The Exiled

by David Barbaree

  But I can hear it, in between Marcus’s screams, while he pants, gaining the energy to scream again. I can hear the wet, elastic pull of flesh. It sounds like a ram being torn up after the sacrifice – after its throat is cut and its belly is sliced open.

  And this is a sacrifice of a kind. In exchange for Marcus’s blood and pain, the gods will grant him his freedom.

  This is not manumission, though. This is not a slave who has been granted his freedom by his master. This is not a public act, overseen by a magistrate, permissible under the law. Marcus will not be known as a freedman and always bear the mark of his master, and thus never fully escape his servile past.

  This is something different entirely. This is Marcus’s final step to becoming free – not only of a life of servitude, but free of his past itself.

  Today Marcus is born again.

  I met Marcus on a blisteringly hot June morning, the night after I had been deposed by my own soldiers, my eyes cut out, and my empire stolen from me. Marcus was a slave in the jail that held me. He was beaten and terrorized by his master. He was a quivering bird about to take flight at the slightest hint of conflict.

  But that’s not fair, is it? I am trying to tell a good story rather than the truth. Marcus was timid, but he was also brave, in his own way, which, considering his circumstances, made his bravery all the more remarkable.

  Three soldiers dragged me to the prison. Their leader, a centurion named Terentius, who Marcus called the Fox because of his red hair and dark beady eyes, ordered Marcus to let me lie on the floor of the prison cell, cold, starving and thirsty. But Marcus’s compassion overruled his fear. After the Fox left, Marcus took care of me, nursed me back to health. He brought me water and blankets and whatever else I needed to survive. He brought me hope.

  I eventually sent him to find and enlist Doryphorus, my former freedman who was making his living as an actor. The three of us orchestrated my escape. Doryphorus helped me flee, no doubt. But it was Marcus who saved me. Without him, I would be dead.

  This is what inspired my decision to raise Marcus up, from slave to something more. Not only because he saved my life, but because I knew – even then, when he was a frightened bird – that there was something beneath his timid exterior.

  This was not entirely new for me. I had taken an interest in slaves before. I had taken many under my wing, raised them up from nothing to something. Theseus was once called Spiculus. A gladiator in the arena, owned by a brute who thought Theseus was best used as fodder for other fighters. But I saw potential. He was the size of a mountain, yet moved quickly, and with a certain grace. I purchased Theseus for a song, had him trained, and after he mastered the arena and won his freedom, I made him head of my personal bodyguard.

  But Theseus will always be a freedman. I didn’t try to do what I am doing with Marcus. It never occurred to me that I could snap my fingers and erase his life of servitude. It wasn’t until the opposite happened to me – when, in an evening, I fell from emperor to prisoner – that I understood how utterly unremarkable one’s identity is, how malleable it can be.

  Rome’s hierarchy is as unjust as it is inflexible. At the bottom, there are slaves, the lowest of the low; above the slave, is the freedmen, former slaves; then merchants and tradesmen; then knights; and then the senatorial class. Actors, prostitutes and the like are near the bottom as well, maybe a tick above slave, but definitely below freedmen. Each rung is further divided by wealth and lineage – though how these factors are applied differs according to the class in question. Senators consider pedigree – the number of former consuls in one’s family, the number of former praetors – more important than wealth. Freedmen, in comparison, couldn’t give a fig about who your parents were. The size of one’s coffers is how you judge a man’s worth.

  This system was in place for nearly a thousand years. And then Augustus came, proclaimed himself the pre-eminent citizen – the Princeps – and put himself at the top.

  Rome’s hierarchy has an ingenious way of perpetuating itself. Each person on a rung does his best to get to the rung above, rather than to topple the whole system. If a slave is unhappy, rather than deciding he will be a senator, snapping his fingers and making it so, he looks to the station above him and does what he can to get there. The goal of a freedman is not to free more slaves, but to own as many slaves as they can afford. Knights work tirelessly so their sons can become senators, senators aspire to become the next emperor, and the emperor works like mad to stay where he is, at the very top.

