Roman Games (21 page)

Chapter Twenty-nine

Pliny drew a long, deep breath and shook his head. What a story she had told, and he didn’t doubt the truth of it for an instant. Knowing what he knew, how could he hand this woman over to certain death? Before he decided what to do, he needed to know more. “What were you doing in Verpa’s house?”

She shook her head, her lips a tight white line.

“Purissima, you would do better to tell me than to have to tell it to the emperor.”

“He won’t be emperor much longer if the gods favor us. And if not, I am content to die. I am already polluted by a man’s touch, I can never return to the service of the goddess.”

Pliny raised his hands, then let them drop in his lap. “You leave me no choice then, Purissima.” Now was the moment to stand up and call for his litter. But somehow he didn’t move. They continued to stare at each other.

“Very well,” she said finally. Anything to keep him here while the others did their work. “I will answer your question, vice prefect, and then I beg you not to oppose us but to join us.”

“Join you in precisely what, madam? Treason?”

Her eyebrows drew down sharply. “Liberation!” She leaned close to his face and began to tell him, though without naming names, how their plan to put Clemens on the throne had been thwarted by Verpa’s denunciation. Then, how weeks later Verpa had contacted them, claiming to have an incriminating letter from Domitilla as well as her husband Clemens’ imperial horoscope. “We had to know how much she had told him, or if it was all bluff. And so Iatrides and I talked our way into his house and spent four days with that vulgar, vicious family.” Her lip curled. “All the while, as I smiled and made myself agreeable, I listened as hard as I could. Whenever they questioned me too closely I became faint, and not all pretense either, the strain was nearly unbearable. During those days I tried to be wherever I could overhear Verpa talking. That was my plan, and it bore fruit.

“As I have already told you, on the third evening I was sitting in the garden and overheard Verpa and his son arguing; Lucius demanding to be free of
potestas
and live on his own, Verpa threatening to kill him if the boy tampered with any more of his bedmates. What I didn’t tell you is that I also heard Verpa boasting about the letter and horoscope. I decided right there that I would steal them if my courage didn’t fail me. The next morning I wrote a message and gave it to poor Iatrides to carry to the cloister.

“Late that afternoon, I was in my room resting when Verpa burst in. He showed me Iatrides’ severed finger with his signet ring on it. He said he had mistrusted both of us right from the start, that he wasn’t as gullible as Scortilla. It was plain that I was no devotee of Isis. He had questioned me at dinner about some detail of the goddess’ liturgy. I had tried to learn something about that filthy foreign cult before I entered his house, but I was quickly out of my depth. And he had discovered that Iatrides was a fraud too. He’d asked him for a dose of some Isiac remedy for headache and, of course, the poor man had no such thing. ‘So I followed your physician,’ Verpa said, ‘and we got him before he could deliver your message, took him to a very private place, and oh, the things he told us when we applied fire to his genitals. I’ve just come back from there.’ He laughed at me. ‘Really, Purissima, what a dishonorable trick you’ve played me! I expected better than this from a priestess of Vesta. I am through wasting time with you and your friends. Tomorrow, I go to the emperor. At one stroke I can give him the documents and another deceitful Vestalis Maxima to bury alive. That is, unless you do exactly as I tell you. I can keep your name out of it if I choose to. I have done everything in a long and interesting life but debauch a Vestal Virgin.’”

“Then he dragged me to his room. This was before Pollux came on duty at the second hour of the night. He told me to stay there and make no sound. He would be back for me later. ‘In the meanwhile,’ he said, ‘you will have time to study my murals. They’ll instruct you in the arts of Venus, a far more endearing goddess than Vesta.’

“He went away then, and in the interval before he returned I tried to make ready the poisoned needle. I intended to kill myself.”

“Whose idea were these needles?” Pliny asked.

“One of us—I’ll tell you no names—knew someone who could prepare them and we all agreed to carry them. In case the worst happened, none of us could denounce the others.”

“It didn’t work for Iatrides, though.”

“No, sadly. I kept mine knotted in a corner of my
palla.
But when the time came, my hands shook so badly I couldn’t untie it. What I suffered that night was horrible enough. And now I must tell it to you—a policeman, a
man.”

Pliny held up his hands. “Not all of it, lady. I’ve already guessed a good deal.”

