That gawky sunburned slut never smiled at me, but I always felt the smile lurking, just the same. I sniffed and hurried ahead, away from the rows of gracious marble villas and toward the seedier district on the edge of the Subura where the gladiator schools were. Even a warm summer day couldn’t make Mars Street pretty.
A perfumed slave boy tried to leave me waiting in the anteroom, but I gestured to Thea and she tossed him a copper that got me admitted. No one kept Lepida Pollia waiting. I was shown into a narrow room with a writing desk, and behind it the fat
lanista
in midtirade.
“—abusing your followers? Hurling wine cups at powerful fans, say, when they beg for souvenir locks of your hair? Or pitching drunken young patricians into the Tiber when they challenge you to a match?”
Arius sat on a wall bench with a jug of wine in one hand, head thrown back. He drank off a swallow with his eyes closed, and I drew in a breath at the sight of his arms. Rough, brown, muscular, scarred—
Gallus still hadn’t seen me. “I’m not averse to giving you your head, dear boy. A little money of your own, perhaps. Roaming privileges in the evenings. But only if you behave yourself, and—”
I cleared my throat. Gallus gave an irritable glance. “Have you been sent with a gift, girl? Put it over there.”
“I’m Lady Lepida Pollia,” I said, sweeping my hood back in a gesture that showed off my rings. “And perhaps I
have
come with a gift. We’ll see.”
I stole a glance at the Barbarian, but he took another swallow of wine without looking at me. Too dazzled, of course. Gallus bounded to his feet at once, bowing over my hand, offering me a chair, gesturing a slave boy forward to take my cloak. His eyes flicked past me, looking for my father, then looked back again with greater interest.
“It’s dreadfully hot in here. My fan, Thea.” I patted my forehead, and Thea came forward to hand me my peacock feather fan. The Barbarian was looking at me now, missing nothing, not even Thea as she faded back into the corner. I slouched gracefully, shrugging off my
palla
so he could admire my white shoulders. “Aren’t you going to wish me a good morning, Barbarian?”
Gallus nudged him. Arius shrugged. “Good morning.”
“I see you’ve had other visitors.” I glanced around the room at the gifts sent by besotted fans: silver plate, a cloak of Milesian wool, a tooled sword belt. “My father sent the Falernian wine. I noticed at the banquet that you had a taste for it. Such a discerning palate for a barbarian!”
“Wine’s wine,” Arius said when Gallus nudged him again.
I made an airy gesture, showing off my bracelets. “Anyway, I’ve come to say good-bye. I’m leaving for Tivoli tomorrow. I found out that you won’t be fighting again until fall anyway, so I might as well escape the heat.”
“Quite,” Gallus agreed, passing forward a little plate of candied pears. “No use wasting the Barbarian in the summer games, is there? Paltry little festivals, with the Emperor gone. Now, the Romani games in September . . .”
“Quite.” Popping one, two, three little candied pear slices into my mouth. “Would you like me to get you a prime spot in the Romani games, Barbarian?”
Gallus prodded him. Arius looked at me unblinking, and I felt a little thrill. Such a granite face! I’d see it cracked someday.
“Of course he’d like that, Lady Lepida,” Gallus broke in smoothly. “How kind.”
I could hardly look at him. Arius folded his sunburned arms across his chest, and I imagined them around me instead. Would he hurt me? I’m sure he would. “Thank you,” I murmured to Gallus. “Of course, if he ever wants to thank me, he should send a message to my father’s house in Tivoli. Thea, my cloak.”
Thea came forward. Was she staring at his arms, too, imagining them wrapped around her? I rather think she was. I gave Arius a last dazzling smile and took myself away. Gallus was berating him again before the door even shut. “—got that father of hers wrapped around her little finger, so you’ll be polite the next time she—”
I smiled as we stepped out into the morning sun. “Excellent,” I said. “A pity we’re leaving for Tivoli, but perhaps it’s better that way. Gallus won’t let him fight in the summer games—so the Emperor and everyone will be clamoring for him in the fall. Just like he’ll be clamoring for me.”
“Yes, my lady.”
