With that in mind, Simon put effort into the training in a way he never had for anything before, and would scarcely have thought himself capable of doing. He exercised and practised not only during the long periods scheduled by the lanista, but outside them as well. Bos heartily approved, joining him and encouraging him. As he frankly said, other things being equal, the odds were not on Simon’s side. The greatest fatalities were always (and understandably) among the tirones; in addition, Simon was a lot younger than was usual and, although tall and reasonably well built, was a long way from peak condition. So Bos welcomed the enthusiasm and drove Simon on when he showed any sign of flagging.
Bos also used his influence with the cooks to get Simon even more of the precious meat which in one meal a day accompanied the basic mess of barley and beans. Simon became an object of professional pride to him; he would stare at him with the approval of a farmer surveying a prize steer.
The other and even more important thing he did was to teach the tricks of his trade—the manoeuvres and dodges he had learned in the long years of fighting. He had already fixed it that Simon, after the initial basic training, should join him as a secutor parmularius. The advantage of having a lighter and less cumbersome shield, he declared, more than made up for the lower level of protection even when one was up against a scutarius, and against a retiarius the difference was much more marked. Especially, he added, for a youngster like Simon.
There was one particular trick he would reveal only when they were off parade, with no one watching. It was for use against a retiarius, as a last resort if one had been netted, and involved falling in a particular way, rolling, and coming up again with a special leap which took you sufficiently clear of your opponent to have a chance to cut your way free of the net. Bos managed to get hold of a net for them to practise with in one of the unused storerooms. It was agonizingly difficult, involving the use of muscles Simon had not imagined existed. Practising went on a long time before Bos expressed grudging satisfaction.
Something else happened in the aftermath to this, while they were relaxing and resting. Bos’s barrel chest rose and fell with his breathing, and the fish design on it did the same. At the beginning Simon had wondered idly about the tattoo, but later it had become something he took for granted, like the trumpet reveille soon after dawn or the grainy coarseness of the bread. In the beginning he would have felt diffident about asking, but he felt more sure now of Bos’s amiability.
Bos did not look surprised or put out by the question. He said simply: “Christianus sum.”
It should not have been too much of a surprise; Simon recalled that the fish had been one of the earliest Christian symbols. It was just that he did not easily associate the remark with someone like Bos—especially with someone of Bos’s calling. How did he reconcile being a Christian with a lifetime commitment to kill people in the arena? He decided it would be unwise, especially with his limited command of Latin, to pursue that point. He contented himself with saying: “Et ego.” Bos looked at him, and this time was surprised. Simon nodded. “Christianus sum.”
The big face split into a grin, and a moment later he was enfolded in a hug that made him feel Bos ought to have been called after a bear rather than an ox. He did not grasp all, or even half, of what else was said except that Bos was going to take him to meet a priest, after the Games. That might be useful, Simon thought. Whatever the priest thought about Bos’s being a gladiator, surely he would lend a hand to help someone else to escape from the business. He wondered again, just where in the past he was. Before Christianity took over, presumably, but he had forgotten when that happened. And it scarcely mattered, compared with what lay not much more than a week ahead.
• • •
Although Bos was his close and constant companion, Simon had inevitably come to know other people in the barracks, particularly in the dormitory. Apart from the Celt, who kept his distance, he got on well with all of them, though he realized that might well be connected with the fact that Bos had befriended him.
The one he got on best with was Tulpius, the slave who had been picked with him out of the seven in the forum. In such a world as this, shared experiences—common disasters and common strokes of luck—were very likely to forge bonds of real, if transient, friendship. At any rate, he talked quite a bit with Tulpius, who was unlike Bos in having been a verna, a slave from birth, bred on a big country estate. He, too, had been sold, not on the death of his master, but on the dissolution of the estate. He was vague about the reason for it—there had been some talk of a fortune’s being lost in sea-trading ventures. The result was all that mattered. He had found himself in a much smaller household, and in the city, not the country. He had not liked it; there had been only six slaves altogether, which meant a lot more work than he had been used to.
Then his new master had been murdered. There was no evidence as to who had killed him—he had been stabbed in the street, just outside the house. It was lucky that it had happened outside rather than inside. The magistrates had varied the normal ruling that all slaves of a murdered man should be put to death (for not having protected him) and had ordered that only the chief slave should be executed out of hand. The rest had been sold to the lanista. He had been lucky again in being young and strong enough to be chosen for the sword, instead of going like the rest to the beasts.
Bos had not shown any interest in Simon’s life prior to joining the gladiatorial school—he had very little curiosity in general—but Tulpius did ask questions. Simon’s near-total ignorance of the language immediately stamped him as a barbarian—someone from foreign parts. So he said he hailed from a land across the sea, leaving it vague as to whether he meant Ireland or Scandinavia or Ultima Thule, and had been captured by pirates and sold here in Britain. Tulpius found that acceptable; just another run-of-the-mill story of life in the Roman Empire. He asked other questions about his earlier life, and Simon duly invented what he could and fell back on his poor Latin when things started looking sticky. But they rarely did; very little was known of lands beyond the borders of the empire, so almost anything would do.
