B007IIXYQY EBOK (126 page)

At midday a brassy braying of trumpets signaled that the time had come for the contests between men. The guards returned and began conducting off the novices in groups of ten.

Celadon explained to Auriane that they would open with several unimportant individual bouts; then the first “stage set” battle would take place. All afternoon the single bouts would alternate with simulations of the battles of the war, to allow the architect-engineers’ assistants time to ready the scenery for the battle spectacles. Of the many facts Celadon related that day, one remained perversely illumined in Auriane’s mind: There were men settled outside this city whose sole task in life was to grow the trees
for the scenery used in these mock battles. She was astonished anew by the peculiar habits of this race of men.

When the first bout began, she noticed at once how the sight of human blood transformed the crowd’s voice. During the animal-baitings their cries were softer and more scattered. Now they gave single, surging cries with a much harder edge—deep, hungry roars from the belly that seemed to issue from a single throat, punctuated by shrieks alive with eager malignity.

Time stalled; the throng’s cries became increasingly laden with dark discontent. When Coniaric and Thorgild were taken off, their departure was so swift and matter-of-fact, so empty of the glory she always associated with battle that they might have been setting out to drive cattle in from pasture. Auriane struggled to perform the Ritual of Fire in her mind, but the crowd’s growing agitation kept breaking into her silence. She knew well the sounds of a throng ready to riot; she had attempted to calm many such a crowd in her own country.

She listened to the guards’ talk, struggling to learn the fate of Coniaric and Thorgild. But she discovered only that the first exhibition of women—a dozen pairs of Sarmatians from the Claudian School who fought with javelins—had been greeted with a shower of rotted turnips.

When Celadon was taken off for his single bout, he surprised Auriane by embracing her with fierce warmth, lifting her off her feet. “If I don’t return, Auriane,” he said at the last, “go to Bargates when curiosity goads you. He was a fugitive from the kitchens of a great-house, and knows this city like fleas know a dog’s back. He’s of sanguine temperament and won’t be maddened by your constant questions.”

“Celadon…, live!”
she said miserably as the guards prodded him off.

A quarter-hour passed. The guards returned and selected nine men—and Auriane.

Suddenly she felt like a skittish horse.

I am not ready.
This throng is a ravening beast. They’re in a murderous humor today—they’ll spare no one. And what if I am victor and the crowd demands I kill? Celadon heard a tale that this man Perseus sold himself to the school to keep his family from starvation. I cannot slay an innocent man. I see no possible good end for this day.

They were brought to the equipment rooms alongside the armory. Two fierce-faced old women began to prepare her. One had watery eyes and hands pebbled with warts, the other, a mobile, toothless mouth; their dry hands scuttled over her body like crabs as they fastened the greave to her left leg, the arm guard to her right arm. One drew Auriane’s hair tightly back at the nape of her neck and twisted it into the smallest knot she could fashion. The hair must be kept well out of the way—should a stray strand be caught by the point of a sword, she could be scalped. Together they fastened onto her a tunic of layered leather. Then they placed on her shoulders a heavy wool cloak dyed a deep garnet red.

Behind her, assistants hurried in with carts bearing bloodied equipment plucked from the dead, but she scarcely heard the activity all about—the world of the living seemed to recede and grow small, and she felt faint and light, as though her soul had begun already to seek the sky.

Erato came in then, followed by a secretary and a recorder. At the sight of her he was struck to stillness. That severely drawn back hair gave her a stark, bold look; she seemed all determination and searching eyes. He reflected uneasily on the night when she had knocked him down, and once again he had the unsettling sense that this was no subject woman but some mortal emissary of the Fates, who would work their will and then vanish when her task was done. Impatiently he shook the feeling off—the spirit-realms were for the credulous rabble; he believed only in speed, courage and accuracy.

“Let me see your wrists,” he said with brisk impatience. “Good. Now, then, what is the meaning of this sign?” Quickly he went twice through the hand signals they had devised. Then he ordered his secretary and his recorder to leave him. She sensed a faint awkwardness in his manner, as though he’d committed some act that caused him to feel ashamed.

