Curses and Smoke

by Vicky Alvear Shecter

  The man’s thick, wide citizen ring featured a crest that marked him as a patrician of the highest order. Tag had heard of rich patricians and free citizens joining a school for gladiatorial training and even fighting in the arena, but he’d never actually seen it happen. Not at their school, anyway. Tag couldn’t train to fight for his freedom, yet this man could saunter in and playact at fighting just to have stories to share with his drinking buddies later. The very idea of a man willingly giving up his freedom for sport sickened him. Yet Tag forced his face to bear the impassive expression of the compliant slave.

  Well, the young patrician likely wouldn’t last long. “Follow me, please,” Tag said to him. But Quintus did not move. “Follow me to the medical room,” Tag repeated, a little louder.

  The man turned his attention to him, his eyes widening. “Oh, excuse me. Were you talking to me, slave? Address me as Dominus in the future.”

  Red heat spread through Tag’s chest, and he fought the desire to twist the young man’s curled head into the sand like Archimedes’s screw. His attitude must have aggravated Pontius too, because the giant Samnite stepped up inches from Quintus’s face and stabbed a fat finger into his chest.

  “Listen here, ye privileged pansy,” he hissed. “Nobody out here calls ye Dominus, got it? That’s what ye call me. Now, I don’t know why ye came here or what game yer playin’, but there are no guarantees that you’ll make it out alive. Yer under my control now, and if ye make me mad, it may slip my mind to ask my men to go easy on yer pampered backside. Are we clear?”

  Quintus hesitated just long enough to skirt the edge of politeness. “Yes … Dominus,” he said.

  “Tag, take this piece of trash outta my sight,” Pontius ordered him, turning back to the sand.

  “Follow me,” Tag said again as he walked away, not bothering to look back. Inside the medical room, Castor ran under the table for an empty record tablet when Tag nodded at him.

  “I must ask you to strip,” Tag said to the young nobleman.

  “But we’ve only just met,” Quintus replied, quirking one eyebrow and crossing his arms.

  “For the medical examination,” Tag said coolly, taking the wax tablet and stylus from Castor.

  The patrician untied his filigreed, embroidered belt and began shrugging out of his tunic. Tag noticed how carefully he protected his oiled curls as he pulled the tunic over his head. Gods, the other gladiators were going to eat him alive.

  “Castor, go help my father, please.”

  Clearly intimidated by the rich man, the boy nodded and careened out of the room.

  “Wait! Don’t run —” Tag began, but stopped at the sound of cascading, clanging metal. He winced.

  An equipment slave cursed loudly in a mix of guttural Latin and Greek over what Tag guessed was a spilled basket of shields. “Watch where you’re going, you stupid little sot,” the man roared after Castor.

  Tag shook his head, then tossed Quintus a subligaculum — a canvas loincloth — and a wide leather belt. Quintus let them fall at his feet.

  “You cannot be serious,” he said. “I will not wear another man’s sweat-stained undergarments!”

  “Then you can train naked,” Tag said nonchalantly. “Some of the Celt warriors insist on doing so when they first come. It usually doesn’t go well for them. I’ve learned there are some surgeries I really don’t like to perform.”

  Quintus blanched, then stepped into the subligaculum. Tag suppressed a smirk. He could feel the patrician examining him from head to toe as he opened the wax tablet.

  “So,” the man said. “You are a medical slave. Interesting. By the young-Apollo looks of you, I would have had you pegged as the lanista’s personal slave….”

  Tag narrowed his eyes. “I am a trained healer. That is my sole purpose.”

  “What a waste.”

  Tag ignored his baiting and began. “All new fighters to the ludus — free or slave — must answer the following medical questions.” He sped through them as quickly as possible in order to get the man out of his room.

  Have you ever had a broken bone? If so, where?

  A cough that caused labored breathing?

  Have you had the falling-down sickness?

  Quintus answered all his questions with an attitude of superior boredom. The scabs on Tag’s lashes itched with irritation, and he rolled his shoulders to ease the tension during the interview.

