A voice screamed in Pliny’s brain to ignore this little man and allow the funeral to proceed. Instead, he said, “Oh?”
Oh, yes. There was no stopping him now. When he had removed the body to his embalming shop and uncovered it, Diaulus said, the face was awful to behold: the tongue protruding, the eyes bulging, the mouth hideously twisted. “Rigor had already set in. Cadaveric spasm, we physicians call it.” Here Martial made a derisive snort.
“You see, sir, it comes on quick like that sometimes; almost instantaneously when the victim is exerting himself or in a state of high emotion at the moment of death-in the act of love, for example. The gentleman’s left hand was clutching his throat, the fingers really digging in. But it was his right hand, sir. His right hand was gripping his, ah, membrum virile -I eschew the language of the streets, sir-still in a state of tumescence. I had hard work getting him to let go of it, I can tell you. After some hours the rigor passed and things, ah, settled down, so to speak.”
Pliny and Martial exchanged glances; the same thought occurred to both of them. Had Ganymede made love to his intended victim and slaughtered him at the moment of climax? Did that pathetic boy have so much nerve?
“Now, as to the stab wounds, sir,” the undertaker continued, warming to his subject. “Understanding him to be a murdered gentleman, I was glad of the chance to observe the effects of the blade on the internal organs. But, to my great disappointment, there were none to be seen! Whoever wielded that knife was a weakling indeed. I would almost have said a woman. He inflicted a great many superficial cuts, but he didn’t succeed in piercing a single vital organ, neither lungs, nor liver, nor kidneys, and there was no internal hemorrhaging at all, sir, I’ll take my oath on that. The organs, by the way, are in those jackal-headed jars right there by the coffin, if you’d care to have a look.”
“I would,” replied Pliny grimly, “and more. Valens, and you men, carry the casket into that side room. We’ll have it open right now. Oh, and fetch Lucius out here.”
“Sacrilege!” screamed the priest of Anubis, who had been listening to this. “I forbid it!”
Martial looked at Pliny as if he’d taken leave of his senses. Their carefully constructed case was about to collapse unless he stopped now. In fact, Pliny was amazed at himself. He had never suspected he was capable of such brutal decisiveness. But there was something of his uncle, the natural historian, in him that would let nothing deter him from ascertaining a fact.
“Do as I say, centurion. And clear all these people out of here. The funeral is postponed.”
The mourners, with their palm fronds, their rattles, their pitchers of Nile water, and all the rest of their paraphernalia made a hasty exit. The last to leave was the priest, who was calling down a host of barbarous demons to feast on the vice prefect’s guts. He had ripped off his mask and suddenly Pliny recognized him as the man with the star-shaped mark on his shaven skull who had been present at the reading of the will. The man who was now in charge of spending an incredible two million sesterces. It wasn’t hard to imagine how much of that would stick to his immaculate fingertips. Unless, of course, the will turned out to be a forgery.
Diaulus was nearly in tears. “Oh, why did I open my mouth?”
“Well, you did,” said Martial, “and it’s too late now.”
The casket was sealed with wax. When they finally got the lid off a sweet, sickening effluvium mingled of resin and decay assailed their nostrils. Pliny felt nausea start in his throat. The wrappings were stiff and discolored with a yellowish stain. The body had leaked. “Too little time, too hot-” Diaulus mumbled.
“Cut the wrappings, undertaker,” Pliny ordered with all the authority he could muster. But the little man shrank back. “I’ll lose my position!” Finally, Valens drew his sword, inserted the tip at the crotch and ripped upward, laying open the cocoon of bandages. Here, at last, was the man himself. Turpia Scortilla, who had followed them in, took one look and fainted dead away. Swallowing hard, Pliny peered at Verpa’s naked torso.
“That gash in his side looks fatal enough.”
“That was my incision for removing the organs,” Diaulus explained. “Turn him over and pull the bandages away from his back.”
