Arena (10 page)

Wine had made me rash. “Am I to be exhibited again? I earned praise for you once already today.”

He refused to be provoked, laughing like a conspirator. “Whether you’re — ah — exhibited depends on how you behave yourself, and what transpires between you and the lady who sent her slave here with the request that the bestiarius Cassius join her for dinner. Locusta, you blockhead! It’s a great honor for us.”

“So I’m allowed out only to enhance the school’s reputation even further?”

“I swear by Mars I don’t know what makes you so quarrelsome! Fine things can happen to a man who wins the approval of a woman in high position. Certainly it wouldn’t be like making up to some fat gray old harpy. If it reaches that point,” he added with a lewd glance. “Look, lad. The reputation of our profession is none too good among the so-called righteous elements in the city. So why scruple about Locusta’s reputation? What bothers you? The tales of poison?”

“Nothing bothers me,” I returned, putting down my foolish hesitation. “I’ll go, and gladly.”

So I did. In style, too. Fabius had rented a handsome gilt litter with side draperies. Half a dozen of the witless bullies who passed for guards at the school surrounded the conveyance. We jogged through the twisting streets in the light of the sinking sun. Even under guard, the litter and the clean linen against my flanks gave me a sense of freedom and power that was new and startling.

Page 33

As we neared the Forum I saw, scrawled on a wall, among other greetings and epithets, large charcoal words some girl had written.

Cassius the Bestiarius is the maiden’s sigh.

I smiled. Writing such mottoes was a custom in Rome. The sentiment was empty, and the name of the man in the phrase was changed as often as some new gladiator acquired a bit of notoriety in the arena, or an old one died. Yet the fact that it was my name filled me with fresh confidence.

The litter bumped down. I looked out. I discovered we had stopped on the center of the Forum.

The guard in charge indicated a number of tall white boards propped against several pillars.

“Might as well enjoy your fame while you can, Cassius. I hear your name’s there in the gazette.

Stretch a bit and read about it, if you wish.”

Eagerly I jumped out. I pushed through the crowd around theActa Diurna , the message boards which served as the dissemination point of Rome’s popular gossip, as well as of news of such things as the corn crop in Numidia and the activities of the legions in Gaul. Rapidly I ran my eye down one album, then the next.

Several citizens were commenting on a sensational story about a Greek thief. Condemned to death, he had been escorted to the broad and splendid Forum yesterday, to be stoned to death, only to be spared when the execution party accidentally encountered the six Vestal Virgins in a nearby street. The holy women had been making their morning trip to the Fountain of Egeria near the Coelian Hill. There they drew water used in preparing their sacred cakes. For a condemned man to encounter the Vestals face to face was considered a terrible omen for the city. Such a man was always freed, regardless of his crime.

But I wasn’t interested in the antics of criminals. My eye rushed on, locating at last the album devoted to reports of the games. My name was near the top.

Cassius, a bestiarius new to the arena, displayed much promise by slaying three boars during the opening hunt. He killed two with a pair of spears simultaneously. Vale, Cassius!

The other accounts were meaningless. I read mine again and still again. Surely I had taken the first great step upward.

Two of my guards urged me back into the litter. I went at once. Gone were thoughts of Acte.

Gone were any doubts about turning into some kind of male whore for the woman with whom I was to dine.

Why should I be the one to question the accepted customs of Rome? What did I care for Locusta’s dark reputation? She might very well enhance my career, and provide me some pleasure in the bargain. In this confident state I arrived at the grim and forbidding gate of the Temple of the Earth Mother, Cybele. Within, cymbals clashed and pipes skirled.

“Locusta’s house is just behind yon temple,” the chief of the guards informed me. He leered good-naturedly. “Our delay in the Forum cost us dear. They’re celebrating their rites. No doubt well have to camp out here a while.”

He scratched his chin, studying the high wall. Its clay was washed an evil scarlet by the sundown.

Weird orgiastic yells echoed from inside.

The guard went on, “Although I hear the punishment is losing an arm or leg if you’re caught, I’d like to enter that place. Without an invitation like yours, I mean. I hear also the customs of the cult would stand even the hair of our pleasure-loving Emperor on end. Ah, well. No such luck for me. I’m on duty tonight. I suppose we’ll have to wait until they summon — Who’s that?”

