The emperor looked at him narrowly. “Of course I’ve heard of it. True devotion. Admirable. Are you suggesting something? I’m a legatee in the will myself. I would not like to see it held up in probate.”
“No, Caesar, of course not.”
A silence fell between them. Then, “You’ll be at the sacrifice tomorrow? You’re a true Roman, Pliny, not like these foreigners who surround me. And I’ll send for you again tomorrow night, my only friend. Now leave me, I’m tired.”
Domitian enfolded Pliny in his powerful arms and kissed him on both cheeks.”
The same carriage that had taken him away deposited him back on his doorstep. It was growing light in the east. How long had he been gone? As in a nightmare, time was distorted. Pliny was shaken to the depths of his being.
This talk of prophecies and assassination? What was it Verpa knew? Was there a plot against the emperor? The gods forbid it! If Domitian, bad as he was, should be assassinated, it would mean civil war, the second in a generation. The legions in Germania were loyal to him; they would exact a terrible price for his death. Legion fighting legion, blood running in the gutters of Rome, and the barbarians looking on from the sidelines, watching and calculating, just as had happened after Nero’s overthrow. Could anyone, no matter how much they hated Domitian, wish to see that again?
“ We pray for better emperors but we serve the one we have.” Pliny repeated the well-worn line, only this time it brought him no comfort.
He found Amatia waiting up for him. “Your wife is asleep,” she said. “She was half out of her mind, I feared for her and the baby. I sent a slave to fetch your doctor, Soranus. He gave her something for her nerves.”
“Thank you, Amatia, I’m in your debt. You go to bed now, you must be exhausted.”
But she seemed reluctant to leave him. “You’re all right?”
“Oh, quite all right. Caesar, ah, wanted some information.” Pliny tried to hide his agitation, but he could feel her eyes boring into him. He realized that his cheek was twitching uncontrollably. Finally, searching for something, anything, to say, he asked, “Have you received a dream from Isis yet?”
“Oh yes. It won’t be long now.”
He waited for her to go on, but she didn’t seem inclined to say more. “Well, I congratulate you. I trust it was more pleasant than my dreams have been, or the emperor’s.
She raised an eyebrow at this but said nothing. She turned and went back to her room.
And Pliny, after looking in on his wife, retired to his. He felt drained. He would have to dress for the ceremony in a couple of hours. He lay in his bed sweating, sick to his stomach, staring at the ceiling. ???
As the sun came up, Parthenius sat in his apartment across the table from Stephanus. The former steward of Clemens and Domitilla looked thoughtfully at the grand chamberlain. He had just finished making his report on the curious outcome of Verpa’s funeral, for he had met with the poet again. “May I ask what influence you have over this surly fellow who meets me at the popina?” he asked. “Every time he comes he looks angrier.” “Really? Oh, it’s just something he wants the emperor to grant him with my help.” “But the emperor won’t be with us much longer.” Stephanus smiled crookedly and touched his bandaged arm. “A pity for our friend, then.”
“Another thing. I’m worried about the Purissima, sir. Why is she still there? What is she thinking of? I watch the house as often as I can. She never goes out. I was wondering if I could get in on some pretext.”
“No,” Parthenius replied. “Too risky-for her.” He spread his plump hands. “We must trust she knows what she’s doing. In fact, she may be safer there than anywhere else for the moment.”
Chapter Twenty-one
The Ides of Germanicus. Day nine of the Games.
The second hour of the day.
In the temple of Vesta, little Laelia, ten years old, roused herself from a doze and felt a moment of terror. On the bench by her side, her elder “sister” Fusca nodded, too. Fusca had lectured the little novice all night long, how if the sacred flame should ever be extinguished, mighty Rome would fall. Trembling, the two girls threw sticks on the guttering flame. They had been on duty since midnight, alone in the tiny, circular temple, it being their turn to tend Vesta’s hearth fire. Although tucked away in one corner of the Forum and dwarfed by loftier buildings, this spot was the sacred center of the Roman race. Their other “sisters” would be just now waking and stretching in their beds in the adjoining cloister that was their home and nearly the limit of their world.
And in this precinct, willing or not, the Vestals would draw out their days in an unceasing round of ritual duties, seldom seeing their families, never knowing the love of a man, on pain of death.
Vesta was not a goddess like Isis, who inspired ecstasy in her devotees. Vesta answered no prayers, offered no blessed afterlife. No myths were told of her. Her temple had no cult statue. But she was the living flame of the primeval kings’ hearth, the heart and soul of Rome. She was tended by six virgins, the king’s daughters once upon a time, who were potent with unspent fertility. Their service was not a joy but a solemn, unsought obligation.
Laelia remembered how almost a year ago the emperor, in his role of Pontifex Maximus, tall and terrifying, had come in great state to her home, spoken the ancient formula, ‘I take thee, Beloved,’ and pulled her roughly by the hand while her father, a Roman senator, stood by, puffed up with pride, and her mother wept.
And she remembered how she too had wept, in those first days, as though her heart would break. It was only the tenderness of her new “mother,” the Vestalis Maxima, that had eased her sorrow then. Perhaps it was because the Purissima herself seemed to wear an air of perpetual sorrow that made her so gentle a friend and so patient a teacher to the young ones.
But where was she now? When would she come back to them? She had told them she was ill and must leave the cloister for awhile. But that was so many days ago, and not a word from her since. But surely, Laelia thought, she would come back today, the day of Jupiter’s banquet. Hope fluttered in the little girl’s breast.
The “sisters” breakfasted together, and then their serving women helped them arrange their hair in the archaic fashion: coils of hair bound with fillets of red and white wool massed on top of the head and covered with a long veil that fell over their shoulders.
Outside, Laelia heard the shuffling of many feet and the lowing of cattle. It was beginning! It was only these few grand occasions that punctuated the tedium of her life. And this time the second-oldest Vestal, who was temporarily in charge of them, had given her permission to attend the ritual banquet. With two Vestals left behind to tend the flame, there would be only three of them going. But oh, if only the Purissima could be among them!
Groggy after a sleepless night, Pliny stood atop the Capitoline Hill with a very subdued Aurelius Fulvus and other officers of the City Battalions. His bronze corselet felt noticeably less snug than it had just nine short days ago when he wore it at the opening of the Games; worry had done this to him.
At that moment silver trumpets blared, the signal for the three massive doors of the temple to swing open. The feeding of the gods was the central rite of the Roman Games. The three-chambered temple of Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva had been consecrated on this day six centuries ago, when Rome was only a collection of mean little cottages huddled on the slopes of seven low hills. Today, as on that first day, Jupiter’s face was painted a fiery red, symbolic of the blood of his slaughtered enemies, and he and his two female consorts were gorgeously dressed for dinner.
Public slaves carried the massive gold and ivory statues, freshly tinted and dressed for the occasion, down the temple steps and laid them lengthwise on banqueting couches built for giants. They placed tables before them and began to carry in steaming platters of food. Other couches had been arranged for the guests, senators and magistrates, who would share this sacred meal. Truly, at times like this, Pliny thought, the gods felt very real and very close. For a little while he could imagine himself among those shaggy ancestors, who in their simplicity believed that the divine images were nourished by the same food as they themselves ate. But what should he think of these deities now after what he had been through with Domitian, Lord and God, last night?