Chasing the Lion

by Nancy Kimball

“Why did you kill the lion?”

  “Its death was certain and it was suffering. It would have been cruel not to.”

  “Then you should understand me.”

  The trainer studied him for a long moment. “Your death is far from certain, and the life of a gladiator a far cry from suffering. Ask any one of them who survived the mines and quarries before taking up the sword in the arena.”

  “You know nothing of suffering.”

  “Enough of his mouth, Clovis.” The guard who tried to strike him earlier reached for his sword.

  “Leave us,” Clovis said.

  “Caius ordered him guarded at all times.”

  “Don’t insult me. I will guard him. Leave us until I order you to return.”

  The man followed the other guard through the sheet door but gave Jonathan a glare as sharp as the weapon he’d tried to draw. Clovis set the whip in his hand on the table beside him and sat on Nessa’s stool. He regarded him a long moment.

  Jonathan wanted to look away but somehow couldn’t.

  “You don’t really want to die,” Clovis finally said.

  “You know nothing of what I want.”

  “So there is something you want.” Clovis crossed his arms and continued to stare at him.

  Of course. Freedom. “It doesn’t matter anymore. Nothing does.” The claw wound in his leg throbbed, and he raised his knee to examine it.

  “Jonathan.”

  He’d become so accustomed to ‘slave’ from anyone besides Nessa that hearing his given name snapped his head up.

  Clovis leaned forward, his stare intense. “You don’t really want to die. You just no longer know why you want to live.”

  The truth of that statement settled deep within. No one had ever put it into words before. “I’m not going to fight. Not for the bloodlust of a mob or a man who profits from it.”

  “No one has ordered you to fight yet.”

  “What was the lion?”

  “A failed execution.”

  “My apologies.” Jonathan laced his tone with mock sincerity.

  “You are refusing a life you know nothing of, in favor of death. Something you also know nothing of. That is not fearless, or noble.”

  Noble. Jonathan almost laughed. If Clovis only knew.

  “Train with the others. Learn something of the life you so hastily dismiss.”

  “To what purpose? Finding myself on the other end of a sword held by a man who will kill me or spare me on the whim of another? I won’t live like that. Not another day. Not ever again.”

  Clovis studied him for a long moment. “Why do you assume you’ll be the loser?”

  The question stunned him. More so that he didn’t have an answer. What if he were the victor? Was that better or worse, to have to kill for the same blood sport he refused to die for?

  “Train under me. You may find there is more about yourself you don’t know. You can choose to throw your sword away at any time, if you have the courage to pick it up first. You needn’t decide now. I can clean up that scratch until Quintus and his slave girl return.”

  “Where is she?”

  Clovis’ blond brow lifted at the question. “Fond of the little one?”

  He shouldn’t have asked.

  “Well, I’d prefer her to my battlefield medicine too.” Clovis gathered water and a cloth and scrubbed the sand from the wound as Frona would scrub a floor. When he finished with the gash in Jonathan’s leg he went to work cleaning his back. Jonathan bit his lip to stifle a curse when the trainer rinsed his handiwork in salted water rather than wine. He could have sworn the man enjoyed it. Clovis wrapped the wound on his leg so tight the lower half felt as if it might shrivel up and fall off.

  “On your feet now. Follow me.”

  Jonathan rose from the bed and the pain in his leg vanished under the tightness of the dressing. They followed the perimeter of the courtyard to a row with many doors, all standing open. Some of the gladiators training in the courtyard paused their sparring to stare at Jonathan and Clovis as they passed.

  “This one is yours.” Clovis entered a small cell. A long, low wooden bed identical to his in the medicus chamber filled one side. A table with no stool held a clay pitcher and clay cup. In the opposite corner beside the door sat the clay chamber pot. Clean, since he’d seen it before he smelled it.

  Clovis took a small, corked vial from his belt and set it on the table near the cup.

  “What is that?”

  “Hemlock.”

  Jonathan couldn’t believe it. “A poison?”

