B007IIXYQY EBOK (122 page)

From that instant, Erato’s plan went awry. He began his own lunge a fraction too late, so startled was he by the change in her face as she hurled herself at him. An exultant light flared in her eyes; she was transformed from woman to night predator, some remorseless hunter of men that might have risen from her own vaporous bog-lands. He remembered the shock of their shields’ impact. But he never did fully untangle the whip-quick succession of events that followed. Later he realized she used a maneuver Trebonius had taught her, but it was incorporated so smoothly into a series of baffling cross-cuts he could not believe she had been taught it but two days ago. These things demanded practice, and she had had no time. And she was ready for his upward thrust before he began it, forcing his blade down with a stroke so cleverly placed he felt a hammer blow drove it to the sand.

How had she known?
She could not have known. He saw his sword intercepted and trapped; then her foot was where he least expected it—and he tripped and went down hard. This too, however, he deduced later; at the time it seemed he lunged at her only to find himself caught, entangled, then thrust downward by a subtly irresistible force. He was next aware of lying on his back, gasping for breath, looking up at a black sky, a ring of torches, and Auriane, who crouched over him.

Then he saw naked steel poised above his heart. Terror surged through him. Somehow she had managed to remove the leather guard.

This is a madwoman. She planned this well. Only one guard knows I’m here, and I ordered him not to interfere.

Auriane’s eyes were hot and liquid; her chest heaved.

“You must release Sunia,” she said through heaving breaths.

Gods, no
, Erato thought, struggling to mentally regain his feet. This is too horrible and ludicrous at once.

“Auriane, you will destroy yourself. Let me up now.”

“You can buy her back. Do it!”

“Auriane,” he said carefully, as if quietening a dangerous animal, “lay down that sword like a sensible wench now,
and get off of me.”

She looked at the sword then, and Erato saw a start of surprise in her eyes. He felt immense relief. She had not intentionally removed the guard; it had been knocked off accidentally. Quickly she tossed the sword aside. As his wits returned and his frozen blood began to warm, he realized her eyes were filled not with hatred but fierce sadness. Of course,
Erato thought. She does not have a treacherous nature, but she does
have a monumentally stubborn one.

She crawled sideways, giving him room to rise. Disgustedly he brushed sand from his hair and wiped tears from his sand-stung eyes.

“I warn you, don’t test me anymore on the matter. You
know
we’re short of women. Yesterday one of Aristos’ lust-maddened brigands skewered one of them with a spear, right in front of the guards—who looked the other way. And that one, on top of the four we lost to the quartan fever, makes five,
five
I’ve lost. I am not the Fates, Auriane. I did not bring her here.”

“Nor did she bring herself here. This is monstrous. Slavery is ignoble enough, but at least set her to tasks to which she is fitted. Help her!”

“Enough I say!” He kicked hard at the sand, throwing it high in the air. She whirled away, shielding her eyes. “Remember where you are. Surrender to fate, you little fool, it is all a man or a woman can do. You will not speak of this again!”

She accepted then that he would never bend. Though he seemed a king in his kingdom, he was, in the end, the creature of others. She would have to find some other way.

When Erato saw surrender in her eyes, his anger eased away. “Auriane,” he said finally, cautious awe creeping into his voice, “a moment ago when you threw me,…how did you know in advance what I was going to do?”

“I watched you.”

“You
watched
me? What did you watch?”

“Your gestures, your eyes, your hands. I do not know exactly. Even your anger told me many things. And…there is something else, for which I do not know the word in your language.”

“Try. Sorcery? Witchery? Second sight?”

She frowned. “No. A
knowing.
A knowing that feels certain.”

“I don’t like this, I tell you.”

“But it does not come always—I cannot summon it.”

“Once
is too often. I give no credence to such things,” he said, while discreetly making the sign for protection against the evil eye. “What you did was impossible. Therefore, there must be an explanation for it. Now we’re going to walk through this, step by step, and you’re going to show me exactly what it was you did.”

