Caligula r-1

by Douglas Jackson

  Caligula

  ( Rufus - 1 )

  Douglas Jackson

  Douglas Jackson

  Caligula

  Prologue

  The Rhine frontier AD 18

  The boy crept stealthily through the low bushes, eyes darting right and left for any sign of the enemy. Today he imagined himself the last survivor of the battle of the Teutoburg Forest, the only man from the three massacred legions who could still complete his mission and kill the Cherusci king, Arminius. He came to the edge of a small clearing and stopped. There was his quarry. He drew the small dagger that doubled as his legionary's gladius and charged the Cheruscan hordes, smiting their champions one by one. There! And there! Die, Arminius! Die for your treachery!

  When the victory was complete, he stood among the fallen bodies of his enemies, breast heaving beneath the light armour that protected his chest. Except for the helmet, he wore the complete uniform of a light infantryman of the Twentieth legion: red tunic, mail vest, a thick belt that held loops for his equipment, leather greaves covering his shins, and sandals. The uniform had been specially made by the quartermaster to fit a six-year-old and when he wore it his heart filled to bursting with pride.

  He brushed the unruly dark hair from his eyes and began to pick up the enemy dead. The thin green saplings would have to dry first, but they would do for the fire. Collecting firewood gave him the excuse he needed to come to the woods. He loved the woods; loved their sharp, resin smell and the way the wind moved through the treetops, loved the way the sun pierced the leaf canopy to create strange, shifting patterns on the forest floor. The birds and the beasts fascinated him, and he was always on the lookout for something new to discover. His mother didn't like him coming here. She worried too much, and would have preferred him to stay close to the camp and try to make some friends of his own age.

  What did he need with friends when he had the soldiers? The soldiers loved him as they did his father, Germanicus. Germanicus was a great leader and a favourite of the Emperor. The boy could list every one of his victories and had even touched the two eagles his father had won back from the Cheruscans as he wreaked vengeance in the years following the Teutoburg disaster. He loved his father, especially when he gave him presents like the uniform.

  When he'd collected all the saplings and a few fallen twigs he began to make his way back to the camp. He had only a vague idea of the direction, but he wasn't afraid. He followed a faint deer path through the undergrowth which should bring him to a small stream. Once he was there, he would know his way.

  A blackbird exploded from a low thorn bush beside the track, making him jump, and he grinned at his own foolishness. He laid the bundle of sticks on the ground and inspected the bush closely, taking care not to catch himself on any of the dangerous, inch-long spikes. There it was, close to the ground, a tight-knit structure of grass and moss. He crouched low and crept forward. There might be a clutch of the pale blue, brown-freckled eggs.

  Once he was in position to see into the nest he realized with a thrill that the eggs had recently hatched. Huddled together in the centre of the grass bowl were four tiny baby blackbirds. Very carefully he reached in and picked up one of the wriggling little creatures and placed it gently in the palm of his hand. He studied it carefully. It was small and naked and vulnerable. A long-necked bundle of pink flesh that was so light he could barely feel it on his hand. Its head was the same size as its body and the little wings were barely formed flaps of skin with bumps that were the first signs of feathers. It had an almost imperceptible pale yellow beak and the eyes were just dark circles beneath the translucent pink skin. The sensation of it, warm and helpless and so alive he could sense the beating of its tiny heart, sent a liquid feeling of pleasure through him.

  But there was another feeling too, an underlying tension he didn't recognize, but that made him feel quite breathless. Could he? With his free hand he reached out and plucked one of the inch-long spikes from the thorn bush. The breathless sensation slowly left him, and it was as if he grew larger and the baby bird in his hand diminished. He hesitated, still not certain, waiting for a sign. The little bird opened its beak.

  He smiled and very deliberately forced the needle-sharp thorn through the fleshy covering and into the centre of the helpless chick's eyeball. It squirmed between his fingers, but he held it tight. The tiny mouth opened and closed in soundless agony. He selected another needle from the bush.

