A Gladiator's Tale Read online

  Many of Aemil’s gladiators were, like Herakles, captives from outposts, but Herakles sneered at any who’d embraced the Roman way of life. He’d hated me, Roman born, on sight.

  “Good riddance to them,” Regulus went on.

  If the three ran away or caused trouble, Aemil also would have to answer for it, either with a large fine for not keeping his slaves contained, or with imprisonment, or his life, depending on what the gladiators did and to what Roman.

  “Did Ajax have a favorite woman to visit?” I directed my question to both Septimius and Regulus, ignoring Regulus’s bluster.

  “True—he could be smothered in some woman’s bosom.” Regulus waved an arm, bracing himself on the wall when he lost his balance. “Look for him in the Subura.”

  So Septimius had said. I turned to Septimius, noting he remained out of arm’s reach of Regulus. “Who is Herakles’s lady in the villa?”

  “Don’t know.” Septimius’s reply was quick, but I could not decide if he lied. “Nonus Marcianus does, I think.”

  Nonus Marcianus was the medicus who doctored the gladiators when we were cut up in the arena. Marcianus sewed wounds, set bones, and gave us concoctions that brought us back to life.

  Marcianus was in the Equestrian class, maintaining a practice on the Aventine among the plebeians even while working for Aemil. He’d told me he liked healing those who had no expensive private physician at their beck and call, as well as learning all he could about anatomy and medicine by treating gladiators. He was an unassuming man, but very few disputed Marcianus.

  “Is he here?” I glanced through the gate to the sunshine glaring on the practice space. The air was cool but the sun warm on my shoulders.

  “I don’t know,” Regulus snapped. “I’m not your errand boy.” He pushed past me with a growl at Septimius. “Tell Aemil I’m off to find dinner.”

  Septimius glowered at his back. Aemil must have given Regulus leave to depart because Septimius said not a word as Regulus stalked away along the street.

  A boy who’d escaped the tutor teaching letters darted to Regulus, wide-eyed at seeing a true gladiator. Regulus scowled at him but stopped to scratch his name on the piece of brick the boy held up. Regulus had no use for fawners, but he knew how to keep the public of Rome cheering for him.

  “The medicus came in maybe an hour ago,” Septimius told me once Regulus had gone, the boy scampering back to the annoyed tutor. “One of the tiros was hurt.”

  While Aemil hadn’t had gladiators in games since Saturnalia, he didn’t hold back on training, which could become as brutal as actual bouts.

  I gave Septimius a nod and moved through the gate into the ludus.

  As usual when I entered the place, a feeling came over me that I’d never left. The practice yard was full, mostly with the younger, rawer gladiators battling away at the posts. Two more experienced gladiators were practicing throwing the weighted nets.

  My feet wanted to take me to the rack where the wooden swords waited, my hand remembering the weight and heft of them. I’d pick out a newer gladiator and force him to face me, teaching him how to survive by coming at him without mercy.

  Afterward, I might take the limping, bleeding lad to the nearest popina and relieve his pain with drink, but I wouldn’t go soft on him in the training yard. They either learned to fight back and hard, or they’d die on the day of the real games.

  I made myself not assess the net throwers on their skill or the swordsmen on their thrusts. I had been a secutor, fighting with a short sword, my left arm swathed in padded armor, but Aemil liked to train everyone in multiple areas in case a fighter was needed to replace a fallen one, so I’d had some experience as a retiarius.

  I strode into the dim interior of the building that held the gladiators’ cells. Most cells were empty, the men in the practice yard or lounging in the sun watching the training.

  I paused in front of a grated door that was closed and pushed it open.

  This had been my cell. I’d lived here the last two years I’d been with Aemil, and I knew every cranny of it. Regulus had taken over once I’d gone, and his spare tunics hung on pegs driven into the stone wall.

  I glanced at the ceiling. My best friend, Xerxes, had drawn erotic stick figures there as a joke one day, roaring with laughter when I’d laid down to sleep and the flame of my lamp had flickered over the drawings. I’d shouted, and Xerxes had nearly pissed himself with hilarity.

