Bruce Macbain - The Bull Slayer

He turned and walked away, came back. “You understand if this becomes public I will have to divorce you. How can I ever trust you again? How long will it be before you make a fool of me with some other man? How long? ” He grabbed her by the arm, dragging her from the chair, his fingers sinking into her flesh all the way to the bone. He raised his hand to strike her.

“Yes, hit me, go ahead! Kill me if you like. When my heart was broken you sent Marinus to take my blood. Take it now, take all of it. I don’t want to live any longer. I’m no use to you. And him , I mean nothing to him. He treated me like one of his whores-you say she was watching us? I’m not surprised. And when we’re caught he runs away.”

Pliny flung her back. “If you hate him why won’t you tell me his name?”

“So you can banish him, kill him? No, despicable as he is he doesn’t deserve that. He didn’t do anything I didn’t let him do.”

Pliny felt suddenly empty, eviscerated, no more than a shell, without nerve, without strength. Calpurnia was wrong-he was not a killer, not even a wife beater. But someone must be punished. “You didn’t do this alone,” he said. “Ione helped you. She‘s been your go-between. By the gods, I’ll get the truth out of her.”

“Leave her alone, Gaius, please. She only-”

But he rushed out into the corridor, calling a slave and sending him to fetch her. A moment later Ione appeared, with Zosimus at her side. They had been next door in their room, waiting for the summons.

“Zosimus, leave us,” Pliny said. “This doesn’t concern you.”

“I beg your pardon, Patrone.” He lowered his eyes. “What concerns my wife concerns me.” It was the first time Zosimus had ever opposed his master’s wish. It took all his courage.

Pliny turned on Ione. “Tell me the name of my wife’s lover, damn you.”

“Leave her alone, Gaius,” Calpurnia cried. “Don’t make her betray me.”

“Betray you ? She has violated the fides she owes me, her master. I can have her flung out into the street for this.”

“Will you send Zosimus away too, then?” Calpurnia shot back. “Or will you deprive him of his wife and child?”

“ Not Zosimus’ child.” Ione’s voice was shrill. She pointed a shaking finger at Pliny. “ His child! Tell her, Patrone, tell her or I will.”

Calpurnia stared at her husband wide-eyed, and instantly knew it was true. How could she not have noticed before the growing resemblance between little Rufus and Pliny? How could she not have understood his love for the boy?

He couldn’t meet her eyes. A different man would not have cared if he got a slave girl pregnant, and would not have expected his wife to care. But their marriage hadn’t been like that. He had been attracted often enough by slave women who would have been happy to share his bed, but he had always exercised the self-control that a man of his education should. And then he had bought Ione from a friend to be his wife’s maid and companion. And she reminded him powerfully of that slave woman in his uncle’s house who had initiated him when he was thirteen. And Ione was no innocent victim. She soon guessed the effect she had on him and teased him with it. Finally, one day it happened. It was a steamy summer’s day at his villa in Laurentum, and he had retired to his bedroom for the midday siesta. He had undressed to let what little breeze there was play over his naked body. Ione came into the room without knocking, claiming she was looking for her mistress. Was that a lie? He never knew for sure. But suddenly she was on the bed and in his arms and he was helpless to resist her.

But that was the only time. And two months later, when she told him that she was pregnant, he had hastily manumitted her and married her to Zosimus.

“Patrone?” Zosimus whispered. “Not my son?” His features twisted in pain. And it was like a dagger in Pliny’s heart.

“How long has this been going on, my dear husband?” Calpurnia’s voice was heavy with scorn. “She’s swelling again, is this one yours too?”

“I only wish it were!” Ione rounded on her like a tiger. “ You couldn’t give him sons but I could. I could have been his concubine, given him more sons, I could have been to him what you never can be-the mother of his children! Instead, he used me once and then gave me and our baby away-to him .” Her eyes slid to the wretched Zosimus.

Pliny sagged, his legs barely supporting him. “I see it now. You hate us. This is all about getting back at me. Such bitterness, so long concealed.”

Ione’s lip curled. “Oh master,” she sneered, “we slaves drink in dissembling with our mother’s milk. How else can we survive in your world?”

“And to pay me back for the wrong you think I did you you made my wife a whore?”

Ione scoffed, “She did that herself, I only helped, although she frightened me sometimes with the chances she took. And now see where we all are.”

Pliny drew a deep breath. “I ask you again, who is my wife’s lover?”

“Don’t!” Calpurnia screamed.

But Ione gave him a cunning half smile. “I’ll make a bargain with you, master. I’ll tell you his name if you promise not to put me out of the house-no, more than that, make me your concubine and acknowledge our son.”

“How dare you! I don’t bargain with my servants.”

“I’ll get it out of her, Patrone-” Zosimus, who had stood all the while as motionless as if the eye of a basilisk had turned him to stone, shot out a hand and seized his wife by the throat. “- if I have to strangle her.”

But Ione broke loose from his grip, raked his face with her nails, and bolted from the room, leaving the others to stare at each other in mute, unspeakable pain. A frozen tableau. There was no sound but the howling of the wind and a distant mutter of thunder. If some god had struck them all dead at that moment, they would have thanked him.

The 3rd day before the Kalends of December

“It isn’t easy for a man to talk about some things,” Pliny said. He gazed down at his breakfast table, the food untouched. “You understand?”

“I’m honored by your confidence.” Suetonius looked at his chief with sympathy. The man was unshaven, haggard, his color was bad. Plainly, he hadn’t slept all night.

“Well,” Pliny forced a weary smile, “you already know the worst. You have a way of knowing secrets, haven’t you?”

“I’d rather not know this one. I’ve never had a high opinion of women. Calpurnia was an exception.”

Pliny rested his forehead in his hand. “She’s an exceptional woman.”

They were quiet for a while.

“What is everyone saying?” Pliny asked.

“They sense something’s wrong. The wives, I gather, are desperate to find out what’s happened. Harpies. Vultures.”

“Well, they won’t learn it from Calpurnia.”

“What are you going to do with her?”

“She wants to go back to Italy, to her grandfather. He’s unwell and needs her. I’ve told her she can travel by the cursus publicus , but it will take some time to arrange. In the meantime, I’ve put her in another apartment, far from mine.”

“I mean, will you divorce her?” Suetonius looked a question at Pliny, waiting for an answer that didn’t come. “Of course, you needn’t if you don’t want to,” he went on. “As long as everyone’s discreet and the emperor doesn’t find out, the Augustan law on marriage needn’t be invoked. Sophronia won’t talk as long as we’re nice to her. And the lover, whoever he is, has apparently kept his mouth shut all along.”

“Whoever he is.”