Mistress of Rome

  “What?” Sabina craned her neck. Marcus nudged her back, below the rail. She was too young to see anything that arena had to offer. She didn’t seem to mind, though; her eyes were round as saucers from the slave boy’s fibs, and she hardly seemed to hear the arena’s racket of screams and clashes.

  “The Barbarian.” Vix sounded awed. “I knew he was the best, but he’s even best-er than I ever thought. He’s a god.”

  “He is very good,” Marcus found himself agreeing. “I always make sure he has a fight after the Senate imposes a new tax. He calms the mob down for weeks.”

  Sabina blinked. “Who’s the Barbarian?”

  “Where’d you grow up?” Vix looked down at her. “In a box?”

  “I’m not allowed to go to the games, usually. I have epilepsia,” she explained, “and excitement isn’t good for me.”

  “I never knew anybody with epilepsia.” He eyed Sabina with more interest. “’Cept Julius Caesar, but I guess I didn’t really know him. Y’know gladiator’s blood’ll cure it? I should give you some of my blood. I’m gonna be a gladiator, too, y’know.”

  Her eyes widened again. “Are not.”

  “Are too.” The boy aimed a thrust at the wall with an imaginary sword. “I’ll be even better than the Barbarian.”

  “You’ll get in trouble.”

  “You get in trouble no matter what you do,” Vix said sagely, “so you might as well do everything you can.”

  A philosopher, Marcus thought. What an appalling child. And Sabina looked entranced.

  “Hey, they’re opening the trapdoor.” Vix leaned forward over the rail. “What’s next?”

  WHAT—” Arius twisted as the guards grabbed hold of his arms. “My fight’s done.”

  “We’ve got orders,” one of the guards said shortly. “If you know what’s good for you, hold still.”

  They wrenched him around, two holding each side, and he saw a trapdoor open in the sand to disgorge a half-dozen green-kilted boys from Brigantia. Fanning out, swords held wide, toward a puzzled Hercules.

  “No.” Too late, Arius began to struggle.

  Hercules looked around, confused. His comic act came next: “Arius the Barbarian mowing down the heathen,” the heathen being played by twenty peacocks. But there were no peacocks in sight . . . just a half-dozen boys with their swords out.

  “Oh,” he said. “Oh.”

  The comic wooden sword dropped from his fingers.

  He ran.

  They fell on him.

  THE boys fanned out into a circle, and Arius saw Hercules stagger. Run for an opening. Go down in a welter of rising and falling sword hilts.

  From a long way away he heard himself cursing, felt himself wrenching at the guards. A blow fell across the back of his head and he went to his knees.

  Panting and sobbing, Hercules wriggled free. Dashed for escape on his short legs. A howl of laughter went up from the stands as he made a great scrambling leap and tried to climb the wall.

  They pulled him down.

  Arius got an arm free and crashed his fist into the face of one of the guards. A shield boss clubbed down on Arius’s shoulders, and he ate sand.

  Hercules was screaming.

  Arius erupted off the ground and took a guard around the knees. He clawed his hands up to the man’s belt, and got his dagger.

  Hercules was screaming his name.

  Arius found a gap in the armor and stabbed. Blood pattered on his face. He rolled off the body, surged to his feet, and took a great lurching leap before three guards hit him from behind and he went down again.

  For a moment his eyes got clear of sand and saw Hercules’ face. A white oval pressed into the ground, two blind eyes filled with blood, a smeared mouth opening in a black howl.

  Arius felt his mouth opening, his whole body cracking, and somewhere inside his head he howled back. A long unending scream consumed him, a dreadful backdrop to the thuds of the sword hilts against Hercules’ body as the Brigantian boys leisurely beat him to death.

  His vision went black as the demon reared its head and screamed.

  They gave him his sword and let him go.

  “Well,” Marcus said mildly. “This is interesting.” Beside him the slave boy hung open-mouthed on the rail.

  Arius fell to his knees when they released him. The sword dropped from his hands.

  Kill them, howled the demon, but it seemed very far away.

  Couldn’t breathe. He ripped off his helmet, flung it aside. His fingers curled in on themselves.

  Kill them, whimpered the demon. He could imagine Gallus smiling, settling back in his chair. “That should bring out the old Barbarian,” he would be saying happily. “Enjoy the show!”

