The Artifact

by Quinn, Jack

  As I tossed pebbles through her bedroom window, it never occurred to me that her husband Stephen would be at home, nor on that night choose to sleep with his wife. It took me aback no end, therefore, when the old man with close cropped white beard and hairless dome appeared through a first floor portal holding a flickering lamp, armed with sword. Yentl clutched the bodice of her billowing sleep robe as she peered around him with an expression of concern.

  “It is the crippled carpenter from Nazarat,” she exclaimed, laying doting fingertips on her husband’s shoulder.

  My feeble explanation of seeking food for my escape to Cyprus from the Romans was received by Yentl with suppressed laughter and by her husband with a scowl of incredulity. “I could slay you here as an intruding thief,” he said, “and the Romans would thank me.”

  Yentl was enjoying the irony of the encounter, apparently sure that I would come to no harm at the hands of Steven. “Do not splash his blood on your new nightgown, dear.”

  “If you kill me tonight, Pilate could require your presence in Caesarea to explain the murder of a Jew wanted for questioning.”

  Steven lowered his sword, pretending to ponder the situation. “Yentl, fetch the boy bread and dates.”

  When she had gone into the house he placed the lamp on a table beside him. “I know you.”

  I told him the truth. “The third son of Joseph of Nazarat.”

  “Who dallies with young wives in the absence of their husbands.”

  I began to speak, what words I know not, when the elderly man held a hand out to forestall my lies. “I suppose I would rather be cuckold in secret by one boy than a dozen bragging men.”

  “Your honor, I swear that....”

  “Swear to nothing, worthless scoundrel and listen. I abhor our pagan captors as well as any Jew. I wish you a speedy journey to Greece or any place far from here.”

  “That is my intention.”

  “Take the main road to Haifa, where you may be able to hide in or around the aqueduct if they come that way. Not the northern route you have been following, which the Romans will expect.”

  Yentl returned with a parcel of food and handed it to me in silence accompanied by her enigmatic smile.

  After his questionable advice Steven waved me away and sword in hand, left me confronted by Yentl in the wavering light. “May God walk beside you,” she whispered, then grasped the oil lamp and was gone, leaving me standing outside the portal in darkness.

  I have never been good at taking advice, and stood there with the sack of food in their courtyard contemplating my circumstances. If that cunning old man had put me on the wrong course, he could rid himself of me, ensure my punishment for bedding his wife, and never become involved with the Romans.

  I relate the following embarrassing account of the next day as briefly as possible: ignoring Steven’s well-intentioned recommendation, I continued along my original route north through the night, only to find half the pursuing Romans waiting for me as I entered the gates of Haifa. I have often wondered since what sort of man not only ignores a humiliating offense by another, but also attempts to save his adversary from danger. Compassionate old Steven had evidently forgiven my transgressions against him and would have rescued me from well-deserved punishment. I would experience this concept of absolution again, but I must confess that it makes almost as little sense to me now as it did then.

  The cavalry soldiers took me down to Caesarea where prolonged flogging and torture failed to reveal the whereabouts of Yehoshua. I was brought beaten and bloody before one of Pilate’s magistrates, convicted of aiding a suspected rebel and sentenced to a lifetime of slavery under the cruel heel of the Roman Empire.

  My life for the next three years is not worth recounting. Suffice it to say that I was employed in the circus in Caesarea first as attendant to bestiarii43 sweeping dung from the stalls of lions, tigers, giraffes, elephants, ostriches, prodding them through the tunnels under the stadium into cages, then dragging their carcasses off the arena floor after they had been killed by another animal, gladiators or bestiarii for the enjoyment of the crowds. Following each event, I would sweep the blood and organs of creatures and men off the arena sand before the contest to follow.

  My initial awe and revulsion at the unimaginable, inhumane circus spectacle enjoyed by Romans and other gentiles did not completely recede during my lengthy involvement in it, and to this day is the most unfathomable, degenerative facet of a purported civilization that encompasses three-quarters of the known world.

  Those early years of my existence in the dim, underground cells below the amphitheater in Caesarea remain an exhausted, demeaning time in which my normally accurate memory ceased to function. Days merged into nights into weeks into months into years of sitting on wet earth, chained at the neck to men on either side of me, our backs against damp cavern walls. We were clothed in the same filthy rags month after month, thirsty, hungry for the same barley slop we fed the animals that were not carnivorous, constantly weary from the brutish work and the near impossibility of sleep in our short chains on rocky ground, embattled by sharp-tooth rodents gnawing at our weary flesh that eluded our grasp, delighted at our infrequent success at snaring and choking one to supplement our meager meals.

  Working around wild animals purposely starved to encourage their attack on unarmed slaves was a constant threat to limb and life. That peril was intensified for me by a leg that often impeded my rapid exit from danger. If I had remained in those circumstances longer, the depths of exhaustion and despair would surely have caused my demise below the arena of Caesarea in the claws of some ferocious beast or by my own hand, except for a fortuitous incident one hot summer morning that took place before ten thousand screaming spectators.

