Arena Read online

  Capito trembled as he struggled to his knees, clamped his hands around the solid legs of Britomaris and bowed deeply, presenting himself for execution. He stared hopelessly at the bloodied sand as he cursed himself for underestimating his opponent. He prayed that whoever faced Britomaris next would not make the same mistake.

  His limbs spasmed as the sword plunged into his neck behind his collarbone, and tore deep into his heart.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The officer raised his head slowly from his cup of wine and focused on the two Praetorian Guards standing in front of him, dimly lit by the dull glow of a single oil lamp. Outside the inn, the street was pitch black.

  ‘Lucius Cornelius Macro, optio of the Second Legion?’ the guard on the left barked. The officer nodded with pride and raised his cup to the guards. They wore plain white togas over their tunics, he noticed, which was the distinctive garb of the Praetorian Guard.

  ‘That’s me,’ he slurred. ‘Come to hear the story behind my decoration too, I suppose. Well, take a seat, lads, and I’ll give you every grisly detail. But it’ll cost you a jug of wine. None of that Gallic swill, though, eh?’

  The guard stared humourlessly at Macro. ‘You’re required to come with us.’

  ‘What, right now?’ Macro looked at the young guard on the right. ‘Isn’t it past your bedtime, lad?’

  The young Praetorian glared with outrage at the officer. The guard on the left cleared his throat and said, ‘We are here on orders from the imperial palace.’

  Macro sobered up. A summons to the imperial household, well after dusk? He shook his head.

  ‘You must be mistaken. I’ve already collected my award.’ He proudly tapped the bronze medals strapped across his chest, which he’d been presented with by the Emperor before the festivities at the Statilius Taurus amphitheatre earlier that day. The defeat of Capito had cast a cloud over proceedings and Macro had left his seat as soon as the gladiator had fallen, sensing the mood of the crowd was about to turn ugly. He’d sunk a skinful of wine at the Sword and Shield tavern not far from the amphitheatre. It was a stinking hovel with foul wine, redeemed by the fact that the owner was an old sweat from the Second Legion who insisted on plying Macro with free drinks in recognition of his decoration.

  ‘The Praetorian Guard doesn’t make mistakes,’ the guard said bluntly. ‘Now come with us.’

  ‘No use arguing with you boys, is there?’ Macro slid out of his bench and reluctantly followed the guards outside.

  The crowds had taken their anger out on everything in the streets. Market stalls had been overthrown. Carved miniature statuettes of Capito with their heads smashed off littered the ground, and Macro had to watch his step as he ambled down the covered portico of the Flaminian Way towards the Fontinalian Gate. The Julian plaza stood at his right, its ornate marble facade commemorating Caesar. To his left stood rows of extravagant private residences.

  ‘What’s this all about, then?’ Macro asked the guards.

  ‘No idea, mate,’ the one at his left shoulder replied, blunt as the spear Britomaris had been equipped with. ‘We were just told to find you and bring you to the palace. What you’re wanted for is none of our business.’

  Gods, thought Macro as the guards escorted him through the gate towards the Capitoline Hill. A Praetorian who wasn’t sticking his nose where it wasn’t wanted? He couldn’t quite believe it.

  ‘You never get used to the smell here, I suppose,’ Macro said, creasing his nose at the fetid stench coming from an open section of the great sewer that carried the city’s filth out from the Forum.

  The guard nodded. ‘You think it’s bad here,’ he said, ‘wait till you visit the Subura. Smells like a fucking Gaul’s arse down there. We steer well clear of the place, thank the gods. Spend most of our time up at the imperial palace, being in the Guard and all. Clean air, fresh cunny and all the figs you can eat.’ He grinned at the other guard to Macro’s right. ‘And that fifteen thousand sestertii bonus from the new Emperor came in very handy.’

  A bewildering array of smells fanned over the officer. Although the markets had closed a few hours earlier, the potent aroma of cinnamon and pepper, cheap perfume and rotten fish lingered in the air, mixing with the smell of the sewers and conspiring to churn Macro’s guts. He hated being in Rome. Too much noise, too much dirt, too many people. And too many bloody Praetorians, he thought. Acrid billows of dull grey smoke wafted up from forges and blanketed the sky, rendering the air muggy and leaden. It was like walking through a giant kiln. Fires glowered dimly in the dark. Apartment blocks tapered along the distant hills and valleys, their blackened upper storeys barely visible against the night sky.

