Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 100, Nos. 4 & 5. Whole Nos. 603 & 604, October 1992

The Lemures by Steven Saylor

The tales of ghosts and witches associated with Halloween in the U.S. and the British Isles have their origin in Celtic lore, but superstitions about the spirits of the dead, or “lemures,” as the ancient Romans called them, were also prevalent at the time of Steven Saylor’s story. To exorcise these troublesome spirits, the Romans held rites each spring (the Lemuria) — to no avail in the case of the soldier in the following tale, for each autumn the lemures of those he killed in battle return to haunt him, until he wisely consults Gordianus...

The slave pressed a scrap of parchment into my hand:

Lucius need not have warned me against bringing Eco, for at that moment the boy was busy with his tutor. From the garden, where they had found a patch of morning sunlight to ward off the October chill, I could hear the old man declaiming while Eco wrote the day’s Latin lesson on his wax tablet.

“Bethesda!” I called out, but she was already behind me, holding open my woolen cloak. As she slipped it over my shoulders, she glanced down at the note in my hand. She wrinkled her nose. Unable to read, Bethesda regards the written word with suspicion and disdain.

“From Lucius Claudius?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Why, yes, but how—?” Then I realized she must have recognized his messenger. Slaves often take more notice of one another than do their masters.

“I suppose he wants you to go gaming with him, or to taste the new vintage from one of his vineyards.” She tossed back her mane of jet-black hair and pouted her luscious lips.

“I suppose not; he has work for me.”

A smile flickered at the corner of her mouth.

“Not that it should be any concern of yours,” I added quickly. Since I had taken Eco in from the streets and legally adopted him, Bethesda had begun to behave less and less like a concubine and more and more like a wife and mother. I wasn’t sure I liked the change; I was even less sure I had any control over it.

“Frightening work,” I added. “Probably dangerous.” But she was already busy adding to the household accounts in her head. As I stepped out the door I heard her humming a happy Egyptian tune from her childhood.

The day was bright and crisp. Drifts of leaves lined either side of the narrow winding pathway that led from my house down the slope of the Esquiline Hill to the Subura below. The tang of smoke was on the air, rising from kitchens and braziers. The messenger drew his dark green cloak more tightly about his shoulders to ward off the chill.

“Neighbor! Citizen!” a voice hissed at me from the wall to my right. I looked up and saw two eyes peering down at me, surmounted by the dome of a bald, knobby head. “Neighbor — yes, you! Gordianus, they call you; am I right?”

I looked up at him warily. “Yes, Gordianus is my name.”

“And Detectus, they call you — ‘the Finder,’ yes?”

“Yes.”

“You solve puzzles. Plumb mysteries. Answer riddles.”

“Sometimes.”

“Then you must help me!”

“Perhaps, Citizen. But not now. A friend summons me—”

“This will take only a moment.”

“Even so, I grow cold standing here—”

“Then come inside! I’ll open the little door in the wall and let you in.”

“No — perhaps tomorrow.”

“No! Now! They will come tonight, I know it — or even this afternoon, when the shadows lengthen. See, the clouds are coming up. If the sun grows dim, they may come out at midday beneath the dark, brooding sky.”

“They? Whom do you mean, Citizen?”

His eyes grew large, yet his voice became quite tiny, like the voice of a mouse. “The lemures...” he squeaked.

The messenger clutched at his cloak. I felt the sudden chill myself, but it was only a cold, dry wind gusting down the pathway that made me shiver; or so I told myself.

“Lemures,” the man repeated. “The unquiet dead.”

Leaves scattered and danced about my feet. A thin finger of cloud obscured the sun, dimming its bright, cold light to a hazy grey.

“Vengeful,” the man whispered. “Full of spite. Empty of all remorse. Human no longer, spirits sucked dry of warmth and pity, desiccated and brittle like shards of bone, with nothing left but wickedness. Dead, but not gone from this world as they should be. Revenge is their only food. The only gift they offer is madness.”

I stared into the man’s dark, sunken eyes for a long moment, then broke from his gaze. “A friend calls me,” I said, nodding for the slave to go on.

“But neighbor, you can’t abandon me. I was a soldier for Sulla! I fought in the civil war to save the Republic! I was wounded — if you’ll step inside you’ll see. My left leg is no good at all, I have to hobble and lean against a stick. While you, you’re young and whole and healthy. A young Roman like you owes me some respect. Please — there’s no one else to help me!”

“My business is with the living, not the dead,” I said sternly.

“I can pay you, if that’s what you mean. Sulla gave all his soldiers farms up in Etruria. I sold mine — I was never meant to be a farmer. I still have silver left. I can pay you a handsome fee, if you’ll help me.”

“And how can I help you? If you have a problem with lemures, consult a priest or an augur.”

“I have, believe me! Every May, at the Lemuria, I take part in the procession to ward off evil spirits. I mutter the incantations, I cast the black beans over my shoulder. Perhaps it works; the lemures never come to me in spring, and they stay away all summer. But as surely as leaves wither and fall from the trees, they come to me every autumn. They come to drive me mad!”

“Citizen, I cannot—”

“They cast a spell inside my head.”

“Citizen! I must go.”

“Please,” he whispered. “I was a soldier once, brave, afraid of nothing. I killed many men, fighting for Sulla, for Rome. I waded through rivers of blood and valleys of gore up to my hips and never quailed. I feared no one. And now...” He made a face of such self-loathing that I turned away. “Help me,” he pleaded.

“Perhaps... when I return...”

He smiled pitifully, like a doomed man given a reprieve. “Yes,” he whispered, “when you return...”

I hurried on.

The house on the Palatine, like its neighbors, presented a rather plain facade, despite its location in the city’s most exclusive district. Except for two pillars in the form of dryads supporting the roof, the portico’s only adornment was a funeral wreath of cypress and fir on the door.

The short hallway, flanked on either side by the wax masks of noble ancestors, led to a modest atrium. On an ivory bier, a body lay in state. I stepped forward and looked down at the corpse. I saw a young man, not yet thirty, unremarkable except for the grimace that contorted his features. Normally the anointers are able to remove signs of distress and suffering from the faces of the dead, to smooth wrinkled brows and unclench tightened jaws. But the face of this corpse had grown rigid beyond the power of the anointers to soften it. Its expression was not of pain or misery, but of fear.

“He fell,” said a familiar voice behind me.

I turned to see my one-time client and since-then friend, Lucius Claudius. He was as portly as ever, and not even the gloomy light of the atrium could dim the cherry-red of his cheeks and nose.

We exchanged greetings, then turned our eyes to the corpse.

