The air around Arria acquired a strange weight. It pressed down upon her so hard that she could not lift her feet, or her arms, or even her head, which slumped along with her shoulders in a reflection of her father’s own miserable posture.
She watched beneath heavy lids as her father and the gold-toothed man discussed their wager. Soon they were met by a third man—a scribe. The sober old documentarian scratched hastily upon a scroll, then offered the men his quill. Her father signed the scroll and gripped the gold-toothed man’s arm for a third time.
The bet had been made. Arria had been staked.
She felt tears falling unbidden down her cheeks. There were too many tears. Her handkerchief was not big enough to absorb them all.
‘Die well, gladiators!’ said the ringmaster.
Who was she supposed to pray for now?
Surely the Beast, for only a fool would have bet on the little man with the swinging tail. Even now, the howling Satyr was retreating from the Beast, kicking up sand and scratching at the arena walls. When the two finally engaged, the Beast quickly knocked the sword from the goat-man’s hand.
‘Kill the Satyr! Kill the Satyr!’ the crowd chanted.
It appeared that her father was chanting along with them.
Thank the gods—he had bet on the Beast. For once he had made a sound judgement. Perhaps he even stood to regain what he had lost. Arria could only send a prayer to Fortuna to make it so.
The Beast had the Satyr pinned to the wall and Arria could already feel the weight of the air beginning to lift. She glanced at her father. His eyebrows arched hopefully and his wrinkled old mouth was bowed up into a grin.
Strangely, the gold-toothed man was smiling, too.
That was when Satyr thrust his finger into the Beast’s chest wound. The Beast stumbled to the ground in howling agony and released his sword. The Satyr placed his hoof upon the Beast’s bloody chest, pausing above him for the death blow.
Stunned, the spectators fell silent. The champion was about to lose, right before their eyes. Arria strained to believe her own. Something was not right. The Beast would never have lost control of his sword as he had done. Even Arria could see that he was too experienced to make such an error.
The Beast raised two fingers—the traditional entreaty for mercy.
Was it obvious to no one but her? The Beast had deliberately lost.
‘Mitte! Mitte!’ the crowd thundered. Spare him! All eyes turned to the governor, who gave a simple bow of the head. Mercy. His chest wound still leaking blood, the Beast lumbered to his feet and Arria found herself searching for his gaze. But he kept his head bowed as the ringmaster raised the Satyr’s hand into the air. ‘Romans, I give you Felix the Satyr, your winner.’
Arria should have been relieved. The Beast’s life had been spared. For once this terrible night, mercy had triumphed over bloodlust. But injustice had triumphed, too, for the Beast had deliberately succumbed to the Satyr and Arria had been sold into slavery as a result.
She gazed across the ring. Her new owner was already assessing her. His eyes scraped over her: her hair, her breasts, her arms. He was regarding her physical form just as the bettors had regarded the gladiators’. No, no, no. This could not be.
Desperation seized her. ‘The Beast deliberately relinquished the fight!’ she shouted without thinking. ‘Did nobody see it? The outcome was fixed before the act! You have all been cheated! Robbed!’
Now it was not just the gold-toothed man’s eyes on her. It seemed that every single man gathered around the Chasm of Death had turned his attention to Arria—including the governor.
Oh, gods, what had she done? The governor gave a tight-lipped command, and soon his guards were pushing towards her from the left edge of the arena. From the right, her father and her new master were nearing, as well. The pit sprawled below her. The distance to the ground appeared to be three body lengths or more. There was only one direction in which she could flee—back into the bustling crowd.
But when she turned around she was confronted with a large guard smiling down at her through a mouthful of wine-stained teeth. It was the guard from the entry. He had pursued her, it seemed, and now he had her trapped. ‘Now you really owe me a favour,’ he growled.
She was surrounded on three sides, and there was only one option for escape. She closed her eyes, swung her legs over the edge of the pit and jumped.
‘Criminal!’ commanded the governor.
‘Harlot!’ hissed the entry guard.
‘Daughter!’ shouted her father.
The shouts grew fainter and she knew that she was falling through the air towards a very hard end. And then it came. Thunk. Her legs buckled, her arms, too, and when she looked up she half expected to find herself upon the shores of the River Styx. Instead she was wallowing in the bloodstained sand. There beside her lay the Beast’s fallen gladius.
She commanded her hands to seize the sword and, miraculously, they obeyed. Her legs obeyed her, too, and as she struggled to her feet she became aware of the riotous crowd. ‘Gladiatrix! Gladiatrix!’ they chanted.
Above her, two of the governor’s guards were already straddling the arena wall, preparing to jump in after her. The crowd was taunting them, daring them to take the plunge, and out of the corner of her eye Arria could see more coins changing hands. The men were making bets. On her.
