Roman Games psm-1

by Bruce Macbain

  “Madam, I…”

  At the sight of him she shrank back against her pillow, nearly dislodging her wig, the back of one thin hand pressed to her mouth. Iarbas ran around them and clambered up on the bed beside her. She clutched his wooly head to her breast. The woman looked terrified. Why?

  This was not the moment to confront her head-on. Pliny forced a smile. “Come now, I’ve only a few questions for you, nothing to be alarmed at.” Had she heard a disturbance that night? When had she gone to bed? Had Iarbas spent the night with her? Had Verpa seemed worried at all? Had he hinted at anything in the preceding days?

  But to all these questions she only shook her head and clutched the dwarf tighter. In desperation, Pliny addressed the dwarf directly, but got in reply only a string of uncouth syllables. Finally, he gave it up. “I will return another time, Lady, and hope to see you in a better frame of mind.”

  They closed the door softly on her and returned to the atrium. Pliny was unbearably weary of the whole thing: the odious Verpa and his unpleasant family in their ostentatious house, the pathos of the slaves, the centurion’s smirking superiority. This was no job for him. “Now I really must be going,” he said firmly.

  “Sir.”

  “ What?” He nearly shouted at Valens.

  “Perhaps just a word with the door-slaves of the front and back door? They may have seen something.”

  “Yes, yes.” Pliny was in a state now. “Bring them here.”

  The two men, who a little earlier had been among those who had proudly sacrificed to the gods in the garden, fell on their knees before Pliny as though he were a god himself.

  “Just think hard now and tell the truth,” he assured them, “and all will go well with you. Now, did either of you see anyone lurking about the house on the night your master was killed? Anyone strange to the neighborhood?”

  The slave of the back door shook his head. But yes, said the slave of the front door. There had been someone. Someone who had stood across the street for an hour or more from sundown until it grew too dark to see. Describe him? Well, about average size, neither young nor old, dark-haired, nothing special. One thing though. He carried his left arm in a sling.

  Chapter Nine

  By the time he left Verpa’s house, it was nearing the ninth hour of the day, and the sun was creeping down the sky. The heat was still oppressive, as it had been for days. Pliny longed for the baths. Cool water, a bit of modest exercise, a rub-down, uncomplicated camaraderie with a few casual acquaintances, the blessed anonymity of nakedness, or so he thought. He directed his bearers to take him to the Baths of Titus. But the City Prefecture was on his way and conscientiousness got the better of him. He would stop and make his report first.

  The Prefecture was a sprawling labyrinth of offices, archives and courtrooms connected by dim corridors where clerks and secretaries, minor officials and armed troopers bustled to and fro on hurried errands. Pliny hated the place. He passed rooms where lines of weary petitioners waited patiently to speak with clerks who ignored them. In other rooms, secretaries shuffled through stacks of files and dossiers. Was his own name, he wondered, on one of them? There were still other rooms, rooms in the cellars with iron doors and brick walls. He preferred not to think about what went on there. He pressed on.

  In the antechamber of the city prefect’s office, he asked for Aurelius Fulvus and was told that the chief had gone for the day. He was turning to leave when he heard loud laughter coming from the inner chamber. Suddenly angry, he brushed past the secretary and marched in.

  The prefect was sprawled in a chair with a cup in his hand. Some other men, whom Pliny didn’t know, sat around him. All of them were flushed with wine. Fulvus looked up as Pliny entered. He seemed to have some trouble focusing his eyes.

  “Yes? I gave orders not to be-oh, it’s you, ah, Gaius Plinius. Yes, well, what brings you here? Ah, sit down, won’t you?” He gestured vaguely with the wine cup, spilling half the contents, but there were no empty chairs in the room. “Orfitus, get up and let my vice prefect sit.” Pliny replied stiffly that he preferred to stand. “As you like. And so, this is about…? “The Verpa case.”

  “The…ah, yes, of course.” Fulvus made a visible effort to compose his long-jawed face. “And so what have you concluded? The wretched slaves, of course. It always is.”

  “In this case not, sir. Or, not the majority of them. Everything points to a Jewish assassin who crept in through a window aided by a slave in the household.”