“Titus,” explained Lucius, “the owner of this house. For the last two years, anyway.”

“He died from a fall?”

“Yes. There’s a gallery that runs along the west side of the house, with a long balcony that overlooks a steep hillside. Titus fell from the balcony three nights ago. He broke his back.”

“And died at once?”

“No. He lingered through the night and lived until nightfall the next day. He told a curious tale before he died. Of course, he was feverish and in great pain, despite the draughts of nepenthes he was given...” Lucius shifted his considerable bulk uneasily inside his vast black cloak and reached up nervously to scratch at his frazzled wreath of copper-colored hair. “Tell me, Gordianus, do you have any knowledge of lemures?”

A strange expression must have crossed my face, for Lucius frowned and wrinkled his brow. “Have I said something untoward, Gordianus?”

“Not at all. But this is the second time today that someone has spoken to me of lemures. On the way here, a soldier, a neighbor of mine — but I won’t bore you with the tale. All Rome seems to be haunted by spirits today! It must be this oppressive weather... this gloomy time of year... or indigestion, as my father used to say—”

“It was not indigestion that killed my husband. Nor was it a cold wind, or a chilly drizzle, or a nervous imagination.”

The speaker was a tall, thin woman. A stola of black wool covered her from neck to feet; about her shoulders was a wrap of dark blue. Her black hair was drawn back from her face and piled atop her head, held together by silver pins and combs. Her eyes were a glittering blue. Her face was young, but she was no longer a girl. She held herself as rigorously upright as a vestal, and spoke with the imperious tone of a patrician.

“This,” said Lucius, “is Gordianus, the man I told you about.” The woman acknowledged me with a slight nod. “And this,” he continued, “is my dear young friend, Cornelia. From the Sullan branch of the Cornelius family.”

I gave a slight start.

“Yes,” she said, “blood relative to our recently departed and deeply missed dictator. Lucius Cornelius Sulla was my cousin. We were quite close, despite the difference in our ages. I was with dear Sulla just before he died, down at his villa in Neapolis. A great man. A generous man.” Her imperious tone softened. She turned her gaze to the corpse on the bier. “Now Titus is dead, too. I am alone. Defenseless...”

“Perhaps we should withdraw to the library,” suggested Lucius.

“Yes,” said Cornelia, “it’s cold here in the atrium.”

She led us down a short hallway into a small room. My sometime-client Cicero would not have called it much of a library — there was only a single cabinet piled with scrolls against one wall — but he would have approved of its austerity. The walls were stained a somber red and the chairs were backless. A slave tended to the brazier in the corner and departed.

“How much does Gordianus know?” said Cornelia, to Lucius.

“Very little. I only explained that Titus fell from the balcony.”

She looked at me with an intensity that was almost frightening. “My husband was a haunted man.”

“Haunted by whom, or what? Lucius spoke to me of lemures.”

“Not plural, but singular,” she said. “He was tormented by one lemur only.”

“Was this spirit known to him?”

“Yes. An acquaintance from his youth; they studied law together in the Forum. The man who owned this house before us. His name was Furius.”

“This lemur appeared to your husband more than once?”

“It began last summer. Titus would glimpse the thing for only a moment — beside the road on the way to our country villa, or across the Forum, or in a pool of shadow outside the house. At first he wasn’t sure what it was; he would turn back and try to find it, only to discover it had vanished. Then he began to see it inside the house. That was when he realized who and what it was. He no longer tried to approach it; quite the opposite, he fled the thing, quaking with fear.”

“Did you see it, as well?”

She stiffened. “Not at first...”

“Titus saw it, the night he fell,” whispered Lucius. He leaned forward and took Cornelia’s hand, but she pulled it away.

“That night,” she whispered, “Titus was brooding, pensive. He left me in my sitting room and stepped onto the balcony to pace and take a breath of cold air. Then he saw the thing — so he told the story later, in his delirium. It came toward him, beckoning. It spoke his name. Titus fled to the end of the balcony. The thing came closer. Titus grew mad with fear — somehow he fell.”

“The thing pushed him?” I said.

She shrugged. “Whether he fell or was pushed, it was his fear of the thing that finally killed him. He survived the fall; he lingered through the night and the next day. Twilight came. Titus began to sweat and tremble. Even the least movement was agony to him, yet he thrashed and writhed on the bed, mad with panic. He said he could not bear to see the lemur again. At last he died. Do you understand? He chose to die rather than confront the lemur again. You saw his face. It was not pain that killed him. It was fear.”

I pulled my cloak over my hands and curled my toes. It seemed to me that the brazier did nothing to banish the cold from the room. “This lemur,” I said, “how did your husband describe it?”

“The thing was not hard to recognize. It was Furius, who owned this house before us. Its flesh was pocked and white, its teeth broken and yellow. Its hair was like bloody straw, and there was blood all around its neck. It gave off a foul odor... but it was most certainly Furius. Except...”

“Yes?”

“Except that it looked younger than Furius at the end of his life. It looked closer to the age when Furius and Titus knew one another in the Forum, in the days of their young manhood.”

“When did you first see the lemur yourself?”

“Last night. I was on the balcony — thinking of Titus and his fall. I turned and saw the thing, but only for an instant. I fled into the house — and it spoke to me.”

“What did it say?”

“Two words: Now you. Oh!” Cornelia drew in a quick, strangled breath. She clutched at her wrap and gazed at the fire.

I stepped closer to the brazier, spreading my fingers to catch the warmth. “What a strange day!” I muttered. “What can I say to you, Cornelia, except what I said to another who told me a tale of lemures earlier today: why do you consult me instead of an augur? These are mysteries about which I know very little. Tell me a tale of a purloined jewel or a stolen document; call on me with a case of parricide or show me a corpse with an unknown killer. With these I might help you; about such matters I know more than a little. But how to placate a lemur, I do not know. Of course, I will always come when my friend Lucius Claudius calls me; but I begin to wonder why I am here at all.”

Cornelia studied the crackling embers and did not answer.

“Perhaps,” I ventured, “you believe this lemur is not a lemur at all. If in fact it is a living man—”

“It doesn’t matter what I believe or don’t believe,” she snapped. I saw in her eyes the same pleading and desperation I had seen in the soldier’s eyes. “No priest can help me; there is no protection against a vengeful lemur. Yet, perhaps the thing is really human, after all. Such a pretense is possible, isn’t it?”

“Possible? I suppose.”

“Then you know of such cases, of a man masquerading as a lemur?”

“I have no personal experience—”

“That’s why I asked Lucius to call you. If this creature is in fact human and alive, then you may be able to save me from it. If instead it is what it appears to be, a lemur, then... then nothing can save me. I am doomed.” She gasped and bit her knuckles.

