Death in the Ashes

by Albert A. Bell, Jr.

  “By the gods!” Tacitus said. “She wouldn’t—”

  “Get me a horse!” I grabbed the first servant I saw and pushed him toward the stables. “Two horses. At once.”

  In a few moments that felt like hours Philippa led two horses to us, bridled and ready to ride. Tacitus and I mounted, and Capsius and his companion turned their horses to accompany us. The man driving the wagon was left to unload the chest with the help of some of Aurelia’s servants.

  “Guard that with your lives,” I told the servants, “but don’t open it. Have Diomedes lock it up in the storeroom. Tell your lady I’ll explain when I get back.”

  “Where are we going?” Capsius asked.

  “Just ride!” I told him, digging my heels into my horse’s flanks.

  Even before we got to the south gate of Naples we could see the flames stretching into the sky. Our horses refused to go the last two blocks, and we couldn’t have gotten through the crowd anyway. The insula was fully ablaze and sending sparks flying in all directions. Men on the roofs of neighboring buildings were dousing embers as they landed. People leaned out the windows of the burning insula, begging for help. Novatus and his vigiles had given up trying to put out the fire and were concentrating on getting what few ladders they had up to people who were trapped.

  “There are hundreds of people in there,” I said, hardly able to look at the disaster. “They’ll never get to all of them in time.”

  In their desperation some people dared to run down the stairs. A few staggered out into the street, their clothes and hair in flames. Bystanders threw water on them or smothered the fire in blankets. Others never got that far. Their dying screams and the crashing of the staircases were the only testimony to their effort.

  Novatus paused beside us and took a drink of water.

  “How did this happen?” I asked him.

  “The fire started in the book shop. It looks like someone spread oil on the steps and anywhere else there was wood. Nobody had any warning. They were getting ready for supper.” He ran a hand over his smoke-stained face. “Two rooms full of papyrus documents and those wooden stairs and floors—the place was an inferno before we could get here.”

  I looked around at the crowd of people watching the “entertainment” that a fire always provides. They were urging the trapped people to jump. The spectators didn’t seem to understand that they could as easily be the ones in the building. No one made any effort to help.

  “Don’t just stand there!” I yelled. “Those are your friends and neighbors. Do something.”

  “What can we do, sir?” one woman said. “We’d have to risk our own lives to go in there.”

  Tacitus pulled me into the rear of the crowd. “There’s nothing anyone can do, Gaius Pliny. Sometimes we just have to accept what’s happened.”

  “This didn’t ‘happen.’ Somebody did it.” I began looking around.

  “Are you looking for someone in particular?” Tacitus asked.

  “Yes, a woman with a misshapen foot.”

  “Surely you don’t think she’s still here.”

  “I don’t doubt it for a moment. To get the full satisfaction from this, she would have to see me looking at it and know how much it hurts me—to think that I goaded her to do this.”

  An ominous creak emanated from the insula, growing louder until the building collapsed in on itself. The screams of the dying as well as the excited shouts of the spectators were drowned by the roar.

  Putting my hands over my ears to block out as much of the sound as I could, I turned away from the sight. Tacitus put his arms around me and held me to his chest. Plautia would learn the meaning of “implacable enemy,” I vowed to myself.

  XXII

  Sadly, the Jupiter wasn’t available for our return trip. The current commander of the fleet at Misenum had sent Decius and his crew to investigate a problem with pirates off the coast of Sicily, so we had to book passage on a commercial ship. Even though it took a day and a half, the trip wasn’t as bad as I feared it might be.

  Our ride on horseback from Ostia back to Rome was almost leisurely. We still had two days before the Ides, giving me ample time to go over my speech for Pompeia’s case. I was thinking about rewriting it de novo, now that I knew I would be facing Regulus. I was determined to make the man pay for his hubristic error in giving up a victory by default just so he could seize an opportunity to humble me.

  “Arrogant ass,” I muttered.

  “Got Regulus on your mind again?” Tacitus asked.

