Mistress of Rome (25 page)

Arius surfaced on the opposite side of the Athenian war galley with his sword between his teeth like a pirate. He grabbed for an oar and hoisted himself up onto the deck, spitting his blade into his hand and wading in. Long before his fellow gladiators stroked up in their galley for a share in the glory, the Athenians were running in panicked circles and the red sails were burning. I caught my breath as Arius emerged from the carnage. He had an arrow stub protruding from one shoulder and half his hair was burned off, but set against the background of flaming sails and heaped corpses he could have been Mars come to earth. He never looked back at his fellow gladiators, moving in to finish off his victory. He just took a shallow dive into the water, resurfacing with an energetic splash as he unlaced his mail sleeve and let it sink, then scrubbed the ash and blood off his face. Ignoring the screams, the shouts, the crash of sparks and burning timber, he turned on his back like a boy paddling in a swimming hole and floated, eyes closed against the blue sky.

I felt my eyes sting, and realized I wanted to weep. My stomach was clenched into a knot and my hands trembled. The applause, the screams, the falls of silver coins and the showers of rose petals lasted a full hour as the Barbarian drifted on his back in the middle of a sea battle, with his eyes peacefully shut—and I had never wanted anyone more. Why had he not wanted
me
? Why had he picked Thea with her rough hands and her sunburned face? Why not me? Someday I’d have the answer from him, along with his guts coiled and steaming from his belly.

“The
rudius
,” one of the Sulpicii pageboys whispered, and suddenly everyone was saying it, the whispers mounting through the tiers of the Colosseum.

“The
rudius
—he’ll get the
rudius
now—the Emperor will give him the
rudius
—!”

The Barbarian opened one eye and shook the water out of his ears, squinting up at the Imperial box where the Emperor had risen and was stepping forward.

 

 

 

ARIUS
heard his sandals squelch as the Praetorian escorted him up the marble steps. Squealing women rushed to soak their handkerchiefs in the puddles. He heard the word rudius. The wooden sword? It had been years since he’d dreamt of a
rudius
.

“Bow,” the Praetorian hissed, jabbing a spear haft into his back. Arius jerked his head toward the most powerful man in the world.

“So.” Emperor Domitian’s eyes raked him. “This is the Barbarian.”

“Yes, Caesar.”

A small frown flickered in the Emperor’s forehead.

“Lord and God,” hissed the Praetorian.

“Lord and God,” said Arius.

“Well fought, Barbarian. I’ve watched you for eight years—a long time. Why have you not hung up your sword?”

“I’m a slave, Lord and God.”

“They say slaves are cowards.” The Emperor reached out idly and snapped his fingers. A slave came forward with a silver tray. On the tray—

Arius’s breath stopped.

“A
rudius
.” The Emperor tapped the plain wooden blade. “For you, perhaps. Shall we see?” He snapped his fingers again.

A tubby little man bustled forward. He had a fringe of ringlets around his bald head and a Greek freedman’s robe. “Nessus,” said the Emperor. “You read the future as easily as the rest of us read the alphabet. What does this man’s future hold?”

Arius looked from the astrologer to the
rudius
, and back to the Emperor.

Nessus held out an imperious hand. “Palm, please.” He peered at the lines, chanted a line or two of mystic gibberish, poked at the sword calluses and scars. Then he peered back at Arius’s face. “How interesting.”

“Interesting?” The Emperor leaned forward. “What do you see?”

“I see—well, Lord and God, it’s a very strange hand. I see three deaths.”

“Three?” Emperor and gladiator spoke in unison.

“Three. Odd, really—most of us only get the one, don’t we? He will die once by fire, once by the sword, and once as an old man.”

“You see no
rudius
?” The Emperor’s broad ruddy face was inscrutable.

“Um.” Nessus flicked a nervous glance at Arius. “Well, no.” Arius felt a dull jolt. The drifting rose petals seemed to freeze in place.

“Pity.” The Emperor settled back into his golden chair. “I would have said he’s earned it by now. Take it away,” he told the slave.

Dumbly Arius watched his freedom disappear.

“ ‘By fire, by the sword, and as an old man,’ ” Domitian mused. “How interesting. Well, it’s a prophecy worth testing, isn’t it?”

For a moment their eyes locked, and silent words were exchanged.

You want to kill me, don’t you?
said the Emperor.

