“Princess!” he pleaded.
Aurelia put the cub aside and stood up. She stepped up to the struggling pair and seized Marcus by the hair. One strong jerk backward and the fight was over. She flung him to the ground, then went back to her place, sat down on the marble floor, and began to stroke the cub again as if nothing had happened.
“You stupid squittering girl-pig, you hurt my head!” Marcus shouted, sprawling.
“Mind your language,” she said calmly. “Your foul mouth will get you into trouble.”
That silenced him. The hint was enough. He had a bad temper and he had been thwarted, but as he lay there he gulped when he thought how lucky it was for him that he had not said what he might have said in the heat of the moment; for example, that she was the daughter of a pig. You might say that to anybody else during a quarrel, but not to her.
After a short while he got up, rubbing the back of his head, and moved toward her. She smiled at him as a sign of truce.
“I don't want him to be a fighting tiger, even in fun,” she said. “Come on, let's play ball with him. I'll throw and you can race him for it. You'd better let him win,” she added with a little smile.
She'd had Boots for two months. He had grown. He was quite a size now, but he had learned many lessons, and he was so little danger to her that the heavily armed guards that had been engaged to stand by whenever the cub “came to visit” had been dismissed. They were expensive. The Emperor had overruled his wife after watching Aurelia and Boots at play on several occasions.
“The beast is quite safe. He loves her, you can see it. He wouldn't hurt her—she has tamed him with her strong will and kind hands.”
The Empress was not so sure. “Does he really love her?” she asked Julius, who still accompanied the cub whenever he was at the palace.
“No, Empress. Not as we understand the word. But he knows her, and she has gentled him, that's true, and I don't think he poses any danger to her—as long as I'm here.” He stressed this in part because he sensed that she was uneasy about his frequently being alone with the princess and would have liked to dispense with his services, and Julius was quite determined she should not.
“But he's getting so big! Surely large male animals become dangerous as they grow?”
“Usually, yes. But this one seems to be the exception.”
Out of delicacy, he forbore to tell her that Boots was no longer exactly male. A further operation had been performed on him at the Emperor's command that had had a distinctly calming effect.
After this had taken place, there had been no visits to the palace for several days while the cub recovered. (Julius told Aurelia the cub had a mild illness.) Of course Boots had no idea what had happened to him, how he had been altered—diminished. The fangs, the paw mufflers—these had been nothing compared to what had been done to him now. But apart from the swiftly fading pain, and a certain lassitude which was new to him, he felt no different. He didn't know he would never sire cubs, never have the ferocity and energy that he was born to. To Julius, who had a genuine feeling for animals, it seemed a pity in a way. But he knew Boots's destiny was a happy one, compared to his brother's.
In thinking about this comparison, Julius became curious to see what had become of Boots's twin.
• • •
One sultry afternoon, on his way home from the menagerie, he went to the Colosseum and bribed his way into the cellars where the wild beasts were kept. He passed down flights of stone steps into a foul-smelling dark warren of cavelike, cage-fronted compartments, directly under the arena.
This place fascinated and yet repelled him. Here were gathered animals that had been brought from all corners of the Roman Empire, and even beyond, to take part in Caesar's games and processions. There were so many creatures, of such strange and wondrous shapes; although the conditions they were kept in distressed him, Julius could never have enough of seeing them. Great bears, both brown and black, that rose threateningly on their hindquarters. Leopards, glaring at him with their angry yellow eyes. Lions, prowling their cages with hungry saliva dripping from their great jaws. Hyenas—stinking, ugly little beasts, not so impressive until you had seen them, working as a pack, pull a man down and rend him into fragments … and then eat the fragments. Elephants, whose huge feet could crush the life out of a man, whose trunk could pick him up, raise him high, and dash him to the ground. However, it was seldom that these gentle giants lost their tempers and attacked.
But the tigers! The tigers were the best. The fiercest, the most fearless, the most beautiful.
