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.”
Valens nodded.
“Get me Ganymede. He’s another one who was allowed to prowl the house at night. He may, at least, have seen or heard something.”
“How old are you, boy?” Pliny asked the creature who now stood, loose-limbed before him.
“Fifteen, sir.”
Closer t
o seventeen, Pliny guessed. Almost too old for a cinaedus. He had seen others like this one. The boy wore a short-skirted Greek tunic, the color of crocus and diaphanous to the point of transparency. His hairless limbs glistened with oil like the limbs of finely polished furniture. But his long, scented ringlets were matted and tangled and there was a faint stubble on his cheeks; he’d had no opportunity to singe them with hot walnut shells.
“Are you home bred or bought?”
“I was purchased from the Temple of Eros, an all-boy brothel, at a high price, too. I was only nine, yet so skilled at giving old men pleasure that Sextus Verpa fell hopelessly in love with me. He came every day and would accept no one else. Finally, he made Marcus Ganeus, my owner, sell me to him. He loved me very much. He gave me presents. The slave girls hate me. He never gave them such fine stuff.”
The voice was unnaturally high and wispy. He was forcing himself to speak in a falsetto so as not to betray his age. When the voice broke a boy’s career was over. Ganymede fluttered his long lashes seductively and touched himself between the legs. Pliny felt a mixture of pity and revulsion. There was something that was not quite human about Ganymede. He was a work of art, the product of someone’s fantasy. Every gesture practiced and studied.
“Besides giving your master pleasure, have you other duties in the house?”
“I am the principal dancer in our pantomime troupe,” he answered in his light, lisping voice. “I am called ‘Anguilla,’ the eel, because I dance as if I haven’t a bone in my body.” To make his point the youth lifted his arms above his head and a ripple of motion ran through his body beginning with his ankles, rising through knees, hips, and ribs cage and ending at his fingertips which fluttered imaginary castanets. It did distinctly give the impression of an eel twisting lazily through water. Pliny noted the long muscular legs, the wasp-thin waist, the narrow shoulders and the sinuous arms. He couldn’t have weighed much more than a hundred pounds. The boy flashed him a practiced smile, then let his arms drop to his sides.
This pantomime troupe of Verpa’s, of Scortilla’s really (she being an old trouper herself), was a bit of a scandal, hardly in keeping with the spirit of the age. A perversion, not to put too fine a point on it. Verpa and Scortilla entertained a very select group of friends of whom Pliny, happily, was not one, though he had heard things. And Martial had added other juicy details gleaned from his sources in the demimonde. Surprising, really that the emperor permitted it, since he had banned public performances of the same kind. But it seemed there were exceptions made for useful men like Verpa.
“Was that other boy, Hylas, a performer, too?”
“Hylas was a runny-nosed brat who couldn’t put one foot in front of the other without tripping!” Malice glittered in Ganymede’s eyes.
“Did you kill Hylas?”
“No!” Color rose from his throat to his cheeks. He sucked in his breath.
Pliny gave the boy a long, searching look. His face was haggard and there was something in the eyes that was inexpressibly tired. An old man in a boy’s body. And he was frightened, but he stood his ground.
“Did you see who killed him?”
“It was dark, everyone was pushing and tumbling over each other. I didn’t see anything. I tried to stay out of the way.”
“Did you know he was an atheist?”
“I don’t even know what that means.”
“Did you kill your master?”
“Of course not.”
“Were you with him that night?”
“No.”
“Where were you?”
“Sleeping at the bottom of the stairs. I sleep wherever I please.” Such arrogance in those words.
“Did anyone see you there?”
“I don’t know. I was asleep.”
“Did you see or hear anything out of the ordinary all evening?”
“No, sir.” Ganymede ran his finger around the iron slave collar that circled his soft neck. Clearly, it chafed him, perhaps his pride more than his flesh. The boy had pride.
Without warning, Pliny uncovered the dagger which he had placed under a cloth on the table beside him. He kept his eyes on the Ganymede’s face as he did so. The boy’s eyes widened, then quickly slid away.
“You recognize this, do you?”
“No.”
“What? Don’t recognize an object that lay in plain sight on your master’s bedside table?”
Ganymede compressed his lips into a thin line. He refused to answer. Poor Ganymede wasn’t very good at thinking on his feet.
