Caligula

what I was paid to do. So, I tell you now in good faith, so that we will not be enemies, there is another lesson you must learn — do not waste your hatred on someone who does not have the luxury of choice.'

With a nod, he walked away.

As time passed, Rufus's feelings swung from one extreme to another whenever he went over in his mind what had happened. At first he hated Fronto for his callous treatment of an animal that had done nothing to deserve the terrible death it suffered. He even considered running away from the trader, but he had no idea where he would go. Finally he realized the lesson of Circe was one he would have had to learn for himself. There could be no room for emotion when animals were destined for the arena. Their hearts might beat and they breathed the same clean air as men, but they were doomed from the moment they were captured on the savannahs or in the jungles of their homelands. From now on he must harden his heart and treat them as tools to be worked with. With that realization came another: Fronto was more than his owner. In the few months they had been together he had become a friend, and when Rufus thought back over a lifetime of often being alone, and occasionally even an outcast, that fact counted enormously.

That knowledge opened another door, and introduced a wonderful, unfamiliar feeling. A desire to change his life for the better. His time with the animal trader had been a success. He knew that if he worked hard and made progress he had a real opportunity to become Fronto's freedman and share in his business, perhaps even set up a business himself. Fronto had promised to take him with him on one of his trips to Carthage. Was it possible he might see his mother again? Was she even alive?

The next step of his development came unexpectedly, in October, when the first thunder clouds swept in from the coast, making the animals nervously pace their cages and compounds. Fronto ordered Rufus to pack his few belongings and move them to his villa on the edge of the city. When he had settled in Rufus was summoned before his master. Fronto was not alone. With him was a small, plump man with sparkling, intelligent eyes and unruly tufts of hair growing above each ear, giving him the appearance of a well-fed squirrel.

'This is Septimus. He's Greek. He will teach you your letters.'

So began a long and often difficult journey that opened Rufus's eyes to the wonders of a new world and took him to places beyond his imagination. It was a slow process, but beginning with the simplest children's stories, Septimus taught him the magic of the written word. Fronto had compiled a well-stocked library: tight-wrapped scrolls in protective leather cases stacked neatly round the walls of the room. Rufus enjoyed nothing better than to browse through them, even if many of the words and what they described were beyond his understanding.

After six months he began to accompany Fronto to meetings with the men who organized the great games in the arena. Men who answered to senators and consuls, even to the Emperor himself. At first, he sat silently in the background concentrating on what was being said, and, sometimes more important, not said, trying to understand the intricate detail of the negotiations. Near-invisible signals of hand or eye could mean a difference of thousands of sesterces. They were hard men, all members of the same guild, who survived by their wits and their ability to drive a tougher bargain than their rivals. He grasped very quickly that to underestimate them or to treat them lightly was to court disaster.

By and by, there was a subtle change in his status. Now Fronto would occasionally bring him into the conversation, asking his opinion on some small matter or his advice on the qualities of one of the animals he knew so intimately. It was never mentioned directly, but everyone on the couches round the negotiating table was aware of it. Slave or not, Fronto had adopted Rufus as his heir.

As he worked with his animals, Rufus often thought of the young gladiator. He had long since stopped blaming Cupido for Circe's death. The leopard was always destined for the arena. It was his, Rufus's, own stupidity which had hastened her end.

They met by chance in early spring, at one of the first shows of the new season. By now the name Cupido was spoken with reverence among enthusiasts of the amphitheatre. He was feted by the rich and the powerful. Rufus was surprised and flattered when the gladiator approached him and asked politely how he was.

'I am well, but I hear you are better. They say you have killed twenty men.'

The grey-eyed fighter gave a dismissive laugh. 'What do they know, these pederasts and wife-beaters who bay for blood from the cheap seats? Not every fight is to the death, and not every fight that seems to end in death produces a corpse.'

Rufus had heard rumours that it was not always the crowd who decided who lived and who died in the arena. Cupido seemed to be confirming this, but the gladiator clearly felt he had revealed enough and Rufus decided not to delve further. Instead, as they walked among the animal cages under the arena floor, he asked Cupido about his unusual name.

The fighter shrugged. 'That is my ring name. My true name is of no significance now. The person who owned that name is gone for ever. I was a prince of my people, but when the men of my father's tribe rose against the Romans and were defeated, I became a slave like all the others. The Romans put me on a farm. Not a healthy place. Many of us died in the quarries. They would have worked me to death if I'd stayed there.'

'How did you come to escape?'

'Escape? I didn't escape. The overseer was a man who used his whip and his feet too freely. He used them on me only once,' Cupido said, his tone proud. 'I took the whip from him and beat him until he screamed for mercy and the skin was stripped from his backbone.

Perhaps I should have killed him. When he recovered he would surely have killed me. I was fortunate. The local magistrate gave me the choice of the cross or the ring. I chose the ring.'

The sad smile touched his lips. 'Now great men treat me like a prince again. One senator pays me to be his bodyguard, to impress his friends and as a warning to his enemies. He knows I despise him and all his kind, but still I must teach his children to use the sword and to defend themselves, and he showers me with gifts. Last week, another rich knight sent me a beautiful woman because I had won him money. She seemed disappointed when I sent her away unused.'

Rufus was astonished that Cupido could take so little satisfaction from his achievements. He himself had often wondered what it would be like to experience the acclaim of a huge crowd in the arena. Sometimes, he dreamed he was in Cupido's place, his blade singing as he scythed down opponents, but there always came an awful moment when the sword point wavered and he woke up sweating in the certain knowledge that the next victim would have been himself.

'You have a wonderful talent, a great name and the acclaim of half of Rome. On a good day I work as a clerk and on a bad one I might wipe a hippopotamus's backside. Which life would you choose?'

The fighter turned to him with a flash of irritation. 'Yes, I have acclaim, but for what? One day the blood spilled in the arena will be mine. Then what good will all the past cheers of the mob do? I will be just another punctured bag of guts and bones to be dragged from the arena and fed to your lions. And yes, you are right, I do have a talent. A talent to take life and make it look easy. But such a talent comes at a price. Some of the men I would call my friends take pleasure from the kill. They live for that split second of another man's death. They savour the feeling as the blade pierces skin and the flesh closes round it and embraces it like a welcoming host. Nothing in life gives them greater satisfaction.

'And me? I despise myself, because killing is so easy. It's as if they offer themselves to me. In the arena there are only two types of men: the quick and the dead. The men who face me on the dirt are already dead. It is as if they fight with their feet trapped in mud. They wait until I have positioned myself for the thrust. They place themselves where I will them to be. Their weapons flash, but they are made of air, they cannot touch me. Then I kill them. Does a butcher have talent? Does a slaughterman? Then yes, I have talent.'

He turned and walked off, leaving Rufus utterly bemused.

V

In Rome, a rumour could pass from the Palatine to the Aventine quicker than a dog's bark. But the latest one turned out to be true. Tiberius was not the same man who had led his legions across the Rhine to conquer Germany. The Emperor took his ease now on the island of Capri, where there were stories of debauchery that would make even the most broad-minded Roman blanch. The ageing ruler had bested every rival for over twenty years and was secure in his power. He did not need to court the popularity of the mob and he was shrewd enough