Bruce Macbain - Roman Games

“That’s an old story in our city,” Pliny sighed. “A son with a living father possesses nothing of his own, can’t sell anything to raise money, can’t legally borrow money, but they all do anyway. And then they wait for father to die.”

“And sometimes, if father is tiresomely long-lived, they don’t wait,” Martial concluded the thought. “I’m told he begged his father to free him from patria potestas or, at least, raise his allowance, and the old man refused. Now, of course, that’s all changed. Lucius is his own man at last.” Martial paused and moistened his throat with more wine, enjoying the attention of Pliny and the freedmen, whose eyes were riveted on him. “And as for Turpia Scortilla, her case is more interesting. Did you know she’s not his wife?”

“What are you saying, she’s only a concubina?”

“Exactly. Her father was a stable hand for the Greens, she grew up in the Circus, started out as a bare-back rider and acrobat, if you can believe it. Yes, quite an athlete, our Scortilla: handstands on a galloping horse during the intermissions between races. From there she worked her way up to high-class courtesan. She was some courtier’s girlfriend, and burrowed her way into the palace, where she made herself a fixture and eventually a nuisance. She drank too much and made scenes. A nasty piece of work altogether. And she and Domitilla didn’t get on at all. Which is interesting, isn’t it, in light of that lady’s recent condemnation for atheism. Anyway, Scortilla wanted the wealth and status a senator could provide, and Verpa, who was recently divorced, fancied her. She was beautiful once, in a brittle sort of way, and she got her hooks into him. Of course, the Julian Laws don’t permit a senator to marry a woman with a background like hers, so she settled for being his concubine.”

“But I gather,” said Pliny, “that they haven’t been intimate for years. Why didn’t Verpa break it off when she no longer pleased him?”

“Probably because she knows all his secrets. She’s not an absolutely stupid woman, and she amuses herself with the slaves just as he does. Those eight strapping German litter bearers of hers? It’s said that they carry her all day and she carries them all night. Say, that’s rather neat, isn’t it? I must make a verse of that.”

“My good man,” Pliny said in a tone that approached awe. “How on earth do you know all this?”

“Scandal is my stock in trade,” Martial smiled modestly. “Everything is meat for a satirist, and ‘smoke,’ my friend, is everywhere if you have a nose for it. I swim in waters where you would not dip your toe, if I may mix my metaphors.”

“And so you think…”

“I don’t think anything. Probably it was this Jewish brute after all. But I would like to hear more as you carry on your investigation. It’s food for a satirist. Perhaps occasionally over one of your excellent dinners we might exchange thoughts?”

“Why, I should like nothing better, my dear Martial. You’re a gift from the gods! With your assistance I will get to the bottom of this business. Shall we say tomorrow at this hour?”

“I’m honored by your confidence, sir.” The poet heaved an inward sigh of relief and vowed an offering to Bacchus. That was dinner taken care of for the next few days! ???

The tenth hour of the night.

In a corner of the temple compound in the Campus Martius, almost under the shadow of the great Isis temple itself, a passerby might observe a shop sign with a painting of the mummified Osiris, brother-husband of the Queen of Heaven. Within the cluttered workshop, the curious visitor would notice a cage with an elderly ibis, its beak tucked under its shabby wing, a stuffed crocodile, a pair of somnolent cobras, a bale of linen, a nested pile of caskets, and jars containing various unguents. The odor of camphor, resin, and myrrh hung like a fog in the small workroom. But Nectanebo used none of these in his work. Their only purpose was to impress the temple trade, who were directed to his establishment by Alexandrinus, the priest of Anubis, in return for a share of his fees. Quite a satisfactory arrangement really. And this was only the beginning, for Alexandrinus had plans to enlarge the embalming works and Nectanebo intended to be a part of that. He had latched onto a good thing. Until lately, Roman worshippers of Isis had cremated their dead like everyone else, but in just the year since he’d set up shop, with the backing of the temple, Nectanebo’s exotic services were beginning to catch on.

Of course, it was all a sham. The ancient ritual of mummification was supposed to take half a dozen men seventy days to complete-you could read that in Herodotus. But nobody these days had time for that. Nectanebo had been given a mere five days to prepare the body of the murdered devotee. Well, they couldn’t expect miracles, then, could they? Scoop out the guts, stuff in a lot of sawdust and rags soaked in cheap oil, shovel on some salt, wind the wrappings, none too carefully, and nail a lid on the casket. By the time the smell got too bad the thing would be safely in its tomb. Of course, in this unseasonable heat they’d been having lately…

Nectanebo was lean as a bone and had the waxy skin of a man who seldom saw daylight. His kohl-rimmed eyes narrowed, he bent his shaven head close over the corpse. He had rolled it over on its back on the stone draining slab and was preparing to slice open the abdomen. He pursed his lips, puzzled. For him this was the reward. He had been hired by Alexandrinus because he knew how to keep his mouth shut about certain things that went on in the temple, but he was a doctor by training, not an undertaker. He had closed up shop early yesterday, as soon as he’d returned from Verpa’s house, and had done nothing but dissect since then: peeling away layers of fat, tracing veins and tendons, probing the puckered knife wounds that covered the man’s back. There was something very odd there; he didn’t know what to make of it. And now this. His nose twitched with excitement.

“Here, what’s this, then?” he spoke aloud to the sleepy little slave who sat beside him and whose job, performed with a minimum of effort, was to wave a horse-hair whisk at the cloud of buzzing flies that hovered over them. Holding the lamp closer, Nectanebo peered and poked at the little, livid bump which was already turning from purple to black. “By the beard of Ptah, most peculiar.” It looked for all the world like a nasty bee sting. Nectanebo frowned in thought. “Now, how in the world does a man get a bee sting in a place like that?”

Beyond Nectanebo’s workshop the columns of the great temple rose up black against the midnight blue of the sky. Before the temple stretched a broad courtyard flanked by porticos of lotus-stalk columns under whose eaves inert figures lay curled on papyrus mats, men and women indiscriminately. One could hear the collective sigh of their breathing. Now and then, one would moan or stir in his sleep. Serpents glided silently among them, tongues flicking out, touching eyelids, bringing dreams. Incense hung heavy in the moist night air.

The only illumination was the pale glow of oil lamps set upon the ground by each sleeper’s head. The priests of the temple kept watch throughout the night, some resting on stools, others bending over the recumbent figures, those who were restless, whose dreams wouldn’t come-touching, whispering incantations, assuring them that the compassionate Mistress of the Universe and her consort were with them and would heal them of their gout, their headache, their infertility. Attending were the priests of Isis, of Serapis, of Thoth; and the priest of Anubis-Alexandrinus-his head covered by the towering jackal mask, long-snouted and sharp-eared, painted black on one side and gold on the other. Through small eye-holes in the long neck he peered into the darkness.