The Risen

by David Anthony Durham

  Crassus sent riders out that very night. He heard back from them late the next morning. As they brought the confirmation he sought, he jolted the legion with orders that brought it buzzing to life like a kicked hornets’ nest. Patient, prudent, cautious, fearful of failure: Crassus was all of these, but he also knew to strike when the moment came. And it had come. Baebia, the twice-damned deserter and enemy collaborator, had brought it to him.

  The morning after Crassus and the bulk of the army marched out of camp, Kaleb went to the task his master had set him. Alone with the Roman, Kaleb became acutely aware of his dimensions. Sculpted of heavy muscles, he sat upright, leaning against the tent’s central pole, with his legs stretched in front of him. The light of the two lamps revealed scars on his bare arms, on his neck, a welt on his leg that might have been an old burn. He wore two stigmas, the letters on his arm that declared him condemned to bloody death, and one near his collarbone, an image of some animal on the run. This latter was unusual for a Roman, but this one had lived with barbarians. There was no telling how much that had changed him.

  “Prisoner, I am to interview you. Answer me as you would my master. Do you agree to speak truthfully?”

  Baebia looked up, studied him for a moment. “I’ll answer you truthfully. I’ve nothing to hide. Don’t expect me to call you ‘sir,’ though. That’s not going to happen.”

  Kaleb took his seat, pulled the frail desk close, and prepared to write. “My master wants you to recount everything of importance, beginning with when you joined the gladiators’ uprising.”

  “He wants to know all that?” Baebia pursed his lips. “He wants to know if I have value beyond the information I’ve already given him. Good. He’ll find I do. Should I speak slowly?”

  “No,” Kaleb said. “Just talk as you are doing. If I have need, I’ll tell you to pause.”

  As if to test him, Baebia began at once. “I knew little of Spartacus before the night he came to Nola. He was a name, a man causing trouble, given little chance of surviving from one day to the next. He came to Nola because he heard one of his kinsmen was in the city. That’s why he stormed the town and went straight to Bruttia’s ludus. He would’ve left me in my cage, but I pleaded with him. I told him I was a Roman soldier and I could tell him things that would help him to fight Rome all the better. He didn’t trust me for quite a time, but he did unlock my cage.”

  “So you were aiding them against Rome from the start?” Kaleb asked.

  “No. Be clear on this. It was always my intent to betray them. I was, from the start, acting in the service of Rome. Yes, I had to reveal things to them, but only so as to win their trust. Always I was awaiting the opportunity to conspire against them.”

  Kaleb didn’t believe that any more than Crassus would. “You were with them for more than a year and a half.”

  “Finding that opportunity took longer than I expected.”

  That, too, Crassus would likely take issue with. “Continue.”

  He did. He seemed to quite like telling his tale. He described the power struggle with the Germani chieftain Oenomaus and the duel to the death that resolved it. He said that the Risen accepted all who came to them, made use of them all, protected all, no matter their nation or the gods they worshipped. He spoke of Spartacus’s evolving objectives, the widening of his perspective over the winter camped in the hills outside Thurii, his correspondence with Sertorius and, by extension, with Mithridates. He told of how Spartacus planted the seeds for the invasion of Sicily early, preparing the disgruntled slaves there to erupt the moment he landed, and conspired with pirates: all this while he marched his army up and down Italy, destroying any army that dared to face him. He gave point-by-point versions of the rebels’ successes that varied greatly with the official Roman versions circulating in the capital. He claimed that by the time the Risen defeated Gaius Cassius Longinus in Cispadane Gaul, the slaves weren’t even tempted to escape through the Alps, as surely the Senate must’ve expected. No, Spartacus had given them too clear a vision of the great things they could create at Rome’s expense. None of the decisions he made, Baebia said, were as random or wanton as the senators would certainly believe. Even with all the destruction he caused—all the villas burned and fields harvested and goods and treasures carried away—he again and again sought allegiances with cities, trying hard to convince them that they shared the enemy that was Rome. That’s why Spartacus had bested Rome again and again. Nimble-minded, broad in his outlook, the Thracian thought ahead of other men but was kind enough to explain himself with clear language all could understand. He’d been but an afternoon’s sail away from igniting Sicily into a rebellion. When that failed, he found another goal.

