Colosseum (3 page)

The puddles are sprayed with mud and brain matter, the barbarian swords gorge on the blood of the She-wolf.

Triumph.

But it is only the beginning, the village chieftain knows that very well. He gathers men, women and whimpering children. At his signal there is silence, the wind drops. Even the legionaries' dead bodies look like pillars of salt, mummified remains.

“You must leave! The dogs will be back, this was just a taster.”

The Lord of Hammers does not mince his words, intended for the women and children. They do not argue, rushing into their huts to grab the leftovers of bread. Even before first light, the road is crowded with refugees in flight. The chieftain watches the womenfolk as they slip away towards the woods, wishing good luck for them and a glorious death for himself.

The invaders do not make them wait: as the sky takes on a pinkish hue, the fire of Rome is at the gates once more. Calgacos has grown up with the idea of war. He has spent nights training himself against make-believe enemies, imagined centurions, creatures of the wood whose heads he has taken clean off.

But the truth is that nobody can really be ready for war.

He had thought he would wield his sword fearlessly. He had thought he would hurl himself at the enemy, invoking the names of the gods at the top of his lungs.

In search of a good death.

But instead he is trembling uncontrollably behind the well in the middle of the village.

When he notices someone caressing his shoulder, his heart almost bursts. He wheels around and sees her: Adraste, eyes wet with tears, sleeves of her dress muddied, that same, absurd smile as always on her lips.

“What are you doing here? Run! Get away with the other women! Go!” The boy is beside himself.

The girl strokes his face, kisses him again: “I'm not leaving without you…”

“I can't…I've got to…protect the village.”

Adraste laughs, thin lips brushing against his hair: “Oh, I know…You're doing a great job! Nobody will dare touch this poor well now that you're here to defend it!”

“You know what I mean…”

She cannot stop kissing him: “I know, I know…but you have to trust me. My father is strong, it will all be alright. We'll stay hidden here until it's all over. Then, when they've been chased off, I'll go to the chieftain and tell him you saved my life and want to take me for your wife, what do you think?”

The girl has thought of everything.

Pretty bright, there is not much he can say.

Calgacos wants to say “yes.” To shout it as loud as he can, but the war has just returned to shatter his world.

Nobody can really be ready for war.

Nor for love.

Governor Sextus Julius Frontinus is fed up to the back teeth.

He certainly did not enlist in order to spend his life in the mud. He hates this damned island on the wrong side of the sea, hates the countryside stench of dung, the fickle weather, the howling, ill-mannered wind.

If it were up to him he would go around wrapped up in more layers than an old wet nurse, but image is everything. So he has no choice but to strut around in a sleeveless tunic in the middle of the night, as an example to the men. He would almost prefer to have a fever—that way he would have an excuse to curl up in his field tent, or better yet next to the fire, wrapped in a couple of goatskins, thank you very much. But no, not so much as an itch in his nose, even with the wind-god Aeolus giving it his all and with the hour so late that twilight is giving way to early morning.

“May as well get this over with,” he thinks. And then he gives the order.

The cavalry that they have is nothing compared to Rome's true might: at a single gesture from their officer, the infantry forms up, marching in compact groups behind a dozen stallions, white as a December afternoon.

It is the final act of a conquest that has lasted four years. Perhaps, after the umpteenth bloodbath, Frontinus will finally be able to dedicate himself to the hobbies he has yearned to pursue since he entered the army: no more sleeveless tunics or barbarians to butcher. Only writing and contemplation. And memories, too; his head is full of them. The governor loves public works. He has never spoken to anyone about it, fearing that a weakness like that could undermine his credibility as a commander. Often, strolling around the capital or one of those thriving North African cities—he knows them inside out because the family of his wife Cornelia, great grand-daughter of the famous conqueror Scipio, has spent most of the last fifty years in the desert—Frontinus stops to observe the construction work being carried out with an interest that goes beyond mere curiosity and extends to authentic passion. Inadvertently, he frowns in concentration and crosses his hands behind his back, watching each movement of the pulleys, the placement of each ornate stone, and each trench dug for the foundation.

When he dedicates himself to contemplation he ages in a second, and the more attention he pays, the more hunched he becomes. There are those who swear they have seen the hair on his temples go gray as he daydreams, staring in rapture. It is just talk, of course; the imagination of some drunken
aoidos
singer. And yet, such jibes always have an element of truth to them. The interest of Sextus Julius Frontinus, slayer of barbarians and supreme conqueror of Britannia, in building sites—especially those for aqueducts—is such that the governor has for some years now been secretly drawing up plans for a great treatise on the subject. A manual, an interesting list, a compendium for telling well-crafted arches, channels and drains from the shoddier examples. He will call it
De aquae ductu
, an authentic light in the darkness of ignorance surrounding water-channels and construction.

For Frontinus, the time for parchment and writing styluses will come, for sharpened reed-pens dipped into hot wax. First though, he has to take care of this riffraff. Slaughter them or enslave them. Take their lands and their women. One last ferocious assault, Sextus, and then there will be only peace and quiet.

He hears the horns sounding near the village and pushes his heels into the palfrey's flanks, setting it off at a gallop: the last mile is always the toughest.

The smell of blood is already in the air.

Two worlds colliding like stars on an unlucky course: the impact is devastating, compassion dying in a spray of red.

The men follow the governor's command wordlessly.

The Tortoise.

They crouch into the unassailable scrum formation, their shields forming a tortoise-shell. Wood and muscles deflect the hail of stones, only just registering a couple of hits. The Lord of Hammers and his brave warriors are already at a disadvantage, and the battle has only just begun.

