The Gladiator's Mistress (Champions of Rome) (24 page)

“No,” said Valens. “It is our moment.”

He grasped the lanista by the wrist and held both their arms high. He wanted to savor the moment, to drink it in like an expensive wine and swirl it through his mouth.

Acestes looked down from the sponsor’s box, his eyes narrowed and full of hate. Valens feared that the general saw through all the lies and understood the complete truth. He also feared that because of this, the general would never let Phaedra go.

Chapter 40

Phaedra

At the end of the day, Acestes accompanied Phaedra and her father to their home. The general lingered, drinking wine and talking politics. As the hour grew later, he accepted the invitation to remain for dinner. Now, as he brought the conversation around to the gladiatorial contests, Phaedra wondered if he ever planned to leave.

“Valens Secundus is without question the hero of the games,” Acestes said.

Phaedra wanted to blush with pride and tell the world that he was her hero, now and always. Soon she would be able to, but not now, not yet. Instead she took another long sip of water. She wanted to remain clear of thought, lest she let her secret slip at the wrong moment.

“Valens Secundus is a gladiator,” her father said. “It is his way of life to be a hero, if not a legend.”

“You will become part of his legend, will you not? You made Valens an equestrian on the same day that his father claimed him as his own. I am sure that story will be told again and again. I do wonder why now. Why at all?” Although Acestes spoke to her father, he watched Phaedra.

She held up her goblet to a slave. “More water.”

“You saw the gladiator,” said her father. “He is old and tired. I doubt if he will win his match tomorrow. I took advantage of this turn of events. Today I made him a knight. Tomorrow I will mourn his death with the rest of Rome. From then on, I can bask in the thanks and admiration of the plebs for bringing a slave, a bastard, and a gladiator into the higher ranks of society.”

“Brilliant move,” said Acestes.

Phaedra’s father placed his feet on the floor and leaned forward. “I will share with you a secret. To succeed in politics, you must never just think of how your next move will be perceived at the moment you make it.”

“Never?”

“You must always think of the consequences of your actions now, later, and even later still.”

Was that it? Her father had agreed to nominate Valens into the knighthood not so she and he might marry, but for political gain? Had he kept his promise to her assuming that he would never have to honor it, all the while secure that she would perceive his actions as loving? Or was her father a deal maker to the core, giving Acestes a version of the truth that the general appreciated?

“It appears there is much for this old soldier to learn,” said Acestes.

“Together we have what it takes to run the republic, you and I.”

Acestes held up his goblet, and the two men toasted each other and their certain success.

“I did not know that I could become any drowsier,” said Phaedra. “Constant talk of running the world wears on the nerves. I am off to bed.”

“If you could wait a moment,” said Acestes, “there is another topic that I would like to discuss. It does not concern you.”

He paused and examined his fingernails. “Marcus kept an untidy villa, but very tidy accounts. Well, Scaeva, I want to discuss the debt you owed my uncle and now owe to me. Five million sesterces is quite a bit of money. I wonder when you planned to tell me.”

Five million sesterces? Damn her father and his lies and his expensive parties and his well-made clothes—damn them to Hades. No, damn them all to a river of fire and eternal suffering. Five million owed to Marcus and now to Acestes. Yes, when
did
he plan to tell them? Or had he not planned to tell them at all?

“I wanted to wait until we settled the matter of the marriage,” her father said.

“Why? So I did not demand Phaedra’s hand, or so she did not feel obligated to marry me? Perhaps you did not want me to withdraw my suit because of the debt.”

“A bit of all those reasons.”

“Did you know of this debt?” Acestes asked Phaedra.

She shook her head, not quite believing what she heard but knowing the truth of it all the same.

“I did not think you did,” said Acestes. “Even though your father owes me this money and has played me for a fool, I am still willing to marry you.”

Her father’s full cheeks grew red and redder still, almost purple. Sweat dripped from his hairline and dampened the fabric under his arms. He looked ill. But he had manipulated her—all of them—to meet his own ends, and Phaedra refused to offer him sympathy now that he had been caught.

She bit off an oath. The gods preserve them all. She had no choice but to marry Acestes. Valens had only two million sesterces, not enough to pay back the debt. Unless he won his other matches, then she would be wealthy in her own right and could easily pay back her father’s debt.

