Desire of the Gladiator (Affairs of the Arena Book 3) (4 page)

Finally, the ambassador had enough. He declared that unless the King would provide him with a feast as befit the majesty of Rome, then great and terrible consequences would be delivered unto his royal house.

Her father, then, had arranged a very special feast. The entire court was invited. The ambassador seemed to be having a grand time, drinking much wine, and all seemed forgiven. Then, his meal was brought out. Leda remembered it still. The stench of it. Inside a giant golden dish was the uncooked, rotten carcass of an eagle, blackened with oil.

The eagle, was, of course, one of the animals associated most closely with Rome.

Naturally, the ambassador was furious. Her father had always felt self-assured because he knew that Rome needed him in power to keep the Parthians at bay. This made him feel invincible. And indeed, the ambassador knew he could not act against the king directly.

Instead, he had taken his eldest daughter, enslaved her, and sold her, warning that more of the same would happen if he were defied again.

To Leda's understanding, this had left the King thoroughly cowed.

For herself, she was cowed from the moment a contubernium of eight legionaries broke through her door and led her away from her home at spear point. Regaining her sense of calm had taken months of careful meditation exercises and a great amount of writing letters in this small office.

Publius stepped through the open doorway. Immediately—regrettably—Leda stopped what she was doing. When the Dominus was present, a slave had to wait on him. Even a slave that was royalty by birth.

“You’ve been acclimating yourself well here, I understand,” said Publius. He was in his early fifties and had salt white hair. A Roman of the old schools of thought, he disliked excess and kept himself trim and fit. “Though I also understand the secret is out with regards to your language barrier.”

“Yes, Dominus.”

Leda assumed that Conall would simply tell everyone what he had found out. And so, she had started to speak to other slaves in full sentences instead of the chopped fragments she had grown accustomed to using. It was rather fun to see the surprise in their faces when they heard her speaking eloquently and simply, making requests for jugs of water, extra cloths, and so on.

It would be nice, also, to have people stop talking to her in slow, loud voices. She wasn’t deaf, for goodness’ sake, and she never had pretended to be.

The main reason, really, that she had pretended to have a language barrier was to prevent herself from entering into a minefield of needless conversations. Leda rather despised small talk and gossip, and that was most of what the servant population of House Varinius seemed interested in talking about.

When people thought you disinterested in talking to them, they thought you a snob, which Leda was not. She was simply
discerning
with what she chose to occupy her mind with. A brain was not a barn door, and did not need to have every sort of idea-creature floating through it at any given time.

A brain was a trap, constructed uniquely within each person with very specific purposes.

Her own skills rested in rhetoric, logic, and analysis. Another reason she couldn’t stand the aimless drift of small talk—a person’s spoken thoughts could be
doing
things instead of wandering through the air like half-grown bear cubs in a snow storm.

Publius knew she was skilled in legal affairs, and that was part of why Publius had allowed her for so long to pretend to have the language barrier between herself and the other slaves. It was an allowance he gave her, so long as she performed her duties for him in a sufficient manner.

Most particularly, she handled his legal matters when they cropped up. Shortly after her arrival, he’d had a dispute with a supplier of armor to his ludus which she had handled for him. With Leda's help, the supplier ended up paying the ludus twice what Publius originally paid.

Leda was good at what she did.

“It’s good that you have adapted here as well as you have,” said Publius. “I notice that some in particular think more highly of you than others.”

“Do they, Dominus?”

“A certain fighter, in particular.”

He meant Conall, of course. Leda wasn’t sure where this was going.

“Some men are hard to dissuade, Dominus,” said Leda. “Even if you say nothing to them at all.”

For nine months.

She had not spoken a word to the insane beast for more than nine months, and all it seemed to do was make his affection for her grow.

Of course, her own attraction to him had done nothing but grow, but that was different. She did not pontificate about his beauty or dream up some saccharine love story between them. Leda merely wanted his body.