“But if it was your husband’s death the thing desired—”

“Haven’t you been listening? I told you what it said to me: Now you. Those were the words it spoke!” Cornelia sobbed. Lucius went to her side. Slowly she calmed herself.

“Very well, Cornelia. I will help you if I can. First, questions. From answers come answers. Can you speak?”

She bit her lips and nodded.

“You say the thing has the face of Furius. Did your husband think so?”

“My husband remarked on it, over and over. He saw the thing very close, more than once. On the night he fell, the creature came near enough for him to smell its fetid breath. He recognized it beyond a doubt.”

“And you? You say you saw it for only an instant before you fled. Are you sure it was Furius you saw last night on the balcony?”

“Yes! An instant was all I needed. Horrible — discolored, distorted, wearing a hideous grin — but the face of Furius, I have no doubt.”

“And yet younger than you remember.”

“Yes. Somehow the cheeks, the mouth... what makes a face younger or older? I don’t know, I can only say that in spite of its hideousness the thing looked as Furius looked when he was a younger man. Not the Furius who died two years ago, but Furius when he was a beardless youth, slender and strong and full of ambition.”

“I see. In such a case, three possibilities occur to me. Could this indeed have been Furius — not his lemur, but the man himself? Are you certain that he’s dead?”

“Oh, yes.”

“There is no doubt?”

“No doubt at all...” She shivered and seemed to leave something unspoken. I looked at Lucius, who quickly looked away.

“Then perhaps this Furius had a brother?”

“A much older brother,” she nodded.

“Not a twin?”

“No. Besides, his brother died in the civil war.”

“Oh?”

“Fighting against Sulla.”

“I see. Then perhaps Furius had a son, the very image of his father?”

Cornelia shook her head. “His only child was an infant daughter. His only other survivors were his wife and mother, and a sister, I think.”

“And where are the survivors now?”

Cornelia averted her eyes. “I’m told they moved into his mother’s house on the Caelian Hill.”

“So: Furius is assuredly dead, he had no twin — no living brother at all — and he left no son. And yet the thing which haunted your husband, by his own account and yours, bore the face of Furius.”

Cornelia sighed, exasperated. “Useless! I called on you only out of desperation.” She pressed her hands to her eyes. “Oh, my head pounds like thunder. The night will come and how will I bear it? Go now, please. I want to be alone.”

Lucius escorted me to the atrium. “What do you think?” he said.

“I think that Cornelia is a very frightened woman, and her husband was a frightened man. Why was he so fearful of this particular lemur? If the dead man had been his friend—”

“An acquaintance, Gordianus, not exactly a friend.”

“Is there something more that I should know?”

He shifted uncomfortably. “You know how I detest gossip. And really, Cornelia is not nearly as venal as some people think. There is a good side of her that few people see.”

“It would be best if you told me everything, Lucius. For Cornelia’s sake.”

He pursed his small mouth, furrowed his fleshy brow and scratched his bald pate. “Oh, very well,” he muttered. “As I told you, Cornelia and her husband have lived in this house for two years. It has also been two years since Furius died.”

“And this is no coincidence?”

“Furius was the original owner of this house. Titus and Cornelia acquired it when he was executed for his crimes against Sulla and the state.”

“I begin to see...”

“Perhaps you do. Furius and his family were on the wrong side of the civil war, political enemies of Sulla’s. When Sulla achieved absolute power and compelled the Senate to appoint him dictator, he purged the Republic of his foes. The proscriptions—”

“Names posted on lists in the Forum; yes, I remember only too well.”

“Once a man was proscribed, anyone could hunt him down and bring his head to Sulla for a bounty. I don’t have to remind you of the bloodbath, you were here; you saw the heads mounted on spikes outside the Senate.”

“And Furius’s head was among them?”

“Yes. He was proscribed, arrested, and beheaded. You ask if Cornelia is certain that Furius is dead? Yes, because she saw his head on a spike, with blood oozing from the neck. Meanwhile, his property was confiscated and put up for public auction—”

“But the auctions were not always public,” I said. “Sulla’s friends usually had first choice of the finest farms and villas.”

“As did Sulla’s relations,” added Lucius, wincing. “Yes, I’m afraid that when Furius was caught and beheaded, Titus and Cornelia didn’t hesitate to contact Sulla immediately and put their mark on this house. Cornelia had always coveted it; why pass up the opportunity to possess it, and for a song?” He lowered his voice. “The rumor is that they placed the only bid, for the unbelievable sum of a thousand sesterces!”

“The price of a mediocre Egyptian rug,” I said. “Quite a bargain.”

“If Cornelia has a flaw, it’s her avarice. In that, she’s hardly alone. Greed is the great vice of our age.”

“But not the only vice.”

“What do you mean?”

“Tell me, Lucius, was this Furius really such a great enemy of our late, lamented dictator? Was he such a terrible threat to the security of the state and to Sulla’s personal safety that he truly belonged on the proscription lists?”

“I don’t understand.”

“There were those who ended up on the lists because they were too rich for their own good, because they possessed things that others coveted.”

Lucius frowned. “Gordianus, what I’ve already told you is scandalous enough, and I’ll ask you not to repeat it. I don’t know what further implication you may have drawn, and I don’t care to know. I think we should drop the matter.”

Friend he may be, but Lucius is also of patrician blood; the cords that bind the rich together are made of gold, and are stronger than iron.

I made my way homeward, pondering the strange and fatal haunting of Titus and his wife. I had forgotten completely about the soldier until I heard him hissing at me from his garden wall.

“Yes, yes! You said you’d come back to help me, and here you are. Come inside!” He disappeared, and a moment later a little wooden door in the wall opened inward. I stooped and stepped inside to find myself in a garden open to the sky, surrounded by a colonnade. The scent of burning leaves filled my nostrils; an elderly slave was gathering leaves with a rake, arranging them in piles about a small brazier in the center of the garden.

The soldier smiled at me crookedly. I judged him to be not much older than myself, despite his bald head and the grey hairs that bristled from his eyebrows. The dark circles beneath his eyes marked him as a man who badly needed sleep and a respite from worry. He hobbled past me and pulled up a chair for me to sit on.

“Tell me, neighbor, did you grow up in the countryside?” he said. His voice cracked slightly, as if pleasant discourse was a strain to him.

“No, I was born in Rome.”

“Ah. I grew up near Arpinum myself. I only mention it because I saw you staring at the leaves and the fire. I know how city folk dread fires and shun them except for heat and cooking. It’s a country habit, burning leaves. Dangerous, but I’m careful. The smell reminds me of my boyhood. As does this garden.”

