by George Green
Like everyone who worked under the arena, Serpicus had to protect his animals against the problems posed by it. No chariot driver who cared anything about his horses wanted to leave them there longer than was absolutely necessary, but the crush in the streets each evening after the games usually made it impossible to leave until well after dark. Some charioteers left their teams to the tender mercies of the track animal handlers, who were surrounded by every kind of animal slaughtered every day and saw no reason to spend time or effort on a particular team of horses. Not without a stupendous bribe anyway, and even a bribe only meant that, all other things being equal, they probably wouldn’t actively mistreat the horses. When he was a driver Serpicus had preferred to stay with the horses himself until the streets cleared enough to allow them to leave. Other drivers, those who could afford it and who had orgies to go to that couldn’t be put off until later, employed trusted men to look after their teams. Serpicus was married, he didn’t get many invitations to orgies and he couldn’t have afforded to employ a groom anyway, so he always did his own work. He knew that the horses were calmer and easier to lead from the stable if he stayed with them, not to mention being a lot less difficult to handle when coming back in again. More than once a horse being led into the arena to compete in a race had turned and bolted at the sight of one of the track handlers.
Between trips most of the trappers worked under the arena looking after the animals. The smell was stupefying and the pay little better than slavery, but it was better than starving and it allowed them to keep an eye on what animals were popular and which weren’t. The popularity of different types of animals went in waves. For a while every games would feature hordes of wild boar, and the audience would scream and not be able to get enough of them. Then, suddenly, they would tire of boar and yell for lions, and anyone who put a boar into the arena would find themselves booed out of the city. More than one group of trappers had returned with a good catch of animals and discovered that what they had caught was last month’s fashion and was now worthless. It paid to move fast and keep your ear to the ground. Most trappers paid people to do their listening for them. Serpicus and his partners couldn’t afford to do that so they went one better: they did it themselves.
They were attending to the horses. Galba and Brutus were grooming the horses’ shaggy coats, pulling a thick-toothed comb through the rough hair with long measured strokes. The wound to Brutus’ head was covered by the rag he wore around it, and if any blood was still left on him it was covered by a thick film of sweat and dirt. Decius was fetching water and talking at length about a slave girl he’d seen that afternoon who he thought might have looked at him. Serpicus was showing a slackmouthed stable-lad the correct way to use a grooming brush – ‘the side with the bristles goes onto the horse, the side without the bristles goes in your hand’ – when he heard the door behind him open. An educated drawl came through it.
‘I am Calcas. I am looking for some Germans. I seek Serpicus, and the one named Decius whom some call Sigmund.’
Brutus looked up. He was standing on the other side of Serpicus’ horse and so could see who was talking. He leant on the horse’s rump and looked over Serpicus’ shoulder at the man who had come in.
‘Lots of Germans in these parts,’ he said lightly. ‘Who wants them?’
There was a wary silence. ‘I seek the Germans called Serpicus and Decius only.’
‘Who wants them?’ Brutus repeated, still amiably but without interest.
‘As I have said, I am Calcas.’ The voice came closer behind Serpicus. ‘Are you Serpicus?’ Serpicus heard the sound of a bucket being put down nearby. Decius was listening but wasn’t going to show himself just yet. Galba came out of a shadow and stood beside Brutus. Both of them folded their arms on the horse’s back and rested their chins on their arms. They looked like boys peering over a wall at adults who think they aren’t being watched.
‘Who’s this?’ asked Galba.
‘Says he’s Calcas,’ said Brutus. ‘Looking for Germans, apparently.’
‘Plenty of those about,’ said Galba. Brutus made a grunt of agreement.
The voice behind Serpicus became slightly strained. ‘I don’t have time to play games. I have an important message to deliver.’
Brutus chewed on a piece of straw and looked at the messenger with a yokel expression that he used whenever anyone was annoying him. ‘Let’s suppose I’m Decius or Serpicus, then, and you can deliver the message to me.’ Brutus stopped leaning on the horse and unfolded his arms. The horse let out a sigh of relief. Slapping the horse on the backside, he walked away to the other side of the stable. ‘Just so you can get some practice in message delivering.’ Brutus was now on the other side of the room, and presumably the messenger behind Serpicus would be watching him. Serpicus turned round.
