Roman Games(69)

Scortilla stared for a long moment in silence. And then, without warning, her shoulders heaved and tears started down her cheeks, making tracks in the dead-white powder. “So clever, aren’t you, both of you? Well, I’m sorry once again to disappoint you. I did not creep through that window on these! With a swift motion she gathered her gown in both hands and pulled it up to her thighs. “Look now at what I hide even from my lovers, hide because I will not be pitied.”

In spite of himself, Pliny took a step back. The woman’s knees were swollen, misshapen knobs of bone. Hopelessly arthritic.

“Aren’t they pretty, Vice Prefect? They’re the price an athlete pays. And the pain is unbearable. No medicine, no amulet relieves it, not even the compassionate Isis to whom I pray daily. Only wine mixed with opium—which I buy from the potioners, yes—dulls it enough so that I can live my life as I wish to. And so I drink all day long, and if I stumble people like you despise me for a drunkard. Well, I prefer that. And no one, up until this moment, has ever seen me weeping for the girl I once was.”

“Turpia Scortilla, you will consider yourself under house arrest and report personally to my centurion twice every day,” said Pliny, grim-faced.

“Oh, spoken like a true policeman, vice-prefect! Never let mere facts get in your way!” Her voice was heavy with scorn.

“Yes, well…,” murmured Martial when they were on the street again. “I think we could both do with a nice bath, don’t you? Cool our heads.”

But Pliny waved him off angrily.

At home, Pliny went straight to his tablinum and locked himself in. He was in no fit mood for company, not even his wife’s. He had left the dead monkey where it lay on the floor but he had had the presence of mind to bring the needle home with him wrapped in its napkin. This he locked in a small iron casket. Then he sank onto a chair with his head in his hands. Presently, he sent for some food and wine. He drank a glass. Then another. And another. He was defeated. The Games would be over in six days. Possibly, Lucius could be charged with some sort of attempted murder. As for Scortilla—nothing. No means, no motive that he could mention without angering the emperor. But dammit the woman was guilty! And forty innocent human beings would die for her crime.

The hours wore on. Eventually, Pliny drifted off to sleep.

But not for long. He woke with a start to find the emperor’s lictors standing in his doorway again. This time they treated him more respectfully, but the summons was still peremptory. Refusal was not a choice.

Five hours later he was home again. Calpurnia wept with relief. Amatia gave him a penetrating look, but said nothing.

“Just a private interview,” he assured the women, smiling wanly. He would not tell them of the repetition of his previous night’s bizarre conversation with Domitian, the self-pitying complaints, the dark suspicions, the wild accusations, the lavish praise of Pliny and his uncle, which turned maudlin as the emperor drank more and more; his final escape when Domitian finally passed out on the floor. Or that this time he had had a run-in with Parthenius, who seemed to be lying in wait for him as he left. The chamberlain had tried to pump him. Pliny had shoved him roughly aside.

For the second night in a row Pliny lay in the dark, desperate with exhaustion, unable to close his eyes. He could not go through this again; could not put his frail wife through any more of it. As the first rays of dawn slanted through his window, he lit a lamp and sat down at his desk to shuffle aimlessly through the correspondence that had piled up there. And so it happened that his eye fell upon a letter from Calpurnius Fabatus, his wife’s grandfather. The old man wanted him to go up to Ameria to help him evaluate the condition of an estate he was thinking of buying. Since the courts and Senate weren’t in session surely dear Pliny could spare him a couple of days?

“Accipio omen,” Pliny murmured. “I accept the omen.” He wasn’t a policeman, had never claimed to be. It needed someone cleverer than him to solve this wretched case. He had done all he could. One thing he knew for certain: call it running away, call it hiding, but if he didn’t get out of Rome, clear his head, calm his soul, and, above all, escape from the emperor, he would soon go mad.





Chapter Twenty-three



The eighteenth day before the Kalends of Domitianus

[formerly October].

Day ten of the Games. The first hour of the day.



Pliny emerged from his bedroom wearing a traveling cloak and broad-brimmed straw hat. “Zosimus,” he called to his young freedman, “send the clients away with my apologies. You and I are going on a journey.” Zosimus was on easy terms with his patron but something in the set of Pliny’s mouth told him to ask no questions. “Boy,” Pliny beckoned a slave, “run to the hostler’s outside the Flaminian Gate and order a covered coach with a mule team and driver to be ready at once.”