  I nodded. It was a relief to have anything on my mind other than the horrible scene of that collapsing insula and the people trapped in the flames. The last two nights I had slept only after reaching a point of utter exhaustion, and my sleep was restless, bringing no relief to mind or body. Tacitus kept reassuring me—and I knew it with some part of my mind—that I was not responsible. Plautia did it because she was an evil, uncaring person, the same reason that she had ordered Sychaeus to kill Amalthea. One victim or hundreds, the blame lay on her and her indifference to other human beings.

  But who would make her pay for her crime? Novatus and his men had searched as much of Naples as they could. It was an empty gesture. She wasn’t in the city any longer, I was sure. She had the money to go wherever she chose, even after paying Aurelia the full sum I had demanded, I guess because she thought that would make me leave her alone. What frustrated me was that she could be tracked. Her foot was not an easy thing to hide. Someone, somewhere, would inevitably notice her. But how could I learn of it? They wouldn’t know the evil they were looking at. They would probably just pity her because of her deformity.

  We had sent a servant ahead as soon as we got off the boat, and since we weren’t rushing, my household would have about an hour’s advance notice of my arrival. As we entered the Ostian Gate, Tacitus said his good-byes and turned to his own house.

  “I hope Julia is feeling better,” I said.

  “I’m afraid the loss of the child will be with her for a long time, as it has been with your mother all these years.” As he and his servants started up the street to his house he called over his shoulder, “Let me know how the plans for your wedding are progressing.”

  He might as well have slapped me in the face. The prospect of confronting Regulus in court was one I could deal with, even look forward to. I knew I had the oratorical ability to stand toe-to-toe with him. The prospect of confronting the fifteen-year-old girl who was supposed to become my wife made me want to turn around and ride to…anywhere but home. I had no confidence in my ability to be a husband to a woman I did not love.

  And there was the question of Aurora. Or rather the questions of Aurora. Would I find her at home? If so, where had she been? If not, where was she now? Would I have to go looking for her? Could I punish her if I had to?

  That last question I could answer. The rest were as unclear to me as the waters of the Tiber after they’ve been roiled by a storm.

  †

  When Demetrius opened the door and welcomed me home, the first thing I saw was my mother waiting in the atrium, huddled with Naomi. The door was hardly closed behind me when Mother assailed me. There was no other word for the manner in which she approached me. Naomi trailed after her, as powerless to rein her in as a groomsman chasing a runaway horse.

  “There you are,” Mother said in the voice she usually reserved for scolding a delinquent servant. “It’s time you returned. Long past time, for that matter.”

  “Good day, Mother. I’m happy to see you, too.” I leaned in and kissed her on the cheek.

  “Don’t get sarcastic with me, Gaius. You have responsibilities here, and you’ve been evading them. Pompeia Celerina and Livia will arrive at any moment.”

  “Already? I’ve hardly set foot in the house.” Something was clearly bothering her. Something that she considered serious.

  “I sent for them as soon as the servant that you sent told us you were on your way from Ostia. We’ve got to get the plans for the weddin
g settled.”

  “You mean you’ve got to get the plans settled. I see no need at all to rush.”

  Mother wrung her hands. “Now that we’ve announced the engagement, Pompeia is concerned that people will begin to talk if the wedding doesn’t take place soon. They’ll think something is wrong with Livia.”

  “Tell them something is wrong with me.” I sat on a bench beside the impluvium and accepted a cup of wine from a servant, who then scampered away. As I glanced around, I thought the atrium seemed oddly quiet and deserted. The servants, I suspected, had gone to their hidey-holes, like animals taking shelter before a storm. Only Demetrius and Naomi were brave enough to face whatever was coming.

  “Is there something wrong with you?” Mother asked. “Is that why you spend so much time with Tacitus?”

  I stopped in mid-drink. “What—”

  “I’ve recently heard stories about that man—vile, disgusting stories. I might believe you were like that if I didn’t know you were in love with that servant girl.” She jerked her head toward the servants’ quarters.

  Standing up, I took a step toward her, my eyes narrowing. “How can you know how I feel when I don’t even know?”

