Anno Mortis Read online

  "I had to defend myself," she said. "He was trying to kill me."

  "It was an act! A show! But the next time, barbarian... The next time you lift your sword in the arena - watch your back."

  He spun on his heel and left the atrium before Boda could respond. But the threat remained, hanging heavy in the air behind him.

  Narcissus trailed at Claudius's heels as they made their way back to the palace. A red press of uniforms surrounded them, the Praetorian Guard whose sole duty lay in the defence of Caesar's life. Their leader, Marcus, walked behind Caligula himself, leather-sheathed sword thwacking against his muscular thigh with every stride.

  Wherever they passed, the people of Rome stopped and stared and cheered and Caligula smiled beneficently at them, accepting their tribute as his due.

  Narcissus wondered how the people would have behaved if the Praetorian Guard hadn't been there. He grinned helplessly at the thought, looking down before anyone could catch him at it. His eyes, as they often did, found themselves fixed on the wooden tablet which hung around his neck and marked him as a slave.

  The sun had passed its zenith now, and the streets they walked through were so narrow that the shadow of the buildings enveloped them entirely. Narcissus was grateful for a respite from the oppressive heat. All of Rome had been sweating under it for days now, with no sign of a break. He supposed he should be grateful he hadn't been sold to one of the bakers whose shops lined the street they were currently traversing. The smell of the bread wafted out from the ovens, where the owners' slaves toiled through the long day and into the night, their sweat mingling with the raw dough.

  Ahead of him, Claudius stumbled suddenly, tripping over a loose flagstone. His arms flailed, trying to regain his balance.

  Taken off guard, Narcissus made a wild grab for him. His fingers hooked into the back of his toga and pulled - and the cloth came away in his hand, leaving Claudius flat on his face on the ground wearing nothing but his loincloth. He blushed a red so virulent it looked diseased.

  There was a peel of high, cruel laughter from ahead. Caligula. He'd turned just in time to catch Claudius's disrobing. After a second, given permission to mock their betters by the Emperor himself, the soldiers of the Praetorian Guard also started laughing.

  Claudius tried to scramble to his feet, then seemed to realise that this would expose even more of him to ridicule, and sat back down again.

  Finally regaining his wits, Narcissus leapt forward, holding out the folded white cloth of the toga to wrap back round his master. Claudius reached out a hand to grab it, avoiding Narcissus's eyes. The worst thing, Narcissus thought, was that Claudius wouldn't beat him for this. His master wasn't angry, he was upset that Narcissus had seen him so publicly humiliated.

  "Oh, there's no need for that," Caligula drawled. "I'm sure my uncle will appreciate the breeze without one." And he held out his hand too, demanding the toga.

  And this, Narcissus thought, was the moment. This was his chance to prove himself a man, no matter that he was one who could be bought and sold. This was when he could repay Claudius for all his kindness over the years.

  He imagined, for a moment, the gratitude in Claudius's eyes. The pride, as Narcissus ignored the demands of his emperor and handed the toga to his master instead.

  And then, even more vividly, he pictured Caligula waving at the Praetorian Guard in that uncaring way of his. He saw them falling on him with the pommels of their swords until they'd beaten him into unconsciousness. Dragging his limp body to the Esquiline Gate. He felt the terrible agony as the nails were driven through his wrists, and the cross raised.

  He took two steps forward, and handed the toga to Caligula.

  The Emperor smiled. He shot one sly, triumphant look at Claudius, still sprawled on the paving slabs where he'd fallen, then slung an arm around Narcissus's neck.

  "What's your name, slave?" he asked.

  The words stuck behind the lump of shame in his throat. He forced them out with a cough. "Narcissus, dominus."

  "Narcissus. Well, not really as beautiful as the myths say, but..." He ran his hand down the slope of Narcissus's shoulder, down his back to cup his buttock beneath his thin tunic. "You'll do."

  Narcissus lowered his eyes submissively, afraid of what Caligula might read in them. "I am at my Emperor's command."

