The Bull Slayer (2 page)

What would he do without Zosimus? Secretary, companion, nursemaid at times. Friend. He had a head of yellow hair like an untidy haystack and the innocent, earnest face of a fool—but he was far from being a fool.

“See if you can’t find Suetonius out there somewhere and ask him to step in. And stop looking so worried.” Pliny waved him off. While confusion reigned around him, he busied himself arranging the objects on his desk—ink stand, styluses, sheaves of parchment, a carafe of watered wine, a bronze bust of Epicurus the philosopher inherited from his learned uncle, a cameo of his darling Calpurnia painted by her own hand. There was comfort in orderliness, even in small things. His passion for order amused his more exuberant friends.

Lately he had begun to be aware of his own mortality. He was nearing a half century of life—more than three-quarters of his allotted span. A half century that had seen the enlargement of the empire while rot set in at the center. By the grace of the gods they had survived Caligula, Nero, and Domitian and come at last to the present happy state of affairs—the reign of a sane and benevolent emperor who respected their liberty. He prayed it would endure at least as long as he did.

Pliny knew that others saw in him only a rather plump, rather domesticated, rather fussy man. He made no apologies. It was a lifetime of hard work, reliability, attention to detail that had won him, at long last, this extraordinary appointment: Governor of Bithynia-Pontus with overriding authority to clean up the most corrupt, mismanaged, seditious, and turbulent province in the Empire. The province had been a backwater for too long; a place for second-raters, governors from whom little was expected. That would all change now. Only a few people knew it, but Bithynia was to be the staging area for an invasion of the Persian empire. Restoring order and sound finances was now a top priority. Trajan, Best of Emperors, had entrusted this to him. And he would not fail him. Bithynia was a graveyard of governors. Pliny knew he had enemies who would relish his downfall. What man of importance didn’t? He was determined not to give them the chance.

“There’s a line of people out into the street waiting to see you. All clutching petitions in their sweaty hands.” Suetonius, pink-cheeked and pink-scalped—at forty he was already losing his hair—edged through the mob of clerks, accountants, and messengers, and dropped into an armchair beside Pliny’s desk. “Shall I send them all away?”

“On the contrary, I want you to interview them—unless you’re otherwise engaged?”

“I was about to be. Research, you know. But it can wait.”

“Ah, and which of your many works-in-progress are you researching today? Greek Terms of Abuse? Famous Whores? Physical Defects of Mankind?”

“Well, one never knows what will turn up, does one?”

They laughed easily together. Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus was one of Pliny’s literary protégés: a talented writer, a man of restless curiosity, a bottomless repository of rude anecdotes, a tireless collector of backstairs gossip, a lover of the odd fact, fascinated by the grotesque—in short, an extremely useful man to have along in this hellhole of sedition. He was vain, too, and combatted his baldness with concoctions of horseradish, cumin, and worse things—all to little avail. No sooner had he arrived in the province than he’d exchanged his white Roman tunic with an
eques’
purple stripes for a colorful Greek outfit of sheer linen.
The better to blend in—you learn more.
He had jumped at the chance to come to Bithynia on Pliny’s staff.

“Have you found what you wanted in the files?”

Pliny pressed his fingers to his temples and rubbed, feeling the skin move on his skull—for an awful instant imagining the skull bare of flesh as it might look ten, fifteen years from now if he lasted that long, if he husbanded his strength. He drove the image from his mind. “Beyond belief, the mess he’s left us with! Six former governors of this province have been prosecuted and our friend Anicius is likely to be the seventh, for sheer incompetence, if nothing worse. Transcripts of trials, minutes of meetings with the local grandees—all missing. He’s taken them home with him or more likely burned them. And the people he’s left behind, this lot.” His glance took in the room. They come in late, they leave early, they give you sour looks when you speak to them. I’m putting you in charge of the secretariat. Whip them into shape.”

Suetonius winced. “Not really my—”

Pliny held up a finger. “What on earth is that racket?”

