Colosseum

by Simone Sarasso

  Verus feels bad for a lot of reasons. Rage boils all too visibly inside him.

  The two merchants who taunted him are now scared shitless.

  When he is in this state he scares the shit out of everyone.

  The crowd parts to let the Briton continue on his way, finally free to go back and serve. Which is only right for someone who lives in chains.

  Using the bronze bull to get his bearings, he finds his way out of the spider’s web of tiny streets, and slinks towards a fountain that depicts Neptune with a fishing net, but the gladiator pays no heed of the effigy as he scrubs his face in the icy water, rinses his hands and chest, then strips off his tunic, standing almost naked. He had hoped to wash off all the filth, but while his skin is left clean his soul is not. Now the son of the Island takes the road toward home, followed by appalled gazes of the locals standing in line with buckets in hand to fill up their water troughs. Home. Or better, the prison without bars that he has learned to call home.

  With each step that brings him closer to his destination, Verus is more certain of what he must do.

  A wise man, many years ago, told him that being a man is more complicated than it seems: it is about doing what you have to do when you have to do it, whether you want to or not.

  In those days Verus did not understand what that stubborn, foul-mouthed old man Cormac—who insisted on being called “master”—was on about. But Cormac knew that sooner or later he would understand.

  Now the British warrior knows that if he wants to find his place again in the world, he must bow his head, swallow his pride, and make the peace with Priscus. Life and death are too awful to face alone. Verus needs Priscus, needs his serious stare and his simple words that tell things like they are.

  Verus has had enough of lies and anger.

  Life in the arena is not marvelous. Killing a human being is not magnificent.

  Killing is shit, just like dying.

  But that is all we have, brother. You’ll have to get used to it. It is as though he can already hear the Gaul’s voice in his ears.

  It has taken him a while, but Verus is finally realizing how Priscus’s heart began to strain when Julia entered their lives.

  The heart is a thief, and love a cursed jewel. Where emotions are concerned, the dance is never in time with the music. Verus has never been particularly bright, but now he knows that all the little pieces of the jigsaw of life are interconnected. Now the vast mosaic of life begins to take shape before his swollen eyes, streaked with dark tears.

  Sergius’s death.

  The black warrior’s death.

  Julia’s eyes at her father’s house, her malice and her scent.

  Priscus’s anger, his distance, his suspicion.

  Priscus has chosen to suffer, shutting Verus out of his world.

  And Verus has allowed him to do it, Verus the unthinking blockhead, his thoughts clouded by mad dreams of Julia, blinded by impossible jealousy.

  The beautiful Julia, daughter of the Emperor, may well have lost her head for Priscus the ice-man. But the Gaul’s heart, rough as stone up until the day it decided to let in the kindred spirit of his brother from the sea, has been elsewhere for a long time.

  Finally, Verus understands.

  Without needing anyone to explain it to him.

  Priscus loves him.

  Or at least, loved him.

  Before Verus ruined everything by believing himself invincible.

  Before Sergius died. Before everything was sullied with blood, damn it.

  Priscus loves him, no point in pretending otherwise.

  And not in a brotherly way. This was the same kind of love that bound Patroclus and Apollo.

  Verus does not feel the same way about Priscus, but he also knows that he does not want to live without him. There is a special bond: they might never be a single body, but they are certainly two halves of a whole. And he does not want to throw that away, especially now that he regrets everything that has happened.

  The rich bastards, the unjust deaths, this shitty life.

  The blood, everywhere, sprayed against the walls of his soul.

  Verus quickens his step and feels the blood pulse in his veins—the Ludus Argentumis drawing closer.

  No more cowardice, no more naivety. He will go to Priscus, right now. He will beg his forgiveness. He will embrace him.

  They will talk.

  By the gods, he will talk until the Gaul’s ears bleed. He will get everything off his chest, will bare his heart and find his brother once more, his friend, his other half.

