Under Vesuvius(28)

“Well,” Julia said, “from your description she’s rather a bold creature, and such women easily fall afoul of their masters. Besides, the priest had good reason to be displeased with her. He may hold her responsible for letting Gorgo stray out that night.”

“But why just Charmian?” I asked. “Why not the other two, Leto and Gaia? Go on, Hermes.”

“I called her name. After a while she looked up. Her face was so swollen and bruised she was barely recognizable. I asked her why she’d been punished so, but for a long time she couldn’t talk at all. Finally she said, ‘I’ll talk to the praetor, no one else.’ Then she lowered her head and I think she passed out. I couldn’t linger.”

This was the reason for his grimness. Hermes had been a slave and could sympathize with the unfortunate girl, even though he had given his own masters far more grief than they ever gave him.

“I have to do something about this,” I said.

“What?” Julia demanded. “You have no right to interfere with a citizen disciplining his own slave. He can kill her if he likes and you have no say in the matter. That’s the law.”

“I know it is, but I don’t like it.”

“Anyway, he may have good reason to beat her.” But she said it without conviction, for the sake of form. She knew perfectly well that the girl could hardly have earned so savage a beating.

But I had to wonder. Just what did that girl know that she would tell only me? Somehow, I had to find out.



THE NEXT DAY I HELD COURT in Baiae. The cases were all the same: some disgruntled businessman of the city bringing suit against a foreign competitor. The boredom induced by such cases is difficult to describe, but it works like the face of Medusa in turning a man to stone. I am afraid that I rendered judgments based on whether I found one plaintiff or defendant more congenial. Anyway, it served them right for wasting my time so.

About midday a slave came to my curule chair and handed me a message. Eager for anything to break the monotony of my day I unrolled it and read: Please come to my house as soon as you dismiss the court. It was signed Jocasta. I tucked it away with some satisfaction. I had intended to seek her out and she was relieving me of the trouble.

I rushed the court through the final cases and pronounced adjournment. There was some muttering at my haste, but I’ve had worse than mutters thrown at me in my day. Hermes came up to me. He had been away all day investigating.

“No luck finding the merchant who sold it,” he said, referring to the fabulous necklace. “But it’s Phrygian in origin.”

“That’s not much help,” I said. “Keep looking. And don’t assume that any merchant is telling the truth.”

“Do you think I’m a beginner at this?”

“Go. I’m headed for the house of Gaeto to talk with his wife Jocasta, She may be the boy’s only alibi.”

“Don’t assume she’ll tell you the truth,” he said, grinning.

“Get out of here.”

I saw the messenger slave and beckoned him to me. “Take me to your mistress,” I told him. Silently he turned and I followed him from the forum, bidding my entourage to meet me in the evening at the villa. They were mystified. Ordinarily, one as august as a praetor goes nowhere alone, without even his lictors. But I wanted to question the woman by myself, and witnesses are the same thing as spies.

The boy led me to a house of modest size, by the standards of Baiae. It lay on one of the broader streets, near the edge of town by the city wall. I placed a hand on my guide’s shoulder. “Is this the house of Gaeto?” It seemed entirely too small and was nowhere near the slave market.

“This is my mistress’s town house,” he explained. “My master’s house is on the bay, outside the city wall.”

“I see.” He would not be the first husband to indulge his wife in this lavish fashion. Nor the first to regret it, either. Wives with their own houses have been the subject of scabrous comedies since the days of Aristophanes.

We entered the courtyard, and moments later the woman appeared, this time wearing a dress no more extravagant than was common for the wealthy women of Baiae. Apparently, she reserved silk for special occasions.

“You honor my house, Praetor,” she said. “And you must have hurried right over from court. You must be hungry.”

“Famished,” I agreed.

She led me to a table in the impluvium next to the pool with its fountain playing around a figure of a dancing faun. There a table had been laid out lavishly.

”This,” I said, eyeing the superb viands, “could be construed by some to be a bribe.”