The bunch of wool was brought and teased apart, with Calpurnia’s white kitten leaping up to catch the strands. Pliny turned reluctantly back to his office, leaving the two women, with their heads together, laughing.
That night Martial joined them again for dinner. He was amusing, entertaining, teasingly flirtatious with the women. He evaded Pliny’s questions about where he had been yesterday. While they waited for the first course to be served, he studied Amatia, who as usual shared a couch with Calpurnia. Who was this serene, attractive woman? What was he supposed to notice about her? He told himself that he was merely satisfying his own curiosity. “You’re from Gaul, madam? A part of the Empire I’m happy to say I’ve never visited. Do they still wear long hair and paint themselves blue?” Fishing for information.
She laughed pleasantly. “‘Long-haired Gaul’ is a thing of the past. We’re reasonably civilized these days. Lugdunum is a good sized city nowadays. My father was a land-owner. My husband was a merchant. He died some years ago and left me well provided for. I live with my eldest daughter and her husband. But it is a rather dull place, I admit. No society that would interest a man of the world like you.”
“Well, in that case, seeing as you’re in Rome during the Games you should take the opportunity to see some plays. It would be my pleasure to accompany you if you don’t object to being seen with such a notorious fellow as myself.” He favored her with his toothiest smile.
“Thank you, but I have a horror of crowds. They bring on my attacks.”
“Ah, a pity. And your illness, if you don’t mind my asking? You seem well at the moment.”
“Hysterical suffocation. It strikes me at odd times, whenever something happens to upset me. As I explained to Gaius Plinius, there’s no medical cure. But to Isis all things are possible. Even my physician Iatrides agrees.” At this she turned anxious eyes on Pliny. “I know how busy you are, but I’m so worried about him. Where can he have gone to? It’s been more than a week. I’m afraid something awful has happened. Are the City Battalions searching for him? You remember-a corpulent man with a beard, about fifty years old.”
“Yes, yes of course. So far no word, I’m afraid.” The truth was, the matter had entirely slipped his mind. He had said nothing to the prefect, but he would do so tomorrow.
Martial gave up on the woman and turned his gaze on Pliny. “And what did you learn yesterday at Verpa’s?”
“Oh, a great deal, my friend. I wish you had been there.” He summarized briefly and concluded, “The difficulty is making sense of it all. Lucius is raging. He claims the legacy to the temple is a forgery, and it does seem like an extraordinary amount of money for a tight-fisted man like Verpa to donate for a mortuary, of all things. I’d like to know how much Scortilla had to do with it. She’s certainly in thick with those charla-” He checked himself out of regard for his guest.
“And the two of them are still living in the house together?” Martial asked with wry amusement. “I’d like to be a fly on that wall.”
“Exactly. I’m hoping the pressure will build up and one of them will say something incriminating. My men have orders to eavesdrop at every opportunity.”
Martial stroked his chin. “And you say the dagger was actually Verpa’s? So there was no outside assassin, despite someone’s attempt to make it seem so.”
“Yes, and that someone is Lucius, I’m convinced of it. Remember, he was the one who first suggested it. And having assisted his father in getting evidence against Clemens by infiltrating the God-fearers, he would know about the seven-branched candlestick that we found drawn on the wall and the significance of that dagger. But, if his plan was to incriminate Pollux, he outsmarted himself. He didn’t know that Pollux had turned Christian.”
“Christians,” Amatia interjected. “There are said to be some even in Lugdunum. Haters of mankind who pray for the end of the world by fire. Compare that to the loving-kindness of Queen Isis.”
“Indeed so,” Pliny hastened to agree. Gaius Plinius wasn’t much interested in the next world. His ambitions were confined to this one. Of course one paid honor to the gods of the State, while agreeing with the philosophers that the One God, if he existed, was very far away and not much concerned with mankind. What Pliny, and others of his class, objected to was superstitio- religious zealotry, uncontrolled passion that inevitably led to public disorder.
“Any other enemies a possibility?” Martial brought them back to the topic at hand. “There’s still Scortilla and her dwarf. Perhaps the motive was money or some personal grudge we know nothing about.”
“Of course I’ve thought of that.” Pliny replied, “but I have nothing to go on.”
“I suspect you’d like it to be her, wouldn’t you? Something about her offends you deeply. But consider. Could a dwarf kill a man three times his size and weight? Could he have sketched the candelabrum so high above his head?”
Pliny frowned and said nothing. The poet, damn him, was right.
Sensing that he had been perhaps a little too clever and offended his patron, Martial hastened to turn the conversation in a different direction. “I suppose Verpa’s papers were examined?”
Calpurnia had been about to say something to her friend, but Amatia pressed her hand over the girl’s mouth; the move was sudden, swift and rude. Martial, whose place at the table was between them and Pliny, caught it out of the corner of his eye.
“Before I got there on the day after the murder,” Pliny answered, “the prefect had already impounded the contents of the tablinum. I haven’t heard any more about it since then. I assume they found nothing of interest.”
“Then let’s come back to the ‘who’ and the ‘how,’” said Martial. The cinaedus Ganymede interests me. I’ve known plenty of boys like him.” Martial suppressed a pang, thinking of his current love object, the unfaithful Diadumenus, whom he was still pursuing all over the city.
“The usual sad story,” Pliny said. “Getting too old, losing his looks, and so jealous of Hylas, the other cinaedus, that he couldn’t conceal it. It occurred to me that he might have killed his rival under cover of the other stranglings. And he might well have had reason to kill Verpa, too, if the master was getting ready to throw him out in the street to starve, which is the sort of beastliness Verpa was famous for.
“And yet plainly, he didn’t act alone. It must have been Lucius who showed him how to draw the candelabrum on the wall and convinced him that, by deflecting blame onto the Jews, the other slaves, including himself, would be let off.”
“Hold on, though,” Martial objected, “Lucius couldn’t have reckoned on you, with your rather eccentric views on slavery, taking charge of the investigation.”
“That wouldn’t have stopped him from lying to Ganymede. What does an ignorant slave boy know of Roman law? He’d believe whatever he was told because he’d want to believe it. No doubt Lucius promised the boy a life of ease and security for the rest of his days if they carried it off.”
“All right, but could he have done it, physically?”
Pliny chewed thoughtfully on a stalk of asparagus. “Excellent point. I can scarcely imagine that sorry creature overpowering Verpa in a fight.”
“Well, as to that we’ll never know, but it would be something if we could prove that the boy has the ability to make that extraordinary climb.”
“And just how would we do that? He’ll hardly cooperate.”
“No, but an idea occurs to me.”
When Martial had finished laying out his plan, Pliny slapped the table with delight. “By Jupiter, we’ll do it tomorrow morning-no, better tomorrow night; to be fair we must see if he could do it in the dark. You’ll come with me, of course. What would I ever do without you, my friend?”
The hour was growing late. The poet yawned, stood up and called for his shoes. “Oh, by the way,” he said to Pliny, his manner studiously casual, “have you, ah, spoken to Parthenius yet-I mean about my poems? An invitation to the palace?”