by Mark Morris
XV
IT WAS ALMOST TIME. SPARTACUS AND VARRO SAT SIDE BY side, silent now, each enmeshed in his own thoughts. Both men were well aware that in less than an hour they would either be revered heroes, the crowd stamping their feet and chanting their names, or utterly forgotten, their broken bodies tipped into the stinking charnel house of the spoliarium, their blood mingling with that not only of other slaves and gladiators, but also of criminals and beasts.
As ever, Spartacus thought of Sura, and more specifically of her utter reliance on the quirks and vagaries of fate, on an existence determined wholly by the gods despite the earthly illusion of choice and free will. Having given himself over to her philosophy, he fought without fear or rancor; he fought purely because he was required to fight—because Sura would have claimed that the gods had decreed it so—and as such, he did it with concentration and a grim determination, concerned more for the welfare of his partner and friend than for himself.
Varro, too, thought of his wife—of Aurelia and also their young son—but his motivation came from a determination to survive, in order to earn enough coin not only to pay off his gambling debts, but to cater for his family’s daily needs, to keep them fed and clothed and safe from harm. Like Spartacus, Varro cared little for the laurels of the crowd. He was happy to leave dreams of glory to those who had nothing else to dream about— to the likes of Crixus, who wanted nothing more on this earth than to march out on to the sands with a sword in his hand once again, the plaudits of his admirers ringing in his ears.
At a signal from a guard the men rose to their feet. They glanced briefly at one another, their faces grim, and then Varro gave a single short nod and they began the long walk through the underground passages toward the tunnel that led to the huge gates, through which they would ultimately step out into the blazing daylight and riotous clamor of the arena.
Many of the cells they passed were empty, though some contained those of Batiatus’s men who had emerged victorious from earlier bouts. These men were now resting, or sluicing off the grime and blood of combat, or nursing wounds inflicted upon them by their opponents. Some of the men simply watched them silently as they passed by, whereas others wished them luck, or even— with grim humor—bid them a final farewell.
Spartacus and Varro ignored them all. Their faces were set, their minds focused purely on the task ahead. As ever, Spartacus was unencumbered by heavy armor, a curved sword clenched in each hand. Varro was dressed as a murmillo, his head encased in a large visored helmet with a high crest, each side of which was decorated with an elaborate relief design of a gorgon’s head, its mouth and eyes agape, its hair a mass of writhing snakes. In one hand Varro carried a large, curved shield, and in the other he held a gladius—a short, stabbing sword. Both men were oiled so that the impressive musculature of their bodies would gleam in the sun. They made a good contrast, Spartacus lean and lithe, his chest covered in a wiry stubble of dark hair, Varro big and burly and broadshouldered, his own chest, arms and back shaved as smooth as a woman’s skin.
Leaving the cells behind, they began to walk up the tunnel toward the gates. Already they could hear the noise of the crowd rising in volume, a rumble of speculative chatter, laced with an almost palpable sense of excitement for the main event of the day. As yet the gates were nothing but a distant blur of diffuse light, but as they neared the arena’s entrance, the light became both brighter and more distinctive, the thick crosshatched mesh of the gates acquiring a vast and forbidding solidity. Spartacus saw Oenomaus standing against the wall to the right of the gates, waiting for them. His tall, lean, long-limbed frame was as straight-backed as ever, and his face a mask of dignity, pride, icy focus and grim determination, as if it was he, and not the men he had trained with such dedication, who was about to step out once more on to the sands.
On Doctore’s opposite side, standing against the left-hand wall like his evil reflection, was Mantilus. Spartacus stared at him, stony-faced. Though not an essential element of dominus’s preparations for the day, they had all been hoping that the grim creature would assume his position by the gates, just as he had done during the previous games. Yellow light filtered through the diamond-shaped gaps between the criss-crossing strips of iron mesh, fell across his scarred body, giving his skin a scaly, lizard-like texture. Indeed, with his milky-white eyes he looked like some nocturnal animal—a reptile or an insect—which had crawled out from between the dank, dark cracks in the stone walls and was now poised, motionless, waiting for a time when it would either pounce upon passing prey or slither back into hiding.
