Forbidden to the Gladiator Read online

  She had been so thrilled by the sale that she had etched her elation on to a piece of pottery: a list of everything she planned to purchase with her earnings. She would buy honey, salt, oil and wood to see her family through the winter. With what remained, she would buy a sandal for her brother’s remaining foot, wooden shutters for the window and coin to pay the midwife when her mother’s time came.

  And of course more wool.

  Careless in her happiness, Arria had left the list beside her bed mat. She should have known that her father would find it there. Sick with the gambling disease, it had not taken him long to discover the purse itself, which Arria had hidden beneath their small clay hearth. And now their hearth would be cold and empty as a result. And so would their bellies.

  A small farm was all she wished for—a place where her mother could tend a garden and worship her god in peace, where her brother could drink rain instead of wine and where her father’s delusions of riches could go no further than the boundaries of a fine wheat field.

  It was a fantasy she had clung to since her brother Clodius had come home from the campaigns in Britannia. After his legion had defeated a barbarian tribe called the Caledonians, he had been granted a small plot of land somewhere beyond a Roman fort called Eboracum.

  But he had refused to claim the land, had said that it was made of rock, not soil, with evil winds and wicked winters and local barbarians spoiling for a fight. ‘I do not care how many battles we won, the barbarian tribes still rule the north of Britannia,’ he had argued.

  Arria and her family had no choice but to believe him, though Arria had her doubts. Soon after her brother had returned from his service, Arria had found him lying in a puddle outside the public latrine. ‘How is a man supposed to till a piece of land when he cannot even get himself to the toilet?’ he had despaired.

  Now she found him lying in the gutter outside their building, dozing over the mouth of his flagon.

  ‘Hello, Brother,’ she said, giving him a gentle kick.

  He lurched his head forward and gave a thready grin. ‘Hello, dear S-Sister. Lovely morning, is it not?’ Arria no longer nagged Clodius about his reckless spending on wine, for he had come to depend on it as others did bread.

  ‘You are drunk, Clodius,’ she said. And have managed to lose another tooth.

  His crutches lay beside him, their dented wooden grooves tracing a history of tantrums. Humiliation was an ailment that even the medicine of drink seemed unable to cure.

  ‘Come, I will help you upstairs. Father and I have some news.’

  ‘News? Did Father finally win some money?’

  ‘Not quite.’

  She gathered his crutches in one arm and lifted him to standing with the other.

  ‘I know what news!’ he spewed as he leaned heavily against her. ‘You found the dirty barbarian who stole my leg.’

  ‘Not quite.’

  ‘You found the filthy barbarians who killed our brother?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You found any barbarians at all? They do not have to be the exact same dirty barbarians, you know? You can bring me any barbarians you like. I would be happy to slit their throats.’

  ‘Not all barbarians are evil,’ she said, then bit her tongue. A heedless rabbit would not have taken the bait quicker.

  ‘What do you mean “not all barbarians are evil”? Do you not see the place below my thigh where a leg should be?’

  As they hobbled past the second floor, Arria settled herself in for one of her brother’s scathing lectures on barbarian culture.

  ‘Do you know what the barbarian priests do when they want their gods’ favour?’

  Arria said nothing.

  ‘They sacrifice a thousand children!’

  ‘Unbelievable,’ said Arria. Last week it had only been a hundred.

  ‘Do you know that the barbarian women eat their babies?’

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘They are like animals, Arria. Do you not remember what the barbarian did when I begged him to end my life?’

  Arria nodded patiently. She had heard the story so many times she could have recited it in her sleep. ‘He pissed on me! The man pissed right on the place where he had severed my leg. What kind of a monster does that?’

  His eyes were fierce, indignant. It was as if he were still lying on that cold battlefield begging for someone to end his life. He leaned on her hard. ‘At least they got him,’ he concluded, as he always did. ‘I saw him in the shackles the next day—sold away with the rest of the s-savages.’