Privately he thought, by Charon’s eyes, after this night I set no limits on what this strange creature can do.

The next night in the dining chamber Auriane’s attention was caught by a certain kitchen slave, visible through the open door as he sat chopping onions. She had seen him before, but now she tensed with interest as she watched him. He was powerfully built, and had suffered some grievous injury to his knee. The man always seemed out of place to her—most of the school’s kitchen slaves were slender Syrian youths or maids. She got up from her place and sat beside Celadon.

“What happened to that man?” she asked him. “Do you know anything of him?”

He followed her gaze and laughed genially. “I’ll wager you’ve Greek blood in your veins—I’ve never known a barbarian so astir with curiosity. That one there, that’s Pylades. He’s a lucky fellow, happy as a mudlark, I would say. He was a novice who got himself too badly cut up his first time out. He’ll never walk again, much less fight, so they put him in the kitchens. Now his only tears are over onions.”

Auriane was greatly surprised. The guards would have them believe such unfortunates were thrown to the animals, but that made little sense now that she considered it carefully, for these were a practical people—why would they waste a useful pair of hands?

“Auriane,” Celadon said, moving protectively close. “You plan some mischief. I pray to good Diana you tread cautiously.”

She gave him a bare smile of acknowledgment, then turned to look at Sunia, who sat without eating, her cheeks shadowed, her eyes full of death. Sunia, she wondered, would you be content working in the kitchens?

Fria had at last granted her a way.

The city prepared to embrace the coming Games like a long-absent lover. Most people’s first thought upon arising, whether they lived in a stifling tenement room between a brazier and a chamber pot or in marble halls amid the splash of fountains, was—how many days remain? For too many generations the common people of Rome had been allowed no hand in governing, and their state religion had long since mummified into dry rituals that never touched ordinary passions. It was inevitable, proclaimed the dour scholars of the philosophical schools, that the Colosseum would become their chief temple and the fortunes of gladiators would be watched as closely as the rise and fall of nations. In streets and taverns, talk of the war with Dacia rarely brought more than a halfhearted response—it might be amusing if Domitian bungled another war, their shrugs said, so long as the barbarians did not actually swarm over the frontier and sack Roman towns. But the Emperor’s grand blunders, diverting as they were, could never hope to rivet the attention as much as the coming spectacle of Aristos, their own King, and Hyperion of Capua, the Beast of the South, bent on carving out each other’s hearts.

And their lover, the Games, teased them unmercifully. Every day the notice-writers made their rounds; wherever they could find space on the walls of public buildings they posted that day’s amended list of the gladiators who were to appear. And every day they failed to add the one name all longed to see—Aristos. Wherever the notice-writers set up their ladders, they were surrounded by an ardent crowd. The people cheered when the name of a favorite appeared and shouted abuse when the notice-writers climbed down without writing the name of the favorite of favorites. The appointed day drew maddeningly close—and still, no Aristos. When but nine days remained, a notice-writer plying his trade in the fly-ridden Subura district was murdered by a testy mob clamoring for Aristos. It was well known that Aristos had recovered from the injuries he sustained in his last bout with his archrival Hyperion. With so many noblewomen praying for his recovery, it was often said, he had no choice. For what perverse reason was he withheld?

The mystery fed speculations; rumors raged like an epidemic. Aristos actually had died, it was said, and Domitian did not want it known before he departed for the Dacian war, for fear the general mourning would be ill-omened and bring disaster on the departing army. Others claimed he’d run off with Junilla, and the happy pair were living contentedly on one of her estates in Gaul, enjoying a good laugh at all this fuss.

