A red spot burned in each of his withered cheeks. “He’s a good man. His only crime is obedience to orders. Perhaps if I speak to him…” “Yes, you tried that already,” Nerva sneered. “It was not a success.” “Sir, I ask you again. There is no more time for talk. Your vote. We are waiting.” The invalid’s face twisted in anguish. “Death.” “Sir, I could not hear you.” “Death!” “Thank you, sir.”
“He won’t outlive the hour,” Petronius growled, jumping to his feet. “And I’ll bring the Purissima back here to wait until it’s over. I’ve already given sealed orders to my tribunes to neutralize the City Battalions when the hour comes.”
“And we,” Parthenius said, nodding to Stephanus and Entellus, “must be back at the palace before we’re missed. The emperor will be calling for me soon. Is everyone clear about the plan?”
They nodded.
“Then may Fortune favor the brave!”
Chapter Twenty-nine
Pliny drew a long, deep breath and shook his head. What a story she had told, and he didn’t doubt the truth of it for an instant. Knowing what he knew, how could he hand this woman over to certain death? Before he decided what to do, he needed to know more. “What were you doing in Verpa’s house?”
She shook her head, her lips a tight white line.
“Purissima, you would do better to tell me than to have to tell it to the emperor.”
“He won’t be emperor much longer if the gods favor us. And if not, I am content to die. I am already polluted by a man’s touch, I can never return to the service of the goddess.”
Pliny raised his hands, then let them drop in his lap. “You leave me no choice then, Purissima.” Now was the moment to stand up and call for his litter. But somehow he didn’t move. They continued to stare at each other.
“Very well,” she said finally. Anything to keep him here while the others did their work. “I will answer your question, vice prefect, and then I beg you not to oppose us but to join us.”
“Join you in precisely what, madam? Treason?”
Her eyebrows drew down sharply. “Liberation!” She leaned close to his face and began to tell him, though without naming names, how their plan to put Clemens on the throne had been thwarted by Verpa’s denunciation. Then, how weeks later Verpa had contacted them, claiming to have an incriminating letter from Domitilla as well as her husband Clemens’ imperial horoscope. “We had to know how much she had told him, or if it was all bluff. And so Iatrides and I talked our way into his house and spent four days with that vulgar, vicious family.” Her lip curled. “All the while, as I smiled and made myself agreeable, I listened as hard as I could. Whenever they questioned me too closely I became faint, and not all pretense either, the strain was nearly unbearable. During those days I tried to be wherever I could overhear Verpa talking. That was my plan, and it bore fruit.
“As I have already told you, on the third evening I was sitting in the garden and overheard Verpa and his son arguing; Lucius demanding to be free of potestas and live on his own, Verpa threatening to kill him if the boy tampered with any more of his bedmates. What I didn’t tell you is that I also heard Verpa boasting about the letter and horoscope. I decided right there that I would steal them if my courage didn’t fail me. The next morning I wrote a message and gave it to poor Iatrides to carry to the cloister.
“Late that afternoon, I was in my room resting when Verpa burst in. He showed me Iatrides’ severed finger with his signet ring on it. He said he had mistrusted both of us right from the start, that he wasn’t as gullible as Scortilla. It was plain that I was no devotee of Isis. He had questioned me at dinner about some detail of the goddess’ liturgy. I had tried to learn something about that filthy foreign cult before I entered his house, but I was quickly out of my depth. And he had discovered that Iatrides was a fraud too. He’d asked him for a dose of some Isiac remedy for headache and, of course, the poor man had no such thing. ‘So I followed your physician,’ Verpa said, ‘and we got him before he could deliver your message, took him to a very private place, and oh, the things he told us when we applied fire to his genitals. I’ve just come back from there.’ He laughed at me. ‘Really, Purissima, what a dishonorable trick you’ve played me! I expected better than this from a priestess of Vesta. I am through wasting time with you and your friends. Tomorrow, I go to the emperor. At one stroke I can give him the documents and another deceitful Vestalis Maxima to bury alive. That is, unless you do exactly as I tell you. I can keep your name out of it if I choose to. I have done everything in a long and interesting life but debauch a Vestal Virgin.’”
“Then he dragged me to his room. This was before Pollux came on duty at the second hour of the night. He told me to stay there and make no sound. He would be back for me later. ‘In the meanwhile,’ he said, ‘you will have time to study my murals. They’ll instruct you in the arts of Venus, a far more endearing goddess than Vesta.’
“He went away then, and in the interval before he returned I tried to make ready the poisoned needle. I intended to kill myself.”
“Whose idea were these needles?” Pliny asked.
“One of us-I’ll tell you no names-knew someone who could prepare them and we all agreed to carry them. In case the worst happened, none of us could denounce the others.”
“It didn’t work for Iatrides, though.”
“No, sadly. I kept mine knotted in a corner of my palla. But when the time came, my hands shook so badly I couldn’t untie it. What I suffered that night was horrible enough. And now I must tell it to you-a policeman, a man.”
Pliny held up his hands. “Not all of it, lady. I’ve already guessed a good deal.”
“Have you. How very clever. But you can’t know what it was like. I was so frightened I couldn’t even scream. I knew I couldn’t resist his strength. When he returned, I wept and pleaded with him. He laughed and kissed me with his obscene mouth and stripped me of my clothes…” Her words came in little gasps, in a voice so low that Pliny had to strain to hear her. He couldn’t take his eyes from her face which was flushed and beaded with sweat.
“He made me drink wine with him. Then, holding a lamp in one hand and gripping my wrist with the other, he took me around the room to look at his filthy pictures. Things I never imagined people did! Meanwhile I heard Pollux outside taking up his post, rocking his chair back against the door. Verpa said he would do me the favor of saving my virginity technically-he had that much fear of the gods in him-but he would use me in every other way…” Amatia’s breath began to come hard, her hand went to her throat and Pliny was afraid she was going to have another attack, but with a violent shake she mastered herself.