The Gladiator Gambit

by Gavin Chappell

  ‘Very generous of you,’ Xenocrates sneered. ‘I’ll do nothing of the sort! You can’t coerce information out of me. Who do you think you are? You’re just common gladiators. You have no legal status…’

  Camilla returned to the doorway, hand resting loosely on the pommel of her sword. Now Flaminius folded his arms. ‘Returning to my idle questions,’ he said, ‘did I not hear you instruct the slaves to take that cadaver to be dissected?’

  The medic laughed nervously. ‘I think you misheard,’ he whinnied. ‘I told them to take it to be embalmed.’

  Flaminius stuck a finger in his finger and waggled it solemnly. ‘Curious,’ he said. ‘Must be the echoes in this subterranean cavern of yours. But it sounded like “dissection” to me.’ He glanced at Camilla. ‘What did you hear?’

  She nodded. ‘Definitely something about dissection.’

  ‘Dissection has been prohibited under Roman law,’ Flaminius lecture the medic, ‘for two and three-quarter centuries.’ He was pretty sure of the date, his distant ancestor Gaius Flaminius Nepos had been consul at the time. ‘I do hope you’re not practising illegal arts.’

  The medic shook his head wordlessly. He put his head in his hands. His shoulders shook. He dashed tears of frustration from his eyes and gestured dramatically at the bloody slab. ‘Few of my patients survive. You’re right. I only wish it was different! I swore by Apollo the Healer, by Asclepius, by Hygeia, by Panacea, and by all the gods and goddesses that I would treat the sick according to my ability and judgement. Do you know how difficult that is, when all your patients are gladiators?’ He gazed into the distance. ‘One day I shall find a rich master to work for, whose troubles are nothing more than groin strain from overindulgence, or the stone from overeating. But for now, I am severely hampered… by my ignorance!’ He cried the last word out so it rang from the stone walls, and slapped his hand down wetly on the slab. ‘Yes, my ignorance!’

  Flaminius and Camilla exchanged glances. ‘Your ignorance, you say?’ Flaminius prompted. ‘Why are you working as a medic if you’re ignorant of your trade?’

  ‘My ignorance, and that of my fellow medics,’ the Greek told him. He grimaced. ‘I have so poor an understanding of anatomy.’ Seeing their unfamiliarity with the word, he tried to explain. ‘The way the body is put together? I know so little about this, and time and time again I fail to save wounded gladiators. All because of this superstitious Roman law against dissection. Only through dissection can the sacred truth of anatomy be found. And so, I have broken the law. But before you judge me, remember this! One day, sometime soon, it could be you on this slab,’ he pointed at Flaminius, ‘or you!’ he pointed at Camilla. ‘And your life will depend on my knowledge of my art.

  ‘I experiment on the dead. I dissect them, I go against all Roman law. I learn from my studies, and my surgery improves hugely as a result. The slaves who aid me are sworn to secrecy, and none other knows of it except perhaps a few impresarios, who are sympathetic, naturally enough.’ He looked appealingly at the two gladiators. ‘I hope I have explained my reasons for this lawbreaking, and I hope also that you will swear oaths of silence by all the gods.’

  Flaminius raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Maybe that particular law has its faults,’ he said. ‘But the law is the law. I’ll have to think about this. Really, we should report you.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘Is one of the impresarios you mentioned a man called Apuleius Victor?’

  The medic swallowed. ‘He knows, yes. It is in his interest! Gladiators do not come cheap. And with such a rapid turnover…’

  ‘…he’s willing to cut corners and bend rules,’ Flaminius completed Xenocrates’ sentence. Presumably Apuleius Victor preferred to employ free gladiators since it kept down costs. ‘But he could report you, if he felt like it, to the magistrate.’

  ‘Oh, but he won’t,’ said the medic hastily. ‘Nor will you, if you give the matter some thought…’

  ‘Apuleius Victor has some kind of hold over you,’ Flaminius went on. ‘I assume that is why you are willing to take bribes.’

  The medic looked horrified. ‘How did you…?’ He looked at them both. ‘I know you,’ he said, recognition dawning at last. ‘I remember you from earlier. Colleagues of my first patient. Another failure!’ he added bitterly.

  ‘Petrus was his name!’ Camilla grunted. ‘Was he taken to be cut up and poked around? Now he’ll come back to haunt us all!’ She dodged round the slab and seized the frightened little man by his neck.