The governor shouted down at the ringmaster. ‘Seize her, you fool!’
The ringmaster stepped towards Arria.
‘Stay back!’ she hissed, slashing the heavy gladius through the air. The ringmaster stepped backwards. He turned to the Beast.
‘You heard the governor,’ the ringmaster shouted at the Beast. ‘You seize her!’
Arria waited for the towering gladiator to make his charge, but he only stood and stared, a rueful smile twisting his lips. He shook his head, and glanced above them. ‘You would do well to run,’ he said.
The governor’s guards were perched at the rim of the pit and preparing themselves to pounce. The tunnel loomed before her: dark, terrifying and her only hope. She dropped the sword, kicked up a cloud of dust and dashed through the iron gate.
She found herself surrounded by a prison of stone. A long, dimly lit hallway stretched past several empty, iron-barred cells. There was the smell of blood and moss, and the sound of dripping water, though she could not determine whence it came.
Drip, drip, drip.
She heard a shout from the arena and a thud upon the sand. Doubtless the first guard had made his jump. Arria could hear him coughing and shouting obscenities while the crowd coaxed him on. Think, Arria.
She seized the nearest torch, shaking it to extinction. She did the same with the other torches until she had plunged the barracks into complete darkness.
Reaching the end of the hall, she pushed against a heavy stone door. Incredibly, it gave way. An exit. She felt a rush of fresh air and paused. The guards would expect her to escape through this door and they would come after her on legs faster than hers.
Think.
She left the door open, then stepped backwards.
She could hear the slap of the guards’ sandals upon the stones now. They were moving down the dark hallway, getting closer to her by the second. They stopped suddenly, listening for her.
Drip, drip, drip.
Cal heard a splash in the large water urn outside his cell. If he had not known better, he would have thought it a drowning mouse.
‘That was a remarkable show you gave us tonight,’ called Felix the Satyr from the adjacent cell.
‘Well, of course it was,’ Cal replied. ‘For I am the Empire’s finest gladiator.’
‘I am not talking about you, idiot,’ said Felix. ‘I am talking about the woman who has taken up residence in our barracks. Do you not see her there? You need only stand up and peer into the urn across from your cell.’
Cal stretched out on his bed and closed his eyes. In truth, he did not care if Venus herself had taken up residence across from his cell. All he wanted was a little rest before the arrival of his promised reward.
‘I hope she knows that she will not escape this ludus by cowering like a kitten all night,’ Felix mused. ‘If she is going to escape at all, she must leave while darkness reigns.’
There was a long silence and Cal was sure he heard another splash of water.
‘Why does she continue to conceal herself?’ mused Felix.
Because she is a Roman woman, thought Cal. And thus nourishes herself on the melodramatic.
Cal rubbed his bald head. When he had first caught sight of the woman that evening, he had half believed her an illusion—some vision of divinity foreshadowing his own death. In his three years at this ludus, he had never once seen a woman attend the pit fights and thus naturally assumed she had come for him—his personal escort to the Otherworld.
But the fights had gone exactly as planned. He had killed his first two opponents, then taken the fall, just as Brutus, his owner and trainer, had instructed. The governor granted mercy, just as Cal had been told he would, and the governor, Brutus and Brutus’s gold-toothed brother Oppius had all made large sums of denarii on the outcome. It had been business as usual at Ludus Brutus that night, with no chance of a trip to the Otherworld after all.
He should have known she was not divine. When he had glanced up at her that second time, he had noticed her appearance and it was about as far from divine as a woman could get. Her tunic was tattered, her expression was pinched and worried, and a distinct spatter of blood stained her shapely lower legs.
Though it was not her appearance that had finally convinced him of her mortality, it was what happened to her cheeks when she looked at him. A dark crimson hue had spread over the twin mounds and down her neck to the notch at its base. There, a tiny relentlessly pulsing drum of skin had betrayed her racing heart. He had been able to see it even from his position in the pit.
He never tired of witnessing it—the effect he had on Roman women. First came the blush, then the shudder, and then the look of fascinated derision, as if the woman were witnessing the incarnation of her darkest, most forbidden thoughts.
He was like a strange food from a foreign land: they all wanted to try a sample. And though this particular Roman woman was one of the loveliest he had yet seen, he was not so foolish as to let her stir his lust. Roman women were all alike in his experience. They were selfish, bored creatures who used gladiators like men used whores.
Pah! He had only a few nights left upon this earth. He did not wish to waste his thoughts on a Roman woman.
