To Be Wolves, page 28
“I will be back,” said Pomponia. “I miss my sisters and friends. I miss my estate too. It is so peaceful compared to Rome. And my slave writes that my vineyard has produced the best grapes in years.”
“Don’t worry about your wine barrels,” Cossinia replied. “The rest of us will take care of those.”
Pomponia leaned against Cossinia affectionately. “You have been a great help to me. When you return to Tivoli, the temple there will benefit from the way you’ve helped manage this crisis here in Rome.”
“I’ve already been working on some protocols so that we are better prepared for a contagion should it strike our town,” said Cossinia. “The crisis at the temple in Africa has also inspired me to make sure we are prepared for anything. Our sisters may not be happy to see me return, such is the work I will bring with me.”
“They will be happy beyond words,” said Pomponia. “And you know it. Now look, sisters, Taurus takes the stage.”
The wall and the seats in the stadium shook as thousands of spectators jumped to their feet, applauding and shouting excitedly at the appearance of Taurus on the arena floor. He walked with his arms extended and his eyes wide with the drama of it all until he stood before the emperor’s balcony.
“Great Caesar!” He bowed and then turned to the private box of the Vestals. “Blessed priestesses, welcome!” His arms and eyes went wider as he spun in a slow circle on the sand-covered floor of the arena to address the masses of spectators that wrapped around him. “My fellow Romans,” he shouted, “the great boxer Thracius, having killed all fighting men in Capua, continues his reign of terror in Rome. How will he fare today? Will his luck and his winning streak finally end?”
An earsplitting roar of excitement rose up like a roll of thunder. Taurus pumped his arms up and down, gesturing for the uproar to cease. “We will soon find out! But first, dear friends, we must say goodbye to another great athlete from Capua, one whose scandalous death was as fascinating as his life . . . Scorpus the Titan!”
At that, a Scorpus look-alike charged out of the gate and onto the arena floor, riding the very chariot that Scorpus the Titan had ridden in the Circus Maximus. Its blue metal surface gleamed in the sunlight while the iridescent black scorpions on its veneer seemed to crawl this way and that, depending on how the light struck them.
The look-alike raised one clenched fist to the cheering crowd, while the other gripped the reins to control the four white horses that pulled the chariot. His resemblance to the famous charioteer was remarkable—strikingly tall, muscular, handsome, and confident, dressed in a rich blue tunica and wearing a helmet inlaid with gold.
He could not have looked less like the real Scorpus the Titan who sat on the highest tier of the amphitheater and watched the dramatics below with only the mildest of interest.
His beard was sticky with wine and neglect, and his tunica was in even rougher shape. He sat hunched over to hide his height and that, combined with the loss of muscle and bulk he had suffered over the previous months, stripped away his most recognizable features. His face was drawn, and he looked little like his former self.
The four white horses pulled the brilliant blue chariot in a lap around the arena. As it came to a stop near the spot where Taurus stood, he again pumped his arms to quell the surge of shouts and the stomping of feet.
Suddenly a horn sounded. It was a strange sound, sad and despairing, as if rising from the depths of Hades. Which, of course, is exactly how Taurus wanted it to sound. As it wailed, the black-robed figure of the ferryman Charon—a frequent visitor to Taurus’s amphitheater—moved ominously toward the double, approaching the unsuspecting charioteer from behind.
The spectators began to cry out. “Scorpus, turn around!” “Look behind you, Scorpus!” “Scorpus, you fool, watch your ass!”
But it was not to be. Charon gripped the long handle of his death oar and struck the charioteer with it. He howled out in mock pain, then stumbled out of his gleaming blue chariot to stagger a few steps this way and that, faltering and almost falling with every step, his exaggerated dramatics eliciting laughter and applause from the crowd.
As he floundered, another chariot entered the arena from the gate. This one was black, tattered, and pulled by four equally black and tattered-looking horses. It seemed to move on its own, without a driver.
“Oh, what a tragedy!” Taurus shouted as he pointed to the black horses. “What a sad story that you, dear Scorpus, should be called so prematurely to harness the dusky steeds of Pluto!”
