Uptown Local and Other Interventions (6 page)

“Continuing his triumphant return to the Flavian Amphitheatre,” they shouted in unison, “in an additional exhibition bout. With fourteen victories in fourteen fights, and thirteen crowns for technical excellence: the Thracian’s Thracian, the Man in White…
Hilaaaaaaarus!”

A roar of approval went up from the thousands of men in the Colosseum, and a vast eager shriek from the women. Hilarus raised his sword and waved.

“And making his first appearance in the mighty Flavian, and hopefully not his last, the tyro from Pompeii…already famous under the stands as The Man Who Likes A Good Rubbing…” A tremendous girly scream of lust went up, accompanied by some lascivious noises from various men in the lower tiers. “Cest
iiiii
nius… Ven
eeee
ris!”

Cestinius held up both his arms, turning slowly to greet the whole crowd. Lucius’s heart leapt at the sound of the roar that went up. He really had it, that charisma, the spark that made people look at him even though they’d never even seen him fight.

“Coaches,” said the umpire. “Purse details all sorted out?”

“Yes,” said Lucius. Velantinus growled something inaudible. The umpire eyed Lucius for a moment. Coaches could sometimes be very young men: sometimes gladiators worked without them at all. “Your master’s happy with you doing this job?”

“Yes,” Lucius said.

“Fine. Let’s go.”

The two fighters squared off, waiting for their signal from the Imperial box. Lucius started sweating. In a fight between established gladiators, who’d recouped their training costs and were steady moneymakers, fights to the death didn’t usually happen. First blood was the rule. But when one man was a tyro, nobody particularly cared. If he died, his owner replaced him and started over
. But there’s no replacement for Cestinius!
And though he was sure Hilarus meant well, accidents could happen...

A kerchief waved from the box. Both gladiators dropped into a crouch, then both instantly leapt forward to the attack. There had been no circling, no time spent in assessment: Lucius suspected that each had done all the assessing required down in the trainers’ bay.

Above and all around him, the crowd roared so that Lucius could hardly think…and the band behind him, blaring away, wasn’t helping either. Lucius tried to ignore it.

Cestinius feinted at his white-crested opponent, then cut, but Hilarus dodged the sword and merely lost some shoulder-padding before he was out of reach. “Not like that!” Velantinus bawled from beside Lucius. “Watch his left, get in and—” The crowd yelled at the miss, while from their ringside boxes knights and senators shouted new bets to their nearest bookies.

“Go on,” Lucius shouted, “go on, don’t let him—” Cestinius was already sliding forward, jabbing at Hilarus’s poised shield, hoping he’d try to smash the extended sword from his opponent’s hand. The shield flickered up and around, the move that Lucius had seen in his dream and since they came through that gate had been praying wouldn’t happen.
“No!”
Lucius yelled as Cestinius thrust. Not past the shield, but over it, at Hilarus’s left eye—

Hilarus ducked, just enough, and the blade screeched off his helmet. White plumes went flying. He overbalanced, staggered backwards as the crowd shrieked with excitement, then recovered and crabbed sideways. There was a look in his eye that Lucius hadn’t seen before: not the manic rage that he’d seen often enough when the fight heated up, but a chilly calculation that wasn’t entirely human. Yet it was also an amused look… and Lucius didn’t understand it at all.
At least it’s not the dream…!
But that raised other possibilities.

Like Cestinius getting killed.

Another flurry of blows began, faster than Lucius could follow. Hilarus was at the top of his form—graceful, fast-moving, laying down a ferocious battery of blows; but Cestinius seemed faster, more agile, and somehow less afraid of what was happening, dancing lithely in and out of the blows, parrying, striking in turn. Like lion fighting leopard, they circled and struck, sword against sword, against shield, again and again, from above, from below—

Then Lucius, Velantinus and Cestinius all saw the same opening—but Hilarus missed it.

“No!”

