Render Unto Caesar

by Gillian Bradshaw

  The lanista followed them all the way to the gate. While the Pimp was unlocking the bolt to let them out, the Savage said to Cantabra, “This is a real prizewinning employer you’ve got yourself, girl. Do they chain him up at the full moon?”

  The barbarian rounded on him. “If you’re so wise, Naevius Saevus, why don’t you have ten thousand in a bank? And if you’re so brave, let’s chain you to the post and hear what you say!”

  “That wasn’t brave,” said the Savage, shaking his head. “That was stupid.” He gave Hermogenes a last slit-eyed look, then moved aside to let them go.

  Hermogenes walked blindly away from the gladiatorial school, paying no attention to where he was going. He stopped only when he reached the Tiber. It ran between steep embankments, low in this summer season, with grass growing on the mud banks, and it stank of sewage. The day had grown overcast and muggy, and the river swarmed with gnats and blowflies. A low wall separated it from the street.

  He leaned against that wall, then sat down on it and bent over, cradling the arm Taurus had injured. What had just happened was like a huge, unwieldy bundle which he had somehow managed to carry through the crisis itself, but which now seemed far too heavy to pick up again. The rage that had supported him was gone, and the fear that had waited behind it shook him.

  “Are you hurt?” Cantabra asked anxiously.

  “He hit me under the arm,” he told her. “When I cursed Romans.”

  She caught the arm and began chafing it. “I could hear … most of it. But I couldn’t see.”

  “I shouldn’t have cursed Romans,” he admitted. “It was, as the Savage said, stupid.”

  She looked up earnestly into his face. “He believed you. You’ve almost won.”

  He considered that. She didn’t, of course, mean that the Savage believed what he’d said about Romans but that Taurus believed what he’d said about Rufus. “I think probably he knew enough to recognize that it was true,” he said slowly. “He probably already knew that his friend had problems with money, and he knows Pollio and was expecting him to try something. Yes. He believed that I was telling the truth about Rufus the moment I accused him.” He tried to laugh. “And Myrrhine’s letter convinced him that I wasn’t acting as Pollio’s agent. He still had no right to look at it, though.”

  Cantabra gently brushed his hair out of his face.

  “As to whether I’ve almost won … oh, Zeus! I don’t like it that I’ve agreed to let him make me a prisoner; I don’t like that at all. You know him better than I do. Can I trust him?”

  “He is honest,” she told him. “If he promises, he will keep the promise. And he promised that he would not give you to Rufus, and that he would reward you for saving his life.”

  He spat. “I want nothing from that maker of gladiators. His money has blood on it. I only hope that he doesn’t let Pollio get me, or give me to Rufus.”

  “I am so sorry,” she said humbly. “I know you only went there because I insisted, and … and…” Her hand tightened on his sore arm, the grip painfully strong, and suddenly she was almost in tears. “Och, oh, when he ordered them to chain you to the post, I thought I would lose my mind.”

  “Cantabra!” he exclaimed, astonished and touched.

  She wiped at her eyes. “And they put me in the punishment cell again,” she said in a choked voice. “I thought that was one place I would never have to endure again, but they put me in, and I thought I would have to listen while they whipped you, and I was the one who made you come. I thought I would lose my mind.” She let go of his arm. “And then you won, you forced him to back down, and they let us out! Do you know how wonderful you are?”

  “Me?” he asked in amazement.

  She gave him a radiant, tremulous smile, and kissed him. He was so surprised that he was unable to move, and he sat frozen in amazement at the wet warmth of her mouth and the strong suppleness of the body pressed against his.

  “I am sorry,” she said, pulling away hastily. Her face had gone red. “I shouldn’t have done that. I know you think I am an ugly red-haired heifer. But I—”

  “I don’t think that!” he protested. “That wasn’t me! That was Pollio!”

  She frowned. “You don’t think that?”

  “I…” He faltered, aware of a gulf opening up on either side of him. He tried to find a way carefully across the middle of it. “I … if I said I found you desirable, would you be offended and … how was it you put it? Rip my balls off?”