• • •
The weather had been unsettled for a week, and a lot of the final practising had taken place in pouring rain, but the day of the Games dawned fine. Simon awoke to the trumpet call with a strange feeling of excitement mixed with fear and a dragging sense of doom. The meal the night before had been a special one, with an extra ration of meat, and even jugs of wine passed from hand to hand along the trestle tables. There had been a lot of jollity and laughter and much bellowing of songs. Simon had put up a show of joining in, but had been acutely aware of the macabre nature of a situation in which men now singing and laughing together would tomorrow be intent on killing one another.
The day of reckoning had come, and he felt a sick conviction that all the effort had been inadequate and to no purpose. There was a different atmosphere in the dormitory—a quietness and tenseness and preoccupation in place of the usual jesting and horseplay. And the others were all older than he was, most of them a lot older, and most of them experienced. Bos put a hand on his shoulder and gave him a grin and a word or two of encouragement, but even he was grim-looking and taciturn. It was a weird and awful thing to look out into the morning light, with the sun rising over the east wing of the barracks, and know that the odds were one wouldn’t live to see it set.
They marched in procession from the barracks to the circus, with armed guards marching alongside. That put paid to any notion of escape on the way. Although it was early, the streets were lined with people, some cheering, others jeering. Simon wondered if Brad might be among them, but thought it highly unlikely. He doubted if Brad had even survived, but if he had, it could be only as a slave, not as one of the city mob enjoying the festival. Though that would be preferable to what he faced.
The circus presented itself as a high blank curving wall, with an open gate at the base through which they marched into a dark tunnel, lit by torches fixed against the side
s. The tunnel sloped down and then, after a time, up again. They came out, blinking sunlight from their eyes, into the arena, and to a great roar from the spectators massed in tiers all round. As far as Simon could tell, not a seat was empty. The procession wheeled towards a place at the centre of one of the long sides of the amphitheatre, where a platform jutted out with a purple awning and purple-draped front. The figure sitting in the middle, in a purple toga, would be the governor. They marched beneath him, arms raised in salute, and bellowed the ritual greeting: “Morituri te salutamus!” We who are about to die salute thee.
Simon opened his mouth obediently, but nothing came out. Sand crunched underfoot, golden in the sunlight. There would be a lot of red staining it, before the day was over.
Having completed a circuit, they were marched back into the shadows; as they entered the tunnel, Simon heard the growling and snarling of the wild beasts penned on one side, and caught their rank feral smell. Hours of waiting still lay ahead. The morning was devoted to the beasts, either fighting between themselves or slaughtering their helpless human victims. Light entertainment—clowns and jugglers and such—came next. Then, in the afternoon, the important show. Their show.
Simon had been separated from Bos during the procession, but the big man came and found him after they had been dispersed into one of the long, low cavernous rooms that lay on either side of the central tunnel. He said: “Good news!”
Simon looked at him. The only good news he could imagine, apart from a miraculous reappearance of the fireball with late-twentieth-century England on the far side, would be that the Goths and Vandals were pounding at the city gates. Bos said: “You’re going to be fighting another tiro, not a veteranus.”
He supposed that was better than nothing. “Who?”
Bos shrugged his broad shoulders. “Not a veteranus, that’s what matters. I told Burro”—that was the instructor—“that you were too promising a youngster to be chopped without a chance of proving yourself. He put it up to the lanista, and the lanista has agreed.” He slapped Simon’s arm. “Now, let’s see you be a credit to me!”
• • •
Even though Simon was scarcely looking forward to what came next, time passed with wearisome slowness. Down here they could hear no sounds from the arena, but Simon could imagine the carnage. He felt sick at the thought, and when they were brought a snack—bread and cold stringy meat—he at first refused it. But Bos was not standing for that; a slice of meat, he growled, could make the vital difference to a swordsman’s fitness—the difference between killer and killed. Simon choked, but managed to swallow it.
Then, unexpectedly, horrifyingly, the time had come. They were marched out, to another roar of welcome from the crowd. They paraded again, but this time with a musical accompaniment; an orchestra, of trumpets, horns, flutes, and stringed instruments, went ahead of them, playing something like a march. They made their gruesome salute to the governor a second time, had it acknowledged by the languid wave of a handkerchief, and the greater part of the column headed back towards the tunnel. Those were the fighters for the later bouts. When his section was halted, Simon realized with a churning stomach that he was one of those who were on first.
There were to be four simultaneous contests of secutor against retiarius, in four different corners of the arena. The star turn took place directly beneath the governor’s dais and was supervised by the lanista. Simon was directed by one of the lanista’s deputies to the eastern end. He waited there, gripping his sword tightly, while the retiarii were directed to their stations, too.
He recognized his opponent the moment he started to walk forward but hoped he was mistaken—that such a bad joke could not be true. But it was Tulpius who stood and faced him, net in his left hand, trident poised in the right.
