Catilina's riddle rsr-3

by Steven Saylor

  'I don't remember seeing them stacked up like that when we were here with Catilina, do you, Meto?' I said, puzzled.

  'No,' he whispered.

  'I did it,' said Diana. 'I gathered them all up.' 'But why?' I asked.

  'Because they were lonely, and so was I.I was cold last night, Papa, but imagine how cold they must have been, without their skins.'

  I looked at her carefully. 'Who do you think they are, Diana?'

  "The other little boys and girls, of course. The ones that the wicked king brought for the Minotaur to eat. Look, he ate them all up and left only the bones! Poor little boys and girls. When Claudia's slaves brought me here yesterday, I knew this must be the labyrinth. They dropped me over the wall and wouldn't help me back over, even though I screamed and told them they'd be sorry. Do you suppose they thought the Minotaur would eat me?'

  'Oh, Diana,' I said, holding her tight, 'you must have been so frightened!'

  'Not really, Papa.’

  'No?'

  'No. Meto probably would have been frightened, because Meto would have been afraid of the Minotaur, but not me.' 'Why not, Diana?' 'Because the Minotaur is dead!' 'How did you know that?'

  'Because you told me so, Papa. Don't you remember?'

  'Yes. Yes, I do remember,' I said, thinking back to a hot summer day when Diana had come to fetch me because an unexpected visitor had arrived from Rome, and we fell to talking about the Minotaur because Meto had been teasing her. 'I told you that a hero named Theseus slew the Minotaur.'

  'Exactly. And that's why I wasn't frightened, only cold, and a little lonely, because the other poor children couldn't talk to me. And hungry. Papa, I'm so hungry. Can't we get something to eat? But not from Congrio — Congrio wants to poison us…'

  XLI

  Meto was of the opinion that we should carve Congrio into fillets and make a banquet of him I pointed out that the dinner would be much too fatty; besides, he might contrive to poison himself first and thus poison us when we ate him. Bethesda thought we should drop him down the well and watch him slowly starve day by day. But why pollute the well again? Eco, ever practical, suggested we choose an enemy of the family and offer to sell Congrio to the unsuspecting party, knowing how treacherous he was. Now there was an idea, I thought, but whom did we dislike that much?

  As for Claudia, no punishment could be severe enough. Numerous ideas were bandied about. Most of these elaborate fantasies began with kidnapping her in the middle of the night and ended with visions of exquisite cruelty and horror to rival the worst abuses of Sulla. Bethesda was especially creative in devising torments, which I thought odd, for the Egyptians are a relatively civilized and easy-going people compared to the Romans. She was truly a Roman matron now, plotting the destruction of another Roman matron, as surely as Meto had proved himself a Roman soldier on the battlefield of Pistoria. We were all Romans now; and so, I argued, why not take recourse in that great Roman institution, the law?

  This suggestion met with no enthusiasm at all We had defeated the Claudii in the courts once, Eco conceded, but that was with a will on our side and Cicero's help. We couldn't be certain of winning against them again, and besides, look at the sluggishness of the courts in dealing with the dispute over the stream. Roman courts and Roman justice had become mere tools for powerful men to attack one another with, more amenable to bribery and intimidation than to demands for truth and justice. As in the days before the Republic, men were being driven to take matters into their own hands if they wanted satisfaction, which is what we would have to do if Claudia was to suffer for what she had done.

  There was, of course, the matter of the other Claudii, I pointed out, who surrounded us like an enemy army. None of them struck me as likely to sit idly by if we harmed Claudia, no matter what our justification. They hated us enough already; what would they do if Claudian blood was spilled? Were we to spend the coming years killing and kidnapping one another? What sort of life was that?

  It was a good thing to let everyone shout and throw up their arms and goad each other to devise more and more and more terrible torments for the guilty. After the fright we had suffered, we all needed such a shared release. It also bought me time, for after Diana was found they had all been eager to take drastic action at once. But I wanted that night and at least another day and night to pass before we proceeded on any course. While our anger cooled and left us with clearer heads, Claudia could spend a couple of sleepless nights wondering what we were up to.