  “We marched on Brundisium,” Baebia said. “We made good distances every day. It was easy. Rolling hills and flat spaces. No snow and ice. We ate up the miles. We sent out small groups on horseback to arrive by ones and twos in the city. And we were just preparing an attack unit of two thousand. They were to force march, traveling at night to cover the last hundred miles in secrecy. We hoped they would arrive just as the gates were captured by those Spartacus had conspired with. Hear me? Just about to send that force. Then some of the lone riders came back with news. Marcus Lucullus had just arrived at Brundisium with a small army. Not a whole legion but enough that they owned the city. They relieved the magistrate’s soldiers and were guarding the gates themselves. Worse than that, they had just defeated Thracians. The news of it stopped us right there. The very things that would’ve made it so easy for us to take and hold, made it just as easy for Lucullus and half an army to hold. That was it. Done. Brundisium wasn’t ours. A week earlier, yes. That day? No.”

  “You sound disappointed,” Kaleb said.

  “I’m just telling you the story. The Germani broke off then. The warriors and their followers marched away and began to raid and forage on their own. They didn’t do it to spurn Spartacus. It was easier to forage that way, to cover more ground with the same numbers and bring in more supplies. But we knew they were worried that their gods had withdrawn their favor. They were considering whether they should quit Italy and go home. The remaining Celts had the same question, and they went with the Germani, too. It changed the mood in the main camp. Many began to doubt, to wonder if they should split off as well and find some other way. Some began to slink away in the night. I said to myself, This is how it begins to end.

  “But not so. Spartacus called a council. As he did over and over again before, he laid out a new plan. The time had come, he said, to take their fight right to Rome. He told us to remember what it felt like when Kotys’s fury drove our hands and we defeated every army Rome put against us. We could have that back if only we stayed unified. We could depend on nobody but ourselves. That was the lesson of fall and the hard winter. He knew it, and in attacking Rome the gods would favor us again. The Celts led by Brennus had sacked the city ages ago. Why not again?”

  Kaleb asked, “You are claiming Spartacus has decided to march on Rome?”

  “I’m not claiming it. I’m just telling you the truth. Attacking Rome directly: the stuff of dreams, that. Proposing it worked magic on the Risen. It’s then I knew I had to leave them and do what I could to save my nation.”

  Kaleb held up a hand, asking the prisoner to pause a moment. He finished writing and then looked over the page before lifting it and setting it aside in favor of a new one. “Are you aware,” he asked, “that you sometimes call the Risen they and sometimes we? You seem undecided about whether you are one of them.”

  “Why do you keep on about things like that? They. We. Just words as I’m talking! Listen to what I say, not how I word it.”

  “Yes, but I have to write them down,” Kaleb said. “It matters—”

  “So write them as I say them and blame it on me!”

  “It was just an observation,” Kaleb said. “Continue, then.”

  Baebia sat a moment in sullen silence. Kaleb waited, and the other eventually resumed. “It all depends
on the Germani, though. They are thirty thousand strong. That’s fighting men, I mean. Spartacus has forty thousand men, and a much larger number of camp followers. He wanted the Germani and Celts back, so he began trying to win them. We sent delegations back and forth between the camps, talking it through. I had a part in this, carrying messages, keeping contact as both groups kept moving, gathering supplies, you know. Spartacus convinced them to rejoin and march as one group, toward Rome. Gannicus and Castus—the Germani leaders—they love Spartacus. They want to stay with him. They just need to believe that it is right and their gods will be pleased. What gods wouldn’t be pleased by the boldness of a frontal attack on Rome? So they are convinced. Spartacus will have his army back and then march on Rome. We made plans to carry on foraging and meet up at a particular place, where a saddle in the mountains will make it easy to join forces. Two people were sent to take word of this back to the Germani. One of them was Castus, one of their leaders. The other was a person who knew the route and could guide the Germani on it.” Baebia paused until Kaleb looked up at him. “The second person was me.”

  —

  That day Kaleb was eager to hear what he had next to say. Awaiting Crassus’s return a week later, he would just as soon both he and the prisoner hold to silence. Baebia, however, is of another mind.