With absolute deliberation, Spartacus walked up to Mantilus and stood before him, their faces no more than a few inches apart. He stared, unblinking, into Mantilus’s white eyes, just as he had done on the night when Batiatus and Lucretia had staged a celebration at their villa to welcome Hieronymus and Crassus to Capua.
Several moments passed in utter silence, Spartacus unflinching in his appraisal of the man indirectly responsible for the deaths of several of Batiatus’s gladiators in the previous games, Mantilus unresponsive, as if unaware of Spartacus’s presence.
“Do you see me, sorcerer?” Spartacus whispered with derision. “Do you observe eyes gazing into soul?”
Mantilus said nothing, did not even so much as twitch a facial muscle in response, and after a moment Oenomaus said quietly, “Spartacus.”
Spartacus turned away from Mantilus and stood shoulder to shoulder with Varro before the gates.
“You have no need of my words,” Oenomaus rumbled. “You both know what must be done.”
Varro nodded, but, like Mantilus, Spartacus offered no response. He simply stood, a sword hanging loosely in each hand, his eyes looking straight ahead.
As the curved horns sounded their fanfare, two Roman soldiers stepped forward, and, with all due ceremony, hauled the massive iron gates slowly open. Spartacus and Varro paused a moment, waiting for Solonius, up in the pulvinus, to complete his introductions, and then they strode out on to the sands. From the way the crowd greeted them, clapping their hands, stamping their feet, and bellowing out Spartacus’s name over and over, until it became a single chanting voice that boomed echoingly around the entire stadium, it seemed that the popularity of Capua’s champion had been affected not at all by his previous lackluster victory in the arena, despite rumors to the contrary. But as usual Spartacus seemed utterly unmoved by the laurels heaped upon his head. From the look in his diamond-chip eyes, it was as if the crowd might not even have been there at all.
Once the gladiators were out on the sands, the soldiers who had opened the gates pushed them slowly and creakingly closed again. They left just enough of a gap to slip through, and then they stepped into the tunnel and pulled on the gates until they met with a resounding clang of metal. One of the soldiers then stepped forward with a huge key and locked the gate, after which the two of them sauntered away up the tunnel—though not before the one with the key had first given Oenomaus a dismissive and disdainful glance.
Once they had gone, Mantilus pushed himself away from the wall like a living shadow and drifted silently up to the gate again. He hooked his fingers through the mesh as before and resumed his silent vigil, his lips moving constantly and silently.
Oenomaus waited until he was in position and then he too stepped forward. This time, however, instead of standing next to the scarred attendant, with the tip of his nose almost touching the metal of the gate to afford him the best possible view of proceedings in the arena, he quietly and deliberately stood a couple of paces behind him, legs slightly apart, hands hanging loosely at his sides.
Spartacus and Varro walked a third of the way into the arena, their strides long and easy, their demeanor deceptively casual. Eventually they came to a halt and looked, with equal indifference, around them. To their left, perhaps forty paces away, were Solonius’s men, a hoplomachus, with his spear and his short sword, and a thraex, clutching a sica and a short rectangular shield, his visored, wide-brimmed helmet crest
ed with the head of a griffin. Directly facing them, again around forty paces away, were Hieronymus’s gladiators—a retiarius, with his net and trident, and a secutor, who compensated for the limited range of vision through the round eye holes in his egg-shaped helmet by having a large rectangular shield with which to protect himself, and a longer than average stabbing sword.
For several seemingly interminable seconds all six gladiators in their three pairs regarded one another, standing as if on the points of a large invisible triangle. The crowd, quietening a little now, watched expectantly, waiting to see who would make the first move.
With an almost lazy turn of the head, Spartacus looked at Solonius’s gladiators, who looked back at him with no apparent malice, their shields only half-raised, their weapons pointing toward the ground. If they gave any kind of signal, it was not immediately obvious to those looking down from above—but suddenly Spartacus raised both his swords and began to run toward Hieronymus’s men, slowly at first, but quickly gaining speed as he covered the distance between them.
