The red-haired woman walks beside a man who towers over her. The two of them lead a group of more men, long-haired Thracians or Celts; Mouse isn’t sure which. She is slim and small beside them, but she moves with authority to match theirs. Chin high, her face cuts the air. They are moving quickly, and Mouse knows they are important ones.
“Who is that?” she asks.
Hustus whispers his answer, reverence in his voice. “Spartacus. He’s one of the leaders.”
“I mean her. Who is she?”
Hustus bends his head to put his lips near her ear. Looking at the ground, he says, “She is the priestess. Astera. The one who knows the future. Don’t look at her.”
Mouse can’t pull her eyes away.
A young man runs up to the group, and they pause. The men talk over something animatedly. The priestess crosses her arms, and her gaze moves over the camp, searching for something to interest her more than whatever the men are discussing. Mouse knows she should look down. She doesn’t, and the priestess sees her. Stares.
Hustus hears the catch in Mouse’s breathing. “What? Is she looking at us?”
Mouse doesn’t feel as if she can move. “She’s coming toward us.”
“Shit,” Hustus hisses. “Shit. Shit.”
Spartacus and the other men stop talking. They watch Astera for a moment, and then one of them resumes the argument.
Astera walks up to the children. She studies them a moment. Her face is pale by Italian standards, freckled around the nose. Her eyes are a shade of green that Mouse never knew eyes could be. She has stigmas curling up her arms and half hidden by her tunic, frightening images that Mouse tries not to see too clearly. Hustus keeps his gaze down.
“You are twins,” Astera says. Her Latin is strangely accented. “Twin…brothers, is that right?”
Mouse manages to nod.
“You are from these hills, aren’t you?”
She nods again.
“Shepherds?”
Another nod.
“You both had collars about your necks. I can see where you wore them. You had an owner who claimed you. Who was he?”
Hustus answers, “Marcus Aburius.”
Astera squints as she studies Mouse, then lets her gaze include Hustus. “This Aburius would not like it if he knew where you are right now, would he?”
“No, he would spit fire if he knew,” Hustus says. As ever, he is finding his voice quickly.
“He has that power?”
“I mean…curses. He would spit curses.”
Spartacus calls to Astera. He places his hands on his hips, framing the bulky muscles of his chest and the compartments of his abdomen. Mouse is glad he’s not any closer. He says something in a language she can’t understand. Astera answers him in kind. Her voice sounds sharp, but that may be the character of the language and not an indication of her temperament. Spartacus takes no offense. He shrugs and says something to his companions. They continue on their way.
“I have to go,” Astera says. “Others are waiting to talk to us, but I have something to ask of you. You know who I am, yes? What I am?”
Both twins nod.
“I am a priestess of the goddess Kotys. She is unknown to you, but she speaks and I hear her. Even now, as I say words to you, she is saying words to me. What she says is that you are the children I must ask to do a thing for her. You must be willing, though, or it is no good. Are you willing?”
Hustus says, “Yes, we will do it.”
“And you?” Astera asks her.
Mouse nods.
“The goddess rewards those she asks to serve her.” Astera steps closer, bringing them into the narrow sphere of her confidence. “You must do this thing in secret. Understand? Tell no one. If you do, the goddess will not be pleased.” And then, even closer, she whispers the task the goddess has for them.
—
They do the thing Astera says the goddess Kotys wishes them to do. It’s a strange thing, Mouse thinks, and she doesn’t understand it until the morning afterward. And even then it’s not so much that she understands but that the existence of new mysteries have been revealed to her. Not answers but questions.
That morning she awakens to whispers. And motion. She thinks, They’ve come. Masters. Soldiers. Romans. Her hand goes to her neck, feeling for the metal that’s no longer there. It should be, she thinks. Better that it were. Safer. She half-rises, letting the blanket that one of Astera’s women had given her fall away. The world is lit by the gray light of predawn. Through it people move. Voices murmur. Someone shouts something and then is shushed. And then another voice, a woman, intones something like a prayer. There’s confusion but not the sounds of an attack.
