Roman Games (16 page)

Chapter Twenty

The seventh hour of the night.

Four of the emperor’s lictors burst into his room and dragged him from his bed. Rough hands pinned his arms behind him. One of the men threw a traveling cloak at him. “Put it on.”

“My—my shoes,” he stammered. He could think of nothing else to say.

Outside, in the atrium, Calpurnia had collapsed on a couch, sobbing. Amatia had her arms around her, stroking her hair. “It will be all right, darling,” she murmured, “Don’t be afraid.”

“Some sort of mistake,” Pliny said, his voice like the croaking of a frog. He could hardly breathe. “I’ll be back soon, you’ll see.”

Calpurnia gave him a desperate look.

In the street a covered carriage waited. Two lictors mounted the driver’s box, the other two forced Pliny inside with a hand on the back of his head. They sat one on either side of him, crushing him between them. The clop of the horses’ hooves echoed in the empty streets. “What is it? Why am I summoned like this?” No one answered him.

The emperor’s bed chamber was ablaze with light. Tiers of lamps threw leaping shadows against the walls. The smoky air was almost unbreathable. The lictors forced Pliny to his knees, which were shaking so badly they couldn’t have supported him anyway.

Like the Minotaur in his maze, the Lord of the World sat in the middle of the room, bent over his desk, all alone, except for Earinus, the little boy with the freakishly small head, who crouched at his feet.

The only sound that relieved the silence was the buzzing of bluebottles. Pliny saw the insects crawling over the inside of a glass jar. He watched as the Conqueror of the Germans pinched one large specimen between thumb and forefinger. The desk top was littered with their corpses. “You, see, how this one struggles, Earinus?” He stroked the boy’s head of golden curls. “Shall I let him go? If I do, he’s sure to bite me.” The point of the stylus went in. He dropped the little corpse on the desk.

Minutes crept by. A wave of nausea swept over Pliny. He was afraid he would mess himself. Rivers of sweat ran down his back and sides. His knees started to ache. Still the emperor never looked up and Pliny was too terrified to speak.

Then in a sudden explosion of violence Domitian’s arm lashed out, sweeping the jar off the desk. It burst on the stone floor, sending shards of glass everywhere. The flies rose up in an angry swarm. With a guttural cry, he flung himself on Pliny, brandishing the stylus in his upraised fist. With his left hand he grabbed him by the shoulder, hauled him to his feet, shoved him up against the wall. Pliny shut his eyes, he could feel the man’s breath on his face. He waited, trembling, for the slashing point to rip open his cheek, tear out his eye.

Moments passed until at last he felt the grip on his shoulder relax. He dared to open his eyes. A madman’s face confronted him. The eyes feverish and red-rimmed with black circles under them. The mouth twisted into something that resembled the mask of tragedy. The cheeks quivering. The fist that held the stylus shook.

Pliny slumped against the wall and struggled to breathe. “Caesar,” he whispered, “there’s been a mistake. Who has spoken against me?”

“The Priest of Anubis! You defiler of corpses! You jackal!” Spittle flew from his mouth. “I sent you to find a murderer, not to violate the rites of the Queen of Heaven. I’ll crucify you for this.” The tendons bulged in his bull’s neck.

For an instant Pliny wanted to cry, to blubber, to grasp the emperor’s knees, beg for his life. Instead—and he would never understand where his courage came from—he said, “Listen to me, Caesar.” And without stopping to draw a breath, he laid out everything he had discovered at the funeral. The emperor’s eyes narrowed.

“Two killers?”

“Yes, Caesar, and the other is still…”

“Not atheists?”

“It seems they had nothing…”

“Documents?”

“A letter, according to Lucius, possibly containing names of people Verpa was blackmailing—people close to you. And something else that might be a horoscope; whose I don’t know. We haven’t found them, but the prefect seized Verpa’s papers before…”

“He did so at my order. One assumes the man kept papers that are best removed from prying eyes—including yours.” Domitian turned to the lictors who stood at attention by the door. “You there, fetch Aurelius Fulvus here at once!” Then he staggered back to his desk and sank onto his chair with his legs splayed out. “Earinus, pour wine for me and the vice prefect.”

The transformation was startling. Pliny now saw not an angry man but a man ravaged with fatigue, distracted beyond endurance. Dough-faced, dull-eyed. What was wrong with him?

“Gaius Plinius, do you believe in the stars? Don’t stand there, man, sit down by me.”

“Well, I suppose, I mean most people do. Of course, Cicero was a skeptic, on the other hand Nigidius Figulus…” Pliny realized he was babbling.

Domitian cut him off. “An astrologer has predicted ‘blood on the moon as she enters Aquarius.’” He scratched a pimple on his forehead and drew a little blood. “I pray this is all the blood required.” He gave a short, sharp laugh.

“Caesar, no two diviners ever agree about these things.”

“Do they not? A soothsayer has prophesied the day, even the very hour, of my death. The fourteenth day before the next Kalends at the fifth hour. And lately another has said the same thing! That is only seven days from today! If they’re right, I won’t live to see the end of the Roman Games. And the day before yesterday, during the thunderstorm, they say a lightning bolt struck the temple of Capitoline Jupiter. Did you see it?”

