The Corpus Conundrum

by Albert A. Bell

  Tranio had a point. He had grown up on this estate, first as a slave, now as a freedman. He married a woman from an estate three miles south of here, after meeting her in the village on market day. My uncle purchased her from her former owner for him. His brother was the steward of a farm two miles east of us. If he did not recognize the body in the cart, no one was likely to.

  In spite of those odds, I felt an obligation to try to discover Nobody’s identity. I hadn’t quoted Terence just to show off my erudition. This man was a human being, not just a pile of flesh we had stumbled upon in the woods. No human being should die this anonymously and ignominiously, carted away by total strangers.

  Aside from simple human feeling, I also had a selfish motive for delaying the funeral. I wanted to learn how the man died. I had never seen anything like this—a person dead with no discernible trace of what killed him. Nor could I recall reading anything of this sort in the scrolls my uncle left behind.

  Those 160 scrolls, written in a small script on the front and back, contained his unpublished observations on many scientific topics, including causes of death. Unless it comes by drowning or some internal disease, he concluded, death always leaves an external mark, however subtle, on its victims, if one knows how to look for it. Even drowning and suffocation leave indications, such as discoloration of the lips or evidence of a struggle. And a murderer, no matter how clever he thinks himself, always leaves some clue as to how he committed the crime.

  “He may be a complete stranger,” I admitted, “and we may end up burying him without knowing who he is, but I’m going to try to identify him first.”

  I wanted to have as much information as possible about this man and what happened to him before informing the duovirs in nearby Laurentum. I wasn’t even sure if they had jurisdiction this far out of town, but it would probably be a good idea to notify some sort of authority if I had in fact found a dead man on my property. The office of duovir had been held by members of the Licinius clan for as long as I could remember. My uncle had never spoken kindly of them and had recommended I have as little as possible to do with them. Until now I had heeded that advice.

  “It’ll upset your mother no end to see him, my lord. She’s such a gentle soul.”

  “We’ll keep him out of her sight. If we can’t identify him within two days, we’ll turn him over to the duovirs and admit that was all we could do.”

  “Very well, my lord. They’ll be glad you waited that long, I’m sure.” Tranio’s words were right, but their tone as well as the lift of his eyes showed what he thought of my decision.

  The trip back to the villa was slowed by the bearers toting my boars over the slippery, wet, uneven terrain and by the uneasiness of our living animals. There was no odor that I could detect, nor did my servants notice any—at least the ones I could induce to get close enough to him—but the horse pulling the cart reared twice and almost dumped Nobody. The dogs continued to shy away from the cart and to bay at its contents, adding to the horse’s nervousness. I finally had to have a servant ride the beast rather than lead him by the reins.

  My servants had put the man into the cart head first, so his bare feet were hanging out the back. As we made our tedious progress toward the house I studied them. They were heavily calloused and dirty, as though the man never wore sandals. That might indicate he was from somewhere around here, though not conclusively. I certainly would not want to walk any distance barefoot, but some ascetics, such as Socrates, prided themselves on doing so.

  “When you come back for the nets and gear,” I told Tranio, “look around for a bag or a walking stick. If this man came from any distance, he must have been carrying something.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  When we emerged from the woods and came in sight of the house the breeze from off the sea picked up. That still did not calm the animals.

  “Put him in the stable,” I told Tranio. “I think that’s all we can do.”

  “Even with the way the horse and the dogs are acting, my lord? Don’t you think he’ll upset the other animals?”

  “That’s quite possible, but we can’t bring him into the house and we can’t leave him in the cart.”

  When we halted in front of the paddock adjoining the stable, the household servants gathered to admire the results of our hunting, but the sight of Nobody quickly turned their admiration into consternation. Tranio tried to wave them away from the cart. “Get on there. Tend to your business, and it’s not this.”

  “Be sure the last stall is cleaned out and put him there,” I said. “Use that blanket to cover him. Then we’ll burn it. Post guards in four-hour shifts. No one is to bother him.” I emphasized those last words for the benefit of the gang of servants who were slowly backing away from the cart.

  Leaving Tranio to his tasks, I went into the house. Word of our find would spread quickly among the other servants. I wanted to talk to my mother before she heard an exaggerated version of the story. And, although evening was approaching, I dispatched two servants to Rome with Hylas’ hurried copy of my letter and an oral message to Tacitus: Please come as quickly as you can. I need your assistance in a matter of some urgency.

  Before having supper I went out to the stable to be sure Tranio had carried out all of my orders. I was reassured to find a guard on duty and the bar in place across the door. The thought occurred to me that I could be certain no one opened the door if I placed some wax over the bar and put my seal on it, so I sent the guard into the house to get Hylas. When they returned, Hylas crammed a wad of wax between the end of the bar and the door, where it would not be immediately noticed, especially in the dark. I pressed my seal into it, the ring I inherited—along with my name—when my uncle adopted me in his will. It has a dolphin on it. The creatures come into the bay below this house. My uncle and I enjoyed watching them and the local children who sometimes swam with them.

  Once I had placed my seal on the door, I was satisfied that no one could open it without my knowing it.