  Flaminius dragged her off and the medic fell back into the corner. ‘That’s not the way,’ he told the gladiatrix sternly. Physical intimidation came later, if required; that was what he’d learnt from Probus. ‘Get up,’ he told Xenocrates irritably.

  The medic rose to his feet, dusting himself down and rubbing at his neck. ‘I accepted a donation of money from your impresario,’ he said. ‘I’ll admit it. He could easily expose me, as you say, to the magistrate. I might end my days on the cross, or be given a role in the morning show.’ That was when condemned prisoners were thrown to the beasts. ‘And I save the money, with the hopes of establishing myself in another city, retained by a rich patron, not as an imperial official working in the amphitheatre. Would you not do the same in my place?’

  Flaminius nodded slowly. ‘I might,’ he said. ‘I can see your dilemma. But,’ and he pointed at Xenocrates accusingly, ‘Apuleius Victor bribed you to falsify evidence. To bear false witness. To say that Petrus died of disease, when you and I and the gladiatrix here all know he died…’

  ‘Of poison… yes,’ said Xenocrates, defeated, head down. ‘Why he was poisoned, or who by, I do not know. But concentrated asp venom was introduced into his blood stream, and he died of it.’

  ‘Who poisoned him?’ Camilla demanded.

  The Greek shook his head. ‘I told you, I do not know.’

  ‘And how was he poisoned?’ Flaminius said. ‘Answer that and I think we can answer the first question.’

  The Greek shrugged. ‘The poison was introduced into his blood stream by means of an incision into his flesh. The incision was made by a bladed instrument, a sword. I should think the asp venom was applied to the sword edge before the beginning of the fight.’

  Flaminius nodded. ‘And it would have been removed, along with the blood, when the blade was cleaned in the sand. No chance of proving anything now, unless you’re willing to give testimony.’

  The medic shook his head. ‘I have too much to lose,’ he explained. ‘Questions would be asked. I would be under oath. Speaking of which, I must ask you to swear by all the gods not to reveal my secrets.’

  ‘That do I swear,’ Flaminius said, and Camilla echoed him, but the medic insisted on a lengthier rigmarole, invoking the gods of high Olympus and the infernal gods below. Flaminius complied. When the oath swearing was over, he added, ‘And I’ll be asking you to swear much the same oaths.’

  ‘I?’ asked the medic, startled. ‘What must I swear?’

  ‘By all the gods of high Olympus and deepest Hades, and by the River Styx, an oath even the gods fear to break,’ Flaminius was making it all up as he went along, ‘you, Xenocrates, will swear never to speak of this matter to anyone, high or low, Greek or Roman, slave or emperor.’

  ‘B-by all the gods of high Olympus and deepest Hades,’ said the medic solemnly, ‘and by the River Styx, an oath even the gods fear to break, I, Xenocrates of Rhodes, swear never to speak of this to anyone, high or low, Greek or Roman, slave or emperor.’

  ‘Do you really think he’ll keep his oath, Tiro?’ Camilla asked as they made their way back up the torch-lit subterranean passages.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Flaminius confidently. ‘He’s sworn an oath. He believes that if he were to break it, he would be pursued by the Furies to the ends of the Earth.’

  They came out into the torchlit street. ‘Do you believe that?’ Camilla asked.

  ‘Not a word of it,’ said Flaminius with a smile, ‘but Xenocrates does. And that’s what matters.’
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br />   ‘By Celestial Juno, you did that very well,’ Camilla grunted. They walked back to the gladiators’ school. ‘I’d have just seized the rat by the throat and shaken him until he squealed.’

  ‘You tried something like that,’ Flaminius commented. ‘Not very effective, was it?’

  ‘But you were cunning about it,’ Camilla grunted, giving him an admiring look. ‘You manipulated him. Clever. You used what weapons you had, and yet left him thinking he had won a victory. Now he won’t tell anyone about us and we won’t tell anyone about him.’

  ‘Unless we betray him,’ said Flaminius casually. ‘Or vice versa.’

  ‘You think he’ll betray us?’ she said.

  Flaminius shook his head. ‘Not after all those oaths. But we might,’ he said, ‘if it’s expedient.’

