Spartacus: Swords and Ashes

by J. M. Clements

“Have you not seen them? This whole region is shot through with doorways to death itself. Molten rocks like Vulcan’s very furnace. Hot waters gushing from cracks in the earth.”

  “You make that sound as though it were a bad thing.”

  “The dust! The rock turns powdery as ash, and throws up clouds of gray dust upon everything.”

  “Merely a matter of perspective,” Ilithyia said touching Lucretia’s arm condescendingly. “Look past the rude bricks toward the marble that will come with further prosperity.”

  “Do you suggest Pelorus had wisdom and forethought?”

  “Where you see gateways to Hades, some see cleansing hot springs. Why commandeer armies of slaves to heat water when nature will do it for you? Think of the coast around Neapolis strewn with villas for the wealthiest and noblest of Romans. Land costs little.”

  “Because the former owners met their deaths in a generation of war!” Lucretia said with exasperation.

  “And there is so much history to be found. The cave of the Sibyl at Cumae. The old Greek colonies. You can sail north to Ostia from Neapolis, or take the Appian Way through Capua across land. Roads lead to the south, or if your business takes you further afield, you can sail straight from Neapolis to Sicilia, or onward to the east.”

  “Perhaps you would like to stay here forever,” Lucretia said icily.

  “Perhaps,” Ilithyia replied, ignoring her companion’s tone. “When there are more residents of suitable rank to welcome me! Have the other mourners yet arrived? I want to put this parade behind me. The wake will see the wine cellar plucked dry.”

  Batiatus knelt in the Neapolitan dirt, a choking dust more like black talcum or the ashes of hell. He scooped up a fistful in several careful sweeps, and dumped it on his head, taking care to run his fingers across his face. At his side, the gladiator Barca loomed in watchful guardianship, clad in a dark tunic.

  Gaius Verres approached, his eyes on the towering bodyguard, as if awaiting permission to come closer. Barca made no indication either way, but kept his gaze on the approaching Roman.

  “You do him suitable honor,” Gaius Verres addressed Batiatus. Verres was now correctly attired for the occasion, his bright, clean toga replaced by a tunic and cowl in black and dark gray. He, too, knelt in the dirt in search of suitable ash, carefully dragging his fingers down across his face to create a cage of dark bars on his cheeks.

  “I would say good morning, Gaius Verres,” Batiatus said solemnly, “but such a morning cannot be in such conditions.”

  “Death comes to us all,” Verres mused. “Let us bid farewell to good Pelorus as best we can.”

  “His friends, where might they be?” Batiatus asked. He glanced around, checking to see if Verres led a new set of arrivals, but saw only the hired help as before.

  “Us two I believe in number,” Verres replied, patting Batiatus’s arm.

  “Yet Pelorus met death at a banquet among dozens of guests. Was their friendship so fleeting?”

  Batiatus stared in apprehension at the other six bearers, every one of them a dour-faced undertaker. None met his eye. As he watched, they donned white masks bearing the imagines of deities. He shook his head in sorrow that Pelorus had no family imagines to walk in his procession, but remembered he had been the newest of New Men.

  Nearby Lucretia and Ilithyia lurked, their necks craning as they peered down the road, searching in vain for any other arrivals. Close to the women stood a small gaggle of slaves, and servants. They, too, donned masks that bore the images of gods and heroes. Batiatus saw a Hercules and a Theseus, a Jason and an Achilles, a Hector and an Ajax-warriors all. Absent imagines for their faces, Lucretia and Ilithyia fastened their veils, drawing them down from their headdresses to render their faces all but invisible.

  Batiatus caught sight of a wide-hipped, shapely woman in a veil and mourning robes, but no other candidates for friends or relations.

  “I see pipes and drums, trumpets and horns,” Batiatus muttered to Verres. “I see professional mourners and undertakers, slaves to clear the way. I see my wife and her irritating friend, and another woman whose visage is unfamiliar. And you. And me. And that is all. That is all!”

  He scowled at the six men standing impassively nearby, each in the dark, long-sleeved tunic and brightly colored hat that marked them out as undertakers.