Julius went to the circus (in the cheapest seats, close under the canopy where it was hottest) as often as he could and watched the shows. Some of what he saw disturbed him deeply, but he never showed it or spoke of it. To do so would have been to expose himself as a weakling. Even Roman women had little squeamishness about the bloodletting in the arena. After all, that was what the circus was all about—the power of the strong over the weak, the domination of man over nature, expressed in battle and bloodshed. It was the masculine principal in action, and women responded to that.
Julius puzzled himself sometimes. He could watch the gladiators and other slaves killing and being killed in fights, and cheer with the rest of the huge crowds. Why did it distress him so badly to see animals being killed?
Perhaps because they were innocent. Yes. However ferociously they fought, however cruelly they clawed or bit or crushed to death—humans and each other—there was an innocence in it. They were doing what nature meant them to do, or what their human masters had trained them for. How could you hate them? Julius had sometimes caught himself having the strange thought that even if (the gods forbid!) he were ever in the arena and about to be mauled to death by a lion or a bear, he might, in the midst of his prayers, spare one for the beast about to tear him to pieces.
When they were killed, as they frequently were, there was something shaming in it. It was pitiful—yes, pity and shame were what he felt—when they were slaughtered instead of fulfilling their destiny as killers for food and status among their own kind.
Besides, they were so beautiful. In Julius's eyes, more beautiful than people. More beautiful, at least, than most people. He could think of one exception!
He stood now amid the cages in the cellars of the Colosseum, breathing in the rank stench and listening to the growls and shiftings and howlings of the beasts. He didn't know which way to go through the labyrinth of narrow, dark passages, and a primitive fear was inevitable in this place, where every corner held a dealer in death. He called out tentatively, and a heavyset middle-aged man with a grizzled beard, carrying a lantern, came out of one of the tunnels.
“Who are you shouting at—who are you?” he growled.
“I'm Julius Minimus, the princess's tiger keeper,” said Julius. The man dropped his aggressive tone at once.
“Oh. I didn't know, did I.”
“What's your name?”
“Caius Lucius. What can I do for you?”
“I wanted to see the tiger cub, the one that arrived about two months ago.”
“Oh, him. He's not to be viewed. He's in training.”
Julius knew the routine. A coin changed hands.
“One can always make exceptions for specialists,” said Caius. “Follow me, and don't get too near the cages.”
Julius followed him through the maze of tunnels, glancing to left and right as the lantern lit the cages they passed. At one he stopped.
“What's that?”
“Camel,” grunted Caius. “New consignment just in from Arabia. Never seen one before?” Julius, staring at the strange, humpbacked creature, shook his head. “They come from the desert,” the man said. “Beasts of burden, there. We got dozens of them, fresh from the ships. Easy to tame. This one'll be showing tomorrow. You should come. Grazers aren't as popular as the wild beasts in themselves, but they show the carnivores off. We set the lions on them. They leap on their backs or tear their throats out. Drives the crowds wild.�
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Julius felt the pores opening along his arms and bile came into his mouth, but he said nothing and followed where the man led. The tunnels were perfectly dark except where the lamp threw moving shadows.
“You like the circus?” Caius grunted as they went.
Julius hesitated. “The fights can be good,” he temporized.
“Of course, it's not like the old days. When the Colosseum was first built, you know, they could flood the whole arena. They had sea battles with ships modeled on real ones.”
“That must have been quite a spectacle.”
“You know what else?” Caius chuckled. “They had crocodiles in the water. Made it more exciting when someone fell in!”
Julius said nothing.
“In some ways, though, it's better now. They have to keep thinking of ways to keep the people satisfied. All sorts of fancy tricks they got—well, you've seen 'em. Want to see the lifts?”
He took Julius down a passage to a cavelike room and held his lantern up. Julius saw a wooden winch attached to pulleys. There was a sort of platform near the ground with a cage on it.
