The Far Arena (30 page)

'Should I sleep with him?' Miriamne asked. She rubbed her face.

'Who?'

‘
The man I marry to use,' sh
e said. 'Of course,' I
said.

'You would have me give my body to him?' 'I would have you alive for me when I get to you. I would have you alive. I love you. I love Petronius. I most love you.' 'You never told me that, Eugeni.'
‘
I am telling you now, ignoramus.'

Over this she cried. It was very difficult giving instructions for I cried also. I kissed her where I had slapped her and kissed Petronius where I had slapped him and told him I could not kill him but was lost for what else to tell him to make sure he protected his mother.

'I love mother, too,' said Petronius, and there we were as the sounds of the mob far off came to us in the cubicle. We embraced, and I told them how proud I was of them both, and of Petronius, not for his Romanness, but for bis good mind and courage, for being his mother's son, and mine.

'You love me?' asked Miriamne.

'Of course I love you. I freed you. I married you legally and put it in the records of Rome.' 'But you never said you loved me.'

'I am saying it. I am saying it. I love you, ignorant house slave. Quiet. I must explain the difference in the jewels.'

'I know, father. The ruby is the most valuable.'

'But as valuable as it is, you cannot spend it easily.'

'Of course, the value fluctuates,' said Petronius. 'We will use the coins and the other jewels to keep us until we can sell the ruby at a propitious price. The ruby itself is a fortune. I know that. What do you think you sired, a latifundium slave?'

I kissed Petronius again. We entered one of the passageways that bore us under the ground towards the outer perimeter of houses. Petronius carried a small oil lamp, shielding it with his hands from going out.

Miriamne had a question.

'Maybe there will be no trouble, Eugeni? What laws have you broken ? The Romans are famous for their love of laws. You have broken no laws by refusing to slay Publius. They may just never match you again, which I would love. You must break a law in Rome to be punished.'

Petronius answered better than I. He laughed.

"There will be a law,' I
said. 'One will be found. Rome needs one. I have robbed Rome of a fond myth. This thievery is one that is always punished.'

We climbed up rock stairs by the little dodging yellow light of the lamp and entered through a storage room of an ironworker's shop - one of the many merchants to whom Demosthenes rented the periphery of my buildings, cheaper to them because they also served as gatekeepers to the area.

We startled the large ironworker, whose shoulders were like boulders, his face sweaty and black from his forge. I think he was a freedman. His face was as dirty as the leather apron he wore. He put a hand on an iron bar, but when he recognized us, he fell down kissing my hands.

'Go,' I said and embraced Miriamne and Petronius a final time.

'Good-bye,' said Petronius. 'Good-bye forever and hello. I know you now, and never have before.' He whispered that he knew I was going to my death.

'Maybe not,' I said. "There are ways. But you are a smart, smart lad. Smarter than I thought. Remember always your father thinks of you as a blessing.'

He tugged crying Miriamne into the street, and, seeing some exhausted people, obviously crazed with mob fever, he pointed in the direction of our house behind him.

The ironworker vowed upon his household gods that he would never say what he had seen this day. He also mentioned that he was a very poor man, and his silence was a very important thing he was doing.

'I understand,' I said.

There must be people willing to pay me five thousand sesterces for saying what I have seen. But I will never talk.'

'I know,' I said and had my hands to his throat before he even saw them move, and I squeezed his voice into eternal loyalty. It was the second murder of my life, the first sentencing me to a life in the arena, the last after I had left the sand forever.

I found a sharp cursi - a vicious little knife - in his shop and ran out into the street with it. I only needed the dagger long enough for Rome to capture me alive.

Petronius had wisely known that I had no intention of escaping. I brought no wealth with me, and he had seen that. It was not the most secure of all plans, but I had neither the time nor the certain influence to build a better one. I would not know for a while if anyone would remain loyal.

And all my allies with any sense would be running themselves as soon as they heard the news. Until Rome found me, there would be a hunt of such magnitude that Miriamne and Petronius wo
uld surely be caught.But having
found me.Rome
would
hardly hinder a woman and her young Roman cousin from sailing safely to their destination within the empire. Once Rome had what it wanted, it would not be poking into every purse and bale and bag to see if Eugeni was there.

It was not a bad plan. There was an invincible limit to what Rome could do to me, and when that was reached I would be free. I had seen too many men mutilated and dragged around the arena to worry. Nothing hurt them after death, no order from the mobs of Rome was loud enough to bother dead ears, or flames to burn once-burned limbs, or rods to whip flesh that had been whipped enough. The greatest horror was in the mind. Living men suffered more.

When I saw large groups of people, I joined them - the most dangerous thing in the face of a mob was not being a part of it. I ran, I walked, I hid at times, but street by street made my way to the most likely place to be captured. There were several people I could go to: Tullius, Galbas, many. I chose the home and counting-house of Demosthenes. Domitian and his praetorians would most certainly look there for me, under the assumption that I would attempt to save my fortune.

The door to his vestibule was open, a good sign. I ran into the house waving my cursi, calling his name. A frightened slave said Demosthenes had left. Neither the urban cohorts nor the praetorians had arrived yet. If Demosthenes had stayed, they surely would have had him over the coals or under the whip until his paining body made his tongue disclose the last copper.

I loudly accused Demosthenes of being a wily Greek, untrustworthy in a crisis. I went through the account rooms. I went to a storage room. There was the six million sesterces bagged for Domitian and little else. Good. Demosthenes had cleaned the house of any massive wealth. Smoke came from the kitchen. Piles of scrolls were burning. Good for you. Demosthenes, I thought.

