Forbidden to the Gladiator Read online

Her father’s betting companion leaned backwards into the shadows, tucking the purse in a pouch beneath his bulging stomach. He gave her father a friendly clap on the back. Would you like another bet? he appeared to ask.

  No, he would not, Arria thought bitterly, for he is utterly ruined.

  But her father nodded vigorously and reached beneath his toga once again.

  Impossible. Her father was perennially poor. He was a sand scratcher, a circus rat, a man who lingered outside the arenas begging better men for loans. But a glint of gold caught the light and Arria watched in horror as her father held out her mother’s golden ichthys.

  It was the most sacred object her mother owned, a gilded fish, a symbol of her strange faith. The fish had once belonged to a Jewish man named Paul who had come to Ephesus many years before to spread something called the good news. He had secretly converted many Ephesians to his new religion, including Arria’s late grandparents.

  The golden fish had been her mother’s inheritance and only comfort. She kept it near her bed and each evening she rubbed it lovingly as she mouthed prayers to her singular god and his son, Jesus.

  Now the fat man cradled the fish in his palm, measuring its weight. Arria thought of her own mother’s palms, red and chapped from having to take in other people’s laundry. The man lifted the fish to his mouth and tested it with his teeth, one of which, Arria observed, was made of gold itself.

  He gave a satisfied nod.

  No, no, no. Arria opened her mouth to scream, then bit her tongue. Out of the corner of her eye, the governor’s ghostly toga came into focus. There he was—not a dozen paces away—on the very same side of the pit where she now stood.

  She sank back into the crowd. He had not noticed her, thank the gods, for his attention had been fixed on the dozens of coin purses changing hands beneath his gaze.

  Arria pushed backwards against the press of bodies, determined to reach her father before the next bout.

  But she was once again thrust forward as the men behind her moved towards the ringmaster’s voice. ‘Behold your champion,’ he announced, holding the Beast’s arm aloft, ‘for he is also your next competitor!’ The crowd howled at the unexpected change of rules. ‘Will this champion survive a second bout?’

  ‘By Jove’s cock he will!’ someone slurred.

  ‘Two denarii says he pays the boatman.’

  ‘I’ll wager five,’ shouted another. ‘The man is losing blood!’

  And he was. Blood was still seeping from the long diagonal wound that traversed his chest. It had mixed with his blue body paint to produce a sickening shade of green, which had smeared across his ribs like fetid mud.

  Blood. There was too much blood. It pooled at the top of his loincloth and streaked across his furry kilt. It dribbled down his giant legs like paint on pillars. It had even smeared atop his bald head.

  He gazed up at the crazed spectators in a kind of wonder. If he were not breathing so hard, and bleeding so terribly, he might have been a statue—some splendid, towering ode to the male form. Or he might have been the figure of an ancient god standing there in the sand. A great spirit brought low—cut down by the ugly world.

  An aching sadness overtook Arria. The blood. If only she could staunch the flow of it, or somehow wash it all away.

  Instinctively, she pulled her handkerchief from her belt. As if such a small piece of cloth could possibly help this man, or any of the gladiators. They were slaves, criminals, captives of war. Their deaths had not been spared, only delayed for the entertainment of the bloodthirsty mob.

  ‘I give you the Beast’s next foe,’ announced the ringmaster. ‘The Wrath of Syria!’

  The man who emerged through the iron gate was shorter than the Beast, but twice his width, with fat arms and legs like twin logs. The Wrath held a tall trident spear, but was without the net that usually accompanied such a weapon. Across his broad forehead were the large tattooed letters of a field slave.

  ‘Romans, place your bets.’

  She watched in resignation as her father gripped the gold-toothed man’s arm, sealing the next bet. Her mother’s ichthys had been staked.

  ‘Die well, gladiators!’ said the ringmaster.

  The Beast circled the Wrath, who was thrashing his trident about wildly, as if he had no idea of how to use it. In a single swing of his sword, the Beast knocked the weapon away. Incredibly, the Wrath did not even attempt to retrieve it. He simply dropped to his knees and awaited the final blow.

  The Beast held his blade to the Wrath’s neck and gazed up at the governor, awaiting his command of mercy. But the governor was not even watching. His head was bent over a collection of coins.

  ‘Iugula!’ someone shouted. Kill him!

  Without looking up, the governor drew his finger across his neck. No mercy.

  Arria turned away. She hated them—all of them—the ringmaster, the governor, the spectators, the Roman Empire itself. This was not entertainment. This was Roman conquest writ small.

  There was a collective groan, and when she returned her gaze to the arena she saw that the Wrath of Syria had been granted a merciful death. He lay face down in the sand, blood pooling where his throat had been slit. She saw her father bury his head in his hands.

  Which meant he had bet on the Wrath.

  Her father’s companion patted him on the shoulders consolingly, gently relieving him of her mother’s golden fish. Her father stared down at his empty hand. When he finally looked up, his eyes locked with Arria’s.

  He flashed her a smile of recognition, followed by an odd frown. Arria made a gesture of departure. Come now, Father, she mouthed, pointing towards the exit. It is time to go.

  But her father’s attention was distracted once again by the ringmaster, who stepped forward holding the Beast’s arm in the air. ‘The Beast of Britannia will fight a final bout!’

  The crowd cheered with fresh abandon. The exhausted Beast raised his sword and his gaze found Arria’s once again. Her chest squeezed. His eyes were no longer green, but black, like the darkest part of Hades. She remembered what he had done—the cool indifference with which he had removed the German’s head and the terrifying efficiency with which he had killed the Syrian.

  It was no wonder she felt so weak beneath his gaze. So completely exposed. He was a killer of men—a kind of monster. She hugged her arms around her chest, feeling the heat of fear burn in her stomach. The heat could not be contained. It was spreading to her limbs. She could feel it colonising her very cheeks.

  ‘Gloria!’ someone shouted.

  Straight away, a man half the Beast’s size skipped through the gate. He wore a comical goat’s tail and sandals shaped like hooves. ‘Romans, prepare yourselves for a battle that only the Great Jupiter could conceive.’ The ringmaster gazed reverently at the heavens, then returned his attention to the crowd and flashed a wicked grin. ‘I give you the Beast of Britannia versus...Felix the Satyr!’ The crowd disintegrated into laughter.

  Now the mockery was complete. The goat-man scuffed his hoof-like sandals in the sand, bleating and bobbing to a cacophony of jeers. Arria assumed he was mad, though his ropy muscles and fast movements suggested an ability to fight.

  She returned her attention to the Beast. He was still looking at her assessingly. It was as if he were some terrible predator trying to decide if she was worth the effort to hunt. Or perhaps he had already decided. She swallowed hard.

  ‘Romans, place your bets!’

  Her father and the gold-toothed man were speaking together fervently now and she wondered what they might be saying. Were they haggling over some promised credit? Impossible. Her father was not credit worthy and he had nothing left to bet. At length her father raised his finger. He was pointing across the ring.

  At Arria.

  Chapter Two

  The air around Arria acquired a strange weight. It pressed down upon he
r 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.