Chapter 25
Lying alone, unable to move, unable to feel, unable to see, gave me much time to think.
I could hear—the drip of water, the scuttle of mice—and I could also smell.
The Cloaca Maxima ran beneath this building, and this cellar must have a drain to it.
Its pungent odor wafted upward to perfume the chamber.
I wondered if Aulus would return later and simply push me into the sewer to be rid of me.
If so, I’d end up, after a journey through Rome’s filth, in the Tiber, where I’d quickly drown. No one might ever know I’d entered this building at all.
The thoughts that came to me most readily were those of Cassia. She’d still be teaching Hadrianus at this moment, the two bending over the writing board behind the wine merchant’s shop. I pictured Hadrianus moving the stylus hesitantly, as I’d done when Cassia had first taught me the letters.
I recalled how she’d gazed uncertainly at me when Hesiodos had first introduced us, peering at me with dark eyes over a fold of her cloak. Then, how she’d confounded me by explaining she knew how to do nothing but write and do accounts.
She’d exaggerated her lack of skills. Cassia, in a few short weeks, had made our apartment comfortable, found me work, made certain we had food and drink every day, and generally made life livable. I’d not have survived without her.
I knew many believed us lovers, as we lived in close quarters day after day, but we’d come to an understanding the first night. I’d been numb, still grieving Xerxes and stunned by the loss of my former life, currently uninterested in pleasures of the flesh.
Cassia had been used by her former master, which had enraged her former mistress, who’d accused her of being a seductress and sold her. Cassia would not recover from that for a long while, if ever, and I had no intention of forcing myself on her.
So, we lived side-by-side, each of us too wounded to reach for each other.
One day, I’d thought. We’d soften enough to let what had grown between us become more. That is, if pristine Cassia ever formed any interest in a scarred, brutish gladiator.
Not that I had any experience with tender affections.
I’d observed it in Xerxes, the way he’d watch Marcella when she wasn’t looking, betraying a deep joy I doubted I’d ever feel.
I’d formed friendships, but two of the closest ones—the builder I’d once worked for and Xerxes—had been brutally taken from me.
Trusting and caring were dangerous things.
Fear wasn’t much better, and a wave of it surged through me.
I might never regain the use of my limbs, which meant I’d lie here until I died of thirst or starved to death.
The air in this cellar wasn’t stuffy, meaning the space was large and probably not sealed off.
Therefore, I’d be able to breathe while I succumbed to the other two problems.
Next came anger. Aulus had robbed Xerxes of that joy I’d witnessed in him, a happiness many people never found. He’d had a woman who loved him and children he adored. Aulus had taken that happiness from Marcella as well, leaving her alone with five fatherless and fast-growing offspring.
For what? So Aulus could make more money? He’d committed murder to protect his illegal smuggling business—both offenses would send him to the executioner. A pity the swordsman could only cut off his head once.
Panic assailed me next. Cassia had been with me when I’d first come to speak to Cassius Tatius, and Aulus would have realized by now that she was more to me than a slave who could conveniently take notes.
Once Hadrianus returned to Samorix, Cassia would be alone.
The wine merchant did his best, but he couldn’t protect her.
Aulus would find Cassia and kill her, then he’d hunt for Lucius and dispatch him too.
I could do nothing. Frustration flooded me, as well as anguish. Cassia shouldn’t die because of me and my connection to Xerxes. I should have sent Lucius far from us when he’d first turned up and left well enough alone.
But no, I was still mourning Xerxes and determined to take my revenge on the man who’d caused him to die.
I hated my inability to move. I wanted to spring up, rush to Cassia, then find Aulus and fling him into the nearest pit.
More anguish came to me, not only for Cassia’s safety, but because I’d never see her again. I wanted to touch her face, feel her cool hands clasped over mine, tell her goodbye.
She’d been good to me from the day I’d met her, puzzled whenever I questioned her as to why she bothered. We take care of each other, she’d say, and I needed that with all my strength.
I wanted to see her one more time, to tell her what she meant to me.
I prayed to any god who would listen to let that happen.
I don’t know how many hours went by, or if only one did, when the door opened again. Light stabbed into my eyes, but I couldn’t turn my head away or even lower my eyelids to shut it out. It was only a pinprick from an oil lamp, but it seemed a blazing aurora to me.
Aulus tramped down the stairs, grumbling when my inert body impeded his progress. He set the lamp down and climbed over me, kicking me in the process. I only knew this because my body moved sidewise as his foot contacted my side.
He seized me under the arms and dragged me the rest of the way down the stairs. Aulus dropped me at the bottom, my head thumping on the stone of the cellar floor. I smelled the bright tang of blood and knew it had come from my skull.
Aulus retrieved the light and set it on the floor in the middle of the cellar. Earth walls loomed above us, reinforced with brick. The patterns were old, showing that this had been built before the time of Augustus. Gallus could have told me exactly when.
Aulus hefted me up once more and dragged me onward, one of my sandals coming off in the process.
I knew he was taking me to the drain—I could hear the sewer rushing past beneath us.
