Chapter XIII
XIII
FELIX HADN’T STAYED TO WATCH. Couldn’t stay to watch. For more reasons than how the violence assaulted his conscience.
He descended into the tunnel and began the trek back to the Ludus Gallicus.
Trying and failing to focus on the determined clap of his sandals on the stone floor and not on the roar of the crowd screaming her name as she entered the ring.
, ! It echoed through the tunnel after him, clanging into the names of the other fighters as they joined her.
The responding shout of the gladiators came as both a taunt and a warning.
Morituri te salutant.
“Protect her, God,” he murmured. “Preserve the lives of all the fighters today.”
The image of Adelgard being injured again—being killed—played over and over again in his mind.
He’d seen too many fighters carried into the clinic to ignore the risk that one of the fatalities could be her.
But why it bothered him so much, he couldn’t say.
Or wouldn’t say. Because she reminded him of one of his sisters? No, definitely not.
Felix had told Jovan from the moment he’d accepted the job that he wouldn’t remain to observe the school matches or private fights.
Being present at the public spectacles was Sergius’s job, and it was Felix who waited at the ludus, ready to attend to the aftermath.
The violence of the fights and the intoxication and addiction of men and women witnessing it, cheering it on, made him sick.
Could they not see it for what it was? How could the most powerful empire in the world value life so little?
Be entertained by such destruction? How could a people governed by leaders who claimed to follow Christ continue to revel in such violence?
And was he enabling these senseless deaths by his work here?
The request from Gaius and Telemachus had plagued him for days.
But how could he get involved? Freeing—stealing—imperial slaves, prisoners of war, out of the Ludus Gallicus was an insane request. Not to mention impossible.
There were two ways out of the school: through the front gate—guarded and locked at all hours—or through the tunnels.
Since they only led to the other schools or locked warehouses, the latter didn’t seem a viable option. Not that the front gate did either.
But even if there was a way to free the Visigoth captives, how could he do so, when he’d risk his life, his job, his family in the process?
Wasn’t his first responsibility to them?
He’d argued the same to Telemachus, who’d only shrugged.
You may save them for a day, but Alaric will sack the city, and who will save them then?
A chill not from the tunnel crept up his spine.
Emerging from the underground passageway, Felix crossed the courtyard toward the clinic. The school was eerily silent and should be for a while. Let it be so.
A glance at the ludus gate confirmed his decision.
He couldn’t help.
The best he could do for the Visigoths was collect names for Telemachus’s list and mend wounds.
Felix clenched his fists, resisting the urge to slam them into the clinic wall in frustration, to stoop to the violence he tried to protest.
“Why do You not stop it?” he growled at the ceiling. “Why don’t You do something?”
Conviction smote in the next instant. A gentle voice, a solid knowledge.
I sent you.
He swept the thought aside as easily as the debris on the floor, busying body and mind with cleaning, reordering the shelves of supplies, wiping down the operating table and preparing the side table with everything he’d need for a traumatic arrival: threaded needles, herbal tinctures, rags to mop up blood.
He refused to think any more on Telemachus’s request. Liberation from this place was impossible. And risking the lives of his family felt an equal impossibility.
Footsteps rushed up the colonnade outside the open door.
Already?
Felix poked his head outside, relieved to find only a slave approaching and not a litter.
“A delivery for you, sir.” The man’s hands were empty.
Felix frowned. “Where?”
“At the gate. It’s the blade sharpener. Wants to talk to you about scalpels.”
“This isn’t a good time. I’ll see him next week.”
“He’s insistent.”
“I need to be here if anyone comes.”
“I’ll wait here and fetch you if there’s a need.”
Perhaps a distraction would be nice after all. Felix sighed. “See that you do.”
A young man fidgeted in the hall of heroes, eyeing the niches and jars and doing his best to keep near the gate, as if he feared the ludus might trap him forever if he stepped farther in.
Not likely, given his scrawniness. Felix shot a glance over his shoulder toward the clinic where the slave leaned against the wall by the door. No litter yet.
“How can I help you?”
The man looked up—if one could call him a man with barely a beard to his name—and gave a sharp bow. He was not the blade sharpener Felix usually employed on Caelian Hill.
“I am Ilias. Bladesmith at the Markets of Trajan.” As he straightened, he withdrew a knife from his belt and extended it toward Felix. The guards at the gate lurched forward, but Ilias held up his free hand.
“I mean no harm!” With a flick of his wrist, he offered the blade to Felix resting on both palms.
The guards relaxed, but kept watchful eyes trained on the man.
Felix made no move to take it. It wasn’t one of his scalpels, or even a medical blade. “I thought you were here about scalpels.”
“I am, but I also dabble in forgery, and thought you might be interested in—”
“Forging, you mean?” Felix took a half step back. There was no way he was buying a blade from a man who didn’t even know the name of the process used to make one. “I’m the medicus, not the weapons purchaser. You’ll have to speak with—”
“You are Felix Cassianus, are you not?” His brows drew together.
“I am but—”
“If we can speak in private, I promise you’ll—”
“Medicus! Medicus!” The shout brought both relief and dread.
Felix spun to see slaves rushing a litter toward his clinic. “We’ll speak another time,” he shouted over his shoulder.
Felix tied off the last bandage, covering the third and shallowest puncture wound from the trident of a retiarius. “You’re all set, Gaiseric.”
The tall, thin secutor winced as he eased himself off the operating table.
“Rest in your cell and come back in the morning. I’ll put more salve on it. If it begins to bleed again or ooze, come back immediately.”
The secutor had barely limped through the doorway before two slaves with a stretcher shoved into the room, heaving their load onto the operating table.
“The Gaul took a sword to the side,” one of them clipped.
The three of them rolled the man off the stretcher, Felix noting the blood-soaked bandages wrapping the man’s middle. The slaves left without another word, dragging the bloodied stretcher behind them.
The man groaned, locking Felix in a tight-lipped stare.
“What’s your name?” Felix tucked two fingers beneath the man’s jaw to check the strength of his pulse.
“G . . . Gaul.”
That wasn’t what he meant, but the man clearly couldn’t manage both pain and a conversation.
His pulse was weak. Felix rushed to reorganize his supplies on the stand next to him.
What he wouldn’t give for an assistant at times like these.
Thankfully, times like these were not daily occurrences.
Peeling back Sergius’s bandages, he revealed a deep gash slicing from the man’s side to his belly button.
He cleaned the wound with wine-soaked rags, mind racing.
He’d need to stitch in deep, full-length stitches, rather than in layers as he might do for a gash on a thigh or arm.
None of the internal organs had been ruptured by the blow—that he could tell.
The recovery would be long, but possible.
“I’m going to stitch you up now.” Felix gave his clammy shoulder a pat and then measured a draught of painkiller in a small, one-sip cup of wine.
“Take this first.” He tilted the man’s head and poured the painkiller into his mouth.
The Gaul groaned as he lay back, shutting his eyes and not making another sound while Felix stitched.
He was still stitching when the slaves stumbled in with the short-haired gladiatrix who promptly threw up on his feet. She was bleeding from a blow to the head, but she was mostly upright.
Felix drew a shallow breath. “Lay her in the infirmary, and wrap a bandage around her head.” Why hadn’t Sergius done it before she’d left the arena? There must be something more pressing coming up the line. “I’ll get to her next.”