“Hustus?” she whispers. For a moment, she fears that he woke before her, realized what was happening, and ran. The thought of it takes her breath away, but then he’s there beside her. He grabs her hand and says, “We know nothing. Remember? Say nothing if asked.”
“About what? What’s happening?”
He pulls her along. Not away from the commotion, as she would like, but toward it. By the time they approach, a group has gathered around something, peering down. A few hold torches. Women and a few men, mostly the Thracians close to Spartacus. Whatever they are looking at has hushed them completely. Hustus slides between them, pulling Mouse behind him. They brush past hips and through arms. They get as close as they can. Those in front won’t budge when Hustus tries to get past them. He squirms to one side. Through the small space between two people, Mouse sees what everyone is transfixed by.
Spartacus. He sleeps under the flickering highlights of the torches, on his back, propped up against a bundle of some sort. Mouse hasn’t seen his face this close up. She has a memory of climbing onto her father’s chest and squeezing his cheeks. It’s there and gone in an instant. How he can sleep with all the people around him and the flaming torches so near, she can’t say. But that’s not the strangest thing. It’s not why people are staring.
The snake that is wrapped around his face is why. It’s long and gray, with loops that bind the Thracian’s face loosely, from his chin up around his cheek and over the crown of his head. The snake’s slim head rests on his forehead. It wears a black collar around its neck. She can’t make them out, but she knows that its scales are gray with darker flecks along the belly. She knows this because the day previous she caught it with her own hands. She had scrambled across the jumble of rocks in which the creatures lived until she came across one that seemed asleep in the glare of noonday. She moved slowly toward it. Her bare feet silent on the stones, toes reaching as she stepped. Hustus was off on the other edge of the slope, annoyed because it was proving hard to find the snake Astera had told them the goddess wanted.
Mouse sat for a time beside it, watching it breathe, trying to convince it that she was not a threat. When she reached for it, she simply pressed the palm of her hand down on its head. It flexed but didn’t squirm. She had never caught a snake like that before.
That snake is this one, wrapped around Spartacus’s sleeping head. That would be strange enough, but it’s the amazement of the group that confuses her even more. They stand staring. They don’t move until one of Astera’s women, Cerzula, shoves through them, yelling for them to clear away. Her face is filled with rapture. Her cheeks tremble. She touches the snake, gently slipping her fingers under it. She lifts the loops free, and the snake stays limp in her hands.
Spartacus swallows and moves his head to one side. Other than that, he sleeps on.
Cerzula holds the snake high and shouts that Kotys has given a sign. She runs toward the clearing in the center of the camp, propelled by others who rush behind her, repeating her claim with mounting fervor. The day, suddenly, seems fully lit. Awake, as if it’s found its purpose.
The women grasp Spartacus. One slaps his cheeks. Others grab him by the arms and pull. He stirs, eyes opened and mumbling. They get him to his feet and lead him, stumbling on his long, muscular legs, to the clearing, where other
s are rushing to see what’s happening.
Mouse doesn’t know what to think. The goddess didn’t send a sign. Mouse herself caught that snake. Or did she? The snake just lay there as if it were waiting for her. And she didn’t wrap it around the Thracian’s face. Did the snake do it, driven by the goddess? Perhaps that’s what Cerzula meant and what had the others so excited. She thinks to ask Hustus, but he’s already run toward the clearing. He is caught up in the moment while Mouse stands stunned by it.
Her thoughts vanish when Astera appears beside her. She speaks softly. “Here is the first thing I will teach you: to be an instrument of the gods, one must learn their will and act to see it realized. We listen; we act. That is how the divine shape the world. That’s what many don’t understand. They pray, but they sit waiting for the response. Truly, the gods help us make the world, but they don’t do it for us. This is a large thought. Don’t try to understand it completely just yet. But hold it. Watch and you will see.” Then she adds, “You are not a boy.”
Mouse’s face flushes.
