Roman Games(72)
“Yes, now. And I want this rabble out of my garden.”
The centurion’s face darkened, and for an awful moment Lucius feared the man might hurt him. But his woman was up at once, dragging the children out, and Valens, tight-lipped, turned smartly and marched off.
He was back in half an hour. “Vice-prefect’s not at home, as it happens,” he said in his surliest tone of voice. “His wife says he’s left town and she doesn’t know where. Didn’t seem too happy about it either. Anything else you want done, you ask your own people.” He returned to the garden, now emptied of his family, drew his sword and set to sharpening it with vicious strokes against the edge of a stone bench.
Chapter Twenty-four
The seventeenth day before the Kalends of Domitianus.
Day eleven of the Games.
The white napkin, released from the praetor’s fingertips, fluttered down, simultaneously a horn sounded, the restraining rope dropped, and a dozen four-horse chariots shot out of the starting boxes. A roar rose from a quarter of a million throats. The drivers, distinguished by their team colors — green, blue, red, white, purple, and gold—stretched out almost horizontally over their horses’ backs, cracking their whips, twisting their bodies, turning their heads for brief seconds to see who was beside or behind them, searching for an opening to the left, closer to the barrier.
As they dashed around the first turn, a Green driver tried to foul one of the Reds by crowding him but wasn’t skillful enough and lost control of his own chariot, careening into the barrier. The chariot flipped up and over, throwing the driver out. His horses plunged on, dragging him, still tied to the reins, into the path of another team. The roar of the crowd redoubled. This was what they had come to see.
Martial and his four friends rose to their feet, screaming with the rest, although from high up in the cheap stands of the vast Circus Maximus it was hard to see what had happened. The surviving chariots disappeared around the turn and up the back stretch in a cloud of dust. They sat again on the benches, prodded by elbows in their ribs, knees in their backs.
“Purple’s going to carry off the honors today,” Priscus shouted in his ear over the rumble of voices. “The emperor’s team. That’s where I put my money.” They could just make out the distant figure of the emperor in the imperial box, swathed in the folds of his purple toga, surrounded by his courtiers, Parthenius, no doubt, among them. “Who’s your money on, then?”
But Martial wasn’t listening. The momentary excitement past, he had sunk back into his own thoughts, which, like those chariots, went round and round in an endless circle. Where was Pliny? Why had he left the city yesterday morning without warning, telling no one where he was going? He would have to meet Stephanus tonight at the popina, but what could he tell him? Stephanus. That man gave him the shudders with his cold eyes and sallow cheeks and that perpetually bandaged arm. And what if Parthenius refused to believe that Pliny hadn’t confided his plans to him? What if Parthenius dropped him after all this? He doubted that anything he had reported so far had really been of much interest to the grand chamberlain. It was that woman Amatia he seemed most interested in.
And there, Martial had simply drawn a blank. An ordinary and harmless provincial matron was all he saw. Rather reserved, rather sad, a bit foolish on the subject of religion. None of the gossip-mongers knew anything about her, naturally, since she hadn’t been in Rome more than a couple of weeks. But in that case, why did Parthenius care? And yet he did care. Which must mean that there was more to Amatia than he had guessed. The thought pounced on him like a cat leaping from cover upon an astonished mouse. Amidst the din of a mindless crowd, Martial’s mind suddenly gained clarity. The woman was lying to them. As simple as that. But what was he to do with this new idea? Martial, who had always thought himself so clever, so knowing, suddenly felt out of his depth, baited and hooked like a fish into betraying his friend and patron for reasons he couldn’t fathom.
He must tell Pliny, as he should have done in the first place. But how could he do so without confessing to his deal with Parthenius and all of his small betrayals over the past days? No, he couldn’t afford that. He would lose both Pliny and Parthenius as patrons.
Thirty years in Rome, grasping for a fame always just out of reach, had changed him into a man that he didn’t like any more. But “the die was cast,” as the Deified Julius had once famously said. There was no alternative now. He would go back to Pliny’s house tonight, play the dutiful client, make himself agreeable to the little wife, and see whether he could pry any information loose from the mysterious Amatia.