Nubia realised she must do something quickly or she would never get into the amphitheatre.
She remembered Flavia’s words: The trick is to act like you belong.
Taking a deep breath she boldly stepped out of the crowd and fell into step with some slaves walking beside a large wooden cage.
‘Hey, you!’ she heard someone shout. She stared resolutely ahead, resisting the temptation to panic and run away.
‘Hey, you!’ came the voice again. ‘Hercula! You going to wrestle that lion with your bare hands?’
Laughter.
Nubia sighed a secret sigh of relief. It was just her cloak that was attracting attention: a lionskin cloak like the one the mythical hero Hercules wore. She glanced up at the cage beside her. She was too low to see the animal through the small barred window at the top but she could smell lion.
Suddenly she gasped as an iron grip closed round her wrist.
‘Sorry, miss,’ said the soldier sternly. ‘But I’m afraid you’ll have to come with me.’
Lupus moved further into the great amphitheatre, sweeping as he went.
Once, two workmen passed by. One held thick ropes of flowers and the other pots of paint. Neither of them took any notice of the lowly slave-boy sweeping the corridors.
The further in he went on this level the darker it became. Here the corridors were lit by flickering torches in wall brackets. It occurred to Lupus that if these torches went out a person might wander in the maze forever.
Now he was alone. He had not met anyone for five or ten minutes and he only had the brisk sound of his twig broom to keep away the fear and the ghosts.
Suddenly he stopped sweeping. Drifting out from the dark mouth of the corridor up ahead was an eerie wailing noise. Lupus felt the short hair on the back of his neck stand right up, just as he had seen the hackles rise on the back of a dog.
He had never in his life felt such a clear premonition of horror as he did now. And so he did the only sensible thing.
Lupus dropped his broom, turned and ran.
‘You’d better come away from there!’ said the soldier to Nubia. ‘Unless you’re with this lion.’
‘Of course she’s with this lion,’ said a man’s accented voice behind Nubia. ‘Can’t you see she’s wearing his father’s skin?’
‘Mnason!’ cried Nubia in delight. She knew the Syrian animal trainer from Ostia; she had helped him recapture an escaped lion and giraffe.
The soldier shrugged and released Nubia’s wrist. ‘Just trying to keep some order,’ he growled, and clinked off along the line of carts.
‘Nubia! What a delightful surprise!’ said Mnason, when the soldier was out of earshot. ‘And I’m glad to see you’re wearing the cloak I gave you.’
‘It pleases me. It is keeping me warm. Is the Monobaz here?’
Mnason nodded and jerked his thumb towards the cart behind. ‘Right back there . . .’
‘He is well?’
Mnason fell into step with her and they walked beside the slowly-moving cart. ‘He is in peak form, my dear. In peak form. In fact he is on tomorrow’s programme.’
‘Is that good?’
‘To be on the first and greatest day of the games? I should say so.’
‘He will not be eating people, will he?’ asked Nubia in a small voice.
‘Of course not!’ laughed Mnason. ‘He’s a trick lion, not a common man-eater. Just you wait and see.’
At last the cart was entering the special gate beneath the marble sculpture of a four-horse chariot.
Nubia hesitated.
‘Are you coming in?’
‘Yes,’ she said, taking a deep breath. ‘I am coming with you and the Monobaz.’
‘Excuse me, young lady.’
Flavia jumped. A thin man holding several pieces of papyrus stood behind her. He looked down at Tigris who was panting softly.
‘Just taking your dog for a walk?’ he asked mildly. He was obviously a scribe or clerk.
‘Um, yes.’
‘Well, you look like a highborn girl, so let me offer you a piece of advice. Don’t loiter here under the arches. It’s where the women in togas ply their trade. You might get . . . unwelcome attention.’
‘Oh. Thank you. My dog and I were just leaving.’ Flavia gave Tigris’s lead a little tug, and as she walked out from under the archway, the thin man consulted his wax tablet and hurried after her.
‘Wait! Before you go . . . I’m looking for the organiser, Quintus Fabius Balbus. That man over there with the ponytail . . . would he be the magister ludi?’
