“I would be forever grateful, Patrone.”
“Now, now, no such word as that between us. You must consider me a friend.”
The first course was served and cleared away. During the interval Pliny urged his young wife to recite for them. “I mean if you’re feeling up to it, my dear. It’s her pregnancy,” he said in an aside to Martial, “she’s under doctor’s orders not to tire herself. Still, if you would…” He gazed at her hopefully. “I mentioned I write verses. Calpurnia sets them to music and accompanies herself on the lyre, with no schooling from a music teacher, but with affection, which is the best possible teacher.”
Martial steeled himself. Clearly, the pompous man was dying to show off his verses and show off his child wife too.
The verses were pedestrian, but she was charming. She sang in a light, girlish voice while her fingers plucked complex patterns on the strings, and all the while her husband beamed at her with indescribable complacency.
“Bravo!” Martial clapped his hands when she had finished. “Why, mistress, put my verses to music and you’ll make my fortune for me!”
She blushed. “My talent is small, sir, but it is at your service. Tell me, what meters do you employ? For the lyre I find that iambic trimeter works best, although the dactylic, of course-”
“Calpurnia?” Pliny ’s face was a picture of baffled embarrassment.
“Why, husband, what is the matter?” She raised an innocent eyebrow. “I must ask him, mustn’t I?” Martial caught a gleam of amusement in her eye and an answering one from the freedman, Zosimus across the table. Well, well, thought Martial, this young lady has been taking lessons, and not only from Cupid. And now she’s teasing him. Here’s a girl with more spirit than she’s given credit for.
They spent the next few minutes discussing Latin lyric meters and the poet was impressed, both by her knowledge and by her tact in drawing her husband back into the conversation and smoothing his ruffled feathers. Meanwhile more dishes were brought out-filling, if not exciting. Presently Calpurnia stifled a yawn and excused herself.
“You chose wisely, my friend,” said Martial when she was gone, and meant it. “She’s charming. I’ve been in half the bedrooms in Rome, but I’ve no one to go home to tonight. It’s no life for a man my age.”
“She is devoted to me, the dear thing.” Pliny was moist-eyed. “She memorizes my courtroom speeches, you know; even sleeps with a sheaf of them beside her on the bed when I have to be away from home.”
“No, really?” said Martial. He had to bite his lip to keep from laughing. “But when you’re lucky enough to be in the bed, she’s not, ah, too modest, I hope.”
“Oh, goodness no,” Pliny assured him. Lately, of course, because of the fear of a miscarriage, they had been abstaining. Pliny had a more ardent nature than many would have suspected and he was beginning to feel quite definitely deprived.
Leaving the subject of his host’s marital bliss, Martial ventured, “This murder case you’re on…”
“ Mehercule,” Pliny burst out with feeling, “I don’t know why this business has been thrust upon me. The babe unborn has as much knowledge of crime detection as I do. I’m no more a policeman than you are.”
“But it is of some interest,” the poet replied. “What little I’ve gathered from the barber shop gossip. What have you learned so far?” Pliny described his morning’s investigation. “Jewish assassins,” said the poet. “And you believe it?” “Well, I mean to say, the evidence all points that way. I only hope I can save the other slaves.”
“You actually care about them, don’t you? It does you credit. I once composed an epitaph in verse for a little slave girl who died on our estate back home. A dear little thing. I’m not all winks and nudges, you know.”
Pliny affirmed that he was glad to hear it.
The poet made a temple of his fingers and rested his chin on them. “You knew Verpa, of course.”
“Only slightly, and his wretched family not at all. Lucius seems to be a typical young man of our age, that is to say good for nothing. And as for the lady, she is either a mad woman or she’s afraid of something. Her behavior this morning was extraordinary.”
“You don’t say. Well, I can tell you that our Lucius has been living far beyond his allowance; gambled and whored it all away-reminds me of myself when I was his age. I’ve learned that half a dozen usurers are pursuing him and have threatened to cut off his credit or even complain to his father if he doesn’t pay up.”