  “Of course not,” she said impatiently. “I would never do anything to a man just for what he said.”

  “Ah. Good. Well, I do. Definitely. Very much so. However, I … you made it very plain that I could not expect anything, and I accepted that. The offer to take you to Alexandria was not … was … that is, I am not going to try to force you or blackmail you or buy you, please believe that, and I would have made the same offer to a man who had done for me what you have. It was, and is, an honest offer.”

  She was still frowning. “You want me?”

  He shrugged helplessly. “Yes. If that displeases you, you can safely forget it, because nothing will ever come of it.”

  “But you’re rich! You can hire the most beautiful courtesans—you told the Savage so, and he believed you: it made him angry.”

  “I said it to make him angry, but it was perfectly true. I can hire courtesans, and I have. I don’t see why that should mean I’m incapable of wanting you.”

  “I’m not beautiful.”

  He hesitated, then answered honestly, “I don’t think you’re beautiful. I like the way you look, though. I like your hair, and that look on your face when you’re thinking hard, and the way you smile and the way you walk and the way you laugh. I like you—and that does seem to mean that I also want you, perhaps simply because I am a man, but it does not mean that I expect you to be my whore. It does not mean anything more than you want it to mean.” He looked away from those steady blue eyes and added, trying to make it sound like a joke, “I do not want to have my balls ripped off.”

  She touched the side of his face, and when he looked back, kissed him again. Something inside him seemed to turn like a key in a lock, and he felt himself shaken to the core by the sudden opening of a thousand possibilities.

  It was not, he knew, going to be simple. This was not a woman with whom to conduct a casual dalliance: this was a woman who was strong, courageous, and passionate, and who had suffered abominably. An affair with her would require the commitment of important assets, the calling in of other debts, the investment of the capital of himself—and he wanted to do it. That was the shocking thing: he wanted it very much. That tingle of desire hadn’t been simply a matter of proximity, after all. He regarded the strength and the certainty of his own feelings with astonishment.

  “I thought you thought I was just an ugly barbarian,” she told him, looking into his face. “I was sure you found me repulsive.”

  “No,” he said thickly. “Not at all.” He reached out to put an arm around her.

  She froze, as she had when he pressed her hand, then seized his arm and pushed it back at him. He sat still, staring in confusion, and she lowered her eyes but not the hand that held him off. “Please,” she said shakily. “Please understand. I … I am not trying to … to tease you, but when you touched me … when a man touches me like that, I want to hit him. But I don’t really want to hit you, I just … ach, I am being so stupid!” She let go his hand and turned away.

  “I do understand,” he told her, withdrawing his arm. “You suffered things no one should have to endure, and you made yourself strong enough to endure them and fight back. Of course you cannot stop fighting all in an instant.” She looked back at him, and he felt once more that sense of being shaken to the heart. Just from her eyes, he thought incredulously; just from the look in her eyes!

  “You are very wise,” she whispered. “I … I like you so much. Yesterday I went into your room to wake you, and when I saw you sleeping, I … realized. Then I r
eminded myself that you didn’t want me, and I was angry, with you and with me. I was awake all night, telling myself how I was being stupid, that you were doing everything I’d hoped for—hiring me, and trusting me, and treating me honorably, and it was stupid to want anything more. Now you say that you do want me, and part of me is very glad, but part of me is frightened. When I look at you, it seems good, but when you touch me, I feel angry and confused. Don’t touch me, please!”

  “I won’t,” he said impulsively. “I will never touch you without your permission, and nothing will happen except what you want. I want to be one person who has never hurt you. Never. If I ever do, I want you to tell me, and make me stop.”

  She looked at him very doubtfully, then laid her palm against the side of his face and simply looked at him for a long, aching moment. Then she kissed him again.

