Roman Games

by Bruce Macbain

  “Oh,” Calpurnia blushed, “just one of my husband’s speeches to the probate court. I memorize them—well, as much as I can, it pleases him.”

  “Goodness, child, what a wife you are!” Amatia laughed.

  “You mustn’t call me ‘child,’ I am a married woman.”

  “Of course you are; forgive me, Calpurnia. Still, you are so young. Do you have any friends your own age?”

  “Not really. All the other wives in our set are much older than me. And on their second or third husbands.”

  “Are you from Rome?”

  “Oh, no, from the north, Comum, where my husband comes from. Our family properties adjoin. Two years ago he went home to visit his mother. I happened to be in the house. My grandfather, who has raised me since I was a child, had sent me there to be a companion to the old lady. Anyway, I was there when he arrived. His own wife had recently died of a long illness. But he was sweet to me. We talked, he told me all about Rome, the baths and the theaters and the tall buildings. And, of course, all about the courts and the cases he tries there. I’m afraid I didn’t understand much of that, being a country-bred girl, but it all sounded so grand. And then, before I knew it, he asked for my hand in marriage. I was speechless, terrified. What could he see in a simple girl like me? But he said it was my simplicity that he loved. That I would bring a breath of the North with me. My grandfather, of course, favored the match. And so here I am. I’m very lucky.”

  Amatia was silent for a while. “But are you happy? Gaius Plinius sometimes seems more like your father than your husband.”

  “Oh, he’s husband enough!” She risked a smile. “And as for a father, well, I hardly remember mine. So, that’s all right too. Oh, I know he fusses about things and some people say he’s vain—I’m not deaf or stupid, I hear things—but I do love him and I want very much to please him. And so…” She tapped her forehead with the scroll.

  “So you memorize his speeches and set his poems to music.”

  “And now, Martial’s as well. I was touched by his poem, weren’t you? I hope he’ll like what I’ve done with it. I confess, he frightens me a little.”

  “Indeed, that man is a study in contradictions. But you, at any rate, are a good wife and a shrewd woman as well. If only Rome had more like you than of the other sort. Still, you must be bored sometimes and lonely.”

  Calpurnia sighed. “The hours pass somehow. I read all sorts of things, Gaius likes me to be well-informed. What else is a wife to do after all, especially one in my condition? Tell me all about your home. Of course, I’ve read Caesar’s Commentaries, but I suppose Gaul is very peaceful now.”

  “Yes, well…” Amatia began.

  “Oh!” Calpurnia touched her abdomen. “He just kicked. Do you want to feel?”

  Amatia put out her hand. “I do feel it! He’ll be a strong boy.”

  “I sacrifice everyday to Juno Lucina that he will. Sometimes I’m so afraid. My husband wants a son so badly. Soranus, my obstetrician, says I have the pica. I have vomiting, dizziness, headache. I must eat only soft-boiled eggs and porridge. And twice a day old Helen massages my abdomen with myrtle and oil of roses. Everything is forbidden to me—excitement, travel, crowds, and now even love-making.”

  “Poor Calpurnia. We’re a fine pair of invalids. My births were all easy, thank the gods, but this hysteria that afflicts me now—that is something else.”

  “And you believe Queen Isis will truly heal you? I know almost nothing about that cult. My husband doesn’t approve.”

  “Indeed, I do not.” Pliny emerged from the tablinum, where he had spent the morning trying, without success, to draft a memorandum to the city prefect. “I have nothing against the goddess, mind you, but her rites are far too stimulating for Calpurnia in her present state. Waving those rattles around, dancing. Of course, if you want to go to the temple yourself, Amatia, my litter is at your disposal.”

  The woman smiled up at him. “Alas, there is no point until I receive my dream and my money. I pray for the time to be short. My dear,” she turned back to Calpurnia, “do you know how to spin wool?”

  The girl shook her head, her mother had died when she was a baby, no one had ever…

  “I will teach you, just as I did my daughters. Pliny, be good enough to ask a slave to fetch wool and a distaff and spindle. You know, my dear, how it says on the tombstones of wives from the old republican times ‘lanam fecit—she made wool?’ In those days they really did. It was the highest praise a woman could receive. I find it calms the mind. So will you, my dear.”

