Tiger, Tiger

by Lynne Reid Banks

  “Speak the truth!” he barked suddenly.

  But Aurelia dared not say the words. She fell to her knees just as Julius had, her head down, her hands over her face. A long, long moment, a moment of paralysis, passed.

  “You will see my justice,” said Caesar, in a voice terrifyingly empty of all emotion. “Yes. You will see it. You won't be spared. If I have to hold your eyes open with my own hands, you will witness every second of it.”

  The Ides of July

  THE DAY HAD COME.

  Marcus woke early and went out onto his balcony that overlooked the countryside through which Boots had made his escape. Of course he knew that the tiger had been found by Aurelia (her lone pilgrimage was the subject of scandal and gossip throughout the city), that Caesar had sent him to the Colosseum. He knew that today was the day that the animal he had so often petted, and felt jealous of, and admired, was surely going to die. Under other circumstances he would have been sorry for it.

  But Marcus knew that Julius would die today too. There was no doubt or hope in his mind about it. Caesar had ordered that he be sent unarmed into the arena to be torn to pieces by the other tiger, the terrible man-eater. And Marcus also knew that his cousin would be there when it happened, with the eyes of Rome upon her to see how she bore herself.

  Of course, none of the vast crowd who would be there today would know that she wasn't there of her own free will, but had been condemned to watch the spectacle as a punishment. But Marcus knew. When he let himself imagine her feelings this morning, his brain twisted away, as his body might from a lighted brand thrust into his face.

  He hadn't done as she'd asked, and spoken to his father the senator. And this was a dreadful burden on him. She had confessed, she had begged him to do the same, but he hadn't dared. Besides, his father had not been available. Dangerous events were afoot in the Empire—events that, ordinarily, Marcus would have been very excited about: the legions on the march against barbarian invaders from the East, and the Senate in session much of the time. The only concern anyone in authority had with the circus at this time of crisis was that it should keep the populous from too much concern about the military situation, which had called many of their men away.

  As Marcus stood there looking out across the hills, his father suddenly came into the room behind him.

  “Marcus!”

  He turned around, startled and nervous.

  “Yes, Father?”

  “I suppose you'll want to go to the circus this afternoon?”

  He stood openmouthed.

  “The whole city is talking about it! The two tigers will fight to the death. Surely you want to see that?”

  “One of them is Aurelia's tiger,” mumbled Marcus, looking at his sandaled feet.

  “Well, of course I know that,” said the senator impatiently. “That should make it more interesting for you! Do you want to go or don't you?”

  Marcus was aware that his father was looking at him very searchingly. If he refused, for any reason, it would only confirm his suspicions that Marcus had something to hide.

  “All right, Father. I—I'd like to go.”

  “Very well, you can go with Caesar's party. The Emperor has invited you.”

  And why did he do that? Marcus wondered. Is he trying to punish me as well as Relia? He dreaded the thought of being there—dreaded it.

  But something in him—the manhood he was growing toward—was glad. Last time, he had been waiting for his cousin to show fear, wanting her to so that he could feel superior. Last time, Julius had been with her, Julius had supported and comforted her. This time—this time, when she would need far more comfort—perhaps she would turn to Marcus.

  And anyway, it was only right that he should share her ordeal. It was his just deserts.

  •••

  Aurelia had not emerged from her apartment since the encounter with her father.

  Her personal servants tiptoed in and out with meals she refused to touch. She didn't undress or wash herself. She paced the floor, crying and tearing her clothes. She slept very little, and then often lying on the cold marble floor, not on her bed. She was trying, perhaps, to imitate the conditions of Julius in his prison cell. She strove to fill her thoughts with a more powerful emotion than fear or the horrible apprehension of what was to come. They were filled with bitter, furious hatred for her father, who had unlimited power to do good or harm, and chose harm.

  When her mother came to see her and remonstrate with her—“Look at yourself! Have you no self-respect?”— Aurelia turned on her.

