Colosseum (11 page)
Authors: Simone Sarasso
“In line, dogs! On your knees! Today is your lucky day!” yells the Mole's voice.
Nobody has ever heard him shouting like that. He is not normally very excitable, but there he is charging about and gathering up his slaves as though his life depended on it.
Verus and Priscus get moving, they know it is best not to anger the boss. Twenty or so forced laborers line up like at a slave market, while the rest of the group abandon whatever they were doing and stare wide-eyed and open-eared in order to find out what on Earth is going on.
The Mole clears his voice. Protruding eyes and flaccid skin beneath his chin complete the picture. Next to him stands a bold-looking man, tunic and sandals fresh from the cleaners, trimmed beard, very short hair and watchful eyes. He has the muscles of one who has lived on the street, and his arms and chest wear a man's scars, still hot with sand and blood.
The Mole introduces him and Verus's heart misses a beat: “Wretches! Today the gods are giving you more than you deserve. Say hello to Decius Ircius, lanistaâowner and masterâof the Ludus Argentum, glory of all Rome!”
The chained congregation raises a cry to the heavens.
Verus's head is spinning.
The Mole continues as Ircius strokes his bristly chin, inspecting the merchandise with a clinical eye.
“Three of you will have the honor of entering his school. Decius has deigned to come down here because he is confident that hardy vines can grow out of stone. Be sure not to disappoint him: show yourselves worthy of the honor being granted to you.”
Verus is on the point of suffering a heart attack. Priscus, on the other hand, keeps his gaze fixed to the ground, as always. His fists are closed so tightly his knuckles have turned white.
Decius Ircius makes a close inspection of the magnificent thirty, evaluating the unfortunates' bone structure, fractures, posture. He feels their necks and arms, tests their feet with the look of a horse trader before a piebald mare.
When he passes in front of Verus, the Briton smiles like a little boy. The lanistastares at him and Verus opens his mouth like the others, showing an orderly circle of perfect, white teeth. Then Decius moves along and chooses the man to his right, a sort of sulfur giant with yellowish skin.
Verus is crestfallen and his smile evaporates, but he does not lose hope yet because Ircius is still moving up and down the lines, inspecting faces, hands, and mouths. He asks a black man as tall as a fir tree to lean over so that he can have a look in his ears. He smirks with satisfaction.
He chooses Porcius, and it is a good choice, because that son of the She-wolf was born to kill.
Verus's heart is hammering in his chest now.
Blood fills his head.
Ircius passes in front of him once more without even taking him into consideration, then lays eyes on Priscus and thinks about it a moment too long. In the end though, he walks past and settles on Corcides as the last acquisition of the day, a strong, stocky Spaniard with a hairline no more than an inch above his eyebrows.
At that moment, Verus feels a black hole opens up in the middle of his chest. The son of the Island strangles a groan in his throat as the lanista finally moves off, pleased with his day's booty.
So that is how it is: this thing called life will continue to kick him even while he is down.
His one chance of deliverance, melted away like ice on the first days of March. Smashed by a bolt of lightning sent by his fate, sick and perverse.
His future reduced to crumbs, condemned to be consumed one stone at a time, until his masters grow weary of him or his muscles are no longer able to satisfy them. And then a blow to the neck and a communal grave.
Shit.
When Priscus the Gaul comes up to him to place a hand on his shoulder and whisper to him: “We got off lightly⦔ his world suddenly turns red. His anger explodes in an instant. The pain, pressed down into the bottom of his belly, gains the upper hand, and nothing else exists. Verus throws himself into Priscus, smashing his face with a head-butt. He cries out in madness, like a beast at the slaughterhouse.
The Gaul is caught unawares and staggers backwards, bleeding. But he is not the sort to be floored by something so slight. With a bound he is on top of Verus, hammering into his face with his right fist.
At that point the other slaves form a circle around themâit is between the two of them.
Only those two.
