Forbidden to the Gladiator Read online

  The bell clanked closer and Arria observed the piteous expressions of the people making wide circles around the woman. Her long dishevelled hair hung in unkempt ropes over her small hunched shoulders, which looked alarmingly familiar. Someone paused to give the woman a coin and Arria beheld the emaciated, pregnant figure of her own mother.

  ‘Mother,’ she whispered, knowing that if she took a single step forward, Oppius would have her by the hair.

  Her mother wore no shoes, despite the cold, and her tunic was of such a loose weave that it was as if she had sewn it together with scrap yarn. Her only adornment was a small homemade necklace comprised of thick, garish beads.

  Arria choked back her sobs. She knew the purpose of such a necklace, could practically read the tragic script etched on to its largest charm—Familia Arrius of Ephesus: Mother Livia, Father Faustus, Brother Clodius, Sister Arria.

  It was a crepundia—the customary necklace fashioned by a mother for a baby whom she planned to abandon at the dump. The necklace was an amulet and also a badge. If by some miracle the baby was rescued, then the information written on the charms of the necklace could one day lead him home.

  Her mother angled closer and Arria stepped out from the depths of the stall. She glanced at Oppius, who had become distracted by a passing cake pedlar. ‘Arria, what are you doing?’ hissed Epona. ‘Oppius will see you. He will beat you.’

  But Arria no longer cared. If she had to incur a beating for a few words of comfort with her suffering mother, then so be it. She raised her arm and opened her mouth to call her mother’s name.

  And in that instant a young woman in a gold-laced veil raised her arms in front of Arria and shrieked. ‘Minerva’s Owl, this is magnificent!’

  The young woman rushed past Arria into the stall, followed by a small army of slaves.

  ‘Mother, come look at this carpet,’ the woman shouted over her shoulder, blasting Arria’s ears. An older woman with an army of her own pushed past Arria and Arria stood on her toes to catch sight of her mother again. There was still time to reach her. Arria opened her mouth to shout.

  ‘That is the shape of a man’s head, is it not?’ the young woman asked Arria, her face only digits away. She pulled back her veil, revealing a nest of carefully arranged braids and curls. ‘Well, is it?’

  Arria tried to speak, but no words came.

  ‘Ah, yes, I see it,’ said the elder, removing her own silken veil. ‘A woman’s figure. Or perhaps it is the figure of a goddess. What a wonder of a design. I have never seen anything like it.’

  Arria caught sight of her mother’s figure slowly retreating into the crowd.

  ‘Can you not picture it in the dining chamber, Mother,’ the younger woman was saying, ‘just below the middle couch?’

  ‘Gods, no!’ said the elder. ‘Such a carpet can only be hung on a wall.’ She turned to Arria. ‘Tell me, is this woven of lambswool?’

  She had asked Arria a question, but Arria had not heard it.

  ‘Excuse me, woman?’ repeated the voice in annoyance. A pair of liquid black eyes bored into her. ‘Is this carpet made of lambswool or not?’

  ‘Ah, no, Domina, not lambswool.’

  ‘Not lambswool? But it is so soft.’

  Arria did not know what to say. Her mother was gone. Her heart was breaking. ‘Tell me, do you know the weaver? Is she from Rome? She must be quite sought after...’

  Arria shook her head. No, she did not know the weaver, for the weaver was a brave woman who loved her mother and would risk anything to help her. A woman who was clever enough to free herself from bondage and rescue her family from ruin. A woman, in other words, who was nothing like herself.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The sound of the bell was like the sound of death—thin and hollow. The crowd hushed as the ancient woman who rang it stepped out on to the field. She cackled with menace as the bell clanked out its foreboding.

  Cal and Felix scrambled to the centre of the arena and pressed their backs together, gripping their swords.

  What will it be? wondered Cal. He lifted a sword from one of the corpses and held it in his other hand. Lions? Chariots? A rain of arrows?

  But it was something far, far worse.

