‘Flavia! Nubia!’ cried a voice from the entrance. ‘Great Juno’s peacock! Are you girls all in one piece?’
Nubia saw Sisyphus struggling to push his way between two burly guards.
‘Oh Sisyphus!’ cried Flavia. She ran to the slim Greek and threw her arms round him.
Domitian raised an eyebrow. ‘Is this your father?’
‘Caesar!’ Sisyphus’s eyes grew wide and Nubia saw him try to bow with Flavia still clinging to him. ‘Caesar, my name is Sisyphus. I am secretary to Senator Cornix. His niece Flavia Gemina and her friend Nubia are under my protection.’
‘Charmed to meet you. Do come in and join us.’ Domitian spread himself comfortably back in his ivory chair. ‘This is my wife Domitia,’ – he lazily waved an arm to his right – ‘my niece Julia and her husband Flavius Sabinus. Also my friends Calvus the senator and Martial, a poet.’
‘Oh Sisyphus, it was terrible!’ said Flavia. ‘First the hippos, and then the crocodiles, and then the bear . . .’
Nubia heard Flavia’s teeth chattering.
‘I know! My dear, If I hadn’t seen it I wouldn’t have believed it. But the crowds loved it. Come, let’s accept Caesar’s kind offer and sit here on the couch beside Nubia the heroine! Are you all right, my dear?’ This last to Nubia.
She nodded and gave him a weak smile.
‘Nubia ex machina,’ said Sisyphus. ‘My dear, you were superb!’
Beside her Flavia was still trembling so violently that the whole couch was shaking.
Nubia took Mnason’s scratchy blanket from her friend’s shoulders and replaced it with a soft blue cover from the imperial couch.
‘Take some refreshment.’ Domitian was watching them. ‘Go on, Nubia-the-heroine, I command it!’ he laughed.
Nubia obediently leaned forward and took a date from the low table. As she bit into its delicious chewy sweetness, she suddenly realised that she was ravenously hungry.
Suspended in space above the arena, midgets were having lunch, too. They sat on chairs balanced on the tightrope and they tossed fruit back and forth while the water organ played a jolly tune. Below them, slaves were running to bring the last sections of wooden planking to cover the now empty basin. Nubia was amazed at how much bigger and more detailed everything was from the this level.
She turned her attention to the other occupants of the box, and as Domitian and his guests began to eat, she secretly studied them.
Domitian’s wife Domitia was a dark-haired woman, with a strong nose and a weak chin. Her complicated hairdo was so stiff and her posture so rigid that she might have been carved of marble. In complete contrast, Domitian’s niece Julia made Nubia think of a ripe peach. She was a pretty redhead of about fourteen or fifteen. She had a short neck, a plump body and a mouth shaped like Cupid’s bow. Nubia noticed that Julia kept glancing towards Domitian, and once she saw him wink back at her.
Sitting on one side of Julia was a pleasant-looking man with reddish-brown hair, presumably her husband. On Julia’s other side sat an ape-like man with hairy arms and legs, and eyebrows that met over his nose. He was taking notes on a wax tablet. A bald man wearing a red-striped tunic had vacated their couch to sit in a gilded chair behind them. He must be the senator.
Slave-boys came into the box carrying silver trays with little pastry animals on them. Flavia shook her head as Sisyphus coaxingly pressed a honey and almond hippo against her firmly-closed mouth. It was obvious to Nubia that her friend had no appetite.
But Nubia had never felt hungrier and when the slave-boy extended the tray to her, she devoured three lions, two tigers and a bear.
Lupus sought a hiding place where nobody could find him.
He had ignored Verucus’s bellow of rage to run blindly through one dim corridor after another. Finally he had found this high little niche, behind a statue of Cupid. It was tight and he had to bend his head but somehow it felt safe. He felt like an injured animal who has crept back to its lair to lick its wounds. But his wounds were inside and the only way to soothe them was to weep. So he let the great hot tears pour silently down his cheeks.
Everything had depended on the curly-haired boy of the rumours being Jonathan. But the boy was not Jonathan. That meant Jonathan must be dead.
There was no hope left.
