‘I did not send for … What the?’
Thermon looked up and instantly sprang to his feet, lowering into a crouch as he snatched up a knife from the table. Festus stopped, fifteen feet away, took aim and loosed an arrow. The shaft blurred through the air as Thermon leapt to one side. The woman let out a cry of shock as the barbed head gashed his shoulder. He sprang forward as Festus frantically tried to fit another arrow. He had only pulled back the arrow a short way before Thermon crashed into him. Even so the arrow pierced the other man’s chest as they tumbled on to the floor.
Marcus glanced at Decimus and saw that he was still too shocked to react and then turned to help his friend. Thermon had his weight on top of Festus, the knife clenched in his fist as he strained to stab it into the bodyguard’s throat. Festus had a fist clamped round his opponent’s wrist, trying to hold the blade off, but inch by inch it drew closer.
Marcus reached the struggling men in an instant and did not hesitate as he slashed his sword into the back of Thermon’s skull. He heard the bone crack and Thermon let out a loud grunt, before Festus thrust him away and rolled to one side. Marcus glanced down and saw that Thermon’s eyes were blinking wildly as his jaw shuddered. A dark pool of blood was spilling out across the tiled floor round his head.
‘He’s done for,’ said Festus as he drew his sword. ‘Let’s deal with Decimus.’
Decimus had already grasped the danger he was in and surged up from his couch as he plucked a knife from the table. Without a moment’s hesitation he grabbed the woman who had been lying on the couch next to him and spun her round so that she faced the intruders. Clamping one arm across her chest he brought his knife hand up with the point barely an inch from the woman’s slender throat. She let out another quick cry of terror and clenched her eyes shut.
‘Come any closer, and I’ll kill her!’ Decimus snarled. ‘I mean it!’
Festus gave a dry laugh. ‘We’ve come for you, Decimus. Nothing’s going to stop us.’
‘Come for me?’ Now it was Decimus who laughed. ‘Nonsense. You’ve come for that boy’s mother.’
At his words the woman opened her eyes and Marcus focused his attention fully on her for the first time since they had entered the room. As he recognized her familiar features he felt the strength drain from his limbs and he lowered his sword in shock.
‘Mother …’
She gasped and made an impulsive gesture to reach out as she tried to step away from Decimus. ‘Marcus … My Marcus.’
Decimus wrenched her back harshly. ‘Stand still, you bitch! Don’t you dare move again, if you want to live.’
Her voice trembled as she spoke. ‘You told me that he was being held –’
‘Shut up!’ Decimus shouted in her ear. ‘Shut your mouth!’
Festus lowered his sword and held out his other hand. ‘Let her go, Decimus. If you want to live. She’s the one we’ve come for. Let her go, and we’ll leave.’
‘Ha!’ he spat. ‘You think me a fool? The moment she’s out of my hands I’ll end up like Thermon down there.’
Marcus glanced aside and saw Thermon’s body twitching as he bled out. Then his eyes snapped back to his mother as he spoke in a clear, cold voice. ‘Let her go.’
‘I don’t think so.’ Decimus grinned, then drew a deep breath and called out at the top of his voice. ‘Guards! Slaves! On me! Help! Help!’
Marcus and Festus looked on helplessly as he raised the alarm. It was Livia who reacted first. Bunching her fist, she drove her elbow back and up into Decimus’s face. There was a light crunch as his nose broke and he let out a gasp of pain and surprise, loosening his grip. With her other hand she snatched at his knife hand and wrestled it away from her throat.
Decimus howled in pain and rage. ‘You’ll pay for that!’
He punched his spare fist into her stomach and Livia folded up with a light groan, still trying to force the knife away, now with both hands.
‘Hold him!’ Festus shouted, racing forward. Marcus had already sprung towards them and punched the guard of his sword into Decimus’s jaw, snapping his head back. He punched again, quickly, and Decimus’s eyes rolled in a daze. Festus dropped his sword and clasped the other man’s hands, forcing them away from Livia so that she fell to one side. With a powerful blow, Festus sent the moneylender sprawling on to a couch, and the knife clattered to the floor at his feet. Before either Festus or Marcus could act, they heard a shrill scream of savage rage as Livia snatched up the knife and leapt on to Decimus, stabbing at his throat. Blood sprayed into the air as he tried in vain to ward off her assault.