  "Of course you are!" Caligula said, suddenly pulling away. He turned back to Claudius, who had finally dragged himself to his feet. "Uncle, I want your slave. Give him to me."

  Narcissus knew that Claudius was very good at keeping his real feelings from his face. It was how he'd survived so long in the court of the mad Emperor, virtually the only member of his family who had. But he couldn't disguise his expression of dismay now. "He's been with me si-si-sixteen years!" he said. "I bought him when he was just a b-b-boy!"

  Caligula shrugged. "Then he must be more than ready for a change of scene. Really, uncle, it's terribly selfish of you to want to keep an energetic young man like this all to yourself."

  "B-b-but— "

  "I'll go," Narcissus blurted out. He hung his head, because what did it say about him, that his poor, crippled master had the courage to stand up to Caligula for his sake, and Narcissus had none? "I'll gladly go with you, dominus."

  Caligula beamed and Narcissus looked only at him and never at Claudius, so he wouldn't have to see the betrayal in his master's eyes.

  Boda took her flatbread to a quiet corner to brood. Now that battle was no longer heating her blood, she could think more clearly. She closed her eyes and watched a memory unfold behind her eyelids, the moment when the Roman soldiers had found her, miles from her tribe and without hope of help.

  There had been four of them, two so young they'd barely started shaving and all of them shivering in the northern cold. But their swords were sharp and clean and there had been only a moment of hesitation before they were all pointed at her.

  One she could have taken. Maybe two. But four? For a second she'd considered charging forward anyway, dying a glorious death. It would have been the honourable thing to do, and her tribe would have sung songs and drunk mead to her memory.

  Honour and glory. In that instant, Boda learnt a shameful thing about herself. She cared more about life than either of them.

  Her sword had left a deep imprint in the snow as she dropped it. She remembered seeing the yellow petals of a newly sprouted daffodil, crushed beneath the tip.

  And she realised now that, in that moment, she'd stopped thinking, because her thoughts were too painful. She'd let instinct alone and long years of training carry her through the terrible journey back to Rome, the pain of branding, the humiliation of sale at a slave auction and the long, bruising training at the gladiator school.

  Instinct had told her that the other gladiators were enemies, only to be fought, and she hadn't questioned it. And now a man was dead because she had never thought that he too was a slave. She'd never seen that these people were her brothers, not her adversaries.

  The people of Rome were not all of one tribe, and it was wrong to treat them so. Who was she, without honour or kin, to look down on others who had made choices no worse than hers?

  And there was something else, now that she was thinking again, now that she'd stopped drifting through the world like a spirit, as if she really had died in the dark and ancient woodland of her home.

  Why had no one told her that the games were a performance, no more real than the spear-shaking dance that initiated the youths of her people into adulthood? Why had Quintus, the trainer of the gladiator school, not told her? His employers had paid much gold for her and all the others; he should be the most eager of all to save the lives of their possessions.

  She saw him now, a fat, silver-haired old man who always stank of violets. He glanced quickly at her, then away and his pace increased, little mincing steps turning into a half trot as he moved away from her.

  She sprang to her feet, intercepting him before he could enter the private quarters where th
e gladiators weren't allowed.

  "Quintus - a question."

  He turned with an oily smile. "For you, my barbarian beauty, anything."

  "The games today. The others - they told me I wasn't supposed to kill Josephus. Is that true?"

  "You're a warrior, my petal, my thorny white rose. Fierceness is what the crowd expects of you." He turned away, obviously hoping she'd be satisfied with that.

  She took two long paces to put herself back in front of him. "Fierceness, yes. But is it supposed to be real, or a show?"

  He waved an expansive arm in the air. "How are such things to be distinguished? All life is a performance, or so they say."

  "Real, or not?" she persisted grimly.

  He sighed and his eyes darted to left and right, as if checking to see whether anyone was close enough to overhear. They weren't. "There is perhaps an element, the merest hint of showmanship, my dove..."

