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  In another mansion, across the city, the same obligatory morning ritual was in progress.

  Gaius Plinius Secundus, Roman senator, lion of the court of probate, currently acting vice-prefect of the city, arose well-rested from his bed and took his breakfast: the bread dipped, not drowned, in wine, the pear neatly sectioned, a few figs, and all arranged on the tray with his napkin folded just so, the way he liked it.

  This small repast over, a slave buckled on his red leather senatorial shoes while another, an elderly man of dignified bearing, commenced to wrap him in a dazzling, purple-striped toga, not releasing him until he was satisfied that every fold was perfect. This was the man’s single job and he performed it with great state. Even on a sweltering September morning like this one, the ridiculous garment was mandatory for Romans at the salutatio. So the mos maiorum, the way of the ancestors, commanded: those ancient, grim shepherd-warriors who could think of no more fitting badge of citizenship than to wrap themselves in a woolen blanket from neck to ankle and damn the weather. Already, his clients gathered, in the atrium, were itching and sweating in their own togas, and all, patron and clients alike, would have to endure this for an hour.

  What an inexpressibly tedious chore, thought Pliny to himself, not for the first time, as one by one the family freedmen together with a clamorous multitude of flatterers, place-seekers, seedy literary gentlemen, and the merely hungry, bustled forward with hearty looks to kiss his hand and receive their food basket and a few coins.

  As though from a great distance, Pliny heard himself murmuring inanities: “What a fine young fellow! Do you go to school?” He smiled benignly on a squirming boy thrust at him by an eager father.

  A chore, but dignitas demanded it. A man of his position must have clients thronging his atrium, and clients must have patrons to defend them in the courts, whisper in a magistrate’s ear, commission a poem, dower a homely daughter. The morning salutatio was one of the duties pertaining to rank, and Pliny was a man who took his rank and his duty seriously. And every so often, he reminded himself, there came along some promising young man from his native district, just setting his foot on the path to advancement, who deserved the counsel, wealth, and connections that an up-and-coming senator like Pliny could offer.

  Though he ached to stand up and massage his neck, Pliny stifled a yawn and kept his stately pose, fondly conscious of the eyes that admired him from behind the door curtain—the dear girl, so curious, so shy. He squared his shoulders and looked magisterial.

  At last, the clock slave called the second hour of the day and the crowd began to shuffle out. He watched their backs retreating through the vestibule and out into the street. Fewer clients nowadays, he reflected, sought their patron’s advice or his blessing on their endeavors as they once had done in the old republican days. Now they came mostly for the handout, the money that was just enough to keep food in their bellies for another day. They would all be back again tomorrow, and the whole tedious degrading routine gone through again. At least, with the Senate and courts in recess, he would not need to be accompanied by a horde of them throughout his day. What a relief!

  As the door closed behind the last of them, a plump young girl emerged from the side chamber where she had been hiding. She looked up at him with a grave and gentle gaze, full of love and admiration. With her own hands she unwound his sweat-soaked toga and draped a light linen cloak over his shoulders. Pliny held her round chin between his fingers and gave her a tender, almost fatherly, kiss on the forehead.

  But this fond moment was interrupted by a female slave bursting into the atrium, baskets of vegetables spilling from her arms. “It’s all over the market, Master,” the woman gasped. “Senator Verpa’s been murdered! Hacked to bloody pieces, they say. Troopers from the City Battalions are there already and have the slaves under guard. Thanks to the son, they say, not a single one got away…” She stopped to catch her breath.

  There followed a moment of stunned silence while Pliny’s slaves stood stock still and exchanged fleeting looks. The girl turned wide eyes on Pliny. “Husband, what does it mean? Are we…?”

  He checked her with a stern look. “Now Calpurnia, you’re not to think about it at all. There’s simply nothing to be afraid of. Do you hear me, my dear? That’s better. Helen, take your mistress into the garden and fetch her kitten or her sparrow or something, you know what to do. Go along, my darling, and put this completely out of your mind, completely out of your mind. You know you mustn’t excite yourself, not now.”