  On the second morning after Diana had been rescued, having heard all their arguments and cries for action, I exerted my prerogative as father of the household and announced that I would handle the matter in my own way. My decisions would be final and beyond appeal. Having made this clear, I retired to my library and wrote a brief note, then dispatched a slave to carry the message, telling him he would be wise to approach Claudia's house with his hands in the air and an announcement that he was armed only with a letter

  Claudia:

  There are matters we must discuss in private, and on neutral ground. Meet me at midday at our usual place on the ridge. I will come alone and unarmed, and I vow by the memory of my father to cause you no harm. Your presence there will indicate that you come under the same conditions. There is nothing to be gained by further acrimony, and I believe that we can come to terms of mutual acceptance. That is the earnest hope of your neighbour,

  Gordianus

  The day was cloudless, and there was no wind on the ridgetop, as I had feared there might be. All in all, it was a mild day for the end of Januarius, a month that had already seen enough turmoil for the whole year to come.

  I sat on a stump and looked out over the farm, such a placid scene that it was hard to believe so much deceit and wickedness could lurk among the innocent grapevines and the cold, gurgling stream. The sun at its zenith was low in the sky and seemed to hang motionless while I waited. It was a long time, so long that I thought my guest had refused the invitation. Then I heard a rustling among the branches nearby and Claudia emerged from the bushes.

  She looked as she usually looked: sausage-fingered, plum-cheeked, and cherry-nosed, with a careless clump of frazzled orange hair atop her head. She was wearing a long woollen tunic with a heavy cloak wrapped around her. She approached without a word, took a seat on the neighbouring stump, and joined me in studying the view. I looked at her face, but she did not look back at me. I noticed a few horizontal cuts on her throat, where I had pressed too hard with my blade. She reached up from time to time to touch the marks.

  After a moment she said, 'Where shall we begin?'

  'At the beginning Before we say anything else, I want you to tell me the truth: did you have anything to do with the death of your cousin Lucius?'

  This caused her to turn her head and look into my eyes, but only for a moment. 'How could you even think—'

  I held up my hand. 'No pretty protests, Claudia. The question requires only a simple answer yes or no.'

  'Did I murder Lucius? What a question! No, of course not. He died in the Forum, with hundreds of people around, clutching at a pain in his chest. Men die that way every day. It's perfectly natural.'

  'You did nothing to help nature along? A bit of poison…'

  'Gordianus, no!'

  I studied her profile while she stared fixedly down on the farm. 'I believe you. I had no particular reason to think that you might have murdered poor Lucius, but I wanted to know for sure. He was my friend, you know. It would matter to me if someone had caused his death.'

  We both gazed at the view for a while in silence. It was clear that I would be asking the questions and that she would be answering. I was in no hurry.

  'When I lent you Congrio to help cook for your family gathering’ I finally said, 'that was when you suborned him, wasn't it?'

  She shrugged. 'It wasn't hard to do. Congrio doesn't like you, and he despises your wife. Some slaves can't stand working for an ex-slave; Congrio hated it, simply on principle. Pride comes with talent,
which he has in abundance, as I'm sure you'll agree. He had worked all his life in the respectable household of a patrician master, then suddenly found himself the property of — well, Gordianus, your ancestry is hardly worth mentioning, is it?'

  'I'd prefer that you didn't mention my ancestors, true enough. So you told Congrio that if he would go along with your schemes, you could set everything right and become his new mistress. He agreed to become your agent in my household.'

  'Something like that.'

  'Would you believe that for a long time it was Aratus I suspected of betraying me?'

  'Aratus?' said Claudia. 'You should have known better. Lucius always said he was the most unwavering and loyal slave he had ever owned. A man couldn't hope for a better foreman to run a farm.'

  'So I've gradually come to realize. But back to Congrio: when the first headless body appeared in my stable, it was Congrio who placed it there, wasn't it?'

