“Not far from here, in Cumae, there was a prophetess, a strange woman from the east, who dwelt in a cave on the slopes of the citadel. Some say her name was Amalthea, some Herophile, others Demophile. The Romans simply call her Sibyl. And this Sibyl came to King Tarquin with the strangest of offers. She offered him nine books, for a costly sum.”
“What was in nine books that was worth so much?” Spartacus wondered.
“Ah!” Varro said. “What indeed?”
He glanced round at the expectant listeners, enjoying their anticipation.
“What could possibly be worth a hundred lifetimes’ wealth? I can see you thinking on that very question, as did King Tarquin when he returned to his hearth. What madness was this? What did the witch know? Moreover, what knowledge did she possess when, in full view of Tarquin, she threw three of the books upon the fire?”
He kicked the embers before him for effect, throwing out a cloud of sparks and glowing ash.
“Tarquin watched as the papyrus curled and burned, as the wooden covers darkened and smouldered. Through the flames, he caught sight of ancient letters, scrawled in fading inks, succumbing to the flames! But still he did nothing. And the witch turned to him, brandishing the six remaining books, and asked him if he wanted to buy them at double the price!”
Spartacus laughed. Barca muttered something about the foolishness and melodrama of women, particularly hypothetical prophetesses.
“If nine books cost a hundred lifetimes’ labor,” Varro continued, “how could six be worth twice as much? King Tarquin laughed at the crazy Sibyl, this addled crone from the smoking fields of Cumae. He scorned her offer and told her to leave him in peace, and she looked at him with pleading, tearful eyes. Once more, she begged him to take the books for the sum she demanded, and once more Tarquin turned away in disgust.
“And so, the Sibyl held up three more books, half the remaining total, and weeping this time, as if she were murdering her own child, she cast them also onto the fire!”
Varro kicked at the hearth again, sending up another flurry of sparks.
“Tarquin stared into the flames, and watched three more books burn into cinders, while the witch wept silently. She looked mournfully at the three remaining books, and spoke through her sobs. ‘King Tarquin,’ she said. ‘These last three are all that remain, and they are yours for ten times the original asking price!’
“Ten times, my friends! A thousand lives’ labors, for a mere fragment of the original!”
“But what in the books was of such value?” Spartacus pressed.
“Tarquin wondered that himself. He saw something in the witch’s eyes that told him this was his final chance. He sensed something in her inverted, perverse means of bargaining, that struck fear into his heart. And so, angry at himself, rage boiling up in his breast, he ordered his slaves to bring him the fortune the witch desired. She went away with a thousand lifetimes’ wealth, and left him with nothing but the three books. And Tarquin opened up the books, and looked at their strange lettering, a form of Greek so ancient as to be barely intelligible to the educated Roman. He read verse after verse of arcane oracles, and began to understand the enormity of what he had done. Only now, as he sat in the fading firelight, unrolling these delicate, brittle scrolls, did Tarquin start to realize his monstrous crime. And Tarquin sat by his hearth and wept.”
“What was in the books?” Barca demanded, seemingly ready to punch the answer out of the storyteller.
“You tell me! What could it be that was worth more, the less there was of it? What text could there be, that would cause a ruler to weep as he read through to its premature end?”
“The... the history of Rome...?” Spartacus asked.
“THE HISTORY OF ROME! From the first time the word was uttered on the banks of the Tiber, to the fall of the kings and the foundation of the Republic. Our tribulations against Carthage and the crisis of Hannibal’s invasion. The Social Wars, and our campaigns in Greece and Hispania. You and me, here at this very moment! All our victories and our loves. Our children yet unborn, and our children’s children! Slaves and nobles, farmers and soldiers, wives and mothers. Everything we are and will be. The people we meet and the enemies we fight; the women we love and the places we settle; the seas we cross and the mountains we climb! Anything and everything that Rome has been or ever will be, was in those books!”
“And Tarquin watched six of them burn...”
“So he did.”
“Fool,” Spartacus murmured.