Through the open second-story window, carried on a soft September breeze, came a sudden shriek of flutes and a crash of cymbals. A parading army couldn’t have made more noise. Pliny and Suetonius looked out and, as they watched, a mob turned the corner, marching along the avenue below them, men and women together, dancing, leaping, shouting something—a word, a name? Pliny strained to make it out but in the general din it was impossible. But there was no doubting who the focus of this adulation was. On a litter that swayed above the heads of the crowd, rode a handsome man whose hair hung down his back in long curls. He stared straight ahead, looking neither left nor right, motionless as a statue while eager hands reached out to touch his long, white garment as he passed. In his right hand he held a glittering scimitar, but what held everyone’s eye was the giant python that draped itself around his chest and over his shoulder, its head swinging to and fro.

Pliny felt a stab of anxiety. Somewhere out there in this alien city was his wife.

***

“’Purnia, don’t let go of me!”

“Hold tight, Ione!”

Calpurnia, the taller and sturdier of the two women, gripped her maid’s hand as they struggled to keep their footing in this crowd of madmen that surged outside the temple of Asclepius and filled the whole marketplace alongside it. Elegant matrons pressed against greasy-aproned shopkeepers, beggars contested with merchants for a glimpse of the holy man who rode above them in his litter like a raft tossed upon a sea of eager faces and outstretched arms.

A sharp elbow hit Calpurnia in the side, knocking the breath out of her. Her knees buckled and she thought for an instant she would fall and be crushed under the stamping feet.

“Pancrates! The god returns!” The shout rose up from five hundred throats, mingling with the din of cymbals, flutes, and drums.

Calpurnia and Ione had spent the morning going round the shops and stalls and ateliers of the unfamiliar city, escorted by a retinue of slaves and local guides—all of them now lost somewhere in this seething confusion of color and noise. The palace in which she and Pliny and all their staff were housed had once belonged to the ancient kings of Bithynia. Mithridates the Great—a name that could still strike fear in Roman hearts even after a century and a half—had ruled his bloody empire from here; and so had Pompey the Great, who defeated him and made the kingdom a Roman province.

The palace, which sat on a high hill overlooking the harbor, was vast: more than a hundred rooms grouped around two great peristyle halls. Impressive in size but disappointing in detail. All the portable works of art, all the splendidly wrought furnishings had long since been looted, first by Mithridates and then by a succession of Roman governors, culminating with the wretched Anicius, who had filled a whole ship with whatever was still worth stealing. The mosaic floors were original and fine, but the statues that populated the courtyards were now mere copies of copies. The tapestries and draperies were shabby, the brass work tarnished, the frescoed walls black with soot, the rooms littered with trash, the smell of mildew heavy in the air. Calpurnia sighed for her Italian villa, swallowed hard, and determined to turn the place into a home worthy of her husband. Worthy of Rome. The last governor, who had no wife, was so parsimonious that tradesmen had stopped coming to the palace, so she must seek them out herself. In a single day she had examined fabrics, contracted with cabinetmakers and painters and silversmiths. Thank the gods she had Ione with her. Her freedwoman spoke fluent Greek, while Calpurnia’s halting kitchen Greek was not up to haggling in the marketplace. That was another thing she was determined to rectify.

It was the end of a long and productive morning. Hunger and the hot sun overhead urged that they return to the palace for a bath—at least the plumbing worked—and a meal with their overworked husbands, Pliny and Zosimus. And then suddenly they had found themselves swamped in this sea of frenzied celebrants.

“Long life to Pancrates! Oracle of Asclepius!”

The crowd surged forward as the object of their adulation was helped down from his litter—he and the astonishing snake. At that point she lost sight of him as he passed within the bronze doors of the temple. But a herald stood on the topmost step and cried out, “The god has returned to his house. Present your questions and they will be answered to your heart’s desire for the fee of one drachma.”

The crowd was mostly male but there were women too, Greek women modestly veiled as their custom was. But then, to her surprise, Calpurnia saw Roman faces too, unveiled and elaborately coifed like herself. One towering hairdo atop a whitened face and fat neck forced its way toward her through the press of bodies.

