The Gladiator's Mistress (Champions of Rome) (5 page)

Chapter 8

Valens

Before the sun rose, the training ground stood empty. Walls surrounded Valens on all sides. Far from feeling trapped, he felt sheltered. The back wall connected to the house of the lanista by a second-story balcony from which Paullus could watch his gladiators’ progress. Behind the wall on the right were the barracks, the kitchens, and the infirmary. The heavily guarded armory hid behind a barred metal door. A set of high gates bisected the final wall, and those gates, the only way in or out of the ludus, led to the forum.

Even with the forum so near, Valens heard no noises, save for the call of a bird and the crunch of his footfalls on the sand. The new trainee should come out any moment, and he disliked having to share this solitude with someone else, especially someone meant to replace him as Rome’s champion.

In the center of the training ground a platform stood taller than the tallest man. Rough wooden beams held it high, although not stable. Later in the day he planned to bring the new gladiator to the platform and teach him about balance and the need to know his perimeter. Several large tree trunks stood upended. Their bark and wood had been hacked away by years of practicing aim and correct swordsmanship. Today he would begin his own training, and the training of the new volunteer, with strokes at a tree.

Valens’s first trainer, an ancient and wise man with a limp and scar from chin to brow, had shared an invaluable secret on his first day of training—costmary leaves that were crushed, covered with olive oil, and left for days would increase his fighting ability. When rubbed onto the skin before bathing, it loosened the muscles, and the combination of costmary and steam from the hottest bathwater would make both sight and hearing more acute. In short, costmary helped the gladiator become more than a man of the sword. He became a predator with animal-like reflexes certain to bring victory.

Over the years others had tried to guess what Valens used in his bathing oil. It was one thing he never told. Yet now that
he
was the trainer, he wondered what secrets he might share with the equestrian gladiator, and if costmary would be one of them.

The sun crested over the walls. For a moment it was just a thread of light, the glare so brilliant it turned the whitewashed wall black. A heartbeat later it rose. The brilliance blinded Valens and he blinked. Several racks filled with practice weapons lined one wall. When his eyes adjusted to the light, he selected his favorite wooden sword and went to work.

Slash, slash, thrust, spin, slice.

The movements felt good and pure. His muscles, his mind, his weapon, and his will merged, becoming one and the same. He acted and reacted with purpose and, at the same time, without intent. A barred door clanged open and Valens turned.

The new gladiator stumbled into the light, rubbing away sleep. He and Valens were almost the same size. Valens guessed that the equestrian, fit and devoid of any marks that denoted a hard-lived life, had not yet reached twenty-five annums. He carried himself with the unpracticed grace common to all the upper classes and had the kind of face women found attractive. Yet, there was more to being a gladiator than an athletic physique, a high rank, and a handsome face. A person needed to know much more than how to wield a sword.

Valens decided that he envied the equestrian. Not only did Paullus intend to make this man the next Champion of Rome, as a member of Rome’s elite, the new gladiator could marry Phaedra someday if he wanted. On top of it all, the damnable noble had thought to bargain and would be allowed to retire from the arena, assuming he survived the next six years.

Valens wondered if Phaedra had already spoken to her father about choosing her next husband, and if her father had agreed. Assuming she had gotten her way, and assuming that she outlived her current husband, the next time she married it might be to this man.

“You are late,” Valens said to the equestrian.

“I thought training began after breakfast,” said the man.

Valens drove the hilt of his sword into the man’s middle and waited for him to stop wheezing and retching on the ground. “The first lesson you will learn is to not think. You are a gladiator, meant to embody the strength and honor of Rome.”

They were not the moving words he had heard on his first day as a gladiator, but this task was different. Valens had entered the ludus as a lump of clay and allowed the master’s hands to mold and shape him. This man before him was already formed. He needed to be broken, crushed to dust, and then reassembled.

To be a gladiator, a man of the sword, one needed to learn to fight even as his bowels turned to water. He needed to stay and face an opponent when any sane man would run. He had to struggle through the pain and the blood while the crowd chanted his opponent’s name and called for his own death. To be a gladiator one must endure all of this for the glory of Rome, although his position remained that of a slave.

How could Valens put all that in words? How could he explain the discipline needed, the strength, the perseverance, to a man for whom life always provided the best of everything?

“The second lesson you will learn,” said Valens, “is that I am your new god. I have complete control over your fate. You will train when I tell you, and eat, sleep, and shit when I feel you have earned the privilege.”

The new gladiator stooped over, his hands resting on his knees, as he took a heavy, panting breath. “Who are you to strike me without warning?”

