The Mammoth Book of Roman Whodunnits (30 page)

“Fine. Let not status be considered in your search. From slave to senator; if the person claims to have seen the spectre, I would like to speak with him – or her.”

“Very good. It will take some time.”

“Also bring me whoever saw this page last when he was alive, and someone who knows what he was supposed to be doing at the time. They may well be the same person.”

“Very good. I will put some men on it.”

“Find me a suitable room in which to wait, provided with chairs, a desk of some sort if possible, and refreshments. We have not yet eaten this morning.”

“It shall be as you wish.”

“And tell – whoever – to remove that poor young man’s body.”

“And clean the blood from the floor. That, also, shall be done.”

Centurion Sabatinus showed us to a room about the size of a large bedroom. It was lit by a skylight, and had wide benches strewn with cushions around three of the walls. What it had originally been intended for, I have no idea. After a few
minutes a couple of guardsmen brought in a slab-top desk, much like the one Vespasian had been working on, and several folding chairs. And some time after that two serving girls came in bearing trays of food: dried fish and several sorts of olives and bread and olive oil and little pastries filled with lentils and spinach and figs and slices of melon, and a pitcher of a good Falernian wine. My master was hungry. He ate. After a moment he pushed a plate my way. I was hungry. I ate.

“How do you suppose,” I asked my mentor, who was staring thoughtfully at a fig, “the Sybil knows what she knows?”

Quintilian turned to stare thoughtfully at me. “What, exactly, does she know?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Neither do I.” He ate the fig.

The first witness was brought in shortly after that. A short, round man who worked in the kitchens, he was very nervous and kept fiddling with his white cap, dropping it several times during the brief interview.

“Your name?” Quintilian asked.

“Osterius, if it please your excellency.”

“Relax, Osterius; you have been brought here merely to tell us what you saw.”

“About the ghost, your excellency?”

“Just so. About the ghost.”

“I didn’t see nothing I shouldn’t have seen, your excellency.” He dropped his cap and bent over, trying to snare it without looking down.

“Of course not,” Quintilian said, waiting patiently for him to retrieve the cap. “But, just what did you see?”

“It wasn’t my fault. I didn’t want to see it. It was just there.”

“Yes. Where?”

“What?”

“Where did you see it? Where were you when you saw it?”

“In the storeroom sir, where we keep the jars of pickled foodstuffs.”

“Ah. You saw it in the storeroom?”

“Well, I was, like, in the storeroom. The ghost was outside, in the corridor.”

Quintilian nodded and smiled an encouraging smile. “Very good. You’re very observant. What was it doing?”

“Eating, sir. A chicken leg, I think.”

“And then what happened?”

“Well, he saw me about when I saw him. He looked just like the great Julius Caesar looked on some of them old coins, and on the busts in the Forum. And he looked kind of – ghostly. He kind of smiled, and waved at me. And then he went around the corner. But when Scullius and me went around the corner – he was gone.”

“Scullius?”

“Yes, your honour. My mate who was waiting for me in the small preparation room.”

“So you didn’t go right after this ghost?”

“No way, your excellency. I went to get Scullius first. Then the two of us, we went back and followed him around the corner. And he was gone. And there wasn’t noplace for him to go. The only room around that corner is locked with a special lock, to which only the wine master has the key, ’cause it contains the amphorae of Greek wine what come in special wagons from way up North.”

“Ah!” Quintilian said. “When was this?”

Osterius thought for a moment. “About six weeks ago.”

“Did you ever see the ghost again?”

“No, sir. Once were enough.”

“Indeed. Thank you for your help.”

*   *   *

Osterius was our interviewee number I, and his story was not that different from numbers II, III, IV or V. Man or woman sees figure who looks like what they imagine Julius Caesar to look like standing in some place where no human ought to be standing – down an empty corridor, or sitting on a bench in a closed courtyard, or at the far end of a deserted room; and they stay frozen in astonishment, or sheer fright, while the figure ambles out of sight, often going into some area from which there is no exit, and disappears.

