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.
Chapter Twenty-seven
He was met at the door by Martial. “You’re back! Just thought I would come by in case-”
“Yes, well, go home now. State business, not for your ears.” Pliny brushed past the poet, almost knocking him over. He was about to call for Amatia when, instead, Soranus emerged from his wife’s room, closing the door behind him.
The physician was a young Greek, not yet thirty years old, with a brisk, confident manner. He wasn’t well known in Rome, though he had come highly recommended from his native Ephesus. His face was half hidden behind a massive black beard, which he hoped added authority to his youthful face. He had a pair of intelligent, owlish eyes. He blinked them at Pliny. “Not to worry,” he said. “Bit of an emergency last night-bleeding and pain. I trust you had a good reason for leaving her alone.” There was an edge to his voice. “The fetus is alive, I can detect its heartbeat through this little tube of mine. You owe a debt of gratitude to your house guest, Amatia. While I was attending another case, she stayed with your wife, comforted her, wouldn’t let anyone else touch her, so say the servants.”
Pliny felt his conviction ebbing away. He pursed his lips. This was going to make what he had to do even harder. He looked into Calpurnia’s bedroom. She was very pale. Her eyes fluttered open, and she smiled wanly at him. If there was reproach in her eyes, he could not afford to think about that now.
“We rejoice at your return.” Amatia approached him from the far side of the atrium. Her hair was disheveled and the circles under her eyes were darker than ever, the skin around them finely wrinkled. “Your trip was a success?” Pliny knew it was no idle question, but she didn’t dare press him. “A success? Yes, madam, in ways I wouldn’t have wished for.” “Madam?” She measured him with her eyes. “We’re not usually so formal, are we?” If he prolonged this he would lose his courage entirely.
“Thank you for attending my wife, I’m very grateful. We have something to discuss. Come with me into the tablinum and shut the door.” He turned and she followed him. When they were alone, he said, “Lady, do you recognize this?” He produced the medical kit from under his traveling cloak. She shook her head, no. He turned the box over, exposing Iatrides’ name inscribed on the bottom. He didn’t have to ask again; her face told him everything. She groped behind her for a chair and sat down heavily.
“Your friend was murdered, I regret to say, quite brutally. Tortured to death by Ingentius Verpa. Now I ask you, why would Verpa do that?” Amatia sucked in her breath; it made a high-pitched wheezing sound like a child with pneumonia. But Pliny was relentless. “Forgive me, lady. I must play the role of policeman, not friend, although I hope I am your friend.” He went to his desk, opened the small strongbox and brought out the needle that had killed Iarbas’ monkey. He held it in front of her face. “Do you recognize this? We found it in Verpa’s room. It’s what killed him. There’s its twin in Iatrides’ box. Now, madam, what do you have to say to me?”
Before he could put out a hand to catch her, she was on the floor, her arms and legs thrashing violently, her teeth clenched, sweat pouring out of every pore, the veins at her temples bulging.
“Soranus!”
The physician had been about to take his leave. He rushed in, tossing his cloak aside. “By Apollo!” He fumbled in his kit and produced a bottle of some liquid. “Help me force her jaws open.” This was no easy thing but at last they were able to get a few drops down her throat. “A mild sedative,” the doctor explained. Gradually, the convulsions subsided and her body grew limp. They carried her to her room and laid her on the bed. Pliny had never seen her as bad as this. But there was no pretending here.
“She suffers from hysteria,” he told Soranus. “We must find something with a stink for her to inhale.”
“Nonsense.” The physician frowned with authority. “Even the great Hippocrates could talk rubbish sometimes. The womb scampers around like a kitten chasing a ball? I don’t believe it. Some day I shall write a treatise on the subject.”
“Have you seen many cases, then?”
“Well, actually, no. One doesn’t come across these things every day. And so I would be most grateful, sir, if you would permit me to examine the lady while she is at rest.”
“Saving her modesty, of course,” Pliny warned.
“Oh, absolutely. I will avert my eyes; I can tell a great deal by touch alone. I’ll just get my kit and then if you’ll leave us for a few minutes?”
A quarter of an hour later, the doctor emerged, frowning in puzzlement. In his hand he held a contraption such as Pliny had never seen before. It was made of bronze and comprised four prongs whose distance from each other could be adjusted by means of a screw-threaded handle and crossbar mechanism. Soranus set it on the table between them. “A speculum of my own design,” he explained. “I call it the dioptra. It allows me to look through the cervix.”
To Pliny’s eye it looked like some dreadful instrument of torture. “You examined her with that thing!”
