On the right side of the road are the public refuse pits, where the residents of the Subura and surrounding neighbor' hoods dump their trash. All manner of waste lies heaped in the sand pits-broken bits of crockery and furniture, rotting scraps of food, discarded garments soiled and torn beyond even a beggar's use. Here and there the custodians light small fires to consume the debris, then rake fresh sand over the smoldering embers.
No matter in which direction one looks, there are certainly no gardens outside the Esquiline Gate, unless one counts the isolated flowers that spring up among the moldering debris of the trash heaps, or the scraggly vines which wind their way about the old, neglected tombs of the forgotten dead. I began to suspect that Oppianicus and the Fox had a cruel sense of humor indeed.
A glance at Lucius told me that he was having second thoughts about accompanying me on this part of my investigation. The Subura and its vices might seem colorful and quaint, but even Lucius could find no charm in the necropolis and the rubbish tips. He wrinkled his nose and batted a swarm of flies from his face, but he did not turn back.
We passed back and forth between the right side of the road and the left, questioning the few people we met about three strangers they might have seen two days before-an older man, a foxy young rogue, and a mere lad. The tenders of the dead waved us aside, having no patience to deal with the living; the custodians of the trash heaps shrugged and shook their heads.
We stood at the edge of the sand pits, surveying a prospect that might have looked like Hades, if there were a sun to shine through the hazy smoke of Hades onto its smoldering wastes. Suddenly, there was a low hissing noise behind us. Lucius started. My hand jumped to my dagger.
The maker of the noise was a shuffling, stooped derelict who had been watching us from behind a heap of smoldering rubbish.
'What do you want?' I asked, keeping my hand close to the dagger.
The lump of filthy hair and rags swayed a bit, and two milky eyes stared up at me. 'I hear you're looking for someone,' the man finally said.
'Perhaps.'
'Then perhaps I can help you.'
'Speak plainly.'
'I know where you'll find the young man!'
'What young man are you talking about?'
The figure stooped and looked up at me sidelong. 'I heard you asking one of the workers a moment ago. You didn't see me, but I saw you, and I listened. I heard you asking about the three men who were by here two days ago, the older man and the boy and the one between. I know where the boy is!'
'Show us.'
The creature held out a hand so stained and weathered it looked like a stump of wood. Lucius drew back, appalled, but reached for his purse. I stayed his hand.
'After you show us,' I said.
The thing hissed at me. It stamped its foot and growled. Finally it turned and waved for us to follow.
I grabbed Lucius's arm and whispered in his ear. 'You mustn't come. Such a creature is likely to lure us into a trap. Look at the jewels you wear, the purse you carry. Go to the crematoria, where you'll be safe. I'll follow the man alone.'
Lucius looked at me, his lips pursed, his eyes open wide. 'Gordianus, you must be joking. No power of man or god will stop me from seeing whatever this man has to show us!'
The creature shambled and lurched over the rubbish heaps and drifts of dirty sand. We strode deeper and deeper into the wastes. The heaps of ash and rubble rose higher around us, hid' ing us from the road. The creature led us around the flank of a low sandy hill. An orange haze engulfed us. An acrid cloud of smoke swirled around us. I choked. Lucius reached for his throat and began to cough. The hot breath of an open flame blew against my face.
Through the murk I saw the derelict silhouetted against the fire. He bobbed his head up and down and pointed at something in the flames.
'What is it?' I wheezed. 'I see nothing.'
Lucius gave a start. He seized my arm and pointed. There, within the inferno, amid the indiscriminate heap of fiery rubbish, I glimpsed the remains of a human body.
The flaming heap collapsed upon itself, sending out a spray of orange cinders. I covered my face with my sleeve and put my arm around Lucius's shoulder. Together we fled from the blazing heat and smoke. The derelict scampered after us, his long brown arm extended, palm up.
'There is no proof that the body the derelict showed us was that of Asuvius,' I said. 'It might have been another derelict, for all we know. The truth is beyond proving. That is the crux of the matter.' took a long sip of wine. Night had descended on Rome. Crickets chirred in my garden. Bethesda sat beneath the portico nearby, beside a softly glowing lamp. She pretended to stitch a torn tunic, but listened to every word. Lucius Claudius sat beside me, staring at the moon's reflection in his cup.
'Tell me, Gordianus, how exactly do you explain the discrepancies between what I saw and the tale that Columba told us? What really happened the day after the Ides of Maius?'
'I should think that the sequence of events is clear.'
'Even so-'
'Very well, this is how I would tell the story. There was once a wealthy young orphan in a town called Larinum who chose his friends very poorly. Two of those friends, an old rogue and a young predator, talked him into going to Rome for a long holiday. The three of them took up residence in one of the seedier parts of town and proceeded to indulge in just the sorts of vices that are likely to lull a green country lad into a vulnerable stupor. Away from the boy's watchful sisters and the town gossips in Larinum, the Fox and old Oppianicus were free to hatch their scheme.
'On a morning when Asuvius was dallying with his favorite prostitute, the Fox pretended to be the boy and took to his bed, feigning a mortal illness. Oppianicus summoned strangers off the street to act as witnesses to a will-people who wouldn't know Asuvius from Alexander. Oppianicus made at least one mistake, but he got away with it.'
'What was that?'
'Someone must have asked the dying man's age. Oppianicus, without thinking, said he was not yet twenty; you told me so. True enough, if he meant Asuvius. But it was the Fox who lay on the bed pretending to be Asuvius, and I gather that the Fox is well beyond twenty. Even so, you yourself ascribed the discrepancy to illness-'haggard and lined,' you said he looked, as if terribly aged from his sickness. The other witnesses probably thought the same thing. People will go to great lengths to make the evidence of their own eyes conform to whatever someone tells them is the truth.'
Lucius frowned. 'Why was the will in two different handwritings?'
'Yes, I remember you mentioning that. The Fox began it, feigning such a weak hand that he couldn't finish it; such a ploy would help to explain why his signature would not be recognizable as the hand of Asuvius-anyone would think it was the scrawl of a man nearly dead.'
'But the Fox pressed his own seal ring into the wax,' protested Lucius. 'I saw him do it. It couldn't have been the true seal of Asuvius, who was with Columba, wearing his ring.'
'I'll come to that. Now, once the will was witnessed all around, you and the others were shunted from the room. Oppianicus wound the Fox up in a sheet, tore his hair and worked tears into his eyes, then called for the landlord.'
'Who saw a corpse!'
'Who thought he saw a corpse. All he saw was a body in a sheet. He thought Asuvius had died of a sudden illness; he took no pains to examine the corpse.'
'But later he saw two men taking the body away in a cart.'
'He saw Oppianicus and the Fox, who had changed back into his clothes, carrying out something wrapped up in a sheet- a sack of millet, for all we know.'
'Ah, and once they were out of sight they got rid of the cart and the millet and went to fetch Asuvius from the brothel.'