What was the equestrian expecting from a gladiator school? To be tickled? Better to learn the harsh realities now than to have his dead body dragged from the arena by a slave dressed as Charon, the ferryman. With a loose grip on the wooden sword, Valens brought up his fist, connecting with the man’s chin. The new recruit fell backward, an arc of blood shooting from his mouth like a fountain.

The man lay on the hard-packed earth, blinking. He rolled onto all fours and spit. The dry ground soaked up the blood. Looking up, he opened his mouth and Valens suspected that the equestrian was about to ask another inane question.

“Do not speak,” Valens said.

The man opened his mouth wider and sucked in a breath.

Valens knelt and their gazes met. “This is not the life for you.” Valens poked the front of the equestrian’s shoulder with the tip of his sword. The flesh bore no brand. He had sworn no oath. No matter what the agreement was between the equestrian and the lanista, it was something Valens considered breakable. “I will tell the lanista you do not have the makings of a gladiator. You will be released from any contract.”

He stood and motioned for the guards to collect the bruised and bloodied man. As they hooked their arms under the equestrian’s shoulders and dragged him to his feet, Valens wondered how much of his relief came from the fact that he would remain champion of the ludus and of Rome. True, he had lost the person designated to teach him to read and write. So be it. He could find another tutor.

“No.” The man struggled with the guards. “I do have what it takes.”

Valens did not even bother to look up as he called out to the man. “Go back to your home. Tell your friends that you fought Valens Secundus at a private party. Tell them that Consul Fimbria attended. It will make a great story that can grow grander in the retelling.” Valens returned to his drills.

Slash, stab, slice, thrust, spin, duck.

“I have no home.” The equestrian said as the guards dragged him toward the arena’s edge. “I have nothing.”

A homeless equestrian? Now he had seen everything. Valens knew the desperation that came from not having a place in the world. He had never known his own father, or even the name of a possible sire. A fatherless son never belongs. Valens stopped and held up one hand. The guards let the man go. “You have a story. I would hear it.”

“My wife left me for an Egyptian trader. She took all my coin, sold my villa. Everything went with her, even my dog.” The equestrian shook his head. “I still miss the dog.”

Valens snorted. What a waste of a man to let a woman take all while he sat back and did nothing. “You had no notion to stop her?”

“It happened while I served with Gaius Marias in North Africa. I had no idea she had left, much less stolen anything.”

“Your people did not stop her, either?”

“My family hails from Padua and I live in Rome. She sold my steward first so he could not warn me of what happened.”

Padua, what a dung hole. Yet this man and his story piqued Valens’s interest. “Why become a gladiator? Why not buy a tavern or something else a disgraced equestrian might do?”

“First, I have no coin. Have you not been listening? Second, I know of no better way to regain my fortune or reputation than in the arena. I am good with a sword and not afraid to die.”

Valens grabbed another practice sword from a rack near the wall and dropped it in front of the equestrian. “Come after me, if you think that is all it will take.”

The new gladiator picked up the sword. He whirled it across his body to the right and then to the left before balancing the blade on the side of his hand, twirling it around his wrist and catching the grip.

“That is a nice trick,” said Valens. “It will make all the women in the stands wet. Now come at me.”

With sword raised high, the equestrian rushed forward. Before he connected, Valens struck him twice, once to the solar plexus and the other at his gut. The new gladiator bent double and retched on the ground.

“Too open,” Valens said. “Try again.”

Lowering his sword, the equestrian rushed in, ready to slash. Valens stepped aside and delivered a hit to his back as he passed. The other man stumbled forward only a few steps before dropping his sword on the ground.

“You fight like a child of privilege that no one dare strike.” Valens picked up both swords, threw them high across his body, and caught each in the opposite hand. Then he whirled the wooden blades above his head and ran around screaming. Valens knew he looked ridiculous, but he taught a lesson with his antics.

“I do not look that foolish.”

Valens shrugged. Maybe, maybe not. “You lack control.”

“I always trained with the sword, and my instructors rarely landed blows.”

“Your instructors knew enough to make you feel like a superior fighter. You would not have paid for their services if they had beaten you.” Valens held out the sword. “Come at me again.”

The equestrian gripped the hilt and let the sword hang down. He crouched and held the wooden blade at the ready. With the other hand he motioned to Valens. “You come at me.”

Valens smiled. Maybe this new man showed some promise after all. “Attack only when necessary. You learned this lesson quickly. Have you a name?”

“Spurius Mummius Baro. Most people call me Baro.”