“What about running the republic together?” she asked of Acestes. “You will have a hard time courting the voters with a disgraced adviser.”

“I can manage. There are many men in Rome happy to share their advice with me. Besides, if we marry, the debt disappears and no one ever need know.” Acestes sighed. “I do tire of the games you play with me, Phaedra. I need an answer now.”

“Phaedra, forgive me,” said her father. “I never meant to hurt you. I wanted to pay back the debt a little at a time. You do not understand the cost of everything. Food. Clothes.”

“You were hardly eating porridge three times a day and wearing sackcloth.” While arguing with her father kept Phaedra from having to answer Acestes’s question, the three of them knew she must accept his offer.

“I know, I know. It is the appearance of wealth that costs so much.”

“That is what makes the wealthy special, Father.”

“Without the parties and the clothes and the seat in the Senate, I am no one, Phaedra. No one at all.”

“Funny,” she said as she stood. “I thought you were my father.”

Tears blurred her vision and she ran from the room.

“My lady!” Terenita stepped from the shadows and called after Phaedra.

Phaedra ran through the atrium and out the front door. Once in the street, she leaned against the wall of a neighboring villa and sobbed.

“My lady.” Terenita placed her hands on Phaedra’s shoulders. “You must get off the street. Come back inside.”

Phaedra knew that Terenita had heard everything. The maid had broken with expectations and come to Phaedra as a friend, not simply waiting to be ordered as a slave. The gesture and the kindness it implied were not lost on Phaedra, and yet her grief over the betrayal overtook every other emotion until she felt nothing but raw.

“He lied to me,” she said. “He told me I could choose my own husband. He helped Valens become a knight, knowing we would never be together. With all this debt, I now must marry Acestes, though I do not love him. I suppose we could sell everything, but then what will be left of us?” Phaedra sobbed. “Terenita, I would be forced to sell you.”

“Now, let us return to the villa,” said Terenita. “You must work with your father and General Acestes to resolve all the issues, personal and financial both.”

Phaedra looked back at her home. The door remained closed. Eventually she would have to face her father and Acestes again, but not now. For the moment she needed time away from them all. “No,” Phaedra said. “I will see Valens one last time.”

They walked through the darkened streets of Rome without incident. Phaedra thought of the last time she had left her villa without guards, the time she and Valens found each other in the market. How much had changed for her, within her, since that day.

Phaedra needed to tell him that they could never marry. Her father had played everyone false—all of them, including Acestes. He had quietly lied and cheated without making a sound, all the while hoping never to get caught and somehow to appear wise and loving in the end.

The Capitoline Market, empty of vendors and shoppers, stretched out before her. In the distance she saw the ludus. Torches burned at the open gates. Several men huddled in a group with the lanista, Paullus, his mane of white hair unmistakable in the firelight. The men looked familiar, but at a distance Phaedra did not know why. As she approached she recognized them both as the physicians called to Marcus’s deathbed. Valens had looked ill today. He had fought poorly the day before, and the cut to his shoulder had been deep. He had claimed that the injury did not bother him, but now she recalled the warmth of his skin last night. In the moment she had thought it was the heat of passion, not illness.

Never once did Phaedra consider that the physicians had come to treat another gladiator. Nor did she care that she tripped over her long gown as she ran across the empty plaza. She could see coins glinting in the torchlight as Paullus paid the physicians. Breathless, Phaedra arrived at the ludus gates as the doctors took their leave.

“I thought about sending for you,” Paullus said, confirming what she knew already. “I had not yet found the time. Here you are on your own. I heard that sometimes love can be so strong that the man and woman are connected even when apart.”

“How is he?”

A guard opened the heavy gate and Paullus motioned for Phaedra to pass through. “He is alive,” he said, “but weak.”

“He was not that ill when I saw him today.” They walked across the training ground, and Phaedra tried to believe her own words. She knew a body could turn on itself without warning, leaving a person sound one minute and dead the next. She had watched it happen with Marcus. Once his final decline began, it had gathered alarming speed until the inevitable end.

She did not want that for Valens.

“His shoulder is tainted,” said Paullus. “The physician at the ludus drained the wound but fears it has spread. It might heal, but not by tomorrow, and that is when he must fight again.”

