Pliny had a sudden glimpse of the lives of these sex slaves. The whispered rumors, the jealous looks, the anxious observation of every clue to the master’s shifting preferences. Their lives depended on it.
He cleared his throat. “I’m told that Lucius wanted your company too and the old master didn’t like that.”
Her hands twisted in her lap. “I never encouraged young master. It’s hard for someone like me, pulled both ways. A slave can’t refuse.”
The girl’s vulnerability reminded Pliny uncomfortably of his own wife. If life were different, if situations were reversed…He gave her a moment to compose herself. “Phyllis, who do you think killed the master?”
“Well, not old Pollux,” she answered with surprising firmness. “That poor old man didn’t have it in him to do such a thing. It’s a shame what the others did to him and his friends, even if they were Jews and atheists.”
“You know, child, I agree with you. Tell me what you think—could an assassin have climbed through the window?”
“How would I know? But it’s funny then that he didn’t bring his own knife with him.”
“What do you say?”
“The curved dagger, sir, that was lying on the floor all bloody, it belonged to the master. I saw it when we all crowded in to see what had happened.”
Pliny looked at her sternly. “Are you quite sure?”
He called for Valens, who had remained just outside the door, and ordered him to fetch the weapon.
“It’s his.” She studied it closely. “The red leather on the hilt. Those foreign letters scratched on the blade. See? He told me it says ‘Death to Romans.’ He used to make me admire it. Told me how he took it off a dead rebel in Jerusalem. I’d ooh and aah. He liked that. He kept it on the table beside the bed.”
Pliny tried to force his thoughts into some order. “If you recognize it then others must have. Wouldn’t Pollux have recognized it?”
“I’m sure he did,” she girl answered. “But that poor man was slow-witted. Too many blows to the head.”
Pliny tried to remember the details of his brief interrogation of the boxer. Had he even asked him about the weapon? He shook his head woefully. What a fool he was.
“Well, but Lucius certainly recognized it, damn him!” He hadn’t meant to speak these words aloud. Now he had frightened the girl.
“I—I don’t know.” Her under lip quivered. “Please sir, I don’t know any more. Don’t make me say anything against Lucius. He’s my master now.”
“Yes, yes, quite. What you’ve told me will stay between us. You may go now, and thank you.”
Valens handed her off to one of his men to return her to the guarded dormitory. He rubbed his bristly chin and looked thoughtfully at Pliny. “So young Lucius has been lying to us, sir. There was no Jewish assassin.”
“Yes, but the man didn’t stab himself in the back. Someone managed to climb through that window. The shutter was open, and we saw how the ivy tendrils on the column looked as if they were torn loose by someone’s hands and feet.”
Valens nodded.
“Get me Ganymede. He’s another one who was allowed to prowl the house at night. He may, at least, have seen or heard something.”
“How old are you, boy?” Pliny asked the creature who now stood, loose-limbed before him.
“Fifteen, sir.”
Closer to seventeen, Pliny guessed. Almost too old for a cinaedus. He had seen others like this one. The boy wore a short-skirted Greek tunic, the color of crocus and diaphanous to the point of transparency. His hairless limbs glistened with oil like the limbs of finely polished furniture. But his long, scented ringlets were matted and tangled and there was a faint stubble on his cheeks; he’d had no opportunity to singe them with hot walnut shells.
“Are you home bred or bought?”
“I was purchased from the Temple of Eros, an all-boy brothel, at a high price, too. I was only nine, yet so skilled at giving old men pleasure that Sextus Verpa fell hopelessly in love with me. He came every day and would accept no one else. Finally, he made Marcus Ganeus, my owner, sell me to him. He loved me very much. He gave me presents. The slave girls hate me. He never gave them such fine stuff.”
The voice was unnaturally high and wispy. He was forcing himself to speak in a falsetto so as not to betray his age. When the voice broke a boy’s career was over. Ganymede fluttered his long lashes seductively and touched himself between the legs. Pliny felt a mixture of pity and revulsion. There was something that was not quite human about Ganymede. He was a work of art, the product of someone’s fantasy. Every gesture practiced and studied.