Arena (27 page)

“Murder! I didn’t realize — these persons you mentioned wanted to kill — to kill the —”

“Unable to say it, are you?” he broke in, amused. “Yes, that is their intent. It may be merely drunken speculation. But something must be done to rid Rome of this curse. I have never condoned killing. I’m not positive I would do so now. It’s a heavy price to pay for the removal of a tyrant. For this reason I have so far refrained from joining the cause of my midnight visitors, except as a partner in discussion.” Rapidly he ate another barley cake. “I have said too much already.”

“Whatever I hear will go no further,” I promised him.

His eyes flashed up, wise and gently cunning. He murmured, “I know, Cassius. That is why I dared speak at all.”

Again I wondered at the faith others seemed to have in me, when I had so little in myself. Was the struggle in me so transparent? At any rate, I must have been gaping like a bumpkin. The savant chuckled.

“Don’t let me unnerve you with old man’s prattling. Paulina told me you came to ask, not listen.

Very well. Ask what you will.”

“One question only, sir. What do you know about the character of the brother of our dead friend Serenus?”

“Brother?” Seneca returned. “Do you refer to Linus Justus?”

“He was introduced to me as Drusillus. He’s the one who owns large farms outside Rome.”

“Someone is hoodwinking you, my young friend. Annaeus Serenus had only one brother, younger than he. His name was Linus Justus. He was killed in a skirmish while serving with the Twelfth Legion in Gaul. That was — let me see now — at least ten years ago.”

“There were no other brothers, living or dead?”

“None,” Seneca answered. “Nor sisters either.”

The suspicion I’d harbored these many weeks was suspicion no longer. Shaking with fury, I rose.

“Thank you.”

“I trust what I’ve said won’t provoke you to any rash act.”

At the entrance of the peristyle I halted. “No, sir. But it may well save me from becoming the victim of one.”

Though I probably should have remained and done him the courtesy of a full explanation, my heart was so full of wrath I could think of nothing but leaving at once. It was all I could do to
Page 95

murmur a word of thanks to Paulina in the atrium. I intended to drag the whole rotten scheme into the open. Even the monumental treason contemplated by Seneca’s friends seemed trifling compared with my own anger.

My bearers carried me straightaway to the Probi banking house. I realized with humiliation that Syrax had gambled upon my indifference to business matters. He had told me I was free to examine the records of the Cassian School kept at the bank, but he’d said it, I recalled, in an offhand way. No doubt he assumed I would accept his word without going to see in person.

And I had, fool that I was.

Old Probus himself greeted me when I entered the establishment. Loudly I demanded all the tablets and scrolls pertaining to the Cassian School. Probus discreetly tried to learn the reason for my concern. I said nothing, only repeated my demands.

He ushered me into a private cell reserved for clients of the house. After a brief wait a sharp-eyed clerk began bringing me piles of tablets and scrolls. When he had made his last trip I said, “This is all? I want every last item in your storage vaults.”

This is all, Splendidi.” The clerk gave me a peculiar look. “Master Probus himself attended me, to see that I brought everything.”

“Very well. Kindly draw the drapery and leave me alone.”

He retired as bidden. I opened the brass hasp that held the top three tablets together. I began to read, though I had much difficulty with the loquacious legal Latin.

After an hour’s search I found what I sought — an obscure reference to the death of Annaeus Serenus, and the statement required by law to record purchase and transfer of his share. The clod fobbed off on me as his brother was no doubt some vagabond actor hired to drop in at the school now and then to maintain the masquerade. The true purchaser of the silent share was clearly listed. Staring at his name, my cheeks grew hot and the pulses in my wrists beat fast.

My partner was Ofonius Tigellinus.

After returning the tablets to the clerk, I rushed at once to the Cassian School. I stormed around the buildings and the amphitheater, shouting for Syrax. No one knew his whereabouts. Very conveniently, I thought. I left a terse, unmistakable message with the clerks, demanding that he come at once to my home as soon as he received my communication.

Then I retired to my house. I took from a chest the long, bright ornamental sword I had worn in the recent equites’ parade. Though crusted with gems and fancily finished, it would cut a man down as easily as a plain blade. I set about polishing it while I brooded alone in the tablinium. I kept the sword close by all day.