Flavia looked at Ponytail. ‘Yes,’ she said, and looked at the scribe. ‘I think that must be the magister ludi.’
Lupus smiled sheepishly.
What a coward he was! He was deep in the bowels of a vast monument devoted to violent death, looking for condemned criminals. What did he expect to hear? Jolly choruses?
He took a deep breath, turned and forced himself to move back through the corridors. Back the way he had come. Back towards the eerie wailing noise.
Lupus found his broom where he had dropped it. He picked it up and gazed unhappily at the three dark corridors before him. He had no idea which one to take. The eerie noise had ceased and he could only hear the crackling flames of the wall torches. He closed his eyes and rested his forehead against the wooden broom handle and prayed.
‘You there! Stop leaning on your broom and give me a hand.’
Lupus started. A slave in a pale tunic was glaring at him.
‘Take one of these buckets,’ ordered the slave. He had an enormous wart on his right eyelid which gave him an unpleasant leer. ‘Come on! I don’t have all day. It’s feeding time for the prisoners.’
Lupus dropped his broom and ran to take one of the wooden pails from the big slave. It was full of water and he could see a copper beaker lying at the bottom. The big slave shifted his remaining pail to the other hand and adjusted the bulging canvas shoulder bag slung over one shoulder. Then he strode off down the middle corridor.
‘Fungus was supposed to help me,’ he said over his shoulder, ‘but he never does his share. Always playing dice with Pupienus. Come on, boy! Keep up. And try not to spill any water: it makes the floor muddy.’
Mnason let out his breath in a slow whistle. ‘Look at this cell,’ he said. ‘Bright, well-ventilated, a constantly replenished water trough, fresh hay on the ground. See this, Monobaz?’
Monobaz emerged blinking from his wooden cage, padded down the ramp and sniffed the hay. Then he flopped onto his side.
‘Nothing but the best for my kitty.’ Mnason scratched Monobaz behind the ear and the big cat’s whole body vibrated with a rhythmic purring.
‘I wonder where they are keeping the prisoners,’ said Nubia, looking around.
‘Well, if their cells are half as nice as these, they won’t want to leave, will they, Monobaz?’
Lupus followed Verucus into a dim vaulted room, and nearly gagged at the powerful stench of human sweat and excrement. Behind a second barrier of iron bars, more than two hundred faces turned towards him as the door slammed shut. The prisoners – almost all of them bearded men – sat on the beaten earth floor. The only person standing was a short man with a turban, who had obviously been addressing the criminals.
Lupus saw that the man wore a black and white shawl over his shoulders. He had seen a rabbi at Jonathan’s synagogue wearing such a shawl.
Lupus braced himself for the stampede Verucus had predicted, but the people remained seating.
‘Good,’ said the rabbi to them in accented Latin. ‘That is good. No panic. No wailing. Now. We will pass the bread to the younger boys first. Then us men. And I want two of you –’ he gazed round, then pointed, ‘– you, Reuben . . . and you, Shmuel . . . get the water and ladle it out. Remember,’ the rabbi was telling the prisoners, ‘the Master of the Universe – blessed be he – is watching us. We have a chance to please him in the last hours of our lives. How many people get such an opportunity?’
>
As the two bearded men picked their way carefully through the seated crowd towards the bars, Lupus quickly scanned the prisoners for his friend. His heart thumped several times, for there were a surprising number of heads with dark curly hair, but none of them was Jonathan.
Verucus was taking leathery discs out of his canvas shoulder bag and passing them through the bars to eager hands. As the bread was passed along to those most in need, the rabbi began to intone something in another language. Lupus instantly recognised the first few words of the Hebrew blessing that Jonathan’s father recited every day over the food: ‘Barooch ata adonai elohay noo melech ha olam . . .’
Lupus felt as if he had been kicked in the stomach. He suddenly realised who the prisoners were. They were all Jews.
‘Well,’ said Mnason to Nubia. ‘I’ll ask around, but the prisoners are in a different part of the amphitheatre. I’ve heard there are some cells on the west side . . .’
‘Father!’ said a youth of about fourteen. He had Mnason’s black hair and olive skin, but his cheeks were smooth. ‘Come quickly! The gladiators are about to rehearse their procession into the arena.’
