Colosseum (19 page)

Deprived of his Corinthian headpiece, the
hoplomachus
sports a peculiar pear-shaped skull, his bulging eyes and overly heavy jaw betray his mountain origins, and there is a hint of cretinism typical of the valleys. Enraged, the man takes a run-up and launches into a powerful charge, kicking up sand like a crazed horse. The spear glints cruelly under the Roman sun as it draws ever closer. Priscus slides to the ground, dropping his weapons and kicking with all his might into his attacker's unsteady shins. The man stumbles onward, Verus rolls out of the way and the
hoplomachus
's spear runs straight into his companion's belly.

For a moment time stands still, crystallized by the horror of that obscene act.

The dull-witted mountain man hisses with rage as his colleague screams through the mesh of his helmet like a skewered pig. Blood froths at the poor bastard's mouth and he collapses to the ground, a trail of red from his throat dripping through the bronze casing, mixing with the liquid spurting from his guts.

The crowd is as silent as a cornered mouse waiting for the cat's dreaded paw. The only sounds are the curdled screams of the skewered man, unable to live and unable to die.

Finally, the referee nods to Charon, and the giant brandishes the colossal hammer with both hands. He walks slowly and calmly over to where the moribund man lays. He raises the hammer high above him and brings it down on the metal-coated head of the dying man without any show of emotion.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

The sound of snapping bone travels through all those who hear it.

The rasp of bronze against skull and against the stone of the hammer raises goose bumps on the skin.

Their obscene work done, the ferryman returns to his place and the referee commands that the hostilities recommence.

Verus and Priscus gnash their teeth like wild beasts, snorting inside their helmets, sweating and shouting with rage.

The surviving member from the Bearfeels the insolent caress of death on the nape of his neck. He weighs up his options and decides his best bet is to end it here and now. He falls to his knees, throws down his arms and bows his head in a gesture of submission, begging the deities to spare his life.

Verus and Priscus approach the vanquished warrior and hold their weapons to his throat, but they do not strike.

Decius Ircius signals to them that this will suffice, until the referee raises his wooden staff and declares them the winners.

The crowd surrounds them in a litany of bestial shrieking.

The two victors remove their helmets. They cannot believe their tired, mistreated eyes. From now on they will be called veterans, and with good reason. From now on everyone will know they are real men.

The lanistaleads them out of the arena, but not before shaking hands with Tetrus from the Bear
.

Verus and Priscus are blessed by the hands of the vulgar masses. They claw at them and praise them as though they were the heroes of Marathon returning to their homeland.

Once they have turned a corner and silence finally envelops them like a fresh shroud, Ircius tells them to halt.

His men still dressed for death, Ircius hands them the tablets that bear their names: “You've earned them.”

The two gladiators wear the ivory tokens with pride, securing them to their necks with a length of leather. They look one another in the eye, like brothers.

“Strength and honor,” they recite in unison.

“Strength and honor,” repeats the lanista.

Their companions give them an emotional homecoming when they get back to the school: Cosmos is the first to embrace Verus and Priscus and to treat each of them to a warm, heartfelt smile.

But that is nothing next to the coming evening that Decius has organized for his veterans.

It all takes place in a modest, poorly-lit cellar, about a thousand paces from the house of silver. An intimate locale crammed full of all sorts of delicacies awaits the gladiators, who are scrubbed and dressed for the occasion in red tunics and sandals, cleaned by the novices with a little spit and a bit of elbow grease.

Fresh fruit and legs of lamb, red wine and frothy ale, servants, cup-bearers,
triclinia
.

But it is only when
they
come through the doorway that Verus, Priscus, and the rest of the warriors realize where all this is leading to. Twenty or so women—some very young, others heavily scented—come timidly down the steps that lead to the center of the cellar, decked out for the mother of all parties.

“Noblewomen,” Ircius whispers in Verus's ear. “The daughters of Rome have come to visit the gods.”

The high-society women of the Capitoline have no need to prove they are highborn: their class speaks for itself.

