Arena (6 page)

He cried sharply, “Must we take pleasure from bullying the helpless? I beg you, Domitius, let him alone.”

The youth spun, poutish lips spitting the words, “We’ll take pleasure where I say and when I say, Serenus. Now if the rest of you spineless japes are friends of mine, let’s see you join me in teaching this lump of dung a lesson in respectful posture. He’s not respectful enough yet. Not nearly. A few more kicks will do it, though.”

And the youth fell on the prone doorkeeper, battering him with heels and fists.

All the nobles except Serenus swarmed forward. My throat grew scalding hot. The grizzled man shouted vain warnings about the watch. His words were greeted with hoots of derision as the gentlemen rained blows on the doorkeeper, whose protesting pleas turned to reedy screams of pain.

Meantime the moon-faced youth had worked himself into a frenzy. “He’s not respectful enough!

Strike harder!”

I could bear it no more. I plunged across the street.

The first noble I seized by the shoulder squeaked in fright when I struck him in the face and sent him staggering.

The man Serenus rushed to my side. “Get away, whoever you are! Don’t meddle in this.”

But I had already meddled, and the pack of perfumed dogs was snapping all around, grabbing at my arms, aiming fists at my head and chest. The round-faced noble was the worst of the lot, spewing obscene oaths as he darted under a comrade’s arm to kick me between the legs.

I cursed, swinging wildly. My balled hand connected with his chin. His eyes popped in amazement as he hurled back against two of his companions, then spilled on the ground.

People appeared in Sulla’s doorway. There was too much confusion for me to notice them clearly. The round-faced youth climbed to his feet, pointing at me with a shaking hand.

“Who is that? Whois that filth? Where are your swords? Kill him!Castrate him! ”

The friends and servants seemed too dazed to move. The doorkeeper huddled against the wall, mumbling incoherently. Hands dipped beneath cloaks. Short swords and daggers appeared. A ring of men closed in on me.

One of the nobles charged, iron blade ready to rip my belly open. Serenus grasped the man’s arm, diverting his attack. I leaped for another of the bullies, tearing his sword out of his fingers. I whacked him hard with the flat across his skull. He dropped, moaning.

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A sharp gasp of pain went up behind me. I fended the next assailant, dumped him bodily over my shoulder and turned, panting.

Serenus was clutching his side in surprise. He had been accidentally wounded. The man whose sword Serenus had knocked down gazed at the gory point in shock and chagrin.

A linkboy ran in the gate. “The watch! Blocks away, but coming fast.”

Distant halloos broke the stillness. I wiped sweat from my eyes, still surrounded. The puff-cheeked youth gnawed his lip. All at once, with a hateful glare at me, he gathered the hem of his cloak in his hands and scuttled for the gate, crying. “Leave them! I prefer not to wrangle with policemen.”

Someone shouted a question about Serenus. The grizzled noble was leaning against the wall, drawing heavy breaths. The youth paused in the gateway. He waved a beringed hand.

“He can fend for himself. After all, they’re his men.”

Like chaff scattering on a wind, the party of nobles and servants vanished. Serenus took a few shambling steps in my direction.

“Please, young man. Your arm. I can’t seem to walk well.”

Before I could reply, a voice said softly behind me, “Cassius?”

Acte thrust forward through the chattering crowd of kohl-painted prostitutes who had spilled out of the brothel. She ran to my side. I drew back, sickened at the sight of her.

She wore a pure white stola of Milesian wool. The garment was far too expensive to have been purchased with her own meager funds. Her hair was adorned with intricate inlaid combs. Rings and chains and brooches of onyx and sard and amethyst and agate winked on her fingers, arms and breasts. She’d been well rewarded for her night’s work, the traces of which still reddened her face to a deep hue.

She saw me staring at her flushed, roughened cheeks. A sapphire on her hand mockingly blazed back the light of the false dawn as she hid one cheek.

“Cassius, I would have come out sooner —”

“Except that what you told me at the school was a lie. A lie to amuse your friends,” I finished.

“I beg you, Cassius, listen a moment. Let me tell you why —”

I struck her full in the face.

She fell back, gasping. “I know why, Acte. Because you’re a whore, and whores give out false words as easily and cheaply as they give their bodies.”

