Roman Games (19 page)

Chapter Twenty-five

The fifteenth day before the Kalends of Domitianus.
Day thirteen of the Games. Night.

Under a bright harvest moon a team of tired horses galloped along the Via Cassia between rows of tall poplars, drawing the light, two-wheeled gig toward Rome. Zosimus held the reins and urged the team on, while Pliny, beside him on the seat, fretted and devoured the road with his eyes. They would change the horses for fresh ones two or three more times before reaching the city. It was impossible to know the hour with any certainty. He could only pray they would be in time.

* * *

The eleventh hour of the night.

“I think we are all here. Anyone who is not we must treat as an enemy from this hour on. There’s no time now for second thoughts. Are we agreed?” Parthenius, all smiling blandness, looked from face to face, allowing none of them to avoid his eyes.

Here, in Corellius Rufus’ house, some of the conspirators were seeing others for the first time, astonished to find themselves together in the same room, and some of them secretly wishing they were somewhere, anywhere, else: Corellius himself, prostrate on his couch, his face etched with pain, his mouth set in a grim line; Titus Petronius, the Praetorian commandant, a big blustering man, but subdued now, cracking his knuckles to release tension; sleek Entellus, the emperor’s secretary for petitions, with two other imperial freedmen, the three of them sitting close together and trying not to look intimidated by the company they were in; Cocceius Nerva, his handsome, long-nosed face pale and drawn, drumming his fingers on the tabletop and exchanging worried looks with two other senators who were as nervous as he was; and finally the empress, Domitia Augusta, looking more manly than any of them, her large hands resting motionless on the arms of her chair and not a muscle in her body betraying the strain she must be feeling. She was dressed in a plain stola, without jewelry. She had arrived in a long, hooded cloak, and when she removed it, the bruises on her face were unmistakable even through her face powder.

All of them seemed to be waiting for Parthenius to speak again. This son of a Levantine slave, who had devoted his whole life to intrigue, was their unquestioned leader—and he knew it.

Inclining his head to the empress, he said, “I did not dare ask the Augusta to risk coming here tonight, but she insisted. Your Highness, please tell the women of your bedchamber how grateful we are for their help in smuggling you out of the palace. And now, let us begin.” He swallowed the bile that rose in his throat. His stomach was torturing him but he wouldn’t allow it to show. “Our fortunes are at a crisis. Tomorrow is the fourteenth before the Kalends. By mid-day either the tyrant will be dead or we will. We have much to discuss, and little time, it will soon be sunup. For the benefit of some of you, let me review the sequence of events that has brought us to this point.”

“Wait!” the Praetorian commandant lurched to his feet, crossed the tablinum and ripped back the curtain that gave onto the garden. Half a dozen of his Guardsmen in civilian clothes had taken up positions there. There were still more at the front of the house.

“All quiet, Sir,” their officer reported. The commandant went back to his seat. He had already taken the precaution of cancelling all leaves, and his officers had been alerted to attack the City Battalions if they rallied to the emperor.

Parthenius drew a breath and began again. Over the past months, he explained, he had orchestrated the tyrant’s mounting terror. “We wanted to drive him mad, encourage him to even greater outrages which would eat away at his still considerable support in some quarters. I have sent people to report lightning strikes in every part of Italy. With the help of my colleagues in the palace, we arranged a series of parlor tricks all designed to unnerve him. His morbid imagination did the rest. Not long ago I procured a soothsayer to prophesy the date of his death: tomorrow at the fifth hour of the morning. The unfortunate man paid with his life, but that is no matter. And our campaign of terror has succeeded. Don’t be fooled by the image he displays at the Games. I happen to know that he has scarcely slept in days.

