Arena (22 page)

“And the cup?” I panted as we stumbled down narrow stairs. “That was your work?”

“Yes. Careful, now. Take the turn on the right. It’s an old passageway that leads out through the wall.”

While we rushed on, the dim screams of the slaughter echoing behind us, Ptolemy explained how he’d stolen one oryx from its pen, slain it and fashioned the cup with his own hands. He had put a powder in the cup. Not poison, but a special kind of crushed earth, that foamed and fulminated in contact with any liquid. The powder was supplied by the village wizard.

Ptolemy had concocted the scheme not to place me in danger but to give me a pretext for reporting Quintus to the decurion.

A gust of cool air brushed my face, signifying the tunnel’s end. He finished his account quickly.

“All my people knew Quintus and the woman plotted against you. I am not a wise man or I would have realized they would fall upon you when exposed. I didn’t plan for Quintus to die or, even worse, for his death to give my people courage enough to dig up the spears.”

We reached the mouth of the passage. It opened into a narrow drainage ditch below a deserted section of the fort wall. To my right I saw the precious cage carts, many aflame. Black figures danced around them.

Lions wailed in mortal pain. Monkeys screamed. The burning bars of one cart buckled and three antelope leaped out, their pelts afire, strange moving torches.

The blacks gave chase, slaughtering the animals with spear and sword and club. A lioness tried to escape her cage. The wooden bars snapped under the impact of her thrashing. As she jumped to freedom she impaled herself on the broken stakes.

From above us a legionnaire plummeted off the wall and smashed against the earth. Another body followed. Both men were naked, their heads and genitals gone.

“I can’t leave the animals to die,” I shouted hysterically. “After all these months of work —”

“Do you want the animals or your life?” I could only shake my head dazedly. Ptolemy seized my arm. “Cassius, wake up or we’re both finished! You still have the three unicorns. Weeks ago I hid one empty cage cart and an ox, a ways from here. I never dreamed this night would come so soon when I did it. Hurry now, we must go quickly.”

“These are your people, Ptolemy. If you come with me —”

He shook his head, eyes shining sadly in the hellglare. “With the bad devils running loose, I can’t go back either. I put myself on your side, the Roman side, helping you. Cassius, I beg you as your friend — no more talk.”

“All right,” I said feebly. “Which way?”

He led me away from the ditch under the wall. On the crest of the first dune we turned. There before us, the fort blazed up, alight from corner to corner. And all the cage carts were burning too.

Tears streaked Ptolemy’s face. A part of him was still primitive. I think he wanted to be with his people in their hour of vengeance. But he said nothing.

Abruptly I picked out a woman’s figure fleeing along the parapet from a tower. Men gave chase.

The woman’s hair was afire, streaming out behind her, redder than it had ever been in life. A
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spear in her backbone doubled her. Then another. Then two more.

With four spears piercing her body, Locusta fell into the dark, her hair a red banner of her destruction.

Watching her die, I felt nothing.

“Ptolemy? I have seen enough.”

We turned our faces to the black night of the desert.

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LEAN, FAMISHEDand baked nearly as black as my tall Numidian companion, I reached Iol Caesaria after almost thirty days of wandering.

Out of the carnage of the night the fort was destroyed, we had salvaged the trio of oryx antelope. The gray gentle beasts rode placidly in the cage cart Ptolemy had hidden away, and all in all, fared better than we did on the exhausting journey.

We screeched to a stop at the gate of the estate of Cornelius Publius. His manservants started to stone us away as mountebanks. I raised a row. Presently the decurion himself appeared, backed by soldiers. They drove off the crowds that had collected once we reached the city highroad with our marvelous cargo peering from behind thong-and-pole bars.

Publius made us welcome. I slept almost two days, bathed for three hours and gorged myself with food. Publius already knew about the loss of the fort. Legion scouts had reported its destruction and the subsequent fight of all the Numidians. A full cohort had been dispatched into the desert to round up the renegades, a task Publius admitted was hopeless.

Ptolemy smiled in agreement. Publius shook his head sadly time and again as I explained the real cause of the massacre — the malfeasance of Titus Quintus. He grew plum-faced when promising that the lazy first centurion, still idling away his time at a resort somewhere down the shore, would soon reap a whirlwind out of the seeds of his indolence.

