“Master, should I?” Kaleb asks.
Crassus, who had begun to wrap the sash around his waist, exhales an exasperated breath and holds out the strip of red cloth. Kaleb slips the cloth around the molded leather of his master’s breastplate. His fingers are nimble, making a snug bow so that the waistband doesn’t slip, then draping the two ends to either side of the bow, tucking them to make the hanging loops uniform in length.
“There,” Crassus says, “proof that it’s a simple task.” He pats Kaleb on the back, unaware that his praise is an insult at the same time. “Now my cloak.”
Kaleb first picks up the heavy clasp that will hold the embroidered cloak in place. He holds it between his teeth and lifts the garment from the chair it had been draped over. It takes him a moment to adjust his grip on it. When he has it, he positions it just so on his master’s shoulders. Crassus dips his head to make it easier. Kaleb feels the warmth of the man’s breath on his neck. He holds the cloak pinched in place with one hand, and he tugs the folds until they look suitably regal.
“Strange the way fate moves us, isn’t it?” Crassus asks. “At the start of this uprising, I wanted nothing to do with it. Now I’m at the center of it, by my own design. What happens in the coming months matters, Kaleb, as does how I begin. That’s why there was no choice but to execute that soldier. There’s no room for mirth at my orders.”
True enough, the soldier in question had been truly unwise. One of the orders Crassus gave on arriving was that men would wear their swords at all times, even when digging trenches and preparing each night’s camp. It was a standard order, made before he’d even assessed that it needed to be restated. One soldier, to the initial amusement of his companions, went to work digging wearing his sword belt but nothing else. Butt-naked he jested. Butt-naked he died. The men, Crassus had said, might as well know that a sense of humor was not one of the things he was famous for.
“Do you understand why I’m going to do this thing today? With the tremblers, I mean.”
Kaleb pulls the clasp from his teeth and answers, “Yes, master.”
“Just ‘Yes, master’? What do you think of it?”
“What I think does not matter.”
“It doesn’t up until the moment I ask you. And the moment after you’ve answered, it no longer matters. But now I’m asking. So answer me.”
Kaleb, aware of the nearness of Crassus’s neck and the pulsing artery there, pushes the pin through the cloak, careful to get both ends. His fingers move, long and dark, brushing Crassus’s lighter skin. He doesn’t really pause to consider what he thinks. He just says what Crassus wants him to. “There is no place in a legion for cowardice.”
Crassus grunts.
“A man who will drop his weapons and run,” Kaleb says, “is no soldier. He should be made one, if possible. But also, he should be made an example, so that others do not succumb to the same sickness.”
“Which is my intention.”
“Yes, master. You are exactly right. When in need of the right model, look back, just as you’re doing.”
Snapping the clasp in place, Kaleb steps back. He moves out of the fall of the lamplight to see better.
“Do I look the part?” Crassus asks.
Kaleb makes a show of taking in the whole of him, from his military sandals to the folds of his skirt and over the ornate leatherwork of his breastplate, molded into a musculature he knew was more exaggerated than what lay beneath it. The sash of rank. The long sweep of the red robe, embroidered with patterns sewn in golden thread. Above this, Crassus’s boldly featured face, all the parts seemingly in competition with one another.
Incongruously, looking at the senator’s face reminds Kaleb of Umma. Before he and Crassus left to march south to Picentia, they had a night together. A wonderful night, and not just for the bed they shared, but moreover for the rare moment of lightness between them after they were intimate. It was brought on by the news he’d just shared with her and that put her in good enough spirits to poke fun at their master. She’d said he looked like a frog that had swallowed a scorpion and was just realizing it had made a mistake. She’d done an impression of him. It was comical mainly because her beautiful features bore no resemblance to the senator’s. No matter how she puffed her cheeks and grimaced and raised one eyebrow and then the other, she was perfection nonetheless. His perfection, and he had only this trouble with the gladiators to see through before returning to her. He hears her words, ones spoken so close to his ear, which she breathed from her soul directly to his.
“I want you to always be with me,” she said. “Only you.”
