Using the staves, Corax demonstrated the elementary steps of the advance and retreat. “Surprise is all,” he would bellow as he strode among them. “Vary your retreats. If you crave long life, never let your man detect a pattern.” Auriane heard these words so often they resonated in her mind at night as she dropped into sleep.
As they practiced, Greek physicians watched them with emotionless eyes, to see that muscles developed properly and were not overstrained. Sometimes they ordered massage; at others they adjusted the amount of barley in the novices’ diet or prescribed the swallowing of ashes, a regimen thought to aid in building strength. At first her muscles were painfully sore, but gradually they awakened, strengthened and remembered—and she found herself exulting in the feeling of returning skill and power. The clumsy stave was a weapon, if a feeble one, against this loathsome dependency.
During the times of practice Corax kept Coniaric and Thorgild apart from Auriane and Sunia. He sensed the four took too much strength from each other’s presence, and it irritated him. But at meals they stayed close by one another, sometimes eating in silence, at others speaking passionately of home, carefully keeping to memories that brought amusement rather than tears. They would tell tales of Grimelda and her axe, but they never spoke Odberht’s name. Or they would talk of Auriane’s humbling of Gundobad, while leaving Athelinda shrouded in darkness. Almost nightly Coniaric proposed some new plan for escape. It filled Auriane with sadness—none of his stratagems showed real understanding of how far they were from home or of the grim reality that not just the school but the whole country was their prison. She would listen respectfully, accepting it as a thing he must do to preserve his mind.
She spoke of Marcus Julianus to no one, though she felt he accompanied her always, watching with affection and concern. The memory of that night was sometimes transcendent, sometimes a brooding shadow. Why had he sent no sign? She could not believe he had forgotten her—he had risked much for her already. And she could not accept that she might have been mistaken about what she sensed of his spirit. Occasionally she heard his name spoken when she overheard snatches of the trainers’ or physicians’ gossip of affairs at the Palace, and so she knew he lived still. She did not miss the reverence in their tone—she quickly realized that of all their ruling men he was the most beloved of the people.
One day in the equipment room an armory boy who was fastening her leather greaves met her eyes briefly, then furtively looked down. Speaking into the din of daily preparations for practice, he said, “You are Auriane.”
“Yes,” she said, her body tautening, sensing a gate thrown open to peril.
“I have words from the one who gave you that amulet of earth.”
The ground seemed to shift sharply beneath her feet. She felt every sense grow luminously alert.
“Caution’s necessary, I’m to report,” the boy continued, “and delays unavoidable. For safety’s sake, do nothing to bring yourself to the attention of those above. Take heart—soon now he comes for you.” The boy looked up, smiling carelessly as if he engaged in idle banter, showing teeth that were brilliantly white against a rich brown Syrian complexion.
“Praise to sun and moon! Tell me—” she began and stopped, realizing Corax was watching her. The boy, nimble as a monkey, moved on to his next charge, and to her relief Corax’s contemptuous gaze passed on.
She felt raw joy, confusion and wrenching pain.
He lives, and is maddeningly close, but something is wrong, I sense it. I fear I will not see him again in this life.
That night in the dark of the cell she shared with six women captives, she attempted for the first time to tell the whole tale to Sunia while the four others slept soundly in the straw.
“Ah,” Sunia whispered when Auriane had finished. “I knew something uncanny passed on that night. It sounds like a tale of Wodan in mortal guise.”
“No, Sunia, there is a great mystery here, for certain, but he seems a master of the powers of day, not of night.”
“Well, if I attracted looks of love, it stands for certain you would.”
“You’ve something to tell me, then.”
“There is a net fighter of the Second Hall, strapping, tall, beautiful to look upon…. He gave me a rose wreath.”
“Sunia, no. That means he wants to bed you once. And I doubt he’ll survive until Yule—have you not seen that the net fighters are first killed?”
