unconcern which was belied by the lines of tension around his mouth; Iarbas, his monkey on his shoulder, lurking near the doorway. He was Scortilla’s eyes and ears, the lady herself claiming to be indisposed. All around them on the walls, the satyrs and maenads -eerily lifelike in the glimmering light of the lamps-writhed and coupled, indifferent to the drama which was being enacted in the middle of the room.
Ganymede, his features twisted in anguish, violently shook his head no.
“Shall we put it to the test?” snapped Pliny. “We can’t make you climb up to the window, but we can make you climb down…or break your neck.” This had been Martial’s bright idea.
“Centurion, you’ve stationed a man below? Good. Draw your sword and persuade this boy to show us why he is called “the eel.”
Valens gripped Ganymede by his long hair, dragged him to the window, pushed his head out, and prodded him in the rump with the point of his weapon. The youth spread his arms and legs and tossed his head frantically from side to side while the centurion’s blade dug deeper into his flesh.
“Save me!” he shrieked.
“Don’t fear, Eros protects his own.” It was Lucius who spoke, rapidly and softly. The words had an instantaneous effect. Ganymede’s shoulders twisted and folded together until he seemed to have no shoulders at all. He went through the narrow window as far as his waist. Then, making a half twist with his hips, he kicked with both legs together, imitating a fish’s tail, and in an instant was outside. He dropped to the overhang below, landing on all fours. Then he was hanging from the rain gutter, and then his head and fingertips disappeared.
“Here he comes,” shouted the trooper down below, who held up a torch. “Scampers like a squirrel, he does. Got his legs around the column now-ooof!”
Ganymede dropped directly on the man, knocking him to the ground. The back of the garden ended in a high brick wall, thick with leafy vines. The boy went up it like a cat, leapt from the top to the street below, and bounded away into the shadows.
“Merda! ” cried Pliny, using a word he never used. “Centurion, the rest of you, follow me! Bring torches!” Moments later, they stood milling about on the street. “It’s hopeless, sir,” growled Valens, “this time of night.” “Martial,” Pliny confided, “when it comes to the dregs of humanity, you’re my oracle. Where would you go if you were Ganymede?” “Thank you so much. I’m afraid I agree with your centurion.” “The Circus Flaminius!” cried Pliny. “It’s not far from here. Hundreds of hiding places under those arches. Come on!”
They pelted down the street toward the colonnaded supports of the grandstands. Pliny, who hated exercise of any sort, was breathless by the time they reached it. For an hour they prowled the darkened arches, but turned up no one except prostitutes and homeless beggars, who all denied having seen a running youth.
“And where to now, sir?” asked Valens, a hint of insubordination in his voice.
Pliny leaned against a wall and mopped his perspiring face. ???
Tight-lipped, Lucius bent over his writing desk.
To Marcus Ganeus, greetings. He scratched the words with his stylus on a pair of waxed tablets. Ganymede will come to you tonight, seeking shelter. You will oblige me by killing him and disposing of the body. You’ll be well paid. L.
He bound the leaves together and handed the packet to a slave. “Hide this under your tunic as you go out, the soldier mustn’t see it. Here’s where you’re to take it, listen carefully.”
Suspended over the doorway of an establishment near the Laurentine Gate, half way across the city, a carved, red-painted prick and balls swung to and fro in the wind. Beneath it, a sign proclaimed this the Temple of Eros. Cleaner than most of the male brothels in Rome, it catered to a genteel clientele. A slim figure stumbled through the door. “Who are you, then?” The shrewd-eyed man behind the desk looked up sharply. Ganymede stopped in confusion. “Where’s Marcus Ganeus?” “Doesn’t own the place any more, I do. What’s your business with him?” “I-I used to work here, I want to come back. Put me in a room, I’ll make money for you.”
“That good, are you? You look too old to me. Step closer. Why, you’re wearing a collar! ‘Fugio tene me-I’m running away, catch me.’ No, my friend, out you go. City prefect would close me down in a minute for harboring a runaway.” “Please…” “You want me to call the Night Watch?” The boy ran out.
