had frightened the girl.
“I-I don’t know.” Her under lip quivered. “Please sir, I don’t know any more. Don’t make me say anything against Lucius. He’s my master now.”
“Yes, yes, quite. What you’ve told me will stay between us. You may go now, and thank you.”
Valens handed her off to one of his men to return her to the guarded dormitory. He rubbed his bristly chin and looked thoughtfully at Pliny. “So young Lucius has been lying to us, sir. There was no Jewish assassin.”
“Yes, but the man didn’t stab himself in the back. Someone managed to climb through that window. The shutter was open, and we saw how the ivy tendrils on the column looked as if they were torn loose by someone’s hands and feet.”
Valens nodded.
“Get me Ganymede. He’s another one who was allowed to prowl the house at night. He may, at least, have seen or heard something.”
“How old are you, boy?” Pliny asked the creature who now stood, loose-limbed before him.
“Fifteen, sir.”
Closer to seventeen, Pliny guessed. Almost too old for a cinaedus . He had seen others like this one. The boy wore a short-skirted Greek tunic, the color of crocus and diaphanous to the point of transparency. His hairless limbs glistened with oil like the limbs of finely polished furniture. But his long, scented ringlets were matted and tangled and there was a faint stubble on his cheeks; he’d had no opportunity to singe them with hot walnut shells.
“Are you home bred or bought?”
“I was purchased from the Temple of Eros, an all-boy brothel, at a high price, too. I was only nine, yet so skilled at giving old men pleasure that Sextus Verpa fell hopelessly in love with me. He came every day and would accept no one else. Finally, he made Marcus Ganeus, my owner, sell me to him. He loved me very much. He gave me presents. The slave girls hate me. He never gave them such fine stuff.”
The voice was unnaturally high and wispy. He was forcing himself to speak in a falsetto so as not to betray his age. When the voice broke a boy’s career was over. Ganymede fluttered his long lashes seductively and touched himself between the legs. Pliny felt a mixture of pity and revulsion. There was something that was not quite human about Ganymede. He was a work of art, the product of someone’s fantasy. Every gesture practiced and studied.
“Besides giving your master pleasure, have you other duties in the house?”
“I am the principal dancer in our pantomime troupe,” he answered in his light, lisping voice. “I am called ‘Anguilla,’ the eel, because I dance as if I haven’t a bone in my body.” To make his point the youth lifted his arms above his head and a ripple of motion ran through his body beginning with his ankles, rising through knees, hips, and ribs cage and ending at his fingertips which fluttered imaginary castanets. It did distinctly give the impression of an eel twisting lazily through water. Pliny noted the long muscular legs, the wasp-thin waist, the narrow shoulders and the sinuous arms. He couldn’t have weighed much more than a hundred pounds. The boy flashed him a practiced smile, then let his arms drop to his sides.
This pantomime troupe of Verpa’s, of Scortilla’s really (she being an old trouper herself), was a bit of a scandal, hardly in keeping with the spirit of the age. A perversion, not to put too fine a point on it. Verpa and Scortilla entertained a very select group of friends of whom Pliny, happily, was not one, though he had heard things. And Martial had added other juicy details gleaned from his sources in the demimonde. Surprising, really that the emperor permitted it, since he had banned public performances of the same kind. But it seemed there were exceptions made for useful men like Verpa.
“Was that other boy, Hylas, a performer, too?”
“Hylas was a runny-nosed brat who couldn’t put one foot in front of the other without tripping!” Malice glittered in Ganymede’s eyes.
“Did you kill Hylas?”
“No!” Color rose from his throat to his cheeks. He sucked in his breath.
Pliny gave the boy a long, searching look. His face was haggard and there was something in the eyes that was inexpressibly tired. An old man in a boy’s body. And he was frightened, but he stood his ground. “Did you see who killed him?” “It was dark, everyone was pushing and tumbling over each other. I didn’t see anything. I tried to stay out of the way.” “Did you know he was an atheist?” “I don’t even know what that means.” “Did you kill your master?” “Of course not.” “Were you with him that night?” “No.” “Where were you?” “Sleeping at the bottom of the stairs. I sleep wherever I please.” Such arrogance in those words. “Did anyone see you there?” “I don’t know. I was asleep.” “Did you see or hear anything out of the ordinary all evening?”