  For much of my life I thumbed my nose at all this. I socialized with slaves and actors and prostitutes. I gave important ministerial posts to a freedman or knight, so long as they were capable or if I enjoyed their company. It was only after I fell – after I was deposed and blinded – that I saw the system for what it is. Power is everything. Political power, financial, physical, sexual. And power only exists if you use it. A slave is a slave – not because it is the will of the gods – but because one man had the opportunity to conquer another.

  Once I understood this, it’s easy to move beyond it. Why not snap my fingers and make a slave a freeborn citizen?

  And my plan was working. One day the little slave who saved my life was Marcus, slave to Creon. The next, he wasn’t. He was Marcus Ulpius, heir to an olive oil fortune.

  After we escaped Rome, we went looking for Theseus on the island of Sardinia. There I had the good fortune to meet Marcus Ulpius Traianus, a prisoner in the camp. He was a Spanish merchant who had been kidnapped years before. He told us how his brother had died after their merchant ship had been overrun by pirates. His brother, Lucius, had the approximate features that I had: height; weight; hair colour. They had been missing for years. No one knew their fate, that one was alive and being held captive, while the other was dead. The deceased brother offered me an opportunity – a name, a family, a background – to reintegrate into the empire. To be born again, a new man. When we left Sardinia, I was Lucius Ulpius Traianus. Marcus was my nephew, Marcus Ulpius Traianus. The elder Marcus had travelled so broadly, and for so many years, he said people would be surprised if he didn’t return to Spain with a son.

  The plan was perfect.

  Or so I thought.

  Theseus warned me. He said erasing Marcus’s past, rather than manumit him like any other slave, was against nature and the gods would punish us. He raised these concerns constantly during our travels, at night mainly, after Marcus had gone to sleep. I’d pat my old friend on the hand and say, ‘Don’t forget,Theseus, I was a god. I know what I’m doing.’

  I had thought Marcus’s transformation was complete.

  I was wrong.

  It happened a few months ago, when we were in Pergamum. We were on the trail of one of the conspirators in the coup that brought me down, the eunuch Halotus. We learned that we had only missed Halotus by a day or two. He was headed east, to Syria. The night before we were to set out on the road again, Theseus was once more raising his concerns about erasing Marcus’s past. He mentioned it for the first time.

  The tattoo.

  He said, ‘And, of course, there is the mark of his master.’

  It was night, after a fair bit of wine. I had been reclining on a couch, but Theseus’s words made me sit up with a start. ‘What?’

  ‘The mark of his master. On his left shoulder blade.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ I demanded. ‘I asked Marcus if he bore his master’s mark and he said no.’

  ‘Well, it’s there. It says CREON, clear as day.’

  Often slaves are tattooed with the name of their master, so there is never any doubt about whether a man or woman is chattel or freeborn citizen. I had thought Marcus did not bear any such mark.

  ‘When did you ask him?’ Theseus asks.

  ‘Years ago.’

  ‘He was a boy,’ Theseus said, ‘and the mark is on his back. He probably didn’t know or he forgot.’

  I was furious – at myself more than anything. ‘Why didn’t you te
ll me?’

  ‘I assumed you knew. You’re always bragging about having the power of the gods. I thought you considered it within your providence.’

  After I’d ranted and raved for a time, I said, ‘The tattoo comes off tonight. We’ll cut the flesh right off his back.’

  But none of us could bring ourselves to do it. We let him sleep, and then we never raised it with Marcus.

  Not until today, our first day in Antioch, when it became necessary to cut it off or risk losing everything.

  We had left Pergamum and sailed to the port town of Selecuia Pieria, and made our way inland, to Antioch. On the road into the city, under the brutal desert sun, just before the city gates, we came upon two slaves being crucified.

  Marcus lingered, staring at the dead slaves.

  At the city gates, there were gladiators searching carts and harassing people, but only as they were leaving the city, not entering, so we were left unmolested.

  ‘I wonder what this is all about?’ Theseus asked.

  ‘A bad omen,’ Doryphorus said.

  We made inquiries about accommodations in the forum. While there, Marcus couldn’t help himself: he had to know what the poor devils outside the city gates did to deserve crucifixion. He asked a merchant, but the man did not share Marcus’s empathy. ‘Their own damned fault,’ he said. ‘A family of slaves escaped from the home of Senator Sulpicius Peticus. The mother and father were the ones you saw on the crosses.’

