Arena (32 page)

He sprawled on his side, whimpering in dumb animal puzzlement. With hair in my face and blood gouting from my useless left forearm, I straddled him, lifted the paralyzed left hind leg out of the way, chopped him twice more in the loins. Then I reached behind me for the glittering sword and rammed it straight through his neck.

The magnificent beast died while I tottered up, everything confusion and dizziness around me. I swung my head from side to side, searching for Xenophon.

Down at the arena’s end lay the headless corpse of the other lion. He had finished his animal. He would be coming for me. But where was he?

The blood poured from my arm, washed down my legs in a red torrent. A thousand voices jeered behind me, warning me he was there, and that I was too late.

I spun. My feet tangled. Out of the flickering mist of my dizziness Xenophon towered up, both hands on his sword handle and the blade over his head, aimed for the middle of my skull.

I flung up my own sword, making my right arm rigid as I could. Iron clanged iron. Sparks flew.

My sword snapped in half.

I was helpless. Xenophon backed off a couple of paces. Blood leaked from many cuts on his powerful body. He lifted the blade in salute. His cruel eyes shone.

“It appears the winner of the contest is decided.”

And he attacked.

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White and shimmering, his sword leaped toward my face.

An eternity passed in the heartbeats. I saw my father again. I struggled to remember something.

Then I had it, dim from the past —

How he’d learned the trick with the hand from a Numidian gladiator. A gladiator. My father was the one who had put the trick to use on animals.

Xenophon’s sword loomed, a split second from my heart.

I dropped to my knees. The point of the blade ripped a trough out of my scalp. I struck him between his legs with the side of my hand.

Over he went, shrieking, stumbling against me. I threw my shoulder to his thighs, dumping him soundly. Then I think I went mad.

The next thing I remember, I was squatting over his body, hacking my hand again and again on the back of his neck. His eyes stared at the sand a few inches from his nose. His head was bent at a peculiar angle. There was no bone within the column of his throat as I hit it, only strange pulpy jelly.

Sobbing for air, I stood up. Taunts, oaths thundered in the stands. But I had won. And the Emperor had made a promise.

I turned and lurched toward the Imperial box. Nero was on his feet, livid. I was conscious of leaving a trail of huge red bloodspots at every step. But I was so deep in death and pain I felt a kind of exultation.

I lifted my head to meet Nero’s angered eyes. I wanted to laugh in his face. My right arm was leaden. I brought it up, clenched the fist, raised the hand high.

The mercy sign.

His face dissolved into totally mindless anger an instant. Then it composed. He glanced around the stands. Gaius Julius stormed into the box, stabbing his breastplate with the thumb of his balled right fist, the signal that demanded my death.

“I have sworn —” the Emperor began.

I shook my fist again.

“No!” a Praetorian screamed.

Then a hundred:“No!”

Nero Caesar Augustus brought his right arm up from his side. His fingers were extended but his thumb was bent beneath his palm. He had sworn mercy. He hesitated.

The outcries of the Praetorians grew louder. They were on their feet to a man around the mighty amphitheater, stabbing their breasts with their thumbs.

“No! No! No! No! No! No!”

The tribune Julius shouted, “Emperor, he killed our Prefect!”

I shouted up to them, “A vow was made —”

The eyelids of the Emperor drooped sadly. His right shoulder lifted in an exquisite shrug.

Almost like a shy youth responding to a maid, he lifted his face and looked out over the noisy crowd.

“No! No! No!”

Once more he shrugged, a pained, uncertain look upon his puffy face. But I was near enough to see a glitter beneath his drooping lids, and at last my heart and my courage broke. This was all staged and arranged in the event of my victory, for without the swords of the Praetorians behind him, the Emperor’s power was nil. To surrender me in violation of his own promise would be a gesture of loyalty to the blood-lusting soldiers that none could misinterpret.

“These men,” he exclaimed, gesturing to the Praetorians, “are Rome. I — I am only the Emperor.”

He gave a quick jerk to is right hand, jabbing the ball of his thumb deep into his soft chest. His mouth formed one word.

“Death.”