Ircius and the Mole are about to leave the site, but they notice the commotion. The former raises an eyebrow and takes a step in the direction of the fight. Suddenly alert.
Verus and Priscus are really going at it.
The Briton lunges about clumsily, but his sheer rage makes up for lack of fighting skills. The emotional paralysis of the last two years is a chained beast: it kicks and howls, throwing itself into the attack only to be choked by the iron links, risking a broken neck and carrying on regardless. It pulls until its prison chains give way.
And then things really turn bad.
Priscus is well prepared and evidently used to fighting. In a previous life he must have been a soldier or something similarâDecius Ircius is convinced of this as he observes the two battle with each other. The lanista studies the Gaul's composure as he takes the punches and studies his adversary's movesâwhich are failing miserablyâso as to neatly fell the Briton and quench the lad's rage. Priscus knows precisely what he is doing and keeps his guard up. What he does not know is that because of Verus he is about to find himself in bigger trouble than he ever has before.
The Briton bleeds but does not give up.
His lungs heave, he lunges, receives a blow, falls, but gets back on his feet.
The lad is giving it his all.
Until his breath catches in his throat, until the Mole's stick lands hard on his naked back.
Until Priscus too, having taken his dose of wood and discipline, collapses to his knees.
They stay that way, staring at one another blankly. Sand, blood, and sweat.
Labored breaths, balanced on the edge of that precipice which is fate.
The Mole is not irate. He is used to dealing with these beasts.
“That's enough, now,” says the master, sternly.
The lanista Ircius examines the two exhausted combatants once more: “I'll take these two as well.”
The Mole smirks to himself: at this rate he will make enough money to afford the decorated palanquin he has been eyeing for weeks. He savors in advance the moment in which he will plant his behind on the seat and order four servants to carry him through the city center. He is about to rub his hands together with glee but stops himself in time.
“Take them,” he says unctuously. “I'll make you a fair price.”
The deal is done.
Verus cannot believe his ears.
The wind of fate has suddenly changed direction once again.
Without thinking, he hugs the bastard he wanted to kill until a moment or two ago.
For his part, Priscus is unruffled. He is man enough not to hold a grudge, and well understands what is going on inside the head of the damned Briton.
“Thank you, brother,” whispers Verus.
“Don't thank me,” the Gaul says with a shake of the head. “You are deluding yourself if you think destiny has smiled on youâyou've just put us into the shit, up to our eyeballs, you'll see. Thanks to your pigheadedness, we've basically signed a pact with death. Death. That's what being a fucking gladiator is about.”
Ircius has overheard their exchange and nods to himself. Since the Gaul now belongs to him, he could punish the man. But he is not in the habit of penalizing those who tell the truth, and turns heel and sets off in the direction of the sunset.
Verus follows his new master, his belly churning with embers he has no intention of quenching.
On the other side of the city, wearing the purple and nothing else, bare feet on the freezing flagstones of the great hall, Emperor Titus once more peruses his latest creation. Even the scale model of the Amphitheater is enormous, by Jove. The damn thing reaches the height of his chin, and not even four people with arms outstretched could reach around it. The model is the work of a master sculptor, and the amount of detail is incredible. Titus can make out all the flights of steps and the balconies, columns and capitals, each one painted with frescoes, and at the top of the great oval, even the winches that govern the opening and closing of the huge white sails of the velarium are minutely detailed. Titus stares at the cedar model of the arena, and imagines the iron.
His mind turns to his father Vespasian, and the dark illness that took him from the world. Too soon. Without granting him the time to see his dream made flesh. Titus remembers the final days, his father's delirium, the tremendous outbursts of rage, the man's remorse for all the deaths, all the blood spilt. The Amphitheater was a colossal reservoir for the blood of countless Christian souls of Judea, and a lurid killing machine devised to sate and placate the mindless Roman public's craving for entertainment.
Tomorrow is irrelevant.
The Emperor fondles the wooden model's arches, dreaming of the future stone. He runs his fingertips along the miniature buttresses, until a treacherous splinter missed by the master's plane plants itself in his flesh, and his blood falls in crimson drops onto the pale surface of the scented wood.