“Have you. How very clever. But you can’t know what it was like. I was so frightened I couldn’t even scream. I knew I couldn’t resist his strength. When he returned, I wept and pleaded with him. He laughed and kissed me with his obscene mouth and stripped me of my clothes…” Her words came in little gasps, in a voice so low that Pliny had to strain to hear her. He couldn’t take his eyes from her face which was flushed and beaded with sweat.

“He made me drink wine with him. Then, holding a lamp in one hand and gripping my wrist with the other, he took me around the room to look at his filthy pictures. Things I never imagined people did! Meanwhile I heard Pollux outside taking up his post, rocking his chair back against the door. Verpa said he would do me the favor of saving my virginity technically—he had that much fear of the gods in him—but he would use me in every other way…” Amatia’s breath began to come hard, her hand went to her throat and Pliny was afraid she was going to have another attack, but with a violent shake she mastered herself.

Listening to her relive this horror, Pliny gripped the arms of his chair until his knuckles turned white. As bad as he knew Verpa to be, this was almost inconceivable. A Vestal abused like this! He was shocked down to the soles of his feet.

“He mounted me from behind, like an animal, but while he couldn’t see my hands I got hold of my palla where it lay on the bed, put the knotted corner in my teeth and freed the pin at last. I kept the cork between my teeth, careful not to let my lips touch the poisoned tip. Somehow I must kill him and then myself. After he had finished, he turned me toward him and poured a goblet of wine for us. I kept my head lowered so he couldn’t see my face.

“You admire it, eh?” He thought I was staring at his thing, still swollen with lust. “Well, now, I’ll teach you a whore’s trick. Kiss, it, darling.” He thrust it up in my face—and I struck like a viper!

“He let out a yelp, jerked away, looked at his thing with disbelieving eyes, the needle still stuck in the flesh. Faster than I could have imagined, he doubled up in pain and clutched at his throat. I think he tried to scream but only a gurgling noise came out, not loud enough for Pollux to hear through the door. As he fell back on the bed I pried myself loose from his grip. With a final spasm he rolled over on his stomach, covering the needle with his body. I couldn’t bring myself to touch him. He was still alive but unable to move—I don’t know for how long. Only his nostrils moved in and out with his breathing. I remember that.”

Pliny felt humbled by this woman’s strength. She was like some heroine of ancient days, a modern Lucretia.

“Then it seemed like only a moment later that I heard a noise outside the window. I only had time to roll off the bed onto the floor. I heard the shutters swing open. A figure slithered through.”

“And that was Ganymede,” said Pliny. “There is no coincidence. Lucius chose that night because, by counting the slave girls and finding them all in their own beds, he naturally concluded that his father was sleeping alone, as he occasionally did. In fact, he had you there with him.”

“I couldn’t imagine what this marauder’s purpose was, but he crept toward the bed and I saw in the lamplight that he carried a dagger. Still naked, I scuttled back into the farthest, darkest corner of the room and crouched in front of one of the figures on the wall. From there I watched the intruder throw himself on Verpa, hacking and slashing until his breath came like sobs. He seemed not to notice that Verpa never stirred, never let out a sound. And he didn’t see me! Finally, he tossed the dagger on the floor beside the bed and, with a piece of charcoal that he had with him, sketched some sort of figure on the wall. Then out he went again through the window. I could hear him drop to the garden pavement below.

“As soon as he was gone, I dressed again. I can’t describe the thoughts that whirled through my brain after that. Somehow I must get out without being seen. But how? The window—impossible! I looked down at that two-story drop and my head swam. After that, the hours dragged by. The oil lamp guttered and went out. I was in despair.

“And then, as it was growing light, I heard muffled voices outside. Verpa’s servants coming to wake him. They knocked on the door, waited, knocked louder. I did the only thing I could; realizing how I’d escaped assassin’s notice, I thought maybe it would work a second time. I undressed again and matched myself to the figure of the woman on her hands and knees being mounted by the Satyr—”

Pliny stopped her with a gesture. He didn’t need her to describe the trick, he had seen it. “No more, please, I know how it was done. Only I thought it was Scortilla!”

