“You fought well, dominus,” Varro said, carefully.
“Of course I fought well!” Timarchides declared, momentarily piqued. “I fought as I fought for my freedom. And won it, too. But you, Varro... you, I hear, gave your freedom up.”
“I did, dominus.”
“To pay a debt. Your last act as a freeman was to submit to a new master. Where slaves are usually torn from their liberty, resisting, you gave yourself of your own free will.”
“I had no choice, dominus. I needed coin for—”
“I care not. I care only that you are a Roman, who has lost his will.”
“Dominus?”
“Take it off.”
“Dominus?”
“Remove your loincloth.”
Varro exhaled and did as he was told. He stood, naked in the dim firelight.
“Excellent,” Timarchides said. “You are a fine Roman specimen.”
Varro said nothing.
“The cock’s a little small,” Timarchides said. He reached out to touch it. Varro flinched.
“Such a big man,” Timarchides said, caressing Varro’s shoulder admiringly. “And yet between his legs, there is nothing but a little finger.”
Varro twitched, but said nothing.
“There is something on your mind, slave?”
“There is not, dominus.”
“Oh, but there is. You find my words to be an assault on your manhood.”
“No, dominus.”
“I am sure you would build a tower tall enough with the right incentive. But it is no matter. It only adds to your attraction. In Greece, we are not particularly keen on large cocks anyway. Small is beautiful, for our purposes.”
Varro swallowed nervously. Timarchides continued to run his hands slowly over Varro’s body, a feather-light touch on the hard curves of his muscles.
“I was a slave myself,” Timarchides whispered. “Not by choice.”
“Nobody is a slave through choice, dominus,” Varro said.
“Oh, but you are,” Timarchides laughed. “Not I. I was raised in captivity. I was bought and sold like cattle. I was passed from master to master, I fetched and carried, I worked in the fields. I tramped grapes day after day. I was a handsome boy, Varro. Do you know what that means?”
“I do not, dominus.”
“Do you know what it means to be a handsome boy, when everything you are can be bought and sold?”
Varro said nothing, for there was nothing to say. Behind him, he heard the sound of something wet and viscous.
“I got accustomed to the sound of fingers dipping in olive oil,” Timarchides said. “I got accustomed to the cold touch of oil between my thighs.” Varro flinched again as Timarchides’s wet fingers pressed between his legs.
“Now, bend over,” Timarchides hissed.
“Dominus... I...”
“Bend over. Or should I call your fellow slaves in here to hold you down and witness your humiliation?”
“Dominus!”
“Dominus I am. And slave you are, Varro. And how delicious to imagine there was a time not long ago when our roles could have been reversed. You, the master, and I, the slave who must bend to your will. You cannot resist, Varro. Grapple with me in games, and we are gladiators well matched. But here, in this bedchamber, your very life is forfeit if you do not obey me. Obey me now.”
Knowing he had no choice, Varro bent over, resting his hands on the table. He felt Timarchides’s hard cock pressing between his thighs, nudging against his testicles. He gritted his teeth.
“Oh it feels so good,” Timarchides breathed. “See, it is not so bad to have another man’s cock between your thighs. This is how the accomplished seducer acquires all his conquests. First the cock rubs here, in the crux of the legs. Finely plucked, too, Varro, like the best of youths, my congratulations. This must have been how my thighs felt to my seducers, when I was but a young slave.”
Varro looked across the room at the flickering lamps and the curtain across the bare window opening. He tried not to think of the man behind him, far too close, whispering in his ear in a manner that no man had ever done before.
“But it is never enough for the man who can have everything,” Timarchides continued, his tongue flicking playfully into Varro’s ear. “For if I have come this far, why not further?” His hands seized Varro’s buttocks, gently but firmly, prising them apart.
“So tense, Roman?” Timarchides said. “There is no point in resisting. What use was there in resisting when the Roman armies came to Greece? Why stand and fight like Philip and Antiochus, Perseus and Andriscus?”
“I do not know of whom you speak...” Varro pleaded.
