Chapter 2
Cassia expressed disappointment, when I reached home, that I had not coerced Aemil into paying me something today, but she agreed that the entire fee would be welcome.
“Make sure he gives it to you,” she said darkly as she noted the transaction on her wax tablet.
“He’s paid us before.” I hung my cloak next to hers, noting how much care she took of the garment.
“Only after he tried to argue his way out of it,” Cassia reminded me.
Cassia’s dark hair was in place in its usual knot at the base of her neck. Her tunic flowed in soft folds from her shoulders, the fabric whole and unstained. She wore no jewelry, but her hands were as clean and neat as her clothing, her nails trimmed.
She was always tidy, in contrast to me, dusty from my days at the building sites where I worked with an architectus, and from Rome’s general grime.
“Why did you agree?” Cassia asked me in curiosity.
I shrugged, avoiding her penetrating gaze. “For the money. I thought you’d be pleased.”
“Income is always welcome, yes.” Cassia removed her scrutiny and made another mark in her tablet. “But you vowed never to return to the arena.”
True, I had said this many times. As I did not want to tell her why I was willing to face my darkness and take Aemil’s fee, I shrugged again.
“I’m not fighting in the games. I will walk in the parade, stand in place for a few minutes, and then depart.”
I moved to the shelf that had been in the apartment when we’d moved here, where my rudis lay, a reminder that I was truly a freedman. I’d never been given a freedman’s cap or the banquet for my luck at gaining my liberty, but I hadn’t minded. The rudis was the only symbol I needed.
I heard a whisper of cloth, a soft footfall, and Cassia was next to me.
She reached up and laid a finger on the rudis. “We should have a stand made for this. To display it with honor.”
“It is no trouble,” I answered.
I didn’t need to exhibit the wooden sword as a trophy. I only wanted it nearby to reassure myself that my days of desperation and ruthlessness were over.
I lifted the rudis from the shelf. I hadn’t touched it much since Cassia had pried it from my hand the day we’d first entered this apartment. Before that, I hadn’t been able loosen my hold and let it go.
My hand threatened to cramp around the hilt once more. I forced my fingers to relax, while I waited for darkness to pour at me, the black mindlessness that took me over whenever I fought. I became a deadly machine, efficiently breaking my opponent until he was dead or severely wounded at my feet.
Nothing happened. The chill winter breeze crept through cracks in the shutters, and the oil lamp Cassia had lit in the gloom flickered.
She stood close to me, unafraid. I could turn on her, snap her slender neck without much trouble, and leave her mangled on the floor. The trained gladiator in me knew exactly how to do it.
But I never would. Cassia watched me, unaware of the danger next to her, confidence in her eyes.
I let out a breath and replaced the rudis on the shelf. I’d perform this task for Aemil, take his money, and purchase her the gift she deserved.
Cassia sent me a faint smile, believing all was well.
“I should still kill you,” Regulus informed me.
We stood at the entrance to the Circus Gai, the long arena built for chariot races and gladiatorial games by the late emperor Gaius, sometimes known as Caligula, for the small army boots he’d worn as a child.
The Circus lay on the far side of the Tiber, north of Aemil’s ludus, on an open plain atop a low hill.
The vast stands were already full, with more spectators arriving. Word had spread that Leonidas the Spartan, after a year’s absence from the games, would walk out once more before the crowds.
“I could win the grand prize money for the day if I defeated you,” Regulus droned behind me as we waited to begin the parade. “Remember when I asked you to kill me ? So I could go out with dignity? So that day would always be remembered as the one when Leonidas slew his greatest friend?”
I well recalled how Regulus, trapped in the crook of my arm while we awaited the decision on the match, had snarled at me to kill him on the spot. He’d cursed me soundly when I’d refused.
Regulus had not been my greatest friend, as he claimed. That had been Xerxes. I’d lost Xerxes, suddenly and painfully, during a bout when he’d made a fatal mistake against his opponent. One hesitation, and he was gone, nothing more than a dead gladiator, bleeding onto the sand.
Regulus could never take his place. But at that moment one year ago, I hadn’t wanted to lose Regulus as well.
He’d never forgiven me for it.
Aemil stalked up and down the line of gladiators, bellowing last minute instructions or rebukes. He’d given me the promised contract, which Cassia had scrutinized and I’d signed my name to. Cassia had been satisfied with the agreement’s legality, even if Aemil still wouldn’t pay me beforehand.
“Straighten up, look proud,” Aemil was admonishing.
“The princeps will be watching. If he thinks you’re a sorry specimen, he’ll have you skewered on the spot, or maybe fed to the lions.
These are the Saturnalian games. They want spectacle, not sulking old maidens. ” He moved on, growling and muttering.
Behind Regulus was Herakles, who, despite his name, was not Greek, but from a savage barbarian tribe in Pannonia, on the northeastern edge of Roman territories.
He was now secundus palus, one below the primus , and always chafing to best Regulus.
He regarded me warily, remembering the beating I’d given him some months ago.
I saw more familiar faces beyond him, gladiators I’d fought and helped to train. New men had joined since I’d left the ludus, such as Praxus, from so far north his hair and skin were ghostly pale, and an Egyptian from its southern deserts, whose muscular body was a rich brown.
A few I’d known were notably absent, gladiators Aemil had sold or traded, or who’d met their deaths in games this past year. I mostly tried not to think about the last, but I let myself spend a moment acknowledging them.
Inside the arena, trumpets blared, and banners fluttered. Nero, the princeps of all Rome, had entered his box.