“Takes three men to winch that up to the roof,” said Caius. It was clear he took a pride in the technical side of the circus. “Beyond that, of course, there's the floor of the arena. See that trapdoor up there? Look, I'll show you.” He turned another wheel and a square shape dropped down. The cave was abruptly flooded with sunlight from above. “The beast, whatever it is, is hauled up to the floor of the arena and released. Can't get back down, has to rush into the ring, and then—look out, whoever's in its way!” He turned the wheel back and the trapdoor creaked shut again. They resumed their walk through the darkness.
“Go to the palace a lot, then, do you?” asked the man, who seemed more friendly now.
“Oh, yes, very often.”
“Ever see anything of a serving woman called Bella?”
“I don't think so. Caesar has many servants, I don't know their names.”
“She was the young lady's nurse when she was small. Still lives there, on pension, like.”
“Oh! The nurse. Yes. I see her once in a while. She hates the tiger, so she doesn't often come when I'm there.”
“Good looker, eh?”
Julius was surprised. “Maybe once. She's old now.”
“No older than me,” Caius said gruffly. “Here's what you came for.”
They turned a corner in the tunnel, and in front of him, as the man raised the lantern, Julius saw the brother of Boots.
He stopped and stared. Already there was a marked difference between the two. Boots had grown bigger, but also fatter—Aurelia loved to feed him and she gave him more than he really needed. This one was lean, strong, powerful—and taller when he stood up, as he now did, rising to his feet with slow, feline grace as Julius drew near.
“Careful. He's a mean one. If you go too close, he can—”
Without warning the tiger leaped toward them. His mouth was open in a furious snarl, and his claws—no muffling here!—stretched themselves between the bars in a downward swipe. Julius saw them, long, curved, sharp as knives. If either man had been standing against the cage, his belly would have been ripped open.
Julius instinctively jumped back.
“Phew! He is fierce! Was he like this when he first came?”
“Well—we've helped his temper along a little,” said the man with a smirk. “And we don't feed them more than just enough to keep them alive and active. He'll be ready for his first bout in the arena soon. By then he'll be so eager to vent his rage, and to make a good meal of someone, he'll give the crowd their money's worth, take it from me!”
“Will … will he be killed in his turn?”
Caius shrugged. “Well, most of 'em die in the end. But he'll give a good account of himself first. I pity whoever's up against him!”
“You pity them?” Julius asked, startled.
The man glanced at him. “Manner of speaking,” he said. “You can't afford pity in my job. They're all just slaves, really, aren't they, animals and men alike—slaves, criminals, prisoners of war. It's all they're fit for, to entertain the crowds and glorify Caesar.” He ran a stick across the bars of the cage, and the tiger glared and backed off, as if preparing to spring again. But he didn't. He growled and muttered and then lay down on his side, his eyes closed, as if disdaining his tormentors.
“What's he called?” asked Julius, watching him, thinking what it might be like to be in the tiger's hide—in his head.
“What's he called?” repeated the man. “D'you think I've nothing better to do than give them all names? I call him Brute when I'm provoking him.”
The tiger opened his eyes and lifted his great bicolored head.
“Well, look at that!” exclaimed Caius. “I'll go to Tartarus if he don't know his name! Whoever saw the like!”
“He's intelligent, then?”
“So it seems! The dogs and that, they're quite sharp, you can train 'em to come to a whistle, do what you tell 'em. There was a dog here once—wild when he came, but I managed to teach him tricks. Got so he knew me…. I tried to buy him, but I couldn't. Sorry when he went.” He glanced overhead.
“And the elephants!” he went on after a moment. “Now, there's a clever beast and no mistake. You can't help respecting the elephants, they know what's happening to them, and they know what's happening to their fellows, almost like us.
