Roman Games psm-1

by Bruce Macbain

  “Today our brothers Pollux and the young man Arminius, and our sisters Modestina, Artemisia, and Graciliana are sitting at the feet of God. They will live forever, hallelujah. But I have come to beg for their bodies, to bury them according to our rite.”

  “This is a police matter, I can’t allow it.”

  But Martial interrupted with an unpleasant laugh. “Immortal are they? What, merely by dying? Seems a cheap and easy way to achieve immortality. Any gladiator can do it. The Isis priests, so I hear, make you pay through the nose and spend months in initiations.”

  The bishop seemed to notice him for the first time. His black eyes flashed. “You are that poet, I believe.”

  “I am delighted to hear my fame has spread so far.”

  “Oh yes, I know your works: the language of the gutter employed with the skill of an artist for the solitary purpose of drawing blood. The women, whores when they aren’t bald, toothless and eyeless; the men, gluttons, hypocrites and perverts.” Martial opened his mouth but the bishop silenced him with a dismissive flick of the hand. “I know what you’re going to say: you attack the vice, not the person; your verse is lascivious while you yourself are chaste. But I tell you, God sees through that false rhetoric.” “Rhetoric! What does a drag-tail fellow like you know about rhetoric?” Martial sputtered. “I was a professor of it for twenty years before my eyes were opened.” It was said with more than a trace of pride. And, for once in his life, the poet found himself without a riposte.

  While the two men stared each other down, Pliny was recalling a public reading he had attended some years earlier, given by the historian Cornelius Tacitus: How these Christians were every bit as atheistical as the Jews, from whom their sect had sprung, though now they claimed to hate the Jews. Like everything filthy and degrading, Tacitus had said, they eventually found their way to Rome. Nero accused them of starting the great fire that had nearly destroyed the city some thirty years ago, and executed some of them with particular savagery-so much so that they excited a degree of public sympathy. It was the common belief, nevertheless, that they engaged in orgies and sacrificed children to their god and even ate them. Probably an exaggeration, but who could say, since they practiced their rites in secret.

  Then another thought struck him.

  “Fellow, bishop, whatever you call yourself, answer me one question. Is the seven-branched candelabrum a symbol of your cult?”

  “Certainly not! That is for the ones who reject Our Lord, who misunderstand their own prophecies. Our symbol of recognition is a fish.”

  “Then Pollux and the others you named are not Jews?”

  “Not since they chose the true path to salvation. I converted Pollux myself some years ago, and from that day onward he never struck a man.”

  “You mentioned four others besides Pollux. We found a sixth body, a boy of twelve or thirteen, Hylas he was called. Is he not one of yours?”

  Evaristus shook his head. “He is not known to me.”

  Pliny motioned Martial to come closer and they exchanged a few whispered words. If Pollux was, in fact, one of these Christians, then perhaps the sketch of the candelabrum and the Jewish dagger had been planted as clues to implicate him by someone who thought he was still a Jew. And who would that someone be? Lucius leapt to mind; he certainly had the motive. But the question remained, how was it done? Who had come through that open window, if not a Jewish assassin? And how could Pollux not have heard sounds of the struggle? And then why was the boy Hylas killed by the other slaves if he was neither a Jew nor a Christian? Whatever theory he had had about the case before was now shipwrecked. He would have to begin all over again. There were too many puzzles, and Pliny, whose whole professional life dealt with certainties, with documents and numbers, hated puzzles. He discharged his annoyance at Evaristus.

  “They say you are atheists and haters of mankind. You gather secretly like rats in the sewers. You do not sacrifice to our emperor. If even half what they say about you is true, you deserve to be punished. What gives you the nerve to come here and ask me for a favor?”

  The bishop returned his angry gaze with eyes as bright as steel; there was no fear in them. “We are men of peace, we obey the laws and those who are set over us. We pray for the emperor, though not to him. We mean no harm to anyone. I say to you, Senator, save yourself, be born again in Christ Jesus-”

  “Macro!” Pliny shouted to his door keeper. “Escort these men out.”

