Arena (17 page)

“Murder!” I exclaimed. “Gods! Are you still drunk?”

“Do you know the identity of the leader of the pirates?” she sneered. “Pirates indeed! You worthless wretch! Hasn’t it occurred to you that sea-rovers intent on looting a villa wouldn’t bother to sink the owner’s barge first? They’d simply go ahead and loot. Oh, the Earth Mother
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consign me to hell for taking up with you!”

She drummed her fists on her flanks, her age showing as her face cracked with rage. I said,

“Locusta, I still don’t understand —”

“The man with the pearl in his ear and the drooping eyelid! Everyone in that room but you knew his identity! He’s the commander of the royal fleet at Misenum. His name is Anicetus. He’s a freedman, and one of Nero’s closest friends. Now, Cassius.Now is there a shaft of light inside that stinking hollow of your head?”

Light there was, and despair that I hadn’t seen the truth before: the barge designed by the Emperor’s artisans; Agrippina’s role as a source of constant irritation to, and restraint upon, her son; the sudden arrival of the hired assassins after the barge sank. It all made evil sense at last.

By sending me to Africa, no doubt at Tigellinus’ suggestion, the Emperor had conveniently disposed of the single remaining witness to the crime, as well as another source of danger —

Locusta — at a single stroke.

“You’ve dragged me down,” Locusta whispered. “Down into the slime of your own miserable failure!”

I still had foolish hope. “How so? He wants a unicorn’s horn. Very well, we’ll fetch him the only such horn available — from a rhino. Then we’ll be free to return. The Emperor said so himself.

By means of a contact in Africa made through Serenus, the task will be easy. We’ll soon be back —”

“Jackass!” she cried. “We’ll never be back! There’s a trap in it. Somewhere, there’s a snare waiting to catch us. We’ll learn what it is soon enough. That madman in there is clever, the way only madmen can be.”

She moved nearer, her painted mouth ugly, the very lines of her body, once so soft, like weapons of her defiance.

“I warn you of one thing, Cassius. I have no choice but to go with you. Arguing with Nero would be folly. I know that from the way he glared at me. But if you’ve ruined my life — if, because of you, I never see Rome again —” She smiled. “Then, my darling, you’ll pay dearly.”

Her cloak billowing around her, she vanished across the antechamber. I shook my head, still trying to puzzle out where the trap lay. The humming notes of the lute echoed in the great hall.

Echoed and rose and fell, counterpointed by strange, tittering laughter.

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AMONTH later, all my affairs in order, I closed my house, dismissed my slaves and stepped into an elegant litter to be borne to the port of Ostia, down the Tiber on the seacoast.

The sun was high. The breeze smelled fresh. Peasants in the prosperous fields to either side of the great highroad, the Via Ostiensis, saluted as I passed. I expect they thought I was a noble, since I traveled with a dozen porters lugging my baggage in a file behind the chair. I was not a noble yet, but when I traveled this road again, going the other way, I would be.

We descended the green plain. The seven Roman hills were replaced by melon groves, then with the glimmering roofs of the port that served Rome. A field of sails sprang up on the blue Tyrrhenian Sea ahead. My heart grew heavier.

Would the exile really be brief? Or was there yet another snare waiting somewhere?

Near the outskirts of Ostia a group of people had gathered alongside the road to shout my name. “Vale, Cassius! Good luck! A safe journey to the famous bestiarius!”

TheActa Diurna had carried a lengthy notice about my departure to the African provinces to bring back a menagerie for the Cassian School. Quite a crowd had seen me off in Rome. My spirits rose a little. Perhaps Nero merely wanted me out of Latium for a year or so, until the shock of Agrippina’s death passed. The Emperor had retired to his villa at Naples, ostensibly grief-stricken. The populace believed otherwise. I had seen one or two ugly lampoons circulated.

The anonymous authors clearly named him the murderer of his mother.

Soon my bearers carried me into the clutter of inns and warehouses beside the great stone Ostia
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mole. Triremes of the Imperial navy swung at anchor. Also merchantmen out of Egypt with Rome’s corn dole. Even a ramshackle trader from distant Albion island. From this last naked stevedores were unloading precious tin ore for transshipment by barge up the Tiber.

