Roman Games

by Bruce Macbain

  Scortilla, you offer to suck me—I fly!

  Wise Pliny’s discovered the truth.

  I’ve no wish, Scortilla, like Verpa to die

  From the bite of your venomous tooth!

  Just off the top of my head, you know.”

  “Very droll,” said Pliny. “You can recite it to the lady in person.”

  

  Scortilla lay stretched on a couch in her bedroom, where she spent most of her days now. She held a wine cup; the liquid sloshed and spattered her gown as she stirred. She looked at Pliny with unfocused eyes, which first showed bewilderment, then hostility, and finally fear. He remembered again his military appearance. Did she think he had come to kill her? Well, so much the better; it would loosen her tongue.

  “Turpia Scortilla, I am here to charge you with suspicion of murder in the death of Sextus Ingentius Verpa.” He tossed the bundle on the floor and jerked the wrapper away. Iarbas, crouched in a corner, let out a cry in his uncouth language and threw himself at his monkey’s little corpse.

  “You recognize him, I trust,” said Pliny with his sternest expression. “We found him in Verpa’s bedroom, he had punctured his hand with this.” He thrust the needle in her face, observing how she flinched. “The poor creature died in agony, just as Verpa did. Diaulus—Nectanebo to you—will swear in court that the monkey’s wound is identical to the one he showed us on Verpa’s flesh. No doubt, you purchased the poisoned needle at some potioner’s shop, we’ll find it. Come now, you may as well confess.”

  “I know nothing of poisons!” she croaked, shrinking back on the couch.

  “Oh, but Scortilla,” Lucius purred from where he stood behind Pliny, “you visit the magicians and amulet sellers all the time. Don’t those same shops deal in deadlier goods?”

  She turned on him savagely, “You lying little shit! You’d say anything to ruin me.” Her anger drove out fear. “You can’t prove anything, vice-prefect. Why would I have done such a thing?”

  He knew perfectly well why she had done it, but he bit his tongue and kept silent. Somehow, she and the priest had cajoled or tricked Verpa, or actually tampered with the will, so that they could spend that legacy together. But he dare not say so after the emperor’s warning last night. But even if he couldn’t bring the will into it, he could still prosecute her for murder.

  “We’ll discuss your motive later.”

  “I know why she did it, and I’ll say so even if you won’t.” This was Lucius. Pliny shot him a warning look.

  Scortilla smelled uncertainty. “Very well. You won’t tell me why. Then how am I supposed to have done this deed?”

  That, of course, was the question that Pliny and Martial had been debating all the way from the library.

  “You may have used your wiles on Pollux to let you in.”

  “My ‘wiles.’ On that virgin! The stupid ox hated me. I tried seducing him once years ago, just for something to do. He rejected me! Me! Verpa was quite amused when Pollux confessed to him.”

  “Then, you entered the same way Ganymede did.”

  “What? Through the window!” she nearly howled.

  “It’s not impossible,” Martial said. “Once upon a time you used to do handsprings on the back of a galloping horse. A former acrobat, one who hasn’t grown fat in retirement, might have managed it. I wonder what passed through Verpa’s mind when he awakened out of a deep sleep to find you poised over his privates? But I don’t imagine you gave him much time to think, did you?”

  Scortilla stared for a long moment in silence. And then, without warning, her shoulders heaved and tears started down her cheeks, making tracks in the dead-white powder. “So clever, aren’t you, both of you? Well, I’m sorry once again to disappoint you. I did not creep through that window on these! With a swift motion she gathered her gown in both hands and pulled it up to her thighs. “Look now at what I hide even from my lovers, hide because I will not be pitied.”

  In spite of himself, Pliny took a step back. The woman’s knees were swollen, misshapen knobs of bone. Hopelessly arthritic.