I looked up at the tall, denuded trees that loomed in stark silhouette against the cloudy sky. Among them were some cypresses and yews that still wore their shaggy, grey-green coats. A weirdly twisted little tree, hardly more than a bush, stood in the corner, surrounded by a carpet of round, yellow leaves. The old slave walked slowly toward the bush and began to rake its leaves in among the others.

“Have you lived in this house long?” I asked.

“For three years. I cashed in the farm Sulla gave me and bought this place. I retired before the fighting was finished. My leg was crippled, and another wound made my sword arm useless. My shoulder still hurts me now and again, especially at this time of year, when the weather turns cold. This is a bad time of year, all around.” He grimaced, whether at a phantom pain in his shoulder or at phantoms in the air I could not tell.

“When did you first see the lemures?” I asked. Since the man insisted on taking my time, there was no point in being subtle.

“Just after I moved into this house.”

“Ah, then perhaps the lemures were here before you arrived.”

“No,” he said gravely. “They must have followed me here.” He limped toward the brazier, stooped stiffly, gathered up a handful of leaves and scattered them on the fire. “Only a little at a time,” he said softly. “Wouldn’t want to be careless with a fire in the garden. Besides, it makes the pleasure last. A little today, a little more tomorrow. Burning leaves reminds me of boyhood.”

“How do you know they followed you? The lemures, I mean.”

“Because I recognize them.”

“Who were they?”

“I never knew their names.” He stared into the fire. “But I remember the Etruscan’s face when my sword cut open his entrails and he looked up at me, gasping and unbelieving. I remember the bloodshot eyes of the sentries we surprised one night outside Capua. They had been drinking, the fools. When we stuck our swords into their bellies, I could smell the wine amid the stench that came pouring out. I remember the boy I killed in battle once — so young and tender my blade sliced clear through his neck. His head went flying off. One of my men caught it and cast it back at me, laughing. It landed at my feet. I swear, the boy’s eyes were still open, and he knew what was happening to him...”

He stooped, groaning at the effort, and gathered another handful of leaves. “The flames make all things pure again,” he whispered. “The odor of burning leaves is the smell of innocence.”

He watched the fire for a long moment. “They come at this time of year, the lemures. Seeking revenge. They cannot harm my body. They had their chance to do that when they were living, and they only succeeded in maiming me. It was I who killed their bodies, I who triumphed. Now they seek to drive me mad. They cast a spell on me. They cloud my mind and draw me into the pit. They shriek and dance about my head, they open their bellies over me and bury me in offal, they dismember themselves and drown me in a sea of blood and gore. Somehow I’ve always struggled free, but my will grows weaker every year. One day they will draw me into the pit and I will never come out again.”

He covered his face. “Go now. I’m ashamed that you should see me like this. When you see me again, it will be more terrible than you can imagine. But you will come, when I send for you? You will come and see them for yourself? A man as clever as you might strike a bargain, even with the dead.”

He dropped his hands. I would hardly have recognized his face — his eyes were red, his cheeks gaunt, his lips trembling. “Swear to me that you will come, Gordianus. If only to bear witness to my destruction.”

“I do not make oaths—”

“Then promise me as a man, and leave the gods out of it. I beg you to come when I call.”

“I will come,” I finally sighed, thinking that a promise to a madman was not truly binding.

The old slave, clucking and shaking his head with worry, ushered me to the little door. “I fear that your master is already mad,” I whispered. “These lemures are from his own imagination.”

“Oh, no,” said the old slave. “I have seen them, too.”

“You?”

“Yes, just as he described.”

“And the other slaves?”

“We have all seen the lemures.”

I looked into the old slave’s calm, unblinking eyes for a long moment. Then I stepped through the passage and he shut the door behind me.

“A veritable plague of lemures!” I said as I lay upon my couch taking dinner that night. “Rome is overrun by them.”

Bethesda, who sensed the unease beneath my levity, tilted her head and arched an eyebrow, but said nothing.

“And that silly warning Lucius Claudius wrote in his note this morning! ‘Do not bring the boy, the circumstances might frighten him’ — ha! What could be more appealing to a twelve-year-old boy than the chance to see a genuine lemur!”

Eco chewed a mouthful of bread and watched me with round eyes, not sure whether I was joking or not.

“The whole affair seems quite absurd to me,” ventured Bethesda. She crossed her arms impatiently. As was her custom, she had already eaten in the kitchen, and merely watched while Eco and I feasted. “As even the stupidest person in Egypt knows, the bodies of the dead cannot survive unless they have been carefully mummified according to ancient laws. How could the body of a dead man be wandering about Rome, frightening this Titus into jumping off a balcony? Especially a dead man who had his head cut off. It was a living fiend who pushed him off the balcony, that much is obvious. Ha! I’ll wager it was his wife who did it!”

“Then what of the soldier’s haunting? The old slave swears that the whole household has seen the lemures. Not just one, but a whole swarm of them.”

“Fah! The slave lies to excuse his master’s feeblemindedness. He is loyal, as a slave should be, but not necessarily honest.”

“Even so, I think I shall go if the soldier calls me, to judge with my own eyes. And the matter of the lemur on the Palatine Hill is worth pursuing, if only for the handsome fee that Cornelia promises.”

Bethesda shrugged. To change the subject, I turned to Eco. “And speaking of outrageous fees, what did that thief of a tutor teach you today?”

Eco jumped from his couch and ran to fetch his stylus and wax tablet.

Bethesda uncrossed her arms. “If you continue with these matters,” she said, her voice now pitched to conceal her own unease, “I think that your friend Lucius Claudius gives you good advice. There is no need to take Eco along with you. He’s busy with his lessons and should stay at home. He’s safe here, from evil men and evil spirits alike.”

I nodded, for I had been thinking the same thing myself.

The next morning I stepped quietly past the soldier’s house. He did not spy me and call out, though I could tell he was awake and in his garden; I smelled the tang of burning leaves on the air.

I had promised Lucius and Cornelia that I would come again to the house on the Palatine, but there was another call I wanted to make first.

A few questions in the right ears and a few coins in the right hands were all it took to find the house of Furius’s mother on the Caelian Hill, where his survivors had fled after he was proscribed, beheaded, and dispossessed. The house was small and narrow, wedged in among other small, narrow houses that might have been standing for a hundred years; the street had somehow survived the fires and the constant rebuilding that continually changes the face of the city, and seemed to take me into an older, simpler Rome, when rich and poor alike lived in modest private dwellings, before the powerful began to flaunt their wealth with great houses and the poor were pressed together into many-storied tenements.

