Tiger, Tiger
Page 14
Julius knew he had only minutes before Caesar realized what had happened—that they had passed out of the Colosseum to freedom instead of into the cellars where they belonged. Pursuit would be swift and deadly. They must escape—all of them! But Julius dared not run ahead of the tigers—Brute would remember himself and give chase. The tigers must go first.
“Go, my beauties! Go!” he cried.
For a moment the two animals stood, uncertain, afraid. Then Boots took the lead. He had been free before. He knew these streets, he knew the route to freedom. He turned his head to his brother. Julius saw and understood the communication that passed between them. Follow. We go together.
Then he bounded away.
Brute sprang after him. His wound hampered him—he stumbled but recovered. In a double swirl of black and gold, they rounded a corner and were lost to sight.
And now Julius, too, ran. He threw the heavy sword away. He must get to his mother, bid her goodbye. He would leave his laurels with her. Then he must do as the tigers would do—run to the edge of the city and away to the unpeopled wild country to the south.
Alone, friendless, pursued, his love left behind him forever. But free.
EPILOGUE
AURELIA never saw Julius again.
Her father did not punish her any more. His defeat at the hands of the crowd weighed more strongly on him; he couldn't blame her for that. And besides, with barbarians threatening the Empire, he had many affairs of state to deal with that quite turned his mind from the events in the Colosseum that day. Father and daughter were never again close. But the Emperor had no further cause to complain of Aurelia's disobedience.
Two years later, she consented to marry her cousin Marcus. The marriage being an arranged match, romantic love was not part of it. Nevertheless, it was not unhappy. The two understood each other at a deep level, and remained good companions. In later life, a mixture of blessings and misfortunes drew them ever closer together.
They had four children. Two of them, who showed signs of defects, quietly died in infancy, whether in the course of nature or with some assistance is not certain. The other two, a boy and a girl, were exceptionally beautiful and brilliant, seeming to have inherited the finest qualities, in looks and character, of their parents. And the two sister-grandmothers, who had engineered the match between their closely related children and had then suffered agonies of doubt and guilt, drew breath again.
Both of Aurelia's older brothers died before their father, one in battle, and one in mysterious circumstances, a fate that befell a number of heirs to the Caesars down the centuries. So the next emperor was Aurelia and Marcus's second son. His name was Secundus Darius, but when he assumed the mantle of Caesar after the death of his grandfather, he fulfilled his mother's wish and changed his name to Julius Secundus.
Julius Secundus ruled well, and it was in his time that the circus began to play a less prominent part in the life of Rome. It still took place, but this Caesar's thumb was more often turned up than down, and the number of animals imported to service the arena was far lower. This was partly because Rome's power and reach were on the wane. The incursions of barbarian tribes from the north and east became more frequent, and the cost of defending the far-flung borders of the Empire became ever more impossible to maintain. Those borders began to shrink, and thus the power of Rome to crumble.
Christianity was taking hold stealthily but steadily. Though it would be years yet before the Emperor Constan-tine yielded to his mother's wishes and declared Christianity the official religion of Rome, Aurelia was able to cleave to her new beliefs—although in secret—and teach them to her children, though they could not practice openly.
She never persuaded her nurse, however, who clung to the old gods till her death. Even as she lay dying, though much tempted, she never told Aurelia how she had paid Caius to have a sword put into Julius's hand, or how she felt when Caius had not lived long enough to spend her bribe…. She took to her grave the secret of the vital part she had played on the day Julius had triumphed, been freed, and disappeared forever.
And what became of the two tigers?
Who can say for certain? They were never caught. Large tracts of southern Italy at that time were unpopulated, full of game and places of concealment.
It's entirely possible that they lived out their lives in that wild country, rediscovering their true nature after their years of captivity. It's pleasant to imagine the brothers becoming reacquainted, hunting, sleeping, and playing together as they roamed free across those stony, broken hills and warm, sheltered valleys. One may imagine a combination of talents—Brute's for the chase, Boots's for concealment. One might fear for Rufus, the thieving, simple shepherd, if his path crossed theirs!
But surely Boots could never have become a man-eater.
And Julius?
Loneliness is not a problem for two brother tigers together. But what of a young man who has left behind all that he knows and loves, never to be recovered?
It's good to think he may have made his way south down the long leg of Italy and found human companionship in a village or small hill town, safely remote from the capital. He could have pretended to be a wandering storyteller. And what a story of romance and daring he could have told, without straying from the truth! The slowly fading silk scarf he always wore about his neck would give rise to many questions.
But if he was wise, as surely he grew to be, he would not tell his true story, but others that would need some wit to invent, and thus earn his bread and keep his true past a secret, as he kept his first love, deep in his heart.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
TA. HERE WERE MANY Roman emperors, but the one in this story is invented, as are the other characters, and all the events told here are fictitious.
However, as nearly as possible, the facts about ancient Rome—the way people lived, the Colosseum, the roles of animals and fighters in the circus, the often despotic rule of the Caesars after the original democratic ideas of early Rome had been abandoned, and the slow, secret growth of Christianity—these are all as true as I can make them.
I have purposely not given any exact date, but if you think of the late third century A.D.—about two hundred years of slow decline before the Roman Empire fell and was replaced by the Greek, or Byzantine—that would be about right.
Published by Laurel-Leaf an imprint of Random House Children's Books a division of Random House, Inc.
New York
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2004 by Lynne Reid Banks
All rights reserved.
Laurel-Leaf and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
www.randomhouse.com/teens
Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools,
visit us at www.randomhouse.com/teachers
RL: 5.5
eISBN: 978-0-307-54807-8
v3.0