The back was covered with a dozen or more puckered, livid wounds. “These were the only wounds on him when I got him,” said Diaulus, “and not one deeper than the tip of my little finger.” Ganymede, in an evident frenzy of hate, had rained useless, ill-aimed blows on his victim. “The veins were still full of blood when I opened him up. When a man’s killed by sword or knife the blood runs copiously from him. But cut into a body which has died some hours before, as my profession requires me to do, and you notice that the blood flows sluggishly. No one knows why, sir, but it’s true.” Pliny shook his head. “If I had seen the body immediately, I could have discarded the idea of a professional killer at once.” “Now, if you’ll roll him back again,” Diaulus continued, “and expose the throat.” It was purple with bruises. “What would make a man strangle himself?” “Nothing in my experience, sir. But that’s not what killed him either, the windpipe wasn’t crushed.”
Meanwhile, Martial’s gaze had wandered lower. “Decent sized mentula on him.”
“Trust you to notice that,” observed Pliny with asperity.
“If you’re referring to the gentleman’s member, I found something rather odd there, too. Not much to look at now,” wrapping his fingers in a napkin, he retracted the foreskin carefully, “but there, you see? When the body was fresh it was tumescent, quite erect. I couldn’t help but notice that swollen lump on the glans.” It still looked for all the world like a nasty bee sting. “I’ve no idea what could have made it, sir. All I do know is that this man was dead before he was murdered, so to speak.”
“Dead of what?” Pliny cried in exasperation.
Diaulus pursed his lips and looked thoughtful. “We don’t know what most people die from, not really, sir. We blame it on the humors, but that’s just a name we give to our ignorance.”
“The quack’s a philosopher, too!” sneered Martial.
Meanwhile, Lucius had been brought into the room. It had taken him only a moment to digest this new development. His lips curved in a cunning smile. “Then I’m guilty of nothing, vice prefect. I can’t have procured the murder of a dead man.”
“Not so fast,” Pliny shot back, “that’s for a magistrate to decide. And when you’re tried you will need a very good lawyer. It so happens that I am a very good lawyer. I suggest you start cooperating with me if you want to avoid that leather sack. Why didn’t you mention the hand on the throat and the, ah, the other detail when I first questioned you?”
Lucius gave his characteristic shrug. “I didn’t mention it because I didn’t know what to make of it. It was no part of my plan. I assumed that idiot Ganymede had given him a bit of fun before killing him. I threw a coverlet over him before anyone else got too close, and sent for Nectanebo, or whatever he calls himself, to get him out of the house as fast as possible. I never had a chance to question Ganymede before the soldiers arrived and locked him up.”
Late in the day, Verpa’s funeral was, at last, allowed to proceed. Diaulus, “Nectanebo” once again, had succeeded in rounding up his crew of hired screamers, and the cortege departed in full cry. Pliny watched them go glumly. What a day it had been; by turns, a farce, an anatomy lesson, and a new mystery. “We have a killer still to find, Martial, and damned little time left.” And the slaves, always guilty until proven innocent, were once again in danger of summary execution. What was he going to do?
Martial read his friend’s thoughts in his weary face. “Odious little pissant!” he said with feeling.
“Diaulus? But he knows what he’s talking about. I had no choice but to hear him. Verpa died in a state of sexual arousal-can you believe it?” They emerged from the house into the blinding light of the noonday sun. “You look done in,” Martial said. “Go home and rest, inspiration may yet strike.” “I fear I’m out of tha
t commodity.” “Shall I come for dinner?”
Pliny pinched the bridge of his nose. He had a splitting headache. That afternoon he was invited to the coming of age ceremony of a friend’s son. No getting out of it. There’d be a banquet. “Not tonight. What are you going to do with yourself?”
“Me? Just my usual haunts. You know.” The poet’s eyes slid away. “Shall I call on you in the morning?”
“Tomorrow morning I’m required to attend the Banquet of Jupiter at the Capitoline temple. If you’ve a Roman heart under that shaggy Spanish hide of yours, you’ll be there too. Farewell.” ???