He came close and said in a low voice, “Auriane, there are people who think I’m a madman for the claims I’ve made for you.” He shrugged, then gave her a cautious, sheepish smile. “But some of them in important places have decided to believe me…and they’ve placed some rather extravagant bets on you, solely upon my word. My position and reputation are at stake today. Well, I might as well tell you, my life
is at stake. One of them is that grasping pig of a Finance Minister, Musonius Geta, and he won’t hesitate to slit my throat if he loses his lousy million sesterces. Rescue me from this one, Auriane, and when it’s over, I’ll see that you get any reward it’s in my power to give.”

She regarded him with amused disbelief. He had succumbed to an obvious temptation—the selling of information. She would only be an unknown once, and the odds had been set against her at nine to one. But what was his purpose in telling her this? Did he not count her own desire to survive motivation enough? Worry is scrambling his wits, she thought.

“
Any
reward?” she said, suppressing a smile. “May I live to see you regret that promise.”

“Within reason, you minx. No hot and cold baths for every one of your tribesmen, or—”

“I know already what I will ask. Leave me now, before I catch your fretfulness like a pox.”

“Why are prodigies always so irksome?” he said, smiling with good humor. “At last look I was still director of this School, my testy princess. Now, march ahead of me to the armory, and watch that cloak, it’s too long…. None of us can afford it if you stumble and break your neck.”

Domitian’s box was a sumptuous chamber that offered most of the comforts of his own bedroom. It was set at the center of one of the long sides of the arena’s ellipse, right at the barrier. The Colosseum’s seating was planned so that a man’s view improved with his rank, and the Emperor’s view was beyond compare. To ensure that nothing whatever impeded it, one of the mast-poles for the awning had been removed, and it seemed to Domitian the dramas of life and death were played out for him alone. The imperial box was enclosed for privacy; two sets of curtains—the inner ones of gauzy silk, the outer of heavier silk threaded with gold—shielded him from the probing eyes of the populace. But on this day he had ordered them thrown open so the people might be treated to the sight of him—a generous gesture, he thought, given their churlishness on this day.

Domitian was sunk deeply into his overcushioned chair, a delicate masterwork of cedarwood and ivory fashioned by Egyptian craftsmen. His footstool rested on a floor of gleaming squares of porphyry set in a chequered pattern of sea-green and pale rose. Behind Domitian, Carinus stood guard near silver ewers of snow-cooled water and Falernian wine, watching fearfully for the slightest gesture of the Emperor’s heavily ringed hand. A troupe of musicians played panpipes and citharas, trying to imitate with their music the sounds of trickling water. Domitian had lately given up the struggle to maintain the appearance of one who eschews luxury; it no longer troubled him if the people thought him not as fit and battle-ready as his father. In these days he rarely walked if he could be carried, and his body had begun to thicken like an aging stallion’s after it is set out to pasture. He sat stiffly still with exaggerated dignity, but his gaze was ever restless, roaming like a truculent bull, always alert to signs of independence in the herd.

Curled at Domitian’s feet was the simpleminded boy the Emperor brought with him everywhere as though he were a lapdog; a child of seven born with a too-small head, he was pitiful in rich clothes that were too large for him. Domitian felt increasingly separated from his fellow men and this boy was a balm—he could be in a vile mood or a mild one and the child offered him the same unfettered devotion. The boy was massaging the Emperor’s feet with an expression of intense concentration on his benign face. Domitian paid him no mind—his senses were pricked to the temper of the crowd. Whenever they shouted “Throw Veiento to the panthers,”
or “Match Veiento with Hyperion,” a deep flush sprang to his cheeks and spread to his thick neck, and his eyes became bull’s horns, casting about for someone to gore. Carinus would stop breathing and stand very still, hoping Domitian would forget he was there.

Below them on the sand a net-and-trident fighter warily circled a Thracian swordsman. Domitian scarcely watched; the next bout, Auriane’s, was the one that promised to lift him from his stale melancholy.

