My Wicked Gladiators

by Hawkeye, Lauren

  Pity washed over me as I watched the woman who had such noble blood strip. I remembered the thread of vulnerability that she had shown me, remembered the sad tale she had told me and tried to be kind, though I still did not care for her at all.

  I looked at Caius, the impetuous man whose freedom had been stripped away. I looked at Marcus, who had lost a wife and an infant through the deceit of others. Both men could have done as Hilaria had in the aftermath of pain, could have become selfish and cunning, could have delighted in passing on the cruelty that they had received to others.

  They had not. They had risen above the pain, the darkness, and were now the two most honorable Roman men I knew.

  “Hilaria. You do not have to do this.” Digging into the sides of my horse with my thighs, I held out my hand and touched the friendship ring that she still wore on her finger.

  She looked down at the touch, the ring, as if dazed, before shrugging me off angrily. She turned to Marcus, her eyes ablaze.

  “Strip, I said! Are you stupid?”

  Marcus simply regarded her passively, as did Caius, though I noted that Caius tapped his heel on the side of the horse ever so slightly with agitation.

  “I do not understand.” Hilaria turned toward me, confused. “Why will they not do as I say?” She seemed genuinely confounded, and in her upset, reached out to me as if she had not treated me as she had a moment earlier.

  “They do not want you, Hilaria.” I kept my words soft, for I was beginning to understand that the problems in the other woman ran far deeper than most could ever imagine. I truly believed that she was mad. “They do not want you, and you will not have them. You will revise your deal with my husband, and you will forget that you saw us here. If you do not forget, completely forget, then I am afraid that the entire story will have to be told, not just yours.”

  I watched as understanding slowly dawned. She could crow far and wide about Lucius reneging on their deal, for I did not think that she would be embarrassed for others to know that she had paid to fuck a gladiator.

  For others to know that the two gladiators that she wanted most had refused her, however, ignored her completely despite her beauty and her class . . .

  That was another thing altogether.

  I watched the trembling emotions riot throughout the other woman. Slowly, she pulled her tunic back up, covering her naked flesh, and lay back down on her litter, turning her face away from me.

  I felt pity as her slaves began to carry her away. That pity faded when, in a last fit of pique, she drew the twisted metal and beads of the friendship ring off of her finger and threw it into the road as hard as she could.

  I watched for a long moment, observing the bright glitter fade as dust settled over it.

  Then it was gone, buried in the sand.

  Gone, as if it had never happened.

  The walls of the ludus loomed out of the dry earth like an insurmountable barrier. I looked them over solemnly, wondering how I could ever have thought myself happy living within them.

  “You need to stay here.” I had told Caius and Marcus this more times than I cared to admit over the days that we had journeyed. Each time they had refused.

  The sensation of victory that I had obtained during my exchange with Hilaria began to fade, all because of the stubbornness of two gladiators.

  This time I made certain that my voice was as stern as I could make it, stern and serious.

  “I will be safe. Lucius will not hurt me, not knowing that there is a child inside of me.” I dismounted from my horse before either man could dismount theirs and help me down, simply to further prove the point—that I could take care of myself when need be. “He is many things, but in his deepest self, he is not a monster that would hurt an unborn infant.”

  Shielding my eyes from the sun, I squinted up at each man in turn. Caius scowled openly, as always the one whose thoughts played out over his face.

  Marcus simply regarded me with his features set, but with stubbornness radiating out of his obsidian eyes.

  “You two, he will want to punish. You know this.” My words did not seem to be making a difference, as neither man appeared to care what my arguments were. “He sees you as possessions, things that he can do with as he will.”

  Two faces regarded me with looks that told me they cared not a whit about being harmed, themselves.

  “It will hurt me if you are hurt,” I continued. Some flickers of emotion, but still, not a large reaction. I sighed deeply and pressed my lips together.

  “Very well. If you try to enter the upstairs house with me, I will simply return down here, to the gate. I will continue to do this until you remain here, and the entire house thinks we have taken leave of our senses.”

  The men continued to stare at me, but I returned the hard gaze. Finally, finally Marcus nodded once, curtly.

  “Very well,” he said. “However, if you have not returned within an hour, we will come in, to make certain that you have not been harmed.” I could not refrain from rolling my eyes to the heavens.

  I knew, I truly knew, that I would be safe. Their protests were simply causing me no end of grief.

  I also truly knew that a part of me appreciated their fierce protectiveness of me. No one in my life had ever been so concerned for my well-being, so willing to lay their life on the line, as these two warriors here.

  Marcus raised an eyebrow at me as he dismounted. “I am telling you the truth.” He took the rope of my horse from my hands, and I wondered for a moment at the sheer physical perfection of him.

  Shading my eyes again, I looked up at Caius, who was still seated on his animal. “Where will you go while I am inside? Back to the market? We will need supplies.”

  Caius shifted uneasily, and I saw fiery hints of russet teased out in the gold of his hair by the sun.

  “We will not buy supplies until after you have spoken to your husband. We do not want to anger the gods. We will stay here, outside the gates.”