The bearers set down the chair. I stepped out, wearing my finest tunic and amulets. Our ship, a Levantine trader with colorful sails, bobbed alongside the quay. As I was seeing to the loading of my things, runners shoved through the idlers loitering on the dock. Another litter was on the way, borne by bald eunuchs. I gathered my cloak around my arm and waited. I had not seen Locusta in many days.

She climbed from her litter and blinked rapidly, unused to the sun. A stevedore accidentally stumbled against her, dropping his bale of Egyptian cotton.

“Clumsy, unwashed pig!” She kicked savagely at the unlucky man’s shins. He scuttled away in terror. With a contemptuous glance at the crowd Locusta swept up the ship’s plank. Not once did she notice me.

At the rail she paused and stared back across the narrow strip of blue water. I nodded. She did not return the greeting, passing out of sight.

With a sigh I saw to the loading of the last of my belongings. I paid off the porters and the chairmen and wandered a while on the bustling quay. Now and again some child or seaman would point and whisper. The novelty of being a celebrity was beginning to pall.

Under the best of circumstances, a journey into Africa would not be easy. With Locusta in her present frame of mind it might well be unbearable. After one initial meeting, all our arrangements had been handled by agents hired by Syrax, to whom I had bade farewell last night in Rome.

Just as I was about to enter an inn for a last cup of good Roman wine, a chariot came racing down the wharf. People scattered as the driver wheeled up. I went to meet Annaeus Serenus, whom I had been expecting.

My grizzled partner looked older than ever. “A damned broken axle delayed me on the highroad,” he informed me. From his cloak he produced a parchment sealed with wax and impressed with a signet. “This is the letter of introduction I promised to Cornelius Publius in Iol Caesaria.”

I nodded, tucking the letter safely away. “We’ve corresponded. I’m sure the decurion will give me every assistance.” I added, with a confidence I did not feel, “When I return, our partnership will prosper even more, Serenus. Going to locate a unicorn’s horn for the Emperor is only one purpose of this trip.”

Serenus shook his head. “Why can’t he concern himself with statecraft, instead of with gratifying these bizarre whims?”

I said nothing, By mutual consent Locusta and I had not concealed our reason for going to Africa. We had, however, kept secret the circumstances under which Nero made this request.

Only the dimmest rumors of my role in the death of Agrippina had leaked out. To these I had added nothing, for my own sake.

“One last thing I charge you with, friend,” I told Serenus. “From time to time, look over the accounts of the Cassian School with the bankers.”

“Be assured I will. That Syrax is a good enough fellow, I suppose, but I don’t like him and I never have. He strikes me as none too scrupulous about the means he employs to reach a given end.”

“With you to keep a discreet watch on him, we have nothing to fear.”

Serenus clasped my hand. “A good journey, Cassius. Father Neptune of the Foam smooth your way both going and coming. Let’s hope the reckless young man on the Palatine allows Rome to remain standing while you’re gone. Have you heard the latest?”

I said I had not. He proceeded to tell me a tale of the Emperor’s growing infatuation with things Grecian.

“Word is, he spent one night recently at his Neapolitan villa drawing diagrams of Rome rebuilt
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on a plan resembling that of ancient Athens. How do you suppose the madman intends to dispose of the Rome we have now? Burn it?”

Before I could reply I saw a certain face in the crowd.

For a moment I was dumb with surprise. My heart broke at the sight of her slim, lovely body beneath a simple pale gray stola that looked rather threadbare. Then I recalled all the anguish of the past, and I hardened my heart.

Acte struggled toward me. Hastily I turned to Serenus, “Excuse me, good friend. I’d better see to my things on board. Farewell.”

Taken aback, he had no chance to say anything before I slipped away. But I was unsuccessful in my escape. Acte’s hand closed on my arm.

“Cassius? Are you such a hard, selfish man to turn away a second time?”

Facing her was simple enough. Keeping the hardness in my heart was the difficult task. There in the pandemonium of the dock, with the cries and curses of the Levantine sailors rattling in the air and the blue eternity of the sea lapping off to the horizon, she was lovely as she had always been. And painful for me to look upon.

“I suppose you’re going to say you walked all the way from Rome to see me off, Acte.”