“He does want me, you know.” Thinking of that impassive gaze. “Not that he says anything, but he’s never talked to a lady before, has he? Just whores and slave girls, like you. And by the way”—as we crossed the end of the forum back toward my father’s house, dodging round the shouting vendors with their wooden trays—“I shan’t be taking you with me to Tivoli.”
“My lady?”
“I’ve decided to take Iris instead. She can do my hair and bring me my breakfast, and you can stay here to run one or two little errands for me. Let’s just say I want to make sure Arius doesn’t forget about me.” I smiled sweetly. Thea’s long horse face was impassive. I’d have that face cracked, too, someday. “You won’t mind seeing him again, will you, Thea? Not at all, I think. And you can walk behind me now.”
I
’M expensive,” she said by way of introduction. “But I’ll do you for free.”
He recognized the blond curls, the soft painted face, the transparent lemon-yellow dress. Laelia, one of the city’s most exclusive courtesans. “How’d you get here?”
“Your
lanista
showed me in.” She perched beside him on the bed and favored him with a glittering smile. “I like gladiators.”
He edged back along the bed as she ran a soft hand down his arm. “Madam—”
“Call me Laelia.” She leaned against him, one hand tracing a circle on his knee. “I believe you’re nervous, Barbarian. Never had a woman like me before?”
Never had
any
woman before. To another pair of eyes—darker eyes, maybe; quieter eyes—he could have said it. Not to these blue eyes, flickering with excitement.
“So tell me.” She hooked one knee over his and rubbed her foot along his leg. “How do barbarians make love?”
Make love. How would he know, hauling rocks in Roman mines since he was thirteen? He’d seen how the Romans did it, laughing and panting and thrusting, with their friends cheering encouragement and their knives at the woman’s throat. He’d seen it often enough. He knew how the Romans did it, all right.
Just once, he’d tried with a woman. A prostitute at the mines, when he was fifteen. He’d hurt her. He hadn’t meant to—but she bolted. He hadn’t tried again.
His every muscle coiled tight as a perfumed, painted mouth closed on his.
Stop
, he told himself. But his hands clenched on her shoulders.
“You’ve bruised me.” She looked up at him with a smile of parted lips and gleaming teeth. “Like it rough, do you?”
He rose, so fast he spilled her on the floor. Caught her by both wrists, heaved her up.
Hurt her
, whispered the demon.
That’s how the men do it.
He flung her out the door before she could protest, kicking it shut with his foot. He sank down against the wall, raking his hands through his hair. On the other side of the door he heard a stream of shrill curses. He closed his eyes, pushing his head down into his folded arms. Waited for his muscles to stop trembling. Waited for his blood to stop roaring. Waited for the demon whispers to die down to simple, straightforward, uncomplicated murder.
Killing he could handle. Killing was easy.
THEA
M
Y mistress and her father left the next morning in a welter of wagons and slaves and silver litters, and I was free. Free! The July sun baked me golden brown, the dust rose off the streets and choked my lungs, the sweltering nights gave me my usual nightmares, but I was free. No Lepida to trail with a fan and a handkerchief, no bee-sting jabs from her tongue. No Pollio with his moist hands in dark hallways. No work to do, since the exacting steward ceased tracking our comings and goings and retired to the circus to watch the chariot races all day. The male slaves slipped off to the taverns, the maids tripped out to meet their lovers, and no one cared a jot.
I went walking in the evenings when purple twilight cooled the air, sitting on hot corner stones listening to street musicians and parting with my few coins to pay for the pleasure they gave me. I even sneaked into the Theatre of Marcellus to hear a famous actress sing a round of Greek songs, memorizing her every graceful gesture to practice for myself in the heat-shriveled Pollio gardens. In my mind I could see my mother smile as she said, “What a pretty voice you’ll have when you’re grown.” And then I’d fall silent and perhaps creep back inside to my blue bowl with the frieze of nymphs on the side, because my mother was no longer here to sing me lullabies, and over the years it had somehow become my fault.
I saw Arius the Barbarian, of course. His
lanista
flashed him all over the city like a prize stallion: dragged him into the theatre to watch the comedies, into the Campus Martius where everyone strolled to see and be seen, into the Circus Maximus to watch the chariot races. Wherever he went there was a hush of deliciously savored fear, a respectful drawing back, and afterward the buzz of speculation.