The look-alike shuffled through the sand, lumbering toward the decrepit chariot of death. He pulled himself inside, taking care to not step on the dwarf man who held a hidden set of reins within. He gripped the reins and called out, “Mighty steeds of Pluto, take me to your master in the underworld!”
The chariot lurched forward, moving toward a gate in the stadium’s encircling wall. The figure of Charon walked behind, waving his death oar threateningly at the crowd. “Mors omnem ludum vincit!” the ferryman called out. Death wins every race.
The death chariot disappeared through the gate, and the crowd sprang to its feet, erupting in applause. The real Scorpus scratched his beard and then clapped from the highest tier in the stadium.
Far below, in the private box of the Vestal priestesses, Pomponia also clapped. She risked a glance at Soren. She was curious—what would he think of this? No doubt the scandal with Scorpus was a sore spot for him. To her disappointment, he seemed unmoved and was chatting idly with a magistrate. Anchises sat rigidly beside him, nodding pleasantly to a senator who was standing over him and relating what, even from a distance, she could tell was a tedious anecdote. It was unusual for a slave to be granted access to upper-class areas, but the singer’s celebrity among Rome’s elite meant that Soren often had him in tow.
And then something in Anchises’s demeanor changed. His back straightened and the accommodating smile on his face fell into a stiff frown. On the floor of the arena just below him, several arena slaves were positioning tall torches in a circle, when Thracius emerged naked from an unseen door in the wall and walked heavily toward the torch-lined boxing ring. His leather caestus were wrapped around the knuckles of both hands.
Behind him followed two women dressed in white stolas and wearing Vestal-like veils. Each pseudo-priestess held a shallow bronze bowl from which incense sent up thick coils of smoke into the air.
Taurus opened his arms. “Caesar, blessed priestesses of Vesta, and my fellow Romans,” he called out again, “Soren Calidius Pavo, owner of the boxer Thracius, wishes to pay tribute to his cousin, our beloved Priestess Tuccia, on this day which would have marked the thirty-ninth year of her life.”
Pomponia gripped the fabric of her stola and clenched it in her hands.
“With all honors to our Vestalis Maxima Pomponia and with all devotion to the Vestal order of Rome,” said Taurus, “Soren Calidius Pavo hereby renames this slave Ignis! Ignis, for the fire that the great goddess ignites in our hearts! Ignis, for the sacred fire that Priestess Tuccia guarded for our sakes! Ignis, the name of fire itself!”
The crowd emitted a collective gasp of emotion. Manic applause. And then thousands of voices began to chant “Ignis! Ignis! Ignis!”
Pomponia looked at Soren. He was on his feet and standing as smugly as any human being could stand. He stared at her expectantly, and she could read his thoughts: You have no choice but to stand and acknowledge me before everyone here, before Caesar, before all Rome.
She felt Quintina’s hand on her shoulder. “Keep calm, sister,” she said into Pomponia’s ear. “Do your duty. We will deal with him later.”
Soren saw a gracious smile spread across the chief Vestal’s lips. He saw her stand and nod in gratitude to him. He bowed his head to her, and then after she took her seat again, he did the same.
Horns sounded and Thracius’s—Ignis’s—hulking opponent appeared on the arena floor. He strode with his hefty arms in the air to the boxing ring of fire, within which Thracius stood waiting. Both fighters turned to the emperor’s balcony, and Thracius’s opponent saluted Caesar shouting, “Ave, Caesar!”
Octavian raised himself off the Tyrian-purple cushion of his high-backed chair and returned the salute. “Avete,” he answered. Fare you well.
Thracius’s opponent made the first move. Thracius held his forearms in front of his face to absorb a few fast blows to the head and felt the flesh on his forearms separate. Unlike the caestus around his own hands, his opponent’s knuckle wraps were outfitted with some kind of cutting metal inserts. Thracius wasn’t surprised. He had yet to fight an opponent in Rome who wasn’t given an advantage.
He parried his opponent’s wide swings and then, in a move the crowd loved, caught the man’s fist in his palm and thrust his arm forward so that the man struck himself in the face. A swell of laughter went up.
