Night of the Wolf (47 page)

At this hour of the morning it was deserted. As they entered, the owner appeared out of the shadows at Lucius’ elbow.

Lucius handed him a coin. “The steam room.”

The man looked him up and down, then inspected Philo. “Want food, wine, a woman?”

“No,” Lucius answered. “I have a hangover. Late party last night.”

“Don’t get many purple stripes ’round here.” He eyed the senatorial stripe on Lucius’ toga.

“Inquisitive, aren’t you?” Philo said. He was now being a citizen, also togate.

“I can go blind,” the man said.

“Do so,” Lucius said, handing him another coin.

“Right. In there.” He pointed to a wooden door. “Sheets in the dressing room. Watch your clothes.” Then he vanished as quickly as he’d appeared.

The steam room wasn’t bad, the sheets clean, benches along the walls. The steam was generated the old-fashioned way: rocks heated by a bed of coals. The room was warm and damp.

“No hypocaust,” Lucius said.

“Is that good?” Philo asked.

“Yes. Sound carries through those things. Now we wait and see if our friend contacts us.”

“I’m not sure whether to be sorry or relieved if he doesn’t,” Philo said.

“Yes.”

But a few minutes later they heard sounds in the other room and then Maeniel entered, also wrapped in a sheet. He took a seat on the bench.

One of the bath attendants wandered in with a bucket, threw water on the rocks to generate more steam, looked surprised to see Maeniel, and exited.

“You may have to pay extra,” Maeniel said.

“A detail,” Lucius said.

Sure enough, the owner arrived, hand out. Lucius placed another coin in it and he exited.

“Who was that hysteric at the ludus?” Lucius asked.

“His name’s Decius. We met in Gaul. Some . . . relatives . . . of mine wanted to make a meal of him. I prevented them.”

“Too bad,” Lucius said.

“As it happens, yes. He was waiting for me last night at the house of Manilius and Felex. As soon as I walked in, he began screaming. I had to depart precipitously. Fortunately, I’m good at it. They didn’t catch me.”

“Obviously.” Lucius nodded.

“Yes, but I spent all night wandering around Rome, trying to find the ludus. When I did, I discovered I had more trouble on my hands than I knew what to do with.”

“You know her?” Lucius asked.

“Yes, very well.”

“Care about what happens to her?”

“Yes.”

“Why is she here?” Lucius asked, and saw evidence of an internal debate going on on Maeniel’s face.

Finally the wolf answered, “Caesar,” and made a throat cutting gesture.

“Pity,” Lucius answered. “She never got close enough, but she’s not the only one who finds the idea attractive. There are a number of others, myself among them, but I can’t think of a way.”

Maeniel nodded. “States the problem in a nutshell.”

“Do you know what I would do?” Philo spoke for the first time.

“No,” they chorused.

“Pay a call on Brutus.”

“Brutus,” Maeniel said. “Is he the one Antony quarreled with at dinner the other night at—”

“Yes,” they chorused again.

“Word gets around. Calpurnia says Caesar’s making a list, but I’m not sure what that means.”

“Proscriptions.” Lucius made a wringing motion with his hands.

“Does that mean what I think it means?” Maeniel asked.

“Yes, and you do get around. How well do you know that particular lady?” Lucius asked delicately.

“No,” Maeniel said. “She has too much to lose.”

“I think I’ll go call on Brutus,” Lucius said.

“I need clothes and money,” Maeniel said.

“A detail,” Lucius told him.

The fight showed every sign of being an event. Marcia guarded Dryas’ sleep and she did sleep well. The room above the kitchen was warm.

The arena was not a very big one. The seating was shallow, only about five tiers, but it was set in the middle of the five-story ludus. Two colonnaded porches overlooked the ring on three sides. They were comfortable and sheltered from the wind by the back of a theater across the street. Nothing else nearby was tall enough to block the light.

A beautiful arrangement, really,
Gordus thought. He’d presented private munera for Caesar before. The men in the audience usually gravitated down into the seats. Food and wine were spread out for the spectators on the porches, where there was more comfortable seating for the women. They had a good view, and if bloody spectacles weren’t to their taste, they could spend their time nibbling and gossiping while their menfolk were involved with the violence of the arena.

Now he must think of a way to keep the little priestess alive. That was how he’d thought about her since the night in the mortuary chapel.