  Until then, the bishop’s companion, the cadaverous, bearded ancient in his threadbare cloak, had stood silently by, giving no sign that he understood what was being said. Macro’s firm hand on his shoulder set him off. Without warning, he flung his scrawny arms wide and burst into shrill Greek. “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great. Babylon, the harlot of the seven hills. Alas, alas for the great city that was clothed in fine linen and purple and scarlet. Alas that in a single hour she should be laid waste…” He stared with all his eyes, seeing something that was invisible to the rest of them. While his breath came short and sharp between his teeth, he poured out a torrent of words.

  Bishop Evaristus, for the first time showing fear, looked this way and that. “The vision comes upon him sometimes, unfortunate timing, please excuse us…” He tried, with Macro, to push Ioannes toward the door but the holy man was not to be silenced. The Greek was so rapid, the man gasping in the throes of his vision, Pliny could only understand bits of it-a woman riding on a scarlet beast with seven heads and ten horns-the seven heads were the seven hills of Rome and the woman was drunk on the blood of God’s people-foul and malignant sores on those who wore the mark of the beast and worshipped its image, plainly the emperor himself-the seas, the rivers, and springs were turning to blood and every living thing dying-now the kingdom of the beast, plunged in darkness and men gnawing their tongues in agony-tormented in sulfurous flames…

  “Enough!” Pliny sprang from his chair. “Monsters! Out of my house!”

  When they were gone, the old man’s voice echoing down the street, Martial groped for a stool and sank on to it. There was a moment of shocked silence while the two men looked at each other. “What on earth was that about?” breathed Pliny. Martial shook his head. “Sounds treasonous to me.” “Well, that’s not our concern right now.” “Yes, but d’you think one of them could be Verpa’s killer? Blame it on the Jews?” “I doubt it. Why bother if we’re all going to go up in flames soon anyway?” The sound of a girl weeping came from behind the half-open door of one of the side chambers.

  “Calpurnia!” Pliny ran to her at once and clasped her in his arms. No telling how much she had understood but the girl seemed scared out of her wits. A moment later, Amatia appeared from her bedroom, her face still puffy with sleep. Between them they got Calpurnia to a couch.

  Martial watched discreetly from the sidelines. When some calm had been restored he asked Pliny if he was going back to Verpa’s house today.

  “I’m staying with my wife. Tomorrow the will is going to be read. I will attend that. Wills, at least, are something I understand. Come with me if you like.”

  The poet bowed himself out.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The sixth day before the Ides of Germanicus. Day four of the Games.

  The fourth hour of the day.

  For the third time in four days Pliny reluctantly mounted his litter and was carried above the jostling crowds, the choking dust and stinks of the city. The foot traffic eddied around his conveyance, a small boat riding a turbulent stream. The heat already felt like the exhalation from a potter’s oven.

  His way took him down the slope of the Esquiline, past the Colosseum and the Temple of Venus and Rome, along the Via Sacra and on into the Forum Romanum. On his left he passed, with a throb of longing, the noble Basilica Julia, the two-storied colonnaded building which occupied nearly the whole north side of the Forum. His view of it sadly was obscured by an immense bronze equestrian statue of Domitian, which towered over the surrounding buildings. But this was his arena, the sce
ne of his triumphs since the day he had argued his first inheritance case there at the age of eighteen. In its vast interior the law courts met in open view of passers-by, and when he pleaded a case, audiences would desert the other orators to gather round him! Over the years, he had made a name for himself and done quite well off his fees. How he wished that this interminable month, not yet a third over, would end, allowing him to get back to his proper vocation.

  Leaving the Forum behind, he was carried along the Clivus Argentarius, skirting the north flank of the Citadel, and coming out in the Vicus Pallacinae, near the east end of the Circus Flaminius.

  As he swayed comfortably on the broad shoulders of his bearers, Pliny let his mind drift. He realized with a twinge of guilt that all during the morning salutatio he had scarcely heard a word anyone had said, including himself, so preoccupied was he with this wretched case. (Martial had sent a note, saying he’d had a late night and begged to be excused.)