  Pliny beamed. He suddenly felt a great tenderness toward his young wife, and great gratitude toward Amatia. In just four days she seemed to have blended imperceptibly into the life of his family. She was, like himself, a provincial who valued the old Roman traditions as few Romans of the City did. And Calpurnia clearly loved her. It bothered him a bit that a woman of such obvious good sense would want to involve herself with those Isiac charlatans, but he supposed illness makes cowards of us all. Still, he felt that if Calpurnia had a sudden emergency, he could count on Amatia to keep a level head and know what to do. He was sorry, in fact, that she must eventually leave them.

  The bunch of wool was brought and teased apart, with Calpurnia’s white kitten leaping up to catch the strands. Pliny turned reluctantly back to his office, leaving the two women, with their heads together, laughing.

  That night Martial joined them again for dinner. He was amusing, entertaining, teasingly flirtatious with the women. He evaded Pliny’s questions about where he had been yesterday. While they waited for the first course to be served, he studied Amatia, who as usual shared a couch with Calpurnia. Who was this serene, attractive woman? What was he supposed to notice about her? He told himself that he was merely satisfying his own curiosity. “You’re from Gaul, madam? A part of the Empire I’m happy to say I’ve never visited. Do they still wear long hair and paint themselves blue?” Fishing for information.

  She laughed pleasantly. “‘Long-haired Gaul’ is a thing of the past. We’re reasonably civilized these days. Lugdunum is a good sized city nowadays. My father was a land-owner. My husband was a merchant. He died some years ago and left me well provided for. I live with my eldest daughter and her husband. But it is a rather dull place, I admit. No society that would interest a man of the world like you.”

  “Well, in that case, seeing as you’re in Rome during the Games you should take the opportunity to see some plays. It would be my pleasure to accompany you if you don’t object to being seen with such a notorious fellow as myself.” He favored her with his toothiest smile.

  “Thank you, but I have a horror of crowds. They bring on my attacks.”

  “Ah, a pity. And your illness, if you don’t mind my asking? You seem well at the moment.”

  “Hysterical suffocation. It strikes me at odd times, whenever something happens to upset me. As I explained to Gaius Plinius, there’s no medical cure. But to Isis all things are possible. Even my physician Iatrides agrees.” At this she turned anxious eyes on Pliny. “I know how busy you are, but I’m so worried about him. Where can he have gone to? It’s been more than a week. I’m afraid something awful has happened. Are the City Battalions searching for him? You remember—a corpulent man with a beard, about fifty years old.”

  “Yes, yes of course. So far no word, I’m afraid.” The truth was, the matter had entirely slipped his mind. He had said nothing to the prefect, but he would do so tomorrow.

  Martial gave up on the woman and turned his gaze on Pliny. “And what did you learn yesterday at Verpa’s?”

  “Oh, a great deal, my friend. I wish you had been there.” He summarized briefly and concluded, “The difficulty is making sense of it all. Lucius is raging. He claims the legacy to the temple is a forgery, and it does seem like an extraordinary amount of money for a tight-fisted man like Verpa to donate for a mortuary, of all things. I’d like to know how much Scortilla had to do with it. She’s certainly in thick with those charla—”
He checked himself out of regard for his guest.

  “And the two of them are still living in the house together?” Martial asked with wry amusement. “I’d like to be a fly on that wall.”

  “Exactly. I’m hoping the pressure will build up and one of them will say something incriminating. My men have orders to eavesdrop at every opportunity.”

  Martial stroked his chin. “And you say the dagger was actually Verpa’s? So there was no outside assassin, despite someone’s attempt to make it seem so.”

  “Yes, and that someone is Lucius, I’m convinced of it. Remember, he was the one who first suggested it. And having assisted his father in getting evidence against Clemens by infiltrating the God-fearers, he would know about the seven-branched candlestick that we found drawn on the wall and the significance of that dagger. But, if his plan was to incriminate Pollux, he outsmarted himself. He didn’t know that Pollux had turned Christian.”