  ‘All the lads in the camp are talking about your award,’ the guard said, his voice carrying a hint of jealousy. ‘It’s not every day that his imperial majesty personally decorates a lowly officer, you know. You’re the toast of Rome.’ He narrowed his eyes to slits. ‘You must have some friends in high places, I suppose.’

  ‘Afraid not,’ Macro replied drily. ‘My boys and I were part of a punitive expedition against a tribe from across the Rhine. We got caught in the thick of it. Killed three hundred of the wildest-looking Germans you could imagine. I led the men back after our centurion copped it. All in a day’s work for the Second. Honestly, I don’t know what all the fuss is about.’

  The Praetorian swapped an impressed look with the second guard. Macro felt a sudden hankering to be back on the Rhine Frontier. Rome disagreed with him, even though he had lived there in his childhood. He’d left the city under a cloud some thirteen years ago, after avenging the death of his uncle Sextus by slaying a violent gang leader. He had journeyed north to Gaul and enlisted for twenty-five years at the fortress of the Second Legion. He’d not expected to ever return to the city, and being back felt strange.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, patting his stomach. ‘It’s tough being a hero. Everyone buying you drinks. Tarts fawning over you, of course. The ladies love a man with a shiny set of medals.’ The guard glanced back enviously across his shoulder. ‘Especially the posh ones. They can’t resist a bit of rough.’

  Macro struggled to match pace with the guards as they weaved their way through a wave of exotic faces – Syrians and Gauls, Nubians and Jews. Synagogues and a variety of temples he hadn’t seen before loomed between the tenements along the main thoroughfare.

  ‘A word to the wise,’ said the guard. ‘From one soldier to another. Things aren’t like they used to be around here. A lot’s changed.’

  ‘Oh?’ Macro asked, his interest piqued. ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Claudius may be emperor, but his accession hasn’t exactly been smooth. That unfortunate business of Caligula getting the chop a few months back caused a bit of a mess.’

  ‘As I recall,’ said Macro frostily, ‘it was one of your own who stuck his blade into Caligula.’

  News of the assassination of the previous emperor in January had been greeted with a mixture of dismay and relief by the men of the Second. Dismay that there was a chance they might return to the days of the Republic, but relief that Caligula’s reign had ended. The Emperor had been dogged by scandal. It was common knowledge that he’d committed incest with his sisters and turned the imperial palace into a brothel, and an attempt on his life from the offended aristocracy and Senate had been all too predictable. In the end, a trio of officers from the Praetorian Guard, led by Cassius Chaerea, had taken matters into their own hands. The conspirators had stabbed Caligula thirty times, slain his wife and smashed his young daughter’s head against a wall to end the bloodline. For a short while, a new Roman republic had seemed on the cards. Until the Praetorians turned to Claudius.

  The guard stopped in his tracks and, turning to face Macro, lowered his voice. ‘Look, between you and me, old Chaerea was a decent bloke, but he never had much support among the Guard. He forgot the golden rule. Praetorians stick by the Emperor through thick and thin.’ He paused, took a calming breath and continued. ‘Anyway, after Caligula died,
a few unsavoury types crawled out of the woodwork, announcing that they were opposed to Claudius becoming emperor. One or two of them had the idea that they deserved the job instead. Or worse, wanted to turn Rome into a republic again! To have us return to the dark days of civil war and bloodletting on the streets …’ The guard shivered at the thought. ‘Obviously the Emperor can’t rule with dissent in the ranks.’

  ‘Obviously,’ Macro said.

  ‘Right. So we’ve had to spend these last few months rooting out the ones who were opposed to Claudius and making them disappear.’

  Macro made a face. ‘Disappear?’

  ‘Yes,’ the guard said, his eyes darting left and right to check no one was snooping on their conversation. ‘We quietly take them off the streets, bring ’em to the palace and deal with them.’ He made a throat-slitting gesture. ‘Senators, knights, magistrates. Even the odd legate. The sons get exiled, or worse, thrown into the ludus. The list seems to grow by the week. No one is safe, I’m telling you.’