“Maybe so.”
“Rome’s history is Rome’s history. I shall not be part of it.”
“Oh, but Spartacus, you already are. Whether you desire it or not.”
“All books must end,” Spartacus said, thoughtfully.
The bolt rattled in the door to the cell, and the men looked round to see a guard fumbling at the lock.
“Varro. You are summoned,” the guard grunted.
The three gladiators looked at each other in surprise.
“Spartacus is the Champion of Capua,” Varro said, carefully.
“Varro. Varro alone.”
“Are you sure they do not want the Beast of Carthage?”
“You, Varro. Now.”
Lucretia sat up with a start.
“I see you found quiet room, far from moving lips,” Ilithyia said.
“A taxing day,” Lucretia said, “of great cost.”
“A torment,” Ilithyia agreed. “You would think Timarchides would arrange enough couches and benches.”
“In death,” Lucretia mused, “Pelorus has attracted considerably more friends than he had in life.”
Ilithyia’s eyes widened in excitement.
“We are over-run!”
“Who is to say who is a friend of Pelorus, and who a chancing passer-by? There is no man, free or slave, at the door.”
“The nobler Roman would have a nomenclator to remember the names,” Ilithyia added, as if Lucretia could not possibly have known this. “My husband has a fine one who is always on hand with appointments, and reminders, and the like. No face comes to our door without the nomenclator whispering: ‘Master, it is so-and-so of such-and-such a place. His wife’s name is Calpurnia and he is secretly fucking his body slave.’”
Lucretia raised an eyebrow.
“We are the sum of those that know us,” she said. “I was barely acquainted with Pelorus, but I carry fragments of him in my mind. Things my husband has said. Things my late father-in-law mentioned. I carry pieces of his life at one remove. It is all that will be left of him.”
“Nonsense,” Ilithyia said. “He has a whole day of games to honor him tomorrow.”
“Who troubles their mind to remember who gives the games?” Lucretia said.
“Great games stay in the memory for years!” Ilithyia protested. “And it surprises me to hear you, a lanista’s wife, claim otherwise!”
“When I die, I would prefer temple offered to gods in place of games.”
“I want games. I want the best of men, a primus of primuses. I want the finest muscles straining against death in my honor. I want a crowd to see men pierced by blades, screaming in pain in my name!”
“It will be of little solace to you.”
“I want to hear them in the afterlife. I want to hear their grunts and moans. I want them to celebrate their victories with an orgy of ludiae, and when they spend their seed inside their whores, I want them to say: ‘This I do for Ilithyia.’” Ilithyia gave a little gasp of ecstatic satisfaction, and laughed at her own arrangements.
“Take it from me,” Lucretia said with a yawn, “gladiators are not the sort of creatures to dwell much on such things.”
“They live for their editors, and for those whose honors they enact.” Ilithyia pouted at her friend. “You shatter all my illusions,” she said. “The more I know of the workings of the arena, the less I crave its delights!”
“Apologies,” Lucretia said. “Today’s fight leaves me truculent and uncharitable.”
“And me parched and coughing!” Ilithyia declared. “And yet Pelorus would have been proud of the House of Batiatus, for providing such a fine show at his last exit.”
“I do not think pride was much of a consideration,” Lucretia said, setting down her goblet. She looked around her at the shadowy corners, listening for the faint noises of merriment in the main rooms. Outside, she heard footsteps approaching, unhurriedly.
“What do you mean?” Ilithyia asked. “I thought the House of Batiatus was the very core of Pelorus’s existence.”
Lucretia snorted.
“He never spoke to Verres of the House of Batiatus,” she said.
“Indeed he did not,” Verres’s voice said. The two women looked round to see the subject of their gossip in the doorway, bearing two flagons of wine.
“Apologies, my intention is not to intrude,” Verres said. “But I heard the music of your laughter from the hall and wondered if these wines would buy me audience to its notes.”
Ilithyia proffered her empty cup with a cascade of giggles.