  "Then why in Odin's name didn't you tell me?"

  His eyes shifted again. Not looking for anything this time, just avoiding hers. And she knew that whatever he said next would be a lie.

  He was saved from voicing it by a commotion, over by the door to the school. "How painful it is to leave you mid-conversation," he said. "But alas, that terrible task-master duty calls."

  He slid from her side quicker than a man his size should have been able to move, and headed towards the source of the sound.

  Boda considered letting him go. She'd discovered that he was hiding something. Anything beyond that he was unlikely to reveal. But there was something about the noise from the doorway - not any words she could make out, just a tone that was hauntingly familiar - and she found herself following Quintus.

  "What's this?" he said. "A fox in the hencoop? Someone come to disturb the peace and tranquillity I've worked so hard to foster?"

  "Just a beggar," said Aulus, the youngest and meekest of Quintus's household slaves.

  "Then give him some bread and send him on his way."

  "I've tried, dominus! He says he won't go without bread and wine."

  "Does he now?" Quintus turned back to the door, an unpleasant expression on his face.

  Boda moved beside him, getting a clear view of the beggar for the first time.

  "Absolutely," the beggar said. "And make the wine something decent - none of that Spanish crap!"

  He was tall, red-haired and pale-skinned, with a fine dusting of freckles over the sharp spike of his nose. Boda felt a flare of something warm and hopeful in her belly. She had never met him before, but she knew his face all the same. This was a man of the Cimbri, of her people. She could hear it in his voice, the accent as he spoke Latin a mirror of her own.

  She knew he recognised her too. His gaze appraised her and seemed pleased with what it found. "Greetings, clanswoman," he said in her own language.

  She lowered her head, to acknowledge him and to hide her face. She didn't want Quintus to read whatever might be written there. She knew that it was too open, a vulnerability she didn't want to show.

  Quintus must have guessed some of it. "One of your own?" he said. "How fortuitous, my virgin huntress. Then you may find him the stalest bread and the dregs of last night's wine, and send him on his way." He smiled thinly and left, clearly glad to be rid of them both.

  "I am Vali," the beggar said. His eyes, she saw, were a startling red-brown, unusual for her people. They stared into her own blue ones with amused frankness.

  "I am Boda, daughter of Berthold," she said. "A captive here."

  "Will you show me to the kitchen, then, and the food I've been promised?"

  She nodded. "I'm sure I can find something a little better than stale bread for a hungry man." There was a hungry look about him - in the thin, sharp angles of his face.

  "And in return," he said. "I have something to show you."

  She paused to shoot him a puzzled look. He was wearing nothing but a tunic, too light to hide anything beneath it.

  "Something here," he told her. "A secret darkness in this place."

  He walked ahead before she could ask him what he meant. Straight towards the kitchen, as if he already knew where it was.

  Petronius sprawled on the bed, wondering if life could get any better. A slave girl under one arm, a slave boy under the other, and food and wine enough to sate the entire Ninth Legion. Best of all, he could feel himself beginning to recover from their previous exertions. More pleasure, he felt, was definitely imminent.

  Which was why he was particularly displeased when his father strode through the doorway, throwing the two slaves such savagely disapproving looks that they instantly slunk from the room.

  "What?" Petronius said. "We were only just getting started!"

  His father glared. "You've been in here two hours."

  "Exactly."

  "You're a disgrace."

  "That's not what they were saying half an hour ago."

  It was a familiar argument, and one they'd had so often before that Petronius felt his father hardly needed him there to supply his half of the exchange. Except this time, the other man veered wildly off script.

  "It's over," his father said. "Enough. You're a man, or -" a pause for him to slowly eye Petronius up and down "- so the calendar tells us. Fifteen years old, and no achievement to your name bar the impregnation of five slaves and the debauching of Jupiter knows how many others."