  “You don’t have to sit in ignorance, you know?” Baebia asks. “Someone brought word of Crassus’s return. Whoever that person is has news of what happened. He’ll be working his jaw talking about it right now. Soldiers always do. Go listen, and then come back and tell me.”

  Kaleb has inspected his quills several times over. He’s sorted through the papyruses, found them dry and in good shape. He’s mixed ink, tested its consistency and color, and set the ink pot to the side. He’s moved it several times. There’s really nothing else for him to do in preparation for his master’s return. He could do as the Roman asks, but he’s trapped in the moment, knowing that whatever has happened has happened. It can’t be undone. While he wants to know, he also thinks of these last moments of ignorance as being wide with possibilities that will cease the moment he learns the truth. Will victory show on Crassus’s usually inscrutable face? Yes, he thinks it will. Will defeat? Surely. That’s what Kaleb waits for. His master’s face and the things written on it.

  “You’re thinking something,” Baebia says, “though I couldn’t for the life of me say what. What outcome do you want? You asked me questions. Ask and listen, ask and listen. You want to know my thoughts, but you never say much of what’s in your mind. Don’t tell me you’re not thinking anything, that you have no opinion. You’re a slave, but a smart one.” He pauses. “Though maybe that’s why you hold your tongue. I’ve never been that smart.”

  “I asked and listened on my master’s behalf,” Kaleb says.

  “No more or less than that? I don’t believe you.”

  Kaleb looks at his writing supplies again, then wishes he had something else to busy himself with. There is a satchel on Crassus’s desk. He knows it contains personal correspondence that arrived after the commander marched out. Rising, he moves to the larger desk and flips open the satchel, aware that the prisoner’s gaze follows him. He tips the documents out: several scrolls in their tins, two wax tablets, a booklet with vellum pages. He knows that one. It’s the booklet in which Crassus corresponds with his eldest son. He can hear the type of paternal advice Crassus bestows on his son. One of the scrolls is from Tertulla, Crassus’s wife. He’s sure she likes best the missives Kaleb writes on his master’s behalf. He touches them with flourishes of affection that Crassus rarely remembers to offer on his own. And yet another is from a widow Crassus has taken as his mistress. His passion for her, Kaleb knows, has mostly to do with the vast estates of her former husband, now under her sway as her son is but a weak-minded youth, easily manipulated.

  “Am I witnessing a crime?” Baebia asks. “If your master came in just now, would he be shocked to find your nose in his letters?”

  “I shouldn’t think so,” Kaleb says. “My nose is often in his letters, at his orders.”

  “Has he no secrets from you?”

  “None that I know of.”

  “That’s not an answer. If you knew, they’d not be secrets.”

  Kaleb shrugs. It seems to him that Crassus takes it for granted that he has no secrets from him. Sometimes at least. Other times he assumes that Kaleb has no thoughts of his own at all. Being a slave owner, Kaleb has learned, requires a mind trained to know and not know, to see and not see as suits the moment. The same is required of slaves, he thinks, then decides that’s not quite true. It’s not really that he knows and doesn’t know, sees and doesn’t see. It’s that he knows and sees and pretends he doesn’t. For a master the equation is similar, but different as well.

  “What are you thinking now, slave?” Baebia asks.

  Kaleb realizes he’s been standing over the table, rolling a scroll tube beneath the tips of his fingers. “Funny that you call me a slave, when you are the chained one, the bruised and swollen one, the one whose life hangs in the balance of the news we wait on. You’re the one who ran up and down Italy with a band of fugitives. How come you are so sure I’m more a slave than you?”

  Baebia smiles. “The title never stuck on me. I never believed it. Never took it to heart. That’s why I didn’t die in the arena. It’s why I shook off my chains and roamed this country, free as I pleased. I’m a Roman. I began that way and will end that way. A bit of time in chains doesn’t change that, not when a man is free in his heart. I had my fun, paid back old slights; now it’s time to save my people. But you”—he squints, makes a show of scrutinizing Kaleb—“I think you’re a slave because you believe yourself to be one. Smart as you are, Crassus has you bound in some way. If he doesn’t—and you’re not a coward—you should be with the Risen, not here waiting to learn whether they’ve suffered a defeat. If everyone in bondage just picked themselves up and joined the rebels, Spartacus would win this in a month. So if he fails, it’s men like you who are to blame. That’s why I call you a slave, and why you think of me as a Roman.”