“That’s an old story in our city,” Pliny sighed. “A son with a living father possesses nothing of his own, can’t sell anything to raise money, can’t legally borrow money, but they all do anyway. And then they wait for father to die.”
“And sometimes, if father is tiresomely long-lived, they don’t wait,” Martial concluded the thought. “I’m told he begged his father to free him from patria potestas or, at least, raise his allowance, and the old man refused. Now, of course, that’s all changed. Lucius is his own man at last.” Martial paused and moistened his throat with more wine, enjoying the attention of Pliny and the freedmen, whose eyes were riveted on him. “And as for Turpia Scortilla, her case is more interesting. Did you know she’s not his wife?”
“What are you saying, she’s only a concubina?”
“Exactly. Her father was a stable hand for the Greens, she grew up in the Circus, started out as a bare-back rider and acrobat, if you can believe it. Yes, quite an athlete, our Scortilla: handstands on a galloping horse during the intermissions between races. From there she worked her way up to high-class courtesan. She was some courtier’s girlfriend, and burrowed her way into the palace, where she made herself a fixture and eventually a nuisance. She drank too much and made scenes. A nasty piece of work altogether. And she and Domitilla didn’t get on at all. Which is interesting, isn’t it, in light of that lady’s recent condemnation for atheism. Anyway, Scortilla wanted the wealth and status a senator could provide, and Verpa, who was recently divorced, fancied her. She was beautiful once, in a brittle sort of way, and she got her hooks into him. Of course, the Julian Laws don’t permit a senator to marry a woman with a background like hers, so she settled for being his concubine.”
“But I gather,” said Pliny, “that they haven’t been intimate for years. Why didn’t Verpa break it off when she no longer pleased him?”
“Probably because she knows all his secrets. She’s not an absolutely stupid woman, and she amuses herself with the slaves just as he does. Those eight strapping German litter bearers of hers? It’s said that they carry her all day and she carries them all night. Say, that’s rather neat, isn’t it? I must make a verse of that.”
“My good man,” Pliny said in a tone that approached awe. “How on earth do you know all this?”
“Scandal is my stock in trade,” Martial smiled modestly. “Everything is meat for a satirist, and ‘smoke,’ my friend, is everywhere if you have a nose for it. I swim in waters where you would not dip your toe, if I may mix my metaphors.”
“And so you think…”
“I don’t think anything. Probably it was this Jewish brute after all. But I would like to hear more as you carry on your investigation. It’s food for a satirist. Perhaps occasionally over one of your excellent dinners we might exchange thoughts?”
“Why, I should like nothing better, my dear Martial. You’re a gift from the gods! With your assistance I will get to the bottom of this business. Shall we say tomorrow at this hour?”
“I’m honored by your confidence, sir.” The poet heaved an inward sigh of relief and vowed an offering to Bacchus. That was dinner taken care of for the next few days! ???
The tenth hour of the night.
In a corner of the temple compound in the Campus Martius, almost under the shadow of the great Isis temple itself, a passerby might observe a shop sign with a painting of the mummified Osiris, brother-husband of the Queen of Heaven. Within the cluttered workshop, the curious visitor would notice a cage with an elder
ly ibis, its beak tucked under its shabby wing, a stuffed crocodile, a pair of somnolent cobras, a bale of linen, a nested pile of caskets, and jars containing various unguents. The odor of camphor, resin, and myrrh hung like a fog in the small workroom. But Nectanebo used none of these in his work. Their only purpose was to impress the temple trade, who were directed to his establishment by Alexandrinus, the priest of Anubis, in return for a share of his fees. Quite a satisfactory arrangement really. And this was only the beginning, for Alexandrinus had plans to enlarge the embalming works and Nectanebo intended to be a part of that. He had latched onto a good thing. Until lately, Roman worshippers of Isis had cremated their dead like everyone else, but in just the year since he’d set up shop, with the backing of the temple, Nectanebo’s exotic services were beginning to catch on.