“When I and the empress first combined to plot his overthrow, we knew the importance of horoscopes in molding public opinion and lending nerve to a potential replacement. The empress wished Clemens to succeed, and so we prepared a horoscope predicting his imperial destiny. We gave it to him so that he could produce it at the crucial moment. This was a calamitous mistake. The horoscope can be traced to us. In fact, I composed it myself in my own hand. Foolish, I admit. Two months ago our plans came crashing down. Out of the blue, that snake Verpa astonished everyone by accusing Clemens and his wife of atheism and Jewish practices. We had known nothing of this mania of theirs. We were completely routed, terrified that the conspiracy would come to light. We held our breath and waited for the ax to fall, but it didn’t. Clemens went quietly to his death, his wife was banished to a desolate island, and the incriminating horoscope seemed to have vanished.

“After a time, we gathered our courage once more. We had to begin again to recruit someone to take Clemens’ place. The noble Nerva has courageously accepted our offer.” Parthenius nodded in the man’s direction and favored him with a tight smile. Nerva looked around as though he wanted to bolt for the door and only shame kept him in his place.

“It was during this tense period,” Parthenius continued, “that the Vestalis Maxima, the Purissima, came to our aid. I think most of you know, without my going into the details, the reason for her hatred of the tyrant.” Several heads nodded. “The Cloister of Vesta would be our center of communication. The wives of senators and other allies of ours could go there to leave messages and receive instructions, and the empress’ loyal women would serve as a link between the Cloister and ourselves. This way no senator would ever be seen in a compromising conversation with someone like me or with the empress. This is what we proposed and she undertook it eagerly on behalf of her Order.

“Several weeks went by in this way while we bided our time. Then, just a little more than three weeks ago, Verpa struck at us. It seems Domitilla had managed to get a letter to him revealing the conspiracy and telling where they had hidden her husband’s horoscope. We learned this both from Stephanus, her steward, a most useful man in many ways, who came directly and reported to me, and also from Verpa himself. He wrote a letter to the emperor, well knowing that Entellus here would intercept it. It was his way of announcing himself to us. Over the next days, I bargained with him, but the price of his silence was astronomical, and finally he had the audacity to propose himself as emperor! He wouldn’t tell me what the letter said, but he hinted that he held all our lives in his fist. Maybe he exaggerated, but who could be sure?

“Somehow he had to be stopped. We decided that, while we continued to negotiate with him, we needed a spy in his house. Someone who might be able to find and destroy the horoscope and the letter. Again the Vestalis Maxima came to our rescue. As you know she proposed herself for this mission. We men were reluctant to allow this absolutely unprecedented act by one so holy, but she had her reasons, and our empress seconded her. She is the only one among us whom Verpa and Scortilla would not know by sight or by name. The Vestals are never seen in public without their veils and no one dares to stare at them or enquire too closely about them. We might have sent some low-born person, but the spy, to be effective, had to be someone with breeding and manners, someone who would have the freedom of a guest, sit with them at dinner, befriend them, listen and observe. Her idea was to pose as a devotee of Isis with some story of coming to Rome on a pilgrimage and being robbed. We thought an appeal to Scortilla’s piety and vanity would be most effective, and we were right.

“She took with her one of Corellius’ freedmen, a philosopher, one of the few to escape the recent purge. The man wanted vengeance for many a dead friend. He said he had a smattering of knowledge in the sciences, enough to pass himself off as her physician under the name of Iatrides. And he would be her courier. If she learned anything, he would carry a message to the Cloister and drop it just outside the gate, where one of the Vestals would retrieve it and pass it on to me or the empress.”

Here one of the senators interrupted. “How was a Vestal able to be away from the Cloister for so long? As Pontifex Maximus, the emperor is their religious superior. They can’t just come and go as they please.”

“Quite so. I told him about her hysteria, that it had suddenly become more serious and that she needed medical attention that she could not get in the Cloister. This does happen from time to time. The fact is, she has no living family, I’m told they all perished in the eruption of Vesuvius, so I invented a sister for her in Capua, a woman of impeccable reputation. Oh, believe me, Domitian actually pretends to care about such niceties. He might have looked more closely into the matter except that he has been so distracted with fear. He told me to handle the arrangements. So the tyrant never knew where she was—or is.”