They introduce themselves with a name and nothing more as they pass between the men in red, who eat with their bare hands. They nibble suggestively at grapes and laugh as they caress chests and thighs, throwing glances at the men's rising erections and unmistakable virility. Sex is everywhere, desire and sweat fill the air.

The torches blaze merrily and the braziers give off a salty scent that mixes with the ladies' perfume and with the fragrance of their breasts, with nipples painted in the Berber style beneath their transparent tunics.

Priscus keeps to the edge of the group.

Verus, for his part, has long since lost his head. He is giddy from the carousel of flowing hair and bewitching gazes.

As soon as he sees her though, his heart skips a beat.

She is simply incredible. Sixteen years old or thereabouts: a girl that young cannot lie. Skin like a peach and fingers of silk that run mischievously across the Briton's chest as he caresses her curls and manages to steal the briefest of kisses.

Julia, that is her name, supple and elusive: she nears him then backs away again, never stops talking. She does not let herself go despite her desire, and feels the Briton's ardor growing beneath his blood-colored tunic.

Julia takes his breath away: a heartbeat, a sleepless night of prayer, the scent of the sea at dawn.

Julia is love itself.

But what does this boy know of love?

Love is all or nothing, Verus.

All or nothing.

His heart is in flames. It happens; there is no need for thought. Even if losing one's head over the heir of who knows which noble lord is a terrible idea—when the admirer happens to be the son of nobody. And of nobody shall remain.

But that is how things are: Verus plucks up his courage, encircles her waist in his arms, places his lips on Julia's, closes his eyes and lets himself go.

It is an instant, a spark, perfection.

When the girl opens her eyes, she abruptly changes her mind on life, love, sex and everything else.

Her gaze meets that of Priscus.

Standing at the end of the room, the Gaul has turned ashen-faced as he watches. He is suffering. For a long time now he has had eyes only for his friend, his brother, his companion in life and death.

Anyone could see that he is beside himself with jealousy.

Jealous of Verus and the girls, of his thirst for tomorrow, of his passion for today. Jealous of the small, cold hands that now caress Verus, his Verus, jealous of the kisses he is wasting on that slip of a girl, of the warmth that wretched Briton keeps to himself. Jealous, because Priscus has been forgotten.

Now Priscus fully grasps that what he feels for Verus is not brotherly love. It is something more, damn it. Yet the Briton does not understand, nor does he wish to.

The Briton is a dimwit, his heart as pure as a solid gold coin.

Or else, his heart is simply elsewhere.

Priscus feels the anger mounting in his eyes and stares at Julia with a ferocious glare. She mistakes his rage for seduction—what does she know of life? Julia is just sixteen. The muddled head of a girl, but between her legs the sensuality of the Queen of Sheba. So she quickly ditches Verus, who does not take it very well. He thinks it is a joke, the excitement of flight and pursuit, a breath of air to feed the flames.

But no.

Julia gets up and lets go of him. All alone in the middle of the room. She approaches Priscus with a confident stride. He continues to stare at her, his gaze a challenge. She squares up to him and, without saying a single word, plants him a forceful kiss on the lips.

The party has really got going all around them. Not all of the noblewomen are still wearing their veils. The gladiators thrust into them as though they were the banners of the vanquished in a foreign land.

Moans and hushed orgasms, laughter, rivers of wine.

Julia slips her tongue into Priscus's mouth and he does not resist. He does not want her, but he is still angry with Verus. He is enjoying seeing his friend suffer. Or at least he thinks he is.

Julia is burning up, her hand slides under Priscus's tunic. He stops her and drags her into a dark corner.

Julia may well be young but she knows exactly what she is doing: she strips the gladiator and climbs on top of him.

They are off to the side, away from prying eyes.

Julia is liquid, ready for love.

But Priscus is not.

Julia throws her whole being into it.

But Priscus cannot.

Bitterness is a solid lump at the bottom of his throat. Impossible to swallow.

After all that sweat and nothing to show for it Julia gives up, feeling that the ice man has struck her, albeit without laying a hand on her. That mute, impassive body, the gaze of a man punished by a life that is slipping away all too quickly: these things stay with her.