  “Jews you say? By Thundering Jove!” Fulvus slapped the chair arm with a ruby-ringed hand. “Our Lord and God will be pleased! And how many are there?”

  “Only five. One man, three women, and a boy.”

  “Nonsense! Bound to be more. You keep at it, then. Don’t stop short. See what else you can nose out. The emperor likes you, you know. You can make a name for yourself with this case.”

  “If that is your wish, sir. My hope is that the other slaves, the ones who aren’t atheists, can be exonerated. I’m ready to vouch for them myself if need be.”

  “What?” Fulvus looked up in astonishment. So did his friends. “Exonerate? Slaves? Yes, well, something to think about. Now, is that all, my dear Pliny?

  Pliny made no move to leave. “I mean it, sir. They had nothing to do with this murder.”

  “You’ve made yourself quite clear. I said, we’ll see. Just you do your job.” Irritation rose in his voice. He turned his face away. “Orfitus, fill my cup like a good fellow. Good day, vice prefect. Look in again, won’t you, when you have more to report.”

  As he left the building, Pliny’s stomach was churning. He was not ordinarily an excitable man, or so he believed. He had chosen a dull profession-or it had chosen him-because it imposed a wall of paper between himself and the sweaty emotions of real people. If he were investigating a charge of unjustified disinheritance or the distribution of assets among the offspring of a man who had been married four times; if he had been faced with a suspicious codicil or a questionable signature-here Pliny felt himself capable and sure-footed. He was not a stupid man. But this! Bloody daggers, sexual perversion, murderous fanatics, secret symbols scrawled on walls, a louche and slippery filius familias, a concubine catatonic with fright. He felt like a man standing on a pitching deck, grasping vainly for a handhold. ???

  The crowd streamed out of the Theater of Marcellus and Martial patted his grumbling stomach. It was a long, hot walk to the Baths of Titus, but that was his hunting ground. He wouldn’t leave without a dinner invitation from some rich booby. He had lived more than thirty years in Rome since emigrating from Spain, a young man full of hope and poetry. In all that time he hadn’t had to stand in a bread line yet, although he had come close more than once.

  Outside the baths, hucksters, street performers, and food-stalls filled a broad courtyard. Inside rose a vast, echoing fairy-land of brilliant mosaics, high coffered ceilings, wide windows that flooded the spacious rooms with afternoon sunlight; and everywhere, priceless works of art, though here, as elsewhere in the city, the new golden statues of Domitian the God effaced all else. Martial paid his copper coin and went in.

  The Baths of Titus, built by Domitian’s elder brother during his brief reign, was only the latest of the great imperial thermae provided by emperors to the Roman people at enormous expense. The shouts of happy citizens disporting themselves, men and women together, filled the vast echoing complex. There was method to this philanthropy. It had not taken the emperors long to learn the profound truth that people who are warm and wet do not, as a general rule, riot in the streets. In this democracy of nudity even the poorest Roman could, for an hour every day, imagine himself to be a little king; could forget for a moment that elsewhere a real king, in a real palace, held the power of life and death over him.

  Martial undressed in one of the large changing rooms and stowed his things in an open cubicle. Other bathers posted slaves to guard their belongings; Martial had nothing worth stealing.

  Beyond, al
l was bare flesh. Here respectable citizen and cruising libertine, rich man and poor man, male and female met as equals.

  Martial went first to the caldarium to luxuriate in the steam. Adjacent to the steam room lay the exercise court, from where the poet, who never exercised himself, could hear the grunts and groans of men swinging lead weights, of ball players tossing a medicine ball in a three-cornered game of catch, of wrestlers and runners. On his other hand, were the massage rooms. From here echoed the slap of hands on oiled shoulders and the shrill voice of the hair-plucker, calling his trade.

  When he was red as a mullet, Martial went on to the tepidarium and from there into the frigidarium, where he dove into the cold pool with a great splash and a boy’s happy shout, and swam vigorously for a minute or two.

  The baths cultivated the mind as well as the body. Beside the swimming pools and gymnasia, there were libraries, art galleries, and a large and beautiful recitation hall, where people, back in their clothes again, could beguile the hours, listening to a play or a poetry reading. Hither, in his threadbare tunic, went Martial.

