The Far Arena (10 page)

'I will show you how a Roman dies,' said Publius.

'You have already shown us how a Roman eats, gossips, and drinks,' said Varro.

'Quiet, Varro,' I said.

Through the stone an occasional cry could be heard. There were many calls for mothers, a thing common to dying people of any age. Someone poured liquid into a goblet.

'Water or wine ?' I asked.

'Wine,' came the voice of Publius.

'No more wine for anyone,' I said. I heard no more pouring. Publius was drinking un
watered wine. 'Can I leave ?
' asked the lanista.

'No. The bodies will be there later,' I said, meaning that I understood he wanted to get to the possessions of the dead before the gangs.

The body pressed against the slit muffled the sounds.

'See if you can move that body up there, Plutarch,' I asked. We heard the sound of a spear against stone looking for a hole, then dull, small thuds, and a grunt from a man putting weight behind the spear.

'Dead,' said Plutarch. 'Won't move.'

Because of the blockage of the slit, we did not know when it would become dark, so I forced a longer wait.

Finally, I told the slaves to open the door. This they did with the help of swords used as pries. The stench of flesh where it had been burned by pitch started someone retching behind me.

'Body,
’
said Plutarch.

Apparently, someone using pitch against the door had been pushed into his own flames and death. I felt the door. It was charred and sticky. A piece of skin came off on my fingers. I rubbed it back into the door. The water had been a good precaution.

We had survived. We proceeded with the armoured slaves ahead of us and behind us. Publius complained of the slow pace, although he knew as well as anyone that should we move quickly we would attract as much attention as if someone yelled. And attention meant people, and people meant the mob.

In the arena, where the mob had milled, we saw the empty movement of the wounded. The groans came like the winds. The sand smelled of urine and retching fear. Publius stepped on a small child and wanted to take it until Varro pressed Publius' hand to the child's belly. It was cold.

It is the children who suffer most in these incidents, most often trampled to death when trying to hold on to their mothers. Publius threw it away, as though stained. In a short while it would be stiff. The bodies would be removed, and the arena cleaned with fresh sand, and whatever was burning would be quenched, and whatever was burned would be rebuilt. Thus was Rome, queen of cities, centre of the world, invincible. Eternal, because it was always born again.

Within days the emperor and senate would offer up some object for hate, and blame that on the riot, so that emperor and senate would not have to face the citizenry. I was sure that the aedile was dead. He could not have escaped. When we left the tunnel and walked onto the sand, I saw that no one around him had escaped, including those who were first to attack him. I could tell this by the piles of bodies mounted around his seats.

We moved to an exit out of the plebian seats, and when a slave reported the mobs were off beyond the Capitoline, all of us moved quietly, surrounded by my armoured slaves, off towards the Colossus of Nero near the Flavian amphitheatre, beyond which is my house with the high walls and large arbour and warren of small, protected streets to delay the easy speed of a mob.

'My house is that way,' said Publius, pointing beyond the gates of the city.

'Yes,'
I said.

‘
They are waiting for all of us. I have promised, on your promise. My brother comes from Hippo by sea, just for the sight of you and your fame. I told them you were my friend.'

'Publius, even if we would not have to hack our way through a mob to reach your house, dear Publius, friend Publius, I wish to go to my home, not yours.'

'You promised,' said Publius.

'Quiet,' said Varro.

'To the dung of Mars's ass, I will not quench the fire of my tongue,' said Publius, and his voice boomed above the groans of the streets of Rome.
'You're coming because you promised, and I do not fear some goat rabble of a mob, I am Roman.'

'Publius, shh. Still your mouth. I am not going. Now get back with us. You stay with me until a new day,' I said.

'Is that your last word ?' said Publius.

'Last,'
I said.

'Greekling,' he yelled, and I found myself cuffing him across the face, perhaps because the word offended me, but mostly because it was loud, and in this sort of a city one attracted attention as one would the threat of crucifixion.

To most men, a slap would be cause for anger. To Publius, it seemed like an offence against the gods. He threw his short sword at me, and it bounced off a slave. He demanded an apology. He demanded my life. He damned the life of every Greek ever born of a she-goat. Which, of course, was every Greek, yes, including Alexander who probably was not Greek in the first place but a Scythian or a German. Otherwise, why would he have had yellow barbaric hair?

'Get back with us, Publius,' I said.

He began a speech about living life as a Roman, and, since the slaves in front had already started a healthy pace into the streets, I could not stay to reason with him. Varro whispered that young Publius had been drinking unwatered wine as he waited for the mob to pass earlier in the afternoon.

I thought I had heard him yell apologies. But it would not matter. I was sure he would engage some other drunk that night and spill his blood in some useless fight over who had the right of way in an alley both would vacate shortly, or who had looked at whom first. He did not. In his drunken anger, heated from the first insult by a slave, to our last words, and constantly fuelled by wine, Publius preserved his life long enough to ruin both of ours ultimately.

It would have been expected that Publius would waste his own life, it being a race between the inordinately good fortune that had kept him alive so far and his incredible lack of moderation as to which would triumph first. But I, Lucius Aurelius Eugenianus? Friend of Domitian? Seducer of the mobs? Owner of latifundia and slaves thesize of nations? I, who stood beneath the protection of the influence of the Aurelii ? I, who myself had become a powerful patron of many?