The physician looked a bit sheepish. “Well, just a peek, sir. I mean, in the interests of science. And I can state with confidence that the lady’s womb is precisely where it should be. In one way, however, the traditional wisdom has proven to be true. It’s no wonder she suffers from hysteria. It’s a very common effect of sexual deprivation in a passionate woman. It is, in short, a virgin’s disease. And this lady, sir, is a virgin, astonishing as that sounds.”
Pliny felt his he
art flutter. But hadn’t he already guessed?
“Well, ah, I mean, was a virgin,” the doctor blinked rapidly, “that is, I fear I inadvertently did her a little damage. I mean, how was I to know?”
“You what? Out! Out of my house, you butcher!”
Pliny, on his feet, his hands balled into fists, watched the physician’s disappearing back. He felt as though all the air had suddenly been let out of him.
“Husband, I heard you shouting.” Calpurnia tottered unsteadily toward him. “How can our dear Amatia be a virgin if she is the mother of five daughters?”
Pliny could only shake his head silently. The implications were just beginning to sink in. Amatia and Verpa. He tried to erase the picture from his mind but couldn’t. A shudder of dread -something from deep in the racial memory-ran through him. A Vestal Virgin polluted by man’s touch and by death. “Go back to bed, dear.” “But-” “Go back to bed!”
Calpurnia’s door had hardly closed when Amatia’s opened. She held on to the doorposts, her face drained of blood, her hair down across her face, and gazed at him with eyes of stone. “What-have-you-done to-me?”
There was no turning back now.
Pliny swallowed hard. “I know who you are, Purissima. I know what you did. With a heavy heart, I charge you with the murder of Sextus Ingentius Verpa. If it were up to me, I would award you the Civic Crown for patriotism, but the Law thinks otherwise. It’s all been a pack of lies, hasn’t it? The family in Lugdunum, the pilgrimage to Isis…I am an officer of the State. I must go to the Prefecture and tell the prefect what I know. He will report to the emperor.” She took a step forward, swaying on her feet, and clutched his arm. “Wait, please!” He pulled away from her. “I warn you, you’re playing a dangerous game. I’m not a fool.” “No indeed. You’re much cleverer than I thought. Too clever for me.
“Before Iatrides died, he spoke the name of Clemens. This touches on the emperor’s family-on the emperor himself. What is it all about? Why have you been hiding in my house? You have lied to me and my wife, who adores you. I have never been more angry than at this moment.”
“ You are angry?” she shot back. “Your anger is a small thing compared to mine! I have nothing to say to you-and very soon it won’t matter anyway.”
“Then I will go to the Prefecture at once.” He turned from her.
“No, stay a minute! Whatever you do, you mustn’t hate me. I-I want to tell you something about myself. Perhaps it will answer one of your questions.” She was playing for time. Surely, by now the final steps were in motion. She would say anything to keep him here. She sat down and motioned him to sit beside her.
Pliny hesitated.
“I was six years old when I was taken. Without spot or blemish, as sacral law demands. It was in the first year of Nero’s reign. He must have been no more than seventeen. I can still remember that pudgy face and those insolent eyes. He thought the whole thing was a huge joke. When he called me ‘Beloved’ according to the ritual formula, he licked his lips and smirked at me. I was too young to understand.
“The Vestalis Maxima in those days was a horrid, shriveled old woman who smelled of decay. But there was another Vestal there, only a few years older than me and she became like an older sister to me. Her name was Cornelia. I loved her from the first and, in time, we became everything to each other. Everything. The years passed happily for us. I never missed the “world.” I had everything I wanted within the small round world of the temple. And then six years ago catastrophe struck us. The tyrant Domitian conceived a hatred for our Order. Three Vestals were falsely charged with unchastity and forced to commit suicide. I never dreamed it could happen to Cornelia, who by then was the Vestalis Maxima-a woman of nearly fifty, who had not known a man in her whole life, who had never loved anyone but me…” She turned away, her shoulders working with grief.
Pliny said nothing. He knew all about the Chief Vestal, Cornelia-or, at least, what the Senate had been told: how she had been caught in flagrante with her lover. Pliny had stayed away from the execution, but everyone in Rome knew what had happened. Cornelia was bound and gagged and carried in a closed litter through the Forum to the Colline Gate. The crowd drew back from the cortege in shocked silence. Since a Vestal’s blood could not be shed, she would die by suffocation in an airless underground chamber with a bed, a loaf of bread, and a jug of water. Rome hadn’t seen this ancient penalty exacted in generations.
“We were made to watch,” Amatia continued. “While the other pontiffs turned away, the tyrant dragged her to the lip of the chamber. She cried out and prayed to Vesta although her head was muffled with a cloth. The public executioner set her foot on the ladder and forced her down. Her dress caught and she tried to free it. The executioner reached out his hand to help her but she shrank back. She would not let her chaste body be touched by the foulness of death. Then they pulled up the ladder and shoveled earth over the opening until it was level with the ground. I felt my throat constrict as hers must have, felt black death cover my eyes. They say I fainted and began to thrash. My hysteria dates from that moment.