  I wanted to argue. I was not concerned about angering the gods—if anything, I thought that they would be on our side. But they were fickle creatures, and I supposed that Caius was right.

  I took a step toward the gate, brushing my tangled hair from my face. I raised a hand to knock, then looked over my shoulder to make certain that the two men had disappeared. They had not.

  “Stay out of sight! I mean it!” I glared at them until they moved, one to my right, one to my left. Unless someone came directly outside the gate and looked quite deliberately in each direction, they would not be seen.

  The imposing gate was attached to an ancient bell inside the house, and it often took some time for someone to appear at the gate and to wrench it open. After standing there for several long minutes, finally I heard the key turning in the lock, and then the scarred wood was pulled backward, toward the house.

  On the other side stood Marina, her red hair so bright in the sunlight that it hurt my eyes. Still, with that hair and her nutty skin gleaming, she looked magnificent, far tidier than many slaves did. In comparison I felt disheveled, filthy, and unattractive, and was self-conscious about it.

  However, I liked that my mind-set toward slaves had evolved enough that I could feel threatened by one, when that one was a beautiful woman.

  “Domina!” Long lids blinked over eyes as dark as olives. “What are you? Are you alone?” She stepped forward, meaning to look exactly where I did not want her to, I was sure—the girl had always had entirely too keen of an interest in gladiators, in my opinion—but I stepped forward, blocking her way.

  “I am alone, Marina. I am weary. Go back inside.” She had no choice but to do as I said, though I saw a flicker of resentment about her lips before she folded her hands and turned away from the gate.

  “Yes, Domina.” Perhaps I was imagining it, but it seemed as if the girl considered me less of her mistress than she ha
d before I had gone. Truthfully, I reciprocated the feeling, though I did not intend to tell the girl that.

  “Dominus is in his chamber,” she added. “I will tell him that you have arrived home unexpectedly, but he will not be pleased.” The gate swung shut behind me. Marina did not bother to lock it again, and I did not remind her.

  It could only be helpful to have it unlocked.

  Weeks earlier, I would have chastised Marina thoroughly for the manner in which she spoke to me. Now I found that it no longer mattered. She would be Lucius’ problem entirely. I was here simply to bargain with Lucius, to collect my jewels, and to leave.

  She did not ask on the whereabouts of Drusilla, and this did bother me. I did not know what I had been expecting, however—the two had never been friends. I might have been the only one to mourn Drusilla’s passing, but at least she’d had me.

  In the house, the girl started in the direction of my husband’s room. I reached out a hand, placed it on her arm to stop her. She very nearly wrinkled her nose at my touch, and I stifled the urge to slap her. Not hard, just enough to knock the nonsense out of her. I had been traveling, yes, and I needed a bath, but I was hardly disgusting enough that my touch would contaminate her.

  I swallowed all words except those I had been meaning to say before the expression crossed her face. “I will make my way there on my own, Marina. You are dismissed. Gratitude.”

  She cast a quick look at my tunic. “Do you not wish to bathe first? Or to change?”

  Both options sounded delightful, but I had no time to waste. I had precisely one hour, and if I was not back outside before the sun had moved that fraction of space in the sky, there would be trouble, more trouble than I wanted.

  “No, thank you, Marina. As I said, you may go. I wish to speak to my husband alone.”

  With a slight sniff, the girl spun on her heel and walked away—in the direction of the slave’s quarters, I noted, and not to do more work.

  Oh, well. Again, she was no longer my problem.

  Lucius’ room was next to my own. I debated quickly, then ducked into my own chamber first. There, I stripped my stained, torn traveling tunic off, letting it fall to the floor with haste. Around my waist was tied a leather thong, and from that braided thong dangled two skin pouches.

  Naked but for those pouches, I knelt beside my bed and pulled my wooden chest from beneath the frame. I filled one pouch and then the other with all of the glittering pieces that I had accumulated over the years of my life, some from my girlhood, most from my marriage. I had a momentary pang when I realized that my own coin had bought not a single one of them.

  Then I thought of that first night with my masked gladiator, and of the sickness and terror that had rolled around in my gut.

  I had earned them. They were mine.

  Since I was already nude, when I again stood, this time weighted down with my contraband, I slid a clean tunic over my head. It was not a fancy one, but the simple cloth would be more suited to where I intended to go.

  Having accomplished all this undiscovered, I wiped damp palms over the newly clean cloth that covered my body, and willed my arms and legs to stop trembling.

  It was just Lucius. I trusted that he would not harm me, not even in the worst fit of temper. I had once loved the man, after all, and I believed, deep down, that he had loved me. He might even still think that he did, though his actions told me otherwise.

  Knowing this did not make telling him what I had returned here to tell him any easier.

  I passed through the curtain of my chamber for the last time, letting my fingers linger on the soft fabric. At the sea house, the fabrics, the furnishings and the art were not nearly so fine.

  I did not care. I would not miss the opulence, for I was gaining something far better.

  I moved down the corridor, my steps deliberately soft. Outside of Lucius’ room I paused, inhaling deeply, uncertain how to begin. That was when I heard the noise. It sounded like . . . crying? Like a man crying.