Amatia answered with a bleak smile. “I wish it had been. I could hear them talking outside the door though I couldn’t make out the words. For a while nothing, then the voice of Lucius calling out Verpa’s name. My clothes! I had left them in the middle of the floor. I raced to get them and stuffed them under the bed, then back to the wall again. My heart was pounding so, it nearly broke my ribs. Then the door burst open and they all tumbled in, Lucius in the lead, holding a lamp. They saw the body tangled in the sheets. For an age, it seemed, they milled around the bed, while I, only a few steps away, pressed myself against the painted figure, trembling, and praying with all my might to Vesta to help me. ‘Bring more light,’ one said. ‘No carry him outside.’ Then, all shouting and gesticulating, they carried his body out and left me there alone.

“I threw my clothes on again. But still, how could I leave? The atrium below was full of people. If someone were to look up and see me sneaking away…I did the only thing I could think of, gave a loud scream and backed out of the room. Of course, everyone looked up: and all they saw was the invalid guest who must have been roused by the commotion, entered the room, saw the blood and become hysterical; she was known to be suffering from weak nerves anyway. And that is all that happened.”

* * *

Martial runs down the Via Sacra, his heart pounding in his shaggy breast. His knees are aching and his chest is on fire. How much farther to Verpa’s house? Up the Citadel steps and down the other side, not the easiest route but the most direct. He doesn’t think he can make it. But he must!

He hadn’t meant to tell Stephanus so much—not about Amatia! But the man had threatened to knife him right there in the street and, after wringing everything out of him, had dashed off somewhere. Parthenius’ creature!

At last! He stumbles against Verpa’s door. A trooper opens the door cautiously, recognizes him, and pulls him inside. In the atrium the others are sitting about, grim-visaged and talking in low voices.

“Valens!” The poet is panting so hard he can barely speak. “Gaius Plinius—needs you—at once! What? What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that we’ve been ordered to return to barracks and surrender our arms to the fucking Praetorians. If we’re seen in the city we’ll be treated as rebels. We’ve just been talking about what to do.”

“What you must do is come with me, now! I’ll explain on the way.”

“Your pink-cheeked senator friend has gotten himself in trouble? How is that our problem?”

Assenting grunts from the men.

“Valens, that will he was going to write for you? You may need it sooner than you think!”

* * *

“And why, madam, are you here in my house?” Pliny challenged.

“You invited me,” Amatia said simply. “And there was no more to be done at Verpa’s house. Without Iatrides I had no way of communicating with the others. So, on my own, I decided to spy on you, I confess it gladly. You insisted on investigating the case, day after day, with your obnoxious friend, as if it actually mattered whether a few slaves were executed or not! What if you somehow stumbled on the truth? I had to steer you away from that.”

It dawned on Pliny then how easily he had let himself be fooled by this woman. There were a dozen ways he could have checked her story, but it had simply never occurred to him. Why should it have? He was so bent on exposing Lucius and Scortilla, and Amatia was so good to his wife. Was that only a charade too?

“Now, I have told you everything,” she said, “I appeal to you. If you simply do nothing, all of this will be over in a matter of hours. Today is the appointed day.”

Do nothing? His anger flared. “You speak so contemptuously of the slaves, lady. Does justice mean nothing to you? You are willing to sacrifice the lives of forty innocent human beings who will be punished for murdering their master when it was
you
who committed the crime?”

She rounded on him, matching her anger against his. “You expect me to risk all our lives for slaves! Tell me, Pliny, aren’t we all slaves? Slaves to the tyrant? Have you no tears for us? Or for yourself? For you are as much a slave as any of us. You know what kind of man he is, don’t deny it. I studied your face when you returned from those midnight visits with him. I saw the fear in your eyes. You know what that monster will do to us and to our families and friends if we fail. We’ve suffered him for fifteen years. He could live for another twenty or thirty. The fate of Rome is more important than your wretched handful of slaves!”

“No, madam. I sympathize, I understand, but I do not agree. The Deified Julius was murdered, Claudius murdered, Caligula murdered, Galba and Vitellius murdered amid the horrors of civil war when blood ran in our streets. And now Domitian, too? Do you want that again? He’s popular with the legions in Germania. They’ll demand blood for blood. We have been lucky in Vespasian and Titus, not so lucky in Domitian. But we must endure him. Otherwise it is back to the old ways where everything is decided by the knife. Are we a great and noble people or are we a pack of savages?”