  “You're his wife. You can influence him.”

  “No! I can't.”

  “Women have ways. I've heard. You can refuse him—”

  Her mother shrank away from her. “How can you speak of such things? Your father's right! I think you've lost your mind, not just your silly heart! Where's your duty and obedience? Has my example taught you nothing?”

  “I refuse to be dutiful to a man I hate!”

  “Aurelia! It's blasphemy to hate the Emperor, even if he were not your father!”

  “Can it be blasphemy to hate what's wicked and cruel? It's not only Julius. It's everything. It's the circus. It's the animals. It's the Christians!” She was on the very verge of telling her mother her secret, but, luckily for her, her mother was already rushing from the room, her hands over her ears.

  Now the dreaded day had come.

  Caesar sent a male messenger early in the morning.

  “Princess, Caesar orders you to ready yourself.”

  “Tell him I won't.”

  The man looked away in distress. He could scarcely believe the sight before him—Rome's beautiful princess, her hair dirty, tangled, and uncombed, her clothes draggled and torn, her face thin and wild.

  “Caesar's orders are,” he muttered, “if you will not ready yourself, servants will be sent to wash and dress you by force.”

  She knew then that it was hopeless. Her pleas had failed. The condition she'd fallen into as proof of her despair had failed. He would make her go through with it. If he had to tie her up and have her carried to the Colosseum—if, as he'd threatened, he had to stand behind her and force her eyes open—he would make it happen, he would make her watch it. There was no escape but one, to take her own life—and she knew she couldn't do that.

  In her desperation she did a fierce and terrible thing. She ran to the larium, the shrine that had been her reverence since childhood, and, throwing open the wooden doors, tore out the sacred figures with both hands and hurled them to the ground with a sickening crash.

  “Tell him! Tell my father what I've done!” she screamed at the messenger. “Tell him I worship the Christian god now, and that god hates him as much as I do!”

  The messenger gasped in horror, and fled. He told no one the incredible thing he had seen, the impossible things she had said. He was afraid to utter the words for fear the gods would punish him.

  Aurelia waited, her whole body clenched and trembling, for the people who would come and force her to do her father's will.

  Instead, the nurse came.

  She entered in a rush, and swept to the middle of the floor where the girl sat, hunched and stiff, ready to resist to the last. The nurse gasped at the sight of her former charge, but she said nothing, merely bent down, lifted her to her feet with surprising strength, and smacked her hard through her torn clothes.

  “Come. Come at once,” she ordered.

  Aurelia found herself half led, half dragged into her private bathroom. The nurse removed her dress and threw it into a corner. She pushed Aurelia down the two steps, forced her to sit in the square stone basin, then clapped her hands. Servants, obviously primed beforehand, entered with warm water in copper ewers. The nurse dismissed them, rolled up her sleeves, and proceeded to wash Aurelia as if she were four years old. She rubbed her with oil, scraped her with a strigil, scrubbed her hands and feet with pumice, and washed her hair, pouring jug after jug of water over her. Aurelia sat under the mini
strations, familiar from her early childhood, and felt the fight drain out of her body as the water washed over it. The nurse pulled her to her feet at the end and wrapped her in a huge, absorbent sheet. With another she briskly rubbed her hair till it hung in a dark, damp cloud, then pulled a comb through it and, with the aid of long ivory pins, arranged it on her head like a grown woman's.

  “Now,” she said, “what is being worn this season, for the worst that can possibly happen?”

  Aurelia gave a cry of pain and flung herself against the nurse. But the nurse pushed her upright, gripping her arms.

  “Stop that,” she said sternly. She pinioned her with her eyes. “This is the testing time. Now you will prove that you are the daughter of an Emperor, no matter what you think of him. Now you will show whose milk built you—that you are my nursling.”

  She led her back into the bedchamber. She stopped short, and lost color, when she noticed for the first time the broken gods on the ground, but she said nothing. She dressed Aurelia in her most beautiful dress, the finest imported silk in bright, eye-catching colors banded with gold thread, and draped a contrasting païïa around her shoulders.

