Spartacus - Swords and Ashes

by J. M. Clements

  “Come back to bed,” he wheedled. “I yet have appetite unsatisfied.”

  Outside, she heard the janitrix setting her mop within its bucket and sauntering toward the door.

  “As you command,” Successa said, and turned back to her client.

  Outside, the slave wearily peeled open the shutter in the main door.

  “Who is it?” she said.

  “A message for Quintus Lentulus Batiatus,” a man’s voice said.

  “There are no names here,” the slave said carefully. “For this is the House of the Winged Cock.”

  “Then let me deliver papyrus that Batiatus may gaze upon it should he happen to be nearby,” the voice said with some irritation.

  “Very well,” the janitrix sighed, not wishing for any further trouble. She slid back the bolt and began to pull on the door, and hence had little time to register the sudden foot that kicked it wide open, or the short sword that plunged into her neck. She struggled, fitfully, against the hand that was clamped on her mouth. Her lungs heaved, but drew in no air as blackness crept at the edge of her vision—then nothing. Her last thought was that her newly cleaned floor was stained with blood.

  The new arrival strode inside, his figure hidden beneath a bulky cloak. He pulled back the hood to reveal a shock of red Teutonic hair, and a knotted beard and mustache. The cleaning slave slid off the end of his blade, crumpling on the floor, her blood seeping across the newly scrubbed tiles.

  The interior of the House of the Winged Cock was silent and dark, and the Teuton smiled to himself as he walked further inside. He was hence entirely unprepared for the bellowing cry of: “BATIATUS!” and the sudden onslaught of a Carthaginian giant.

  Barca leapt out of the shadows, his coverlet still clinging to his chest, his hands grabbing for the sword-arm of the surprised Teuton. The two men pitched over onto a table, rolling across it until it gave way under their weight, dropping them both to the floor.

  Successa and Batiatus appeared at the doorway to her chamber, baffled.

  “Your bodyguard earns his keep,” she mused.

  “Against what dangers?” Batiatus said.

  Barca and the Teuton seemed equally matched, their fists smacking into each others faces, their hands clawed to grab at clothes and flesh, their muscles straining to heave the other off-balance. They scrabbled across the tiles, smashing into pots and pans and pieces of shattered furniture.

  “Such brawls are regular occurrences in a house such as this,” Successa noted, unmoved by the drama unfolding in her courtyard.

  “Drink and cunt makes many men merry,” Batiatus agreed, nibbling at her shoulder.

  Then they both caught sight of the dead slave.

  “Get dressed,” Batiatus said, suddenly deadly serious. “This is no drunken brawl.”

  Successa ducked back inside the room, only to scream in shock.

  A man was climbing through her window, sword in hand.

  Batiatus followed her into the room. He swiftly snatched up a blanket, throwing it over the new arrival. He grabbed Successa and guided her quickly to the stone steps that led to the upper floor.

  Their pursuer charged after them, throwing off the blanket, and revealing the squat, black, scarred face of a Numidian warrior. Even as Batiatus flinched from him, he leapt through the air, sword outstretched toward Batiatus’s neck—

  Only to stop suddenly and smack to the ground, hard.

  Someone had grabbed his ankles mid-flight. The Numidian kicked savagely with his legs at his new assailant: a Thracian, newly clambered through the same window.

  “Spartacus!” Batiatus cried in surprise and relief.

  Spartacus did not pause to greet his master, instead he dragged the Numidian down the stone steps and back into the central atrium.

  In the distance, Barca and the Teuton punched each other on the floor, still neither had the upper hand.

  The Numidian seized the fallen mop, jabbing it up at Spartacus like a spear. The assault threw the Thracian off-balance, affording the Numidian a vital chance to kick himself free and clamber back to his feet, sword in hand.

  Spartacus and the Numidian eyed each other warily for a moment, before the laughing Numidian lunged at the gladiator with his sword. Spartacus lunged forward, too, to the side, snatching the Numidian’s sword-arm behind the wrist, and tugging him forward.