  She halted, and he stopped, looking back at her. ‘My, my,’ she said, ‘but you are ruthless. Just who are you, anyway, Tiro? A new boy as gladiators go, and you’re pretty young. But it seems to me, you’re not so young in other ways. You… you’re…’ She covered her mouth suddenly. ‘You’re not working for the prefect, are you?’ she hissed.

  Petrus had voiced the same fear. And again, with perfect honesty, Flaminius shook his head.

  ‘I want to find out how and why Petrus died,’ he said. ‘And who killed him.’

  They started walking. ‘So do I,’ she said. ‘Then go before the magistrate with what we have found out, so justice can be done. But how can we hope to do that? The medic won’t testify, will he? He would be incriminating himself. You can’t ask him to do that.’

  ‘We can forget about Xenocrates,’ said Flaminius dismissively. ‘He’s told us what we wanted to know. He confirmed that Petrus was killed with concentrated asp venom. He also hypothesised how it could have been applied.’

  ‘By the sword,’ said Camilla. ‘Even one of those shallow cuts a gladiator gets in the fight, if the sword edge was smeared with poison, would be his death. But who applied it?’

  ‘Who fought Petrus?’ Flaminius asked.

  Camilla grunted. ‘I did! You can’t be suggesting…’

  He shook his head. ‘I don’t think you killed him. But he went on to fight against Syphax the Murmillo. And I heard Apuleius Victor talking Syphax in his office.’

  ‘I think we should also talk to Syphax,’ said Camilla after a pause.

  ‘As do I,’ said Flaminius. ‘As do I.’

  —11—

  Ozymandias’ House, Alexandria, Roman Province of Egypt, 26th August 124 AD

  ‘And how was your day, dearest?’ asked Nitocris, sitting beside her brother-husband.

  Ozymandias looked weary. He sipped at the crystal goblet of Greek wine a slave had brought him and gave a yawn. It was getting late.

  ‘The usual,’ he told her. ‘Shelving, cataloguing, answering inquiries. Oh, and some impromptu firefighting…’

  Her eyes were wide. ‘Firefighting?’

  Ozymandias grinned. ‘A ship was on fire in the harbour,’ he said. ‘It drifted close to the Library warehouses. Naturally, we did all we could to help the harbour guards put the fire out. One of the scholars at the Museum has been working on an experimental new squirter, you see, so we liberated it and put it to good use.’

  ‘Liberated?’

  ‘A military term. In other words, we stole it.’

  ‘Brother,’ said Nitocris reprovingly. ‘You’ve not gone back to robbery, have you? Look at this nice house, these nice clothes, this nice food. You might lose your job at the Library, and then’—she lowered her voice—’we would be back in the gutter.’

  ‘It was all in the name of public duty,’ said Ozymandias with a smug smirk. ‘The scholar was absent, so the centurion broke into the workshop and…like I say, liberated it. But you’re wrong.’ He shook his head.

  ‘Oh, I am, am I?’ His sister snorted.

  ‘I suppose it’s time I told you,’—Ozymandias indicated their opulent surroundings— ‘This doesn’t come from my meagre stipend as assistant librarian. No, it comes from… my other line of work. And that brings me to something else that happened today. It was during this outbreak of fire, actually…’

  ‘Other line of work? But what else happened?’ his sister said. ‘Don’t tease.’

  Ozymandias’ mouth became a thin, cold line. ‘I had a visit from an old friend. Someone we both know. And love. A certain tribune.’

  Nitocris flushed. ‘You don’t mean Gaius?’

  ‘Gaius?’ Ozymandias was outraged. ‘I mean Flaminius!’

  ‘He told me his name is Gaius.’

  ‘I bet he did,’ said Ozymandias savagely. ‘That’s his forename. All Romans have a forename, a family name, and usually a nickname too.’ He should know; he had received Roman citizenship after doing time as a slave to a Roman official. ‘My name is Gnaeus Flavius Ozymandias, as you ought to know.’

  She giggled. ‘And the tribune is called Gaius Flaminius?’

  ‘Gaius Flaminius Drusus,’ Ozymandias corrected her. ‘But unless you’re very close to him, it would be more proper that you should call him Flaminius.’

  Nitocris frowned. ‘He told me to call him Gaius.’

  ‘Did he now,’ muttered Ozymandias, and looked away. ‘Very familiar. A little bit too familiar.’

