Pliny looked up in surprise. “What on earth for?”
“For being useless, scared out of my wits. I failed in my duty.”
“Nonsense, what could you or anyone have done? We owe our lives to the Purissima.”
“You still call her that, even though—”
“Of course I do. What else?”
At that moment, Calpurnia sighed, and her eyelids fluttered open; she moved her lips. “Gaius? How…?
“Hush.” He lifted her to him, kissing her forehead, murmuring thanks to every deity he could name.
“Have I been sick?”
“The gods have given you back to me, that’s all that matters. We…we despaired. So much blood. Hush now.”
“No, but tell me what has happened. What are they shouting outside?” She gripped his hand and tried to struggle up on an elbow. He felt her trembling.
“Yes, yes, all right. The emperor has been assassinated. Before that, the Praetorian commandant and his men came here to take Amatia away and to, well, to deal with me.” She needn’t know every detail. “Then you went into labor and Amatia took command. I confess I’ve never seen anyone so magnificent. She refused to leave us. She sent a slave running for the midwife. And she convinced Petronius that I had joined their conspiracy to overthrow the emperor. Yes, that’s what it was all about. I don’t know if he believed her, but such force leapt from that woman’s eyes…Short and stout she may be, but at that moment, she seemed to tower over him like the great statue of Minerva come to life. Anyway he backed down.”
“And had you? Joined them?”
Pliny shook his head wearily. “At that moment I honestly don’t know.”
For a while they were both silent. Then Calpurnia whispered, “And now, husband, I want to see my baby.”
He covered his eyes with his hand.
Chapter Thirty-two
A week later.
Domitian’s corpse had been carted away on a common litter by the public undertakers, as they did with paupers. His old nurse saw to his burial in an inconspicuous spot. The elderly Nerva, looking shrunken inside the voluminous folds of Domitian’s triumphal toga, had presided as emperor over the final day of the Roman Games. In the city, people waited nervously for the tramp of approaching legions, but, as it became clear that there would be no civil war, rejoicing broke out anew and continued for days.
A communiqué had been promptly released from the palace announcing that the tyrant had been killed. No names were named but the text underlined that his death had occurred at the fifth hour on the fourteenth day before the Kalends, the precise day and hour that had been widely prophesied. Plainly, Fate, or the stars, or call it what you will, had spoken. There was no gainsaying it. And Parthenius had even found the time, during those last hectic days, to throw together an imperial horoscope for Nerva. So that clinched the matter.
The dead emperor’s memory was formally damned by the Senate. In an orgy of hate, his arches and monuments were demolished, his name obliterated from inscriptions. The months Germanicus and Domitianus reverted to their old names, September and October.
The Deified Julius and Augustus had named the months Quinctilis and Sextilis respectively after themselves, but they had died with honors and the changes seemed likely to last; not so Domitian. It would be as if he had never existed. The following day Aurelius Fulvus, the city prefect, who had been a regime stalwart to the end, was removed from office, and Pliny was politely relieved of his post as vice-prefect, although with a commendation from Nerva for good work and a hint that, having shown such a talent for detection, there might be further assignments of a confidential nature. Pliny devoutly hoped there would not be. He had sunk into a deep funk, crushed by the double loss of his stillborn son and Verpa’s slaves. Apart from unavoidable duties, he hadn’t left the house in a week.
All that drew him out today was a desperate message from Hispulla. Corellius Rufus, her husband, had resolved to starve himself to death; she begged Pliny to come and reason with him. He approached this meeting with a heavy heart.
When he arrived he was dismayed to find Amatia there too. How should he feel about this woman who had saved his and Calpurnia’s lives while coolly condemning forty innocent human beings to death? Now, unexpectedly he was face to face with her one last time. Though he scarcely recognized her. She lay stretched on a couch beside the old man, looking nearly as ill as he did. Her hair hung limp around her drawn face. She too had decided to end her life.
Pliny went swiftly to his mentor, knelt beside the couch and took his hand. “Sir, I have lost much, am I now to lose you?”