  It was women. Two tall, fair-haired gladiatrices who might have been his own kin. They emerged from a trapdoor not far from where the legate and tribune gladiators stood. One woman was older than the other, but their faces looked similar, as if they were mother and daughter. Their breasts were bare and they shrieked and howled as they poked their spears at the sky. The crowd answered them with mocking cries.

  ‘I cannot kill a woman,’ Cal said.

  ‘You must kill a woman,’ growled Felix. ‘And then another. There is no choice.’

  There is a choice, thought Cal. I could finally succumb.

  But then the memory of Arria’s whispered words crowded into his mind, along with the vision of two dark moons pleading with him to fight. ‘On my command, we split apart,’ said Cal.

  ‘Are you mad?’

  ‘The only way to defeat the women and the men at once is to set them upon each other. You must trust me, Felix. Await my command.’

  In moments their enemies were upon them. Cal’s ears rang with the clang of swords as he traded blows with the towering legate. Beside him, Felix was fending off the small tribune and elder gladiatrix, but Cal could see his strength waning. In a surge of effort, Cal pushed the legate backwards into the younger gladiatrix, sending them both to the ground.

  ‘Split now!’ Cal shouted.

  As Cal and Felix went running to opposite sides of the field, Cal could hear the crunch of bone as the legate severed the young woman’s head.

  A familiar loathing invaded Cal’s heart as the crowd erupted in cheers. The young woman who had just died had been an innocent and Cal might as well have killed her himself.

  Felix circled around, taking down the older gladiatrix with a deadly slash, and she spent her last breaths in a long, mournful howl. Felix shook his head and Cal knew that there would be no good dreams for either of them this night.

  The legate lifted the young woman’s head to the crowd. The man was so engaged in his own triumph that he did not see Cal’s rusty sword until it was well lodged in the soft of his neck.

  There were three men left—Cal, Felix and the gladiator dressed as a Roman tribune. He stood atop the pile of corpses in a state of pure agitation. Cal and Felix circled him like wolves.

  ‘Iugula! Iugula!’ chanted the crowd. Kill him.

  ‘Let us fight him to exhaustion,’ Cal called to Felix. If they spared the man’s life, then Cal could at least return to Arria with part of his soul intact. ‘We can still defy the crowd. There is no more need to kill. Take a rest, Felix. I will fight him first.’

  Felix gave a nod of agreement and slowly lowered his sword. And in that brief, terrible instant, the maniacal tribune leaped down from the mountain of flesh.

  * * *

  That night, after the guard closed the door to the workshop and locked the bolt into place, Arria wept. She wept for her destitute mother and for the baby who would not survive. She wept for Epona, who had been sent off with a stranger while Arria herself had been spared. And she wept for Cal, for she feared he might be dead.

  ‘To whom was Epona rented this time?’ Grandmother asked across the darkness.

  Arria could not find the words to answer. The tribune had arrived at dusk, paid Oppius in new denarii and taken Epona by the wrist, explaining as an afterthought that the legate was ailing and would not be requiring Arria’s services after all.

  And just like that, Arria had been saved.

  And Epona had not.

  ‘Do you know what is worse than being violated by a twisted man?’ Arria asked bitterly. ‘Knowing that your friend is enduring such a fate and there is nothing you can do about it.’ />
  ‘She is stronger than you know,’ Grandmother whispered, hearing Arria’s sobs.

  ‘It should have been me,’ Arria sputtered.

  ‘Do not weep for her.’

  ‘I will weep for my mother, then.’

  ‘More wasted tears! Mothers are the strongest people there are.’

  ‘She is heavy with child, yet she starves.’

  ‘Hush now. Remember your pigeon.’

  Arria shook her head. ‘My mother says that hope resides in the next world. And eternal salvation, too. I fear she will be there soon.’

  ‘She follows the way of Jesus?’

  Arria wiped her tears. ‘She says we must endure suffering with grace, just as Jesus did on the cross.’

  ‘Well, I would not go that far.’

  ‘But is that not what you do—what we all do here?’

  ‘Do you think that is what I do? Endure suffering?’