  His feet fall faster and faster. Run, Verus. Run.

  Breathing heavily, Rome slides past him like a waking dream. The first, hot rays of the sun, the morning feels like hope. Verus feels his nausea melt away as he draws ever nearer to the silver barracks.

  The misunderstandings will crumble away, forgiveness will flower. It will not be love—not of the sort Priscus has in mind, anyway—but their brotherhood will soothe every wound. Verus needs to believe it is possible. He is running now, gasping life into his heaving lungs.

  He cannot wait.

  He shoulders his way into the ludus without so much as acknowledging his companions around the entrance. He smiles and calls Priscus’s name at the top of his voice. Someone tries to stop him but Verus is a raging bull, charging into the dormitory and then the courtyard, even knocking at the armory door before he comes back outside, into the dust of the arena. Until he meets the cold and pitiless gaze of Decius Ircius.

  Verus is gasping, hardly a breath left in his body. The lanistalooks him up and down: “What are you in such a hurry to find, young champion?”

  Verus is crimson, from exertion and embarrassment.

  “I’m looking for Priscus, my lord. Priscus my brother…”

  He pronounces the last two words with great pride.

  Ircius continues to stare as the Briton heaves and gasps, as if drawing his very soul out of his lungs. Without the slightest change of expression, the lanista drily answers: “Priscus? He’s gone.”

  Verus’s chest abruptly stops heaving.

  “I sold him this morning to a school in Capua,” he goes on. “He left a short time ago.”

  The expression of hopeful anticipation on the Briton’s face disintegrates in an instant. “What? He’s g… gone?”

  Ircius smiles. “Yes. I sold him,” he says, emphasizing his power to dispose of his possessions as he thinks fit. “A very good deal it was too,” he adds smugly.

  Verus’s spirits plummet into an abyss, where dark slime licks at his body, like black bile about to swallow him whole.

  Ircius passes a hand across his chin: “Tell you the truth, he didn’t seem all that displeased. Like he was itching to see the world beyond these walls.”

  He wanted to go, thinks Verus.

  It is over.

  Now it is truly over.

  The lanistaslaps a hand on the gladiator’s muscle-bound shoulder: “Cheer up, lad! Now the Gaul’s gone you can finally earn your place here among the gods of the Ludus Argentum! Verus the Invincible!”

  His laughter is like a hailstorm of ice on the Briton’s soul.

  But his fellow inmates take the master’s words seriously.

  Deadly seriously. “Verus the Invincible!” they roar in unison.

  Verus feels his heart shrivel and crumble to pieces.

  The sun has suddenly set, before it has even risen.

  The warrior of fire no longer has the man of ice watching his back. He is the loneliest bastard in the whole damned Empire.

  In the great hall the light is smooth as velvet, a softness it reveals only in Rome.

  Emperor Titus walks gracefully around the enormous model of the Amphitheater at the center of the room. It has been made using f
our different types of wood: cedar for the frame, polished walnut for the inlays, rosewood for the arches and Oriental ebony to emphasize the imposing buttresses. The master of the world imagines the glory, the shouts of a grateful populace, eyes wide open to drink in the dream. Titus claps his hands at his back, moving barefoot across the decorated floor. A few grains of dust, fine sand carried on the wind, remain stuck to his dry heels, immovable as promises.

  His heart weighs heavy in his chest: the works continue but they are behind schedule. The plague has given his kingdom a beating, she and destiny could not care less about deadlines.

  It is late. Everything is late.

  And Titus feels anxiety gallop through him like a herd of rampaging oxen. He tires at nothing; for those in command, thoughts alone can exhaust muscles and joints.

  The Emperor bends down and brushes the arena with the palm of his hand. A trusted freedman has filled it with a thin layer of extremely fine sand. The monarch wonders whether the grains teasing his toes came from here or whether the wind carried them from far away, perhaps from the great land of Africa, where the strangest of beasts will come from.