“
There!!
”

Cestinius said nothing. But his sword flicked towards Hilarus’s left knee, and suddenly the Thracian was collapsing over a leg that wouldn’t hold his weight. Velantinus was on his man in a moment, fist up, two fingers raised. The umpire signaled too, and medics sprinted forward while Velantinus, swearing steadily, yanked the tall greave aside to get better access to the wound.

“You okay?” Lucius said to Cestinius. He nodded, watching the umpire contacting somebody in the Imperial box with the complex hand-signs that arena staff used to work though crowd noise. Lots of spectators were waving upwards, the “Let ‘im walk!” gesture. But some who’d lost bets were savagely doing the thumb-to-neck “Stick it to him!” gesture for the kill...

Lucius swallowed.
There were so many...

Then the umpire nodded, took Cestinius’s arm and raised it high.

“Knights, Vestals, conscript fathers and citizens of Rome,” shouted the repeaters, “by umpire’s recommendation and the Emperor’s confirmation, on points, Hilarus walks! Winner… The
murmillo
Cestinius, tyro, first victory with crown for technical merit…
and
the editor’s purse for the best new fighter of the Games!”

The crowd roared again as the payoff crew came out of the gates with the
murmillo
’s winnings heaped up on a tray. It was just bags of coin at first, but as the victory lap progressed the tray began to fill with jewels, rings and other gifts from the stands…along with one gold-crusted, rose-red veil that draped itself with surprising accuracy over one of the bearers’ heads.

Lucius grinned, watching his winnings get closer and closer. He glowed with pride. It had finally happened.
Finally.
He reached out—

And clutched a whole fistful,
denarii
, and golden
aureae
such as he’d never dreamed of.
This is real. I’m rich. There’s enough here to buy my freedom.

But not to buy what’s really important.

He turned to Cestinius and pushed the coins into his hands. “Here—”

“But this is yours, sir,” the gladiator said. “All yours…”

Lucius’s eyes were burning. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s clear the sand…”

Both gladiators headed for the gate together, Hilarus limping, but Cestinius alongside taking some of the weight with an arm across his shoulders. The crowd cheered. Behind them, the bearers carried the tray, now spectacularly fuller than it had been when first brought out.

Waiting inside was one of the Flavian’s bankers and a slave manning a little table with a set of scales. The purse was weighed out then and there, divided among Hilarus, Cestinius, and the house; then came the secondary weighing of the managers’ percentage. Suddenly there were bookies and gofers all around them. Even Mancipuer appeared and made off with his promised cut.

The rest of the day went by in a blur. Suddenly everybody wanted to know Lucius. Wine flowed, there was more food than seemed possible, and everywhere his back was being slapped, his advice was being asked. There was even a party in the downstairs sports bar. For the first time in his life Lucius had enough to eat, enough to drink: but as the night went on, it mattered less and less.

You have a day…

 
Finally no one was left but Hilarus and his lady. “Until tomorrow,” said the Thracian. “Don’t look so depressed, son! There’ll be other days like this…”

All Lucius could do was clasp his arm and hold back the tears as the big man limped away. Once the bar closed there was nothing for Lucius to do but go back his little sleeping-place, with Cestinius in tow, and wait for the day to end. Cestinius insisted on sleeping across the doorway of Lucius’s little bed-space, and shortly he was snoring.

Lucius stayed awake as long as he could, until his little lamp burned down, unwilling to turn his eyes away. By the last dim spark of the failing wick he could see the piled-up armor glinting outside the door. Then that too was gone, but for a long time he lay propped on his elbow, staring into the dark…

*

He didn’t know, when he smelled roses, what time it was. He opened his eyes, and though it was pitch black, there was no
not
seeing the still and beautifully robed form before him. She looked very like the lady that Hilarus was seeing; but her veil was the color of shadows. The rose-scent hung about her, and her eyes were sweet—but darkness was within them. Lucius instantly knew that, though she looked nothing like the little wooden carving with the big hips, this was nonetheless the same goddess.

“Was it a good day?” said Venus of the Dark Places.

“Lady—” Lucius scrambled to his knees. “Lady, thank you. It was what I always dreamed of—”          

“That was the price of my bet with Mars.”

