The Gladiator's Mistress (Champions of Rome) (22 page)

“He is not my real father.”

“I know that. You know that. He knows that. But the rest of Rome is none the wiser.”

Valens pulled Phaedra down on the bed. “It is a nice idea, Love. But it cannot work.”

“Why would it not work? Unless you do not want to marry me, that is.”

“Of course I want you. I have wanted you as mine, my wife, since that first time I saw you. But what you suggest is impossible.”

She struggled out of his grasp and sat up. “Tell me why.”

“No one has agreed to any of this, for one.”

“We have yet to speak to them. Once we do, they will agree.”

Covering his eyes with his arm again, Valens lay without moving, without breathing. He looked at her from behind his arm. “Do you think your father would agree?”

“If you agree to provide the proof he needs to secure his place in the Senate, he will. But do not give anything to him directly. He will spend it all.”

Valens stared at the ceiling. His slow breaths were the only sound in the room. “This might work. Could we actually be together? Could we? Would you love me even if I am not the Champion of Rome?”

“I will. But will you love me when I have turned old and fat and all our children are grown and gone?”

“I will love you all the more then, because we will have gotten old and fat together.”

Phaedra kissed him. “If we are to be together, we must make it happen now. I will speak to my father tomorrow. You must speak to Paullus first thing, as well. We will have to act, each of us without knowing if the other is successful or not.”

“I will, but with one condition.”

She had come to hate conditions and bargains. “Yes?”

“You let me sleep for a while. I worked harder with you than I did in the arena and am now exhausted.”

Phaedra agreed and rested back in Valens’s arms. He had defeated death today and must certainly do so twice more. They were favored by the gods! Her plan for them to be together would work. She knew it with a certainty she felt in her bones.

Chapter 37

Valens

In the hour before dawn, Terenita awakened Valens. He gave a hasty kiss to a sleepy Phaedra and followed the maid through the house. At the door to the street, the maid stood with her hand resting on the latch.

“You love her,” she said.

Valens did not know if she asked a question or made a statement. “Yes, I do,” he said.

“Have you not thought to leave her alone? To let her marry Acestes and live a comfortable life?”

“I love Phaedra for who she is, not what she represents, or what she can offer me. I think that is enough.”

“How will you support her if she loses the general’s favor? Return to the arena full-time?”

“I will do anything I need to make Phaedra happy, including walking away. I would rather start with the two million sesterces I have already. Maybe I can open a tavern. I would like that, and people would pay extra to hear my stories, meet me personally. She warned me that her father has expensive tastes.”

“Two million,” said the maid. “Not as much as Acestes.”

“But it is still enough, and all of it hers.”

“I heard your plans,” said Terenita. “I hear everything. Do you really love Phaedra, or is she your way into Roman society?”

“I love your mistress so much that I forget where I end and she begins.”

“You might be a good man. I have not decided.”

“I hope to be a better man for Phaedra,” he said. “I do love her.”

“I fear for you both. You are playing a dangerous game with a powerful man.”

Valens opened his arms as if to embrace the whole world. “I am Valens Secundus, Champion of Rome. None is more powerful than me.”

“You jest?”

“A little.”

“You do not have the law on your side or an army to command.”

“You are right. I have neither.”

“Be careful, Valens Secundus,” she said. “It is not just your life you chance, but Phaedra’s as well.”

Terenita lifted the latch and opened the door. Valens inclined his head to the maid and walked out into the street. He headed down the hill to the empty forum and the ludus, just beginning to come to life. Today, the second day of five, Valens planned to rest and train while other gladiators fought. The injury on his shoulder stung, and he decided to see the ludus physician after he spoke to Paullus.

A guard answered his knock on the heavy wooden gates.

“Take me to Paullus,” said Valens as he entered the compound.

The guard escorted him to a barred door that led to stairs and the family’s home beyond. “I do not think he will like being interrupted this early in the morning and without warning,” the guard said as he unfastened the heavy iron lock.

“I care not for what you think,” said Valens. “I can find my way from here.”

Even before daybreak, Paullus sat behind his desk in the tablinum. Valens knocked on the doorjamb. “Greetings,” he said.

Paullus looked up from the scrolls and tablets on his desk. “Greetings. Greetings. Come in, come in. I wanted to speak to you about your fight yesterday. Horrible, eh?”

Valens shrugged. His shoulder hurt. “I won.”

“True,” said Paullus. “Have you broken your fast? Care for some porridge?”

“I will eat with the men.”

“It pleases me to see you embrace the brotherhood of the gladiators.”

“Funny you should mention family; that was what I came to discuss.”

“Sit down. Is it something about your sister?”

Valens sat and rubbed his shoulder that now throbbed. “It is not my sister, but rather my father.”