  Should he consider now that the Jewish business was a blind, intended to throw him off the track? And, if so, by whom? By Lucius? Or even Scortilla? Or, both of them? He knew so little. A man like Verpa would have had hundreds of enemies who wished him dead, any one of whom might have found a way to accomplish it. But how? A room with one high, narrow window and one door guarded by a man who, in spite of being a slave and a former Judean rebel, struck Pliny as truthful. And who was now revealed to have been a different sort of atheist altogether.

  At any rate, today’s task was to interrogate those few slaves who had had the run of the house that night, something he should have done in the first place. That and listen to the reading of the will. Perhaps there would be a clue there.

  His bearers, by this time, could have found their way blindfolded to the imposing porphyry-columned entrance to Verpa’s house. They set him down before the bronze-studded double doors which, today, were decorated with dark acanthus wreathes and bows of cypress, proclaiming that the deceased’s lying-in-state had begun.

  The great man lay encoffined in a vast gilded mummy case resting on a black-draped catafalque which occupied the center of the atrium. The head of the case was painted with a likeness of Verpa’s face which, despite the artist’s best intentions, did not completely disguise the hard jaw line, the pugnacious nose, the heavy-lidded eyes. The actual burial was scheduled for four days hence. Were those alien gods, Pliny wondered, who stood ready to receive his spirit on the banks of the Styx, or wherever it was Egyptians went-were they quite prepared for what they were getting in this pretty package?

  The atrium was mobbed. The rich, the envious, the senator and the freedman; the pinch-faced legacy hunter and the humble, hopeful sycophant; the clergy of Isis, bone-thin, brown and bald; the matrons, painted and coiffed, and many decked out with jeweled scarab beetles or other Egyptian gewgaws. In the midst of these, receiving their fawning condolences, was Turpia Scortilla. For the occasion she wore a new wig, tier upon tier of massed blond curls for which a dozen German captives must have given up their hair. She held to her thin bosom Iarbas’ monkey, who rejoiced in a new collar of lapis lazuli and gold. It leapt out of her arms at Pliny’s approach and disappeared in a forest of legs. She extended a heavy-ringed hand to him.

  “And how is my poor Amatia?” she simpered. “Tell her that I am thinking of her.” Pliny said that he would do so. “I am aware,” she went on, “of the deaths of Pollux and the other atheists. It’s just what they deserved, don’t you agree with me, Vice Prefect? May we not call the case closed at this point? Lucius feels that we should.”

  The elapse of two days had improved her appearance and manners. She wasn’t drunk, at any rate, and, perhaps, was in a mood to make peace. “I am growing steadily less certain that Jews had anything to do with Ingentius Verpa’s murder.” Her face enacted a mimicry of surprise. “Then who?” It was far too soon for accusations. Pliny spread his hands. “The man must have had other enemies; what informer does not?”

  At the word “informer” she bristled. “Just because he showed himself loyal and useful to his emperor, as every senator should do, instead of carping and caviling, and scheming behind his back, you call him that! Tell me, Gaius Plinius, if Sextus Ingentius was an informer, exactly what are you?”

  “I don’t understand you, woman,” Pliny replied frostily.

  “Don’t you? You serve the same master. You come here snooping and asking questions. Your policemen spy on us. And in the end, you hope to denounce one of us and get your reward. I’ve lived long in this society, I know better than a small-town provincial like you how it works.”

  Pliny turned from her in exasperation. How dare the hag talk to him that way! He was an officer of the Prefecture, doing his duty, and not willingly either.

  And yet, something of what she said lodged under his skin and stuck there.

  He caught sight of Valens standing at the edge of the crowd, looking glum. “How goes it, centurion?”

  The centurion was unhappy. “The lads are bored, getting into trouble. I had to cudgel two of them last night for breaking into the wine locker. Now that more slaves have arrived from Verpa’s estate in Apulia, there’s nothing for them to do all day. Bad for discipline, sir, and it’s not likely there’s going to be any more murders.”

  “I understand. Do the best you can. I want as many pairs of eyes and ears in this house as possible. It may still have things to tell us.”

  Valens cocked an eyebrow.

