She blushed. “My talent is small, sir, but it is at your service. Tell me, what meters do you employ? For the lyre I find that iambic trimeter works best, although the dactylic, of course-”
“Calpurnia?” Pliny ’s face was a picture of baffled embarrassment.
“Why, husband, what is the matter?” She raised an innocent eyebrow. “I must ask him, mustn’t I?” Martial caught a gleam of amusement in her eye and an answering one from the freedman, Zosimus across the table. Well, well, thought Martial, this young lady has been taking lessons, and not only from Cupid. And now she’s teasing him. Here’s a girl with more spirit than she’s given credit for.
They spent the next few minutes discussing Latin lyric meters and the poet was impressed, both by her knowledge and by her tact in drawing her husband back into the conversation and smoothing his ruffled feathers. Meanwhile more dishes were brought out-filling, if not exciting. Presently Calpurnia stifled a yawn and excused herself.
“You chose wisely, my friend,” said Martial when she was gone, and meant it. “She’s charming. I’ve been in half the bedrooms in Rome, but I’ve no one to go home to tonight. It’s no life for a man my age.”
“She is devoted to me, the dear thing.” Pliny was moist-eyed. “She memorizes my courtroom speeches, you know; even sleeps with a sheaf of them beside her on the bed when I have to be away from home.”
“No, really?” said Martial. He had to bite his lip to keep from laughing. “But when you’re lucky enough to be in the bed, she’s not, ah, too modest, I hope.”
“Oh, goodness no,” Pliny assured him. Lately, of course, because of the fear of a miscarriage, they had been abstaining. Pliny had a more ardent nature than many would have suspected and he was beginning to feel quite definitely deprived.
Leaving the subject of his host’s marital bliss, Martial ventured, “This murder case you’re on…”
“ Mehercule,” Pliny burst out with feeling, “I don’t know why this business has been thrust upon me. The babe unborn has as much knowledge of crime detection as I do. I’m no more a policeman than you are.”
“But it is of some interest,” the poet replied. “What little I’ve gathered from the barber shop gossip. What have you learned so far?” Pliny described his morning’s investigation. “Jewish assassins,” said the poet. “And you believe it?” “Well, I mean to say, the evidence all points that way. I only hope I can save the other slaves.”
“You actually care about them, don’t you? It does you credit. I once composed an epitaph in verse for a little slave girl who died on our estate back home. A dear little thing. I’m not all winks and nudges, you know.”
Pliny affirmed that he was glad to hear it.
The poet made a temple of his fingers and rested his chin on them. “You knew Verpa, of course.”
“Only slightly, and his wretched family not at all. Lucius seems to be a typical young man of our age, that is to say good for nothing. And as for the lady, she is either a mad woman or she’s afraid of something. Her behavior this morning was extraordinary.”
“You don’t say. Well, I can tell you that our Lucius has been living far beyond his allowance; gambled and whored it all away-reminds me of myself when I was his age. I’ve learned that half a dozen usurers are pursuing him and have threatened to cut off his credit or even complain to his father if he doesn’t pay up.”
“That’s an old story in our city,” Pliny sighed. “A son with a living father possesses nothing of his own, can’t sell anything to raise money, can’t legally borrow money, but they all do anyway. And then they wait for father to die.”
“And sometimes, if father is tiresomely long-lived, they don’t wait,” Martial concluded the thought. “I’m told he begged his father to free him from patria potestas or, at least, raise his allowance, and the old man refused. Now, of course, that’s all changed. Lucius is his own man at last.” Martial paused and moistened his throat with more wine, enjoying the attention of Pliny and the freedmen, whose eyes were riveted on him. “And as for Turpia Scortilla, her case is more interesting. Did you know she’s not his wife?”
“What are you saying, she’s only a concubina?”
“Exactly. Her father was a stable hand for the Greens, she grew up in the Circus, started out as a bare-back rider and acrobat, if you can believe it. Yes, quite an athlete, our Scortilla: handstands on a galloping horse during the intermissions between races. From there she worked her way up to high-class courtesan. She was some courtier’s girlfriend, and burrowed her way into the palace, where she made herself a fixture and eventually a nuisance. She drank too much and made scenes. A nasty piece of work altogether. And she and Domitilla didn’t get on at all. Which is interesting, isn’t it, in light of that lady’s recent condemnation for atheism. Anyway, Scortilla wanted the wealth and status a senator could provide, and Verpa, who was recently divorced, fancied her. She was beautiful once, in a brittle sort of way, and she got her hooks into him. Of course, the Julian Laws don’t permit a senator to marry a woman with a background like hers, so she settled for being his concubine.”
