Fighting Fit (10 page)

“I love you, Pater,” Aurelia called desperately. “I always loved you!”

I heard desolate howls from Minerva’s kennel as we were led away.

The guards marched us through the early morning streets.

Aurelia was looking around her, wide-eyed, as if she had suddenly realised how beautiful her world was. The sun was rising and birds sang joyfully from hidden gardens. The air was full of mingled scents; roses from the flower market, eye-watering fumes from the street of the leather workers, heady incense from a shrine.

I was trying hard not to think about what would happen when we stopped marching and reached our destination. I just put one foot in front of the other; left right, left right.

People kept calling out to know why we’d been arrested.

“We bagged us a few more Christians!” a guard shouted back cheerfully.

The mood immediately darkened. “Filthy vermin,” a woman screamed. One man spat in our faces. “You’re going to die today, Christian scum!”

Outside a semi-derelict apartment block, people pelted us with rotting fruit, and someone started throwing stones. Everyone despised us, the guards included.

“I don’t understand people like you,” a guard said contemptuously to Aurelia. “We’ve got perfectly good Roman gods and goddesses. But you have to have your own special god, it makes me sick.”

“Why do you care which god she worships, man?” Reuben asked. “She’s not dissing yours, is she?”

“Reuben!” I hissed. “You’re not meant to hold philosophical discussions with the guards.”

The guard was still ranting. “All Christians are in league with the barbarian hordes. You want to burn Rome down around our ears.”

When we reached the amphitheatre, crowds of Romans were already queuing to go in. We were taken to a row of cells and a guard booted us in through a door. I just had time to see the gruesome straw on the floor, then the door slammed behind us and we were plunged into total darkness.

We’ll be fine, I told myself. Any time now, that door will open and Orlando will walk in.

But when we finally heard the bolts being dragged back, hours later, a security guy stood in the doorway grinning unpleasantly. “Let’s be having you!” he said.
“
Mustn’t keep those hungry pussy cats waiting.”

“No,” said his mate with a leer, “we’ve been starving them specially.”

Other Christians were being dragged from neighbouring cells. We were chained together like dangerous criminals and kicked and prodded along a low gloomy tunnel.

We stumbled along, our eyes fixed on the white blaze of sunlight at the far end. Fifty-thousand brutal voices surged to meet us, all chanting the same word over and over. “Kill! Kill! Kill!”

Aurelia suddenly missed her footing but Reuben and I quickly steadied her. “I know it doesn’t seem like it, but we’re going to be OK,” I told her.

My mistress’s voice trembled, but her face was calm. “Other martyrs have died for their faith,” she said bravely. “And I know I will soon be reunited with my mother in Heaven.”

When the crowd saw us emerge, blinking and confused in the pitiless midday sun, they howled with excitement. I was still clinging to the hope that Orlando would stage some fabulous last-minute rescue. If so, he was leaving it desperately late. I stared wildly around the amphitheatre. Where are all the angels? I wondered.

Two gates flew open and thirty or more lions exploded into the arena. I assumed they were lions. I just heard furious roars and saw a blur of gold. Then my world suddenly went into slow-mo, and everything was in nightmare close-up; wild yellow eyes with tawny flecks, fleshy crimson tongues, bared fangs drooling saliva.

When I smelled their hot breath on my face, I squeezed my eyes shut and flung my arms around Aurelia. It was the only way I could think of to protect her; some crazy idea that I could at least slow the ravenous beasts down. In that moment I relived every piece of wildlife film footage featuring lions and helpless baby animals that I’d ever seen on TV. I didn’t just
see
it. I was getting Dolby surround sound. The juicy ripping of muscle. The splintering of bone…

But the seconds ticked by and there was no ripping or splintering.

The crowd had gone oddly silent. Even the lions had gone quiet. Their roaring had been replaced by a bizarre rumbling, like the throbbing engines of a very old bus. Amazed laughter rippled round the amphitheatre.