  It was very informative. Each chick reacted in a slightly different way to the application of the thorns. One reared and attempted to wriggle away. Another curled up and simply accepted the torture. As he completed each experiment he dropped the dying birds on to the leaf mould at his feet with the wooden spikes still protruding from their blind eyes.

  'Gaiuuus!' His mother's cry came from the direction of the camp and he realized he was late.

  He dropped the last chick to join its siblings and lifted his foot to bring the nailed sandal they called a caliga down hard on the tiny pink bodies, twisting and turning the sole until what had once been perfectly formed baby blackbirds were just a red mess among the disturbed dirt.

  'Coming, Mother,' he shouted. In his excitement he almost forgot the bundle of sticks, but he picked them up and began to run towards the sound of her voice. It would soon be time for dinner.

  I

  Rome AD 36

  Rufus sat with his back to the warm bark of a pear tree and pondered his future. For the first time in his life he was tortured by the luxury of choice.

  Should he stay with Cerialis, or should he accept the animal trader's offer? The question had vexed him all morning, and he was no nearer the answer now than he had been two hours ago.

  The household of the fat baker had been his family since he was six years old and he considered himself fortunate. How else could he feel when Cerialis showed enough regard for him to allow a slave to decide his own future? He was learning a trade. He did not go hungry and he had never been beaten.

  So, stay with Cerialis. It was obvious.

  But on the opposite side of the scales was the prospect, the unbelievable prospect, of freedom. Freedom. The word made his senses spin. Did he really want to be free? Free to do what? To starve? To beg on the streets?

  In any case, the animal trader was not offering freedom now. It might be years before he fulfilled his bargain.

  It was the bear's fault. If it wasn't for the bear he would be at his ovens baking the finest bread in Rome, instead of sitting in the gardens of the Porticus Liviae with his head pounding like the inside of a drum.

  Two butterflies, one a delicate pale blue, and the other a beautiful mix of red and brown, flitted across the edge of his vision towards the flowerbed. He grinned and touched the charm at his throat.

  So be it. Let the gods decide.

  Cornelius Aurius Fronto was endowed with a laugh that bent forests and shattered roof tiles and he was laughing now.

  'So, the baker's boy has finally made up his mind? He has chosen the certainty of greatness with Fronto over the drudgery of picking weevils out of stale bread for that lard-arsed shopkeeper. How could it be otherwise?'

  This last, with a theatrical whirl, was addressed to the half-dozen slaves and freedmen who emerged at his shout to welcome Rufus. They appeared, showing various attitudes of boredom or interest, at the gateway of a walled enclosure which hid the animals that were Fronto's stock-in-trade. Rufus wondered what the animal keeper would think if he knew that he had placed his destiny in the flight of a blue butterfly.

  As the slaves gathered, he reflected on the contrast between Fronto's welcome and the previous occasion on which he had changed masters. The ordeal at the enormous slave market outside Ostia when he arrived on the ship from Carthage was one he would nev
er forget. He had been a small, terrified boy, alone among more people than he ever dreamed existed. He remembered looking for somewhere to hide among that great ebb and flow of humanity, but it had been hopeless. Eventually, he had sat down close to the wall and cried until he could cry no more. It was a relief when he was bought by Cerialis the next day.

  He returned the stares of the little group, noting whose smile was open and who among them saw him as a potential enemy. They were evenly split.

  'Did I tell you how he saved my life?' Fronto demanded, and a few wide grins told Rufus that the answer was 'yes' — several times over — but they knew they must endure the story one more time.

  'It was a large bear, but not one of my finest. No, the finest must be kept for the arena. In truth this one was old and mangy and worm-ridden. But it still had its claws. Great hooked claws that would tear the top from a man's head. Is that not so, young Rufus?'

  Rufus remembered that the bear's claws were clipped short, but thought it would be impolite to cast doubt upon his new master. So he nodded. The beast's yellowing fangs were terrifying enough.

