Brude had his usual moment of doubt. He was reasonably sure that Cruithne, no matter how strong he was, would be no match for a trained gladiator in a one-on-one fight but he could not take that for granted. Turning this into a contest of skill rather than a fight would, he hoped, give him an even greater advantage. But there was always a doubt. Don’t mess this up, he told himself. He walked to stand in front of the partially built roundhouse and stabbed the blade of his spear down into the ground so that the shaft stood upright a few paces from the wall. Cruithne stared at him and called, “You are standing in front of my target, little man.” He did not sound disappointed by that fact.
Outwardly, showing a calmness he did not feel, Brude called back, “This is probably the safest place. I don’t think you’ll come close to hitting the wall.” He heard murmurs of concern and even a few nervous laughs from the villagers standing away to his left but he kept his attention on Cruithne.
The big man grinned. He still wore his heavy mail shirt and his sword was still strapped round his waist. If Brude’s plan worked, this would be to his advantage for the added weight would slow Cruithne down. Cruithne, though, did not seem bothered by the weight. Few men wore mail armour, unless they actually expected a fight, for it was heavy and made hot work of any exertions but Cruithne was so strong it barely seemed to bother him. He hefted the long ash spear with its sharp iron blade and prepared to throw. Brude saw the giant smile. He had obviously decided that if Brude got in the way of his spear then that was Brude’s fault. Cruithne slowly advanced to within thirty paces of where Brude stood, drew his right arm back, took a few running paces and, with a grunt of effort, hurled the spear as hard as he could.
He threw it with incredible force. It sped through the air faster than Brude would have thought possible, aiming almost straight for him. It was as good a throw as Cruithne could ever hope to make and both of them knew it.
Brude moved. No matter how fast the spear was, for a man trained to fight in the arena, it was an easy target. He took a half step to his right, swivelled his body so that he was side-on to the approaching spear and snapped his right hand out, catching the shaft just behind the blade as it went past him. Without pausing, only dimly aware of the shouts of astonishment from the watching villagers, he grabbed the spear in both hands and started running towards Cruithne.
The giant warrior stood with his mouth open, a look of utter disbelief on his face as Brude swiftly covered the ground between them. As he approached, Brude made to dodge round him but Cruithne, realising what Brude was attempting, moved to intercept, bellowing a roar of anger as he tried to grab him and wrestle him to the ground.
Brude swerved, avoiding Cruithne’s first lunge but the big man was still between him and the tree stump and coming for him again, faster than Brude had expected him to move. Brude had to adjust his plan. He stopped, swinging the spear low, catching Cruithne hard on his right shin but had to jump back, spinning away as the giant warrior ignored the blow and reached to grab the spear. Cruithne charged again, intent on simply flattening Brude to the ground. Brude had to leap back again, swinging the spear as he did so and this time landing a powerful smack on Cruithne’s left hand. That blow must have hurt because Cruithne instinctively pulled his hand back. In doing so he left an opening, which Brude pounced on, driving the butt end of the spear forwards to stab Cruithne in the belly. Even with his mail shirt with its leather undercoat and a woollen jerkin beneath that, the blow struck home so hard that Cruithne gasped in pain and doubled over. Despite this, he tried to grab the spear with his right hand. Brude quickly drew it back, whirled it in his hands then brought it down with a crashing blow which hit home on Cruithne’s head just behind his left ear. The big man staggered then fell face down, unmoving, on the grass.
Brude exhaled deeply then walked to the tree stump and rammed the point of the spear into the hard wood. He shot a warning glance at the four warriors who stood nearby, nervously looking at each other, unsure of what to do. The other villagers were watching him, their faces displaying a mixture of awe and delight. Castatin pushed free and came running over to meet him, carrying Brude’s shirt, which he had snatched from Fothair. “That was amazing!” he said, as he handed the shirt over.
Cruithne groaned as he pushed himself up, his long hair hanging down around his head. He struggled to his knees, looked at Brude with unfocussed eyes and then saw the spear standing proud on the tree stump. He groaned. “Kill me,” he said.