  “Men who truly want to die usually find a way. Some men take the oath to avoid a sword to the throat, not because they intend to honor their vow. We find them with cloth-stuffed throats or stabbed with a broken table leg they sharpened on the stone floor. I’m not going to waste my time on you if this”—he held up the vial—“is really all you want.”

  He returned it to the table and looked Jonathan squarely in the face. “It gets no easier than this. Drink it all with a full cup of water. You will fall asleep and never wake again. In this life at least.”

  Clovis sighed heavily and left, shutting the cell door behind him. The bolt clanked into place, and his footsteps retreated into the distance. Jonathan sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed his still aching head. He stared at the vial until a slave brought him a crust of bread and a pear.

  The texture of the bread resembled sandal leather, hobnails and all, but it gave him something to do besides think about the poison. The juice of the pear ran down his chin, reminding him of the many times Nessa had held a cup to his lips. When the distraction of the food was gone, he listened to the gladiators through the small grate of metal bars in his door.

  The one called Tao was cursed often. Sometimes even his mother. Those curses usually followed a particularly loud crack of wooden weapons or thump of a body hitting the ground. He recognized Seppios’ angry voice, yelling for a new sword and after some time, a new partner. The second one must have fared better. The relentless cracking lasted longer at least.

  A snap of a whip preceded a sudden quiet, followed by many footsteps and the sounds of doors being closed and locked all around him. Soon the square of sunlight on the shadowed wall faded completely. After a time, a faint torch glow replaced it.

  Alone in the faint light, he stared at the vial that was now a malevolent presence filling the tiny room. It gets no easier than this. The man was brilliant. With a single glass bottle, he’d given him complete control of his fate. The power of the choice was exhilarating, and that was cause to reconsider over and over again.

  Hours passed like minutes. Every memory Jonathan ever had played through his mind. But there was one memory that stood out from the others, that settled his indecision.

  In it, he wore his newly acquired toga virilis, a gift for his fifteenth birthday. Now that he was officially a man, he would accompany his father to the games. His mother and Deborah had hated them, but the way Manius carried on about them, Jonathan had been curious.

  The morning beast shows had been exciting, seeing various animals chained to each other in fights to the death. A bear had made a mess of a bull, but not before being gored so badly it had to be carted from the arena by a slew of slaves, a hundred arrows sticking up from its fur like some great sea urchin.

  It had been the three elephants that made his stomach quiver. After being paraded around the arena, the beastiarii’s arrows wouldn’t pierce the animal’s hide, so they turned to spears. The crowd went wild when the biggest elephant charged, trampling a few of the hunters before it too looked like a sea urchin. A baby elephant stood in the center of the arena, the hunters surrounding it with their spears while the mother elephant stood near her dead mate.

  The hunters began to stab the baby over and over, its feeble cries enraging the mother, who shrieked and knocked hunters aside right and left with her trunk. She stood over the body of her dying child, covering him with her shadow as if to shield him from the pack of hunters. />
  Jonathan’s throat had tightened, his eyes burning. The little trunk rose slowly, covered in blood and sand, and entwined with his mother’s. He wanted to scream for them to leave her alone. One by one each beastiarius retrieved its spear from the fallen elephant and surrounded the mother guarding her dying calf. He rose from his seat as the spears were thrown. Blood poured from every wound covering her gray skin. Her legs buckled and her great ears twisted and flapped like loose sails before she fell, crushing her baby.

  Jonathan had sunk slowly to his seat, unnoticed by the others.

  “It’s a shame about the little one,” one of his father’s colleagues said. “Someone could have had it for a pet.”

  “They don’t stay small. I purchased a tiger cub last year for my wife. She adored it, but it kept killing too many of the slaves when it grew. I made a gift of it to the emperor for his December games. She raises those orange and white bearded fish now.”

  Slaves in the arena sank great metal hooks into the carcasses of the elephants, and teams of oxen hauled them away. He had to look away when they dragged the baby out by its trunk. Another group of slaves emerged and removed the bloody sand, raking it smooth for the midday executions. After the carnage of the beast hunts, he doubted his ability to endure the executions.

