Render Unto Caesar

by Gillian Bradshaw

  “This is only the first shift,” she replied. “The First Hall, the best fighters. They get to exercise early, when it’s cool. All the women are in the Fourth Hall. We exercised later.”

  “Is that why Taurus normally comes early?”

  She nodded. “He likes to spar with one of the best gladiators to start his day. They get special thin wands for it, and he gets a wooden sword to fix things so that he can win. He gets armor, too, and they don’t. He likes them to try hard, though, and if they beat him he gives them money.”

  He snorted and glanced round the bare courtyard again. “Four Halls?” he asked. “Where are all the others?”

  She waved a hand at the blank walls. “Locked in their cells. They never let out more than one hall at a time. You stay in your cell unless it’s your turn to exercise or eat.”

  He looked at the dirty brick walls. “No windows,” he said in a low voice.

  She nodded. “That was hard. I hated that.”

  Two years, he thought, locked up in the dark, let out only to exercise in this bare yard; taken, once a month or so, to the arena to kill or be killed. He couldn’t imagine it. He shook his head.

  “They don’t allow real weapons in the school,” she said abruptly. “They’re afraid the gladiators would kill themselves, even if they didn’t attack their trainers.”

  One of the fighters in the center took a blow to the face and stopped, hand clapped over his bleeding nose. His opponent stood back; the Savage immediately rounded on the pair, and began striking both men with his whip, shouting at them until they began cutting at each other again. The man with the nosebleed was half-blinded, and his opponent drove him back, and back again. The Savage got behind the casualty and began whipping him, shouting for him to attack. He did, and his opponent caught him in the belly, then tripped him. “Hit him!” yelled the Savage, “Get the bastard!” and the opponent obediently rained down blow after blow.

  “How did you help that brute get his job?” Hermogenes asked in disgust.

  She snorted and crossed her arms. “When I first arrived at the school, the man in charge was called Papinius Macer. He and the Pimp used to take money from citizens to allow them in. Some people want to fuck a gladiator.” She glanced at him warily. “Some women, even rich ones, want that. And men who like young men, and some who like women. It doesn’t matter what you look like, it’s the smell of blood they want. Anyway, I wouldn’t. I said I’d rip the balls off any man that tried, and they didn’t want that happening to a citizen, so they couldn’t make me. At first it didn’t matter because Macer just gave them somebody else, but after I’d fought a couple of times, he started getting requests. He offered me half the money, but I still wouldn’t. So he would beat me and put me in the punishment cell every time I said no. The old bull—that is, General Taurus—came by once and asked what I’d done, and Macer just said I’d been disobedient. And then he had me chained and thrown in the punishment cell before a fight, for three days. He only let me out for the dinner the night before. He wasn’t supposed to do that: you’re not supposed to be sent out to fight unless you’re fit for it, because it’s bad for the reputation of the school if you get killed easily. Everybody thought I was going to die, because I was tired and stiff, and he’d fixed me up against a retiarius, a man. Only I won. The old bull saw the fight, and he went and checked the record, and then he had me brought in and asked me, in front of Macer, why I’d been in the punishment cell immediately before I was supposed to fight. I told him.”

  She grinned fiercely. “So then the old bull said to Macer, ‘What are you, a lanista or a pimp? If she’s willing to fight, it’s no concern of yours whether she fucks!’ and sacked him. He brought in the Savage to run the school instead, out of a smaller school down South. After that nobody tried to make me fuck anyone.”

  He was silent, once again confronted with a thing he couldn’t begin to imagine.

  “The Pimp’s still here, though,” she said regretfully.

  There was a stir at the doorway beside them, and then a band of six guardsmen trooped through—not barbarians, and not toughs in livery, but Roman soldiers in strip armor and red-crested helmets. Despite the ban on real weapons, they all carried spears and wore short swords: ordinary rules didn’t apply to the praetorian guard. They halted, three on each side of the gate, and stood to attention as a man in the long red cloak of a general strolled through. Another two guardsmen followed him.

