In the Shadow of the Wall (25 page)

“Believe me, it wasn’t easy. You’re strong and you’re fast. You nearly caught me a couple of times. If you were trained as a gladiator you’d probably be unbeatable. But I would say it is better to be a free man who fights his own battles than to be a slave who fights for other people’s pleasure. Or because other people tell them to.”

Cruithne nodded slowly, understanding what Brude was saying to him. His great hairy face looked up at Brude. “Why don’t you just kill Colm and take over as head man?” he asked.

There was an expectant silence. Brude was careful not to look at anyone else. He wasn’t sure what he would say if he looked at Mairead and saw the same question on her face. Instead he stared at Cruithne, pursing his lips thoughtfully. “Why don’t you?” he responded. “You are strong enough.”

From Cruithne’s expression, Brude saw that the thought had never crossed the big man’s mind. Cruithne answered, “Because he is my lord and I owe him everything I have.”

“And why should I be any different?” Brude said. “He is an old friend of mine from our boyhood. His wife is an old friend and his son is my friend as well. It would be a strange friendship if I betrayed that, wouldn’t it?”

“He’s not your friend,” Cruithne said. “I told you that. He really does not like you.”

Brude shrugged. “Then he will have to learn to live with his dislike for I have family and friends here and I do not intend to leave.” He squatted down so that his face was level with Cruithne’s. “I would like it if we could be friends as well. Or, at least, not enemies. What do you say?”

Cruithne’s brow wrinkled in thought. “Will you teach me how to fight like that?” he asked.

Brude chuckled. “You don’t need much help from me,” he said. “You are good enough to beat just about anyone. Anyway, there are better ways to live your life than going around frightening people just because you are stronger than they are. Perhaps I should teach you those things instead for I’m afraid I don’t think you will learn them from Colm. It saddens me, but I think he is in danger of losing his sense of honour. You need to make sure you don’t lose yours.”

Cruithne was uncertain. “He will not be happy if we are friends,” he said pensively.

“What can he do to you? If he throws you out, you can come and live down here. But I don’t think it will come to that. Mairead will tell him what happened and he will see that no blame can come to you.”

Cruithne lumbered to his feet. “I can see why he doesn’t like you,” he said softly. “You undermine his authority.”

Brude knew then that he had been right about Cruithne. For an apparently simple man he was more shrewd than anyone gave him credit for. Clasping the big man’s hand, he said, “Then I rely on you to convince him that I am harmless. I’ll keep out of his way as much as I can and do nothing to upset him. Can you persuade him of that?”

“I will try,” said Cruithne. He clasped Brude’s hand firmly. “I think it would be good to be your friend.” He took his spear from Castatin then slowly set off towards the trackway, his four bemused young warriors trailing wordlessly after him.

Seoras, standing in the doorway of his house, watched them go. He said to Brude, “You should have killed him.”

Mairead, her whole body radiating confusion, agreed. “At the very least you should have stuck to your first plan and made him act like a dead man around you. You can’t trust him. He’s an animal. That’s why Colm keeps him.” Brude remembered the bruise on her arm and wondered whether it was Cruithne who had put it there and not Colm as he had thought. Now was not the time to ask, he knew.

“Brude can beat him any time,” Castatin chirped confidently.

“Not if he brings a gang with him or sets fire to his house at night, or stabs him in the back,” Fothair pointed out gloomily. Castatin’s face fell.

Brude, watching Cruithne slowly climb the track up the steep hill, said, “That’s exactly why I don’t want him as an enemy. I think I can trust him. He has some honour and he’s not as stupid as he makes out.”

“Honour?” Mairead was scathing. “What makes you think he has honour?”

“He could have drawn his sword when he tried to grab me. I’d have been in trouble then, but he didn’t. He could have ordered his four men to attack me, but he didn’t. I think I can trust him. I’d rather have him on my side than against me, that’s for sure.”

Fothair wasn’t convinced. “You’re crazy,” he announced cheerfully. “But life certainly isn’t dull while you’re around.”

“That’s the trouble,” said Brude. “I’d be happy with a dull life.”

“You won’t get one if you marry Seasaidh,” Mairead observed. He heard an unspoken question in her voice.

“She’s more Castatin’s age than mine,” Brude told her. “Like I said, I have no intention of marrying anyone just now.”

Castatin looked alarmed, plainly terrified by the very mention of Seasaidh. Fothair laughed at his consternation. Mairead stepped close to Brude, looking into his eyes, studying his face as if she were looking for something. “You’ve changed a lot, Brude,” she said softly. “I think you are more Roman than you like to pretend.”

He wasn’t sure whether that was a criticism or not. “We all change as we grow older,” he replied. “The Romans always thought I was more like a Pritani than I let on. I used to think I was neither one nor the other, but then I met a man who taught me that I can only be myself, whatever others may think of me. He told me that, instead of being worried about not fitting in either place, I should take the best from everyone I know and everything I see and use these things to make myself a better person.”

“He sounds very clever, this man,” Mairead said. “Was he a fighter too?”

Brude laughed. “Cleon? No. He was a book-keeper.”

A.D. 204

Curtius didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “Twenty-six men dead and five badly wounded. The school’s lost six men but you walk out without a scratch. I don’t know how you did it, boy. If it wasn’t for the bruise on your head from where you nutted that Retiarius, I would swear you hadn’t fought today.”