  "That's what they're for," Petronius protested. But he rose to his feet, clutching the bed sheet around him. He felt, though he wasn't quite sure why, that he was about to get some news which needed to be received standing up. His curling black hair was a tangled mess, and he raked a hand through to tidy it, then gave his father the most meltingly innocent look his big brown eyes would allow.

  "You're no use to me, you're a disgrace to the family name," his father continued, clearly unmoved. "And it's my fault. I've indulged you. I've allowed you to laze around the house, doing nothing more productive than scribbling a few words when the fancy takes you and claiming you're planning to be a playwright. A playwright! No, it won't do. It's time you started a profession suitable for a man of your station."

  A beam of light crept through one of the house's high windows as his father spoke, casting his shadow onto the wall behind him like a harbinger of death.

  Petronius shivered involuntarily. "Writing is an honourable profession. Phaedrus is a highly respected man."

  His father sniffed. "By the plebeians, maybe."

  Petronius forbore to point out that their own family had been plebeian themselves a mere two generations ago. He didn't think now was a good time to be antagonising his father. "I'm not suitable for anything else," he tried instead. "You've said so yourself - who would put up with a no-good wastrel such as myself?"

  "A very good question," his father said ominously. "Happily, today I found the answer. Seneca is in need of an apprentice of good family, and despite having heard every sordid tale of your behaviour buzzing through Rome, he declares himself happy to take you on. No doubt it's because he's a Stoic - they're said to crave hardship and unpleasantness."

  "Seneca?" Petronius said. "What can that dusty old bore possibly teach me?"

  His father smiled for the first time since entering the room. "Rhetoric. I've thought long and hard, and there's only one career in which you can possibly excel - politics. With your propensity for lying and lechery, the Senate should feel like a home from home."

  Petronius let himself fall backwards onto the bed and closed his eyes. He was hoping that when he opened them again this would all prove to have been a dream.

  Caligula talked to Narcissus all the way back to the palace. It was the longest twenty minutes of his life.

  The rest of the Emperor's hangers-on held back, and Narcissus sensed that they were glad of the chance to leave the conversation to someone else. Caligula's mood seemed good at the moment - almost too good, as he laughed raucously at his own jokes and commanded his guards to throw coins to the prettiest of the women they pa
ssed. But Narcissus knew that Caligula's moods were as changeable, and as deadly, as a maritime wind. One wrong word and he'd find himself wrecked on the rocks of Caesar's displeasure.

  He tried to confine himself to yes or no answers, but he soon realised that even this was angering Caligula. The tenth time he smiled and agreed, the Emperor pouted and pulled away from him. "You're no fun," he said. "I thought you wanted to be my friend."

  There was no possible reply to that. Narcissus bowed his head and hoped that would be enough.

  It wasn't. "If I wanted silence," Caligula said, "I'd have cut out your tongue."

  "I'm sorry, dominus," Narcissus whispered. But he could see that this only angered Caligula more. What did he want? Impertinence, perhaps, a witty retort - but it was far too great a risk.

  "He's d-d-dazzled by you, nephew," a voice spoke up behind them.

  Claudius, protecting him still. Narcissus was too ashamed to turn round and face him.

  Their procession finally swept through the entrance to the palace, purple-painted marble pillars looming on either side. Caligula frowned at Narcissus in the sudden shade. "Are you? Dazzled by me, that is?"

  "Yes, dominus." Narcissus said. And then, through a mouth numb with fear, "I've admired you so long from afar. To be suddenly so close to a living god is too much for a humble slave like myself."

  "Well," Caligula said. "Understandable, I suppose. But disappointing. As you're such a hopeless conversationalist, I suppose I shall have to find another use for you."

  "I live to serve," Narcissus said, and this time it seemed to be the right thing.

  Caligula nodded. "Naturally. And I think I have just the job for you." There was a cruel twist to his lips as he spoke. "The importation records for the Empire are in a most desperate state. I had a slave looking over them, but her handwriting was just dreadful. So I cut it off. Her hand, that is. And then I couldn't have her bleeding all over the parchment, so since then there's been no one to sort it out."