A Gladiator Dies Only Once rsr-11

by Steven Saylor

  "Zuleika!" I cried.

  "Did he say… Zuleika?" One of the men-tall, broad, majestic in silhouette-broke away from the others and ran toward her. Seiz-ing a hanging trident, he drove it into the snarling dog-then gave a cry of exasperation and cast the trident aside. "Numa's balls, I grabbed one of the fakes! Somebody hand me a real weapon!"

  I was closest. I reached into my tunic, pulled out my dagger, and thrust it into his hand. He swooped down. The dog gave a single plaintive yelp, then went limp. The man scooped up the lifeless dog and thrust it aside.

  "Zuleika!" he cried.

  "Zanziba?" she answered, her voice weak.

  In blood, fear, and darkness, the siblings were reunited.

  The danger was not over, but just beginning; for having discovered the secret of Ahala's gladiator camp, how could I be allowed to live? Their success-indeed, their survival-depended on absolute secrecy.

  If Zuleika had not followed me, I would have climbed over the palisade and ridden back to Ravenna, satisfied that I knew the truth and reasonably certain that the Nubian I had seen earlier that day was indeed Zanziba, still very much alive. For my suspicion had been confirmed: Ahala and his gladiators had learned to cheat death. The bouts they staged at funeral games looked real, but in fact were shams, not spontaneous but very carefully choreographed. When they appeared to bleed, the blood was animal blood that spurted from animal bladders concealed under their scanty armor or loincloths, or from the hollow, blood-filled tips of weapons with retractable points, cleverly devised by Ahala's smiths; when they appeared to expire, the death rattles that issued from their throats actually came from sound-makers like the one I had blown through. No doubt there were many other tricks of their trade which I had not discovered with my cursory inspection, or even conceived of; they were seasoned professionals, after all, an experienced troupe of acrobats, actors, and mimes making a very handsome living by pre-tending to be a troupe of gladiators.

  Any doubt was dispelled when I was dragged from the armory into the open and surrounded by a ring of naked, rudely awakened men. The torches in their hands turned night to day and lit up the face of Zuleika, who lay bleeding but alive on the sand, attended by an unflappable, gray-bearded physician; it made sense that Ahala's troupe would have a skilled doctor among them, to attend to accidents and injuries.

  Among the assembled gladiators, I was quite sure I saw the tall, lumbering Samnite who had "died" in Saturnia, along with the shorter, stockier Thracian who had "killed" him-and who had put on such a convincing show of tottering off-balance and almost im-paling himself on the Samnite's uptight sword. I also saw the two dimacheri who had put on such a show with their flashing daggers that the spectators had spared them both. There was the redheaded Gaul who had delivered the "death blow" to Zanziba-and there was Zanziba himself, hovering fretfully over his sister and the physician attending to her.

  "I can't understand it," the physician finally announced. "The dog should have torn her limb from limb, but he seems hardly to have broken the skin. The beast must have been dazed-or drugged." He shot a suspicious glance at me. "At any rate, she's lost very little blood. The wounds are shallow, and I've cleaned them thoroughly. Unless an in-fection sets in, that should be the end of it. Your sister is a lucky woman."

  The physician stepped back and Zanziba knelt over her. "Zuleika! How did you find me?"

  "The gods led me to you," she whispered. I cleared my throat.

  "With some help from the Finder," she added. "It was you I saw at the funeral games in Saturnia that day?"

  "Yes."

  "And then again in Rome?"

  He nodded. "I was there very briefly, some days ago, then came straight back to Ravenna."

  "But Zanziba, why didn't you send for me?"

  He sighed. "When I sent you the money, I was in great despair. I expected every day to be my last. I moved from place to place, plying my trade as a gladiator, expecting death but handing it out to others instead. Then I fell in with these fellows, and everything changed." He smiled and gestured to the men around him. "A company of free men, all experienced gladiators, who've realized that it simply isn't necessary to kill or be killed to put on a good show for the spectators. Ahala is our leader, but he's only first among equals. We all pull to-gether. After I joined these fellows, I did send for you-I sent a letter to your old master in Alexandria, but he had no idea where you'd gone. I had no way to find you. I thought we'd lost each other forever."