“No, sir.” Ganymede ran his finger around the iron slave collar that circled his soft neck. Clearly, it chafed him, perhaps his pride more than his flesh. The boy had pride.
Without warning, Pliny uncovered the dagger which he had placed under a cloth on the table beside him. He kept his eyes on the Ganymede’s face as he did so. The boy’s eyes widened, then quickly slid away. “You recognize this, do you?” “No.” “What? Don’t recognize an object that lay in plain sight on your master’s bedside table?” Ganymede compressed his lips into a thin line. He refused to answer. Poor Ganymede wasn’t very good at thinking on his feet.
An image presented itself to Pliny’s mind-of an “eel,” lithe with muscular legs, shimmying up a column, negotiating the overhanging eave, somehow unlatching the shutter from the outside, and slipping in through Verpa’s narrow window. But could this effeminate youth possibly have overcome Verpa, who, even if taken asleep, was a powerful and vigorous man, a fighter? Hard to imagine it. And what could the boy’s motive be? These sex slaves were far more likely to kill each other out of jealousy than to kill the master upon whom they all depended. But if someone had put him up to it? Someone like Lucius? Plenty of motive there. But no, Pliny was not yet ready to charge the son of an imperial favorite with patricide-a crime punished by ancient and savage ritual-based on the innuendo of a female houseguest or the frightened look in a slave’s eye. Gaius Plinius Secundus had his career to think of.
While he turned these thoughts over in his mind, Valens opened the door and admitted Lucius. The will was about to be opened. No doubt Pliny, as representative of the city prefect, might wish to be informed. Lucius was acting the gracious host this morning, confident of his new position. Pliny looked for some sign of recognition between him and Ganymede. There was none.
“Thank you, Lucius Ingentius, I had planned to stay for the reading. Centurion,” turning to Valens, “I want this slave boy kept separate from the others, under twenty-four-hour guard. No one is to have access to him. No one. I’ve had one witness murdered already, I won’t have another.”
“Witness to what?” Lucius’ newly-won composure was gone in an instant. “What are you insinuating? And you’ve no right to keep my slaves locked up any longer-especially this harmless creature. I want you and your policemen out of here, I am master here now.” His voice was shrill.
“Please calm yourself,” Pliny replied. “The soldiers will be here for a while longer and the slaves must remain under guard until the Games are over. Prefect’s orders.” Best to take shelter under his superior’s authority rather than explain his own reasons. “We’ll see about that,” Lucius sneered. “This family still has influence. You, your family is nothing.” “So I have already been reminded once today.” Lucius flung himself from the room. Pliny followed.
The will was to be read in the tablinum, the master’s office, where his big iron-bound strongbox occupied one corner and cubicles containing his letters and accounts lined the walls. The death masks of his ancestors stared vacant-eyed from their niches. The room, though large, could scarcely accommodate the sweating mob of clients, relations, and cronies who were attempting to crowd into it.
Lucius sat himself in the front, next to Scortilla. Facing them sat a man at Verpa’s desk. Atilius Regulus, whom he had last seen that night of the infamous “black banquet.” Pliny sighed. How fitting that he should be Verpa’s attorney. On the desk lay a thick leather cylinder, its clasp covered with a wax seal. Inside it was the scroll of Sextus Ingentius Verpa’s last will and testament.
Seeing him standing in the back, Regulus invited Pliny, “his esteemed colleague at the bar,” to come forward and join him and the heirs in examining the seal before it was broken. Pliny had examined many such seals and rather fancied himself an expert on the subject.
The seal was perfectly intact and both Lucius and Scortilla attested that the signet was undoubtedly Verpa’s. Regulus, rubbing his hands together as though he were about to sit down to a good meal, broke the seal, removed and unfurled the scroll, cleared his throat importantly and began to read.