  “Let me smell your breath,” Tag said. The man’s breath had a slight metallic undertone, indicating that the patrician’s blood was too hot — a sure marker that his humors were out of balance. Excess yellow bile likely accounted for his odiousness. Tag carved his observations into the wax with the stylus.

  “Now let me look at your nails.” He was looking for yellowing or ridges, but Quintus’s nails were buffed and manicured beyond anything he’d ever seen. Tag swallowed his revulsion, trying to imagine having so much free time — not to mention money — that he could own another human whose sole purpose was to massage and buff his fingertips.

  “Why are you here at this ludus?” he asked, pretending it was one of the questions on the list.

  “To irritate my father, mostly,” Quintus said, shrugging. “I am, of course, the fifth son, determinedly not following in the footsteps of my overachieving brothers. My father bleats that he’s tired of my gambling, drinking, and whoring. So he gave me a choice — serve as a butt wiper to his friends’ officers at a military outpost in Britannia, or come here to dry out and toughen up for a few months.”

  “So you came here? Kissing some officer’s backside would’ve been a lot easier.”

  Quintus smirked. “I am not going out on any military post unless I am the officer in charge. My father should have known this. In truth, I believe he never thought I’d choose this hellhole. Which is, of course, why I did. I live to enrage him.”

  “Well, you have a talent for enraging others too. You should watch yourself around the gladiators,” Tag warned. “Have you been told which barracks you will be sleeping in?”

  Quintus laughed. “Barracks? No. I’m staying in the big house with your master.”

  “But haven’t you signed your freedom over to the school?” Doing so meant the patrician would have to live like the rest of the fighting slaves.

  Quintus scoffed. “My father has made special arrangements with your master to accommodate me. Besides, your master wouldn’t dare insult a patrician like me by making me sleep with you filthy brutes.”

  Tag shook his head. His throat would be cut by sunset.

  The young man seemed to read his expression. “Oh, I’m not worried. In addition to the significant amount of money my father has given your owner to cover this little adventure, I’ve managed to slip him even more gold to make sure I come out of this with nary a scratch. I’m sure the overseer slave —”

  “Pontius is not a slave — he’s a freedman.”

  “I’m sure the former slave will receive his instructions about this. I think your master is hoping to get a wealthy sponsor out of this little arrangement. Which he just might, if I come out of this as handsomely noble as I went in.” He touched his hair again.

  Tag stared at him in disbelief.

  Quintus picked up a small square of metal and gazed at his reflection. “Speaking of pretty faces, I understand the lanista’s daughter is quite a little beauty. I imagine every gladiator here fancies himself half in love with her.”

  “She is betrothed,” Tag pointed out.

  Quintus shrugged. “Yes, but she isn’t married yet.” He smiled wickedly. “Oh, wouldn’t my father love that.”

  “Love what?”

  “If I suddenly claimed that I’d fallen for the daughter of a ‘Butcher of Men.’ The scandal would serve him right.”

  “I do not recommend such a game,” Tag said. “It is well known that if any gladiator so much as looks at the girl, he will be whipped to within an inch of his life.”

  “Ah, but I’m not a gladiator, am I?” Quin
tus said, walking around the small room, sniffing at the small clay bowls full of dried healing herbs.

  Tag clenched his teeth. “I believe we are done here.”

  “Excellent. Can I go get my sword now?”

  “You do not get a sword. We train with wooden weapons. You know this. Everyone knows this.”

  “But I want a real sword! What’s the fun of this if I don’t get to play with a real sword?”

  “Go out to Pontius and tell him you’re ready for your ‘real sword.’ He’ll take care of you.”

  “Splendid!” Quintus sauntered out of the room, giving Tag a smile of amused condescension.

  Again, Tag had to take multiple breaths to beat back the urge to twist Quintus into sausage links. How dare he talk about Lucia like that! Were people truly just playthings to the very rich?

  With an irritated sigh, he began the report for Pontius and the master on the new “trainee.”