I opened my eyes and found myself looking at a scene from a particularly magical dream.

Reuben was standing in the centre of a circle of lions, completely unharmed. The beasts gazed back at him with adoring expressions. The rumbling was the purring of thirty blissed-out lions.

Aurelia’s eyes were full of awe. “It’s a miracle!” she breathed.

When
will
you learn, Mel Beeby? I asked myself. We don’t need angels to help us. We ARE the angels!

And at that moment the audience went wild. All around the amphitheatre, Romans jumped to their feet: slaves, citizens, senators, men, women and children. All because of a honey-coloured angel-boy with dreads.

They
love
him, I thought tearfully. They absolutely love him even though they think he’s a Christian!

A worrying thought occurred to me. Shouldn’t all these people have their thumbs UP? But every where I looked, people were jabbing their thumbs in a sharp, unmistakably downward direction. They still want us to die! I thought in despair. Then my heart gave a leap as I heard what everyone was yelling.

“FREE THEM! FREE THEM!!”

It turned out that those Hollywood movies had it totally wrong. In Roman times, the thumbs-up gesture
actually
meant, “Stab him in the jugular!”

An official in a toga approached the barrier, keeping as far away as possible from the lions. “Hey, you kids! Get over here,” he called. “His Imperial Majesty wants to meet you.”

The Emperor Nero had seen the whole thing!

Normally I’d have panicked at the prospect of meeting a real live emperor, particularly one as cruel and decadent as Nero, but we’d just survived wild lions so by this time we were up for anything.

We were marched into the Emperor’s presence between hefty Praetorian guards.

Considering he was the head of the biggest empire the ancient world had ever known, Nero wasn’t that impressive. He had practically no chin and his eyes were such a pale blue, that you could hardly detect the colour. He was wearing what appeared to be a squalid old dressing-gown spattered with crusty splodges of food. But though he might not have the looks or the gorgeous robes, Nero had the imperial attitude all right.

His gaze flickered over me and Aurelia, as if we were little dung beetles, unworthy of his attention. Then he saw Reuben, and a greedy glitter lit up his eyes.

“We live in wondrous times,” he said, “so wondrous that the mighty Nero is willing to make a bargain with a Christian slave boy. Teach me how to make lions love me, and I’ll let you and your little girlfriends go free.”

I immediately knew where Nero was coming from. He’d just witnessed a despised slave performing a feat that no ordinary human could possibly have done, not even an all-powerful emperor. Now he was desperate to have this magical gift for himself. If Nero could get wild lions to worship him, his people would think he was some kind of god!

Of course, that was never going to happen.

Reuben was firm in the way only a pure angel can be. “Sorry, that won’t be possible,” he said politely.

I’d have said the Emperor was borderline normal up till this point. But the instant Reubs turned him down, I felt him switch.

Nero didn’t start to froth at the mouth, or bark like a dog, he just went very
very
still, but you could feel something dark seething inside him. “Take them out of my sight!” he commanded the guards. “They bore me.”

Aurelia gasped. “But what will happen to us?”

“I haven’t quite decided,” said the Emperor in an irritated voice. “But throwing you to wild animals is obviously out. What do you think, my friends?” he called over his shoulder.

My heart sank as Titus and Quintus hurried forward. Nero drew them into a huddle. “How shall I kill the Christian children?” he asked them petulantly.

“Easy!” said Titus in his high voice. “Put them in the ring with trained gladiators!”

The Emperor let out a mad titter. “Excellent idea! Take them to the dungeons. Tomorrow the gods can decide their fate.”

Chapter Nine

T
he sun was setting as the guards marched us through the city. In households all over Rome, people were cooking their suppers. The air was hazy with wood-smoke and I kept catching savoury whiffs of frying fish and onions. Once I looked up and saw a woman on a balcony, hushing her new baby to sleep.