  When they arrived inside the one-room apartment, Arria’s mother enveloped her in an embrace, sobbing. ‘I had half hoped you had escaped to a better life,’ she whispered into Arria’s ear.

  ‘The Goddess reminded me of my duty,’ Arria said, touching the small rise of her mother’s belly.

  In the corner of the room, her father was seated on the bed mat, staring at the white stain of a bird’s dropping on the wall. He shook his head, then buried his face in his hands. ‘I have failed you, Daughter.’ He broke into sobs. ‘That barbarian Beast was not supposed to lose. The dirty, wretched fiend. If I could wring his filthy—’

  ‘He is not a fiend.’

  Her father’s sobs ceased. ‘What?’

  ‘He is not a fiend. He is a man whose life has also been destroyed by gamblers.’ Her father stared at her as if she had just sprouted horns. ‘Do you not see it?’ she snapped. ‘It is the Empire of Rome you should be cursing. It consumes us, Father, and you most of all!’

  Now her mother and brother were staring at her, too. She needed air. She crossed to the open window and peered out of it. Pacing towards the building was a cluster of four armed men. They flanked a short, portly man gripping a scroll. It was he! The gold-toothed victor and her new owner, already come to collect his due.

  Her heart was pounding. ‘How long, Father?’ she asked. He would not meet her gaze. Say a year. Or even two years. A two-year indenture she could endure. Or even three. Or even five.

  ‘Ten years.’

  ‘Ten years?’ gasped her mother.

  In ten years Arria would be thirty-five years old.

  ‘What’s going on?’ asked her brother, swaying against his crutch. ‘What are we talking about?’

  Bitterness gripped Arria’s heart. ‘Father wagered my freedom at the fighting pits, Brother. He also wagered the profits from the carpets I wove and Mother’s golden fish. He lost all of it. To pay his debt, I shall go now and work for a merchant for ten years—a man with a golden tooth.’

  ‘A golden tooth?’ slurred her brother, as if all the rest was only details.

  There was a long silence and Arria heard the sound of footsteps in the stairwell below. Suddenly, she began to laugh. ‘Yes, a golden tooth.’ She laughed harder, unable to stop herself. Was that not remarkable? An entire tooth covered in gold? That was what her new owner had. Yes, indeed!

  There was a loud pounding at the door and Arria doubled over with laughter. She could not stop herself, even as the guards burst into the apartment and took her by the arms. They dragged her across the room like a dog and, as she continued to laugh, a realisation struck.

  This was exactly how the Beast must have felt when she had accused him of wrongdoing. It was why he had laughed so hard that he had split his wound. How could he possibly be guilty of anything when his life was not his own? It was so ridiculous as to be absurd. And now her life was no longer her own. Ha! Was that not beyond amusing? In her selfishness, she had cursed him and now she had also been cursed—by a man with a golden tooth!

  Chapter Seven

  On the day he was supposed to die, Cal was instead declared touched by the gods. He bowed his head before his opponent and waited for his death blow...and waited...and waited.

  He had believed his opponent to be drawing out the drama of the momen
t. Instead, he was clutching at his chest, suffering an attack of the heart. The man fell backwards upon the sands and Cal was saved.

  The crowd had been silent as Cal rose to his feet and the ringmaster puzzled up at the sky. ‘Touched by the gods,’ he murmured.

  Now he paced inside his cell beneath Brutus’s accusing gaze.

  ‘You are not supposed to be alive!’ shouted Brutus, rattling his pugio against the bars.

  ‘Thank you for the reminder,’ said Cal. It had been a month since the woman had cursed him and he had already failed to die three times.

  ‘I thought we had a deal.’

  Cal spat. ‘Do you think I caused that man’s attack, or the omen, or had anything at all to do with the murmillos?’

  Brutus pursed his lips. Less than a month before, Cal had gazed out at the stage of the great theatre at Miletus, fully prepared to die. It had been a good day for it, too: cool and sunny with a smattering of puffy white clouds making ethereal shapes against the crystalline sky. As he stepped out on to the stage, he had gazed up at those clouds and perceived the profile of his wife’s face. She was watching him for certain, waiting for him to join her in the Otherworld.

