A Mixture of Madness, Book II of The Bow of Heaven (17 page)

“
I need more skills.”

Betto
looked dumbfounded. “Why couldn’t you just say that?” He turned to Malchus. “Why couldn’t he just say that?”

And
so it was that Betto and I began our training all over again.

Chapter
XI

5
6 - 55 BCE   Winter, Rome

Year of the consulship of

Cn. Cornelius Lentulus Marcellinus and L. Marcius Philippus

It was several weeks after our mission to the
balnea
Numa before lady Cornelia and Livia could both be released from their social and medical obligations to travel together into town. The streets were still unsafe, and would remain so until after the elections, which Crassus would continue to have postponed until Januarius. I forbid Livia from this outing; she laughed. Why is it I will not be taken seriously? Neither her personal safety nor the threat of rain would make her see sense, and I could not bring myself to have the guards confine her. She argued her position with a whispered kiss against my ear. “You’ll thank me next time you suffer from one of your migraines.” The headache would arrive either way, for the thought of her out and vulnerable in the city was making my temples throb and the cords in my neck turn to iron.

After a promise that our itinerary would have a single destination and no impulsive excursions, Malchus, Valens, the lady’s man, Buccio and I escorted the women to the herbalist’s, a tiny shop down a crooked street little more than an alleyway. Betto had wanted to come as well, but
domina
was out preparing for the parties that would festoon Sulla’s Victory games like banners. Crassus had sent so many men to guard her, including Betto, that you could barely see her litter, let alone get near it. We opted to abandon the use of such a carriage, as it would attract more unwanted attention than our paltry guard could comfortably accommodate. As for Hanno, he had discovered the stables, and the horses had discovered him. Love grew unbridled, if you will forgive the pun, by horse and boy alike.

The games were of particular importance to the Crassus household, since they were held to honor Sulla’s victory
against Marius and Cinna in the Civil War a generation earlier. There was not a Roman alive older than forty who did not remember that the battle at the Colline Gate would have been lost had it not been for Marcus Crassus and his 2,500 Spaniards. Sulla’s forces were about to be overwhelmed when my master, right beneath the very walls of the city, broke through Marius’ Samnite defenders, allowing Rome to be taken into the loving but brutal arms of its conqueror. Some of the older
optimates
could still be heard to murmur that had Crassus been just a little older (he was thirty-three at the time) the city and the dictatorship might have gone to him. Rome loves nothing so much as a hero.

I have reminded you on several occasions that I am no Roman. While Crassus would be the man of the hour for the last week of October, this celebration, of all the dozens of festivals held throughout the Roman calendar, was most reviled by
this chronicler. Before Sulla had himself declared dictator of Rome, he and his armies had been preoccupied with the sacking of Athens, abducting everything of value, from our books, to our art, to our greatest minds. To whit, me. To be fair, at nineteen, my mind still had some small way to go before it would come fully into its season. That point aside, this festival had special significance for me:  not long after the butchery had abated I was captured, brutalized and chained; given as a gift of gratitude from the victorious general to his young lieutenant. While Rome drinks, eats and whores itself into a stupor to mark the occasion, for me this holiday must in perpetuity commemorate the end of my freedom and the beginning of my life as a slave.

If this were not reason enough to abhor these games, I have another. For over 700 years the festival that honored mighty Zeus was held in Olympia near the town of Elis, a celebration of man’s feeble but worthy attempt to mimic the gods in prowess and speed. It is no coincidence that these two festivals, one infant, the other ancient and venerable, are held at the same time of year. As I have previously perhaps overstated, when Sulla’s armies trampled our fair city, the dictator transported everything he could lay his hands on to Rome, including the
Olympic Games themselves. Fortunately, he died two years later and no one objected when the official competition quietly stole back to Greece, where it belonged. As Greece honored Zeus, so Rome continues to venerate Sulla with its imitation of the Olympiad. And Rome, being the repository for all the world’s stolen wealth that it is, keeps offering greater and greater prizes for the winners in each event. The celebration of Sulla’s conquest is an irresistible cynosure for every athlete within a thousand miles. They stream to Rome to compete, leaving our original celebration destitute of quality competitors. I spit on Sulla’s Victory games. In private, naturally.