  It takes me a moment to remember the name. One Sulpicius committed some sort of treason when I was Princeps (I can’t recall what, now), and he was put to death. His brother ran to the east, for fear of drawing my ire for being the relation of a traitor. He must have run here, to Syria.

  ‘Why did they run?’ Theseus asked.

  ‘Sulpicius was going to make the boy a gladiator. The parents were worried he’d die, so the whole family ran. The city alarm was sounded before they’d gotten very far. The parents were discovered trying to scale the city walls.’

  ‘And the daughter and son are still on the run?’ Marcus asked.

  ‘So they say. Senator Sulpicius’s gladiators have been searching day and night for his missing slaves.’

  ‘Who is this Senator Sulpicius?’ Marcus asked.

  ‘He’s one of those Romans who couldn’t make it in Rome,’ the merchant says, ‘so he came to Antioch to be a big fish in a small pond. But he’s the richest man in Asia with as many gladiators as the emperor has soldiers. Antioch is his town.’

  The merchant was clearly wrong: there was little chance Sulpicius had that many gladiators. I knew Sulpicius from my days as emperor. In Rome, he wasn’t influential. He was a bully when the opportunity presented itself, uncivilized, and not particularly bright. But he must have power and influence in Antioch if a man in the street is talking about him like this.

  ‘What about the governor?’

  ‘You mean Ceionius Commodus?’ the merchant said. ‘That man doesn’t give a damn about Antioch or Syria. The governor has been here since January and – believe me – he’s counting the days until he can go back to Rome. It’s not that he’s scared of Sulpicius, mind you. He just doesn’t give a damn, so long as Sulpicius doesn’t give him extra work. He’s happy to let Sulpicius do as he pleases.’

  Marcus was more concerned about the murdered slaves than the local politics. He said, ‘a cruel way to punish a mother and father for trying to protect their children.’

  The merchant was indifferent. ‘The law is the law. Slaves know what they get if they escape.’

  ‘He’s right,’ Theseus said – more to me, than the merchant. ‘The law is the law.’

  ‘Are you new in town?’ the merchant asked. ‘Well, I’d expect a visit from Sulpicius’s gladiators. They’re watching everyone who comes and goes. Just because you made it through the gate, doesn’t mean they’re done with you.’

  That afternoon, after we found an apartment to rent, we all agreed: Marcus’s, tattoo had to come off immediately. It was too dangerous to keep it – not with Sulpicius’s gladiators going door to door, looking for missing slaves.

  Marcus agreed. ‘Get that damned man’s name off of me.’

  And here we are: Marcus screaming; Theseus playing surgeon; and Doryphorus struggling to hold Marcus down.

  Then all of a sudden the screaming stops.

  ‘He’s passed out,’ Theseus says.

  ‘Hurry and finish,’ Doryphorus says.

  When the tattoo is removed, Theseus treats and dresses the wound.

  Marcus is still unconscious when, hours later, we hear a violent knock on the door.

  Theseus leaves and, when he returns, I can hear the heavy footsteps of a dozen men and the chaos of our apartment being searched. Cupboards are opened, furniture overturned.

  ‘How many slaves in this house?’ a gruff voice asks.

  ‘I am the wrong person to ask,’ I say, pointing at my missing eyes. ‘We could have one, we could have a hundred.’

  There is only angry silence in reply.

  Theseus says, ‘We have three slaves. All purchased this afternoon. We only arrived in Antioch this morning.’

  ‘Three?’ the voice is incredulous. ‘For an apartment like this?’

  It is a large apartment. He thinks there should be more.

  ‘As I said,’ Theseus says, ‘we only just arrived.’

  Theseus is telling the truth. We freed all of our slaves when we left Rhodes. We have a rule: we do not keep slaves longer than three months. In our experience, three months is about the time it takes before slaves begin to ask questions. Marcus insists we free rather than sell the slaves. It’s an expensive habit, but we can afford it.

  ‘What are you looking for?’ I ask.

