“Tell him, Publius, for the sake of the children!”
“It’s a trick, shut up!”
“Tell him!”
Other voices: “We adore your image every day at sunrise, Caesar!”
“We shut our doors to our son and his republican friends.”
“We rejoiced when the criminals, Senecio and Priscus, were put to death.”
“And when you drove the rabble of philosophers from the city.”
“O, Lord and God, spare us,” a woman beside Pliny sobbed. “We never hid the traitor, Musonius, in our house, never! Torture our slaves, they’ll tell you who…”
Her husband clapped his hand over her mouth, but not before Pliny recognized her voice. He recognized them all, and in that instant, realizing why he was here, he groaned with shame. More guests leapt to their feet, upsetting the lamp stands and “tombstones” with a clatter, and all trying to be heard at once. They were innocent. They swore it on their children’s heads. But they knew who his secret enemies were, if he would only spare their lives…!
Then one voice made itself heard above all the others. “Hush, all of you! Silence, I say! Caesar, this excellent joke is worthy of your divine wit. Why, our friends who are not here tonight will feel themselves slighted when we tell them what fun we’ve had! But I fear some of your guests, and particularly the ladies, are taking it entirely too seriously. It would be unkind to encourage them further. I, for one, am hungry and want my dinner.” The speech ended with a forced laugh.
Old Cocceius Nerva, thought Pliny. An ornament of the Senate for more than forty years. Smooth, adaptable, a friend of the dynasty or, at least, not an enemy. He had never, before tonight, been remarkable for courage, but this was a brave thing he was doing.
There followed a tense silence which lasted until Pliny thought he could not bear it another moment, and then a trap door opened above them, letting in a shaft of light, and the distinguished lords and ladies, the flower of Rome’s aristocracy, made an unseemly dash for the stairs.
Above ground, the Praetorians were gone and Parthenius, smiling blandly, congratulated them all on their return from dead. But his hooded eyes said something else. Pliny stole a look at his companions. Women, bewigged and bejeweled, tried to repair tear-streaked makeup. The men avoided each other’s eyes, but all gazed at the tall, stooped figure of Nerva, their savior.
As though nothing were amiss, Parthenius, clasping his hands and smiling wetly, led them back the way they had come to the entrance to “Jupiter’s Banquet Hall” for the real dinner. Here, servants in white livery removed their shoes and led them in groups to their tables. Pliny noted that he, the city prefect and the informer Regulus, their companion of the evening, were each placed at a different table—to continue eavesdropping, of course. Pliny felt sick to his stomach and prayed that his face did not give him away. Had things come to this? A dynasty that had started off so fair? He would march into the prefect’s office tomorrow at daybreak and resign his post.
It had been only that morning, coming on the heels of the excitement over Verpa, that a message had arrived from the Prefecture.
“To Gaius Plinius Secundus, greetings from Aurelius Fulvus. Your presence is commanded at the palace at the ninth hour for dinner. Wives are particularly invited.” Pliny raised an eyebrow at this; as a rule, the emperor had little use for senatorial wives. “We will meet on the steps and go in together. Be prompt. Farewell.”
Curt and faintly unpleasant, as usual. Pliny disliked his superior. Some months ago he had been plucked from his civil law practice and asked to assist the Prefecture in clearing away a great backlog of criminal cases. Not long afterward, one of the deputy prefects, a man tortured by ulcers, committed suicide, inconveniencing everyone, and Pliny was moved into his position. Only for a few days, he was assured, but days had stretched into weeks with no end in sight. It was another feather in his cap, no doubt, but the job was irksome.
The sun was still high and the heat oppressive as his litter-bearers had snaked along the teeming streets, holding him high above the filth. The narrow streets of Rome were clogged with thousands of visitors streaming into the city to enjoy the revels that would occupy the next fifteen days: tomorrow the Ludi Romani, the Roman Games, began.
The palace sprawled over half the Palatine Hill, rising up “like seven mountains piled one atop the other, reaching to the sky,” said a flattering poet. It was divided into a public and a domestic wing. In the former, the Domus Flavia, toiled a thousand imperial slaves and freedmen—the clerks, scribes, and accountants whose drudgery made the vast Roman Empire run, while in the latter, the Domus Augustana, other slaves, sleek and perfumed, performed more intimate services for their “Lord and God.”