She slips away, confused and disheveled. She raises her hood before leaving the party, without deigning to look at Verus again.

He is still there where the girl left him. Alone with his emptiness.

Priscus emerges from his cave of failed love. He gaze meets that of his companion, but he finds there only anger and disappointment.

Something has just broken.

Precious, fraternal, treasured friendships are shattered because of Venus. The goddess is a bitch in heat, without a scrap of respect. Which is why they all go crazy for her, damn it.

Verus and Priscus ignore one another. They go off in different directions without saying a word.

In the cellar the party is in full swing and the heat is unbearable.

But the night, out there in the streets of Rome, is sharper than an assassin's blade.

Virtue is nourished with sweat and blood.

S
ENECA
,
Epistulae morales ad Lucilium
,
67, 12

Rome,
AD
80, May

TODAY, A NOVICE has become a man.

The Ludus Argentumis celebrating: new muscles have entered the
familia
.

Recruits are coming in fast because Ircius is in a hurry to swell the ranks of his team in view of the looming games. The inauguration of the Amphitheater is only a little over three months away.

Rome is in a frenzy, bucking like an unbridled filly. Arenas are springing up like mushrooms after a downpour, a constellation of improvised rings. The mob is hungry for violence, and sick to the back teeth of hard work and hunger.

The lanistas have never been so busy.

At the house of Ircius, Aton has done a fine job with the new arrivals: he has squeezed them to the last drop, turning them into killers in half the time it would normally take. But there is someone who has really stood about above the rest. His name is Sergius, a curly-haired boy and a Gaul like Priscus.

Everyone likes him; even that knucklehead Cosmos made an exception to the usual abuse he deals out to the novices.

Above all though, Priscus and Verus have grown particularly attached to the boy—largely because of the feud between the two of them, which began when Julia came onto the scene.

Julia is a problem: Verus has not managed to get her out of his head and Priscus is not able to get rid of her. She scribbles letters of passion to the man of ice, who receives them and ignores them. But he ignored her so successfully that Julia began to worry her notes were not reaching their destination and flew into a rage against her servants. With great respect, these explained to Ircius that if Priscus went on pretending he was not getting her letters, they would be the ones to feel the brunt of her anger.

And so Ircius—more out of love for Julia's noble lineage than for her servants' wellbeing, it must be said—took the matter to heart, and this was how Sergius ended up playing gooseberry between Verus, Priscus and the sixteen-year-old beauty.

In the beginning it was Verus who read the girl's letters.

Every mention of her beating heart or her empty bed was a torment. The Briton's inability to understand his friend's true feelings sent the Gaul ever deeper into depression which, combined with his apparent indifference to the letters, created a great deal of misunderstanding between the two friends.

The situation quickly became paradoxical: Julia's messages would arrive at the
ludus
, Priscus would ignore them, Verus read them and got angry with Priscus, Priscus got even angrier because Verus was thinking only of that little girl and had forgotten about their purer love. Or, worse still, his friend had never even considered the damned sentiment.

The two did not speak to one another and even stopped training together, which resulted in a worrying drop in performance among the house veterans.

A great situation.

Simply unacceptable.

Aton's punishments, designed to put the two stubborn asses back in line, have not had the desired effect. They seem immovable.

It is at this very moment that Sergius saves their bacon: it is as though he has a special talent for smoothing things over.

The boy is twenty-two years old and a freedman. Or at least he was before he decided to place five years of his life in Decius Ircius's hands. Sergius has a family, a wife and three small children, and this is why he does it. He is neither a dreamer nor an idiot; he knows how it works. He knows the risks, the immense sacrifice, and the exhaustion. He thought briefly about the army, but signing up would have taken him far from home. By staying in Rome, on the other hand, he can watch his children grow up and, even if he does not sleep with his wife, he can be—in a certain sense—there for them.

Sergius is a real workhorse, the kind of man who never complains and always has a big smile slapped across his face. Two rows of perfectly straight, white teeth, windblown curls and big, blue eyes.

