Roman Games (6 page)

“Sir?” Valens scratched his jaw. “If I might make a suggestion, sir.”

“Yes, what?”

“Ask about the murder weapon.”

“Right, of course, centurion. I was just going to.” In fact, it hadn’t occurred to him. He was no policeman, damn it!

“I have it,” said Lucius. “We found it on the floor by the bed. I took it to my room, I’ll get it.”

Lucius returned moments later with the dagger and held the hilt toward Pliny, who took it in his hand. It was a heavy piece with a wicked-looking curved blade incised with symbols in a foreign script. Black flakes of Verpa’s blood clung in them.

“A Jewish
sica,”
said Valens. “An uncle of mine worked for tax farmers in Judea before the revolt. The Zealot terrorists used to slash Roman throats with these.”

“You’re a font of information, centurion.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Here, you’d best take charge of it. It’s our only evidence so far.” He handed it to the centurion. Turning back to Lucius, he asked, “Are there any Jews in this house?”

The young man looked at his feet. “Well, yes, one among the slaves that I know of. But really, I don’t think…”

“And who is that?”

“Old Pollux, a former boxer, who guards—guarded—my father’s door at night.”

“Then, I think we’d better speak with him.”

Chapter Eight

Valens stepped out and returned a moment later with Pollux and a second soldier to guard him, even though the man was shackled hand and foot. Ignoring Lucius, he gazed steadily at Pliny. There was nothing servile in his manner. Valens lifted the man’s tunic with the point of his sword, exposing his nakedness.

“Well, the old boy’s a Jew, all right.”

Pollux stood as still as a statue but Pliny saw his jaw muscles quiver. Valens was no weakling but this man could have broken him in half.

“Leave the man alone, centurion,” Pliny snapped. “There’s no call for that.”

He reminded Pliny of a Greek statue he had once seen of a boxer, not in triumph but in defeat: battered, scarred, sad-eyed and infinitely weary. This fellow could have posed for it. He looked to be in his late fifties, his hair and beard grizzled. His shoulders were huge, his big-knuckled hands hung at his sides, gnarled from years of being wrapped in the cruel iron-studded thongs that boxers fought with.

“How did your father come to own this man?” Pliny asked Lucius.

“He served in Judaea during the revolt; legate of the Fifth Macedonica under Vespasian. Pollux here was a Zealot fighter. Thousands of them were crucified, others sent to the mines. My father brought him home, trained him as a boxer, and used to hire him out for private shows. He’s been in our familia since before I was born. After some years he begged to stop fighting, lost his heart for it I suppose. My father made him his bedroom slave instead.”

“Why would your father entrust his life to a former rebel?

“Why do some people keep pet panthers? It’s the kind of man my father was.”

“You speak Latin, man?” Pliny addressed Pollux.

The slave inclined his head ever so slightly.

“The night your master was killed when did you take up your post?”

“Always at the fifth hour.”

“And was your master already in the room?”

The slave nodded.

“Speak when I ask you a question!” Pliny felt unaccustomed anger rising in his chest. This turbulent race with their single god who refused to live peaceably within the Empire like everyone else. Surely, they deserved what had happened to them.

“He was inside,” answered Pollux.

Valens snarled at him, “You’ll address the vice prefect as ‘sir.’”

“And you were outside the door all night,” Pliny continued, “and yet you heard nothing?”

“Nothing.” A pause. “Sir.”

“I can have you tortured, you know.” But there were slaves, Pliny knew, who would go to the rack before they would betray their master, and one look into that brutal, battle-scarred face told him that Pollux would not yield to torture, at least not to any degree of torture that Pliny had the stomach to inflict. Anger gave way to a feeling of helplessness.

“Take him back, centurion. I’ll question him again later.”

He turned back to Lucius. “What’s your opinion of Pollux’s loyalty?”

Lucius gave his characteristic gesture of indifference. “My father saved the fellow from crucifixion and promised him his freedom one day in return for good service. And as far as I know, that’s what he got.”

“Until now, that is,” said Valens. “I’ll have the truth out of that brute in short order—”

“What are you saying?” Pliny turned on him. “That Pollux came in here, butchered his master, drew the candlestick on the wall, dropped the dagger by the bed—all making it plain that this was an act of
Jewish
vengeance—and then went back and calmly took up his post again outside the door until morning?” At last he’d scored a point against this overbearing soldier. Valens frowned at the floor and said nothing.

There was a hint of a smile on Lucius’ lips.

Pliny turned back to the young man. “Is there anything else here we’ve overlooked? Think carefully. Any other way into this room besides the door?”

