I barely kept myself from laughing. Based on my own experience, I could have told Calpurnius that “obsessed” was far too kind a way to describe Domitian’s interest in Augustus’ descendants.
“Ironically,” Calpurnius said, “the only child they’ve had died.” Even in the dim light I could see that he couldn’t suppress a smile.
“What does any of this have to do with you being blackmailed and Amalthea being killed?” I asked.
“It’s the reason behind it all,” Calpurnius said. “What Aristotle would call the prime mover, the thing that sets everything else in motion.” He took a moment to gather himself, then went on. “Several of us—friends of Aelius—decided we would not sit idly by and let this pretender take Aelius’ wife from him. His father Vespasian comes from a family of tax-collectors and rag-merchants. They barely qualify for the equestrian stripe. They had over-reached themselves and needed to be dealt with.”
Calpurnius’ tone of voice, along with the tilt of his head, revealed his arrogance. Even though his family wasn’t in the top rank in Rome, he thought himself better than he was and everyone beneath him worse than they were. That sort of snobbery can cause a man to underestimate those he considers his inferiors. Vespasian and his sons may have over-reached, but they had grasped the prize, pushing Calpurnius and his ineffectual friends aside in the process.
“How did you propose to deal with them?”
“I wrote a short letter to Aelius telling him we were going to ‘rectify the wrong that had been done’ to him.”
Tacitus and I gasped. “You put that in writing?” Tacitus said before I could form the question.
“Why are you so surprised?” Calpurnius said. “It’s perfectly innocuous. I didn’t say we intended to kill Domitian, although that was precisely what we were planning.”
“I don’t think anyone could miss your meaning,” I said. “If you were foolish enough to write that, was Aelius foolish enough to keep the letter?” I knew I was being harsh, but this man had gotten himself into this predicament by violating the first rule of survival in Rome: never say anything that could be misunderstood—inadvertently or deliberately—and never write anything down. If it’s on papyrus, somebody will find it.
“Yes, he kept it. He wanted to write a history of that period, so he kept everything. There’s no more dangerous urge than the itch to write history. I hope neither of you is ever afflicted with it.”
“When did the blackmail begin?”
“About the time I was emancipated I received the first demand for money. They—or he, or she, I don’t know—said they would reveal the contents of the letter if I didn’t pay.”
“That was six years ago, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. A little over a year before this disaster.” He waved his hand as though showing off the room. “Someone knew I had access to money that I didn’t have to account to my father for. And they knew a particular phrase that was used in the letter. They couldn’t have known that unless they had seen the letter.”
“You don’t have any idea who it was? Not even the most unlikely suspicion?”
“None whatsoever. I talked to Aelius, of course. He said he still had the original copy of the letter.”
“So someone had read it or made a copy.” Once again I wished I had Phineas along to take notes.
“They had to have seen the original or they wouldn’t have seen the word we used as a code. It was embedded in the text, rather cleverly if I must say so myself. I told Aelius to destroy the thing immediately. He told me that he burned it.”
“After it was too late,” Tacitus said.
Calpurnius nodded. “Epimetheus always sees things more clearly than Prometheus, doesn’t he?”
“If you didn’t know who was blackmailing you,” I asked, “how did you pay them?”
“Once a month I rode into Naples and left the money with the owner of a book shop on the south side of town. He had been told that I was paying off a gambling debt and was trying to remain discreet.”
“Could he have been the blackmailer?”
Calpurnius shook his head. “He was nobody. He couldn’t have had access to the letter.”
“So he delivered the money to someone, or someone picked it up,” Tacitus said.
“He must have,” Calpurnius said.
“Did you watch to see what happened after you left the book shop?” Tacitus asked.
“The first time I left the money I did hide nearby and kept watch for the rest of the day. I did not see anyone I recognized going into the place, and no one coming out was carrying my money pouch.”
“It would be easy to conceal,” I pointed out.
“I know, but I couldn’t search everybody who left. The next day, I received a message warning me that I had been spotted.”
“That suggests that someone with a connection to the book shop was collecting the money.”
“There are apartments on the two floors above the book shop. I had no way of knowing where somebody was watching me. The note said, if I was seen again, the consequences would be dire. I decided it was safer just to let the matter rest.”
I couldn’t believe a man would have so little interest in finding out who was blackmailing him, especially a man described as having good business sense. “You could have hired someone to watch the place.” A spy like Aurora.
“I wasn’t sure I wanted to know who was behind it. I didn’t think it was Domitian or Longina. If they had found out about the plot, I was sure they would have taken more direct action. If I pressed the issue, I was afraid the blackmailers might actually go to Domitian. There was no serious threat, just the demand for some money. Bribes and payoffs are part of doing business. I could absorb the expense.”
“Until the eruption?”
Calpurnius sighed heavily. “Yes. After the eruption my sources of income were greatly diminished. The shops I owned around here, the estates, they were all gone. I went through my reserves in just a couple of years.”
Bastet held a skin to his lips and Calpurnius took another swallow of water. He laid his head on the Nubian’s bosom and closed his eyes. For a moment I was afraid he was dead.