  He excused himself to purchase refreshment for him and his father, taking his time about it. When the cheering of the crowd died down again, he returned to their seats with wineskins and a basket of cut fruit for the main event—the gladiator contests.

  The first round wasn’t as bad as the elephants. There were so many fighting en masse it made it difficult to tell what was really happening. No one was killed. The fallen were allowed to leave the arena through the gate of life.

  It was the last match that had given him nightmares for days afterward. A long fight the crowd approved of, by their incessant cheering. The referee had separated the pair of men after a particularly solid blow. One of them stumbled and fell to his knees. He leaned forward and put his sword hand out to keep from falling on his face, and with the other, slowly raised two fingers.

  The crowd began to wail their disapproval.

  “What’s happening?” Jonathan asked his father.

  “The man gives the missio, conceding defeat and asking mercy of Domitian.”

  “They’re not men, Cornelius, they’re gladiators,” said the man who had earlier bemoaned the dead elephant calf. “Inferi.”

  Jonathan had not heard that term before, even in his extensive studies with Dionysius. “What does inferi mean?” He whispered the question to his father, lest he embarrass him if it should be something he should already know.

  “Lowest of the low.”

  “Oh.”

  The emperor rose from his seat in the pulvis overlooking the arena. He surveyed the fifty thousand people in the crowd. What was he looking for? Jonathan watched the man on his knees, still holding up his two fingers. His victorious opponent stood to the side, sword ready and head trained toward the emperor. Domitian extended his hand and slashed the air with his thumb.

  “What’s happening?”

  The kneeling man slowly lowered his arm and the one standing raised his sword high. Before his father could answer, the sword fell and severed the fallen gladiator’s head from his body. Screams of joy erupted everywhere and the men around Jonathan laughed. The victor walked to the helmet where it had rolled and picked it up. He shook it until the loser’s head fell free and rolled at his feet. The crowd roared like a mighty beast with a single voice.

  Jonathan froze.

  The head on the sand had black hair. Like his. A moment ago it had been a man—with desires and fears and maybe a family.

  “Cornelius,” a voice nearby said. “Your son does not wilt like a woman at the sight of a severed head.” The man clapped his father on the shoulder. “You should be proud, my friend. Your son is a true Roman.”

  A true Roman.

  Jonathan uncorked the vial and poured it into the empty cup. He filled the cup with water from the pitcher until he felt it on the fingertip he had placed just inside the rim. Slowly, he raised it to his lips and drained the cup. “Forgive me,” he said in a choked whisper, to the memory of his father—and the God he swore no longer existed.

  Chapter 15 – Lied To

  The metallic scrape of a door bolt roused Jonathan awake like cold water. Memories of yesterday flooded through him as he sat up—alive. The door swung open and sunlight silhouetted a hulking form. The man stepped into the shade of the small cell.

  Clovis.

  Jonathan swung his legs to the side and came to his feet, ignoring the smattering of aches and pains. “Why am I still alive?”

  The trainer eyed the empty bottle of poison on the table and frowned before crossing his arms. “There are two ways to forge a gladiator. Neither is easy, but you have chosen the hardest.” He picked up the empty bottle and cork and refastened them. “It was spiced nectar, not hemlock.”

  “Why?”

  Clovis snapped his fingers and tucked the empty vial in his belt. A slave entered and handed him a small bundle of leather and cloth. “Now I know how committed you are to resisting, you should know that I will be as committed in my task of training you.”

  This couldn’t be happening. Lies—more lies so people could still take from him with impunity. “Knowing I’d rather die?”

  “You want to die, fine. Do it in the arena. I will teach you how.” He dropped the sandals, belt, and loincloth at Jonathan’s feet. “Should you attempt escape or provoke the guards, rest assured a quick, easy death will not be your fate. I will chain you to a wall, cut open your belly, and let the carrion birds feed on your guts while you die slowly, and painfully.”