Mnason looked up from brushing Monobaz’s golden fur. ‘Nubia, this is my son, Bar-Mnason. We call him Bar for short.’
Bar looked Nubia up and down, then grinned.
Mnason pulled off one of his necklaces – a stamped clay tag on a leather thong – and handed it to Nubia. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘Take this. It’s a pass to the beast-keepers’ area. If anybody asks what you’re doing just say you’re with Mnason’s group. Now run along with Bar to see the gladiators. You can help me feed Monobaz later.’
‘Hey, you! What are you doing here? This area is strictly off-limits.’
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ lisped Flavia in her little girl’s voice, ‘but my doggy ran in and I’m just going to get him.’ Flavia pointed at Tigris, waiting patiently at the top of the stairs inside an arch of the amphitheatre.
The guard narrowed his eyes at her.
By thinking about Jonathan, Flavia managed to fill her eyes with tears. She also let her chin quiver.
‘Oh, all right! But be quick about it. No loitering!’
‘Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.’
Flavia sighed. She wouldn’t be able to use the little girl ploy much longer. She took the marble steps two at a time, picked up Tigris’s lead and together they moved deeper into the structure. Presently the puppy led her into a bright, honey-scented space with big colourful columns and a low marble parapet.
The sweet smell came from garlands of spring flowers draped from the tops of the columns before her. Pink peony, yellow narcissus, and purple crocus were twined with creamy honeysuckle. The same colours that swirled through the marble of the polished columns.
Flavia moved forward to see the whole amphitheatre framed between these columns.
She gasped.
It was enormous.
Its walls were tier upon tier of marble seating rising up and away from her. Its floor was a huge oval of pale sand and its ceiling was a red awning high above the amphitheatre. Even as she craned her neck to look up she saw a lofty square of red fold itself up, seemingly without human help. There was a hint of blue between the thinning clouds that promised good weather for the following day.
Looking around, Flavia saw that she stood in the lowest tier of the great amphitheatre and suddenly realised she must be in the Imperial Box. Tomorrow the Emperor himself would sit here.
Slaves hovered over the seats on either side, dipping paintbrushes into clay pots and applying them to the marble benches that curved around the vast seating area. Flavia looked down on one of these slaves, and saw that he was filling the inscribed seat numbers with red paint to make them easily legible. He also picked out the lines dividing one seat space from the next.
Abruptly Flavia froze. A strange moaning sound filled the amphitheatre. It sounded like a giant’s groan.
The noise seemed to come from an object at one end of the arena on the lowest level of seats. It was a big wooden box with copper sticks poking up from it, each a different length. The copper sticks reminded Flavia of upside-down pan-pipes and she realised it was exactly that: an instrument with giant bronze pipes.
A man stood behind this box and two slaves crouched on either side. Although the man was not blowing he was doing something to the box to make it breathe. Now the sound was lighter, higher, as if the giant was humming. The sound made her heart beat fast and her stomach sink, as if something exciting was about to happen.
She saw that many of the slaves had stopped to look, too, and from the unseen tier above her head she heard a man yell: ‘Get back to work, you lot!’
As Flavia stood listening to the compelling sound of the strange instrument, she saw two people appear on the far side of the arena at her level. Flavia squinted. One was a dark-skinned figure in a tawny cloak.
Flavia waved at Nubia, and her friend waved back. Flavia shook her head slowly and gave an exaggerated shrug, to let her know she hadn’t discovered anything yet.
Across the arena, Nubia saw Flavia shake her head and shrug. She nodded, to show she’d understood, then pointed at herself and shook her head too.
‘Do you know that person over there?’ Bar asked Nubia in surprise.
She nodded. ‘That is my friend Flavia Gemina. What is the noise?’
‘The water organ? Haven’t you heard one of those before? Strange, isn’t it?’
‘I like it.’
‘Me, too. Father says it just stirs up the crowd, but I think it makes the games more exciting.’
The water organ played another sequence of dramatic chords. Suddenly trumpets blared out a fanfare and Nubia saw two men in togas emerge from an arched gate below the water organ. They were carrying strange bundles of something like twigs. Three men blowing large curved trumpets strutted after them into the bright arena. And then came the men.
