“Besides giving your master pleasure, have you other duties in the house?”
“I am the principal dancer in our pantomime troupe,” he answered in his light, lisping voice. “I am called ‘Anguilla,’ the eel, because I dance as if I haven’t a bone in my body.” To make his point the youth lifted his arms above his head and a ripple of motion ran through his body beginning with his ankles, rising through knees, hips, and ribs cage and ending at his fingertips which fluttered imaginary castanets. It did distinctly give the impression of an eel twisting lazily through water. Pliny noted the long muscular legs, the wasp-thin waist, the narrow shoulders and the sinuous arms. He couldn’t have weighed much more than a hundred pounds. The boy flashed him a practiced smile, then let his arms drop to his sides.
This pantomime troupe of Verpa’s, of Scortilla’s really (she being an old trouper herself), was a bit of a scandal, hardly in keeping with the spirit of the age. A perversion, not to put too fine a point on it. Verpa and Scortilla entertained a very select group of friends of whom Pliny, happily, was not one, though he had heard things. And Martial had added other juicy details gleaned from his sources in the demimonde. Surprising, really that the emperor permitted it, since he had banned public performances of the same kind. But it seemed there were exceptions made for useful men like Verpa.
“Was that other boy, Hylas, a performer, too?”
“Hylas was a runny-nosed brat who couldn’t put one foot in front of the other without tripping!” Malice glittered in Ganymede’s eyes.
“Did you kill Hylas?”
“No!” Color rose from his throat to his cheeks. He sucked in his breath.
Pliny gave the boy a long, searching look. His face was haggard and there was something in the eyes that was inexpressibly tired. An old man in a boy’s body. And he was frightened, but he stood his ground.
“Did you see who killed him?”
“It was dark, everyone was pushing and tumbling over each other. I didn’t see anything. I tried to stay out of the way.”
“Did you know he was an atheist?”
“I don’t even know what that means.”
“Did you kill your master?”
“Of course not.”
“Were you with him that night?”
“No.”
“Where were you?”
“Sleeping at the bottom of the stairs. I sleep wherever I please.” Such arrogance in those words.
“Did anyone see you there?”
“I don’t know. I was asleep.”
“Did you see or hear anything out of the ordinary all evening?”
“No, sir.” Ganymede ran his finger around the iron slave collar that circled his soft neck. Clearly, it chafed him, perhaps his pride more than his flesh. The boy had pride.
Without warning, Pliny uncovered the dagger which he had placed under a cloth on the table beside him. He kept his eyes on the Ganymede’s face as he did so. The boy’s eyes widened, then quickly slid away.
“You recognize this, do you?”
“No.”
“What? Don’t recognize an object that lay in plain sight on your master’s bedside table?”
Ganymede compressed his lips into a thin line. He refused to answer. Poor Ganymede wasn’t very good at thinking on his feet.
An image presented itself to Pliny’s mind—of an “eel,” lithe with muscular legs, shimmying up a column, negotiating the overhanging eave, somehow unlatching the shutter from the outside, and slipping in through Verpa’s narrow window. But could this effeminate youth possibly have overcome Verpa, who, even if taken asleep, was a powerful and vigorous man, a fighter? Hard to imagine it. And what could the boy’s motive be? These sex slaves were far more likely to kill each other out of jealousy than to kill the master upon whom they all depended. But if someone had put him up to it? Someone like Lucius? Plenty of motive there. But no, Pliny was not yet ready to charge the son of an imperial favorite with patricide—a crime punished by ancient and savage ritual—based on the innuendo of a female houseguest or the frightened look in a slave’s eye. Gaius Plinius Secundus had his career to think of.
While he turned these thoughts over in his mind, Valens opened the door and admitted Lucius. The will was about to be opened. No doubt Pliny, as representative of the city prefect, might wish to be informed. Lucius was acting the gracious host this morning, confident of his new position. Pliny looked for some sign of recognition between him and Ganymede. There was none.
“Thank you, Lucius Ingentius, I had planned to stay for the reading. Centurion,” turning to Valens, “I want this slave boy kept separate from the others, under twenty-four-hour guard. No one is to have access to him. No one. I’ve had one witness murdered already, I won’t have another.”