“He won’t last the next fight,” people scoffed in taverns. “Beating Belleraphon, that was a fluke.”
“And the Amazons?” his fans retaliated hotly.
“Anyone could beat a team of women!”
“No, he’s something special. Just wait till the Romani games in September—” The argument went on, even though he ignored his fans as if they were shadows and drank alone in taverns despite the hundreds who would have kept him company.
His face started to appear everywhere, painted badly on the sides of wooden buildings around the Colosseum. Crudely chalked graffiti greeted my eyes on alley walls: “Arius the Barbarian makes all the girls sigh!” Vendors hawked garish little portraits on gaudy ribbons. Taverns offered him free wine, and whores offered him free time. Arius, a slave and a barbarian, a man who would be cut up and fed to the lions when he died instead of meeting his gods in a proper tomb. Lower than sewer trash, but so important: His fights would calm the crowds when they grumbled too loudly over the Emperor’s taxes, his presence would titillate the most bored patricians at dinner parties and keep them from scheming, his blood would be sold to epileptics as a cure for their foaming fits, and brides would fight for one of his spears to part their hair on their wedding day and thus guarantee themselves a happy marriage.
All of it would vanish overnight, of course, if he lost his next fight. And I wondered how long he would last.
“Savages never live long,” an aging legionnaire said critically, slamming a mug of beer down on the table at a tavern where I’d gone to sing. “The Barbarian’s just like all those tribesmen I came up against in Britannia—throws too much into every stroke. Savages always lose in the end because they can’t keep their heads.”
Quite correct, I thought. Men who want to die usually do, and Fortune’s smile on gladiators is notoriously fickle. But . . .
I watched Arius stride through the forum, seeing the icy rigidity of his shoulders, the iron grip of the fingers clasped at the small of his back, the fierce impassive gaze he turned on the
lanista
who waddled complacent and perspiring at his side. Thin ice over savagery—a potent brew, and the fans lapped at it deliriously. The ice never broke, but stories persisted of the men he’d killed in street brawls, the taverns he’d wrecked in drunken rages, the fellow fighters he’d slain in sparring practice, and hopeful crowds turned up daily outside the Mars Street training courtyard in hopes of seeing it for themselves.
Yes. While he lived, while he lasted, he’d rise to the top.
“What’s the news in Rome?” Lepida wrote to me after a careless description of Tivoli’s cool winds and soothing rains, her success at local parties, the Tivoli girls she put to shame. I wrote back an inventive account of Arius’s carousing, naming each and every fabled beauty who’d reportedly offered her services free of charge, and volunteering my personal opinion that he’d sampled them all.
“My, aren’t you talkative,” she wrote back snappishly. “Well, you’d better start delivering these right away, one per week. And don’t think I won’t know if you conveniently lose them.”
“These” turned out to be a packet of letters: prewritten on expensive paper, sealed and scented, and addressed to
“Arrius the Gladiator”
in Lepida’s none-too-literate hand. Dutifully I took one and made my way to Mars Street.
“Oh yes,” Gallus purred. “Lady Lepida’s maid—you have a delivery from your mistress? These noble ladies and their plotting! Never fear, I’ll leave you in privacy.” He disappeared, leaving me alone with the Barbarian.
For a moment we just looked at each other. “I have a letter from my mistress,” I said crisply.
“I can’t read,” he shrugged. “Only fight.”
“I’ve been charged to read it to you.” I cleared my throat, retrieving the letter and breaking the seal.
“ ‘My dear Arrius,’ ”
I read, feeling my cheeks flush.
“ ‘How horibly dull it is up here in Tivoli with no games. I so much look forward to the gladitorial shows when I get back. I’ve perswaded my father to give you a prime spot. I do hope you haven’t forgoten all about me. Lepida Pollia.’ ”
I folded the letter up. “Reply?”
“None.” He was leaning up against the wall, arms folded across his wide chest, gazing out the window.
“She won’t like that,” I said, and noticed incongruously how a scar behind his ear interrupted the line of his russet hair.
No answer. I curtsied, turned—
“Thought I saw you at the Golden Cockerel last week.”
“Yes. The taverner likes me to sing.”
I saw Arius there the following night, drinking. Deaf to me.
Another letter the following week. “No reply,” he said.