Roman Games psm-1

by Bruce Macbain

  Mehercule! thought Pliny as he shouldered his way back through the crowded street. Both his concubine and his son had a crack at the old man on the same night, only she, somehow, got to him first! Still, there were pieces to be filled in. He wanted to know what sort of poison this was and where she could have obtained it. And, most perplexing of all, how she administered it. For the first of these questions anyway, he knew precisely where to look. He collared an urchin in the street and gave him directions to Martial’s house with instructions to meet him without delay at the public library. It was a big job he was undertaking; he’d need the poet’s help. Still carrying the monkey and the needle, he turned his steps toward the Forum of Peace.

  The Deified Vespasian had built his beautiful forum after the annihilation of Jerusalem and its inhabitants and had dedicated it, appropriately, to Peace. In one angle of it he built a library, Rome’s largest, where thousands of Greek and Latin manuscripts could be consulted by citizens of sufficient status. A librarian directed Pliny to the shelves which groaned under the enormous bulk of his uncle’s crowning scholarly achievement, an encyclopedia of natural history.

  “As a favor to the emperor,” Pliny explained to Martial, who arrived soon afterwards, out of breath, “my uncle, who also became my adoptive father after my own father died, bequeathed his original manuscripts to the library. He was one of the most learned men of this or any other age.” Pliny began to hunt along the honeycombed walls from which the knobs of dusty scrolls protruded. Martial watched him dubiously. “You know, he thought any moment wasted which was not devoted to work. He rose before dawn and began work by lamplight. After his mid-day rest, he would work again until dinner time, only to rise from dinner while it was still light and return to his studies.”

  The bookish young Pliny had grown up in the household of that extraordinary man. He began to pull out scrolls now, touching them lovingly, blowing the dust off them and heaping them on a long table while he talked over his shoulder to Martial. “Whether he was bathing, sunning himself, dining, or being carried through the streets in his litter, a secretary was always beside him, reciting from some book, while he himself jotted down excerpts. I remember how he chastised me once for wasting precious hours by walking. He was dictating notes on volcanic eruptions, you know, when Vesuvius engulfed him.”

  The heap of scrolls on the table grew dangerously high. “And so, I can’t help smiling when people call me studious,” Pliny grunted as he carried another armload to the table, “when, compared to him, I am the laziest of men. At his death he left the world over fifty volumes of history, nearly a dozen on grammar and oratory, one hundred sixty miscellaneous notebooks for which I’ve been offered a small fortune, and of course, the Historia Naturalis, in thirty-seven volumes, comprising twenty thousand facts gathered from two thousand books by one hundred forty-six Roman and three hundred twenty-seven foreign authors!”

  Martial looked on, bemused, and felt that he was, at last, beginning to understand this man. How might it crush a boy’s soul to have been raised in the shadow of that Titan of Tedium!

  Pliny sat down and mopped the sweat from his forehead. When he recounted what Diaulus had told him, the poet’s eyebrows shot up and his eyes shone with wicked glee.

  “And what would your uncle have thought of your marshalling all his scholarship just to save a gang of slaves from the executioner?”

  “I’m sure he would have thought I’d lost my mind. I half agree with him.”

  At that moment the mountain of volumes collapsed and scrolls in their cylindrical capsules rolled every-which-way across the floor.

  It seemed the librarians had never gotten around to affixing labels to all the capsules. On hands and knees, the two men searched for the index volume, unwinding scroll after scroll. The poet glanced here and there among the yards of unwound papyrus that snaked across the polished floor… contact with a menstruating woman will drive a dog mad…a statue of a woman by Praxiteles was so lifelike that a man attempted to have intercourse with it…amber is formed from the urine of lynxes…a man with eyesight so keen he could see the tiniest details at a distance of a hundred and twenty-three miles…the entire Iliad inscribed upon a nutshell…the Arimaspi who have only one eye in the middle of their foreheads…the Megasthenes who, like serpents, have slits in place of nostrils…

  “I’ve got the index,” called Pliny from a far corner of the hall. “Yes. Here we are. He treats of poisons in chapter forty-one of Book Eight, and again in Book Twenty-seven, chapter twenty-two.” “Eight’s over here,” yelled Martial, catching his friend’s excitement. “Good, I just had…Where was it? Here it is, Twenty-seven.” Each of them rolled and unrolled a volume, running his finger down the columns of crabbed writing.