  The next time I visit Cornelia, Lucia thought as a rivulet of sweat snaked down her back, I absolutely must leave earlier in the day. Like clay in baking ovens, the paving stones in Pompeii’s streets absorbed the sun’s heat and threw it back in people’s faces. But while the weather normally cooled off in September, it still felt like high summer — almost as if the ground itself was generating heat. Just one more thing to add to my list of strange happenings in Pompeii.

  “Would you like a drink, Domina?” asked the barefoot little slave boy scampering after her and her attendant, holding a skin filled with watered wine.

  “I am not thirsty yet, Castor,” she said.

  “Well, when you do get thirsty, I will be right here!”

  She smiled at the child, who grinned up at her with pride. How old was he — five? Six? The wineskin was almost the size of his head. The poor little slave was the only child in the household. She’d had Tages to play with when she was that young, but Castor had no one. If any of her mother’s babies had survived, she was sure Castor would be running through the woods with them, just as she used to with Tag.

  Occasionally, she watched Tag from the balcony as he made his rounds of the gladiators, fascinated by the changes time had wrought. The funny, mischievous little boy she remembered had disappeared, though sometimes she caught glimpses of him when he laughed at some joke a gladiator threw his way. Still, for the most part he seemed to be always scowling. Which — remembering the whip marks on his back — she supposed made sense. She hoped she would run into him in their hideout again sometime soon.

  At Cornelia’s villa, Lucia left her slaves outside the kitchens to rest and headed toward the private baths. Her friend had done well for herself in marriage: Her husband was only ten years older and was sweetly devoted to her. Lucia would not be fighting her father’s plan for marriage so tirelessly if he could find someone like Antyllus for her.

  When Lucia entered the baths, she saw Cornelia already seated in the water. “What, you couldn’t wait for me?” she teased.

  “No, I couldn’t,” Cornelia answered, her arms waving underwater like pale fins. A young female bath slave scurried over to help Lucia with her clothes. “I trusted you’d understand.”

  Lucia took a deep breath of the warm, moist, scented air. Another young female slave rushed to her side, carrying a tray with an array of tiny, glinting blue, clear, and green glass flasks. “Saffron oil today, Domina?” the girl asked. “Or perhaps essence of rose?”

  Lucia pointed to her favorite — yellow citron oil gleaming in a clear vial. While the slave oiled her body in preparation for scraping with the strigil, she watched Cornelia in the bath. Gods, pregnancy suited her! She looked so happy, even with her belly poking through the water like an island emerging from the sea.

  “Stop staring at my monstrous belly,” Cornelia complained with fake petulance.

  “It’s not monstrous, it’s beautiful!”

  “Then why are you doing everything in your power to avoid getting into my condition?” Cornelia laughed. “You are sixteen, not six.”

  “If you met my betrothed, you would understand.”

  Cornelia rolled her eyes. When Lucia had been properly scraped, she descended into the water. “Oh, it is not as cool as it looks,” she mumbled.

  “I know. I’d much prefer it if we could move into the frigidarium, but Antyllus wants me to avoid extreme temperatures, even though the midwife says it wouldn’t be a problem.”

  “And you don’t dare disobey your lord and master,” Lucia said with a sly grin.

  Cornelia splashed her. “That’s right, I don’t. Because he makes me swoon.”

  Lucia laughed. “Swoon? That’s a new one.”

  Her friend sighed. “Just you wait. One day, you will fall in love —”

  “Or lust.”

  “— and you will see. It’s not that I have to do what he tells me, it’s that I want to.”

  “Oh, Venus protect me,” Lucia muttered.

  Cornelia snorted. “She’s the last one to ask. You’d best turn to Diana if you’re determined to stay a virgin your whole life.”

  “I don’t want to be a virgin my whole life. I just don’t want to marry a man who needs a cane to get around! Or whose nose-hairs are bushier than his eyebrows!”

  Cornelia laughed. “Oh, do stop about the poor man’s nose-hairs. He can’t help it!”

  “Yes, he can! Plus, he probably hasn’t smiled in decades. I bet if he tried to smile, pieces of his skin would flake off like old frescoes in an earthquake.” She shivered. “At least your husband is kind and gentle and handsome. Did I mention how noble and wonderful he is?”

