Roman Games (14 page)

Through veils of rain he could make out the entrance to the Temple of Eros and above it the prick and balls that banged back and forth in the wind. Lucius would come there soon, looking for him. He would make an arrangement with the new proprietor, and then, as soon as things died down, he, Ganymede, could go home again, safe and protected forever. Lucius had promised him this, if he did his part right, and he had.

It had been so easy! He had plunged the dagger again and again into Verpa’s naked back, pouring out a lifetime of hate that surprised even him. The filthy old beast didn’t cry out, didn’t even grunt. And he had followed the rest of Lucius’ instructions exactly: drawing the picture, leaving the dagger. He’d even had the pleasure of strangling that wretched little Hylas in the confusion when the other slaves were killed. Still, somehow, that vice-prefect had come to suspect him. But no matter, Lucius was too clever for them; he knew what to do. Lucius would never abandon him. But what if Lucius didn’t come? No! Lucius loved him, hadn’t he said so? But if Lucius changed his mind, if he were angry with him?

Ganymede was soaked to the skin and shivering. He’d eaten nothing for hours. The old crone’s wine jug held only a few dregs at the bottom and if there had been any food in the cupboard, the rats had long since consumed it. Someone stirred in the apartment below. Only an inch thickness of floorboard between them! He froze, not daring to move a muscle, though his limbs ached with cold. He was trapped. If Lucius didn’t come soon he would surely die! He clutched his knees and wept silently.

Chapter Eighteen

The eighth hour of the night.

“Compliments of Centurion Valens,” said the breathless trooper, striding into the dining room. “We’ve got the pretty boy, sir! Though he ain’t so pretty anymore.”

Pliny was up from the table instantly, calling for his boots and cloak.

Under a dripping sky, his litter bearers set him down in front of a shabby tenement near the Laurentine Gate, where the walls were scrawled with graffiti, and the filth in the gutters was ankle-deep.

The trooper led the way up to the garret room, roughly shouldering aside curious tenants who crowded the landing. An exhalation of boiled cabbage and onions, of wood rot and stinking straw seeped from under every door. The heat was suffocating. Inside, Pliny found Martial and Valens, both looking pleased with themselves. On the puddled floor by the window lay the old woman and the boy, like two sodden rag dolls. The shards of a smashed wine jug lay between them, and one sharp-pointed fragment was in Ganymede’s lifeless hand. He had used it to rip open both wrists. A pinkish pool of blood diluted with rainwater spread out around him.

“Red rain drops come through our ceiling, Your Honor, drippin’ on our plates while we was eatin’. Me an’ the wife.” From the open doorway, an old man addressed himself to Pliny. “I come up to see what was the matter. He’s a runaway, ain’t he? I saw that writing on his collar but, not being a reader, you see, I didn’t know where to report him. I’ll wager there’s a reward for him though, ain’t there? You think I’ll get it? Mean a lot to us. I walked all the way to the Prefecture in this rain just to report him. Be a shame not to get a reward.”

“I will see to it personally,” Pliny murmured.

“It took another hour for the word to get to me,” added Valens.

Martial struck in, “Your excellent officer and myself were pursuing our researches into the brothels of Rome. We were visiting our, what was it, sixth or seventh Temple of Eros? The proprietors, I must say, have all been terribly obliging. They’ve all invited us back any time for a night on the house. Wonderful thing, being a policeman. We hadn’t gotten near this neighborhood yet, but there’s another Temple of Eros down there across the street. You can see it from the window. I reckon that’s what our friend was doing, watching out for someone. Don’t know why he would have killed himself, though.”

“Don’t you?” sighed Pliny wearily. “Here’s matter for your pen, my friend, if you would write in a somber vein: this pathetic creature, this ‘boy’ who was never allowed to be a child. What happens to the pretty boys when they lose the power to please us? Whether they are house slaves like Ganymede or hustlers on the make like your Diadumenus and his little friends. What happens to them, Martial, when they no longer amuse? I think you know the answer but I imagine you’ve never looked at it before. Look now. Ganymede believed himself to be betrayed. What else could he do but die?”

The poet started to say something, then closed his mouth and looked away.

“You’re right about him being betrayed, sir,” said the centurion. “While we were waiting for you I interviewed the brothel keeper. Take a look at this.” He handed Pliny the message addressed to Marcus Ganeus. “You notice it’s signed ‘L’.”