The orchestra had remained in the middle of the arena. They were playing again: jangling angry music that clawed at one’s nerves. He looked at Tulpius, at a set, tense face which showed no sign of recognition. The music went on and on, to surges of impatient howling from the crowd. It reached a crescendo and abruptly stopped. For a second or two there was silence, even the spectators seeming to hold their breath. Then a shrill blast of trumpets and a full-throated roar of satisfaction. The contests had begun.
Tulpius moved catlike, circling him. Simon turned with him, on the same spot. The circling went on and on. Suddenly Tulpius darted forward, net flung upwards, babbling a stream of venomous Latin. Simon dodged back, the falling net brushing against his shield arm. The circling started again.
Time ceased to mean anything; there was only a never-ending succession of moments in which concentration had to be held and honed. At some point a shout from the spectators, marking the early end of one of the other bouts, distracted him momentarily. The net flashed and almost had him, and as he stepped back, he nearly tripped and fell. The taunting continued all the time. He felt at a disadvantage in not being able to reply, but at least he could not understand much of what was being said, either, even though the tone was all too clear. He thought of Tulpius the previous evening, passing him the jug of wine and offering a toast to friendship. The net flashed, and he quickly pulled back.
It was the net which, gradually, became his obsession. It maddened and mesmerized him; he wondered if this was what happened to a bull in front of a matador’s cloth. He saw, was conscious of, nothing but the net. That was the real tormentor rather than the man wielding it. Even more than the constant turning and dodging, the net seemed to be draining strength from him. The urge to slash it with his sword, to put an end to its weaving and flicking, increased with every moment. In the end it was uncontrollable. His right arm moved almost as though it were something separate, with a will and a need of its own. The sword flashed out towards the mocking net.
The net shifted, whirled through the air, twisted, and came down. Simon felt it over his head, light and insubstantial for an instant but turning into knotted cord that tightened and twisted and pulled him irresistibly. He was off-balance, and going down, and once down, it would be as good as over.
Surprisingly he felt clearheaded. Uppermost in his mind was the thought not of his impending death, but that Bos would be disappointed. Bos . . . He remembered the hours of practice in the storeroom. The rolling fall first, with sword held back . . . He hit the ground and rolled. Then the leap. He tensed his muscles, gathered breath, exploded upwards. He landed on his feet, swayed, tottered, but stayed upright. The net still covered him but only loosely; the leap had dragged it out of Tulpius’s grasp. Simon slashed upwards with his sword, and it parted and fell.
He heard the crowd roaring all round. Tulpius stood a few paces away, his face frozen now with fear, holding the trident. He did not move as Simon attacked, and the sword’s edge sent the trident clattering yards away.
The lanista’s deputy was beside him, shouting something. He did not know what it was, and did not care. The crowd was shouting, too—not only those immediately above but all round the arena, it seemed. It was a concerted chant, like that of football crowds—a single word over and over again. Not missos—set him free—but iugula. Cut his throat. . . .
The deputy seized Simon’s arm and dragged him round. He was pointing to the dais where the governor sat. It was a long way off, but the gesture was unmistakeable. Thumb pointed to chest: Dispatch him. The bout underneath the dais had ended, too. The retiarius stood victorious. An attendant in a mask stood over the fallen secutor, reaching down with a hot iron, making sure the man was dead. The shouts went on and on. “Iugula . . . iugula . . . iugula. . . .” The deputy lanista was shouting, too. Simon dropped his sword and turned away.
• • •
Two days later he squatted naked in the dust of the forum. There had been a thunderstorm during the night, but the sun beating down from a sky of naked blue had already dried the ground, and the heat was rapidly becoming oppressive. He was roped as before, along with more than a score of others. From the auction platform behind them he heard the auctioneer’s
urgings and the bids for the slave on show.
Simon thought of his last meeting with Bos, the big hand grasping his through the bars of the cell. Bos had been troubled, bitterly disappointed, but, above all, uncomprehending. Simon had been his pupil, with a great future as a secutor, and Simon had let him down. He could not understand why.
And even if he had had enough Latin, Simon doubted if it would have been possible to explain. This was a totally different world, and killing, for a long time, had been Bos’s profession. Bos went on to say something else and, by dogged repetition, finally got it across. He had been able to do Simon one last favour. He had pleaded with the lanista, having won his own contest well, and the lanista had listened to him. Instead of being condemned to the beasts, Simon would be sold off in the market.
To Bos himself, it was plain, there was not much difference between the two fates. A secutor who had failed to kill after winning a bout might as well be dead. Simon, on the other hand, was very much aware of the difference, and grateful to his unhappy friend. To be safe from the beasts and out of the gladiatorial school as well was more than he could have hoped for. Whatever fate lay in store for him as a slave was better than those.
The guard came and prodded him to his feet. He shuffled round to the other side of the wooden screen and mounted the steps to the platform. The auctioneer, a tall man with a thin, greasy-looking face, gave an order and, when Simon failed to respond, roughly pulled up first one arm, then the other, and turned him round. He was being shown off, he realized, from all angles. The auctioneer launched into what was presumably a catalogue of his qualities. Simon avoided looking at the people clustered in front. The sense of relief in being no longer a gladiator was not strong enough to survive this particular experience. All he could feel was shame.