Of course, it was all a sham. The ancient ritual of mummification was supposed to take half a dozen men seventy days to complete-you could read that in Herodotus. But nobody these days had time for that. Nectanebo had been given a mere five days to prepare the body of the murdered devotee. Well, they couldn’t expect miracles, then, could they? Scoop out the guts, stuff in a lot of sawdust and rags soaked in cheap oil, shovel on some salt, wind the wrappings, none too carefully, and nail a lid on the casket. By the time the smell got too bad the thing would be safely in its tomb. Of course, in this unseasonable heat they’d been having lately…
Nectanebo was lean as a bone and had the waxy skin of a man who seldom saw daylight. His kohl-rimmed eyes narrowed, he bent his shaven head close over the corpse. He had rolled it over on its back on the stone draining slab and was preparing to slice open the abdomen. He pursed his lips, puzzled. For him this was the reward. He had been hired by Alexandrinus because he knew how to keep his mouth shut about certain things that went on in the temple, but he was a doctor by training, not an undertaker. He had closed up shop early yesterday, as soon as he’d returned from Verpa’s house, and had done nothing but dissect since then: peeling away layers of fat, tracing veins and tendons, probing the puckered knife wounds that covered the man’s back. There was something very odd there; he didn’t know what to make of it. And now this. His nose twitched with excitement.
“Here, what’s this, then?” he spoke aloud to the sleepy little slave who sat beside him and whose job, performed with a minimum of effort, was to wave a horse-hair whisk at the cloud of buzzing flies that hovered over them. Holding the lamp closer, Nectanebo peered and poked at the little, livid bump which was already turning from purple to black. “By the beard of Ptah, most peculiar.” It looked for all the world like a nasty bee sting. Nectanebo frowned in thought. “Now, how in the world does a man get a bee sting in a place like that?”
Beyond Nectanebo’s workshop the columns of the great temple rose up black against the midnight blue of the sky. Before the temple stretched a broad courtyard flanked by porticos of lotus-stalk columns under whose eaves inert figures lay curled on papyrus mats, men and women indiscriminately. One could hear the collective sigh of their breathing. Now and then, one would moan or stir in his sleep. Serpents glided silently among them, tongues flicking out, touching eyelids, bringing dreams. Incense hung heavy in the moist night air.
The only illumination was the pale glow of oil lamps set upon the ground by each sleeper’s head. The priests of the temple kept watch throughout the night, some resting on stools, others bending over the recumbent figures, those who were restless, whose dreams wouldn’t come-touching, whispering incantations, assuring them that the compassionate Mistress of the Universe and her consort were with them and would heal them of their gout, their headache, their infertility. Attending were the priests of Isis, of Serapis, of Thoth; and the priest of Anubis-Alexandrinus-his head covered by the towering jackal mask, long-snouted and sharp-eared, painted black on one side and gold on the other. Through small eye-holes in the long neck he peered into the darkness.
Then one of the sleepers-she hadn’t really been asleep at all-arose and came silently toward him, holding her lamp before her. Quickly Alexandrinus led her around the back of the temple and through a small door into a private cell. He turned to her, raising his arms to shoulder height, palms outward. “Praise the Queen of Heaven,” he said. The voice was deep, the accent Egyptian, whether honestly come by or not. The voice of a god.
“Praise the Daughter of the Stars,” repeated Turpia Scortilla and threw herself against his broad chest. He could feel her trembling.
“Not wise for you to come here.”
“It worked! My Lord, it worked! Eight nights passed after I buried the tablet, I didn’t sleep a single one, lying in my bed, listening, not daring to hope. Then the night before last they came-Ereschigal, Phokensepsou, Cheloumbra, and Abrasax. They came! Flying through his window. I heard the beating of their wings, and then slashing and ripping with their talons. I saw the marks on his body the next day and nearly fainted. I haven’t stirred from my room since then until tonight. But I had to see you, to tell you. It’s all happening exactly as you told me-”
“ I told you?” he broke in sharply. “I told you nothing. It is the divine that speaks through me. Never say I told you.”
“Yes, my Lord.” She lowered her head. “We-we haven’t done wrong, have we?”
He stroked her hair. “Isis is Queen of Hades as well as Queen of Heaven. All means to an end are within her compass.”