He snatched his dagger from its scabbard. Unseen, a smaller portal in the great gate had opened.

A creature glided forth into the shadows beneath the wall.

Creature is the only proper word. It was a man physically. But it was effeminate beyond belief.

Smooth cheeks it had, and lips painted with cosmetics, and hair curled into perfumed ringlets.

The creature wore a black gown ornamented with cabalistic symbols. I gathered this was one of the cult’s Galli, or priests. I knew little of the religion, except that moral people maintained the worship of the Eastern goddess was merely a pretext for the basest of sexual spectacles. Many exalted Senators, equites and their wives, however, participated. Who was I to scruple?

Page 34

“This is the man Cassius?” the priest inquired in a reedy eunuch’s voice. He carried a sistrum, a peculiar bronze rattle which gave off a bizarre clanging sound when he pointed it at my chest.

The guard said gruffly that I was indeed Cassius. The priest went on. “The lady Locusta invites him within. You gentlemen remain here. Food and wine will be brought out.”

He minced back toward the gate. Inside, the frenzy of yells and sharp cries had increased. The burly guard looked at me balefully.

“On second thought, Cassius, I’m not positive I’d care to go in there at all. Sounds like all the black imps of the world let loose. Shout if you need help.”

I did not tell him my own spine was crawling. The priest held open the small portal and I walked in.

|Go to Table of Contents |

OF ALL THEstrange foreign cults that enjoyed favor in Rome, that of the Great Mother of Pessinus was by far the oldest. It dated to ancient times, when her temple was first raised in faraway Galatia. In the days when Hannibal of Carthage marched against Rome, the populace, impatient with defeats and eager to enlist the help of any and every deity available, brought from the East a great image of Cybele and erected it in the Temple. While other religions died, this one prospered, though all said its mysteries and rituals contained little of a spiritual nature. In fact, just the opposite. No doubt that accounted for its popularity.

Still, the cult was a part of that wave of popular passion for blood and lewdness which I intended to ride to prosperity. Thus I hardened my heart while the eunuch priest with the jingle rattle led me down a maze of passages into the heart of the building.

Cautioning me to speak no word and remain behind the stone gallery to which he led me, the priest glided away. He emerged moments later on the Temple floor below. It was a great gloomy hall. No outside light leaked in. What illumination there was came from dim lanterns set into niches. At one end rose an immense image of the Earth Mother, taller than three floors of an insula.

Her stone eyes gazed down past gigantic carven breasts to the spectacle taking place before her.

The carcasses of several lambs lay on a low altar. To one side, some Galli played flutes and timbrels while others leaped into the air, forming a ring of dancers. They banged together sistra and brass-handled flails.

Nearest the stone goddess danced a dozen or more women. They were young and old, bedaubed with blood, hair unkempt and eyes vacantly rolling. Everyone was naked.

They performed a sort of leaping, twisting ritual supplication of the goddess. Their movements perverted every posture and attitude of human love. The pipes skirled. The timbrels thudded. In the flickering light of the lamps I saw that the dancer who leaped higher than the rest, thighs and breasts smeared with blood, hair flying like a copper banner, was Locusta.

The women were the Corybantes, the priestesses of the Earth Mother. Soon they were joined by the Galli. The priests tore off their symbolic robes, revealing their ghastly eunuch’s bodies. They sought partners among the women for the completion of the indecent ritual.

Sour bile rose in my throat. The music reached an hysterical pitch. One of the Corybantes, a slim, black-haired girl, leaped onto the altar. She seized a dagger and with an ecstatic shriek plunged it between her own thighs.

Though I am not by nature a prudish man, that was the most I could bear. I rushed from the gallery into a damp, stone-walled corridor where I vomited up what was in my belly.

Coming to my senses, I realized the great Temple was quiet, empty except for the lamb corpses and the ruined body of the dead priestess. The stink of blood swam all around. Great Cybele stared down with unfeeling stone eyes on the welter of gore.

The same priest who’d fetched me to witness the ceremonies appeared on a stair. He beckoned.