  An instant later, he had thought of the Roman woman, trying to fuel his courage. He had been paired with a murmillo—a gladiator playing the role of a deadly fish. As his enemy, Cal was the retiarius—the fisherman—equipped with a net and trident against the murmillo’s sword and shield. Cal gladly took the triple-pointed trident into his hand. He would make a few jabs, throw the net once or twice, then open his chest to a direct blow from the murmillo’s sword. It would be a clean death and Brutus the blood merchant would own him no more. He would finally, finally be free.

  But just as soon as Cal and the murmillo had faced off, another murmillo stormed into the sparring ring. Even better, Cal had thought at first. Two swords to finish me. Then he heard the murmillos trading insults beneath their helmets. He recognised their accents. One man was Jewish, the other Nabataean: mortal enemies.

  The men had practically ignored Cal. They danced about the arena to the crowd’s wild cries, trading blows until the fateful moment when their swords thrust into one another’s guts. Both men sprawled dead on the field and Cal was declared the winner.

  ‘It was not my fault they fought each other instead of me,’ said Cal. ‘Nor was it my fault that your Jupiter disapproved of the Sardis Games.’

  Days after the murmillos, Cal had been fully prepared to die at the theatre of Sardis, in games held in honour of the city. But the moment he stepped out into the sparring ring, a shadow had passed over the sun and day had turned to night. It was enough of an ill omen for the local mayor to call off the games entirely and Cal had exited just as he had entered: hale and maddeningly alive.

  ‘Live or die? Which is it, Cal?’ Brutus asked now. ‘My purse grows emptier while you decide.’

  Hoping to break his streak of ill fortune, Cal had finally confessed to Brutus his decision to die in the arena. To his credit, Brutus did not attempt to dissuade Cal from his mission. Indeed, he appeared to conclude that he could not stop Cal from seeking death, so he might as well profit from it. That very afternoon, at the Romani Games of Smyrna, Brutus had bet a heavy purse on Cal’s demise.

  How could Cal have known that his opponent would suffer an attack of the heart before Cal had even landed a blow? Or that the crowd would give Cal an ovation as it had, chanting that he was touched by the gods—the very spawn of Jove?

  ‘I am a man of my word,’ said Cal. Absently, he reached into his cubicle and grasped the small, bent hairpin that he had developed a habit of fondling. ‘When I say I will fall, I will fall,’ Cal stated. ‘But I cannot control the whims of Fortuna.’

  Brutus shook his jowls. ‘It makes me wonder—why do the gods spare you?’

  ‘It is not the gods who spare me,’ muttered Cal. He worried the pin between his fingers.

  ‘What did you say?’

  He could see her face so clearly: her arched brows, her high cheeks, the way her shapely lips had pursed into a bud as she pronounced her curse. ‘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 erroneously believed that she was his muse, that she had been sent to inspire him, to give him the courage he needed to bow beneath the blade. Never once did he think her a sorceress, or that her silly curse would actually take hold.

  ‘Answer my question, Beast. Who keeps you alive, if not the gods?’

  ‘It is a curse that keeps me alive,’ Cal admitted. ‘The woman from the pit fights cursed me. She is a sorceress.’

  In truth he did not know if she was a sorceress. He knew very little about her, really, though she continued to occupy his thoughts. He did not even know her name.

  * * *

  ‘Why must you know my name?’

  She was standing at the opposite end of his cell, pressing her back against the stone wall with such force that he feared she might break through it.

  ‘Do not fear,’ he said in his fumbling Latin. Even at this distance, he could see her lip trembling. ‘I mean you no harm.’

  Only a month had passed since they had met, yet she was much thinner. There were small rags tied around several of her fingers and her other fingers were as red as beets. She certainly did not look like a sorceress. She no longer looked very much like a plebeian maid, either.