  Regaining her strength, Zuleika rose onto her elbows. "Your fighting is all illusion, then?"

  Her brother grinned. "The Romans have a saying: A gladiator dies only once. But I've died in the arena many, many times! And been paid quite handsomely for it."

  I shook my head. "The game you're playing is incredibly dangerous."

  "Not as dangerous as being a real gladiator," said Zanziba.

  "You've pulled it off so far," I said. "But the more famous this troupe becomes, the more widely you travel and the more people see you-some of them on mote than one occasion-the harder it will become to maintain the deception. The risk of discovery will grow greater each time you perform. If you're found out, you'll be charged with sacrilege, at the very least. Romans save their cruelest punishments for that sort of crime."

  "You're talking to men who've stared death in the face many times," growled Ahala. "We have nothing to lose. But you, Gordianus, on the other hand…"

  "He'll have to die," said one of the men. "Like the others who've discovered out secret."

  "The skulls decorating the gateway?" I said.

  Ahala nodded grimly.

  "But we can't kill him!" protested Zanziba.

  "He lied about his purpose in coming here," said Ahala.

  "But his purpose was to bring Zuleika to me… "

  So began the debate over what to do with me, which lasted through the night. In the end, as was their custom, they decided by voting. I was locked away while the deliberations took place. What was said, I never knew; but at daybreak I was released, and after making me pledge never to betray them, Ahala showed me to the gate.

  "Zuleika is staying?" I said.

  He nodded.

  "How did the voting go?"

  "The motion to release you was decided by a bare majority of one.

  "That close? How did you vote, Ahala?"

  "Do you really want to know?"

  The look on his face told me I didn't.

  I untethered my horse and rode quickly away, never looking back.

  On my first day back in Rome, I saw Cicero in the Forum. I tried to avoid him, but he made a beeline for me, smiling broadly.

  "Well met, Gordianus! Except for this beastly weather. Not yet noon, and already a scorcher. Reminds me of the last time I saw you, at those funeral games in Saturnia. Do you remember?" "Of course," I said. "What fine games those were!" "Yes," I agreed, a bit reluctantly.

  "But do you know, since then I've seen some even more spectacular funeral games. It was down in Capua. Amazing fighters! The star of the show was a fellow with some barbaric Thracian name. What was it, now? Ah, yes:'Spartacus, they called him. Like the city of warriors, Sparta. A good name for a gladiator, eh?"

  I nodded and quickly changed the subject. But for some reason, the name Cicero had spoken stuck in my mind. As Zuleika had said, how strange are the coincidences dropped in our paths by the gods; for in a matter of days, that name would be on the lips of everyone in Rome and all over Italy.

  For that was the month that the great slave revolt began, led by Spartacus and his rebel gladiators. It would last for many months, spreading conflagration and chaos all over Italy. It would take me to the Bay of Neapolis for my first fateful meeting with Rome's richest man, Marcus Licinius Crassus, and a household of ninety-nine slaves all marked for death; but that is another story.

  What became of Zanziba and Zuleika? In the ensuing months of warfare and panic, I lost track of them, but thought of them often. I especially remembered Zuleika's comments o
n Roman slavery. Were her sympathies inflamed by the revolt? Did she manage to persuade her brother and his comrades, if indeed they needed persuading, to join the revolt and take up arms against Rome? If they did, then al-most certainly things went badly for them; for eventually Spartacus and his followers were trapped and defeated, hunted and slaughtered like animals, and crucified by the thousands.

  After the revolt was over and the countryside gradually returned to normal, I eventually had occasion to travel to Ravenna again. I rode out to the site of Ahala's compound. The gate of bones was still there, but worn and weathered and tilted to one side, on the verge of collapsing. The palisade was intact, but the gate stood open. No weapons hung in the armory. The animals pens were empty. Spider webs filled the slaughterhouse. The gladiator quarters were abandoned.

  And then, many months later, from across the sea I received a letter on papyrus, written by a hired Egyptian scribe:

  To Gordianus, Finder and Friend: By the will of the gods, wefind ourselves back in Alexandria. What a civilizedplace this seems, after Rome! The tale of our adventures in Italy would fill a book; suffice to say that we escaped by the skin of our teeth. Many of our comrades, including Ahala, were not so lucky.

