Roman Games (12 page)

“Of course,
Patrone
, don’t trouble about it.” Martial looked away.

“Well, see you tomorrow.”

* * *

The second hour of the night.

The forecourt of the temple was silent but for the susurrus of breathing, the intermittent sighs and grunts of the sleepers, the dreamers. Behind his jackal mask, Alexandrinus’ eyes swept over them. Then one, a dark shadow against the wall, stirred, stood up, and came toward him, stepping carefully among the recumbent forms.

He hurried her into his private room. Her face was tear-streaked.

“I can’t stay there another night, Alex. He rants, he threatens to kill me, he’s going to challenge the will, he’s even talking about hiring that odious Pliny for his lawyer.” She clung to him.

With difficulty, the priest unlocked her arms and stepped back. “Calm yourself, my dear. Let Lucius say what he likes. The seal and the forged numeral were perfect! And the emperor will support us, if it comes to that. He’s a devotee and he has a financial interest in the will going unchallenged. We’ve won, do you understand? Isis is with us. Feel her power.”

But Turpia Scortilla would not be reasoned with. “Lucius will kill me. He’s half out of his mind.”

“He won’t. The house is full of soldiers, isn’t it? Let him threaten, he doesn’t dare do anything.”

“Please, let me stay here in the temple with you. I can’t go back there.”

“Absolutely not. We can’t be seen together until all this dies down. Lucius
would
have grounds for challenging the will if he could prove something about us. We’re about to inherit two million. Just be patient a little longer.”

“Alex—Lord Anubis—don’t forget that it was I who got it for you. You won’t will you? I love you. Make love to me.”

But he took off the long-snouted mask and set it aside, exposing his beautiful skull. He wouldn’t play the lusty god with her tonight; he wasn’t in the mood.

Soon she left, walking with her head down and moaning softly. In the stillness of the night, it was a sound that Nectanebo, working late as usual in his embalming shop, was bound to hear.

Chapter Sixteen

The fourth day before the Ides of Germanicus. Day six of the Games.
The third hour of the night.

Pliny looked at him severely. “I asked you once before, boy, and I ask you again now. Did you, at the order of someone in this house, murder Sextus Verpa, your master?”

They stood in Verpa’s bedroom—Pliny and Martial; Valens and three of his men; Lucius, affecting an air of unconcern which was belied by the lines of tension around his mouth; Iarbas, his monkey on his shoulder, lurking near the doorway. He was Scortilla’s eyes and ears, the lady herself claiming to be indisposed. All around them on the walls, the
satyrs
and
maenads
—eerily lifelike in the glimmering light of the lamps—writhed and coupled, indifferent to the drama which was being enacted in the middle of the room.

Ganymede, his features twisted in anguish, violently shook his head no.

“Shall we put it to the test?” snapped Pliny. “We can’t make you climb up to the window, but we can make you climb down…or break your neck.” This had been Martial’s bright idea.

“Centurion, you’ve stationed a man below? Good. Draw your sword and persuade this boy to show us why he is called “the eel.”

Valens gripped Ganymede by his long hair, dragged him to the window, pushed his head out, and prodded him in the rump with the point of his weapon. The youth spread his arms and legs and tossed his head frantically from side to side while the centurion’s blade dug deeper into his flesh.

“Save me!” he shrieked.

“Don’t fear, Eros protects his own.” It was Lucius who spoke, rapidly and softly. The words had an instantaneous effect. Ganymede’s shoulders twisted and folded together until he seemed to have no shoulders at all. He went through the narrow window as far as his waist. Then, making a half twist with his hips, he kicked with both legs together, imitating a fish’s tail, and in an instant was outside. He dropped to the overhang below, landing on all fours. Then he was hanging from the rain gutter, and then his head and fingertips disappeared.

“Here he comes,” shouted the trooper down below, who held up a torch. “Scampers like a squirrel, he does. Got his legs around the column now—ooof!”

Ganymede dropped directly on the man, knocking him to the ground. The back of the garden ended in a high brick wall, thick with leafy vines. The boy went up it like a cat, leapt from the top to the street below, and bounded away into the shadows.

“Merda!
”
cried Pliny, using a word he never used. “Centurion, the rest of you, follow me! Bring torches!”

Moments later, they stood milling about on the street.

“It’s hopeless, sir,” growled Valens, “this time of night.”

“Martial,” Pliny confided, “when it comes to the dregs of humanity, you’re my oracle. Where would you go if you were Ganymede?”

“Thank you so much. I’m afraid I agree with your centurion.”

“The Circus Flaminius!” cried Pliny. “It’s not far from here. Hundreds of hiding places under those arches. Come on!”

They pelted down the street toward the colonnaded supports of the grandstands. Pliny, who hated exercise of any sort, was breathless by the time they reached it. For an hour they prowled the darkened arches, but turned up no one except prostitutes and homeless beggars, who all denied having seen a running youth.

“And where to now, sir?” asked Valens, a hint of insubordination in his voice.

Pliny leaned against a wall and mopped his perspiring face.