  “Aren’t they pretty, Vice Prefect? They’re the price an athlete pays. And the pain is unbearable. No medicine, no amulet relieves it, not even the compassionate Isis to whom I pray daily. Only wine mixed with opium—which I buy from the potioners, yes—dulls it enough so that I can live my life as I wish to. And so I drink all day long, and if I stumble people like you despise me for a drunkard. Well, I prefer that. And no one, up until this moment, has ever seen me weeping for the girl I once was.”

  “Turpia Scortilla, you will consider yourself under house arrest and report personally to my centurion twice every day,” said Pliny, grim-faced.

  “Oh, spoken like a true policeman, vice-prefect! Never let mere facts get in your way!” Her voice was heavy with scorn.

  “Yes, well…,” murmured Martial when they were on the street again. “I think we could both do with a nice bath, don’t you? Cool our heads.”

  But Pliny waved him off angrily.

  At home, Pliny went straight to his tablinum and locked himself in. He was in no fit mood for company, not even his wife’s. He had left the dead monkey where it lay on the floor but he had had the presence of mind to bring the needle home with him wrapped in its napkin. This he locked in a small iron casket. Then he sank onto a chair with his head in his hands. Presently, he sent for some food and wine. He drank a glass. Then another. And another. He was defeated. The Games would be over in six days. Possibly, Lucius could be charged with some sort of attempted murder. As for Scortilla—nothing. No means, no motive that he could mention without angering the emperor. But dammit the woman was guilty! And forty innocent human beings would die for her crime.

  The hours wore on. Eventually, Pliny drifted off to sleep.

  But not for long. He woke with a start to find the emperor’s lictors standing in his doorway again. This time they treated him more respectfully, but the summons was still peremptory. Refusal was not a choice.

  Five hours later he was home again. Calpurnia wept with relief. Amatia gave him a penetrating look, but said nothing.

  “Just a private interview,” he assured the women, smiling wanly. He would not tell them of the repetition of his previous night’s bizarre conversation with Domitian, the self-pitying complaints, the dark suspicions, the wild accusations, the lavish praise of Pliny and his uncle, which turned maudlin as the emperor drank more and more; his final escape when Domitian finally passed out on the floor. Or that this time he had had a run-in with Parthenius, who seemed to be lying in wait for him as he left. The chamberlain had tried to pump him. Pliny had shoved him roughly aside.

  For the second night in a row Pliny lay in the dark, desperate with exhaustion, unable to close his eyes. He could not go through this again; could not put his frail wife through any more of it. As the first rays of dawn slanted through his window, he lit a lamp and sat down at his desk to shuffle aimlessly through the correspondence that had piled up there. And so it happened that his eye fell upon a letter from Calpurnius Fabatus, his wife’s grandfather. The old man wanted him to go up to Ameria to help him evaluate the condition of an estate he was thinking of buying. Since the courts and Senate weren’t in session surely dear Pliny could spare him a couple of days?

  “Accipio omen,” Pliny murmured. “I accept the omen.” He wasn’t a policeman, had never claimed to be. It needed someone cleverer than him to solve this wretched case. He had done all he could. One thing he knew for certain: call it running away, call it hiding, but if he didn’t get out of Rome, clear his head, calm his soul, and, above all, escape from the emperor, he would soon go mad.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  The eighteenth day before the Kalends of Domitianus

  [formerly October].

  Day ten of the Games. The first hour of the day.

  Pliny emerged from his bedroom wearing a traveling cloak and broad-brimmed straw hat. “Zosimus,” he called to his young freedman, “send the clients
away with my apologies. You and I are going on a journey.” Zosimus was on easy terms with his patron but something in the set of Pliny’s mouth told him to ask no questions. “Boy,” Pliny beckoned a slave, “run to the hostler’s outside the Flaminian Gate and order a covered coach with a mule team and driver to be ready at once.”

  At the sound of her husband’s voice, Calpurnia tottered into the room. Pliny spoke brusquely to her. An errand for her grandfather. Where? North. He would say no more. How long? Two or three days, he really couldn’t say.

  “Then I’m coming with you.”