  We have saved enough money to buy passage back to our native land. In the country of our ancestors, we hope to find family and make new friends. What appalling tales we shall have to tell of thestrange lands we visited; and of those lands, surely none was stranger or more barbaric than Rome! But to you it is home, Gordianus, and we wish you all happiness there. Farewell fromyour friends, Zuleika and her brother Zanziba.

  For many years, I have saved that scrap of papyrus. I shall never throw it away

  POPPY AND THE POISONED CAKE

  "Young Cicero tells me that you can be discreet. Is that true, Gordianus? Can you keep a confidence?"

  Considering that the question was being put to me by the magis-trate in charge of maintaining Roman morals, I weighed my answer carefully. "If Rome's finest orator says a thing, who am I to contradict him?"

  The censor snorted. "Your friend Cicero said you were clever, too. Answer a question with a question, will you? I suppose you picked that up from listening to him defend thieves and murderers in the law courts."

  Cicero was my occasional employer, but I had never counted him as a friend, exactly. Would it be indiscreet to say as much to the censor? I kept my mouth shut and nodded vaguely.

  Lucius Gellius Poplicola-Poppy to his friends, as I would later find out-looked to be a robust seventy or so. In a time wracked by civil war, political assassinations, and slave rebellions, to reach such a rare and venerable age was proof of Fortune's favor. But Fortune must have stopped smiling on Poplicola-else why summon Gordianus the Finder?

  The room in which we sat, in Poplicola's house on the Palatine Hill, was sparsely appointed, but the few furnishings were of the highest quality. The rug was Greek, with a simple geometric design in blue and yellow. The antique chairs and the matching tripod table were of ebony, with silver hinges. The heavy drapery drawn over the doorway for privacy was of plush green fabric shot through with golden threads. The walls were stained a somber red. The iron lamp in the middle of the room stood on three griffin feet and breathed steady flames from three gaping griffin mouths. By its light, while waiting for Poplicola, I had perused the little yellow tags that dan-gled from the scrolls which filled the pigeon-hole bookcase in the corner. The censor's library consisted entirely of serious works by philosophers and historians, without a lurid poet or frivolous play-wright among them. Everything about the room bespoke a man of impeccable taste and high standards-just the sort of fellow whom public opinion would deem worthy of wearing the purple toga, a man qualified to keep the sacred rolls of citizenship and pass judgment on the moral conduct of senators.

  "It was Cicero who recommended me, then?" In the ten years since I had met him, Cicero had sent quite a bit of business my way.

  Poplicola nodded. "I told him I needed an agent to investigate… a private matter. A man from outside my own household, and yet someone I could rely upon to be thorough, truthful, and absolutely discreet. He seemed to think that you would do."

  "I'm honored that Cicero would recommend me to a man of your exalted position and-"

  "Discretion!" he insisted, cutting me off. "That matters most of all. Everything you discover while in my employ-everything-must be held in the strictest confidence. You will reveal your discoveries to me and to no one else."

  From beneath his wrinkled brow he peered at me with an intensity that was unsettling. I nodded and said slowly, "So long as such discretion does not conflict with more sacred obligations to the gods, then yes, Censor, I promise you my absolute discretion."

  "Upon your honor as a Roman? Upon the shades of your ancestors?"

  I sighed. Why must these nobles always take themselves and their problems so seriously? Why must every transaction require the invocation of dead relatives? Poplicola's earth-shattering dilemma was probably nothing more than an errant wife or a bit of blackmail over a pretty slaveboy. I chafed at his demand for an oath and con-sidered refusing, but the fact was that my daughter, Diana, had just been born, the household coffers were perilously depleted, and I needed work. I gave him my word, upon my honor and my ancestors.

  He produced something from the folds of his purple toga and placed it on the little table between us. I saw it was a small silver bowl, and in the bowl there appeared to be a delicacy of some sort. I caught a whiff of almonds.

  "What do you make of that?" he said.