A knock upon the door summoned a veritable giant, a hulking, thick-chested slave with squinting eyes and a scowling mouth — not the door slave of a secure and respectable home, but quite obviously a bodyguard. I stepped back a few paces so that I did not have to strain to look up at him, and asked to see his master.

“If you had legitimate business here, you’d know that there is no master in this house,” he growled.

“Of course,” I said, “I misspoke myself. I meant to say your mistress — the mother of the late Furius.”

He scowled. “Do you misspeak yourself again, stranger, or could it be that you don’t know that the old mistress had a stroke not long after her son’s death? She and her daughter are in seclusion and see no one.”

“What was I thinking? I meant to say, of course, Furius’s widow—”

But the slave had had enough of me, and slammed the door in my face.

I heard a cackle of laughter behind me and turned to see a toothless old slavewoman sweeping the portico of the house across the street. “You’d have had an easier time getting in to see the dictator Sulla when he was alive,” she laughed.

I smiled and shrugged. “Are they always so unfriendly and abrupt?”

“With strangers, always. You can’t blame them — a house full of women with no man around but a bodyguard.”

“No man in the house — ah, not since Furius was executed.”

“You knew him?” asked the slavewoman.

“Not exactly. But I know of him.”

“Terrible, what they did to him. He was no enemy of Sulla’s. Furius had no stomach for politics or fighting. A gentle man, wouldn’t have kicked a dog from his front step.”

“But his brother took up arms against Sulla, and died fighting him.”

“That was his brother, not Furius. I knew them both, from when they were boys growing up in that house with their mother. Furius was a peaceful child, and a cautious man. A philosopher, not a fighter. What was done to him was a terrible injustice — naming him an enemy of the state, taking all his property, cutting off his...” She stopped her sweeping and cleared her throat. She hardened her jaw. “And who are you? Another schemer come to torment his womenfolk?”

“Not at all.”

“Because I’ll tell you right now that you’ll never get in to see his mother or sister. Ever since the death, and after that the old woman’s stroke, they haven’t stirred out of that house. A long time to be in mourning, you might say, but Furius was all they had. His widow goes out to do the marketing, with the little girl; but she still wears black. They all took his death very hard.”

At that moment the door across the street opened. A blonde woman emerged, draped in a black stola. Beside her, reaching up to hold her hand, was a little girl with haunted eyes and black curls. Closing the door and following behind was the giant, who saw me and scowled.

“On their way to market,” whispered the old slavewoman. “She usually goes at this time of morning. Ah, look at the precious little one, so serious-looking yet so pretty. Not so much like her mother, not so fair; no, the very image of her aunt, I’ve always said.”

“Her aunt? Not her father?”

“Him, too, of course...”

I talked with the old woman for a few moments, then hurried after the widow. I hoped for a chance to speak with her, but the bodyguard made it quite plain that I should keep my distance. I fell back and followed them in secret, observing her purchases as she did her shopping in the meat market.

At last I broke away and headed for the house on the Palatine.

Lucius and Cornelia hurried to the atrium even before the slave announced my arrival. Their faces were drawn with sleeplessness and worry.

“The lemur appeared again last night,” said Lucius.

“The thing was in my bedchamber.” Cornelia’s face was pale. “I woke to see it standing beside the door. It must have been the smell that woke me — a horrible, fetid stench! I tried to rise and couldn’t. I wanted to cry out, but my throat was frozen — the thing cast a spell on me. It said the words again: Now You. Then it disappeared into the hallway.”

“Did you pursue it?”

She looked at me as if I were mad.

“But I saw the thing,” offered Lucius. “I was in the bedchamber down the hall. I heard footsteps, and called out, thinking it might be Cornelia. There was no answer and the footsteps grew hurried. I leaped from my couch and stepped into the hall...”

“And you saw it?”

“Only for an instant. I called out. The thing paused and turned, then disappeared into the shadows. I would have followed it — really, Gordianus, I swear I would have — but at that instant Cornelia cried out for me. I turned and hurried to her room.”

“So the thing fled, and no one pursued it.” I stifled a curse.

“I’m afraid so,” said Lucius, wincing. “But when the thing turned and looked at me in the hallway, a bit of moonlight fell on its face.”

“You had a good look at it, then?”

“Yes. Gordianus, I didn’t know Furius well, but I had some dealings with him before his death, enough to recognize him across a street or in the Forum. And this creature — despite its broken teeth and the tumors on its flesh — this fiend most certainly bore the face of Furius!”

Cornelia suddenly gasped and began to stagger. Lucius held her up and called for help. Some of the household women gathered and escorted her to her bedchamber.

“Titus was just the same before his fall,” sighed Lucius, shaking his head. “He began to faint and suffer fits, would suddenly lose his breath and be unable to catch another. They say such afflictions are frequently caused by spiteful lemures.”

“Perhaps,” I said. “Or by a guilty conscience. I wonder if the lemur left any other manifestations behind? Show me where you saw the thing.”

Lucius led me down the hallway. “There,” he said, pointing to a spot a few paces beyond the door to his room. “At night a bit of light falls just there; everything beyond is dark.”

I walked to the place and looked about, then sniffed the air. Lucius sniffed as well. “The smell of putrefaction,” he murmured. “The lemur has left its fetid odor behind.”

“A bad smell, to be sure,” I said, “but not the odor of a corpse. Look here! A footprint!”

Just below us, two faint brown stains in the shape of sandals had been left on the tiled floor. In the bright morning light other marks of the same color were visible extending in both directions. Those toward Cornelia’s bedchamber, where many other feet had traversed, quickly became confused and unreadable. Those leading away showed only the imprint of the forefeet of a pair of sandals, with no heel marks.

“The thing came to a halt here, just as you said. Then it began to run, leaving only these abbreviated impressions. Why should a lemur run on tiptoes, I wonder? And what is this stain left by the footsteps?”

I knelt down and peered closely. Lucius, shedding his patrician dignity, got down on his hands and knees beside me. He wrinkled his nose. “The smell of putrefaction!” he said again.

“Not putrefaction,” I countered. “Common excrement. Come, let’s see where the footprints lead.”

We followed them down the hallway and around a corner, where the footprints ended before a closed door.

“Does this lead outside?” I asked.

“Why, no,” said Lucius, suddenly a patrician again and making an uncomfortable face. “That door opens into the indoor toilet.”

“How interesting.” I opened it and stepped inside. As I would have expected in a household run by a woman like Cornelia, the fixtures were luxurious and the place was quite spotless, except for some telltale footprints on the limestone floor. There were windows set high in the wall, covered by iron bars. A marble seat surmounted the hole. Peering within, I studied the lead piping of the drain.