  I saw that Regulus had scratched most of them out. Only one remained, a gladiator with a large phallus chasing a maiden in the far corner, the rock there too rough for the marks to be easily erased.

  Anger burned in my stomach. I was slow to wrath, but any pity I’d had for Regulus vanished. He’d erased what Xerxes had made, destroying a part of the man I’d loved like a brother.

  I shouldn’t have looked. I slammed the door and strode on in rage.

  “Leonidas?” Marcianus called out to me as I passed the cell he used as his workshop.

  I halted, remembering my errand. Inside, Marcianus wrapped the splinted arm of a broad-shouldered young man who had the blond hair and large frame of those from the far north.

  “Praxus took a direct hit on his arm,” Marcianus said cheerfully. “Broke it clean through.”

  Praxus, who had joined the ludus after I’d left, was large and very young, with the vast confidence of a youth who thought nothing could defeat him. He winced as Marcianus tightened the bandage but kept up his air of bravado.

  “It’s not bad.” Praxus’s accent was thick, his Latin barely intelligible.

  “Train more with a shield or arm guard,” I advised him. “A broken bone will get you ejected from the arena. You won’t have a chance at prize money, and Aemil might make you haul water or slops until he thinks you’ve learned your lesson.”

  Praxus gazed at me in all seriousness. “Then I will practice, as you say.”

  “Not for some weeks,” Marcianus continued in his sunny tones. “This bone has to set. No training for you for a while. Why are you here, Leonidas? Come to assist me?”

  “To find the gladiators who’ve run off,” I said, not responding to his jest. “Did they mention to you where they were going? Ajax and Herakles, I mean.” I would simply look for Rufus at his home with his wife.

  Marcianus lost his smile. “I imagine it’s their business.”

  Marcianus did not approve of gladiators being penned in like animals. He enjoyed his job of patching them up, but he avowed that all gladiators should voluntarily join the life and be free to leave it when they wished. Many, like Rufus, did join as free men, hoping for fortune and fame, but most were bought at auction or given to the ludus in lieu of execution, as I had been.

  “Better I find them than Aemil,” I told him. “Or the urban cohorts.”

  “They haven’t been gone all that long, and there are no games scheduled,” Marcianus pointed out.

  “If they’re simply dicing or drinking, then Aemil can decide what to do.” I paused. “He seems worried.”

  Marcianus snorted. “If you are painting Aemil as a concerned mother hen, don’t. And leave the men be.”

  As I cast around for a way to pry the information from Marcianus, Praxus broke in.

  “Look for Herakles at a villa north of the Pons Agrippae,” Praxus said. “He told me of a great house there with a wine cellar the size of a theatre.”

  Both Marcianus and I turned to Praxus in surprise. The lad must be all of sixteen, tall and bulky, but with the lankiness of one who’d just grown into his body.

  “How do you know that?” Marcianus demanded. He finished tying off the bandage, his movements gentle, though I could see he wasn’t pleased with Praxus for giving me the information.

  “Herakles told me. He doesn’t talk to many, but he does to me. Probably because I’m not a Roman.”

  Most gladiators were from outside Rome, but Herakles must have taken to this young man from northern Germania, both of them coming from the very edges of the e
mpire.

  “Where exactly is this villa?” I asked him.

  Praxus propped one foot on the bunk, leaning against the wall behind him. “Across the river from the trigarium. One of the big houses on the hill on the western bank.”

  The trigarium was a track for chariot races. It was nowhere near the size of the Circus Maximus but was a place for training and smaller races.

  Marcianus’s face pinched in disapproval, but he said nothing as he folded away the rest of the bandages and mixed a concoction for Praxus to drink. “This will help with the pain,” Marcianus told him.

  Praxus scoffed. “I am fine.”

  Marcianus held the cup under his nose. “Maybe you are now, but when the shock wears off and you want to sleep, this will help. More sleep will heal you faster.”

  Praxus shrugged but took the cup. I’d drunk Marcianus’s potions before, and I was usually asleep within minutes.

