“Alexandros,” moaned Felix. “Take care of this.” He looked around, as if searching for another exit unclogged by clients. Looking at the room now, it seemed there were far more of them than Anazâr had originally noted. He was beginning to understand the root of Felix’s overwhelmed frustration. “I have an appointment with the magistrate. Ana— I mean Cyrenaicus and I must be off!”
“I’ll follow you,” said Quintus.
“Piss on that!”
“You don’t want me and my cousins to follow you? I mean, that’s sort of our job, when we’re not guarding warehouses.” He frowned.
“Yes, I suppose I need a fucking retinue now. Of course. Well, come on then.”
The clients fell into line behind him. When they’d exited the front door, Anazâr saw Felix pick up the pace of his stride, as if he could outrun them, but his “retinue” just matched his speed, bustling along in anxious, needy silence. Would their desperation outweigh their inevitable revulsion at Felix’s manner? Anazâr wasn’t sure. For the sake of the household he hoped so.
“Is this man your natural son or brother?” asked the magistrate, in the chanting tone of a ritual. Solemn, ancient, and one of his eyes held a milky cloud, forming a weird mirror of Felix’s youth and darkly bruised, swollen socket.
“No,” said Felix.
“What is his purpose of manumission?”
“To be my bodyguard.”
Felix’s lawyer shook his head violently. They’d met him at the magistrate’s office; he’d rushed Felix immediately into a corner for a private consultation.
“Sorry,” said Felix. “I meant, he’s going to be one of my managers. Right.”
“We shall proceed, then. Cyrenaicus, step forward. Who will argue for the freedom of this unjustly enslaved man?”
Was there such a thing as justly enslaved? But those were the words of this ritual, this strange mock trial, this script that when read to the last letter would magically culminate in his improbable freedom.
“I will so argue,” said the magistrate’s lictor, and raised a stick. “I declare his status as freedman.” The ceremony, at that moment of mock threat, became real to him, embodied, visceral. When the rod of vindicta touched him, he would be a freedman. And more than that, a Roman citizen.
“Does the lawful master contest the restoration of liberty?”
“No,” said Felix, very firmly, but the magistrate wasn’t listening; another lictor was whispering into his ear.
Anazâr heard. Heard the conviction in Felix’s voice, heard Felix’s pure uncomplicated belief that Anazâr should be free. Free to stay or leave. Free to love him, purely by choice.
He is not your master.
His love for Felix had always been a choice. And now, as then, he’d choose to love him. Choose to stay.
“There appears to be a complication,” rasped the magistrate. “Lictor, return the vindicta.”
No. No no no.
Felix’s face showed the grief Anazâr could not allow himself.
“Are you all right?” asked Felix.
Anazâr leaned against the gate to the street. Clients waited outside; he couldn’t let himself be seen like this. “Yes. I just need to catch my breath. Really, I’m all right.”
“I’m so sorry. I thought we could get through it without the fucking complication. I struck it out of my mind that Lucullus is your master, and it doesn’t matter if I’m the boy’s real father, as far as the law’s concerned I’m just your master’s guardian, and there’s a matter of filing a declaration in front of the proper witnesses, and I hate the law, I absolutely despise it, the courts and the magistrates and the whole rotten sanctimonious lot of them—”
Anazâr took a deep breath, straightened, and grabbed Felix’s flailing wrist. He’d been slashing at the air like a swordsman. “I said, I’m all right. I trust you. You’ll have full ownership when Aelia remarries. Until then, I trust you—I trust you not to sell me, even if you grow tired of me.”
“I’ll never grow tired of you.” Perhaps that was the wrong thing for Anazâr to say, because even Felix’s good eye looked raw and red now.
“Well, fine, but if you did, I know you wouldn’t cast me aside. And you wouldn’t . . .” Whip me. Beat me. Humiliate me. Send me to the cross. “I trust you to take care of me, Felix. I don’t crave a master in my life, but if I did, it would be you.”