“Has he come forward? I hate to say this, but I caution you not to believe without proof. A talented liar might be able to ingratiate himself with you, turning into an expense you do not need.”

“It is nothing like that, either. I want to marry.”

Paullus opened his mouth and Valens raised his hand to stop him, lest they spend the entire morning with a round of guesses, never reaching the actual request.

“Can I at least congratulate you?”

“Not yet. It is complicated.”

“How so?” Paullus asked.

“She is a patrician. She is the daughter of Senator Phaedrus Scaeva Didius, widow to Senator Marcus Rullus Servilia.”

“You have a sick sense of humor, you know that?”

“This sounds crazy, I know. I have loved Phaedra since the first time I saw her. For her, I wanted to be free. She is the reason I wanted to learn to read and write. I wanted to
be
better for her. I
am
better because of her.”

“I am speechless. I know not what to say. I want you happy, my boy, but the law will not allow a marriage between you. Pressing your case will ruin you and her as well.”

“A poor bastard born in the Suburra cannot marry a patrician. Even the Champion of Rome cannot marry a lady of aristocratic birth. But an equestrian can.” Paullus opened his mouth. Valens kept speaking. “Anyone can become an equestrian, providing they have three things.”

“Go on.”

“They need money, an influential friend in the Senate, and a family name. I have the money, more than enough. Phaedra thinks her father will sponsor my bid to become an equestrian. He is popular and liked enough to get the votes needed. That leaves a family, a father.”

Paullus twirled a stylus on his desk. “Is that the favor? You want me to claim you as mine?”

“I can be the son of no one else.”

“There are some problems with your plan or, rather, our part of your plan. Why do I claim you now?”

“Say anything you want, other than I have asked you to lie.”

“Always a quick comment with you.”

“Said just like an exasperated father.”

Paullus twirled the stylus again. “In all seriousness, I must have a reason for claiming you after all these years.”

“Say that you lay with my mother and later knew about the child. That is why you accepted me at the ludus when you should have thrown me out into the street. As your bastard son you took me in, trained me well, and let me take your name.”

“Why claim you now? Why not claim you when you retired? Or when you first came to the ludus?”

That question proved harder and Valens had no answer. Paullus spun the stylus again and again. As it wobbled, its metal tip scraped the wooden desktop.

Wood. Wooden swords. Metal swords. The answers to all of life’s questions came to Valens with a weapon in his hand. “You said yourself I fought poorly yesterday. After all these years, you fear I will die. You cannot let me go to my death without claiming me as your son.”

“It might work, but we need to do something grand, something memorable.”

“And something soon. If Phaedra’s not betrothed to someone else by the end of the games, she will be forced to marry General Acestes.”

“This just keeps getting worse and worse, does it not?”

“Excuse me, dominus.” A guard stood at the door. “Baro was looking for Valens. He says he has news.”

“Tell him I will meet him on the practice field,” said Valens.

The guard nodded and left.

“I will claim you as my son today at noon,” said Paullus. “It will be the best time, since the morning fights will be done, but the executions will not have yet begun.”

Valens was ill at ease with the depth of his emotions. His eyes stung and watered. He could not find his voice. Nodding, he coughed. “I will try to make you proud,” he said at last.

“You already do.”

Valens rose and they grasped wrists. Paullus slipped his arm around Valens’s shoulder in an embrace. It was the sort of thing fathers did with their sons all the time. Yet, for Valens, it was a first.

Paullus was not the man who had created his life, but rather the person who had taught him how to be a man. A father. “I need to see Baro,” Valens said, his eyes still leaking.

“Go. Meet me at the eleventh bell. We will walk to the arena together.”

Although his shoulder ached, Valens made his way through the villa with unmistakable optimism in his step. He would be with Phaedra, rightly, legally, the way he had always wanted.

On the field of practice, Baro sparred with an upturned tree trunk. Exercises such as this kept gladiators from any accidental injuries, yet it lacked the element of reaction. In any real fight, an instinct to react was paramount.

“Where have you been?” Baro asked without stopping his regime.

“Speaking with Paullus.”

“I heard from my aunt in Padua. She would love to have Antonice come and live with them. Your sister can go anytime. Now, even. They live near the marketplace. Ask anyone in Padua and they will give directions to the villa.”

Valens moved in to embrace Baro, the awkwardness of it all be damned. Today was a day for embraces. A dull sword swung toward him. Valens ducked, but not quickly enough. The blow landed on his injured shoulder. Blackness filled with tiny pinpricks of light exploded in his vision.

“What are you doing? Trying to get killed? I am practicing, focused on my target. You cannot step in without warning.”

Valens gripped his shoulder. Pain radiated outward with each beat of his heart. “I was going to give you a hug.”

“Try to hug me again and I will run you through.”