‘We are locked in our cells if that is what you are afraid of, sweetheart,’ called Felix. ‘And even if we were not locked in, you would have nothing to fear. Why not emerge from the urn where you are hiding and dry yourself? We promise not to watch. You see, we are honourable men.’
Still more silence. Then, finally, ‘You are not honourable men.’
It was as if she had spent the last few hours sharpening the words upon a whetstone.
‘We die to honour Rome, my dear,’ said Felix, his tone thick.
She pulled herself from the vessel with feline grace. ‘You die to honour profit.’
He craned his head and saw her shadowy figure lifting the skirt of her tunic and squeezing it back into the urn.
Felix cackled. ‘You wield your tongue as well as you do a gladius.’
‘And you wield your boasting as well as you do your deceit.’
Cal smiled to himself. Perhaps what she lacked in judgement she made up for in wit.
She jumped in place, apparently attempting to dry herself. Finally she drifted beneath the torchlight near Cal’s cell and he gave her a glance.
Her efforts to squeeze herself dry had been for naught. She was still dripping wet. Her large dark eyes blinked beneath thick, water-clumped lashes that glistened in the torchlight and played off her ebony hair, which had come loose from its braid in places in small, distracting spirals. Worse, the top of her threadbare tunic was soaked through, giving a full view of her breast wrap, which was itself so thin that he could see the dark shadows of her nipples beneath it.
He had never seen anything so erotic in all his life. Her big, blinking eyes, her bouncing curls, her small, shapely breasts and thinly veiled nipples: perhaps she was divine after all. Maybe she was the very naiad that had been painted on the urn itself, come to kiss him with her sultry lips.
Although those sultry lips were currently twisted into a Medusan scowl. ‘You deliberately succumbed to the Satyr,’ she accused Cal. She stepped forward and gripped the bars of Cal’s cell gate. ‘Do you deny it?’
Cal did not look her in the eye for fear he might turn to stone. ‘Do you not have some escaping to do?’ he asked.
‘I asked you a question.’ She folded her arms over her bosom and that was a shame. But he could still observe how her skirt clung tightly to the shape of her thighs. She was lovely, female and completely without defence. Did she not understand how quickly he was able to move? That he could simply jump to his feet, pull her body against the bars and have his way?
‘You say nothing because you know that I speak truth,’ she spat. ‘You deliberately succumbed to the Satyr, though it was obvious that you were the better fighter.’
Cal grinned. ‘Did you hear that, Felix?’ he called. ‘She said I am the better fighter.’
‘Rubbish,’ replied Felix.
‘Your second opponent had expected to die,’ she continued. ‘I saw him begging you for a merciful death.’
‘And I damn well gave it to him,’ he grumbled.
He did not wish to think of the Syrian’s death. The man had been a farmer, not a fighter. He had been purchased by Brutus only weeks ago—a field hand who had been put up for sale as a punishment for attempting an escape. He had not been a bad man—not like most of the gladiators who came in and out of Ludus Brutus. Still, the governor had decreed his death and the governor had to be obeyed.
‘So you admit it?’ she pressed.
‘Admit what?’
‘That you deceived everyone.’
Why were Roman women so unrelenting? ‘I admit nothing.’
‘The only true fight was the first one,’ she observed. ‘You relieved the Ox of his head with little effort.’ She pushed her face between the bars. ‘You lie there acting as if you are proud of your deception. They call you Beast, but in truth you are a snake.’
Ha! If only he were a snake. Then he could slither through the bars of his cell and devour her whole. Surely that would shut her up.
Her scowl deepened and he waited in dull irritation for her next accusation. Would she remind him of the gladiator’s sacred oath, perhaps? Or would she explain the Roman code of honour and then recite it for him ad nauseum while she shook her little plebeian finger at his nose?
‘You defied the gods,’ she spat.
‘Which gods? Whose?’
‘You ruined my father.’
‘Your father ruined your father.’ This was almost as diverting as swordplay.
‘I know that you are famous,’ she said. ‘I have heard your name at the baths and seen it scrawled in graffiti. Why would you deliberately destroy your own reputation by rolling beneath the Satyr’s blade?’
‘And what of my reputation?’ Felix called cheerfully. ‘Have you also heard it spoken at the baths?’
‘And mine?’ called another gladiator from down the hall.
But the woman paid the other gladiators no mind. She seemed bent on making Cal alone suffer.
‘Do you think I care a wink for my reputation?’ Cal asked mildly, but her scowl remained fixed, as if she had not heard him.
Typical. In his experience, Roman women never heard what they did not wish to hear, never did what they did not wish to do and rarely saw beyond their own toes.