“But I’m frightened. The penalty for magic is death. The police are camped in our house, some inspector came around. I wouldn’t speak to him, but what if he comes back?” “These police are stupid men. Calm yourself. The next step is the will. When is the reading?” “Lucius wants it the day after tomorrow.” “Then there isn’t much time. Verpa wrote what you suggested to him?” She nodded. “A hundred thousand.”
“Now I’m going to teach you how to lift a seal. It’s a simple trick, some book maker’s glue mixed with chalk, it hardens quickly. Lift it off and you have a perfect mold. The rest will be simple.”
“Oh, Goddess help me. I’m afraid. I don’t think I can go through with this. My nerves…”
“You can. The demons have done what you commanded, the rest you must do yourself. Anubis will hold your hand, as I do now.” He pulled her to him. Not gently. An animal growl rose deep in his throat, he pushed her on her knees on the cold stones, although he knew it hurt her, and pulled up her stola. Her spine was like a string of knucklebones, her buttocks thin, her hips razor-boned. He mounted her from behind, the dog-headed god himself in all his power and ferocity. He howled and barked through the megaphone of the mask, and she arched her back and cried out as he thrust-the god inside her!
After she had gathered herself and gone, Alexandrinus took up his place again in the courtyard of the sleepers. Human life, he considered, is ruled by the tyrants Hope and Fear. If you employ them skillfully, you can do very well for yourself. Turpia Scortilla was not the first overripe matron, drunk with faith, who had crawled on her knees to Queen Isis only to be lifted up by him.
Nectanebo, standing in the doorway of his workshop for a breath of fresh air, was thoughtful. Whatever he had seen was none of his business.
Chapter Eleven
The eighth day before the Ides of Germanicus. Day two of the Games.
The second hour of the day.
With great satisfaction, Lucius Ingentius Verpa watched the last of his clients bow themselves out of his atrium. His clients. His atrium. Now he was paterfamilias here. He looked around with distaste at the Nile mosaic and the Egyptian bric-a-brac that filled the room. That would all have to go, whether Scortilla liked it or not. He was master here now and there would be some changes made.
The salutatio had not been an entire success. He had soon grown bored trying to make sense of the clients’ petitions and finally ordered them all out. Of course, they were all scum-parasites and legacy hunters hoping for a share in the old man’s estate. And just as soon as the undertaker returned the body, they could proceed with the lying in state, break t
he seal of the will, and find out exactly what the estate amounted to. Then there was the matter of those papers, the ones his father had waved under his nose, hinting at their great value, taunting him with them. What were they? Where were they? That first night after his father’s death, he had ransacked the tablinum looking for them, and surprised Scortilla in the dark, obviously on the same errand. Since then, with troopers all over the house, it wasn’t safe to be seen searching; that would only arouse the curiosity of that meddling vice prefect.
These thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of the man himself. Lucius looked at him sourly. “Am I to look forward to these visits on a daily basis, Gaius Plinius?”
“No more than I do, I assure you. I’ve come to interview Pollux again, with your permission, of course.”
“My permission seems to weigh little against the authority of the city prefect. You’ve turned my house into an army camp. The soldiers are into everything, I’m hardly master here. Do what you like by all means.” Lucius waved his arm and let it drop.
Pliny ignored the insolent tone. “And Turpia Scortilla? I hope she is better disposed this morning?”
“She’s out of her room, if that’s what you mean. Not that you’ll find her very helpful. She begins drinking as soon as her eyes are open.”
“Yes, well then, I’ll start with Pollux.”
The slaves who languished in the stifling dormitory looked and smelled worse than they had the day before. Two more weeks of confinement and there would not be many left to execute. He looked from one face to another-pinched with hunger, glassy-eyed with fatigue and fear. Something odd about them today, too. Yesterday they had greeted him with screams. Why were they so quiet now?
“Pollux, step forward!” bawled Valens, the centurion. But no one stirred.
With a sudden premonition, Pliny plunged into their midst. He found the broken bodies of Pollux and the four others who had not sacrificed in a tangled heap in the far corner of the dormitory, throttled with their chains, their heads savagely battered.
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