CHAPTER 3

I didn’t see him coming.

Caligula attacked me from the side, cursing about what I had said. He drove me to the ground and climbed on top, punching my face before I could even react. I raised my arms to block the blows, but he pulled one arm away and drove his fist into my cheek. I heard the thud of bone on bone. I tasted blood and saw stars.

I turned my head and tried to block the blows, but Caligula was maniacal, pummeling me with his right fist. The other boys had gathered around, and I thought I saw Marcus trying to help me. But someone was holding him back.

Seneca?

Nobody was going to rescue me, and I wanted to cry. Caligula hunkered over me now, still landing blows. I managed to cover my head with my forearm, curling into a little ball on my side, pulling my knees up to my stomach. Surely if I went into the fetal position, he would stop. Instead, he kicked me in the ribs and drove his fist into my ear. I felt it pop, a sharp pain that made me yelp.

Somehow little Marcus broke through and pushed Caligula in the back, knocking him off-balance. Lucian grabbed Marcus and threw him away from the two of us. But my friend had given me enough of an opening so I could scramble to my feet and lunge at Caligula.

This time I was the crazed animal. I had tasted blood and humiliation. I had nothing left to lose. I had been trained in gymnastics and wrestling, and though Caligula outweighed me by nearly fifteen pounds, I was wiry and filled with adrenaline. I threw him to the ground and put him in a cradle move I had perfected. I wrapped one arm around his head and the other around his legs. He tried to scratch at me, but I squeezed him tighter and put my full weight on top of his body, punching him with little blows in the face with the same arm I had wrapped around his legs.

“Enough!” Seneca barked.

I let go and sprang to my feet, wiping the blood from my mouth. I kept one eye on Caligula, ready for him to jump up and attack.

Instead, he started shaking. At first they were small spasms, but they soon became full convulsions, his hands wrenched at odd angles, his wrists bent forward, fingers clawing at the air. I stood there, my mouth agape. His head was tipped back and he was foaming at the mouth.

“Stand back,” Seneca demanded, stepping in to kneel beside his student.

I backed away, shuddering at what I had done. Was he dying?

Seneca put a hand under Caligula’s head, tilting it back. He pulled out his waterskin and jammed it between Caligula’s teeth. He grabbed Caligula’s tongue.

“It’s parliamentary disease,” Seneca said breathlessly. “We need a doctor.”

I stared for a moment, horrified and guilt-ridden at the scene before me. “Come on,” I said to Marcus and took off running down the Appian Way toward the city. I was probably the fastest kid in the class. Plus, I felt personally responsible for whatever Caligula was going through. Had I just killed the great-nephew of the emperor?

I soon outdistanced Marcus, fueled by the fear of what I had done, running so fast my lungs started burning. I passed an array of travelers —merchants with wagons pulled by mules, a lone horseman, a bleary-eyed family trudging along, a group of actors, a small regiment of soldiers. With every group, I breathlessly asked if any of them were doctors or if they knew where one might be found. I barely slowed down long enough to get an answer.

The picture of Caligula squirming on the ground, his eyes rolled back in his head, would not leave my mind. I ran faster, parched with thirst, my muscles beginning to fail. “I need a doctor!” I yelled at every traveler.

I don’t know how long I ran. It might have been ten minutes or it might have been thirty. Finally I found a man who claimed to be a physician riding with a small caravan. He was probably the personal physician for the family inside the litter. Gasping for air, I explained what had happened.

When I mentioned the name Caligula, the physician’s gray eyebrows shot up and he interrupted me. “Did you say Caligula, son of Germanicus?”

“Yes! And he’s having an attack right now!”

The man quickly got permission from the family in the litter, pulled me up on the back of his horse, and spurred the animal into a gallop down the road. I hung on as best I could, being jostled about as we flew by Marcus, who was headed in the other direction. I yelled at him, and he turned around with big eyes and outstretched palms. I waved for him to hustle back and join us.

My mind was racing faster than the horse on the way back to my companions. I could only imagine the worst. Caligula had died. I was responsible. Seneca would be blamed as well for not taking action sooner. I prayed to the gods that they might somehow spare the lives of both Caligula and me.

When we arrived at the site, I was relieved beyond words to see Caligula and the others sitting there talking as if nothing had happened. Sweaty and shaking, I climbed down from the horse, and my knees nearly buckled from stress and exhaustion.

Seneca pulled the physician aside, and they exchanged a few words. Caligula would not look at me.

My relief lasted only a few moments. The physician decided that the only way to be sure the episode had passed was to remove the vicious humor by bleeding. He pulled out a surgical knife and a bleeding cup from a pouch on his horse, and I watched Caligula turn white.

Caligula told Seneca he felt fine. He demanded that the physician not touch him. But Seneca ignored him. The doctor had a determined and calming authority that came from age. Caligula frowned, shot me a hate-filled glance, and did as he was told.

The doctor sat down next to Caligula and clasped the boy’s left wrist. He had Caligula look away. Seneca held a bowl under Caligula’s forearm. With the knife, the doctor made a surgical slice in the arm that left me woozy as I watched. Caligula winced but tried to play it tough.

The bright-red blood flowed into the physician’s bowl until the doctor was satisfied that Caligula had suffered enough. He pressed a cloth onto the wound, and the cloth itself soon turned crimson, staining the hands of the doctor.

I looked away. My stomach was knotted and twisted, the world starting to spin. After everything that had already gone wrong, I didn’t want to pass out in front of my friends. I sat down, put my head between my knees, and stared at the ground, forcing myself to think about something else.

The next thing I knew, the doctor’s hand was on the back of my neck.

“Just take a few deep breaths,” he said.

I looked up, and though the world was still blurry and swimming, I managed to keep myself from passing out. My right eye was swollen half-shut, and my ear ached. My cheekbone hurt as well, and I wondered if it was broken.

The doctor looked me over and told me that I would be fine.

Seneca thanked the man and paid him handsomely. Then he made Caligula and me shake hands and apologize.

I looked Caligula straight in the eye and told him I was sorry for speaking ill of his father. His handshake was weak, and though he had a few inches on me, I felt embarrassed for what I had done to him earlier. He was only sticking up for a father who had been murdered by a coward.

“I know you were only answering the questions you were asked,” Caligula said to me. His words were deliberate, and his face still looked white from the loss of blood. I sensed a bitterness lurking just beneath the surface. “I’m sorry for beating you up,” he said.

It was a face-saving move. A reminder that until Marcus had intervened, Caligula was getting the better of me.

But nobody who had been there would remember it that way. I had wrestled him to the ground, and he had gone into convulsions. He needed the doctor, not I.

“Apology accepted,” I said confidently.

Yet from the look on Caligula’s face, I knew I had not heard the last of the matter.