  Praxus downed the liquid in one gulp. “Tastes foul.” He managed to give the cup back to Marcianus before slumping onto the bunk.

  I watched with detached interest as Praxus’s big body deflated, and his eyes closed. In the next moment, a snore emitted from his open mouth.

  Marcianus wiped out the cup and returned it to the shelf. “Hunt for Herakles and the others if you must, Leonidas. But say nothing to Aemil until you find out what they’re up to. No need for him to flog them if they’re only visiting their lovers.”

  “I would leave them to it.” I hesitated, wondering why I needed to explain myself to Marcianus. “But I need the fee Aemil has said he’ll pay.”

  “Your benefactor hasn’t showered you with riches yet?” Marcianus’s good humor began to return.

  “Not yet. If he—or she—ever will.” I had a few ideas about who my anonymous and rather stingy benefactor might be, but so far, I’d found out little. “I haven’t had a job in a few weeks, and if Cassia says our funds are dwindling, I believe her.”

  Marcianus’s face softened. “Cassia is a wise young woman. Give her my best, Leonidas.”

  Marcianus and Cassia had formed a friendship—both of them spoke fluent Greek and were well-read in the sciences and medicine. I imagined that Cassia found relief in speaking with Marcianus after days of living with an illiterate gladiator.

  “I’ll say nothing to Aemil until I know what’s become of them,” I promised. “If they simply show up for training tomorrow, he might go easier on them.”

  “Let us hope so. Good day to you, Leonidas.”

  I returned the goodbye and left Marcianus, who was always cordial. Behind me, Praxus snored on.

  I walked along the colonnade, avoiding my old cell, and departed through the gate. Septimius bade me a good-natured farewell, his annoyance with Regulus gone.

  The gate clanged behind me with finality. Inside was a life and routine I’d known for years. Outside was uncertainty, the scramble to make enough money to feed myself and Cassia. My new life, like the one I’d left, could end just as suddenly.

  I was not certain which was better.

  I decided to search for Ajax first, turning my steps toward the brothels of the Subura. I knew the Subura well, having spent plenty of time there at a lupinarius run by a woman called Floriana. That house was empty now, the women gone, but I knew of other places.

  The Pons Agrippae was busy as I crossed it, people hurrying both away from Rome or into it, wanting to be indoors when darkness fell. In Februarius, the sun set near the twelfth hour, and by the looks of the sky, it was close to that.

  I glanced upstream as I went. Villas lined the Tiber, with terraced gardens flowing down toward the river. Which had Herakles gone to?

  The current of Romans took me with them to the Campus Martius. During daylight, I would have simply cut through the Campus to avoid the crowds in the forums, but at night, it was better to stay in more congested areas.

  It was already twilight by the time I turned south past the Theatre of Pompey and the Campus Flaminius. I continued with the throng around the Capitoline Hill, the crowd thinning somewhat as I neared the Forum Romanum, as business there had concluded for the day.

  Usually, I’d make my way northward from the Forum up the hill to the small lane where I lived. Cassia would be home, laying out things for our supper, making notes on her tablets, singing some ballad under her breath.

  Our life had settled into a routine—Cassia fetched water and food for our meals, then spent time after breakfast going through our accounts and deciding how much I needed to charge on my next job. I’d go to the Forum and skulk about, looking for men who might need a guard. Sometimes I was successful, sometimes not. I’d then adjourn to the baths and to exercise to keep myself fit, as I had today, before returning to find Aemil at my table.

  I wanted more than anything to go to the apartment now, to eat my lentil stew and greens and any sweet treat Cassia had found on her way home. I’d listen to her talk about who she’d spoken to that day and what was happening in Rome—Cassia always seemed to know.

  My compulsion to tramp that way made my limbs ache as I turned away and continued along the base of the Quirinal to the Subura.

  Most people feared walking here in the dark, but I’d done so many a night. I passed the building that used to contain Floriana’s lupinarius. Most of the house had been pulled down, and the shops replacing it were still under construction.

