Spartacus: Swords and Ashes

by J. M. Clements

  Lucretia stumbled after him, one piece of her gown draped over her arm to aid her swifter passage along the uneven path.

  “Quintus, break open head and share thoughts!” she demanded.

  Batiatus grabbed her arm and dragged her off the path behind one of the more imposing cypress trees.

  “A plan, hatched in the moment, unhappily subject to unexpected setbacks,” he muttered, leaning one arm on the tree trunk and glowering back at the figures silhouetted around the pyre.

  “Bebryx will surely not fight again this month. Two of our gladiators out of action before the games even commence,” Lucretia hissed. “Of what ‘plan’ do you speak?”

  “Realization only dawned during the eulogy, as Verres was speaking,” Batiatus replied.

  “Realization of what?” She batted his hand away, nursing a forearm that still bore his eager fingermarks.

  “No written will exists. These games in ‘honor’ of Pelorus are mere showmanship for Verres and his eternal desire for greatness.” Batiatus stumbled over his words, gulping extra breaths in excitement, like a man who had run twice up a hill.

  “Are you unwell, Quintus?” Lucretia asked.

  “We are better today than we have been for many years.”

  “How so?”

  “If Pelorus died intestate, Roman law is clear as water. Our departed friend was a freedman, and if a freedman is without an heir, his estate defaults to his former owner.”

  Lucretia frowned in thought.

  “Your father? But he is-”

  “Dead! Yes, the old bastard is dead, leaving all of his worldly goods, both material and notional, in the hands of…?”

  “You!”

  “His grieving son! His noble heir!”

  Batiatus grasped Lucretia’s hands, trembling with joy.

  “It is ours! His house! His ludus! The gladiators within! It all belongs to us!”

  Lucretia’s eyes narrowed.

  “At the very least, we can sell it all off. Our Capuan debts paid.”

  “Or see our house extended to the shores of Neapolis!”

  “So what is the problem?” Lucretia asked.

  Batiatus peered around the tree at the imposing form of the freedman Timarchides, who stood watching the flames.

  “Him,” he replied.

  VI

  CENA LIBERA

  He stood at the edge of the Thracian plain, where the first of a series of rocky outcrops marked the beginning of the foothills. The sky was shot through with the rusty marblings of sunset, though the clouds scudded past at an unearthly pace. Gentle winds tugged at his long hair, while round pebbles poked at the soles of his feet through sheepskin buskins.

  He saw figures far away. Thracian shepherds stood as still as statues, surrounded by their flocks. He glanced around him in search of his own animals, but there was nothing there.

  Nothing except Sura.

  “My husband,” she said, in a language he had not heard for more than a year. “My husband has returned.”

  Her lips were wet and red, like the fruits she picked on the hillsides. Her black hair swirled, the color of tar. He reached out to her but she floated beyond his grasp, seemingly not realizing the ache she caused within him.

  “Thrace lives on without us,” she said, her voice echoing, her arm gesturing at the plains below as lightning arced and struck a distant tree.

  The clouds scudded faster, and he saw the armies of Mithradates and Rome clashing on the plain below. He looked for the flocks of sheep, and thought for a moment that he saw sheep among the soldiers, but when he looked again, he could only see other warriors: the Getae with their skull-masks and painted warrior-priestesses, Mithradates himself, standing fearless amid flashes of lightning.

  Sura kicked her legs behind her, floating in front of him as if swimming in the air, coiling about him, her dark hair puffing behind her as if held in invisible waters. Her tattered clothes drifted apart in a similar fashion, showing him the curve of her breasts and the shadows of her thighs. She reached out her arms to him, beckoning him to take to the sky with her.

  “Come with me, my husband,” she said. “Be free once more.”

  He reached out to her, but his fingers could not quite stretch to hers. He leaned over the edge of the rocky outcrop, straining to reach her, but never quite managing to touch. Flames sprang up in the folds of her dress, small at first, then gaining in strength, swiftly rising to engulf her. He recalled the screams of the man fixed to the funeral pyre, who begged for freedom but asked for death.