  “Gaius, I’m your wife, I’ve a right…”

  But he leveled his gaze at her, and the girl reluctantly allowed herself to be led away by her nurse. Calpurnia Fabata was fourteen years old, less than half her husband’s age. And she was pregnant with their first child. Pliny watched her with anxious concern. A pregnancy could be difficult in one so young. Her morning sickness had now stretched into the sixth month, and her doctor insisted that excitement and mental stress must be avoided. In an age when Romans of his class had to be bribed by the government to procreate, Pliny longed for children.

  Swift-footed rumor raced through the city. By mid-morning there was no one in Rome who hadn’t heard of Verpa’s murder. And, as always happens, exaggeration flourished. The isolated murder of one master, and a notoriously cruel one at that—he was once said to have thrown a miscreant slave into a pool of carnivorous eels—had now swelled to the first act in a bloody slave insurrection. Romans, reminding each other that fully one-third of the city’s population was of servile origin, felt stirrings of panic.

  By midafternoon the wilder reports had begun to subside. Nonetheless, the killing of even one master by his slaves chilled Roman hearts. Living in a sea of slaves—slaves to dress them, feed them, bathe them, brush their teeth, wake them, put them to bed, carry them, read to them, teach them, amuse them, sleep with them, even remember their friends’ names for them—Romans had a queasy fear of them. A man had no secrets from his slaves. They were everywhere in the house, silent shadows, seeing, hearing things that might interest a tyrannical emperor and cost their master his life.

  And whenever a slave, driven beyond endurance, turned on his master, Romans responded with hysterical savagery, for this was every slave owner’s nightmare. The Law was explicit. All the slaves in the house must be punished alike. Could one slave alone plot his master’s death without letting a word slip to the others? Could he procure the weapon, creep unnoticed past the night-guard, open the door to the chamber, carry in a light, do the deed, and make off all in total silence and secrecy? Impossible. Every slave in the house, it must be assumed, knew what was afoot and could have reported it. To put it simply, no slave was innocent of his master’s death, and the whole familia without distinction must be executed. “Are not some punished unjustly?” asked a few. “What of it? Unless we keep them in constant fear, we are at their mercy.”

  Even the mild Pliny, who had never raised his hand or spoken a harsh word to a slave in all his decorous life, could not suppress a shudder.

  Chapter Three

  The day before the Nones of Germanicus.

  The ninth hour of the day.

  The bronze gates of the palace swung shut behind them with a clash of metal. A moment later the figure of Parthenius, the imperial chamberlain, preceded by a cloud of scent, strode toward them with arms outspread. Vast sheets of colored silk draped his whale’s body, rings glittered on his fingers and thumbs, the crisp curls of his hair appeared to be sculpted in silver. He performed, as well as his belly permitted, a low bow.

  “What a pleasure to welcome all of you, my lords and ladies,” the chamberlain panted. “A rare evening is in store for you. If you will follow me, please.”

  The guests made the minimal reply that etiquette demanded. Roman senators despised these imperial freedmen. Spawned in the gutters of Antioch and Alexandria and sold as children into the emperor’s service, they wielded more real power than any senator did. Parthenius, for exampl
e, oversaw the emperor’s domestic arrangements, woke him in the morning, and all but tucked him in at night. At dinner, in the bath, even in the latrine, some said, he never left the emperor’s side. A good word from Parthenius was worth much gold.

  Preceded by this great man, the dinner guests filed into the Hall of Audience. The heat of the streets never penetrated here. Pliny shivered in the marbled chill and felt goose bumps on his arms. The hall was empty now that the day’s business was done, but visitors were always taken this way for a good reason: the vast space was designed to awe. In this stupendous vaulted cavern a man was no more than an insect. Pliny had not been here for some months, and so it was with surprise that he noted a new feature. Disks of moonstone as big around as shields and polished like mirrors had been attached with brackets to the walls and columns wherever one looked. For what purpose, he could not imagine.

  From the great hall, their way lay through a splendid formal garden in whose center a sunken fountain shot jets of water high above their heads. Peacocks strutted past them on the path.