“Why, no, Caesar, I don’t believe any such thing happened.”

“What, you think I’m mad?”

“No, no, Lord, of course not.”

“And the wind wrenched the inscription plate from the base of a statue of mine and hurled it into a nearby tomb! One of the Praetorian Guards fetched it and showed it to me. And the cypress tree in the courtyard that flourished during the reign of my father and brother—you know the one? It was uprooted! Parthenius took me to the spot, I saw it with my own eyes!”

“Caesar, calm yourself, rest now. You’re tired.”

“Tired!” The Lord of the World buried his face in his hands. “I never sleep any more, Pliny, not without a strong dose of laudanum.” He peered between his fingers. “I’m afraid of my dreams. Last night I dreamed that Minerva threw down her weapons, mounted a chariot drawn by black horses and plunged into an abyss. She has abandoned me.”

“Sometimes opium can produce fantasies that—”

“Do you believe in the gods, Pliny? What exactly do you think they are, and where?”

This was treacherous ground. Pliny could only stammer, “You yourself, sir, being a god, must know that better than I.”

“You think I’m a god, do you? You’re a fool or a liar! I’m no god. If I am a god why do I fear death? If I am a god, why does my wife deceive me with actors? If I am a god, why am I despised, conspired against, lied to by my own slaves? Do people do that to gods?” His voice rose and cracked.

Domitian had always been the despised younger son; ignored, raised in squalor, unloved by the Roman populace and even by his own family. He could never compete with the memory of his brother. Titus had been handsome, generous, a great commander, and had died after only two years on the throne, too young to have developed any vicious habits. Domitian, after fifteen years of power, still seethed with resentment and quivered with insecurity.

Suddenly he was on his feet. “Come with me, I’ll show you something.”

Torches flared along the walls, casting puddles of yellow light in the darkness. The emperor pulled Pliny along by the arm down one echoing corridor after another. Here and there they passed a sleepy Guardsman, who straightened to attention and clapped his fist to his chest at the emperor’s approach. Occasionally they saw a harried clerk bent on some late errand who cringed as they passed him. But all was stillness. They turned corners, passed through shadowed courtyards, mounted and descended flights of stairs until Pliny had no idea where he was. The Minotaur’s labyrinth might have looked like this, he thought. It was not a thought to give comfort.

And at every turning, he noticed those polished disks of moonstone, as big around as shields, mounted on brackets high on the walls. He had seen them before, on the night of the “black banquet.”

“You know why I’m having those things installed? I’ll show you, I’ll turn my back, you hold up some of your fingers.” Pliny obeyed. “Three! Am I right? You see? With these mirrors everywhere, no one can sneak up behind me and…” he drew his thumb across his throat.

“But, sir, you don’t really mean…?

“Don’t I? But they’ve tried already! Why do you think I’ve had to execute so many? The governors of Egypt, Asia, Britannia, and Germania. Two Praetorian commandants. More senators than I can count. My cousin Clemens, and my cousin Sabinus before him!” He raked his hands through his few wisps of hair. “Do you think I
like
putting people to death? Do you think I
enjoy
scorching genitals and cutting off hands? Justice is my watchword! But I tell you, my friend, that an emperor is the unhappiest of men, for nobody believes that people are trying to kill him until someone finally succeeds! Any Roman senator with an army behind him can dream of becoming emperor. My own father did it.”

This remark reminded Pliny of his schoolboy Plato: the tyrant is never happy. Here was the living illustration of that truth.

They turned another corner and, to Pliny’s surprise, found themselves back at their starting point. Aurelius Fulvus was there now, quaking on his knees, surrounded by the lictors. He tried to speak but Domitian silenced him with a look.

“Verpa’s papers—have you examined them yet?”

“Yes, Caesar, we’ve gone through everything but we’ve turned up nothing of interest.”

“Not a horoscope or anything touching on a plot against my life?”

“Certainly not. I would have reported it at once if we had.”

Domitian kicked the man in the chest and sent him sprawling. “Get out! And I command you not to sleep until you have found a letter and a horoscope. Your life depends on it, Fulvus.” The lictors dragged the prefect out.

Pliny swallowed hard and felt himself swaying on his feet. He had no love for Fulvus, but violence terrified him. Domitian threw an arm around him, guided him to a chair, leaned toward him. “Plinius Secundus, I love you. You’re the only honest man I know. You won’t betray me, will you? I need someone I can talk to—not that reptile Parthenius. I’ll have his guts out of him soon enough! Be to me as your uncle was to my father.”

“Caesar, you honor me too much.”

“But you went too far at the funeral.” Domitian jabbed him in the chest with a blunt finger. “Your uncle wouldn’t have done that.”

“No, no, sir, no he wouldn’t. Blame it on my inexperience, sir. I was overzealous. I will apologize to Scortilla and to the Priest.”

Domitian smiled for the first time. “Don’t worry about Alexandrinus. I’ll settle him down. Frankly, I don’t like the man myself.”

“Caesar, are you aware of Verpa’s legacy to the Iseum, two million sesterces for an embalming works, entrusted to Alexandrinus?”

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.”