  I lay awake long into the night, with my mind jumping from problem to problem as often as my body turned over in the bed.

  At first I puzzled over Nobody’s body. Could there be some cause of death with which I was totally unfamiliar, either from my own experience or from my uncle’s writings? A cause of death which left no external marks of any kind? Could a dead person not be subject to the patterns of stiffness and discoloration which my uncle had observed and which I had verified for myself? I thought about going out to the stable to examine the man again, but I chided myself that the uncertain light of a lamp or a torch could make me miss things I might easily spot in daylight.

  Then another question came into my troubled mind, and I sat up in bed, breathing rapidly like a frightened child. What would Rome’s ruler, the princeps Domitian, do if he heard that a dead man had been found on my property? And he would hear it. He had spies in the household of every important man in Rome, even mine, though I do not consider myself important. The antagonism between us runs especially deep. His hatred of my uncle was passed down to me, like a legacy, and in recent months I have built upon it. Would he seize an opportunity to bring a charge against me?

  The answer to that question might depend on the identity of Nobody and what had happened to him.

  But what if Domitian already knew the answers to those questions? What if this was part of some plot hatched by Domitian and Marcus Aquilius Regulus, his advisor in all things criminal? In recent months I have felt my life was becoming a gigantic game of latrunculi, with Domitian as my opponent and Regulus whispering over his shoulder to suggest moves. We made our moves in turn, but sometimes the purpose of a move was not to improve one’s own position on the board so much as to box in one’s opponent. A series of seemingly unconnected moves might be made merely to set up one later move. If a player watched only the most recent move and did not try to deduce his opponent’s ultimate plan, he could find his piece surrounded and captured.

  I needed to calm myself, so I
went out on the terrace that runs around my suite of rooms—my addition to my uncle’s house—and overlooks the small bay. My house sits at what might be called the head of the bay. Just to the right of it a stream with a rocky outcropping on this side separates my property from my neighbor’s. The stream, unfortunately, isn’t large enough to provide water for the needs of my household, but we have wells and springs that keep us amply supplied. Even as close as we are to the coast, the water from the wells isn’t brackish.

  The sight and sound of the sea at night is the most soothing thing I know, as long as I’m on land looking at it and not bouncing around in a boat. Tonight the moon reflected on the water, which is so clear I can see to the bottom for fifty paces or more from shore.

  But the sea couldn’t lull me tonight. Why did I imagine that Domitian and Regulus could possibly have anything to do with Nobody? Had I become so obsessed with them that every odd incident in my life seemed to happen at their direction? If they were involved, what move could they be setting up? If you attribute too much cleverness to your opponent in latrunculi, even his blunders look like strokes of genius. You begin to play into his hands. I must not let my dislike of them—or fear of them?—cloud my judgment. Domitian was rumored to have an actual list of people he considered enemies, but would I stand high enough on that list to merit the hatching of some convoluted plot?

  I had inherited a spot among the princeps’ enemies, and I might have moved up a few places because of my friendship with Tacitus, whose father-in-law, Julius Agricola, was at the top of the list. So it wasn’t for mere curiosity that I had to discover who the man in the stable was and learn how he had died and whether there were any wider implications to his appearance on my land.

  Still restless, I lit a lamp and walked out to the stable. The guard, awake if not alert, was standing in front of the stall where we had placed Nobody.

  “Is something wrong, my lord?” he asked.

  “I’ll know in a moment.” I held my lamp down to the bar. Seeing my seal still intact, I let out a breath. “No, everything is fine. Have you heard anything?”

  “From in there? No, my lord. Would I? Isn’t he dead?”

  “Yes, of course.” I sighed in relief. I was creating tightness in my stomach when none need exist. Tomorrow I would find whatever answers I could from Nobody’s body and then turn him over to the duovirs. That would be the end of it.

  Feeling resolved, if not calmer, I returned to the terrace and was about to go back to bed when I saw someone standing on the shore below me, looking out into the bay. With the moon as bright as it was, I could tell the figure was a man and he wasn’t carrying anything. He was too far away for me to call out to him. Without thinking, I headed for the steps that lead from my terrace down to the beach. The steps are mostly naturally occurring, but I’ve had them carved out in a few difficult places.

  By the time I got down to the beach the man had become aware of me. Before I could get anywhere near him, he turned away from the water and starting running toward the trees along the shore at the foot of one of my neighbors’ houses. I broke into a run after him but lost sight of him as he went around the outcropping of rock beside the stream. When I got to the spot I slowed because I was afraid he might be lying in wait for me.

  “Hello!” I called in Latin, then in Greek. “I mean you no harm.”

  Tensing, I stepped around the outcropping. There was no sign of anyone. The footprints appeared again across the stream, then ended several paces from the trees. Could someone have jumped from where the footprints stopped up to a tree limb or onto the outcropping of rock?

  Fearing the waves would wash the footprints away, I picked up a small rock and marked where they stopped. When it was daylight I would come back and examine the matter further. As I started back up the steps a raven cawed and flew out of the trees and over my head.

  Odd, I thought. I’ve never seen one flying around at night.