“Don’t be silly,” Brude told him. “In fact, I think we should forget our wager. I’d prefer it if we could just get along without fighting. What do you think?”
Cruithne looked at him blankly. “What?”
“Never mind,” laughed Brude. “Come over to Seoras’ house and we’ll have a look at your head. That must hurt.” He held out his hand. Cruithne stared at it for a moment. Brude thought he was going to refuse but then the giant reached out, allowing Brude to help him to his feet. Brude wrapped Cruithne’s arm around his shoulders and helped him walk slowly towards the village. “Go and fetch his spear,” Brude told Castatin.
Practically everyone in the lower village gathered round Seoras’ house while Brude sat Cruithne down on a stool at the doorway and carefully examined his head. Castatin stood, proudly on guard, holding Cruithne’s spear upright. The four warriors hovered nervously nearby, uncertain and confused but at least doing nothing more than watching. Brude gingerly pulled Cruithne’s straggled and greasy hair aside so that he could examine him. There was a nasty bruise, purple and yellow, and a rising lump but the skin was not broken. He applied a cold cloth, telling Cruithne to hold it firmly in place while he mixed a potion for him to drink.
Brude told the crowd, “He’ll be fine. Just a sore head. You know how tough he is.” He acted as if Cruithne was an old friend who had simply had an accident.
Some of the villagers started to wander off, chatting animatedly about what they had seen. A few who had missed the fight but had come to see what was going on, expressed doubts but the evidence of Cruithne’s defeat was there for all to see.
Mairead and Fothair stood nearby, not sure what to say. Mairead watched Cruithne nervously but Brude calmly made the big man drink his potion. “It will help with the pain, but it might make you sleepy,” he told him. “Probably best to rest here for a while before going back up the hill.” He shot his mother a warning glance to stifle any protest she might make.
Seasaidh came up to Brude and said, “If you’re not marrying Barabal, you should marry me. I like a man who is a good warrior.”
Brude raised his eyebrows. He saw Fothair stifling a laugh. “At the moment,” he told the girl, “I have no plans to marry anyone. But I’ll certainly remember what you’ve said.”
“Don’t wait too long to make up your mind,” she pouted. “I won’t wait forever, no matter how strong you are.” She blew him a kiss before going back to Seoc and Barabal. The three of them headed for their own house. Brude saw that Seoc was giving Seasaidh a talking to. Fothair was laughing aloud.
Brude turned back to Cruithne whose eyes were now more focussed. “Are you all right?” he asked.
Cruithne winced as he withdrew the cold compress from his head. “Where did you learn to fight like that?” he asked in his throaty growl.
“Rome. I told you, they like to watch slaves fighting. They have special schools where they train men so that they can offer better entertainment.”
“Maybe I should go there and learn,” Cruithne rumbled. “Did you have to make it look so easy?”
“Believe me, it wasn’t easy. You’re strong and you’re fast. You nearly caught me a couple of times. If you were trained as a gladiator you’d probably be unbeatable. But I would say it is better to be a free man who fights his own battles than to be a slave who fights for other people’s pleasure. Or because other people tell them to.”
Cruithne nodded slowly, understanding what Brude was saying to him. His great hairy face looked up at Brude. “Why don�
��t you just kill Colm and take over as head man?” he asked.
There was an expectant silence. Brude was careful not to look at anyone else. He wasn’t sure what he would say if he looked at Mairead and saw the same question on her face. Instead he stared at Cruithne, pursing his lips thoughtfully. “Why don’t you?” he responded. “You are strong enough.”
From Cruithne’s expression, Brude saw that the thought had never crossed the big man’s mind. Cruithne answered, “Because he is my lord and I owe him everything I have.”
“And why should I be any different?” Brude said. “He is an old friend of mine from our boyhood. His wife is an old friend and his son is my friend as well. It would be a strange friendship if I betrayed that, wouldn’t it?”