Brude didn’t know how to react either. He sat in the underground darkness below the arena, stripped of his weapons and armour. He had a loincloth, an old, dirty tunic, sandals and a wooden sword. He had some money back at the school, a few coins but hardly a fortune. Apart from that, he owned nothing. He was free and he should have been overjoyed but all he could think about was Josephus, lying dead in his arms, his neck ravaged by the fatal wound. Brude may have been free but he still felt trapped.

“Come on,” Curtius told him. “We’d best get you cleaned up. You’ll need to look your best for the celebration.” He tugged Brude’s arm and led him to the main corridor, which ran the length of the arena. Brude followed, his mind still numb. They climbed the stairs and the guards unlocked the gates, letting them out into the open air.

It was daylight. Brude had always come and gone from the great amphitheatre at night. Now he walked out through its massive arches and into the heat of the late afternoon. The place was crowded as the last of the spectators made their way home, still talking excitedly about the day’s spectacle. None of them paid any attention to Brude or Curtius except perhaps to give them a passing glance. Brude stood still, looking around him in wonder. The walkway beneath the arches was filled with small merchant booths selling all sorts of food, drink and trinkets. He saw one displaying an array of statuettes in the shapes of assorted gladiators. He was amazed that people could actually buy such things. Outside in the bright, sweltering sunlight the houses crowded round the amphitheatre and there, on the Palatine hill, was the palace of the emperor himself, a massive sprawling building of arches, columns and white marble splendour. It was the heart of the empire. Brude felt almost overwhelmed.

Curtius nudged him into motion. Looking back over his shoulder, Brude saw the outside of the Flavian amphitheatre for the first time. He stopped again, staggered by its size and grandeur. Its successive rows of arches rose skywards, gleaming in the sun, dwarfing everyone and everything around them. The sheer scale of it amazed him. He had known it was large, of course. He had sensed its bulk when they came in darkness, sometimes seen its silhouette against a lightening sky and he had seen it from the inside many times. In the arena, though, he was more aware of the crowd than the stadium; more concerned about his opponent than where they were fighting. Seeing it now he felt he was being reminded of just how unimportant and small he was, how vast, impressive and powerful the empire was. He ould not even begin to understand how anyone could conceive of such a building, let alone actually build it. Josephus had always insisted that it had been built by thousands of Jewish slaves, brought from
Jerusalem
when the emperor Titus had stormed the city after yet another of the revolts that the Jews were famous for. The little gladiator had also claimed that the walls contained the bodies of the slaves who had died building it. But then, Josephus had claimed a lot of things. The thought of his dead friend made Brude shudder. Curtius, misunderstanding, clapped him on the shoulder. “It gets you the first time, doesn’t it? It’s some place.”

Curtius led Brude eastwards, through a maze of narrow, busy streets. One or two people saw the wooden rudis in Brude’s hand and a cry went up that the gladiator who had won the games was there. A crowd quickly gathered, mobbing him, cheering him and trying to touch him. He was too numb to fend them off but Curtius snarled at them, shoved and pushed then dragged Brude into a small public bathhouse, asking the attendants to keep the crowd at bay.

“You get cleaned up,” Curtius told Brude. “Give me your rudis and I’ll look after it for you. These places are full of thieves, so you don’t want to leave it lying around here. I’ll go and get you something better to wear.”

A young woman, wearing a plain grey tunic, approached. Curtius handed her some coins. “My friend is new here. Show him the baths and give him a massage. Make him presentable for a dinner with someone important, will you?” The woman nodded, tucking the coins away into a small pouch. “By the way,” Curtius added, “he’s a gladiator, just been freed by the emperor himself, so perhaps a little extra something would be nice.”

The woman smiled a humourless smile, which never touched her eyes. “If he wants sex, he pays for it like everyone else,” she said.

Curtius grunted. “Never mind then. Just a bath and a massage. I’m sure he’ll get plenty of free offers later on.”

The woman showed Brude to a changing room where she told him to strip. He left his clothes with a slave who assured him they would be safe. Brude didn’t care; they were old, dirty and ragged and Curtius had said he would get new ones. The slave passed him some wooden sandals, telling him to put them on. Then the woman led him through a door, to a room with a cold pool, which they walked round. They passed through some more doors to a warmer room where several men were sitting relaxing, some of them talking in easy tones. There was no pool here but around the room were several niches with stone benches, giving it a pleasant and relaxing atmosphere. All the men were naked but if that bothered the young woman, she certainly didn’t show it. She walked on, Brude following her obediently, his mind still too overwhelmed to have any thoughts that might lead to an embarrassing reaction. He was more interested in his surroundings anyway. The gladiator school had a bathhouse but it was little more than a small pool of warm water where the slaves cash off the sweat of the day’s training. This place, although small by Roman standards, was far more impressive, with its painted, tiled walls and floors, and its statues of goddesses and nymphs decorating the small niches in every room.

The third room they went into was stifling. They walked through the wooden doors into a wall of steamy heat. Brude quickly realised why he had the sandals on, for the tiled floor was incredibly hot. The walls were decorated with paintings of trees, flowers and birds but they, too, were hot to the touch. In the centre of the room was a pool of steaming water. There were a couple of men already in the pool and the woman indicated to Brude that he should join them, pointing out the steps. “When you’re ready, come to one of the couches at the far end,” she told him.

He slipped off the sandals, making his way cautiously down the steps. The water was hot and felt wonderful. Trying not to be self-conscious, nor to betray his inexperience in places like this, he stepped in until the water came up to his waist. He found that there were stone benches around the edge of the pool, under the water at a convenient height so that he could sit with his head above the surface. He closed his eyes and relaxed. He had never felt anything quite like it. No wonder the Romans were always going on about the baths, he thought.