Fighting Fit (8 page)

The girls hurtled towards each other from opposite ends of the arena, swords flashing in the sun. Some guys yelled obscene comments from the stands, wanting the girls to show them what they had under their leather chest bands. But they were quickly shouted down. Star and Juno were big favourites, and I soon saw why. If gladiators were kings of the arena, these girl fighters were warrior queens.

Star was just amazing. Juno was stronger and more cunning, but Star was lighter, faster, far more graceful and took crazier risks. You know how a great dancer can make you feel as if she’s dancing for you? Like she IS you, almost? That’s how I felt watching Star. It was me with the sun beating on my bare neck. It was me out there on the burning sand with an intricately plaited hairstyle and leather thongs tied around my naked arms. Star was an artist; a fabulous, daring, totally lethal artist.

Aurelia was utterly entranced. “I feel as if I know her.” She put her hand to her heart. “I know her in here.”

“I know. Me too!” Then I suddenly heard what I was saying. Star was a killer! As an angel, I had no business admiring her!

It was like I’d hexed her with my thoughts, because the very next second, Star’s foot slipped from under her.

Juno pounced, slashing at her with her sword. Star faltered, then renewed her furious attack. She didn’t seem to notice the blood seeping through her short leather skirt. Star was fighting for her life and there was no room for anything else.

Our dojo master would love her, I thought in awe. When Star fights, she’s like the wind, totally empty. No past, no present, only now.

So I wasn’t surprised when a sweating, bloodstained Star finally stood over her opponent, the point of her sword blade triumphantly grazing Juno’s throat.

“Kill, kill, kill!” chanted the crowd. Star had been fighting for them too. Now they wanted her to kill for them.

The triumphant gladiatrix stared calmly around the arena, as if she was genuinely considering the crowd’s demands. Then she threw her sword down in the sand and raised a clenched fist. “This is not Juno’s day to die, citizens!” she cried in heavily accented Latin. “She fought well. Spare her to fight another day!”

Reuben gave a gasp. I saw a bright drop of blood fall from Star’s leather skirt into the sand; and another and another.

The gladiatrix swayed and clutched her side. She glanced down and seemed astonished to see the spreading crimson stain. Without a sound, she crumpled to the ground, and lay totally still.

“NO!” I yelled. I was on my feet before I’d thought. I was beside myself with distress. I’d just seen dozens of people senselessly murdered. But I didn’t know them. I’d felt a connection with Star. She couldn’t be allowed to die.

But someone was already vaulting over seats to get to her. It wasn’t the lanista or a uniformed official. It was Orlando and when I saw his expression, I felt like I was falling through space. All these months I’d been waiting for this beautiful boy to realise I was his special someone. But he’d found her already and it wasn’t me.

Chapter Seven

I
hurled myself over the barrier and raced across the arena. Tiny grains of burning-hot sand stung my bare legs as I ran. Down here the smell of blood was suddenly suffocating.

Orlando was already kneeling beside Star. The lanista, Festus Brutus, limped down from the stands to join Orlando. A doctor attached to the gladiator school hurried after him.

Star kept trying to lift her head.

“Lie still!” Festus growled.

Orlando looked appalled to see me. “Mel, you’re not supposed to be here.”

“Will Star be OK?” I asked in a small voice.

“Too early to say,” he said tersely. “Now go take care of Aurelia like you’re supposed to” A flicker of worry crossed his face. “She’s OK, isn’t she?”

As OK as you can be when you’ve just watched thirty human beings slaughtered in public, I thought. But I just said huskily, “She’s fine.”

“Well, you shouldn’t leave her too long.”

Star didn’t look like a warrior queen lying crumpled on the sand. She looked small and vulnerable. She’s no taller than Aurelia, I thought.

But the gladiatrix was a warrior to the core. When the doctor ripped her blood-soaked skirt, Star didn’t so much as murmur, even though the leather was sticking to an open wound. The doctor began to probe inside the wound with metal instruments, trying to discover the extent of the damage. It must have been agony but she didn’t flinch.