“And where exactly
is
the woman?” This was Nerva, whose nerves made him petulant.

“She had not been at Verpa’s more than three days,” Parthenius replied, “when the man was killed, under what circumstances we don’t yet know. The information that Pliny has seen fit to release is extremely confusing, and she is now at his house—has been for the past twelve days, apparently without Iatrides, who disappeared around the time of Verpa’s murder.”

“Then how do you know she’s there?” asked a senator.

“The resourceful Stephanus, against my advice, I may say, talked his way inside and got a look at her. He couldn’t speak freely to her, the silly little wife was around, but he tried to convey to her in guarded language that, one way or another, this will all be over soon. That was three days ago. Since then we’ve had no communication with her. The truth of the matter is, I am very concerned.

“I also have an informant, a certain ambitious, foul-mouthed poet, who has attached himself to Pliny like a barnacle and tells me the man is convinced that Verpa’s murder was a family affair, as it very well may be, knowing that family. But Verpa’s son said something about papers—surely our letter and horoscope—and my fear is that Pliny may yet find them or that the Purissima will make some slip. We know she suffers from a weakness of the nerves that could overcome her at any moment, with the anxiety she must be feeling. The fact that nothing has happened to us so far eases my mind only a little. Gaius Plinius is, by all appearances, a loyal soldier of the regime.”

“Chamberlain, I protest!” Corellius quavered, raising himself painfully on one elbow. “I’ve known Pliny all his life. I can vouch for his good character. He will do the right thing.”

Parthenius frowned patiently. “Forgive me, sir, I know he is your protégé, but while others spoke out against tyranny and paid with their lives, his career has flourished under the emperor’s patronage. Now he has been given this extraordinary police job under the city prefect, who we all know is the tyrant’s creature. Why?”

Corellius looked about him helplessly. “I yield to no one in my hatred of Domitian, but Pliny must have a career, mustn’t he? He still has years of service ahead of him. It isn’t his fault if he has had to serve a bad master; he’s guilty of no evil himself. I defy you to prove otherwise.”

“Then how do you account for his nocturnal meetings with the tyrant?”

Suddenly everyone looked sharply at the grand chamberlain. Even in the empress’ eyes there was a flicker of what might be fear. “What nocturnal meetings are these, chamberlain?”

Parthenius was never a man to conceal his air of superior knowledge, and he didn’t now. “I have not told you the worst. They have met twice in the emperor’s private rooms until the small hours of the night. No one has overheard them except little Earinus, who is, of course, feeble-minded and incapable of understanding anything. Believe me, I tried. I had thought at first that Pliny was going to be punished for the way he behaved at Verpa’s funeral. But on the contrary, the emperor seems to dote on him. And now Pliny has suddenly left the city, pretending, according to my informant, that he is going “north” on some undisclosed business. He was seen leaving by the Flaminian Gate.”

“North,” said the Praetorian commandant. “North.” Then he slapped his palm with a heavy fist. “I’ll tell you what’s north of here, the town of Reate! The home of the Flavian clan, where the family estate and all their clients are! The townsfolk there are fanatically loyal to the Flavian name! Domitian knows what’s coming, and he’s preparing a bolt hole. A place where he can defend himself until the German legions can come to his support. And this Pliny, whom no one suspects, is preparing the way for him! What else can it be?”

Suddenly everyone was speaking at once. Parthenius with difficulty brought them back to order.

“Titus Petronius, I think you may be right. But that only means that we must be resolute. I have my poet friend in Pliny’s house and the reliable Stephanus is watching at the Flaminian Gate. If Pliny doesn’t return before tomorrow then there is nothing we can do.

“If he does return…” Parthenius let the sentence hang in midair.