  “Tradition often allows a dying master to free some slaves in his service, that his funeral procession might have some grateful associates walking freely amongst it,” Verres commented.

  Batiatus snorted scornfully.

  “Such a plan has little to recommend it when the slaves attempt to free themselves, and slay the master in the process,” he said dryly.

  “It is an honor to be one of the pallbearers,” Verres said. “And you and I, Batiatus, we are in the frontmost position, rated the most high among all the men of Pelorus’s acquaintance.”

  “By whom are we rated such?” Batiatus murmured. “There are none here to observe it. I am honored before an audience of no one.”

  Verres chuckled wryly, leaning down with the others to grab a purchase on the bier.

  “The gods, Batiatus,” he whispered. “The gods see your actions and note them.”

  “Fuck the gods,” Batiatus snapped in retort. “Once again they conspire to fuck me.”

  “Ah,” Verres said. “Timarchides arrives. We are ready.”

  Batiatus followed Verres’s gaze, to see a man he knew only from correspondence moving toward them. He was a towering, burly Greek, his hair in tight black curls against his head, his deep tan marked in places by thin white scar lines. He was clad in a dark toga edged incongruously with a white border, as if in defiant reversal of everyday wear. In his belt he wore a rudely fashioned wooden sword. Batiatus squinted at the flat of the blade, making out enough letters scratched in it to know the name it bore was Timarchides’s own.

  “And a freed gladiator,” Batiatus muttered, acidly. “All the great and good are present.”

  With careful deliberation, Timarchides raised a mask to his head, strapping it in place. He turned to look at Batiatus, his face a golden parody of Pelorus himself.

  “Surely the best of all the imagines,” Verres said. “That is based on Pelorus’s own death mask. Set in wax upon his face and painted by the swiftest and most diligent of craftsman.”

  “So Pelorus may walk among us, even in his own funeral procession,” Batiatus said.

  “Indeed so. And he will walk among us as a giant of a man.”

  “Larger in death than he was in life-” Batiatus began, only to gasp at the sight of another figure, suddenly raised above the bier. Looming above the whole procession was a giant winged creature in black, a cowl covering a face that was featureless and shadowed. Standing twice as tall as a man, the imposing being was held up on a frame by an unseen slave, creating the impression that a Titan walked among the lesser mortals of the procession.

  “Nemesis,” Batiatus breathed.

  “A goddess of some importance to Pelorus, I believe,” Verres said.

  Batiatus nodded.

  “Vengeance herself?” he said.

  Verres gazed up admiringly at the figure of the goddess.

  “I thought it particularly fitting,” he said, “in consideration of the manner of Pelorus’s passing. And my intentions for the games that celebrate him.”

  The band struck up their music, a discordant clash of cymbals, limned by moaning pipes. The horns blew a grave fanfare, announcing to the world ahead that a dead man was on his last journey, and Verres signaled to the other bearers.

  Barca gestured for Batiatus to stand aside, seeing a burden to be shouldered, but Batiatus shooed him away.

  “Barca,” he said. “Ever my protector. Today shall be some small Saturnalia, when you walk unencumbered and your master bears a slave’s burden.”

  “As you wish, dominus,” Barca said.

  As one, the eight men lifted their load, causing Batiatus to struggle for a moment, but only for
balance. Distributed among eight sturdy men, the dead form of Pelorus weighed little.

  Batiatus chuckled, despite himself.

  “You are amused, good Batiatus?” Verres asked, his voice slightly muffled on the other side of the bier.

  Keeping time with the slow drum, the bearers began to advance.

  “The weight of man is not so momentous,” Batiatus said, keeping his eyes focused ahead. “Litter bearers never make mention of that.”

  “I do not follow.”

  “This job is not so difficult. The slaves should silence tongue.”

  Two women in black began to screech and wail, stumbling ahead of the coffin in exaggerated pantomimes of desolation. They tore at their hair, and yelled defiant, confrontational questions at the sky. Why did he have to go? Why him? Why have the gods treated us so?

  Lucretia sighed, and turned to say something to Ilithyia, but the Roman woman was still sulking to herself. True to noble tradition, Lucretia maintained a stoic, unmoved disposition and walked on calmly, letting the professional mourners do the official grieving.

