studious,” Pliny grunted as he carried another armload to the table, “when, compared to him, I am the laziest of men. At his death he left the world over fifty volumes of history, nearly a dozen on grammar and oratory, one hundred sixty miscellaneous notebooks for which I’ve been offered a small fortune, and of course, the Historia Naturalis, in thirty-seven volumes, comprising twenty thousand facts gathered from two thousand books by one hundred forty-six Roman and three hundred twenty-seven foreign authors!”
Martial looked on, bemused, and felt that he was, at last, beginning to understand this man. How might it crush a boy’s soul to have been raised in the shadow of that Titan of Tedium!
Pliny sat down and mopped the sweat from his forehead. When he recounted what Diaulus had told him, the poet’s eyebrows shot up and his eyes shone with wicked glee.
“And what would your uncle have thought of your marshalling all his scholarship just to save a gang of slaves from the executioner?”
“I’m sure he would have thought I’d lost my mind. I half agree with him.”
At that moment the mountain of volumes collapsed and scrolls in their cylindrical capsules rolled every- which-way across the floor.
It seemed the librarians had never gotten around to affixing labels to all the capsules. On hands and knees, the two men searched for the index volume, unwinding scroll after scroll. The poet glanced here and there among the yards of unwound papyrus that snaked across the polished floor… contact with a menstruating woman will drive a dog mad…a statue of a woman by Praxiteles was so lifelike that a man attempted to have intercourse with it… amber is formed from the urine of lynxes…a man with eyesight so keen he could see the tiniest details at a distance of a hundred and twenty-three miles…the entire Iliad inscribed upon a nutshell…the Arimaspi who have only one eye in the middle of their foreheads…the Megasthenes who, like serpents, have slits in place of nostrils…
“I’ve got the index,” called Pliny from a far corner of the hall. “Yes. Here we are. He treats of poisons in chapter forty-one of Book Eight, and again in Book Twenty-seven, chapter twenty-two.” “Eight’s over here,” yelled Martial, catching his friend’s excitement. “Good, I just had…Where was it? Here it is, Twenty-seven.” Each of them rolled and unrolled a volume, running his finger down the columns of crabbed writing.
“This may be something,” said Martial. “Barbarians hunt panthers by means of meat smeared with a poison called aconitum. Goes on to say the beasts die from almost instantaneous strangulation!”
“Here I’ve found it too,” announced Pliny from his corner. “‘Aconitum, panther-strangler…quickest of all poisons if the genitals are merely touched by it…’ The genitals! That’s it! We’ve got it!”
The poet nodded excitedly. “Poison is a woman’s weapon. And remember, Scortilla’s the one who wanted the body wrapped up like a parcel. Why else but to hide that mark! Picture it. She enters his bedroom, rekindles the flame, arouses him, and as she delights and distracts him, she kills him! What an epigram this will make! Who but Scortilla could do something so shameless? She must have held the cork end between her teeth as she bent over him, like some fanged viper! Scortilla, you offer to suck me-I fly!
Wise Pliny’s discovered the truth.
I’ve no wish, Scortilla, like Verpa to die
From the bite of your venomous tooth!
Just off the top of my head, you know.”
“Very droll,” said Pliny. “You can recite it to the lady in person.” ???
Scortilla lay stretched on a couch in her bedroom, where she spent most of her days now. She held a wine cup; the liquid sloshed and spattered her gown as she stirred. She looked at Pliny with unfocused eyes, which first showed bewilderment, then hostility, and finally fear. He remembered again his military appearance. Did she think he had come to kill her? Well, so much the better; it would loosen her tongue.
“Turpia Scortilla, I am here to charge you with suspicion of murder in the death of Sextus Ingentius Verpa.” He tossed the bundle on the floor and jerked the wrapper away. Iarbas, crouched in a corner, let out a cry in his uncouth language and threw himself at his monkey’s little corpse.