  On that occasion, I was the last man dragging the mauled corpse of a tiger from the arena to the death tunnel when my hook slipped from the body, and I had to reset it before I could shoulder the ropes again and drag it away. The crowd had been murmuring impatiently waiting for the next contest, when I heard a burgeoning uproar from the stands behind me and whirled to see a huge lioness with matted orange fur on sunken ribs, bared fangs in her frothing mouth crouched on her open cage in the center of the ring. When several animals are required, they are usually prodded into the arena through a gate in the retaining wall, but when only one is needed, its cage is lifted from the tunnels below on pulleys, then a single ingenious pin is pulled to drop all sides of the iron bars at once, leaving the animal completely free. This lion was to be pared with a single gladiator or bestiarii, who had not yet stepped out on the harena44 The glare of the roaring animal and shouting spectators were glued to my predicament.

  “Oh, God! Save me!” A ridiculous plea directed at the very One who had placed me in this circumstance. Did I now expect Him to swoop down from heaven to strike the lioness dead at my frightened supplication?

  Running was out of the question. I jerked the meat hooks from the corpse at my feet and waited, my only hope the emergence of the gladiator intended to oppose the beast. People in the stands threw stones and food and sandals at the lioness to stimulate her charge. Then with a great roar and swing of her massive head the voracious beast crouched lower, preparing to spring. My knees trembled, sweat blurring my eyes fixed on the object of my certain death, the tension in her hindquarters as she soared into flight. At that same instant I heard a shrill whistle slice through the din and my side vision caught an object twirling toward me high against the blue sky, its silver blade flashing in the brilliant sunlight. A surge of hope coursed through my body as I dropped the hooks, grabbed the hilt of the tumbling sword with both hands in mid air, twisting, kneeling under the animal’s final leap to thrust the razor-honed shaft up into its belly with my entire strength, eviscerating that savage creature as it soared over and collapsed beyond me. I remained kneeling in my own urine until my hearing was of a sudden blasted by the yells and screams and stamping feet of spectators. The message of their rhythmic shouts finally penetrated my mind,
and I jumped up to raise the blessed sword high above me and beheaded the still writhing animal with a single devastating blow. I cut an ear off the decapitated beast and paraded around the arena holding it aloft as was the custom.

  Upon completing a full circle to the satisfaction of the crowd, I spied Vespasian’s old trainer, Fabian, approaching from behind a protective barricade beside the gladiator tunnel. It was impossible to hear speech over the noise from the stands, which had erupted to a mind-blanking volume when Fabian gestured for me to place my good foot on the carcass of the lioness and raise the sword in hand over my head in victory.

  The next day, a guard unchained me from my neighbors in the slave quarters and brought me to a tiny sunlit room under the stands that Fabian shared with another lanista45 as an office while in Caesarea. He kept me standing before his table, inquiring about the misfortune that had brought me there. He explained his decision to remain behind in Palestine when Vespasian’s family returned to Rome and how he had used his savings from the army and his own gladiator days to procure several gladiator slaves. During the past few years he had supplemented those early fighters with others, training and engaging them in battle in arenas throughout the provinces for profit.

  Standing there in my filthy, bloodstained rags, I envied his success, his comfortable room, his clean toga, but most of all, his freedom.

  “I congratulate you on your success,” I told him, and again expressed my indebtedness to him for saving my life.

  “I had not expected a crippled Jew to master swordplay.”

  I shifted my weight from bad to good leg, my bare arm warmed by the rays of the sun that came through his window as I waited to learn why he had summoned me.

  “You must have brushed death several times during the past few years,” Fabian observed.

  “A few.”

  “You understand, however, that the lifespan of any bestiarii is brief.”

  I had seen that with my own eyes and acknowledged the inescapable truth by lifting my shoulders.

  “If I bought you from your present circumstances,” he said, “and trained you to fight in the

  arena, you might live a while longer.”

  “What about my leg?”

  “We shall see to that.”

  I could not refrain from laughter. “I would be a meal for the first starved beast loosed upon me.”

  “You would not challenge animals.”

  My visage must have registered incredulity. “Men?”

  “Spectators would relish a contest between a crippled runt and whole man--win or lose.”

  “I understand a successful gladiator can earn a great deal of money.”

  Fabian leaned back on his stool and laughed. “A Jew would bargain with Charon46. to avoid Hell!”

  I acknowledged his mirth with a smile. “We are speaking only of money.”

  “Training for the arena is far more difficult than fencing with Vespasian. If you complete that and live through your first engagement, we shall discuss salary. If you do not, yet survive, I will sell you to the highest bidder.”

  “No chains, better food, a bath, clean quarters, an occasional woman?”

  “You told me once that you did not believe you could kill a man.”

  I gave pause at that. “I have seen many things since then.”

  “A wounded man down on the sand with your sword at his throat, the hands of the crowd pointing to their chests demanding your thrust of death?”

  I shrugged at remembered thoughts I had entertained many times during my enslavement. “I refuse to kill unarmed slaves, women, or children.”

  “You know the oath?”

