Arena (13 page)

“Ask the sword for me, Cassius. You owe me your life.“Ask!”

The risk seemed small, drunk with pain and shock as I was. I flung up my right arm.

The crowd in the vicinity of the Imperial box quieted. The Emperor nodded his chubby head, giving me leave to speak.

“A boon, Emperor! For my companion Syrax who saved my life that I might claim victory from your exalted hand. The wooden sword for Syrax too!”

The cry was picked up by nearby spectators, then passed along the tiers.

“The sword for Syrax the brave!”

“He saved Cassius!”

“Two wooden swords!”

“Two wooden swords!”

My partner basked in the recognition, bowing and posturing. All at once Nero peered at me quizzically. Was he remembering the night at Sulla’s?

Then his round eyes misted over with unconcern. He shrugged and flung down two wooden swords and turned to accept the shrieking adulation of the mob.

Nero’s sycophants tossed garlands to the other four bestiarii. They had no thought for them, clapping us on the back.

“Good, Cassius!”

“Lucky devils!”

“Clever Syrax!”

“Freedom! Freedom for you both!”

Greedily Syrax snatched up one wooden sword. He threw back his head and laughed wildly.

Down the line of boxes I glimpsed Tigellinus and the Praetorian Julius. They were silent and scowling. But beyond them shimmered a froth of reddish hair beneath a parasol. I dipped the wooden sword in a gesture of acknowledgment. Through the storm of flower petals, gambling tokens, fruit peels and other objects being rained down in praise upon us, I thought I saw Locusta nod and smile in return.

The crowd thundered our name until the heavens shook. Strangely, there were tears in my eyes as I closed my fingers around the rough-hewn wood. A splinter slid into the flesh of my palm, a tiny pain, the sweetest pain on earth.

There in the sunlight and the thunder of voices, I was free of the school forever. Moving upward, steadily upward, to the fame and wealth I’d nearly died to earn.

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OUR COMPANIONSfrom the Bestiarius School thronged around us in the tunnel.

They slapped dressings on the worst of our wounds, and bound them with linen. Then they hoisted us to their shoulders, draped flower wreaths about our necks, thrust pots of wine into our hands and carried us along the dim stone passage leading to the outer arches. Even old Fabius was beside himself with joy. Although he was losing two pupils, his reputation could not help but be enhanced as a result of our victory.

Syrax and I shouted jokes at one another. We grew drunker by the minute from the wine we gulped. Outside the tunnel entrance a crowd of several hundred had collected. They broke into cheers as we were borne forth.

I cracked my head on the tunnel ceiling and tumbled to the ground, laughing despite the soreness of my wounds.

“Watch my precious skull, you oxen!” I bawled. “I want to live to enjoy my new freedom. I want —”

Words stuck in my throat. From among many sweated, screeching faces, one leaped into prominence, unsmiling, streaked with tears. Acte’s.

She thrust around a quarrelsome orange vendor who thought Syrax or I might be in a mood to scatter some coppers his way. Above the caterwauling of hawkers and the plaudits shouted by a cluster of small boys, she called, “Cassius? Please let me speak to you a moment.”

“Our plans?” Syrax was shouting to the mob. “Confidential for the moment. But you’ll all be suitably impressed when —”

“Let me through!” I said, pushing. “Let me pass.”

A great roar shook the arches as the next event commenced inside the Circus. The sound faded from my mind. So did the pushings and jostlings of our admirers. All I saw was Acte.

She was lovely as ever, high-piled dark hair lustrous in the shadows. She was forced to speak loudly because of the racket, “I owe you an explanation for the night at Sulla’s.”

“No. None’s due, not any more.”

I was shoved against her gowned breasts by the heave of the mob. I drew back, remembering how I’d been wounded that night, with a wound far more lasting than any bothering me now.

The wine and the wooden sword gave me the cruel desire to injure her the same way.

“I understand perfectly that you had to play up to the Emperor and his rich friends. What happened to us at the school happened because of my boredom and your wish to amuse yourself at my expense.”

Tears glimmered at the corners of her dark eyes. “They’ve hardened you already, haven’t they?

