Roman Games(50)

“I—I used to work here, I want to come back. Put me in a room, I’ll make money for you.”



“That good, are you? You look too old to me. Step closer. Why, you’re wearing a collar! ‘Fugio tene me—I’m running away, catch me.’ No, my friend, out you go. City prefect would close me down in a minute for harboring a runaway.”

“Please…”



“You want me to call the Night Watch?”



The boy ran out.



Crouched in a stinking alley not far from the brothel, he twisted and tugged uselessly at the iron collar until his skin was raw and tears ran silently down his cheeks.

A quarter of an hour later, Lucius’ slave knocked at the same door and asked to deliver a message to Marcus Ganeus. Now the brothel owner’s curiosity was aroused. “I’m him, give it to me.” He tossed the slave a copper coin.

The proprietor of the Temple of Eros wasn’t much of a reader, but he got the gist of the message. His eyebrows lifted in surprise.

Hours passed, and Ganymede was hungry. He’d tried to scavenge for scraps in a heap of refuse behind a popina, but snarling, yellow-eyed dogs had driven him off. Now he shrank into the recess of a doorway, the entrance to a crumbling insula that rose six stories above street. He knew they would be looking for him and that he must get off the streets before daybreak. The top of this building, he reckoned, commanded a view of the brothel. Lucius would come there for him as soon as it was safe. Lucius wouldn’t fail him. He must wait and watch.

He crept up the rotting stairway, intending to hide on the roof. When he reached the topmost story a better opportunity presented itself. Peering through the tattered rag that served as a door, he saw that the apartment had suffered a fire; the walls were charred and the roof was half open to the sky. There wasn’t a stick of furniture in the place, but propped against the wall, scabby legs sticking out before her, sat an old crone. Her head lolled to one side, a wine jug lay in her lap.

“You come to see me, darlin’?” she croaked. “Cost you two coppers, ’at’s all.”

It was the work of a moment to strangle her. Then Ganymede hunkered down by the window to wait.

The search party had blundered down one dark alley after another in the neighborhood of the Circus until, at last, even Pliny was ready to give up. The night air was sultry, heavy with threatening rain. Sweat pooled in the hollows of Pliny’s eyes, trickled down his neck.

“Where in Hades are we?” he demanded of no one in particular.

“As it happens,” replied Martial, “we are not very far from the house of some poet friends of mine. There’s always a party going on. Come along, enjoy some bad wine, good company, and better verses than Statius ever wrote. Your centurion can see you home when you’ve had enough.”

“The last thing in the world I want to do right now is go to a soirée,” said Pliny testily. “Mehercule, I should have been home two hours ago. Calpurnia will be worrying herself sick.”

But the poet persisted and, at last, Pliny yielded. “But only for half an hour.”

Valens and his men repaired to a tavern down the street to wait.

Answering to Martial’s knock, the door was opened by a tipsy young man, naked to the waist, whose long hair tumbled over his face. The room behind him was dark and smoky with incense; flutes shrilled a wild melody, castanets clattered, dancers whirled in a candlelit haze.

“This isn’t a poetry reading, this is a bacchanal!” Pliny sputtered. But Martial applied a firm hand to his back and propelled him inside.

“You there, boy, fill a goblet for my friend and me,” Martial shouted to a slave over the commotion of voices. The poet tossed his off at a gulp. “Come meet my friends.” He plunged into the crowd of revelers, holding tight to Pliny’s elbow lest he escape. “Mind where you step.” Tangled like crabs in a sack, bodies sprawled and writhed upon cushions—men, women, boys, creatures of ambiguous sex, sleek and oiled cinaedi in gaudy pantomime masks, and battle-scarred gladiators all together. A miasma of perfume, sweat, and the ranker smells of love engulfed them.

“Fancy seeing you here, old man!” An elderly senator, whose private life was said to be beyond reproach, tugged at Pliny’s cloak, grinning foolishly from the floor while a naked girl tousled his white hairs.

Martial led the way through a succession of rooms until the sounds of laughter and clapping hands drew them to a small garden at the rear of the house, where torches flared amid deep shadows.

“Ho, Nepos, is that you?” cried Martial. “And Cerialis? And Priscus, too?”