To Domitian’s left Montanus slouched in a humbler chair; a collection of petitions rested in the valley between his chest and the swell of his belly. Nervous perspiration beaded Montanus’ upper lip as he read from them in his high, immature voice. Veiento had been given leave not to attend, for fear that the mob, if they saw him, might try to rend him limb from limb, but also because Domitian had set Veiento at another task today—supervising the torture of every one of his agents to discover who had betrayed the truth of Gallus’ death.

And to Domitian’s right sat the man who had betrayed it, his confidential counselor and First Advisor, Marcus Arrius Julianus.

Julianus felt sharply separated from all about him. He knew he had but his wit, his hands, and a will of adamant to pit against the coming horror. The evening before, he had lectured the students of his beleaguered school on the words of the esoteric philosophers regarding the futility of sorrow, hoping it would help him bear his own. The students had applauded and wept, but it had left him feeling ever more strongly that something was gravely missing from all known teachings. And there had come a memory, invisible and emotionally undermining as old, loved music: He saw again the broken fort where he had taken refuge on the pine-clad slope of the Taunus, and remembered that striking peace.

Our philosophies are brittle houses of words, Julianus thought; they collapse in every gale. The wind-rattled pines speak with an older voice, one afire with nature’s gentle omniscience…. Could it be the barbarian sybils do
have the means of healing the wounds of cities, of showing the way to natural life? Did not that vision-ridden madman Isodorus hint at it? Is not Auriane’s primal innocence a sort of proof?

I think sorrow is taking my good sense.

If this day does not end in her death, it will certainly end in our exposure—for how can I restrain myself from rushing in to aid her if she seems truly to need it?

Montanus’ next words brought Julianus to cold stillness. “Here’s one from some rascal named Corax,” Montanus said to the Emperor. “He insists he was unfairly removed from his post after the Torquatus affair, and asserts he has a truer version of it to relate to you. He wants his post back, or a better one.”

Domitian gave Montanus the combination gesture-and-grunt that meant—put that one aside so I can study it later.

Nemesis,
Julianus thought. If Corax says too much, Domitian might easily guess that I ruined Torquatus to save Auriane. I must act quickly. I’ll either have to buy Corax’s silence or find him a better post myself. I sail a ship that daily springs more leaks.

In back of them Junilla reclined on a couch, attended by two handmaids chosen for their colorlessness so they would not unduly distract Domitian’s attention from herself. Normally Domitian would not flaunt Junilla in public, but he did so today to punish his wife—for yesterday he had learned the truth of her miscarriage, after questioning her personal physician under torture. He meant to publicly banish Domitia Longina from his side until she came before him of her own will to confess her crime.

Junilla looked about with worldly confidence; every year her far-flung estates brought her increasing wealth. As long as she occasionally yielded to Domitian’s restless lusts, he repaid her by neglecting to closely scrutinize her private life. Her stola of carnelian silk was so finely spun that her rouged nipples were visible beneath; its clasps were studded with emeralds. She had smoothed green verdigris around her eyes, giving them a glittering, snakelike brightness. Her hair was set in tight, disciplined tiers of curls that had taken her maids half a day to fashion; the result made it appear as though she had summoned an architect rather than a hairdresser. Her periods of imperial favor never lasted more than a few nights. Repeatedly Domitian discovered that her intimidatingly perfect mouth, those dark and barbarous eyes, that beauty so unchanged as year added to year that it seemed embalmed, and her moods, shifting with whip-crack speed from honey to acid—began to repel as much as they first excited, and he would dismiss her. And Domitian would realize, greatly annoyed, that a good part of the reason he returned to her repeatedly was because she was enshrouded in an unaccountable haunting allure because she had once been Marcus Julianus’ wife.

But Domitian had not dismissed her yet and Julianus knew she was at her most dangerous at these times—imperial favor lent a reckless quality to her malice. She scented his unease at the mention of Corax; that beautiful head came up, and he felt her eyes fixed on the back of his neck like claws.