  ‘Not sure I like the sound of that,’ Macro said tersely. ‘Soldiers shouldn’t get involved in politics.’

  The guard raised a hand in mock surrender. ‘Hey, don’t look at me. You know how it is. Orders are orders. If you ask me, it’s those freedmen the Emperor has been surrounding himself with we need to watch. You should see the way they talk to us. But they’ve got his ear.’

  The guard straightened his back and approached a set of wrought-iron gates at the entrance to the imperial palace complex. A blast of cool evening air swept through the street as the guards ushered Macro up a wide staircase leading into a dimly lit hall with marbled walls and a bas-relief frieze depicting the famous battle of Zama, the decisive victory against Carthage masterminded by Publius Cornelius Scipio, the great reformer of the Roman military. They swept along a vast corridor and cut through a lavish garden adorned with fountains and statues and surrounded by marble arcades. Beyond, Macro could see the rooftops of the Forum and the columns of the Temple of Castor and Pollux. Arriving at the opposite side of the garden, they climbed a flight of stone stairs and entered a large hall with an apse at the far end. The guards escorted Macro across the hall to where a shadowed figure stood at the step of a raised dais used by the Emperor when he was holding court.

  The man at the dais was not the Emperor. He had the dark curly hair and sloping nose of a Greek. His smooth skin and willowy physique suggested he had never done a day’s hard labour. He wore the simple tunic of a freedman, although Macro noted that it appeared to be made of fine-spun wool. His eyes were black like the holes in a stage mask.

  ‘Ah, the famous Macro!’ the freedman said with an exaggerated tone of praise. ‘A true Roman hero!’

  He approached Macro, his thin lips twisted into a smile.

  ‘Leave us,’ he ordered the guards in a sharp, shrill voice. The Praetorians nodded and paced back down the centre of the hall. The freedman followed them with his dark eyes until they were out of earshot.

  ‘You have to be careful who you speak around these days,’ he said. ‘Particularly the Praetorians. They have the misguided impression that his imperial majesty owes them an eternal debt. What is the world coming to when the guards think they hold sway over the most powerful man in the world?’

  Macro bit his tongue. He’d heard that after Caligula had been assassinated, Claudius had been discovered hiding in the imperial palace by members of the Praetorian Guard. Desperate for stability, the Praetorians had promptly acclaimed as emperor a fifty-year-old man with practically no experience of government and who, if the rumours were to be believed, didn’t even want the job. Without the backing of the Praetorians, there might have been another face stamped on every coin in the Empire. No wonder the freedman felt so threatened by their presence, thought Macro.

  The freedman said, ‘My name is Servius Ulpius Murena. I report to the imperial secretary, Marcus Antonius Pallas. I presume you’re familiar with the name?’

  ‘Sorry, but no,’ Macro replied with a shrug. ‘It’s been a while since I’ve been around polite society. I’ve spent the last few years chopping down Germans.’

  Murena grunted. ‘I’m aware of your background, officer. As a matter of fact, that’s why you’re here. Pallas is a secretary to his imperial majesty. He helps the Emperor administer Rome and her provinces. As do I. Tell me, how many Germans do you think you’ve killed during your time at the Rhine?’

  Macro shrugged. ‘Depends.’

  ‘On what?’ Murena said, cocking his head at the officer.

  ‘Your average German takes a number of cuts before he drops,’ Macro said. ‘Sometimes you’ll give one a good few stabs and he’ll still be charging at you and foaming at the mouth. You don’t actually see them shuffle off to the Underworld. They drag themselves away to die somewhere nice and quiet. But they die all the same. We have a saying in the Second: swords can’t tell the difference between Germans and Greeks.’

  ‘I see.’ The freedman shifted awkwardly on his feet, clearly unsettled by the violent turn the conversation had taken. ‘And what precisely does that mean?’

  ‘A stab’s a stab,’ said Macro. ‘Give a man a good twist in the guts and he’s done for, whether he’s a whacking great barbarian or a skinny little toga-lifter.’

  Murena wrung his hands as he turned away from Macro towards the gardens and the pair of Praetorian Guards hovering under the arched walkway. ‘What a pity the great Capito did not heed such sagacious advice.’

  ‘Sagacious?’