  “Christians,” Amatia interjected. “There are said to be some even in Lugdunum. Haters of mankind who pray for the end of the world by fire. Compare that to the loving-kindness of Queen Isis.”

  “Indeed so,” Pliny hastened to agree. Gaius Plinius wasn’t much interested in the next world. His ambitions were confined to this one. Of course one paid honor to the gods of the State, while agreeing with the philosophers that the One God, if he existed, was very far away and not much concerned with mankind. What Pliny, and others of his class, objected to was superstitio—religious zealotry, uncontrolled passion that inevitably led to public disorder.

  “Any other enemies a possibility?” Martial brought them back to the topic at hand. “There’s still Scortilla and her dwarf. Perhaps the motive was money or some personal grudge we know nothing about.”

  “Of course I’ve thought of that.” Pliny replied, “but I have nothing to go on.”

  “I suspect you’d like it to be her, wouldn’t you? Something about her offends you deeply. But consider. Could a dwarf kill a man three times his size and weight? Could he have sketched the candelabrum so high above his head?”

  Pliny frowned and said nothing. The poet, damn him, was right.

  Sensing that he had been perhaps a little too clever and offended his patron, Martial hastened to turn the conversation in a different direction. “I suppose Verpa’s papers were examined?”

  Calpurnia had been about to say something to her friend, but Amatia pressed her hand over the girl’s mouth; the move was sudden, swift and rude. Martial, whose place at the table was between them and Pliny, caught it out of the corner of his eye.

  “Before I got there on the day after the murder,” Pliny answered, “the prefect had already impounded the contents of the tablinum. I haven’t heard any more about it since then. I assume they found nothing of interest.”

  “Then let’s come back to the ‘who’ and the ‘how,’” said Martial. The cinaedus Ganymede interests me. I’ve known plenty of boys like him.” Martial suppressed a pang, thinking of his current love object, the unfaithful Diadumenus, whom he was still pursuing all over the city.

  “The usual sad story,” Pliny said. “Getting too old, losing his looks, and so jealous of Hylas, the other cinaedus, that he couldn’t conceal it. It occurred to me that he might have killed his rival under cover of the other stranglings. And he might well have had reason to kill Verpa, too, if the master was getting ready to throw him out in the street to starve, which is the sort of beastliness Verpa was famous for.

  “And yet plainly, he didn’t act alone. It must have been Lucius who showed him how to draw the candelabrum on the wall and convinced him that, by deflecting blame onto the Jews, the other slaves, including himself, would be let off.”

  “Hold on, though,” Martial objected, “Lucius couldn’t have reckoned on you, with your rather eccentric views on slavery, taking charge of the investigation.”

  “That wouldn’t have stopped him from lying to Ganymede. What does an ignorant slave boy know of Roman law? He’d believe whatever he was told because he’d want to believe it. No doubt Lucius promised the boy a life of ease and security for the rest of his days if they carried it off.”

  “All right, but could he have done it, physically?”

  Pliny chewed thoughtfully on a stalk of asparagus. “Excellent point. I can scarcely imagine that sorry creature overpowering Verpa in a fight.”

  “Well, as to that we’ll never know, but it would be something if we could prove that the boy has the ability to make that extraordinary climb.”

  “And just how would we do that? He’ll hardly cooperate.”

  “No, but an idea occurs to me.”

  When Martial had finished laying out his plan, Pliny slapped the table with delight. “By Jupiter, we’ll do it tomorrow morning—no, better tomorrow night; to be fair we must see if he could do it in the dark. You’ll come with me, of course. What would I ever do without you, my friend?”

  The hour was growing late. The poet yawned, stood up and called for his shoes. “Oh, by the way,” he said to Pliny, his manner studiously casual, “have you, ah, spoken to Parthenius yet—I mean about my poems? An invitation to the palace?”