Suddenly Syrax bolted from the brothel doorway. He rubbed his eyes furiously. He spotted the wounded Serenus, who was staring into the street, hunting for signs of the watch. Instantly Syrax turned pale. He pushed Acte aside, hissing in my ear, “I drowse off a while and what happens?

You brainless lout, do you know the identity of that wounded man? Annaeus Serenus himself, Prefect of the Vigiles.”

“And so? His friends, the fine, noble gentlemen visiting this sweet and pure lady attacked the old man.”

“Ah, gods, how I wish I’d stayed awake!” For the first time Syrax looked unsure of himself.

“You didn’t — lay hands on them? Or anything so rash as that?”

“What if I did? I struck one snot-cheeked boy who started the baiting.”

“Brainless clod!” Syrax practically screamed. “That snot-cheeked boy was the Emperor!”

“TheEmperor! ”

The word boiled my guts with fear. Now I recollected exactly why his weak and pudgy-lipped countenance had seemed so familiar. I had gazed on it many times before, struck into the metal of Imperial coins.

“I wanted to come out to you, Cassius,” Acte was saying. “But the Imperator wanted his nightly revel and —”

“And whether he’s a beast or not, you flatter him with lies, the same way you did me.”

“Cassius, what I said at the school —”

“Never mind!” I shouted. “The cur won’t trouble you again.”

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A hand closed on my forearm. Serenus stood there, weaving. His skin was pale, and the greasy swathe of blood on his cloak shone in the day’s brightening gleam. He indicated the gate.

“Stranger, whoever you are, you seem to have your wits about you.” His deep voice was broken by pained breaths. “I am Serenus, as that man told you. We have only a few moment’s grace. The watch turned off to chase some of the Emperor’s friends. Futile. They’ll be down on us next. It would be highly embarrassing for their commander to be caught disturbing the peace. Help me out through the rear gate. I’m not sure I can walk alone. I’ll pay well.”

In a sense I felt responsible for his injury. But I hedged. “My friend and I must return to —”

I stopped. There was little point in worrying about Syrax. He had put the salvation of his own hide uppermost, and melted out of sight. I noted the narrow purple stripe of Serenus’ toga, just visible beneath an opening in his cloak. I might as well reap some sort of profit from this dismal night, like everyone else.

“All right, I’ll help you. Lean on me and direct me to the gate.”

Drawing breaths with difficulty, Serenus supported himself on my shoulder. We started toward the rear of the building. Sulla himself, a fat, bald eunuch, was herding his girls back inside. Even the doorkeeper had crawled off to hide. Feet hammered in the street, converging from several directions.

At the building’s corner, Serenus stumbled, cried out and nearly fell. Catching him, I happened to turn in such a way that the courtyard was still in plain view. In its center stood Acte, watching us.

The grayish light rippled and shone on the gems she’d won for her night’s work. “I meant what I told you, Cassius,” she called. “I meant it all.”

Propping up Serenus as best I could, I spat on the ground and turned my back.

We had barely reached a low gate in the rear wall when a cry went up in the courtyard. “Ho!

Everyone stay where you are!”

“Down here, quickly,” Serenus panted. He indicated a thick clump of shrubs adjoining the gate.

“They’ll make only a cursory search of the grounds. As soon as they’re inside, we can leave.”

Search they did, but not overly hard, as he’d predicted. One vigile tramped by swinging his tallow lantern. Then stern male voices clamored inside the brothel. Serenus stood up with a groan and I helped him toward the gate.

A bad night’s work. The love I’d foolishly imagined Acte felt was false, I’d struck the Emperor himself, and by now I was probably being hunted by Fabius as a fugitive, my life forfeit if I was caught.

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BY A DEVIOUSroute we at last reached the entrance of a splendid house of soft black tufa stone enriched with golden travertine. The house sat almost at the apex of the Esquiline Hill. The view was breathtaking.

Not only the thoroughfares below, the Flavia Victoria and the other squalid streets roundabout, already swarming, but the other six hills and even the distant blue mountains could be seen across the plain. Guiding my companion when he faltered, I had long since abandoned worry over punishment at the school. I was far too late to creep back unobserved. What would come, would come. Instead of fretting, I relished the sharper, sweeter air of these heights crowded with elegant homes. Up here one day I too would dwell, I told myself. I would be a rich eques. But how close I’d come to turning aside from that shining goal because of the false words of Acte!