  “This may be something,” said Martial. “Barbarians hunt panthers by means of meat smeared with a poison called aconitum. Goes on to say the beasts die from almost instantaneous strangulation!”

  “Here I’ve found it too,” announced Pliny from his corner. “‘Aconitum, panther-strangler…quickest of all poisons if the genitals are merely touched by it…’ The genitals! That’s it! We’ve got it!”

  The poet nodded excitedly. “Poison is a woman’s weapon. And remember, Scortilla’s the one who wanted the body wrapped up like a parcel. Why else but to hide that mark! Picture it. She enters his bedroom, rekindles the flame, arouses him, and as she delights and distracts him, she kills him! What an epigram this will make! Who but Scortilla could do something so shameless? She must have held the cork end between her teeth as she bent over him, like some fanged viper! Scortilla, you offer to suck me-I fly!

  Wise Pliny’s discovered the truth.

  I’ve no wish, Scortilla, like Verpa to die

  From the bite of your venomous tooth!

  Just off the top of my head, you know.”

  “Very droll,” said Pliny. “You can recite it to the lady in person.” ???

  Scortilla lay stretched on a couch in her bedroom, where she spent most of her days now. She held a wine cup; the liquid sloshed and spattered her gown as she stirred. She looked at Pliny with unfocused eyes, which first showed bewilderment, then hostility, and finally fear. He remembered again his military appearance. Did she think he had come to kill her? Well, so much the better; it would loosen her tongue.

  “Turpia Scortilla, I am here to charge you with suspicion of murder in the death of Sextus Ingentius Verpa.” He tossed the bundle on the floor and jerked the wrapper away. Iarbas, crouched in a corner, let out a cry in his uncouth language and threw himself at his monkey’s little corpse.

  “You recognize him, I trust,” said Pliny with his sternest expression. “We found him in Verpa’s bedroom, he had punctured his hand with this.” He thrust the needle in her face, observing how she flinched. “The poor creature died in agony, just as Verpa did. Diaulus-Nectanebo to you-will swear in court that the monkey’s wound is identical to the one he showed us on Verpa’s flesh. No doubt, you purchased the poisoned needle at some potioner’s shop, we’ll find it. Come now, you may as well confess.”

  “I know nothing of poisons!” she croaked, shrinking back on the couch.

  “Oh, but Scortilla,” Lucius purred from where he stood behind Pliny, “you visit the magicians and amulet sellers all the time. Don’t those same shops deal in deadlier goods?”

  She turned on him savagely, “You lying little shit! You’d say anything to ruin me.” Her anger drove out fear. “You can’t prove anything, vice-prefect. Why would I have done such a thing?”

  He knew perfectly well why she had done it, but he bit his tongue and kept silent. Somehow, she and the priest had cajoled or tricked Verpa, or actually tampered with the will, so that they could spend that legacy together. But he dare not say so after the emperor’s warning last night. But even if he couldn’t bring the will into it, he could still prosecute her for murder.

  “We’ll discuss your motive later.”

  “I know why she did it, and I’ll say so even
if you won’t.” This was Lucius. Pliny shot him a warning look.

  Scortilla smelled uncertainty. “Very well. You won’t tell me why. Then how am I supposed to have done this deed?”

  That, of course, was the question that Pliny and Martial had been debating all the way from the library.

  “You may have used your wiles on Pollux to let you in.”

  “My ‘wiles.’ On that virgin! The stupid ox hated me. I tried seducing him once years ago, just for something to do. He rejected me! Me! Verpa was quite amused when Pollux confessed to him.”

  “Then, you entered the same way Ganymede did.”

  “What? Through the window!” she nearly howled.