'Wily Greeks. You cannot trust them,' I yelled and assisted a few scrolls, that had failed to catch, towards the embers and blew them into flame

'Wily Greek,' I yelled again and returned to the account rooms. Many scrolls remained, and I thought briefly of lighting them, but if Demosthenes had left them, he probably wanted them left. Perhaps enough to fill Domitian's mouth and stay that appetite for wealth from finding the greater fortunes. Perhaps to confuse Domitian more.

The emperor would get most of the known lands, but it would take him much time, and I was now sure Demosthenes had left exactly what would delay our divine Domitian most, while giving him the least. The jewels and gold he probably would never get. The shares in my Egyptian wealth could be sold, even to Domitian himself, without his knowing to whom they belonged. Such is great wealth, so big and so vast that it is harder to find than a small gold coin in a field. I not only had properties in most of the civilized world, but offices as well that stretched from Alexandria to the northenmost boundaries of pacified Britannia.

I was not completely helpless. There might be something worked out. It was not as though I had stolen a cloak because I was cold, where simple justice would punish me without fail. I had breached a contract which, because it involved the most politically sensitive arena games in Rome, now threatened the empire's stability. It was, in truth, a form of treason against Domitian himself. But punishments are meted out not for the severity of the crime but for the helplessness of the criminal. Yet Domitian might himself be helpless not to punish me, for this was public crime.

I sat down to think in the room I had teased Demosthenes in just days before. If the praetorians or urban cohorts were not here yet, then Domitian had either been assassinated, or he did not know how important Demosthenes was to me. The longer they looked for me, the greater danger that Miriamne and

Petronius would be captured. Frightened slaves brought me drink while I waited to be captured.

I did not wish to think. For then I would have to say to myself that I had ruined my own life and sent Miriamne and Petronius into flight for something no sane Greek would ever do.- My mother Phaedra, was not here to appreciate the honour, and even if she had been in the arena earlier in the day, she would not have liked it. My mother would have said live, Eugeni. That is what my mother would have said. Defiance for some passing thought and the risk of welfare for that thought was not only a Roman thing but a patrician one

And there in the room, the torture began. I looked at the small cursi, for I could end my pain now. Let Demosthenes have all the money, he loved it so. Let him run with it. That was what he would do if I were dead, and possibly even if I were alive.

But I could not do it. Rome needed me. And if it did not have me, it would seek out Miriamne and Petronius. Surely it would. Rome needed my punishment.

I put the cursi in my lap. I would satisfy the Roman appetite for revenge. They would feast on me. But why so long?

Finally, the praetorians arrived with pilum and shield and the glory of their muscled cuirasses - chest shields that were sculpted to the muscles of their bodies and in other units used only by generals or wealthy tribunes. The series of plumes atop their ornate helmets was like a gentle crimson sea flowing up the street.

When I heard them, I had run out to see them. Upon seeing their great number I realized what had delayed them. There must have been twenty continubrium, or one hundred and sixty men, almost a double maniple. They were delayed because they could not risk small units to search simultaneously all the places they thought I might be - the small units being vulnerable to tin's seething city. Therefore they sent this large unit, and their having been delayed meant Domitian had estimated other places were more important to me.

I made a great act of running back into the house and slamming an iron lock on the door. Then I hid myself in the room where the bundled gold for Domitian was. When the praetorians reached me there, I offered them half the gold to let me go free.

⁴
The gold and you belong to the wrath of our divinity,' said a praetorian officer. He had a likeness of Domitian upon the centre of his finely muscled cuirass, the face of the emperor being the standard upon which they swore all sorts of religious and military oaths.

I bemoaned the fact that all my wealth was gone and that all I had was this meagre gold. I swore vengeance upon Demosthenes whom, I said, I had always distrusted and now was proven right.

The officer ordered me shackled and told me that I would be unwise to think of the praetorian as some slave gladiator 1 could trundle with. The praetorian was the best of all the legionnaires of the empire, and the legions were invincible.

'Is that a threat or an invitation to join?' I asked.

'The praetorians slaughter Greeks, we do not accept them, Greekling.'

'Yes, you're too busy perfuming yourself and decorating your bodies to accept anyone who can get to a fight on time. Or did you have trouble with the armoured slaves at my entrance here?'

'We checked all your money places, the only question being which you would run to first,' he said, telling me for certain they were not looking for my wife and child.

Relieved, I could not show it.

'All my money. The slave ran away with all my money,' I cried.

'A Greekling, no?' laughed the praetorian. He tapped me contemptuously on the back of my head, slapping away my cursi with a following blow. He wanted me to stand and follow. I was roughly pushed out into the street and shackled to a young praetorian who made threats for me to keep pace.

We avoided the major forums and outlying shops where large mobs tended to congregate and marched behind the House of the Vestal Virgins, the Julian temple, the temple of Mars I had donated to the city, and came upon Domitian's palace from the rear, skirting entirely the Forum Romanum and the nearby senate I smelled the smoke of great fires, and the sky was grey with burning cinders blowing in from the Vatican arena. Even the port of Ostius might be aflame now, and I worried for the safety of Miriamne and Petronius.

At Domitian's palace, the vigiles, who were supposed to be containing these flames, were huddled behind the massed cohorts of the fully armoured praetorians and the urban cohorts, who were also fully armoured. The urban cohorts were supposed to be quelling the riots. Friends of Domitian were hurriedly moving their families and portable wealth through the soldiers into the palace, bringing only their most valuable slaves with them. The praetorians stripped everyone entering of weapons. A few people saw me and shouted curses. It was an army of wide purple-striped togas. The patricians now needed Domitian as an ally - common disaster being the greatest peacemaker of them all.