“Such fine specimens of Mars,” he cried. “Such deadly creatures in the arena. Tomorrow they will draw blood in memory of Pelorus. Tomorrow they shall fight in the primus, to avenge his death!”
Amid further cheers, Batiatus signaled the band, and the music began once more. As Spartacus and his fellow gladiators left the stage, the dancing girls arrived, tinkling with bells and cymbals, sparkling in the bronze light, their skins bearing the starry sparkle of mica rubbed into oil.
The men in the crowd cheered even louder than they had cheered for the gladiators, pushing toward the stage, while Batiatus detected a distinct rush of soft silks toward food and drink as the women found other diversions.
Seeing no sign of Lucretia or Ilithyia, Batiatus turned instead to watch the stage, as the girls writhed in time to the music. He ignored their pert breasts and glittering skin, and did not dwell on the shadows of their thighs or the curves of their bottoms. Instead, he looked at their faces with the practiced eye of a slaver. The girls jutted their hips in time with the music, curling their hands in gestures of erotic symbolism, but Batiatus watched instead for the look in their eyes.
This one had the sullen, dead stare of a beast of burden. That one curled her lip as if her every moment on stage was distasteful to her. Perhaps it was, but that was of no concern to Batiatus. Another kept her lips pressed grimly together, concentrating on her movements as if her life depended on it. Perhaps it did-Batiatus saw the telltale welts of a corrective whip on her shoulders, and suspected that her dancing skills came at a price. The fourth, however, the fourth had it all. Long blonde braids fell below her waist. Bright blue eyes, the mark of a northern savage, glittered in the light from bronze mirrors. Her skin was milky white, in stark contrast to the dusky, tanned flesh of most of the other slave women present. She weaved sinuously on the stage, a bright smile upon her lips, her eyes shining beneath her tiara. She saw Batiatus watching her and tongued suggestively at her upper lip. Their eyes met momentarily, before the next turn of her dance took her away from his line of sight.
“She favors you,” Timarchides said, who had appeared, unnoticed, by his side.
“As she will any man for a price,” Batiatus laughed. “Even you!”
Timarchides said nothing, and Batiatus laughed too long, in an attempt to make it clear it was a joke.
“Cheer yourself,” Batiatus said. “Soon you must purchase slaves of your own.”
“Indeed,” the freedman conceded. “But I shall be sure to buy local stock.
“Local slaves with heads rammed right up their own asses, like other eunuchs in this crowd,” Batiatus commented.
“Their response gave surprise?” he asked.
“Capua was once the greatest city in Italia.”
“Remind me again why it cannot still make that claim,” Timarchides said, his eyes fixed on the gyrating dancers. One half-heartedly held out her arms to him, as if entreating him to embrace her, but he met her gaze without expression, and she turned away with the next phrase of the music.
“Were it not for Rome…”
“Or
“You twist events long past.”
“I merely repeat facts.”
“Some have died for repeating less as fact.”
“Capua boasts of its champions, but it is nothing but a city of sheep. Its heroes ignorant of true conflict, with knowledge only of the staged victories of the arena. The road to redemption is one fraught with difficulties for citizens of Capua. Though one supposes even the most craven cowards might better themselves in time, with enough luck and virtue.”
“I see,” Batiatus said stiffly.
“And what do you see?”
“You speak with tongue wet with only days of freedom. Merely because your freedom permits you to speak without being whipped for your insolence, Timarchides, does not mean that you should spit out any bile that springs to mind.” His gaze darted around in search of Barca, who could always be trusted to protect him in times of trouble, but Barca was already gone, assuredly already marching back to his cell. “The clarity of the language you speak. Your very ability to complain with such concision is a benefit to you from the Latin world. As is your freedom to whimper like a pup without being slapped like one.”
The music and merriment thrummed around them as they stared expectantly, each at the other. Batiatus tensed, wondering how long he would have to ward off any blows before someone came to his aid. His heart pounded, his fists trembled.
And then Timarchides laughed.
“You must forgive me, good Batiatus,” he said. “I am, as you so bluntly observed, only recently liberated, and not yet used to the chains of manners that still constrict the free.”
“There is time,” Batiatus replied, somewhat confused at the sudden change in tone from his companion. He patted Timarchides on the arm in an attempt at camaraderie, and turned away in search of friendlier conversation.
VII
Bebryx snored fitfully in the corner, his breathing labored, one hand clutched protectively at the seeping bandage on his shoulder. Empty wine flasks were scattered all around him.
Varro shook one experimentally, then hurled it at the wall. It bounced, noisily, but Bebryx did not stir.
“Bebryx has been defeated by wine,” Varro mused. “It has laid him lower than this morning’s combat.”
Barca ignored him and stretched out by the dwindling fire. Varro hunched sulkily by the embers, and watched as Spartacus lay back on a bundle of straw.
“Fine living can wound a man as easily as hunger,” Spartacus observed. “As deadly as a spear.”
Varro smirked, and poked at the fire.
“Perhaps,” he said.
“And perhaps,” Spartacus asserted, “Rome will be brought down from the inside. Not by barbarian threats, but by honey and cured meats.”
“You know nothing, my Thracian friend,” Varro said smiling. “Such luxuries are the rewards for Roman virtue. They do no harm in moderation, for the residents of Roma Aeterna, the eternal city.”
“Nothing is eternal. Not even Rome,” Spartacus said. “There will come a time, some day, when Rome is a distant memory, like the Egyptian Thebes or Barca’s Carthage.” Barca scowled at him, but listened. “Some day they will wonder at the ‘glory’ that was once Rome.”
“Then glory, too, is eternal,” Varro protested. “They will see our roads and aqueducts, our statues and our temples, and they will see a republic grander than any other.”
“You see bricks and marble, and Republican finery. But I see the brick-maker, the stone-carver, the weavers and water-carriers. Rome does not rest on victorious laurels or noble sentiments. It rests upon millions of slaves.”
“So speaks the ant as he carries a leaf back to the nest. Sure of his importance.”
“A great nation can fall. Ask Barca what became of Carthage. What is Carthage now but barren ruins in Africa?”
“Carthage had no divine destiny,” Varro insisted.
“And Rome does?”