  “Chamberlain, have you forgotten where the emperor’s banquet hall is?” Several of the guests had stopped where the path divided and regarded Parthenius with amused contempt.

  “Our Lord and God,” he answered, breathing heavily, “prefers a more intimate room tonight, as we are so small a party. Come this way, please.”

  Obediently they went through a door and down a succession of sloping corridors that turned and twisted until they had lost all sense of direction. And it seemed as if at every turn the corridor grew dimmer, dustier, quieter. Conversation died until there was only the shuffle of sandals and the wheezing and puffing of their guide to relieve the silence.

  “And just down these steps, my lords and ladies…” A flight of worn stone steps descended into a well of darkness. No, this was all wrong. There was no dining room in the bowels of the palace. The guests bunched together, turned round and found their retreat blocked by a dozen Praetorians who had come up silently behind them. Women turned to their husbands with wild, questioning looks. Pliny caught the city prefect’s eye, but his superior’s face, controlled through years of practice, told him nothing.

  “Before you, honored friends, gapes the Portal of Hades, the bourn from whence no man returns. Your Lord and God commands you to join him tonight in the realm of Pluto, his brother god.” Parthenius delivered this speech with the voice and gestures of an actor on the stage. Pliny breathed a silent prayer of thanks that he had not brought Calpurnia, though she had begged and pouted.

  The Praetorians took a menacing step forward, hands resting on the hilts of their swords. Among the guests, hearts froze but faces remained under control. It was crucial not to show fear, not to betray the smallest doubt about the emperor’s good will. A frightened man was a guilty man.

  “I’ll lead the way,” Atilius Regulus called out. “Hercules wasn’t afraid to visit Hades, and I think I’m as good a man as he!” The rest of them took up his light-hearted tone as best they could. There was simply nothing else to do.

  “I pray I don’t meet my first husband down there,” cackled Arulena Rustica, the much-married wife of a general.

  “I think I’ll just stay there until my creditors go away” cried the gourmand Gavius Apicius, who had squandered a king’s ransom on oysters.

  Their lips twisted in desperate hilarity, the guests descended, half-stumbling, into the black pit. One elderly senator turned and tried to claw his way up again, but was borne down by the weight of the others. At the foot of the stairs, moved by invisible hands, a door swung inward on screeching hinges

  “Nice dog, Cerberus!” joked someone, but there was no laughter.

  They were plunged into darkness. Suddenly Pliny could not breathe, and the blood pounded in his temples. Whichever way he turned, other bodies pressed against him. He had no idea where the stairs were. The air stank of burnt charcoal. It was obvious they were in the furnace room which, in wintertime provided currents of hot air to warm the floors above.

  Then a line of tiny lights appeared in the blackness. As Pliny watched spellbound, the lights advanced in a double column, drew nearer, divided and formed a circle around the huddled guests. When they were just an arm’s length away, he saw in astonishment that each was a candle held by a little boy, who was entirely naked and black.

  “Your name, master?” whispered a little candle-bearer. The accent was of the Roman streets, not Africa—the child’s color was painted on.

  Pliny croaked a reply. In the crepuscular glow of the gathered candles, rows of chairs could just be made out, and beside each a dark object of some sort, standing about waist high. The child took his hand and led him to a chair. The candle dipped and gave its light to an oil lamp on a stand, the sort of lamp that hangs in tombs. Then pointing to the slab-shaped thing beside the chair, the child commanded Pliny in a piping voice to read his fate. All around him other demon-children were doing likewise and other guests were helplessly obeying. Pliny heard their gasps and stifled cries and a rising commotion of angry and frightened voices. He examined the thing, touched it. It was a plank in the shape of a gravestone and on it was carved his name.

  From somewhere a double-flute began to play a funeral dirge and the naked boys, gliding like phantoms, performed a weird circle dance, weaving patterns in and out with their glowing candles. Now black-clad servants appeared, carrying tables with trays on them which they set before each place. Pliny peered at his. Black dishes containing black fruits and flowers—offerings to the dead. When a hand touched his shoulder he nearly leapt straight out of his chair. But it was the city prefect. “Ready to do your duty,” Fulvus whispered into his ear, and then moved away.

