The Mer- Lion (56 page)

Lagging feet felt lighter and spirits lifted as the city took form in front of them. And by sundown, their blistered feet, rope-burned and lacerated by their sandals, trod the hard stones of Kairouan's streets. Past nineteen mosques, and countless shrines of marabouts, or holy men, they were marched, straight to the courtyard in front of the Great Mosque. There the camel-riding drovers kicked their mounts to kneel before the well.This was no ordinary well. Its designers had provided comfortable drinking for all—man and beast. Around its perimeter were ledges of varying heights and depths, calculated to fit hooves and paws as well as the knees of kneeling thirst-quencher. The guards helped themselves first to the cool liquid, then came the horses, then slave drivers and camels, finally the prisoners. Custom called for humans to touch the water only with their lips, and the parched prisoners who attempted to splash some of the cool water on their faces and arms received smart cuffs from their silent guards as the well's guardians harangued them to drink, not bathe.

After all had drunk, the guards, without any apparent discussion, led their train to the left, into a narrow, seldom used lane. Eventually, they came to a cleared area before the great wall separating the

medina from the rest of the city. Here was a natural prison. The brick wall, some 500 years old, had windowless abutments jutting from it One man or two, thanks to the walls, could keep
a
hundred closely chained prisoners from escaping. At the same time, the curious and beggars could not get close.

After a meal of goat meat, milk, and bread, the prisoners took
a
more lively interest in their surroundings. The guards were gathered off to one side, silently devouring a meal no more varied though mere plentiful than that of the prisoners. The camel drovers, having wolfed their food, made themselves comfortable leaning against their kneeling beasts. All was somnolent.

Now John the Rob had his chance. Out came his round pebbles and up they flew. Soon, one drover got to his feet and then another. Finally all seven had formed a semicircle around the juggler.

"Quickly," John the Rob muttered out of the side of his mouth to de Wynter. "Ask the nearest one where we are."

"Who cares?" de Wynter whispered back. "I want to know where we go."

"Fine, ask him, but be quiet about it."

"Al Djem," was the sibilant reply.

"Where the hell is that?" de Wynter whispered back. A gesture in the general direction of the south was the quick reply. The drovers, torn between fascination for the flying stones and the prisoners' demands for information, grew restless. John the Rob began adding objects his fingers had found and stored within his pouch—
a
date,
a
stick, a link of chain—and the drovers hunkered back down. "Ask why the guards don't speak," came John the Rob's terse instructions.

Stealing a look to make sure no guard was nearby, the drover made a cryptic cutting movement of two fingers before an outstretched tongue. No more need be said. And the drovers decided already they'd said too much. They got to their feet and scurried back to the safety of their cud-chewing beasts.

Meanwhile, the guards were involved in some spirited, though silent, discussion, their hands gesticulating rapidly. Finally, one of them rose and went to his saddlebags. The matter of contention, whatever it was, was settled by throws of bone dice passed from

hand to hand. One last throw and half of the guards hurried off to dig clean robes out of their saddlebags.

For the first tune, the prisoners saw guards unveiled and in the flesh. Some were dark-skinned, but most light, one even fair. All had the lean, hard; muscular look of fighting men kept trim. If all were naked, one could not have told guard and prisoner apart. Scrubbing hands with sand, polishing teeth with a twig, one or two scraped away at their facial hair with a sharp dagger and the aid of a polished tray. Robed and reveiled, the six disappeared into the night, leaving their spears behind.

Four, remaining, unrolled blankets to sleep, the other two standing first watch. The prisoners, having shared with one another the information gleaned from the drovers, soon fell asleep, too, one after the other like a stack of spoons.