Kaleb lets none of the warmth he’s reminded of show. Nor any of his impatience to see her again. He says, “Yes, master, the men will see you as a model to aspire to.”
“Well, they should,” Crassus says. He turns to leave. “Come. Let’s get this over with.”
—
A month earlier, when the news arrived, Kaleb sat where he usually did during the afternoon, at a small table near Crassus’s massive desk. He perched on a bare stool. Slaves for Crassus didn’t merit cushions. Cushions wore, needed replacement. They were an expense, and despite the ostentatious grandeur of the villa, Crassus spent only on luxuries that could be observed, that demonstrated his wealth for the eyes of those nobles whom he most wished to impress with it. Slaves were not such, so Kaleb had often to adjust his position, looking for moments of comfort.
He bent over calculations Crassus had called for that morning. Working from a few sets of architectural plans, he was to determine the number of familial rooms there would be in one of Crassus’s new tenements. From there, he’d look at the going rental rates, calculate the likely rent receipts as compared to the running maintenance costs, and work back to estimate how quickly the initial costs of design and construction would be recouped. After all that, of course, he was to turn to tallying profits. With Crassus, things always eventually turned to tallying profits. The senator already had a team employed on just this task, but he liked to contrast the numbers they produced beside the ones Kaleb did. Several times Kaleb had caught errors—intentional or not—in other men’s work.
Though he worked the complicated sums, Umma was never far from his mind. He’d just begun to speculate on where in the household she was right now—in what room, engaged in what work, with whom around her—when the senator arrived. He stepped into the room with a dazed look on his face, paused there, and seemed confused by where he was and why. He held a scroll at his side.
“Master?” Kaleb asked. “Is something wrong?”
Crassus didn’t look at him. He moved to his writing table, placed the papyrus on it, and scanned it. “Wrong? A great many things are wrong.”
“Can I be of service?”
As with the first question, Crassus answered but sounded as if he were speaking to himself, not to Kaleb. “In dire times we must all be of service. Each in our way. In dire times there is opportunity. Remember that, Crassus. Always. Always, remember that.”
Kaleb stood, causing the stool to rasp across the tiles. “How can I help, master?”
The motion and sound attracted Crassus’s gaze. He seemed surprised at Kaleb’s presence, but only for a moment. He erased the expression and became craggy-featured Crassus again. “No, it’s not you I need.” He thought a moment. “I must get dressed. The Senate. That’s where I need to be. Leave me, Kaleb.”
He so ordered, but before Kaleb could organize the documents he’d been working with, Crassus himself left the room, calling for his servants to attend to dressing him. The slave stood but paused. He’d been told to leave, but not the room, the person. And that person was no longer here. He lowered himself to continue with the figures, but he was immediately aware of a presence in the room. The parchment. It moved. Curling slightly at the edges. There were words on it, and whatever those words were, they’d stunned a man who was supposed to be immune to being stunned.
Kaleb sat for a time studying the nearness of the le
tter. He rose, moved around the senator’s desk, and stood above it. At the top of the papyrus, written in a bold hand, was scrawled Intended for Marcus Licinius Crassus only. He couldn’t help feeling that this was written specifically for him. He had read a great deal of his master’s correspondence, but he’d never ignored so clear a warning. He glanced toward the open door. People moved out there, answering Crassus’s cries. Someone could appear and see him at any moment. How many of them would know what correspondence he should or shouldn’t be reading? Not many. Crassus, yes, but Kaleb could hear his voice, and it was at a distance. If you’re going to read it, he thought, do it now, and quickly. Stop hesitating.
Brother, have you heard of my shame? If not, this letter will arrive with the dire news in its wake. Defeat. Twofold. A dark hour, and me with a dreadful part in it. Know these things to be true. The army I commanded has been destroyed. Massacred, Crassus, through a foul trick the design of which I don’t yet comprehend. All of them slain by the barbarians. That I live is but the workings of a malignant god. I was not, that day, with the marching army, having stopped to appraise Numerius Antia of my victory over the horde under the leadership of the Gaul, Crixus. I awoke in luxury in Numerius’s villa while my men were slaughtered. Am I ruined, Crassus? I have thoughts against my life. I am naught but a death mask.