  She looked sorrowful, but not in pain.

  “Touch me,” she pleaded. “Touch me and we shall be together.”

  The clouds whipped past her head, as red tears of blood began to trace lines down her cheeks.

  “Sura!” he called. “Come back to me!”

  Red rain pelted from the sky, drenching them both, dousing the flames on her body with hisses of red mist. It was blood, blood that covered his arms as they stretched out to her.

  “Are you still my husband?” she asked, her voice growing smaller, her form drifting away. “Can you remember who you are…?”

  “I will never forget!” he shouted, his words drowned beneath the wind. “My name is-!”

  “Spartacus!” Varro said, shaking him. He was awake instantly, his arms up to ward off an attack that never came. He was wet, but with sweat, not blood. There was rain, but it came down outside their cell. He was not in Thrace. He was not free. He was not with her.

  “You snatch slumber wherever you can,” Varro muttered. “Is this the secret of the Champion of Capua?”

  “Unlikely,” Barca sneered from the corner of the cell. “He prattles all his secrets while he sleeps.”

  “My love for my wife is no secret,” Spartacus said, rubbing his eyes.

  There had been an apocalypse of pigs. Several of the animals had been slaughtered and roasted, their rich meats baked to flaky perfection. Crisp skin and succulent interiors, just the right relic of soft, silky fat. An old slave with a sharp knife carved haunches and hams for those guests who did not simply reach across the table and tear off a chunk for themselves.

  Already, the band was playing. Already, there was laughter among the guests. Timarchides and Verres mingled with a crowd that had been too busy to attend the funeral, but all too willing to come to the cena libera-the dinner that marked the eve of a gladiatorial event.

  “And why not?” Verres said, laughing diplomatically. “The day was a time to mourn. The night is a time to dance, celebrate, and anticipate the delights of the arena. To the arena!”

  He shoved his goblet forward in a gesture of celebration, and was met with enthusiastic echoes from other diners. Timarchides raised his own goblet half-heartedly, and flicked a pinch of wine at the floor.

  “To Pelorus,” he mumbled, before lifting his head and smiling once more.

  Noting Timarchides’s mood, Verres turned away from the crowd, and flung an arm around the Greek in earnest camaraderie.

  “His shade pours a libation to you in return, my friend. I am sure of it,” he said smiling.

  Timarchides took a breath, looking around the atrium.

  “It was but scant days past,” he said, “that we fought for our lives within these very walls.”

  “A fight well remembered.” Verres said. “And honored with vengeance.”

  “Quaestor or not.”

  “The quaestor arrives tomorrow for sure?”

  “As surely as wind and waves allow. Marcus Tullius something. Strange name.”

  “An unfortunate interruption during these sad times.”

  “He is intended to reside with Pelorus.”

  Verres leaned wearily on the wall.

  “Quaestors investigate all things. Legal cases, tax, disputes marital…”

  “My release from slavery?”

  “Let us hope so.”

  “Pelorus expected him at the harbor tomorrow.”

  “Then I shall perform that d
uty, and divert him with games and wine. Did Pelorus not have a slave to remember his appointments, and details thereof?”

  “The nomenclator? I sought his aid, and he was most uncooperative.”

  “Why?” Verres asked.

  “He is sentenced to die tomorrow,” Timarchides replied.

  “He should still do his duty.”

  “This I explained, through the bars of his cell, but his answer was… colorful.”

  “Would that we yet had some friendly undertakers, who might wring information from him with pliers and tongs.”

  “It is too late for that. The slaves of House Pelorus are now beyond our reach, locked in the arena under armed guard to prevent them from committing harm to themselves and ruining the spectacle.”

  “A necessity most inconvenient.”

  “None of the slaves here tonight belonged to Pelorus. They are rented from our neighbour, the lady Successa.”

  Verres looked at the anonymous figures that walked among the dignitaries. Their clothes were neat enough for servants at a party, their faces as blank and expressionless as all slaves’ faces inevitably became. He did not recognize any of them.

  “I am not accustomed to paying attention to the furniture. Are we safe?” Verres asked, inclining his head at the old slave with the butcher knife.