Kicks woke them. The guards were back and Ali ben Zaid was very much in command. When the long line moved out again, traversing crowded, crooked lanes, their chains roused no interest, not even from children. At last, they turned into a wide avenue leading to the Bab Djedid, the eastern gate in the Great Wall. Every caravan heading toward Sousse and the other coastal cities must pass between those two enormous wooden doors, as did those bound for al Djem and the smaller inland villages that dotted the Sahel. At this hour, the line of slaves was just one of many trying to get through the gates. Falling in between a camel train and a flock of bleating sheep, many hid their breakfast dates within their loincloths to be chewed later when there was less dust.

A few miles along the well-traveled road to Sousse, Ali ben Zaid turned his mare's nose southward into the bleak desert terrain and headed straight as an arrow to al Djem. Dutifully the line of slaves followed suit. For five hours with no respite, the caravan trudged across the now-burning desert, the scorching sun climbing from just above their left shoulders to straight overhead. A quick midday prayer and water break served only momentarily to interrupt the tortuous journey.

They plodded along on uneven ground, straining to keep in step so the neck rings did not start their sores to bleeding again. Sand fleas had invaded their clothing during the sleep by the wall. Soon
everyone, guards and slaves alike, was rubbing and scratching in a vain attempt to dislodge the pests or relieve the itching of their bites. The slaves, forced always to cooperate, dug and scratched at one another's back. But too much of the torment was beyond the reach of these tethered men.

By midafternoon another apparition, pinkish as the setting sun rose sharply from the sand atop a low plateau to take shape on the horizon dead ahead. De Wynter rubbed his eyes, then looked again. It was the Colosseum of Rome. A mirage. Yet it did not quiver and disappear. Quite the contrary, with each step they took the colosse-um loomed larger.

Onward the slaves marched, each hour bringing the ruins into sharper focus. For twelve hundred years this great stone and mortar amphitheater had withstood the burning sun and driving sand storms, her great stone arches mellowing to a golden pink. Three tiers of superimposed arches rose thirty-six meters into the air, the height of twenty grown men. Decorated columns separatedeach arch. Roomy galleries formed a cross under the arena itself. In the passageway leading from the galleries to the arena, the ruins of a statue of Marcus Aurelius gazed down benignly.

As the slaves moved ever closer, they could see the remains of the Town of Thysdrus, once one of the richest cities in the whole of the Roman province of Ifriqiya. Alongside the amphitheater, dwarfed by its immensity, stood the ruins of vast villas, once the pride of rich olive growers; the scraggly remains of those same olive groves grew now in clumps to the east of the amphitheater. The villas they passed were desolate. Or sheep and goats and chickens took possession of rooms whose walls gleamed still with fragments of brilliantiy colored mosaics.

Off in the distance, a second amphitheater could be seen. This one smaller and older than the one at al Djem. Where Romans trod, monuments rose, and these long outlasted the halcyon days of the Roman Empire.

The caravan was now close enough to hear the sounds of construction and see workers scurrying in and out of the upper tiers of the great amphitheater. On they marched directly into the shadows cast by the great oval which measured nearly ISO meters at its widest and 120 meters across its narrowest dimension.

CHAPTER
24

Controlled by their neck rings, the slaves moved one by one through the main entrance to the colosseum, past the two guards there, up one ramp, then down another. The interior of the colosseum was cool, a welcome protection from the burning sun that for hours had scorched their thin robes. Then, blinking, back out into the sun they walked and into the central oval where their neck chains were removed. Free of one another, like sheep, they stayed together, only looking about independendy.

What they saw offered little hope for any escape. They were virtually sealed in, surrounded by a wall twice a man's height. If one surmounted that wall, the only exits were openings high up on the second and third tiers. To jump was suicidal. If one survived, unscathed, how could he avoid the guardposts the slaves had seen as they entered the area? No wonder chains were not needed to retain the slaves.

However, if they put in a full day of hard labor and obeyed the few rules the
muraqib
described—no shirking, no resistance, no backtalk, no sexual activity and no attempting escape—they could have the run of the lower area.

