most exclusive district. Except for two pillars in the form of caryatids 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 onetime client, 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 nepenthe he was given…' Lucius shifted his considerable bulk uneasily inside his vast black cloak, and reached up nervously to scratch at his frizzled 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 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 rigidly 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
The Lemures were quite close, despite the difference in our ages. I was with him 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 center of the room and departed.
'How much does Gordianus know?' Cornelia asked 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 said, '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?'
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 into 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 called after me.'
'What did it say?'
'Two words: Now you. Oh!' Cornelia drew in a quick, sharp 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 missing jewel or a stolen document; call on me with a case of blackmail 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.
