Caligula

VI

It did not take the animal trader long to discover that all was not as he left it.

Rufus was standing beside the lion pens speaking to Cassius, the head keeper, when a snorting sound behind him made him wonder if one of the enclosures had been left unbarred. But it was Fronto, and he was furious.

'What in the name of the immortal gods have you done? I didn't give you permission to separate the young cats from the adults. You'll ruin them as you did the leopard.'

Rufus had known this moment would come, but he was not prepared for the cataclysmic power of Fronto's wrath. He had hoped to be able to explain his plan earlier, but somehow the moment had never seemed right. Now their faces were so close that the younger man could feel the rage radiating from Fronto like heat from an open fire.

'I left you in charge here, because I believed I could trust you,' Fronto roared. 'All you had to do was keep things running smoothly, but you couldn't help yourself, could you? Don't deny it — I know all about it. I've heard what you have been doing with the lions. Petting them, sitting in the cage with them, feeding them by hand. Jupiter!

You've even been wrestling with the bloody things. When they go into the ring they won't fight the gladiators, they'll try to hug them to death.'

Rufus opened his mouth to speak, but the modest sign of defiance only served to make Fronto angrier.

'You're too soft. I wanted you to have all this, but I didn't work my way from a farm in Etrusca to become a Roman citizen so that you could throw it all away. You will never be anything but a slave. You can move out of the house and back into the slave quarters tonight. Get out of my sight.'

Rufus refused to move as the bigger man tried to force his way past, and Fronto was as much surprised by the weight of the shoulder which halted him in his tracks as by the edge in the boy's voice. Boy? Perhaps no longer. This was a different Rufus from the one who had waved him off three months ago.

'I know how many animals you brought back on the ship. Eight. Six kudu and two mangy cheetah. How long do you think we can stay in business without animals? You're not a fool, Fronto. You know the answer as well as I do.'

'The answer is to go as far as it takes to find new stock,' Fronto spat back.

'No. The answer is to keep the stock we have alive, to find a way of winning the crowd without sacrificing them. We can use the animals again and again. It could earn us a fortune.'

Fronto laughed incredulously. 'Now who is the fool? The mob only wants blood. It has only wanted blood for a hundred years. Do you think you can wean them off it with a few clumsy tricks?'

Rufus looked steadily into his eyes and the trader broke off, his anger beginning to ebb away like a wave retreating down a pebble beach.

'At least let me try.'

Fronto recognized the determination in Rufus's eyes. There was a certainty in them that left the contemptuous refusal on the tip of his tongue stillborn. For a moment he saw himself in the young man before him: stubborn, impetuous, unscarred by the thorns of failure. His anger faded completely and he shook his head at his own weakness.

'The gods save me, but tell me what you want to do.'

In the weeks that followed Rufus spent every waking moment with the big cats. He found they were as individual in their moods and habits as any human, and it seemed natural to give each of them a name, although he was careful not to allow Fronto to discover this.

'You will be called Diana,' he told the smaller, but more agile, lioness. 'For you will some day be a swift hunter.

'And you are Africanus,' he whispered in the ear of the big male, whose mane would soon turn from its present fluffy fringe into the great symbol of power and strength that would awe everything, man or beast, he confronted. 'For you are a brave and mighty conqueror.'

When obedience had become a habit, he was certain he could make them do anything. The only question was what?

He sought out Cupido at the gladiator school, where he found the athlete going through a series of intricate movements under the watchful gaze of his lanista, the school's owner and the manager who organized his fights. Sabatis was watching from the edge of the training ground, and Rufus joined him, looking on fascinated as the naked Cupido pirouetted and danced, his sword glinting in the sunlight as it carved lightning patterns in the air around him.

'Make yourself comfortable: he'll do this all day. Wears me out just watching him,' the big man grunted.

It seemed impossible that anyone could keep up such a pace. But the gladiator never faltered as the sun grew higher in the morning sky, though Rufus could see that his muscles were shaking with the effort and sweat ran in glistening torrents down his tanned body. Finally, at a signal from the trainer, he halted, his chest heaving as his tortured lungs sucked in the warm air. Rufus stayed in the shadows and watched Cupido nod as the trainer spoke quietly to him, outlining where improvements could be made.

At last, the lanista handed the gladiator his tunic and walked off. Cupido joined Rufus in the shade. He sat back against the wall with his eyes closed and sipped from a flask of tepid water.