  Ten months had passed since his first encounter with the imperial agent. Back then, he was living with his sister-wife in a one room hovel in the Egyptian Quarter and working as a scribe for the commander of the civic guard. Life had certainly improved in any number of ways, he told himself, considering the walled garden in which he and his sister-wife sat, with its lush foliage, tinkling fountains and sweet-smelling blooms. Their new home, too, was a well-appointed Roman townhouse, all porphyry and serpentine, mosaic floors and frescoed walls.

  And as he had just told Nitocris, the money for all this did not come from his job in the Library, which Flaminius had secured when his job as scribe fell through after the commander committed suicide, but from his work as an agent. He had worked hard at this, creating his own network of informers and agents, using contacts from his days as a thief and tomb robber. But Flaminius had been out in the Thebaid with the legion, and their contact had been through coded reports sent via signal towers, using flags in the day and torches at night.

  Nitocris was picking at a plate of figs. She had also been dragged into this murky world, firstly by Flaminius’ predecessor, Centurion Julius Strabo, then by Flaminius himself. She’d had contacts of her own in the sinister subterranean cult of Christianity; she and Flaminius had attended a meeting of some of the most perverted members of that religion when the imperial agent was investigating Strabo’s murder. He’d long suspected her of infidelity with the tribune, but had never been able to bring himself to accuse her. Knowing that Flaminius and Nitocris were even in the same city made him anxious.

  ‘So what did Gaius Flaminius Drusus have to say for himself?’ Nitocris asked. ‘Is he still working for the legion? You should invite him for dinner while he’s in Alexandria.’

  ‘He’s investigating links between robbers in the Thebaid and some people in Nicopolis,’ Ozymandias said shortly. ‘I don’t think he’s in town very long. He’ll be back in some desert outpost fighting off the barbarians soon enough.’

  ‘That’s not nice,’ she said. ‘I don’t like to think of him travelling up and down the country. Not during the inundation.’ Much of Egypt was under several cubits of water right now: this was the time of year the Nile waters rose. ‘He’s a good man, Ozymandias, and so are you, so you’ve got no reason to bristle so jealously.’ She frowned. ‘What was he doing when you were saving the Library stock from another holocaust?’

  Ozymandias shifted. ‘Flaminius was there with me,’ he admitted. ‘He helped out, very valiantly, then hurried off as soon as the excitement was over.’

  She looked dreamy. ‘How noble. He doesn’t court the acclaim of the mob, he does his duty and departs.’

  ‘I wouldn’t call the chief librarian
and his cronies a mob,’ Ozymandias remarked. ‘Anyway, isn’t it time for dinner? I’ve worked up a real appetite today.’

  He clapped his hands and summoned a slave, who informed him that the cook was putting the finishing touches to a minutal of perch and that dinner would be served in the dining room. Smiling, Ozymandias rose, extended his arm, and led his sister-wife inside.

  Dinner that evening was a splendid affair in the lavish dining room lined with the busts of… well, they weren’t Ozymandias’ ancestors, they represented a job lot he’d picked up shortly after buying the house. As the two dined, the busts gave the couple stony expressions of Roman gravitas or perhaps indigestion, Ozymandias could never tell which. No doubt they disapproved of the master of the house’s incestuous marriage; an Egyptian custom hallowed by antiquity, it was looked upon with abhorrence by Roman citizens.

  After dinner, they both sat in the atrium while a slave recited Virgil to them and Ozymandias drank until Nitocris reproved him for unbecoming drunkenness. All in all, it was a very Roman affair, although Ozymandias’ citizenship was only skin deep. He was an Egyptian at heart. Two spirits warred within his breast, one Roman, one Egyptian. But which would win?

  They took to their bed soon after, and Nitocris went straight to sleep. No doubt she was worn out by her hard life of lounging in the atrium. Ozymandias, whose day had been much more strenuous, lay awake, deep in thought, for a long time. He had a tough decision to make.

  —12—

  Gladiators’ School, Alexandria, Roman Province of Egypt, 26th August 124 AD

  ‘And where’ve you two sweethearts been? Walking in the moonlight, is that it?’

  Maccabeus eyed Flaminius and Camilla sourly as they entered the dining chamber. He sat alone, drinking cheap Greek wine in a desultory manner, straight from the amphora and giving them a look that had something of envy in it, of jealousy.