Catilina's Riddle (41 page)

"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.

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C H A P T E R T W E N T Y - F I V E

e 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 w 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

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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, toward 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 toward the south.

Behind us there was a smudge on the horizon that might have been a team of slaves or cattle being driven toward 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 toward 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

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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 hill.

"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 downward 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, toward 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.

Only a few steps away we saw the goatherd. He was only a boy, younger than Meto, dressed in a ragged tunic and worn shoes barely held

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on his feet by scraps of leather. He had found the kid he was seeking.

The animal was draped over his shoulders, its legs crossed over his chest and held tight in his fists. The sound of the waterfall had covered our quiet footsteps. When he saw us, the young slave gave a start and drew back, so suddenly that he almost lost his balance. For a moment he teetered on the edge of a rock and might have fallen into the pool if Meto had not stepped forward to grab his elbow.

The young goatherd recovered his balance and jerked free of Meto's grip. He drew back. The kid struggled and bleated. The slave tightened his grip on the beast's forelegs until his knuckles were as white as the animal's fleece. He stared from Meto's face to mine with fear in his eyes.

"Who are you?" he finally stammered. "Are you alive or dead?"

A curious question, 1 thought, until I remembered that the pool with all its bones and skulls was haunted by the lemures of dead slaves.

Forfex himself had told us so. "We are very much alive,"
I
said, and meant it; surely lemures do not feel stiffness in their joints and soreness in their legs as living men do.

The slave looked at us from beneath drawn brows and kept his distance. "I suppose your hand felt warm enough on my arm," he said, glancing at Meto. "But what are you doing here? Friends of the Master?"

"What are
you
doing here?" I countered.

"They made me come, because I'm the youngest. Somebody heard one of the kids bleating down here by the pool, so they made me come after it. Sure enough, it had one of its hooves trapped between two rocks down by the water. Nobody likes to come down here, because of
them."

He looked about at the scattered bones.

"Who sent you?" I said. "Was it Forfex?"

"Forfex?" He made the name into a stifled gasp.

"Yes, isn't Forfex chief among the goatherds?"

"Not anymore. Not after—" He looked at us with renewed suspicion. "Does the Master know you're here?"

"Tell us what happened to Forfex,' I said, putting as much authority into my voice as I could. The slaves of Gnaeus Claudius were of the sort that responded to such a tone of voice—easily intimidated and unable to press their own questions, even against a trespasser. This said much about their master and the way he treated them.

"Forfex—the Master didn't mean to do it, not really. He gets around to beating all of us sooner or later, but he's never before—at least not with his own hands—or not since I've been here, and I've been here since I was a boy . . . "

"You're saying that Gnaeus Claudius killed Forfex, aren't you?"

demanded Meto, glancing at me with a hint of a smile on his lips. He might have cause to feel vindicated, but his interruption was a mistake.

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He was neither old nor fearsome enough to make the young slave quail.

The goatherd again drew back, unsure whether he was more afraid of answering or of not answering. The kid across his shoulders bleated pathetically.

"How did your master kill Forfex?" I asked sternly, stepping forward and pinning the goatherd with my gaze. He was only a boy, and a slave, and regularly abused by his master. He had no defense against a direct interrogation, even from a man who had no right to administer it, so long as 1 held him with my eyes and hardened my voice.

"His head—Forfex had already hurt his head not long ago . . . "

I remembered Forfex's striking his forehead against the rock in the mine—the blood streaming down his face, his visions of lemures, his pitiful moaning as we carried him down the mountainside. "Yes, go on,"

I said.

"After that he became a bit addled—slower than usual, not always making sense, with an ache in his head that came and went, sometimes so bad he woke up at night bleating like a kid."

Poor Forfex, I thought. If only Catilina had not bribed you into going where your deepest fears warned you not to go.

"The Master isn't very patient. He was always beating Forfex for being stupid, anyway, but after the accident he was often really furious with him. He blamed Forfex for hurting himself, saying that he should never have taken it on himself to show the mine to strangers in the first place—but then, you must be . . ."' He peered at us with a dawning awareness in his eyes.

"Never mind, go on!" I snapped.

"A few days ago the Master ordered Forfex to slaughter one of the goats, but Forfex slaughtered the wrong one, or so the Master insisted.

The Master flew into such a rage—terrible to see, like lightning when it strikes the mountain. He beat Forfex across the back with his whip so hard he ripped his tunic. There was blood on the whip. Then there was a terrible change in the Master's face. I was standing close enough to see. The sight of it turned me to water. It was as if he had made up his mind that Forfex was ruined and not worth keeping. Like a cracked clay bottle that a man might smash just for the thrill of it. That's what he did to Forfex. He turned the whip about in his hand and began to strike him with the handle—it's made of leather wrapped around iron, with hard iron studs. He began to strike Forfex all about his head. He laughed and said, 'Since it's your head to blame, I'll take it out on your head!'

And all the time Forfex bleated and moaned and then started making other noises. Oh, please—"

The memory had turned his face the color of chalk. His eyes were red and moist. He blinked and staggered uncertainly. The kid across his

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shoulders bleated at the sudden jostling and began to kick, so violently that the boy lost his grip and the animal went flying through the air, landing with a clatter of hooves on a flat stone. It bounded into the water and then out again and went running through the underbrush toward the path, shaking itself and sending beads of water flying from its snowy fleece.

The young goatherd staggered back against a wall of rock and slid downward until he sat on a stony bench, holding his hands to his stomach.

"It makes me sick to remember," he said weakly.

"I'm sure it does," I said earnestly. How much sicker would it make him to see Forfex now? "When did this happen?"

"Five days ago."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. It was just after the Ides. The Master was gone for a few days, down to Rome for the election. He came back as soon as it was over.

They say the voting went as he wanted, but he was in a terrible mood anyway. Perhaps something else went wrong for him down in Rome besides the election. I think he would have found fault with Forfex no matter what."