A Gladiator Dies Only Once (20 page)

Sensing more than seeing his advantage—for the net must have greatly blocked the view from his narrow visor—the Gaul rushed forward. Holding fast to the trident, the Nubian was unable to stand his ground and was pushed back. Tripping, he fell onto his rump and released the shaft of the trident with one hand, still gripping it with the other. The Gaul, using his bull-like strength, twisted to one side. The Nubian, his wrist unnaturally bent, gave a cry and released the trident altogether.

The Gaul, slashing at the net with his sword and thrusting upwards with his shield, managed to push the net up and over his head, taking the trident with it. Stepping free, he kicked the net behind him, and with it the now hopelessly entangled trident. The Nubian, meanwhile, managed to scramble to his feet, but he was now without a weapon.

The Gaul might have made short work of his opponent, but eschewing his sword, he used his shield as a weapon instead. Rushing headlong at the Nubian, he struck him with his shield, so hard that the Nubian was knocked backwards against the wooden wall of the arena. The spectators directly above him, unable to see, rushed forward from their seats and craned their necks, peering over the railing. Among them—not hard to pick out in that crowd—I saw the Nubian woman. Even greater than the contrast of her dark flesh next to the paleness of those around her was the marked contrast of her expression. Submerged in a sea of faces that leered, gaped, and howled with bloodlust, she was silent and stricken, wearing a look of shock and dismay.

The Gaul played cat-and-mouse with his prey. He stepped back, allowing the Nubian to stagger forward, gasping for breath, then struck him full-force again with his shield, knocking him against the wall. Over and over, the Gaul struck the Nubian, knocking the breath out of him each time, until the man was barely able to stand. The Gaul delivered one last body-blow with his shield, and the Nubian, recoiling from the wall, fell forward onto his face.

Casting aside his shield, the Gaul grabbed hold of the Nubian’s ankle and dragged him toward the center of the arena. The Nubian thrashed ineffectively, seemingly unable to catch a breath. To judge from the intermittent red trail he left in the sand, he was bleeding from some part of his body, perhaps from his mouth.

“Ha!” said one of the men behind me. “Who’s the fish out of water now?”

The Gaul reached the center of the ring. Releasing the Nubian’s ankle, he held up his fists and performed a victory strut in a circle around him. The crowd gasped at the man’s audacity. The Thracian had behaved with the same careless bravado, and had very nearly paid for it with his life.

But the Nubian was in no condition to take advantage of any miscalculation by his opponent. At one point, he stirred and tried to raise himself on his arms, and the crowd let out a cry; but his arms failed him and he fell back again, flat on his chest. The Gaul stood over him and looked to the spectators for judgment.

The reaction from the stands was mixed. People rose to their feet. “Spare him!” cried some. “Send him to Hades!” cried others. The magistrate in charge turned his head this way and that, looking distinctly uncomfortable at the lack of consensus. Whichever course he chose, some in the crowd would be disappointed. At last he gave a sign to the waiting gladiator, and I was not surprised that he did the predictable thing. Mercy to a defeated fighter had already been granted once that day; mercy was the exception, not the rule. The crowd had come expecting to see bloodshed and death, and those who wanted to see the Nubian killed had more reason to see their expectation gratified than did those who preferred the novelty of allowing him to live. The magistrate raised his fist in the air.

There were cries of triumph in the stands, and groans of disappointment. Some cheered the magistrate, others booed. But to all this commotion I was largely deaf, for my eyes were on the Nubian woman directly across from me. Her body stiffened and her face froze in a grimace as the Gaul raised his sword for the death blow; I had the impression that she was struggling to contain herself, to exhibit dignity despite the despair that was overwhelming her. But as the sword descended, she lost all composure. She clutched her hair. She opened her mouth. The sound of her scream was drowned in the roar of the crowd as the Nubian convulsed on the sand, blood spurting like a fountain around the sword thrust between his shoulder blades.

For an instant, the Nubian woman’s gaze met mine. I was drawn into the depths of her grief as surely as if I tumbled into a well. Cicero gripped my arm. “Steady, Gordianus,” he said. I turned toward him. His face was pale but his tone was smug; at last, it seemed to say, he had found someone more squeamish at the sight of death than himself.