“Straight down the slope of the Palatine Hill and into the Cloaca Maxima, and thence into the Tiber,” commented Lucius. Patricians may be prudish about bodily functions, but of Roman plumbing they are justifiably proud.

“Not nearly large enough for a man to pass through,” I said.

“What an awful idea!”

“Even so...” I called for a slave, who managed to find a chisel for me.

“Now what are you doing? Here, those tiles are made of fine limestone, Gordianus! You shouldn’t go chipping away at the corners.”

“Not even to discover this?” I slid the chisel under the edge of one of the stones and lifted it up.

Lucius drew back and gasped, then leaned forward and peered down into the darkness. “A tunnel!” he whispered.

“So it appears.”

“Why, someone must go down it!” Lucius peered at me and raised an eyebrow.

“Not even if Cornelia doubled my fee!”

“I wasn’t suggesting that you go, Gordianus.” He looked up at the young slave who had fetched the chisel. The boy looked slender and supple enough. When he saw what Lucius intended, he started back and looked at me imploringly.

“No, Lucius Claudius,” I said, “no one need be put at risk; not yet. Who knows what the boy might encounter — if not lemures and monsters, then boobytraps or scorpions or a fall to his death. First we should attempt to determine the tunnel’s egress. It may be a simple matter, if it merely follows the logical course of the plumbing.”

Which it did. From the balcony on the western side of the house, it was easy enough to judge where the buried pipes descended the slope into the valley between the Palatine and the Capitoline, where they joined with the Cloaca Maxima underground. At the foot of the hill, directly below the house, in a wild rubbish-strewn region behind some warehouses and granaries, I spied a thicket. Even stripped of their leaves, the bushes grew so thick that I could not see far into them.

Lucius insisted on accompanying me, though his bulky frame and expensive garb were ill-suited for traversing a rough hillside. We reached the foot of the hill and pushed our way into the thicket, ducking beneath branches and snapping twigs out of the way.

At last we came to the heart of the thicket, where our perseverance was rewarded. Hidden behind the dense, shaggy branches of a cypress tree was the tunnel’s other end. The hole was crudely made, lined with rough dabs of cement and broken bricks. It was just large enough for a man to enter, but the foul smell that issued from within was enough to keep vagrants or even curious children out.

At night, hidden behind the storehouses and sheds, such a place would be quite lonely and secluded. A man — or a lemur, for that matter — might come and go completely unobserved.

“Cold,” complained Lucius, “cold and damp and dark. It would have made more sense to stay in the house tonight, where it’s warm and dry. We could lie in wait in the hallway and trap this fiend when he emerges from his secret passage. Why, instead, are we huddling here in the dark and cold, watching for who-knows-what and jumping in fright every time a bit of wind whistles through the thicket?”

“You need not have come, Lucius Claudius. I didn’t ask you to.”

“Cornelia would have thought me a coward if I didn’t,” he pouted.

“And what does Cornelia’s opinion matter?” I snapped, and bit my tongue. The cold and damp had set us both on edge. A light drizzle began to fall, obscuring the moon and casting the thicket into even greater darkness. We had been hiding among the brambles since shortly after nightfall. I had warned Lucius that the watch was likely to be long and uncomfortable and possibly futile, but he had insisted on accompanying me. He had offered to hire some ruffians to escort us, but if my suspicions were correct we would not need them; nor did I want more witnesses to be present than was necessary.

A gust of icy wind whipped beneath my cloak and sent a shiver up my spine. Lucius’s teeth began to chatter. My mood grew dark. What if I was wrong, after all? What if the thing we sought was not human, but something else...

“And as for jumping in fear every time a twig snaps,” I whispered, “speak for yourself—”

I fell silent, for at that moment not one but many twigs began to snap. Something large had entered the thicket and was moving toward us.

“It must be a whole army!” whispered Lucius, clutching at my arm.

“No,” I whispered back. “Only two persons, if my guess is right.”

Two moving shapes, obscured by the tangle of branches and the deep gloom, came very near to us and then turned aside, toward the cypress tree that hid the tunnel’s mouth.

A moment later I heard a man’s voice, cursing: “Someone has blocked the hole!” I recognized the voice of the growling giant who guarded the house on the Caelian Hill.

“Perhaps the tunnel has fallen in.” When Lucius heard the second voice he clutched my arm again, not in fear but surprise.

“No,” I said aloud, “the tunnel was purposely blocked so that you could not use it again.”

There was a moment of silence, followed by the noise of two bodies scrambling in the underbrush.

“Stay where you are!” I said. “For your own good, stay where you are and listen to me!”

The scrambling ceased and there was silence again, except for the sound of heavy breathing and confused whispers.

“I know who you are,” I said. “I know why you’ve come here. I have no interest in harming you, but I must speak with you. Will you speak with me, Furia?”

“Furia?” whispered Lucius. The drizzle had ended, and moonlight illuminated the confusion on his face.

There was a long silence, then more whispering — the giant was trying to dissuade his mistress. Finally she spoke out. “Who are you?” she said.

“My name is Gordianus. You don’t know me. But I know that you and your family have suffered greatly, Furia. You have been wronged, most unjustly. Perhaps your vengeance on Titus and Cornelia is seemly in the eyes of the gods — I cannot judge. But you have been found out, and the time has come to stop your pretense. I’ll step toward you now. There are two of us. We bear no weapons. Tell your faithful slave that we mean no harm, and that to harm us will profit you nothing.”

I stepped slowly toward the cypress tree, a great, shaggy patch of black amid the general gloom. Beside it stood two forms, one tall, the other short.

With a gesture, Furia bade her slave to stay where he was, then she stepped toward us. A patch of moonlight fell on her face. Lucius gasped and started back. Even though I expected it, the sight still sent a shiver through my veins.

I confronted what appeared to be a young man in a tattered cloak. His short hair was matted with blood and blood was smeared all around his throat and neck, as if his neck had been severed and then somehow fused together again. His eyes were dark and hollow. His skin was as pale as death and dotted with horrible tumors, his lips were parched and cracked. When Furia spoke, her sweet, gentle voice was a strange contrast to her horrifying visage.

“You have found out,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Are you the man who called at my mother’s house this morning?”

“Yes.”

“Who betrayed me? It couldn’t have been Cleto,” she whispered, glancing at the bodyguard.

“No one betrayed you. We found the tunnel this afternoon.”

“Ah! My brother had it built during the worst years of the civil war, so that we might have a way to escape in a sudden crisis. Of course, when the monster became dictator, there was no way for anyone to escape.”