“He’s not your friend,” Cruithne said. “I told you that. He really does not like you.”
Brude shrugged. “Then he will have to learn to live with his dislike for I have family and friends here and I do not intend to leave.” He squatted down so that his face was level with Cruithne’s. “I would like it if we could be friends as well. Or, at least, not enemies. What do you say?”
Cruithne’s brow wrinkled in thought. “Will you teach me how to fight like that?” he asked.
Brude chuckled. “You don’t need much help from me,” he said. “You are good enough to beat just about anyone. Anyway, there are better ways to live your life than going around frightening people just because you are stronger than they are. Perhaps I should teach you those things instead for I’m afraid I don’t think you will learn them from Colm. It saddens me, but I think he is in danger of losing his sense of honour. You need to make sure you don’t lose yours.”
Cruithne was uncertain. “He will not be happy if we are friends,” he said pensively.
“What can he do to you? If he throws you out, you can come and live down here. But I don’t think it will come to that. Mairead will tell him what happened and he will see that no blame can come to you.”
Cruithne lumbered to his feet. “I can see why he doesn’t like you,” he said softly. “You undermine his authority.”
Brude knew then that he had been right about Cruithne. For an apparently simple man he was more shrewd than anyone gave him credit for. Clasping the big man’s hand, he said, “Then I rely on you to convince him that I am harmless. I’ll keep out of his way as much as I can and do nothing to upset him. Can you persuade him of that?”
“I will try,” said Cruithne. He clasped Brude’s hand firmly. “I think it would be good to be your friend.” He took his spear from Castatin then slowly set off towards the trackway, his four bemused young warriors trailing wordlessly after him.
Seoras, standing in the doorway of his house, watched them go. He said to Brude, “You should have killed him.”
Mairead, her whole body radiating confusion, agreed. “At the very least you should have stuck to your first plan and made him act like a dead man around you. You can’t trust him. He’s an animal. That’s why Colm keeps him.” Brude remembered the bruise on her arm and wondered whether it was Cruithne who had put it there and not Colm as he had thought. Now was not the time to ask, he knew.
“Brude can beat him any time,” Castatin chirped confidently.
“Not if he brings a gang with him or sets fire to his house at night, or stabs him in the back,” Fothair pointed out gloomily. Castatin’s face fell.
Brude, watching Cruithne slowly climb the track up the steep hill, said, “That’s exactly why I don’t want him as an enemy. I think I can trust him. He has some honour and he’s not as stupid as he makes out.”
“Honour?” Mairead was scathing. “What makes you think he has honour?”
“He could have drawn his sword when he tried to grab me. I’d have been in trouble then, but he didn’t. He could have ordered his four men to attack me, but he didn’t. I think I can trust him. I’d rather have him on my side than against me, that’s for sure.”
Fothair wasn’t convinced. “You’re crazy,” he announced cheerfully. “But life certainly isn’t dull while you’re around.”
“That’s the trouble,” said Brude. “I’d be happy with a dull life.”
“You won’t get one if you marry Seasaidh,” Mairead observed. He heard an unspoken question in her voice.
“She’s more Castatin’s age than mine,” Brude told her. “Like I said, I have no intention of marrying anyone just now.”
Castatin looked alarmed, plainly terrified by the very mention of Seasaidh. Fothair laughed at his consternation. Mairead stepped close to Brude, looking into his eyes, studying his face as if she were looking for something. “You’ve changed a lot, Brude,” she said softly. “I think you are more Roman than you like to pretend.”
He wasn’t sure whether that was a criticism or not. “We all change as we grow older,” he replied. “The Romans always thought I was more like a Pritani than I let on. I used to think I was neither one nor the other, but then I met a man who taught me that I can only be myself, whatever others may think of me. He told me that, instead of being worried about not fitting in either place, I should take the best from everyone I know and everything I see and use these things to make myself a better person.”
“He sounds very clever, this man,” Mairead said. “Was he a fighter too?”
Brude laughed. “Cleon? No. He was a book-keeper.”