“Did you ever hear tell about a time—oh, centuries ago, when Pompey was Emperor—when he ordered a half-dozen elephants into the arena and set twenty starving lions on 'em? And when they were downed, and being eaten, but still alive, they lay there making such sounds, and put up their trunks as if they was beseeching pity, or a-saying of their death prayers—that was one time the crowd didn't like it! They say that fifty thousand people rose to their feet as one man, and wept, and cursed Caesar, and shouted for the elephants to be spared—that was a sight to fill you with pity, if you like! But it was too late by then.”
Julius swallowed hard. The pictures in his mind almost unmanned him.
“Is that the only time?”
“What?”
“That the crowd has been … on the side of the animals.” Caius scratched his beard.
“The only time I've heard of. It was only because the elephants was so big and—and sorrowful, somehow.” There was a long silence while they watched the tiger, each with his own thoughts. When Caius spoke again, his voice was very quiet, as if he were afraid one of his fellows would hear him.
“It does go to your heart sometimes to see something so—so …”
“Magnificent.”
“Yes. Magnificent. When you see something so magnificent brought low, just to make the crowds happy.”
“Doesn't it ever seem … wrong, to you?” Julius asked eagerly.
The man seemed to come back to himself. He gave Julius a look—whether of contempt or of warning, Julius couldn't tell.
“You'd be no good around here! You'd best get back to your pampered house cat, and leave the circus to men who've put a callous on their feelings for the Emperor's sake. Go on about your business now, I've got work to do.”
When the two-legs had gone, Brute sat up and began to groom himself.
He never did this when any two-legs were watching. He got such comfort and satisfaction out of licking and cleaning his fur that he had a sense of intrusion if he wasn't alone. He couldn't do it when he was filled with hatred and fury, only when he felt calm, and for that he needed to be by himself.
The rocky hole he lived in was to him like the worst nightmare of imprisonment would be to a human being. There was no natural light. The air was fetid; it brought him no more than a tantalizing whiff of anything natural and good. He could smell only the reek of other unhappy, confined creatures, and sometimes—when the circus was in progress above him—the strong scent of blood, that nearly drove Brute mad. The smells were in every breath he drew, and smells are a tiger's language. The hate and fear of his
fellow prisoners, the bloodletting and the terrifying roars of the crowd above, had become part of him. They fed his rage and strengthened it.
He still missed his brother, but in a less focused way.
When he lay down to sleep on the hard stone floor, he felt an absence, a vacancy where the other ought to be. He didn't visualize him or grieve for him. He just felt incomplete.
In the cage opposite him was an old bear. This bear had been in the circus for a long time. He had appeared in the arena often, and was a favorite with the crowds, which explained why he was still alive. When he loped into the ring on all fours, or was led in on a chain on his hind legs, the crowd would roar their recognition, and throw bits of food to him which he was sometimes allowed to eat. His performance was to fight off dogs that were set to bait him. In the early days, he had had to fight desperately against a pack of them, but nowadays only a few dogs were set on him, and care was taken that he not be outmatched. He was nearly always able to throw himself back on his haunches, grasp the springing animals in his great arms, and hug them to death one by one, keeping the others off with snapping teeth. But he never escaped without some bites. His thick brown fur was bald in places, where the scars had healed.
The bear was the only animal Brute ever saw come back down from above. When the bear was injured, the tiger would scent the blood and yowl. It was mostly from the bear that Brute received his sense that when animals went up there, terrible things happened. He was afraid, and yet he waited his turn with something like eagerness.
He wanted to fight, rend, and kill. And up there, his instincts told him, that was what happened.
Marcus
THE BOY MARCUS was plotting his revenge on Aurelia and her pet.
Not her pet tiger. Her pet keeper. That was how Marcus saw Julius, as Aurelia's tame man. Between them, the slave and his young mistress had cheated Marcus of his pleasure, humiliated him, and hurled him to the ground. They had brought him low. He wasn't going to stand for that. Not him—what, a senator's son swallow such an insult? No, no matter how high Aurelia set herself above him.
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