Nubia leaned on the marble parapet and gazed out over the arena.
‘Where once was water now is dry land,’ she heard the hairy-armed man proclaim.
‘Virgil?’ asked Domitian.
‘My own verse,’ said the poet, looking smug. ‘I have just composed it.’
‘Very good,’ everyone murmured, and Nubia nodded, too.
It was hard to believe that the place where five girls her age had just died was sand again, clean and pure. As clean and pure as the desert, the golden desert of her childhood.
Would she ever be able to see sand again without thinking of pain and death? Without wondering how deep she would have to dig to find blood? Had the Romans made it impossible for her to go home again?
She gazed up at the thousands of people in the vast bowl around her. What was she doing here?
Trying to find Jonathan, she told herself. I’m here to find Jonathan.
Jonathan, who had been closer than a brother since the night the four of them had swum with dolphins. Jonathan, who bound them together with his steady friendship the way the deep bass notes of his barbiton brought together their flute, drums and tambourine.
If Jonathan was no longer there to hold them together then she must do it. Flavia and Lupus had become her new family. And she could not afford to lose another family. It was up to her to keep them together and to protect them.
‘Nubia,’ she heard a voice whisper behind her and turned to see Flavia extending her hand. With a smile Nubia took it and sat beside her friend and comforted her as she wept.
And for the first time since they had met, Nubia felt she was stronger than Flavia.
Lupus’s tears were subsiding when he heard voices and approaching footsteps. He sniffed and wiped his nose on his finger. Then he froze.
‘The senators are outraged by the murder of those little girls.’ A man’s voice – low and urgent – and speaking Greek.
His companion – a man with a deeper voice – replied in the same language. ‘That parade of informers yesterday meant nothing. This morning Titus showed his true nature. We said he’d be a second Nero, and it looks as if we were right.’
‘You know, my friend. This could be the perfect time for us to do what we’ve spoken of before . . . to take his throne. But we must act immediately.’
Lupus wiped the tears from his cheeks and slowly leaned forward to see the two men whispering in the corridor below him. If he peered under the marble cupid’s chubby arm, he could just see them. The one with the deeper voice had a bald patch. The other one was very tall and thin. They were in their early thirties, he guessed, and the broad red stripes on their white tunics told him that they were of the senatorial class.
‘You and I?’ said Bald Patch. ‘Co-rulers instead of Titus and Domitian?’
‘Why not?’ said the tall one. ‘We’ve discussed this before. We’re both of better ancestry. You come from the Julian line and my great-grandmother was Pompey’s niece. Their father was a mule-driving farmer from the Sabine Hills.’
‘And you think now is the time?’
‘Now is the perfect time. The slaughter of those little girls was outrageous. We’ll start speaking to the senators today. Test the –’
‘Shhh! Did you hear something?’
Lupus moved back into the shadows and held his breath.
‘Let’s go outside,’ said Bald Patch. ‘No risk of being heard there.’
Lupus heard their footsteps retreating and presently all was quiet, except for the distant roar of the crowds.
He knew he had to make a decision.
Titus’s throne was at risk. The Emperor’s life might even be in danger.
But only yesterday Titus
had flogged Rome’s informers and then paraded them in the arena.
Lupus knew that if he told Titus about the plot, it would make him just like them. He would be an informer, too.
‘What is the meaning of this?’ a bellowing voice rose up the stairs and filled the Imperial Box.
Nubia looked up to see the Emperor Titus appear. He was gripping his purple cloak in one hand and the man called Fabius in the other. Titus flung away the cloak in a swirl of purple and forced the magister ludi to his knees on the coloured marble floor.
‘Freeborn girls being fed to hippos? Ten-year-olds fighting off crocodiles? What in Hades did you think you were doing?’ The Emperor’s face was flushed with rage. ‘I parade a thousand informers to snuff out the rumour that I will be another Nero, and what do you do? You follow it up with a show of little blonde girls that even that depraved maniac would not have dreamed of!’
Fabius hung his head.
Titus was still breathing hard but now his face was returning to its normal colour. He pulled out his handkerchief and mopped his brow.
‘Well? What do you have to say for yourself?’
