Fireball (7 page)

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 sides. 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.

They were bidding for him. Someone came up close and stared at him, and he looked blindly at the sky. A last bid, a final entreaty from the auctioneer, and it was over. The guard pushed him to the steps and down to where his new owner waited.

He was aware of two figures, a man and a boy, both in embroidered tunics of expensive cloth. He still would not look at them, but bowed low as he had seen other slaves do. It was the boy who responded. He said, in English:

“Pretty good, Simon. That saves you from a whipping. For today anyway.”

T
HE VILLA WAS BUILT ON
a small plateau just under the brow of a hill and faced southeast. All that Simon had so far managed to take in was an impression of spaciousness and luxury. He sat with Brad in the
impluvium,
the central courtyard, or rather, they reclined on facing couches, made of intricately carved oak and heaped with cushions. When he moved, he was aware of the clinging softness of the tunic he had been given, to replace the blanket he had worn during the drive out from the city.

A servant brought a painted tray with a tall jug of
rosy glass and two elegant glass beakers, and set it down on the small table between them. Brad reached and poured for them both. He raised his glass.

“Prosit!
Which means, I believe: May it do you good.” He sipped. “Not bad?”

It was basically lemon, but with other spicy flavours as well. Taste buds, battered almost to extinction by the barracks diet, came gratefully back to life. Simon said: “Better than not bad. Now tell me how it happened—all this.”

During the journey here, on Brad's prompting, he had told his own story. He had not needed much encouragement; the relief of talking to someone who could understand what he said had made him garrulous. But curiosity was uppermost now.

Laconically, Brad set about telling him. The horsemen who had picked him up at the edge of the wood had been returning from a hunting party. They had given chase more out of curiosity than anything else. But having captured him, they thought they might make a coin or two out of selling him. They decided to stay overnight at an inn and take him into the city the following morning.

Simon said: “Wait a minute.” Brad looked at
him. “How did you know all this—what they were planning to do?”

“Because they were discussing it. I was facedown over a saddlebow, but I could hear well enough.”

“Are you telling me they were talking
English
?”

Brad smiled. “I guess maybe they had a bit of an English accent, being natives of this island, but no, they spoke regular Latin.”

“But . . . I thought they didn't do Latin in American schools?”

“They don't often. We didn't study it in my school. I got interested a couple of years back and studied it in my leisure time. I wouldn't say I got really proficient, but I could make out what these characters were saying.”