•••

I paid little attention to whatever ointments and herbs Livia was purchasing. My eyes, and those of Valens and Malchus, were trained on the crowded street, scanning for trouble. Buccio kept a rear guard at the back entrance to the shop. All of us had short clubs looped into our belts, save for our two real legionaries, Malchus and Valens, who kept their hands on the pommels of their ill-concealed swords. And of course, there were my knives.

We came to grief at the intersection of the wide Nova Via and the Porta Mugonia at the base of the Palatine. To our left loomed the vined and
hoary columns of the temple of Jupiter Stator. The wind rose, the bare branches of the trees above us on the hill argued with each other in coarse, scratchy voices, and it began to rain. We were just about to start our climb to home and safety when Livia called my name with low urgency. We turned to see twenty of Clodius Pulcher’s brutes walking quickly down the cream brick steps of the temple. Most were unknown to us but their leaders had sickeningly familiar faces. To a man they wore the look of smug imprudence that comes from being on the side with overwhelming odds in its favor. Two of them wore the trappings of gladiators:  a
retiarius
with his net and trident, and a
hoplomachus
, with padded leggings, a small round shield on his left forearm, a dagger in his left hand and a stained lance in his right. Neither of them wore helmets, but their expressions were as hard as armor. Those two stood on either side of Velus Herclides. There were only four or five long strides between us.

“
Furina’s
feces!” Malchus muttered under his breath. “This is not good, Alexander.”

“Drusus Quintilius Malchus,” Herclides called, smiling like a cat with a sparrow beneath its paw, “How do you like me without the beard?”

“This crossroads is a sacred place,” Malchus called back as Herclides’ men moved in, forming a semi-circle in the broad plaza of the gate. Behind us rose the Palatine.

“I was hoping you and I might have another
moment
.”

“And you’ve just brought weapons into a temple.”

“But as you can see, we’ve brought them back out again.” His men chuckled.

“Bad luck to spit in the face of the gods,” Valens said. His gladius slid into view, whispering a soft farewell to its scabbard. Behind Herclides, the scarred Palaemon leered.

Malchus held Valens back with an outstretched arm, then stepped in front of him. “Your complaint lies with me, Velus. Let us walk apart and settle our differences privately.”

“You?” Herclides said with surprise. “You’re a fellow legionary. How could you think a bone with any meat on it lay between us?” His face was smiling, but his eyes, flitting left then right to check the positioning of his men
, made my legs weak. “It’s the women we want, same as before.”

I called out, “What would Clodius Pulcher say if he knew what you were up to?”

“Well, if it isn’t the Mantis. Best guess? He’d probably say, ‘save some for me.’”

When the laughter died down I said, “You know who we serve.” Somehow, I kept my voice from flying off into the upper registers. “Let me remind you:  Marcus Licinius Crassus.”

“Mantis, hadn’t you better start praying?” This evoked a drool-laced cackle from Palaemon.

“Back then,” I continued, fear spilling words from my mouth like bees fleeing the nest, “you must have been, what? Fifteen? Twenty? Old enough to remember. The Via Appia? Spartacus? You are no more than twenty assembled here. Marcus Crassus was in a hurry back then, what with wanting to nail up six thousand as quickly as he could. With you lot, he’d most probably, and this is just a guess, of course, but I shouldn’t be at all surprised if he took his time with you and your men. You’d be begging for crucifixion by then, that is, if you still had tongues. Is that how you picture the end of your days, Velus Herclides.”

“That’s good, Mantis. Truly.” Herclides’ voice wavered just a fraction. “But if you keep needling me, who’s going to be around to tell him? Besides, I can always grow another beard.”