  “It’s not impossible,” Martial said. “Once upon a time you used to do handsprings on the back of a galloping horse. A former acrobat, one who hasn’t grown fat in retirement, might have managed it. I wonder what passed through Verpa’s mind when he awakened out of a deep sleep to find you poised over his privates? But I don’t imagine you gave him much time to think, did you?”

  Scortilla stared for a long moment in silence. And then, without warning, her shoulders heaved and tears started down her cheeks, making tracks in the dead-white powder. “So clever, aren’t you, both of you? Well, I’m sorry once again to disappoint you. I did not creep through that window on these! With a swift motion she gathered her gown in both hands and pulled it up to her thighs. “Look now at what I hide even from my lovers, hide because I will not be pitied.”

  In spite of himself, Pliny took a step back. The woman’s knees were swollen, misshapen knobs of bone. Hopelessly arthritic.

  “Aren’t they pretty, Vice Prefect? They’re the price an athlete pays. And the pain is unbearable. No medicine, no amulet relieves it, not even the compassionate Isis to whom I pray daily. Only wine mixed with opium-which I buy from the potioners, yes-dulls it enough so that I can live my life as I wish to. And so I drink all day long, and if I stumble people like you despise me for a drunkard. Well, I prefer that. And no one, up until this moment, has ever seen me weeping for the girl I once was.”

  “Turpia Scortilla, you will consider yourself under house arrest and report personally to my centurion twice every day,” said Pliny, grim-faced.

  “Oh, spoken like a true policeman, vice-prefect! Never let mere facts get in your way!” Her voice was heavy with scorn.

  “Yes, well…,” murmured Martial when they were on the street again. “I think we could both do with a nice bath, don’t you? Cool our heads.”

  But Pliny waved him off angrily.

  At home, Pliny went straight to his tablinum and locked himself in. He was in no fit mood for company, not even his wife’s. He had left the dead monkey where it lay on the floor but he had had the presence of mind to bring the needle home with him wrapped in its napkin. This he locked in a small iron casket. Then he sank onto a chair with his head in his hands. Presently, he sent for some food and wine. He drank a glass. Then another. And another. He was defeated. The Games would be over in six days. Possibly, Lucius could be charged with some sort of attempted murder. As for Scortilla-nothing. No means, no motive that he could mention without angering the emperor. But dammit the woman was guilty! And forty innocent human beings would die for her crime.

  The hours wore on. Eventually, Pliny drifted off to sleep.

  But not for long. He woke with a start to find the emperor’s lictors standing in his doorway again. This time they treated him more respectfully, but the summons was still peremptory. Refusal was not a choice.

  Five hours later he was home again. Calpurnia wept with relief. Amatia gave him a penetrating look, but said nothing.

  “Just a private interview,” he assured the women, smiling wanly. He would not tell them of the repetition of his previous night’s bizarre conversation with Domitian, the self-pitying complaints, the dark suspicions, the wild accusations, the lavish praise of Pliny and his uncle, which turned maudlin as the emperor drank more and more; his final escape when Domitian finally passed out on the floor. Or that this time he had had a run-in with Parthenius, who seemed to be lying in wait for him as he left. The chamberlain had tried to pump him. Pliny had shoved him roughly aside.

  For the second night in a row Pliny lay in the dark, desperate with exhaustion, unable to close his eyes. He could not go through this again; could not put his frail wife through any more of it. As the first rays of dawn slanted through his window, he lit a lamp and sat down at his desk to shuffle aimlessly through the correspondence that had piled up there. And so it happened that his eye fell upon a letter from Calpurnius Fabatus, his wife’s grandfather. The old man wanted him to go up to Ameria to help him evaluate the condition of an estate he was thinking of buying. Since the courts and Senate weren’t in session surely dear Pliny could spare him a couple of days?

  “ Accipio omen,” Pliny murmured. “I accept the omen.” He wasn’t a policeman, had never claimed to be. It needed someone cleverer than him to solve this wretched case. He had done all he could. One thing he knew for certain: call it running away, call it hiding, but if he didn’t get out of Rome, clear his head, calm his soul, and, above all, escape from the emperor, he would soon go mad.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  The eighteenth day before the Kalends of Domitianus

  [formerly October].

