Roman Games

by Bruce Macbain

  Ganymede dropped directly on the man, knocking him to the ground. The back of the garden ended in a high brick wall, thick with leafy vines. The boy went up it like a cat, leapt from the top to the street below, and bounded away into the shadows.

  “Merda!” cried Pliny, using a word he never used. “Centurion, the rest of you, follow me! Bring torches!”

  Moments later, they stood milling about on the street.

  “It’s hopeless, sir,” growled Valens, “this time of night.”

  “Martial,” Pliny confided, “when it comes to the dregs of humanity, you’re my oracle. Where would you go if you were Ganymede?”

  “Thank you so much. I’m afraid I agree with your centurion.”

  “The Circus Flaminius!” cried Pliny. “It’s not far from here. Hundreds of hiding places under those arches. Come on!”

  They pelted down the street toward the colonnaded supports of the grandstands. Pliny, who hated exercise of any sort, was breathless by the time they reached it. For an hour they prowled the darkened arches, but turned up no one except prostitutes and homeless beggars, who all denied having seen a running youth.

  “And where to now, sir?” asked Valens, a hint of insubordination in his voice.

  Pliny leaned against a wall and mopped his perspiring face.

  

  Tight-lipped, Lucius bent over his writing desk.

  To Marcus Ganeus, greetings. He scratched the words with his stylus on a pair of waxed tablets. Ganymede will come to you tonight, seeking shelter. You will oblige me by killing him and disposing of the body. You’ll be well paid. L.

  He bound the leaves together and handed the packet to a slave. “Hide this under your tunic as you go out, the soldier mustn’t see it. Here’s where you’re to take it, listen carefully.”

  Suspended over the doorway of an establishment near the Laurentine Gate, half way across the city, a carved, red-painted prick and balls swung to and fro in the wind. Beneath it, a sign proclaimed this the Temple of Eros. Cleaner than most of the male brothels in Rome, it catered to a genteel clientele. A slim figure stumbled through the door.

  “Who are you, then?” The shrewd-eyed man behind the desk looked up sharply.

  Ganymede stopped in confusion. “Where’s Marcus Ganeus?”

  “Doesn’t own the place any more, I do. What’s your business with him?”

  “I—I used to work here, I want to come back. Put me in a room, I’ll make money for you.”

  “That good, are you? You look too old to me. Step closer. Why, you’re wearing a collar! ‘Fugio tene me—I’m running away, catch me.’ No, my friend, out you go. City prefect would close me down in a minute for harboring a runaway.”

  “Please…”

  “You want me to call the Night Watch?”

  The boy ran out.

  Crouched in a stinking alley not far from the brothel, he twisted and tugged uselessly at the iron collar until his skin was raw and tears ran silently down his cheeks.

  A quarter of an hour later, Lucius’ slave knocked at the same door and asked to deliver a message to Marcus Ganeus. Now the brothel owner’s curiosity was aroused. “I’m him, give it to me.” He tossed the slave a copper coin.

  The proprietor of the Temple of Eros wasn’t much of a reader, but he got the gist of the message. His eyebrows lifted in surprise.

  Hours passed, and Ganymede was hungry. He’d tried to scavenge for scraps in a heap of refuse behind a popina, but snarling, yellow-eyed dogs had driven him off. Now he shrank into the recess of a doorway, the entrance to a crumbling insula that rose six stories above street. He knew they would be looking for him and that he must get off the streets before daybreak. The top of this building, he reckoned, commanded a view of the brothel. Lucius would come there for him as soon as it was safe. Lucius wouldn’t fail him. He must wait and watch.

  He crept up the rotting stairway, intending to hide on the roof. When he reached the topmost story a better opportunity presented itself. Peering through the tattered rag that served as a door, he saw that the apartment had suffered a fire; the walls were charred and the roof was half open to the sky. There wasn’t a stick of furniture in the place, but propped against the wall, scabby legs sticking out before her, sat an old crone. Her head lolled to one side, a wine jug lay in her lap.

  “You come to see me, darlin’?” she croaked. “Cost you two coppers, ’at’s all.”