  Titus Statilius Taurus was older than his friend Tarius Rufus—perhaps sixty—but tall and powerful where Rufus was thick and flabby. He had a dark face with heavy brows, a large nose, and deep lines at the corners of his mouth. He paused at the edge of the yard, studying the fighters. The Savage at once stopped his supervision and came over to him. The two men talked briefly, and then both turned to look at Cantabra and Hermogenes. The Savage beckoned them over.

  Hermogenes came warily. Cantabra was slightly ahead of him, and when she stopped, she saluted Taurus with the outflung arm he had seen her employ for the purpose once before. He smiled in reply, his teeth very white in his dark face.

  “Cantabra,” he said, in a deep strong voice. “With a rich employer. I’m glad of it. What is it you want?”

  “That you listen to my employer, lord,” she replied earnestly. “He has news which you should hear.”

  The dark, deep-set eyes turned to Hermogenes, who drew a deep breath, straightened his shoulders, and committed himself. “Lord Statilius Taurus, good health. I am Marcus Aelius Hermogenes, a businessman from Alexandria, and, as my bodyguard has said, I have come across some information which concerns you closely and which I thought it best to put before you … privately.” He glanced significantly at the Savage.

  Taurus regarded him for a long moment in silence, his face forbidding. “Marcus Aelius Hermogenes,” he repeated at last. “I have heard your name frequently in the last few days. In fact, last night I issued an order for your arrest.”

  Hermogenes stood frozen. He was aware, without looking away, of how Taurus’s guardsmen had come alert and were watching him. “On what charge?” he asked quietly.

  “On no charge,” Taurus conceded. “Simply for questioning. Some days ago my friend Lucius Rufus informed me that he was having a house on the Via Tusculana watched because he had had some kind of trouble with a guest of the man who owned it. Yesterday the owner of the house turned up complaining of harassment, which he says is the result of quarrels between you and Rufus, and you and Publius Vedius Pollio. Pollio had his people search the house, and the owner complained about that, too.”

  “He had his men search a private house?” Hermogenes asked, shocked. “Was anyone hurt?”

  “Not to my knowledge,” replied Taurus, his face unyielding. “Pollio also has men searching the city for you. They claim that you were his guest, but stole a valuable statuette and absconded during the night. He has not brought charges against you before any magistrate, but I believed it prudent to question you.”

  “Lord, I am here and ready to answer questions.” He was appalled, but he was also aware of an old niggling worry settling. Rufus’s intimidating barbarians had not been as stupid a move as they’d seemed: the consul had cleared them with his friend the prefect of the city before posting them. “I assure you, I am not a thief, and this story that I am was invented to give Pollio a pretext for searching for me. The matter at stake is far more important than a statuette. I would prefer to discuss it in a less public place.”

  Taurus grunted. He glanced round at the Savage, then snapped his fingers. “Come, then,” he ordered, and walked directly across the exercise yard to a doorway on the other side, forcing the fighters and the runners to halt abruptly or hurry aside to let him pass. Hermogenes and Cantabra followed, enclosed by Taurus’s eight guardsmen. The Savage, at the end of the procession, stopped to haul one of his own guardsmen away from his place in the sun and set him to supervise the yard.

  The doorway led into what appeared to be the offices of th
e gladiatorial school: there was a large front room with a desk and a bench, a number of large chests, and two more doors, one at either end. A set of wooden swords of various types hung on a rack along one wall; the wall to the right, more ominously, held iron shackles of various sizes and weights suspended on pegs. Taurus went directly to the desk and sat down in the chair, turning it to face into the room. He snapped his fingers, gestured for four of his guards to stand watch outside, and waited while the rest arranged themselves on either side of the room. The Savage shut the door.

  “Now,” Taurus commanded, “search them.”

  Cantabra stiffened. “Lord!” she protested, and took a step forward. Taurus merely nodded, and two of the guardsmen seized her and pulled her off to one side of the room.

  Hermogenes stood stiffly while the other two guardsmen turned their attention to him. They pulled off his good cloak, tossing it onto the bench, unfastened and examined his belt, checked his empty purse. They found the trunk key on the cord around his neck, and set it down on the desk. They ran their hands down him, checking for the sheath of a concealed knife, and ordered him to take off his sandals. They untied the bandage on his ankle and shook it out. Then, empty-handed, they stood holding him by the arms and watching as their fellows finished searching Cantabra.