  He fought the very strong desire to put his arms around her. He put them behind his back instead and clutched his hands together to keep them still. It was, he told himself, an utterly ridiculous situation—and what on earth and heaven did he think was going to happen now? Would she sleep with him without letting him touch her? Was he going to sack her as his bodyguard, and keep her as his mistress? Bring her into his household and keep her … where? Set her up in another house in Alexandria? Have her learn another trade, employ her, let her find other employment of her own?

  He didn’t really care. His heart was pounding and his battered body seemed to have been transformed, flooded with an elixir of life and joy. One step at a time, he told himself. Survive the next few days, and then you can decide what to do next.

  They wandered back to the lodging house, pausing along the way to buy and eat bread and a salad from a corner cookshop. When they arrived it was nearly noon.

  “Oh, there you are!” exclaimed Gellia happily, letting them in. “Oh, Herapilus, sir, what a beautiful cloak! I don’t like to think what that must’ve cost. What’s the dye?”

  “Dyes,” Hermogenes corrected her. “Iron alum and saffron.” He was feeling very cheerful, and he added, “You are supposed to think what it cost. That is the point of it: to impress people with how much it cost, so that they hope the fool who wasted the money on it will part with a little more.”

  Gellia giggled. “How did your inquiries go?”

  “Not so well at first, but they improved. I have an appointment for the day after tomorrow. Gellia, I am sorry to trouble you about this again, but have you cleaned the rooms?”

  Her face fell. “Well…” she said, and coughed. “To tell the truth, sir, after the party last night I didn’t get up very early, and I’ve only got back from shopping just now. And now you’re back, you won’t want me fussing around…”

  “Give me the cleaning things, and I will do it,” said Cantabra.

  “Will you?” cried Gellia in relief, and bustled off to fetch them.

  “You should not have said that,” Hermogenes told her disapprovingly. “It is her job.”

  Cantabra shrugged. “She hates cleaning, and she does it very badly. I don’t mind. When I stayed here before, when I was first discharged, I used to sweep the floor and wipe down the shutters twice a day, just because I was so glad to have a place of my own to look after, instead of a place where I was kept.”

  He started to touch her hand in sympathy, but recollected himself in time. “No wonder Gellia liked you,” he said instead, and she smiled.

  Gellia came back with a broom, a dustpan, and a bucket of tepid water with a handful of fine ash in it to serve as soap. Cantabra took these up the stairs and energetically set about cleaning the room. She beat the flea-infested bed mattress with the broom handle, swept the floor under it, then tipped the sweepings into the alleyway. She turned the mattress over and commenced beating it again. He was suddenly and uncomfortably reminded of the gladiators that morning, the victorious man raining blows down on his half-blind and fallen opponent. He shivered. He remembered that Cantabra had said she’d fought thirty times in the arena. At least some of those fights must have ended in a death. He wondered whether his new sense of life and joy might not be misplaced.

  Cantabra stopped beating the mattress and began to sweep again. He moved out of her way, then wondered if he ought to help. After all, this was as much not-his-job as not-hers: there weren’t any slaves. There was only one broom, though. That was lucky: if his father had been alive to see his son and heir wield a broom, the shock would certainly have killed him. “Should I do something with the water?” he asked.

  She paused, leaning on the broom and grinning. “Have you ever cleaned a room in your life?”

  “No,” he admitted. “But I’ve seen it done.”

  She laughed her hooting, uncivilized laugh. “I’ll do it. You can sit down: the bed should be better now.”

  He sat down. Cantabra continued to sweep vigorously—the floor, the walls, the corners of the ceiling. He leaned on the windowsill and looked out. The overcast sky was becoming dark.

  “Does it rain in Rome in the summer?” he asked hopefully.

  “Sometimes.” She came over to have a look for herself. “I think there will be a storm,” she declared, with some satisfaction. “You will not be able to go out to the bathhouse.”

  He stared in surprise. “Why not?”

  “You’d get wet.”

  “One expects to, in the bath.”

  “You’d get your clothes wet,” she told him impatiently. “Then you’d have a wet cloak to sleep under. Nobody goes out in the rain if they can help it!”