When he was around twenty paces away, he let loose a blood-curdling battle cry, full of rage and venom, which was immediately taken up by the crowd. Both Hieronymus’s men—belying their supposed status as savage and fearless Morituri—took a stumbling step back, clearly unnerved by the sheer ferocity of his lone attack.
As he closed with them, the retiarius rallied slightly, adopting a fighting stance and casting his net with one sweep of his arm, hoping to ensnare Spartacus within its barbed mesh. Spartacus, however, was far too quick for him. As the net first billowed through the air toward him, and then began to sink back down to earth, he crossed his swords in front of his chest and dived into a forward roll, his body passing completely beneath the descending net.
Before the retiarius even seemed to realize what had happened, Spartacus had closed the remaining distance between them. Springing back to his feet, he uncrossed his arms in a single blur of movement, the swords in his hands slashing out in a double-arc of sun-white metal. His right-handed blade cut the Retiarius’s legs from under him—literally—whereas the one in his left went a little higher, opening a long slash across his opponent’s unprotected stomach.
The retiarius didn’t even have time to scream before he was falling, his legs, hacked off just beneath the knees, flying one way, and his body the other. As he hit the ground with a heavy thud, his slashed belly burst open like a paper bag and blood and slippery internal organs gushed out of him.
His partner, the secutor, meanwhile, simply stood and gaped, his reflexes far too slow to match the sheer speed and agility of Spartacus’s assault. He had barely raised his shield before Spartacus, his momentum continuing to carry him forward, was upon him too, his twin swords a whirling blur of lethal metal.
Desperately the secutor brought up his own sword in defense, only to find less than a second later that his hand, with the sword still clutched in it, was flying across the arena, trailing blood, having been severed neatly at the wrist. The gladiator hadn’t even reacted to the pain before Spartacus’s other sword was flashing up and across, unerringly finding the narrow gap between the top of the secutor’s shield and the bottom of his helmet, and severing his head with one blow.
As the helmeted head landed on the sand with a heavy thud, the secutor’s body, blood spurting from the stump of the neck, folded at the knees and waist and crumpled to the ground.
Spartacus rose slowly from his half-crouch, the blades of his swords dripping blood on to the sand, and glanced round briefly at the screaming, leaping, delirious crowd. Then, without even raising a single sword in acknowledgement, he turned and trudged casually back to where Varro was standing waiting for him, the hacked, bleeding remains of Hieronymus’s gladiators already attracting flies on the sand in his wake.
Varro nodded, and Spartacus nodded back, and then the two of them turned to face Solonius’s men.
“Now that unworthy dogs are despatched, we can fight like true gladiators,” the thraex growled, his voice muffled beneath his helmet. “Prepare to die, Thracian.”
Marcus Crassus lowered his head briefly, his hand rising from his lap at the same moment to cradle it. His thumb and middle finger gently massaged each side of his temple for a few seconds, and then he lifted his head slowly once more and glared at Hieronymus.
The Greek merchant was sitting and shivering on the floor of the pulvinus, out of sight of the crowd, his back pressed against the inside edge of the balcony. He had drawn his knees up to his chin and was now pawing at his lips with his hands, as if in an attempt to drag coherent words from his unresponsive mouth. His black eyes, wide and staring, darted this way and that, as if they were witnessing unimaginable terrors bearing down on him from every direction. Since accusing Batiatus of poisoning him, he had withdrawn into himself, muttering and gibbering, resisting all attempts to draw him out of his shell. Brutilius’s wife had tried for a while, but Hieronymus had flinched as though he thought she meant him harm, and in the end she had given up. Then it had been time for Solonius to announce the primus, since when all eyes had been on the arena.
Now that Spartacus had perfunctorily, even contemptuously, despatched Hieronymus’s gladiators, however (men selected especially for the primus, and therefore, theoretically, the best that his ludus had to offer), Crassus, his professional interest in the contest effectively over, turned his withering attention back to Hieronymus.
