“She suffers from hysteria,” he told Soranus. “We must find something with a stink for her to inhale.”
“Nonsense.” The physician frowned with authority. “Even the great Hippocrates could talk rubbish sometimes. The womb scampers around like a kitten chasing a ball? I don’t believe it. Some day I shall write a treatise on the subject.”
“Have you seen many cases, then?”
“Well, actually, no. One doesn’t come across these things every day. And so I would be most grateful, sir, if you would permit me to examine the lady while she is at rest.”
“Saving her modesty, of course,” Pliny warned.
“Oh, absolutely. I will avert my eyes; I can tell a great deal by touch alone. I’ll just get my kit and then if you’ll leave us for a few minutes?”
A quarter of an hour later, the doctor emerged, frowning in puzzlement. In his hand he held a contraption such as Pliny had never seen before. It was made of bronze and comprised four prongs whose distance from each other could be adjusted by means of a screw-threaded handle and crossbar mechanism. Soranus set it on the table between them. “A speculum of my own design,” he explained. “I call it the dioptra. It allows me to look through the cervix.”
To Pliny’s eye it looked like some dreadful instrument of torture. “You examined her with that thing!”
The physician looked a bit sheepish. “Well, just a peek, sir. I mean, in the interests of science. And I can state with confidence that the lady’s womb is precisely where it should be. In one way, however, the traditional wisdom has proven to be true. It’s no wonder she suffers from hysteria. It’s a very common effect of sexual deprivation in a passionate woman. It is, in short, a virgin’s disease. And this lady, sir, is a virgin, astonishing as that sounds.”
Pliny felt his heart flutter. But hadn’t he already guessed?
“Well, ah, I mean, was a virgin,” the doctor blinked rapidly, “that is, I fear I inadvertently did her a little damage. I mean, how was I to know?”
“You what? Out! Out of my house, you butcher!”
Pliny, on his feet, his hands balled into fists, watched the physician’s disappearing back. He felt as though all the air had suddenly been let out of him.
“Husband, I heard you shouting.” Calpurnia tottered unsteadily toward him. “How can our dear Amatia be a virgin if she is the mother of five daughters?”
Pliny could only shake his head silently. The implications were just beginning to sink in. Amatia and Verpa. He tried to erase the picture from his mind but couldn’t. A shudder of dread —something from deep in the racial memory—ran through him. A Vestal Virgin polluted by man’s touch and by death.
“Go back to bed, dear.”
“But—”
“Go back to bed!”
Calpurnia’s door had hardly closed when Amatia’s opened. She held on to the doorposts, her face drained of blood, her hair down across her face, and gazed at him with eyes of stone. “What—have—you—done to—me?”
There was no turning back now.
Pliny swallowed hard. “I know who you are, Purissima. I know what you did. With a heavy heart, I charge you with the murder of Sextus Ingentius Verpa. If it were up to me, I would award you the Civic Crown for patriotism, but the Law thinks otherwise. It’s all been a pack of lies, hasn’t it? The family in Lugdunum, the pilgrimage to Isis…I am an officer of the State. I must go to the Prefecture and tell the prefect what I know. He will report to the emperor.”
She took a step forward, swaying on her feet, and clutched his arm. “Wait, please!”
He pulled away from her. “I warn you, you’re playing a dangerous game. I’m not a fool.”
“No indeed. You’re much cleverer than I thought. Too clever for me.
“Before Iatrides died, he spoke the name of Clemens. This touches on the emperor’s family—on the emperor himself. What is it all about? Why have you been hiding in my house? You have lied to me and my wife, who adores you. I have never been more angry than at this moment.”
“You are angry?” she shot back. “Your anger is a small thing compared to mine! I have nothing to say to you—and very soon it won’t matter anyway.”
“Then I will go to the Prefecture at once.” He turned from her.
“No, stay a minute! Whatever you do, you mustn’t hate me. I—I want to tell you something about myself. Perhaps it will answer one of your questions.” She was playing for time. Surely, by now the final steps were in motion. She would say anything to keep him here. She sat down and motioned him to sit beside her.