  There was a long pause, then an ancient harrumph. Arria felt a wooden object being pressed into her palm. ‘Be careful not to touch the tines,’ Grandmother whispered. ‘They are very sharp.’

  Arria slid her fingers gently along a long flat surface that forked into two arched curves. She touched her finger against the tip of one of the curves. ‘Ouch!’

  ‘Did I not warn you, dear?’

  ‘How did you forge such an object?’ Arria asked. She had seen the guards gather the women’s knives and scissors at the end of each day and count them carefully.

  ‘During the day, when I see the guards are not looking, I use my carving tool.’

  ‘But the guards are always looking.’

  ‘I admit that it has taken some time to carve. Fortunately, time is something I have much of.’

  ‘How much time?’

  ‘About ten years.’

  Arria could not believe what she was hearing. Ten years? The carving must have amounted to a single pass of the knife each day. ‘You have the patience of Penelope,’ whispered Arria.

  ‘And the breasts of Kybele,’ added Grandmother.

  Arria stifled a giggle, then realised what Grandmother was trying to say. ‘That is where you hide it? Beneath your breasts?’

  ‘Clever girl,’ said Grandmother.

  ‘I think you are much cleverer than I.’

  Grandmother gently took the weapon from Arria’s palm. ‘There are many things one may choose to do with suffering. Enduring it is just one of those things.’

  ‘The son of my mother’s god endured great suffering. Her goddess was a virgin when she bore him.’

  ‘Ah, Mary,’ said Grandmother. ‘My own grandfather knew Mary when she dwelled in Ephesus with John. She has since become a worthy goddess, though there are many goddesses one may choose to worship.’

  ‘And whom do you worship, Grandmother?’

  ‘Well, I have my pick, do I not? Kybele, Artemis, Mary, Ephesia, the founder of our fair city. They all have roots in Ephesus and ashes, too. But I must say that I prefer Kybele. She is my kind of goddess.’

  Arria nodded thoughtfully. ‘Kybele the earth mother. Rome’s Magna Mater. The Greeks’ Rhea.’

  ‘The very same, though I dare say that Kybele existed long before Rhea.’

  ‘Kybele of the ancient earth.’

  ‘Kybele of the pendulous breasts!’ cackled Grandmother.

  Arria laughed softly. She thought of Epona, who would have enjoyed the jest. She wondered what terrible encounter she was enduring in this moment. She would need the strength of a hundred Kybeles on this night.

  ‘Grandmother, what goddess gives Epona her strength?’

  ‘Is it not obvious? She looks to Ephesia.’

  ‘Ephesia the Amazon Queen?’

  ‘The very same.’

  Arria smiled to herself. The Amazons were part-legend, part-history, part-divine story. Believed to have descended from the Greek gods Ares and Aphrodite, the Amazons were beautiful warrior women who had come from the foothills of the distant Caucasus Mountains on the backs of magnificent horses. On their way home from a visit to Athens, they founded Ephesus and installed their mighty queen.

  ‘Epona is a warrior,’ said Grandmother. ‘You must try to be one, too.’

  ‘But I am a weaver, not a warrior,’ whispered Arria.

  ‘Rubbish,’ said Grandmother.

  Arria closed her eyes and thought of Cal. He was the true warrior and, though he always triumphed, each of his triumphs were in themselves defeats. There was too much war in the world, fuelled by too much greed. She imagined him now, giving up his life to the roar of a crowd.

  ‘Do not give your heart to a gladiator,’ said Grandmother. ‘Too dangerous.’

  ‘How did you know I—?’

  ‘You wear your love like a crown of flowers, dear girl.’

  ‘I do not love him. I hardly know him,’ whispered Arria. ‘Besides, Fortuna does not favour me in matters of the heart.’

  ‘More rubbish,’ said Grandmother.

  ‘Tell me, Grandmother, what kind of weapon is it? The one that you carved?’

  ‘It is no weapon at all, my dear. I thought you knew.’

  ‘Not a weapon?’

  ‘Of course not. It is a key.’

  ‘A key?’

  ‘To this very workshop.’