  'Why ask me? You must have had the story from him already.'

  'Some of the story. Other bits I've worked out for myself, but there are some things only you could know for certain, Claudia. Well, then, it started on the day that we burned the first batch of blighted hay. There were a lot of fires on my land and a lot of smoke going into the air. One of your slaves showed up, ostensibly to deliver a gift of figs from your farm, in exchange for which I sent you some fresh eggs. I thought the man was there to see what the smoke was about; in reality, he was there to confer with Congrio and make plans for the delivery of the body. I remember he stayed a long time in the kitchen; I thought he was merely tasting Congrio's custard.

  "The next day a wagon arrived, full of provisions. Congrio said it came all the way from Rome and that he'd had to go over Aratus's head to order the things he needed. That made me angry at Aratus, and took my mind away from Congrio. Still, I wondered why he insisted on unloading the wagon himself. Now I know: there was a dead body amid the pots and pans. The wagon came from your farm, not from Rome. Congrio unloaded the body, as your agent had instructed the day before. He managed to conceal it in the kitchen and then put it in the stable later. No wonder he was sweating and trembling; I merely thought he was out of breath and angry at Aratus.' I spread my hands on my lap. 'So I know how the body arrived and who assisted. But who was Nemo?'

  'Nemo?'

  "That was what I called the headless corpse, having no name for him. From his body, it was hard to tell whether he was freeborn or a slave. If a slave, he wasn't engaged in hard labour and didn't work outdoors. Nemo was your cook, wasn't he?'

  Claudia looked at me sidelong. 'How did you know that? I never even told Congrio.'

  'You told me yourself, but I wasn't listening at the time. Do you remember the note you sent back with Congrio, thanking me for lending him to you?' I pulled the scrap of parchment from within my tunic. 'I saved it. I don't know why, except that you were so effusive in your gratitude that you called it "a promissory note" which I could use to call on you for repayment. It was sentimental of me to set much store by it, I suppose, but I was touched by your gratitude. In the note you also said something else. Let me read it to you: "Greetings neighbour, and my gratitude for the loan of your slaves," et cetera, et cetera, "especially your chief of the kitchen, Congrio, who has lost none of his skill since the days when he served my cousin Lucius. I am doubly grateful because my own cook fell ill in the midst of preparations, whereupon Congrio proved to be not merely a great help but utterly essential" So, your head cook was ill. Later he died.'

  'How did you know?'

  'You told me! It was here on the ridge, over on the eastern side. We were all watching the Cassian Way, you and Meto and I, and you fed us honey cakes. "My new cook baked them fresh this morning," you said. "He's no Congrio, I fear, but he does make fine sweets." Your new cook, Claudia, because the old one, the ill one, had died and you replaced him. And because you hate waste so very much — not even a morsel of a honey cake could you stand to waste! — you even found a use for your dead cook's body, thinking it could be a tool to frighten me off my farm, or at least make a beginning. So Nemo wasn't murdered, was he? He died of an illness, and after he was dead you had his head cut off so that no one would know him when he appeared on my farm. One of the kitchen slaves I lent you just might have seen the man, after all, and thus might have recognized the dead man's face.'

  'You comprehend everything, Gordianus. And did the appearance of the body not frighten you at all?'

  'It frightened me very much, but at the time I had reason to think I knew who had left it, and why, and it had nothing to do with my neighbours or whether I should stay on the farm. I hid the incident from the slaves, including Congrio. Was it maddening when Congrio had nothing to report to your man the next time he came?'

  'Quite.'

  'Meanwhile, I had every reason to think that I could trust you, if anybody, because the kitchen slaves I lent you returned with glowing reports of how you stood up for me to your cousins. It was you who planted the idea that I could use those slaves as spies on your family gathering. You joked about my having them poison your cousins; well, I would never do that, but I could tell my slaves to keep their ears open. And so they simply happened to "overhear" you defending me to Gnaeus, Manius, and Publius. But you meant for those words to be overheard, didn't you? I was to think you were my only ally, and so when awful things began to happen on my farm, I might suspect anyone and everyone else, but never you. And if the time ever came when I was ready to sell the farm in desperation — well, I would turn to the one neighbour who had stood by me, wouldn't I?'