The barbarians throw themselves into the attack with bestial fury: braids and iron-shod maces, blades and bare chests beneath the malevolent gaze of Brigantia, three-faced goddess of the moon, deceptive and wise just like Diana, her Roman counterpart. As if by magic, the Imperial rearguard forms a circle of metal and flame around the enemy. In an instant, the first houses in the village go up in flames.

Behind the well, in the middle of the chaos, Calgacos is trembling and holding Adraste tightly against his chest. The girl is in tears, unsure if she is crying out of fear or for the joy of finally finding herself in the arms of her beloved.

The Lord of Hammers is the first to fall. Unfortunately for the villagers, he will not be the last.

Sextus Julius Frontinus himself thrusts a blade into his skull, without even the good manners to warn him first. He takes him from behind, as the Ordovician chieftain valiantly defends himself against the onslaught of a
primus pilus
centurion. He feels no emotion as he places the sword at the nape of his enemy's neck and pushes with all the force required to send it slicing through brainstem, hard palate, and whatever comes after that. The governor of Britannia may well have a passion for books, but he has earned his rank on the battlefield all the same. Sextus is a born killer. Adraste's father defends himself as best he can, backed up against the door of his house by a pack of She-wolf cubs. The Roman soldiers have the unkempt beards and gaunt looks of men who have not slept properly for months. In their eyes is a fury that brooks no resistance. There are five of them around him: the first smashes his face in with a head-butt, the second sends his teeth down his throat, but it is the third soldier who puts an end to it, impaling him on the flagpole.

The dishonor of killing a dead man falls to the other two, who set to work with ferocious blows of their short-bladed
spathae
swords, filthy from too many battles fought by moonlight.

Adraste sees it all. Calgacos tries to keep her with him. If he could, the boy would swallow her whole to save her from that spectacle. But the lives of the common folk are not like those of the gods; they are clumsy and vile. And all Calgacos can do is feel infinite compassion for those green eyes, eyes he loves so much that he feels his breath give out, deep down in his throat.

The red-haired girl frees herself from his grasp and runs toward her father, crying out like a wounded bird.

The soldiers have not yet finished with her dad, and go on kicking and spitting on his body. Adraste grabs hold of the biggest of them by the arm, begging him to stop in a language that no conqueror will ever manage to learn.

The infantryman seems to find the girl's hysterical shrieking funny, but it is a different story when she bites him on the arm.

All around there is nothing but death and destruction; densely-packed Roman shields march across a carpet of lifeless bodies, while flames lick at the sky, turning the houses and lives of a hundred innocent victims to ash. A few survivors end up in chains, cheekbones smashed by a last flicker of violence before submission.

Adraste, delicate mountain flower, regrets doing it the moment she sees the look in the centurion's eyes. No mercy, no patience. They do not see an innocent young girl, nor even a human being.

It happens fast, that is how things are in war.

The centurion grabs hold of her and flings her to the ground without a second thought. He tears her dress and gives her a couple of slaps, more to turn himself on than to keep her quiet. He pins her with his weight and even if she tried, she would not be able to move. His friends start to taunt him when he has some trouble getting in the mood, in amidst the end, the shit, the desperation. But the look of blind hatred on the girl's face is enough to get him going, and to do the deed.

Love dies a hundred times over in the eyes of Calgacos. And another thousand, and more.

All those kisses Adraste's lips will never give him.

All those days they will not spend together.

All the times they will not make love.

That love that Adraste will never know.

Which Calgacos has yet to discover.

The centurion finishes quickly, lands a punch on her delicate face and then snaps her neck. Leaving death where life had flowed with luster. Turning love into a corpse, hope into a bottomless abyss.

Calgacos falls to his knees, impotent and damned, with no heart left to rip from his chest.

He feels no pain when a Roman grabs hold of him by the hair and drags him away. He does not feel the icy-cold of the stocks, the obscene clinking of chains. The kicks to his shins do not hurt, the frogmarching in the dark and the shame do not weigh on him.

He is deported, along with half a dozen others on death's door.

Behind him are ash and flame, lifeless bodies that nobody will bother to bury.

He and the other slaves are the only traces of a vanished world, murdered in the July darkness along with love.

Calgacos dies this night. Nobody, ever, will pronounce that name again. Nor that of Adraste, he promises himself.

Calgacos disappears, and in his place there is only “the boy.”

Who stubbornly refuses to answer their damned questions in Latin, who does not tell them his name, even when it a cane doing the asking, and loudly.

The caravan traverses the Island's grasslands and continues on its way. Towards another universe, with bloody feet and no explanations.

Calgacos has just embarked on the journey of his life.

A journey that will take him to the very heart of the Empire, to fight for life and death. To give himself and all he holds dear, for a future snatched away from him too soon.

But he knows none of this, how could he?

Calgacos is dead, not a trace of him remains.

He walks slowly, one step after another, oblivious both to his jailors and his exhaustion.

He does not care about destiny, he wants nothing more than to get it all over with.

In his soul a black cloak, protection and hiding place.

The broken shards are destined to become dust.

Something has broken forever.

Forever.

Again, on the coast we have Neapolis [...] called Parthenope from the tomb there of one of the Sirens, Herculaneum, Pompeii, from which Mount Vesuvius may be seen at no great distance

P
LINY THE
E
LDER
,
Naturalis Historia
,
III
9,62

Pompeii,
AD
79, August

TWO YEARS.

Two years of solitude and anger. The boy no longer recognizes himself, not even when he looks closely at his reflection on water, or on the brass of the shields placed on the ground by visiting soldiers. He has changed; the life he leads would change anyone. Powerful muscles line his long arms and his broad, hairy chest makes for an impressive sight, sitting atop a pair of legs that look like tree trunks that have sprouted up too quickly. The young Briton wears his hair short: Rome will not tolerate unkemptness, not even in a slave. The quarry guards dispense grooming advice with a club in their hand and a sympathetic smirk on their face.