  It was the work of a moment to strangle her. Then Ganymede hunkered down by the window to wait.

  The search party had blundered down one dark alley after another in the neighborhood of the Circus until, at last, even Pliny was ready to give up. The night air was sultry, heavy with threatening rain. Sweat pooled in the hollows of Pliny’s eyes, trickled down his neck.

  “Where in Hades are we?” he demanded of no one in particular.

  “As it happens,” replied Martial, “we are not very far from the house of some poet friends of mine. There’s always a party going on. Come along, enjoy some bad wine, good company, and better verses than Statius ever wrote. Your centurion can see you home when you’ve had enough.”

  “The last thing in the world I want to do right now is go to a soirée,” said Pliny testily. “Mehercule, I should have been home two hours ago. Calpurnia will be worrying herself sick.”

  But the poet persisted and, at last, Pliny yielded. “But only for half an hour.”

  Valens and his men repaired to a tavern down the street to wait.

  Answering to Martial’s knock, the door was opened by a tipsy young man, naked to the waist, whose long hair tumbled over his face. The room behind him was dark and smoky with incense; flutes shrilled a wild melody, castanets clattered, dancers whirled in a candlelit haze.

  “This isn’t a poetry reading, this is a bacchanal!” Pliny sputtered. But Martial applied a firm hand to his back and propelled him inside.

  “You there, boy, fill a goblet for my friend and me,” Martial shouted to a slave over the commotion of voices. The poet tossed his off at a gulp. “Come meet my friends.” He plunged into the crowd of revelers, holding tight to Pliny’s elbow lest he escape. “Mind where you step.” Tangled like crabs in a sack, bodies sprawled and writhed upon cushions—men, women, boys, creatures of ambiguous sex, sleek and oiled cinaedi in gaudy pantomime masks, and battle-scarred gladiators all together. A miasma of perfume, sweat, and the ranker smells of love engulfed them.

  “Fancy seeing you here, old man!” An elderly senator, whose private life was said to be beyond reproach, tugged at Pliny’s cloak, grinning foolishly from the floor while a naked girl tousled his white hairs.

  Martial led the way through a succession of rooms until the sounds of laughter and clapping hands drew them to a small garden at the rear of the house, where torches flared amid deep shadows.

  “Ho, Nepos, is that you?” cried Martial. “And Cerialis? And Priscus, too?”

  The three poets occupied a bench while a clutch of admirers lay on the grass at their feet. “Glycera, Telesphorus, Hyacinthus, Thais, Thalia,” Martial seemed to know them all.

  “Who’s your friend?”

  “This is Gaius, a lover of poetry.” Mercifully, Martial omitted the rest of Pliny’s name. “Goblet empty already, Gaius? Here, someone fill him up.”

  “I’d rather he fill me up!” cackled an aging prostitute, asprawl on the ground in a pose that left nothing to the imagination.

  “What, your ancient cunnus, Ligeia?” Martial shot back. “I don’t know why you even bother to depilate it anymore—seems to me rather like plucking the beard of a dead lion!” The revelers howled with laughter.

  “Bastard!” Ligeia showed him the digitus infamis.

  “Look, my friend has come here to listen to poetry, not to be propositioned by aging lupae. Here, make room for him on the bench and pass the wine jug. Nepos, give us one of your epigrams.”

  After Nepos, they all in turn recited—wicked, cutting, scabrous verses. In the midst of the hilari
ty, Pliny observed a beautiful youth with hair like molten gold sit down beside Martial and put his arm around him. They kissed long and deeply. The celebrated Diadumenus, no doubt.

  Meanwhile the jug went round and round, and Pliny kept finding his cup in need of refilling. Then he heard a new voice reciting—it was his own.

  “Bawdy verse! Why, you old lecher!” Martial cried in delight. “Is that what’s on your mind when you’re looking so damned dignified?”

  “I smile, I laugh like other men.” Pliny was instantly defensive.

  “Of course you do!” Martial thumped him on the back.

  “I mean they’re nothing really, mere trifles.”

  “You’re too modest! Put a laurel wreath on his head, someone— you’re one of us! You know, I always suspected there was a real poet inside there somewhere.”