“Baro, you need to know much, much more.” Valens picked up a broken spear and drew a square in the sand. “Establish a space. Defend your space. Study your opponents, learn their limitations. Know your own limitations. Then you can attack. Always remember, our job is to entertain.”

He surprised Valens by nodding. “I will think on what you have said.”

Valens held out his arm. Baro took it and the two grasped each other’s wrists. “Welcome to the brotherhood of gladiators. I would have a word with you about something else.” Valens scratched the side of his ear. Sometimes, he decided, one had to leave the safety of the known and directly assault a problem. “I desire to read and write. Paullus said if I trained you then you would tutor me.”

“A fair trade.” Baro took the broken spear from Valens and traced symbols in the dirt. “This is your name,” he said and pointed to each figure. “V-A-L-E-N-S.”

Valens studied the letters and nodded his head. “Go and break your fast. We will continue after we have eaten.”

After Baro left, Valens traced the letters until his arm knew the feel of them and his mind would forever know what each one meant.

Chapter 9

Valens

The sun reached its zenith, and all the gladiators went indoors to eat and escape the midday heat. Having trained since before dawn, Valens decided to leave the ludus and explore Rome alone. He walked to the front gate and stood before a guard.

The guard knocked on the heavy wooden door, and it opened. Without a word, Valens slipped into the crowd that moved through the Capitoline Market. For the first time since his adolescence, he was unencumbered by the orders of another. Expectantly he held his breath, hoping the world was somehow different now that he was no longer surrounded by guards. Breathing in, he found that the air smelled the same. The bright white sun shone down on the forum just as it had in the ludus. He trod on the exact same gray paving stones as always, slightly uneven in height, but perfectly fitted together.

Like a snake, the responsibility that came with freedom coiled around his heart and constricted. He looked back at the gate, eight feet tall, with steel beams reinforcing the wood. He thought of going back to the ludus, making a joke that even without guards, Rome still smelled like dung.

Valens could not return, not yet. He faced men in the arena. Men with swords who meant to do him ill. That never bothered him. Since when did walking on the streets become frightening? He supposed it was because the last time he had been free, he had been coming
to
the ludus.

No. He would not be a coward, even if only he knew of his cowardice. But where should he go?

To his right stood the Palatine Hill and the villa in which Phaedra resided. That was where he wanted to go, but he should not. He knew that he should never see her again. Perhaps one day a litter would pass by and he would catch a glimpse of her profile. Just then, two litters approached. He craned his neck to see inside of each one. She rode in neither. Valens struggled to quell his craving for the woman. It did not work.

His mother and sister lived close by, and he decided to visit them. He turned left, away from Phaedra and her villa and its high walls that kept her hidden within, and him alone and without.

After two years as a gladiator, Valens had earned enough money to buy his mother and sister a home in any part of the city he chose. His mother, born and raised in the Suburra, cried at the thought of leaving her friends. Valens suspected she feared that a higher class of people would never accept her.

Hoping to make her happy, Valens had bought her an apartment in a cleaner section of the Suburra. The four rooms took up a quarter of the building’s third floor. Most of the residents were former slaves who had bought their freedom after learning a trade. His mother spent much of her time at the restaurant that occupied the whole of the ground floor, while his sister, Antonice, played in the streets, as did all the local children. Valens hoped Antonice was happy. She seemed happy, at least.

Valens entered the apartment building through a side door and walked up the two flights of stairs. He knocked. A sweaty man with long hair answered. “Yes?” the man said.

Without a doubt, it was another one of his mother’s male friends. As each year passed, his mother’s companions seemed less fit, less kind, less everything good.

Valens had hoped to find his mother and sister at home and alone. Still, the man could be sent on his way soon enough. Without acknowledging the man with glance or word, Valens tried to walk past.

“You cannot barge in here.”

“Get out of my way,” Valens said as he bumped into him.

The man staggered and righted himself. Narrowing his piggy eyes, he glared. “Who are you? You do not belong here. Go away.”

Bile rose in the back of Valens’s throat, and his vision narrowed. Over the man’s shoulder, Valens saw into the apartment. The table he had purchased for his mother filled the middle of the room. Bowls someone had given him when he fought in Capernaum—that he then had gifted to his mother—sat on top of the table. Spices circled the room, tied in bundles that hung from the ceiling near the shelf Valens had paid for.

“Who am I?” Valens shoved a finger into the man’s flabby chest. “Who are you?”

Antonice came from her bedroom. Taller than he remembered, with dark brown hair that fell loose around her shoulders and down her back. How long had it been since his last visit? A week? A month? No, a whole season had passed. For the first time, he noticed the slight and subtle changes that transformed her from a little girl to young woman. What was the sweaty, flabby man doing in the apartment alone with his sister?

