The Bull Slayer

pain, the blood…I nearly died. And since then…we’ve tried everything. Doctors, spells, potions, I’ve slept in temples for healing dreams, sacrificed to Juno and Diana, Isis. And all the time, my husband, so kind, so patient. He has never reproached me, but I know, I know what he feels. We don’t talk about it.” Her shoulders worked with grief.

While she spoke he kept his eyes on her, his head tilted slightly to the left. They had begun by standing an arm’s length apart. She realized now that they were sitting, facing each other, almost knee to knee. She didn’t remember how that happened. And she was speaking in her own language now-Greek abandoned-but he understood her. Finally, she swallowed hard and wiped her face with the fold of her palla. She felt naked in front of him. What sorcery had he used to make her tell him what she had never told any stranger?

“There are cures for your condition that the Brahmans know.”

“No! Stop it! There is no cure. I’m not a child anymore to believe such things.”

He smiled and shrugged. “We’ll speak of it another time. I will leave you with a happy thought. Someone new will soon come into your life.”

She laughed harshly-angry at herself and him. “Is that all your wisdom? We’ve only been here a week, someone new comes into my life every day.”

He stood up abruptly. “Thank you, lady. I’ll see myself out. If you wish to see me again, I am at your service.”

“Wait-”

But he was gone.

She sat a long time with her head in her hands, feeling-what? Shaken, violated, hopeful? Had she just met someone extraordinary or only a clever fraud? She could not face going back to the dining room, to those hens who would peck at her, who would quiz her. As if in answer to her unspoken command, Ione appeared in the doorway. “Tell them I’m not feeling well. They may leave whenever they wish. Then come back to me.” The freedwoman nodded and went out.

As Pancrates left the palace there was a smile on his lips. No knowledge is ever wasted.

***

The big covered wagon swayed and jolted, axles screeching, harness creaking as the mule team hauled it to the top of the long ridge that lay across the road from Prusa to Nicaea. Pliny tapped the driver’s shoulder. “Hold up. Let the animals rest. Let us all rest a bit. Help me down.” Even on a good Roman road like this, travel was exhausting. The driver jumped down from his seat, propped the stepladder against the front wheel and reached out to take the governor’s hand. Behind them a train of a dozen wagons-an entire household on wheels-and a flanking squadron of cavalry sent up a cloud of dust into the brilliant blue sky.

Pliny stretched, flexed his shoulders, stamped his feet to get the blood flowing. They had been on the road since dawn and the sun was now high in the sky. “You know, this country reminds me of home,” he said to Zosimus, who had climbed down beside him. “Mountains, gorges, pine forests, the bracing air,” he inhaled deeply through his nostrils, “just like Comum. How I wish I were there! It’s been too long.”

Nymphidius trotted up on his horse. “We’ll be lucky to reach the city by nightfall, sir. Up one blasted hill and down the next.” The scenery had no charms for him.

“Nevertheless, call a half hour halt. And Zosimus, fetch me down my folder and a camp stool.”

He spread his papers out on his knees, meticulous notes that described the unfolding disaster of the province’s economy: everywhere new theaters, public baths, colonnades, aqueducts, all badly planned, unfinished, and left in ruins, leaving nothing behind but a welter of accusations and indictments for corruption which he, sitting on his tribunal hour after weary hour had to adjudicate. He was already sick to death of it, and he had only just started. After a few moments, he pushed it all away in disgust. “No. Zosimus, get me my writing kit and ask a messenger to come here. I owe Calpurnia a letter.”

And Pliny drifted into pleasant contemplation of his happy and capable partner, safe at home.

Chapter Seven

The 4th day before the Kalends of October

The sixth hour of the night

That night she could not sleep. Finally, she gave up and went to wake Ione who slept in the bedroom next to hers.

“What should I think? Am I being a fool? Everything he claimed to sense about me he could have guessed or heard somewhere. Atilia and the others gossip about everyone, surely about me too. But if you’d seen his eyes…”

“And he said he could cure you, ’Purnia?”

She nodded, looked away.

Whenever they were alone together Ione called her by her pet name; only in the presence of others did she call her matrona, lady. Although most Roman matrons did not consider themselves properly cared for with any fewer than a dozen maid servants, Calpurnia was content to have Ione alone. They had become almost like sisters, especially now in this strange place where she had no one else to turn to. She had had a younger sister once, a lovely girl who had died of a long wasting illness when Calpurnia was ten. Her death had left a hole in her life. Ione was about the age her sister would have been and somehow this ex-slave-pretty, saucy, barely literate, with no family, no past-was able to fill it in spite of the barrier of rank that divided them.

“Then you must believe him. Who can doubt an oracle?” As simple as that. “Will you see him again?”

“I don’t know. My husband won’t allow him under our roof, I know that.”

Ione winked. “Things can always be arranged.”

As they talked, the sun came up. Rufus woke up and while they fed him breakfast and played with him Calpurnia’s mood improved. Around the third hour of the morning the idea suddenly took her to visit the art gallery in the temple of Zeus. Diocles had recently made a gift to his fellow citizens of sculptures and paintings, some of them priceless originals. It was the talk of the town. She and Ione would go together and she would bring her easel, too, and sketch.

The gallery, which occupied a portico in the temple precinct, was crowded when they got there. The exhibition was everything she expected and more. Among the statues of bronze and painted marble she thought she recognized Praxiteles’ Artemis and a Heracles by Lysippus-copies, of course, though good ones. But it was the paintings that took her breath away- portraits, landscapes, mythological scenes by the great names-Apelles, Zeuxis, Polygnotos. After surveying them all, she ordered her slave to set up her easel in front of a large Niobe Mourning Her Dead Children by Parrhasios; and what instinct drew her to that she would not acknowledge even to herself. She tacked a parchment to the easel, seated herself on her stool, and began to sketch in charcoal.

As she worked, onlookers came and went but she became gradually aware of a young man who stood beside her, resting his weight on one muscular leg, his hip thrust out, his arms folded, his eyes moving up and down from the original to her copy.

He saw that she had noticed him. “The eyes,” he said. “Niobe’s eyes. The despair in them. The film of tears. How do you think he did that? Thin washes of wax layered on ever so carefully, don’t you think? Armenium, malachite for his pigments, but just a hint. Too much would spoil it. That’s how I’d do it, anyway. But, of course, I’d make a hash of it.” He smiled, showing a crooked front tooth.

She didn’t quite catch all of this, he spoke so rapidly. But it sounded impressive. Politeness required her to say something. “Are you a painter by profession, then?”

He made a wry face. “Me? I have no profession. My family owns land, quite a lot of it.”

She looked at him more closely now. How stupid to think he was a common artisan. His purple-bordered cloak and his rings were expensive. He was young, twenty perhaps, if that; clean shaven; oiled hair, black as ink and smelling of crocus, curling over his ears; nose and chin so finely sculpted that he might have modeled for