round. The herbs which Mantilus had daily been adding to the water supplies of both his rivals’ ludii should have reduced their gladiators to little more than shambling wrecks. He blinked and rubbed his face, unable to comprehend what had gone wrong. He felt unaccountably dazed by it all, oddly distanced, almost as if he was subconsciously trying to deny what was taking place before his very eyes, or as if his mind was trying to convince him that the whole appalling experience was nothing but a terrible dream.
He looked around. His surroundings seemed thick and soupy, the very air seeming to shimmer and coil like oil in water. He had the odd sense that he was moving in slow motion. Perhaps he had absorbed too much sun? He reached for his water cup and gulped at it greedily. Surprised to find it empty, he held it out for more. It was refilled by Athenais, the Greek slave he had bought as a gift for his friend, Crassus. He caught her eye, and saw that she was looking at him intently. He had a feeling he should have known what that look meant, or at least been able to guess, but his thoughts felt too heavy, too vague, like dark shapes rendered indefinable by swirling mist. He heard a roar from the crowd-a muzzy, dragging, nightmarish sound in his ears. He looked down into the arena, trying to focus. Another bout had begun. He hadn’t even heard the announcement. It was as if events were melting together, blending into one.
He tried to concentrate on the moving shapes, to make sense of the blur of action, the clash of swords and shields. He blinked and rubbed at his face again. He was alarmed to find that he could not even discern which men belonged to him, and which to his rivals. He saw a gladiator fall, cut almost in half by a helmeted man with an ax. He was half-aware of Brutilius and Batiatus leaping to their feet, a cry of triumph erupting from Batiatus’s lips. He rubbed at his limbs, which felt hollow and full of aches and shivers. Perhaps he was coming down with a fever. He took another gulp of water and turned to Crassus.
“What gladiator falls?” he asked. There was no reply, and he wondered whether he had spoken the words too quietly. He tried again. “What gladiator falls?”
This time his voice was too loud. It seemed to boom not just in his ears, but around the arena. Suddenly Hieronymus felt that all eyes were on him. Paranoid, he looked down at his sandaled feet, barely able to suppress the feverish shudders that were now rippling through his body. He heard Crassus’s voice, full of spite and sharp edges, each word like a separate knife blade dragged across his prickly, tender flesh.
“You ask who falls?”
“I … I did not see,” Hieronymus said. He gestured vaguely above him. His arm felt weightless and far too heavy, both at the same time. “The sun … my eyes …”
“You do not recognize despoiled wretch who bears your own mark?” Crassus’s voice dripped with contempt. “Yet one more in a long line to fall within moments of setting foot upon sands. Your men embarrass you this day, Hieronymus. As you do me by association in the supplying of cattle in guise of gladiators. To call oneself lanista beyond these games would take great courage. Tattered whores from the streets could make more competent show at the task.”
“I … I …” Hieronymus said weakly, but whatever words he wanted to express lay stillborn. He looked down at his feet again, in an effort to concentrate, but he quite simply could not connect the blundering thoughts in his mind.
“Have decency enough to face me when addressed,” Crassus snapped.
Hieronymus raised his head to do as Crassus had asked, the action making him dizzy. He blinked at his friend, but at first the Roman’s imperious features were nothing but a dark blur, framed by the sun. Then Crassus shifted slightly, blocking the sun, and his face sharpened into crystal clarity …
Hieronymus screamed.
The sound was girlish, high-pitched, attracting startled looks from Brutilius and his wife, and stares and laughter from the crowd. But the merchant didn’t care. All that concerned him at that moment was getting away from the creature that was sitting beside him. Because it was not his friend Marcus Crassus who was looming over him, but a snarling wolf wearing the toga of a Roman nobleman. The fact that the wolf had human hands was of no comfort whatsoever. In fact, it seemed to make the whole thing much worse somehow.
The wolf opened its mouth to speak, and Hieronymus saw long yellow teeth slick with drool. The breath of the creature was rank, a hellish stench of rotting meat. Whimpering, the Greek merchant tried to scramble away from it, and succeeded only in tumbling from his chair, and sprawling on the floor at the feet of Brutilius and his wife. Flailing wildly, his hand slapped down on, and then grabbed, Brutilius’s wife’s leg, prompting her to release a little squeal of alarm.
The wolf snarled and snapped at him again, its eyes rolling in fury. A guttural, distorted voice came from deep within its throat: “Have you not disgraced yourself enough? Do you seek to lower status yet further with such antics?”
As the wolf reached for him, long curved claws springing from the ends of its human fingers, as if to rend and tear at his flesh, Hieronymus screamed again and scrambled away. He crawled over the feet of his fellow guests within the pulvinus, and over their lunch debris: bones, olive stones, half-eaten pieces of fruit and discarded chunks of bread.
Now other creatures were leaning down toward him- not his fellow lanistae and their guests, but the evil spirits which had replaced them, and which he felt certain were preparing to feast on his flesh. He gibbered and curled into a ball as one of them spoke.
“Hieronymus is unwell,” a voice said.
“An imbalance of humors, distress of his humiliation the cause perhaps,” another suggested.
Now a third shade spoke, its voice softer, but laced with a delicious glee at his misfortune.
“Perhaps sun is to blame, its heat roasting skull and scrambling thought.” There was a pause, and then, as though calling forth all the tortures of Tartarus, the same soft-voiced shade said, “Bring more water for Hieronymus. Quickly.”
Water. It was something about the manner in which the shade gave the order-with such sadistic relish, with such a
“Water,” he croaked in horror.
The soothing voice of the shade came again.
“Patience, dear Hieronymus. Did I not tell you we would cater to every need? If you desire water, then you shall have it.”
Before he knew what was happening, Hieronymus felt a hard edge-the rim of a cup-being pressed to his lips and cold liquid splashing into his mouth and running down his face. He recoiled, lurching away with such force that the back of his head cracked against something hard. Through the sudden, unexpected pain he heard cries of alarm intermingled with soothing words. He spat what he could of the foul liquid from his mouth, but some had already trickled down his throat, making him splutter and cough. As the cup was pressed against his mouth for a second time he dashed it away, to more cries of protest and alarm.
“The water,” he said again. “You … you have
A face came close to his. He recognized it as belonging to Batiatus, though it was stretching and twisting constantly before his sight. Eyes alight with glee, the face grinned, displaying far too many teeth.
“Poison, good Hieronymus?” it laughed. “Surely you are in grip of delusion. All I supply is kindness, with provision of water from mountain stream supplying my ludus. It flows with the utmost purity. One could not imagine such stream running afoul. Could one?”
XV
It was almost time. Spartacus and Varro sat side by side, silent now, each enmeshed in his own thoughts. Both men were well aware that in less than an hour they would either be revered heroes, the crowd stamping their feet and chanting their names, or utterly forgotten, their broken bodies tipped into the stinking charnel house of the spoliarium, their blood mingling with that not only of other slaves and gladiators, but also of criminals and