In the blackness Auriane heard only a rustling of straw and Sunia’s ragged breathing as she fought against sobs. “All of them are killed. We will be killed. What cursed difference does it make?”
“We are going to live, Sunia, this is what I am trying to tell you.” But Auriane saw Sunia clung to the comforts of her pessimism like an old woman who will no longer venture from the safety of her house. “Listen to me. The man of whom I spoke is the most powerful of their noblemen. He seems to have cast some spell over the Emperor. I’ve heard it said by many that he is the one man who keeps the Emperor from becoming wholly evil. He’s very close to all these mysteries about us—a fearful thing, yet he seems nobly kind and human enough. Sunia, he’s promised to help us escape this place. I’ve little doubt he will, he seems able to do anything—”
“Us?” Sunia said skeptically. “He does not know me.”
“I’m not leaving without you, he’ll have to understand that.”
“I would be cautious, Auriane. Do you think these people love as we do? I think not—they’re more than half mad. There are way too many of them, crawling all over one another. They scarcely speak to each other. They have no families. They have no hearths. They—”
“Enough of that. Go to sleep. Have you forgotten the throng that raised me up?”
At practice Auriane stayed near Sunia, striving to correct her clumsy mistakes before the trainers did so with their whips. Thorgild and Coniaric would give a good account of themselves, she was certain, but she worried continuously that Sunia would never pass to the next stage of training. She would be taken off to be used in the bloody “morning shows” that preceded the exhibitions of gladiators, where criminals were given to the beasts, or put into one of the mass spectacles where the combatants were scarcely prepared and expected only to die.
Days of games came and passed. The school huddled in the Colosseum’s baleful shadow and the clamor of the throng was to Auriane a titanic and bestial war cry that called up images of limitless horror. Surely it was not composed of human voices—it was the primitive roar of the great Wyrm at world’s end as stretched wide its jaws to gulp down whole nations, splintering bones, demanding ever more.
On the last day of the games held in honor of Vespasian’s birthday, the door of the future opened a crack and its horror rushed forth. It happened that two physicians’ assistants were hurrying to the hospital rooms with a fatally wounded man, closely pursued by twenty and more noisy spectators, jostling and crowding. The physicians turned down a wrong passage in their haste and collided with the file of novices going to practice. Auriane saw a linen cloth had been hastily thrown over the dying man. Great dark stains spread from terrible unseen wounds. His helmet had been removed; his head seemed to have been anointed in blood. In his eyes was the wild, roaming look of one betrayed. As Auriane watched, astonished, the crowd swarmed about the stalled litter. The linen cloth was torn away from him and the people, daggers in hand, fell on the man, in spite of the curses and blows of the physicians. Guards rushed in soon after, but too late.
Later the meaning of this ghastly scene was explained to her by a novice named Celadon, a Gaul by birth, and the only man in this place not of her tribe who spoke to her with friendliness. Celadon had lived here most of his life and knew the customs. They wanted a piece of his liver, Celadon explained. A bit of liver from a fallen gladiator cures epilepsy, dropsy and gout.
Though she had lived on battlefields all her life, still Auriane found herself feeling crippled inside with the horror of it, and ashamed for this whole god-cursed race of men. Th
is, she thought, is evil beyond measure. War has its reasons, and has existed since the time of peace and wandering, but human creatures were not created by the gods to live and die in a slaughterhouse.
Fall never became winter, though enough days passed. Auriane was amused to hear the trainers grumble of the cold and see them don heavy cloaks when the air was scarcely chilled. The snows did not come. She prayed for snow because its absence was unsettling; if Fria did not throw down her white mantle there could be no merriment of Yule, no warmth of hope, no serene death-sleep so all could be vigorously reborn in spring.