“What is your name?” Astera asks.
Mouse tells her.
“That’s not a name! I mean, your real name. What is the name your mother gave you?”
“Laelia.”
Astera considers it for a long time, then says, “That’s a good name. The goddess meant for you to find me, and me you. You are my Laelia now. My moon at night. Not a slave, but someone to walk beside me so that I can teach you how to see the goddess in everything. Will you walk beside me?”
“Why?” Laelia asks.
Astera frowns, her thin lips changing shape entirely. “You mean, why do I offer this to you? Because you are a twin. Because you have lived disguised, a girl the world has not noticed yet. Because you are scared, and you need not be. Aren’t those enough reasons?”
Laelia nods. She takes the woman’s hand when it’s offered, and the two of them follow the others toward the clearing.
Spartacus
One after another they offer testimony. Of his bravery. Of his life before the arena. Of his feats within that hellish circle. Of the clear signs that the gods favor him. The snake wrapped around his head—if that was not a sign that the Great Mother is with him, what would be? Some voices he knows. Others are new to him, though they all attest to having witnessed things he has done.
Spartacus can hear them from where he lies beneath the cover of a sheet pinned at a slant from some saplings. He’s near but sheltered from the group that has taken to gathering each morning to listen to these tales. He listens not for the tales themselves, as most of them he’s heard already. Nor out of pride. He knows the truth of himself and that humbles him, as it should all men. He does want to hear what’s said, though, and to weigh how it’s received. He may not believe the myth of himself, but he knows its import. He marks the time until it becomes his turn. For his turn always comes, and being ready for it is part of what he owes the people who follow him now.
Kastor speaks. He lost his countrymen on the night of the breakout. Since then, he’s been one with the Thracians, welcomed among them. His voice is always big, but today he must be standing near the shelter. He tells of when Spartacus fought the one they called Martianius the Rapist in the arena in Rome. He was new to the ring then, he explains, just come from Thrace. Vatia had bought him but did not yet know what he had on his hands. He sent him to be slaughtered before ever he took him home to Capua. But Spartacus wasn’t slaughtered. Instead, he got around Martianius’s shield and avoided his sword and sank his rusty dagger into his abdomen. He held the man by the neck and sawed the dull blade through his belly until his insides spilled out.
“The Rapist hadn’t expected that!” Kastor shouts. “Four years he’d fought and lived, until he met Spartacus. You should’ve seen how large his eyes were. Big as two moons.” Kastor seems to like that detail. He repeats it several times. Likely he makes moons of his own eyes. Spartacus can imagine him turning, feigning surprise, stumbling as death gets hold of him. People laugh and hoot.
Spartacus doesn’t remember Martianius’s eyes. What he remembers is that he went to that fight, his first as a gladiator, praying to Zalmoxis for a good death. That’s all he wanted, to escape to the next world. A small thing that comes to all in time, he wanted death as soon as possible. He could’ve had it, but there are rules to such things. If he wanted to be praised in the next world, he had to leave this one fighting with everything he had. He had to intend to kill, not to be killed. And when he intends to kill, he does. So far it has been as simple as that. The Rapist got the death that Spartacus himself wanted. He wonders, sometimes, if that dead man—or any of the others—thanks him or curses him for it.
When the Galatian is finished, another voice rises to speak. And then another. After several people speak, Drenis tells of the hunt they had a few days before. Even here on the slopes of Vesuvius, the Hunter Hero, Zalmoxis, is strong. Surely he is, because he brought a boar right to the tip of Spartacus’s hunting spear. It went to no other, he says, but just to Spartacus, who met it with his spear and punctured the creature’s heart. He asks others to confirm what he’s said, and they do. “I’ve known him since we were both just boys,” Drenis says. “I know he is beloved of the gods. And we are too, so long as we stand with him.”