“We are at your command, Governor Verres,” she said, gazing at him from behind her eyelashes. Lucretia managed a pained smile to match, and Verres approached with his purloined wine.
“Is it Gaulish?” Lucretia asked, noting the strange shape of its jar.
“Indeed it is,” he said. “Suffused with the flavor of barbarism!” He sloshed some of the red liquid into both their cups, while the women carefully held the drape of their sleeves out of harm’s way.
“I fear I have already had enough!” Ilithyia said.
“Ilithyia,” Verres breathed. “If you were not already taken by so noble a husband, I would be unable to resist.”
“I am sure she would not put up much of a fight, either,” Lucretia said dryly.
Ilithyia shot her a dirty look.
“If she were not married, of course,” Lucretia added hastily.
“When I have a wife,” Verres said brightly, “I shall have a wife.” He settled himself on the floor cushions that were scattered at the foot of the couch.
“No woman has laid claim to you?” Ilithyia said, her voice full of disbelief.
“It is true, I have no wife. But there are many women that can be taken to wife—even temporarily. My lesson from a young age was that the Roman way is not one of love, or even lust. But of power. Ever since the Sabines. Ever since our men of legend. The Roman way has been one of the exercise of force, if you understand my meaning?” he added, nudging Ilithyia suggestively.
She laughed in peals of glee... and then said, “No.”
“I was but a boy when I discovered what it meant to truly own a woman,” Verres continued. “She was a household kitchen slave, which kept her out of the way for most of the time. But I would see her carrying and chopping, and heading out to market.
“She would wash in the atrium when she thought herself alone. And she treasured a small, rude-fashioned pot of rouge. When she went to market she would dab the slightest dash of it upon her cheeks. Perhaps there was a grocer she hoped to impress. I never asked.”
The two Roman ladies listened in rapt attention. Ilithyia with one hand held to her chest as if to still her beating heart.
“I ordered her to follow me. She made as if to protest but... sssh... I reminded her that I was the master in the absence of my parents. Master of the house, and master of her. So she followed me into the bedchamber, and stood there, waiting, nervously.”
Verres gazed into two pairs of wide eyes, and smiled inwardly that two women should take such pleasure in the tale of the ruin of another of their sex.
“To have her trembling like a little bird in a snare. That is the joy of being a Roman man, to know that Roman virtue has woven an invisible cage around such women.”
“What a thought,” Ilithyia said. “Lost to women of our position.”
“Why should it be?” Verres asked. “You promise in marriage to give yourself to no other man but your husband. But a free woman cannot give herself to a slave—a slave is not equipped to take anything.”
“You mean legally...?” Lucretia asked.
“Legally,” Verres confirmed with a smirk. “If a slave were to seize you, his life would be forfeit. But if you seized a slave... what harm would there be?”
Ilithyia seized Lucretia’s arms excitedly, like a little girl with a new dress.
“Did you hear that, Lucretia?”
“I did,” Lucretia said, peeling her friend’s hands away. She took a deep drink of her wine and said no more.
“I am sure you do not begrudge your husbands the occasional... need, absent the delights of your good selves. Surely they should not begrudge you, either? What matters it to them if you feel a slave’s tongue between your legs every now and then?”
Verres flicked his own tongue over his teeth suggestively. Ilithyia slapped him playfully, hooting with excitement. Her face was flushed and her breathing quick.
He stood up as if to leave, only for Ilithyia to jump up and snatch hungrily at his sleeve.
“Do not leave us on the edge!” she cried. “Tell us more.”
“I cannot share all my secrets with you, lady,” he said in mock affront. “It would be like sharing the Eleusinian Mysteries or gazing upon the Sibylline Books. Such matters are secrets for a reason.”
“We promise not to tell,” Ilithyia said.
Verres glanced about him, as if checking for eavesdropping enemies.
“Be seated,” he said, patting the cushion beside him, “and I shall tell you of the delights of the free. Not of slaves merely used, but of loves freely given.”
Ilithyia sat, gracefully, a respectful distance from him.