A good man at heart, but he knows his stuff in the arena. He has balls and brains, and is fast despite his considerable bulk. Aton has trained him well and wishes to grant him a rare honor: he will be a provocator, and sooner than expected. The idea is that Sergius will skip the
tirocinio
, or at the very least undergo a shortened version of it, so that he can build up a basic knowledge of the weapons and start fighting immediately. The Ludus Argentum needs strong arms, and Ircius is hunting for glory.

First though, someone must sort out the problems between Verus and Priscus.

And it is Sergius who tries to smooth things over.

First of all he takes charge of Julia's love letters, ensuring that Verus does not see them and Priscus does not throw them away. Sergius studies them carefully—he learnt the skill of reading in the study of an aging, half-blind scribe. He had to, or else the old man's disability would have starved him to death. And that old scribe was his father. So Sergius pieces together neutral replies, respectful and never offensive, which neither fan the flames nor entirely douse them. In other words, he is playing for time.

Meanwhile he studies hard, stealing the tricks of the trade from the two gladiators: from Priscus he learns to harness his strength, from Verus the passion, the sacred fire of battle. His muscles swell and his mood improves.

Every now and then the three of them enjoy the cool of the evening together after hours of frenetic training beneath the sun. Even the weather is beginning to mellow, and the long faces of Verus and Priscus grow shorter by the day.

“My son says that at Lando's bakery there is a mosaic showing Cosmos at the climax of a fight, with his arms raised and a look of pride in his eyes. He hopes one day there will be a mosaic of me…” Sergius's voice has a shrewd edge to it.

Verus laughs heartily: “A life of hard work, only to wind up on display in a baker's shop!”

“Laugh all you want,” Priscus cuts in. “Remember that Cosmos's name is all over the Eternal City. I saw his face painted on some amphoras at the Gulf. They trade them for six
assarii
before a fight, and they sell like hot cakes. The women are nuts about him!”

Verus takes the bait. “You're the last one who should be moaning about a lack of attention, brother. By the way, how are things going with that noble slut of yours?”

Priscus lets out a sigh but does not answer back. Right now he does not feel like arguing.

“Women only bring trouble,” butts in Sergio, breaking the tension. “Best leave them well alone. Ever since my wife found out I'm no longer a novice, she won't miss a fight. She's checking up on me…”

The Briton would like to put the upstart back in his place, to remind him he still has a lot of hard knocks to take before he treads the sand and takes on some real men. But the instructorhas just arrived to prove him wrong. With that sidelong smile of his, so typical of the damned Egyptians, Aton gestures to Sergius to get up. He relays the decision.

“My boy, I don't know what sacrifices that bitch of a wife of yours has offered up, but from what it seems, the gods favor you. Tomorrow you will have your chance to show us all what you're made of. Near the Circus Maximus they're putting on a demonstration of the school, for the benefit of some senators. Sergius, you'll fight in the provocator's armor. If you survive, you'll have earned your tablet. By order of Decius Ircius.”

And there it is, an absurd slap in the face to the old guard.

First the newcomer skips his
tirocinio
,and now he is ready to play with the big boys.

Priscus is displeased. But more than anything, he is worried about his young friend.

For his part Verus is angry: he cannot abide shortcuts. Perhaps because nobody has ever offered him anything in his life. He sweated to earn the title “veteran” and now this impudent, beardless boy might get to steal his place without even trying.

“He hasn't got a chance. He'll be dead at the first lunge…” the Briton mutters through his teeth.

Aton stares at him with the eyes of someone who is always four moves ahead: “If Pluto wills it, his blood will stain your blade, you dim-witted, ignorant barbarian. You will be his opponent. Tomorrow, at sunset.”

Aton walks off, leaving only dust and silence behind him. Verus, Priscus, and Sergius sit motionless beneath the faded sunlight.

Nobody feels like talking now.

What a haircut. How can anyone go around with hair like that?

Everyone is wondering the same thing, but of course no one opens their mouth. The lowborn are not there to speak to the powerful.

And yet the mop on Senator Polonius's head deserves a philosophical treatise, a
satyra
, at least a song. To be strummed beneath the moonlight in some malodorous tavern, the mockery transformed through the mouth of a drunken
aoidos
into a sonata, the truth into an indecent melody.

