Arena (7 page)

I thought it over, remembering Acte. “I believe so.”

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The famous philosopher nodded. “Such courage is admirable, though misguided. The Emperor is a dangerous foe. He is circuitous in his hatred. However, Rome could do with a trifle more courage of the kind you displayed. Especially in the Senate.”

“I tell you,” Serenus blurted hotly, “the Emperor’s cruelties will ruin us all! Already the rumors of his antics are the talk of Rome. What if he accidentally murders some poor wretch and we can’t hush it up?”

Slowly Seneca stroked his chin with a bony finger. “Worse, Serenus, what if he kills us? Then there would be none to check his excesses. Only yesterday, on the Palatine, Nero was ranting about wanting the status and veneration of a god. When I suggested that deification was reserved for rulers already departed, he took it as a threat, not a comment, the way I intended. He shrieked at me like a spoiled brat. Frankly, I often wish Claudius had been a little firmer in his dislike of the Stoic philosophy. Had he been, I might never have been recalled from exile to tutor Nero, and today I’d be living the kind of life I enjoy, not mixing my hands in politics, at best a dirty business. Well, tell me. What happened, and where?”

Serenus hitched himself nearer the wine. He poured another generous draught, downed it and said, “Sulla’s.” One more drink and a healthier color returned to his cheeks.

“We have gone there five nights in a row. The Emperor is so enamored of that little whore, I have no choice but to fawn over her and play her lover to divert public suspicion from him.

Otherwise his mother Agrippina and his wife Octavia would be stirring up more trouble than they are already. What a fine role for a man my age! Forced to giggle and joke over a prostitute!

Although,” he added, his features gentling, “other things aside, she’s pretty enough, and has a pleasant temper.”

From a tray Seneca broke sections of a loaf of bread and ate two. Then he extended the tray to me. I took a piece, knowing again the miracle of being rich. For this was not the cheap, coarsepanis sordidus of the streets, but the sweet and yeasty siligineus, which I had never tasted.

“Perhaps you wonder, Cassisus,” the philosopher said, “why we speak so frankly about the Emperor.”

“It’s not my position to say. I can only guess it’s because you sympathize with his weaknesses.”

Seneca laughed. “And it’s clear from your tone you don’t. Neither do we. Personally, I would much prefer to live the retired life I mentioned, writing plays and tending to my foreign estates, than capering on the Palatine. By my lights, life is a bad lot at best. It’s made bearable only by study and contemplation in solitude. On the other hand, Serenus and I both feel someone must attempt to curb the Emperor’s peculiar tastes and temper. We and his other chief adviser, the Prefect of the Praetorian Guard, Sextus Afranius Burrus, deplore his unbridled emotions, his egotism. But we bow and scrape to him because we’re fully aware of what the people’s lot would be if Nero ruled unchecked. So don’t think too harshly of Serenus for the company he keeps. We are, so to speak, watchdogs over a very rowdy and savage animal. How long we’ll be allowed to remain watchdogs, no one can say.”

Inwardly I felt contempt for the selflessness of these two men. How was it possible to make one’s way in Rome while worrying about the welfare of the masses? I said nothing, however.

Serenus grumbled, “Personally, I don’t intend to remain the butt of jokes in the Forum much longer. Nor serve as a screen for that mad boy’s passion for Acte.”

“Acte!” I blurted the word, my palms suddenly cold.

Seneca scrutinized me. “Yes. The young prostitute we mentioned. Do you know her?”

“She’s the one I went to Sulla’s to visit. Foolishly, it turned out.”

“Thus far you’ve said precious little about yourself, Cassius,” Serenus broke in. “Are you a freedman?”

“I was.” I decided to risk the truth. “I am auctorati, from the Bestiarii School.”

When this had penetrated, Serenus complained, “Oh, splendid. We have a fugitive on our hands.”

“How did this happen?” the philosopher asked. “Because of Acte, you ran away from the
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school?”

“Only for one night. I meant to return. Now it’s too late.”

With guarded words I told them that Acte and I had become acquainted when she visited the school. I described my nocturnal visit to Sulla’s as a lustful lark, rather than the agonizing experience it had turned out to be. At the end Seneca commented, “Certainly the fates weren’t kind when you decided on that particular girl. You’ve involved yourself in a very tangled affair.