“Why should you know?” Timarchides responded. “They are forgotten Greek heroes, who fought for nothing.”
The tip of his penis nudged against Varro’s anus, the olive oil now warm and liquefied, melting the men together.
“My ancestors gave up the fight soon enough, in favor of roads and taxes, prefects and praetors. And what did we give you in return? Answer me, Varro. What has Greece given Rome?”
Varro cleared his throat nervously.
“Philosophy?” he ventured. “The playwrights, Sophocles and—”
Timarchides shoved his cock roughly inside Varro, his hands seizing Varro’s waist, refusing to permit any struggle in any direction.
“Culture!” Timarchides shouted. “Greek culture! How does it feel inside you, Roman?”
Varro gasped, his hands clutching at the edge of the table, his eyes screwed tightly shut.
“It is what I tell myself,” Timarchides laughed, thrusting repeatedly. “Every... time... I... fuck... a Roman...!”
Varro thought of Rome, eternal and ever greater. His mind dwelt on the unstoppable, ever-widening growth of the everlasting city, as her sons forged ever further, bringing the light of civilization to the world. He thought, proudly, of his birth as a citizen of no mean city, and put from his mind all considerations of his fall from grace. He thought not of his loss of freedom, or the course it set him on. A course that brought him here, bent over a table, in a dark, unforgiving room, while a sweating stranger ground against him, causing waves of sharp pain in his bowels, as spurts of hot liquid forced their way inside him.
VIII
VENATIO
IT WAS BEST TO ARRIVE WITH THE OTHERS. BEST TO BE ONE with the crowd, a surging, teeming mass of humanity. Farmers and blacksmiths, wives and daughters, temple maidens and priests, all came to the arena. But most of all there was the rabble—the crowds of men and women who had no true profession. Freed slaves and unemployed laborers, inured to a generation of grain dole and handouts from politicians, drones happy to suck on the teat of Mother Rome, while other, nobler men fought the wars and brought in the wealth.
Successa was one of them now, she imagined. Who would want a disfigured whore, after all? She might find clients in the darkness. She might make an occasional trade at masked orgies. But what long-term client could she ever hope to cultivate? What man would retain her if she removed her mask to show her seething, weeping welts and scars?
Successa smiled all the same, clutching her veil close to her face as she sauntered through the crowd. She passed fruit sellers and sausage sellers, wine merchants and barbecues. She breezed past the sizzle of chicken and mice, and only briefly glanced at the morning doxies. A woman leaning on the wall by one of the staircases pulled down her gown to reveal full, veiny breasts. The man passing by smacked his lips approvingly, but did not reach into his pouch for coins. Nor was he likely to. Not before the first blood of the day was shed; not before the crowd felt their own blood quicken at the sight of blood on the sands.
The early arrivals thronged toward the front. Successa squinted at the welcome sun, and climbed toward the upper seats, which she knew would be in shadow by midday. And if it rained, the awnings, those great protective sails, were overhead. Seeing the musicians and trumpeters setting up on their dais, she carefully paced a few dozen steps away for t
he sake of protecting her ears. Eventually, she found the perfect seat, not too far from the killing ground, not too close to the band. It afforded her, too, a view of the balcony, a place where she had once been fondled by a shipbuilder from Puteoli. She looked hungrily at its marble benches and soft cushions, and tables whose coverlets fluttered in the gentle breeze. The balcony was a world away from Successa, now, and as desolate as her heart.
And then, she watched as the dignitaries began to arrive.
“Apologies, apologies,” Batiatus laughed, his hands held high in supplication. The sudden rush from the shadows to the sunlight caused his eyes to tighten against the glare. Shading them with his hand, he squinted around the balcony, and found it empty.
“The pulvinus yet stands empty?” Lucretia asked beside him.
Ilithyia glared at them both, as if this was somehow their fault.
Cushioned chairs were placed in prime position, with small tables set ready for refreshments. But there was not even a single slave standing ready to serve. Batiatus leapt back nervously, not wishing the crowd to take him for someone of importance.