The house remained quiet, unvisited by messengers, even to nightfall. A yellowish full moon rose, gilding the distant jumble of the Palatine. The evening was unusually still. The streets seemed ghostly, deserted. Many of the most eminent people had followed Nero and his court to Antium for a summer holiday.

I drank a great deal of wine. My temper grew blacker and blacker. I was on the point of taking my sword and going back to the school when a slave scuttled in.

“Master, there’s a dirty urchin at the scullery door. He begs to speak with you.”

“Lead the way.” I carried the sword. No telling what company of murderers might be waiting for me, if Syrax sensed trouble.

But as the slave had reported, it was only a boy with lice in his scraggled hair and fear in his sunken eyes. After checking carefully to see that no one lurked in the sour alley, I stepped outside, out of earshot of the scullery slaves.

“Did the Syrian sent you, boy?”

“Yes, Splendidi,” he quavered. “For a copper he bade me deliver a message. He knows you wish to meet him. He fears to come here, or to the school.”

“Well he might,” I muttered.

The boy didn’t understand. “He says he is in trouble with the authorities, and in hiding.”

“Hiding where?”

Page 96

“He made me promise not to say.”

“Very well. Do you know why he’s in trouble?”

“Yes, master. He insulted an influential Senator at the Palatine yesterday. He asks you to fill a purse and come meet him at once.”

A trap was being laid. I said quietly, “Where?”

“The only place he thought safe, sir. Beneath the arches outside the Circus Maximus. He plans to leave Rome for several months. That’s why he needs money.”

I glanced up at the moon, luminous and fair. I might never see it again. I patted the boy’s shoulder. “Don’t shrink back, lad. See that portly man inside? My steward. He will give you a meal.”

The boy cried, “Thank you, Splendidi. May the gods bring you much luck.”

I think I smiled, there in the wretched alley outside my home. Were there any gods? If so, I would need their help greatly this night. I knew beyond all doubt that Syrax would be waiting in the maze of the Circus arches with a pack of gutter ruffians behind him, bent on killing me.

I returned to the house for a light cloak and the scabbard for my sword. Over the protests of my slaves, I hurried out alone into the empty streets. Perhaps I would have been wiser to take a flock of helpers. But I had nothing to lose beyond a life grown dull and tasteless. Anger drove me to seek a final reckoning with the cheating Syrian, man to man.

A sultry heat blanketed Rome. The distant shouts of the vigiles sounded listless and weary. I slipped along black thoroughfares, down the hills toward the pillars of the Circus where I had stood for hours as a boy, strengthening my hand by hitting it against the ageless blackened timbers. From towering insulae roundabout rose the voices of the poor, quarrelsome in the summer’s night heat. Babies wailed and fretted in the wretched tenement rooms.

All this and more I saw, as if for the last time. Presently I drew up in the shadow of a wall.

Directly ahead, the great arched outer wall of the Circus curved away both left and right, a forest of dark nooks in which a man’s scream would hardly be heard. Here and there torches guttered, suspended in brackets hammered to the wooden columns.

With quick steps I crossed the street. I slid into concealment behind the nearest column. I searched the dark arcade to the right, saw nothing but pools of reddish torchlight spaced far apart between patches of black.

But when I looked left, I glimpsed a figure six or seven arches down. The man turned his head when I made a noise. A gilt ear hoop flashed.

I stepped out from behind the pillar and began to walk.

As I strode along my belly tightened up. Clammy-warm sweat oozed in the palm of my sword hand. Syrax heard me coming, there at the edge of a pool of torchlight. My sandals rang on the stone. Though I was walking in the heart of Rome, I might have been passing down to the underworld, so eerie and deserted were the passages where crowds jammed on Circus day.

Only the nervous flutter of Syrax’s fingers twisting his dark cloak betrayed him. I watched the shadows to his back for signs of hired killers. I saw nothing.

My partner’s face glistened with sweat. His lips formed a smile. He was as tense as I, and the smile was an ugly jerk at the corners of his lips.

“There’s no purse at your belt,” he exclaimed hoarsely. “To flee Rome I need —”

“We can drop the pretenses, Syrax. Your message was transparent. You aren’t in trouble with any influential Senator. Only with me.”

“Still, you came. Alone.”

“To have it out with you. Bring on your cutthroats. I’ll give them a go.”

“Do you think you can handle soldiers in armor, braggart?” said a voice out of the dark.