  He had been escorting Lucretia, the cook, to the fruit market along one of the narrow streets off the Sacer Clivus when it happened. One moment the street was filled with laughing, jeering peasants, the next it was emptied by a single scream. The bear stood on its hind legs, a broken length of chain hanging from a metal collar round its neck, its dark brown fur matted with patches of dried blood.

  'And that poor child,' Fronto was almost weeping now, 'abandoned by her wet nurse, alone and defenceless with that ferocious monster drooling over her. Poor little…' He faltered for a moment.

  'Tullia,' chorused his audience helpfully.

  Tullia. She was blonde and tiny; the bear enormous and angry.

  'Certain death,' the animal trader roared. 'Certain death awaited her, but for this brave boy.' An arm as thick as a tree branch swept towards Rufus.

  He meant to run away from the bear with Lucretia. Instead, he found himself scrambling towards it.

  'And do you know what he did? He danced.' Fronto roared with laughter, his great belly shaking. 'He danced with a bear.'

  At the time, it seemed the only thing to do. He couldn't fight the bear — it was twice his size and many times his strength. But to remain still was to die.

  'How did you think of that, boy?' Fronto demanded. 'What made you dance with my bear?'

  Rufus remembered the terrifying moment when he had stood at the great beast's mercy, but he shrugged as if dancing with bears was an everyday occurrence.

  'When I was small a travelling circus visited our village,' he explained. 'It was nothing like the circuses in Rome, just some bad actors and their flea-bitten animals. They owned a bear, a little thing the same height as I was. They had taught it to dance. Just a few steps, but it would dance, and people would dance with it. It seemed to enjoy it. I suppose in my head I was dancing with the same little bear.'

  He had danced around the bear, and the bear followed, its obsidian eyes never leaving him, as if it was concentrating every part of its brain on copying his movements. As it turned, a group of men appeared behind it. One motioned to him to keep dancing, while the others untangled a large net. They crept closer to the bear while he opened up the distance between himself and the animal a few precious inches at a time. Then the net whirled and the bear became a spitting, growling ball of fury, paws clawing at the all-enveloping mesh.

  'You saved your own life, and, though you did not know it, you saved Fronto's, and Fronto pays his debts.' The trader wrapped an enormous arm round Rufus's shoulders and he felt he might collapse under the weight of it. 'I pledged my word to Vitellius Genias Cerialis, and I pledge it to you now. You have a way with animals, and I can use that. I buy them and I train them for the arena and the circus. I'll teach you every trick I know, and, if you come up to scratch, in a few years I will make you my heir and sit back and watch in comfort as you make me rich. We will draw up the papers tomorrow.'

  A murmur ran through the group of workers. Rufus noted the frowns and understood that Fronto's generosity wasn't received with universal approval. He saw their point. He doubted if they were impressed by the tousle-haired seventeen-year-old in the ragged tunic. The ambitious among them would resent him and attempt to obstruct him, but he was not concerned. Years of lifting sacks of grain at the bakery had made him strong. He would be ready for them. It was his good fortune that Tullia was the daughter of a very senior senator. Her father was as well known for his devotion to his youngest child as for the cold-blooded manner in which he disposed of his political rivals. If the bear had harmed her, Fronto would have ended up in a sewer with an assassin's knife in his liver.

  'What if I don't come up to scratch?' he asked.

  'I'll feed you to the lions.'

  There was a long silence.

  'Only joking, boy… feed you to the lions.' The laughter shook Fronto's great frame once more. 'You should see your face.'

  Fronto's business was to the south of Rome, across the four arches of the Pons Sublicius. It was far enough from the city to deter crowds from coming out to gawk, but close enough to the cattle market at the Forum Boarium to ensure the trader a constant supply of food for his carnivores.

  Inside the animal compound Rufus's heart quickened as Fronto proudly listed the exotic treasures he bought and sold to perform at the great spectacles in the arena. The grass-eaters browsed peacefully in a series of wide paddocks. The trader pointed out the different types.

  'Antelope.' He indicated a herd of graceful animals standing placidly in one enclosure. They were several shades of dusty brown, and varied in size from tiny fragile creatures the height of a small dog to broad-chested giants with long spiralling horns and dark patches on their haunches.