  Instantly a circle gathered round him, already chuckling. He was among friends. He knew their names, knew their foibles, knew they’d take insults from him that they wouldn’t have taken from anyone else. He whirled from one to another, leering, mugging, improvising.

  He flung a hairy arm about the stooped shoulders of an elderly man. “Caecilianus!” “Now you’ve shut your wife up tight,

  (A woman as homely as she is!)

  Fututores besiege her by day and by night,

  Got any more bright ideas?”

  He moved on to an aging prostitute, who plied her trade in the baths, and, wrinkling his nose, declaimed- “Why won’t I kiss you? Philaenis, you ask.

  You’re one-eyed, you’re red-faced, and bald.

  To undertake so vile a task,

  Why, let some fellator be called!”

  He pranced over to a heavy woman with pendulous breasts and clapped his hands with delight- “Dasius sells tickets here,

  No brighter boy than he!

  Big-titted Spatale just tried to come in,

  And Dasius charged her for three!”

  He pounced upon a portly man with curled and scented hair and, waggling a reproving finger under his nose, improvised- “Your slave boy’s mentula is tired and sore,

  And, Naevolus, so is your culus.

  We reckon what he has been using you for,

  O Naevolus, don’t try to fool us.”

  Poor Naevolus looked like he wanted to escape. Martial released him and tip-toed over to another, his hand cupped behind his ear. “Flaccus, listen, d’you hear

  The sound of hundreds clapping?

  It must be Maro strolling near,

  His great mentula flapping.”

  This brought a lot of laughter; the well-equipped Maro was a familiar sight.

  Martial was warming to his work, starting to enjoy himself-and then in one swift instant he found himself abandoned. Pliny had just been spotted near the door.

  The most populous city on earth was still in many ways only an overgrown village, where nothing stays secret for long. The prefect’s troopers stationed at Verpa’s house had told friends, who had told other friends, and so on, until all Rome by now knew that Gaius Plinius Secundus was handling the Verpa case. He was instantly mobbed.

  Martial knew him by sight; had heard him holding forth in the Basilica Julia where the Chancery Court sat and any passerby might stop and listen. He had put him down as just another brass-throated haranguer with the soul of an accountant.

  There being nothing else for it, Martial was forced to follow his audience, only to hear the vice prefect protesting that he had no comment, and would they kindly let go of him! Spying Martial in the crowd, Pliny shouted over the hubbub, “I fear I’ve spoiled your recital, and most amusing it was.”

  “Not your fault, sir.” Martial shouldered his way to Pliny’s side and held out his right hand. Never to quarrel with a potential meal was the chief rule of his life. “Marcus Valerius Martialis at your service.”

  “I know your name. Who in Rome doesn’t? How can I make it up to you?”

  “Well,” the poet favored him with his most winning smile-he could be charm itself when he wanted to. “It is approaching dinner time, and I find myself actually unengaged…”

  “Say no more. Literary men are always welcome at my table. I’m on the Esquiline near the Lake of Orpheus. Ask anyone in the neighborhood for directions. I’m going home soon. Come in an hour. Vale.”

  As Pliny passed through the exercise yard, some rowdy young men were making a nuisance of themselves, kicking a ball around in a circle, running and making diving catches, accompanied by much shouting and laughter. Suddenly the laughter died in their throats. One of them had kicked the ball high up over the heads of his companions and they watched in horror as it struck the gilded body of the Lord and God, towering on its pedestal over the exercise yard. Instantly they scattered, trying to lose themselves in the crowd. But some weren’t quick enough. An older man tackled one, held onto him by the ankle, crying, “Here, I’ve got the traitor!” From the edge of the crowd grim-faced troopers closed in on the terrified boy.

  Pliny didn’t stay to watch the outcome. He felt a coldness in his belly.

  Chapter Ten

  The tenth hour of the day.

