. You should forget that we were ever here.'

'Like lemures in the mist,' he said.

'If you wish.'

'There is one other question we should ask,' said Meto. 'When you put Forfex's body in this rocky place, what had become of his head?'

'Beaten to a pulp. I told you that,' said the slave, turning pale again. 'Yes, but was it still attached to his body?' 'Of course.'

'Not cut away? Being so badly mangled, perhaps—' 'The body was all in one piece!' protested the goatherd, his voice shaking.

'No need to press the matter,' I said to Meto, laying my hand on his arm. 'Tell us: was there another death among the goatherds, about a month ago?' I asked, thinking of Nemo.

The boy shook his head.

'Among your master's other slaves, then?'

'No. One of the kitchen slaves died of a fever, but that was well over a year ago. There's been only one death since then, and that was Forfex.'

We descended the tumbled rocks strewn with bones and crossed the stream. The young goatherd went on his way, while Meto and I rested for a bit before pressing on. The shady glen was a beautiful place, even if despoiled and made fearsome by the presence of so much death and suffering. Not a bad resting place, I thought, for the lemures of dead slaves, who must have been far more miserable in life, toiling beneath the hot sun or burrowing into the dank, stony earth.

XXVII

'We should confront him directly,' said Meto as we made our way down the mountain path. 'I agree.'

'We know now beyond any doubt that the body in the well was Forfex. We know that Gnaeus killed Forfex. And we know that he doesn't like us one bit. He thought he was going to inherit the farm from Lucius Claudius, didn't he? Therefore, motive: to spoil the well and try to drive us away.'

'There are a few gaps in your logic,' I observed wryly, negotiating a steep step and bending back a whiplike branch.

'Such as?'

'Why was the head of Forfex removed?'

'So that we wouldn't attribute the act to Gnaeus. He knew that we had met Forfex and might recognize him despite his injuries, and thus might surmise where he came from. Gnaeus is the worst kind of coward, skulking about and afraid to own up to his actions. He cut off the head so we wouldn't know where the anonymous body came from. He didn't count on my sharp eyes recognizing the birthmark on the back of Forfex's hand, did he?'

'No, the culprit did not. But why did Gnaeus order the slaves to dispose of the body at the waterfall if he intended to use it elsewhere?'

I looked over my shoulder. Meto shrugged. "The idea didn't occur to him until later. Obviously he didn't kill Forfex just so he could drop his body down our well; the murder wasn't premeditated, and neither was the outrage against us. But once he had the body at hand, it struck him that he could make use of it.'

'The young goatherd said nothing of being ordered to retrieve the body.'

"The goatherd didn't know anything about Catilina, either. Surely Gnaeus has other slaves more suitable for doing what was done with poor Forfex's corpse.'

'And what about Nemo?'

"That must have been Gnaeus's doing as well. He put Nemo in our stable to frighten us, but it didn't frighten us enough. So he tried the same cowardly trick again, only this time he did something truly dangerous, polluting the well. What a despicable man!'

'But where did Nemo come from? The goatherd told us that there have been no other deaths on the mountain.'

'Who knows? Perhaps Gnaeus waylaid a wandering freedman, or murdered a visitor from Rome.'

'A stranger, you mean. A stranger to us.'

'Yes.'

'Then why was Nemo's head removed? You postulate that the head of Forfex was removed to conceal his identity. That makes sense. But what of Nemo? Who was he and why was his head cut off?'