The man in front of him was about sixty, tall and thin, well dressed for a servant, and with a face like a greyhound drinking vinegar. Serpicus got the feeling that life and everything about it was a perpetual disappointment to him, and that meeting people like Brutus merely confirmed him in this opinion. He didn’t trouble to hide his distaste at his surroundings. A taller, thinner man with dark skin stood a spear’s length behind him, his head bowed like a servant’s, unmoving in the shadows. Serpicus squinted to see the man’s face and, as if he had somehow felt Serpicus’ eyes upon him, the man withdrew silently further into the darkness.
‘So, what’s it all about?’ asked Brutus.
‘The Partner’s uncle wishes to discuss the possibility of employing the Germans.’
‘Ah. So you are here to…?’
‘I am come to request their presence tomorrow night at the Palace.’
‘What palace is that, exactly? There are so many these days.’
Calcas made a sort of hissing sound and spoke with a reverent emphasis. ‘The Palace of the Partner of His Labours.’
Brutus and Galba exchanged indifferent glances. ‘No, never heard of it,’ they said together.
Serpicus leant forward. It was suddenly no longer funny. ‘Sejanus’ palace?’ he said. Calcas looked at him with the expression of slight hope and almost certain disappointment with which a teacher in charge of an extremely slow group of students looks at an unusually dim-looking boy who has suddenly spoken for the very first time.
‘The same,’ he said, with a slight movement of his head towards Serpicus and then a more exaggerated one at Brutus. ‘Although the actual invitation is from Blaesus, the Partner’s uncle, whom I have the honour to serve. Perhaps you could impress on your… your friend here, the honour – the singular honour – that is bestowed on him by this invitation.’ He looked at Brutus with a sour expression, and got a cheerful grin in reply. ‘If, that is, your friend is indeed the man I seek.’
Brutus pointed with his stalk of straw at the messenger. ‘So, just to be clear. You are Calcas?’
‘Correct.’
‘From Blaesus?’
‘As I have said.’
‘This message is for Decius, yes?’
‘Yes.’
‘Previously Sigmund.’
‘Yes.’
‘And Serpicus?’
‘Yes.’
‘The German.’
‘Yes, him too.’
‘Just Decius and Serpicus invited to dinner then?’ asked Galba with a winning smile.
‘Yes.’
‘Not, say, Decius and Serpicus and their particular and most loyal friends?’ The messenger hesitated and looked at him with renewed dislike.
‘The invitation was for Decius and Serpicus alone.’ Galba shrugged. ‘I’ll pass the message on.’
‘Thank you.’
‘From… who was it again?’
The messenger sighed deeply and looked directly at Serpicus, as if perhaps he might be a dim torch of sense in the darkness that Brutus and Galba were surrounding them all with. ‘Is it possible perhaps to talk to someone who speaks a known language?’
The dark man in the deep shadow
behind him lifted his head slightly and Serpicus thought his thin lips curved slightly into a smile. The man somehow didn’t look like a servant. Serpicus didn’t know what he was.
Brutus was enjoying himself. He pushed his leather cap further back on his head. ‘And you’ve come here to do what, again, exactly?’
‘Request his presence. Their presence.’
Brutus pulled a face. ‘Ah. “Request”, eh? Not, for example, “require”?’
Calcas made the same noise that an old dog makes when it is tired of children pulling its tail. ‘Indeed. It is an invitation, not an order.’ He gathered his dignity as an elderly woman pulls her skirts around her after falling down in the street. ‘The honour of such an invitation is such that the idea of compulsion would be as ridiculous as it would be unnecessary.’ He sniffed loudly. ‘As any man of breeding would know.’