My absence from Rome had now lasted about two and a half years. Like a man emerging from the vale of the dead, I listened eagerly to the news of what had been happening. The news, however, was similar to the kind I’d brought Publius — disheartening.

“Nero has all but seized complete power. The Senate has no real authority any longer. Treason trials for those who speak a single word of criticism against the regime have begun. The latest dispatch said that Seneca was requested by Nero to retire. You know what that sort of request means. Comply, or you’ll meet some faceless assassin on a dark street. Well, Seneca is completely out of it now. Living in seclusion. Seeing no visitors. The Emperor also managed to rid himself of Octavia at last. He divorced her for barrenness.”

“Is Poppaea Sabina the Empress?”

“Aye. Nero married her precisely twelve days after Octavia was banished to Campania. Oh, Cassius, there’s no end to the evils of the reign. The Praetorian Prefect, Burrus, is dead.

Ostensibly of a mysterious seizure which confounded all the physicians. Probably it was poison.

The new Prefect is no bargain, either. A worthless rascal who exploits his position as the most powerful man in Rome.”

“Who is it?”

“That ex-criminal Ofonius Tigellinus.”

An ominous heaviness clutched my belly. Publius went on.

“Actually there are two Prefects with theoretically equal power. But Faenius Rufus, the former Prefect of the corn supply, is a mere figurehead.”

Ptolemy listened patiently to all this, not understanding. I understood all too well. My enemy had reached the acme of power, and would not be happy to see me return.

The decurion also reported that on the island of Albion, which some called Britain, the tribe of Iceni led by their warrior queen, had staged a disastrous revolt against the Legions.

“Fortunately for the sake of our dwindling liberty, the Legions stationed throughout the Empire aren’t so enamored of Nero as the Praetorians seem to be. In truth, many of the overseas
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commanders grumble openly about the lascivious ways of Rome. The drain Nero’s excesses make on manpower and money and morale. Thanks to the quick action of one of the generals, Vespasian, the Iceni revolt died a-borning. It also elevated Vespasian to high popularity. Bear his name in mind, Cassius. I hear he’s a shrewd customer who appreciates the role the army plays in maintaining the throne. When and if the rotten Julian bloodline ends without issue from Nero —

and about time, in my opinion — Vespasian will be a comer.”

Later, Ptolemy asked me, “What did all the decurion’s talk really mean, Cassius?”

“That evil days have fallen on Rome. And worse ones may be in store so long as Nero lives.

Perhaps the evil won’t touch us. I’ll have high rank when I return.”

We saw to it that the three antelope were securely caged. I identified them to all I met as genuine unicorns. I used a sum advanced by Publius to secure passage on a fast ship to Ostia.

As we neared the lovely blue-green coast of Latium, we put in at various ports to discharge cargoes of olives and figs. Word of the unicorns spread inland. Soon great crowds thronged along the beaches, following the ship’s progress from afar.

At Ostia I was eager to go ashore as soon as we moored in late afternoon. The captain of the vessel put me off with vague remarks about an inspection of strange animals being required for the sake of public health.

Pacing the deck, I watched a lighter put out from the teeming shore. Shortly the head of the so-called inspector appeared above the rail.

He’d grown older, but the drooping right eyelid and the pearl-hung left ear were all too familiar.

“Ave,Cassius!” he greeted, as though we’d never met before. “I am Anicetus, master of the fleet.

The regular inspector was detained in town. Here’s my certificate of authority to inspect your animal cargo. Now, let’s see whether you brought back real unicorns, or only rhinos.”

He marched below decks. I followed quickly, not caring for the appearance of the men left behind in the lighter. They were wharf-killers if ever I’d seen one.

In the hold I discovered Anicetus walking round and round the cage, clearly baffled.

“What are these animals?” he demanded. “I’ve never seen the like before.”

“Naturally not,” I replied. “They are the beasts the Emperor sent me to Africa to find.”

His evil eyelid drooped more than ever. “Unicorns? Come now!”

“That is the name the popular tongue gives them. What their original African name is, I cannot say.”

He was visibly upset. “There’s a trick somewhere. Where did you locate them?”

“Sir, the Cassian School wouldn’t prosper if it revealed trade secrets.”