  ‘Sit down,’ he said, motioning to the edge of his bed.

  ‘I prefer to stand,’ she said, eyeing the mattress with alarm.

  Brutus had purchased the woman’s time from Oppius after what Brutus had complained was an unnecessary negotiation. They were brothers, yet Oppius had demanded a pretty coin for this short visit, explaining that it would take precious time away from her weaving. Oppius had also made it clear that she not be touched, lest the price rise considerably.

  Not that Cal required such a warning. The night they met, Cal had all but admitted that he had thrown the fight that had resulted in her enslavement. Not long after that, he had all but frightened her to tears. If she did not loathe him outright, he was certain the woman counted him among her enemies.

  Still, he felt strangely reassured by the sight of her, though her once-white tunic had faded to brown and her long black braid had lost its sheen in a layer of dust. But something in her watchfulness told him she remained herself—desperate, indignant, mercifully unbroken.

  ‘Can I offer you some wine?’ He crossed to the table and poured her a cup, which he delivered with a polite bow. ‘I almost expected you to be hiding in some distant forest.’ He gave a good-natured laugh. ‘You know—living on berries and such.’

  ‘You summoned me here to mock me?’

  He shook his head, reminding himself to tread carefully. Her freedom had been stolen from her, but she obviously still clung to her pride. ‘Please, drink your wine. Relax. Perhaps you would like a honey cake?’

  She stared at the honey cake sitting on the table beside him, as if calculating its worth. Finally, she looked at him. ‘Why did you not summon the barbarian woman?’

  ‘Apologies, I do not understand. What woman?’

  Apparently unhappy with the specificity of the first question, the woman replaced it with a better one. ‘Do women come often to your bed?’

  It was the kind of question that in more worldly circles would have stood for a proposition. ‘They do, in truth, though not usually upon my request.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Was the woman so naive that she did not know of the private tasks of a gladiator? ‘Roman matrons sometimes pay my lanista to lie with me,’ he explained. ‘I give them what they want.’

  ‘What they want?’

  ‘Pleasure.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said and looked away. He watched with more than th
e usual satisfaction as a deep crimson flush colonised her cheeks. In an effort to conceal her face from him, she turned and feigned interest in her wine cup, but her blush seemed only to grow deeper as she studied the figure painted on its side.

  It was unfortunately a very naked, very aroused image of Adonis.

  ‘I do not give them everything they want,’ Cal blurted, though he had no idea why he felt compelled to clarify himself. ‘I do not kiss the women on the lips.’

  And because he had said the word lips, and for no other reason than that, his gaze slid to hers. And by some combination of dryness and nerves, it was at that exact moment when she chose to moisten those lips with her tongue. He felt a thunderbolt of heat split his stomach.

  ‘Let us begin again,’ he said, his knees nearly buckling. He smoothed his kilt, wishing he had thought to don his tunic. Surely she would be taking him more seriously if he were fully clothed. They both would be. ‘My name is Cal. Short for Caldagius. And you are?’

  ‘Why does it matter? Are all women not terribly similar once you have us on our backs?’

  All at once it hit him—the reason for her prickly demeanour. She believed she had been summoned to lie with him.

  ‘I did not ask you here to put you on your back.’

  ‘You did not?’

  ‘Of course not,’ he said and he saw her eye twitch. Damnation. Now he had wounded her vanity.

  ‘My lanista has purchased your presence so I may make a request of you. That is all.’

  She flung a glance at the table. Was he mistaken, or did she appear to be flirting with the honey cake?

  He retrieved the cake and placed it in her palm. ‘I summoned you here to ask you to lift the curse you put on me.’

  ‘Curse?’ she said absently, taking a ravenous bite.

  ‘You placed a curse on me the night we met. Do you not remember? I have suffered beneath it ever since.’

  A crumb shot out of her mouth and she fumbled on the ground to retrieve it. She certainly did not seem like a sorceress. Then again, Ephesus was famous for its abundance of sorcerers and maleficium came in many forms.