“Well, the window, but I hardly think… Wait, though, the shutters were open. Yes, I’m sure they were. And that wasn’t my father’s habit, even on the hottest nights. He dreaded night vapors.”

The single window was barely a foot wide by two feet high. This part of the house was raised on a tier of columns, topped by a course of overhanging eaves that surrounded the garden at the rear. Pliny crossed to the window and peered out. Ivy grew thick around the window frame.

“We’ll go down to the garden, centurion.”

They all trooped downstairs and looked up at Verpa’s bedroom. Strands of ivy spiraled up the columns producing a striking and pleasing effect, but they could see plainly at the base of the column nearest Verpa’s window that the tendrils were torn and loose, used as handholds.

Valens scratched his jaw. “Seems an impossible climb, sir, getting around that overhang and up to the window. And what man of normal size could have squeezed through it? It was clearly designed to give the slaves who were kept there a little air, but no means of escaping.”

“Maybe a trained assassin…,” Lucius said, looking thoughtful. “Not impossible. I’ve heard from my father what those Judean Zealots were like. And if Pollux was his accomplice? I mean, telling him which window, signaling when the time was right, and then guarding the door in case anyone came by?

Pliny was silent for a moment. It sounded fantastic, yet who could say that Jewish assassins hadn’t made their way to Rome, where the filth of all the world eventually collected.

A thought occurred to him. “Are there other Jews in the familia?”

“Don’t know, really. We’ve got slaves from everywhere.”

“There’s one way to find out, sir,” said Valens, eager to regain his authority. “None of them will sacrifice to our gods. Why don’t we put them to the test? I mean, if you agree, sir.”

“Oh, I don’t think…” Lucius began, but Pliny cut him off. “No, my centurion’s right—again.” Pliny was beginning to feel distinctly annoyed at this competent officer. “We may as well know the worst. What images of the gods have you?”

“Dozens, look anywhere in the house. We’ve an altar too, quite nicely carved.”

“Show my men. Bring one of every deity out into the garden, we’ll do it there. And have you an image of Our Lord and God?”

Lucius replied that they kept a small bust of the emperor in the
lararium
together with their household gods so that they could venerate it everyday.

“Put it with the others and fetch wine and incense. In the meantime, centurion, show me to the slave quarters.”

A rank stench of bodily waste, sweat and terror assaulted Pliny when the door was unbolted. And this, after only two days of confinement. What would it be like after fifteen—if any of the slaves were still alive by then? With a wail of shrieking protestations they cried out that they knew nothing of any plot to murder Master. On their lives, they would have told if they did. And why would anyone do such a thing to Master? Good, kind Master.

Here was the blood and bones of the household, Pliny reflected. They were Levantines, Nubians, Dacians, and Germans. They were litter bearers, torch bearers, bodyguards, and private bully-boys; doorkeepers, footmen, and messengers; valets, butlers and barbers; lady’s maids, dressers, bath women, hair curlers, and masseuses; scullions, chefs, pastry cooks, waiters, cup bearers, and tasters; keepers of the silver, the unguents, the pearls; short-hand writers, hour callers, name rememberers, bed partners of both sexes, musicians, mimes, dancers, and reciters of poetry. Among them also were children, for Verpa permitted his slaves to cohabit on payment of a fee. Pliny saw backs and shoulders seamed with the marks of old floggings and more than one face branded like a felon’s to serve as a warning to the rest. And now, by order of the city prefect, all wore iron collars on which were inscribed the words,
“I’m running away—seize me.”
The collars were linked together with chains.

Valens banged his staff against the door jamb and bawled at them to shut their yaps.

When there was some semblance of quiet, Pliny spoke to them, while breathing as little of the fetid air as he could. “I am going to ask you to do something very easy, to sacrifice to the gods and our emperor, only that. No one will be tortured, I promise you. We have reason to think that there may be one, or a small number, of depraved madmen among you, devotees of a vicious cult. If that turns out to be true, then maybe, I can promise nothing yet, maybe the rest of you can be saved.”

Pliny heard with genuine surprise these words come from his lips. Like anyone with a smattering of Greek philosophy, he knew that slavery was against nature. There was no difference between a freeman and a slave except a cruel twist of fate. But as far as Roman law was concerned, the slave was not a man at all but a “speaking tool,” possessing no rights. Pliny wasn’t sure quite when it had occurred to him that his purpose here was to save these men and women from an unjust death. It certainly had not been in his mind two mornings ago when news of the crime had alarmed the city. Valens looked at his superior, incredulous that anyone would talk to slaves this way, while the slaves resumed shrieking their innocence.