  Passing Floriana’s made me think of my friend Gnaeus Gallus, an architectus. He’d once offered to take me on as his assistant, but I hadn’t accepted. First, because I doubted he could pay more than the bodyguard work, and second, I wasn’t certain about returning to the remnants of my old life—the one before the ludus. Walking onto a building site was bittersweet for me.

  A painting of a nude woman pursued by a satyr adorned the wall of the next lupinarius along. Men gathered outside the door, clumping together nervously as they waited their turn.

  “Leonidas! Who are you choosing tonight?” A burly man I’d seen many times at Floriana’s hailed me in recognition.

  I shrugged, which made him laugh, probably thinking I’d line up the ladies and pick who I wanted. I threaded my way through the men and ducked under the low lintel and inside.

  “We’re full.” A woman in a garish red wig, curled like the best patrician matron’s, skewered me with a glare. “Oh, it’s Leonidas. I haven’t seen you in these parts for months. Too good for us now, are you?”

  She snapped her retort in all seriousness. I’d been a well-paying customer, though I’d preferred Floriana’s.

  “I’m looking for Ajax.” I saw no reason to lead up to my question.

  “Not here.”

  The woman turned away, finished with me. I caught her arm, which earned me a scowl and a hand raised to slap before I released her.

  “It is important. Has he been here in the last four days?”

  “Of course, he has. Couldn’t be rid of him, but at least he paid. He left last night.”

  “Do you know where he went?”

  “No.” Her kohl-lined dark eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Why should I? Why are you asking?”

  I decided not to explain. “If Ajax returns, tell him I’m looking for him and to come to me on the Quirinal.”

  “I’m no one’s messenger.”

  The woman turned away again. I caught her once more, but this time, I held a sestertius in front of her pinched face.

  “Tell him.” I pressed the coin into her hand and let her go.

  I would have asked which lady he’d spent the most time with, but the cubicles were all occupied, and from the ecstatic shouts and groans drifting from behind the curtains, busy.

  I left the house, aiming for the next one.

  “That was quick,” the burly man called out with a laugh. “Well met, Leonidas.” I answered him with a wave of my hand.

  I had a similar result in the next lupinarius. Ajax had visited it two nights before, but no one had seen him since. Here, I was able to talk to the women who’d been w
ith him. Ajax had been his usual robust self, the ladies told me, then declared he was going to another house when he departed, as he had plenty of energy still.

  Probably he’d gone to the first house I’d checked. I thanked the women, distributing a few as to them and to the madam who ran the place, and left them.

  I continued my walk. It was fully dark now, and I had no light to guide me, except the few feeble oil lamps that flickered here and there in doorways. Pinpricks of light guided higher-born men through the area, but most of the respectable were either at home or taking supper at the house of another well-born family. Those in the Subura either were here for the brothels or hurrying through on their way someplace else.

  One such party, led by a wary guard with a lantern, came up behind me. Lictors carried bundles of short spears over their shoulders, hardening their faces to all. Two plump-bodied patricians, purple stripes on their togas, walked surrounded by their retinue, talking loudly as though not afraid of passing through these streets after dark.

  I had to step into a side passageway to let them by. The lane was narrow and inky, and I pressed myself into a wall to wait.

  My sandal landed on something that gave a faint metal clank. It could be anything—a discarded cup, a spent lantern, a stray bit of coin.

  Unusual for the Subura. Anything metal, especially coin, was snatched up, hoarded, or sold at the nearest market.

  As the lantern-bearer swept by, the beam of his flame glanced across what was at my feet.

  I went very still. The lantern-bearer rushed on, the lictors and patricians leaving a breeze in their wake.

  I’d seen, in that brief moment, the gleam of light on the bronze helmet of a gladiator, the grating on the eyeholes dark and silent. Next to it lay an arm gripping the small shield of a secutor. Behind that, I’d seen two legs encased in bronze shin guards decorated with the reliefs of a fighting man. None of these limbs were attached to the trunk which bore a loincloth and nothing else.