Roma Victrix

by Russell Whitfield

  Her eyes were drawn once again to the pyre. It was stacked high and soaked in pitch, the aroma not dampened by the rain. On the pallet, Varia was laid out, arms across her chest, eyes closed as though she were sleeping. She was so young, Lysandra thought, and the accusing ghosts of her memories filled her mind. She recalled when they had first met in Balbus’s ludus. She had been little more than a child then and they had become friends when Lysandra spared her from the wrath of Greta, one of Balbus’s scrubs.

  More than friends to Varia. Lysandra had always known it – Varia had looked up to her, worshipped her almost. She was everything that the child had wanted to be. Tall, strong, hard and able to stand up to the Gretas of the world. It had flattered Lysandra’s ego to have Varia in tow and amused her as the girl trained alongside her.

  But the child had grown to womanhood and Lysandra had curbed her ambition, for her own safety: she had always known in her heart that Varia was not a killer. Her nature was too gentle. Even as they had fought, Varia’s harsh words had seemed forced – as though she was trying to justify her own actions.

  You should have let her win, the ghosts accused her. It should be you lying there.

  The mourners reached the summit and their dire increased in its intensity, high-pitched and keening. When she could stand it no longer, Lysandra raised her arms and waited as the howling died out. She stepped forward, clearing her throat: Only-begotten, noble race of Zeus, Blessed and fierce, who joys in caves to rove: O, warlike Pallas, whose illustrious kind, Ineffable and effable we find:

  Magnanimous and famed, the rocky height, And groves, and shady mountains thee delight: In arms rejoicing, who with Furies dire And wild, the souls of mortals dost inspire.

  Supple virgin of terrific mind,

  Dire Gorgon’s bane, unmarried, blessed, kind: Mother of arts, impetuous; understood, Rage to the wicked, wisdom to the good: Female and male, the arts of war are thine, Fanatic, much-formed dragonness, divine: Over the Phlegrean giants, roused to ire, Thy coursers driving, with destruction dire.

  Sprung from the head of Zeus, of splendid mien, Purger of evils, all-victorious queen.

  Hear me, O Goddess, when to thee I pray, With supplicating voice both night and day, And in my latest hour, give peace and health, Propitious times, and necessary wealth, And, ever present, be thy votaries aid, O, much implored, art’s parent, grey-eyed maid.

  As Lysandra sang, the old priest made his way from the temple, leading a magnificent bullock: so well-drugged was the beast that the rain did nothing to rouse it. ‘Athene!’ she shouted, her voice cracked and heavy with emotion. ‘Hear me! This was my fault. Mine! I am your handmaiden and this is my punishment for turning from your path. I ask forgiveness and I will pay in blood if that is your will.’

  She had given voice to her shame and her punishment, she knew, would go on till the day she died. It was guilt from which she could never be expunged. Athene would broke no deals: Lysandra could not throw herself onto the swords of Aesalon Nocturna and hope to end her pain so easily. The goddess would not allow it. So she must fight to win and honour the goddess that she had turned her back on. She had strayed unknowingly, perhaps, but ignorance was no excuse and Athene could be cruel to her priestesses as Medusa’s dire fate had shown.

  Lysandra stepped back and the old priest began the Hymn to Hades:

  Beneath the hills and wrapped in night, the cavernous plains below, the realm of Hades.

  Mystic Hades, Holder of the Keys of Earth, Incline Thy sacred ear, unlock Thy deep and adamantine gates, and bring abundant fruits to bear.

  All needy mortals pray to Thee, and You reply with riches from your hidden chambers.

  The seat of Gods, the basis of mankind is fixed upon Thine Avernean throne in the Underworld,

  Distant, unknown to rest, where darkness reigns, and destitute of breath, pale spectres dwell.

  In dread Acheron, whose depths are shrouded, and Earth’s stable roots are held secure,

  Thou determines the fates of the dead, heeding the council of Queen Persephone, Thy wife.

  In Thy black chariot, by sable horses drawn rapt over the deep, in the wondrous cave of Atthis, the wide gates display the entrance to Thy realm devoid of light.

  Thou shelter mortal souls in the comforting heart of Gaia, in the dark womb of Earth.

