“Ah, well, actually no.” Pliny tried and failed to cover his embarrassment. “The emperor is much preoccupied these days; they all are, in fact. Don’t know why, really. Silly rumors of conspiracies. But we’ll see. In a few months I’m sure I can arrange something. In the meantime, Statius-well, you know he’s my friend.”
“Of course, Patrone, don’t trouble about it.” Martial looked away.
“Well, see you tomorrow.” ???
The second hour of the night.
The forecourt of the temple was silent but for the susurrus of breathing, the intermittent sighs and grunts of the sleepers, the dreamers. Behind his jackal mask, Alexandrinus’ eyes swept over them. Then one, a dark shadow against the wall, stirred, stood up, and came toward him, stepping carefully among the recumbent forms.
He hurried her into his private room. Her face was tear-streaked.
“I can’t stay there another night, Alex. He rants, he threatens to kill me, he’s going to challenge the will, he’s even talking about hiring that odious Pliny for his lawyer.” She clung to him.
With difficulty, the priest unlocked her arms and stepped back. “Calm yourself, my dear. Let Lucius say what he likes. The seal and the forged numeral were perfect! And the emperor will support us, if it comes to that. He’s a devotee and he has a financial interest in the will going unchallenged. We’ve won, do you understand? Isis is with us. Feel her power.” But Turpia Scortilla would not be reasoned with. “Lucius will kill me. He’s half out of his mind.” “He won’t. The house is full of soldiers, isn’t it? Let him threaten, he doesn’t dare do anything.” “Please, let me stay here in the temple with you. I can’t go back there.”
“Absolutely not. We can’t be seen together until all this dies down. Lucius would have grounds for challenging the will if he could prove something about us. We’re about to inherit two million. Just be patient a little longer.”
“Alex-Lord Anubis-don’t forget that it was I who got it for you. You won’t will you? I love you. Make love to me.”
But he took off the long-snouted mask and set it aside, exposing his beautiful skull. He wouldn’t play the lusty god with her tonight; he wasn’t in the mood.
Soon she left, walking with her head down and moaning softly. In the stillness of the night, it was a sound that Nectanebo, working late as usual in his embalming shop, was bound to hear.
Chapter Sixteen
The fourth day before the Ides of Germanicus. Day six of the Games.
The third hour of the night.
Pliny looked at him severely. “I asked you once before, boy, and I ask you again now. Did you, at the order of someone in this house, murder Sextus Verpa, your master?”
They stood in Verpa’s bedroom-Pliny and Martial; Valens and three of his men; Lucius, affecting an air of 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.