“Sir,” I said, “you have a magnificent house. I assume there are servants on the premises to tend your wound.”

“There had better be,” Serenus grumbled, whey-faced. “The house is not mine, though. It’s Seneca’s.”

“The philosopher? The Imperial adviser?”

“The same. We’d go to my home, but it’s further away. Knock loudly. And hurry. I seem to have
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struggled this far with a pit in my side only to die bleeding while you talk and goggle.”

I rapped at the entrance as he bade. Momentarily a slave arrived. The man’s expression of surliness changed to one of deference as soon as Serenus threw back the cloak with which he’d concealed his features during our journey down back alleys.

“Wine and bread and linen!” Serenus yelled, shoving inside. “And tell your master to meet us in the tablinium. Young man, give me your arm again.”

We passed between elegant columns of Luna marble into the atrium, which was richly furnished.

Serenus limped badly, clutching his side. At each step his wound rained bright droplets of blood onto the tiles.

Brazen tritons sprayed water into the atrium pool. A magpie chattered in a cage. The air was fragrant with the smell of green plants floating on the water’s surface.

A moment later we entered the tablinium, a sparsely furnished room at the atrium’s rear. In this room of the house the master customarily received his clients. Slaves bustled in and out fetching basins and ewers and jars of ointment. Clumsily Serenus settled onto a bench and lifted away the bloodied mess of his cloak and toga, revealing a long gash running parallel with his pale ribs. To me the wound looked more gory than deep.

Serenus gulped a mug of wine and swatted at a slave’s head. “Not so hard, not so hard! Apply the dressing if you must, but don’t tear me apart doing it.” He twisted his head in my direction.

“Have you never been inside a residence like this, young man? You gawk like a yokel. Why worry about offending? You’ve struck the Princeps himself. You can hardly do anything worse.”

He spoke not in reproof but with a sort of weary mirth. He was a spare, sturdy man in his late forties, with a noble nose, thrusting jaw and kindly brown eyes. He said by way of finishing,

“Stand there if you feel you must, but you have my leave to sit. That was wretched business at Sulla’s. I wonder where the boy’s excesses will bring us. In a way I’m sorry I hadn’t the courage to strike him myself. However, I’ve always had a certain aversion to poison.”

Taking this all in, I was ready to accept his invitation and perch on one of the stone benches when the hangings were swept aside. Into the tablinium stepped a tall, slim noble slightly older than Serenus. He wore a simple woolen robe. His nose was sharp, his eyes intelligent, his cheeks lean, his mouth determined. Outside in the atrium I glimpsed a pretty, silver-haired matron wearing a stola as simple in cut and hue as the man’s garment.

The new arrival gestured to the woman. His voice had the rich qualities of a schooled orator’s.

“Before we talk privately, Serenus, my wife Paulina wishes to inquire after your health.”

“Tell Paulina greetings and also that I’ll live,” Serenus answered wryly.

The tall man turned toward the hangings. His wife, having heard, smiled and glided away. The hangings dropped. Serenus added, “It isn’t this gash that frets me. It’s the circumstance which produced it. Our young charge grows more reckless every day. He — oh, permit me to present this stranger. I don’t even know his name, but he helped me through the streets.”

“My name is Cassius, sirs,” I said. To the tall man I added, “Ave!”

“Ave,” he replied, smiling at the greeting of the streets.

With a clap he dismissed the slaves, who had finished binding Serenus’ wound. He settled down to a bench opposite his friend. He poured sweet wine into silver goblets, like a servant rather than a master. He even handed me one. His eyes were tolerant and amused.

“Take it, good Cassius. You’ve earned it.”

“In case you haven’t guessed,” Serenus said to me, “this is the celebrated L. Annaeus Seneca.”

“The celebrated failure,” Seneca replied somberly. “In matters of Imperial counsel anyway.

Cassius, whatever you hear in this chamber shall go no further.”

“Don’t worry,” Serenus put in. “He won’t go running to Nero. He hit him in the face.”

Seneca sighed. “The gods preserve us. On what pretext?”

“I didn’t know who he was,” I said lamely. “But he was abusing an old man.”

“Would you have struck had you known his identity?” asked Seneca.