Up close I realised that Star’s arms and legs were peppered with bruises and tiny healed scars; through the slits of her mask, her closed eyelids were deathly pale.

“We should get her back to the barracks,” the doctor told Festus. “She’s lost a lot of blood.”

Orlando hovered anxiously. I wanted to believe that his concern was strictly professional, but paranoid worries swarmed through my mind.

Had Orlando met Star on his previous trip and fallen head over heels-in-love with her? Did he organise his task force purely to save her from a bloody death in the arena? Was that why he couldn’t tell us the purpose of the mission?

I stared down miserably at my rival. She was everything l could never be. Sexy, fearless, mysterious…

Reuben came up behind me. “You should come back.”

“Just give me a minute,” I pleaded.

Orlando and the lanista were helping the dazed gladiatrix to her feet, with some assistance from Juno. Between them, they half-carried Star out of the arena. There were confused murmurings from the crowd.

I went back to my seat like a zombie.

“You missed my brother,” Aurelia said in a bright voice. “He brought Titus Lucretius to meet me.”

“Didn’t stay long, did they?” Reuben murmured in my ear. “You’d almost think they’d been waiting to get her by herself.”

“So who was that beautiful boy you were talking to?” Aurelia asked me with that same fake brightness. I told myself she wasn’t thinking about what she was saying. She didn’t know how I felt about Orlando. She couldn’t know the last thing I needed right now was for him to have another female admirer.

Through my fog of misery I sensed that Aurelia’s meeting with her future husband had distressed her. It was sweltering in the amphitheatre, but I saw her shiver. She drew her thin shawl more closely around her, and for the first time since I’d known her, she spoke like a haughty mistress addressing her slave. “Find our bearers, Mella. I wish to leave. At once!”

That night I helped my mistress get ready for the banquet. I helped her put on her new silk stola. I arranged her hair and secured it with ornamental hairpins, making it look as if her complicated braids were studded with tiny pearls. She looked lovely when I’d finished, except for looking so pale. She’d hardly said a word since we came back from the Games. I should get her to open up and tell me what was wrong, but I was in a daze myself, just going through the motions.

Being an angel isn’t that different from being a gladiator, I thought bleakly. You might be bleeding inside, but you keep going. Your heart might be breaking, but you can’t let it show.

That evening I ran about with the other house slaves, making our guests welcome. I brought warm scented water to wash the dust from their feet. I took ladies’ shawls and gentlemen’s cloaks. I plumped up the cushions on the couches, so our guests could recline like gods and goddesses, wearing their ceremonial crowns of leaves and flowers.

But none of it seemed real. Not like Orlando’s face when he saw Star’s blood soaking into the sand.

In the kitchen Reuben and two other slaves were helping with the preparations. Like all Roman kitchens, this one was a soot-encrusted hellhole.

Can you believe that Dorcas had to cook this entire banquet over a wood fire, with no windows for ventilation? Plus the dishes Quintus had selected for his guests were just bizarre: peacock eggs in pepper sauce, milk-fed snails simmered with garlic, stuffed dormice. It was pretty obvious that Aurelia’s brother hadn’t designed his banquet to be enjoyed. He just wanted to impress his guests with how rich and important he was.

Reuben grabbed me as I tottered past with a huge wine jug in each hand. “OK, so Orlando has other things on his mind,” he said in a firm voice. “And OK, so you’re upset. But get over it. You’re no good to Aurelia in this state and she’s the one Orlando wants us to watch.

“I can’t help it, Reubs,” I wailed. “It hurts so much.”

My angel buddy made me look at him. “Maybe Mel Beeby can’t get over it, but Helix can.”

Sometimes I think Reuben knows me better than anyone else in the entire universe. It’s like he always knows exactly the right thing to say. As he spoke my angel name out loud, my buddy’s voice took on new powerful vibe.

To my astonishment, I saw my name form in the air in glowing letters, right there in that sweltering garlic-smelling kitchen. No one else saw, but I gasped.