‘Here they come,’ said Bar. ‘Here come the gladiators.’
As the forerunners of the procession marched out into the arena, Nubia saw a slave who had been raking sand stop and stare, then scamper off.
A moment later a man with a ponytail come into sight on the sandy oval of the arena below them.
‘That’s Fabius,’ remarked Bar. ‘He’s the magister ludi, in charge of organising everything. They say if the spectacles are a success, Titus will give him a villa at Baiae and a townhouse in Rome. But if not he could lose his head.’
Nubia saw Fabius approach a stocky man in a cream tunic who had appeared with the gladiators. Beside her, Bar pointed. ‘I think that’s Rotundus, the lanista.’
‘What is lanista?’ asked Nubia.
‘A lanista is a trainer and manager,’ said Bar. ‘I don’t suppose you can read?’
‘Yes, I am learning.’
‘Can you read the banner those two men are holding?’
‘It is saying . . . Ludus Aureus.’
‘Then that is Rotundus. The Ludus Aureus is the new gladiator school here in Rome and he’s the lanista. Hey! See that gladiator with the curly blond hair?’
Nubia nodded.
‘That’s Crescens. He’s one of the most famous of the retiarii.’
‘What is retee aree?’
‘Net-men. They fight with a net, trident and dagger. And I think that one down there is Celadus the Thracian. There. The bald one.’
‘My brother is a gladiator,’ said Nubia.
Bar stared at her. ‘Your brother is a gladiator?’
She nodded. ‘He was taken as slave and is training to be a gladiator in the school of Capua. He is very far from Rome.’
‘Capua!’ breathed the young Syrian. ‘It’s the best school in Italia. Father and I were there last year. That’s where Spartacus came from.’
‘Spartacus?’ The name sounded familiar to Nubia.
‘Yes,’ whispered Bar, though they were quite alone.
‘He was a gladiator who lived a hundred and fifty years ago. But his leg
end lives on. He escaped from the school of Capua and he was so well-trained that he and some other runaway slaves survived for two years before they were recaptured.’
‘Maybe my brother will escape, too,’ whispered Nubia.
‘I hope he doesn’t try,’ said Bar, giving her a quick glance, ‘or he’ll suffer the same fate as Spartacus.’
‘What was that?’
‘Spartacus and his six thousand runaway slaves were crucified,’ said Bar in a low voice. ‘Capua may be far away, but the whole road from here to there was lined with their crosses.’
‘Juno!’ squealed Flavia, as a finger tapped her shoulder.
And then, ‘Oh Lupus! It’s you. You frightened me halfway to Tartarus!’ She pressed a hand to her thumping heart. Tigris had greeted Lupus with a brief wag, and was now sniffing the boy’s sandals with great interest.
‘Here,’ hissed Flavia, tugging the sleeve of Lupus’s tunic. ‘Come here behind this column. I think this is the Emperor’s box. Did you find Jonathan?’
Lupus shook his head and started to write on his wax tablet:
LOTS OF JEWS
‘Who?’ said Flavia. ‘Where?’ Then her eyes widened. ‘You mean the criminals to be executed are Jews?’
Lupus nodded.
‘But Jonathan wasn’t with them?’
Lupus shook his head.
Flavia leaned her forehead on one of the cold, smooth columns. Beside her Tigris whined and turned in a circle.
‘I’m sorry, Tigris,’ she whispered.
Jonathan’s big puppy moved to the marble balustrade. He stood on his hind legs to put his front paws on the marble half wall.
Lupus joined him, standing beside a big polished column and gazing out over the arena. He grunted in amazement and turned to beckon Flavia.
She joined him and Tigris at the parapet. And gasped.
Hundreds of gladiators and their attendants had filled the arena, and now they stood quietly, attentively, watching Fabius. He snapped a command Flavia could not hear, and the five hundred men turned to face Flavia and Lupus.
Flavia jerked back behind the shelter of her column and pressed her back to its cold curved surface. Then she peeked again.
The Roman Mysteries Complete Collection Page 100