Kaleb reread those last two sentences. He glanced at the signature. Gellius. This was the consul Lucius Gellius’s writing! He jumped back to where he’d left off.
But I said a twofold tragedy. Here is the rest. The rebel army, disguised as my legion, garbed in Roman armor and under the legion’s standard, converged on Clodianus’s forces and, through trickery, attacked them before they knew their peril. Vile treachery. We are shattered. I fear for Rome. I fear for—
Kaleb jumped at the sound of Crassus’s booming voice. He dashed around the desk, regained his stool, and bent his head to the figures just before the senator strode in. A slave named Caeso scurried beside him, trying desperately to arrange the drape of their master’s toga. Crassus’s agitated motions weren’t making it easy. He shrugged and contorted, fighting the body servant’s efforts. He was in the room just long enough to snatch up the letter. He pulled away from Caeso. “That’s enough, damn you!” he snapped. Still in disarray, he marched into the hall, holding up the hem of his toga to better walk quickly. He hadn’t even glanced at Kaleb.
Caeso scowled after him. He whispered something under his breath. Kaleb heard him clearly enough, but the language he used was incomprehensible. He was a terse man of Gallic origins. He rarely had words for Kaleb. This time he stopped and studied him a moment. The scowl faded, and his voice, when he spoke, was congenial. “Do you know what’s happening?”
Kaleb shook his head. No good could come of revealing what he’d read. To Umma, yes, but not to anyone else.
Caeso pressed him. “He’s upset. Is this about the gladiators? He mumbled something, but it made no sense.” When Kaleb just shook his head again, Caeso’s friendly expression vanished. “Fine. Keep it to yourself. Be glad the man didn’t look you in the face. The truth is written on it, Ethiopian.” With that, he left.
Yes, Kaleb thought but didn’t say, but how often do masters see the truth written on their slaves’ faces?
Alone, Kaleb sat letting what he’d read fill him. Gellius defeated, likely disgraced. Considering taking his own life. That’s what he meant, right? I have thoughts against my life. What else could that mean? Please let that be so, Kaleb thought. Die, and leave Umma to the one who loves her.
This wasn’t the first time he’d hoped that the consul would be killed in the field. He’d prayed for it, in fact. He’d bought a small wooden carving from an Egyptian woman who claimed to sell powerful curses. She made him pay dearly for it, seeming to know the moment she saw him that the curse involved a slave seeking to harm a citizen. The carving was of a black jackal, its mouth open and jaws cut into the wood. He asked after the god’s name, but the woman wouldn’t give it. He didn’t need to know, she said. All he had to do was prick his wrist and bathe the carving in blood. Plenty of it. And then let it dry. And then burn it in a small fire, saying over and over again the name of the man to be cursed. Lastly, he was to collect the ashes and spread them on the doorstep of the accursed. That proved fairly easy, as Crassus gave him occasion by sending him with a letter to Gellius.
And Clodianus defeated as well. What a turn of events. The two of them had risen to their offices with a wave of optimism. They were going to end this rebellion. Everyone knew it. Crassus, though a friend of Gellius’s, had fumed at his rise to the consulship. Despite the calculated diligence with which he pursued acquiring wealth and regardless of the haughty pride he took in the power it gave him, Crassus yearned for true political power. The status of consulship. The full acceptance and respect from his peers that it testified to. In his mind, he should’ve been elected consul years earlier. Sometimes when it was late and he was in the mood to, he would complain that the very thing that gave him power—his wealth—denied him the consulship—because of lesser men’s jealousy. That was how he’d explained Gellius’s rise to prominence before his own.
The fact that the gladiators offered Gellius a sure military success had also riled him. The senators had all disdained the command when the revolt first began. But that was before the passing of months and the series of defeats. Before the slaves army’s numbers grew and the disruption to commerce began to hurt. Now, it was a command of some worth, a way to climb yet higher through military success.
“Or maybe not,” Kaleb whispered.