  Day ten of the Games. The first hour of the day.

  Pliny emerged from his bedroom wearing a traveling cloak and broad-brimmed straw hat. “Zosimus,” he called to his young freedman, “send the clients away with my apologies. You and I are going on a journey.” Zosimus was on easy terms with his patron but something in the set of Pliny’s mouth told him to ask no questions. “Boy,” Pliny beckoned a slave, “run to the hostler’s outside the Flaminian Gate and order a covered coach with a mule team and driver to be ready at once.”

  At the sound of her husband’s voice, Calpurnia tottered into the room. Pliny spoke brusquely to her. An errand for her grandfather. Where? North. He would say no more. How long? Two or three days, he really couldn’t say.

  “Then I’m coming with you.”

  “Over miles of bumpy roads in your condition? I won’t hear of it, my dear. You’re best off here with Helen and Amatia to look after you. Here, I’ve written notes to the city prefect, the emperor, and to Martial. See that they’re delivered, will you?” “But must you go today?” she persisted. “You don’t look well. You’re not yourself. What is the matter, you must confide in me.” “Nonsense, I’ve had it in mind for some time.” “You never said…” Tears suddenly overflowed her eyes. “Really, Calpurnia, must I announce my every move ahead of time?” He turned from her abruptly and shouted up his bearers.

  Awakened by the commotion, Amatia came out of her room. She put her arms around Calpurnia and held the girl tightly. “We’ll be fine on our own, won’t we darling? Enjoy your trip, Gaius Plinius, I’m sure you’ve earned a rest. By the way, last night while you were shut up in your office I received welcome news from home. A messenger sent ahead by my son-in-law just arrived by ship from Massilia. He has gathered the money for my initiation fee and will be arriving himself in just a few days. I’ll be able to make my devotions to the goddess and then I’ll no longer have to impose on your hospitality. You know the old saying, ‘After three days a guest and a fish begin to smell.’ And I’ve taken advantage of your kindness far longer than that.”

  “Nonsense, dear lady. The advantage has been ours. You’ve done wonders for my wife. We will both miss you. I must say this messenger made remarkably good time.” “And,” Calpurnia put in, “the poor man hurt himself on his journey, I think.” “Oh, in what way?” “He had a broken arm.” ???

  The lumbering four-wheeler jounced over the paving stones of the Via Cassia, following the valley of the Tiber up into the Umbrian hills. Zosimus sat beside his master and unrolled a volume of Alexandrian lyrics, but before he had recited a dozen lines Pliny’s eyelids drooped. He was still sleeping when the setting sun lit thei
r way into the courtyard of an inn where they would stop for the night. ???

  Pliny was not the only one who had felt weary and oppressed that morning. Brooding in his bed, Lucius was prey to similar feelings. He had long since given up the morning salutatio since no one came any more. Deserted by the family clients, who smelled better pickings elsewhere, without friends or prospects, a virtual prisoner in his own house, he had nothing much to do but drink and sleep. As for those mysterious papers that his father had taunted him with, Lucius had long since given up the search. Clearly they weren’t in the house. For all his cunning, he had exactly nothing to show. The trial was not many days away and he would be lucky to escape with nothing worse than banishment for life, and that only because someone else-could it possibly have been the pitiful Scortilla?-had murdered the old bastard first.

  These morose thoughts were interrupted by the knock of a trooper. Four tradesmen were at the door, dirty foreigners by the look of them. Should they be admitted? Lucius shrugged. He had nothing better to do. In an ill temper he pulled on a rumpled tunic and went out into the vestibule.

  He looked sourly at the four characters, swarthy and bearded to the eyes, who loitered near the door. Three of them, he recognized. They were brothers, Syrians, whom his father had brought back with him from Judea and set up as rug dealers near the Forum. Lucius knew that his father had used these thugs to administer an occasional beating, or worse, to loosen a tongue; a regrettable, but necessary part of the informer’s trade. And because they would unavoidably hear things during these interrogations, Verpa had warned them not to learn Latin beyond a few basic words, not that they were likely to in the immigrant ghetto where they lived.