  Arius rocked back on his heels. The Brigantians gazed, panting, swords wavering in damp hands.

  Arius spread his arms. His hands were bleeding from where the nails had dug in, but he felt nothing. “Kill me.”

  They stared at him.

  “Kill me,” he roared. “Kill me, you bastards!”

  His voice echoed around the death-silent Colosseum. He flowed to his feet and took a ferocious step forward, spreading his bared hands. “Kill me!”

  Muttering, forking the sign of the evil eye at him, they backed away.

  THEA

  IN the Imperial box we were frozen like statues: me with my hands pressed to my mouth to keep from screaming; Lepida with a handful of sweets halfway to her lips; Paulinus open-mouthed; the Empress shedding her usual calm to look surprised; Flavia’s sons frozen in fascination.

  Then Domitian erupted out of his chair. “Iugula,” he shouted as loudly as Arius, and turned his thumb in the sign for death.

  A scream strangled in my throat as the Brigantians circled in. But Arius turned, his empty hands spread wide.

  “Who’s first?” he asked, his voice blasting us all. “Who’ll take the first hack at the Barbarian?”

  Their eyes flickered. They licked their lips. They looked at each other.

  “Kill me!” He took a wavering sword blade and pressed it against his own throat. “Do it.”

  The boy dropped his sword.

  Arius turned on the others like a lion, and five swords hit the sand. A half-dozen boys in the prime of strength backed away, their faces white as a senator’s toga, as a single aging gladiator bore them slowly down with his eyes.

  Then he began to laugh. He flung his head back and roared laughter up at the sky. He jumped lightly at the Brigantian boys, and they backed away shivering, rings of white showing around their eyes.

  He turned his back on them and advanced on the Emperor—the Emperor, standing rigid at the front of the Imperial box.

  “Care to take a crack, Caesar?” Arius shouted, spreading his arms. “You blood-sucking Flavian whore.”

  WHOA,” said Vix. “That was stupid. He’s in trouble now—” “What?” Sabina rose from her stool, craning her eyes. “What’s all the noise? What’s—”

  “I think it’s time we left, Vibia Sabina.” Marcus scooped her up, gesturing to the steward. All around, the crowd stood utterly silent, transfixed by the scornful gladiator. Dear Fortuna, what would the plebs make of this?

  “What about Vix?” Sabina peered over Marcus’s shoulder as he carried her out. “We left him behind.”

  “He’ll be safe.” Marcus had no desire to see what the Emperor would do to the Barbarian, and no desire for his daughter to see it, either. “Cling tight, Sabina.”

  “He stole my pearl haircomb,” she said mournfully. “Do you think I’ll see him again?”

  THEA

  AS Domitian wrested a bow and a quiver of arrows from a guard, I fell toward him with some idea of throwing him to the ground. But I tripped and fell headlong, and he swiftly nocked and shot.

  The shaft thudded into the sand between Arius’s feet.

  Arius laughed again. He strode forward, holding his arms out, offering himself up. Grinning.

  Domitian shouted. No words, just a long bellow. He
shot again.

  The arrow wisped through Arius’s hair. The next brushed past his shoulder.

  Ordinarily Domitian could draw a bow with such precision that he could send five arrows winging between the splayed fingers of a slave fifty yards away. Today, not one of an entire quiver touched his scornful target.

  Arius laughed again. I felt a bubble of hysterical mirth lurking at the back of my own throat. In the stands I heard a ripple of choked giggles. Domitian gazed wildly back and forth, looking for laughers amid an audience of fifty thousand.

  Arius’s laughter trailed off. He leaned forward. Nailed Domitian’s eyes with his own. He spat into the sand.

  “Guards!” Domitian bellowed, brick red. “Guards!”

  A hail of spears rained down into the arena. Two struck a hapless Brigantian boy, who screamed and writhed. But Arius strode unhurriedly to the center of the arena to lay the crushed body of the dwarf on his shield, lift it up, and stride unhurriedly out through the Gate of Death. Not one spear touched him.

  A silence fell over the Colosseum, a silence so dead and heavy that it froze fifty thousand people to stone. A few made stealthily for exits—one of them a fat man with a fringe of oiled ringlets. The Emperor’s eyes darted to him, and a finger pointed to the man who had suggested that killing the dwarf would bring a better show from the Barbarian.