Gordus was a hard man. He trained gladiators for Caesar and others. He’d sent many men out to die. In almost every munera, he lost a few. That’s why he’d built the columbarium, the tomb. Even these outcasts needed to know they would receive a proper burial and be feasted, at least, by their fellows when they died. It was part of the discipline of the ludus. The oath of acceptance, stating they would face punishment by whips and hot irons or even death by steel if they failed in obedience to their owners and trainers, was not a hollow one. He himself had felt the whip and even the iron occasionally and he inflicted them with a free hand when he had men in training. There was no place for kindness or even, most of the time, for mercy in his profession.

But, oddly enough, few of those he taught hated him and a lot actually seemed to like him. After a taste of just how hard he could be, they accepted the discipline of the ludus and he was unrelentingly thorough in imparting the skills they needed to survive the arena. Many were grateful and came back to work for him when they earned their discharge from owners who made money.

Like many hard men, he was sentimental about women. Wives and daughters were ritually pure. Yes, things had happened at the hands of soldiers when Marcia’s father and his fell trying to protect what little they had. He knew some of the men in his village accepted being put on the roads, driven into poverty rather than allow their wives and children to suffer as his mother and Marcia’s had. He understood this. He hated and resented it to the very bottom of his soul, but he understood.

Once, men like his father and grandfather had been important. They were the backbone of the legions. They stood and protected Rome when Hannibal crossed the Alps into Italy and threatened the city itself. Men of his family soldiered with Scipio and Fabius, fought the Samnites and, in Tuscany, helped lay the foundations of awesome Roman power. They had felt they and their sons would be rewarded one day with prosperity, security, and peace.

But they were wrong. Even his grandfather had been sure the Gracchi would deal justly with the small landowners near Rome. At that point, faith ran out. Gordus was sure his father had fallen in despair. He himself saw clearly how the game was going.

The only two classes that mattered now were the publicani—the knights who looted the provinces for their own profit—and the patrician generals who were paid by these successful thieves to go out and conquer more people, so they in turn could be looted, exploited, and enslaved until the wealthy classes were so bloated with their gains that they fell to cutting one another’s throats in a mad brawl over the spoils.

He made his own separate peace, as many men and women have over the long ages, turned his eyes inward, and resolved to protect his own. By whatever means necessary.

He knew ugly things had happened to Marcia before he could buy her freedom and her mother’s, but they were not her fault. She had done what she must, but, even now, he noticed she wore the vitta, the woolen fillets of a chaste wife and, over them, an old-fashioned linen veil lest any think she might be careless about her virtue because of the past.

Dryas did not belong here. No woman did. The ludus was a certain special sort of hell, for men only. Only men could deserve it.

He felt an absolute contempt for Caesar because he colluded with Fulvia in placing Dryas here. He admired discipline and courage. They were the only virtues that mattered to him in one of his fighters and were, as far as he was concerned, central to all others.

Despite being a woman, Dryas upheld those standards. He would do his best for her, so he began to assemble a wardrobe.

The boots were tricky. He used sandals reinforced in the legs with leather wrappings, then gilded the results. They were handsome.

Then he cut her a cuirass of chain mail on the inside with scale mail on the outside. The beast fighters liked scale mail because talons, claws, and teeth couldn’t get a purchase on it, but chain mail was stronger. So she had the best of both worlds—he hoped. He did have to tack the finished product up so it would leave her midriff bare, but the sleeves extended almost to the elbow and would give some protection to her arms.

Aquila gave him her sword and two daggers. He drew the sword. Even in the dull light of the overcast sky, rainbows shimmered in the metal. “Razor sharp,” he commented.

Aquila nodded.

“How did they ever lose?”

“Sometimes they didn’t,” Aquila said.

He brought the things to Marcia, who stood at the foot of the stairs.

“She’s still asleep,” Marcia said.

“Good. The caterers are just setting up for the food,” he told her. “Let her sleep as long as she can.”

Two men, both experienced gladiators, sat at the table, having some wine. Both were exauctorati; they had been discharged. He could trust them. He joined them. Marcia went upstairs.

“You open for her,” he told the men. “The two boys I picked are tyros, just trainees. Nice-looking kids. Don’t cut their faces. I told them don’t press you and don’t try any tricks. You aren’t supposed to cripple or kill them. Don’t make a liar out of me. Exhibition only. Caesar will be there. He knows.”