  One man was examining the stitching on her belt; the pen case was already lying on the desk in front of Taurus. The other man, grinning, was feeling her breasts. He raised his eyebrows. “Take off the tunic!” he ordered. “I think you’ve got a knife there.”

  The barbarian woman spat, shoved his hand off with an elbow. “I have a knife,” she admitted. “To defend myself, not to attack anyone, still less to kill the bull.”

  “It is an offense to carry a concealed weapon on the streets of Rome,” said Taurus levelly. “Give it to my men.”

  She drew it out and reluctantly handed it over. “Now take off the tunic,” the general commanded.

  Her head came up angrily, but she took off the tunic. Her body was thin and hard between the plain breastband and the cloth about her loins, and marked with scars. The sheath of the knife stood out, stitched into the breastband. It was evident that the knife she’d just handed over was the only one she’d had.

  Taurus grunted and picked up the pen case. He opened it, drew out the letters, tipped the money onto the desk, then slid it back in. He began to examine the letters of credit.

  “You have seen that I am unarmed,” Hermogenes told him angrily. “And that my bodyguard has only the sort of weapon which, if illegal, can hardly be uncommon among those of her profession. I came here to speak to you about a matter which ought to concern you. I understood that you wanted to ask me questions.”

  Taurus looked up at him with grim satisfaction. “And so I do.” He glanced at the guardsmen and ordered, “Take the man, strip him, and chain him to the pillar. Shackle the woman and put her in the cell until we’ve finished with him.”

  “No!” screamed Cantabra, and flung herself forward.

  The two men beside her had hold of her and wrestled her to the floor before she’d gone two steps. Hermogenes noticed the Savage shaking his head as he took a set of manacles from a peg, and then his own guards had marched him through the door to the right.

  This was evidently the place where the slaves of the gladiatorial school were punished for any offense against its rules. Three whips hung in prominent positions along the long outer wall, one of leather, one of knotted cord, one, with four lashes, of both; beneath them stood birch rods bound together in a stack. In the center of the room stood a thick pillar of stained wood, fitted with iron manacles on an adjustable chain, so that it would secure for flogging a victim of any height. Hermogenes stood helpless with outrage while the guards stripped him. Cantabra was cursing and screaming behind him. Hermogenes’s guards shoved him against the pillar and drew his arms around it, crossing his wrists above his head. The iron manacles locked with a snick, and one of them turned a wheel to tighten the chain.

  He stood with his stitched cheek pressed against the wood of the pillar, the sweat cold on his bare skin as it dried, shaking with rage. “I am a Roman citizen!” he announced loudly.

  No one replied. Somewhere behind him, Cantabra was still cursing, muffled now. He could not see her—could not see anyone, with his face against the pillar.

  Footsteps sounded, deliberate and unhurried, from the direction of the office.

  “I am a Roman citizen,” he said again. “This proceeding is not legal.”

  “I am prefect of the city,” Taurus’s deep voice replied. “I am entitled to hold extraordinary hearings … which I declare this to be.”

  “You are not entitled to flog freeborn citizens without trial!” Hermogenes answered fiercely. “I came here to save your life, Roman! This is my reward, is it?”

  Taurus’s face appeared in his field of view, still with that expression of grim satisfaction. “Publius Vedius Pollio. When did he hire you?”

  “He did not,” Hermogenes replied flatly. “You said yourself he has accused me of theft and is searching the city for me: would he do that if I were his hireling?”

  Taurus shook his head. “Perhaps you’ve fallen out with him. Perhaps you did steal something from him: it wouldn’t be the first time greed has got the better of one of his creatures. Pollio hired you. I think you have been helping him to blackmail a friend of mine.”

  Hermogenes gave a choking laugh. “Your friend Rufus has sold you to Pollio, O wise prefect of the city. He has agreed to kill you, in exchange for the cancellation of some debts and my life.”

  The dark eyes held his own. There was a sense of something massive behind them, something that was shifting, like a great weight under the delicate manipulation of a cunning machine. “Debts,” Taurus repeated softly. “What debts?”