* * *

Tight-lipped, Lucius bent over his writing desk.

To Marcus Ganeus, greetings.
He scratched the words with his stylus on a pair of waxed tablets.
Ganymede will come to you tonight, seeking shelter. You will oblige me by killing him and disposing of the body. You’ll be well paid. L.

He bound the leaves together and handed the packet to a slave. “Hide this under your tunic as you go out, the soldier mustn’t see it. Here’s where you’re to take it, listen carefully.”

Suspended over the doorway of an establishment near the Laurentine Gate, half way across the city, a carved, red-painted prick and balls swung to and fro in the wind. Beneath it, a sign proclaimed this the Temple of Eros. Cleaner than most of the male brothels in Rome, it catered to a genteel clientele. A slim figure stumbled through the door.

“Who are you, then?” The shrewd-eyed man behind the desk looked up sharply.

Ganymede stopped in confusion. “Where’s Marcus Ganeus?”

“Doesn’t own the place any more, I do. What’s your business with him?”

“I—I used to work here, I want to come back. Put me in a room, I’ll make money for you.”

“That good, are you? You look too old to me. Step closer. Why, you’re wearing a collar!
‘Fugio tene me—I’m running away, catch me.’
No, my friend, out you go. City prefect would close me down in a minute for harboring a runaway.”

“Please…”

“You want me to call the Night Watch?”

The boy ran out.

Crouched in a stinking alley not far from the brothel, he twisted and tugged uselessly at the iron collar until his skin was raw and tears ran silently down his cheeks.

A quarter of an hour later, Lucius’ slave knocked at the same door and asked to deliver a message to Marcus Ganeus. Now the brothel owner’s curiosity was aroused. “I’m him, give it to me.” He tossed the slave a copper coin.

The proprietor of the Temple of Eros wasn’t much of a reader, but he got the gist of the message. His eyebrows lifted in surprise.

Hours passed, and Ganymede was hungry. He’d tried to scavenge for scraps in a heap of refuse behind a popina, but snarling, yellow-eyed dogs had driven him off. Now he shrank into the recess of a doorway, the entrance to a crumbling
insula
that rose six stories above street. He knew they would be looking for him and that he must get off the streets before daybreak. The top of this building, he reckoned, commanded a view of the brothel. Lucius would come there for him as soon as it was safe. Lucius wouldn’t fail him. He must wait and watch.

He crept up the rotting stairway, intending to hide on the roof. When he reached the topmost story a better opportunity presented itself. Peering through the tattered rag that served as a door, he saw that the apartment had suffered a fire; the walls were charred and the roof was half open to the sky. There wasn’t a stick of furniture in the place, but propped against the wall, scabby legs sticking out before her, sat an old crone. Her head lolled to one side, a wine jug lay in her lap.

“You come to see me, darlin’?” she croaked. “Cost you two coppers, ’at’s all.”

It was the work of a moment to strangle her. Then Ganymede hunkered down by the window to wait.

The search party had blundered down one dark alley after another in the neighborhood of the Circus until, at last, even Pliny was ready to give up. The night air was sultry, heavy with threatening rain. Sweat pooled in the hollows of Pliny’s eyes, trickled down his neck.

“Where in Hades are we?” he demanded of no one in particular.

“As it happens,” replied Martial, “we are not very far from the house of some poet friends of mine. There’s always a party going on. Come along, enjoy some bad wine, good company, and better verses than Statius ever wrote. Your centurion can see you home when you’ve had enough.”

“The last thing in the world I want to do right now is go to a soirée,” said Pliny testily. “
Mehercule
, I should have been home two hours ago. Calpurnia will be worrying herself sick.”

But the poet persisted and, at last, Pliny yielded. “But only for half an hour.”

Valens and his men repaired to a tavern down the street to wait.

Answering to Martial’s knock, the door was opened by a tipsy young man, naked to the waist, whose long hair tumbled over his face. The room behind him was dark and smoky with incense; flutes shrilled a wild melody, castanets clattered, dancers whirled in a candlelit haze.

“This isn’t a poetry reading, this is a bacchanal!” Pliny sputtered. But Martial applied a firm hand to his back and propelled him inside.

“You there, boy, fill a goblet for my friend and me,” Martial shouted to a slave over the commotion of voices. The poet tossed his off at a gulp. “Come meet my friends.” He plunged into the crowd of revelers, holding tight to Pliny’s elbow lest he escape. “Mind where you step.” Tangled like crabs in a sack, bodies sprawled and writhed upon cushions—men, women, boys, creatures of ambiguous sex, sleek and oiled
cinaedi
in gaudy pantomime masks, and battle-scarred gladiators all together. A miasma of perfume, sweat, and the ranker smells of love engulfed them.

“Fancy seeing you here, old man!” An elderly senator, whose private life was said to be beyond reproach, tugged at Pliny’s cloak, grinning foolishly from the floor while a naked girl tousled his white hairs.

Martial led the way through a succession of rooms until the sounds of laughter and clapping hands drew them to a small garden at the rear of the house, where torches flared amid deep shadows.