“He needs rest, my lord,” Bastet said, caressing his forehead, “and food. That filthy child didn’t leave enough. You and Cornelius Tacitus should go back and get some more supplies.”
I did not want a slave giving me instructions, especially one who showed no remorse whatsoever about killing a boy’s father. “I think one of us should stay here,” I objected.
“Do you think I’m going to run away, Gaius Pliny?” Calpurnius said without opening his eyes. “If it hadn’t been for the good fortune of a stray horse, I would never have gotten this far. And the horse is gone now. I’ll be here any time you want to talk to me. I’m very tired and very hungry.”
Tacitus took me by the elbow and steered me out of the room. “Let’s go,” he said. “It won’t take us that long to get to Aurelia’s house and back here. If the man’s stomach is full, he’ll be able to talk longer, and perhaps be in a more voluble mood.”
I didn’t like the idea, but it would give me a chance to think over what I’d heard so far, and I needed to get out of this place.
†
When we emerged from the tunnel I took a deep breath. “Well, at least the Sibyl was wrong.”
“But you have to go back down there,” Tacitus reminded me, picking up on my allusion as though he were reading my mind.
Like a good sentinel, Philippos stood on duty. I explained our mission to him. “We’re going to get some food and lamps and other supplies for the man who’s down there. I want you to conceal yourself and keep an eye on this entrance. If that Nubian woman or a tall Roman man comes out, you watch which way they go and tell me when I get back.”
“But, sir, you want me to stay here…all by myself?”
His eyes conveyed a scroll’s worth of expression. I realized he had never been completely alone in his life, and he had no reason to believe that we—the peopl
e who had killed his father—would return. I took the leather strap with the Tyche ring from around my neck and placed it around his.
“This ring is quite…quite precious to me. It’s the goddess of good fortune. If I leave it with you, she will protect you and you know I’ll come back for it, and for you. And we’ll bring you some more to eat.”
“And a clean tunic,” Tacitus said.
“How long will it take, sir?”
“Not long at all. I promise you that. You just keep a sharp eye on that entrance. It’s a very important job.”
Fingering the ring, he seemed reassured enough to smile at me. I tousled his hair and Tacitus and I climbed down the bank of hardened ash to where the raeda was waiting. The driver had showed some forethought by turning the contraption around, no easy task on the narrow roadway.
“Don’t spare the horses,” I told him.
Tacitus chuckled as he climbed into the raeda. “That’s easy to say when they aren’t your horses.”
The noise of the carriage covered our conversation, but we sat at the back anyway, as far from the driver as possible, and side-by-side so we wouldn’t have to raise our voices.
“What sense do you make of all this?” Tacitus asked as we bounced on the raeda’s hard, uncomfortable seats.
“Not much. I can’t see any connections. Fifteen years ago Calpurnius wrote a letter containing an implicit threat to kill Domitian. But the blackmail began only six years ago.”
“And one of the first things Domitian did when he took power three years ago,” Tacitus said, “was to kill Aelius, the recipient of the letter. But he didn’t lift a finger against Calpurnius. Pity, really. There would be one less king-loving bastard in the world.”
I had to let him release his republican anger. “If Aelius told Calpurnius the truth, he destroyed the letter when the blackmail began. I don’t think Domitian knew about the letter or the plot. He simply seized his first opportunity to get rid of his wife’s former husband.”
“Perhaps she’d come to her senses and wanted to go back to Aelius.”
I gave that some thought before rejecting the suggestion. “Knowing Domitian, he was probably consumed with jealousy of another man who’d coupled with his wife. Remember what Ovid says: ‘Propose a toast, “Good health to the fellow she sleeps with,” while you’re thinking, damn his eyes.’ ”
“But blackmail is a kind of torture,” Tacitus said, “and we both know Domitian is capable of tormenting someone. It’s his nature. They say, when he’s by himself, he catches flies and pulls their wings off.”
“If he’s by himself, how does anyone know what he does?” I certainly didn’t mean to defend the princeps, but fallacies in logic annoy me.
“From all the dead, wingless flies in his room?”
That would have been funny, if I’d been in a mood for humor. “This kind of anonymous blackmail just doesn’t seem Domitian’s sort of crime. He wouldn’t get to watch his victim suffer or have the satisfaction of his victim knowing who was hurting him. For him that’s the greatest pleasure he derives from tormenting people.”
“So, if Domitian’s not behind the blackmail, who is?”
“I’m not as ready as Calpurnius to dismiss the owner of the book shop where he dropped off the payments. A place like that wouldn’t be chosen at random. The blackmailer would have to be confident he would get the money.”
“You’re saying ‘he.’ Do you think it’s one person—a man?”
I had to brace myself to keep from sliding into Tacitus as the raeda took a bend in the road. “Oh, I was just saying ‘he’ for convenience. But it’s more likely to be a man, isn’t it?”
“I’m not so sure. Blackmail is a woman’s game. Wives do it to their husbands in subtle and not-so-subtle ways every day, as you’ll soon find out.”
“Please, don’t remind me.” I had almost managed to forget the bride looming in my future back in Rome. “If it is more than one person, though, I suspect it’s a small group—a leader and a couple of thugs to do the dirty work.”