  “From him?” Timarchides said. “I am surprised he has not wounded himself. Fear him not. But watch anyone else with a knife!”

  “Even I feel wary in the presence of gladiators tonight,” Verres admitted.

  “We are only exhibiting stock from House Batiatus,” Timarchides said. “They are sure to be docile.”

  “Particularly after the whipping you dealt them this morning,” Verres laughed.

  “After viewing of the gladiators, other delights will entertain,” Timarchides added, ignoring Verres’s last words.

  Verres shrugged.

  “Whatever pleases the guests. Let us begin the viewing.”

  He glanced around him.

  “Where is Batiatus? The responsibility lays with him.”

  Timarchides peered around the atrium in his turn but saw only the table piled high with meats and fruits, and the revelers clustered like fussing bees around the slaves with flagons of wine. Then he spied two figures hunched in the shadows. Timarchides squinted in the half-light, thinking perhaps he bore witness to a lovers’ tryst. But the heads jerked and gestures twitched with the animation of harsh words. Not lovers, he mused, a married couple.

  “Patience, Lucretia,” Batiatus hissed. “Put it from mind, all will be well.”

  “Will you buy and train new gladiators before tomorrow’s games?”

  “That will not be necessary.”

  “Will you raise Cycnus from the dead? Will you brand your mark upon our porters and see them elevated? Will you heal Bebryx with powerful herbs?”

  “Lucretia, calm yourself. Think of the imagines!”

  “From the funeral? Have the gods deprived you of your senses?”

  “A mask changes identity. We command as many gladiators as there are masks.”

  Lucretia stared at her husband with eyes sharper than a sword.

  “They need only be bare-headed in the primus,” Batiatus said hastily. “When they chase lions on horseback, their helmets will serve to conceal their identity!”

  “And what of their strength?”

  “Was such a question asked of the three hundred Spartans? Was it asked of Alexander? Of Horatius? These men are warriors. They can fight all day and all night if I command it.”

  “I see no problem then,” Lucretia said, flatly.

  As was her habit, she declared the conversation over by walking away from it-though Batiatus had other ideas.

  “Admittedly, beloved,” he protested, scampering to keep up with her, “the situation is far from being ideal. But we must work within the possible.”

  Lucretia stopped suddenly and turned to address her husband.

  “You stand at the edge of a precipice,” she hissed. “You gamble with our livelihood. Is it not enough that Crixus lies bleeding back in Capua?”

  “Spartacus is up to the task.”

  “Let us hope, Quintus.”

  They strode into the light of the party, the gathering illuminated by multiple torches in front of burnished bronze mirrors.

  “There you are,” Verres said to them, beaming. “It is time for you to unleash your beasts!”

  Caged in another part of the house, the “beasts” sat around a small fire in a brazier.

  Bebryx gulped from a flask of wine, found it empty, and cast it across the room, all one-handed-his other arm was in a sling. He reached for another wine from the dwindling pile.

  “You drink beyond your own entitlement,” Varro said.

  “And you not of yours at all,” Bebryx pointed out sourly.

  “I am not drinking of it yet,” Varro replied calmly.

  “Varro does not wish to be caught off-guard,” Spartacus explained. “Unexpected action may be demanded of us at the cena libera.”

  “Not my concern,” Bebryx said with a shrug, nursing the bandages on his shoulder.

  “Indeed,” Barca put in. “You have already been caught off-guard today!”

  The other gladiators chuckled. Bebryx glared at them with a look that said he willed them all to be struck by lightning.

  “To Cycnus,” the injured gladiator mumbled eventually, raising a flask that was surely Varro’s. Varro made as if to get up, but Spartacus stayed his friend.

  “Let him have mine,” he said.

  “I see not fight avoided,” Varro grumbled, “but fight postponed.”

  Bebryx smacked his lips and smirked.

  “The day you cannot take a one-armed man,” Barca said, “there will be no more fighting for you.” He speared a sausage onto a stick, and held it carefully above the glowing embers. Varro and Spartacus followed suit. The ever drunker Bebryx looked at them and shook his head in revulsion.