  Titus is both general and choreographer of the great and violent spectacle that Rome awaits more keenly than a downpour after an endless drought. At length he has spoken with senators and dispatched fixers and recruiters to the corners of the Empire, hunting down the strangest attractions in existence.

  On a low table, next to the colossal model, sits a silver carafe. Time has rusted it, but the water within is cool. Titus’s throat is parched by doubts. A breath of wind upsets the papers on his desk, documents bearing preposterous figures: the calculations of the amount of timber used to build the supports for the velarium, meticulously recorded by a middle-aged scribe, become muddled with the list of construction orders for the month of February. The Emperor knows it all, wants to be aware of every detail, down the most mundane. He watches over the birth of the stone titan like a fretful wet-nurse.

  He is ready to defend his creation from the games of the powerful and the ravages of time. Titus does not speak of it to anybody, but he knows: the Amphitheater will be forever.

  Like the Pyramids of Giza, or the Lighthouse of Alexandria.

  An eighth wonder of the world will bear his name. And that of his father, Vespasian.

  A shiver runs down his spine as he pours the water into a glazed terracotta cup, without drinking so much as a sip. All of the precious liquid is poured onto the sand. Another cup and another until the sand, saturated, can hold no more and the floor of the model is filled with make-believe waves, the breeze from the window gently rippling the surface.

  Not a drop leaks from the wood. The seals are watertight, the sculptor did his job well.

  Titus immerses his hand in the water that has invaded the arena. Eternal fingers in the wet sand.

  He smiles, the master of the world, before pulling the release lever, hidden between two staggered buttresses next to the southern entrance.

  And the magic takes its course.

  The water drains out of the model, flowing through the tubes fashioned by the master’s chisel, where the bevel has crafted the wood into the concave smoothness of a river bed. Tiny holes have been sealed with hammered lead and tar, turning the tree trunk into a perfectly watertight channel. The water trickles out of the miniature Amphitheater and falls noiselessly to the floor.

  It splashes the Emperor’s bare feet but does not tarnish the Emperor’s smile, so pleased that he looks almost childlike. He cannot stop grinning at the wonder that has been created, his fingers in the damp sand, on his lips a word to be uttered in hushed voices, until the moment comes to leave everyone speechless: “Naumachia…yes, mock sea-battles.”

  The applause at Titus’s back rumbles like an August thunderstorm, resounding and brazen as its author.

  Anyone else would give a start at being caught playing with an imitation world while the universe—the real universe—awaits a mere nod of his head to do his bidding. But Titus is not anyone else, he is the Lord of the Earth in its entirety, and he will set the fucking pace as he sees fit.

  He turns around slowly, wiping his hands on his purple robes as though they were any old rags. With a wreath of laurel leaves atop his head he would be the perfect picture: the god of calm, right at the eye of the storm.

  Finally, he sees the man who took the trouble to applaud his wonder emerge from the darkness of the corridor that leads to the great hall. The cape he wears, properly tanned Iberian leather with polished bronze inlays that shine like mirrors, marks him out as important.

  The applause over, Titus’s unexpected guest hints at making a bow. A very handsome man, his flowing blond locks speak of the sea. His cruel, square jaw makes the Lord of the Empire’s head spin. The martial bearing of one who has grown up in the army of the damned Eagle.

  He is the one who disappeared with Julia onto the balcony during the party. The one on whom the imperial firstborn has lavished her coquetry, her smiles and much else besides. The one who gave a damned good fucking to the daughter of the man standing right in front of him: Emperor Titus.

  While Verus, glory of the Ludus Argentum, received the kiss of Persephone, goddess of the underworld, as he removed his adversary’s head for the entertainment of the lords, his peers.

  This is the man who now dares to applaud the wonder.

  “Welcome, Domitian. Welcome, brother,” says Titus.

  Brother.

  Domitian smiles, examining the magnificent model from close up.