The insult was wholly wasted. Brutus looked thoughtful. ‘I see,’ he said seriously, tapping his chin with his straw. ‘Then this must be a very great honour indeed.’ The messenger looked slightly mollified, but remained suspicious. Serpicus felt he was probably right to be so. Brutus walked slowly up to him and stopped a hand’s breadth away from his chest. The other man in the shadows behind him stepped back slightly, as if Brutus had pushed him even though he was nowhere near him. Calcas stood his ground but looked uneasy. Brutus had that effect on people. Not only was he taller and wider than most people, he had an air of danger about him, like the sort of tail-up mongrel dog that doesn’t care one bit what you do to it so long as it can get a bite at your throat while you’re doing it. For anyone with any normal sense of self-preservation, the idea of someone of Brutus’ size who genuinely doesn’t care what happens to them was highly unnerving.
Brutus tapped the old man’s chest with the straw and put it back in his mouth. ‘Consider it done.’
Calcas appeared about to say something more, then thought better of it. He left the room with a haughty expression that looked a bit frayed at the edges. The man who had followed him in and listened without speaking left too. Serpicus wondered again for a moment who he was – not a slave, not a servant, but not a master either.
Galba grinned at Brutus. ‘Your gift for making friends remains undimmed.’
Brutus spat cheerfully. ‘You see people like that, there’s just something about them. Makes me want to stick a thistle up their arse.’
Serpicus was silent and looked thoughtful. ‘I heard all that,’ he said, ‘but I didn’t understand it. What was it all about?’
‘The usual thing,’ said Galba. ‘Dinner invitation to a rich man’s house, to be followed by much drinking and an orgy. Most likely, anyway.’ He scratched himself absently. ‘Of course, if it was me, I probably wouldn’t bother going.’ Serpicus chuckled.
‘Don’t be an arsehole,’ Brutus said, jerking a thumb at Serpicus and Decius. ‘Why would the uncle of the most powerful man in Rome be inviting a couple of no-name German animal catchers like these two to his house?’
‘No offence,’ Serpicus said mildly.
‘To give his beautiful young wife a damn good servicing, I imagine, as prescribed in the animal catcher’s instruction manual,’ said Galba. ‘At least, whenever I get an invitation from someone like Sejanus, I usually find that’s what it’s really about.’
Brutus looked at Galba as if he was seeing him for the first time, and shook his head slowly. Galba gave him his holiday-best smile and then gestured to Serpicus. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I need a drink.’
‘No, I promised…’ Serpicus said, but Galba was already almost out the door. Brutus and Serpicus looked at each other, shrugged and set off after him. Decius hastily put down his broom and turned to follow them.
There was a crash as he fell headlong over the bucket he had just placed on the floor. A few moments later he was trotting beside them in a way that suggested that his leg hurt but he was pretending it didn’t.
‘Sejanus? Sejanus wants to see us?’ he asked carelessly.
Serpicus nodded. ‘That’s what the man said.’
‘I thought… I thought he said something about the Partner of His Labours?’
‘He did.’ Serpicus turned to face Decius as they walked. ‘Tiberius once called Sejanus that, and Sejanus has never let anyone forget it. Remember, if we do see him, he likes to be called the Partner.’
‘Less of a partner, more of a tapeworm,’ muttered Galba, and Serpicus and Brutus looked around nervously.
‘If you want my company in the street, don’t say such things out loud,’ Brutus said in a low voice. ‘The whole city is full of people who earn a good living reporting things a lot less insulting than that.’
‘I’ve met a few,’ said Galba to himself. ‘Leeches. They hang on your lips until they are full and then they drop off.’
Brutus stared at him for a moment. ‘Have you been doing more of that reading thing again?’
‘Go screw yourself,’ Galba said.
Brutus grinned. ‘That’s my boy.’
They walked past a street vendor packing up his stall. A smell of roast pork and herbs surrounded them.
‘Anything left?’ asked Brutus hopefully.
The vendor looked up with a morose expression on his thin face. He didn’t give the impression that selling scraps of burnt pork on thin sticks was much of a business even on a good day, and Brutus’ arrival clearly didn’t represent any sort of improvement. Serpicus could understand his lack of enthusiasm. Pork was the only meat that the poor of Rome could afford, and the meat sold in the street was the bits that the butchers couldn’t sell, and now Brutus was hoping for free samples.