Fabius lifted his head. ‘Caesar, forgive me. The girls . . . We thought it would please the crowds. It did please the crowds. They were only slaves . . .’
‘Not all of them, as I understand it,’ said Titus. ‘I have been informed that some were freeborn and that one in particular was of the equestrian class.’
‘Imposs –,’ began Fabius, and his eyes widened as he caught sight of a red-eyed Flavia shivering on her couch.
Titus turned to follow Fabius’s gaze and his eyes widened, too.
‘Flavia Gemina!’ he said and his eyebrows went up. ‘Were you part of that outrage?’
Flavia nodded, and then burst into fresh tears. Nubia patted her shoulder.
Fabius scrambled to his feet. ‘But Caesar, your brother Domitian approved today’s programme. And that girl swore she was an orphan –’
‘Silence!’ bellowed Titus and pointed at Flavia. ‘This girl saved my life last year. If she had died . . .’ he took a breath and lowered his voice to a menacing whisper, ‘. . . if she had died, then your fate would have been sealed. As it is . . . I’ll give you a chance. Among the gladiators you love so dearly.’
‘But, Caesar!’ Fabius whimpered.
‘Take him!’ Titus gave two soldiers a curt nod and they hustled Fabius out of the Imperial Box.
Titus turned to Domitian, ‘You knew of this?’
Domitian had vacated the imperial throne and was reclining on a couch. He gave his older brother a lazy shrug. ‘Fabius and I thought it would make the execution more entertaining . . .’
‘Entertaining?’ spluttered Titus, then he took a deep breath and tried to steady his voice. ‘Yes,’ he said patiently, as if speaking to a child. ‘The executions are meant to entertain the masses. But also to educate them. And to discourage them from committing similar crimes. Above all, Domitian,’ he raised his voice so that the senators around him would be able to hear, ‘above all, the executions must show justice being done.’
Domitian took an olive. ‘You pardoned that so-called Leander last night after he swam through the crocodiles.’
‘It is my duty to show mercy on occasion. Besides, if the gods spared him, he must have been unjustly accused. Pardoning someone who may be innocent is a different matter from condemning those who have done no wrong. The only crime those poor little girls were guilty of was in being lowborn. And one of them was highborn. We should never submit those of noble birth to this kind of humiliation!’
Domitian gestured at Flavia. ‘Well, I saved the highborn one, didn’t I?’
‘You very nearly didn’t, by all reports,’ muttered Titus and glanced round the box. ‘Domitian. You and I will discuss this further in private. But now please return to the Palatine. I’ll oversee the gladiator combats.’
Domitian rose slowly to his feet and inclined his head. ‘Very well, Caesar,’ he said. ‘Come, Domitia.’ And although he sauntered down the stairs out of the Imperial Box with every appearance of calm Nubia knew better.
She had seen the look of pure hatred in his eyes when he looked at Titus.
‘Excuse me, Caesar!’ said a broken-nosed guard, stepping forward. ‘There’s a boy here who claims to have information about a plot against you. I would have tossed him out but he assures me that you know him.’ The big guard extended a battered wax tablet.
‘An informer?’ Titus closed his eyes, pinched the top of his nose and sighed deeply. ‘I didn’t think there were any left in Rome after yesterday. Well, let’s see.’ He took the tablet, opened it and examined it. From her couch beside him, Flavia caught a glimpse of two portraits etched in the wax.
‘Ah!’ He sat up straight and glanced up at the guard. ‘I’ve suspected these two for some time. Arrest them at once. And show the boy in, would you?’
The guard went out and returned a moment later with a dark-haired boy in a grubby tunic.
‘Lupus!’ exclaimed Flavia, Nubia and Sisyphus.
If Lupus was surprised to see his friends in the Imperial Box he did not show it. He gave them a dull look.
‘You discovered a plot against the Emperor?’ asked Flavia, and for a moment her shivering subsided.
He nodded.
Titus put his hand on Lupus’s shoulder. ‘Come,’ he said, ‘sit and have something to eat . . . or to drink. Then I want you to tell me how you found out about Africanus and Stertinius. You can stay here in my box for rest of the afternoon. There’s no better seat in the amphitheatre. The best part of the show is about to begin: the gladiatorial combats.’
