Chapter XVII #2
Dreda barked a sharp laugh and threw up a hand. “Look around you, Adelgard. You think this place is a paradise? Perhaps it is for you, with your fine food and room of your own. But for the rest of us?” She slammed down her mug and stormed from the room.
Tilla snagged the mug and tipped it to her mouth, muttering something about weakness.
Compassion is not weakness. Adel heard the words in Felix’s voice, remembering him say something similar. She could hardly think of him as weak, and he was the most compassionate person she’d ever known. Perhaps strength of character was better than strength of arm?
“Do not let Wulfula’s lies divide you. We are stronger together.”
“The weak fall and the strong must stand on their backs or fall too.” Tilla dropped the mug to the table and smeared the back of her hand across her mouth, eyeing the door. “There is no together here.”
Adel scoffed, but didn’t deny it. Across the room, a group of fighters quietly sipped their mugs of beer and pretended not to listen as a secutor named Gaiseric spoke in low tones, casting occasional glances toward the guards.
Some might have considered it suspicious.
A threat. But she remembered Gaiseric from the Visigoth camp.
A God-fearer who could usually be found discussing theology with Telemachus or one of his friends.
She wondered what Gaiseric spoke of now and a small part of her wished she could listen too.
It seemed that God had abandoned her along with her people.
But was it possible He could be in such a place as the ludus?
Crickets sang in the shadows along the edges of the arena when a slave ushered the body-bearers into Felix’s office.
The gladiators had gathered for the munera in the triclinium, and the courtyard was quiet in the evening respite.
Felix had puttered around the operating room hours later than usual, waiting for them and—if he was honest—sweating a little.
The plan had been to send word to Telemachus and in turn, he would send monks disguised as body-bearers.
But what if Sergius or Jovan had also sent for the usual company of undertakers?
The undertakers arrived at dusk as they usually did, delivered to the clinic door by a ludus slave. The two men were dressed in the typical red tunics, the color masking stains Felix didn’t want to guess at. They set the wooden litter on the ground beside the Gaul’s sheet-draped body.
“This it?” one of them asked, lifting the edge of the sheet to reveal one of the gladiator’s feet.
Felix nodded, unable to discern from their features if he’d seen them at the monastery or not. “Shall I help or—”
“No need.” The flat response was punctuated by the drop of the sheet and a snap of fingers as the two men squatted at either end of the body.
With a practiced grunt and less practiced moves, they lifted, and shimmied, and pushed the body against the side of the litter, which jumped and skittered sideways across the stone floor.
The ludus slave just stood in the doorway and watched. Why did he not leave?
“You may go,” Felix attempted to dismiss him with a nod.
The slave shrugged and leaned against the doorframe. “I’m supposed to keep the portico clear for the undertakers.”
Felix’s pulse might as well have been a team of chariot horses barreling down the track of the Circus Maximus, reins broken and snapping free. He stared at the Gaul, willing his chest to stay still, for the slave not to have seen the slight expansion, the twitch of a finger.
Do not make a sound. Do not make a sound.
“I don’t mind helping.” Felix stooped to hold the litter steady and reached across it to grip the Gaul’s arm. Perhaps he could help disguise any movement.
Pulling the arm, Felix pushed the litter beneath the Gaul, as the two undertakers finally rolled him atop it. They sat a moment, panting.
“First day?” Felix asked, hinting for anything that might give him a peace of mind that these two men were indeed the monks Telemachus had sent. If not—
One of the men rubbed his forehead into the crook of his elbow. “He’s heavy.”
If they were from Telemachus, he’d sent good ones. If not . . . “I’ll walk you out. I’m just leaving.”
There were two ways out of the Ludus Gallicus. As a free man, or as a corpse. The Gaul left the ludus as both.
It was long after dark by the time Felix ducked into an alcove and knocked at the closed door. He’d parted ways with the undertakers at the ludus gate and made sure to take his usual turn at the eatery before doubling back to a nondescript building.
The door opened immediately at his knock, and he was rushed into a dark passage.
“Salve. Is all well?” a voice whispered.
Felix nodded, then added aloud, “Yes.”
“Good, good. Come quickly then. He will wake soon.”
Felix released a breath of relief at the news. He followed the shadowy figure by the sound of his footsteps until they went through another door and he found himself in a courtyard awash with the slant of cold moonlight.
“Just through here.” The brown-robed figure gestured to a door opposite a shadowed garden and courtyard cistern and turned aside to let Felix go ahead of him.
Illuminated with warm lamplight, the room Felix entered was sparsely furnished and featured only a small table and a low sleeping couch where the hulking form of a man known as the Gaul slumbered and twitched.
Felix approached and slipped two fingers under his jaw, relieved to feel the steady thrum of his pulse.
The man’s eyes slid open and blinked.
“Welcome to life,” Felix said. “The Gaul is dead. So who are you now?”
Not the Gaul turned his head, taking in the sparse room, the open door and closed window, and the copper flakes of lamplight flickering on the walls. He raised a hand, wide and scarred, turning his fingers in the light as if to catch it.
“Nael,” he whispered. “My name is Nael.”
Felix gave a nod. “It is a good name.”
“It is”—Nael swallowed—“all I have.”
“You have friends.”
Nael bobbed his head and tried to push himself up on his elbow.
Felix laid a firm hand on his shoulder, stilling him. “Rest, friend. You have a long recovery ahead of you. But you will be well looked after.”
Nael swallowed again, his lips twitching as they tried to form words. “Thank . . .”
The helpless expression of gratefulness broke something in Felix and rebound it in firm determination. This would not be his last rescue.