  The Numidian lost his purchase on the wet floor, tumbling a second time. His head cracked with a sickening thud against the stones of the hearth. He lolled, his arms and legs twitching, as blood and gray brain matter seeped out onto the flagstones. Spartacus turned to the other side of the hall, where Barca and the Teuton wrestled.

  The Teuton had gained the upper hand, hefting Barca by the waist and throwing him toward the hearth. Spartacus leapt over the fallen Carthaginian, grabbing the Teuton by his long hair, a foot sliding out to trip him up.

  The Teuton snarled in anger, whirling to snatch up his own fallen knife, not seeing the great dangling cauldron hook behind him as the Thracian dragged him by the hair, shoving him with irresistible force, inch by inch, toward the piercing, sharp prong.

  The room was suddenly silent, but for the creaking of the chains that held the cauldron hook, and the gentle pattering of the Teuton’s blood on the floor and table, as the dead body swayed gently, his feet dragging on the flagstones.

  Spartacus helped Barca to his feet, and their hands clasped in momentary unspoken brotherhood.

  “Gratitude,” Batiatus said, stepping forward. “I owe you—” He stopped himself suddenly, remembering his father’s folly with enslaved bodyguards. “I owe you gratitude,” he finished carefully.

  “Two sicarii,” Successa said, trembling as the reality only now began to take hold. “Did they come for you, or me...?” She sat down on the floor, shaking in shock.

  “Or one each,” Spartacus said, “as one was sent to kill Cicero, and another to kill Medea.”

  “Are they—?”

  “Both are safe. I made sure of that.”

  “This place is not secure,” Barca said.

  “Gratitude, Barca, for observations unrequired,” Batiatus said. “Absent a confession extracted from one of the killers, we must work with what we have.”

  “Your meaning?” Spartacus asked.

  “Someone seeks to kill a select group, or perhaps merely to silence us. All the targets are presences usefully absent from the magistrate tomorrow...” He looked at the rosy light of dawn beyond the balcony. “... or rather, later this morning.”

  “This is Verres’s doing?” Successa said tentatively, willing it not to be so.

  “Verres? Timarchides? Perhaps the pair,” Batiatus replied.

  “Absent proof, you might as well be accusing the winds,” Spartacus said. “They have the protection of freedmen against idle accusations.”

  “I seek not proof, I seek safety,” Batiatus said. “Ilithyia is already on her way to Atella. Lucretia should take litter and join her to place herself beyond harm.”

  “Someone must stand guard over her,” Spartacus said.

  “Barca. He has ties to the ludus that he would not dare sever with flight,” Batiatus said, meeting his bodyguard’s eyes.

  “Dominus,” Barca responded curtly.

  “Rouse Lucretia now!” Batiatus instructed. “There must be no delay. Return with her to Capua!”

  “You, too, should flee,” Spartacus said. “There is nothing left here for the House of Batiatus.”

  “Cicero and I have business to attend with the magistrate this morning, with Varro as our protector. And you will stand guard over the witch. My witch.”

  XVI

  GLADII ET CINERES

  VARRO WALKED WITHOUT COMPLAINT BY THE SIDE OF THE litter, along the morning road, unheeding of the birdsong.

  Batiatus left the curtain open so that he might speak to his prize as the slavers carried him along the hill road. Cicero sat upright by his side, his brow furrowed in concentration, his lips moving silently as he
practiced imaginary rhetorics.

  “We pause at the undertakers on the road,” Batiatus said to Varro, “seeking testimony as to the manner of Pelorus’s death.”

  “Dominus,” Varro said.

  “Evidence to further good Cicero’s suit today against the boy-loving Timarchides.”

  “I doubt his predilections,” Varro said.

  “He never ceases to speak of them,” Batiatus said.

  “Yes dominus, but it occurs to me that he might overstate his interests?”

  “For what reason?” Cicero asked, pausing in his mutterings to join the conversation.

  “Timarchides’ motivatation seems to be antipathy toward Romans, rather than love of men,” Varro said carefully.

  “Why tell such falsehoods?” Cicero said.

  “For the forging of a chain of deceit,” Varro said. “A chain that links him to Pelorus in a more intimate fashion than truly warranted, to smooth the passage of the inheritance.”