Lucius’s mouth opened. “Your
bet?”

Queen Venus smiled. “We’re Roman. We bet. Mars has bragged about his great worshippers here, how they honor him better than any other god. I wearied of it. I bet him that I had a truer votary here than any of his. He laughed, but you proved me right when you shared your winnings. You didn’t have to; that little meant more to you than great wealth to the rich. So Venus triumphed in the house of Mars. And as your reward, your dream came true.”

“But only for a day!”

“Child, you have enough gold to buy your freedom now. And much more. Take it, use it carefully, and with your sharp wits you can have as many gladiators as you like.”

“But not this one, lady! Not Cestinius! He’s my friend! He’s—”

“A doll. His life comes from me. He loses nothing by losing it.”

“Lady,” Lucius said, “I promised to take care of him!
And you have to take care of what you own!”

“You say this,” said Venus Cloacina, “to a goddess’s very face?”

The darkness in her eyes flowed around him, pressing in like the black water under the city streets, smothering, potentially fatal. But Lucius didn’t look away…and very, very slowly, the pressure eased, leaving him with the sense of a test that had been passed.

Venus smiled. “Again I triumph.” She put out a hand to touch Lucius’s brow. “Mars will be so vexed at losing another bet…”

The touch awakened him. Lucius was looking at a little rough wooden thing, all breasts and hips, the gift from a Gaulish slave long ago. And behind him Cestinius Veneris peered past the flame of a refilled lamp and said, “So what’s for breakfast?”

*

Later that morning, the gladiator Hilarus paid a call on the Master of the Games. There was talking, then shouting, and finally the clink of coins changing hands. Lucius sat beside Cestinius outside the closed doors and listened, trembling, until Hilarus came out. He had a piece of parchment in one hand.

“We’ll do the ceremony later,” he said. “Right now I have to get ready. My last fight of the season’s in an hour. Then we’ll dine with some fancy senator, and let him convince us that he should give us lots of money to start a gladiatorial school.”

He gave Lucius the parchment. The boy’s lips moved as he spelled through the words that said his liberty had been bought from the Colosseum’s management company by the freedman gladiator Hilarus. It was his manumission.

Lucius looked up in shock. “But I never told you I was a slave! How did you find out? Why—?”

Hilarus paused, and for an instant his eyes were that of something far older, more terrible and bloodstained than any gladiator.

“Because you helped her win
another
bet,” said the God of War. “So now I have to pay her off. But this is
my
place, and if I don’t get you out of here, she’ll start thinking seriously about moving her stuff in.” He grinned. “Go have yourself a life, freedman.”

He turned and walked off, chuckling, suddenly once again just another mortal heading out to have a fight.

*

If you walk down the roughly paved country road which is all that’s left of the Appian Way, you’ll reach the area where the City’s astronomical real-estate values dropped off enough for the more successful gladiators to build their tombs. There, quite close together, are the tombstones of the famous Thracian-style fighter Hilarus, who died old and wealthy, and of another lesser-known gladiator, a
murmillo
named Cestinius Veneris. Both stones are covered with post-retirement testimonials from their families, many friends, and fans. Between these two stones is a memorial to one Lucius Betellus, coach, trainer, investor, and owner of the Betellian gladiatorial school, which substituted solid training and cutting its pupils in for a piece of the action as a far better motivation than the old method of “burn them with fire, kill them with steel.”

And in a museum not far from there, you can find a slab of stone originally discovered in the Colosseum, scratched with a little graffito by some nameless sports fan. It’s a sketch of two gladiators fighting, a Thracian and a
murmillo
. By the Thracian are his name and stats: HILARUS NER XIV/XIII, and ‘M’ for
missus
: ‘He walked’. It’s the same for his opponent, except the superscript says C VENERIS T V.
Tyro. Victor.

Sports aficionados who understand the fight business of that day, and how the stats worked, still read
those
stats with some interest…

Because they know that, one way or another, the fix was in.