  “I like rain,” he told her. “If there’s a storm, does that mean there will be thunder and lightning?”

  She stared at him. “Don’t you have storms in Alexandria?”

  “Not often,” he admitted.

  She stared harder. “Huh!” She piled the sweepings into the dustpan, threw them out the window, then paused and frowned at him again. “Do you have rain?”

  “Sometimes. Not often. I’ve seen storms enough, though, in Cyprus.” He remembered Uncle Nikomachos laughing at him over his childish enthusiasm for thunder and lightning. He found that he longed for there to be a storm now, to clear the muggy air and the stinking streets, to relieve the rage against the Romans that even Cantabra couldn’t still.

  “Not much rain!” said Cantabra wonderingly. “What do you do for water, then?”

  “The river. Egypt lives by the Nile.”

  “No wonder you think it’s sacred!” She took the bucket of water and knelt to begin wiping down the framework of the bed. She shook her head in amazement. “A city where it doesn’t rain!” Then she snorted and added, “No wonder you think you can go walking in the rain! Probably you think it’s fun!”

  He felt irritated by this assumption that it wasn’t. “Does it rain much in Cantabria?”

  “All the time!” She rinsed out the rag, then leaned back on her heels, and said wistfully, “Everything there is green, even in the summer. Not like here.”

  “I thought Iberia was supposed to be dry.”

  “Huh! Iberia probably is. I’ve never been there.” She got up and began to wipe down the window shutters.

  “I thought Cantabria was part of Iberia.”

  “No. Iberia is to the south of the mountains. To the north are the Galicians, the Asturians, and the Cantabrians. We are all Celts. The Iberians are a different people. Their language is different, and their customs, and their gods.”

  “I didn’t realize there were Celts in Ibe—I didn’t realize you were a Celt.” It explained the red hair, he supposed, and the bold, warlike nature.

  She turned from the window and gave him a look very far from warlike, a look of tender affection. “You don’t know anything about barbarians at all, do you? You think the Romans are barbarians. I wish my uncle were alive, and I could tell him that.”

  It was absurd, he told himself, that he should feel this swelling of the heart just because she looked at him. “I wish he were.”

  Then for the first time he wond
ered if she had anyone left in Cantabria—a widowed aunt or mother, perhaps; a sister, or orphaned nieces and nephews—people who would rejoice at her return, who would give her a home and family again. “Do you have anyone alive there?” he asked her recklessly.

  Her face closed forbiddingly. “Why?”

  “If you wanted to go back there to see them, I would pay your fare.”

  She gave him another of those heart-stopping looks, then shook her head. “I can’t go back there. Not after two years in the arenas of Rome. They would … they would not welcome me.” Then she added, in a very small voice, “Thank you for offering.”

  “I am so sorry,” he said helplessly.

  “You mustn’t go out to the bathhouse,” she told him, suddenly very earnest again. “Today or tomorrow. Pollio has men searching for you. You must stay hidden.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Cantabra, Rome is a very great city. Finding one man in it is like trying to find one particular mouse in a wheat field. I’m sure Pollio can hire searchers by the hundred, but even so he can’t post people in every bathhouse! I know I was worried about the barbershops, but that was because one man could make inquiries in a dozen barbershops in an hour. With a hundred people asking, it would be possible to check enough of them that you might get news, if you were lucky. Posting people somewhere to catch someone is different.”

  “But he’s been searching for you so hard that Taurus had heard of it,” she said anxiously. “He’s called you a thief to give himself an excuse. He broke the law to search your friend’s house. He could already have learned that you were at the Baths of Agrippa yesterday—and that means he could’ve posted people there today. He must want you back very badly. Without you he can’t make Rufus do what he wants, and he knows now that you are very clever: he must be afraid of how much you might have guessed. Please, you must not go out. Just stay here quietly until the day after tomorrow.”

  The day after tomorrow, when he had to allow Taurus’s men to arrest him in front of Pollio’s. He groaned, and resolved not to think of it.