The news came as a shock. Phaedra pressed her hand into the wall and steadied herself.

Another guard unlocked a barred door. “This leads to the barracks. I should forbid you from entering. But both you and Valens are so foolish I doubt anything I say will dissuade you.”

“We are the best kind of fools,” she said. “Let me enter.”

“At least wear this. Shield yourself and save whatever dignity you can.” Paullus unfastened his cloak and handed it to Phaedra.

Phaedra took the cloak and draped it over her head and shoulders. What need had she for secrecy? Her life was ruined. Her remaining joy would be her memories of Valens.

She walked past cell after cell. Men, large and well muscled, looked out of barred doors. Some called to her, inviting her to visit them later, while others stared. Realizing why Paullus had given her his cloak, Phaedra wrapped it more tightly around herself and lowered her gaze.

In the last cell at the end of a long and narrow hallway, Valens lay on a small bed pushed into a corner. Torches burned on the wall above him. A fat candle, held steady in a pool of its own dried wax, flickered on a nearby table. A thick gray blanket covered Valens, and still he shivered. Sweat coated his forehead. His damp hair clung to his scalp. The room stank, sweet and rotten.

“Phaedra,” he said as she entered the cell. “Is that you?”

She rushed to his bedside and knelt on the floor. Taking his hand in hers, she said, “Here I am.”

She pressed her lips to his cheek. It felt too hot. Since Valens might not heal in time to fight, in time to win, she almost hoped the fever killed him in his sleep. Then death might sweep him away to Elysium on a dream. Better that than to be claimed by death on the sunbaked earth of the arena, with only pain, heat, and the screams of a thousand bloodthirsty Romans to comfort him.

“Did they call you to me? Am I so bad that Paullus thinks I will die?”

Phaedra decided to answer the second question and ignore the first. “He says you will heal.”

“Then why send for you?”

She did not want Valens to think his injury fatal. At the same time, his ill health prevented her from telling him the real reason that brought her to the ludus. They would never marry. Instead she kissed his lips and said, “I just came.”

He chuckled. “I do not know what kind of lover I will be tonight.”

“Just looking upon your face brings me more joy than anything in the world.”

He smiled and closed his eyes. “I need to ask a favor of you.”

“I will do anything you ask.”

“If I should fall tomorrow . . .”

The words pierced Phaedra’s heart as surely as if she had been run through with a sword. She pressed her fingers to his lips. “Do not speak of such things. It invites bad omens.”

He gripped Phaedra’s wrist and placed her palm on his chest. His heart beat so fast that she feared it might explode any second. “Bad omens come when you ignore the obvious. I am ill and in no shape to fight. If the poison from my wound does not kill me, then whomever I face on the morrow will.”

Hot tears stung her eyes. Her throat tightened and ached. “No.”

Valens took Phaedra’s hand from his chest and kissed her palm. “I do not have the time or energy to argue. Please listen.”

Phaedra wiped tears from her eyes with the edge of Paullus’s cloak. Since she had taken him as her lover, Valens had become the very reason she drew breath. Without him she might cease to exist. As the tears ran down her cheeks, she said, “Ask anything of me. I will do whatever you need.”

“My sister left Rome this morning. I had to hide her away. She is with the family of a brother gladiator, Baro. They live in Padua. If I die, Acestes will see my contract as unfulfilled and want my sister executed for her crimes. Beg for her life.”

“You will not die. You cannot. You have become my light in the darkness. Without you I am lost,” said Phaedra.

Valens opened one eye. “I beseech you now to beg for my sister’s sake.”

There was so much Phaedra wanted to say. She wanted to tell Valens to live for her, to live for them both. She wanted to tell him that she loved him now and always. But her throat closed around the hard kernel of truth. They were not fated to be together. She managed to speak. “I will.”

Valens closed his eyes and settled into the pillow. His features slackened and his breath slowed. “Valens,” she said as she shook his leg. He could not die as she sat there. She would not let him. “Valens.”

He awakened, wide-eyed. “Another favor,” he said.

“Anything.”

“If Acestes will not show mercy to my sister, then never tell him where she has gone, and send her money, enough for her to live. Will you do that for me?”