That night Pliny’s sleep was troubled by terrifying visions of oozing mummies and faceless figures slithering through windows. He was in Verpa’s bedroom and the rutting Satyrs and their victims all around him moved and breathed and leered at him. But he was awakened at midnight to a still greater, and much more real, terror. A pounding on his front door. A stifled scream from Calpurnia. The clack of hobnail boots on the floor. In the Rome of Domitian that could mean only one thing. One winter’s night they had dragged away a neighbor of his-a harmless old senator with large estates and some inconvenient friends; his corpse was “found” some days later; his widow had been afraid to put on mourning. Pliny lay rigid, his heart thumping in his chest.
Chapter Twenty
The seventh hour of the night.
Four of the emperor’s lictors burst into his room and dragged him from his bed. Rough hands pinned his arms behind him. One of the men threw a traveling cloak at him. “Put it on.”
“My-my shoes,” he stammered. He could think of nothing else to say.
Outside, in the atrium, Calpurnia had collapsed on a couch, sobbing. Amatia had her arms around her, stroking her hair. “It will be all right, darling,” she murmured, “Don’t be afraid.”
“Some sort of mistake,” Pliny said, his voice like the croaking of a frog. He could hardly breathe. “I’ll be back soon, you’ll see.”
Calpurnia gave him a desperate look.
In the street a covered carriage waited. Two lictors mounted the driver’s box, the other two forced Pliny inside with a hand on the back of his head. They sat one on either side of him, crushing him between them. The clop of the horses’ hooves echoed in the empty streets. “What is it? Why am I summoned like this?” No one answered him.
The emperor’s bed chamber was ablaze with light. Tiers of lamps threw leaping shadows against the walls. The smoky air was almost unbreathable. The lictors forced Pliny to his knees, which were shaking so badly they couldn’t have supported him anyway.
Like the Minotaur in his maze, the Lord of the World sat in the middle of the room, bent over his desk, all alone, except for Earinus, the little boy with the freakishly small head, who crouched at his feet.
The only sound that relieved the silence was the buzzing of bluebottles. Pliny saw the insects crawling over the inside of a glass jar. He watched as the Conqueror of the Germans pinched one large specimen between thumb and forefinger. The desk top was littered with their corpses. “You, see, how this one struggles, Earinus?” He stroked the boy’s head of golden curls. “Shall I let him go? If I do, he’s sure to bite me.” The point of the stylus went in. He dropped the little corpse on the desk.
Minutes crept by. A wave of nausea swept over Pliny. He was afraid he would mess himself. Rivers of sweat ran down his back and sides. His knees started to ache. Still the emperor never looked up and Pliny was too terrified to speak.
Then in a sudden explosion of violence Domitian’s arm lashed out, sweeping the jar off the desk. It burst on the stone floor, sending shards of glass everywhere. The flies rose up in an angry swarm. With a guttural cry, he flung himself on Pliny, brandishing the stylus in his upraised fist. With his left hand he grabbed him by the shoulder, hauled him to his feet, shoved him up against the wall. Pliny shut his eyes, he could feel the man’s breath on his face. He waited, trembling, for the slashing point to rip open his cheek, tear out his eye.
Moments passed until at last he felt the grip on his shoulder relax. He dared to open his eyes. A madman’s face confronted him. The eyes feverish and red-rimmed with black circles under them. The mouth twisted into something that resembled the mask of tragedy. The cheeks quivering. The fist that held the stylus shook.
Pliny slumped against the wall and struggled to breathe. “Caesar,” he whispered, “there’s been a mistake. Who has spoken against me?”
“The Priest of Anubis! You defiler of corpses! You jackal!” Spittle flew from his mouth. “I sent you to find a murderer, not to violate the rites of the Queen of Heaven. I’ll crucify you for this.” The tendons bulged in his bull’s neck.
For an instant Pliny wanted to cry, to blubber, to grasp the emperor’s knees, beg for his life. Instead-and he would never understand where his courage came from-he said, “Listen to me, Caesar.” And without stopping to draw a breath, he laid out everything he had discovered at the funeral. The emperor’s eyes narrowed. “Two killers?” “Yes, Caesar, and the other is still…” “Not atheists?” “It seems they had nothing…” “Documents?”