Two defeats. The gladiators victorious again. The thought gripped Kaleb with something akin to dread. I fear for Rome, Gellius wrote. Instinctively, Kaleb did as well. This was his home, his life. The order by which the world worked began and ended with the fortunes of Rome. He had so far viewed the slave uprising with just about the lack of interest Crassus would have expected of him. But…two more defeats. And…I have thoughts against my life. Suddenly, it seemed that what the gladiators did actually mattered. They could never prevail—that was still impossible to imagine—but before their eventual failure, they might change his circumstances for the better.
He thought, as he always did before too long, of Umma. These gladiators might change the circumstances of their lives. His. And Umma’s.
Strange, then, that at the very moment he began to care about the gladiators’ fortunes, he began to work against them.
Crassus, ever practical, did not stay stunned long, just while he shared the gravity of the moment with his fellow senators. Along with those venerable men, he wallowed in the misery of Roman soldiers cut down right here in Italy, in lands that were their own and should have been safe and peaceful, a haven for all citizens. With them, he received the estimates of the dead. In that chamber, his voice expounded on the gravity of the situation. Spartacus, once thought a disgraceful nuisance, had become a dangerous enemy of the republic. No effort should be spared in the fight to defeat him. No cost, he said, was too great. No sacrifice not worth making.
He discussed all this with his allies. Some of them were known to be kind to Crassus; many went disguised as aligned against them. Kaleb always sat in attendance, his stylus scratching away as he took notes, his mind keeping track of what he heard. Listening to the elite conspire in private, Kaleb soon realized that—after their initial surprise—not much of their expressed alarm was truly genuine. They seemed to place the blame more on the failures of Gellius and Clodianus than on Spartacus himself. They seemed to see the entire situation as tragedy to be decried and opportunity to be grasped at—the latter being of truer import.
Listening, Kaleb heard the entirety of the plan spelled out before it was put into play. The Senate would both call for the raising of new legions and balk at the expense of them. One of them would put forth a measure to pull all troops back from the east. Why worry about Mithridates when there was an enemy right in their midst? Another would call for summoning Gnaeus P
ompey back from his war against Quintus Sertorius in Spain. Or to recruit legions of provincials. For each, yet another of them would rise—if nobody else did quickly enough—to speak against the idea. The legions fighting in foreign lands had their hands full in their own hard-fought campaigns, they would argue. And anyway, it was the men in Italy who were threatened. Shouldn’t they be the ones to rise to face it? They had manpower enough here at home, which would bring them, inevitably, back to the initial sticking point. The cost.
The solution was clear but needed to be put forth in a manner to allay suspicions of personal ambitions. Thus Crassus let others circulate the opinion that the richest among them should bear the lion’s share of the cost. Why not? The people had been taxed enough. They’d paid for the failures thus far. They’d funded the great armies overseas. Shouldn’t the rich—who had the most to lose and whose villas were the very ones being pillaged—step in and offer for the good of all the fortunes the gods had blessed them with? And who more than Crassus—rich out of proportion to all his peers—should be asked to bear the largest burden?
From the start this was Crassus’s intention. He just made sure to look as if it were pressed upon him, as if he only reluctantly recognized the full responsibility that rested on him, as if even his famed avarice could be checked by calls of duty and for the salvation of Rome.
Kaleb didn’t witness any of this play out in the Senate. He didn’t learn the outcome until late on the night the Senate voted for action, when the senator had him summoned to the familial temple of the goddess Juno. The building sat somewhat lower down on the grounds, on the far side of the gardens, past the private bathing pools and near the southern entrance gate.
Trudging down the stone stairs toward it, Kaleb feared he was being called to hear his master vent his ire at an ill outcome. He knocked on the door, received permission to enter, and swung the door open. He found his master alone in the warm, dim candlelight. The air in the small, circular chamber was heavy with the incense burned in honor of the goddess. Around the altar, thin tendrils of smoke rose toward the ceiling. Kaleb didn’t look at the statue of the goddess, which only made it seem more likely that she watched him through her stone eyes.
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