you?” Scorn and astonishment moved across Lucretia’s face.
“One of temporary convenience only. Hold no doubt that I have Solonius yet marked for future action. But for current purpose I will clasp wretched hand in friendship and conceal sharp teeth behind warm smile. The agony of pretense to be made worthwhile by ultimate gain.”
“The notion unsettles,” Lucretia said. “Solonius’s fallen status makes his worth equal to shit stuck to sandal. Your offer will scrape him off and return him to equal footing.”
“The very temptation he will be unable to resist,” Batiatus countered. “And once he has fulfilled purpose, he will find himself kicked down to earth once more.”
Lucretia narrowed her eyes. The game that her beloved husband was proposing to play was a dangerous one.
“This contest between houses,” she mused. “Who will be editor of them? Who will provide the funding of it?”
Batiatus looked furtive.
“An editor can be found.”
“You propose to pluck one from thin air?” she said. “What if search proves unsuccessful?”
“Then Solonius and I will combine necessary funds,” Batiatus replied evasively.
It was as she had feared.
“This is foolishness, Batiatus. Such laying out of coin will stretch us beyond limit.”
Batiatus waved a dismissive hand.
“For short time only. Once Hieronymus has been bent over and mystery of his powerful friends revealed, all will reverse. And coin will flow back to us without limit.”
“And if Hieronymus is unmoved?”
“He will not be,” Batiatus said bluntly.
Lucretia drew in a breath.
“I hope you speak truth, Batiatus. For sake of this house.”
They fell into a brooding silence, Batiatus resting his elbows on the balcony rail and leaning forward to watch the men training below. He saw Spartacus leap forward, his arms a blur as he swung and thrust with his two swords, using the twin weapons as one. His partner, one of the newer Gauls, tried both to parry with his own sword and protect himself with his shield, but found himself back-pedaling until, eventually, he received a blow to the face and his nose burst with blood.
Batiatus laughed delightedly and banged the rail with both hands as the Gaul sprawled in the sand.
“See how our Thracian performs!” he cried. “A sure sign the gods favor us.”
“The Thracian is a savage,” Lucretia muttered. “He but appears champion, recent fortune cloaking untameable beast. To rest the reputation of this house on the animal’s shoulders is to risk its crumbling.”
Batiatus shot his wife a sour look, but before he could respond a slave hurried on to the balcony, a rolled-up parchment in his hand.
“Dominus,” he said, bowing his head in supplication, “urgent message arrives.”
Batiatus snatched the parchment and read it quickly.
“From Ashur,” he told Lucretia. He read on, and then suddenly glanced up, his eyes dancing with excitement. “Rumor becomes truth. Ashur spies procession of carriages on the Via Appia, two leagues shy of city gates. Hieronymus emerges from hole, and the gods remove cock from mine!”
IV
The narrow, cobbled streets around the gates of Capua thronged with citizens eager to glimpse the new arrival, whoever it may be. As the huge stone arch of the gateway itself came into view, the myriad streets converged on a square, dominated in its center by a fountain, around which the plebeian hordes sat and chattered, eating figs and hunks of coarse bread as though determined to make a day of it.
Batiatus, grimacing at his enforced proximity to the sweating, grimy mass of humanity, looked around, searching for Hieronymus. He spotted him over on the far side of the square, resplendent in a bronze-colored cloak edged with gold trim. He was accompanied by a number of guards, by his scarred attendant, whose name, Ashur had now discovered, was Mantilus, and by Athenais, the Greek beauty, who Hieronymus had snatched from under Batiatus’s nose. Presumably the slave was to be bestowed on this imminent visitor from Rome, the rattle of whose carriages could even now be heard approaching the city gates.
It was not the memory of how the merchant had outbid him over the slave girl that caused Batiatus’s face to harden, however. Silent as an assassin, Ashur appeared seemingly from nowhere and fell into step beside his master.
“Dominus,” he murmured.
Batiatus rounded on him.
“How does that perfumed ape Solonius come to have the ear of Hieronymus?”
The inference was obvious: Ashur had failed in his task to prize Hieronymus from his shell for Batiatus’s manipulations alone. The former gladiator bowed his head in obeisance.
“Dominus, he but gains sliver of advantage. Gleaned solely from lesser distance from city to House of Solonius.”
Batiatus was barely mollified.
“Perhaps this is not good Solonius’s first meeting with Hieronymus,” he hissed.
“If they were acquainted, dominus, I would know it,” Ashur replied.
Batiatus grunted, unconvinced. However, as Solonius glanced his way, a smirk on his thin, rat-like face, Batiatus set his features in an expression of casual indifference and nodded a greeting to his rival.
Solonius nodded back, and then deliberately leaned toward Hieronymus, making a show of murmuring something into the merchant’s ear. Hieronymus nodded, and the two men clasped hands a moment as though sealing a deal. Then Solonius sauntered across to where Batiatus was standing, the latter feigning interest in a bolt of Indian cotton on a nearby market stall.
“Greetings, good Batiatus,” Solonius said, the smirk never leaving his face, nor his voice.
Batiatus turned, blinking, as though preoccupied.
“My old friend Solonius. I hope fortune finds you well, considering recent events in the arena. It cannot be easy for a lanista to recover from such blows.”
Batiatus was referring to the contest, among others, in which Spartacus had first made his entrance. As a Thracian captive, beaten, exhausted and half-starved, he had been sent into the arena as a hunk of living meat for four of Solonius’s finest gladiators to slice asunder. His captor, legatus Gaius Claudius Glaber, had wished to see Spartacus made an example of as revenge for the man’s part in the desertion of Glaber’s legion by an auxiliary of Thracian warriors. The desertion had come about because the Thracians’ main concern had been to defend their villages from the advancing Getae hordes rather than fight against the Greeks for the glory of Rome. Because of the actions of Spartacus and his fellow Thracians, Glaber’s tribune had been slaughtered and Glaber himself, defeated and humiliated, had been forced to return to Rome. Despite the legatus’s desire to see Spartacus dead, however, the Thracian-in full view of Senator Albinius, father of Glaber’s wife, Ilithyia-had somehow prevailed against Solonius’s men, as a result of which Solonius had lost considerable face and status. Spartacus’s reward had been not only life (Glaber had still itched to see the Thracian dead, but Albinius had deemed it unwise to defy the wishes of the crowd baying for Spartacus’s life), but a place in Batiatus’s gladiatorial stable.
Solonius gave a short nod, the sculpted golden curls at the nape of his neck tumbling forward to frame his face. A stiff smile danced briefly across his features as if he wished to give the impression that the episode had been nothing but an amusing inconvenience.
“In an odd way, Spartacus’s victory favored me that day,” he murmured. “Losing the patronage of Albinius enabled me to gain that of one far greater.”
“How lucky for you,” Batiatus said casually, and wafted the fly-whisk in his hand. “It gladdens heart to know fortune’s abandonment of your cause was not permanent.”
Solonius half-turned and gestured across the square.