“Do we arrive at appointed time?” Lucretia asked.
“Once again this town conspires to fuck me.” Batiatus spat in exasperation. “Apologies,” he muttered. He smiled cautiously at Ilithyia and Lucretia, and glanced at the position of the sun.
“The time is right for the games to begin,” he mused. “The crowd arrives in all its questionable glory. We are mere moments away from the venatio: the great hunt itself. Who would miss the sight of beasts locked in battle? Where are the dignitaries? Why does the sacred chair of honors, the pulvinus itself, sit absent noble ass?”
He leaned, baffled, on the balustrade and scanned the crowd below. A woman in a veil seemed to be staring up at him, but turned away to gaze at the empty sands.
A gust of wind puffed a scrap of dirt into Batiatus’s eye, and he flinched, cursing.
Lucretia looked about for a slave to come to his aid. Seeing none, she shook her head in resignation and prepared to dab at her husband’s eye with a corner of her gown.
“This is most unwelcome,” Ilithyia said sourly. “The sun shines, and I fear I shall have to fan myself.”
Sailors called it the Afer Ventus, the wind out of Africa. Sometimes it brought warm rain out of the sky as it spent itself against the coast of Italia. Sometimes, it brought reddish dust, mingled with a storm as if the sky were bleeding. Sometimes it brought ships.
Household slaves cursed it for the scum it left on marble floors. Sailors blessed it for the ease with which it filled the sails of ships out of Sicilia. Tack a sail before the Afer Ventus, and there was a clear line straight to the western Latin ports—Ostia or Puteoli or Neapolis.
The ship had been a dot on the horizon, but steadily it grew in size, her sails appearing redder as the distance through the mist decreased. Soon, they were the color of wet terracotta or whipped skin, straining with the full force of the southwesterly wind. The dockside slave masters watched her with half an eye as she grew nearer. There was no need to take to the water in man-powered cutters too soon, no point in rowing out to meet a vessel that was already powering toward port under full sail. Instead, they waited until they saw small, crawling dots, like tenacious beetles, clambering up the masts to furl the sails.
Despite the pitching sea, the distant sailors clung on and drew in the vast sailcloths. To observers on the harbor watchtower, she did not visibly halt, although she stayed in place on the gently rolling waves, neither growing nor diminishing in size.
Now there were shouts from the crews of the cutters—three thin boats packed tightly with heavily muscled oarsmen, heaving against the waves and out toward the waiting vessel. Drenched already by the spray and spume, the cutter crews made swift work of the distance between the harbor and the newly arrived ship.
Sailors aboard the ship threw strong ropes to the cutters, who wound them swiftly about sturdy stern posts. Then, the rowers heaved once more back to shore, towing the sea-going vessel behind them, guiding it into port without the unpredictable winds. It helped that the ship rode with the tide, past the stone abutments of the outer sea wall of Neapolis, and into its calmer inner harbor.
He stood at the prow, lost in thought, watching as the quayside drew ever nearer. His eyes stared but somehow did not see the cluster of toga-wearing men who stood out in stark white contrast to the hempen clothes of the dock laborers. One of the dignitaries waved at him, but he did not acknowledge it, not even with a smile or grimace. It was as if he did not believe the attention of the crowd was directed at him.
He was not the first to descend. That honor lay with the several sailors who swung from ropes onto the harbor side, or who darted along the gangplank to check its purchase and safety. But he was the first of the passengers to touch the stones of the harbor, a tall man in his late thirties, his hair already receded and thinning, his lips pressed together in a grim stoicism.
He was well-fed but not fat, but for the merest beginnings of jowls at his jawline. His prominent nose had a shallow cleft in its tip, like the indentation in a chickpea. He was clad in a simple tunic, more suitable for shipboard life than an unwieldy toga. His left arm, however, jutted prominently from his side as if from force of habit, as if he were used to carrying cloth draped over it—this was a man fit for the Forum, a magistrate and civil servant. His youthful slave walked behind him, at a respectful distance.
