The Mammoth Book of Roman Whodunnits (29 page)

Quintilian nodded. “Reports of ghosts should be taken seriously,” he said. “But would it not be better to get Pliny the naturalist to investigate this? I understand he’s writing some sort of vast book on these sorts of natural phenomena.”

“We sent someone to ask his advice,” Domitian said. “He’s at his estate in Como. He recommended you.”

“Ah!” My master nodded thoughtfully. “And just what was it that the Sybil said?”

Vespasian sighed. “My son went to Cumae to consult the Sybil about two weeks ago. He asked my permission, and I complied. I thought a favourable prediction would end the mutterings.”

“The mutterings?”

Vespasian made a gesture to his son, who took up the story. “A figure wearing a senatorial toga with a laurel wreath circling his head has been seen wandering throughout this building at all times of the day and night – but mostly at night. He disappears when anyone attempts to approach. Those who have seen him report that he looks like the busts of Julius Caesar. I think every Roman has a good idea of what the great Caesar looked like.”

Even so,” Quintilian agreed.

“Some even report seeing open wounds on the figure, such as Caesar received on that fateful Ides of March,” Domitian continued. “And the blood dripping on the ground. But no blood has been found when the area was examined.”

“I see,” Quintilian said. “So we have a disappearing spectre who looks like great Caesar. How long has this been going on?”

“At least two months. Perhaps longer.”

“Have either of you ever seen it?”

Vespasian shook his head. His son said, “No, we have not been so fortunate.”

“So. And why are the ruler of the Roman Empire and his son so concerned about this spectre flitting about the palace that they feel the need to ask for my poor services?”

“Two things,” Vespasian said. “First, the shade has begun to speak.”

“Speak?”

Domitian stood up and leaned over the desk. “ ‘Beware the
Ides of October,’ ” he recited. “That’s what the fool thing has started to say. Bah! If it
was
Caesar, it’d probably be saying ‘where are the girls,’ or more likely, ‘where are the boys?’ ”

“Now, son,” Vespasian fixed his younger son with a stony glare. “Those are vile calumnies spread by Caesar’s enemies when he had joined the gods and was no longer around to defend himself. Jove only knows what they’ll be saying about me when I, ah, ascend.”

“Beware the Ides of October,” Quintilian repeated. “Not good.”

“No.” Vespasian grimaced. “And you know how superstitious the average Roman is; always looking for portents and appealing for help from one god or another. When I embark on a campaign I must have the legion’s soothsayer inspect the entrails of a pigeon and a rabbit to make sure the signs are favourable. My troops might refuse to move if I did not.”

Something about Vespasian’s glare as he said that told me that the soothsayer knew in advance just what he’d better find in those entrails.

“It makes me a prisoner in this blasted palace of Nero’s,” Vespasian continued. “I want to move out. I
planned
to move out. This gilded claptrap is too ornate – too Nero – for me. Now that it’s finally finished, I plan to turn it into an imperial forum, or a series of temples to the more important gods, or something. I plan to build myself a simple – well, comparatively simple – imperial abode by the Field of Mars. But I cannot move with this spectre hanging over me. I cannot seem to be moving from fear. If I leave while this is going on, my troops will lose respect for me. And there are still followers of Otho or Vitellius about who would just as soon see me dead. And if that happens we’ll have another year with three or four emperors, one after the other, bim,
bam, like that, fighting to stay in power. And Rome couldn’t stand it.”

“So the ghost of Julius Caesar is keeping you in Nero’s palace by threatening your death. I assume that’s how you interpret the ‘Ides of October’ business?”

Vespasian shrugged his broad shoulders. “How else?”

Quintilian nodded. “And that’s why your son consulted the Sybil?”

“It was right after I first heard of the ‘Ides of October’,” Domitian said. “I went to Cumae with a small bodyguard, and paid the priests for an audience with the Sybil. I did not tell them who I was.”

Sure
, I thought,
just some random nobleman guarded by a troop of the praetorian guard
. But I kept my mouth shut.

Domitian continued, “The priests kept me waiting for most of the day. Then, as dusk fell, I was taken into the cave. ‘Sybil,’ the priest said, ‘this is Vergilus,’ for such is what I had told them was my name.”