“I have invested considerable coin in venture, and will have explanation for this disgrace,” he muttered, spitting out his words like cherry pits. “Speak, Grecian, or prepare to be dragged back to Rome behind my horses and see truth torn from body.”
Hieronymus looked up at him, his mouth opening and closing silently for a moment. Then finally, in a harsh and tortured whisper, he said, “Water.”
The expression on Crassus’s face was less than encouraging.
“What of it?” he snapped.
Hieronymus raised a finger and pointed it waveringly at Solonius and then at Batiatus.
“They …” he gulped, his eyes rolling. “They have … poisoned me.”
Crassus’s dark gaze swept across the faces of the two lanistae.
“Is there truth in his babbling?”
Batiatus smiled, seemingly unruffled.
“I don’t endeavor to speak for the man. Let him offer explanation for belief in such a thing.”
Crassus’s attention snapped back to Hieronymus.
“Yes. Do as he suggests and make clear your meaning.”
“I …” Hieronymus had the wretched look of a man who had a number of paths from which to choose, but who suspected that whatever decision he made would ultimately lead to nothing but his own damnation.
Finally, pointing at Batiatus, he said, “The deception lies with him. He … he claims to provide me with water from Rome. But the water he offers … is not Roman.”
Crassus glared at Hieronymus, and as he did so Batiatus in turn watched Crassus’s face closely. He was mightily relieved to see that, unless the Roman nobleman was an excellent actor, he clearly had no idea what Hieronymus was talking about.
As if to confirm the fact, Crassus threw up his hands and barked, “Babble continues to flow as if water itself. Gather thoughts and sharpen point.”
Hieronymus shook his head and clapped his hands over his face.
“I cannot…” he all but wept. “I cannot.”
Crassus’s eyes blazed, though his voice was dangerously soft. Leaning forward, he said, “You can and will, or suffer consequences.”
Still Hieronymus wept, his hands clapped over his face. Brutilius tore his eyes from the action below for a moment and looked down on him with evident distaste.
“The man appears deranged,” he said. “One remembers that the Greeks are renowned for displays of vulgar emotion. Consequence of imbalance of humors in mongrel blood.”
Crassus shot him a look scathing enough to make the portly nobleman turn pale and promptly close his mouth.
Then he turned again to Batiatus.
“Do you understand what the man implies by speaking nonsense of Roman water?”
Calmly Batiatus inclined his head.
“I confess to the grasping of it.”
“Then I demand explanation.”
Batiatus gestured at the jugs of water on the table at the back of the balcony.
“I made arrangement to serve Hieronymus water from the stream that until these several weeks past had supplied my ludus.”
“I would receive reason for it,” Crassus narrowed his eyes. “Does Hieronymus speak truth of this water running with poison?”
“Yes,” Batiatus said bluntly. “But not added by my hand. Nor by good Solonius’s. The stream which runs behind his own ludus was similarly sullied.”
“Whose hand has done it then?”
This time it was Solonius who answered.
“Hieronymus’s himself.”
There was suspicion and incredulity in Crassus’s voice. “Hieronymus poisons himself?”
Batiatus nodded. “Indeed. Though precise reckoning points to Mantilus’s hand, moved at bidding of Hieronymus.”
Crassus looked more exasperated than ever.
“I ask again for its reason.”
“For victory in the arena,” Solonius said.
“Victory absent honor,” Batiatus added.
Crassus scowled at the both of them—and then understanding slowly began to dawn on his face.
“Hieronymus sought advantage with the act in lieu of his men’s prowess?”
Again Batiatus nodded.
“Our ludii laid low by illness at his hand.”
“Batiatus discovered truth of it, and we joined to avenge slight upon our good names—as was our right,” Solonius said.
“We hesitated to resort to public exposure of his deed—for fear that noble name of Crassus would be sullied by proximity,” Batiatus said. “We simply allowed Hieronymus belief that upper hand was still his to enjoy, that affliction upon both of us still held sway.”