“Girl and the tiger. Is it a real thing or just a tumbler?” one of them asked.

“It’s real, all right,” Gordus answered.

The other man seemed taken aback. “A woman. It doesn’t seem right.”

“It isn’t,” Gordus said, “but then what do you do?”

Both men nodded and helped themselves to more wine.

XXV

Cooks prepared roasted meat with honey and herbs, suckling pigs, roast chickens, geese, pigeons, guinea hens, and even swan. A whole pig turned over an open fire, being basted with its own drippings.

Another table held cold food: olives of all kinds, fresh cheese, pickles of cucumber, small squash, onions and leeks, ham and citron. There were breads with cheese, dates, nuts, and pungent breads with olives and onions.

Amphoras of white wine chilled in the snow and there was an ample supply of the justly famous Falernian, the most admired of all reds.

Litters arrived at the gates and disgorged beautifully dressed men and women. They climbed the stairs to the colonnaded porches overlooking the arena where slaves, supplied by Caesar and Antony, offered them wine in gold and silver cups sprinkled with rose petals. A gustatio of spiced eggs, small sausages, smoked cheese, and small asparagus with a savory of coriander, lovage, onion, and wine sauce made the rounds.

Caesar arrived with an enormous entourage including Brutus, Cicero, Fulvia, Cleopatra, Cassius, and Lucius. Lucius knew Dryas’ best chance was for no one to see he gave a rap for what happened to her.

Antony—who was pleased to see Lucius coming around, as he thought, to a more sensible point of view—arrived, as did a horde of other senators, military officials, publicani, knights, and assorted leeches, sycophants, and gate-crashers, including Maeniel.

They wandered around the porches seeing, being seen, and exhibiting jewels, gold, silver, amber, garnets, sapphires, amethysts, rubies, and a plethora of pearls. Fine clothes: velvet, silk, linen silk, wool. The men distinguished in white. The women as gaudy as multicolored butterflies. Exchanging witticisms, inanities, banalities, stupidities, injuries, cruelties, and whatever else entered their minds.

No one listened to anyone else and no one seemed to see anyone else, or so it appeared to Lucius, who was sure Dryas was going to be killed for the amusement of these worthless parasites, murderers, extortionists, and thieves. He indicated as much to Maeniel when he met him investigating the spiced olives on the lowest porch over the seats to the arena.

“Not if I can help it,” Maeniel said, ingesting some black olives steeped in wine, oil, and bay leaves.

“It is an incongruity that you would like olives,” Lucius said. “Wouldn’t you prefer some nice fresh, bloody meat?”

“No,” Maeniel said. “I get a lot of that as it is. I wouldn’t underestimate her. I did once and paid dearly for it.”

“You didn’t see that tiger.”

“Oh, yes, I did,” Maeniel said. “But we’re early and I thought I’d try the food. Problems are best faced on a full stomach. If you don’t eat, you often regret it later. So don’t be self-indulgent. She isn’t, not in the least, I assure you.”

Marcia helped Dryas dress. The gilded footwear was a rather basic thong sandal with uppers that reached to just below the knee. These lent support to the ankle and some protection to the lower leg.

Of course, the standard loincloth, red silk, but Gordus had reinforced the belt and had given back the two knives she carried. The spiked crown was again braided into her hair.

Marcia wrapped the strophium—breast binder—showing Dryas how to wear it in such a way that it supported her breasts and protected them from the mail shirt.

“Tumblers do it this way,” Marcia explained, “so they won’t jiggle.”

Dryas laughed, then admitted, “Yes, they can be a terrible nuisance. Yet I’ve always been sorry I didn’t have bigger ones.”

“Oh, the small ones work just as well as bigger ones, on men and babies both.”

“Yes, I know. I expected to have trouble nursing my son, but I didn’t.”

“Your son?”

“He’s dead.” Dryas looked away.

“I saw stretch marks on your stomach,” Marcia said. “I have a lot of them myself. I had four; only two lived, Martinus and Tullia. Tullia’s married. She married well, considering . . .” She didn’t finish. Marcia had once been a slave and she meant “for the child of a freedwoman.”

Dryas nodded and hoped Marcia wouldn’t ask her any more questions. She didn’t.

Then Marcia produced a pair of wrist guards. They were leather, and they strapped into place. “Gordus had to look high and low for a pair small enough,” she said.