When I looked back, the woman had vanished.

With their palm fronds held aloft, the victors paraded once more around the arena. The magistrate invoked the memory of Sextus Thorius and uttered a closing prayer to the gods. The spectators filed out of the amphitheater.

“Did you notice her?” I asked Cicero.

“Who, that hyperventilating young woman next to me?”

“No, the Nubian across from us.”

“A Nubian female?”

“I don’t think she showed up until the final bout. I think she was alone.”

“That seems unlikely.”

“Perhaps she’s related somehow to the Nubian gladiator.”

He shrugged. “I didn’t notice her. How observant you are, Gordianus! You and your endless curiosity. But what did you think of the games?” I started to answer, but Cicero gave me no chance. “Do you know,” he said, “I actually rather enjoyed myself, far more than I expected to. A most instructive afternoon, and the audience seemed quite uplifted by the whole experience. But it seems to me a mistake on the part of the organizers, simply as a matter of presentation, not to show us the faces of the gladiators at some point, either at the beginning or the end. Their individual helmets project a certain personality, to be sure, like masks in the theater. Or do you think that’s the point, to keep them anonymous and abstract? If we could see into their eyes, we might make a more emotional connection—they’d become humans beings first, and gladiators second, and that would interfere with the pure symbolism of their role in the funeral games. It would thwart the religious intent. . .” Safe once more from the very real bloodshed of the arena, Cicero nattered on, falling into his role of aloof lecturer.

We arrived at Cicero’s lodgings, where he continued to pontificate to his host, a rich Etrurian yokel who seemed quite overwhelmed to have such a famous advocate from Rome sleeping under his roof. After a parsimonious meal, I excused myself as quickly as I could and went to bed. I could not help thinking that the lice at the inn had been more congenial, and the cook more generous.

I fell asleep thinking of the Nubian woman, haunted by my final image of her—her fists tearing at her hair, her mouth opened to scream.

The next day I made my way back to Rome. I proceeded to forget about the funeral of Sextus Thorius, the games, and the Nubian woman. The month of Junius passed into Quinctilis.

Then, one day, as Rome sweltered through the hottest summer I could remember, Eco came to me in my garden to announce a visitor.

“A woman?” I said, watching his hands shape curves in the air.

Eco nodded.
Rather young,
he went on to say, in the elaborate system of gestures we had devised between us,
with skin the color of night.

I raised an eyebrow. “A Nubian?”

Eco nodded.

“Show her in.”

My memory did not do justice to her beauty. As before, her hair was done up with ribbons and she was attired in pale blue and burnished copper. Probably the outfit was the best she possessed. She had worn it to attend the funeral games; now she wore it for me. I was flattered.

She studied me for a long moment, a quizzical expression on her face. “I’ve seen you somewhere before,” she finally said.

“Yes. In Saturnia, at the funeral games for Sextus Thorius.”

She sucked in a breath. “I remember now. You sat across from me. You weren’t like the rest—laughing, joking, screaming for blood. When Zanziba was killed, you saw the suffering on my face, and I could tell that you . . .” Her voice trailed off. She lowered her eyes. “How strange, the paths upon which the gods lead us! When I asked around the Subura for a man who might be able to help me, yours was the name people gave me, but I never imagined that I’d seen you before—and in that place of all places, on that day of all accursed days!”

“You know who I am, then?”

“Gordianus. They call you the Finder.”

“Yes. And you?”

“My name is Zuleika.”

“Not a Roman name.”

“I had a Roman name once. A man who was my master gave it to me. But Zuleika is the name I was born with, and Zuleika is the name I’ll die with.”

“I take it you shed your slave name when you shed your former master. You’re a freedwoman, then?”

“Yes.”

“Let’s sit here in the garden. My son will bring us wine to drink.”

We sat in the shade, and Zuleika told me her story.

She had been born in a city with an unpronounceable name, in a country unimaginably far away—beyond Nubia, she said, even beyond the fabled source of the Nile. Her father had been a wealthy trader in ivory, who often traveled and took his family with him. In a desert land, at a tender age, she had seen her father and mother murdered by bandits. Zuleika and her younger brother, Zanziba, were abducted and sold into slavery.