Anicetus snorted. He refused to put his hand in the cage to touch one of the horns as I suggested. I felt he had been ordered to the harbor to prevent my landing. Perhaps Nero thought I might be fool enough to return with rhinos after all.

Anicetus hemmed and hawed about allowing such possible infected creatures ashore. I shouted back, “Infected with what? They’re perfectly sound animals. Not a sore or a tick anywhere. I intend to take them into Rome.”

“Not until morning,” he hedged. “It can’t be allowed until then.”

“In hell’s name why not? I’ve waited over two years to step on Roman ground again.”

He smiled with false cordiality. “Then what’s one more night? I must hurry back to the city and present my report. I assure you, Cassius, it will be favorable. On the morrow you have permission to unload. You’ll be in Rome by nightfall.”

The more I argued, the more adamant he became. At last I gave up. Probably I was too suspicious. The Emperor had undoubtedly ordered the bogus inspection to spare himself possible humiliation over some dolt parading rhinos up to the Palatine.

I drank wine and took my evening meal with the captain of the ship as the sun sank. I retired to my cabin early, anxious for sleep and the coming morning.

A raw, ragged shriek of pain dragged me from slumber. “What the devil —?” I rushed from the cabin clad only in my clout. Sailors scurried across the deck. The stars glimmered in the rigging,
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for it was still the middle of the night. I bumped into the captain.

“Who cried out?”

“Someone in the hold,” he answered sleepily. “I was awakened myself —”

Pushing the sailors out of the way, I hurried to the hold. Lanterns flickered. A scene of carnage waited there.

One man lay dead, a stranger in shabby seaman’s garb. His belly had been ripped open by a knife. The knife-wielder was big Ptolemy.

The black was sprawled on the planks, blood pouring from his ribs where a cut had scored.

He strained up in pain as I bent over him. His black hand lifted feebly. “Cassius — I tried. I tried well to stop him.”

I saw what he meant. In the cage, two of the beasts pawed fearfully. On the floor, twisted in its own gore and excreta, lay the third. Its throat had been slashed open.

Tears came unbidden as I bent down beside the big black.

“Who did this, Ptolemy? More than one?”

“No, only — only him, lying there.” Though the effort obviously cost him pain, he brought his lips nearer my ear, for his voice was thin. “Today — I didn’t like the looks of that official or his men. I — have a feeling for people. Today it was a bad feeling. I came down here with my knife — to sleep. I tried to stop him —”

“You did stop him, my good friend,” I said softly. “The price wasn’t worth it. Rest now. We’ll fetch a surgeon. He’ll patch you up soon enough.”

His massive black head moved ponderously. “No. I can tell. I’m only sorry I must die so far from my own land. Among white strangers.”

His fingers closed over mine. His eyes were full of childlike pain. “But you’re no stranger, Cassius. You’re my friend, my brother, my —”

He sank back. I held his great black hand until it relaxed after his death-sigh.

I stared at the fine, strong face, tranquil now. I completed his sentence in my mind.

My friend, my brother, my betrayer.

Surely my own success and my wish to rise to riches had taken a heavy toll. Too heavy, I thought.

Furiously I turned upon the captain. “Who is that dead man? A member of the crew?”

“No, sir,” he mumbled. “A thief off the Ostia piers, most like. My mate tells me there’s a strange skiff moored at the stern. Doubtless the man sneaked aboard. I’ll thrash my watchboys for falling asleep, I promise. I don’t know what to say about this —”

I looked closely at his rough face. There was no treachery in it. Which was more than I was prepared to say for Anicetus.

Had his inspection, the night’s delay and the subsequent arrival of the assassin signified the sly hand of Nero working behind the scenes? I couldn’t guess. But I was certain of one thing — I would go straight to the Palatine. I would extract the reward for which good Ptolemy laid down his life.

I snapped at the captain, “You don’t know what to say, eh? You careless fool! Fetch a funeral dealer. This man’s body is to be conveyed to my home in Rome, the address of which I will shortly provide. I want this cage cleaned out, the body disposed of, and the other two antel —

unicorns on the Ostia wharf within an hour. No, not in the morning! To hell with Anicetus and his inspection certificates! At once!”