The other boxer stepped back with an angry roar and then came at Thracius with his legs, kicking while Thracius backed up and also started to laugh. “Are you a man or a donkey?” he asked his opponent. The audience howled in amusement and stamped their feet. Some pretended to bray like a donkey, while others again chanted “Ignis! Ignis! Ignis!”
But then his opponent got serious. He took a step back and eyed Thracius head to toe. He spat in the sand. He lifted his arms and advanced with a cross punch that had such power behind it that Thracius could hear it move through the air. It landed squarely on his jaw, followed by an uppercut to his chin. The metal inserts cut into his flesh, and blood ran down his neck.
Thracius bit his tongue and cursed himself as he spat out blood. He lowered his head and bobbed around the other fighter, blocking a jab and countering with a series of rapid kidney punches that momentarily knocked the wind out of his opponent.
The other boxer spun and stumbled back but quickly recovered. Fists raised, he sprang at Thracius and bobbed and weaved around him, the two of them exchanging a series of punches and counterpunches that had the crowd of thousands on its feet.
Thracius coughed. His mouth was filling with blood from his injured tongue. He spat a mouthful of blood at the other fighter, who stepped back for a moment but then rushed him, head down, striking Thracius in the midsection with his skull like a battering ram striking a fortified door. Thracius felt the man lock a viselike grip around one of his legs and try to lift it but, before he lost his footing, he managed to bend over his opponent’s back and wrap his own arms around the man’s neck from above.
With his head pinned down, Thracius’s opponent nevertheless managed to land several solid, lacerating punches to Thracius’s back and midsection. In response, Thracius kneed him in the face. He felt the man’s nasal bone collapse and then warm blood oozing down his leg from the injury.
Thracius pushed the man away and rushed at him with a flurry of straight, powerful punches that he, his opponent, and every spectator in the amphitheater knew would not stop until the man was dead. Thracius’s opponent wobbled on his feet and collapsed where he stood to land in a bloody heap on the sand.
He thought he might be imagining it, but to Thracius it seemed like the sand at his feet was almost vibrating, such was the force of the reverberation caused by the shouts and stomping of the stadium’s spectators. He spat another mouthful of blood into the sand as the arena slaves dragged the man’s corpse from the stadium.
Above him, on the emperor’s balcony, Anchises allowed himself to exhale. Soren smirked and looked at Caesar—no doubt he had been entertained. The proud owner frowned, however, when he saw that Caesar wasn’t even looking at the boxer.
An elderly magistrate, one Soren had been speaking with earlier, was now whispering into the emperor’s ear while pointing at a man who sat in the seats just beyond the balcony. Caesar’s attention was riveted to the man. He twisted in his seat and called over a centurion guard.
The centurion nodded as he received his instructions, locked his eyes on the targeted man, and then left the balcony with two other guards.
By now, everyone’s attention had shifted away from the arena floor and on to whatever was developing in the stands above it. The three armor-clad guards approached the man. Pushing aside his red soldier’s cloak, one of the guards gripped the man by his toga and pulled him out of his seat, dragging him unceremoniously toward the exit.
Caesar stood. “My friends,” he called out, “I have been informed that this man, called Eulalius, is one of the many who committed adultery with my disowned daughter, Julia. He will answer for his crime right now!”
As the crowd ruminated excitedly, the three guards appeared below them on the floor of the arena, one of them still dragging the man named Eulalius by his toga. The guard threw him at Thracius’s feet before he and the other two soldiers backed away.
Eulalius raised his hand in a feeble defensive gesture and blinked bewilderedly up at the boxer, turning his head slowly to survey the cheering crowd that encircled them. His eyes stopped at the spot where he had been sitting. Thracius followed his stare to see two teenaged boys standing, their mouths hanging open in shock.
“Get up and fight,” said Thracius. “You don’t want your sons to see you die a coward.”
“I don’t know how to fight,” the man stuttered.