“A letter, according to Lucius, possibly containing names of people Verpa was blackmailing-people close to you. And something else that might be a horoscope; whose I don’t know. We haven’t found them, but the prefect seized Verpa’s papers before…”
“He did so at my order. One assumes the man kept papers that are best removed from prying eyes-including yours.” Domitian turned to the lictors who stood at attention by the door. “You there, fetch Aurelius Fulvus here at once!” Then he staggered back to his desk and sank onto his chair with his legs splayed out. “Earinus, pour wine for me and the vice prefect.”
The transformation was startling. Pliny now saw not an angry man but a man ravaged with fatigue, distracted beyond endurance. Dough-faced, dull-eyed. What was wrong with him?
“Gaius Plinius, do you believe in the stars? Don’t stand there, man, sit down by me.”
“Well, I suppose, I mean most people do. Of course, Cicero was a skeptic, on the other hand Nigidius Figulus…” Pliny realized he was babbling.
Domitian cut him off. “An astrologer has predicted ‘blood on the moon as she enters Aquarius.’” He scratched a pimple on his forehead and drew a little blood. “I pray this is all the blood required.” He gave a short, sharp laugh.
“Caesar, no two diviners ever agree about these things.”
“Do they not? A soothsayer has prophesied the day, even the very hour, of my death. The fourteenth day before the next Kalends at the fifth hour. And lately another has said the same thing! That is only seven days from today! If they’re right, I won’t live to see the end of the Roman Games. And the day before yesterday, during the thunderstorm, they say a lightning bolt struck the temple of Capitoline Jupiter. Did you see it?” “Why, no, Caesar, I don’t believe any such thing happened.” “What, you think I’m mad?” “No, no, Lord, of course not.”
“And the wind wrenched the inscription plate from the base of a statue of mine and hurled it into a nearby tomb! One of the Praetorian Guards fetched it and showed it to me. And the cypress tree in the courtyard that flourished during the reign of my father and brother-you know the one? It was uprooted! Parthenius took me to the spot, I saw it with my own eyes!”
“Caesar, calm yourself, rest now. You’re tired.”
“Tired!” The Lord of the World buried his face in his hands. “I never sleep any more, Pliny, not without a strong dose of laudanum.” He peered between his fingers. “I’m afraid of my dreams. Last night I dreamed that Minerva threw down her weapons, mounted a chariot drawn by black horses and plunged into an abyss. She has abandoned me.” “Sometimes opium can produce fantasies that-” “Do you believe in the gods, Pliny? What exactly do you think they are, and where?” This was treacherous ground. Pliny could only stammer, “You yourself, sir, being a god, must know that better than I.”
“You think I’m a god, do you? You’re a fool or a liar!
I’m no god. If I am a god why do I fear death? If I am a god, why does my wife deceive me with actors? If I am a god, why am I despised, conspired against, lied to by my own slaves? Do people do that to gods?” His voice rose and cracked.
Domitian had always been the despised younger son; ignored, raised in squalor, unloved by the Roman populace and even by his own family. He could never compete with the memory of his brother. Titus had been handsome, generous, a great commander, and had died after only two years on the throne, too young to have developed any vicious habits. Domitian, after fifteen years of power, still seethed with resentment and quivered with insecurity.
Suddenly he was on his feet. “Come with me, I’ll show you something.”
Torches flared along the walls, casting puddles of yellow light in the darkness. The emperor pulled Pliny along by the arm down one echoing corridor after another. Here and there they passed a sleepy Guardsman, who straightened to attention and clapped his fist to his chest at the emperor’s approach. Occasionally they saw a harried clerk bent on some late errand who cringed as they passed him. But all was stillness. They turned corners, passed through shadowed courtyards, mounted and descended flights of stairs until Pliny had no idea where he was. The Minotaur’s labyrinth might have looked like this, he thought. It was not a thought to give comfort.
And at every turning, he noticed those polished disks of moonstone, as big around as shields, mounted on brackets high on the walls. He had seen them before, on the night of the “black banquet.”
“You know why I’m having those things installed? I’ll show you, I’ll turn my back, you hold up some of your fingers.” Pliny obeyed. “Three! Am I right? You see? With these mirrors everywhere, no one can sneak up behind me and…” he drew his thumb across his throat.
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