‘Please!’ he begged. ‘No! Please …’
‘Animal!’ she shrieked. ‘Vile murderer! Scum! Pig! Die! DIE!’
Marcus looked on aghast, trembling in grief and fear at the sight of the mother he had sought for two years – the mother who had loved and nurtured him – bringing the blade up high to strike again. The man stopped pleading as his efforts to protect himself became more feeble, and then his hand flopped at his side. Festus reached out and firmly grasped Livia’s right wrist, taking the knife from her.
Decimus lay still, silenced, sprawled on the floor in his blood-drenched tunic.
‘That’s enough,’ Festus said gently. ‘Enough. He’s dead.’
‘D-dead?’ she mumbled, then lowered her head as her shoulders heaved. Her bloodied fingers opened and the blade dropped on to Decimus’s chest. Then she pulled herself off the body and turned towards Marcus. Dark strands of her hair mingled with the red flecks on her face as she cried.
Before Marcus knew what he was doing he had his arms about her and drew her head into his chest, feeling her shudder as she wept and held him tightly. He felt overcome with a seething mixture of emotions – love, relief, grief and tenderness. He recalled the times that she had held him this way when he was younger, to comfort him when he was hurt or afraid, and his heart swelled with devotion to his mother.
‘Marcus … My boy … My child.’ Her voice was raw as she gasped the words through her tears.
‘We have to go,’ Festus interrupted. ‘Now. Before anyone comes to see what all the shouting was about. Back the way we came.’
He helped Livia to her feet and Marcus steadied her with his arm as they headed for the corridor. Festus remained by the body. He took one last look at Decimus, then stepped towards the nearest of the stands that carried the oil lamps lighting the room, knocking it to the ground. He did the same to the others as he followed Marcus and his mother. As pools of burning oil spilled out, the flames caught on to the rich fabrics covering the couches, eagerly spreading as the fire took hold of the furniture.
Making their way down the corridor, they saw the slaves emerge from the kitchen, their anxious expressions illuminated by the flames in the room behind the dark outline of the three people heading towards them.
‘Fire!’ Festus shouted. ‘There’s a fire! Run!’
The slaves hesitated for an instant before the first turned and ran back into the kitchen. His companions followed, leaving Marcus and the others to reach the kitchen unopposed. They hurried through it, and down the service corridor to the slave quarters. By the time they reached the small courtyard it was filled with slaves looking up at the orange hue in the high windows of the villa’s banqueting hall. The crackle of the blaze was clearly audible and the first brilliant tongues of flame pierced the wooden window frames.
Marcus ignored them as he helped his mother out through the gate. Lupus was waiting outside, sword poised until he saw that it was his friends. His relieved expression quickly gave way to anxiety as he looked at Livia.
‘Is she all right?’
‘I’m fine,’ she replied and turned to smile at Marcus. ‘Really.’
‘No time for this,’ Festus interrupted. ‘We have to hide these bodies behind the woodpile and escape as fast as we can. Lupus, help me. Marcus, get your mother away from here. Down there, in the trees.’ Marcus steered his mother across the grass meadow and the others hurried
after him a moment later as the flames began to burst through the roof of the villa, casting long, flickering shadows ahead of the figures fleeing into the night.
22
In the morning there was a clear view from across the valley of the devastation caused by the fire. Smoke still trailed up into the blue sky from the blackened ruins of Decimus’s villa. Small groups of curious onlookers were walking up from the town towards the estate. Festus had left the cave at first light to make his way into Tegea to purchase rations and find out what the accepted explanation was about the cause of the fire. If suspicions had been aroused, then they would have to leave Tegea as swiftly as possible.
With Festus gone, Marcus was left to keep watch. Both his mother and Lupus were still asleep in the shadows at the rear of the cave, but the light from the morning sun would soon wake them. Cerberus lay at his side, head resting between his huge paws and his eyes all but closed as his nostrils stirred with each easy breath. As Marcus looked round at his mother, curled up in a ball with her back to him, he felt confused.