  Claudia shifted on her hard seat. 'Something like that,' she said quietly.

  'The first headless body appeared in the middle of Junius. Then, for a while, nothing untoward happened. Misunderstanding the signal and its origin, I thought this was because I had complied with certain demands made on me against my will. In fact, those days were uneventful because of your absence. You left for Rome to oversee some work on the house on the Palatine, which you inherited from Lucius, so you weren't around to make mischief.

  'The second body didn't appear until after the middle of Quinctilis, when we returned from Rome after Meto's birthday and the elections. You had planned to stay in Rome all that time, but you came back early, before we did; you told me at Meto's party that you were about to leave for home. You also made sure that I met your charming cousin Manius, with predictably appalling results that once again portrayed you as my friend and ally. You came back early, and so you were here when your cousin Gnaeus killed his poor slave Forfex in a rage. Perhaps you had no intention of leaving a second body on my land, but when the opportunity presented itself like a gift from the gods, once again you couldn't let a good corpse go to waste. You had the body stolen from where Gnaeus's slaves had interred it along the rocky stream bank. Once again, the corpse was delivered by your slave, visiting Congrio, probably carrying it in a handcart. The man had been dealing with Congrio so regularly, exchanging foodstuffs every now and again, that no one ever took any notice of him.

  'You knew that I had met Forfex, and so once again it was necessary to remove the head, to obscure the corpse's identity. You should have removed the hands as well, but how could you have known that Meto would recall the triangular birthmark on the back of Forfex's left hand? That led me to Gnaeus. He admitted killing Forfex, which was his right as the slave's master, but he denied having dropped the body down my well. He seemed to know nothing about it.'

  'He didn't,' acknowledged Claudia.

  'So I thought. Once again, I had cause to suspect someone else, but the connection with Gnaeus left me uncertain and confused. I went about the business of running the farm, despite the blighting of the hay, despite the deliberate pollution of my well. I proceeded with building the water mill—'

  "That absurd contraption!' Claudia snapped.

  'Yes, I realize now how frustrating it must have been for you whenever you'd sneak up here on the ridge to look down on my farm, greedy for it, imagining
that it could be yours, despising me for having it, doing what you could in your own craven way to drive me of£ and all the while watching the construction of the mill go on day by day, the tangible symbol of my firm intention to stay and make this property my own. How you must have hated it when I invited you to have a look at it after it was completed! How clearly I could sense your loathing, but I thought it was merely for the mill itself. You hid your true feelings well.'

  'A woman learns to hide her feelings if she's to get what she wants, without a father or a husband to give it to her and without sons to defend her!' said Claudia.

  The bitterness in her voice was startling, and all at once I saw a flint-eyed woman so profoundly different from the jolly, good-natured matron I had known that I was almost frightened, as when a pretty mask drops to reveal a hideous face beneath. For two sleepless nights

  I had puzzled over the riddle of how Claudia could have been behind such atrocities. Now I saw another woman behind the one I thought I knew, who proceeded by guile and deceit and kept her anger and appetites hidden. How else could a woman alone have made her way in such a family and in such a world? For the first time I felt the reality of Claudia's guilt.

  'I was confused again when Gnaeus offered to buy my property,' I said, 'though now I see it was you who put him up to that He even said so in an oblique way, saying you had told him I was having a hard winter, but I thought that was merely gossip among cousins. In fact you were using him to feel me out before you made your next move, seeing if I'd had enough yet of headless corpses and poisoned water and the harshness of the winter. After his surly offer to relieve me of the farm, I grew suspicious of Gnaeus all over again, especially when, the very day after I ordered him out of my house, a third corpse appeared behind my stable. I was just setting out on a journey; there was no way I could stay to sort it out. That was just as well, perhaps, or I might have attacked Gnaeus without cause.