  At that moment Flaccus, yet another poet friend, joined the circle. He was out of breath. “Have you heard the news?” he said to Martial. “Papinius Statius is dead! The old boy croaked in the middle of dinner this evening.”

  “Dead? Statius!” Martial kissed Flaccus, he kissed Diadumenus, he kissed Pliny. He threw his arms in the air and shouted to the heavens, “Tonight I am the happiest man on earth! Diadumenus has come back to me and Statius is dead! By the balls of Priapus, now comes my turn! I will be court poet now!”

  His comrades joined in a chorus of “Hear, hear!” and “No one deserves it more than you.” And Pliny found himself as merry as any of them, although he did seem vaguely to recall that he had always liked Statius.

  The jug continued to go round and, as the hour grew late, amorous pairs in various combinations of sexes were seen creeping off into the shadows.

  Martial roused Pliny, who had fallen into a doze, with a jab in the ribs. “There’s a pretty youth over there,” he whispered. “Buttocks like firm pears, balls plucked and smooth as a baby’s.” He’s looking this way. Go on, my friend.”

  Pliny, in alarm, stood up on wobbly legs. “No, sorry, married man, don’t you know. Look, got to be going.”

  Martial pulled him back onto the bench. “It’s not like cheating on your wife.”

  “Never cared much for boy-love, to tell you the truth.”

  Martial looked at his friend in amazement. “Really? Why ever not? Well, have a bit of the other, then. Ye gods, man, get down off your high horse!”

  This virtuous prig, Martial thought. Would it make it easier to betray his patron if he first dirtied him a little? He signaled to a girl who wore long earrings and nothing else. She swayed toward them, moving her hips to the rhythm of the flutes and cymbals.

  Pliny struggled, but his legs would not obey him.

  The girl knelt at Pliny’s feet and looked up with liquid eyes. Her tongue darted out over her lips. Pliny trembled in every limb. He filled his hands with her thick, scented hair and drew her closer. He swelled, he grew. The music pounded in his head. The torches guttered and flared. He was a man, dammit, and it had been too long!

  “Home to bed, sir?” Out on the street, Valens leered at the acting vice prefect. Enjoyable was it, sir? The poetry, I mean?” Pliny’s clothes were disarranged and drenched with scent, a laurel wreath was cocked over one eye, and he steadied himself with one hand against the house wall.

  “What time d’you make it, Centurion?” He tried desperately to sound in command of himself.

  Valens squinted at the stars. “Dawn in about two hours, I’d say, sir.”

  With an inward groan, Pliny launched himself down the middle of the deserted street. Valens and his men, themselves rather the worse for drink, fell in on either side.

  “Halt!” Pliny commanded, after they had gone a block or two. A street urinal stood before them. He had never deigned to use one before: common, smelly, unbecoming the dignity of a Roman senator.

  “Something wrong, sir?” inquired Valens.

  “Not at all, centurion, kindly wait a moment.” Pliny hitched up his tunic, unlimbered, and pissed—grandly, expansively, like a mountain torrent in the Piedmont—yes, even poetically—until he could not squeeze out another drop. He gave a contented sigh.

  Valens couldn’t contain a furtive smile. “Feel better, sir?”

  “Immensely, centurion. Let us proceed.”

  At his front door, Valens handed him over to his slaves, hastily roused from bed. “No salutatio this morning, be off with you,” the centurion growled at a knot of sleepy clients, already gathered outside the door. “Have a good sleep, sir, and don’t worry about that filthy little cinaedus. We’ll find him.”

  Still foggy with drink, Pliny allowed himself to be undressed and put to bed. If he had been less drunk, he might have noticed Calpurnia’s tear-streaked face peering from behind her bedroom door.

  If he had been less drunk, he might also have noticed a man with a bandaged arm who watched from across the street as he entered his house.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The third day before the Ides of Germanicus. Day seven of the Games.

  The third hour of the day.

