Fighting Fit

by Annie Dalton

  Of course, that was never going to happen.

  Reuben was firm in the way only a pure angel can be. “Sorry, that won’t be possible,” he said politely.

  I’d have said the Emperor was borderline normal up till this point. But the instant Reubs turned him down, I felt him switch.

  Nero didn’t start to froth at the mouth, or bark like a dog, he just went very very still, but you could feel something dark seething inside him. “Take them out of my sight!” he commanded the guards. “They bore me.”

  Aurelia gasped. “But what will happen to us?”

  “I haven’t quite decided,” said the Emperor in an irritated voice. “But throwing you to wild animals is obviously out. What do you think, my friends?” he called over his shoulder.

  My heart sank as Titus and Quintus hurried forward. Nero drew them into a huddle. “How shall I kill the Christian children?” he asked them petulantly.

  “Easy!” said Titus in his high voice. “Put them in the ring with trained gladiators!”

  The Emperor let out a mad titter. “Excellent idea! Take them to the dungeons. Tomorrow the gods can decide their fate.”

  Chapter Nine

  The sun was setting as the guards marched us through the city. In households all over Rome, people were cooking their suppers. The air was hazy with wood-smoke and I kept catching savoury whiffs of frying fish and onions. Once I looked up and saw a woman on a balcony, hushing her new baby to sleep.

  As we tramped through twilit streets, the Christians sang to keep up their spirits. Early Christian hymns were surprisingly uplifting, nothing like the dirges we sang at my human high school. Reuben and I soon found ourselves joining in. Then we taught them to sing Reuben’s song, “We’re not alone! The Christians picked it up really quickly, in fact they actually put a cool little Roman spin on it. But we were attracting too much attention from passersby and the guards got nervous and told us to shut up.

  We were just passing the Temple of Vesta. A door stood open between two lofty stone pillars. I caught a glimpse of rich velvety darkness inside and the golden flicker of the sacred flame. The smell of incense wafted towards me. Suddenly, I had to pinch myself. Coming down the steps towards me, dressed in the tunic and veil of a Vestal virgin, was ANOTHER Aurelia!

  For an instant everything seemed to shimmer: the girl in her gauzy white veil, the beautiful temple, the violet sky with its pinpricks of stars -then Aurelia’s double vanished into the crowd like a dream.

  “Aurelia! I’ve just seen your absolute spitting image!!” I babbled.

  “No talking!” barked one of the guards.

  Aurelia looked bewildered. “You saw someone who looks like me?” she whispered.

  “She’s so like you it’s spooky,” I whispered back. “And she’s a Vestal virgin, just like you once wanted to be. Isn’t that amazing?”

  She stared at me wide-eyed.

  “That must be why you always felt something was missing,” I told her excitedly. “Perhaps you really are a twin!”

  Aurelia’s eyes brimmed with tears. “Even if you’re right, I’m not going to live long enough to meet her.”

  “No, it’s going to work out, I swear!” I promised. “I can feel it, Aurelia! It’s like, there’s this beautiful mosaic forming and we’re all a part of it, but we’re too close to see the pattern.”

  It was true. I could feel all the gorgeous multicoloured pieces coming together around us. Of course, I had no idea how complex this particular mosaic would turn out to be…

  That night Orlando sprang us from the dungeons. I have NO idea how he got hold of those Praetorian guards’ uniforms but my angelic colleagues made brilliantly convincing guardsmen. No one even challenged us! The real guards were totally convinced that their dungeons were impregnable, so they were just chilling out in the guard-room, drinking wine and playing backgammon. We basically sneaked out right under their noses!

  The Christians naturally assumed that Orlando and his team belonged to the early Christian underground. They thanked him warmly then quickly melted away into the night.

  “We’d better lie low,” I told Orlando. “By tomorrow every Praetorian guard in this city will be looking for us, not to mention Nero’s secret police.”

  “We’re taking you back to the ludus with us,” said Orlando. “We’ve got a wagon waiting a couple of streets away.”