* * *

“Patricide!” thundered Pliny, “the most hideous of all crimes!” The vice prefect, flanked by Martial and Valens, shook his fist in Lucius’ face. “Oh, Ganymede wielded the dagger all right, but you, you are the murderer! Do you know the punishment for what you’ve done? It is as ancient as Rome itself. You will be sewn into a leather sack with a cock, a dog, and an ape and thrown into the sea. The animals will tear you to pieces while you drown!”

Seeing himself cornered, Lucius bared his teeth. “Pah! You don’t scare me with your apes and sacks. You’ve no evidence for your ridiculous theory.”

“Haven’t I? Look at this.” Pliny showed him the waxed tablet. “Given to my centurion by the new owner of the Temple of Eros where you told Ganymede to hide. Why arrange his death unless you feared he would incriminate you? Unfortunately for you, Ganymede isn’t dead,” Pliny lied, “and he’s told us everything.”

Lucius’ eyes darted wildly to the door, his muscles tensed, but Valens’ men converged on him from all sides, surrounding him with a ring of steel. His shoulders sagged. The fight drained out of him like air from a punctured bladder.

“It wasn’t just the money.” He spoke in a low voice full of resentment and pain. His face worked with emotion. “In return for my spying on the Jews and the God-fearers, at risk to my own life, he promised me freedom from
potestas
and money to pay my debts. Then he changed his mind! All because of that little cunt, Phyllis. On his last day alive, we quarreled again. He waved two sheets of paper under my nose and boasted he had a dozen great men by the balls and all he had to do was squeeze. I asked him who he meant but he just laughed. Said it was no business for an imbecile like me. You know what he was like. All my life he humiliated me.

“But I’d made up my mind long before that day to kill him. After all, he’d threatened to kill me, hadn’t he? At first, I expected Pollux to take revenge for his Jewish compatriots and spare me the trouble. When he didn’t, I decided to make it look as if he had. I knew enough about them to make a good show of it.”

Pliny exchanged a look of triumph with Martial: all their guesses had turned out to be right.

“Perhaps you will enlighten us on one point,” said Pliny. “Your father rarely slept alone. How did you choose the one night when he did?”

“By going around the house after everyone was asleep and counting his bed partners, male and female. I did it many times until finally that night I accounted for all of them. I wasn’t surprised. He didn’t like to squander his sexual energy on a night before he had important business to transact. From his wild talk that day I guessed he might have something on for tomorrow. I told Ganymede to meet me in the garden at midnight. I gave him a pouch to wear containing the dagger, which I’d taken from the
tablinum
, also a thin-bladed knife to insert in the shutter latch, and a piece of charcoal for drawing the candelabrum. I had to pour half a flagon of wine into the boy to get him to stop shaking, the little coward. Merda! I’ve plenty of friends who would gladly have stuck a knife into my father if I asked them to, but none who could scamper up to that window. I was forced to use Ganymede although I knew he was a weakling. When he came down again I washed the blood off him in the fountain and sent him to bed. I told him that everything would be fine if he just kept his head, and it would have been. The only thing I wasn’t prepared for, vice prefect, was—you. No one else in Rome would have worried this case to death like you’ve done.”

“You say he taunted you with some papers. What were they, where are they?”

“One looked like a letter, the other was covered with signs and symbols, a horoscope maybe. I searched the
tablinum
for them the night he died but I couldn’t find them. I surprised someone else there in the dark. Scortilla, I’ll bet. Why don’t you ask her? Anyway, I couldn’t find anything. Then early next morning, before you got here, men from the Prefecture came and carted off all his files. They probably have them.”

“No one’s said anything to me about it.”

“Yes, well just possibly the prefect doesn’t think it’s any of your business!”

That stung. “Search the house,” Pliny barked at Valens. From top to bottom. Search Verpa’s bedroom. The
tablinum
is too accessible. If these papers were important, I’ll wager he hid them some place more private.”

A few minutes later, Valens reported that a locked drawer in Verpa’s bedside table had been broken open with some sort of tool, leaving gouges on the wood. The drawer, however, was empty.

“Another puzzle,” Pliny said glumly to Martial. “And one we’ll never solve. I’ll mention it to the prefect. But the main thing is that we’ve got our murderer, and that was all I set out to do. Centurion, place Lucius under house arrest and guard him well.”

Three things remained to be done. The first was to inform the city prefect of his success. The thought of going there himself was too distasteful. He scribbled a note and handed it to one of the troopers.

The second was to inform Scortilla. He found her in her apartment. “Ganymede and Lucius?” Her voice cracked, broke into a high-pitched cackle. Her eyes glittered. With what—relief, triumph, stark madness? He asked her about the missing papers but got nothing but a blank stare. How he loathed this woman! He left quickly.