Fire glared on burnished breastplates and pointed spear heads. Two Praetorians slid from the shadows behind Syrax, tough, strapping specimens. I paid more attention to the third who appeared. The voice out of shadow fitted a face now — that of the tribune, Gaius Julius.

He saluted mockingly with his blade. “We know a few more techniques of fighting than gutter
Page 97

riffraff. Are you certain you wish to engage us?”

My heartbeat had slowed. Though death could not be far off, I felt oddly tranquil. “Certain, tribune. I wasn’t aware my partner had so many exalted friends. I’m ready for you.”

Empty bravado. I stood little chance against a trio of professional swords and spears. Syrax was practically capering with pleasure.

“Wait, wait, Cassius! Let’s have the whole company first. I think you’ll be so surprised by the treat we’ve prepared, you’ll lose all taste for fighting.”

He cupped his olive hands about his mouth and called into the dark well of a stair leading up to the high tiers of the Circus:

“Come down now. Bring your prisoner. We have him.”

The tribune Julius laughed. Sandals scraped on the stair. Torchfire gleamed along the flat of a knife. The hand that held the knife belonged to Ofonius Tigellinus.

The knife point was pressed against the throat of a shambling creature clad in bloody rags. A woman. Her hair was matted and filthy beyond description. Her step faltered as her captor shoved her along. All at once the knife pricked too deeply. She glanced up, hurt. Her dark eyes reached across the torchlit circle, widening, widening —

Her name came out of my mouth like a madman’s shriek.

“Acte!”

“Get hold of him, idiots!” Syrax squealed. Julius and the Praetorians lunged.

The sight of her, not a corpse but living, stunned me so much I was an instant late in bringing up my sword. A Praetorian slashed at my wrist with his spear. The sword clattered away.

Julius struck me across the back of the skull with the flat of his blade. I pitched forward on my face.

The two Praetorians hauled me up again. I kicked at their legs, maddened, senseless. A hard iron point jabbed my backbone.

“Writhe all you wish,” Julius said. “But you’ll drive my sword in when you do.”

Syrax slapped me stingingly, twice. The final masks of friendship had dropped, leaving an olive face distorted with hate.

“You fine, clever, strutting peacock! You and your soft coward’s guts! You and your eques toga!

Did you think that I wouldn’t prepare for any eventuality? I knew you’d visit the House of Probus one day. The clerk who brought you the records —” I remembered him, his strange, quizzical glance. “— was handsomely paid by my dear friend and partner Tigellinus to report, the instant you appeared. I hadn’t planned this little meeting so soon. Eventually I intended to get around to it. Dissolve our partnership. But your actions today forced my hand.”

He fluttered his fingers at Acte. Her loveliness hidden by grimy rags spotted with dried blood, she hung in the grip of a sweating Tigellinus. Her eyes were glazed with pain. The Praetorians held me tightly while Syrax concluded.

“Take your time, Cassius. Exchange lovesick glances with your little whore. Neither of you will see another sunrise.” He tittered. “Partner.”

|Go to Table of Contents |

“CASSIUS, plead with them. Ask them to spare you.”

Acte had spoken, her voice enfeebled, numbed. Her dark eyes shone too brightly, as if she’d lived long in company with fear. She turned her head a little, went on.

“Tigellinus, let him leave Rome. I’ll do anything you wish —”

Syrax stamped his foot. “Can’t you silence her clacking tongue?”

The Sicilian probed the knife into Acte’s neck, making her moan. He addressed Syrax sharply.

“Remember whom you’re talking to, foreigner.”

“Andyou remember the secrets we share.”

Tigellinus blinked, bit his lip and kept silent. Syrax turned back to me.

“However, I see no reason why we shouldn’t let Cassius in on them. He’ll be in no position to
Page 98

tell anyone after he’s found floating in the Tiber, the victim of one of those unfortunate nighttime accidents so common in Rome.” Syrax moved closer. “Iused you, idiot. From the start I knew you had too many weaknesses, chief among them your foolish scruples. You tried hard to conceal them beneath a pretense of toughness. But I saw through that. I’ve hated you from the beginning, Cassius. Did you know that? You’re strong. You have a certain clumsy skill in the arena. You can make your way without all the devious stratagems I’m forced to use because of my foreign birth. But now I’m satisfied that I’m the cleverer of the two of us, despite the way you strut around wearing this rag.”