“Thank you, my friend. Today could get no better.” Valens turned to leave. He needed to visit his villa and tell Antonice the plan. If all went well—and it would—she and Leto could be out of Rome by noon.

“Valens,” called Baro. “Your shoulder is bleeding.”

“That does not surprise me. It hurts like a whore from Hades. I will see the physician when I return.” A guard opened the gate. Valens waved with his uninjured arm and stepped out into the busy marketplace.

Chapter 38

Phaedra

“Two million sesterces,” Phaedra’s father said as if the words themselves tasted awful. “Why would you sell yourself for such a low sum? Acestes inherited all of Marcus’s money and already had a fortune of his own. Married to him you would be worth over five hundred million sesterces. Now that is an amount to consider binding yourself to.”

Phaedra took in a long, slow breath. She tried, unsuccessfully, to calm her anger. “Listen to what you say, Father. You want me to sell myself, or bind myself, as you say, to a man for money. Am I your daughter to whom you promised to consider all suitable offers of marriage, or a chair to be sold? Or worse yet, do you see me as a prostitute? Do you, Father, do you?”

The jowls on her father’s face grew ruddy. He stood and limped toward her. Phaedra feared she had pushed too hard and now might meet the back side of his hand. Her father stopped in front of her and breathed in and out several times, his face returning to a more normal color.

“I do not see you as a chair,” he said, “or the other thing.”

“I love Valens,” she said. “I have loved him from the first moment we met. Even if Paullus refuses to claim Valens as his son, or the Senate does not make him an equestrian, you did promise that I could choose my next husband.”

“Yes, yes. I know what I promised. But you might come to love Acestes. Have you considered that?”

“I will never love anyone the way I love Valens. It sounds silly and romantic, I know. But I also know that I shall never be happy without him. My happiness must be worth something.”

Her father snorted. “Do you know who you sound like?”

She did not care for riddles and games this morning. Phaedra glared at her father.

“You sound like me when I wanted to marry your mother,” he said.

“I thought you were given the choice to marry any eligible woman.”

“If the story is told simply, then yes, my father allowed me to choose my wife. I loved your mother from the first time I saw her. I asked her to marry me that very night. The more complex part of the tale is that my father disapproved because her family had no coin.”

“Yet you made each other happy.”

“We did, unless we did not. I enjoy expensive things, Phaedra.”

“I have noticed.”

“Expensive tastes and no money do not go together well. I sometimes wonder if the fear of poverty killed your mother.”

Her father was in one of his sentimental moods and therefore more likely to give her what she wanted. She pressed her advantage and said, “Just as life in a gilded cage would kill me.”

“No need to waste away right here and now. But what of Acestes? I think your mother would have liked him.”

“I think Mother would have liked him, too. But what of me? I do not love him, nor will I ever.”

“You do not know that. He is very much like Marcus, and you came to love him.”

“Acestes
looks
very much like his uncle, I agree. But the two men are wholly different. Marcus focused his entire life on the betterment of Rome. He was a great man and a kind husband. Acestes only wants what he wants, the rest of us be damned.”

Her father chewed on the quick of his thumbnail, a nervous act she had never seen from him before. Was he about to rescind his promise to her? Had he accepted Acestes’s offer of marriage on Phaedra’s behalf without her knowledge, believing that she eventually would capitulate? A red line of blood spread across the base of his nail. He blotted it on the hem of his toga and looked up, his eyes bright and his cheeks ruddy. “I had always heard that Valens was a bastard and knew not his sire. In order to be named an equestrian, he must also have a father.”

“At this moment Valens is speaking to his lanista, who I believe will claim him as a son.”

“Ah, so that is why Paullus Secundus took him in and trained him well. Valens really is his son.”

“As far as you and I and the rest of Rome knows, he is,” she said.

“Which means that Valens really is a bastard.”

“I will not allow you to argue your way out of keeping your promise, Father. What do you care about his lineage, as long as all appears right in the law?”

“I promised you your choice in husbands,” he said finally, “and to consider any and all reasonable offers of marriage. I am a man of my word.”

Phaedra jumped up and kissed her father on the cheek. “Thank you, thank you. A million times, thank you.”

“It is two million times.”

She laughed. “I thank you two million times, then.”

“Are you sure you want to give away all that Acestes offers you? The money, the homes, the chance to be a consul’s wife? He will be named a provincial governor someday.”

He was turning the talk to her future life, but she knew well what was really on his mind.

“Do not worry, Father. You can learn how to manage on two million sesterces. Although you may have to curb your spending.”

Her father harrumphed. “At least you have perfect timing. Today is a good day to ask that Valens Secundus be named an equestrian. There is not much other business in the Senate, and everyone will be talking about yesterday’s victory.”

“Thank you, Father.”

“Come with me to the Senate. You will not be allowed inside, but you can hear from the street when I make a motion for your gladiator to become an equestrian.”