And guess what? I was over it! I snapped out of my self-pity just like that. I wasn’t sad little Mel-with-a-broken-heart. I was an angel with a job to do.

Reuben’s right, I thought fiercely. I can
do
this. I’m going to do this.

I gave his hand a squeeze. It felt rough and calloused from his gardening, but still deeply comforting. “Thanks, Reubs. I owe you.”

“I know,” Reuben agreed smugly. Without thinking he popped a nibble in his mouth and choked. “Yuck! What was that?”

“Just hope it’s not a stuffed dormouse!” I giggled.

I reached the dining room to hear a slave announce solemnly, “Quintus Flavius and Titus Lucretius!”

I’d had my suspicions about Quintus all along, and the minute he walked into the room, I knew I’d been right. Quintus was handsome, even charming, but you could see the cold glint of cruelty in his eyes.

Aurelia’s future husband followed him in. He was short and squat and his lips looked unpleasantly red through his beard. He handed me his cloak. “Well, well. It’s the little slave girl,” he said in a high thin voice.

I almost fainted with terror. I knew this guy. I’d breathed his icky fishy-alcohol fumes. I’d felt his ugly vibes touch my angelic energy field. Titus Lucretius was our pervy night intruder!!

I wanted to grab Aurelia and run right out of that creepy house and keep running until we ended up somewhere nice and normal. I was scared and disgusted, but I was angry too. Titus could have arranged to meet my mistress, if that’s all he’d wanted. But he didn’t want to get to
know
Aurelia as a person, did he? He wanted to creep up on her in the dark like she was his helpless prey. He wanted power over her.

Aurelia’s brother must have been in on it, I thought in horror. That’s how Titus got past the watchman. This era is SO sick!

I rushed off to update Reuben.

Dorcas was standing over the hearth, simmering what looked like little grey bird-tongues in some strangely coloured spicy sauce. The slave woman turned in surprise as I burst in, and saw my stricken expression. “You’ve seen The Knife then,” she said grimly.

It turned out that Dorcas knew exactly what was going on, and it sickened her to the core.

“Titus Lucretius is the head of Nero’s secret police,” she told us in a low voice. “We call him The Knife because he’s had so many people murdered.”

“Aurelia mustn’t marry him,” I gasped. “Someone’s got to stop it.”

Dorcas shook her head. “Everyone’s too scared of him. I just thank the gods her mother never saw this day. She loved that poor girl like her own.” She wiped her eyes on her apron. She looked faintly puzzled. “You two genuinely care about her, don’t you?”

I nodded. “Yes, we do.”

“You’d better get back to work before anyone gets suspicious. Here, take this to Titus Lucretius.” The slave woman ladled out more mulled wine. Then she pursed her lips and spat deliberately into the jug. “A little present from the people,” she whispered.

Quintus and his guests were tucking into their peacocks’ eggs. The guests had brought their personal slaves to wait on them. If they didn’t like something they simply threw it on the floor and the slaves obediently swooped and picked it up.

Once I looked up to see Aurelia’s father in the doorway in his freshly-ironed toga. But when he saw his adopted daughter reclining on a couch next to the chief of Rome’s secret police, he went away.

I’d have been ashamed too, if I was him. Aurelia’s dad was the one person that could put a stop to this nightmare, but he’d given away his authority to his son, and everyone knew it.

My mistress had left her huge egg untouched on her plate. She didn’t eat the next course either. She looked close to tears. This feast was meant to be an opportunity for her and Titus to get to know each other, but both he and Quintus were treating her as if she didn’t exist. They just giggled together at private jokes, like cruel little schoolboys, like they were deliberately trying to humiliate her.

I went to take Aurelia’s plate, intending to whisper something comforting in her ear. Next minute Titus caught my wrist in his clammy grip.

I noticed guests watching us with unpleasant expressions. Their faces seemed to distort in the lamplight, as if they might be going to morph into something totally evil.