Made you greedy.”

“Gods above! You have the gall to speak of greed!”

She reached out to touch me. “Cassius, I love you. Please hear me out. Many times I’ve tried to —”

A wiry little Libyan girl, no more than fifteen, thrust herself between us. She was bare to the waist. She began fondling my chest while her painted mouth repeated a catalog of the delights available to any man who’d won the wooden sword. For a price, naturally. Acte looked stunned when I laughed and slipped my arm around the little whore’s waist.

“What difference is there between you and this charming creature, Acte? None, so far as I can tell. Oh, you’re very adept at pretending otherwise. But your game’s too transparent. Now that the Emperor has granted me freedom, I’ve become a man with a future in your eyes. A man who might be of value to you financially. I’m sorry to say my future doesn’t include you. Don’t you have enough clients already? I hardly see that you need one more.”

“— only a few sesterces,” the Libyan girl was cooing. “For a handsome man like the famous Cassius, a few sesterces would buy any and every act he wished to —”

“Enough talk, dove,” I said. I turned my back on Acte, fondling the Libyan girl’s bare breasts.

“Let’s see whether the performance is as good as the promise.”

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I shoved my way back to Syrax and the others. We went reeling off toward an inn a few blocks from the Circus. There we drank the night away with Fabius standing the entire cost and weeping drunken maudlin tears.

Acte was no more than a healed scar now. A memory of a lovely but false face, of untrue words, of one night’s deception.

The Libyan girl stuck to my side all night long. Before taking leave of the crowd at the inn to go above stairs with her, I chanced to look closely at the lanista. Fabius appeared wine-sotted and happy.

What would his reaction be when he discovered Syrax and I intended to out-rival him with another beast school?

Promptly I put this selfless consideration aside. Had I perished in the arena today, his remorse would have been professionally brief. So was mine.

I praised and thanked him. I followed the Libyan girl to some dim chamber where we spent the rest of the night, Acte forgotten.

And Fabius and his coming failure, too.

In the months that followed, many changes were wrought in my life. All, so it seemed, for the better.

Shortly after the end of the Imperial games, Syrax and I left the Bestiarius School and took up quarters at a small hostelry, paying our way with the modest purses presented by the Emperor’s treasurers to every winner of a wooden sword. I presented myself at the home of Serenus soon after. He had not forgotten his obligation.

We went together to Seneca, and he accompanied us to the great banking house of the Probi in the Via Sacra. Sextus Probus, the head of the firm, was a wealthy and wily old eques. After considering the guarantees offered by Serenus and the introduction provided by Seneca, not to mention my widespread reputation, he agreed to loan initial funds for the construction of a beast school upon property to be selected.

For help with that selection I turned to Locusta, whom I saw almost nightly. The occult of the Earth Mother had vast interlocking holdings in Roman real estate. Behind their smooth, sexless facades, the eunuch priests were skilled in the ways of the marketplace. In a month Syrax and I had chosen an abandoned tallow works on the Vicus Tuscus, a street in the industrial quarter leading down to the Tiber.

The tallow works was long since bankrupt. But it had a sound wharf on the river that would be convenient for unloading animal barges arriving from Africa via the port of Ostia. When banker Probus examined the property he readily approved the choice and advanced funds for the project.

Within weeks work gangs were smashing down old walls, erecting an amphitheater for training, a barracks, office quarters and a large stonework structure that would eventually be our menagerie. Meantime, theActa Diurna carried daily announcements that the Cassian School would shortly be accepting candidates.

We contracted for our first shipload of leopards and antelope from Serenus’ friend, the decurion at Iol Caesaria. Magistrates, learning we were in business, were only to happy to have one additional place to sentence some of the hundreds of criminals who daily passed through their courts. And while criminals made surly students for the most part, they soon felt the sting of my whip as I began turning them into bestiarii who could at least make a respectable showing at outlying circuses.

Perhaps I was a harsh, even a brutal trainer. Yet in the year following the opening of the Cassian School we lost not a single man. Almost weekly one or two stout country lads would appear to swell our barracks by binding themselves over. Our reputation was growing, and well.