He had lived for this moment ever since the time they were parted when she had begged him to make his escape alone. He had dreamt about rescuing her and eagerly anticipated the release of all the love and longing that he had been forced to bottle up inside. Behind it all had been the desire to return his life to the way things were before. He had always considered that to be his aim, without ever really questioning if it was likely to happen.
Now that he and his mother were free again, the future suddenly seemed uncertain. Not only was a return to the farm fraught with difficulties, but he had changed. He had grown up during the last two years and was now more a man than a boy. And he knew that his mother had changed too. Although Marcus was overjoyed to be reunited with her, his emotions were confused. After all, she had butchered a man in front of him. And there had been the shock of finding her dining alongside the man Marcus knew as a bitter enemy. Back in Athens, Decimus had taunted him with the image of his mother in chains and starving. That was a lie, Marcus realized, told to make his misery as acute as possible. He cursed the moneylender under his breath before his thoughts returned to the previous night.
After their escape from the villa she had clutched him tightly as she sobbed. Then, as Festus urged her to put aside her feelings and escape, she had become silent and withdrawn. They had sat in silence, side by side, with their backs to the rock as they watched the flames devouring the villa. The lurid red of the fire bathed the surrounding landscape and the roar of the flames carried clearly in the still night air. Eventually, as the fire began to die down they had both fallen asleep, curled up next to one another as they had done sometimes when he was a small boy.
Turning back to resume his watch over the approaches to the cave, Marcus wondered how Festus was getting on. They would need food for the road now that the bodyguard was keen to put some distance between them and Tegea, without attracting any attention along the way. He hoped the fire would be regarded as a tragic accident for Decimus and Thermon. With luck their bodies, and those of the guards they had disposed of, would have burned sufficiently to conceal the wounds, and in the shock of the blaze no one would recall the small band of fugitives fleeing into the darkness.
‘A sestertius for your thoughts.’
Marcus turned sharply to see that his mother had stirred and was sitting up watching him. She smiled uncertainly and stood up, then trod lightly across the floor of the cave in order not to wake Lupus, and sat down beside Marcus.
‘My poor Marcus.’ She put her arm round him and drew him towards her. ‘My poor boy. I had always hoped that one day I might escape from Decimus and try to find you.’ She smiled uncertainly at him. ‘But it was you who found me. No longer the child I knew. You’ve become a young man … You remind me of your father.’ Tears glistened in her eyes and she quickly kissed his forehead. They sat in silence for a moment and Marcus felt her stifling a sob. There was so much he wanted to tell her, so much he wanted to ask, but he did not know where to begin. She sensed his uneasiness and drew back a little to look at him. ‘What are you thinking?’
Marcus sighed heavily. ‘I’m not sure. The only thing that I lived for over the last two years was to find you. I had to save you. I thought you were being held in chains and worked to death. I wasn’t prepared to see you in that room. At his table, eating at his side …’
His mother was silent for a moment. ‘Does it matter? We are free, that’s what counts. What do you think has been keeping me alive while we have been apart, Marcus? I lived for the same thing. I did what I had to do in order to survive, and, so I thought, to keep you safe from harm.’
He looked at her. ‘What do you mean?’
She frowned briefly and her bottom lip trembled before she swallowed and continued. ‘Decimus told me that his men had recaptured you after we were separated. He said that you were taken to his house in Athens to serve as a slave there. As long as I did what he asked, you would be safe from harm.’
Marcus fought to control a new wave of hatred for Decimus. The man had deserved to die. Even now that he was dead, the suffering he had inflicted on them continued, with an agonizing new twist. He had lied to them both, using his lies to force his mother to do his bidding.
‘I’m glad that it was you who killed him,’ he said harshly. ‘You deserved vengeance more than me.’