All that changed was that their training passed into the next phase. They were given wooden swords of double the weight of a standard sword, and heavy, round oak shields. Clumsy as this weapon was, it was yet a sword, the first Auriane had held since her capture, and in the moment when she first closed her hand round its grip, memories of freedom flooded in. The high walls seemed less dense and a faint pine scent haunted the air. She imagined stable earth beneath her feet instead of irksome sand. As they repeated the basic cuts, she fought down exultant feelings, for with them came guilt—she knew she felt them alone. Poor Sunia was in greater misery than before. And to Coniaric, Thorgild and the others of her tribesmen, swordfighting had never been more than grim necessity. To them, this was but one terrifying step closer to the ultimate dance of death. She carefully disguised her joy.
Fria, you are a difficult mother. Why this, now? We seek simplicity, and you are only content to send complications and desires out of place.
As they practiced, Corax moved among them with his whip, alert to the turn of a wrist, the placement of a foot, the expression in an eye. “A bout can be lost with a look,” he admonished ceaselessly. “Reveal nothing with your eyes. You there. You looked, then struck. I’d have blocked that with a cross-stroke, then made you into cutlets. Remember, it is the mind’s game as well as the body’s. You must be an actor. If you feel confident, feign confusion. If you’re weakening, make a show of strength. Never let your man know your true mind. You must scarcely know yourself what you will do next, in the attack, the retreat, the stroke.”
Often Corax would secretively observe Auriane from a distance, concealing his acute interest in her progress. Never would he say words of encouragement to her, no matter how quickly she demonstrated facility at any new lesson.
Coniaric was one of the few who consistently drew Corax’s praise. “There now…. Good man. That’s right—parry close to the body,” she heard him say one day. “Anticipate your man’s advance. Good—you moved into it. You must sense your opponent the way an animal scents fear. Finely done there, Coniaricus.” At first Auriane had been amused by these people’s tendency to append -us to all men’s names; now she scarcely noticed it.
After this, Corax turned to Sunia and began reprimanding her as usual. But on this day something in his voice caused Auriane to whip about and look. It was too soft, too coaxing. “Wrong, hopelessly wrong,” he was saying. “Straighten that arm for a thrust. There. You announce your move every time. Let’s hope the panthers have a taste for your hide.”
Corax’s hand was closed about her wrist as he demonstrated a feint. His free hand was cupped about Sunia’s breast.
“Like this. Strike deep enough to draw your man into a parry. Keep those knees flexed, now, that’s the way.” His voice had become a crude caress. Sunia twisted and writhed while Corax held her fast, continuing with his instructions as though all were well. “Now remember, when you move forward, that’s when you’re vulnerable. And don’t forget to keep that pretty head still as you advance—”
Auriane dropped her wooden sword and sprang like a mountain cat onto Corax’s back. All three of them toppled to the sand.
This time Auriane fared less well. Corax barely restrained himself from ordering her execution—his desire to watch her die was greater than any lust he ever felt. But once again, he remembered Meton. He contented himself with ordering twenty lashes with a weighted whip, and nine days in the pit.
When Auriane was released, she gave Corax looks of such deep and dedicated hatred that the uneasiness she inspired in him bloomed into terror. She was a witch and she was insane. He half expected to awaken one morning and find himself dying horribly from her curse, with maggots crawling in his flesh. He would not work near her unless guards were posted close. The guards promptly circulated a tale that Corax was a sniveling coward, fearful even of his women charges.
Auriane no longer knew how long they had been in this place of no seasons. Had the day of rekindling the fire slipped past invisibly, without its solemn dances, and brought them, unknowing, into the time of sowing cakes into the first furrow? Without the moon and stars it was impossible to tell. Time did not move forward here; it swirled and pooled, gathering strength to pull them down. But the day came when Corax announced in his most self-important manner: “In four days’ time is the test of aptitude. Those judged skilled enough will stay on with me. Most of you know it from gossip, but I’ll say it, nevertheless. The School’s to provide twenty women and a hundred men for the Games of Ceres on the third day after the Nones of Aprilis, and I’ve got to give my share. Some of you will be kept on to help us defend our honor against the Claudian School. There are no victors in these tests. I mean only to judge your skill and select the ones with spirit and promise—and prune out the wretches that will dishonor us out there. Four days. Prepare yourselves!”