The slaves had not been freed from their fellows for more than an hour before the first escape scheme was hatched. The beggars, misled by the apparent paucity of guards, were its authors. John the Rob, hearing it, decried it but his people insisted. Finally, unable to reason with them, he threw up his hands and admitted defeat. "Have
it your way. But I warn you, you will not win free.'' Despite him, they made their attempt.

The next morning when the slaves emerged from their underground quarters, eleven crucifixes greeted them, each with a beggar affixed. Then, to the accompaniment of groans, shrieks and pleas, the balance of the original three dozen worked at rebuilding the walls.

"There must be some way to help," de Wynter said as he and John the Rob manhandled a large block up into place.

"No," the beggar grunted. "Don't risk yourself. They chose not to heed my warning."

For the rest of the day the incessant mewlings of the sun-bloated lumps drummed home the message: Do not try to escape. Eventually, one by one the carcasses fell silent, and those still living rejoiced secretly that they need no longer hear the disharmony of the dying.

The crucified served their purpose. Escape was not so loosely talked about. However, John the Rob used his juggling to elicit tales of underground passages from the freemen who worked at the amphitheater for wages. Causeways led, or so his informants said, from the amphitheater all the way north to Sousse, constructed to remove the bodies of Christians, slain by gladiators, for Christian burial. But though the prisoners searched the underground galleries over a period of weeks, no walled-up openings or tunnels could be found. Despairing of this approach, Angus and Ogilvy organized a tunnel dig. The first few feet had been dug and shored up by night when the
Ikwan's
routine search uncovered their work. Since no one man admitted being the tunnel engineer, all twenty-five men sharing this cell were punished: three days without food, one without waten-

Even with adequate food and water their days were pure torture. When not set to replacing huge blocks fallen from above, they wielded crude shovels and pickaxes in an attempt to erase the debris blown into the arena over centuries. Day after day, the guards picked up the pace. Time, for them, was not limitless. Studying them whenever possible, John the Rob pieced together their language and puzzled out the story. Within the month, the
rafi as'sa'n
would hold a great event here. As to what that might be, speculation was rife, ranging from a revival of the gladiator bouts to intertribal contests.

Each morning they vowed to meet that night and devise an

escape plan. Each night, after tending to the bruises and blisters of their fellows, they gladly abandoned talk to seek blessed sleep on the damp stone floor.

Twice each day they ate in the center of the arena—at daybreak and again at dusk. The food was plentiful, served in huge trays carried out by blacks staggering under the weight. Squatting about the tray's rim, the slaves found it became second nature to roll rice into balls and dip bread into hot rancid camel's butter and pick meat and vegetables from sour soup. They preferred not to know or ask what meat it might be. And when the meat was semiovoid with a finely linked spine down the side, they chose to pretend it was fish they consumed. Not a man among them would not have gladly given a year of his life for a jug of ale, warm, hot, or cold.

With hundreds upon hundreds of slaves working, the lower tiers of the amphitheater were gradually restored to some of their past glory. Those above were shored up and made structurally safe. Other than that, no attempt was made to return those tiers to former grandeur. Evidently the Moulay and/or his daughter did not expect to fill the amphitheater to capacity.

Fortunately, the silent ones were not sadists. They assigned slaves to work best suited to their abilities. Thus, Gilliver and John the . Rob, both small and apparently weak physically, were assigned less onerous finishing work—the polishing, painting, scrubbing concentrated on that section once reserved for upper-class Romans. Marble seats were fitted with soft cushions; mosaic tile floors were pieced and patched and polished; the walls, too sadly decomposed to be restored, were covered with istabraq.

For the royalty, a whole suite of rooms was being readied. Adjacent to the box overlooking the amphitheater were two resting rooms, each with couches and low marble tables. As John the Rob described them, it was easy to imagine these rooms with their floors strewn with fur rugs, their couches piled high with cushions, their tables covered with foods and flagons of wines. Gilliver it was who told with awe of the comfort stations nearby, the marble seats laved by warm waters heated by boilers below.