“The night she died I tried to hang myself. My faithful Virgins prevented me-and they were right, my life was not mine to throw away. As the next oldest I, Amatia, was forced to take her place as Vestalis Maxima. And I have tried to be everything to my girls, my daughters, as much as if they sprang from my own womb. Just as she was to me.
“But from that day on I swore vengeance on Domitian, and I have waited for the moment of my revenge. Waited six years while I stood beside him at all our holy rites, while I smiled and bowed my head to him, deferred to him and praised him-that murderer of all I loved! The effort of dissembling has worn me down to nearly nothing. We Vestals could do nothing by ourselves, but when we learned that others were leading the way and invited us to help them, we-I-eagerly accepted. The younger Vestals know nothing about this, and I have no living family; they all died in the ruins of Pompeii, where I was born. And that, Gaius Plinius, is all I will tell you.”
“ Mehercule, Purissima, I-” But Pliny didn’t finish his thought because at that moment he heard a noise behind him. He spun around and saw Martial making for the door.
Chapter Twenty-eight
The second hour of the day.
A breathless Stephanus was ushered quickly into Corellius Rufus’ tablinum where the others still sat in tense conversation. He addressed himself to Parthenius. “I’ve just seen your poet outside Pliny’s house. Pliny knows who she is, claims that she murdered Verpa. What else he guesses isn’t certain, but if he takes her in to the Prefecture and they torture her we’re all done for. Even now she may be telling him everything.”
There was tight-lipped silence around the table. Suddenly Nerva leapt up. “This has gone far enough. I must have been out of my mind to listen to you, Parthenius. It’s time to abandon this whole mad scheme.”
“Senator, you surprise me. You were brave enough at our little charade two weeks ago. What has happened to you?” The chamberlain’s voice was silky, although his stomach was shot through with arrows of pain. “I’m afraid things have progressed beyond the point of turning back.”
“Not for me! Domitilla was banished before you approached me. She can’t give them my name.”
“No, but I could,” Parthenius said softly, “and, though I admire the Stoical virtues, I fear they will desert me in the face of torture. No, Nerva, there is no going back now. You are our choice for emperor, suited to the job in every way: respected, uncorrupted, known as a friend of ancient Roman liberty.” Nerva had not been their first choice, but he was definitely their last; it had to be him. What was there to recommend him? Old age and ill health. He would die soon and then the real search for a successor could begin.
“Guttersnipe,” Nerva snarled, “you talk to me of Roman liberty! You care for nothing but your own well-barbered neck.”
“All our necks at this point.” Parthenius voice got lower as Nerva’s grew shriller. “Please sit down, senat
or. You’re not going anywhere until the Praetorian Guard proclaims you and then you will go to the palace and be hailed as Caesar. And I will be there applauding with the rest.”
The grand chamberlain turned back to the others. “This man Pliny needs to be dealt with now. He is too dangerous. Even if we called off the assassination, he would still live to denounce us. We need to get the Purissima out of that house at once and Pliny cannot be allowed to live. Are we agreed? I want each of you to cast his vote in the presence of us all.” Parthenius looked at each one in turn. “Cocceius Nerva Caesar, if I may call you so. As our future sovereign, I defer to you. How do you vote?” Nerva composed his face with an effort, made an angry gesture with his hand. “Death by all means!” “Thank you. And you, Empress?” “This man, Pliny. Who is he?” “A lawyer, a quite junior senator.” “How long has the family been senatorial?” “He is the first to reach that rank.” “He has powerful protectors?” At this, Corellius looked away in shame. He had been powerful once. No more. “No, Empress,” Parthenius answered. “No. His uncle had some influence with Vespasian.” “Vespasian has been dead a long time.” “May I compliment your majesty on your understanding of affairs.” She ignored the compliment. Her dark, deep set eyes were as hard as a gladiator’s at the moment of the kill. “Death, then.” “And the rest of you?” The chamberlain’s gaze swept the room. “Petronius?” “I will drive the sword in with this hand!” The Praetorian commandant made an upward stabbing motion with his fist. “Thank you. Entellus?” “Death.” And so on as he proceeded around the room until he came finally to Corellius Rufus. “Senator?”
A red spot burned in each of his withered cheeks. “He’s a good man. His only crime is obedience to orders. Perhaps if I speak to him…” “Yes, you tried that already,” Nerva sneered. “It was not a success.” “Sir, I ask you again. There is no more time for talk. Your vote. We are waiting.” The invalid’s face twisted in anguish. “Death.” “Sir, I could not hear you.” “Death!” “Thank you, sir.”
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