  “Ah, well, actually no.” Pliny tried and failed to cover his embarrassment. “The emperor is much preoccupied these days; they all are, in fact. Don’t know why, really. Silly rumors of conspiracies. But we’ll see. In a few months I’m sure I can arrange something. In the meantime, Statius—well, you know he’s my friend.”

  “Of course, Patrone, don’t trouble about it.” Martial looked away.

  “Well, see you tomorrow.”

  

  The second hour of the night.

  The forecourt of the temple was silent but for the susurrus of breathing, the intermittent sighs and grunts of the sleepers, the dreamers. Behind his jackal mask, Alexandrinus’ eyes swept over them. Then one, a dark shadow against the wall, stirred, stood up, and came toward him, stepping carefully among the recumbent forms.

  He hurried her into his private room. Her face was tear-streaked.

  “I can’t stay there another night, Alex. He rants, he threatens to kill me, he’s going to challenge the will, he’s even talking about hiring that odious Pliny for his lawyer.” She clung to him.

  With difficulty, the priest unlocked her arms and stepped back. “Calm yourself, my dear. Let Lucius say what he likes. The seal and the forged numeral were perfect! And the emperor will support us, if it comes to that. He’s a devotee and he has a financial interest in the will going unchallenged. We’ve won, do you understand? Isis is with us. Feel her power.”

  But Turpia Scortilla would not be reasoned with. “Lucius will kill me. He’s half out of his mind.”

  “He won’t. The house is full of soldiers, isn’t it? Let him threaten, he doesn’t dare do anything.”

  “Please, let me stay here in the temple with you. I can’t go back there.”

  “Absolutely not. We can’t be seen together until all this dies down. Lucius would have grounds for challenging the will if he could prove something about us. We’re about to inherit two million. Just be patient a little longer.”

  “Alex—Lord Anubis—don’t forget that it was I who got it for you. You won’t will you? I love you. Make love to me.”

  But he took off the long-snouted mask and set it aside, exposing his beautiful skull. He wouldn’t play the lusty god with her tonight; he wasn’t in the mood.

  Soon she left, walking with her head down and moaning softly. In the stillness of the night, it was a sound that Nectanebo, working late as usual in his embalming shop, was bound to hear.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The fourth day before the Ides of Germanicus. Day six of the Games.

  The third hour of the night.

  Pliny looked at him severely. “I asked you once before, boy, and I ask you again now. Did you, at the order of someone in this house, murder Sextus Verpa, your master?”

  They stood in Verpa’s bedroom—Pliny and Martial; Valens and th
ree of his men; Lucius, affecting an air of unconcern which was belied by the lines of tension around his mouth; Iarbas, his monkey on his shoulder, lurking near the doorway. He was Scortilla’s eyes and ears, the lady herself claiming to be indisposed. All around them on the walls, the satyrs and maenads—eerily lifelike in the glimmering light of the lamps—writhed and coupled, indifferent to the drama which was being enacted in the middle of the room.

  Ganymede, his features twisted in anguish, violently shook his head no.

  “Shall we put it to the test?” snapped Pliny. “We can’t make you climb up to the window, but we can make you climb down…or break your neck.” This had been Martial’s bright idea.

  “Centurion, you’ve stationed a man below? Good. Draw your sword and persuade this boy to show us why he is called “the eel.”

  Valens gripped Ganymede by his long hair, dragged him to the window, pushed his head out, and prodded him in the rump with the point of his weapon. The youth spread his arms and legs and tossed his head frantically from side to side while the centurion’s blade dug deeper into his flesh.

  “Save me!” he shrieked.

  “Don’t fear, Eros protects his own.” It was Lucius who spoke, rapidly and softly. The words had an instantaneous effect. Ganymede’s shoulders twisted and folded together until he seemed to have no shoulders at all. He went through the narrow window as far as his waist. Then, making a half twist with his hips, he kicked with both legs together, imitating a fish’s tail, and in an instant was outside. He dropped to the overhang below, landing on all fours. Then he was hanging from the rain gutter, and then his head and fingertips disappeared.

  “Here he comes,” shouted the trooper down below, who held up a torch. “Scampers like a squirrel, he does. Got his legs around the column now—ooof!”