  Gaius Plinius moaned. He had a throbbing, behind his eyes, a vile taste in his mouth, and a troubled soul. He had sent the door slave off to fetch a basin of water and, moments later, his darling Calpurnia, her under lip quivering, had appeared with it in her own hands and meekly set it down on the wash-stand. She shot him a reproachful look and fled without saying a word.

  He scoured his teeth fiercely with pumice and honey, which might expunge the sour taste of cheap wine, but the taste of guilt, never. What had come over him? Drunk as an owl! Rutting with some whore in the bushes! Could a brief association with vulgarians have brought him to this! If Martial should ever, ever mention this night again, he swore to himself, he would terminate their friendship at once.

  It was all Verpa’s fault, of course. Damn the man for getting himself murdered! Today was almost the half-way point of the Games, time was running out, and he had accomplished nothing toward saving those sorry slaves from their fate.

  He had begun to sense the tension among his own slaves too. They who had known nothing but kindness from him and who were always permitted to be lively and at ease, were now ominously silent. As always, by some mysterious telepathy, they knew what was going on and what would happen if Ganymede were to be caught alive and made to confess. That kind of crime, inspired by a slave’s sexual jealousy, allowed no appeal to extenuating circumstances. Ganymede and the whole familia would be hideously tortured and executed. Even Pliny’s beloved Zosimus avoided his eyes now and stumbled so much in his lunchtime recitation of Greek poetry that Pliny became quite vexed and sent him away.

  What did they really think of him—these men and women who made his comfortable life possible? Could one of them be planning to kill him for some slight, some grudge, without betraying the slightest sign? He was shocked to find himself entertaining the idea even for a moment. But, once thought, it could not be unthought.

  To distract himself, Pliny retired to his tablinum and worked all morning on his accounts and correspondence, which had piled up shockingly. The tenants on his Tuscan property were in arrears again, the architect whom he had commissioned to build a temple of Ceres on one of his estates had submitted his bill. Then there were papers to be drawn up manumitting his old nurse and giving her a small piece of land where she could spend her last days.

  About midday, a slave came to announce that Centurion Valens awaited him in the atrium.

  “Make your report, centurion,” said Pliny, as brisk and businesslike as he could manage. He would tolerate no familiarity from the man because of last night. But Valens’ manner was quite correct. Standing at attention and looking straight ahead he reported no success. “That little fellator has gone to earth somewhere, sir.”

  A moment later, Martial arrived, exuding bonhomie. “Up, are we?” he called jovially. Pliny froze him with a look, which the poet understood at once. In a more subdued manner, he inquired if there was any news of Ganymede. “No? I’m not surpris
ed. Combing the city, in my opinion, is useless even with the prefect’s entire force. He’s probably far from Rome by now.”

  “I disagree,” Pliny said. “If he’s the murderer, I’m convinced that someone—Lucius—put him up to it. Now he’ll be waiting for Lucius to help him.”

  The poet sprawled in a chair with his chin in his hand. “So you think he’s hanging about nearby?”

  “I do. Where would you…?”

  “I beg you, Gaius Plinius, do not ask me again to imagine myself as an ignorant adolescent male prostitute.” The two men glared at each other in silence.

  “Hold on!” Pliny burst out suddenly. “A male prostitute! Martial, Valens, do you recall Lucius’ words to him just before he escaped?”

  “‘Fear nothing’—some such platitude,” answered the poet.

  “No, after that. Wasn’t it, ‘Eros protects his own?’ Ganymede told me he had been purchased by Verpa from a brothel called the Temple of Eros. It fits.”

  “It was a signal?” said Martial, sitting up straight. “Lucius was telling the boy where to hide—in his old bordello? Pliny, permit me to say that you are a genius.”

  Pliny allowed himself a pained smile. “Perhaps dissipation is good for the brain, after all.”

  “I’ve always found it so,” the poet agreed modestly.

  “Now,” said Pliny, “if we only knew where this Temple of Eros was.”

  “Unfortunately,” replied the poet, “there are probably a dozen or more in the city, they’re all named either that or the Garden of Priapus, though I reckon I know where one or two of them are.”

  “Martial, once again we are indebted to your peculiar expertise,” said Pliny dryly.