“You know I can’t allow this, Velus,” Malchus said in a low and steady voice,
his weapons drawn. His hands had been empty, but now, as if by sorcery,
pugio
and
gladius
circled slowly in each hand.

“Why Camilla,” Herclides said to Malchus’ gladius, “aren’t you looking bright and shiny today.” He rubbed his roughly shaved chin with a hand fairly covered with coarse, black hairs. Tufts of the same sprouted from the back of his rough-spun tunic and climbed the front of his chest to the base of his neck. “I might spare you,” he said. “But you’ll have to wait. You shouldn’t have interfered, Drusus. As many as we are now, it’ll take hours to get these lovelies back to you. Think of the time you would’ve saved if you’d have let the Mantis hand them over back at the baths.”

Valens turned to Malchus and said quietly, “The road up the hill is narrow. Easier to defend.” Then he walked up to Herclides, his sword point two feet from his chest. “You sure your blurry eye is up for this?” he asked.

Herclides shrugged. “For what? Nodding my
fucking
head?”

Which he did.

“Valens!” Malchus yelled. The
retiarius
threw his net from Valens’ left. Minucius leapt right to dodge its iron entanglement, and stepped into the braced and waiting point of the
hoplomachus’
lance, a trap the two gladiators must have planned from the outset. Valens made no sound that we could hear above the hiss of the rain. Minucius dropped his sword and grabbed the wooden shaft with both hands to try with all his might, his strength sapped by agony, to stop what he knew would happen next. The gladiator pushed and twisted, then yanked the weapon out from his body with a sickening tearing sound. Minucius Valens fell dead in the street.

Many things happened either in quick succession or simultaneously, I cannot remember clearly. Malchus bellowed, switched dagger and sword hands and threw his
pugio
into the neck of the
hoplomachus
. The gladiator had enough strength to pull the blade from his throat, gripping it as Minucius had held the lance that had killed him. Then he fell to his knees, pitched forward onto our fallen friend, his own blood spreading across the back of the man he had killed.

There
were only two daggers in my belt. Now one of them lodged just below the neck of the villain nearest Malchus, the thrust of his sword aborted by my blade. It is a terrible thing to witness death by violence, a thousand times worse to hold a man’s life in your own hands and to willingly, consciously take it from him. Acknowledged or not, something noble has been scoured from your insides, never to be replaced. You saved a friend’s life, and there lies ample justification. But never peace, never balance, never the same. At least that is how it seems to me.

Brutal death is a thing unnatural, a foul insult to whatever order holds sway in the universe. Or a bloody argument that we are lost in the midst of Chaos. Valens was the first victim laid upon the altar of Crassus' revenge. A man I never knew was the second. So many would follow, I weep to think of it.

Drusus screamed for us to run. We turned our backs on our assailants and fled up the hill, knowing there was no hope of escape. Livia and I did our best to shepherd our small flock away from the wolves who loped confidently behind us. Fifty feet ahead the road narrowed. If we could make it that far, we could turn and defend ourselves. It would be the most logical place for us to fight and die. Only an instant before I had wondered what kind of man gives his life for those he barely knows? I wanted to hate Valens because I was unable to find another way to end this. Because I knew such pointless bravery was beyond my understanding, beyond my emulation. Valens had once joked that a hero is a fool too afraid to have the good sense to turn and run away, but his last act among the living gave that jest the lie.

They say in moments of great fear or desperation, a
man will always make a choice—either to flee or face his enemy, but choice requires thought, and in the moment when you know for certain that death is stalking you with strides you cannot outrun, there is no time for thought. You do not choose. Like Betto, or Malchus, or Valens, you act, doing either one thing or the other. Now I understood the lesson Minucius had taught us. I glanced at Livia, her knuckles wrapped white around a small club I had not seen her conceal, her features constricted with determined antagonism. I was furious and wretched to think of all the things we were all about to lose.