That she wanted it urgently, often to the point of distraction during a late night, was besides the point. He was a gladiator with a body from heaven. Everything about him was hairy, muscular, and masculine. He was made to be wanted.

“As I’m sure you’re aware, gladiators are an investment to this ludus.”

“Yes, Dominus.”

“As I’m sure you
also
aware, gladiators of good quality are in short supply.”

“Yes, Dominus.”

The Antonine Plague had hid Puteoli hard in the last few months. While there had been no cases of it specifically at the ludus, there had been plenty in Puteoli. The ludus got everything from the city, less than an hour’s walk away. The ludus needed regular supplies—food, wine, cloth, weapons, armor, and more—to keep running.

Now, any of it could be carrying the plague or carried by someone who carried the plague. Wellness was the constant concern—and there was no getting around the need for the gladiators of the ludus to perform in the arena inside the plague-ridden city. To keep morale up, imperial officials kept throwing games to entertain the populace.

It seemed as though the worst of the sickness had passed, but it still had greatly diminished the available pool of fighters for the ludus when it desperately needed them. Many able-bodied men who otherwise would have fought as gladiators were conscripted into the army to bolster its ranks. It was the army—traveling as it did all over the Empire’s bounds and interacting with so many different people—that was affected by the pock-laden plague the worst.

“I have heard many reports about perhaps him...changing his mind about fighting. He wins in a hard fashion. That can take a toll on a man. I want him to be reminded that life is sweet.”

Slowly, it dawned on Leda what Publius was asking. She stood.

“I understand the bounds of my servitude here, Dominus, but I am of royal blood. And I will not be your whore.”

“Whore?” he smiled. “No. If I wanted you to be my whore, then I would take you out into the street and pimp you. And I could. And be well within my rights as your owner.” He let that sink for a moment. “But, this ludus is an honorable place, and I am an honorable man. I am not asking you to be a whore. You are to be...” he searched. “...a companion. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to in terms of affection. But, Nyx is going to draw up a routine for him and for you. Treatment for his wounds. You will administer it to the letter.”

“I see.”

His head tilted sharply. “Dominus. You say, “I see, Dominus.’ Social ladders are important, Leda. They are how we know where we stand.”

Leda swallowed her pride. “Yes, Dominus.”

He acknowledged the deference with a slight nod. “Speaking of letters, by the way, I hope that’s going well for you. I’m sure your family, once they track you down, will be happy to know that I have treated you as fairly as I have. Just remember who pays to send the messenger on his way, yes?”

“Yes, Dominus.”

He left her alone in the small cell with her thoughts and her fears.

A
companion
to a gladiator. Leda's physical desire for Conall had been kept entirely in check because the two of them simply did not spend that much time together. When lingering in his presence, her thoughts drifted to running her fingertips over the strong muscles of his thighs. Working her thumbs into the heavy bulges of his back and neck, just to
feel
for a moment what such strength was like beneath her hands.

And that was only after a few minutes of lingering—not for days at a time. Given that much time near him, who was to say whether she could control herself at all? Not with a man who clearly wanted her as much as Conall did.

Her mouth was dry. She wanted a drink of wine—or two or three. But she still had a letter to finish. She sighed, sat down, and reviewed what she had written already before going back to work.

––––––––

I
n the early morning, when the air was still chilly and still, Leda made her way down from the house to where the gladiators lived.

The ludus of House Varinius sat upon a small hill. The estate was at the top of the hill, partly built inside the rock and dirt toward its rear. Tall walls surrounded the grounds at the base of the hill—designed much more for keeping the gladiators in than for keeping any intruders out.

Romans had a long-stoked fear of slave rebellion, even though there had not been one en masse for centuries. Stories of Spartacus were still told to the children of Roman nobles to frighten them into behaving with appropriate distance from their slaves.