A cheer went up for him from the higher levels of the arena. While senators loathed or feared Nero, the common people liked him. Nero was interested in the same things they were—chariot races, gladiatorial games, dicing, theatre, music, dancing.
The princeps acknowledged the plebs then settled himself. His attendant, always a slave high in his favor, took his place next to him. Nero leisurely made himself comfortable, forcing us to wait for his signal to begin.
Aemil went up and down the line again, fussing and nervous. The Saturnalian games were the most prestigious of the year, and Aemil was as agitated as a bride before an important wedding.
Finally, Nero raised a hand, the gesture almost negligent.
“Now,” Aemil ordered, as a roar emerged from the crowd.
A man with a standard bearing the emblem of Aemil’s ludus started through the archway and into the arena. I was to follow him.
Inside the circus, the crowd, who knew I was coming, began to chant.
Lee-o-ni-das. Lee-o-NI-DAS.
I froze under the curve of the arched entrance, my bare feet adhered to the gravel beneath them. The muscles of my stomach clenched, and my breathing ceased.
I seemed to view myself from outside my body, as though a spirit had detached itself from my flesh. I saw a tall gladiator with a shaved head standing utterly still in the shadowed archway, while the noise from the sands swelled and grew.
Perhaps I’d died on the spot, I mused dispassionately, and hadn’t yet realized it.
A heavy shove from behind snapped me back to awareness.
“Get on with it,” Regulus growled. “If the princeps orders us all executed because you refused to walk in the gods-cursed parade, I’ll make sure I kill you first.”
Regulus’s diatribe erased my strange vision. I dragged in a long breath, firmed my grip on the rudis Cassia had handed me before I’d left the apartment, and marched forward.
The noise in the arena soared. The sound surrounded me like a heavy blanket, binding and suffocating.
I knew Regulus spoke the truth that our temperamental princeps might order us all killed if we did not perform to his liking. I kept walking.
I gripped the rudis as tightly as I had when it had first been presented to me.
I’d clamped my hand around the wooden hilt and kept it there all that afternoon and evening, overnight and on to the next morning.
Only Cassia had been able, with her gentle touch, to open my stiff fingers so I could release it.
I saw her. As I took in the mass of people, a wash of color under the gray December sky, I spotted her near the top of the stands. Cassia stood in the midst of the throng, wrapped in her pale woolen cloak, her stance serene, her gaze on me.
I exhaled a long breath, my fingers loosened, and I strode on, my step lightening.
I was no longer Leonidas the Spartan, the famous gladiator the people shouted for. I was Leonidas the Freedman, here by my own choice.
I would return home tonight with the woman whose belief in me eased me even at a distance. I’d eat my lentils and greens, drink light wine mixed with water, and sit on the balcony to enjoy the last of the crisp winter evening.
No more cells, no more darkness, no more having to kill men I knew and liked in order to survive.
It occurred to me, as I strode around the far corner of the Circus, that the odds of me picking Cassia out of the dense crowd were small. Had I truly seen her? Or only imagined her? Or had a goddess had directed my eyes to her, to bolster me when I most needed it?
Whatever had happened, my gloom departed, and I marched on, lifting the rudis to salute the people who cheered me.
The line of gladiators and other performers continued the circuit behind me, drummers and flute girls sending sweet music into the air.
I planned, the moment I reached the gate that led back under the walls, to quit the place, find Cassia, and return home. After I extracted the fee from Aemil.
As I approached the archway, however, a commotion in the stands brought me to a halt. The clamor soared over the excited shouts of the crowd or the drunken cries of Io, Saturnalia! caught and repeated.
A senator who sat next to Nero’s box was on his feet, screaming and gesticulating, his bright white toga flapping around him.
Nero was a tiny figure at this distance, but I could tell by the way he twisted his body toward the senator that his irritation was becoming a dangerous rage.
The senator, uncaring, continued to bellow, pointing at Nero and then into the crowd. He showed no fear of the murderous princeps, which meant he was either a fool or from a very prominent family who could protect him from Nero’s temper.
“Ennius Fabricius Drusus,” Regulus said behind me in derision. “Pompous idiot. Bets heavily on me, though, and never loses.”
Regulus had plenty of conceit, but the sneer on his face held great contempt for the senator.
“He must be a brave man,” I said as the senator’s gesticulations only grew.
“He thinks he’s untouchable.” Regulus shook his head. “He’d better calm down or the princeps will delay or even cancel the games, and I’ll be out the prize money.”
The amount a gladiator could win at Saturnalia would keep him in wine and women for a year. Some hoarded their winnings to buy their freedom, but my price had always been so high I hadn’t bothered. Aemil would have found a way to prevent me going, I’d always sensed, even if I’d raised the funds.
Aemil was frantically signaling us to keep moving. I started once more for the opening beneath the walls, ready to be gone.
A year ago, I’d have sought a cool place to rest and stretch, readying my body for the first bout. The preliminary matches would be less perilous, exhibitions mostly, before the true combats began later in the day.
Today, my step quickened as I entered the dim vault beneath the stands. I’d coerce the two sestertii out of Aemil and make my way home with Cassia, never mind the rest of the games.
The tunnel I strode through led to an archway of light. The way out. Freedom.
Four Praetorian guards filled the bright space before I could reach it, blocking my path.
One was called Servius, I knew from my visits to Nero’s domus on the Palatine Hill.
“Leonidas,” Servius greeted me, his countenance grim. “He wants you. Now. I’m to bring you to his box.”