“But I don’t want this. I want you, but I don’t want—”
“Calm yourself. We’ve come too far, risen too high. Together.”
Felix blinked, and pain followed, written all over his face. But he calmed. “Damn, it hurts,” he said, and dabbed a handkerchief at the corner of his wounded eye. “Though every time the pain strikes, I remember what a miracle it is I’m still alive.”
“Oh, come off it. I remember learning in gladiator training, if you shove a thin spike in someone’s eye, you’re supposed to wiggle it back and forth. Otherwise, it’s too unreliable as a killing stroke. Though I forgot the lesson in the cellar that night.”
“Aren’t we a fine pair of soldiers,” said Felix, smiling crookedly, the way Anazâr loved.
“Lucius Marianus Felix!” called the lawyer, walking toward them from a far corner of the courtyard. “I’ve got some good news for you. You and your freedman. Come back with me.”
“Does the lawful guardian acting in the best interests of the lawful master contest the restoration of liberty?”
“No,” said Felix, very firmly. Again.
The lictor brought the rod down. Tapped Anazâr somewhat anticlimactically on the head.
“In concordance with the model of the ancients and the will of the people, I declare this man restored into liberty by Quiritian law.” The magistrate gestured to Felix.
Felix grasped Anazâr by the shoulders and turned him around in a circle. Anazâr felt perilously light, as if he could float into the air without Felix’s touch anchoring him to the earth.
“Walk forward in freedom, Lucius Marianus Cyrenaicus,” said the magistrate. “And have your name entered onto the rolls. We are done here.”
“Will you stay?” asked Felix as they walked away from the magistrate’s office, leaving their tumultuous past somewhere within its halls and rooms. “With me?”
“As long as I can stand you,” Anazâr replied. “So maybe stop letting your former lovers into the house. And don’t leave any more fruit pits lying around in our bed. And wake up in the morning without my needing to cajole you.”
“Can I still play the game where I try to use as many innuendos around Alexandros as I can manage without him noticing?”
“He always notices.”
Several days later, after searching Felix’s various haunts around the domus to no avail, Anazâr found the man in an office closet, searching through accounting scrolls. Alexandros was peering over one shoulder, keeping him on task, perhaps, or answering his questions about the minutiae of running household and business.
Felix had been true to his word about taking his new position of paterfamilias with due gravity, and that fact pleased Anazâr immensely, even if Felix occupied the role with far more complaining than seemed strictly necessary.
“Anazâr!” he greeted cheerfully upon looking up, squinting, from his rolls. “Just the man I wanted to see. We’ve been going over the future running of the family affairs.”
“Oh?” Anazâr moved to his side, opposite Alexandros. He’d spent the afternoon wandering the streets, trying to come to grips with the feeling of walking them as a free man. He’d had to produce proof of his citizenship to two guards, which had been nerve-wracking but ultimately painless. His dread of that experience, however, had been easily balanced by the satisfaction he got from buying pastries at a street stall with his own money. He placed one before Felix now.
“How did you know I was hungry? Brilliant man.” Felix grinned up at him, mouth begging for a kiss.
Later.
“Well, tell me what you’ve decided, then.”
With that little box of pleasures you’ve gifted to me, kept under the bed? No, you are not.
“Of course, there’s a slew of debts to be paid—most of them mine, I’m sorry to say—and an array of business partners who’ve closed accounts for fear of scandal, but I still think we’ll come out on the other side with a little more than we started with. I’ve also decided, with Alexandros’s advice, to pay you a regular salary for your services as a bodyguard, which will leave Quintus and his fellows spread less thinly so they can focus on the warehouses.”
“Thank you,” said Anazâr, too stunned by the news to be more eloquent. “It goes without saying that I’d lay down my life for yours, Dominus.” After gaining his freedom, the word had become something like a term of affection. Felix proved spectacularly enjoyable to serve, most days.