“Was your brother truly an enemy of Sulla’s?”

“Not in any active way, but there were those willing to paint him as such — those who coveted all he had.”

“Furius was proscribed for no reason?”

“No reason but the bitch’s greed!” Her voice was hard and bitter. I glanced at Lucius, who was curiously silent at such an assault on Cornelia’s character.

“It was Titus whom you haunted first—”

“Only so that Cornelia would know what awaited her. Titus was a weakling, a nobody, easily frightened. Ask Cornelia; she frightened him into doing anything she wished, even if it meant destroying an innocent colleague from his younger days. It was Cornelia who convinced her dear cousin Sulla to insert my brother’s name in the proscription lists, merely to obtain our house. Because the men of our line have perished, because Furius was the last, she thought that her calumny would go unavenged forever.”

“But now it must stop, Furia. You must be content with what you have done so far.”

“No!”

“A life for a life,” I said. “Titus for Furius.”

“No, ruin for ruin! The death of Titus will not restore our house, our fortune, our good name.”

“Nor will the death of Cornelia. If you proceed now, you are sure to be caught. You must be content with half a portion of vengeance, and push the rest aside.”

“You intend to tell her, then? Now that you’ve caught me at it?”

I hesitated. “First, tell me truly, Furia, did you push Titus from his balcony?”

She looked at me unwaveringly, the moonlight making her eyes glimmer like shards of onyx. “Titus jumped from the balcony. He jumped because he thought he saw the lemur of my brother, and he could not stand his own wretchedness and guilt.”

I bowed my head. “Go,” I whispered. “Take your slave and go now, back to your mother and your niece and your brother’s widow. Never come back.”

I looked up to see tears streaming down her face. It was a strange sight, to see a lemur weep. She called to the slave, and they departed from the thicket.

We ascended the hill in silence. Lucius stopped chattering his teeth and instead began to huff and puff. Outside Cornelia’s house I drew him aside.

“Lucius, you must not tell Cornelia.”

“But how else—”

“We will tell her that we found the tunnel but that no one came, that her persecutor has been frightened off for now, but may come again, in which case she can set her own guard. Yes, let her think that the unknown threat is still at large, always plotting her destruction.”

“But surely she deserves—”

“She deserves what Furia had in store for her. Did you know Cornelia had placed Furius’s name on the lists, merely to obtain his house?”

“I—” Lucius bit his lips. “I suspected the possibility. But Gordianus, what she did was hardly unique. Everyone was doing it.”

“Not everyone. Not you, Lucius.”

“True,” he said, nodding sheepishly. “But Cornelia will fault you for not capturing the imposter. She’ll refuse to pay the full fee.”

“I don’t care about the fee.”

“I’ll make up the difference,” said Lucius.

I laid my hand on his shoulder. “What is rarer than a camel in Gaul?” Lucius wrinkled his brow. I laughed. “An honest man in Rome.”

Lucius shrugged off the compliment with typical chagrin. “I still don’t understand how you knew the identity of the imposter.”

“I told you that I visited the house on the Caelian Hill this morning. What I didn’t tell you was that the old slavewoman across the street revealed to me that Furius not only had a sister, but that this sister was the same age — his twin — and bore a striking resemblance to him.”

“Ah! They must have been close, and her slightly softer features make her look younger than Furius.”

“Who must have been quite handsome. Even through her horrid makeup...” I sighed. “Also, when I followed Furius’s widow to market, I was struck by her purchase of a quantity of calf s blood. She also gathered a spray of juniper berries, which the little girl carried for her.”

“Berries?”

“The cankers pasted on Furia’s face — juniper berries cut in half. The blood was for matting her hair and daubing on her neck. As for the rest of her appearance, her ghastly makeup and costuming, you and I can only guess at the ingenuity of a household of women united toward a single goal. Furia has been in seclusion for months, which explains the almost uncanny paleness of her flesh — and the fact that she was able to cut off her hair without anyone taking notice.”

I shook my head. “A remarkable woman. I wonder why she never married? The turmoil and confusion of the civil war, I suppose, and the death of her brothers ruined her prospects forever. Misery is like a pebble cast into a pond, sending out a wave that spreads and spreads.”

I headed home that night weary and wistful. There are days when one sees too much of the world’s wickedness, and only a long sleep in the safe seclusion of one’s home can restore an appetite for life. I thought of Bethesda and Eco, and tried to push the face of Furia from my thoughts. The last thing on my mind was the haunted soldier and his legion of lemures, and yet I was destined to encounter them all before I reached my house.

I passed by the wall of his garden, smelled the familiar tang of burning leaves, but thought no more about the soldier until I heard the little wooden door open behind me and the voice of his old retainer crying out my name.

“Thank the gods you’ve finally returned!” he whispered hoarsely. He seemed to be in the grip of a strange malady or spell, for even though the door allowed him more room to stand, he remained oddly bent, his eyes gleamed dully, and his jaw was slack. “The master has sent messenger after messenger to your door — always they are told you are out, that your return is expected at any moment. But when the lemures come, time stops. Please, come! Save the master — save us all!”

From beyond the wall I heard the sound of moaning, not from one man but from many. I heard a woman shriek, and the sound of furniture overturned. What madness was taking place within the house?

“Please, help us! The lemures, the lemures!” The old slave made a face of such horror that I started back and turned to make my escape. My house was only a few steps up the pathway. But I turned back. I reached inside my tunic and felt for the handle of my dagger before I thought how little use a dagger would be to deal with those already dead.

It took no small amount of courage to step through the little door. My heart pounded like a hammer in my chest.

The air within was dank and smoky. After the brief drizzle a clammy cold had descended upon the hills of Rome, such as holds down plumes of smoke and makes the air unwholesome and stagnant. I breathed in an acrid breath and coughed.

The soldier came running from within the house. He tripped and staggered forward on his knees, wrapped his arms around my waist and looked up at me in abject terror. “There!” He pointed back toward the house. “They pursue me! Gods have mercy — the boy without a head, the soldier with his belly cut open, all the others!”

I peered into the hazy darkness, but saw nothing except a bit of whorling smoke. I suddenly felt dizzy and lightheaded. It was because I had not eaten all day, I told myself; I should have been less proud and presumed upon Cornelia’s hospitality for a meal. Then, while I watched, the whorl of smoke began to expand and change shape. A face emerged from the murky darkness — a boy’s face, twisted with agony.

“See!” cried the soldier. “See how the poor lad holds his own head in his fist, like Perseus holding the head of the Gorgon! See how he stares, blaming me!”