Marius Cotinus Polonius, member of a noble, patrician family with holdings in the center of the city and a splendid villa on the
via consularis
, is almost completely bald in spite of his high station. Or at least, he is missing a fair amount of follicular lining on his skull. Which is another way of saying there is an empty strip from his forehead to the nape of his neck, the size of which rivals the Forum itself.

Nothing wrong with that; baldness is as old as mankind and it strikes everyone sooner or later, apart from a few lucky bastards. The point is that Marius Cotinus Polonius, leader of the Eagle's legions against the blond, warlike peoples of the North, victor of glorious pitched battles and slaughterer of foreign kings, detests the fact that he is losing his hair.

The very thought of it is abhorrent to him. And so he refuses to be bald.

That is why he has let those three tufts of hair on his right temple grow to such a length that, if he were honest enough to comb them to their full length like certain Oriental streetwalkers do after making love, they would easily reach his chin.

But Polonius is dishonest by nature: that much is clear from the way he keeps his hands buried in the pockets of his neat senatorial toga, while his lanky strands of hair sit piled on the naked, greasy skin of his scalp, dripping with oil to make them adhere perfectly to the bald spot and combed flat as though they truly belonged in the middle of that pale, pink gap, instead of having been forced into such a state by the vanity of an impotent old fucker.

The upshot is revolting to behold.

He looks like a newborn lamb that has slithered out of his mother's belly this very moment, pieces of placenta still clinging to him.

And yet, what a proud look Marius Cotinius Polonius has in his eyes as he comments to his colleagues on the fight taking place in the arena. He seems born to pontificate.

“I do not think the
murmillo
will make it. He looks a little out of shape to me, what do you say?”

The senator to his right casts an eye over Cosmos's imposing physique: “I would not say out of shape. He seems fairly well built. A little sluggish perhaps, do you not think?”

Polonius nods. Then he speaks his mind and goes a little too far: “It is probably his hair that makes him look like a loser. If it were down to me I would have all slaves' heads shaved.”

His colleague cannot help but stare at the horrible mess stuck to the senator's head.

Look who's talking.

Polonius purses his lips and turn his attention back to the fight.

There is a select but numerous crowd on the wooden terraces of the arena: senators and their slaves, a few prim-looking noblewomen, an old wet nurse with a couple of sons of the Empire on her lap.

Decius Ircius spent a long time talking to Polonius about his gladiators before starting the show, pointing out their features, exalting their prowess and versatility.

Polonius is one of the most important
muneratori
in the city. It is he who compensates the lanistaswhen the games are held, he who pays good money for the blood and sweat of the gods of the arena.

“Remember not to let anyone die. I do not want to pay any more than I am already.” The senator's voice is still echoing in Ircius's ear when he explains the situation to his men, already kitted out to tear each other to pieces: “Fight with honor and give it your all. But nobody must fall, we cannot afford it. Polonius has not yet decided if he is going to entrust the job to the Ludus Argentumand does not want to waste his money. I am paying for this demonstration, but if something should happen to one of you, of course he would have to reimburse me. And that must not happen, got it?”

The gladiators nod in unison and give a quick shout of agreement.

“Strength and honor,” the lanista ends his speech.

“Strength and honor,” replies the iron-clad rabble.

First up are Cosmos and Priscus. The
murmillo
wears his hair long in the barbarian style, an idea of Aton's grudgingly accepted by Ircius. The Gaul is on form and gives nothing away to his adversary.

Cosmos overindulged on wine and women last night: his is a big name in Rome, he is becoming famous and all the women want a piece of him. And every time Ircius lets him get away with it or turns a blind eye, Cosmos gorges himself. He is a hungry bear; that is his nature.

Today though, he is paying for his debauchery: he is sweating like a pig and locks of greasy hair hang out of his helmet and stick to his chest and shoulders, giving him a feral look. Slow all round, he is not managing to lunge like he should and hangs back on the defensive, rectangular shield held over his head,
gladius
dangling in his left hand.