As we tramped through twilit streets, the Christians sang to keep up their spirits. Early Christian hymns were surprisingly uplifting, nothing like the dirges we sang at my human high school. Reuben and I soon found ourselves joining in. Then we taught them to sing Reuben’s song, “We’re not alone! The Christians picked it up really quickly, in fact they actually put a cool little Roman spin on it. But we were attracting too much attention from passersby and the guards got nervous and told us to shut up.

We were just passing the Temple of Vesta. A door stood open between two lofty stone pillars. I caught a glimpse of rich velvety darkness inside and the golden flicker of the sacred flame. The smell of incense wafted towards me. Suddenly, I had to pinch myself. Coming down the steps towards me, dressed in the tunic and veil of a Vestal virgin, was ANOTHER Aurelia!

For an instant everything seemed to shimmer: the girl in her gauzy white veil, the beautiful temple, the violet sky with its pinpricks of stars -then Aurelia’s double vanished into the crowd like a dream.

“Aurelia! I’ve just seen your absolute spitting image!!” I babbled.

“No talking!” barked one of the guards.

Aurelia looked bewildered. “You saw someone who looks like me?” she whispered.

“She’s so like you it’s spooky,” I whispered back. “And she’s a Vestal virgin, just like you once wanted to be. Isn’t that amazing?”

She stared at me wide-eyed.

“That must be why you always felt something was missing,” I told her excitedly. “Perhaps you really
are
a twin!”

Aurelia’s eyes brimmed with tears. “Even if you’re right, I’m not going to live long enough to meet her.”

“No, it’s going to work out, I swear!” I promised. “I can
feel
it, Aurelia! It’s like, there’s this beautiful mosaic forming and we’re all a part of it, but we’re too close to see the pattern.”

It was true. I could feel all the gorgeous multicoloured pieces coming together around us. Of course, I had no idea how complex this particular mosaic would turn out to be…

That night Orlando sprang us from the dungeons. I have NO idea how he got hold of those Praetorian guards’ uniforms but my angelic colleagues made brilliantly convincing guardsmen. No one even challenged us! The real guards were totally convinced that their dungeons were impregnable, so they were just chilling out in the guard-room, drinking wine and playing backgammon. We basically sneaked out right under their noses!

The Christians naturally assumed that Orlando and his team belonged to the early Christian underground. They thanked him warmly then quickly melted away into the night.

“We’d better lie low,” I told Orlando. “By tomorrow every Praetorian guard in this city will be looking for us, not to mention Nero’s secret police.”

“We’re taking you back to the ludus with us,” said Orlando. “We’ve got a wagon waiting a couple of streets away.”

“The minute Festus Brutus sees us, he’ll turn us over to the authorities,” I objected.

Orlando shook his head. “It was Festus who lent us the wagon. He might seem rough and ready, but his heart is in the right place.”

Aurelia was chatting animatedly to some of our rescuers, so I took the opportunity to tell Orlando about my amazing discovery. “I saw this girl on the way here,” I said eagerly. “She’s a Vestal virgin and I’m not exaggerating, she could be Aurelia’s identical twin!!”

My voice faded as I saw Orlando’s expression. He
knew
, I thought. Orlando knew Aurelia had a twin all along.

The lanista lived in a comfortable apartment behind the training school. A slave showed us into a brightly-painted room where Festus Brutus was doing Roman-style calculations at his desk. A grizzled old dog lay at his feet, looking as bad-tempered and battle-scarred as the lanista himself.

“Just a minute,” Festus barked as we came in. “These taxes will be the death of me.”

We waited while he finished scribbling numerals on a wax tablet using a sharp metal stylus. I looked around with cautious interest. There was a couch heaped with leopard and zebra skins, probably booty from various games. All around the walls, an artist had painted scenes of gory gladiatorial combat. Alongside the usual offerings in the household shrine, was a simple wooden sword. I knew from Reuben that this was a “rudis”. A lanista would give this symbolic sword to a gladiator on the day he finally bought his freedom.