“Namely, the two men who attacked Aurelia?”
“Yes, Sychaeus and his companion. I’m certain they’re also the ones who killed Amalthea.”
“What was her involvement in the blackmail?”
“I don’t think she was involved at all. She was the bait in a trap. She had a routine that brought her outside the house alone, so they knew where and when to find her. They killed her, then they lured Calpurnius out to the spot using the code word from his old letter.”
Tacitus rubbed his chin in thought. “Does that mean Sychaeus has the letter? Is he the leader?”
“I doubt it. He’s a slave. How would he get access to Aelius’ papers? And he was sold to someone else six months ago.”
“But he was in Aurelia’s garden two nights ago.”
I nodded. “We can’t get around that, can we? Not with that handprint. So he must be a runaway. That will make him difficult to find.”
“And whoever is behind this has the letter or saw it before Aelius destroyed it—if he did in fact destroy it.”
†
Aurelia met us at the door of her house, peppering us with questions before we could even get inside. I assured her that Calpurnius was safe. “What he needs is food and some medical items that Bastet requested.”
“What he needs is his wife beside him,” Aurelia insisted, “not that conniving Nubian ‘princess.’ ”
“Why do you talk about her that way?” I asked, since I shared her mistrust. “She seems genuinely concerned about Calpurnius and very solicitous of your health.”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s just because I’m bearing a child. That makes a woman—well, I don’t know how to explain it to a man. I’ve known, since the moment I became aware of this child, that I will do whatever I must to protect her.” Aurelia placed her arms over her belly. “And I’ve felt a menace ever since Bastet came into this house.”
I led her into the atrium and got her seated on a bench. “Has she threatened you?”
“No, but she’s always hovering over me and telling me what to eat and when to rest. I feel like she wants to control everything I do. She gives me potions to take—to relax me, she says. I hide them or spit them out when she’s not looking.”
“Hasn’t she been in Calpurnius’ family for some years?”
“Yes,” Aurelia snapped, unable to mask her resentment.
“And she’s of noble birth.”
“Do we really know if she is? All we have is her word on that. Though her arrogance might prove her claim.”
“Calpurnius seems to trust her implicitly,” Tacitus said.
“Or to be completely under her spell,” Aurelia insisted.
“We don’t have time to discuss this,” I said. “We need to get back to Calpurnius.”
“Oh, and we need a child’s tunic,” Tacitus said, holding his hand out to show Philippos’ approximate height.
Aurelia’s brow wrinkled. “A child’s tunic? What do you need that for?”
“You’ll see,” I said, “in due time.”
†
We made the trip back to the ruins without much conversation, eating a bit ourselves as we rode. When we climbed up the bank of hardened ash, carrying three bags of food and supplies, I did not see Philippos immediately. So much for trust, I thought.
“Sir, you came back!” a small voice called before the boy stepped into view from behind an outcropping.
“Why do you sound surprised?” I asked. “I told you I would come back, didn’t I?”
“And we brought you something to eat,” Tacitus said, handing Philippos one of our bags. “There’s also a clean tunic in there. Put it on and we’ll bring out a torch and burn that rag you’re wearing.”
Philippos looked down at his tunic.
“Have you seen anyone come out of the tunnel?” I asked.
“No, sir.”
We started for the entrance.
“But,” Philippos s
aid from behind us, “I did see somebody go in.”
XV
We stopped in our tracks and turned back to the boy. “Somebody went in?” Sychaeus was my first thought—my first fear. “How long ago?”
Philippos looked like I’d spoken in a foreign language. Time was a concept, I realized, that had never figured very largely in his life. Anything less than a day must be meaningless to him. “After…after you left, sir.” His eyes brightened as he offered what he thought was helpful information.
“Did you know him? Was it a him?”
“Yes, sir, it was, but I didn’t know him. He looked like one of us—me and my papa, I mean.”
So, another scavenger. That was not the worst news we could get. But the man might be desperate enough to attack Calpurnius for the little bit of food we had left with him.
“We’d better hurry,” Tacitus said. “Calpurnius is no condition to defend himself.”
“I imagine Bastet can take care of him,” I said.
“Like she did…my papa.” Philippos’ soft voice was filled with pain.
“She won’t have the advantage of surprise this time,” Tacitus said.
“But there’s plenty of rocks around, sir.” He pulled the clean tunic out of the bag and put it to his face. It looked like he was sniffing it, but I saw he was hiding his tears.
We lit two of the torches we’d brought and started for the shaft.
“Sir, wait,” Philippos called.
I turned back to see him taking the Tyche ring from around his neck.
“You may need this, sir.”
I bent over so he could slip it over my head.
“I may indeed. Thank you.”
As Tacitus and I passed from the gray light of the upper world into the tunnel, darkness engulfed us. This time, though, a sense of urgency overcame my anxiety about going back into this underworld that seemed to suck the life out of everything that entered it—even the torches. My eyes are more comfortable in dim light than in bright, but this place was several levels below dim. I hadn’t experienced such thick darkness since the first night of the eruption five years ago.
“Be quiet,” I cautioned Tacitus. “We need to hear any sound an intruder might make.”
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