  “Throw him in.”

  The stands erupted. Roman citizens leaped to their feet, ripping the air with their hands and baying for blood, and a dozen hands picked Gallus up and tossed him over the wall. Into the arena, where a half-dozen sobbing, hysterical Brigantians tore him to pieces before he could shriek the words, “I’ll pay.”

  IN the arena Arius had felt immortality surging through his veins, but in the dark hall of the Gate of Death, immortality faded. He felt sand gritting in his mouth, he felt a sluggishly bleeding wound on his leg, and even the light weight of the dead dwarf was heavy.

  Hercules.

  In the bare hallway where the dead were dragged, he laid out the dwarf on his shield like they laid out the heroes of Brigantia. Straightened the crushed limbs, closed the eye that hadn’t been gouged out, folded the little hands around their little sword. He dropped his own helmet at the dwarf’s side, then his armor. A good time to put an end to Arius the Barbarian, who surely didn’t have long to live anyway. He found a torch guttering in a wall bracket and held his arm over it until the blurred gladiator tattoo burned over black. The pain of the fire barely registered.

  Arius laid the torch at Hercules’ still feet: a pyre for a hero. Hercules would have liked that. He went up and down the hall, collecting more torches from their brackets, and piled them around the shield like a bier.

  He turned away just as the dry wood of the floor began to kindle. He took off blindly, shivering, stumbling, rebounding off the walls. The halls were oddly empty—but then he’d never been inside the Gate of Death before. Maybe death was empty. Even so, any minute now the Emperor’s Praetorians would come and put a sword through his gut. Any minute now—he stumbled around a corner, bounced off a scurrying slave carrying a pail of old meat for the lions, avoided a pair of guards, and ran down another corridor.

  An orange blur rebounded off him. “Careful, there!”

  His eyes focused. The orange blur resolved itself into a plump fair-haired woman in a flame silk stola, a dirty child slung over each hip. She regarded him sternly. “Listen,” she said. “You haven’t seen us.”

  “What?”

  She beckoned behind her. “Come along.” A stream of slaves passed, bearing filthy, big-eyed children on their hips or leading them by the hand. He counted more than thirty.

  “What the—”

  “You haven’t seen us,” she repeated, waving slaves and children past. “I’ll pay you to forget. Same as I paid everyone else. You haven’t seen us.”

  “I’m a dead man anyway.” His body felt like lead. “Better get out quick. There’s fire.”

  “Fire?” She sniffed for smoke; felt the stone wall hesitantly. “Where?”

  “Back there.” Waving over his shoulder. “The hall where they drag the corpses.”

  “What? Who are you?”

  “Barbarian,” he said, weary.

  “Arius the Barbarian? I thought you looked familiar. That commotion I just heard up there in the arena—that wouldn’t have anything to do with you, would it?”

  “Sort of.”

  She gave him a shrewd look. “Are you on the run?”

  “No.” He spoke patiently. “I’m dead.”

  “You look alive to me.” She sniffed the air again. “You know, I do smell smoke. Here, grab this child.”

  Arius grabbed. It was easier to obey. He felt little hands leech around his neck, and followed the orange gown up the dark passage. “Who you?” he slurred around a stone tongue.

  “Lady Flavia Domitilla. The children are heretics, or at least their parents are. Christians and Jews sentenced to be thrown to the lions. I am arranging otherwise. Are you listening? Do as I say, and you’ll get out, too.”

  The Emperor’s niece. Arius supposed muzzily that that was why they weren’t meeting any arena guards in the passages. An Emperor’s niece could bribe people like that to stay out of the way . . . Slaves looked askance at them, hastening past with armloads of weapons or long rakes for the dead, but she calmly tossed coins at them and kept going.

  The smell of smoke was much stronger now. The next pair of slaves didn’t even give them a glance, just hastened back shouting for buckets.

  “Here, open that door.” He shouldered a heavy door open obediently at her order and came out into sunlight.

  “Hand the children up into that wagon. Quickly. There you go, little one—no, no, don’t cry, it’s all right. Marcellus, drive.” She sent the horses and their driver off with a slap, then whirled to beckon Arius. “Here’s my litter. Get in.”