  “I’m your mother, and I won’t have it.” She shook her finger at me. “If you think I’m going to let you carry on with that…trollop, the way my brother did with her mother—”

  I slammed my cup to the floor, shattering it and splattering wine on my mother’s feet. “If you ever refer to her again with that word—or in that tone—I will move you as far from Rome and as far away from me as I possibly can. Don’t force me to make a choice, Mother.”

  Demetrius cleared his throat behind us. “My lord, my lady, the lady Pompeia Celerina and the lady Livia have arrived. Shall I show them in?”

  “I’ll let you greet your guests,” I told my mother. “Demetrius, I need you! I’ll be in the library.”

  When Demetrius and I had some privacy, I asked, “Do you know where Aurora is?”

  “She’s in her room, my lord.”

  “In her room?” That was the last answer I’d expected.

  “Yes, my lord. She returned last night.”

  “Last night? Where had she been?”

  “She refused to tell us, my lord. She said she would talk only with you.”

  I ran my hand over the scrolls that lay on the table—the book Martial had given me, a book of Livy which Phineas seemed to be copying. “I can only imagine how my mother reacted to that.”

  Demetrius looked down, then back up at me. “No, my lord, you can’t.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your mother…slapped her, my lord, and told me to put her in chains.”

  “You didn’t—”

  “No, my lord. I knew you would take a whip to me if I did. I locked her in her room. I hope you’ll forgive me, but I had to keep peace with your mother.”

  I looked at Demetrius with a new appreciation for a man who, every day of his life, had to navigate a narrow, often treacherous, channel between two powerful forces. Perhaps it would be better for everyone if Mother lived in one of my other houses—at least for a while.

  “Will you talk to the ladies now, my lord?”

  “Not just yet. Give me the key to Aurora’s room.”

  “I’ll get it, my lord.”

  As he left the room I heard my mother’s voice and Demetrius’ reply. “He’ll be with you in a few moments, my lady. Why don’t you wait in the exhedra. It’s such a pleasant day. I’ll have some food and drink brought to you.”

  Clever of him, I thought. That would keep me out of their sight when I went to Aurora’s room. The man had developed more of an ability to manipulate us than I had realized.

  As soon as Demetrius handed me the key, I hurried to Aurora’s room, taking the stairs off the atrium two at a time. I unlocked the door and called her name. When she responded, I opened the door and found her sitting on her bed, her legs drawn up and her arms clasped around her knees. She was still wearing the robe in which she’d disguised herself for her trip to Ostia and the dark makeup she had applied, though it was beginning to smear. Her hair hadn’t been washed or combed in days.

  She was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.

  “My lord.” She bowed her head. The warmth I was accustomed to hearing in her voice was gone. And whose fault was that? “What do you want, my lord?”

  You, I thought. I sat in the chair beside her bed. She should have stood when her master came into the room, but I knew we were far beyond such niceties.

  “I want to know where you’ve been the past few days and why you didn’t come straight home from Ostia. You know, the penalty for a runaway slave—”

  “I didn’t run away. After we…talked in Ostia I started back to Rome.” Her eyes pleaded with me. “Don’t you understand? I came back.”

  I did understand, but I couldn’t let myself admit what it meant—for her, for me, for us. “I came back, too.”

  “You had to.”

  “You would have suffered a great deal if you hadn’t come back.”

  “You’re suffering because you did come back.” Now I felt the warmth returning, like a fire that grows from fanning just a few embers.

  I drew my chair closer to the bed and took her hand. “It was already dark when you left Ostia. Someone could have attacked you.”

  “I didn’t care. I didn’t care about much of anything at that point.” She shook her head and ran her fingers through her hair, as I longed to do.

  I hung my head, unable to say anything, unable to feel anything except the ache in my heart. I’d had the chance to tell her how I felt and had let it slip away. No, it hadn’t slipped away. I had thrown it away.

  “I was riding hard,” she went on, “not paying attention to anything around me, when I heard someone call for help.”