  “I would need proof for that,” Cicero said.

  “Before the primus, I was witness to Timarchides bidding farewell to his brother gladiators from House Pelorus,” Varro said.

  “Warm embraces all round no doubt,” Batiatus laughed.

  “They were less than kind?” Cicero asked.

  “I imagine so!” Batiatus said. “To the gods-favored bastard who gained his freedom but hours before all the slaves within the house were condemned to die. And all because he happily sat on the master’s cock!”

  “Perhaps not,” Cicero said.

  “Come now, good Cicero. Verres all but proclaimed it at the funeral. Timarchides was beloved to Pelorus more so than any woman.”

  “Was he, dominus?” Varro put in. “Spartacus and I heard the insults of the gladiators as he departed. They called him many names. They accused him of cowardice and theft. But not once of being the lanista’s lover. Surely, if a gladiator wished to cut another with words, such obscenity would be made prominent abuse?”

  “The hearsay of dead men,” Batiatus said dismissively, “attested by gladiators in my employ. Such testimony is of no use.”

  “Indeed, dominus. But Timarchides himself refuted it.”

  “Go... on...”

  “He swore to them that he purchased his freedom. And that the price of his purchase was recorded upon his wooden sword.”

  Batiatus looked expectantly at Cicero, who nodded enthusiastically.

  “It would be,” Cicero said. “And such evidence that Timarchides dare not destroy, lest any citizen in the future question his manumission. This is useful. As is the news that the first victim that Medea’s violence claimed that night was Verres himself.”

  “How do you know that?” Batiatus asked, shutting the curtain on Varro.

  “Timarchides admitted as much himself when I went to parley with the witch. He spoke of her overpowering Verres, and thence proceeding to her murders.”

  “Verres unlocked the door to her cell? It was him? While tormenting the Getae girl. Successa did not name him, but if that is the case...”

  The bearers came to a halt before the lone house of the undertakers, far from any other dwelling, set within wide-set grounds of ponds and orchards.

  “Business is good, I see,” Cicero commented.

  “Death is sure investment, one with guaranteed buyers,” Batiatus said with a shrug, swinging his legs out of the litter.

  Cicero chuckled.

  “Stay in the litter,” Batiatus said. “We shall but be a moment.”

  “Considering last night’s events,” Cicero said, “I would feel safer accompanying you and your bodyguard.”

  “Of course. Come, then.”

  Batiatus advanced through the gateway, seeing no sign of the skulls and bones that would characterize the carvings in a cemetery. Instead, the decoration of the undertakers’ residence was all flowers and beasts, gods and piety. And yet, the grounds seemed unkept, the hedges untrimmed. Apples, newly ripe but worm-eaten, were scattered on the flagstones.

  “Where are their slaves to tend to such disarray,” Batiatus murmured, as the trio reached the house. “They take such pride in disposition of dead, but not their own residence.”

  A gust of wind tugged at their clothes, causing a shutter to slam in on itself and creak open again. Varro reached out to stay his master, drawing his sword.

  “What is it, Varro? Has the Getae witch infected your mind? Now you see the future, too?”

  “Not the future, dominus. A trouble past.”

  Varro advanced slowly toward the house.

  Batiatus began to register the signs of a dwelling deserted. Torn curtains, damp from earlier storms, flapped in the gusts of the wind. The door stood open. The ponds were not merely untended, but overflowing; their drains clogged with weeds and fallen leaves, their waters forming a new-made stream that trickled between the flower beds, toward the gutter in the road outside.

  With the tip of his sword, Varro pushed the door open and peered inside.

  The house was arranged around a central atrium, open to the sky, with a colonnade around its edge leading to the various rooms. In its midst was a continuation of the external garden. Or rather, had been.

  It was different now. The entire walled garden was now a barren waste of blackened timbers and scorched bones.

  “A bonfire has burned here,” Batiatus said, following behind Varro.

  “Of corpses,” Varro said, poking at a skull with his blade.

  “What has occurred...?” Batiatus breathed.