Pandemonium reigned. Screaming joy, thunderous cheers. The blood running from my arm had
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been wasted worthlessly. I sank to my knees.

And ten thousand voices chanted, “Death to the murderer! Death! Death!Death! ”

My mind went dark.

I awakened sometime later during the night, in the cell at the Imperial prison.

A bald physician was bending over me, wrapping my arm with linen. The smell of some tarry unguent was in the air. The turnkey hovered in the background, holding a lantern aloft.

“Ah,” said the physician, with emotionless professionalism, “awake, are you? Good. That potion I forced down your throat was efficacious. I’d hate to be held responsible for your failure to appear at your own execution.” He tied a last knot and stood back. “Nothing personal, of course.”

To the turnkey I said, “When?”

“First light of dawn,” he replied with relish. “You’re too be marched through the streets to the Forum. Stoned to death there in the manner of criminals.”

I labored up from the hard couch, bleary with pain. “I must send a message to Ostia.”

The turnkey shook his head. “No, that can’t be done.”

“I beg you, help me. I’ll pay you well. I have much money. I’ll write you an order on the House of the Probi that will make you wealthy. Just find me someone to take word to an inn on the coast —”

“No, I’m sorry,” he said querulously. “Much as I’d like to, I can’t. Strict orders.”

Mumbling this, he retired hastily, taking his lantern and leaving me in total darkness. I rested my head on my bandaged aching arm. Only after days of waiting would she perhaps learn how I died.

Soon I grew drowsy. I no longer even had the strength to curse the savage and nameless gods who had destroyed me.

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AT DAWNI was led from the cell to the prison yard.

I moved slowly, deliberately, responding like a dumb animal to the proddings of my guards. In truth I don’t think it was a living man who went to his death that morning. I had died the night before, in the arena.

A group of Praetorians waited in the cheerful brightening daylight. The leader stepped forward.

He saluted to make his men laugh. Under the burnished helm I saw the face of Gaius Julius.

“Ave, Cassius. I trust you slept well. I asked the Emperor’s permission to head the detail conducting you to the Forum. I also trust you understand why.”

“Perfectly. Get it done with.”

“Forward!” he called sharply. His men ringed me and the prison gates creaked open.

Outside a large crowd had already gathered, the inevitable carrion who attended any execution.

Their numbers increased as we moved along the twisting streets, Julius smiling and making many jests at my expense.

I intended to offer no resistance when we reached the Forum. All I wanted now was a quick end.

The taunts of the mob meant nothing, neither hurting nor provoking me. I closed my mind to the swelling roar of the hundreds streaming along behind the circle of Praetorians. I remembered Acte’s lovely face while I still had the chance. Of all those whom I’d known in my wasted life, she was the one person I regretted leaving.

The glittering roofs of an unburned section of the Palatine shone in the distance. The glitter reminded me again that I had worshipped false gods. Only Acte’s love had showed me the truth of it. Perhaps this was the price I had to pay for my error.

Several blocks from the Forum, Julius called an order to halt. Another, smaller crowd had gathered just ahead, surrounding a fountain at the intersection. On the fountain’s sculptured rim stood a man in a plain robe. His words carried above the mutterings of the pack at my heels.

“— for the ways of God are not evil ways, as your Emperor wishes you to believe, but the ways
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of righteousness.”

“That’s treason!” someone cried. I perceived dully that the orator was Paulus.

“Treason to Rome,” Paulus called back, “but loyalty to God. I plead with you, citizens. I am one of you, remember, a citizen — turn against the godless ways of this city. Seek the path of righteousness before the evil that flows from the Palatine engulfs you completely.”

“Pull that wretch down!” Julius shouted, storming ahead. “Move aside! Let me through!”

Paulus flung out his hand, pointing at Julius.

“See? Even public murder is given a blessing by the debauched creature who rules you. He sends out his killers in the armor of respectability.”

“Going to let him get away with that kind of talk, tribune?” a woman screeched from a rooftop.

“I say pull him down and kill him!”

Angrily others agreed. Paulus remained standing on the edge of the fountain, however. Suddenly I saw another anxious face below his. That of the young man Marcus.