Indeed, out of the darkness and smoke I began to see exactly what the wretched man described, a headless boy in battle garb clutching his dismembered head by the hair and holding it aloft. I opened my mouth in awe and terror. Behind the boy, other shapes began to emerge — first a few, then many, then a legion of phantoms covered with blood and writhing like maggots in the air.

It was a terrifying spectacle. I would have fled, but I was rooted to the spot. The soldier clutched my knees. The old slave began to weep and babble. From within the house came the sound of others in distress, moaning and crying out.

“Don’t you hear them?” cried the soldier. “The lemures, shrieking like harpies!” The great looming mass of corpses began to keen and wail — surely all of Rome could hear it!

Like a drowning man, the mind in great distress will clutch at anything to save itself. A bit of straw will float, but will not support a thrashing man; a plank of wood may give him respite, but best of all is a steady rock within the raging current. So my mind clutched at anything that might preserve it in the face of such overwhelming and inexplicable horror. Time had come to a stop, just as the old slave had said, and in that endlessly attenuated moment a flood of images, memories, schemes, and notions raged through my mind. I clutched at straws. Madness pulled me downward, like an unseen current in black water. I sank — until I suddenly found the rock for which I sought.

“The bush!” I whispered. “The burning bush, which speaks aloud!”

The soldier, thinking I spied something within the mass of writhing lemures, clutched at me and trembled. “What bush? Ah yes, I see it, too...”

“No, the bush here in your garden! That strange, gnarled tree among the yews, with yellow leaves all around. But now the leaves have all been swept in among the others... burnt with the others in the brazier... the smoke still hangs in the air...”

I pulled the soldier out of the garden, through the small door, and onto the pathway. I returned for the old slave, and then, one by one, for the others. They huddled together on the cobblestones, trembling and confused, their eyes wide with terror and red with blood.

“There are no lemures!” I whispered hoarsely, my throat sore from the smoke — even though I could see them hovering over the wall, cackling and dangling their entrails in the empty air.

The slaves pointed and clutched one another. The soldier hid behind his hands.

As the slaves grew more manageable, I led them in groups to my house, where they huddled together, frightened but safe. Bethesda was perplexed and displeased at the sudden invasion of half-mad strangers, but Eco was delighted at the opportunity to stay up until dawn under such novel circumstances. It was a long, cold night, marked by fits of panic and orgies of mutual reassurance, while we waited for sanity to return.

The first light of morning broke, bringing a cold dew that was a tonic to senses still befuddled by sleeplessness and poisoned by smoke. My head pounded like thunder, with a hangover far worse than any I had ever gotten from wine. A ray of pale sunlight was like a knife to my eyes, but I no longer saw visions of lemures or heard their mad shrieking.

The soldier, haggard and dazed, begged me for an explanation. I agreed readily enough, for a wise man once taught me that the best relief for a pounding headache is the application of disciplined thought, which brings blood to the brain and flushes evil humors from the phlegm.

“It came to me in a flash of inspiration, not logic,” I explained. “Your autumnal ritual of burning leaves, and the yearly visitation of the lemures... the smoke that filled your garden, and the plague of spirits... these things were not unconnected. That odd, twisted tree in your garden is not native to Rome, or to the peninsula. How it came here, I have no idea, but I suspect it came from the East, where plants which induce visions are quite common. There is the snake plant of Aethiopia, the juice of which causes such terrible visions that it drives men to suicide; men guilty of sacrilege are forced to drink it as a punishment. The rivergleam plant that grows on the banks of the Indus is also famous for making men rave and see weird visions. But I suspect that the tree in your garden may be a specimen of a rare bush found in the rocky mountains east of Egypt. Bethesda tells a tale about it.”

“What tale?” said Bethesda.

“You remember — the tale your Hebrew father passed on to you, about his ancestor called Moses, who encountered a bush that spoke aloud to him when it burned. The leaves of your bush, neighbor, not only spoke but cast powerful visions.”

“Yet why did I see what I saw?”

“You saw that which you feared the most — the vengeful spirits of those you killed fighting for Sulla.”

“But the slaves saw what I saw! And so did you!”

“We saw what you suggested, just as you began to see a burning bush when I said the words.”

He shook his head. “It was never so powerful before. Last night was more terrible than ever!”

“Probably because, in the past, you happened to burn only a few of the yellow leaves at a time, and the cold wind carried away much of the smoke; the visions came upon some but not all of the household, and in varying degrees. But last night the smoke hovered in the garden and the haze spread through the house; and perhaps you happened to burn a great many of the yellow leaves at once. Everyone who breathed the smoke was intoxicated and stricken with a kind of madness. Once we escaped the smoke, with time the madness passed, like a fever burning itself out.”

“Then the lemures never existed?”

“I think not.”

“And if I uproot that accursed bush and cast it in the Tiber, I will never see the lemures again?”

“Perhaps not,” I said. Though you may always see them in your nightmares, I thought.

“So, it was just as I told you,” said Bethesda, bringing a cool cloth to lay upon my forehead that afternoon. Flashes of pain still coursed through my temples from time to time, and whenever I closed my eyes alarming visions loomed in the blackness.

“Just as you told me? Nonsense!” I said. “You thought that Titus was pushed from his balcony — and that his wife Cornelia did it!”

“A woman pretending to be a lemur drove him to jump — which is just the same,” she insisted.

“And you said the soldier’s old slave was lying about having seen the lemures himself, when in fact he was telling the truth.”

“What I said was that the dead cannot go walking about unless they have been properly mummified, and I was absolutely right. And it was I who once told you about the burning bush that speaks, remember? Without that, you never would have figured the cause.”

“Fair enough,” I admitted, deciding it was impossible to win the argument.

“This quaint Roman idea about lemures haunting the living is completely absurd,” she went on.

“About that I am not sure.”

“But with your own eyes you have seen the truth! By your own wits you have proved in two instances that what everyone thought to be lemures were not lemures at all, only makeup and fear, intoxicating smoke and guilty consciences!”

“You miss the point, Bethesda.”

“What do you mean?”

“Lemures do exist — perhaps not as visitors perceptible to the senses, but in another way. The dead do have power to spread misery among the living. The spirit of a man can carry on and cause untold havoc from beyond the grave. The more powerful the man, the more terrible his legacy.” I shivered — not at lurid visions remembered from the soldier’s garden, but at the naked truth, which was infinitely more concrete and terrible. “Rome is a haunted city. The lemur of the dictator Sulla haunts us all. Dead he may be, but not departed. His wickedness lingers on, bringing despair and suffering upon his friends and foes alike.”

To this Bethesda had no answer. I closed my eyes and saw no more monsters, but slept a dreamless sleep until dawn of the following day.