'The legionary officer?' Rufus spoke for the first time, already knowing the answer to his question. 'Lu — arrgh.' He fought for breath as a hand like an iron claw gripped his throat.
'Yes, Lucius. Lucius who betrayed his Emperor. Lucius who could have condemned another hundred, or another thousand, if he had lived. Lucius… who… you… killed.' With the final four words the fingers tightened on Rufus's windpipe and the hand raised him until his feet dangled inches from the floor. He tried to speak, to explain, to plead for his life, but not a single word came out. His vision first blurred, then faded…
He felt himself flying through the air, and for a second he truly believed he had been summoned by the gods, before the flight ended with a bone-rattling crash.
He opened his eyes to see Cupido in a crumpled heap among the straw by the barn door and Bersheba standing over him with her trunk swinging menacingly. There was something in her posture that told him she was preparing to step forward and crush the gladiator beneath her massive pads.
'Easy, girl,' he croaked, massaging his throat. 'Easy.'
He crawled over to the prone body and raised Cupido's head, his hands finding a pronounced lump behind the left ear beneath the golden hair. He looked up to find Livia standing over them, her hands held protectively over her stomach and her eyes wide with fear. Between them, they settled Cupido on the bed and waited.
He opened his eyes two hours later, but it was clear he wasn't aware where he was or how he arrived there. Rufus brought water from the cistern and the gladiator drank it, sitting on the bed. He lifted his head, and the look he gave Rufus was haunted by demons that could not be explained by the events they had witnessed together.
Then, in a voice devoid of emotion, he told them of Caligula's vengeance.
'First they broke the legs of the surviving assassins, so they should be brought low before their Emperor. Not just one break, mind, but smashed up and down with iron bars, so there was no possibility they would ever walk again.
'When this was done and they writhed on the ground below him — for they had brought his throne so he should see the spectacle more clearly — they took the first and hung him from the triangle. He was a young man, well set and handsome…' Rufus remembered the scared eyes beneath the hood and wondered if it was the opponent he had faced. 'The Emperor joked he would be favoured by the ladies. Then he ordered Nestor to remove his manhood, since he would have no further need of it. This Nestor did with a single cut of his razor, and the youth's squeals chilled the blood. There were no questions, you understand, for this was mere instruction for those who watched and waited their turn.'
Caligula had discussed the next entertainment with Nestor as the young man bled to death within feet of him.
'When they trussed up the next he was already babbling with terror, and when Nestor placed the instruments before him — the hooks, the shears and the impaling irons — he wailed that he would tell all and they need not put the fire to him. So the clerks took down the names and the dates and all the minutiae of treason. Once he had given all he knew, he thanked the Emperor for his mercy, but the Emperor asked him reasonably how he could be certain this was all, since he had not been tested. Could he not, for instance, have omitted the name of his mother or his sister, out of love and compassion? And the assassin had no answer, for none would do. So they put the hot irons to him anyway, and he expired still listing the names of his loved ones.
'And so it went. Each one gave a dozen names, and a dozen more, and when they ran out of names, the Emperor helpfully suggested other names: the names of aristocrats and knights with land and riches who would give them up to their Emperor to prove their loyalty or to save their lives. When there were no more assassins they brought the first of the men and women they had betrayed, and it went on, and on, and on. All afternoon and into the night they screamed, sometimes one at a time, at the end in twos and threes.
'Only once did the Emperor show compassion, of a kind. When they brought the actress Quintillia to the triangle she was beautiful, perhaps the most beautiful woman in Rome. She was brave — you would be surprised how many of them were brave at first — but Nestor knows his business and in her beauty he saw opportunity. He removed it one piece at a time, and still she did not answer. So he did things which I will not speak of here, and her courage was such that the Emperor wept, and had her taken down. She could not stand, but he knelt by her side and placed eight hundred thousand sesterces in her hand, as if it was enough to buy her beauty back.'
Cupido closed his eyes then and slept. When he rose before dawn to return to his barracks, Rufus accompanied him to the doorway.
'Should we have let him die, Cupido? Think how many lives it would have saved, how much suffering it would have avoided.'
The gladiator's face was hidden in the shadows when he replied, and Rufus could not read his expression.
'If we had let him die it might have saved a thousand lives, Rufus, but not ours, and not Livia's, and not that of the child she carries.'
Rufus thought he had misheard. 'Child?'
'Are you really so blind?'
Rufus shook his head. It could not be. He was too young. He was not ready. He remembered his own childhood, before Fronto and before Cerialis. The beatings and the hunger. What right had he to bring a child into a life of bondage?
Cupido turned into the light and laid a hand on his shoulder. 'Life was much simpler in the arena.'
XXX
When Cupido left, Rufus turned back into the barn and walked past Bersheba to where Livia waited.
'Is it true?' he asked.
'Yes,' she admitted, surprised he knew without being told. 'I have consulted old Galla, who understands these things. My time will be in the spring. We have much to do.'
Her eyes shone and she took his hand and led him to their bed, where they made love for the first time in many nights. When it was over and Livia chattered her plans and hopes for the child, Rufus nuzzled her neck… and tried to clear his mind of Aemilia's face.
He attempted to come to terms with his new status, but his mind spun in a demented chariot race of doubts and fears. There was so much to consider, so much he didn't know. Whom could he turn to? Not Cupido, who in his own way was as naive as Rufus himself in this area. Certainly not Narcissus. There was only one answer.
Fronto.
Cupido arranged the meeting for three evenings later at the warehouse where Rufus usually collected Bersheba's hay. Rufus was loading her cart when the flicker of torchlight on damp cobbles warned him that someone was approaching. It was the animal trader, accompanied by two men who had all the wary reserve and muscle-bound confidence of bodyguards.
Rufus ran forward to take his old friend in his arms, but his pleasure quickly faded. Fronto had changed, and not for the better. It was not only the white of his thinning hair and matted beard, or the deep lines etched in his cheeks, that made him seem older. The bulk that had reminded Rufus so much of a bear had melted away, leaving only the emaciated husk of the man he knew. The hands that held him shook like reeds in a strong wind.
But Fronto still had some of his old spark.
'So this is the reason the Emperor took you away from me,' he said, waving towards Bersheba, who stood placidly in front of the cart. 'If I had a few like her I would not have half the worries I do now. Perhaps he would sell her to me? You could come too, of course. No? No, I don't suppose he would. Never mind, never mind. We'll manage somehow.'