  Red-faced with effort, the two mourners screamed and sobbed, entreating the gods to be merciful upon the dead man in the afterlife.

  “Be merciful,” they cried, “on our dear Plorus. Witness us, in our grief for the dear departed Pilorux.”

  Batiatus tutted, despite himself.

  “Something is wrong, Batiatus?” Verres asked. “Your load is not so easy to shoulder as you imagine?”

  “I carry this dead weight with ease,” Batiatus replied. “I merely wish someone had informed those ignorant whores as to the pronunciation of the name Pelorus!”

  Verres chuckled.

  “Workers of worth are a challenge to procure,” he agreed. Batiatus smiled weakly to himself, and plodded on toward the cemetery.

  There was no great crowd assembled for the funeral of Pelorus. No Neapolitans gathered by the roadside to bow and bid a fond farewell. Pelorus the great New Man of Neapolis was already a forgotten figure, an unidentified corpse borne by eight men on a slow journey out of the city, accompanied by mourners bearing lit torches at midday. The horns of the musicians were intended to clear the way, but Batiatus had always imagined them doing so through a crowd of well-wishers. Instead, the horns announced the approach of ill omen. Batiatus heard doors slamming up ahead, and shutters clattering fast. Through the keening music of the band, he heard the occasional scuffle of sandaled feet on the road as mothers herded their children indoors. In the yards they passed that were open to the street, he caught momentary sight of recent occupation-well-water left sloshing in its pail, or unattended spinning wheels grinding slowly to a halt.

  “Careful now,” Verres said. “Presently we begin to move uphill.”

  “Of course we fucking do,” Batiatus muttered in resignation, glaring upward at the threatening black mountain that dominated the landward side of Neapolis, looming above the city like Nemesis herself.

  They continued on their way, past villas and houses that seemed recently deserted, as if the ashen hills had suddenly been stripped of all human life, leaving only the buildings. Once, Batiatus felt a positive thrill of relief at the sight of farmers working in the fields, but as the procession drew near, he realized that they were slaves, ordered to remain at their posts, and hence unable to flee the bad fortune that approached them.

  Lucretia walked beside a statuesque, shapely woman whose robes clung tightly to broad sinuous hips and an impressive bust, her face hidden beneath a black silk veil.

  “Lucretia, of the House of Batiatus,” she introduced herself, with a sad smile fashioned to suit the occasion. “United with you in mourning and grief.”

  The woman turned to look at her. The wind tugged momentarily at her veil, revealing a red mass of puckered flesh and scar tissue, as if she only had half a face.

  “Successa,” the woman replied in a small voice. “My name is Successa, of no house.”

  “Were you well acquainted with Pelorus?” Lucretia began, already regretting her attempt to socialize.

  “I was present in House Pelorus, the night he met his death,” Successa said. “I was offered a rich purse to ensure his guests were adequately entertained. I believed it good coin!”

  She spoke as if in jest, but Lucretia knew not to laugh. The pause that followed the woman’s statement stretched into a silence, and Lucretia found herself deeply relieved at the sight of Ilithyia drawing near.

  “Ilithyia,” she stated. “Wife to Gaius Claudius Glaber. United with you in mourning and grief.”

  Successa turned to meet Ilithyia’s gaze, allowing her veil to blow fully aside.

  “Oh sweet gods!” Ilithyia exclaimed.

  “The lady Successa was present the night of the incident,” Lucretia said hastily.

  “Oh, I see,” Ilithyia said frostily. “My… condolences.” She turned to face forward, as if Successa had suddenly disappeared.

  Successa did not wait around for further insult, but graciously modified her pace so that the two women moved ahead of her.

  “We have been lured to this place under pretences, I can only describe as false,” Ilithyia muttered.

  “What is your meaning?” Lucretia asked.

  “You promised a gathering of the great and the good.”

  “Well, you are here, Ilithyia.”

  “Indeed I am, a companion to disfigured whores and masked slaves.”

  “One of the pallbearers is the new governor of Sicilia!”

  “I should never have come.”

  “An invitation upon your insistence!”