  Father of Dionysus, of subtle works, Thou alone are the author, visible and known.

  Teacher of Mysteries, Rapturous Lover, Power All-Ruling, Holy Giver of Hope, who delights in the hymns of sacred poets, grant favour to the work of Your Sister’s Priest

  And rejoicing come, for Holy rites are Thine.

  Lysandra made her way to the pyre and retrieved the sacrificial axe that that had been placed there. The priest poured oil and then wine over the bullock’s head as Valerian stood by with a bowl.

  Gritting her teeth, Lysandra swung the weapon with all her strength.

  It struck the animal at the base of its neck, nearly severing the head from the body.

  Blood sprayed up from its ruined arteries, spattering them with hot, stinking fluid as the bullock’s legs went from under it, dead before it hit ground. Valerian leaned forward, allowing the bowl to fill, body shaking with suppressed grief as he did so.

  ‘Gods on Olympus,’ he cried. ‘Accept our offering and accept…

  Varia… to the Fields of Elysium!’ At this, he emptied the contents of the bowl onto the pyre and stepped away.

  Lysandra took a torch from one of the mourners, steeling herself.

  Once again, her eyes were drawn to the pale corpse on the pallet.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, her words carried away on the wind.

  Perhaps, she thought, Varia would hear them in Elysium and forgive her.

  Lysandra thrust the torch into the kindling and fire leapt up, bright and hot, hungrily consuming the pitched-soaked wood, edging closer and closer to Varia till at last she began to burn, the smoke carrying her anima away. There was nothing left for Lysandra to do but kneel and smear her face with the dampening ashes.

  The house was silent and dark.

  Lysandra had asked Cappa and Murco to stay away from her and, for once, the two bodyguards did not argue, though she suspected that they were probably lurking somewhere outside in the cold night.

  Valerian had come with her – she had not invited him, but as she had walked away from the smouldering ruin of the pyre, he had followed and she had neither the meanness of spirit or the strength to send him away. His face, like hers, was smeared with black ashes, his hands and forearms dark with dried blood.

  ‘Sit,’ she said as she struck a flint to one of the lamps. It caught and soon the room was bathed in a gentle light. ‘Drink?’

  Valerian nodded as he sat at the table, looking about the place.

  ‘I thought you lived at the ludus,’ he said after a while.

  ‘I did whilst I was training. I am not convinced that I will be welcome there anymore. Also, it was Hister that forced Varia to fight on when I had her beaten. Part of me knows that he was only doing what he thought right. Yet… I want to kill him for doing it. It is best that I stay away from there.’ They drank in uncomfortable silence for long moments before Lysandra broke it. ‘You loved Varia, you said. How did you come to know her?’

  Valerian hesitated. ‘I met her at the Flavian. I work there now.

  She was training under Illeana – Aesalon Nocturna,’ he qualified.

  ‘I don’t know… the first time I saw her… I just knew. Even if she was being sick at the time.’ He looked up and met Lysandra’s eyes, a sad smile playing about his lips. ‘She was training… too hard, and she was ill on the steps. Not the most romantic of circumstances, but even next to Illeana, she stood out to me. Illeana’s like a goddess.

  You know, she told me that she had met you… and that she was wrong to say what she said.’

  ‘Yes, she is. And yes, she was – but I could tell that she also cared for Varia. In her own way.’ Lysandra tipp
ed back her cup, knowing where it would end and not caring. Athene had her blood price, she had her handmaiden back and she would serve her in the arena and pay bloody tribute. This night she had walked with Hades and would sleep in the embrace of Dionysus.

  ‘She did,’ Valerian agreed. ‘More than you know.’ He must have seen the spark of anger in Lysandra’s eye. It irked her that these Romans were laying some sort of claim to Varia’s memory and as though he had read her thoughts, Valerian went on. ‘We didn’t know about you, but a lot of the things she said now make sense to me. She claimed to have had a Greek trainer, though she pretended it was a man. She kept her past hidden, buried under half-truths and outright lies. Illeana says…’ he stopped. ‘It doesn’t matter any more anyway.’