  It could not have been Lucius. I had never seen my husband cry.

  Knowing that entering unannounced would only startle him and put him on the defensive, I knocked on the wall beside the curtain, the stones scraping at the pale flesh of my knuckles.

  There was no response, just the slightest pause in the odd sound.

  I rapped again at the wall, this time hard enough to scrape some of the skin from my fist. Hissing, I sucked the cut into my mouth, soothing it with my tongue as I waited for a response.

  Finally, my husband replied. “I said that I was to be left alone for the day.” His voice could have frozen the sun, so frigid was its tone. “What will it take for you idiots to understand this?”

  I raised my eyebrows, and tamped down the anger that I felt. I had never felt that slaves should be spoken to in this manner, but I knew that Lucius, and many others in Roman society, did not agree.

  Aware of time ticking by, I pushed through the curtain that hung in the archway of Lucius’ room, not waiting for an invitation.

  “Alba?” I blinked at the sight before me, as my husband returned the stare, startled to find me there, in his room, when I was meant to be at the coast.

  I could not reconcile the sight before my eyes with the picture that I held of my husband in my mind’s eye.

  “What has happened, Lucius?” Thinking that he had perhaps been hurt, physically hurt, I rushed across the room and perched on the edge of his bed, above where he slumped on the cold floor. Reaching down, I took his head in my hands, pulling until his face turned toward mine, searching for abrasions or blood.

  He shook his head irritably, as if shooing away an insect, then in a complete change nuzzled against my hand. I realized that while there were no cuts, no abrasions, there were tears, salty tracks of them drying on his face.

  Stunned and somewhat off put—more by the caress than by the tears—I jerked my hands away.

  “Lucius?” My voice was wary.

  I watched his face go through an array of thoughts—he had never been good at keeping what he was thinking out of his expression. I saw him try to pull himself under control, saw anger that I had caught him in such a vulnerable position, and finally—and this scared me a bit—acceptance.

  “Well, now I will not have to worry about how to tell you.” He laughed then, an empty laugh, and held his hands out, palm up.

  Moving from the bed, I knelt on the floor in front of him. I noted that he did not ask about the baby, or about my welfare, or ask why I was home.

  It hurt. I knew that he was not a bad man, he was simply the product of his upbringing, of the pressure to rise to the greatness of his ancestors, but still it hurt.

  “Tell me what, Lucius?” I searched his face, saw guilt and . . . was it grief? I had never seen my husband grieve, not even when his own father had passed. I was worried. “What, Lucius? Tell me now.”

  He sighed, then laughed again, a maniacal sound, seeming to be on the edge of hysteria. “We have no money, Alba. None. It is all gone.”

  My mind flashed to the ledger that I had surreptitiously studied, thought of all of the extravagant purchases, and made the obvious conclusion.

  “Have you spent it all, then?” This did not matter to me, not with the decision that I had made. But I was not heartless. I did not like to see the man broken, not even after what he had put me through.

  He looked at me sharply, insult painted over his features. I raised an eyebrow in return, wondering how he could feign innocence. True, he had no way of knowing that I had seen the account books, but still, he knew what they contained.

  “No, Alba.” His voice carried the irritation characteristic of it when he spoke to me, and I swallowed my own sudden anger. I was trying to console him, to find out what had happened. I was not here to be abused.

  “No,” he repeated, thinking of what to say or perhaps how
to say it. Then his composure broke, and he looked at me, a ravaged man. “No. It was stolen. All of it, but for two hundred denarii.”

  A person could live off of two hundred denarii for a fair amount of time, if they lived modestly. But it could not run a household, I supposed, nor a ludus.

  Two hundred denarii, I realized, was the second half of the sum that Hilaria had paid. The money meant as payment for her time with my men.

  “Stolen? How was it stolen?” We kept the majority of our coins, what we did not need on a daily basis, in a large clay jar that was buried somewhere on our property, as did most Romans. I did not even know where that jar was, though I knew of its existence. No one knew where it was buried, except for Lucius.

  Lucius looked up at me then, and though I was expecting to see rage on his face, all that I saw was sorrow.

  “Justinus.” He finally croaked out the name. “It was Justinus. He unearthed the jar, took it and every other thing of value that he could get his hands on.”

  I thought of my jewels, and patted the reassuring weight of one of the pouches where it brushed against my leg.

  “You let Justinus see where the jar was buried?” I could not keep the judgment from my voice. Slaves were never shown where their masters buried their coin. It was simply not wise.

  However, Justinus had seemed more loyal to my husband than most slaves were to their masters. I could see why my husband had trusted the man, detestable though he was.

  I, however, was not overly surprised. I supposed that Justinus was not a bad man any more than Lucius was, though he was infinitely more annoying. He simply did what he needed to do to rise up in the world.

  I supposed that a jar full of denarii was more than the man could pass by, no matter the loyalty to my husband. And as for that husband, I should have felt more sorrow for the loss of the money, for his ruin, in fact, but I found that I could not.