“I’ve always considered them an affectation,” Dryas said as she examined them.

“Gordus does, too, on some of these men who have fists the size of sledgehammers, but your wrists are slender. On small, slightly built men, he’s found them a help. They support the wrist at its narrowest, weakest point.”

Dryas strapped them on, finding they did give a bit of extra support. The thongs ran up between her fingers and a soft leather pad rested on her palm: “Yes, good,” she said, and elected to carry her sword rather than wear the belt and scabbard. “Only in the way,” she said regretfully.

“Well, we are done,” Marcia said.

The abbreviated costume was chilly, so Dryas wrapped herself in the woolen palla.

Marcia handed her a cup of warm liquid. “Philo,” she said. “He mixed this, some of his herbs. He’s good. Gordus was happy to get him. All the men say unless you’re dead when they drag you out, Philo will put you back together and have you laughing at his jokes while he’s doing it.”

Then they walked to the window and began watching the beautiful people of Rome arrive. Marcia chuckled when one particularly overdressed woman climbed out of a litter. “Now, she should know better than that. She’s fifty if she’s a day.” Marcia knew most of them. “Not that they know me, you understand, but some of them show up every time Caesar sticks his head out.

“Servila.” She pointed to an older woman who was very dark and conservatively dressed. “Greediest woman in Rome. Hard to know what she has the most letch for: Old Baldy or his money. During the last proscriptions, he must have had eight or nine of the condemneds’ biggest estates knocked down to coppers for her. She’s not only the greediest woman in Rome, she’s one of the richest.”

“I hate the thought of being paraded in front of those people in this,” Dryas said, opening the palla and looking down at the abbreviated costume. “Half naked.”

“You won’t be,” Marcia said. “There’s a tunnel to the arena entrance. You don’t have to go near them. Just as well; you’re probably the best looking thing in here. All of the men will be salivating when they see you. Take these women . . . No don’t take them, soft as hot butter, muscles sagging, tits sagging, white lead not only on their faces but on their breasts and asses, rouge on their cheeks, tits, and where they squat to piss, kohl on their eyelids and under the eyebrows, tight binders so their flat little titties will have cleavage, corsets that are more harness than a horse wears, just so they look like they still have figures.

“They lie on their couches all day, pop sweetmeats, cakes, cookies, have abortions when they get knocked up, never do any work except to scream at their slave women. Piss and moan when they have to walk as far as the latrine. No wonder Lucius went head over heels for you. Yikes, a woman with some brains and guts who doesn’t look like a fat dairy cow when she’s naked and isn’t afraid to tell a grab-ass aristocrat where to head in. Doesn’t surprise me in the least.”

Someone knocked at the door.

“Is it time?” Marcia asked.

“Yes,” Gordus answered.

A few minutes later, Dryas was waiting in one of the entrances to the arena behind an iron grate.

Gordus handed her a shield. “I can’t give you one the cat couldn’t destroy. This one is good for only about one swipe.”

“No,” Dryas agreed. “I couldn’t carry one strong enough to resist the claws of an animal that size. The sheer weight would be too much for me.”

In the arena outside, the second warm-up match was ending. The tyro, a very handsome blond boy, had an ugly scalp wound. The older man drew away, having done all Gordus paid him to do.

The lanista, one of Gordus’ assistants acting as referee, separated the two men.

“Not bad,” Dryas said. “They look impressive, scalp wounds.”

Gordus nodded. “The way they bleed. He’s not bad, though, the German kid. I usually don’t like blonds. Bad eyes and they cut and ooze like chopped meat. But this kid’s fast. He may live awhile if he doesn’t try to jump the bones of every teenager in Rome.”

“Popular?” Dryas asked.

“Have to chase away a few every time he goes out to practice. You wouldn’t believe the things they try to give him. Clothes, jewelry, perfume.” He paused.

Dryas supplied, “Used underwear.”

Almost against his will, Gordus began laughing.

The arena was clear now, empty. The sun was westering. Above, the overcast came and went. The sun lightened and darkened. Now the white sand and light limestone bleachers were a monochrome blue-gray, setting off patches of white where the bleached tunics and togas of the senatorial classes formed the bulk of the crowd, and then suddenly the sand and limestone oval would sparkle, aflame with transient golden light.

“How do you want your funeral?” Gordus asked. “That’s how we wish each other good luck here.”