“What did the Sybil look like?” Quintilian asked.

“The cave was dark, and lit by torches, and it was difficult to tell,” Domitian said. “One moment she looked young and beautiful – unbelievably beautiful – with long, dark hair, and a slender, sinuous body. And the next moment she looked old, unbelievably old, and wise beyond the knowledge of mortal men.”

“Ah!” Quintilian said, running his forefinger along the side of his nose. “Tell me, did you smell anything?”

Domitian thought for a moment. “Some kind of incense. Perhaps it was from the smoke coming from a vent in the rock. It made my head spin.”

“Ah!” Quintilian said again.

“She looked at me for a long moment. And then she said to me, ‘Hail, ruler of men.’

“ ‘I am no ruler of men,’ I told her.

“ ‘You are what I say you are,’ she said. “ ‘You have come about a Caesar,’ she said, ‘the Caesar that is yet to be concerned about the Caesar that was.’ ”

“Indeed?” Quintilian said.

Domitian nodded. “I was startled. I am no fool; I know the priests could have guessed who I was from my raiment, or from the guards I travelled with. But I told no man the purpose of my quest.”

“And what was it she told you?”

“She seemed to go into a trance. For a long while she said nothing. Finally she said, she sort of chanted,

“This verse,” Quintilian asked, “is it precisely what she said?”

Domitian nodded. “A priest sort of hides in a corner and writes down everything she says. He wrote out a copy for me.”

“I don’t know what else it may mean,” Vespasian said, “but you are marked by your own words. It is clear that you are the highly regarded ignorant one who will cleave the knot.”

Quintilian thought for a moment and then looked up. “You said there were two things.”

“I did.” Vespasian turned to his son. “Domitian, show our learned friend the other, ah, thing.”

“Very well.” Domitian stood up and gestured for us to accompany him. We went a short way down the corridor and entered a short separate hallway leading to a single door. A
guardsman before the door stiffened into a living statue of The Perfect Guardsman At Attention at our approach.

“At ease, guardsman,” Domitian said. “Has anything happened during your watch? Anything at all?”

“No, sir,” the guardsman spat out between clenched teeth, his face turning red from the effort of talking without moving his lips.

“Thank you. Remain at ease.” Domitian pushed open the door. “This is – was – the anteroom to Nero’s throne room,” he told us. “My father chooses not to use a throne room, but has a small audience chamber in another part of the palace.”

The anteroom was small, the walls decorated with a continuous painted scene of woodland beauty, including several scantily clad nymphs darting among the trees. There were two doors: the door we had come in, and a door across the room leading to the throne room. Whatever furnishings the chamber had held during Nero’s time had been removed. It was now bare, except for one, lone, corpse lying in a grotesque heap in the middle of the floor.

“He was found early this morning,” Domitian said. “The throne room is occupied through the night. It is used as the guardroom for posting the night guards. The hallway is under guard all night. Nobody saw the lad go in or out. And yet, here he is.”

The corpse was a young man in a white tunic and sandals; by his dress not a slave, but not a high-status Roman either. Possibly a freedman servant. He had been stabbed several times in the chest and neck. There was surprisingly little blood, but the victim had apparently used what there was to draw the number XIII on the floor above his head with his right forefinger as he was dying.

“Thirteen,” Quintilian said.

“The Ides of October fall on the thirteenth,” Domitian said.

“Yes,” my mentor agreed. “That would be it, of course. Who is the dead lad?”

“One of the pages. Name was, I believe, Septius.”

“What were his duties?”

“I have no idea. You can ask.”

“Who saw him last, that is, when he was alive?”

“You may ask that, too.”

Vespasian appeared in the doorway behind us. “Well?” he asked.

Quintilian turned to him. “This lad was not killed by a ghost,” he said.

Vespasian sighed. “You know that, citizen Quintilian, and I know that. But when word of this gets out, it will be hard to convince the mob. Including, I am afraid, most of my guardsmen.”

