“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 heart 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 ou
t 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, senator. 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.”
“He won’t outlive the hour,” Petronius growled, jumping to his feet. “And I’ll bring the Purissima back here to wait until it’s over. I’ve already given sealed orders to my tribunes to neutralize the City Battalions when the hour comes.”
“And we,” Parthenius said, nodding to Stephanus and Entellus, “must be back at the palace before we’re missed. The emperor will be calling for me soon. Is everyone clear about the plan?”
They nodded.
“Then may Fortune favor the brave!”
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.’”
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