  ‘What does Illeana say, Valerian?’ Lysandra asked. ‘That Varia wanted to forge her own way in life and I prevented that? That if I had allowed her to fight in Asia Minor none of this would have transpired? That this is all my fault?’ She heard the weary resigna-tion in her voice.

  ‘Something like that,’ the Roman agreed. ‘I’m sure there’s more to it.’

  ‘There is. But she is right – I tried to do what I thought was best.

  Varia was never a killer, Valerian. Never. She did not have it in her… that cold fire inside that makes you carry on when your blood is soaking into the sand and your arms are so tired you can barely hold your sword.’ She drained her cup and poured another. ‘I should have let her win.’

  Valerian opened his mouth to speak but stopped and drank instead.

  She knew what he wanted to say – that she was right and it should have been her on the pyre. They drank in silence for a long time, sinking cup after cup. ‘It was an accident,’ he offered eventually.

  ‘Illeana told me that you held back when you were fighting her…you held off. And that you slipped as she fell.’

  ‘Athene is punishing me,’ Lysandra said, gulping back wine and refilling their cups. ‘I was her priestess and then I fought for her in the arena. Valerian, I have never been defeated – and I should have been. But Athene always fought by my side. Somewhere, somehow, I forgot that. This is the price I must pay, and it would seem my indolence has caused suffering for you as well.’

  ‘The gods,’ Valerian too was sinking the wine as quickly as it would come. ‘Achillia, the gods have had their fun with me too.

  Sometimes I wonder if they made us to be their toys. It doesn’t seem fair that one man goes through life with Fortuna smiling on him and another does not. I am such a one. I thought they had had their fill of me – after Dacia.’

  ‘Dacia?’ Sorina land. ‘A bastion of barbarism.’

  ‘It took everything from me.’ He was drunk now, more so than she, doubtless her history of boozing holding her in good stead.

  His eyes filled with tears. ‘You see!’ he wiped at them angrily. ‘You see! My virtus gone. My career gone, my home… gone. Then –when I try to build again, to make good, when there was a possibility for me to know joy…’ he gestured hopelessly.

  ‘What happened in Dacia?’ Lysandra asked, fearing that she should not, but inside she desperately wanted to know.

  Valerian began to speak, telling her of the horrors of the war, his rape at the hands of the barbarians, bringing to mind her own ordeal with Nastasen after Eirianwen had been killed. He rambled on, the story going in circles, retreading paths and then revealing new ones as was the wont of the drunk. ‘I even saw Amazona there,’ he said.

  ‘ Sorina.’ The wine coursing through her made the stab of hatred all the more sharp. ‘She lives, then?’

  ‘Yes,’ Valerian replied. ‘She is a leader amongst them. She remembered me well enough,’ he added, going on to tell in as much detail as he could recall of their meeting. Lysandra pressed him for a while but in the end gave up. That Sorina was still alive sickened her – Dacia, it seemed, was a land that they both wanted to revenge themselves on and were both powerless to do so. She felt a strange kinship towards him as they drank, this man who had so insulted her once. They had both endured horrors that should not be endured and their experiences had marked their souls indelibly. Rape, she thought, was the one experience that you could not look back on and draw strength from and she said as much to Valerian.

  ‘I still think about it,’ he admitted. ‘Not all the time now, but it’s always with me. I wish that I had died with some honour on the field.’

  Lysandra was silent for a long time, her wine-fogged brain working slowly. ‘The gods,’ she said. ‘The gods have a plan for you, Valerian – they must have.’

  ‘As I said…’ He tipped back the last of his wine and banged the cup down on the table, much harder than he should have. ‘…They treat us as playthings. If there is any plan, it is the plan of vicious and cruel children.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Lysandra replied. ‘But I still believe that whom the gods love they test sorely.’

  ‘Your test is yet to come,’ Valerian murmured. ‘In Rome. They say that your fight with Amazona was the finest bout ever performed by women. Illeana is worth ten Amazonas. I think that you will lose, Achillia.’

  Lysandra rose to her feet, swaying as she did so. They had finished the krater and there was no more wine in the house, though she felt that she could drink an ocean. ‘If it is the will of the gods,’ she replied. ‘There’s nothing left to drink: we should sleep now.’ She made her way to her room. After a few moments she heard the door open and then bang shut. Valerian, she thought, would deal with things in his way, she in hers.