Antonice rushed past the man and threw her arms around Valens, lifting herself off the ground by the force of her own embrace. “It is so good to see you. Where are your guards? We would have made you dinner if we knew you were coming. How are you? It has been so long. Too long.” She let him go and dropped back to the floor. “It is good that you are home.”

“You are quite the chirping little bird,” said Valens as an unaccustomed glow of contentment spread through him. “Where is Mother?”

“She is in her room resting,” said Flabby.

Valens ignored him, and he noticed with satisfaction that Antonice did, too.

“Mama,” she called. “Valens is home.”

Straightening her disheveled tunic and smoothing hair away from her face, their mother emerged from her room. She looked older, too. A thin webbing of lines surrounded her eyes. Deeper creases were etched into the sides of her mouth. More than a few gray hairs were visible within her dark locks. He vowed to come home more often, to be more involved. The appearance of his mother and sister should not be a surprise. Flabby should not assume he was the man of the house in Valens’s absence.

His mother tried to fasten a silver comb in her hair. “Oh, there you are! Whatever brings you here?”

“So, you are Valens Secundus, the famous gladiator,” said Flabby.

Valens refused to look at the man and instead spoke to his mother. “I thought to take you and Antonice to dinner.”

His mother moved to her male friend and wound her arm around his sweaty, fleshy middle. “Maybe you could take Antonice. I need some more rest.”

Flabby nuzzled his mother’s neck. “Good idea.”

Valens clenched his fist. One hit and the man would die. An elbow strike to the nose and his miserable life would end. “I am to become a trainer,” Valens said, still ignoring the man. As always, he was hoping for a moment of his mother’s interest. “I train one gladiator for now. With some work, he might be another champion.”

Flabby whispered something to Valens’s mother, who laughed.

“What did you say?” Valens finally addressed the man directly.

“Nothing,” said his mother. “He said nothing.”

“I said I thought you would be taller,” the man said as he kissed Valens’s mother on the cheek.

That was it. Valens grabbed Flabby by his stained and stinking tunic with such energy that neither stopped until they slammed into the wall. The man let out a satisfying whoosh and doubled over. Although Valens had made his point, he loathed the thought of this worthless piece of garbage touching his mother. With as much force as he could muster, Valens drove his knee into Flabby’s crotch. The stinking man dropped to the floor, where he lay, curled in around himself, whimpering and smelling of piss.

Valens bent low, his mouth near Flabby’s ear. “Try fucking my mother now,” he said.

Antonice grabbed Valens by the hand and led him to the door. “He is sorry, Mother,” she said. “You should warn your friends about how sensitive Valens can become.”

Neither Valens nor his sister spoke until they took seats at a scarred wooden table in the restaurant on the ground floor.

“He is new,” said Antonice. “You know how Mother gets when she first meets them.”

The tavern keep brought them two jugs, one filled with water and the other, wine. Valens ignored the water and filled his cup with sour red wine. He emptied it in one swallow. He drank a second and third cup before speaking. “I do know.”

“He is not as bad as some of the others.”

The others.
No matter what Valens gave his mother—a new apartment, money, expensive furniture—she never changed. She always chased one waste of a man after another. He knew that to be a fact, and yet hated himself for knowing. He would never change her, but he could keep his sister from the same fate. In order to save Antonice, he needed to get her out of the Suburra.

“Paullus said I could move from the ludus. Maybe I could buy a villa for us all on the Aventine.”

“She would bring whoever was her favorite at the moment with her, you know that.”

The men, always the men.

“What am I to do?” he asked. “I cannot leave you here.”

“There is no need for you to worry. I have friends. I spend a lot of time at their houses. Besides, everyone knows I am your sister, so no one bothers me.”

“Maybe it is time I find you a husband.” He thought about Phaedra and her forced marriage. “I will find a young man you like. How old are you now, fourteen annums?”

“Twelve. I turn thirteen at the harvest.”

“Too young for marriage,” he said.

“I agree.”

“You promise me that you are fine.”

She smiled. “I am. Now tell me about your new gladiator.”

They ate and talked, and by the time Valens walked Antonice back to her apartment, Flabby had departed, hopefully for good. His mother pouted until he gave her a few silver denarii to buy a new rug to replace the one that smelled of fat, sweaty men and urine. Before evening came, he left his mother’s apartment. Turning his face to the setting sun, he walked toward the ludus, the place that had given him a life and at the same time stolen his ability to live.