* * *

Half an hour before dawn, the pair of spent horses trotted through the Flaminian Gate. Zosimus steered for Verpa’s house. As they turned off the Via Flaminia onto the Vicus Pallacinae, Pliny ordered him to pull up. He saw leaning wearily against a wall what he had been looking out for. She wasn’t very pretty, but she was young and slim.

She yawned, almost ready to go home and sleep after a night that had brought her little profit. But then it seemed her luck had turned. When a couple of well-dressed fellows invite you into their coach and wave a coin under your nose, even at this ungodly hour, a working girl doesn’t have to think twice.

Chapter Twenty-six

The fourteenth day before the Kalends of Domitianus.
Day fourteen of the Games. The first hour of the day.

“Wait with the carriage, Zosimus. What I have to do here is not for your chaste eyes.” The sun was not yet a hand’s breadth above the housetops, a pink smear on the horizon; the street still in deep shadow, exactly as it had been on the morning Verpa’s body was discovered. Pliny knocked on the door. No answer. He pounded harder, using his fist, and shouted at the window. If the sun rose higher, his experiment would be ruined. At last, a tousle-haired slave opened the door a crack, recognized the familiar face of the vice prefect, and admitted him.

“Wake my centurion and tell him to meet me upstairs with the lady Scortilla—but she is to wait outside the bedroom until I call her.” Pliny raced up the stairs with the prostitute in tow.

Valens, his face creased with sleep, came grumbling into the bedroom and stopped abruptly. He broke into a gap-toothed smile.

“Eyes front, centurion,” said Pliny. “You’re not here to gawk. Be good enough to light the lamp on that stand next to the bed.” Pliny moved back and forth across the room while he examined the shadowy figures that populated the walls. “Now girl,” he addressed the prostitute, “no one’s going to touch you, that’s not what we’re here for. Undress. Yes, and now go and stand in that corner—yes, that’s right, flat up against the wall. No, not her, I think. The one to your right. Yes. Now, on your knees, fit yourself to her form, head a little up. Yes, you understand what I mean, don’t you? And now I’m going to turn down the lamp a little. Yes—remarkable, remarkable.” The girl vanished, perfectly fitted to the painted figure behind her. In the feeble penumbra of the single lamp, unless you put out your hand and touched her, you could not have told she was there in the flesh.

“And now we are ready for the lady!”

Scortilla was ushered into the room by two troopers, who shut the door behind her. She was in her nightdress. Without her wig, sparse tufts of graying hair stuck out from her head. And she was very, very angry. “You!” she snarled. “Again! Haven’t you played the fool enough already? This is harassment. I warned you, I will complain to the emperor personally. He will have you crucified!”

“Do you find it dark in here, Scortilla?”

“What?”

“Valens, open the shutters, will you?”

The open window was a pale rectangle of light that left the room still in deep shadow.

“Would you say, lady, that we are alone here—you, me, and the centurion?”

Her eyes were suddenly wary. Her head swiveled in quick jerks like a bird’s. She took a step toward the bed, back again, looked behind her.

“Answer me, woman. Are we alone?”

“Yes, damn you!” What else could she say?

“Girl, show yourself!”

Like one of those islands in the lake, detaching itself from shore and swimming into view, the naked girl emerged from the wall. Scortilla clapped her fist to her mouth to stifle a scream. It was as though the mural had come to life.

“’Ere, this is going to cost you, whatever this is,” the girl complained. “I ain’t used to being made a show of in front a’ ladies. And my neck is stiff besides.”

“Centurion, give her a silver
denarius
, more than she earns in a week. Thank you. You may go now.”

Pliny bent his brows on the speechless Scortilla. “Woman, I charge you with the murder of your husband by poisoning. And I will tell you how you did it. You and Lucius planned this together, one murder concealing another.”