  ‘Yes, almost synonymous with judicious.’ Seeing the quizzical look on Macro’s face, the freedman rolled his eyes. ‘Never mind,’ he went on. ‘My point is, you have lots of experience of slaying the barbaric enemies of Rome.’

  ‘More than most, I’d say,’ Macro said, puffing out his chest.

  ‘Good. Because I have a task for you.’

  Macro frowned as anxiety spilled through his guts. ‘Task?’

  ‘Yes. A task. For me.’

  Macro gritted his teeth. ‘Find someone else to do your dirty work. I take orders from my centurion, my legate and the Emperor. No one else.’

  The freedman laughed and inspected his fingernails. ‘I hear you haven’t set foot in this city for a while?’

  ‘Thirteen years or so.’

  ‘Then I will give you the benefit of the doubt just this once. Rome is different now. I may be a simple freedman, but you would do well to treat me with respect. I have a certain influence within these walls. Enough to rescind your decoration … and your promotion to centurion.’

  ‘Centurion?’ Macro repeated with a start. ‘What are you talking about?’

  Murena produced a scroll, and Macro noticed the imperial seal on the wax. The freedman opened it and read aloud, ‘“Orders from his imperial majesty to the legate of the Second Legion, instructing the immediate promotion to centurion of Optio Lucius Cornelius Macro.” A position that interests you, I believe?’

  Macro frowned at Murena.

  ‘Sadly, I cannot dispatch the letter until you carry out a certain task for the Emperor,’ Murena explained.

  ‘What kind of task?’ Macro said uneasily.

  Murena smiled wanly. ‘Permit me to elaborate. You were there at the arena earlier today to receive your decoration. A proud moment, sadly marred by the defeat of our dear Capito.’ The freedman tutted. ‘Highly embarrassing for the Emperor. Capito was not only the finest fighter in the imperial school and therefore the personal property of Claudius himself, he was the sixth imperial gladiator to fall at the hands of Britomaris.’

  Murena circled the officer. Macro eyed him warily. ‘These are stressful days for the new Emperor,’ the freedman continued. ‘There are many doubters in Rome. Some of them are openly hostile to Claudius. Not just men of the Senate, but in the Forum and the taverns too. I speak frankly now. The Emperor was not a unanimous choice. The vagaries of bloodline and birthright mean that no man can wear the laurel crown without facing nefarious challenges to his supremacy. You
heard the rumbles of discontent in the crowd after Capito died. A defeat like this threatens to undermine our regime in its infancy. We must demonstrate to the mob that Claudius is the strong, decisive leader we have craved since the golden age of Augustus.’

  ‘So invade somewhere,’ Macro said with a shrug. ‘That usually does the trick.’

  Murena laughed like a tutor humouring a brash student. ‘Thank you for that truly enlightening insight, Optio. Your genius makes me wonder why you haven’t elevated yourself higher up the ranks.’

  Macro fought a powerful urge to punch Murena in the face.

  ‘Rest assured, plans are afoot for the near future,’ the freedman went on. ‘But the more pressing problem is Britomaris. Six gladiators defeated! That is more than a stain on the Emperor’s name; it is a veritable boil, one we must lance before it overwhelms us. We cannot afford any more defeats by this barbarian. Whoever faces him next must triumph, demonstrating to all that no one defies the Emperor, and that Claudius is the right man to occupy the throne.’

  Macro said, ‘What about getting Hermes to fight him? He’s just about the toughest gladiator there’s ever been. He’d chop up a thug like Britomaris as quick as boiling asparagus.’

  ‘Out of the question,’ Murena said flatly.

  ‘Why?’

  A pained expression wrinkled unpleasantly across the freedman’s bony face. As if he were chewing on a mouthful of rotten fish guts, thought Macro.

  ‘I must confess, I am not a fan of Hermes. Neither is Pallas. We find him somewhat brutish. However, the problem with Hermes is not one of style. Indeed, in the event of Capito dying, another of the Emperor’s advisers – a wretched, snivelling fellow by the name of Narcissus – had arranged for Hermes to fight Britomaris next.’

  ‘So what’s the problem?’ Macro asked.

  ‘This morning, Hermes suffered a … a rather unfortunate accident.’

  ‘Accident?’ Macro repeated.