  “The minute Festus Brutus sees us, he’ll turn us over to the authorities,” I objected.

  Orlando shook his head. “It was Festus who lent us the wagon. He might seem rough and ready, but his heart is in the right place.”

  Aurelia was chatting animatedly to some of our rescuers, so I took the opportunity to tell Orlando about my amazing discovery. “I saw this girl on the way here,” I said eagerly. “She’s a Vestal virgin and I’m not exaggerating, she could be Aurelia’s identical twin!!”

  My voice faded as I saw Orlando’s expression. He knew, I thought. Orlando knew Aurelia had a twin all along.

  The lanista lived in a comfortable apartment behind the training school. A slave showed us into a brightly-painted room where Festus Brutus was doing Roman-style calculations at his desk. A grizzled old dog lay at his feet, looking as bad-tempered and battle-scarred as the lanista himself.

  “Just a minute,” Festus barked as we came in. “These taxes will be the death of me.”

  We waited while he finished scribbling numerals on a wax tablet using a sharp metal stylus. I looked around with cautious interest. There was a couch heaped with leopard and zebra skins, probably booty from various games. All around the walls, an artist had painted scenes of gory gladiatorial combat. Alongside the usual offerings in the household shrine, was a simple wooden sword. I knew from Reuben that this was a “rudis”. A lanista would give this symbolic sword to a gladiator on the day he finally bought his freedom.

  And it suddenly dawned on me. Festus Brutus wasn’t wounded on the battlefield at all. He’d got those injuries in the arena. Festus had been a gladiator too!

  He finally looked up, rubbing bloodshot eyes. “Well, well, if it isn’t the lion children!” he growled. “The city is buzzing like a beehive with news of your—” He broke off abruptly. He was staring at Aurelia with a stunned expression. “But she’s exactly like—”

  Orlando quickly shook his head and Festus checked himself.

  “My friends would like to see Star,” said Orlando. “If it isn’t too late.”

  The old gladiator gave an amazed laugh. “I’m getting senile,” he muttered. “Aiding and abetting religious dissidents. Giving new cadets the run of my ludus. Next thing I’ll be turning Christian.”

  No wonder he was confused. He had no idea why he’d allowed this barbarian slave to wander freely around Rome, instead of keeping him chained in his barracks like a dog. But we did. Like Aurelia, Festus was deeply susceptible to angelic vibes. (Plus, I have to say, Orlando is excellent at his job!)

  We followed Festus Brutus across a moonlit courtyard to the small apartment where the injured gladiatrix was convalescing.

  “Is Star any better?” I asked him.

  “For someone who almost bled to death, she’s alarmingly well,” he said in a grumbling voice. “That girl has unnatural powers of recovery.”

  Beside the open door was a peach tree so weighted down with ripening fruit, that its branches almost touched the ground. Soft voices floated out of the house into the evening air. Indoors, Star sat with her back to us in a flood of lamplight. Juno stood behind her, plaiting Star’s hair.

  It’s never one thing that makes you recognise a person. It’s more like lots of small things; a tone of voice, a gesture, the texture of someone’s hair.

  Festus gave a last baffled glance at Aurelia. “Strange times indeed,” he murmured. He picked up a fallen peach, dusted it off on his tunic, and took a bite. “You have a visitor!” he called to Star.

  “I’m not interested in visitors,” she called back in her foreign-sounding Latin.

 
“You’ll be interested in this one,” said Festus and I heard a strange excitement in his voice.

  But by this time I knew. I hadn’t been looking for similarities before. I’d been confused by Star’s mask and her sexy fighting costume, not to mention my own mixed-up emotions. But now I knew with absolute certainty what I’d see when Star turned to face us; a girl with grey eyes, flyaway brown hair, and a dimple in her cheek.

  My mistress wasn’t separated from one sister at birth, but two. The Christian girl, the Vestal virgin and the feisty gladiatrix were identical triplets!

  I’ll probably never see two humans more astonished than Aurelia and Star when they finally set eyes on each other. First they were stunned, then disbelieving, then shocked. Then they flew to each other, squealing like little kids on Christmas morning. They hugged and cried all over each other, kissing each other’s hands and cheeks.