“To tell the truth, I did. The news of your departure was widespread. Oh Cassius, they’ve made you bitter, haven’t they? You look so elegant wearing those amulets and chains, your hair curled and your feet in fine leather boots. But your eyes —”

She crushed against me, weeping. “Cassius, Cassius. Why did you walk out on me that day in the arena?”

Roughly I pushed away, not wanting to remember how I’d loved her. It would only bring woe.

“Acte, if you want to rake up the past, I can do it too. Remember the night at Sulla’s when I sent the message in with the doorkeeper? You never came out. You kept me waiting outside like an animal, while you sported with the Emperor so he’d give you a few more pretty presents.”

“Presents!” she exclaimed. “Oh, you great fool. In so many ways you’re a man. Strong, full of courage. In so many other ways you’re blind.”

“Don’t pretend you weren’t flattering Nero to gain some favor.”

“Not for me, Cassius. I did it for my father’s sake.”

“Oh, please. Spare me the cheap little domestic tales.”

“Gods, what have theydone to you? Your lips twist whenever you speak.”

“No one has done anything!” I said sharply. “I have made my own way. I will continue to do so.

I don’t see anything strange in my attitude, Acte. You did the same thing at Sulla’s.”

“I was trying to get my father reinstated!” We were pushed together as another file of porters passed onto the ship. “Do you think I enjoyed what that puffed-up little boy wanted to do with me? And did? The gods have visited us both with evil luck, Cassius. Yours came as success, mine as failure.”

“What you’re saying makes no sense, Acte.”

“Do you remember I told you how my father lost his position in the treasury when Nero replaced office holders from the old regime with followers of his own?”

I nodded cautiously. Growing within me was a desire to believe in her again; to love her as I once had. She stood with the shadow of the sail of the ship for Africa falling across her face. To love her now would be futile.

She hurried on, describing how the Emperor and his friends had been visiting Sulla’s regularly.

How she’d seen Nero’s interest in her as a heaven-sent opportunity to regain her father’s job.

Her dark eyes turned ugly with memory.

“Night after night he came to the brothel, promising me every night that my father’s case would be reviewed. I knew he didn’t actually care for me. He was only indulging his lust. But I believed it when he gave his word. The word of an Emperor. After he stopped visiting Sulla’s, my father went to the office of the Imperial quaestors. He was thrown out. Hooted at. Called a stupid old man. That is the sort of Emperor who rules us, Cassius. That’s the sort of god to whom you
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pander. He’s not worthy of respect, and neither is the whole rotten hierarchy of Rome!”

“I — I’m sorry about your father.” I was weakening in spite of my will. Old memories of that first night of tenderness at the school flooded back. “How is he?”

“Dead,” she said softly. “The last rebuff was too much. He stole a razor from a public barber stand one night when he was drunk. He slashed his throat. My brothers and sisters have all left Rome now, to work on farms or at anything they can find. Two were taken in by distant branches of the family. I left Sulla’s shortly after that.”

“To do what?”

“Oh, this and that.” She was nervous, evasive.

“Do you take men from the streets?”

“Yes, if there’s no other way to — Cassius, do you have to torture me like this?” She was weeping again, oblivious to the stares of those around us. Over her shoulder I glimpsed Serenus standing in the shadow of an inn wall, watching.

“Cassius, I would have come out that night. But I couldn’t, don’t you understand?”

“Whether I understand doesn’t change the fact that you spouted lofty sentiments when we first met. Then used your body like any other whore to your advantage.”

“Yes, I admit that.”

“I’m sorry,” I said again. “That was cruel. I know you did it for your father. But after Sulla’s, you never bothered with me until I won the wooden sword.”

Instantly her head came up. “That’s not true! I sent half a dozen messages to the school.”

“You’re lying. I never got one.”

She puzzled a moment. “Cassius, this is very strange. A few days after you visited Sulla’s, a boy brought a message from your friend. Syrax. He said you were angry with me. But he promised he’d do what he could to mend the situation. Smuggle my letters to you into the school. He maintained they’d never reach you otherwise. I believed what he wrote because I was desperate, Cassius. I sent you letters one after another. Eventually the boy brought them all back with a note from Syrax saying you’d refused even to look at them.”

Cold despair froze me. “Syrax wouldn’t dare to —”