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.
Chapter Forty-one
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.”
“Calpurnia won’t name him?”
“No. If she wants to she will. I won’t force her, I can’t.”
“Nor Ione?”
“Do you know she tried to hang herself last night? Zosimus found her in time and cut her down. She’ll live, though she doesn’t want to. Maybe that’s punishment enough for what she’s done.” Pliny said nothing about fathering Rufus on her. There were some secrets even Suetonius