“Well, I’d prefer if you didn’t, but it is technically a part of the job description, so . . .” Felix waved a hand dismissively. “And anyway. By the end of this week, I hope to have an appointment to adopt Alexandros’s grandson, as we’d agreed, but I wanted to discuss something else with you, too. Do you remember the night . . . well, the night?”
The night you saved my life and killed your brother? The night we fought for and won our freedom?
“Yes,” he said, and left it at that.
“Well, on that night I mentioned a further addition to our household. I’ve been speaking with the old woman Dara—you remember her, as well?—and she says the girl Litis has made good steps toward recovery, such that she can stand the sight of men again. I’d like to . . . well, that is . . . I’m going to adopt her. I’ve seen her housed and provided for thus far, but I think she deserves more than the hovel she’s been living in, considering the sacrifice her mother made, and all because of the feud with my brother. I’d like to take her into our family, not as a slave, but as a daughter. It’s hardly ever done for girls, but the lawyer says the adoption would be recognized. I’d have her raised and educated here, with Dara as her maid. You obviously wouldn’t have to think of Litis as a daughter, but I—”
Alexandros be damned. Anazâr surged forward, capturing Felix’s mouth in a kiss. Once the shock had worn off, Felix laughed against his lips, pulling back with a teasing little bite.
“You approve, then?”
“Gods, yes,” Anazâr replied.
The sunlight hit the garden with such brilliance that the flowers seemed to glow around the edges with their own light. A blue-winged butterfly made its rounds from vine to vine, swooping and skipping through the bright air.
In the shadow of the colonnade, Amanikhabale rested. She wore a sleeveless tunic without a shawl now that the languid summer heat had arrived.
There were new scars on her back, mixed with the old ones.
Anazâr sat down beside her.
“Cassia told me you’d changed your mind,” he said. “That both of you want freedom, and you will not stay. I’d hoped to continue our lessons, but I—well, I wish you well, wherever you decide to go.”
She kept her eyes on the dance of the butterfly. “Opportunity presents itself. I’ve been in contact with one of my countrymen. An ivory merchant. He’s old, and he wishes to return to Adulis before he dies. He’ll marry me, and I’ll be his nursemaid on the journey and until the end. His heir afterward.”
Anazâr remembered her swift action in the arena, and how she’d kept Rhakshna from bleeding to her death. She’d saved them all, even barely wielding her sword. That she had such medical training surprised him; that she had kept it secret did not.
“I always thought I’d live and die in the mother of cities,” said Cassia, who came walking toward them bearing water. “But she’s told me such tales of Adulis! The soaring obelisks, the silk flags streaming over the port, the spices from far India sold cheap as salt. Sunrise over the Red Sea.” She sat down and passed the water to Amanikhabale. “I’ll be leaving my shame behind. And my daughter. I trust my sister to raise her, but Cyrenaicus, will you— Don’t tell her I’m still alive, but . . .”
“I’ll look in on her,” he promised. A silence fell. They were used to departures without farewells, but this time, the air cried out for words, and he had so few of them.
At least he had his name to give.
“My name is Lucius Marianus Cyrenaicus now,” he said. “But I was never from Cyrenaica. I was born deeper in the western desert, and named Anazâr of the free people, the Amazigh.”
Amanikhabale smiled. “I’m no Nubian warrior queen, so I’m leaving that name behind when I walk through these gates. My name is Si’we of Adulis in Aksum. Hail and farewell, Anazâr.”
“Hail and farewell.”
The northern sky was a roiling mass of dark gray clouds. Anazâr sighed and burrowed his hands deeper into the folds of his cloak. His thoughts drifted south, down to the warm shores of the Red Sea. “I hope it doesn’t snow,” he said.
“No!” said Lucia Mariana, and scrunched up her face in grave displeasure. “But I want it to snow. It used to snow all the time, in the mountains where I was born. We’d take wooden boards and slide on it.”