  Ilithyia pouted and marched on with heavy steps.

  The funeral procession wound along the road, the doleful music silencing birds in the trees, the wails of the professional mourners putting everyone on edge. Batiatus felt the ground start to level out.

  “We approach the summit…?” he wondered aloud.

  “Of this mountain, not at all,” Verres answered. “We merely wander in its foothills. This smoking peak stretches far above us, into the mists and beyond.”

  “I cannot imagine Pelorus desiring such a lofty funeral?”

  “We approach our destination,” Verres said calmly from the other side of the bier. “The cemetery is not at the summit.”

  Batiatus was surprised to see that despite the empty roads, the procession was growing in size. Small boys wielded saplings like staffs, alongside grubby men with unkempt hair, old women with hungry eyes, and bony, pock-marked girls who had already seen better days.

  “More professional mourners?” Batiatus whispered.

  Verres shook his head.

  “Beggars and souvenir hunters. Pay them no heed.”

  “From where did they come?”

  “Do not let it trouble mind. They are nothing.”

  “They appear as if from an amphitheater’s dirty crowd,” Batiatus mused.

  “Then Pelorus will be cremated among friends,” Verres laughed.

  “But why would they come here…?” Batiatus said.

  “For the same reason they will surely flock to the arena,” Verres replied. “The violence and bloodshed of the fight.”

  V

  BUSTUARII

  Dusty from their journey, and ashen from their carefully applied dirt, the funeral party rounded a bend in the road. An ancient, Oscan altar and a partly fallen archway marked the entrance to the cemetery.

  The crowd now numbered almost a hundred. Batiatus could smell them over his own sweat. Striding by his master’s side, Barca was obliged to rudely shove some of the new arrivals out of the way, lest they come too close. Some pushed at the edges of the bier, while others dogged its rear like curious hounds. Still more, particularly the children, ran on ahead, pushing past the musicians with shoves that sent their notes into unlikely syncopations, kicking up dust and stones as they ran into the cemetery proper, screaming with incongruous glee at the prospect of what was to come. They hurtled among the monuments, playing tag and leapfrog, in s
earch of what they knew to be lurking somewhere in the grounds-a group of men, suiting up in armor, preparing to do battle.

  “Bustuarii! Bustuarii!” they cried, calling out the name of gladiators of old, those men who would fight in honor of a departed dignitary, shedding their own warm blood in memory of one whose blood was already cold. The children, unimpeded by their exertions, as if they could run and jump forever, were first to find the greenwood altar, rushing ahead of the procession to secure the best places to sit.

  The priests came behind them, jingling their bells to dispel evil spirits, chanting in a Latin so old that its meaning eluded many of the attendees. Their faces were hooded, their rituals occluded, such that their meaning seemed to only carry weight to the priests themselves. They reached the greenwood altar, turning to face the assembled gladiators, and then moved on, on a course of their own.

  Timarchides took off the mask of Pelorus, reverently laying it atop the bier. He then grabbed at a box by the altar, swiftly pulling on the armor of an earlier generation, a battered old set of the kind of soldier’s garb that had been commonplace when Batiatus was a boy. He and his three fellows stood with shields and swords, eyeing their opponents with the calm, assessing gaze of men who knew that the battle had already begun. They watched their stances, looked for limps and tan-marks where bandages might have recently been removed. They studied practice swings for telltale over- or under-extensions, and brooded all the while on how to bring their opponents down.

  Batiatus and his fellow bearers made the last ascent, lifting the bier high above their shoulders in order to place it atop the pyre. There was a final strain, a last farcical panic that the bier might tumble and take its load with it, and then Pelorus was placed firmly on top of the pile of wood and incense.

  Verres draped a cloth over his head, in the manner of a priest reading the auspices. He glanced across at Spartacus, who gave him a discreet nod of readiness. Verres turned to Timarchides, and received an identical, discreet signal.

  “The name of Marcus Pelorus has been declaimed from his death bed,” Verres shouted over the hum of the crowd. “His house purged of spirits of malicious intent. Now it but remains for us, his friends and associates, to see him on his journey to the afterlife, so that we may feast in his memory.”