  The lion would have been merciful compared to vultures fighting over his entrails, their claws digging into his flesh while they feasted. He stared at Clovis in disgust. “I’m sure I wouldn’t be the first.”

  His cold blue eyes flashed. “You’re right. My father was fortunate enough to die in battle against the Romans. My older brother was not. As for the fate my mother suffered, there aren’t enough men in the ludis to kill you the way she died.”

  Jonathan’s mouth went dry as terrible images filled his mind.

  Clovis walked backward toward the door. “Dress quickly. The last man to the courtyard gets lashed.”

  So Clovis and his master wanted to continue to lie and play games. Jonathan would play along then, for now. He stripped off the dirty tunic and dressed in the loincloth, wide belt, and sandals. Clovis had said if he had the courage to pick up the sword, he could throw it down at any time. And Jonathan had the perfect time in mind.

  He elicited a few open stares making his way to join the other recruits. The men had already paired into little groups, eager to keep their distance from him. The gladiators were in various stages of stretching and each already had a shield and practice weapon at his feet, except for those Jonathan recognized as retiarii, who had a net and trident instead of a shield and sword or spear. Clovis showed no expression when they made eye contact. Jonathan turned to the balcony above them, but Caius wasn’t there looking down like the god he must imagine himself to be.

  A sharp pain stung his back and he winced.

  Clovis pulled the lash of his whip back toward him and coiled it. “Don’t be last again.”

  Jonathan bit back the curse that almost came from his lips. Another bite of the whip wasn’t worth it.

  “Pick up a beam,” Clovis snapped. “It’s time to work.” He barked orders all morning, snapping his whip when they weren’t followed fast enough. Jonathan and the other recruits shouldered the heavy beams and were made to perform endless maneuvers with them. One by one the beams began to fall, along with the men who dropped them.

  Jonathan lasted longer than he expected. When he couldn’t take another step and collapsed, he lay panting beneath the beam. Clovis’ whip hit him on the back. It must have been in a healing place, because it hurt so
much. He rolled the beam off and came to his knees, then his feet, glaring at the trainer. Hoisting the beam took two attempts, but he finally shouldered it and fell in step with the others.

  Blood seeped through the linen binding on his thigh. If Clovis saw the bright red stain coloring the dusty cloth, he ignored it. Jonathan tried to, though the ache became more intense every hour.

  Finally Clovis called for the midday meal. Jonathan lined up last of the recruits, who would be served after the gladiators. A slave handed him a bowl with what looked like the same stew he’d eaten with Nessa. His hunger burned as much as his muscles, and he’d hasten down anything short of raw meat.

  As in the courtyard, a dividing line existed between gladiators and recruits. There were no empty tables or benches and the few with room enough for him held men whose faces said he was unwelcome. Too hungry to care, he made his way to the corner and sat on the floor against the wall. His bowl was halfway to his lips when a familiar voice called out.

  “Lion killer, are you too good to eat with the other maggots in training?”

  Seppios. The Roman-hater with the bloody nose. A sudden quiet replaced the laughter, warning him a moment before Seppios appeared from between the rows of tables, stopping so close to him Jonathan had to look up to see him.

  “Did you not hear me, maggot?”

  Seppios kicked the bowl.

  Hot broth splashed Jonathan’s face. The wooden bowl clanged and rolled in a circle on the floor like a cart that had lost a wheel. Seppios laughed along with the other men.

  Jonathan let him laugh. Long enough he wouldn’t be watching for it. Then as fast as he could move his good leg, he kicked him in the groin. Seppios hunched over with a grunt and Jonathan sprang to his feet and put his knee in the man’s face. As his head snapped up from the blow Jonathan slammed his elbow into the back of the man’s neck. Seppios dropped to his hands and knees like a dog. Jonathan had received that series of blows so many times at the hands of Fabricius Clavis’ guards, but never thought he could have given them.

  For a single breath, no one moved.

  Gladiators jumped to their feet. Benches flipped and curses flew. Seppios straightened with murder in his eyes. Jonathan was trapped in the corner with nowhere to go but through them. His quick death was coming after all.