“Our fortunes varied, as did our masters,” she said, “but at least we were kept together as a pair; because we were exotic, you see.”
And beautiful,
I thought, assuming that her brother’s beauty matched her own. “Eventually we found ourselves in Egypt. Our new owner was the master of a mime troupe. He trained us to be performers.”

“You have a particular talent?”

“I dance and sing.”

“And your brother?”

“Zanziba excelled at acrobatics—cartwheels, balancing acts, somersaults in midair. The master said that Zanziba must have a pair of wings hidden somewhere between those massive shoulders of his.” She smiled, but only briefly. “Our master had once been a slave himself. He was a kind and generous man; he allowed his slaves to earn their own money, with the goal of eventually buying their freedom. When we had earned enough, Zanziba and I, we used the money to purchase Zanziba’s freedom, with the intention of putting aside more money until we could do the same for me.

“But then the master fell on hard times. He was forced to disband the troupe and sell his performers piecemeal—a dancer here, a juggler there. I ended up with a new master, a Roman merchant living in Alexandria. He didn’t want me for my dancing or my singing. He wanted me for my body.” She lowered her eyes. “When Zanziba came to him and said he wanted to buy my freedom, the man named a very steep price. Zanziba vowed to earn it, but he could never hope to do so as an acrobat, performing for coins in the street. He disappeared from Alexandria. Time passed, and more time. For such a long time I heard no word from him that I began to despair, thinking that my brother was dead, or had forgotten about me.

“Then, finally, money arrived—a considerable sum, enough to buy my freedom and more. And with it came a letter—not in Zanziba’s hand, because neither of us had ever learned to read or write, but written for him by the banker who transmitted the money.”

“What did the letter say?”

“Can you read?”

“Yes.”

“Then read it for yourself.” Zuleika handed me a worn and tattered scrap of parchment.

Beloved Sister, 1 am in Italy, among the Romans. I have become a gladiator, a man who fights to the death to honor the Roman dead. It is a strange thing to be. The Romans profess to despise our kind, yet all the men want to buy us drinks in the taverns and all the women want to sleep with us. I despise this life, but it is the only way a freedman can earn the sort of money we need. It is a hard, cruel life, not fit for an animal, and it comes to a terrible end. Do not follow or try to find me. Forget me. Find your way back to our homeland, if you can. Live free, sister. I, too, shall live free, and though I may die young, I shall die a free man. Your loving brother, Zanziba.

I handed the scrap of parchment back to her. “Your brother told you not to come to Italy.”

“How could I not come? Zanziba hadn’t forgotten me, after all. I was not going to forget him. As soon as I was able, I booked passage on a ship to Rome.”

“Travel is expensive.”

“I paid for the fare from the money Zanziba sent me.”

“Surely he meant for you to live off that money.”

“Here in Rome I make my own living.” She raised her chin high. The haughty angle flattered her. She was beautiful; she was exotic; she was obviously clever. I could well imagine that Zuleika was able to demand a high fee for the pleasure of her company.

“You came to Rome. And then?”

“I looked for Zanziba, of course. I started with the banker who’d sent the money. He sent me to a gladiator camp near Neapolis. I talked to the man who owned the camp—the trainer, what you Romans call a
lanista.
He told me Zanziba had fought with his troupe of gladiators for a while, but had long since moved on. The
lanista
didn’t know where. Most gladiators are captives or slaves, but Zanziba was a free agent; he went where the money was best. I followed his trail by rumor and hearsay. I came to one dead end after another, and each time I had to start all over again. If you’re as good as people say, Gordianus the Finder, I could have used the skills of a man like you to track him down.” She raised an eyebrow. “Do you have any idea how many gladiator camps there are in Italy?”

“Scores, I should imagine.”

“Hundreds, scattered all over the countryside! Over the last few months I’ve traveled the length and breadth of Italy, looking for Zanziba without luck, until. . . until a man who knew Zanziba told me that he was fighting for a
lanista
named Ahala who runs a camp in Ravenna. But the man said I needn’t bother going all the way to Ravenna, because Ahala’s gladiators would be fighting at funeral games the very next day up in Saturnia.”