Roma.The novel of ancient Rome

them homeward at once.

Armed with knives and spears, hunting in pairs, the settlers combed the Seven Hills. Two of the hunters must have found the monster. Their bodies were eventually discovered on the hill of the osier trees, broken and eviscerated, much as the cow’s body had been.

It did not take long for word to spread up and down the trails that led to the ruma: The monster that was stalking the trading post had an appetite for human flesh. Traders did not merely stop doing business at the settlement; they made great detours to avoid passing anywhere near it.

With most of the traders gone and traffic so greatly reduced on the trails, the monster grew even bolder. An infant went missing. Her remains were found only a short distance from the settlement, at the foot of the steep hill on the far side of the Spinon. One of the searchers, looking up to avert his eyes from the horrible sight, glimpsed a movement on the hillside above. From behind a bramble-covered lip of stone, a hideous face peered down for a moment, then disappeared. A moment later, a shower of rocks rained down on the searchers, who fled. Peering up at the hillside from a safe distance, they discerned what appeared to be a cave, its opening obscured by brambles. None of them could see a way to scale the hillside. Even if it could be scaled, none of them could imagine what would await them once they reached the mouth of the cave.

Back at the settlement, the searchers told what they had discovered. To her horror, Potitia realized that the monster had taken up residence in her secret cave, which was a secret no longer.

From his hole high up in the side of the hill, Cacus ventured out at night to terrorize the settlement. During the day, he stayed hidden in the cave.

More than once, the settlers attempted to scale the hillside and attack him in his lair. Bellowing his name, Cacus dropped stones on them. One settler fell and broke his neck. Another was struck in the eye and blinded. Another managed to draw closer to the mouth of the cave than anyone else, but was killed instantly by a stone that struck his forehead. Instead of falling, his limp body became caught on sharp rocks and brambles. No one dared to climb up and retrieve it. There it hung for several days and nights, a horrifying rebuke to those who had sought to destroy the monster. One morning, the body was no longer there. Cacus had claimed it. The man’s bones, picked clean, appeared one by one at the foot of the hill as Cacus tossed them out.

It was Potitius who suggested that the hillside be set afire. If the flames and smoke did not kill the monster outright, they might at least drive him from his lair. The brambles at the foot of the hill were set on fire. The flames spread upward, heading directly for the cave. Then a wind blew up from the Tiber and drove the flame this way and that. Embers spiraled high in the air, blew across the Spinon, and ignited the thatched roof of a hut. The flames spread from hut to hut. The settlers worked desperately to douse the flames with buckets of water from the river. When the fire at last burned itself out, the face of the hillside was scorched and black, but the cave was untouched and the monster unharmed.

It was decided that a watch should be set upon the cave, so that, if the monster descended, an alarm could be raised. Men and boys took turns throughout the day and night, training their eyes upon what little could be seen of the mouth of the cave from below.

One of Potitia’s cousins, a burly, hotheaded youth named Pinarius, boasted to her that he would put an end to Cacus once and for all. Caught up in his enthusiasm, Potitia confessed to her cousin that she had climbed to the cave many times. Scarcely believing her, Pinarius nonetheless accepted her explanation of how it could be done.

On the afternoon that it was his turn to keep watch on the cave, Pinarius decided to act. The day was hot and the air was heavy with sleep. The rest of the settlers dozed, except for Potitia, who knew of her cousin’s plan and gave him a kiss for luck before he began the climb.

From above, there came a faint noise that they took to be the sound of the monster snoring. Perhaps it was the buzzing of flies, drawn to the cave by blood and gore. Potitia remembered summer afternoons when she had dozed in the shadowy coolness of the cave. She could picture the monster asleep in that familiar, beloved place. The image made her shiver, yet it also pierced her with a sadness that she could not explain. For the first time she wondered where the monster came from. Were there others of his kind? Surely a mother had given birth to him. What fate had led him to the ruma, to become the most wretched of all living things?

Pinarius made the ascent quietly and quickly, but as he drew close to the cave he reached for a handhold that would have taken him in the wrong direction. Watching from below, Potitia corrected his course with a loud whisper.

The sound that might have been the monster’s snoring abruptly stopped. Potitia felt a shiver of dread.

Pinarius reached the mouth of the cave. He pulled himself onto the lip of stone, gained his balance, and grinned down at her. He pulled out his knife and showed her the blade, then disappeared into the cave.

The scream that followed was like nothing she had ever heard, so loud that it woke every sleeper in the village. A rending noise followed, then silence. A few moments later, Pinarius’s head came flying from the hole in the hillside. It landed with a thud in the grass just beyond Potitia, who fell to the ground in a faint. Dazed, with the sun in her eyes and swooning from the heat, she looked up and saw Cacus standing on the lip of stone high above, staring down at her. His hulking, misshapen body was covered with blood and gore. The sound that came from his throat-“Cacus? Cacus?”-had a low, urgent, questioning quality, as if he gazed at a thing which fascinated him, from which he desired a reply.

“Cacus?” he uttered again, cocking his head and staring down at her.

Potitia scrambled to her feet. Running blindly, she tripped over the head of Pinarius. She gave a shriek and staggered back to the settlement, weeping.

The death of Pinarius drove many of the settlers to the limit of their endurance. His father, also named Pinarius, argued that the time had come to abandon the settlement. The monster had inflicted great suffering, and against him they were powerless; but more than this, the arrival of the creature had unleashed a great evil in the land of the ruma. The numina all around them had turned against the settlers. The worst of the misfortunes had been the burning of the huts by treacherous winds and flames, but there had been many other, smaller misfortunes in recent days. The settlers must move on, argued the elder Pinarius. The only questions to be debated were when and to where, and whether they should stay together or go their separate ways.

“If we leave, cousin, what will keep the monster here?” asked Potitius. “I think he’ll follow us. He’ll stalk us on the trail. Our children will be his prey.”

“Maybe,” acknowledged Pinarius. “But in the open, away from his cave, we might at least have a chance to kill the thing.”

Potitius shook his head. “This creature is a far more skillful hunter than any of us. We’d have no chance against him in the wild. One by one, he would take us.”

“That’s what he’s doing now!” Pinarius wept, grieving for his son.

The argument was not settled, but it seemed to Potitia that it was only a matter of time until Pinarius would prevail. The ruma had become a place of sadness and despair. Still, it broke her heart to think of leaving the hills of her childhood.

Then the stranger arrived.

It was the lowing of oxen that woke Potitia that morning. There had been no oxen in the market for a long time. At first, she thought she must be dreaming of the old days before the coming of Cacus. But as she stirred and rose, the sound of the oxen continued. She hurried from the hut to see what was happening.

Sure enough, a small herd of oxen was standing in the slanting sunlight in the meadow on the far side of the Spinon, peacefully eating the grass that grew near the foot of the hill where Cacus dwelled. Near the herd, sitting on the ground and leaning against a tree trunk, was the ox-driver. His eyes were closed and his head was tilted to one side; he appeared to be asleep. Even at a glance, and at such a distance, Potitia was quite certain she had never seen him before. For one thing, he was much larger than any other man she had ever seen, except Cacus, if Cacus could be called a man. Unlike Cacus, he was not at all ugly or frightening to look at. Indeed, he was quite the opposite. She found herself crossing the steppingstones that traversed the Spinon and walking toward him.

“Potitia! What are you doing?” Her father, along with most of the other settlers, had gathered near the empty cattle pen. They were watching the stranger from a safe distance, trying to decide whether he should be