“Witness to what?” Lucius’ newly-won composure was gone in an instant. “What are you insinuating? And you’ve no right to keep my slaves locked up any longer—especially this harmless creature. I want you and your policemen out of here, I am master here now.” His voice was shrill.
“Please calm yourself,” Pliny replied. “The soldiers will be here for a while longer and the slaves must remain under guard until the Games are over. Prefect’s orders.” Best to take shelter under his superior’s authority rather than explain his own reasons.
“We’ll see about that,” Lucius sneered. “This family still has influence. You, your family is nothing.”
“So I have already been reminded once today.”
Lucius flung himself from the room. Pliny followed.
The will was to be read in the tablinum, the master’s office, where his big iron-bound strongbox occupied one corner and cubicles containing his letters and accounts lined the walls. The death masks of his ancestors stared vacant-eyed from their niches. The room, though large, could scarcely accommodate the sweating mob of clients, relations, and cronies who were attempting to crowd into it.
Lucius sat himself in the front, next to Scortilla. Facing them sat a man at Verpa’s desk. Atilius Regulus, whom he had last seen that night of the infamous “black banquet.” Pliny sighed. How fitting that he should be Verpa’s attorney. On the desk lay a thick leather cylinder, its clasp covered with a wax seal. Inside it was the scroll of Sextus Ingentius Verpa’s last will and testament.
Seeing him standing in the back, Regulus invited Pliny, “his esteemed colleague at the bar,” to come forward and join him and the heirs in examining the seal before it was broken. Pliny had examined many such seals and rather fancied himself an expert on the subject.
The seal was perfectly intact and both Lucius and Scortilla attested that the signet was undoubtedly Verpa’s. Regulus, rubbing his hands together as though he were about to sit down to a good meal, broke the seal, removed and unfurled the scroll, cleared his throat importantly and began to read.
Verpa’s estate was worth about eight million sesterces—a handsome fortune, though not as large as many had expected. It consisted mainly of valuable land near Rome and other properties in the south. Lucius was named as heir to the whole. He heard this with a smile of satisfaction. Verpa was under no obligation to name his concubina as an heir, and didn’t. Pliny stole a sidelong look at her. Her face revealed nothing. According to form, the bequests must now be enumerated—subtractions from the estate which the heir was bound by law to make good on. There were several. Five hundred thousand sesterces to the emperor. Lucius winced, but said nothing. This was unavoidable: the surest way to guarantee that a will would not be challenged was to make the emperor an interested party. To Scortilla he bequeathed a half interest in their house in Rome, meaning that Lucius couldn’t throw her out—a cruel trick on both of them. Then there was a bequest of a thousand sesterces to Pollux, who was granted his freedom as a reward for years of faithful service. Several other slaves were manumitted, as well, and given smaller sums. But these bequests, of course, were moot. Pollux was dead and the rest soon would be.
Regulus paused in his reading to draw a breath and unrolled some more of the scroll. As he skimmed ahead, his eyes suddenly narrowed. Lucius, seeing something in his face, leaned forward in his chair.
“And finally,” Regulus read in a faltering voice, “to the temple of Queen Isis in the Campus Martius, for the purpose of founding a mortuary temple and fully-equipped embalming works where that neglected art can be practiced as in ancient days, together with perpetual stipends for the embalmers and priests who will oversee it, I give and bequeath the sum of two million sesterces; this amount to be administered at the discretion of the High Priest of Anubis, the god of embalming…”
The last words were drowned out in the uproar that filled the room.
Lucius was ashen-faced. Two million! A quarter of his estate. A senatorial fortune in itself—for Anubis, or, rather, for Alexandrinus, that charlatan! This was madness. His father would never…
“This is you, isn’t it, you filthy whore!” he screamed in Scortilla’s face, leaping up and knocking over his chair. He drew back his fist to hit her. But a brown, muscular shoulder came between them. It belonged to a tall man clad in white linen. Pliny had noticed him briefly when he arrived. The man had a smooth, beautifully shaped skull marked with the star-shaped scar of Isiac priests, and jet black eyes outlined with kohl. He turned them on Scortilla and a look passed between them.