A.D. 204
Curtius didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “Twenty-six men dead and five badly wounded. The school’s lost six men but you walk out without a scratch. I don’t know how you did it, boy. If it wasn’t for the bruise on your head from where you nutted that Retiarius, I would swear you hadn’t fought today.”
Brude didn’t know how to react either. He sat in the underground darkness below the arena, stripped of his weapons and armour. He had a loincloth, an old, dirty tunic, sandals and a wooden sword. He had some money back at the school, a few coins but hardly a fortune. Apart from that, he owned nothing. He was free and he should have been overjoyed but all he could think about was Josephus, lying dead in his arms, his neck ravaged by the fatal wound. Brude may have been free but he still felt trapped.
“Come on,” Curtius told him. “We’d best get you cleaned up. You’ll need to look your best for the celebration.” He tugged Brude’s arm and led him to the main corridor, which ran the length of the arena. Brude followed, his mind still numb. They climbed the stairs and the guards unlocked the gates, letting them out into the open air.
It was daylight. Brude had always come and gone from the great amphitheatre at night. Now he walked out through its massive arches and into the heat of the late afternoon. The place was crowded as the last of the spectators made their way home, still talking excitedly about the day’s spectacle. None of them paid any attention to Brude or Curtius except perhaps to give them a passing glance. Brude stood still, looking around him in wonder. The walkway beneath the arches was filled with small merchant booths selling all sorts of food, drink and trinkets. He saw one displaying an array of statuettes in the shapes of assorted gladiators. He was amazed that people could actually buy such things. Outside in the bright, sweltering sunlight the houses crowded round the amphitheatre and there, on the Palatine hill, was the palace of the emperor himself, a massive sprawling building of arches, columns and white marble splendour. It was the heart of the empire. Brude felt almost overwhelmed.
Curtius nudged him into motion. Looking back over his shoulder, Brude saw the outside of the Flavian amphitheatre for the first time. He stopped again, staggered by its size and grandeur. Its successive rows of arches rose skywards, gleaming in the sun, dwarfing everyone and everything around them. The sheer scale of it amazed him. He had known it was large, of course. He had sensed its bulk when they came in darkness, sometimes seen its silhouette against a lightening sky and he had seen it from the inside many times. In the arena, though, he was more aware of the crowd than the stadium; more concerned about his opponent than where they were fighting. Seeing it n
ow he felt he was being reminded of just how unimportant and small he was, how vast, impressive and powerful the empire was. He ould not even begin to understand how anyone could conceive of such a building, let alone actually build it. Josephus had always insisted that it had been built by thousands of Jewish slaves, brought from Jerusalem when the emperor Titus had stormed the city after yet another of the revolts that the Jews were famous for. The little gladiator had also claimed that the walls contained the bodies of the slaves who had died building it. But then, Josephus had claimed a lot of things. The thought of his dead friend made Brude shudder. Curtius, misunderstanding, clapped him on the shoulder. “It gets you the first time, doesn’t it? It’s some place.”
Curtius led Brude eastwards, through a maze of narrow, busy streets. One or two people saw the wooden rudis in Brude’s hand and a cry went up that the gladiator who had won the games was there. A crowd quickly gathered, mobbing him, cheering him and trying to touch him. He was too numb to fend them off but Curtius snarled at them, shoved and pushed then dragged Brude into a small public bathhouse, asking the attendants to keep the crowd at bay.
“You get cleaned up,” Curtius told Brude. “Give me your rudis and I’ll look after it for you. These places are full of thieves, so you don’t want to leave it lying around here. I’ll go and get you something better to wear.”
A young woman, wearing a plain grey tunic, approached. Curtius handed her some coins. “My friend is new here. Show him the baths and give him a massage. Make him presentable for a dinner with someone important, will you?” The woman nodded, tucking the coins away into a small pouch. “By the way,” Curtius added, “he’s a gladiator, just been freed by the emperor himself, so perhaps a little extra something would be nice.”
In the Shadow of the Wall Page 18