‘Three for the price of one,’ the vendor said gloomily. Brutus smiled happily and reached into his pocket.
They came to a street corner and Serpicus turned left.
‘Going home?’ asked Galba.
‘Yes.’
Brutus was worrying with a blunt finger at a morsel of stringy pork caught between his back teeth. ‘Not coming for a drink?’ he asked.
Serpicus shook his head seriously. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’
* * *
That night after the children were asleep Serpicus told Antonia about what had happened to Metellus, and that he was going out on another expedition in a few days. Her face became serious.
‘I thought…’ She stopped talking and bit her lip.
‘I know,’ he said. ‘So did I.’
She looked at the floor. ‘I hate what you do.’
He tried to smile. ‘So do I. I must try and get a job that smells a bit better.’
She looked at him in a way she had never done before, partly angry, partly asking for something. ‘No, not that. I don’t mind when you work at the arena, I don’t mind the smell or that you work every public holiday or the lousy money, I don’t even mind that it’s sometimes dangerous.’
He wanted to smile but recognized that silence and the slightest movement of an eyebrow was probably sufficient. Sometimes there is no right thing to say.
She leant forward and held his hand. ‘Because you’re here, don’t you see? You come home to me every evening, and I see you every morning before you leave and I know you’ll return that day. You’re there when I wake up in the night, that’s all that matters.’
Serpicus pressed her hand in confusion. This was new; she had never spoken like this before.
A tear ran slowly down her cheek and she gestured at the room around them. ‘I don’t mind being poor, I don’t mind living here, I don’t mind any of it.’ Her voice became urgent. ‘I don’t mind any of it so long as you’re here. It’s the going away that I mind, the not seeing you. I can’t stand that. I don’t care about money. I’d rather you were here and we had nothing than see you go away, no matter how much we might have when you get back.’ She wiped her cheeks on her sleeve. ‘I’m sorry, this isn’t helping.’
They sat silent for a while, and then Serpicus came to a decision. He didn’t know how he was going to do it, but he knew w
hat he had to do. He took both her hands in his.
‘This is the last time, I promise,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what it’ll take or how we’ll manage, but whatever happens, whatever I have to do, I will never leave you again.’
She lifted her head and looked into his eyes. Serpicus knew that was the right thing to say.
But he wondered why he hadn’t told her about Blaesus’ invitation to supper.
Chapter Seven
To Aelius Sejanus, from his Servant:
Your invitation to the barbarians Serpicus and Decius has been delivered. We had been told that they could be found with the animal hunter Brutus and his confederates at their lair under the arena. It is a dark and pungent place, with noisome air thick with sweat and the scent of animals. The stench is enough to make a civilized man choke in his handkerchief at the time and breathe with difficulty for three days afterwards. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the barbarians who spend the day there appear to thrive on it.
We came upon the German in the stables, grooming a horse. Brutus – or the man I took to be him, for, like all those present, he found it amusing to refuse to identify himself – is a tall unkempt man with the coarse red hair that only another German could find pleasing. His associate, whose name I did not ascertain, is also German and dark. Both men have long moustaches and affect strips of coloured ribbon in their hair. Another man was with them, a Greek whose baldness suggested Thracian origin. There was also a boy present, perhaps seventeen years old, who may have been Decius, or may have been some form of relative of the other three judging by the deference with which he regarded them. The boy is also red-headed, and I thought I marked a resemblance between Brutus and him – whether racial or familial I do not know.
The German addressed Calcas your servant disrespectfully, in the usual manner of their race. The Germans delight in mockery and rough talk; and I saw every other man in the stable smiling and laughing as the Germans traduced your servant. The Thracian took his cue from this lack of appropriate deference. Several times I intervened, to inform them as to who they were speaking to, and to warn them that their rudeness to the servant of the Partner would not go unremarked, but their insults continued. If it were not that I understand that these people may be able to render some service to you, I would already have had them arrested for their treasonous remarks.