  The next morning I came out of my room to find my mother waiting for me. She was accompanied, as she always seemed to be, by Naomi, a slave of her own age whom she regarded more as a sister than a servant. She even let the woman call her by name! And the affection was returned. At the last Saturnalia I had offered to free Naomi as a gift—to both her and my mother—but Naomi declined the offer because she said her status as a slave gave her a closer connection to my mother than she would feel as a freedwoman.

  “Gaius, I’m so glad you’re finally up,” my mother said as Naomi gave the slightest of bows beside her.

  I ran my hand through my hair and stretched. “ ‘Finally’? Mother the sun is barely up. What’s the matter? Is something wrong?”

  “That man you found in the woods yesterday ...”

  Now I was fully awake. “What about him?”

  “Naomi and I need to prepare his body for burial.”

  “Not yet. I don’t want anyone to disturb the body until I’ve had time to make a more thorough examination. I told you that last night. And then we need to turn him over to the duovirs.”

  “What do you need to examine? He’s dead, isn’t he?”

  “Well, yes, but I don’t know why he’s dead.” I didn’t want to admit that I wasn’t even sure he was dead.

  “Does the why really matter?”

  “If someone killed him, it certainly does.”

  Mother put her hand to her mouth and turned to Naomi. “Killed him? Oh, my. If someone killed him, that means our land could be ritually unclean—polluted.” Naomi nodded.

  I held out a hand to calm them. “There’s no evidence he was killed on our land. That’s just where we found him. In fact, there’s no evidence he was killed. As I said, I don’t know what caused his death. It may have been natural.”

  Mother turned back to me. “Still, we shouldn’t take a chance. We need to purify our land and ourselves and provide a proper burial for the poor man as soon as possible.”

  My mother has grown increasingly superstitious in the five years since we witnessed the destruction wrought by Vesuvius, during which her brother—my uncle—died. She thinks of herself as religious, but, as one who does not believe in gods, I would describe her fears and obsessions only as excessive, beyond even what is normal among women. Naomi, with her Jewish origins, has aggravated that tendency, I fear. She has even obtained scrolls of some of the Jews’ arcane books, translated into Greek, for my mother to read.

  “Mother, I do not want anyone to touch that body until I’ve examined it further. And then I’m going to turn him over to the duovirs.”

  “But, Gaius, you ought not to be anywhere near it. Preparing the dead for burial is women’s work. A man will make himself unclean if he touches a dead body. You know that.”

  “It’s too late for that. I touched him yesterday when we found him.”

  Mother took a step back from me. “By the gods! I thought you let the servants do that. You need to begin purifying yourself immediately.”

  “The only thing I need to do immediately is get to the latrine. Then we can talk about this. Wait right here.”

  When I emerged from the latrine, my mother was nowhere to be seen. I stopped the first servant I saw. “Where did my mother go?” Somehow I knew the answer before I asked the question.

  “I saw the mistress and Naomi going out to the stable, my lord.”

  Damn them! I thought. They’re as bad as a pair of disobedient children. Worse! They’re old enough to make others do their bidding.

  I hurried back to my room to put on my sandals. As I emerged again and reached the atrium, my mother and Naomi came running in.

  “Oh, Gaius!” my mother cried, panic sweeping over her face. “You must come quickly.”

  “What’s the matter? Has someone disturbed the body?”

  “No, no. The body is gone!”

  II

  “Gone? What do you mean gone?”

  “I mean he’s not there. What else could I mean?” Mother said.

  “The stall is empty, my lord,”
Naomi added. “There’s nobody there.” She stood a step closer to my mother, like a soldier in a phalanx protecting a comrade.

  “How do you know? Did you go inside?”

  “Yes,” Mother said.

  I looked at her in disbelief. “Did you break my seal?”

  “Your seal?”

  “Yes, I placed my seal on the bar across the door.”

  “I didn’t notice that, dear.”

  I threw up my hands in exasperation. “It was on the end of the bar!”

  Mother looked genuinely hurt. “You don’t have to shout at me, dear. If you wanted to keep people out, you should have put it where they could see it.”

  “I didn’t want anyone but me to be able to see it, so I could tell if anyone went in against my orders.”

  “Sometimes you’re too clever for your own good, Gaius.”

  “I never imagined you would barge in like that.”

  “We just thought we would take a look at him, to see what we needed to do, while we were waiting for you.”

  “We weren’t going to bother anything, my lord,” Naomi put in. “I made Plinia—I mean lady Plinia—promise me that before I agreed to go with her.”

  Excellent. Now my mother was making promises to a slave who called her by name.

  Mother wrung her hands. “We weren’t going to touch anything until you told us we could.”

  “Are you sure you looked in the right stall?”

  Mother nodded vigorously. “The one on the far end. The only one with a guard on it. You said you wrapped him in a blanket. It was still there.”

  I rushed to the entrance to the servants’ quarters off the atrium and called, “Tranio!” He came running.

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “The body is gone.”

  “Gone, my lord? But, how—?” The steward was already counting the lashes he might receive for someone else’s dereliction of duty.

  “I don’t know. Round up everyone on the place. We’ve got to find him.”