At that last point Spartacus nods. That he approves of. They are words that have purpose, and since the breakout Drenis has become freer with speech. Spartacus is less certain that he would claim Zalmoxis brought the boar to him. He hasn’t found that the gods work that way. He’s found only that success at anything—the hunt, battle, the arena—is the product of the actions that bring it about. That’s why to him worship is action. Ask for the gods’ favor, then earn it by doing the thing you wish them to aid you with. The two things—action and results—are as linked as drinking water is to quenching thirst. It’s why he ran faster than the others on the hunt. It’s why he jumped down into the ravine while Drenis paused to look for a way to descend. It’s why he didn’t veer to the left and get tangled in the trees as they climbed toward the next ridgeline, as Dolmos did. Each thing he did was all and only to place him in collision with the boar. That was why he was in the right place to meet him. Did Zalmoxis do it? No, he did. Did Zalmoxis approve and allow it to be? Of course. Spartacus is sure of that. Just as he is sure that any man among the hunt could’ve done the same. He must teach them that. He makes a note to speak of this with Drenis when next he gets the chance.
When he hears Gaidres’s voice, Spartacus sits up. It’s habit, respect to an elder, even one who answers to his orders. He lifts his chin, one ear cocked to hear better. The story he tells? Within a few words, Spartacus knows it. He’s heard it before, many times. His birth.
“In all the many births she had attended,” Gaidres claims, “the midwife who caught him had never seen an infant with hands so large. Looking at the fine lines of his palms, she saw the man who would be. It was written there in his flesh, the plans the gods had for him. She saw it plainly, for it was there to be seen and she had the eyes for it.”
Hearing him, the cadence with which he speaks, Spartacus hears also his father. For this was a tale he told many times. Gaidres speaks with his cadence, with each pause stressing the same moments and with the same conviction.
He describes how the midwife whispered to the mother, “Here is your son. Give him your breast.” And how she then spoke louder, so the father would hear. She said, “He will be a leader of men. He has the spirit of the God Hero in him. See his hands. They are large. They will always be strong, and he will never fear to grasp for the things he desires. He will make men tremble. He will bring much death, and his name will be known to the ages. All this is to be.”
Hearing what the midwife declared, the boy’s father, Desakenthos, was pleased. What man wouldn’t be? He paid the woman with a golden bowl, finely wrought, no mean thing. He did so in public, Gaidres explains, so that others watching would know that he had a son and that he was well f
ormed.
Then he took the boy from his mother’s breast. He wrapped the infant in a woolen shawl. Holding him pressed to his chest, he climbed atop his foremost horse, a mare nearly all white save for splashes of brown above her hooves. He pressed her to a gallop and rode from the summer encampment across the plain. The grass was thick before them, brushed by the wind and undulating like the surface of a great ocean. The father let go the reins and found his balance on the horse’s back. He lifted the child and turned his face so that it cut the wind. He held him like that as he asked one god after another to see him and bless him. He galloped until the mare slowed. He rode on until she stopped and stood listening to the wind. The father knew that she was listening for the gods, so he listened as well. “The child was silent,” Gaidres said, “all of them waiting for—”
“I do not believe it,” a voice hammers through Gaidres’s measured words. Oenomaus. Spartacus knows that Oenomaus hates to hear these stories of him. He comes anyway but only to complain and refute. “No infant would ride atop a horse, held out in the wind like that. He would have bawled like any other babe. Think of that, mighty Spartacus a squawking babe.”
Spartacus almost rises, at the insult to Gaidres more than anything else. In truth he feels no insult. Were he confronted so, he would laugh and agree. It’s just a story, he would acknowledge. He would say, “Do you know, Oenomaus, the truth is that I have no idea when I was born. It might have been during a midwinter storm. Who am I to say? Perhaps there was no horseback ride. The memory isn’t mine, so I can’t know.” But that response isn’t his to give. The moment, the stage, belongs to his uncle and to his father’s story. So he holds back.
And it’s for the best. Gaidres finds voice to rise above Oenomaus, managing to stay calm and authoritative. Still, that might not have stopped him, but others join voices, ordering the Germani to silence. Let the Thracian finish, they say.
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