  “Wonderful toy. Let us hope the real thing works like this, otherwise you can imagine the laughter on inauguration day…”

  Domitian is being an asshole, as usual.

  The Emperor would very much like to answer him back, but here comes yet another unexpected guest, trotting through the great hall.

  Where the fuck are the servants who are supposed to announce visitors?

  The Emperor scratches his head, transferring a few grains of wet sand to his hair. So flat and lifeless it is not even a distant relative of Domitian’s.

  And yet.

  “Father, Uncle…” says Julia dutifully as she enters, not forgetting her manners.

  After all she is daughter of the Emperor. If it were not for her habit of screwing every musclebound male that happened to stroll into their home, she would be quite perfect. But it is well known that perfection is not for this world, not even between the sweaty pleats of Queen Rome.

  Julia spies the model of the house of games and applauds excitedly.

  “I cannot wait for inauguration day! It will be a magnificent spectacle, will it not, Father?”

  As she speaks she throws a languid gaze to her uncle that leaves little or nothing to the imagination.

  Domitian licks his lips.

  Titus sighs and wipes his hands on the purple tunic again.

  The sand refuses to be brushed off.

  “Of course it will, my flower. It will host some truly astonishing spectacles. Exotic animals will fight each other—gazelles, lions, rhinoceros and bears, even a few buffaloes, all decked out for war!—but let’s not spoil the surprise for you, dear. Tell me though, what brings you to these parts?’

  The girl springs forward a step, moving closer to her uncle. She would very much like to take his hand, or simply just caress his arm, but she cannot. Even in the rotten heart of the Eternal City, appearances carry a certain weight. So she limits herself to letting out a small sigh within earshot of him, secretly devouring him out of the corner of her eye.

  “Boredom, more than anything,” she says. “The new handmaidens spent all morning styling my hair for the banquet this evening only to then tell me, a few moments ago, that it was canceled—such a shame!”

  Titus feels a twinge in his liver. It was he who gave the order to put off the party: for some time now he has
started to really feel the effects of drink. Maybe the thoughts and strains of the last few days. Or perhaps the fact that he is no longer twenty years old and his body is begging for a rest. The bottom line is that, although generally an obliging sort of man, he is not prepared to watch the rabble having a good time while he looks on, suffering from constipation and swollen joints. So, no party this evening, you bunch of good-for-nothings.

  “I am sure the servants’ work will not have been in vain, my child. You uncle was just telling me that he would be most pleased to dine with you. A warrior has little to do in peacetime, and now the barbarians have stopped tormenting our frontiers, our consul here seems to be bored of fighting nothing but the powerful pheasants from the imperial kitchens. Is that not right, brother? What say you? Care for an ally for your night time incursion into the field of roasted fowl?”

  Domitian smiles. Titus knows he can be a genuine pain in the ass when he wants to be, but he is the Emperor after all. And nobody contradicts the Emperor, by the gods. Not even his beloved younger brother.

  “If you wished to bestow on me a little of your precious time, dear niece, it would be a great honor for this old soldier to eat in your company.”

  Julia holds back a little yelp of satisfaction: “I accept with infinite pleasure. I will run straight to Lucilla and choose something fitting for the occasion.” Which, translated from court language, basically means: “Of course, Uncle. I can’t wait to get fucked as if there were no tomorrow on top of the dining table in your beautiful villa at the top of the hill, after having gorged ourselves and gotten blind, stinking drunk, of course.”

  Julia vanishes with a squeak of sandals.

  The two men are left alone.

  They stare at one another a long while. Titus’s eyes are tired. Damned tired.

  “Why do you not marry her?” hisses the Emperor to his brother.

  “Who are you talking about?” answers the son of the She-wolf.

  Titus sighs. “Do you think I am blind? Please, do not insult my intelligence.”

  Domitian holds his tongue.

  “At the very least you would avoid making a laughing stock of our blood…”