  ‘Escaped slaves,’ the one in charge says. ‘A boy and a girl. Young. The boy about fourteen, the girl sixteen.’

  ‘You will see that our slaves are all old,’ Theseus says.

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘He’s pointing at Marcus,’ Doryphorus whispers in my ear, ‘asleep on a couch.’

  ‘He is not a slave,’ Theseus says.

  ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘Wine,’ I say. ‘It fells man or child. The great equalizer.’

  ‘Wake him up,’ the gladiator says.

  I hear Theseus rousing Marcus with a light slap on his cheek.

  Marcus mumbles, half-awake, still drunk.

  ‘Stand up,’ the gladiator says.

  ‘What kind of city is this,’ I say, ‘where a gladiator can accost a freeborn Roman citizen?’

  ‘Just making sure we’re not being had, alright old man?’

  ‘I am not old,’ I mutter, ‘only haggard.’

  ‘Strip him down,’ the one in charge says. ‘Make sure he doesn’t bear Master Sulpicius’s mark.’

  Fabric tears.

  Doryphorus whispers: ‘They are inspecting Marcus’s arms, his neck.’

  ‘What happened here,’ another gladiator says, ‘to your back?’

  ‘He fell from a horse today,’ I say. ‘Treacherous roads into this damned city, aren’t there?’

  ‘You’re a gladiator?’ Theseus asks.

  ‘Yes,’ the gladiator in charge says.

  ‘What class?’ Theseus asks. He is trying to draw attention away from Marcus, raising the only point of conversation gladiators care about: fighting.

  ‘A Myrmillo,’ the gladiator says.

  Theseus lets out a derisive snort. ‘Myrmillos are all shit.’

  I can feel the man’s attention shift away from Marcus.

  ‘What do you know of it?’

  ‘I was a gladiator,’ Theseus says.

  A pause as the man considers Theseus. But no one could look at the one-eyed, wide-shouldered Theseus and picture him doing anything other than fighting.

  ‘What class?’

  ‘Thracian.’

  ‘Pff,’ the man mocks disgust. ‘Thracians are all cheats. And you’re too big to be a Thracian.’
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br />   I don’t need my eyes to know Theseus is smiling. He loves nothing more than surprising his opponent. ‘It’s all about speed, my friend.’

  ‘You’re fast?’

  ‘As an eel.’

  ‘Where’d you fight?’

  ‘Rome.’

  The man whistles.

  ‘You don’t fight anymore?’

  ‘Retired. Won my freedom.’

  ‘Is that right?’ The gladiator is impressed. His tone lightens. ‘So you’re scared,’ he says, teasing Theseus.

  ‘Maybe.’ I can hear the smile in Theseus’s voice.

  There is a sense of community among gladiators, so long as they are not in the arena; a sense of belonging, of knowing your hardships are shared.

  ‘If you fought in Rome,’ the gladiator says, ‘you must have seen some things.’

  ‘Yes,’ Theseus says, ‘I’d say so.’

  ‘Maybe you can come to Master Sulpicius’s school. I’d like to hear the tricks you learned in Rome.’

  ‘Buy me a cup and we’ve got a deal.’

  ‘They call me Minnow.’

  ‘Theseus.’

  I can hear the two shake hands. It’s odd, but the deadliest man I know is also the most personable, the man everyone wants to be friends with.

  ‘Will you be much longer?’ Theseus asks.

  ‘Nah,’ the gladiator in charge says. ‘We’re all done here.’ He claps his hands and says loudly, ‘On to the next house, you fat bastards. We want to finish before sunrise.’

  They leave.

  Marcus is snoring.

  ‘Fuck me in the ear,’ Doryphorus says. ‘That was close.’

  Yes. Yes it was.

  *

  Two days later we celebrate the Saturnalia. The one day a year when Rome’s silly hierarchy is inverted; when master serves slave, and slaves have freedom to do as they please. To gamble, to drink.

  I refrained from the festivities for most of the day. I do not feel like celebrating. Not with so much left unaccomplished. But in the evening, when it is time to make dinner for our slaves – the three women we purchased when we arrived – Doryphorus drags me from my room.