  The sun was high when Lysandra regained consciousness, the house full of a familiar smell. Gummy-eyed, she allowed herself to think for a moment that it had all been a terrible dream, but the pain from her wound and the funeral filth that still caked her body were mute evidence that it was not.

  Gingerly, she made her way from her room to see Kleandrias in the main room, cooking. He turned and grimaced at the sight of her. ‘You should get cleaned up,’ he said. ‘I have made food.’

  ‘Blood soup,’ Lysandra identified the staple Spartan dish.

  ‘What else?’ he tried a smile. ‘Lysandra…’

  ‘Do not say anything about it,’ she cut him off. ‘I will bathe now and join you presently.’ Without another word, she made her way outside to the water casket, casting aside her clothes. She felt the familiar, crushing depression that always followed a heavy night but, though her emotions were fraught, she knew that the booze on top of everything was intensifying her melancholy.

  The day was warm, the water cold and it served to revive her somewhat. She kept emptying the ladle over her head, never wanting the feeling of purification to leave her, wanting her grief and pain to be as the ashes that now pooled at her feet. Eventually, the casket was empty but the grief still remained – it would fade in time, she knew.

  She had lost Eirianwen and survived. She had lost Varia and she would survive that, too. Naked, she padded back into the house, aware suddenly of Kleandrias’s eyes upon her. ‘What?’ she asked. ‘What are you looking at?’ Surely he was not entertaining any inappropriate thoughts of her?

  He looked away quickly, almost as though he was ashamed. ‘I was just seeing how your wound was healing,’ he replied.

  ‘Oh,’ Lysandra was relieved. ‘It will heal. Look,’ she walked over to him so he could see it closer. ‘It has clotted well enough.’

  Kleandrias gave her nothing more than a cursory glance. ‘Yes, it has. Get dressed and we will eat.’

  After throwing on a tunic, she joined him at the table and sniffed the bowl of blood soup. ‘By the gods,’ she said and tucked in. ‘It is good, Kleandrias.’

  He smiled in genuine pleasure at her praise. ‘Thank you. A soldier must know how to cook well – though this dish is not popular amongst Romans and other barbarians.’

  ‘It is for a Spartan palate,’ she agreed.

  ‘I have spoken to Hister,’ he said as they ate. ‘He was furious – but impressed. The way you disposed of Caturix and Ia
son was remarkable. I have never seen the like. And nor has Hister, for that matter.’

  ‘Iason, yes.’ Lysandra was ashamed that her grief and remorse over Varia had stifled all that she might have felt for the African gladiator who had only ever been kind to her. She had killed him without compunction, a sacrifice on the altar of her guilt. ‘I imagine that I am no longer welcome at the ludus and I am sure that Hister wants recompense for the loss of his fighters? Tell him not to come anywhere near me, Kleandrias. Though I struck the blow, Hister should not have forced Varia to fight on. He should also… pay.

  You understand what I mean.’

  The big man nodded. ‘Yes. I understand. That is your grief and anger talking, Lysandra. Hister could not have known the situation.

  No one knew. He acted as he thought best. You are a gladiatrix.

  You know the way of the arena… it would not be just to strike him down for what he did.’

  Lysandra looked down, trying to think of an argument that would justify her revenge and could find none. Kleandrias was right.

  ‘In any event, Illeana has already paid him,’ Kleandrias surprised her with this. ‘And for Swanhilde as well. But you were right, Hister did want you gone, Lysandra. That was until Olwydd went to him on your behalf.’

  ‘Olwydd?’ Lysandra raised an eyebrow. ‘I thought she hated me.

  Why would she speak up for me?’

  ‘Because she believes that if anyone can defeat Illeana, it is you.

  She wants revenge for Swanhilde.’

  Lysandra inclined her head. ‘Ah. Of course.’

  ‘It makes sense for you to stay here.’ Kleandrias seemed a little too enthusiastic. ‘The facilities are good and, after all – where else will you find a Spartan to train you? And Cappa and Murco are insisting that they help too. They did a good job before you arrived,’ he added grudgingly.