“Centurion, go and get Lucius out of bed and bring him here.” He turned to Scortilla. “Your mutual hatred is all a charade, isn’t it? You both wanted Verpa dead. You, Scortilla, had the poison and knew how to administer it, but Lucius contributed the idea of using Ganymede and the dagger and candelabrum to make it look like a political assassination. You could easily make Pollux, the Jew, out to be an accomplice. You went to Verpa’s room before he went to bed and before Pollux came on duty on a pretext of wanting a private word with him or something. You must have enticed him sexually and poisoned him with that needle, just as I thought. Then Lucius sent Ganymede in to stab him. You didn’t expect much from that nerveless youth, it only had to look like a fatal stabbing, but he was even more inept than you expected; he managed to not inflict a single fatal wound. But you, because of your arthritic knees, couldn’t escape through the window the way he did. Instead, you hid yourself against the wall and slipped out in the confusion when everyone ran in—you obviously practiced this ahead of time when the room was empty and chose your spot carefully. As for your motive, perhaps you would like to tell me about your nocturnal meetings with Alexandrinus, the Egyptian priest. No doubt Lucius never dreamed that you and that priest planned to take a full two million out of the estate.”

He was being reckless, he knew, but he was willing to risk everything on this throw of the dice. Scortilla didn’t know that Domitian had warned him off from challenging the will. He had to extract a confession from her by overwhelming her with the evidence.

And it seemed to work. The woman was thoroughly frightened. She sank down on the bed; when she spoke her voice was so low he could scarcely hear her. “I never planned anything with Lucius and I didn’t poison Verpa. I never saw that needle before you showed it to me. To put an end to this, I will confess to what I did do. I cursed him. The tablet is still buried in the garden. I’ll show you, if you don’t believe me. I know you can prosecute me for it—but it didn’t work! I thought at first that it had—that a demon flew in the window and slaughtered him and left some unholy symbol scratched on the wall to mark its passing. It seemed so real.”

Pliny recalled seeing her the morning the body was discovered; the glassy-eyed shock in her expression like someone who had played at black magic and found, terrifyingly, that the spell had worked. The stupid woman!

“Now I know it was only Ganymede—and that is all I know. I swear it. I will swear by our Lord and God, by any god you like.” Suddenly her thin shoulders shook with sobs. Pliny just stared. He’d been so sure!

At that moment, Lucius was brought in. He looked from Pliny to the weeping Scortilla. What was happening here, and what did it have to do with him? Pliny explained, tight-lipped.

Lucius knew at once what he needed to do. “Vice prefect, you said you’d help me if I cooperated with you. I hope you’re a man of your word. As much as I would like this filthy witch to be guilty of murder,” he jerked his head toward Scortilla, “there have been some developments while you were away that put things in a different light. The centurion can back me up. Ask him to go fetch the medical kit from my room.”

While they waited for Valens to return with the box, Lucius described his visit from the Syrians. “I went with Valens to our farm across the Tiber and it didn’t take us long to find the grave. Nasty sight. Poor fellow had been dead two weeks or more but you could see what they’d done to him. And it was him all right. The one calling himself Iatrides. My father must have wanted something out of him very badly indeed. Apparently he said the word ‘clemens’ and, as the Syrian understood it, ‘vestis,’ whatever sense that makes.

Valens returned with the box and handed it to his chief. “You’ll find his name on the bottom, sir. And you’ll find something interesting inside.”

Pliny reached in and brought out the bit of cork with its deadly needle.

“It works,” said Lucius, “I tried it on a cat. I suppose Iatrides planned to use it on himself if it came to that, but he didn’t get the chance.” Pliny let the object fall back into the box. A cold sweat had broken out on his body.

Scortilla looked up and wiped her paint-smudged face with the back of a bony wrist. There was anger again—even triumph—in her voice. “You officious dunce! Don’t forget that there was another woman in this house the night Verpa died—but, of course, she’s above suspicion, so endearing, so helpless. Not like me.”

Pliny’s leaving, like his arrival, was quick and unceremonious. He glowered at Zosimus and repulsed the young man’s questions as they rode through the dawn-lit streets toward his home. Vestis? He thought. Or Vestalis? No. He recoiled from the thought. But a tightness gripped his chest.