The Bull Slayer

CHAPTER Forty

The cave of Mithras.

The soldiers clapped each other on the back. They were sure to be rewarded for this! They had stumbled on its back door, in fact, which opened into a small chamber behind the bas relief of the bull-slaying. There they found a lamp on a stand, positioned so that its light would shine through holes drilled through the god’s eyes. The effect on worshippers must have been spectacular when, at some climactic moment in the ritual, one of the priests, concealed behind the relief, lit the lamp and the sun god’s eyes blazed in the darkened cave.

A quick search of the cave proper revealed nothing of interest, at least to these hard-bitten soldiers. No gold, no jewels. When they made their way through to the cave’s front entrance they found it so well camouflaged with bushes that you could have stood right next to it and not known it was there. They found they were only some two hundred paces away from the rear entrance, just around the curve of the hill and a little higher up.

The officer told his men to stay there and guard the place. “And I will take these two back to the city.” He led Calpurnia and her companion out into the open.

Calpurnia forced a smile. “What is your name?” she asked.

“Marcus Catulinus, ma’am. Optio in the third cohort.”

“Well, Marcus, just tell them you found the cave. You needn’t say anything about my friend and me. You’ll have my gratitude, you understand?”

“Ma’am, I can’t—”

At that moment, Agathon let out a curse and started to run, bounding down the hillside and dashing into the trees. Before anyone could make a move to stop him he was on his horse and galloping away.

Calpurnia sank to the ground with her face in her hands.

“Come now, lady,” the officer pulled her to her feet. “We’d best be off. I’ll ride your horse and you’ll sit behind me. I want no tricks.”

“Take your hands off me!” she screamed. “You’ll regret this!”

He looked at her not without a touch of pity. “That’s as may be.”

***

Two days later

Pliny stalked up and down the room, their bedroom, clenching and unclenching his hands, fighting to control himself. Calpurnia, small and miserable, huddled in a chair and followed him with her eyes. A winter storm had arrived the night before; Pliny had ridden through it without stopping. Outside, the morning was almost as dark as night and a high wind hurled sleet against the shutters. It was freezing in the room.

“Who is he? Who is this man you betrayed me with?” His voice was thick. He felt he could hardly breathe.

“I haven’t betrayed you, Gaius. Don’t be silly. We went sketching, he’s an artist, nothing happened. We thought the soldiers were brigands, we ran…” Her eyes pleading.

“Don’t lie to me! Tell me his name. You made love with him in his house. You were seen there by his hetaera. Did you know that? Suetonius knows, Sophronia knows, maybe the whole city knows. How could you do this to me? To us? You think you’re the wife of some shopkeeper that you can act like this? I am the governor!” He stood over her, his fists white-knuckled. “Have you lost your mind?”

“Yes! Yes! My mind, my heart, my honor!” She was sobbing now. “Gaius, I love you but I couldn’t help it. I was so lonely. You were too busy for me and then you were gone and I was left alone with these people who hate me. I wanted be the governor’s wife, to make you proud of me, but I couldn’t. Gaius, you look at me but you don’t see me. I’m not the woman you think I am. I wish I were, but I’m not. That woman doesn’t exist. And so I found a friend. He made me laugh, he flattered me. And I could talk to him just because he was nobody, not one of you. And then the rest—I never meant for it to happen. I beg you to believe me. I’m so sorry.”

That woman doesn’t exist. He was stunned. She had come to him as a child of barely fourteen—fresh, innocent, unformed. And he, like a father as much as a husband, had molded her into the woman he wanted. Had she always secretly resented that? But she had grown more beautiful and accomplished than he could have hoped for—so much that sometimes it almost frightened him. He knew he didn’t cut a dashing figure, had never had great success with women, but he had trusted her, never been jealous of the admiring looks she got from other men.

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.