“You’ve hit your slaves, haven’t you?” Thracius asked. “Sure you have. Pretend I’m one of your slaves. Come on, I’ll let you land a few so your boys don’t remember their father as a sniveling woman.” The boxer shrugged his shoulders. “That’s all that’s left to you, brother.”
The man opened his mouth stupidly and shook his head up at Thracius.
The boxer sighed. “If you don’t stand up, you’ll die on the ground. Don’t think about it. Just get up. The sooner it’s over, the better.”
The man stood. He spread his legs in something that almost resembled a fighting stance and held his trembling fists in front of his face.
Thracius spat yet another mouthful of blood into the sand—his damn tongue wouldn’t stop bleeding—and raised his fists. He bobbed back and forth in front of Eulalius and then threw a fast punch, pulling it at the last second so it landed softly on the man’s jaw.
Eulalius stumbled backward. Thracius gave him a moment to recover. He didn’t fully, but whatever instincts were within him finally kicked in, and he ran at Thracius, swinging madly and landing punches that Thracius imagined the man’s slaves laughed about behind his back.
Thracius leaned his head back and pretended to fall down: he wasn’t sure if the crowd was cheering or laughing at his act. Either way, Eulalius began to punch and kick wildly at him while he slowly lifted himself to his feet. And then in one swift motion, he punched the man hard in the face. He fell back like a stiff board, blood spurting from his nose and mouth. He was dead before he hit the sand.
The crowd was in a near frenzy now. The stone and wood boards of the stadium’s huge encircling wall vibrated from the noise. The games were always entertaining, but this kind of violent human drama was pure bliss.
Yet it presented Caesar with a problem. A slave had just killed a nobleman. Yes, it was on Caesar’s order, but still . . .
He waved one of the guards on the arena floor closer, and the man ran to stand just below the emperor’s balcony. He took off his helmet and looked up at the emperor. Caesar shouted down to him, “Kill the boxer.”
The guard turned to look at Thracius. Damn it, he thought. I liked him. He called back up to the emperor. “Yes, Caesar. Do you have a preference?”
Octavian’s eyes fell on the burning torches that outlined the boxing ring. “Burn him,” he ordered.
The guard put his helmet back on and jerked his head to his two subordinates. Let’s get this over with.
Each of them grabbed a tall burning torch and cautiously approached Thracius with it. If they thought the boxer was going to put up a fight, however, they were wrong. Thracius was a man who took his own advice. The sooner it’s over, the better. As the soldiers moved in on him, he simply stood and searched the stands for Anchises.
He stopped searching when the first torch scalded his flesh. Two more followed. The guards stabbed at him randomly, exchanging baffled looks with each other—the boxer wore no clothes and his hair was cut to the scalp. It was hard to actually set him on fire. Instead, his skin just burned and blackened in the areas the torches touched.
One of the guards had an idea. He rushed to the body of Eulalius and fumbled until he had removed the man’s heavy toga, leaving him sprawled on the sand wearing only a short tunica.
He returned to Thracius who was now backed against the wall of the arena and dropped the toga at his feet. They all stabbed their torches into the fabric, and it caught fire with a whoosh. Thracius cried out in agony.
And then the crowd began to cry out too. Shouts of “Let him live!” rose up to shake the stands. People were on their feet, clutching their heads in dismay and pointing at Thracius, whose lower body had caught on fire. “Let him live, let him live!”
Octavian slumped his shoulders. It was a rare occurrence, but he had misjudged the crowd. They liked Ignis. He flared his nostrils in irritation. I wouldn’t have done it if Maecenas were here today, he thought. Maecenas never misjudges a crowd.
In the Vestal box next to his balcony, Pomponia’s chest was tight with dread. Anchises was rising to his feet, and she knew what would happen next: he would cry out and in his panic, maybe even try to jump down into the arena, but he would be caught, and Caesar would have him killed as well. It would be a double spectacle: Apollo’s Pair, meeting Hades together in horror.
Yet the crowd’s vocal displeasure with Thracius’s execution and Caesar’s self-reproaching expression emboldened her. She stood up. “Caesar,” she called out, “your faithful priestess begs you to spare this man’s life.”