  “Over miles of bumpy roads in your condition? I won’t hear of it, my dear. You’re best off here with Helen and Amatia to look after you. Here, I’ve written notes to the city prefect, the emperor, and to Martial. See that they’re delivered, will you?”

  “But must you go today?” she persisted. “You don’t look well. You’re not yourself. What is the matter, you must confide in me.”

  “Nonsense, I’ve had it in mind for some time.”

  “You never said…” Tears suddenly overflowed her eyes.

  “Really, Calpurnia, must I announce my every move ahead of time?” He turned from her abruptly and shouted up his bearers.

  Awakened by the commotion, Amatia came out of her room. She put her arms around Calpurnia and held the girl tightly. “We’ll be fine on our own, won’t we darling? Enjoy your trip, Gaius Plinius, I’m sure you’ve earned a rest. By the way, last night while you were shut up in your office I received welcome news from home. A messenger sent ahead by my son-in-law just arrived by ship from Massilia. He has gathered the money for my initiation fee and will be arriving himself in just a few days. I’ll be able to make my devotions to the goddess and then I’ll no longer have to impose on your hospitality. You know the old saying, ‘After three days a guest and a fish begin to smell.’ And I’ve taken advantage of your kindness far longer than that.”

  “Nonsense, dear lady. The advantage has been ours. You’ve done wonders for my wife. We will both miss you. I must say this messenger made remarkably good time.”

  “And,” Calpurnia put in, “the poor man hurt himself on his journey, I think.”

  “Oh, in what way?”

  “He had a broken arm.”

  

  The lumbering four-wheeler jounced over the paving stones of the Via Cassia, following the valley of the Tiber up into the Umbrian hills. Zosimus sat beside his master and unrolled a volume of Alexandrian lyrics, but before he had recited a dozen lines Pliny’s eyelids drooped. He was still sleeping when the setting sun lit their way into the courtyard of an inn where they would stop for the night.

  

  Pliny was not the only one who had felt weary and oppressed that morning. Brooding in his bed, Lucius was prey to similar feelings. He had long since given up the morning salutatio since no one came any more. Deserted by the family clients, who smelled better pickings elsewhere, without friends or prospects, a virtual prisoner in his own house, he had nothing much to do but drink and sleep. As for those mysterious papers that his father had taunted him with, Lucius had long since given up the search. Clearly they weren’t in the house. For all his cunning, he had exactly nothing to show. The trial was not many days away and he would be lucky to escape with nothing worse than banishment for life, and that only because someone else—could it possibly have been the pitiful Scortilla?—had murdered the old bastard first.

  These morose thoughts were interrupted by the knock of a trooper. Four tradesmen were at the door, dirty foreigners by the look of them. Should they be admitted? Lucius shrugged. He had nothing better to do. In an ill temper he pulled on a rumpled tunic and went out into the vestibule.

  He looked sourly at the four characters, swarthy and bearded to the eyes, who loitered near the door. Three of them, he recognized. They were brothers, Syrians, whom his father had brought back with him from Judea and set up as rug dealers near the Forum. Lucius knew that his father had used these thugs to administer an occasional beating, or worse, to loosen a tongue; a regrettable, but necessary part of the informer’s trade. And because they would unavoidably hear things during these interrogations, Verpa had warned them not to learn Latin beyond a few basic words, not that they were likely to in the immigrant ghetto where they lived.

  With them was another villainous character who introduced himself as Hiram, a friend of theirs. Hiram could speak Greek.

  Lucius had been an indifferent student, his schoolboy Greek was rusty, but he could get by. “What do you want of me?” he asked curtly. “What’s in that box you’ve got with you?”

  Hiram removed the soiled cloth in which it was wrapped and offered it for Lucius’ inspection. It was a doctor’s kit, made of sycamore wood, with a brass lock, which had been pried open, and a leather shoulder strap. Where had he seen this before?

  Hiram explained: “It belonged to the man your father tortured to death with the help of my three mates, a job for which he agreed to pay ’em one thousand sesterces, their usual fee. I happened to make their acquaintance in a tavern last night and agreed to speak for ’em, since they’re shy of you.” Hiram’s gold tooth gleamed when he smiled. “If they don’t get their money they’ll make trouble.”

