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

“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.”