I’ll
slaughter
you.

Prefect Paulinus Norbanus looked back and forth between them. “Caesar?”

Domitian waved a casual hand. “Take the Barbarian back to his barracks, and send the Imperial physician to tend his wounds. We won’t cheat the gods of his first death. The death in the arena.”

 

G
OT it out of your system, now?” Hercules ducked. A mug shattered on the wall where his head had been. “I don’t see what you’re so sore about. You wanted to die. You’ve been moping around trying to die for eight years. And now, hey, it won’t be long. Not when the Emperor’s got that curious eye of his on you.” Hercules ducked a bowl. “Quit hurling crockery, you big bully. You’re scaring your dumb dog.”

Arius snarled, scooping her up with one hand and disappearing into his room. He banged the door but could still hear the voices outside.

“We’ll never be rid of him now.” Gallus, hoarse from the choking Arius had given him for chuckling at the predicament. “If it weren’t for the fees he brings in . . . Well, may all the gods bless the Emperor. I’m rich for life.”

“Get away from my door, Gallus!”
Arius roared through the keyhole.
“Or I’ll rip your head off!”

“Always knew all that fatalism was a sham,” Hercules remarked.

Months of hair-raising battles followed. Arius’s fights had long been formalized, set far in advance, and not since the early days had he ever been scheduled for more than four fights a year. Now all the rules had been swept away, leaving only one: he fought in whatever way would amuse the Emperor. He fought with his left arm lashed behind his back, fought on a bed of hot coals with only a pair of sandals to keep him from burning, fought when bloodied and dizzy from wounds. He’d been pitted naked and unarmored against a chariot full of archers, pitted with only a short knife against a black-maned lion, pitted on horseback against two maddened bulls.

He survived.

How many times did the crowd freeze in place, inhaling a common breath as he dragged himself out from under a lion’s carcass or a wrecked chariot? How many times did he lock eyes with the Emperor in a duel that ended, over and over, in a draw?

Arius lost count.

“Are you trying to get killed?” Hercules rasped. “The Emperor’s little innovations are bad enough, but you don’t have to glare at him afterward. Have a thought for me! As long as you’re alive I’m immune, just like the dog. You die, and we’ll both be begging for scraps and getting kicked when we don’t move fast enough.”

“It’s not up to me whether I live or die.” Arius shrugged. But sometimes he wondered if it was.

“Is it magic?” Gallus asked, oh so casually as Arius sat with his eyes shut against the wall bench in the barracks courtyard after a savage fight against a Cretan. “Did you swallow some Druid potion back in Britannia to make yourself invincible? One hears of such things.”

“Nothing like that,” Hercules returned before Arius could speak. “It’s immortality. He’s been made immortal.”

“By who?”

“By you. By the crowd. By the Emperor. You’ve all made him immortal. A god among men.”

Arius rolled his eyes, taking a swallow of wine. “Rubbish,” snapped Gallus.

“’Tisn’t rubbish. You’ve only yourselves to blame. Don’t come crying to me when he finally decides to turn his wrath on you.” The dwarf grinned manically. “He won’t come for you first, though. He’ll go for the Emperor first. ‘Lord and God,’ hah. Domitian’s only a god because he calls himself one. Won’t he be shocked out of his Imperial purple sandals when he realizes he’s been playing cat and mouse with the real thing? Oh yes, our Barbarian here will take care of the Emperor first. Then he’ll come for you. He’ll come for you in the dead of night—”

“I’ll have you flogged, dwarf.” Gallus stamped off in a whirl of perfumed linen.

“You know the funny thing?” Hercules turned his cynical gaze back to Arius. “Sometimes I think you are immortal. Imagine that.”

Arius drew a circle in the sand of the courtyard with his foot. His shoulder ached sharply where a leopard had clawed him to the bone in his last fight.

“Arius the God.” Hercules smiled down at the nameless dog. “Funny, hey girl?”

She whined and attacked a leather glove.

D
EAD?” I spun around. “Lady Julia—she’s dead?” “That’s what I heard.” Penelope wrinkled a sympathetic nose. “She’s taken the last ferry.”

“But . . . how?” I asked. “She was only twenty-three or four. Not so old. How did it happen?” Two of the laundresses had gathered close in the atrium to hear, and a new lyre player from Corinth.