When but seven days remained, the name of Aristos appeared in red and black paint at the top of the notices. The city was pitched into a joyful delirium. The notice-writers that day were lavished with wine and gifts. Shopkeepers and artisans decked their stalls with roses as if a public holiday had been declared. To their delight Aristos was matched again with Hyperion the Capuan. Supporters of Hyperion began to trickle in from his native town; when they met devotees of Aristos in the streets, bricks were thrown. At night Aristos’ followers painted
Aristos Rex
over the outer walls of the basilicas that housed the law courts and even the temples, to the horror of the city officials responsible for these buildings’ preservation. Under cover of darkness they set up crudely sculpted likenesses of Aristos in the Old Forum and crowned them with laurel as if he were a victorious general—an act considered blasphemous by the tradition-bound members of the city’s priesthoods. The followers of Hyperion compounded the infamy by pelting the statues with pigs’ intestines. Swarms of shopkeepers, freedmen and idlers gathered about the
Ludus Magnus,
desperate for a glimpse of their king; the streets converging on the school were impassable, day and night. From the prostitutes in their stalls in the Circus to the advocates in the law courts, to noblemen scribbling poetry as they were carried in shaded litters, and even to the inhabitants of outlying towns, the people talked of nothing else.

Which was all precisely as Domitian wished it to be. He had purposefully ordered Aristos’ name left off till the last. For he was preparing to murder someone important, a man who would be much missed, and he needed a suitable distraction. Once this one man was quietly put out of the way, he was certain the plague of misfortunes that had lately dogged him would end.

In these times it seemed to Domitian all his acts turned on him savagely, like some snapping beast grasped by the tail. First there was that unfortunate matter of his niece, his brother Titus’ wanly beautiful daughter Julia. Bedding her might have been impious; however, he was hardly the first emperor to lie with his own niece. But Julia, had, perversely, gotten herself with child by him, leaving him no choice but to force an abortion on her so there would be no stain on the family name. And then the troublesome woman had died of it, showing the poorest possible sense of timing—for he had just revived the old, severe penalties for adultery, all in the interest of enhancing public morals. And as with his every small infraction, of course, the mob learned of it. Julia had made a mockery and a public show of him. And now whenever he gave an audience of state or addressed the Senate, he could feel the contemptuous laughter in the Senators’ silences and the murderous loathing of those who had loved Julia, who was all they’d had left of the even more beloved Titus.

And then there was that equally distressing matter of last year’s severe shortage of grain, caused by a poor harvest in Italia and abroad. He was convinced that any competent administrator would have thought it a sound plan to decree that only wheat, and not vines, be planted in all the lands of Italia. There was wine in abundance—what harm could such a sensible edict do? A part of him believed that had his father passed such a law, all would have gone well. The result was disastrous. The vine growers rioted, all across the land, and defaced his statues in the town squares by night. Some ignored the edict completely, insisting the soil was only fit to support grapes; others simply abandoned their farms. Derisive verses were composed about him and sung in the streets. One that particularly enraged him ended with the lines—
“In war he takes useless land. In peace he makes good land useless.”
How dared they ridicule his great victory on the eve of the games of celebration?

Through a logic all his own, he laid everything at the door of Licinius Gallus. He had long counted Gallus’ love of Titus fanatical. Did the man not have an ostentatious statue of Titus in the
tablinium
of his house, to which, spies reported, he daily made small offerings? Gallus’ quiet inoffensiveness was a cover for his true nature. It was Gallus, he was certain, who fanned the tales of his dalliance with Julia and composed the latest round of scurrilous verses. For a year Domitian waited for the right moment to cut this deadly canker out.

On the eve of the day Aristos’ name appeared, a disturbing bit of news spread beneath the general rejoicing. Gallus was dead. His passing was felt directly by many, for he had hundreds under his patronage, and many more still were distressed by the death of a man who, along with Marcus Julianus and a very few others, exercised a softening influence on Domitian. All that was known was that Gallus mysteriously fell dead in the fish market while carrying an enormous mullet he had selected himself for a dinner with close friends. He had had no illness—he was in the best of health—and his chief cook, who was with him, reported that nothing occurred to arouse suspicions of foul play. But Domitian’s strategy worked well; the worrisome questions raised by Gallus’ death were swept away in the raging torrent of emotion roused by Aristos.