  'What are those?' Rufus asked, pointing to another small group. 'I've never seen a horse with stripes.'

  'They're a type of wild ass. I tried to train them to pull chariots, but they are much more stupid than horses.'

  'And those?' Rufus pointed to a dark brown, hunch-backed, front-heavy creature built on the scale of a small donkey, but with short incurved horns, heavy brows, wide-set narrow eyes and a nose that trailed streamers of snot.

  'Those?' Fronto grinned. 'We just call those ugly.'

  Beyond the paddocks and in a separate compound were squat huts built of heavy timbers. Fronto led the way towards them. As they approached the buildings, Rufus was aware of a vaguely familiar scent, a powerful, pungent aroma which dominated everything around it. It was a few seconds before his memory swept him back more than a decade.

  Lion.

  The galley from Carthage to Ostia had carried them as cargo. Two big females and two cubs. Now he was staring into those same murderous eyes, pale golden yellow flecked with shadows of grey and shooting back pure hatred.

  He still did not truly understand why he had been sold to the slaver. His father was a Spanish auxiliary who had settled in Mauretania at the completion of his service. He had been a better soldier than farmer. Their little homestead in the foothills of the Atlas Mountains was a parched, dusty place in the summer where the rocks cracked with the frost in winter. His mother was a vague memory now, but he knew with certainty that she had loved him, if only because of the contentment he felt whenever he thought of her. If he closed his eyes he could almost recall her face and the damp, morning smell of her long black hair. They were always hungry, but could she have stood by while he was dragged away crying? He supposed she must have. That, he calculated, was in the eleventh year of the reign of the Emperor Tiberius.

  Fronto had a dozen lions, including three magnificent blackmaned males. But there were also slim, athletic cheetah, and three lithe, spotted cats of a species unfamiliar to Rufus.

  'They are leopard,' Fronto explained. 'The crowd loves them. Big as a lion. Twice as fast. Once they get on top of a man, it doesn't matter how well protected he is, he's dead. Their teeth go for his throat and their claws go
for his belly. You've seen a kitten worrying a dead pigeon, little paws scraping away like mad? Same thing with a leopard. If they can't get his belly, they'll get his balls. If not his balls, they'll strip his legs to the bone. Doesn't matter really. Just means it's over more quickly if they get his belly.'

  Finally, they came to what Fronto called his monster.

  'Amazing, isn't it? You'd never think something like that only eats grass.'

  Rufus gazed at the grey goliath standing alone in its paddock. The animal was about twice the size of a bull, with thick, leathery skin. Its head was large even compared to its body, but its legs were almost comically short. It had tiny eyes and from low on its wide, shovel nose projected two horns, one behind the other. The larger, at the front, was nine inches across at the base and tapered over about the length of two feet to a deadly point. The second was half the size, but looked even sharper.

  'I don't know what to do with it. It looks dangerous, but it never seems to do anything except stand around. You can pat it like a dog. Why don't you give it a try?'

  The eyes which studied Rufus brimmed with sincerity. Fronto wore the look of a man who had never done wrong in his life; a man who would go to his grave without a stain on his reputation. A man Rufus did not trust an inch.

  Fronto was testing him, and he believed he knew why. The shrewd trader was giving him his opportunity to prove himself in front of the men who might one day call him master. He looked again at the monster, which seemed to have grown even larger. The question was, would he survive the test?

  With more confidence than he felt, he grinned cheekily and said: 'Of course.'

  Titus, one of the slaves who formed Fronto's welcoming party, held the gate open for him, then, as he shut it again, whispered: 'Watch his ears.'

  Rufus walked slowly into the enclosure. The tension made his heart race, but the world seemed a clearer place and his stomach tightened with anticipation. He saw that the walls of this paddock, although built like the others of wooden planks about the height of a tall man, were strengthened by horizontal beams. In places, raw white patches stood out clearly as if the wood had recently been splintered.