The reek of my sickness was powerful in the corridor. The eunuch never showed that he noticed.

He led me from the Temple into a dark garden. He bade me wait and hurried away.

Page 35

He returned with a basin and towel with which I washed. Then he conducted me to the entrance of a modest house. Lamps glowed in the windows. The sight of lights restored my sense of balance. What I had witnessed seemed remote and unreal.

At the entrance to the house the priest departed. I entered the atrium alone. A Thracian girl, barefoot but demurely clad, emerged from the shadows to conduct me to the peristyle. Other lamps on taborets gleamed there. Golden fish swam lazily in a lily pool. On a couch Locusta reclined, fully dressed and composed. Had I not known what she’d recently been doing, she would have seemed an ordinary Roman matron, only lovelier.

She rose and glided to meet me on slippered feet. I noticed with a start that the pupils of the Thracian girl were a blind milky white. Shadows gathering in the peristyle’s corners became sinister.

“My lady,” I said stiffly, “you do me honor by inviting me to your house.”

“It’s a modest place,” she replied with a graceful bow. Her stole was pale ivory silk. Through it the mature curves of her thighs and round, peaked breasts shone gray. “But there is considerable wealth attached to the role of chief priestess of Cybele. I prefer to put that wealth to work in various trading investments, rather than waste it on ostentation. Come, sit.”

I obeyed, feeling more a prize domestic animal than a man. Locusta’s face, despite its faint patterning of age wrinkles, was smooth and pale. Her greenish eyes danced.

“Does it make you nervous, bestiarius, coming here for such an obvious purpose?”

“No, my lady. Nothing could bother me after what I saw in your Temple.”

“Be sure you keep what you saw to yourself.”

“I will. I don’t think I could discuss it in public.”

Daintily she plucked a moist, freshly shelled crab from a platter. She offered the dish to me. I shook my head, making a bad start at politeness.

“I take it you don’t care for the Eastern mysteries, Cassius. I find that view curious. What’s worse? Private indulgence of the lust for flesh, or public indulgence of the lust for killing in the arena?”

“In truth, my lady, I suppose one is no worse than the other. But when I enter the arena, I fight by my own rules. Those rules are as honorable as the combat allows.”

Irritated, she threw aside the bit of crab and selected a ripe mushroom.

“My lady, my lady,” she mimicked. “Is that all I’ll hear from you tonight? My name is Locusta. I don’t see why we must pretend with one another. That day I happened to drop in at the Beast School, I became convinced there was something about you that marked you as different from the rest of those oafs. Many of whom,” she finished archly, “I have entertained in this same peristyle, by the way. Does my frankness offend you?”

Without her leave, I reached for a cup of wine and drank quickly. Later she told me the sweet stuff was Chalybonium, from Damascus, a favorite of the Emperor’s. After a jolt of the wine washed the sourness from my mouth and warmed my belly, I answered her.

“No, my — Locusta. Your frankness doesn’t offend. It allows me to be equally frank. I accepted your invitation in the hope that your favor might help me gain what I want.”

“Oh, you’re insolent on top of everything else!” she exclaimed, with a nasty display of white teeth. She walked to the pool’s edge and stood gazing down, allowing me the chance to see her splendid body through the thin silk. She smoothed the material once, a quick motion of her hands down her belly, heightening the prominence of her breasts. “So you came here not for an evening’s entertainment or a meal, but for something more?”

“Much more. I aim to be free one day. To found my own Beast School and be appointed to the rank of eques.”

“The rank of eques! Not really! Do you honestly expect you can climb that high?”

“Others have, with the sufficient influence behind them.”

“Ah!” Her jade eyes narrowed. “That’s the reason you’re here.”

“Partly,” I agreed. “Also partly because you are a very attractive woman.”

Page 36

“Is that truth, Cassius?” She started toward me. “Or empty flattery?”

“A little of both.”

I was sincere. Except for the rather twisted light that flashed in those green eyes now and again, revealing another woman hidden beneath the fashionable exterior, I could enjoy her for what she was — cool, perfumed and lovely.

“How can you possibly hope to become an eques? You’re a slave at the school, are you not?”