Titus watches the liquid seep into the grain of the wood. A lurid stain that will remain forever.
Such is destiny. Beyond the arched windows of his study, a copper sky sheds tears of death.
A few months remain until the opening ceremony.
Rome is ready, ready for the greatest sacrifice of all.
Life gives man nought without some toil
H
ORACE
,
Satires
,
I
9,59-60
Rome,
AD
79, NovemberâDecember
CAREFUL WHAT YOU
wish for, boy. Because you might get it.
That beer-swilling bastard of a blacksmith Cormac had told him this, time and again. Now, Verus misses him more than ever.
The old sod was right all along.
Verus has lain many a night awake nurturing his dream. He has caressed it during the dark hours through the bars of his cage. He has fantasized about it while the others around him slept, has never given up hope, even on the rainiest of days.
Ever since the first time he heard about it, becoming a gladiator has represented a special road towards freedom, at least inside that crazy head of his. The only damned chance there was for a nobody like him. And now that it is almost a reality, Verus cannot get used to the idea.
Especially because life in the Ludus Argentum is nothing like he imagined. Perhaps Priscus was right, may the gods of the underworld twice curse him.
Verus plays at hide and seek with his thoughts, sleep having fled him some time ago, and with dawn soon about to break. Little more than a fortnight has passed since their arrival, but it already feels as though he has passed a lifetime within these damned walls.
The journey was very short: the barracks of the Ludus Argentumlie less than a mile from the Amphitheater. Decius Ircius has shelled out a small fortune to secure a place right at the center of the world. The lanista's trade is a tough one, if for no other reason than that he is held in general contempt. In particular, the wealthy nobility cannot abide these merchants of violence, who hail from the rabble but can sometimes earn more than a senator.
Ircius is from Etruria, the seventh region. His parents are upstanding people with a good nose for business, who know how to give a warm welcome and cook up a tasty meal. When they were young they ran an inn for travelers not far from Florentia, but they had soon realized they were destined for higher things than providing horse fodder and reheating yesterday's stew for hurried wayfarers. On top of that, the region was expanding fast and offered solid opportunities to those who were willing to put their noses to the grindstone. The
pater familias
and his lady wife therefore decided to abandon the highway and look for work in one of the
stationesâ
the fabled offshoots of Rome's public baths, a master class of elegant sculptures, of which fantastic tales are told even in the distant Orientâthat were springing up like bluebells in spring around the village of ex-legionaries. After a few years Ircius's father rose to become the owner of the
station
. He could boast senators and equestrians among his guests. That was how he met Corconius, a man of some importance in the Eternal City, who took their son Decius under his wing and brought the boy back to Rome with him to study. But Ircius was not made for rhetoric; he preferred
sestertii
. It took him a few years to emerge from Corconius's shadow, years in which he learned how to make money out of illegal betting. It was the golden age of clandestine gladiators: there was fighting all over Rome, in the streets as in the public baths, even. And as his nest egg grew, Ircius learned how to distinguish the truly adept fighter from those who were little more than muscle-bound carthorses. A couple of times Ircius came off badly: some of the old guard did not look kindly on the provincial upstart and his unprecedented string of wins. But Ircius showed those bastards how dangerous a man can be when he is armed with a will of iron. That and a cut-throat razor, obviously.
He gained a few scars himself, which he still wears with pride. But ultimately everyone came to understand what that sly-eyed young tearaway was made of. And within the space of six months he had made his first acquisition: Rubius, the finest gladiator he could buy without going bust. Thanks to Rubius's brawn and his own determination, Ircius earned enough to set up shop and open his own school.
Rubius never quit and is still at Ircius's side, even though the old gladiator is now nearly fortyâan age equivalent to at least double that for a “civilian” citizen.