“You too, lady Lucretia,” Verres said.
“There is not room enough,” Lucretia protested from her couch. “I can attend perfectly well from here—”
“Lucretia, imagine we are at the races and there is but one seat beside me,” he insisted. “Though we might accidentally touch! You might tread on my foot. I might...”
Verres suddenly reached out and picked a speck of fluff from Lucretia’s gown, his wrist brushing lightly against the top of her breast.
Lucretia gently slapped his hand away.
“My lady, I was merely picking away a scrap of lint from your dress!” Verres protested. “It was marring your otherwise flawless beauty!”
Lucretia laughed in spite of herself.
“And she smiles!” Verres cried in victory, while Ilithyia applauded. “The icy demeanour melts before my onslaught. And suddenly we are talking.”
“This is also not unusual,” Lucretia pointed out. “Men and women have conversation all the time!”
“But we were strangers, and now we are not. I have already crossed the hardest of seas. I am almost in the harbor.” Verres raised an eyebrow suggestively.
Lucretia blushed.
“What next? What next?” Ilithyia demanded, bringing the attention back to herself.
“Since we are imagining we are at the races,” Verres mused. “Perhaps we should place a bet. I let her go before me, of course, for that is also gallant, but I mark well what horse or chariot she favors, and I wager my coin on the very same. We return to our seats, close to the object of my affections, and the race begins!”
He leapt to his feet excitedly, staring across the room at an imaginary racetrack, dragging his two lady companions up by their arms until they were standing at his side.
“The chariots thunder around the circus!” he declared, gesturing wildly. “Every person in the crowd screams the name of their chosen sportsman! And, by the gods, how can this be? We two are yelling for the same rider! We share in his victory! We commiserate in his defeat! If he is victorious, we meet again at the bookmakers. If our chariot falls, in unison we tear up our tickets and lament the cruelties of fate. Whatever the outcome, we have an experience that is most definitely shared!”
“It is almost as if you were fated to meet!” Ilithyia bre
athed, clutching closely at Verres’s arm, her crinkled nose nudging at his ear.
“And as the day wears on, we spend more time in each other’s company!” Verres continued. “Perhaps the gods are smiling upon us after all. Perhaps, as you say, it is fate indeed. And if it is fate, perhaps we should help it along by conceiving another encounter.”
“In the alleys behind the circus?” Ilithyia suggested. “Against the empty barrels?”
“Ilithyia!” Lucretia scolded, aghast.
“At the temple!” Verres responded, with almost as much vehemence himself. “I suggest that we meet the next day at the sanctuary of Venus or at the festival of Mercury. Whatever seems most favorable to bring her back to me.”
“Do such stratagems work for you often, Gaius Verres?” Lucretia asked.
“Now, that would be telling,” Verres said with a smile. He reached out behind Ilithyia’s ear, adjusting an imaginary hair out of place, caressing her ear as he did so. She shivered involuntarily with excitement, and they both laughed.
The guard ushered Varro into a darkened chamber. The shutters had been closed against the night air. Candles and lamps illuminated little, in half a dozen weak glows dotted about the room. In the half-light, Varro saw plush cushions and boxed possessions, as if the occupant were partway through moving in, or moving out.
It was only as the door shut behind the departing guard, that Varro realized the room’s occupant was already present.
“You fought well today,” said a voice.
“Timarchides?”
“My name, to you, is dominus. Mark it well.”
“Apologies, dominus.”
“You tried to master me on the field of battle. You and your fellow gladiators seemed intent on bringing death to your foes.”
“Apologies, again, dominus.”
“You should not apologize for that. A little... eager perhaps for an exhibition fight, but fighting is what gladiators do, after all. Fighting and dying.”
Timarchides drew close to Varro.
“You gave me a taste, Varro,” he said, “a dim memory reawakened of my days as a gladiator. For a moment, I forgot the dreary security of freedom, and felt the visceral, vital surge of a life lived by the sword.”
Spartacus - Swords and Ashes Page 10