  “I used to see you in my dreams,” Aurelia wept.

  Tears streamed down Star’s face. “I saw you too!” she sobbed. “I knew you were real. But they beat me and told me it wasn’t true!”

  I had to press my fingers against my lips to stop from crying. It broke me up to think these sisters had been communicating telepathically all these years.

  Festus Brutus vanished tactfully into his house, loudly blowing his nose.

  “We should leave,” Orlando whispered. “They’ve got some serious catching up to do.”

  We went to sit under an olive tree in a white pool of moonlight. It felt a bit weird sitting so close to Orlando in the dark, but I just looked up at the night sky and listened to the cicadas singing somewhere in the bushes. I sensed that Orlando had something on his mind.

  Eventually he cleared his throat. “I think it’s time I told you about the curse.”

  My mouth fell open. “There’s a curse? As well as triplets!”

  I think I mentioned the Roman tendency to curse everyone and everything that annoyed them? But the curse Orlando was talking about was in a totally different league.

  “Ancient Romans see signs and portents in everything, as you know. If you spill wine at a banquet, you’ll have bad luck in business. If your child is born with a harelip, it’s because you’re being punished by the gods. In such a superstitious climate, even the birth of twin babies is seen as alarming. Surviving triplets are so unique that their very existence seems unnatural.”

  I could tell we were going to be here a while, so I made myself comfortable against the nubbly trunk of the olive tree and listened to Orlando’s story.

  “Fifteen years ago, in the poorest part of Rome, a woman gave birth to three identical baby girls. After a long, difficult labour she was too weak to hold her baby daughters in her arms. She died just hours after giving birth. These children weren’t just linked by the circumstances of their birth,” Orlando explained. “Their souls were connected too.”

  “They were spiritual triplets!” I gasped. “That is SO special!”

  Orlando nodded. “Our Agency had been expecting three extremely special children to show up at some point during this era. They just didn’t know exactly where or when. Unfortunately the local Opposition agent was quicker off the mark, and he grabbed the opportunity to do major cosmic damage.”

  A passing moth brushed against my bare arm, making me shiver. “Go on,” I whispered.

  “OK, you guys probably know from Dark Studies that a curse is basically a negative thought, delivered with intense force?”

  Reuben and I nodded nervously.

  “But if enough humans feed it with the energy of belief, a curse can become like a kind of black hole, sucking in more and more negativity until eventually it takes on a demonic life of its own.”

  Reuben swallowed. “That sounds dark.”

  “It gets darker, believe me,” said Orlando. “Like most uneducated Romans, the triplets’ grandmother was terrified of what she couldn’t understand. She had been jealous of her daughter-in-law, and was furious that her son expected her to feed and care for these freakish motherless infants. This made her a perfect target for the Opposition.”

  “Oh-oh,” I said.

  “This jealous old woman was convinced that the triplets’ mother had offended the gods, so she made up her mind to free herself and her son from this bad luck. She bought a live chicken and took it to the shrine of a particularly unsavoury underworld god. A Dark agent, posing as a priest, accepted her offering. She started to weep and wring her hands, so he made her tell him what was wrong, and after he’d heard her story, this fake priest told her that he knew a way to divert the bad luck from her son’s house.”

  “Don’t tell me - with a curse,” said Reuben in disgust.

  Orlando nodded. “Exactly. Since the old woman was illiterate, he promised to help her word the curse to make it binding.”

  Orlando described how the fake priest scratched the words on a special curse tablet made of lead, and watched with a strange eagerness as the triplets’ grandmother placed it in the bloodstained shrine.

  “What did the curse say?” I whispered.

  “That these unnatural babies must be taken from the house and abandoned in three different areas of the city, where they would be exposed to the elements and left to die. If the old woman did everything exactly as she was told, then she and her son would prosper in all their dealings. But if the girls were ever reunited, not only would their good fortune end, Rome itself would fall.