The Emperor is already experiencing great difficulty with his mother Agrippina because he wishes to divorce his wife and marry his mistress.”

At last the dismal truth crushed home. “The Emperor has been seeing Acte a long while?”

“No, only a few weeks,” Serenus told me. “She’s not the mistress Seneca referred to. That’s a little yellow-haired strumpet named Poppaea Sabina. A divorcee who makes a specialty of bathing daily in the milk of young asses. The Emperor’s fancy for Acte is merely one more of his temporary passions, of which there seem to be hundreds. He’ll use her for what she’s worth, then discard her.”

And she’ll use him in turn, I thought bitterly. Why, I wondered, had she used me?

The gray-haired Prefect of the watch studied my expression, then coughed loudly. I must have appeared embarrassed, for he certainly did. The very fact that he was concerned at all over the feelings of a man of my station warmed me toward him. Rather gruffly, he said, “Truth to tell, Cassius, I like Acte a good deal. It’s only the role I’m forced to play that’s so damnable. I’m no more of a hot young lover than Seneca. But to prevent scandal it’s my duty to cavort like one. If it will assuage your poorly concealed bitterness any, I should report that I’ve talked with Acte enough to know she cares nothing for the Emperor. She’s merely patronizing him, trying to —”

“Please spare me further details, sir,” I said miserably. “I know what she’s trying to do.”

The learned philosopher rose to pace back and forth. He changed the subject. “So you’re in training as a bestiarius, eh?”

“That’s right, sir. I aim to win the wooden sword one day.”

Seneca looked dour. “I won’t bore you with too many personal opinions of your profession, except to say that there is no sportsmanship left in it. Barbarous punishment of criminals should not be turned into a spectacle. The games have also killed the art of conversation. No one today can talk of anything except the skill of various charioteers, the quality of the teams, or the details of some lewd exhibit held at a private circus.”

Waving his wine up, Serenus added, “Nero isn’t helping matters any. Have you heard some of his proposals for clever acts? Sheer filth.”

After a pause indicating tacit agreement, Seneca said to the Prefect, “I assume we owe this young man an appropriate reward for helping you.”

“Definitely,” was the reply. I grew tense. “To have been picked up by one of my own vigiles —

Well, I’d have been laughed out of Rome.”

“And therefore totally useless as a moderating influence upon the Emperor. Cassius? Name your reward.”

A wild, unreasonable gamble took shape in my head as he spoke. What had I to lose? This morning — warm, the sun falling into the atrium’s light well, sifting through the tablinium hangings — I had tasted the sweet bread of nobility. And only last night I had come dangerously close to forgetting my vow to be an eques.

I said carefully, “Honored gentlemen, any reward I claim would do me no good, since I escaped the school to go on my little errand of the flesh, and can’t get back in.”

My heart leaped when Serenus waved. “Don’t let that concern you. We’ll think of some way around that.”

I was skirting the edge of a precipice now, and unable to turn back. “Then I ask nothing for the present. I’ll take my reward in the future. One day, when I win the wooden sword, I mean to found a second beast school in Rome. One which will restore the good name of the profession. I have the ambition to do it, but certain obstacles block me.”

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With a gentle smile Seneca said, “You have ambition and a measure of honor both, it appears.

Continue.”

“No doubt I’m far too presumptuous in asking this. Yet my highest reward would not be money, but words. I know both you gentlemen must be intimate with influential people in the banking world. I’ll need funds for the school. An introduction, a helpful word — that would be enough. If you gentlemen could open certain doors that might otherwise be closed to one born as I was, I would be forever grateful.”

For a considerable time neither spoke. Distantly through the house rang the voices of the slaves, preparing the morning meal and doing menial chores. The silence of the two men I took to mean refusal, the rejection of an upstart who had asked for too costly a prize.

Then Serenus chuckled.

“This Cassius is a find. There’s a certain wolfish greed shining in his eyes. But unlike so many in Rome, he looks like he has the wit and muscle to back up his swaggering air. Further, he has imagination. Or don’t you think so, Seneca?”