  “You Romans-” he began.

  “I am not a Roman,” Spartacus and Barca chorused.

  “You Romans and you Roman slaves,” Bebryx continued, ignoring their protest. “Look at you.”

  The other three exchanged baffled glances.

  “Roasting your masters’ table-scraps over the fire.”

  Varro laughed.

  “You look upon sausage, Bebryx,” he said. “What grievance can you have with sausage?”

  “Lips and offal, skin and organs,” Bebryx replied. “Minced and forced into intestines.”

  “I know what a sausage is,” Varro said. “A rare luxury for a slave.”

  “Where I come from,” Bebryx muttered, “the warriors receive the best cuts. The hunters take the haunches and the steaks. Such relics are the dishes of women and dogs.”

  “Victorious warriors?” Varro asked innocently, glancing at Bebryx’s bandage.

  “An animal!” Bebryx slurred, bellicose. “A beast of burden flayed, and slain, and shoved up its own ass.”

  “More for us, if you do not want your share,” Barca said.

  “I had more distasteful food as a freeman,” Varro agreed.

  “Better to starve free,” Bebryx sneered, “than bend to a master’s will.”

  The sausages began to spit and whine in the heat, their outer skins popping and scorching. Sloshing wine from his purloined flask, Bebryx caught his fingers in some of his elaborate braids, accidentally unraveling part of them. Beads dropped and scattered on the straw-strewn floor. Bebryx cursed in the language of Numidia, using a term close enough to Carthaginian for Barca to smile in recognition.

  “Too much trouble,” Varro said.

  “What?” Bebryx mumbled, not quite focusing on the golden-haired Roman.

  “Your hair is too much trouble,” Varro continued. “A gladiator should not fuss over his looks like a preening woman.”

  “You know nothing,” Bebryx said. “I suppose you would have me close-cropped and anonymous like the T
hracian.” He pointed vaguely in the direction of Spartacus, who said nothing, munching slowly on his food. “Or shave my head entirely?” the drunken gladiator added.

  “There is a middle ground,” Barca said, his mouth full.

  “A shaven head is the mark of a prisoner of war,” Varro said in agreement. “Unkempt hair, the mark of a barbarian. A gladiator must find some middle ground. He must decide if he wishes to look like a presentable, neatly trimmed, Roman.”

  “Such as you!” Bebryx snorted.

  “Or find some form of hair that marks him out to the crowd from a distance,” Barca said.

  “Barca’s size marks him alone,” Spartacus said.

  “And what of those who lack Barca’s stature?” Varro said. “They need the crowd to remember them. Particularly if,” and here, there was the slightest, briefest glance in Bebryx’s direction, “their honor in the arena is wanting.”

  “Honor is what the crowd remembers,” Spartacus said with a shurg. “Honor and victory.”

  “That is easy for you to say, Champion of Capua,” Varro said. “What of we mere minnows in the sea of swords?”

  “You are easy to see,” Barca scoffed, “with your ridiculous golden hair.”

  “And what of those poor unfortunates who lack the height of Barca or the jet-black skin of Bebryx?” Spartacus asked. “What then?”

  “Perhaps,” Varro said thoughtfully, “the crowd might note the hair. They might call for the ‘Plaited One’ or the ‘Braided One’? Will women swoon at the sight of some lizard-like crest down the middle of his head? Will the crowd remember a distinctive mustache or knotted beard?”

  “I doubt it,” Barca said, belching.

  “You talk too much,” Bebryx added.

  “Ask yourself these questions, and mark them well,” Varro continued. “Plaits or braids or knots can serve as additional cushioning, too. Beneath a helmet, they might soften an enemy’s blow.”

  “You talk absent thought,” Spartacus said. “What if the crowd uses hair to call for death? Death to the Plaited One! What then, if the Plaited One is you?”

  “Come,” Batiatus said, appearing behind the guard. The shadows in the room lurched sideways as a lantern threw new light through the bars. “It is time to show you off to the crowd. Save Bebryx, and his wounded shoulder.”