“Ho, Nepos, is that you?” cried Martial. “And Cerialis? And Priscus, too?”

The three poets occupied a bench while a clutch of admirers lay on the grass at their feet. “Glycera, Telesphorus, Hyacinthus, Thais, Thalia,” Martial seemed to know them all.

“Who’s your friend?”

“This is Gaius, a lover of poetry.” Mercifully, Martial omitted the rest of Pliny’s name. “Goblet empty already, Gaius? Here, someone fill him up.”

“I’d rather he fill me up!” cackled an aging prostitute, asprawl on the ground in a pose that left nothing to the imagination.

“What, your ancient
cunnus,
Ligeia?” Martial shot back. “I don’t know why you even bother to depilate it anymore—seems to me rather like plucking the beard of a dead lion!” The revelers howled with laughter.

“Bastard!” Ligeia showed him the
digitus infamis.

“Look, my friend has come here to listen to poetry, not to be propositioned by aging
lupae.
Here, make room for him on the bench and pass the wine jug. Nepos, give us one of your epigrams.”

After Nepos, they all in turn recited—wicked, cutting, scabrous verses. In the midst of the hilarity, Pliny observed a beautiful youth with hair like molten gold sit down beside Martial and put his arm around him. They kissed long and deeply. The celebrated Diadumenus, no doubt.

Meanwhile the jug went round and round, and Pliny kept finding his cup in need of refilling. Then he heard a new voice reciting—it was his own.

“Bawdy verse! Why, you old lecher!” Martial cried in delight. “Is that what’s on your mind when you’re looking so damned dignified?”

“I smile, I laugh like other men.” Pliny was instantly defensive.

“Of course you do!” Martial thumped him on the back.

“I mean they’re nothing really, mere trifles.”

“You’re too modest! Put a laurel wreath on his head, someone— you’re one of us! You know, I always suspected there was a real poet inside there somewhere.”

At that moment Flaccus, yet another poet friend, joined the circle. He was out of breath. “Have you heard the news?” he said to Martial. “Papinius Statius is dead! The old boy croaked in the middle of dinner this evening.”

“Dead? Statius!” Martial kissed Flaccus, he kissed Diadumenus, he kissed Pliny. He threw his arms in the air and shouted to the heavens, “Tonight I am the happiest man on earth! Diadumenus has come back to me and Statius is dead! By the balls of Priapus, now comes my turn! I will be court poet now!”

His comrades joined in a chorus of “Hear, hear!” and “No one deserves it more than you.” And Pliny found himself as merry as any of them, although he did seem vaguely to recall that he had always liked Statius.

The jug continued to go round and, as the hour grew late, amorous pairs in various combinations of sexes were seen creeping off into the shadows.

Martial roused Pliny, who had fallen into a doze, with a jab in the ribs. “There’s a pretty youth over there,” he whispered. “Buttocks like firm pears, balls plucked and smooth as a baby’s.” He’s looking this way. Go on, my friend.”

Pliny, in alarm, stood up on wobbly legs. “No, sorry, married man, don’t you know. Look, got to be going.”

Martial pulled him back onto the bench. “It’s not like cheating on your wife.”

“Never cared much for boy-love, to tell you the truth.”

Martial looked at his friend in amazement. “Really? Why ever not? Well, have a bit of the other, then. Ye gods, man, get down off your high horse!”

This virtuous prig, Martial thought. Would it make it easier to betray his patron if he first dirtied him a little? He signaled to a girl who wore long earrings and nothing else. She swayed toward them, moving her hips to the rhythm of the flutes and cymbals.

Pliny struggled, but his legs would not obey him.

The girl knelt at Pliny’s feet and looked up with liquid eyes. Her tongue darted out over her lips. Pliny trembled in every limb. He filled his hands with her thick, scented hair and drew her closer. He swelled, he grew. The music pounded in his head. The torches guttered and flared. He was a man, dammit, and it had been too long!

“Home to bed, sir?” Out on the street, Valens leered at the acting vice prefect. Enjoyable was it, sir? The poetry, I mean?” Pliny’s clothes were disarranged and drenched with scent, a laurel wreath was cocked over one eye, and he steadied himself with one hand against the house wall.

“What time d’you make it, Centurion?” He tried desperately to sound in command of himself.

Valens squinted at the stars. “Dawn in about two hours, I’d say, sir.”

With an inward groan, Pliny launched himself down the middle of the deserted street. Valens and his men, themselves rather the worse for drink, fell in on either side.

“Halt!” Pliny commanded, after they had gone a block or two. A street urinal stood before them. He had never deigned to use one before: common, smelly, unbecoming the dignity of a Roman senator.

“Something wrong, sir?” inquired Valens.

“Not at all, centurion, kindly wait a moment.” Pliny hitched up his tunic, unlimbered, and pissed—grandly, expansively, like a mountain torrent in the Piedmont—yes, even poetically—until he could not squeeze out another drop. He gave a contented sigh.