Roman Games(61)
Martial read his friend’s thoughts in his weary face. “Odious little pissant!” he said with feeling.
“Diaulus? But he knows what he’s talking about. I had no choice but to hear him. Verpa died in a state of sexual arousal—can you believe it?”
They emerged from the house into the blinding light of the noonday sun.
“You look done in,” Martial said. “Go home and rest, inspiration may yet strike.”
“I fear I’m out of that commodity.”
“Shall I come for dinner?”
Pliny pinched the bridge of his nose. He had a splitting headache. That afternoon he was invited to the coming of age ceremony of a friend’s son. No getting out of it. There’d be a banquet. “Not tonight. What are you going to do with yourself?”
“Me? Just my usual haunts. You know.” The poet’s eyes slid away. “Shall I call on you in the morning?”
“Tomorrow morning I’m required to attend the Banquet of Jupiter at the Capitoline temple. If you’ve a Roman heart under that shaggy Spanish hide of yours, you’ll be there too. Farewell.”
That night Pliny’s sleep was troubled by terrifying visions of oozing mummies and faceless figures slithering through windows. He was in Verpa’s bedroom and the rutting Satyrs and their victims all around him moved and breathed and leered at him. But he was awakened at midnight to a still greater, and much more real, terror. A pounding on his front door. A stifled scream from Calpurnia. The clack of hobnail boots on the floor. In the Rome of Domitian that could mean only one thing. One winter’s night they had dragged away a neighbor of his—a harmless old senator with large estates and some inconvenient friends; his corpse was “found” some days later; his widow had been afraid to put on mourning. Pliny lay rigid, his heart thumping in his chest.
Chapter Twenty
The seventh hour of the night.
Four of the emperor’s lictors burst into his room and dragged him from his bed. Rough hands pinned his arms behind him. One of the men threw a traveling cloak at him. “Put it on.”
“My—my shoes,” he stammered. He could think of nothing else to say.
Outside, in the atrium, Calpurnia had collapsed on a couch, sobbing. Amatia had her arms around her, stroking her hair. “It will be all right, darling,” she murmured, “Don’t be afraid.”
“Some sort of mistake,” Pliny said, his voice like the croaking of a frog. He could hardly breathe. “I’ll be back soon, you’ll see.”
Calpurnia gave him a desperate look.
In the street a covered carriage waited. Two lictors mounted the driver’s box, the other two forced Pliny inside with a hand on the back of his head. They sat one on either side of him, crushing him between them. The clop of the horses’ hooves echoed in the empty streets. “What is it? Why am I summoned like this?” No one answered him.
The emperor’s bed chamber was ablaze with light. Tiers of lamps threw leaping shadows against the walls. The smoky air was almost unbreathable. The lictors forced Pliny to his knees, which were shaking so badly they couldn’t have supported him anyway.
Like the Minotaur in his maze, the Lord of the World sat in the middle of the room, bent over his desk, all alone, except for Earinus, the little boy with the freakishly small head, who crouched at his feet.
The only sound that relieved the silence was the buzzing of bluebottles. Pliny saw the insects crawling over the inside of a glass jar. He watched as the Conqueror of the Germans pinched one large specimen between thumb and forefinger. The desk top was littered with their corpses. “You, see, how this one struggles, Earinus?” He stroked the boy’s head of golden curls. “Shall I let him go? If I do, he’s sure to bite me.” The point of the stylus went in. He dropped the little corpse on the desk.
Minutes crept by. A wave of nausea swept over Pliny. He was afraid he would mess himself. Rivers of sweat ran down his back and sides. His knees started to ache. Still the emperor never looked up and Pliny was too terrified to speak.
Then in a sudden explosion of violence Domitian’s arm lashed out, sweeping the jar off the desk. It burst on the stone floor, sending shards of glass everywhere. The flies rose up in an angry swarm. With a guttural cry, he flung himself on Pliny, brandishing the stylus in his upraised fist. With his left hand he grabbed him by the shoulder, hauled him to his feet, shoved him up against the wall. Pliny shut his eyes, he could feel the man’s breath on his face. He waited, trembling, for the slashing point to rip open his cheek, tear out his eye.