A large series of steps led up from the grounds next to the walls all the way up the hill to the estate. Tall gates on this stone stairwell partitioned the estate off from the rest of the ludus, below which was where the gladiators did their training. Some offices stood on the hill next to the stairs. On the bottom level, though, were the long training sands themselves. There were several circles of sand, each bordered by heavy stones, creating small dirt pathways between them.

In the corner of the grounds, between the walls and the base of the hills, were the cell blocks where the gladiators slept and ate. On the other side of the grounds were the stables, where Publius and his guests stationed their horses.

The cell blocks of the gladiators were slick with dirt and sand dragged in from their training. Small slots of light poured in from high in the ceiling.

Conall’s cell was toward the front of the blocks, which Leda felt grateful for. That meant she had to look at less of the gladiators, and more importantly, less of them looked at her.

Gladiators were known in all the world for their physiques, and those housed in this ludus could easily be as lauded as the rest. Their torsos were chiseled perfection, rippling abs housed underneath concrete slabs of hard pectorals. Thick arms, trained all day with heavy swords, spears, and shields, bulged with muscles almost as large as the ones in their heavy thighs. And yet despite all their muscle, each man moved with a particular grace, giving their bodies an emphasis on leanness over bulk despite how prominent their hard-as-rock strength was.

Leda had little interest in men much of the time. They were uncouth and always wanted something from her in exchange for little on their own.

But she was not made of cold milk. It was impossible, surrounded by so much pure virility contained all in the same area, to not let your eyes wander from time to time.

The mind wandered as well, as hers did whenever she thought of Conall's body being so very similar. Conall, who wanted her so terribly.

Many of the gladiators walked around naked, apparently thinking they had little to be ashamed of. They were right.

Better not to let them think she was interested, though. She could only imagine what sort of mundanity their minds might come up with for conversation—and truly, it was conversation that made Leda more excited than anything else.

A body, no matter how delicious, meant little to her if the brain attached to it could not dream up new methods for delight.

Conall was sleeping. His cell was simple and small. There was the cot in the corner, a small stone toilet on one end, a stool, and then a tiny desk with some scrolls littered this way and that upon its surface.

She examined the scrolls for several moments, eyebrows raised.

“They’re stories.” Conall was awake, propped up now on his elbows. “From the marketplace. Iunius, the eunuch—do you know him? He knows a man. They cost me a fortune and most of them do not end up being very good, but reading is how I learned the language when I was young.”

She did know Iunius. He helped her obtain much of the paper and ink that she used so regularly. Publius didn't mind her using
some
of his at first, but then Leda kept writing, and writing, and writing...

Iunius ended up being a very helpful man indeed. He had a thousand different connections in Puteoli, most of them shady. But he was a useful man to have on her side.

Leda further examined the scroll in her hand. “This is Cicero. ‘On the Laws.’ I’ve read this. Have you read this?”

She had read it maybe a hundred times, along with everything else Cicero ever wrote. A splendid orator and a lawyer beyond compare in the times of the Roman Republic, many of his thoughts and decisions were still the basis for legal philosophy even then, more than three hundred years later.

“I’ve read everything there,” he said. “I was planning to reread it all over the next few weeks. I’m a bit bedridden, as you can see. What are you doing here?”

“I’ve been assigned as your...” she searched. How to describe it? “Your healing assistant.”

That news seemed to wash slow over Conall's face. He smiled broadly.

“I’m glad you’re deciding to speak now. Your voice is very lovely.”

“Yes. I’m sure that it has all the other voices swooning after it.”

She put a hand on his shoulder and pushed him back down on the cot. “You are to stay immobile for the first few days. Nyx was explicit.”

He eyed her hand on his shoulder. The flesh underneath her grip was as hard as oak. It was not the sort of sensation she would forget easily.

“Anything you say.” He smiled. “I’ll get bored, though. You’ll have to keep talking to me.”

“Perhaps. After we change your bandages.”

She began the process of the removing the bandages on his forehead and shoulders.