  “Please tell me you didn’t stop. It could have been a trap.” But I knew she had. And part of me was glad she wanted to help. It’s what those heartless people in Naples should have done.

  “Of course I stopped. That’s what you and I have always done.” She squeezed my hand.

  “Who needed help?”

  “A woman with a child. She said her husband had gone missing. She knew where he was headed when he left home, but no one had seen or heard of him for several days. They were on the road, looking for him.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I got them a room in an inn and tried to find some trace of the man, without any luck. You had the Tyche ring. After a few days I came home to see if you were here yet and if you could—”

  “Gaius! Gaius!” My mother’s voice rang through the atrium and up the stairs. “Where are you? As if I didn’t know.”

  I put my hands on my legs and lowered my head, then looked back up at Aurora. “I want to hear all of that story. But now I have to talk to Pompeia Celerina about her case.”

  “And about your marriage to her daughter,” Aurora said softly, patting my arm.

  Thinking about her lips, I kissed her on the forehead. “Well, yes, there is that, too.”

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  Unless otherwise indicated, numbers in parentheses refer to Pliny’s letters (e. g., 6.16 means book 6, letter 16). The letters are available in a Penguin translation by Betty Radice. The older translation by William Melmoth is on the Internet, but it is cumbersome and severely dated. Selected letters appear on various websites. Unless otherwise indicated, all dates are a.d.

  HISTORICAL PERSONS

  Aelius Lamia His name really was Lucius Aelius Plautius Lamia ­Aelianus. (Try putting that on a name tag at the family reunion.) He was married to Domitia Longina, a descendant of Augustus, until Domitian took her away from him in 69/70. He was executed at either the beginning or the end of Domitian’s reign (81 or 96). Scholars can’t seem to decide which. For the purposes of this story the earlier date worked better.

  Agricola Gnaeus Julius Agricola, father-in-law of Tacitus. He does not a
ppear in this book, but he is mentioned several times as a symbol of opposition to Domitian. He solidified the Roman conquest of Britain in the early 80s and aroused the envy and suspicion of Domitian. Agricola plays a significant role in the second book in this series, The Blood of Caesar. Tacitus reports the rumor that Agricola was poisoned: “We have no definite evidence. That is all I can say for certain.” He died in 93.

  Calpurnia Pliny’s third (or perhaps second) wife appears only as an infant in this book. The question of how many wives Pliny had arises from his statement to the emperor Trajan that he had “married twice” (10.2). But was that written before or after he married Calpurnia? We do not know the names of any other wives. Calpurnia was raised by her grandfather, Calpurnius Fabatus, and her aunt, Calpurnia Hispulla, a friend of Pliny’s mother. We know nothing about the parents of Pliny’s wife, except that her father’s name would have been Calpurnius.

  Calpurnius Fabatus Grandfather of Pliny’s wife, Calpurnia, and a native of Comum, Pliny’s home town. Tacitus (Annals 16.8) says that Calpurnius Fabatus was accused of participating in, or knowing about, crimes of adultery and magic involving Nero’s aunt, Junia Lepida, but the case was never prosecuted. Pliny writes a letter to Fabatus promising to make repairs to Fabatus’ villa in Campania (6.30), and writes moving letters to Fabatus and to Calpurnia Hispulla, after his wife Calpurnia suffered a miscarriage (8.10; 8.11). Fabatus lived to be quite old. The penultimate letter in Pliny’s collection informs Trajan that Pliny used the imperial post to send his wife home from the province of Bithynia when her grandfather died (112/113).

  Domitia Longina The wife, first of Aelius Lamia, then of the emperor Domitian, who took her from Aelius during the turmoil of the Year of the Four Emperors and married her in 69/70. As the first dynasty after the Julio–Claudians, Domitian and his family—the Flavians—needed some way to legitimize their rule. Longina was the great-great-great-great-granddaughter of Augustus, so her children would be descendants of that first dynasty. She lived at least twenty-five years after Domitian’s death in 96 and continued to refer to herself as “Domitia, wife of Domitian,” even though he had suffered damnatio memoriae by the Senate.