  “Will they, indeed!” Lucius snatched the box—he expected it to be heavy, but it wasn’t—and lifted the lid. “It’s empty. Where are all the instruments, the drugs?”

  “They sold the instruments on the street, the little bottles they threw away,” answered the gold tooth. “They had nothing in ’em but colored water and sand.”

  “You don’t say? Well, the box alone is damned near worthless and I haven’t got a thousand in cash, so there!”

  “The name on the bottom might mean something to you?”

  Lucius turned the box over and read the inscription: Iatrides son of Philemon, carved in Greek letters. That gave him a start. The invalid woman’s physician had some such name as this. “What did this man look like? Heavy set? Bearded?” Lucius had scarcely noticed the doctor during the brief time that he and the lady had stayed with them, but, yes, it did seem like him. But why torture him? Turning the box over again, his ear caught a little rattle within it. He peered inside more closely. A pin embedded in a bit of cork lay on the bottom. Help me Hercules! It was the twin of the one that Pliny had shown them yesterday. Trying to conceal his excitement, he scowled and said, “I’ll have to know more details.”

  The thugs jabbered away all at once, and Hiram translated. “They were told to waylay the man at a certain street corner where he always passed. They took him by cart, rolled up in a rug, to your little farm across the Tiber, where your father met them. They all went into the woods beyond the house and worked him over. He screamed a lot, but no one lives out that way. When they got to singeing his balls, he died on ’em. Weak heart, I’d say.”

  “What did my father want from him? Did he say anything?”

  Hiram consulted his companions. “They’re not paid to listen. They don’t understand much anyway. Your father wanted to know who this man was and why he was in his house. The man was harder to understand. He spoke Latin with an accent and he was, you know, screaming. He begged your father to be merciful. They understood the word ‘clemens.’ And something too about clothing—they think they heard ‘vestis.’ But maybe they heard wrong, these fellows ain’t very smart.” The three torturers, not understanding Hiram’s speech, smiled hopefully at Lucius.

  “After the man died,” Hiram continued, “your father told ’em to bury him and the box—they can show you the spot if you like. He went back to the farmhouse for something to eat. While he was gone they hid the box under some straw in their cart, thinking it might be worth something.”

  Lucius wasted no time in paying the Syrians off with some silver spoons, which were worth considerably more than a thousand sesterces. He wanted no trouble from them. No, indeed. He wanted time to think. Clemens? Of course! Not “merciful,” but Flavius Clemens, the God-feare
r whom his father had denounced. Vestis he could make no sense of. Still, something connected this Amatia and her physician to the Clemens affair. Whoever they were, they weren’t what they seemed, and Verpa had found them out.

  Lucius took the kit back to his room and sent a slave to fetch one of Scortilla’s cats. There were half a dozen in the house, all of them “sacred,” more of her Egyptian nonsense. He picked the animal up by its neck and pressed the pin into its blue-gray flank. It twisted and made strangling sounds, and in a moment it was dead. Satisfied with his experiment, he went looking for Valens. Pliny had warned him to cooperate and cooperate he would. His life might depend on it.

  He found the centurion in the garden, not alone. A bosomy, unkempt woman was seated next to him on the bench beside the pool where three sun-burned, naked little boys were engaged in pushing one another’s heads under the water and shrieking at the top of their lungs.

  “The family, sir,” Valens explained, looking a trifle apologetic. “Been after me for days to let ’em come over for a look round. Thought it wouldn’t do any harm.”

  Lucius suppressed an urge to swear at the man. “I want you to go to the vice-prefect’s house and ask him to come here without delay. I have urgent news for him.”

  “Now, sir?”

  “Yes, now. And I want this rabble out of my garden.”

  The centurion’s face darkened, and for an awful moment Lucius feared the man might hurt him. But his woman was up at once, dragging the children out, and Valens, tight-lipped, turned smartly and marched off.