“Is that wise? I do not want Acestes to suspect that anything’s amiss until all is settled.”

“We can ride together in a litter. All will be well if you wait in it outside. Then we will go to the games together.”

“Terenita!” she called. The maid stepped from a nearby corner. “Please fetch my wrap and then we can be off.”

“Yes, my lady,” the maid said with a smile.

“I do want to see you happy, but we must make one thing clear,” her father said. “Should your gladiator not be allowed to enter the knighthood of Rome, or if he falls in one of his two final matches, we will consider that I have kept my part of our bargain and allowed you to arrange your own marriage. The next time you wed, it will be to a man of my choosing.”

“Acestes,” she said.

“We are agreed?”

The thought of marrying Acestes made Phaedra ill. No, not ill, but empty. Yet if she and Valens could not be together, then it mattered little who else she might marry. “We are.”

She and her father rode together as Terenita walked beside the litter with a small contingent of guards. The ride down the Palatine Hill took too long for Phaedra’s liking. She could feel the excitement flushing her face and could not help but smile. Her father ordered the litter to be set down on the uppermost steps. Although the Senate was in session, very few men in white togas hurried past as her father made his way into the Senate building.

From her seat in the litter, she heard Consul Flaccus call the meeting to order and ask for any new business. Then, in his deep voice, he invited the honorable Senator Phaedrus Scaeva Didius to take the floor.

Phaedra held her breath and shut her eyes as she imagined her father limping from his seat at the front of the Senate chamber to stand before the black chairs reserved for the co-consuls. Her father’s slow speech with his nasal intonation floated out the open door. “My friends,” he began, “my brothers. None of us wants to be here today.” A few chuckles followed his remark. “Why? Because we would all rather be at the Forum Boarium just across the way watching the gladiatorial matches fought to honor our good friend and fellow senator, Marcus Rullus Servilia. As you all know, Marcus holds a place of particular sentiment to me because he was also the beloved husband to my daughter, Phaedra.”

“He paid a large amount of coin for your beautiful daughter,” someone called out.

“A fair trade, I am sure,” someone else replied.

More laughter followed.

Would her father really allow her to become a jest? Had she always been that to him? No, she reminded herself. He was keeping his word, trying to win support for Valens in the Senate. Still, she disliked appearing foolish, even if it was as a means to her desired end.

Phaedra’s father continued. “When my daughter married Marcus, we entertained you all well with gladiatorial combats. Many of us, me included, saw firsthand the men who would forever be known as the Titans of Rome do battle. Valens Secundus, the Champion of Rome, spent more years than anyone inspiring us all with his feats of valor and bravery. He won his freedom and has now returned to the arena in order to save his sister. We all must agree that this man has exemplified the Roman way of life.”

A round of “Hear, hear” answered her father.

Phaedra smiled and began to relax. It was happening.

“Senators. Brothers. Friends. I make a motion that Valens Secundus, paragon of Roman virtue, be admitted into the knighthood of the Roman republic.”

Silence. No one in the Senate said a word. Phaedra froze in her seat, listening for even the slightest whisper.

After a moment, someone spoke up. “He is a slave.”

“Born a pleb,” said her father, “conscripted into the gladiators and proved his worth to once again be a free man by a contest of strength and heroism.”

“He needs money,” said someone else. “At least half a million sesterces.”

“I have it on the highest authority that Valens has more than enough coin to satisfy even you.”

Laughter.

“Does he have enough coin to satisfy you, Scaeva?”

“No one has enough coin for him. That is why he wants to marry the daughter to the same fortune Marcus left behind.”

Laughter. Lots of laughter. Hilarity. Was this what the all-important Senate of Rome did all day? Make jokes at each other’s expense? And where was her father? What was he doing? He should be returning their attention to the matter at hand.

“He needs a family, a clan,” another senator said. “I always understood Valens to be a bastard who never knew his father.”

“I have it on higher authority that he has known his sire all along,” said her father.

“He has to fight two more times. What if he dies in the process?” another senator asked.

“Then we,” said her father, “the benevolent members of this Senate, will have given the highest honor to a lowly but brave gladiator. We never have to do anything but enjoy the praise of his admirers.”

Phaedra reminded herself that her father did not wish for Valens to die. He was only saying the right thing at the correct time.

Laughter and calls for Senator Scaeva to run for consul followed his remark. Consul Flaccus called for a vote. From her vantage point on the steps, Phaedra heard the overwhelming vote for Valens to become a knight, assuming that Valens was, in fact, claimed by a suitable sire. Once that happened, and it would, he would become an appropriate husband. Now nothing could keep them apart.

“Terenita,” she said. “Take word of the vote to Valens at the ludus.”

The maid nodded and smiled. “With pleasure, my lady.”