The third, was to address the slaves. He had avoided visiting them lately; their misery was more than he could bear. But now he had a purpose. As the door swung open, the stench of urine and sweat hit him like a blow to the belly. “Valens,” he gasped, “this is an atrocity! I want this place cleaned up and the slaves let out in batches for a wash and some exercise.”

“Yes, sir.”

Watched by forty pairs of dull and sunken eyes, Pliny sucked air behind his hand and stepped into the big room. “Humble friends, hear me! The murderers have been exposed! Ganymede and Lucius conspired together to murder your master. The rest of you are entirely innocent. The Roman Games close in just eight days. This case will go to trial soon after, and I promise you that your imprisonment will end on that day. Be patient only a little longer!”

Like one writhing mass, they crawled to him on their bellies. Croaking voices cried out, “You are our god!” Filthy hands touched his feet, caught at the hem of his cloak. Overcome, Pliny fled.

At home Pliny announced his triumph to the family, sparing no detail of Lucius’ diabolical ingenuity and his own clear-sighted penetration. He had suspected Lucius from the start! Of course, he couldn’t have solved the matter so quickly without the collaboration of his friend Martial. He threw an arm around him.

The poet, with uncharacteristic modesty, smiled but said nothing. Pliny’s slaves ran to kiss his hands in gratitude for their fellows. Calpurnia sang his praises. To Amatia the news seemed like a tonic. Her pale cheeks took on color, she became positively gay and drank a glass of wine. Before dinner was served, Martial excused himself, pleading fatigue, and left them all in high spirits.

* * *

The third hour of the night.

Martial walked along the Via Triumphalis to the arch which carried the Claudian Aquaduct. The
popina
was a narrow, low-ceilinged establishment where big copper cauldrons of stews and chowders sat in holes cut in the stone counter top. The poet had no appetite, but he took a wooden bowl and spoon and was served a steaming mess of stringy meat and vegetables by a woman whose forearms were the size and color of hams. He threw a coin on the counter. He scanned the room. The place was not crowded. Some young men played a noisy game of dice in one corner. Others, a group of working men in leather aprons, sat together at a table and shoveled food mechanically into their mouths, not talking. It was a moment before he noticed the solitary figure at the back. The man sat hunched over his plate, cutting his meat clumsily with one hand, for the other was pressed to his side in a sling. Martial slid onto the bench beside him.

Who was this fellow and what had he to do with the exalted Parthenius? Martial did as he had been instructed: took from his pouch a waxed tablet on which he had scratched a few hasty lines and tucked it into the man’s sling, trying to touch him as little as possible. The man never looked up. So, Parthenius would learn that Lucius was the murderer of his father; that Verpa had possessed a couple of papers, one of which might be a horoscope, but no one could find them; that Pliny was satisfied he had solved the case; and that Amatia, the lady from Lugdunum, was, as far as he could tell, in good health and good spirits. He had tried pumping her without success. If something about her bothered him it was too insubstantial to be put into words. And that was that. May the grand chamberlain be glad of it.

Martial moved the food around in his bowl. He still had no appetite. Finally, he couldn’t resist the urge to speak.

“Who are you, friend?”

“No one you know.” The voice, husky and barely audible.

“I know a lot of people.”

“Not me.”

“How did you hurt your arm? I broke my ankle once—damned long time to mend.”

Silence.

“What’s this all about, then? What do you do for Parthenius?”

The silence continued for several minutes. At last, the poet pushed his bowl away, got up and, in an even darker mood than when he arrived, left.

Stephanus sat and chewed his food without relish. He disliked this business as much as the poet did. But, where Martial was baffled and torn, he, Stephanus, was clear. He had once been chief steward in a great house. Born a slave, then freed by his master, he had risen to command a small army of slaves, seeing that everything was just so, that the finest wines and delicacies were always in plentiful supply, that the kitchen served dishes that were the envy of other houses. And his master and mistress knew his worth and treasured him. Those poor souls. Too late for the noble Clemens, but if he could help his mistress, at least, to regain her liberty, her house, her children—well, for that he was ready to risk his life.

* * *

That night, Gaius Plinius Secundus, acting vice prefect of Rome, composed himself for sleep with a feeling of satisfaction not to be described. Tomorrow was Verpa’s funeral. He would go, and bring Martial with him. Why not witness the last chapter of this sad farce? His friend would certainly find matter in it for a wicked verse or two.