Dryas nodded. “Makes sense.”

The tiger padded into the arena and yawned lazily, showing a massive array of lethal-looking ivory choppers. The crowd drew in an awed breath. Just then the sun returned, shining through a gap in the fleecy tiles above.

“How beautiful,” Dryas said. And it was. The black markings were set off like a velvet appliqué against the sleek orange coat. Under the fur, the big muscles elongated and contracted with a supple grace that seemed almost impossible in a creature so large. Then the tiger’s head turned and the big killer’s yellow eyes, looked, it seemed, with a vast indifference into Dryas’ own, as if to say, “I am waiting.”

Dryas nodded. “We wouldn’t want that. Open the gate.”

She moved out into the open. The shield she carried was a nice match to the red silk loincloth she wore. It, too, was red, bound in brass with an upper and lower rim of the yellow metal.

The sun reappeared and glistened on the copper crown, the scale mail she wore as a shirt, and the high, laced, gilded sandals.

She held the shield negligently to one side.
Best give them a good look. It the least I can do for my friends.

The tiger turned smoothly and took three steps toward her, then glided into a run with almost unbelievable speed and leaped.

At the last second the shadow of the rising animal covered her. She pivoted on her right foot and slashed, catching the cat across the tender pad of its left forefoot with the edge of her sword.

The right paw simply tore the shield from her arm. Her whole left arm went numb as the handle and strap were ripped loose from her hand and forearm, but she got the tiger across the face with the edge of her blade.

She should have died then, and was certain she was going to, but the animal broke off the attack.

Dryas, remembering the mouse-hunting cats she’d seen, moved away very slowly.
That’s what I am. A mouse,
she thought. Her entire consciousness fixed on her adversary.

The tiger shook the paw she’d injured, then shook it again, showering the sand with red drops. Then it began its stalk.

Dryas managed to spare a glance for her numb left arm. Blood dripped from a laceration on her forearm, but her fingers were red only where the shield had pulled free of her hand. She flexed them gently and felt the life returning. She kept moving away. The tiger followed. Yes, she was a mouse and . . .
In a second, yes,
she thought,
here it comes.

It was a blur of motion. She leaped toward it as it came, a warrior’s choice. She had the sword two-handed. She slammed into it. She felt the sword sink through muscle, against gristle, and grate on the bone. It stank and she was blind, wondering if its jaws were closing on her head.

Then she was struck a simply unbelievable blow in the ribs. Her hands were torn free of the sword hilt—she hadn’t known she was still clutching it—and she was flung into the air.

Automatically, as her teachers had taught her so many years ago, she turned herself into a ball. She rolled. When she stopped, she saw the tiger coming like a striking hawk. It was only inches away. The impulse was reflex and she never knew where it came from. She had a handful of sand; it exploded in the tiger’s eyes.

She felt something like icicles move across her bare thigh and, a second later, she stood in the center of the arena, watching the animal try to clear its vision.

Somewhere in the far distance, she heard the crowd, but they were screaming and shouting in some hazy otherworld. Only a vast silence enveloped her.

Her eyes raked the beast. She’d hurt it. The sword was buried to the hilt in the animal’s chest. Every time it took a breath, air bubbled out around the wound. Between the sand and the blood on its face from the sword cut, one eye was hazed, but its vision didn’t seem more than slightly inconvenienced. When the big animal moved, it limped.

She’d been clawed. Blood was sheeting down her left leg from the long, shallow thigh wounds. She’d been bitten on the right shoulder, but the mail had done its work. The whole arm and shoulder was painful when she moved it. She was sure the fangs had tightened, but not penetrated. She had lighter claw marks on her left arm, merely scratches.

Kill it,
she thought.
Kill it.
A litany in her brain.
Kill it. How?
They circled each other.
Kill it.

The shield lay where the tiger had torn it from her arm. She still had her knives. Again, it was a warrior’s choice. She was not as badly hurt as it was. She could outlast it.

The ridges made by the claws on her upper thigh were the worst and they were scabbing over. She could feel them tightening as the blood clotted, but the cat’s eyes were clearing. The injured one was tearing and the yellow orb was bright again and following her movements.

There was more light. She was vaguely aware torches were being placed at measured intervals around the arena. She and the cat padding along, moving from one puddle of flickering yellow light to another. Always it was closer and closer.