  The wood of the pillar stank of old blood. Hermogenes leaned his head back and looked up at the chain wrapped around its top. From outside in the yard came the weary beating of footsteps, the clatter and thump of wooden weapons, the shouting of a guard: “Hit him! Hit him!” For a moment he could feel nothing but contempt for the man beside him, who owned this place.

  “Rufus spent a hundred million sestertii,” he stated with cold disgust, “all the capital he possessed, on land in Picenum—then discovered that if he was to make a profit from the land, he needed to pay for improvements to it. He borrowed the money from Pollio, using the land as security. The interest on the loan is either nearly as much as the profit from the land, or slightly more. If he sells, his indebtedness will come out, and the price of his assets will crash. He was managing to keep Pollio at bay, however, until I chanced to arrive. Many years ago in Cyprus Rufus borrowed money from my uncle which he never repaid; I inherited the debt last autumn, and arrived in Rome determined to press my claim. I am a Roman citizen, able to use the courts; I have documents proving my right, and though Rufus tried to intimidate me, he failed. He found himself unable to escape my claim, and to pay me, he would have to sell. Pollio has offered to buy out my debt and, so I believe, hand me over to him, if he will take your life. He has agreed.”

  A hand grabbed his chin and wrenched his head around again. “So you say,” rumbled Taurus.

  He tried to speak, and could not: the hand was crushing his jaw. Taurus saw it, and let go. Hermogenes rested his cheek against the pillar again, looking into his captor’s eyes. “I am sick of you Romans!” he whispered. “Pollio said that Rufus, more than most of you, has always the sense that we Greeks are sneering at you as barbarians behind your backs. Let me sneer at you to your face, then. Look at you! You have no respect for justice, for law, for contract and the obligations of civilization—you, prefect of the city, and Rufus, a consul, are both of you happy to flout every law the Senate and People ever decreed the moment it conflicts with your own self-interest. You are and ever will be savages. Your great contribution to culture is out there in the yard hitting each other with swords; your arts are oppression and the sheddi
ng of blood. May the gods destroy you all.”

  Taurus hit him. It was a calculated blow, a hand jabbed edgewise under the arm to catch the nerve, and it hurt horribly. He caught his breath with a gasp, trying to support himself against the pillar. His arm was numb. A second blow caught him under the ribs, knocking the breath out of his lungs. He hung in the chains, struggling to get air.

  “You forget yourself, Greek,” said Taurus.

  Hermogenes pulled himself upright by the chains, still panting. “No: you forget yourself, Roman,” he managed. “Or is it legal for prefects of the city to beat citizens during ‘extraordinary’ hearings?”

  Taurus raised his hand again—then lowered it and turned away.

  There was a silence. Hermogenes leaned against the pillar, breathing hard. All he could see now was the wall, and the whips hanging there. He nursed his anger, letting it burn hot and high and keep away the fear. Three times he had gone to an important Roman, asking for things he had a right to ask for; three times he had been insulted and abused.

  “There is a letter here which your bodyguard was carrying,” came Taurus’s voice from somewhere to his left.

  He tilted his head back and managed to turn it and get his other cheek against the pillar. Taurus was standing a few feet away, the letter to Myrrhine in his hand, opened.

  “That is a private letter,” he told the general bitterly. “You had no right to see it.”

  Taurus wagged it back and forth. “Why did your bodyguard have it?”

  “She was to pass it on in the event of my death, and our lodgings aren’t safe. I knew the risk I was taking, coming to you: I never imagined you would welcome news of a friend’s treachery. You have no reason to prevent my bodyguard from sending that letter. Since you have read it, you have seen that it is a private letter, and of no interest to you at all—unless you intend to amuse yourself by mocking it and me. If you do, may you die childless and alone.”

  “‘My attempt to collect the debt from Rufus,’” Taurus read out, the Greek words strange and sonorous in that place of Roman punishment, “‘has brought me into opposition to two very powerful men who have schemes I knew nothing about, but to whom I have now become a threat.’ Two powerful men, Greek? Rufus and who else?”