Crouched in a stinking alley not far from the brothel, he twisted and tugged uselessly at the iron collar until his skin was raw and tears ran silently down his cheeks.
A quarter of an hour later, Lucius’ slave knocked at the same door and asked to deliver a message to Marcus Ganeus. Now the brothel owner’s curiosity was aroused. “I’m him, give it to me.” He tossed the slave a copper coin.
The proprietor of the Temple of Eros wasn’t much of a reader, but he got the gist of the message. His eyebrows lifted in surprise.
Hours passed, and Ganymede was hungry. He’d tried to scavenge for scraps in a heap of refuse behind a popina, but snarling, yellow-eyed dogs had driven him off. Now he shrank into the recess of a doorway, the entrance to a crumbling insula that rose six stories above street. He knew they would be looking for him and that he must get off the streets before daybreak. The top of this building, he reckoned, commanded a view of the brothel. Lucius would come there for him as soon as it was safe. Lucius wouldn’t fail him. He must wait and watch.
He crept up the rotting stairway, intending to hide on the roof. When he reached the topmost story a better opportunity presented itself. Peering through the tattered rag that served as a door, he saw that the apartment had suffered a fire; the walls were charred and the roof was half open to the sky. There wasn’t a stick of furniture in the place, but propped against the wall, scabby legs sticking out before her, sat an old crone. Her head lolled to one side, a wine jug lay in her lap.
“You come to see me, darlin’?” she croaked. “Cost you two coppers, ’at’s all.”
It was the work of a moment to strangle her. Then Ganymede hunkered down by the window to wait.
The search party had blundered down one dark alley after another in the neighborhood of the Circus until, at last, even Pliny was ready to give up. The night air was sultry, heavy with threatening rain. Sweat pooled in the hollows of Pliny’s eyes, trickled down his neck.
“Where in Hades are we?” he demanded of no one in particular.
“As it happens,” replied Martial, “we are not very far from the house of some poet friends of mine. There’s always a party going on. Come along, enjoy some bad wine, good company, and better verses than Statius ever wrote. Your centurion can see you home when you’ve had enough.”
“The last thing in the world I want to do right now is go to a soiree,” said Pliny testily. “ Mehercule, I should have been home two hours ago. Calpurnia will be worrying herself sick.”
But the poet persisted and, at last, Pliny yielded. “But only for half an hour.”
Valens and his men repaired to a tavern down the street to wait.
Answering to Martial’s knock, the door was opened by a tipsy young man, naked to the waist, whose long hair tumbled over his face. The room behind him was dark and smoky with incense; flutes shrilled a wild melody, castanets clattered, dancers whirled in a candlelit haze.
“This isn’t a poetry reading, this is a bacchanal!” Pliny sputtered. But Martial applied a firm hand to his back and propelled him inside.
“You there, boy, fill a goblet for my friend and me,” Martial shouted to a slave over the commotion of voices. The poet tossed his off at a gulp. “Come meet my friends.” He plunged into the crowd of revelers, holding tight to Pliny’s elbow lest he escape. “Mind where you step.” Tangled like crabs in a sack, bodies sprawled and writhed upon cushions-men, women, boys, creatures of ambiguous sex, sleek and oiled cinaedi in gaudy pantomime masks, and battle-scarred gladiators all together. A miasma of perfume, sweat, and the ranker smells of love engulfed them.
“Fancy seeing you here, old man!” An elderly senator, whose private life was said to be beyond reproach, tugged at Pliny’s cloak, grinning foolishly from the floor while a naked girl tousled his white hairs.
Martial led the way through a succession of rooms until the sounds of laughter and clapping hands drew them to a small garden at the rear of the house, where torches flared amid deep shadows.
“Ho, Nepos, is that you?” cried Martial. “And Cerialis? And Priscus, too?”
The three poets occupied a bench while a clutch of admirers lay on the grass at their feet. “Glycera, Telesphorus, Hyacinthus, Thais, Thalia,” Martial seemed to know them all.
“Who’s your friend?”
“This is Gaius, a lover of poetry.” Mercifully, Martial omitted the rest of Pliny’s name. “Goblet empty already, Gaius? Here, someone fill him up.”