“You remember me, Lady Calpurnia? Last night—the reception—such an honor…”

“Yes, of course,” Calpurnia murmured.
What was the woman’s name?
“So many new faces—Atilia, isn’t it?”

“Philomela, you stupid little bitch, where are you?” The woman looked around angrily as a little slave girl, who couldn’t have been more than ten, struggled after her, fighting with both hands to hold up a large parasol.

The woman turned back to Calpurnia. “Impossible to find decent slaves in this country. But isn’t it wonderful, he’s returned at last!”

Calpurnia looked at her blankly.

“Pancrates, of course. Our oracle.”

Chapter Three

That night. The villa of Marcus Vibius Balbus

Balbus snapped his fingers. Thick fingers covered with coarse hairs. Fingers that in their day had gripped a centurion’s
vitis
, bringing it down hard across the shoulders of any legionary who didn’t jump to attention quick enough. Fingers that lately wielded nothing heavier than a stylus—but even a stylus was a weapon in those fingers. Marcus Balbus snapped his fingers and a young slave boy ran up to refill his goblet.

“More wine, Governor?”

Pliny, reclining beside him in the place of honor, hastily covered his cup with his hand. He’d drunk too much already. Balbus preferred his wine unwatered and forced his guests to do the same.

“Another bite of turbot?” He held out the morsel dripping with sauce on the point of his knife. Eat.” It was very nearly a command. Balbus’ face, square, brown, and hatched as a chopping block, leaned close, smiling unpleasantly. He was a man made entirely of bone and gristle, a man who kept himself fit, with big-knuckled hands and a shock of stiff red hair speckled grey. Gaulish blood there somewhere, Pliny imagined, or even German.

Pliny waved the food away. The dishes were all too sauced and spiced for his frugal tastes. And he would not allow this man to bully him. After a long moment, Balbus withdrew his hand and shrugged.

Conversation, which had died momentarily, resumed with pretended gaiety. There were nine of them at table, the usual number for a
triclinium
. In addition to Pliny and Calpurnia, the guests included Suetonius, who was always reliably entertaining at affairs like this; two wealthy Roman merchants, one accompanied by his wife, and a man named Silvanus, who was Balbus’ chief accountant. The merchant’s wife seemed to know Calpurnia and conversed with her throughout the evening with great animation. “Thrilled to see you again…this morning…a god…miraculous man…you must ask him…yes, a snake…” Calpurnia had that fixed smile on her face that meant she was bored to tears.

Again Balbus brought his battered face close to Pliny and said in a whisper that was meant to be heard around the table, “We’ve met before, you know, you and I.”

“Have we? I’m afraid I—”

“Don’t remember my face? Well, I was younger and handsomer then, and I was only one of many. The night before Emperor Domitian was murdered. I was a Praetorian Guardsman then. We paid you a little visit, didn’t we? Almost cost you your life, didn’t it? And your charming wife’s.” He smiled at Calpurnia the way a crocodile smiles.

Pliny felt the blood drain from his face. That was a night that still, after fourteen years, haunted his dreams. And Calpurnia’s. And why was Balbus mentioning it now? To make him squirm, why else? Suetonius shot Pliny a worried look. Calpurnia felt for his hand.

Pliny drew a long breath. “Those were difficult days, my friend. Thank the gods we live in happier times.”

Eager noises of assent around the table. Then Fabia, Balbus’ wife, a big-boned woman all bosom and jewels, hastily changed the subject to her favorite, her only, topic of conversation.

“These Greeklings,” she said, “scoundrels every one of them. They don’t love us.” She spoke in a fluting, gentrified Latin that didn’t quite disguise something foreign in the accent—Thracian, it was rumored. Pliny had heard that she concealed barbarian tattoos under her clothing. He could almost believe it.

“No reason why they should,” he answered mildly.

“We’ve brought them peace, haven’t we?”