Paulus seemed unconcerned about bringing the Praetorians’ wrath down on himself. He pointed a second time at purple-cheeked Julius, shouting contemptuously, “Look at him preen, that hired brute who conducts a man to his death while making jokes. Is that a specimen of Roman honor? To me it looks more like a specimen of Roman rot.”

Wearily I wondered why Paulus was so bent on provoking the soldiers. The tribune’s jaw trembled as he yanked out his long sword and waved it at the Christian preacher.

“Stand down and close your filthy mouth.”

“I will stand here and proclaim the word of God while I still have strength, assassin.”

Julius’ temper cracked. The mob shouted for him to strike. He strode forward. The crowd scattered around the fountain. Julius confronted the bearded man.

“You’ll stand there and blaspheme against the Emperor?”

“Yes, tribune. The Emperor is no god. The Emperor is an abomination.”

“Praetorians!” Julius shrilled. “Half of you forward! Take him! We’ll have an extra treat for the people waiting with rocks in the Forum. Two deaths instead of one.”

Half the soldiers hastened to obey him. Before they reached the fountain, Paulus shouted down,

“To put me to death, tribune, first you’ll have to lay hands on me.”

And with that he leaped into the crowd.

Marcus knocked several people into the path of the soldiers. Men cursed. The Praetorians milled. Paulus and Marcus were gone down a dim side street, robes flying.

For a moment the tribune was at a loss as to what to do. The mob had gotten out of hand, shrilling for the blood of the preacher as much as for mine. Julius’ decision was made for him; the surging crowd around the fountain pushed him and his men down the side street in pursuit.

The hundreds behind me thrust forward too, demanding the same thing.

“Watch Cassius, you men back there!” Julius cried, buffeted along. “The rest of you go after the blasphemer.”

As if they had a choice. His band of men was hurled along ahead of a living sea of bloodthirsty men and women. The group surrounding me was similarly pushed. In the melee I lost sight of Marcus and his mentor.

Another great crowd swelled the already packed streets at the next intersection. Those people suddenly pressed back against the walls of the buildings. I saw Julius’ helm plume dancing above many heads. My guards prodded and kicked me along. “Keep up, lout, keep up.”

Standing alone in the center of the intersection ahead, Julius shouted to the men with me, “Take him back! Back to the other street!”

He shouted to no avail. Hundreds jammed in behind us. But the mob ahead of us parted, almost magically, the people shrinking into the shadows to either side of the street. Those behind kept shoving. The Praetorians cursed. I was suddenly toppled forward on my hands and knees, a short sword’s stroke from the tribune’s legs.

As I clambered up, I heard terrified whispering. Then the whispers melted away to a weird
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silence. Down another thoroughfare drifted the mutter of the mob waiting in the Forum, a menacing rumble.

Six women clad in white, water jars upon their shoulders, had paused in the middle of the intersection.

The tribune goggled, his face white, sweat-bright, at the Vestal Virgins on their morning journey to the Fountain of Egeria on the Coelian Hill.

Then I understood why Paulus and Marcus had been waiting at the fountain; why they had pelted off down this particular side street when they did. I saw them nowhere about. But far down inside me, a dim red spark of hope, no more than a breath, began to burn.

The scene remained frozen a moment. Sensing he would be cheated, Julius turned his back on the Vestals and raised his sword.

“I’ll take the consequences for killing you in front of them, beast-man.”

His blade arched up bright in the rising sun. The foremost Vestal stepped forward.

“Tribune! If he is condemned, then he must go free.”

Julius hesitated, the sword still over his head. One red impulse and it would kill me —

“Stop him, soldiers! If he kills, it will be an evil omen.”

Fickle as the weather, the people in the crowd picked up the cry.

“He must go free!”

“That is the law!”

“Will you defy the gods, tribune?”

“No, don’t let him!”

Slowly Julius lowered the sword, trembling. But beaten.

Still, I hardly dared believe, even though I remembered the day when I’d read in theActa Diurna how another criminal had been saved by such an encounter.

I took a step forward. Another.

The Praetorians looked anxiously at their commander. Julius made no move. No soldier stirred either.