  Kaleb looks at him for a long, cold moment. He clears his throat and says, dismissively, “We really have spoken quite enough. I’ve no more words for you.”

  “Ironic, that,” Baebia says. “I thought you were all about words. You had lots of—”

  “Fine. You want my thoughts? I’m wondering why you are here. Do you hear yourself when you talk of Spartacus? You sound like you adore him. You sing his virtues again and again. The others, too. You name them—Gaidres and Skaris, Gannicus and Castus, Drenis and Dolmos and Kastor—as if they’re brothers to you. You praise them, but you have few kind words for your own people. It’s those men who freed you, Rome that enslaved you. So why are you here?”

  This time Baebia is not as quick with his response. He lifts his hands from his lap, crosses them, and sets them down again, as if hoping to find a more comfortable position for them. By the scowl he gives the wrist irons, he doesn’t succeed. He’s still looking at them when he answers. “I told you of a Roman soldier who deserted to them. The one who told them the best place to break through the wall was in the mountains. He thought he could leave his countrymen and find acceptance among the rebels.”

  “Did he?”

  Baebia shifts his jaw from side to side. “Yes. Why wouldn’t they? He brought them good intelligence. They have reason to like him. He’s just a foot soldier. He is not the type to win distinction in the Roman way. He’s a nothing of a man, but he took an action that had far-reaching effects. When I saw that one—a Roman deserting his legion to come groveling to slaves, betraying his own people—I hated him. I looked at him, and I thought, I despise you. There’s nothing in the world nobler than being a Roman soldier. Nothing. That had been stripped away from me, but I wasn’t like him. I didn’t throw away honor and sneak through the night to the enemy. I hated him for that, and I hated myself. Who was I to despise him, when I myself had fought Roma
ns side by side with Thracians and Celts and Germani? I decided in that moment that I would do anything in my power to get back to my people. I’d bring them a gift to make amends, and I’d help them to defeat the enemy.”

  Kaleb says, “You claimed that that was always your objective. That’s what you had me write.”

  “It was, yes,” Baebia snaps. “It was, but somewhere along the way I forgot it. Seeing that Roman, I remembered. I thought that if a Roman could desert Rome and find welcome among slaves and gladiators, maybe I could desert the gladiators and find welcome among my countrymen. The gods make us run in circles. What can I do but amuse them? It’s not as if—” He cuts himself off. He cocks his head to one side. “Did you hear that? Listen.” The Roman must have keener ears than Kaleb. He heard nothing, but as they share the hush, a sound reaches them. Distant, not in the camp but approaching. Trumpets, announcing the commander’s return. “Your master has arrived,” Baebia says. He rattles his chains and laughs. “Now we’ll find out how the dice have rolled.”

  —

  Back during that earlier interview, Baebia had paused a long moment after saying, “It was me.”

  Long enough that Kaleb prompted him to continue. “It was you,” he said. “I have that. Go on.”

  “Castus and I, we rode to rejoin the Germani army. Just the two of us. We had our message; we had only to deliver it so that the two armies would move to join each other. They would become one again and march on Rome. I saw it happening, and I saw the possibilities. If the full force attacked Rome, who is to say what would happen? Rome has great walls. That should make the city safe. And I know Crassus wouldn’t have allowed them to complete the march unchallenged. But what if they met in battle and he lost? If that battle happened and Spartacus could claim victory, it would change everything. The road to Rome would be open, with no army to stop them from marching to the gates and pounding on them. If the Sabines saw Rome besieged, wouldn’t they come down out of the hills and join the attack? Of course they would. Sicily would go up in flames. The cities that Spartacus had courted all up and down Italy would start to turn. The armies overseas? They would surely be recalled, but what if Sertorius defeated Pompey? He’d done so to all the others sent against him. What if Mithridates bested Lucullus? He’d won victories before. Why not one more now? Do you see what I’m saying? I’d never thought that Rome truly being defeated was possible. Spartacus could bedevil them, but I’d always assumed it would end eventually. But I realized that if the pieces fell together in just the right way…Some things are unimaginable, right? I thought the fall of Rome was one of them. But there, riding beside the Celt, I imagined it. That’s when I became Roman again.”