Rubius is the first person that Verus and Priscus meet when they enter the school. He is the instructor, the master at arms, capable of smashing the bones of half the gladiators who live inside these four shitty walls without so much as breaking a sweat.
That's who this bastard Rubius is.
Ircius gives the orders and Rubius makes sure they are followed. But there is a third character without whom the Ludus Argentum would be little more than a dump full of corpses: Ezius Tortonus, the house physician. Stubby fingers like bunches of carrots, smooth skin like an overgrown child, no eyebrows or hair. He looks like a giant, slippery worm. The new arrivals were told to stand in line while Ezius inspected them one by one. When Verus's turn came, his simple Briton's heart began to race, so unused was he to anything new. The doctor noticed it as well. He examined the youth's mouth, felt his neck and his joints, had a quick look at his feet and, finally, a feel of his scrotum. Verus had not been expecting this, and it set him off hiccupping.
How embarrassingâ¦
The physician showed no emotion whatsoever. If he had been a veterinarian examining horses in a country villa, it would have made no difference to him. He certainly takes no pleasure in touching stranger's grimy genitalia, but that is his duty. Decius Ircius wants to make sure he has spent his money wisely and, whether Ezius likes it or not, you can get a better idea of a man by squeezing his balls than you can by watching him brandish a sword. Thank the godsâin particular Priapus and Venus, who took care of that sort of thingâVerus showed the necessary vigor despite the surprise, and the lanistasmiled with satisfaction when he noticed that the Briton had just passed the test.
But tests make up the backbone of gladiator life, as Verus would soon learn, before he had even managed to memorize the complicated layout of the school.
Indeed, the Ludus Argentum is made for taking in, not for giving back. Essentially it is a prison. There are individual cells for every inmate, little more than a few paces wide and all of them windowless. They are positioned one after another beneath an ample portico of blood-red Doric columns which match the color of the roof tiles.
There is a canteen filled with filthy tables where the same slop is served up for everyone, day in day out: a tepid soup of barley and beans accompanied by a ridiculous ration of water.
The latrines are the worst part. The task of keeping them clean falls to novices like Verus and Priscus, although even a full team of
vigiles
with their water hoses would not manage to cut through enough of the slime to see the surfaces underneath. The floor is a compacted mound of foul human waste, and the channels to the main drains work one day in three. As a result, it would be easier to grow sweet-smelling herbs there than it is to clean those damned shitholes.
The baths, where the gladiators of the
familia
can relax and scrub away the day's grime, are a different story. They are the pride of Ircius's
ludus
. It is said that there are few schools in Rome with such facilities dedicated to personal hygiene. Every cubicle is equipped with running water via a system similar to that of a fountain, having a long stick with a sponge attached to one end. There were even strigils for the more refined bathers.
The first time Verus went in there he felt embarrassed. Apart from taking the odd dip in the river or in frozen lakes, as a slave he has never washed himself much. When he found himself in front of the waterspout had he thought it was a fountain, and had begun to take great gulps of it. Only when he noticed his naked companions mocking him as they rubbed away dry skin did it register that he was supposed to take off his sandals and give himself a scrub.
But this is only the surface, the shiny gloss on Decius Ircius's powerful war machine.
The rest of it, every last bit, has to do with violence. And that is the reason why Verus, in spite of his exhaustion and the state his back has been reduced to by training, cannot close his eyes as dawn edges slowly nearer.
He had not expected this.
Truly, he could not have imagined anything like it.
The day begins like every other: with the shouts of the
untores
, the masseurs tasked with getting the fighters fit for the slaughterhouse. Around here every last crumb of glory is earned on the sand, there are no shortcuts. Upon entering the school they are novices, or to use Rubius's term, “useless stacks of shit.” To become a
tiro
, or recruit, they must undergo the
tirocinio
, the grueling training that constitutes the meat and drink of every warrior in the Ludus Argentum. But until a fighter has spilled his blood in the arena, until he has faced another gladiator in public and survived, he cannot boast the title “veteran.” Once a veteran, a gladiator receives a prize from his lanista, a small bone or ivory tablet carved with his nameâor stage name. It is basically a symbolic act. For all Verus knows they might be writing something charming about the owner's mother on those damned tablets, especially given that most of Ircius's champions are illiterate.
