Spartacus: Swords and Ashes

She stepped from the shrine back to the green-walled atrium, her husband scurrying to keep up with her. She looked around for some sign of her slave Naevia, hoping to busy herself on some ladies’ business that Batiatus would find tedious.

“A terrible thing for Pelorus, but a thing of opportunity for us!” Batiatus protested, slapping the papyrus for emphasis. “We only need send a few gladiators, and the very nature of the event assures them all of victory.”

“Do you not think this one last insult from Pelorus? To force you to make haste across Campania on some pointless enterprise of maintenance, little better than sweeping up behind horse? Has that man not cost you enough time?”

“We have but time to waste, beloved. All Capua is in mourning for the… tragic death of Ovidius. Preventing indulgence in the celebration of our recent victory until nine long days have passed.”

“And you would pass day in other town, until our own offers warmer clime?”

“My thought exact. Let Spartacus, Barca and a few promising recruits take to the sun, far from the cloud of Ovidius and the pale of his death.”

“All to scrape coin?”

“A much needed infusion. And, of course, the chance to bid proper farewell to good Pelorus.”

“And what of it to you, if his funeral passes without remark?”

“I care not a shit for his departure from this world,” Batiatus said. “But let us show decorum befitting of this noble house and lend grace to his disgraced house.”

“Quintus, must we?”

“We were mutual hospes! His threshold was as our own, should we ever have crossed it.”

“An opportunity of which we seldom availed ourselves. Nor he with us.”

“He shall surely be laid to rest before the calends of October, but three days’ hence!”

“Then you had best depart immediately. Lest he be set aflame before you arrive.”

“Lucretia, please!”

“He resides in Neapolis, Quintus! Or had you forgotten?”

“Since when do you not care for Neapolis? And the opportunity it allows to part with coin? To say nothing of the sea air,” he protested.

“It smells of rotten eggs.”

“The friendly local citizens?” Batiatus suggested.

“Quarreling Greek refugees and fishwives.”

Something flashed in the sky, like the glint of a sword in the sun. Batiatus paid it no heed, his eyes locked on his wife, entreating Lucretia to offer some iota of spousal support.

“The broad sweep of the bay. Those sparkling waters,” he pleaded.

“Muggy in summer. Choppy in winter.”

“And here we are, swiftly approaching harvest and equinox! An auspicious occasion to visit.”

Batiatus paused, a broad, winning smile on his face begging his wife to acknowledgment. As if to spite him, there was a distant rumble of thunder on the Capuan hills. A drip of errant drizzle dashed against his cheek, then another.

Lucretia held out her hand inquisitively, craning her head out into the open space of the atrium. She stared up at the low, gray clouds overhead.

“Is that rain?” she mused.

“Impossible,” Batiatus replied.

Behind him, the waters of the atrium pond showed dots of activity. Points of water flecked on the previously calm surface, the impact of unseen raindrops. Across the courtyard, Lucretia saw silent flecks of rain dashing against the upper walls, freckling the brown clay plaster into a deeper shade of red.

There was another flash of lightning, and a crackle of thunder almost immediately after it.

Batiatus glanced behind him in annoyance, in time to see the drizzle shift to a downpour, churning the waters of the atrium pond into a rough sea, spattering the green inner walls a murky dark gray. Batiatus shivered involuntarily, and realized that the lower hem of his toga was already drenched.

“Jupiter’s cock!” he shouted, snatching his robe from its puddle.

Lucretia turned from the rain’s chill, gliding back toward the antechambers of the house.

“Jupiter Pluvius, the divine bringer of rain, himself counsels a roof over your head, Quintus,” she called, not looking back at her husband.

“All summer I prayed only for rain,” admitted Batiatus. “Now I tire of it.”

“Then rest indoors and wait for such storms to pass.”

“This storm? It is but trifle,” Batiatus declared.

“As is all unwelcome change. Be it by men or gods.”

Their upraised voices echoed through the house, but did not travel to the outer gardens. The rain saw to that, pelting onto the Capuan clifftop with increasing volume, until it drowned out all other sounds in a relentless rattle. It pattered on the leaves of the formerly parched trees. It drummed on the cracked ground. It tapped an irritating, unceasing tempo on the waxed tarpaulin of the litter that approached the house of Batiatus.

The four bearers, one shouldering each end of the two carrying poles, struggled with each step to maintain their footing. Feet used to the reliable, measured flagstones of the Appian Way scraped and slipped on treacherous dips and uncleared tree-roots. Three of the slaves did not even look up, crouching their heads beneath their sodden hoods and concentrating merely on putting one foot in front of the other. Only the lead bearer, standing at front-right, exposed his head to the rain, squinting through the storm in case of oncoming traffic.

The litter and its bearers had no other company on the remote track. They plodded on through the rain, their pace picking up as the welcoming lights loomed nearer. The cargo was light, barely noticeable to accomplished porters, such that when the leader called halt, the litter was raised off their shoulders and lowered to the ground with ease.

Within the courtyard of the Batiatus villa, shadowy figures scurried to the portal. The occupant of the litter stirred, placing a foot gingerly on the damp ground. A figure substantially smaller than the vast man’s cloak that wrapped it scampered through the storm toward the entrance of the house itself, and the indistinct sound of a couple in the middle of an argument.

“It is inconvenient,” Lucretia said.

“Inconvenient!” Batiatus yelled in response.

He inhaled sharply through his teeth, raising his arms up in exasperation at the walls around him. He glared hotly at a wall of painted finches and songbirds, and thought meanly of roasting them on spits.

“It is inconvenient that my prize gladiator lays pierced with hole the size of Rome’s Cloaca Maxima, unable to enter the arena any time soon.”

“I realize that,” Lucretia said carefully. “It grieves me. It grieves me sorely that Crixus is-”

“It is inconvenient,” Batiatus interrupted, “that this ludus has but one opportunity to secure coin in coming month and it lays forty-five thousand paces from this place, in a miserable, stinking, boy- loving, infestation of Greeks!”

“I thought we liked Neapolis?” Lucretia said with the faintest of smiles.

“I despise Neapolis!” Batiatus spat. “A filthy backwater population brimming with smug merchants, pushy beggars, and unruly street urchins, built upon slope toward sea. Every journey a torment of travel uphill, through fucking stone stairways.”

“Surely you must travel downhill at least half the time, beloved?”

“And yet, all directions lead uphill.”

“Now who defies reason?”

“Pelorus was a dear friend,” Batiatus said.

“You loathed each other,” Lucretia responded.

“As siblings squabble over pets, we tussled over gladiators. Though given predilections of my Capuan