  “While her son was sleeping,” Orlando went on, “the grandmother took the new-born girls out of the house under cover of darkness and abandoned them in three different areas of the city, just as she’d been instructed. By this time, the local Light agents had finally got their act together. With a little celestial help, two of the triplets quickly found new families. But despite our agents’ best efforts, the third baby - Star - was left crying in an alleyway for three days before any human noticed.”

  I was horrified. “It’s a wonder she survived.”

  “You’d be surprised. New-born humans are surprisingly tough,” said Orlando.

  He went on to describe how Star was eventually rescued - if you can call it that - by the owner of a sleazy public house called The Pomegranate. But when she was three years old, this same charmer sold her on to a slave dealer. After that, Star basically spent her childhood running away from various abusive owners, and being recaptured.

  It’s hardly surprising that she grew into a little female hooligan, who hit first and asked questions afterwards. Yet like her sisters, Star had a strong spiritual side. She had vivid dreams and saw strange visions. But she quickly learned that it was unwise to talk about such things, deciding that it was better to be laughed at for being a feisty tomboy, than stoned as a witch.

  “When she was ten years old, Star decided to take her destiny into her own hands and stowed away on a ship bound for Carthage, to seek her fortune,” Orlando told us.

  Carthage. How weird was that? It’s like when I made up my fictional life-story for Aurelia, I was actually tapping into Star’s real life-story.

  And Star did find her fortune; kind of. Orlando described how soon after she arrived, a sharp-eyed local lanista noticed a wild-haired ragamuffin defending herself in the street from some older boys. He was impressed by her spirit and thought it would be amusing to train her for the arena.

  Reuben shook his head. “Putting a ten-year-old girl in the arena? That’s sick.”

  “Star doesn’t see it that way,” said Orlando. “She says it was the first time anyone ever believed in her. Festus Brutus saw her fight a few weeks ago and decided to buy her for his ludus. To begin with he was just exploiting her like everyone else, but now I think he genuinely wants to help Star to buy her freedom.”

  “Who gave her that name?” I asked curiously.

  “Star was called dozens of different names while she was growing up, but none of them were her own. So when she needed a stage name, she decided to call herself Star. That was her private name for herself when she was a s
mall slave girl,” Orlando explained.

  I felt my eyes prickle with tears. I couldn’t imagine how that unloved child had survived such a harsh life.

  “What about the other sister? The temple girl?” asked Reuben.

  Orlando smiled, “Lucilla is something else. Her foster parents never told her of the circumstances of her birth, yet she always sensed that she had an unusual destiny. From the age of three or four, she’d plead with her parents to take her to the Temple of Vesta. If they refused, Lucilla ran off there by herself, taking offerings of flowers and cakes. She told her parents she felt peaceful there. No-one was surprised when the temple authorities sought her out to train her as a Vestal virgin.”

  “So now all three sisters are back in Rome,” Reuben said. “Star returned from Carthage or wherever. Aurelia just got back from Britain, and Lucilla’s been here all along.”

  “Lucilla will be so amazed when she finds out she’s got two long lost sisters,” I said excitedly.

  Reuben frowned. “Won’t it be dangerous to bring them together?”

  “Because of the curse!” I gasped. “I totally forgot about that.”

  Orlando shook his head. “The three sisters are supposed to be reunited. That’s been our objective all along.”

  “Orlando, that is SO cool!” I was practically hugging myself.

  He had that weary look he gets when I’ve totally missed the point. “This isn’t some family reunion, Mel,” he said in his most patient voice. “It’s an event of major cosmic significance, or the Agency would never have backed our mission.”

  “No, I do see that,” I said hastily.

  “Individually, all the girls have wonderful qualities, yet until now they’ve been incomplete. But once they’re reunited, their inner light will become so powerful, that it will shine down the centuries.” Orlando fixed me with his most intense expression. “These girls will transform history, Mel.”

  Reuben looked nervous. “Do the PODS know about this?”

  Orlando gave us a strange little smile. “Why do you think they’ve fought so hard to keep them apart?”