“Did you!” said Anazâr. “It never snowed where I came from. And I’ve only seen snow once since I’ve been here.”
“How can you say you don’t like it, then?” She reached out and he took her small hand in his own, letting her lead him from the open air of the garden back toward the office.
“I suppose you’re right.”
“Of course I am.”
Anazâr laughed at her smug, self-satisfied tone. “You sound more and more like Felix every day,” he told her. “I’m starting to worry.”
Speaking of Felix, they found him sitting behind his desk, half hidden by a mound of precariously stacked scrolls. A small brazier sat by his feet, giving off a comfortable warmth. He seemed half asleep.
Still holding Anazâr’s hand, Lucia dropped her other hand onto her hip, every line of her body radiating impatient womanly disapproval. “Papa. Felix.”
Felix’s head snapped up, big gray eyes blinking back sleepiness. The scar on his eyelid became nearly invisible. “Oh, my, is it that time? I told Alexandros to . . .” He looked around the room, seemingly forgetting his train of thought. He looked a little like he’d forgotten where he even was. “After all . . . So . . .”
“I don’t mind missing a lesson, but Big Man needs all the help he can get, don’t you think?”
Anazâr looked down at her, feigning a wounded look, but it was true. Litis-now-Lucia had only joined the household a scant few months before, and had arrived just as unlearned as Anazâr, but she’d quickly surpassed him in nearly every subject. Especially reading, which Felix was inordinately pleased and proud to find she had quite a knack for.
After her arrival, each passing day found their house more and more filled with poetry, until Anazâr felt he was breathing words instead of air.
“Very well,” said Felix. “Tablets!” And then, when he noticed there was no one running to answer his beck and call, rose in search of them himself.
Anazâr and Lucia sat cross-legged on the rug, close enough to the brazier to keep their fingers warm. Felix soon tossed them wax tablets, each with a stylus neatly slotted into the corner. “Sappho in Latin?” asked Anazâr, hoping Felix would answer in the affirmative. He liked the simple language, the shorter lines, the marvelous power of the images.
“No, something a little more philosophical, I think. We don’t want Lucia getting bored.” Which was true, because
unoccupied, she could become quite the terror, like a tiny meddling Amanikhabale but with Rhakshna’s fierce temper. “The Nature of Things, by Lucretius. I don’t have it all memorized—I’m not that bloody brilliant—but I know quite a few passages by heart. Attend! Nor can motions that bring death prevail forever, nor eternally entomb the welfare of the world; Nor, on the contrary, can motions that give birth to things and growth keep them forever created.”
“Too long!” cried Lucia when he paused for air. Felix paid her no mind. He had a wonderful voice for recitation, even though Anazâr had to agree the lines were long and unwieldy. He forced himself not to drift off on them like a boat on the black sea of sleep, Felix’s voice in his sails.
Tonight. He’d have Felix recite some lines for him tonight, when they were in bed together, until his dreams were filled with whispers.
“Thus the long war is everlasting waged, with equal strife, between the principles of things; Now here, now there, the vital forces of the world prevail, or fall. Mingled with funeral cries are the bewildered wails of infants coming to the shores of light.” Felix took a deep breath and returned to his normal register. “Start with ‘nor can motions.’ N—”
The light from the garden dimmed as clouds rolled overhead.
Anazâr remembered the winter night he’d stolen the horse and ridden for his freedom. Remembered snowfall the next day, and the tracks left behind for the slave catchers, and the cold and the hunger and the bone-gnawing loneliness. The only snow he’d ever seen.
Lucia was right. For all he’d witnessed of the world, all the suffering and tragedy and misery, there seemed a wealth of unimaginable happiness and beauty just beyond the edge of his experience. Awaiting him.
So let the snow fall.
He traced the perfect circle of an O, looked up to Felix, and smiled.
Adulis: A Red Sea trading port in modern-day Eritrea (see Authors’ Note).
Mark of the Gladiator Page 22