“All right, General. I will try to resolve this ghostly business for you. After all, we cannot make a liar of the Sybil. First I must spend some time examining this poor lad’s body. Then I must see the various places where this apparition has appeared. And then I will speak with all those who claim to have seen Caesar’s ghost, and particularly those who have heard it speak.”

“Yes,” Vespasian agreed. “And I must find out who the lad’s parents are. They must be notified. Death is always cruel and often unnecessary, even in battle. This –” he gestured at the body “– this is a waste.” He looked down at the corpse and shook his head. “I sometimes think that the only death that is not difficult to accept is your own.”

“It is not hard to die,” Quintilian said.

We all looked at him. “It is not hard to die,” he repeated. “That’s what the Sybil said.”

“So it is,” Vespasian remembered.

“When Nero was escaping the mob he hid himself in this palace for a day and pleaded with the head of his guards, to
save him. The guard declined, saying, ‘Is it so hard, then, to die?’ which is a line from one of Virgil’s plays, I believe. Upon which, Nero fled to the countryside.”

“The theatre does not interest me,” Vespasian said.

“But it might explain the Sybil’s quote,” Domitian offered.

“How?”

“I don’t know yet,” Quintilian said. “Give me some time.”

Vespasian and Domitian left us alone in the room. Domitian said that he would arrange for the centurion to be waiting outside for us when we were ready.

Quintilian examined the corpse slowly and carefully, from head to foot, taking an oil lamp from its fixture on the wall to give himself better light. I watched as best I could, but I confess I am not yet hardened to the sight of dead bodies. “Notice how little blood there is,” he commented.

“Indeed,” I agreed.

He rolled the body over. “The back is completely clear of wounds, and of blood. The boy was attacked only from the front.”

“Even so,” I agreed.

“He has a small sheath here on his belt,” Quintilian commented, “but the knife is missing.”

“Perhaps he was killed by his own knife,” I suggested.

“Perhaps,” Quintilian said, “but I think a larger weapon was used, judging by the size of the wounds. I would that you could take notes but, as that is forbidden, try to remember what you see and what I tell you.”

“Yes, mentor,” I said. “I will do my best.”

“The boy was not killed here,” Quintilian said. “He died elsewhere, and was carried here. If he had been stabbed repeatedly here, the strokes of the knife would have splattered blood over the floor and walls.”

“But both entrances were watched.”

“No one was assigned the task of actually watching the entrances to this room,” Quintilian said. “Besides, he came here somehow, alive or dead, despite the possible watchers.”

“True,” I said.

Quintilian went to the door and opened it. The young centurion was waiting patiently outside with two guardsmen, who snapped to attention when they saw Quintilian emerge. My master was, if only for the moment, a person of some stature in the palace. “Sabatinus,” Quintilian called.

The centurion came over to the door and looked curiously at the body lying inside.

“Did you know about this?” Quintilian asked, indicating the corpse.

“Oh, yes,” Sabatinus said. “News travels fast within the palace walls. There are, I believe, few secrets.”

“I assume no bloody room has been noticed about the palace this morning?”

Sabatinus thought for a second. “It could be that some of the servants found such a room, and thought to clean it up without mentioning it to anyone. I will have enquiries made.”

“Also there is a small knife missing from the dead lad’s sheath. See if anyone found it.”

“I didn’t notice the missing knife. I shall have a search made.”

We left the room and closed the door behind us. “Do you know of the ghost said to be wandering these corridors?” Quintilian asked the centurion.

“Great Caesar’s ghost? Yes, I have heard tell.”

“But you have never seen it yourself?”

“No.”

“What do you think of the stories?”

Sabatinus thought for a moment. “I thought it was an
amusing thing for us to have our own personal ghost – and that of Great Caesar, at that. But when it was reported that the spectre had begun to speak, then I began to wonder if it might have greater portent.”

“Then you believe the stories?”

“No, in truth I can’t say I believe them.” Sabatinus smiled. “But were I to come face-to-face with this spectre, I might rapidly change my opinion.”

Quintilian nodded. “Can you gather the people who claim to have actually seen this wraith and send them in to speak with me?”

“I will make a list of names, and then send some of my guardsmen in search of the people you require.”