Number VI, a stocky overseer named Lipato, had the first real variant to the usual story. “It was about two weeks ago,” he told my master, helping himself to one of the smoked sprats that were heaped on the food tray. “We were in the third courtyard, which has been turned into a garden, planting some flowers, or I think maybe vines of some sort. It was at night because the gardener says that these particular horticultures has got to be planted at night to grow right. Then I hears it.”

“What?”

“This voice. High and squeaky, it was. ‘Vespasian,’ it says. Beg pardon, and I hope his mightiness the emperor will forgive me, but that’s what it says. ‘Vespasian – oh woe unto you Vespasian! Beware the Ides of October,’ it says. Fairly scared me so much I couldn’t eat my breakfast.”

“And did you see anything to connect with this voice?”

“Oh, yes. Otherwise it might have been like a joke, you know. But there he was, standing there, as clear as daylight. Julius Caesar himself, in the flesh. Well, maybe not the flesh, but in the whatever-he-was-in. Big nose, laurel wreath around his head, and everything. His toga looked kind of loose and flappy, like maybe there wasn’t too much flesh under it.”

“This was at night?”

“Yes, but we had maybe a dozen torches stuck in the
ground all around – so the slaves could see what they were planting, after all.”

“So it was you and some slaves –”

“That’s right. Maybe half a dozen slaves. And Master Funitus, the assistant to the chief assistant head gardener.”

“And you all saw and heard this?”

“Indeed.”

“And you didn’t run after this apparition and try to grab it?”

“Couldn’t.”

“You couldn’t?”

“That’s right. It was on the balcony which runs around the courtyard. And by the time Master Funitus yelled something – he claims he yelled, ‘let’s get it,’ but it sounded more to me like, ‘let’s get out of here.’ Anyways, when he yelled, the thing, whatever it was, took a step backwards, gave out with another squeaky, ‘Beware the Ides of October!’ and disappeared.”

Quintilian leaned back in his chair and stared across the desk at the stocky foreman. “I take it that you were not overly impressed with this phantom. Don’t you believe in ghosts?”

Lipato shrugged. “Might have been a ghost, might not. At any rate, it wasn’t any danger to me, nor was it going to do me any good, as I saw it. Anyway, if it was a ghost, and it wanted to talk to the emperor, why didn’t it just flit through a couple of walls and do it properly? It don’t make sense.”

“The ways of the spirit world are beyond human understanding,” Quintilian said. “Or so I’ve always heard.”

“It did put the fear of the gods in the slaves that were in the garden, I’ll tell you that,” Lipato said.

Lipato left and was replaced by a slim young man who, by the drape of his toga and the inclination of his chin, proclaimed
himself to be from an old and noble family. His bearing and attitude filled me with an instant dislike, but the feeling was as instantly dispelled by his first words.

“You’re the famous Marcus Fabius Quintilianus,” he said, with a sweeping bow. “I am the orator Aopilis Romulus Laius, and I tremble with delight to meet you.”

“Tremble with delight?” Quintilian asked, looking slightly startled.

“It is a Greek pleasantry,” Laius said. “Perhaps a bit effulgent when translated into Latin, but the emotion is sincere. I teach oratory and rhetoric and whenever I hear that you are going to speak, in a trial or a public debate, I hasten to be in the audience so that I may learn from the master.”

Quintilian frowned, but I think it was to disguise a pleased smile. “You have a school here in Rome?” he asked.

“Not precisely a school,” Laius said. “I do not teach children. My efforts are directed towards those adults who would improve their Latin, their deportment, and their rhetorical skills to enable them to better fit in with their, ah, new-found place in society.”

“Ah, I see,” Quintilian said, and he did smile. “You teach the newly rich to, as some would put it, ape their betters.”

“Some might put it that way,” Laius said defensively. “It is true that my students are, for the most part, freedmen and former slaves who have succeeded in making their fortunes in trade, or other occupations frowned upon by the patrician landowners. But some of those same landowners . . . well, never mind; I’m sure you don’t want to hear my protests about the social order.”

“Perhaps some other time,” Quintilian said. “Right now I’m more interested in ghosts.”

“Yes, of course. That’s why I’m here.” Laius hitched up his toga and sat down. “I saw this supposed ghost, it would be, four days ago. Here in the palace.”

“Just when and where, if you can remember.”