  “When your Julius enters the arena,” she said as she did so, “he will look up at the Imperial Box. He will see you there. Is the last thing he looks at going to be a cowering, weeping, defeated little wretch, made ugly by hate and sorrow? No. He will see his princess, beautiful, strong and proud, and—yes, I will say it, may the gods forgive me— with her eyes full of love for him. It will be a sight to give him courage to face what he must. That's what you can do for him now. No. Be still and listen to me. Nothing can change what the gods have decreed. Accept their will. What did I tell you when you were a little girl? The only way we women can get through our lives honorably is with courage and resignation, both.”

  She put the finishing touches to Aurelia's appearance, fastening a diadem across her forehead, a jeweled pendant round her neck, and gold bangles on her wrists. Aurelia stood motionless, numb now, unable to feel anything but the deep dread of what the next few hours would bring.

  “Your cousin's waiting,” said the nurse.

  Aurelia started from her apathy.

  “Marcus? Marcus is here? He's—coming?”

  The nurse nodded. A tiny fraction of Aurelia's burden of anguish lifted. At least she would not be quite alone, with no one who knew what she felt.

  “And you? Will you be there?” she asked piteously.

  “Me? I have never set foot in that nasty place and I never will, not till I turn Christian and they feed me to the lions,” the nurse replied.

  Aurelia stared at her for a moment and then walked, unsteadily but with a straight back, out of the room.

  The nurse heaved one of her profound sighs, and set about clearing up the debris of the broken gods. She thought there were one or two she might be able to repair. There was one small ictr—a jolly godling whose responsibility was the welfare of the family—which, being made of bronze, had escaped the destruction. She looked at him. He held a cornucopia in one hand and a drinking vessel in the other, and had vine leaves in his hair and a swinging tunic to show he was dancing. Breathing a prayer, she put him back in his place, and closed the doors of the ictrium gently. Then she left the palace by the servants’ way.

  Nobody ever questioned her comings and goings.

  In the Arena

  THE COLOSSEUM was packed to its rounded walls. Forty-five thousand spectators filled the tiers of seats. Another five thousand found standing room. The vast canvas awning kept the worst of the sun off the highest-paying citizens; the rest sat or stood in its full blaze.

  The arena itself bore a likeness to an African desert— sand reflecting whitely back at the pitiless sky, not a mark yet on the smooth surface, as if no living creature had ever trodden there, as if it waited for the marks that the living would make—innocent of its prime function: to soak up the blood of the dying.

  As usual, the expectant crowd, chaotically loud a moment before, fell silent as Caesar's party appeared through the back of the Imperial Box, and then burst into concerted roars of adulation.

  Aurelia didn't wait for her father to indicate where she was to sit—she took her own place, as far from him as possible, indicating to Marcus the seat beside her. She realized now that her father wouldn't really stand behind her and hold her eyes open, as he had threatened. It would demean him to do so. But suddenly she became aware that a member of the Praetorian Guard was standing behind her. Had he had orders … ? No. No man would dare lay a hand on her. Or would he? The thought absolutely terrified her and she clutched Marcus's hand convulsively.

  Below, in the cells, corridors, and cages under the innocently raked sand, all was purposeful bustle and organized activity.

  Scores of half-clad, huge-muscled men hurried to and fro in the torchlit darkness, unconscious of the overpowering stench of distressed animals, and their own sweat. The beasts patrolled their cages, well aware that they were on some perilous edge.

  Boots alone had no premonition of battle, hurt, and death. The smells around him carried no lethal meaning. He sniffed them curiously. They were like those he was accustomed to in the menagerie, but with something added, an element he couldn't identify. He couldn't know it was the smell of fear.

  A cage was manhandled past his cage. And suddenly he stiffened and rose to his feet.

  In the cage was another like himself.