I, Lucius Aurelius Eugenianus, chest to chest in the same arena with Publius? Piddling Publius? Scented, squeaky-voiced intemperate Publius?

Five

At the Dominican convent in Ringerike, a suburb of Oslo, a small package from Dr Semyon Pe
trovitch of the great University
at Oslo waited in the office of the mother superior.

Strangely, it was stamped confidential; and if it were like the other mail for Sister Olav, the mother superior would have opened it. This would not have been an invasion of privacy because there was no privacy to invade - privacy being one of the distractions on the grand journey to one's Maker if one chose the way of the contemplative life. But 'confidential' it was stamped. And this made it like almost everything else in Sister Olav's religious life - different.

But like everything else with Sister Olav, there seemed to be some complication. The order had paid a great deal for her studies at Oxford, and then she had requested to be a contemplative, which meant no use of that education through teaching. The mother superior was not sure how Sister Olav had managed this, but even in becoming a contemplative, decreed by the metropolitan of Oslo, there had been a further complication. She would teach one year in pre-university courses at local schools while living at the convent and then teach no more and become like the rest of the sisters under the mother superior. If a woman who had declined a doctorate from a great British university could ever be like women from these Scandinavian countries, who had no university training, many coming to the convent in their teens, like the mother superior, who had come so long ago and who had suggested that Sister Olav might be more suited for another calling. At least another convent. She was also twenty-one, older that other novitiates, And when she would take the fifth and final vow of the order, she would be twenty-nine, older still.

The mother superior and the package waited for Sister Olav in the barren office with white walls and the sombre, black crucifix riveted into the stone of the building like a parapet from which one did not retreat.

'I'm sorry, Mother Superior,' said Sister Olav, 'for being late. And I will be late again for my class.'

Sister Olav was pale, paler than most of this Nordic people, with skin so light it looked like clear white porcelain, setting off the lips as pink, although there was, of course, no lipstick. Yet it looked as though she wore it, and the mother superior caught herself staring at Sister Olav's lips when she first arrived, stopping herself from saying there was no need for make-up in a convent. The eyebrows were pale to whiteness, two almost invisible strokes above light blue eyes that somehow had to carry an intensity unnatural for their coolness. If it were not for the total involvement in almost every word she uttered, Sister Olav would have been an incredible beauty. But the force of the woman overpowered features, even those as elegant as Sister Olav's, set like a jewel in stark black habit.

'I have a package that is marked confidential. Is there any reason you know of that I should not open it ?'

'No, Mother Superior.'

The older woman nodded. Sister Olav was almost Swedish in her accent, which was quieter than the normal Norwegian pronunciation of words. Although a Norwegian girl, it was rumoured Sister Olav's family had moved to Sweden to get a better early education.

The package appeared overly wrapped and required scissors. The mother superior snipped down into a letter covering another box.

'You have no objections to my reading this, then ?
’

'I have no private life and do not want one.'

'Good,' said the mother superior. "This is from the University in Oslo. I see it is from the hospital attached to it. Dr Semyon Petrovitch, which is a Russian name. A department of cryonics medicine, and it begins, "My Dear Dr Marit Vik, Your name has been given me by a professor of the Romance languages as a possible authority on the language being spoken in the enclosed tape recordings. It is believed that the language might contain some Latin root, and you are recommended most highly.

' "I have two apologies. One for the tape recordings themselves. They are bad because the person is mumbling, possibly incoherently. Secondly, my apologies for asking that you treat this in strict confidence, as I am working on a scientific experiment which could be compromised by commercialism and publicity. If you can identify any word, we would be most appreciative.
” ‘

' "I
am yours truthfully, Dr Semyon Petrovitch."
‘

The mother superior concluded the letter and then inquired who the professor was who both knew and recommended Sister Olav.

'I did not know you had a PhD,' added the mother superior.

'I don't. It was probably a student I knew who assumed I had accepted my doctorate and now is undoubtedly a professor near here. I am not sure who.'

'One meets so many people when one travels so much,' said the mother superior. 'Do you think you should listen to the tape recordings ? I am sure we can get a player somewhere.'

'I don't know.'

‘
Why don't you know ?
’

'Because I am late for my class.'

‘
Then do not let me detain you longer,' said the mother superior.

Sister Olav rushed to the classroom. She had not mentioned why she was late. It would have embarrassed her. Today, and for the rest of the term, the class would read and translate the
Aeneid.
She especially loved the poet Virgil, and loved best the
Aeneid,
and when she had begun to read, preparing for today's class, she had not stopped reading until, while pondering one passage about time, she had realized she had forgotten the time and looked at her wristwatch. Other than the mother superior, she was the only sister with one.

'Oh,' she had said. And was stopped on her way to class to answer questions about a package. When she arrived at the room, there was a substitute civil teacher, who was overly polite in assuring Sister Olav her tardiness was no great thing. Like other Scandinavian countries, Norway was overwhelmingly Protestant, and, the religious wars having ended centuries before, the residual contempt had been composted into an overripe courtesy, nourishing massive blossoms of delicate human concern. One could not walk through quickly without damaging, if one were in a rush. Like now. For this class. 'Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.' said Sister Olav, as quickly as she could and as respectfully as she could and as firmly as she could. She turned to the class.