She looked at him in surprise. ‘No. I don’t think so. Decimus stole your childhood. Nothing can make up for that. And now I see that you are no longer my young son.’ She examined his features in detail for the first time by the light of day. ‘You have grown. You look strong and there is a hard glint to your eyes. You have changed,’ she concluded sadly and shook her head as if reluctant to accept her judgement. ‘Changed … You will never be the same Marcus I knew, the one I had frozen in time during every moment of the last two years.’
Marcus felt tears fill his eyes and took her hand and squeezed it. ‘I am your son, Mother. I always will be. I owe my very life to you and swear by all that is sacred that I will protect you. We will never be separated again. Not now.’
Marcus’s mother smiled. ‘We must try not to let the past ruin what we have. We must do what all free people do, and live in hope. We are free and our fate is our own to decide again. Hold on to that, my dear Marcus. Hold on to that and move on. Don’t let the shadow of Decimus linger over us.’
‘I’ll try. But it won’t be easy.’
‘It never is, living with the past,’ she said with feeling. ‘I know, believe me. It was the same when I lived with your father …’ She glanced at him quickly before she continued. ‘Titus.’
Marcus felt a nervous tremor ripple down his spine. He knew that the time had come to let his mother know that he had learned the truth about the identity of his real father. He shifted so that he could face her. ‘Mother,’ he said, ‘I know about Spartacus.’
He reached a hand up and patted the material of his tunic over the brand on his shoulder. ‘I know about this, and what it means.’
Marcus’s mother had paled. Her expression filled with fear.
‘You know?’ she repeated. ‘By the Gods, Marcus, how did you ever find out? Who told you?’
‘After we were separated I was taken to a gladiator school in Capua for training. There was a man there who saw the brand and recognized it. He told me.’
She closed her eyes and spoke softly. ‘They made you into a gladiator … The Gods could not be more cruel. Your father suffered the same fate. He swore he would dedicate his life to making sure no other man ever had to suffer that. And now his son, his only son, has had to endure the very thing that tormented his soul every day that he led the fight against Rome.’ She breathed in deeply. ‘Is there no end to it? No end to our suffering?’
She looked at him again. ‘What was the name of the man who told you about Spartacus?’
Marcus heard the pain in her voice as she spoke the name. He swallowed before he replied. ‘Brixus.’
&nb
sp; She looked blank for a moment and then smiled warmly. ‘Brixus. He survived then. That’s good. He was one of the best. He would have died at the side of Spartacus if he had been fit enough to fight in that last, terrible battle where it all ended. I’m glad he is still alive. So few of us were spared when they rounded up the prisoners.’ Her eyes suddenly glinted. ‘And yet they failed to extinguish the blaze that Spartacus started. There is still a spark of hope that will one day light the beacon and signal to every slave that the rebellion lives on. You are that beacon, Marcus.’
Marcus had come to know that slavery was a crushing burden and those who lived under it endured a constant black despair like a dark, bottomless pit. It filled him with a sense of unspeakable horror. With a flash of insight, Marcus grasped the powerful force that had driven Spartacus to revolt against slavery, despite the terrible risks and great odds that faced him. What depths of courage he must have possessed, Marcus thought. To not only take on Rome, but to confront the meaning of slavery every day. To carry in his heart a full awareness of the horror that slavery entailed. It was that knowledge that had driven Spartacus to fight Rome, right up until he drew his last breath. Marcus felt a sense of awe for the man who had fathered him and began to understand the depth of devotion from his followers – men like Brixus and Mandracus who had kept the flame of rebellion burning and fed the hope that all slaves silently guarded like a treasure.
Marcus began to see a new future now that he was reunited with his mother. He could not return to the life he had lost. That path was closed to him now. He had grown beyond that and there was a burden he must shoulder, like his father before him. There was a struggle against a monstrous injustice in which he must take part. And there was no alternative to that struggle other than the shame of bowing down before the greatest evil known to humanity. At last he understood his father’s heart and for the first time saw the dim features of the face of his father in his mind’s eye. The careworn strain in his expression, the determination in his steely eyes and the faint smile of approval as he knew that he had not died in vain. That the great cause, for which he had given his life, lived on in his only son.
Gladiator: Vengeance Page 18