  Now, over the shrilling of the flute, a disembodied voice began to chant Homer’s dismal verses which describe the pitiful, squeaking shades of the dead. There was no mistaking that voice. Frightened whispers hissed around him.

  “Tell him, Publius, for the sake of the children!”

  “It’s a trick, shut up!”

  “Tell him!”

  Other voices: “We adore your image every day at sunrise, Caesar!”

  “We shut our doors to our son and his republican friends.”

  “We rejoiced when the criminals, Senecio and Priscus, were put to death.”

  “And when you drove the rabble of philosophers from the city.”

  “O, Lord and God, spare us,” a woman beside Pliny sobbed. “We never hid the traitor, Musonius, in our house, never! Torture our slaves, they’ll tell you who…”

  Her husband clapped his hand over her mouth, but not before Pliny recognized her voice. He recognized them all, and in that instant, realizing why he was here, he groaned with shame. More guests leapt to their feet, upsetting the lamp stands and “tombstones” with a clatter, and all trying to be heard at once. They were innocent. They swore it on their children’s heads. But they knew who his secret enemies were, if he would only spare their lives…!

  Then one voice made itself heard above all the others. “Hush, all of you! Silence, I say! Caesar, this excellent joke is worthy of your divine wit. Why, our friends who are not here tonight will feel themselves slighted when we tell them what fun we’ve had! But I fear some of your guests, and particularly the ladies, are taking it entirely too seriously. It would be unkind to encourage them further. I, for one, am hungry and want my dinner.” The speech ended with a forced laugh.

  Old Cocceius Nerva, thought Pliny. An ornament of the Senate for more than forty years. Smooth, adaptable, a friend of the dynasty or, at least, not an enemy. He had never, before tonight, been remarkable for courage, but this was a brave thing he was doing.

  There followed a tense silence which lasted until Pliny thought he could not bear it another moment, and then a trap door opened above them, letting in a shaft of light, and the distinguished lords and ladies, the flower of Rome’s aristocracy, made an unseemly dash for the stairs.

  Above ground, the Praetorians were gone and
Parthenius, smiling blandly, congratulated them all on their return from dead. But his hooded eyes said something else. Pliny stole a look at his companions. Women, bewigged and bejeweled, tried to repair tear-streaked makeup. The men avoided each other’s eyes, but all gazed at the tall, stooped figure of Nerva, their savior.

  As though nothing were amiss, Parthenius, clasping his hands and smiling wetly, led them back the way they had come to the entrance to “Jupiter’s Banquet Hall” for the real dinner. Here, servants in white livery removed their shoes and led them in groups to their tables. Pliny noted that he, the city prefect and the informer Regulus, their companion of the evening, were each placed at a different table—to continue eavesdropping, of course. Pliny felt sick to his stomach and prayed that his face did not give him away. Had things come to this? A dynasty that had started off so fair? He would march into the prefect’s office tomorrow at daybreak and resign his post.

  It had been only that morning, coming on the heels of the excitement over Verpa, that a message had arrived from the Prefecture.

  “To Gaius Plinius Secundus, greetings from Aurelius Fulvus. Your presence is commanded at the palace at the ninth hour for dinner. Wives are particularly invited.” Pliny raised an eyebrow at this; as a rule, the emperor had little use for senatorial wives. “We will meet on the steps and go in together. Be prompt. Farewell.”

  Curt and faintly unpleasant, as usual. Pliny disliked his superior. Some months ago he had been plucked from his civil law practice and asked to assist the Prefecture in clearing away a great backlog of criminal cases. Not long afterward, one of the deputy prefects, a man tortured by ulcers, committed suicide, inconveniencing everyone, and Pliny was moved into his position. Only for a few days, he was assured, but days had stretched into weeks with no end in sight. It was another feather in his cap, no doubt, but the job was irksome.