  A strong new smell assailed him. A smell that stirred something in his brain. Something familiar there? Something remembered from long ago?

  The cage trundled past and was gone.

  Boots lay down, but, feeling excited, he stood up again and began to prowl, round and round in his narrow prison. Something in that scent had set his nerves alight. The familiar smell lingered faintly. Into his brain came dim remembered sensations. A warmth along his side. A face rubbing against his, whiskers blending, sending messages of comfort. Communications such as he'd never had with any other creature.

  He kept turning his face to where he had last seen his fellow beast in the cage.

  Brute hadn't noticed anything. He was on his way to fight, and to feast. That was all he knew and all he wanted to know. He felt little fear, for he knew what was afoot and knew that for him, it would be satisfying. He would snarl, pounce, kill, and eat. The roaring from all around him would urge him on.

  He willingly walked from his “traveling” cage to the three-sided one on the platform that would carry him aloft. The open side was swiftly turned to face the brick wall. Then he was left alone. Soon, other two-legs would come to do the mysterious things that would hoist him to the surface of the arena. Everything was as it always was before he went up there.

  Then something happened that was not usual.

  The two-legs who had taught him to be angry was suddenly standing beside the cage. He spoke his name.

  “Here, Brute. Look what I've got for you.”

  Brute's attention was caught. There was no tigerish growl now in his tormentor's voice. He had his pointed stick, but it didn't jab at him. On the end of it was a piece of fresh meat.

  The tiger watched it poke through the bars of the cage and as soon as he could reach it, he snatched it with his claws and gulped it down.

  “Good boy,” said the two-legs. Then he went away. Brute lay down to lick his chops. Soon the other two-legs came and got ready to winch the cage up to the surface.

  In the dark, noisome corridor, the nurse waited for Caius.

  “Did you do it?”

  “Yes, may the gods help me.”

  “Was it a nice big piece?”

  “Do you want him to lie down and go to sleep up there? No. It was a small piece. Even that could have me thrown in the cage with him.”

  “Don't worry, my dear friend! No one will ever know. You're a good fellow.” She reached up and kissed him, as she had often done long ago, when they were young. Not that they felt old now. He reached for her, but she evaded his arms.r />
  “You won't forget the other business?”

  “No! Not that. I can't, Bella—I daren't!”

  She reached into the folds of cloth at her breast and brought out a bag chinking with coins. It was her life's savings, but Caius was not to know that. His eyes fastened greedily upon the bag and his hand reached out without his order.

  “Just do it for me, my dear old love,” whispered the nurse.

  The coins in his hand, he stared at her, helpless before his own cupidity. She tapped his grizzled cheek playfully, and slipped away, back to the palace.

  She was not happy—not at all. Or hopeful of a happy outcome. But she'd done what she could, and that had to be her comfort until it was all over.

  Julius was saying his prayers. His body was taut and trembling with fear. But his brain was clear.

  He stood in his holding cell with head bowed and asked the gods to give him courage. Not strength—strength would be useless. He didn't intend to give extra pleasure to the crowd by resisting. All he wanted was to die bravely.

  Then he thanked the gods for his life, and for the love he felt for the princess. Though it was a forbidden love, still he felt it to be the worthiest thing about him, and the purest, and the deepest. He asked the gods to take care of his mother, and of Aurelia.

  At last, he reviewed his life. Truly, he had nothing to be ashamed of—until that fateful moment when he had fallen asleep in the sun. What little weaknesses can bring about a man's downfall! He didn't resent his doom. He knew that to have risked the princess's life was deserving of death.

  But this death?

  Why not? Many just as good as he and better had walked this road. He had watched it happen. The lion sprang, the man fell under its weight, the beast generally mauled him, especially if he struggled—a cat's instinct to play with its prey—and then it would bite and claw him until shock and pain and loss of blood killed him. Julius wouldn't struggle. He would copy the Christians; he would stand straight for as long as he could and then—