“I’d rather he fill me up!” cackled an aging prostitute, asprawl on the ground in a pose that left nothing to the imagination.
“What, your ancient cunnus, Ligeia?” Martial shot back. “I don’t know why you even bother to depilate it anymore-seems to me rather like plucking the beard of a dead lion!” The revelers howled with laughter.
“Bastard!” Ligeia showed him the digitus infamis.
“Look, my friend has come here to listen to poetry, not to be propositioned by aging lupae. Here, make room for him on the bench and pass the wine jug. Nepos, give us one of your epigrams.”
After Nepos, they all in turn recited-wicked, cutting, scabrous verses. In the midst of the hilarity, Pliny observed a beautiful youth with hair like molten gold sit down beside Martial and put his arm around him. They kissed long and deeply. The celebrated Diadumenus, no doubt.
Meanwhile the jug went round and round, and Pliny kept finding his cup in need of refilling. Then he heard a new voice reciting-it was his own.
“Bawdy verse! Why, you old lecher!” Martial cried in delight. “Is that what’s on your mind when you’re looking so damned dignified?” “I smile, I laugh like other men.” Pliny was instantly defensive. “Of course you do!” Martial thumped him on the back. “I mean they’re nothing really, mere trifles.”
“You’re too modest! Put a laurel wreath on his head, someone- you’re one of us! You know, I always suspected there was a real poet inside there somewhere.”
At that moment Flaccus, yet another poet friend, joined the circle. He was out of breath. “Have you heard the news?” he said to Martial. “Papinius Statius is dead! The old boy croaked in the middle of dinner this evening.”
“Dead? Statius!” Martial kissed Flaccus, he kissed Diadumenus, he kissed Pliny. He threw his arms in the air and shouted to the heavens, “Tonight I am the happiest man on earth! Diadumenus has come back to me and Statius is dead! By the balls of Priapus, now comes my turn! I will be court poet now!”
His comrades joined in a chorus of “Hear, hear!” and “No one deserves it more than you.” And Pliny found himself as merry as any of them, although he did seem vaguely to recall that he had always liked Statius.
The jug continued to go round and, as the hour grew late, amorous pairs in various combinations of sexes were seen creeping off into the shadows.
Martial roused Pliny, who had fallen into a doze, with a jab in the ribs. “There’s a pretty youth over there,” he whispered. “Buttocks like firm pears, balls plucked and smooth as a baby’s.” He’s looking this way. Go on, my friend.” Pliny, in alarm, stood up on wobbly legs. “No, sorry, married man, don’t you know. Look, got to be going.” Martial pulled him back onto the bench. “It’s not like cheating on your wife.” “Never cared much for boy-love, to tell you the truth.”
Martial looked at his friend in amazement. “Really? Why ever not? Well, have a bit of the other, then. Ye gods, man, get down off your high horse!”
This virtuous prig, Martial thought. Would it make it easier to betray his patron if he first dirtied him a little? He signaled to a girl who wore long earrings and nothing else. She swayed toward them, moving her hips to the rhythm of the flutes and cymbals.
Pliny struggled, but his legs would not obey him.
The girl knelt at Pliny’s feet and looked up with liquid eyes. Her tongue darted out over her lips. Pliny trembled in every limb. He filled his hands with her thick, scented hair and drew her closer. He swelled, he grew. The music pounded in his head. The torches guttered and flared. He was a man, dammit, and it had been too long!
“Home to bed, sir?” Out on the street, Valens leered at the acting vice prefect. Enjoyable was it, sir? The poetry, I mean?” Pliny’s clothes were disarranged and drenched with scent, a laurel wreath was cocked over one eye, and he steadied himself with one hand against the house wall.
“What time d’you make it, Centurion?” He tried desperately to sound in command of himself.
Valens squinted at the stars. “Dawn in about two hours, I’d say, sir.”
With an inward groan, Pliny launched himself down the middle of the deserted street. Valens and his men, themselves rather the worse for drink, fell in on either side.
“Halt!” Pliny commanded, after they had gone a block or two. A street urinal stood before them. He had never deigned to use one before: common, smelly, unbecoming the dignity of a Roman senator.
“Something wrong, sir?” inquired Valens.
“Not at all, centurion, kindly wait a moment.” Pliny hitched up his tunic, unlimbered, and pissed-grandly, expansively, like a mountain torrent in the Piedmont-yes, even poetically-until he could not squeeze out another drop. He gave a contented sigh.
Valens couldn’t contain a furtive smile. “Feel better, sir?”
“Immensely, centurion. Let us proceed.”
At his front door, Valens handed him over to his slaves, hastily roused from bed. “No salutatio this morning, be off with you,” the centurion growled at a knot of sleepy clients, already gathered outside the door. “Have a good sleep, sir, and don’t worry about that filthy little cinaedus. We’ll find him.”
Still foggy with drink, Pliny allowed himself to be undressed and put to bed. If he had been less drunk, he might have noticed Calpurnia’s tear-streaked face peering from behind her bedroom door.
If he had been less drunk, he might also have noticed a man with a bandaged arm who watched from across the street as he entered his house.
Chapter Seventeen
The third day before the Ides of Germanicus. Day seven of the Games.
The third hour of the day.
Gaius Plinius moaned. He had a throbbing, behind his eyes, a vile taste in his mouth, and a troubled soul. He had sent the door slave off to fetch a basin of water and, moments later, his darling Calpurnia, her under lip quivering, had appeared with it in her own hands and meekly set it down on the wash-stand. She shot him a reproachful look and fled without saying a word.
He scoured his teeth fiercely with pumice and honey, which might expunge the sour taste of cheap wine, but the taste of guilt, never. What had come over him? Drunk as an owl! Rutting with some whore in the bushes! Could a brief association with vulgarians have brought him to this! If Martial should ever, ever mention this night again, he swore to himself, he would terminate their friendship at once.
It was all Verpa’s fault, of course. Damn the man for getting himself murdered! Today was almost the half- way point of the Games, time was running out, and he had accomplished nothing toward saving those sorry slaves from their fate.
He had begun to sense the tension among his own slaves too. They who had known nothing but kindness from him and who were always permitted to be lively and at ease, were now ominously silent. As always, by some mysterious telepathy, they knew what was going on and what would happen if Ganymede were to be caught alive and made to confess. That kind of crime, inspired by a slave’s sexual jealousy, allowed no appeal to extenuating circumstances. Ganymede and the whole familia would be hideously tortured and executed. Even Pliny’s beloved Zosimus avoided his eyes now and stumbled so much in his lunchtime recitation of Greek poetry that Pliny became quite vexed and sent him away.
What did they really think of him-these men and women who made his comfortable life possible? Could one of them be planning to kill him for some slight, some grudge, without betraying the slightest sign? He was shocked to find himself entertaining the idea even for a moment. But, once thought, it could not be unthought.
To distract himself, Pliny retired to his tablinum and worked all morning on his accounts and correspondence, which had piled up shockingly. The tenants on his Tuscan property were in arrears again, the architect whom he had commissioned to build a temple of Ceres on one of his estates had submitted his bill. Then there were papers to be drawn up manumitting his old nurse and giving her a small piece of land where she could spend her last days.
About midday, a slave came to announce that Centurion Valens awaited him in the atrium.
“Make your report, centurion,” said Pliny, as brisk and businesslike as he could manage. He would tolerate no familiarity from the man because of last night. But Valens’ manner was quite correct. Standing at attention and