The Cloaca Maxima was fed by waters from every fountain in and around the Forum, the fountains in turn supplied by aqueducts that constantly poured water into the city.
Fountains overflowed into the streets, the unceasing water seeking drains that channeled into great Cloaca.
A marvel of engineering, Marcianus had told me, fascinated by it.
I did not want to acquaint myself with Rome’s main sewer firsthand. Water from all the latrines flowed into it too.
I couldn’t move to fight Aulus, so I willed myself to become too heavy to lift. I imagined myself as a boulder, a great huge one in the middle of a building site, a challenge for the architectus and his crew to dislodge.
Aulus struggled, grunting in frustration.
“Cursed gladiators,” he muttered. “So stupid, all of you. Should be expunged from the face of the earth.”
He didn’t care that he’d murdered Xerxes. My rage grew, erasing fear. He’d seen Xerxes as an obstacle, as he now viewed me, one to be removed from his path.
I was going to kill him.
Aulus pulled me closer to the noisome smell that flowed from the sewer. He had to drop me to wrestle with the grate, an iron grid that, from its lack of rust, was fairly new.
As I lay waiting to be pushed to my doom, I found I could contract my muscles slightly. I wasn’t certain how that would help me, but I clenched and released my abdomen, then my thighs, then my upper arms.
I could only move one of these areas at a time, as though my body only had the strength for a single set of muscles at any given moment. I wondered if the time I’d lain alone on the stairs had been enough to let the poison begin to wane.
Of course, Aulus could always dose me with more or simply stab me to death. He seemed happy to stick knives into people.
After much growling and cursing, Aulus scraped the grating from the gaping hole in the floor. The rush of water grew louder.
Aulus grabbed me by the arms and pulled me toward the drain. I knew the poison was wearing off then, because the scrape of my back, still healing from Nero’s beating, against the stone hurt.
He’d have to lay me down alongside the drain in order to roll me into it, to avoid falling into the hole himself.
I had other ideas. If I was going into the Cloaca Maxima to drown in Rome’s offal, Aulus was coming with me.
When he seized my ankles and started to heave, I clenched my abdomen as hard as I could and used the strength of it to roll onto my side, kicking one foot from his grasp.
Aulus snarled and grabbed me again. I continued rolling, until I was face down on the packed earth floor. Aulus’s hands clamped around my calves, and he tried to drag me around to thrust my feet into the hole.
I focused on my leg muscles and jerked from his grip, which made him lose his balance and fall on his backside. While he vented his rage at me, I kicked again, pushing him closer to the opening.
Aulus agilely rolled to his feet and slid out his knife once more. I reasoned he didn’t want to cut my throat or kill me in an obvious way—when my body was fished out of the river somewhere far downstream, I’d be just another Roman who’d met with misfortune in the Tiber. Nothing to do with Aulus.
Aulus hadn’t held back slaying Gotarz and nearly killing Arsakes, but then, they were foreigners. He must believe the magistrates wouldn’t worry much about their deaths.
Xerxes and I had been champions of the games, beloved of Rome. Gladiators didn’t count for much in the layers of society, being very nearly at the bottom, but public feeling wasn’t the same thing as the law.
Aulus couldn’t afford to be branded as a murderer and torn apart by those who still lauded me in the streets, even if a magistrate dismissed the case.
He couldn’t afford to let me live, either.
I willed my hands to work, to let me push myself up and land him a stunning blow. My hands didn’t obey.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Aulus draw back his knife and the blade come down. I rolled again, the knife catching me on the side of my leg.
He hadn’t aimed between my shoulder blades or lower down my spine, but at the backs of my thighs. A man sliced to the bone there could lose the ability to walk or even move for a long while.
I heaved myself once more, feeling more strength return, though I could only flop over onto my back. I shoved one leg to the side, catching Aulus’s foot and tripping him.
He righted himself and came at me, eyes blazing with rage. My next kick caught the lamp and sent it flying into the hole to the sewer. The light winked out as it flew downward, any splash it made drowned by the water’s cacophony.
As Aulus yelled in fury, I took advantage of the sudden darkness to roll to my stomach, away from the hole. I’d rest and then keep rolling until I regained more feeling in my limbs.
Aulus still had his knife, though. He found me by stumbling into me and then struck down at random, no more trying to disguise my death as an accident.
The blade bit into my arm and upper back, as much as I flailed to avoid it. I tangled my legs in his, and Aulus went down, but soon was on top of me, the knife finding my throat.
I felt the blood trickle on my neck, though the sting of the blade was still muted by his poison. I didn’t know if he’d coated the knife again, but slicing my throat would kill me without doubt.
I thrashed as much as I could, but Aulus didn’t let go. He nicked me again in the hollow of my throat, and I felt the blade start to go in.
There was a bright light and a cry. Aulus rose into the air and seemed to float above me, held high by the sinewy hands of Xerxes’s ghost.
A halo surrounded Xerxes, who grinned down at me.
“You didn’t think I’d abandon you, did you, Leonidas?”