  “Yes, you did, but I don’t mind hearing it again. I am very fortunate,” Cornelia said, touching her thumb to her forefinger and pressing the hand between her breasts for protection against the evil eye. “May the gods keep us so.” Cornelia’s eyes widened. “Oh!” Her hand flew to her belly. “Come here and feel this!”

  Lucia swam closer as Cornelia retreated to the top step of the pool. Her belly rested on her thighs like an egg in a nest. She looked so insanely hopeful and happy, so young and beautiful, Lucia found that she could not stare into her friend’s face without her throat constricting.

  She dived under the water and emerged at eye level with her friend’s belly. Cornelia leaned back, murmuring something to the bath slave, and Lucia saw her friend’s stomach ripple — it actually moved — as the child shifted positions, like a small creature undulating under the skin of the sea. Had that been an elbow? Or a foot? It took Lucia’s breath away.

  Cornelia saw her expression of wonder and grinned, rubbing her belly.

  “The … the child moved! I saw it!” Lucia exclaimed. At what point did infants in the womb begin doing that? she wondered. Was it truly independent, or did the mother’s mood or thoughts drive the movement? Did little chicks flutter and kick inside eggs too? What animated life like that? Lucia wished she had her wax tablet to write down her questions.

  Cornelia smiled. “Hecate is bringing us chilled wine,” she said. “And now tell me what you need — you said you had a favor to ask.”

  Lucia lifted herself out of the water and sat at the edge of the pool next to her friend. “Oh, no, you don’t.” Cornelia laughed as she playfully pushed her back into the water. “I do not need to see your ridiculously tiny and beautiful body next to mine. Forget it.”

  Lucia shook her head, but stayed in the water anyway. “Well, I was wondering if you could arrange a meal with Pliny.”

  Cornelia’s mouth dropped open. “The admiral? Why?”

  “Well, as Antyllus’s patron, it would not be so odd to have him visit, would it? And if I just ‘happened’ to be here, I could discuss my natural observations with him —”

  “Oh, not this again!”

  “Something strange is afoot in Pompeii,” insisted Lucia. “And I think Pliny would have an idea about what it may all mean. I have been formulating some theories that he might find interesting.”

  Cornelia rubbed at the spot between her e
yebrows. “Lucia, if you tried to share any of your ‘theories’ with the admiral, he would look at you as if you were a monkey that suddenly started reciting the Iliad!”

  “Cornelia, that is not true. The upper classes educate women. I bet his sister Plinia joins him in conversation all the time. I don’t think he will find it that odd.”

  Her friend scooped water with her palms and dribbled it over her belly. “I don’t think I can do it, Lucia. I really don’t.”

  “It’s just that …” Lucia paused and took a breath. “I leave for Rome soon. My wedding is the day after Meditrinalia! It’s only weeks away. While you’re enjoying the tasting of the first wines, I’ll be facing the worst day of my life. I may never have another opportunity to meet the admiral.”

  Cornelia’s expression sobered. “It’s definite, then. You will move to Rome. For good?”

  Lucia nodded. “Yes, you knew that.”

  “I … I just had not thought about it actually occurring.”

  “In truth, I don’t know what upsets me more — marrying a man older than my grandfather would have been, or moving away from Pompeii. I won’t be able to see you anytime I want. I won’t be here when the baby comes….”

  “Gods,” Cornelia said, her eyes growing wide. “I don’t want you to move away.”

  “Well, you know I don’t.”

  “We should be working on a plan to break this betrothal rather than planning a dinner with the admiral,” Cornelia cried.

  “Trust me, I’ve tried everything. I even attempted to get our healer to tell Father that I was barren, but Damocles refused to do it. There’s no way around the marriage. But if I met Pliny, it would be like a dream come true — a memory I can cheer myself with when I am lonely in Rome.”

  Cornelia sighed. “I will talk to Antyllus.”

  Lucia grabbed her friend’s hand. “Thank you, Cornelia. You are wonderful.”

  “No promises. But, you know, if we are able to arrange it, you must look … well, more polished in his presence.”