She was staring down at her own toes now, as if they alone could tell her everything she wished to know about what had happened that night. ‘By the gods, it was all theatre!’ she exclaimed at last. ‘All of it! You were told to kill the German spectacularly and that is what you did. And the Syrian knew he was going to die before he even set foot upon the sands. Those first two bouts were designed for you to win the crowd’s favour so that they would call for mercy when the time came. Your lanista knew it. The ringmaster knew it...’
She gazed up at the stone ceiling, thinking, and Cal observed the elegant length of her neck. ‘Even the governor knew it! And the gold-toothed merchant—he knew it, too. That is why he smiled when you had the Satyr at the tip of your blade. He already knew you were going to lose.’
Cal did not know whether to be impressed or furious. He settled for a smirk. ‘You are remarkably perceptive for one so naive,’ he said.
‘I am not naive.’
‘Your denial of your own naivety is itself naive.’
‘You speak in knots. I assure you that I am quite the opposite of naive.’
‘And what is that exactly?’
She paused, searching the air, and he observed the fine cut of her jaw. ‘Un-naive.’
‘Your cleverness slays me.’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘You are clearly trying to distract from admitting to your deception.’
Her accusations were growing tedious. Fortunately, he knew how to shut her up. ‘And you are trying to distract from admitting that you wish to lie with me.’
The woman gasped. And there it was, that look of fascinated derision—though on her face it more closely resembled straightforward disgust. ‘That is absurd,’ she snapped, then added, ‘The very thought is an abhorrence.’
An abhorrence? Well, at least she was original. ‘I know you want me.’
‘I want nothing to do with you. You are a mon—’
She bit her lip.
‘A what?’
‘Nothing.’
‘I know what you are thinking.’ You think me a monster.
‘You cannot read my thoughts,’ she said.
‘I know you are Roman and that is all I need to know.’
‘You know nothing about me.’
‘Nothing about you?’ His mind churned. ‘Let me see. You illegally shoved your way into a house of men. Only an innocent would be so stupid. You either have no brothers to act on your behalf, or if you do have a brother, he is useless.’
A small cringe. A glance at the ground.
‘Ah, so you do have a useless brother,’ he continued gleefully, ‘and his very mention causes you pain. Probably returned from one of Domitian’s foolish campaigns? A drunkard, perhaps?’
Her pink lips pressed into a thin red line.
‘Your father, too, is useless, for he is the kind of man who must be followed by his own daughter to the pits. He has plunged your family into ruin, has he not? And you pity yourself mightily for it. Pah! You are fortunate he has not sold you into servitude.’
Her face turned an unnatural shade of grey.
Had her father sold her into servitude?
‘I curse you,’ she spat suddenly. ‘I curse you and this ludus and everyone in it, but you most of all.’
He spouted a laugh—a hearty, deep-throated laugh that nearly split his chest wound. He swung his legs to the side of his bed and stood, watching her take in the sight of him. He had not washed or changed out of his fighting kilt and the bloody paint on his chest had caked and crusted into what he imagined was some nightmarish rainbow.
She stepped backwards as he approached the bars. ‘I have never had the pleasure of being cursed by a Roman woman,’ he continued. He swept her body with his eyes. ‘I think I rather enjoy being cursed.’
‘Then I curse you a thousand times, Beast of Britannia. Whatever you long for, may it be as sand through your fingers. Whatever your dream, may it turn to dust.’
He had to grip his stomach so as not to howl. ‘Such poetry! But before you go on, I am afraid I must tell you that you cannot curse me, for I am already doomed.’
‘Doomed?’ She glanced around his cell, then scolded him with her gaze. ‘You are one of the finest gladiators in Rome. You are worth as much as twenty common slaves. Your bed is perched two cubits off the ground, by the gods! I will not hear about your supposed doom.’
‘You do not believe me?’
‘Why will you not admit to your wrongdoing? You wronged every single man in that crowd tonight. You wronged Rome.’
No, he had to stop her there.
‘I wronged Rome? Rome that invaded my land and burned my fields?’ He let out a savage laugh. ‘Rome that raped my tribe’s women and sent its men off to the Quarry of Luna?’ He continued to laugh, though his wound had begun to throb. ‘Do you know what it is like in the Quarry of Luna? If you cut less than ten cubits a day you are whipped. Less than five and they remove a toe.’ He continued to laugh, feeling his wound begin to split. He could not seem to stop.
He lifted his foot to show her his missing digits, laughing harder. ‘I dug for worms each morning to fill my stomach. My flesh baked in the sun each day and then froze in the wind each night. And I wronged Rome? Ha!’ His laughter was crazed, like the laughter of a hyena, but he could not make it cease. ‘Ha! Ha! Ha!’ He doubled over, feeling the warmth of leaking blood down his side.
And then suddenly he was drowning.