'So, you have come to join us, Rufus? You would like to fight beside me in the next games?'

Rufus laughed. They both knew his tenure in the arena would be shorter than an Egyptian snowstorm.

'No. I came because I enjoy seeing you suffer, but also because your baby face cannot hide the fact that you are wise beyond your years and I am in desperate need of some wisdom.'

Cupido looked at him curiously. 'Very well, but let us walk. I cannot allow my muscles to stiffen.'

Saying farewell to Sabatis, they walked out into the city. Rufus loved the thronging narrow streets and it was clear that Cupido shared his pleasure. Beneath one awning was fine, shiny cloth in all the colours of the rainbow, which Cupido assured him came from a country in the east where the sun was so bright that people lived with their eyes permanently shut. The fruit stalls sold soft, ripe peaches of scarlet and gold, velvet-skinned apricots and squat, ugly pomegranates.

They found themselves on the street close to Cerialis's largest bakery and Rufus saw a face he knew in the booth outside the shop.

'Corvo! Are you still giving blind old Atticus the runaround?'

'Not me, Rufus. Now I am Corvo the dedicated. Work, work, work and then, maybe, just a little play.' The curly-haired vendor's face beamed with pleasure as he recognized his former workmate.

'But, more important, do you still bake the best bread in Rome?'

'Certainly,' Corvo agreed. 'Atticus may have the eyesight of a mole, but he grinds the best flour and I bake the best loaves.' He looked around and whispered: 'And we still keep a little under the counter for old friends.'

He reached below the cloth covering the table that held his stock of bread and brought out five separate sections of broken loaf, the largest of which was a half-circle with a distinctive line across its crust.

'Try them. See what you think.'

Rufus insisted that Cupido take first honour. He watched as the gladiator bit into a coarse loaf, the centre of which was a deep brown colour. 'It's good,' he said, mouth full. 'But I think you should get rid of these.' He spat a grit-hard grain of barley into his hand.

Corvo laughed. ' Panis rusticus — peasant bread. So are those, sordidus, castrensis and plebeius, but a bit more refined. Now try that one.' He pointed at the largest portion, which was a deep golden brown. ' Panis siligineus. Finest bread we make.'

Cupido bit through the crust of the loaf to the soft dough within. Slightly chewy in texture, it was pale cream in colour and had a clean, fresh flavour that only improved the longer he had it in his mouth. At last, he swallowed, reluctant to let the moment go.

'Not bad,' he said, trying without success to sound unimpressed, and Rufus joined in Corvo's disbelieving laughter as they left the baker and continued onwards in the direction of the Palatine. Many of the houses they passed had sheer frontages six storeys high, studded with dozens of windows, and Rufus told Cupido about the first time he had seen them.

'I thought the people in them must be very rich to live so near the clouds. Then I discovered it was just the opposite. This is where the poorest live; at least, the poorest who can afford a roof over their heads at all. The people who build them are thieves and the people who own them are gangsters. If you don't die when they fall down on your head, you burn to death when they catch fire.'

As they walked, he told Cupido enthusiastically about the big cats and how their training was progressing, but he was eventually forced to admit that he didn't know what his next step should be.

'I have discussed it with Fronto, but every idea we consider is worse than the last. We have only a single throw of the dice — if it fails, the lions will die and so, probably, will we.'

Cupido thought for a moment, his pewter eyes staring into the middle distance. 'The moods of the crowd are anything but certain,' he said eventually. 'But perhaps you have already seen the way to win them. Do you remember our first meeting?'

'How could I forget it?'

'Yes, but poor foolish Serpentius?'

'The gladiator who ran from the lion? Yes, I remember. He looked so pathetic running around the arena. What happened to him?'

'His next fight — his first proper fight — was his last. He was not really equipped for the arena.'

'I'm sorry.'

'Why? You didn't know him. He was just another slave. Just another piece of meat thrown to the mob. But look back. Remember their reaction when he ran. What did they do?'

'It was sad. They ridiculed the poor man.'

'No, it wasn't sad and they did not ridicule him. They thought it was funny and they laughed at him. Now do you see?'

Rufus looked puzzled for a moment, then the light of understanding sparked in his eyes, and a thrill of trepidation sent a shiver down his spine.

It was his time to enter the ring.