“Certainly the games are popular,” the philosopher agreed, but not happily. “And growing larger and more ostentatious month by month.” The games appear to be the only means the Emperor can find to divert the minds of his subjects from his debaucheries. “However,” Seneca said, “while I don’t agree with your ambition, I agree that you must be rewarded. If my help in securing a loan for a sound business venture is what you wish, you shall have that help at the appropriate time.”

So overwhelmed was I by the luck of my thrust, my wild gamble that had suddenly opened the future again, I barely heard the Prefect tell me, “Come to think of it, Cassius, if your scheme is more than sheer talk, I might be interested myself. As a silent partner, of course. Lately I’ve been so occupied at the Palatine, I’ve devoted hardly any attention to business. My affairs haven’t precisely prospered. I might have another valuable contact for you, in the person of a decurion in the city of Iol Caesaria, in Africa. I met him at a dinner while he was visiting in Rome last summer, and we became fast friends. Ah, but that’s the future, isn’t it?”

The future, yes, but it quickened my imagination. A decurion — the provincial noble charged with governing an Imperial province overseas — could be of invaluable help in securing unique animals for any school with which he was connected. Seneca broke in on these grandiose visions.

“In the present, however, we’re faced with the necessity of secretly returning you to the Bestiarii School. It’s almost the second hour already.”

I told them that usually, Fabius did not disturb or call us out for practice until the middle of that second hour, preferring his pupils to be well rested when they faced the animals. Serenus and Seneca conferred briefly. They decided the latter was the appropriate person to smuggle me back into the school, though Seneca obviously had no taste for the task. Serenus’ appearance when wounded would excite too much attention.

Serenus said thoughtfully, “It may sound odd coming from me, but perhaps I can tell Fabius the Emperor appointed me to look into the hiring of some bestiarii for a future show. Let’s try it, anyway. I’ll see about a litter.”

He strode into the atrium. I reached for a last piece of the sweet siligineus, to fix in my memory its exact taste. That taste mattered more to me now than the flavor of a whore’s mouth. When I had finished eating, Serenus clasped my hand.

“Consider our promise of help firm, not fanciful, Cassius. The rewards for a man in Rome these days, even a man who begins low on the rungs, are great. Provided he doesn’t trouble his soul overmuch about how he makes his wealth.”

“That won’t concern me, I assure you, sir.”

“The arena is dangerous. More so every day. But I have the feeling that if any can make it, you will be one.”

“If desire alone is the standard, then I will.”

From the atrium Seneca called that the litter was ready. Serenus said,“Vale!” I returned the
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word, believing that the grizzled Prefect meant his wish for good luck seriously.

Outside the slave entrance at the rear of the house, I crawled into an uncomfortable position at the rear of the large closed litter. Only then did Seneca summon forth his bearers, tall Cappadocians, and his way-clearers, youths with white wands. We set off through the streets.

From the increasing babble, it was clear that the usual host of parasitic clients seeking favors from Seneca trailed along behind.

There was a tense moment when the guard at the school gate peered inside, but he jumped back deferentially at sight of the patrician profile of the litter’s occupant. The litter bumped to the ground near a shadowy arcade. Seneca clambered out and hurried off to locate Fabius. I slipped out the other side and gained my quarters without detection.

Yet on the ride back my heart had grown heavy again.

Say what I might, I still loved Acte with a helpless passion beyond all reason. Loved her even though she was as scheming, as dishonest, as the basest whore in Rome.

I staggered out of my cell, pretending to have just wakened. I wondered dismally what bad luck such a helpless, hopeless passion would bring me in the days ahead.

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SEVERAL NIGHTS LATER, Syrax slipped into my cell at the school after dark. He gave a mocking salute, then produced from behind his back a small amphora which he set beside me.

“Taste it,” he ordered. His sly olive face shone in the lamp flame. “Though not too deeply just yet. Originally I had two jugs. One went to the clod guarding the end of the hall, to ensure our privacy.”

In response I glowered at him. He sighed.

“Well, since you refuse, I’ll drink. But you’re passing up a good thing. That seems to be your habit. This is Falernian.” He tilted the amphora to his lips.

“Oh, certainly, Falernian. It’s probably vinegar. Where could you get nobleman’s wine?”