Verus, for his part, is beginning to get the hang of letters and words, although he is certain that this new skill will be about as much use to him in here as a feather cushion is to a donkey. For the first few months, the name of the game will be survival, pure and simple: surviving the violence, the abuse, the sheer nerve of the more experienced gladiators, who were known as the
primi pali
, or “first poles,” because they have spent countless hours at the
palo
, or training poleâwhen they are not out on the arena gutting riffraff, urged on by the crazed shouting of the crowd.
When he first saw one of the poles, the Briton felt his knees tremble and a jolt run through his joints. The pole is not all that different to the trunk the boy used to train with by night, near his village on the Island.
The instructorgives a lash of the whip as the sun peeps timidly over the horizon on the first day inside the barracks. For a moment, Verus's mind returns to a world that no longer exists. He feels at home.
The sensation, however, lasts barely a moment, instantly shattered by the shrill voices of the masseurs and guards. Verus sits upright on his bunk and picks up the thin rag that constitutes the sum total of his clothing during his waking hours, tying it round his waist. No sandals, no tunic: novices do not deserve such luxuries.
The cell door is flung open and Verus steps out into the corridor. He looks along the line of his companions, roused from their sleep just moments ago, and recognizes each crumpled face. One of them belongs to Priscus, apparently unconcerned both by the brusque wake-up call and by the thought of what might await them outside, in the courtyard that will soon be transformed into an oven.
Priscus is the sort of person that has already suffered so much that nothing else can faze him. Verus is getting to know him better as the days pass, and if it were not for the stiffness and introversion of the man-mountain, their budding regard for one another could quite easily grow into genuine friendship. But Priscus is in no hurry, especially where it comes to his relations with the rest of the world. He needs time, and Verus has decided it is worth his while to concede it.
A nod of greeting from the Gaul and then everyone goes outside, where time is measured by the instructor's whip
.
Rubius gets the men in line, but not before the novices are forced to pass beneath a rain of slaps and spit courtesy of the
primi pali
, the old guard of the school. “Old” is a relative term here, as the average life expectancy of a gladiatorâa gladiator with well-honed skills and plenty of luckâis a man around thirty years of age. In Ircius's stable, only Rubius and Ezius have seen more than three dozen summers. The oldest of the “brothers in blood” at the Ludus Argentum is Cosmos, a twenty-seven-year-old titan weighing two hundred pounds. The
murmillo
that every noblewoman in Rome dreams of taking to her nuptial bed.
When the new arrivals are also correctly lined up in the courtyard, the training may commence.
It is a damned serious business, and it lasts from sunrise to sunset. First of all everyone is given a
rudius
. These are wooden swords, made in such a way as to prevent the newbies from tearing one another's guts out before they have learned how to do it properly. For two straight hours, the only activity is running: round and round like oxen at a wheel,
rudius
held up above the head or clenched tightly to the chest. For those who do not manage to keep up, for those who are too tired, too thirsty, or simply could not care less, Rubius's whip is always on hand with a reminder: nothing is owed you. Until you swear the oath, you miserable worms, you will be nothing but scum.
Ah yes, the oath. Verus dreams of it night and day.
When a gladiator makes the transition from novice to recruit, he places his own life in the hands of his lanista. In theory, if he is a freedman, he may leave the school before it is too late. The time spent as a novice serves as an opportunity to weigh up the true risks of the trade, for those citizens who are about to voluntarily give up five years of their life in exchange for first-rate training, the hope of unfading glory and a miserable wage of two thousand
sestertii
, rising to twelve thousand if, at the end of those five years, the gladiator signs on for another five.
Are you sure you want to get beaten, battered and trampled bloody for another sixty months of your life? Then swear it, you son of a sow in heat!