  The sun was dipping behind the housetops as Martial, dressed in his one presentable dining-out suit, set out from his tenement on the Quirinal along cobblestone streets still littered with the detritus of the morning’s festivities. His way lay across the Viminal, and up the steep slope of the Esquiline. At his heels trotted a sad-looking little boy who carried his napkin. The poet couldn’t afford to keep a slave, but hired one sometimes for appearance’s sake. Martial was hungry, starving in fact, but the evening held no further enticements for him. Dinner with this earnest, unimaginative lawyer and his equally dull friends would be something to suffer through. But that was how impecunious poets survived.

  A slave met him at the doorway, removed his shoes and gave him dining slippers to wear, and conducted him into the triclinium, where his host rose to greet him.

  To his surprise, Martial found himself the only guest. “We dine intimately tonight,” said Pliny, “just my wife and my freedmen. Simple fare. No roast piglet stuffed with thrushes, no honeyed dormice, no sows’ udders. A ‘philosopher’s meal’ is my style.”

  Martial, who relished sows’ udders, did his best to hide his disappointment.

  “I feed my freedmen and my humblest guests the same food and wine I consume myself,” Pliny burbled, “I make no distinctions of class.”

  “Admirable,” murmured the poet, wishing that Pliny fed his freedmen on mullet and Lucrine oysters.

  “Recline here by me in the place of honor. I’ve long wanted to meet you, in fact. I’m a bit of a poet myself actually. Oh, I don’t publish. Just for my own amusement.”

  The slaves brought honeyed wine and Pliny poured the customary libation to the Lares and Penates.

  Martial gave him an appraising look. “You don’t include the emperor’s bust among your household gods?”

  Pliny’s hand froze for an instant. Without looking at the poet, he said, “Do you?” Then they measured each other with their eyes. “Of course, I worship him-” they both said at once. Then both stopped. Then both smiled. It was a delicate, dangerous moment. Either one of them might have been a spy. “We must serve the emperor we have,” said Pliny carefully.

  “Indeed we must,” said Martial. The moment passed. It would be all right.

  While slaves carried in the first course, Pliny introduced his freedmen; there were three of them reclining on one couch. “This is Zosimus,” he indicated a thin, serious young man in his twenties. “He is my secretary and my most gifted Greek reader, and my trusted friend. And this is-but, ah, here she comes now!”

  Leaning on her nurse’s arm, the heavily pregnant girl came into the
room and eased herself onto the dining couch beside her husband.

  Well, here’s a tasty morsel, thought Martial. Though his preference ran mostly to the other thing, the poet was an admirer of feminine beauty. He noted her lustrous dark eyes and her swelling breasts.

  For her part, Calpurnia didn’t know what to make of this shaggy bear of a man with his flashing teeth and rolling eye. He was certainly unlike any other of her husband’s friends, being rather what she imagined an aging pirate might look like. She struggled with her shyness and risked a smile. “I am pleased to meet any friend of my husband’s. Are you new to our city?”

  Though you would not have guessed it from his poems, Martial had a charming manner with women. He made her a low bow, then laughed. “I come from gold-bearing Tagus, from high-girt Bilbilis and the banks of rugged Salo, in short, from Spain. I came to Rome to seek fame and fortune as a writer, and Rome has grizzled my locks.” He raked his fingers through his hair. “The noise, the distractions drive me wild, and yet I can’t break away. The city gets in your blood. And though I am read all over Rome, nay, all over the Empire, it brings me no money. Fortune still eludes me.”

  “You wish to be known at court, my friend?” Pliny broke in.

  “That is my desire, sir.” The poet put on his serious face. “I’ve sent trunksful of verse up to the palace. I’ve praised the worthy Parthenius, I even dedicated half a dozen poems to little Earinus, though I blush to admit it.”

  “You know your language is rather, ah, indelicate for the ears of this chaste court.”

  “I’ve been told so once already today by that old fart Statius,” the poet replied. “However, I’ve lately written a whole book of poems praising the emperor, and all without a single word that would make your maiden aunt squirm. But I need someone to actually put it in his hands, don’t you see? I halfway believe that Statius intercepts my offerings.”

  “Papinius Statius,” said Pliny stiffly, “happens to be a very dear friend of mine. I assure you, your suspicions are absurd. Nevertheless, when this Verpa business is over I’ll see what I can do for you.”