An image presented itself to Pliny’s mind—of an “eel,” lithe with muscular legs, shimmying up a column, negotiating the overhanging eave, somehow unlatching the shutter from the outside, and slipping in through Verpa’s narrow window. But could this effeminate youth possibly have overcome Verpa, who, even if taken asleep, was a powerful and vigorous man, a fighter? Hard to imagine it. And what could the boy’s motive be? These sex slaves were far more likely to kill each other out of jealousy than to kill the master upon whom they all depended. But if someone had put him up to it? Someone like Lucius? Plenty of motive there. But no, Pliny was not yet ready to charge the son of an imperial favorite with patricide—a crime punished by ancient and savage ritual—based on the innuendo of a female houseguest or the frightened look in a slave’s eye. Gaius Plinius Secundus had his career to think of.
While he turned these thoughts over in his mind, Valens opened the door and admitted Lucius. The will was about to be opened. No doubt Pliny, as representative of the city prefect, might wish to be informed. Lucius was acting the gracious host this morning, confident of his new position. Pliny looked for some sign of recognition between him and Ganymede. There was none.
“Thank you, Lucius Ingentius, I had planned to stay for the reading. Centurion,” turning to Valens, “I want this slave boy kept separate from the others, under twenty-four-hour guard. No one is to have access to him. No one. I’ve had one witness murdered already, I won’t have another.”
“Witness to what?” Lucius’ newly-won composure was gone in an instant. “What are you insinuating? And you’ve no right to keep my slaves locked up any longer—especially this harmless creature. I want you and your policemen out of here, I am master here now.” His voice was shrill.
“Please calm yourself,” Pliny replied. “The soldiers will be here for a while longer and the slaves must remain under guard until the Games are over. Prefect’s orders.” Best to take shelter under his superior’s authority rather than explain his own reasons.
“We’ll see about that,” Lucius sneered. “This family still has influence. You, your family is nothing.”
“So I have already been reminded once today.”
Lucius flung himself from the room. Pliny followed.
The will was to be read in the tablinum, the master’s office, where his big iron-bound strongbox occupied one corner and cubicles containing his letters and accounts lined the walls. The death masks of his ancestors stared vacant-eyed from their niches. The room, though large, could scarcely accommodate the sweating mob of clients, relations, and cronies who were attempting to crowd into it.
Lucius sat himself in the front, next to Scortilla. Facing them sat a man at Verpa’s desk. Atilius Regulus, whom he had last seen that night of the infamous “black banquet.” Pliny sighed. How fitting that he should be Verpa’s attorney. On the desk lay a thick leather cylinder, its clasp covered with a wax seal. Inside it was the scroll of Sextus Ingentius Verpa’s last will and testament.
Seeing him standing in the back, Regulus invited Pliny, “his esteemed colleague at the bar,” to come forward and join him and the heirs in examining the seal before it was broken. Pliny had examined many such seals and rather fancied himself an expert on the subject.
The seal was perfectly intact and both Lucius and Scortilla attested that the signet was undoubtedly Verpa’s. Regulus, rubbing his hands together as though he were about to sit down to a good meal, broke the seal, removed an
d unfurled the scroll, cleared his throat importantly and began to read.
Verpa’s estate was worth about eight million sesterces—a handsome fortune, though not as large as many had expected. It consisted mainly of valuable land near Rome and other properties in the south. Lucius was named as heir to the whole. He heard this with a smile of satisfaction. Verpa was under no obligation to name his concubina as an heir, and didn’t. Pliny stole a sidelong look at her. Her face revealed nothing. According to form, the bequests must now be enumerated—subtractions from the estate which the heir was bound by law to make good on. There were several. Five hundred thousand sesterces to the emperor. Lucius winced, but said nothing. This was unavoidable: the surest way to guarantee that a will would not be challenged was to make the emperor an interested party. To Scortilla he bequeathed a half interest in their house in Rome, meaning that Lucius couldn’t throw her out—a cruel trick on both of them. Then there was a bequest of a thousand sesterces to Pollux, who was granted his freedom as a reward for years of faithful service. Several other slaves were manumitted, as well, and given smaller sums. But these bequests, of course, were moot. Pollux was dead and the rest soon would be.
Regulus paused in his reading to draw a breath and unrolled some more of the scroll. As he skimmed ahead, his eyes suddenly narrowed. Lucius, seeing something in his face, leaned forward in his chair.
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