“Well—” Penelope shrugged. “One hears it was a fever. But I heard it might have been suicide. She stabbed herself in the stomach—”

“She stabbed herself in the stomach, all right, but not for a suicide.” One of the laundresses lowered her voice. “She had a mite of trouble, if you know what I mean, and she tried to cut it out.”

A murmur of speculation. I turned away and walked to the center of the atrium where a hard winter rain was running off the roof gutters into the little blue-tiled pool in the middle. Dead. Lady Julia was dead. I leaned my forehead against the marble pillar, breathing in the smells of fish and tar that the rain brought from the harbor. I hadn’t known Lady Julia, but I’d caught her eyes once on a bright morning by the shrine of Juno, on her wedding day, and I’d looked at her gold-embroidered robes and flame silk veil and silver-shackled arms, and wondered why I pitied her. Even more strangely, her pale little three-cornered face had turned and found mine, and I saw that she’d envied me. Me, a sunburned slave girl who carried fans and scrubbed floors. She’d envied
me
. Why?

Well, we all knew why, didn’t we? Or thought we did. We heard the rumors, even in Brundisium. I remembered her, pale and drained beneath the red veil as she walked into her uncle’s arms for the ritual bride theft . . . and I saw the bridegroom who had to use both hands to wrench her away.

“So she died aborting a child,” I said, very calm. “Whose child? The Emperor’s?”

“Oh, ugh.” The lyre player wrinkled her pretty nose. “Her own uncle?”

“You shouldn’t repeat foul gossip,” said Penelope severely. “The Emperor is brokenhearted, so they say. But that’s no cause to repeat anything filthy.” She retreated in high dudgeon.

“Brokenhearted,” I wondered aloud. “But over a niece, or a mistress?”

“I heard she was his mistress sure enough,” one of the laundresses shrugged. “And he’s mad with guilt now, because he made her get rid of the child.”

“Why?” I put my hand out from under the atrium roof into the rain. The storms this month had ruined the Lupercalia festivals. “Domitian needs an heir, so why order her to kill his child? She may be his niece, but Emperors have married their nieces before. He could make the Senate accept both her and the child, if he wanted.”

“So he didn’t want to,” the lyre player shrugged. “Emperors are funny.”

So they were.

T
HERE will be some loss of dexterity.” The doctor unwound the bandages on Arius’s hand. “Especially in the last two fingers. Too much wear and tear over the years. How many times have you broken those fingers of yours?”

“I don’t know.” Arius flexed his hand experimentally.

“What was it this time? Sword hilt?”

“Shield boss.”

“My sympathies.” The doctor frowned. “Mind you rest them for a few weeks. Or they’ll just snap again like dry twigs.”

“No fear.” Arius curled the injured hand inside the strong one. “I’m on break.”

“Yes, that’s right. Imperial moratorium on all festivals and games, was that it?”

“Mmm.”

“For the Emperor’s niece. She was in Cremona, you know, and with all the heat up there the funeral rites had to be carried out immediately. Oh yes, the Emperor was quite wild when his niece came back to Rome in an urn.”

Arius had a sudden inner picture of Domitian knocking the funeral urn flying with one sweep of his arm, mouth opening in a silent scream, and then falling to his knees to sweep up the greasy white ashes with frantic hands. Arius blinked the image away.

“Done yet?”

“Oh, yes, quite done. Well, I’d best be getting along.” The doctor paused a moment, flushing. “My wife—she’s a great fan of yours. Would it be possible . . .”

“Talk to my
lanista
.” Gallus charged enormous sums for little wooden medallions bearing a portrait on one side and a lock of hair on the other. Not his own hair; the barber’s or the pageboy’s or even Hercules’, clipped and dyed reddish. “Anyone who’s willing to fork money over for mementoes of you, dear boy, deserves to be fleeced.” Arius was for once in complete agreement.

“—She’ll be so pleased,” the doctor enthused. “She’s so excited whenever I get a call to patch you up. Dines on it for weeks. Well, rest that hand! We want you fit for the next games, whenever the Emperor comes out of this black mood of his.”

Arius turned away as the doctor bustled out. He flexed his fingers. No, they weren’t all they once were—they wouldn’t straighten fully anymore. But he could still curl his hand around a sword, and that was what counted. He could pick up a sword tomorrow if he had to. He didn’t need any rest to win.