The garden was quite lovely: boxwood hedges, tall elms, and fruit trees; stone benches round a pool where fountains splashed. Here a miscellany of divine images had been assembled. There was, besides the head of Domitian Lord and God, a bronze figurine of Hercules, a lovely marble Diana, a bust of Jupiter, a statuette of Isis, and the inevitable statue of Priapus, godling of vegetation and sex, who leered mischievously here as in every Roman garden.

The slaves were brought out in batches of ten, shoved along by the troopers, with swords drawn, who cursed at them and struck them with the flat of their blades. Eager to prove their piety, they stumbled forward one by one, dropped incense and wine on the altar fire and mouthed a prayer at Pliny’s dictation.

Finally it was the turn of Pollux, whom Pliny had saved for last, and four others who clung to the man: an older woman, his mate, said Lucius, and two young women and a boy. All of them tried to shelter behind the boxer’s broad back. There was fear in their eyes. Pollux’s lips moved soundlessly. If it was a prayer, it was not directed at those lifeless statues arrayed before them. Like a statue himself, his ugly face unmoving as a mask, Pollux stood before the altar and did nothing with the incense and wine cup handed to him. For a long moment there was dead silence save for the chirping of song birds in the trees.

Then, before Pliny could stop him, Lucius dashed forward and struck the slave in the face with all his strength. Pollux, who had been hit by tougher men than Lucius in his time, did not flinch but continued to look straight ahead of him. His fellow slaves stood by, stunned to silence. Then, one after another, they began to murmur: “Atheist, traitor, you’ll get us all killed!”

One of the young women broke and ran forward to the altar, crying “Please, Masters, I’ll burn the incense!” But Pollux caught her by the arm and pulled her back. “Sister, be brave, in the name of the True God.” In an agony of doubt, the girl looked from the altar to Pollux’s face and back again. The older woman came and put her arms around her and drew her back into their circle. The murmurs of the other slaves rose to angry, menacing shouts. The City Troopers cast nervous looks at their centurion.

“Murderer of my father!” screamed Lucius. “Heat irons. I’ll have the truth out of him!”

Pliny felt the situation slipping out of control. “I give the orders here,” he warned Lucius. “Stand back.”

The young man looked mutinous.

Stepping close to Pollux, Pliny said in a low voice, “You have put yourself and these others in grave danger. I give you one day to think it over.” The boxer only stared back impassively.

“Centurion, take them back to their quarters,” Pliny ordered, “and double the guard.” And to Lucius he confided, “I am encouraged that the poison seems to have spread to only a few. I wish I could release the rest of your slaves now but I haven’t the authority. They will have to remain under guard until the Games are over and a trial before the prefect can be conducted. No doubt, you have other slaves in your country estates. By all means bring them in. And now,” he said, “I am leaving.” The urge to be gone from this place was suddenly overwhelming.

Lucius expressed sullen thanks.

“But sir,” Valens interrupted. “The lady of the house, Turpia Scortilla. Shouldn’t you have a word with her?”

“
Mehercule
,” cried Pliny in exasperation, “haven’t I done enough here today?”

“It’s procedure, sir. She might just know something.” He used the tone of voice one would in speaking to a dull child.

Pliny let out a sigh. “Conduct me to the lady, then.”

Standing guard outside her chamber door, the dwarf Iarbas tried to block their way, hopping from one flat foot to the other and mouthing insults at them. He was the most extraordinary creature that Pliny had ever seen: a black dwarf, fat-headed, with tiny mole’s eyes, a big belly, and short, muscular legs. Golden torques and armlets gleamed against his dusky skin. On his shoulder perched a monkey, equally bejeweled, and making savage grimaces at them with yellow, pointed teeth. Valens pushed man and beast roughly aside. “We tried locking this one up with the others,” he explained, “but the lady was so distressed we let him loose. Seems harmless enough, the ugly little imp.”

“Harmless?” As soon as he laid eyes on him, an image sprang to Pliny’s mind of the dwarf scrambling monkey-like up the column and through the narrow window of Verpa’s bedroom. And who but Scortilla would have sent him on that mission?

The lady lay propped on her bed, bone thin and bone white, the tendons in her neck standing out like ropes, her towering red wig askew. But it was her eyes that held him. He thought back to this morning’s sacrifice on the Capitolium—the look in the ox’s eye when the victimarius stunned it with a blow of his hammer. Turpia Scortilla had that same stunned, glassy-eyed look. And the dead whiteness of her face wasn’t just the effect of cosmetics.

“Madam, I…”

At the sight of him she shrank back against her pillow, nearly dislodging her wig, the back of one thin hand pressed to her mouth. Iarbas ran around them and clambered up on the bed beside her. She clutched his wooly head to her breast. The woman looked terrified. Why?