  “While we’re waiting for the will to be read, I want to talk to a couple of the slaves. Find the girl, Phyllis, and bring her into one of the vacant rooms upstairs, I’ll question her there.” Amatia had said that Verpa quarreled with his son over Phyllis; had actually threatened to kill the young man, which, according to law, he had the right to do, if he didn’t leave the girl alone. It would not be the first time that sexual jealousy involving a slave had led to murder in a Roman household.

  He didn’t know what to expect from her. Some slave mistresses, sensing their power, could be bold and brassy, putting on airs as though they were the virtual mistress of the house. But Phyllis turned out to be quite different. She looked about sixteen or seventeen, was fair-haired and rather fragile. She might have been beautiful, but six days of confinement on short rations had obviously taken its toll of her. She was pale and her eyes sunk deep in their sockets. The acrid smell of sweat and unwashed bodies clung to her. Valens sat her down roughly on a stool and then left them alone. Pliny’s heart went out to her. “You shared your master’s bed?” “Yes.” “Often?” “Yes.” Her voice was barely above a whisper. She stared at the floor. “But you weren’t in his bed the night he died? Why not?” She shrugged. “He didn’t send for me.” “Did he send for any of the other girls?”

  “No. Maybe one of the boys-the cinaedi -or maybe he slept alone. He sometimes did.”

  “The cinaedi. You mean like Ganymede?”

  “Hylas, more likely. The one they killed. Master had gotten tired of Ganymede, everyone said.”

  Pliny had a sudden glimpse of the lives of these sex slaves. The whispered rumors, the jealous looks, the anxious observation of every clue to the master’s shifting preferences. Their lives depended on it.

  He cleared his throat. “I’m told that Lucius wanted your company too and the old master didn’t like that.”

  Her hands twisted in her lap. “I never encouraged young master. It’s hard for someone like me, pulled both ways. A slave can’t refuse.”

  The girl’s vulnerability reminded Pliny uncomfortably of his own wife. If life were different, if situations were reversed…He gave her a moment to compose herself. “Phyllis, who do you think killed the master?”

  “Well, not old Pollux,” she answered with surprising firmness. “That poor old man didn’t have it in him to do such a thing. It’s a shame what the others did to him and his friends, even if they were Jews and atheists.” “You know, child, I agree with you. Tell me what you think-could an assassin have climbed through the window?” “How
would I know? But it’s funny then that he didn’t bring his own knife with him.” “What do you say?”

  “The curved dagger, sir, that was lying on the floor all bloody, it belonged to the master. I saw it when we all crowded in to see what had happened.”

  Pliny looked at her sternly. “Are you quite sure?”

  He called for Valens, who had remained just outside the door, and ordered him to fetch the weapon.

  “It’s his.” She studied it closely. “The red leather on the hilt. Those foreign letters scratched on the blade. See? He told me it says ‘Death to Romans.’ He used to make me admire it. Told me how he took it off a dead rebel in Jerusalem. I’d ooh and aah. He liked that. He kept it on the table beside the bed.”

  Pliny tried to force his thoughts into some order. “If you recognize it then others must have. Wouldn’t Pollux have recognized it?”

  “I’m sure he did,” she girl answered. “But that poor man was slow-witted. Too many blows to the head.”

  Pliny tried to remember the details of his brief interrogation of the boxer. Had he even asked him about the weapon? He shook his head woefully. What a fool he was.

  “Well, but Lucius certainly recognized it, damn him!” He hadn’t meant to speak these words aloud. Now he had frightened the girl.

  “I-I don’t know.” Her under lip quivered. “Please sir, I don’t know any more. Don’t make me say anything against Lucius. He’s my master now.”

  “Yes, yes, quite. What you’ve told me will stay between us. You may go now, and thank you.”

  Valens handed her off to one of his men to return her to the guarded dormitory. He rubbed his bristly chin and looked thoughtfully at Pliny. “So young Lucius has been lying to us, sir. There was no Jewish assassin.”

  “Yes, but the man didn’t stab himself in the back. Someone managed to climb through that window. The shutter was open, and we saw how the ivy tendrils on the column looked as if they were torn loose by someone’s hands and feet.”