“But I gather,” said Pliny, “that they haven’t been intimate for years. Why didn’t Verpa break it off when she no longer pleased him?”
“Probably because she knows all his secrets. She’s not an absolutely stupid woman, and she amuses herself with the slaves just as he does. Those eight strapping German litter bearers of hers? It’s said that they carry her all day and she carries them all night. Say, that’s rather neat, isn’t it? I must make a verse of that.”
“My good man,” Pliny said in a tone that approached awe. “How on earth do you know all this?”
“Scandal is my stock in trade,” Martial smiled modestly. “Everything is meat for a satirist, and ‘smoke,’ my friend, is everywhere if you have a nose for it. I swim in waters where you would not dip your toe, if I may mix my metaphors.”
“And so you think…”
“I don’t think anything. Probably it was this Jewish brute after all. But I would like to hear more as you carry on your investigation. It’s food for a satirist. Perhaps occasionally over one of your excellent dinners we might exchange thoughts?”
“Why, I should like nothing better, my dear Martial. You’re a gift from the gods! With your assistance I will get to the bottom of this business. Shall we say tomorrow at this hour?”
“I’m honored by your confidence, sir.” The poet heaved an inward sigh of relief and vowed an offering to Bacchus. That was dinner taken care of for the next few days! ???
The tenth hour of the night.
In a corner of the temple compound in the Campus Martius, almost under the shadow of the great Isis temple itself, a passerby might observe a shop sign with a painting of the mummified Osiris, brother-husband of the Queen of Heaven. Within the cluttered workshop, the curious visitor would notice a cage with an elderly ibis, its beak tucked under its shabby wing, a stuffed crocodile, a pair of somnolent cobras, a bale of linen, a nested pile of caskets, and jars containing various unguents. The odor of camphor, resin, and myrrh hung like a fog in the small workroom. But Nectanebo used none of these in his work. Their only purpose was to impress the temple trade, who were directed to his establishment by Alexandrinus, the priest of Anubis, in return for a share of his fees. Quite a satisfactory arrangement really. And this was only the beginning, for Alexandrinus had plans to enlarge the embalming works and Nectanebo intended to be a part of that. He had latched onto a good thing. Until lately, Roman worshippers of Isis had cremated their dead like everyone else, but in just the year since he’d set up shop, with the backing of the temple, Nectanebo’s exotic services were beginning to catch on.
Of course, it was all a sham. The ancient ritual of mummification was supposed to take half a dozen men seventy days to complete-you could read that in Herodotus. But nobody these days had time for that. Nectanebo had been given a mere five days to prepare the body of the murdered devotee. Well, they couldn’t expect miracles, then, could they? Scoop out the guts, stuff in a lot of sawdust and rags soaked in cheap oil, shovel on some salt, wind the wrappings, none too carefully, and nail a lid on the casket. By the time the smell got too bad the thing would be safely in its tomb. Of course, in this unseasonable heat they’d been having lately…
Nectanebo was lean as a bone and had the waxy skin of a man who seldom saw daylight. His kohl-rimmed eyes narrowed, he bent his shaven head close over the corpse. He had rolled it over on its back on the stone draining slab and was preparing to slice open the abdomen. He pursed his lips, puzzled. For him this was the reward. He had been hired by Alexandrinus because he knew how to keep his mouth shut about certain things that went on in the temple, but he was a doctor by training, not an undertaker. He had closed up shop early yesterday, as soon as he’d returned from Verpa’s house, and had done nothing but dissect since then: peeling away layers of fat, tracing veins and tendons, probing the puckered knife wounds that covered the man’s back. There was something very odd there; he didn’t know what to make of it. And now this. His nose twitched with excitement.
“Here, what’s this, then?” he spoke aloud to the sleepy little slave who sat beside him and whose job,