Sunia, Auriane thought with desolation. She has improved but little. What is to be done?
For four days Auriane scarcely slept, listening to the distorted shouts of guard changes issuing from far down the feebly lit stone passages, the stifled sobbing in adjacent cells. Sunia feigned sleep, but Auriane felt her alertness. She seemed too terrified to weep.
CHAPTER XXXVII
“WHAT I PLAN,” MARCUS JULIANUS SAID to Diocles, “will be a risk for you as well. Should it fail, I’ve made arrangements for your escape from the city.”
“I’m old and useless, you must not worry over me.”
“As if I could not worry over you.” His eyes were in ferment with care and sadness. “Before you heap objections on me, remember we’re perilously short of time—her training’s progressed more than half way.”
They stood alone on a travertine landing at the western extremity of the fastnesses of the great-house’s gardens. Julianus halted between two sculptures along the low wall— Phidias’ head of an Amazon atop a herma, and a bust in Parian marble of Zeno, founder of the Stoic school. Diocles was seized with the rightness of it, thinking: If I were a painter I would paint him thus, poised between that mythic barbarian woman of battles, bringer of chaos, and Zeno, great lover of order. I think he must choose or go mad.
Before them was a dramatic drop down the Esquiline’s slope. The city Julianus loved and loathed was shrouded in a deathless red-gold haze as the sun eased into the unseen sea. The crowded hills shimmered with mystic light; this chimerical scene might have been a vision from the remote days of Rome’s foundation when all humbled themselves before the horned temple of Diana, or a dream of Morpheus, or of some future realm of a philosopher-king. You are ill, he silently addressed the city as if it had one soul. Ill, and with imperceptible slowness, dying. You’ve blundered off too far from your source, which was—how did Isodorus say it?—“pure, vigorous nature.” The eye of empire drowses into morbid sleep.
“I do not know if any of my messages to her got through,” Julianus continued. “For certain she thinks I’ve abandoned her. And now I’ve lost my last hope of ridding the city of its scourge before she’s sent to her death.”
Diocles nodded in wary acknowledgment. In the last months the Fates rose to oppose the conspirators again and again. Domitian in these days made a great show of ruling mildly, inspired partly by the terror brought by the omen he received during the procession. He increased the days of games and raised the soldiers’ pay by one third. He slackened in his attempts to humiliate the Senate, occasionally al
lowing them to debate issues of relative importance, which lulled the opposition into blind contentment. Julianus cursed their shortness of memory and knew this temperance could not last—but it could easily outlast Auriane.
Other events as well stayed the conspirators’ hands—a serious war threatened on the Danube, with a group of allied tribes who promised to be far more formidable adversaries than the Chattians; Julianus judged it too perilous a time to attempt a change of government, for this enemy would take swift advantage of instability in the capital city.
“Months have passed,” Diocles objected. “I, for one, am not convinced the Emperor has not simply forgotten about her.”
“He will never forget about her. One sign is how strenuously he strives to get me to believe he has. She has become an evil passion with him, one he cloaks even from himself, for it fills him with shame, so much so that he’s given no special orders concerning her to the school’s Prefect, lest he suspect his obsession. Not so, however, with the guards—the ones I’ve thus far approached have proved strangely unsusceptible to bribes when the message involves her. He is not watching her, yet he is watching her.”
“Beware the tyrant that blushes at his own lusts.”
Julianus gave Diocles a nod of agreement. “At the Alban Mount he keeps a new concubine who, in his mind at least, resembles Auriane. The real Auriane disturbs him too much—he seems satisfied with his imitation, at least for now. Of late all he seems to desire from Auriane herself is the prospect of watching her fight and die. And if you need more proof she’s branded upon his soul, I have seen his plans for the games of Ceres, for which he’s recreating the battles of the Chattian war. The native women he’s collected will be used to reenact the taking of the Chattian supply train.”
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