  "It appears to be a sweet cake," I ventured. I picked up the little bowl and sniffed. Almonds, yes; and something else…

  "By Hercules, don't eat any of it!" He snatched the bowl from me. "I have reason to believe it's been poisoned." Poplicola shuddered. He suddenly looked much older.

  "Poisoned?"

  "The slave who brought me the cake this afternoon, here in my study-one of my oldest slaves, more than a servant, a companion really-well, the fellow always had a sweet tooth… like his master, that way. If he shaved off a bit of my delicacies every now and then, thinking I wouldn't notice, where was the harm in that? It was a bit of a game between us. I used to tease him; I'd say, 'the only thing that keeps me from growing fat is the fact that you serve my food!' Poor Chrestus…" His face became ashen.

  "I see. This Chrestus brought you the cake. And then?"

  "I dismissed Chrestus and set the bowl aside while I finished reading a document. I came to the end, rolled up the scroll, and filed it away. I was just about to take a bite of the cake when another slave, my doorkeeper, ran into the room, terribly alarmed. He said that Chrestus was having a seizure. I went to him as quickly as I could. He was lying on the floor, convulsing. 'The cake!' he said. 'The cake!' And then he was dead. As quickly as that! The look on his face- horrible!" Poplicola gazed at the little cake and curled his lip, as if an adder were coiled in the silver bowl. "My favorite," he said in a hollow voice. "Cinnamon and almonds, sweetened with honey and wine, with just a hint of aniseed. An old man's pleasure, one of the few I have left. Now I shall never be able to eat it again!"

  And neither shall Chrestus, I thought. "Where did the cake come from?"

  "There's a little alley just north of the Forum, with bakery shops on either side."

  "I know the street."

  "The place on the corner makes these cakes every other day. I have a standing order-a little treat I give myself. Chrestus goes down to fetch one for me, and I have it in the early afternoon."

  "And was it Chrestus who fetched the cake for you today?"

  For a long moment, he stared silently at the cake. "No."

  "Who, then?"

  He hunched his thin shoulders up and pursed his lips. "My son, Lucius. He came by this afternoon. So the doorkeeper tells me; I didn't see him myself. Lucius told the doorkeeper not to disturb me, that he couldn't stay; he'd only stopped by to drop off a sweet cake for me. Lucius knows of my habit of indulging in t
his particular sweet, you see, and some business in the Forum took him by the street of the bakers, and as my house was on his way to another errand, he brought me a cake. The doorkeeper fetched Chrestus, Lucius gave Chrestus the sweet cake wrapped up in a bit of parchment, and then Lucius left. A little later, Chrestus brought the cake to me…

  Now I understood why Poplicola had demanded an oath upon my ancestors. The matter was delicate indeed. "Do you suspect your son of tampering with the cake?"

  Poplicola shook his head. "I don't know what to think."

  "Is there any reason to suspect that he might wish to do you harm?"

  "Of course not!" The denial was a little too vehement, a little too quick.

  "What is it you want from me, Censor?"

  "To find the truth of the matter! They call you Finder, don't they? Find out if the cake is poisoned. Find out who poisoned it. Find out how it came about that my son… "

  "I understand, Censor. Tell me, who in your household knows of what happened today?"

  "Only the doorkeeper."

  "No one else?"

  "No one. The rest of the household has been told that Chrestus collapsed from a heart attack. I've told no one else of Lucius's visit, or about the cake."

  I nodded. "To begin, I shall need to see the dead man, and to question your doorkeeper."

  "Of course. And the cake? Shall I feed a bit to some stray dog, to make sure… "

  "I don't think that will be necessary, Censor." I picked up the little bowl and sniffed at the cake again. Most definitely, blended with the wholesome scent of baked almonds, was the sharper odor of the substance called bitter-almond, one of the strongest of all poisons. Only a few drops would suffice to kill a man in minutes. How fiendishly clever, to sprinkle it onto a sweet almond-flavored confection, from which a hungry man with a sweet tooth might take a bite without noticing the bitter taste until too late.

  Poplicola took me to see the body. Chrestus looked to have been fit for his age. His hands were soft; his master had not overworked him. His waxy flesh had a pinkish flush, further evidence that the poison had been bitter-almond.