  Varro squinted thoughtfully at the walls.

  “The fire was some days ago. Note the dust carried into doorways and splashed by rain on walls.” He stepped down onto the charcoaled timbers, bones snapping beneath his sandals. “I count perhaps a dozen skulls,” he said. “Maybe more.”

  “A funeral pyre?” Batiatus said, surveying the scene in bafflement. “For what reason?”

  “It is hidden,” Varro said, “within the eaves, and few houses stand near by, who would know?”

  He pushed aside a charred timber, to find a nest of edged weapons, bent and blackened by the heat, their hilts burned away. Turned from a soldier’s tools into so much scrap metal.

  Batiatus peered into the closest room, finding a sleeping pallet spread out upon the bloodstains, and scattered breadcrusts and animal bones.

  “Someone has taken up residence here after the bodies were burned,” Batiatus said. “But why kill the undertakers?”

  “Whoever the killers were,” Cicero said, “they dwelt for several days among swords and ashes.”

  Now, the House of Pelorus had but two occupants. The putative owners and hospes had gone into town. The slaves on loan from the House of the Winged Cock had returned to their home. Cooks and cleaners, serving girls and workmen, all were gone. The manifold guests had long departed, leaving little of the wine cellar but piss in the cisterns. And Spartacus, guardian to a hollow mansion.

  Wearily, Spartacus approached the cell of Medea. The barred door still sat ajar. The resident of the cell still sat on the floor wreathed in her chains.

  “Alone at last,” she said calmly. “And the door to my cell is open.”

  “I am not here for you,” he said.

  “From free Thracian to man with a mop? Such a Tarpeian plummet.”

  “Eat this,” he said, throwing her a hunk of bread. “I must remove your cellmate before he starts to smell.”

  “Gratitude,” she said, “for his elimination from this world, and from this place.”

  Spartacus grabbed at the corpse’s arm. The flesh was already strangely yellow, the blood having pooled lower down the sprawled body. On the face bruises and the flower-shapes of popped veins attested to last moments of strangulation. Spartacus dragged the body toward the door, its clothes snagging on the rough stone floor, pulling back its sleeves and half-opening its tunic.

  Suddenly, Spartacus stopped.

  “What is it, Thracian?” Medea asked.

  “He has
a mark,” Spartacus said, “upon his arm.”

  “So noted,” she said. “What does it mean?”

  “Such a mark denotes current or former status.”

  “As a criminal?”

  “As a gladiator who has passed the test of his house.”

  “Just like yours.”

  “Not so,” he said, brandishing his forearm for her to see. “Mine is B, for Batiatus. His is P.”

  “But I thought the slaves of Pelorus all dead?”

  Spartacus stared down at the arm, thoughtfully. His mind spun with the events of the last few days, with arguments in cells and whispers in corridors; with threats in hot moments and chilly reason. He thought of all the possible reasons why a man with the brand of Pelorus could somehow appear in the dark of night, when the brand of Pelorus was supposedly banished from the world of the living. And then he realized.

  Spartacus dropped the body and darted from the cell.

  “Where are you going, Thracian?” Medea called after him.

  “To retrieve key to your manacles,” he replied. “We must leave. Now.”

  “Gaius Verres, welcome, welcome,” the magistrate said. “And congratulations upon your appointment!”

  “Gratitude,” Verres laughed. “Magistrate Gnaeus Helva, it has been too long since we last met.”

  “And will be long again, if you soon sail for Sicilia.”

  “Duty calls.”

  “It surely does. Be seated, be seated.”

  Helva beckoned to a slave to bring a small stack of scrolls, and took the topmost one from it. Verres slumped into a chair, his leg hooked over one of the armrests in a languorous pose. Timarchides sat carefully in the next chair, his back straight, and his expression serious.

  “This seems a simple matter requiring little more than seal and salutation,” Helva said. He glanced down at the papyrus, his eyes running along the neat letters written in a scribal hand, then frowned. “The death of Pelorus was indeed unfortunate,” he continued, “but these are straitened times. One murder still moves me, even after the purges of the Social War when such things were commonplace and found in their myriads.”