“Remember? How could I forget? I was waiting in a courtyard – I’m not sure just which courtyard, there are so many of them in this place, but I could find it again if you like – when this person appeared in the middle of a tree about twelve feet off the ground.”

“A tree?” I exclaimed.

They both looked at me. “It turns out that it was a potted tree,” Laius explained, “and the pot had been moved so that it concealed a balcony. The person was on this balcony. ‘Vespasian,’ he said, ‘Vespasian, beware the Ides of October! Mind what I say!’ And then he screeched, and stepped backwards until he was out of sight.”

“Your description,” Quintilian said, “makes it sound as though you do not believe the person was a ghost. Is this so?”

The teacher of oratory thought for a moment and then nodded. “I am being cautious about calling it a ghost, because I do not think it was a ghost,” he admitted. “Although the three or four other people in the courtyard at the time seemed to have no such doubts. They trembled and fell on their knees, and one of them went screaming out the entrance. But for me, I saw nothing ghostly about the figure. True, it did resemble Gaius Julius Caesar, but my uncle Timidus bears an uncanny resemblance to the god Bacchus, as may be seen by comparing him to many a mural in the various houses of joy about the city.”

“I see.”

“And besides, the person spoke with the slight hint of a foreign accent.”

“Really? You are the first to note that.”

“Most people wouldn’t. You see, the problem was that his Latin was a hair too perfect, as though it had been learned as an adult. Much like some of the people I teach.”

“So you couldn’t say what sort of accent?”

Laius shook his head. “From the East, rather than the North, I would say; but aside from that, no.”

Quintilian nodded. “Thank you, citizen Laius. One last question: What were you doing in that courtyard?”

“Waiting to see the imperial procurator. My father’s estates were confiscated by Nero, and I am engaged in a continuing struggle to get them back.”

“With what luck?”

“None – absolutely none. It matters not that most of the policies of Nero have been rescinded. In matters of property, the government is most reluctant to retrace its steps. I suppose they’re afraid to open the box. I mean, if an estate grabbed by Nero is returned, then what about one confiscated by Claudius, or even Augustus?”

“There is something in what you say. But, if it is so hopeless, then why do you keep trying?”

“It gives me an air of moral authority among my patrons. Knowing that there’s a chance, however small, that I may one day once again be as rich as they are causes them to treat me with ever-so-slightly more respect than they would otherwise.”

“Thank you again, citizen Laius.”

“Have I been of some help?”

“You have added to our store of information, and that is always helpful.”

Our next guest was a senator, Marius Trabitus by name. Sort of round, but none the less solidly built, and definitely past middle age, he had sharp eyes and a crisp, yet measured way of speaking, as though no words passed his lips until he had examined them carefully to make sure they conveyed just what he wanted them to convey, and no more.

“Glad to be of help,” he said, his eyes taking in the room, with more than one glance towards the platters of food on the
table. “Glad to be of help. You want me to tell you about my encounter with the shade of Julius Caesar?”

“Yes, Senator. If you please.”

“It was frightening, frightening,” Trabitus said, sitting down across from my master and helping himself to a couple of dates from the platter. “It happened about a week ago now. It was late, quite late. I was in the anteroom to General Vespasian’s audience chamber – the general dislikes calling it a throne room, and indeed he has no throne in the room – waiting to speak with the general, when suddenly he appeared before me. Just – appeared – like that –” he waved a pudgy hand through the air to show what it was like.

“Who?”

“Why great Caesar’s ghost, that’s who. One second the room was empty, and the next, there he was. ‘Vespasianus,’ he called, ‘beware the Ides of October.’ And he sighed mightily, and dripped blood from gaping wounds in his toga. He stared at me, and I stared at him. I thought of trying to go and touch him, but I seemed to be rooted to the floor. I did not feel fear, but a sort of tremendous awe, as though I were in the presence of something greater than a mere mortal. And then all at once he disappeared, like blowing out a candle. And – you won’t believe this – when I went to look, there was no blood on the floor! It was then that I felt fear. And then, like an echo from beyond, came the words again, ‘Beware the Ides of October!’ ”

Quintilian leaned forwards. “And what did you do?”