  ‘But how can you know if it will fit in the lock?’

  ‘I cannot. I have had glimpses of the guard’s key and have done my best. When the time comes, that is when I will know.’

  ‘And if it does not work?’ asked Arria.

  ‘My dear, do you not see? It has already worked, for it unlocks my spirit each day.’

  Arria smiled. ‘And thus you will not be broken.’

  ‘Now you are learning.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  He hated himself for wanting her. He hated how his breath quickened at the sound of her sandals in the tunnel, how his heart hammered as the guard unlocked the gate. When she stepped into the cell, he willed his gaze to the floor, for he loathed how much he wished to see her face.

  ‘Cal!’ she exclaimed. She walked softly to the foot of his bed and stood before him, her small white feet curling in their sandals. ‘Oh, Cal, you are alive! Thank the Goddess Artemis! Cal? Why will you not look at me?’

  He was a bad man. A selfish man. A man who had put his earthly desires above all else. And because of that, his friend was now dead. Remember Felix, he told himself. Remember Rhiannon.

  She stood before him in silence for a long while. When she spoke, her voice was hushed. ‘The sun is already set, and it is so very cold outside.’ She crossed to the glowing brazier on the table at the other end of the cell. She was holding her hands over the lit coals. ‘These coals are such a wonder. I feel like I have not been warm in a month.’

  Brutus had been just as cheerful when he had placed the brazier there an hour before. ‘In honour of your unlikely victory,’ he had said, revelling in his own generosity.

  Cal wondered how much money Brutus had won yesterday from Cal’s unlikely victory. Three hundred denarii? Three thousand? Enough to add a few more rooms to his seaside villa and buy his daughter a new slave? Probably even more than that, for he had placed Cal and Felix among the expected losers, thus increasing his odds. He had probably known about the gladiatrices, too. The shameless blood merchant had probably suggested them himself.

  ‘I have also acquired your reward,’ Brutus had told Cal. ‘The one you requested. The weaver. She will be here soon. Eighty denarii for her. Can you imagine? But she will be yours for the night, to do with what you will.’ He had winked conspiratorially at Cal—like a father winking to his child after sliding him a honey stick.

  Cal hated himself then, because in truth he had been overjoyed by the news. It was as if he were a dog who had just hunted down a pack of lions for his own
er, then absently been tossed a bone.

  ‘I thought you had died,’ Arria said quietly. She was still rubbing her hands over the brazier’s smouldering coals, addressing her conversation to the wall. ‘When my master informed me that your lanista had purchased me for the night, well, I just—’

  ‘Felix died today.’

  ‘What?’ She turned.

  ‘Felix the Satyr. The one who occupied that cell just down the hall. He was my friend.’

  She bowed her head.

  ‘It was my fault,’ he added. ‘I left him unguarded.’

  And why had Cal left Felix unguarded? That was the real question. He did not wish to think about the answer, though it was standing right in front of him.

  ‘You cannot blame yourself,’ she said. ‘It was not your choice to fight.’

  ‘But it was my choice.’

  ‘How was it your choice?’ Her eyes caught the glow of the coals.

  ‘I chose to live. I fought for all this.’ He swatted at the air. ‘For you.’

  She crossed to the foot of his bed and stood before him. Gods forgive him, he wanted nothing but to press his head against her stomach and lay his troubles at her feet. He breathed in, hating her smoky, woolly musk. It was too rich. Too enticing. And altogether too much like home.

  She reached out and drew her thumb across his cheek.

  ‘Please do not do that.’ He pushed her hand aside and she recoiled.

  ‘Apologies, I only wished to—’

  ‘Two women died yesterday because of me,’ he said. ‘Their bodies were decorated with blue, do you understand? I could read the runes painted upon their breasts. They could have been Caledonii—my own country women.’

  ‘You are Caledonian?’

  He cringed. He had not meant to reveal it. The more she knew of him, the more power she wielded. He could not allow her to conquer him—not if it meant that he would spend the rest of his days killing for sport. Nothing was worth what he had done yesterday in the arena. Nothing.