‘Did you find . . .?’ Flavia started to whisper as Lupus joined them on the couch. But she trailed off. His bleak expression said it all. He didn’t even have to shake his head for Flavia to know he had not found Jonathan.
Flavia leaned her head on Nubia’s shoulder. Even with the warm imperial blanket wrapped around her she was shivering more than ever.
A silver cup of cool spiced wine and the trumpets’ blare raised Lupus’s spirits a little. He leaned forward as the gladiators emerged into the bright arena from an entrance to his right.
‘Are they starting already?’ Titus put down his plate and glanced up at the sun. ‘It seems too early.’
The crowd was cheering and laughing. People who had left to buy midday snacks or visit the latrines were hurrying back to their seats.
‘It’s the novelty act, Caesar,’ said Calvus, the bald senator.
Lupus glanced out into the arena again.
The gladiators wore their armour and carried their helmets so the crowd could see their faces. Behind came their attendants, carrying weapons, and finally the lanista.
‘Novelty act?’ said Titus.
‘Yes,’ said Calvus. ‘You remember that female gladiators fought yesterday afternoon?’
Just outside the Imperial Box some senators were making exclamations of outrage.
‘Yes?’ said Titus. ‘But those aren’t women.’
Lupus sat up straight and looked harder. Then his eyes widened.
‘No,’ said Calvus, ‘your brother arranged something quite new for today’s show. He thought the crowds might be amused –’
But before he could finish Lupus heard the Emperor exclaim.
‘They’re children!’
As the fanfare died away, an announcer walked onto the sandy oval of the arena and looked up at the Imperial Box. Flavia could hear him perfectly.
‘For your amusement and pleasure,’ he proclaimed, ‘five pairs of child gladiators will now do combat.’
Flavia pulled her blue blanket tighter and sat up straight.
As the young gladiators paired off and began warming up with wooden weapons, she saw that some were girls her age.
‘According to lots cast earlier,’ announced the herald, ‘the pairing will be as follows: Hostis and Prometheus: a Murmillo versus a Thracian. Serpens and Bastet, a hoplomachus and a fish-gi
rl. Two matches between secutor and retiarius: first will be Flaccus and Oceanus, next will be Ursus and Numerius. But to begin today’s novelty bouts we have Vulpina, fighting as secutrix, against Mus the net-girl.’
‘Ahhhh!’ sighed the crowd as the herald indicated a tiny girl with a wooden trident. She wore nothing but a loincloth and the distinctive arm padding and shoulder guard of the net-man.
Nubia gazed at Flavia with dismay. ‘She is so young!’
Lupus held up eight fingers.
‘Maybe younger,’ said Flavia.
Titus had risen from his throne and was gripping the marble balustrade with white-knuckled hands. Now he turned and Flavia saw his face grow deep pink with rage.
‘Domitian!’ he gritted out from between clenched teeth. ‘By the gods I’ll . . .’ The ivory feet of his throne scraped on marble as he shoved it aside and hurried down his private stairs.
‘Caesar!’ Calvus called after him. ‘You can’t leave now! The children are saluting you! And you must inspect the weapons . . .’ his voice trailed off and he looked around the box sheepishly.
‘I’ll inspect the weapons,’ announced Julia suddenly, and moved to sit in her father’s throne.
Down in the arena, two slaves had pushed forward movable steps. The lanista mounted these steps so that his head and shoulders rose up on the other side of the parapet. Two guards clinked forward and stood protectively on either side of Julia, for the lanista held deadly weapons on a long wooden tray.
‘What am I supposed to do?’ Flavia heard Julia say.
‘Just check them for sharpness,’ replied the lanista, ‘by lightly touching –’
‘Ow!’ squealed Julia and her hazel eyes widened in horror as she saw the blood oozing from a cut on her forefinger.
Sisyphus shrieked and Flavia cringed as both guards swung their swords out of their scabbards and pressed the points to the lanista’s chest.
‘Whoa!’ The man tottered for a moment on the steps. ‘I told her to touch it lightly!’
The Roman Mysteries Complete Collection Page 106