The new arrival stared with some degree of suspicion at the committee on the quay, then looked away and began to walk toward the center of town. He only, truly, acknowledged their existence when a man bodily blocked his path, his arm raised half in hail, and half in entreaty.
“Marcus Tullius Cicero,” the man said. “You do us honor with your presence here in Neapolis.”
“An unexpected welcoming party,” Cicero replied. “If you wait expecting news from Rome, you will be much disappointed.” He paused, as if in thought, staring intently as if trying to remember something.
“Gaius Verres, sir,” the man introduced himself. “I am on my way to Sicilia to serve as its governor.”
“Verres, of course! I hope that in my own small way I have left part of the province all the more efficient, and ready to accept your rule.”
“I hope you have kept everyone honest.”
“Certainly, I have done my best.”
“Well then, I trust you have not tried too hard, or there will not be sufficient sums for me to make, eh!” With that, Verres nudged Cicero hard and laughed. Cicero did his best to smile, but only managed to stretch his lips along a thin and disapproving line.
“To what do I owe this... parade?” Cicero asked, glancing with thinly veiled disapproval at the well-draped dignitaries on the dockside. “My journey is of no great import.”
“Oh, but good Cicero, you hide the light of your lamp!” Gaius Verres said. “Your mission is surely of prime importance to the Republic, and we would have you rested.”
Cicero appeared decidedly unhappy to hear this, looking about him with some urgency.
“Are there no soldiers here to greet me?” he mused.
“Come,” Verres said reassuringly. “The House of Pelorus awaits. My slaves will bear your impediments to your quarters.”
“My presence is due elsewhere?” Cicero asked, in some confusion.
“The games commence,” Verres responded. “Let us move with haste.”
Cicero shrugged, noncommittally.
“The balcony offers prime view! The pulvinus yet reserved for you,” Verres said.
“Well then,” Cicero said, barely masking his lack of interest. “Fortune smiles upon us.”
Varro had been quiet all morning. Spartacus had not pressed the matter, and did not much care. But now he needed assistance, and the hulking blond Roman was the only candidate.
“The grating is level with the arena and faces the killing ground,” he said, standing on his tiptoes, peering at a scene that showed him little
but the assembling crowd on the terraces.
“Then it is a shame that you are not the height of a Titan,” Varro said with a frown.
“I am not, Varro. But two of us may be if we stand together.”
“And who, I wonder, do you expect to stand the lower?”
“You are by far the stronger, my friend.”
“Stand on Barca’s shoulders. He is the tallest.”
“He awaits the primus in another cell. So it falls to you.”
“Very well,” Varro sighed in resignation. He climbed wearily to his feet, lacing his hands together to form an impromptu step.
Spartacus grasped Varro’s shoulders and hefted himself up so he was standing upon them in two swift steps. He grabbed onto the iron grille for purchase. Varro planted his feet firmly in the ground, snaking his own arms to steady Spartacus’s calves.
His eyes level with the floor of the arena, Spartacus gazed at a broad expanse of dust and sand. It was like any other arena, except for the center, which was occupied by a small cluster of what appeared to be grassy turf, festooned with fresh cabbages.
“Of what do you see?” Varro asked.
“I can see... a patch of vegetables,” Spartacus replied in bemusement.
“I want information of note, not more of your Thracian fever-dreams.”
“I speak only truth,” Spartacus insisted. “The center of the arena is occupied by a stand of greenery several paces wide.”
Four slaves entered the arena bearing a litter shaped like a long, square coffin. Each man was attired in a Greek huntsman’s tunic of little more than sackcloth, underdressed for a cool autumn day.
The crowd grew silent as the mystery procession marched solemnly toward the patch of greenery. The men halted a dozen paces from the center, setting their cargo down gently.
Spartacus leaned forward intently, straining to get a glimpse of the strange events.
“What is it?” Varro demanded. “What do you see?”
The whole arena was quiet, the hush broken only by the flapping of the overhead awnings in the capricious wind. All eyes rested on the four slaves as they walked slowly toward the center of the killing ground.
Spartacus - Swords and Ashes Page 11