“You recognize him, I trust,” said Pliny with his sternest expression. “We found him in Verpa’s bedroom, he had punctured his hand with this.” He thrust the needle in her face, observing how she flinched. “The poor creature died in agony, just as Verpa did. Diaulus-Nectanebo to you-will swear in court that the monkey’s wound is identical to the one he showed us on Verpa’s flesh. No doubt, you purchased the poisoned needle at some potioner’s shop, we’ll find it. Come now, you may as well confess.”
“I know nothing of poisons!” she croaked, shrinking back on the couch.
“Oh, but Scortilla,” Lucius purred from where he stood behind Pliny, “you visit the magicians and amulet sellers all the time. Don’t those same shops deal in deadlier goods?”
She turned on him savagely, “You lying little shit! You’d say anything to ruin me.” Her anger drove out fear. “You can’t prove anything, vice-prefect. Why would I have done such a thing?”
He knew perfectly well why she had done it, but he bit his tongue and kept silent. Somehow, she and the priest had cajoled or tricked Verpa, or actually tampered with the will, so that they could spend that legacy together. But he dare not say so after the emperor’s warning last night. But even if he couldn’t bring the will into it, he could still prosecute her for murder.
“We’ll discuss your motive later.”
“I know why she did it, and I’ll say so even if you won’t.” This was Lucius. Pliny shot him a warning look.
Scortilla smelled uncertainty. “Very well. You won’t tell me why. Then how am I supposed to have done this deed?”
That, of course, was the question that Pliny and Martial had been debating all the way from the library.
“You may have used your wiles on Pollux to let you in.”
“My ‘wiles.’ On that virgin! The stupid ox hated me. I tried seducing him once years ago, just for something to do. He rejected me! Me! Verpa was quite amused when Pollux confessed to him.”
“Then, you entered the same way Ganymede did.”
“What? Through the window!” she nearly howled.
“It’s not impossible,” Martial said. “Once upon a time you used to do handsprings on the back of a galloping horse. A former acrobat, one who hasn’t grown fat in retirement, might have managed it. I wonder what passed through Verpa’s mind when he awakened out of a deep sleep to find you poised over his privates? But I don’t imagine you gave him much time to think, did you?”
Scortilla stared for a long moment in silence. And then, without warning, her shoulders heaved and tears started down her cheeks, making tracks in the dead-white powder. “So clever, aren’t you, both of you? Well, I’m sorry once again to disappoint you. I did not creep through that window on these! With a swift motion she gathered her gown in both hands and pulled it up to her thighs. “Look now at what I hide even from my lovers, hide because I will not be pitied.”
In spite of himself, Pliny took a step back. The woman’s knees were swollen, misshapen knobs of bone. Hopelessly arthritic.
“Aren’t they pretty, Vice Prefect? They’re the price an athlete pays. And the pain is unbearable. No medicine, no amulet relieves it, not even the compassionate Isis to whom I pray daily. Only wine mixed with opium-which I buy from the potioners, yes-dulls it enough so that I can live my life as I wish to. And so I drink all day long, and if I stumble people like you despise me for a drunkard. Well, I prefer that. And no one, up until this moment, has ever seen me weeping for the girl I once was.”
“Turpia Scortilla, you will consider yourself under house arrest and report personally to my centurion twice every day,” said Pliny, grim-faced.
“Oh, spoken like a true policeman, vice-prefect! Never let mere facts get in your way!” Her voice was heavy with scorn.
“Yes, well…,” murmured Martial when they were on the street again. “I think we could both do with a nice bath, don’t you? Cool our heads.”
But Pliny waved him off angrily.
At home, Pliny went straight to his tablinum and locked himself in. He was in no fit mood for company, not even his wife’s. He had left the dead monkey where it lay on the floor but he had had the presence of mind to bring the needle home with him wrapped in its napkin. This he locked in a small iron casket. Then he sank onto a chair with his head in his hands. Presently, he sent for some food and wine. He drank a glass. Then another. And another. He was defeated. The Games would be over in six days. Possibly, Lucius could be charged with some sort of attempted murder. As for Scortilla-nothing. No means, no motive that he could mention without angering the