I devoted myself almost exclusively to the training amphitheater. Syrax managed the bookwork.

He had the head for it. He also traveled widely outside Rome, arranging to supply half a dozen men to this circus or that. Even under the Emperor’s new edict forbidding provincial governors
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from giving circuses or spectacles to win the good will of their subjects — a rule which did not apply to the Emperor, naturally — country nobles standing for election were not restricted from doing this. As a result we prospered. Slowly, but satisfyingly.

Serenus had come in as third partner in the enterprise, albeit a silent one. Being a man well respected in the very best classes, he preferred to keep his name from public association with the school. His participation was known only to Syrax, myself, and certain officials at the House of Probi who had access to the private records of our loans and agreements.

Originally Syrax balked at taking a third partner and thus splintering potential profit. I argued that Serenus’ contact in Africa would save us time and cash. As it subsequently did. And Serenus seldom, if ever, visited the school. He was content to collect his profits unseen. My partner therefore appeared content with the arrangement after a while.

Indeed, he seemed content with most everything, being full of laughter and my good friend in all things.

Gradually the Cassian School’s reputation began to seriously rival that of the one managed by Fabius. More and more nobles visited us, arranging for larger and larger groups of bestiarii. I was satisfied with our progress, and my life generally. I had moved into a splendid, if small, house near the Garden of Sallust. I wore fine clothes. And I had remained Locusta’s lover.

Except for occasional haunted dreams, I never thought of Acte at all.

Syrax was the impatient member of our firm. One afternoon be brought up the subject of the future as we sat idling in the caldaria of a public bath in the Field of Mars.

An old Senator dozed on a stone bench nearby. Otherwise we were alone in the chamber, looking at one another through clouds of steam billowing from the hot water in the large porphyry pool. Lusty shouts rang out as men indulged in a game of toss-the-ball in the more bracing frigidarium adjoining.

“Really, Cassius,” Syrax addressed me. “We must put our minds to attracting a better class of patrons.”

“I’m satisfied with the ones we have at the moment, thanks. We’re doing nicely.”

“I won’t argue that.”

He proceeded to do so, however. The old, conniving gleam returned to his dark eyes. He made a peculiar picture in the blowing steam. His olive face seemed to float, disembodied, while his gold ear hoop gave off a dull glitter.

“Cassius, you know as well as I that most of the really fat commissions are still going to Fabius.

Especially when the hiring’s done by the Emperor’s toadies.”

I shrugged. “Chalk that off to the unseen hands of Tigellinus and Julius. The Emperor will come around one day. Why rush matters?”

“Because one copper in my hand begets the desire for ten. You feel the same, or you’re not the partner I thought originally.” Always the sly taunt, smilingly delivered. He rushed on, “For example, why don’t we put our heads to the task of turning up some genuine unicorns?”

“Not that again!”

“Think of the sensation it would cause. Unicorns offered exclusively by the Cassian School!”

“All very nice,” I replied. “Except for the fact that unicorns don’t exist.”

“How do we know? We’ve never been to Africa.”

“True. But I wrote the decurion in Iol Caesaria on the subject, remember? At your request. He said the best he could offer was a rhino or two, at prohibitive cost.”

That sobered him only a moment. Shortly he was off again. “Then what about the idea I had a while back? Training some sort of animal to have its way with a woman? No one in Rome seems to know how to do it, but I’m sure if the two of us put our minds to it we could — What’s wrong?”

He blinked ingenuously, as if he’d only remarked that the temperature of the steam was rather high. I said harshly, “I have given you my opinion on that matter before, Syrax. A man with a sword, going against a lion, is an honorable thing. What you suggest is not. It’s base.”

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He snorted. “Who cares where the profit comes from? So long as it comes!”

“I care, for one.” I stood up. “I believe I’ll get dressed. I’ve had enough of this conversation.”

For a moment anger smoldered in his black gaze. Then, as always, he glossed over the quarrel with a quick smile.

“Obviously you aren’t alert to the temper of the times, Cassius. I heard just the other day that Nero was definitely interested in seeing that kind of exhibition.”