  He stared at the lavishly dressed woman, the silver litter, the velvet cushions and silk drapes. It was all too unreal.

  “Get in,” repeated Lady Flavia Domitilla. “Or do you want to be speared by Praetorians?”

  “Wait a moment.”

  “But we haven’t got—”

  He reversed to the door, limped to the first turn of the passage, and putting two fingers to his lips let out a whistle. A moment later and the dog came trotting out, a half-chewed glove hanging from her teeth.

  “We leave now,” came Lady Flavia’s voice from the litter. “Are you coming or not?”

  He scooped up the dog and got in.

  THEA

  FIRE!” “Fire!”

  “The gladiator barracks are on fire!”

  One of the guards seized my arm, hurrying me out of the Imperial box behind Domitian and the Empress. Craning my neck, I could see the smoke rising from the Gate of Death. Dear God—Arius—

  I came dizzily into the square outside the Colosseum, under the shadow of Nero’s colossal statue. People pressed in all directions, mothers locking frantic fingers around the wrists of their children, men shoving and shouting. The Praetorians assigned to my protection cursed and gripped their shields, applying armored shoulders to the crush, and I flattened myself back against the steps of the Temple of Venus. Over the frantic press of pleb heads I saw a bare flash of the Emperor, still snapping at his Praetorians, and then a hand closed around my wrist and yanked me into a vestibule in the temple’s east wall.

  “Hey,” a very familiar voice said.

  “Vix?” I gaped in astonishment at my dusty son, heart suddenly expanding out to fill my ribs, and then seized him in a fierce hug. As soon as I felt his solid weight against me I didn’t think I could ever let him go again. “Vercingetorix, what are you doing here?” I whispered around the block in my throat.

  “Ran away,” he said, muffled against my shoulder. He sounded cocky as ever, but his rough paw found my hand under cover of my cloak and gripped it hard. “Larcius’s brother, he’s all right but his steward had it in for me. Put me t
o work in the kitchen yards, and there was this thing with the prize geese, and not that many of them got stolen, but the steward said he was gonna sell me to a salt mine. So I sneaked into a wagon train going north.”

  “Misenum to Ravenna, and then on to Rome?” I smiled into his hair. I should have known that no new master could keep my son in check. He looked so dusty and tired, his lip jutting as he tried so hard not to look like he’d been missing me—

  I steeled myself and shook him till his eyes rattled.

  “Hey—!”

  “Hush, there’s no time. For once you have to listen to me, Vix.” I peeked around the edge of the vestibule. “They’re already looking for me. Vix, you have to go—I can’t keep you here.” I paused, groping wildly. “Lady Flavia.”

  “Who?”

  “Guard!” I seized the arm of the nearest Praetorian. Thank God Domitian was still absorbed with his own guards, on the other side of the Temple of Venus. “Guard, this slave boy has run away from Lady Flavia Domitilla’s household in Tivoli. You must see him back to his mistress.”

  The guard eyed my dusty, scowling son dubiously. No doubt thinking of the sixteen-mile ride to Tivoli.

  “Take him at once.” I put all the haughtiness of an Emperor’s mistress into my voice. “He is Lady Flavia’s favorite pageboy, and she’ll reward you handsomely for returning him. Take this”—I pressed a few coins into the guard’s hand—“for your trouble.”

  “Yes, Lady.” He tramped off toward his centurion to beg leave, and I whirled on Vix.

  “Mother, I’m tired.” His hand still gripped mine under my cloak—for years he’d been too tough to hold my hand in public, and now he was clinging to me. “My feet hurt an’ I’m hungry an’—”

  “You’re being taken to Lady Flavia Domitilla in Tivoli,” I cut him off ruthlessly. No time to hug and cuddle him, no matter how much I wanted to. “Lady Flavia, the Emperor’s niece. Tell her—privately—that you’re my son. Athena’s son.” I stripped a silver bracelet off my wrist, a bracelet Flavia had seen me wear often, and pressed it into his hand. “Give her this. Flavia will see you right, she’s always got children running about.” I kissed him hard, pushed some coins into his dirty hands, turned to see the Praetorian tramping back. “I hope Lady Flavia gives you a good beating for your disobedience, boy,” I said loudly. “Praetorian, be sure you watch him. He’s nothing but trouble.”