  I placed my palm against my breast, repeating the gladiator’s promise that had rung in my ears during the past three years: “Uri, vinciri, uerberari, ferroque necari.”47

  Fabian purchased me that same day. I was allowed a bath, a clean tunic and was measured for a new leg brace by the circus doctore48 and ironsmith. My gladiator training also began that same afternoon in an open practice area on the outer perimeter of the stands. It began by pairing me against a scarred Celtic giant with long yellow locks, hairless body of pronounced muscles beneath smooth skin slick with perspiration, wearing a red loincloth secured by a wide belt of leather.

  My blue cloth was cinched by a piece of rope. We were both armed with wooden swords and the small shields of a secutor49 Fabian hovered behind us giving instructions, urging me on to greater aggression, at first telling my opponent to pull his blows, then in apparent frustration at my timidity, letting him go, that release swiftly resulting in my sword skittering from my hand, my back on the sand and the wooden tip of my blond opponent’s sword at my throat.

  As I lay there under the presumed threat of death, I realized that this was truly not the benign practice sessions I had enjoyed with Vespasian. I was engaged in an effort designed to preserve my life against a ferocious enemy determined to take it or surrender his own. Since I had always been small in stature, most other men appeared tall to me, and I had long ago ceased to compare how much bigger one was than another, ignoring their size as a fact of life, like my leg. From my early youth I had espoused David’s example by using my sling to gain my equality, so any threat from a bigger man never daunted me. They were all bigger.

  At a command from Fabian the blond giant let me stand, and the lanista ordered us to clash again. My anger at my previous laxity and being overpowered made me belligerent, enabling me to force the giant to retreat a few times, landing a blow or two in the process, which angered him. Despite Fabian’s instructions, the giant disarmed me again, this time pressing the wooden sword point into my neck hard enough to draw blood.

  We continued that session through the afternoon in much the same manner, except I was able to cut the blond man’s arm, once even tripping him off balance with my good leg, to sprawl on the ground, from which he immediately rolled and sprang erect before I could get my foot on his sword wrist or my blade at his throat. Toward the end of the day, Fabian fitted us with the traditional heavy bronze helmets, dull and battered, shorn of plume, and dented greaves50 worn in combat, the first of which was much too large, encumbering my vision, the latter hindered my movement. We spared again for a short time before Fabian waved a halt to our practice day and disappeared behind a barricade.

  Despite my opponent’s forceful congratulatory slap on my shoulder as we walked off the practice field, I felt completely inept, an abject failure for the first time I could recall. As we walked into the gladiator’s quarters, I was certain that one of my prior guards would accost me and lead me back to the damp, lower depths without a word from the lanista. Yet after a meal of roasted meat, bread, cheese and wine, I fell into a deep sleep on the first dry mat I had felt under me in years, waking only in the gray, pre-dawn light to the prodding foot of Fabian. He handed me bread and fruit as we walked through the tunnel into the training area. “I think I misjudged your ability to become a successful secutor, even a myrmillo51 or Thracian52.” I awaited his concurrence in silence, chewing a mouthful of apple.

  “You are too slow on your feet, too weak to disarm an opponent, have too little reach and are so short that you will always be on the defensive from bigger men, never able to batter them down from above.”

  I took another bite of apple, my only hope then was to finish eating the fruit before he took

  me back to the slave quarters. Instead, we emerged into the training field where Fabian led me to a retiarius53 dressed for combat, and like all other gladiators, fought with bare feet in the loose sand. A duplicate set of equipment was propped against a padded practice post.

  “Marcus,” Fabian told me, gesturing at the phlegmatic retiarius, “will show you how to

  don the gear and instruct you in the basic moves using the net.”

  As Marcus pondered how to fit the greave over my old leg brace, the doctore approached again with the iron craftsman who carried a hinged metal support with a raised contoured sole designed as an impro
vement to their first effort, to be worn under the greave on my crippled leg. Although Fabian suggested additional modifications to the device, it already felt far better than previous braces constructed by Father and me.

  Learning to handle the net on the practice pole under the guidance of Marcus required three days of hard, frustrating work. I finally mastered throwing and retrieving the deadly device that was meant to ensnare an opponent who was then dispatched with the fascina54 I was initially pitted against an opponent armed as a Thracian, with whom I worked for several weeks improving my skills, absorbing shouted tactical directions from Marcus and Fabian until neither my stature, reach, strength nor agility posed a hindrance to my ability to master the killing tools of the retiarius, whose chance of long-term survival was allegedly greater than other gladiatorii55 swordsmen.

  Contrary to popular belief, the lives of most gladiators are not promiscuously squandered. With the exception of noxii56 and incompetent slaves--ex-soldiers condemned for some military offense, burly prisoners of war from defeated lands, pressed men and even volunteers, make up the

  majority of the fighting spectacle for practically every circus throughout the Empire. These cadres of vicious contestants are usually members of a familia57 gladiatorii owned by a lanista who

  bought each one at a substantial price. For that reason, these fighters are well fed and cared for, diligently trained, practice consistently, engage in a tough regimen of physical exercise and are scheduled to fight in the arena before spectators only once or twice a month. Most of us were in our eighteenth to twenty-fifth year.