Gladiator: Fight for Freedom

7

Soon after they were returned to their cell, a man entered the courtyard. He was slightly built and tall, and his narrow face made him look taller still. Except for a fringe of silvery hair he was completely bald and his scalp gleamed as if it had been polished. Marcus noticed that he walked with a limp that he tried to conceal as far as he could by walking slowly. He wore a silk tunic with pale leather boots and there was a gold torc around each of his wrists.

The man smiled thinly as he approached the bars of the cell. ‘The delightful wife of Centurion Titus and his young boy, if I am not mistaken. I imagine that you can guess who I am.’

Marcus’s mother kept her expression fixed as she regarded the man. He shrugged and tilted his head slightly to one side. ‘Well, I am disappointed. I had hoped that the wife of one of General Pompeius’s finest centurions would be more polite. Never mind. So, then, I am Decimus. Town father of Stratos and a duly appointed tax collector of Graecia.’ He bowed his head in a mock greeting. He regarded them for a moment in silence before his expression turned into a sneer. ‘Not so high and mighty now, are you? Neither you, nor that fool Titus. Arrogant as ever, thinking that he could ignore his debt and send my men packing. It’s been a long time coming, but now I have paid him back, in his own coin as it were.’

He suddenly pretended to look surprised and clicked his fingers. ‘Oh! But I imagine that you didn’t know that your husband and I were old friends. Perhaps not friends, but certainly comrades.’

Marcus looked up at his mother, but she still refused to speak.

‘We served in the glorious Sixteenth Legion in Spain. Under Pompeius. We were optios. Do you know what that means? We were the men waiting for the chance to be promoted to centurion. Then the chance came. One of the centurions was killed in a skirmish and good old Titus and I were waiting to see which of us would get the promotion. It should have been me. I was the better soldier, without a doubt. Everyone knew it. Anyway, the day before the General made his choice, Titus and I had a little drink. Then another, and one thing led to the next, and then he suggested we have a little mock swordplay, to prove who was the better swordsman. Just for fun, you understand. Only it wasn’t just for fun. Titus wasn’t even drunk, he was pretending to be. We feinted and parried and then he seemed to slip, tripping forward, and his sword tore through my thigh.’

Decimus moved closer to the bars. He seemed to have forgotten Marcus’s mother and was now looking intensely at Marcus. ‘An accident, you see? So I didn’t tell on him.’ Decimus smiled bitterly. ‘The wound was bad enough for the legion to discharge me. There I was, out on my ear, and Titus got the promotion. He always claimed it was an accident, of course. Wait, I’ll show you.’

Decimus lifted the corner of his tunic and raised it to reveal his right thigh. Marcus sucked in his breath as he saw a thick, white, knotted length of scar tissue stretching up from the knee.

‘Quite a scar, isn’t it, my boy?’ Decimus lowered the tunic. ‘I suppose your father did me a favour in a way. If I had stayed in the army, I would have ended up on a miserable little farm on the side of some obscure island, just like him. As it was, I made my fortune in supplying grain to the legions. I bribed the right people and won the contract for tax collection in this province. You can imagine my surprise, and then my joy, when Titus approached me for a loan. I expect he thought that “time was a great healer”. Not for me it wasn’t. So I loaned him some money, on easy terms – easy enough to encourage him to borrow more, and before too long he was deeply in debt and I had a legal right to take my revenge.’ He held up his hands. ‘You know the rest of the story.’

Marcus’s mother cleared her throat and spoke firmly. ‘You may have had the legal right to recover your debt, but not to murder Titus and enslave his family.’

‘Really? I merely sent my men to collect what was owed to me. The fact that your husband resisted violently and unfortunately died as a consequence is not my fault. As any court in this town would agree.’

‘I wonder if General Pompeius will agree when he hears of this outrage?’

‘General Pompeius will never find out. I am not a fool, Livia. If word ever got to Pompeius that one of his veterans had suffered such a fate, he would visit his anger on the man responsible, sure enough. That’s why you were pulled out of the auction.’ Decimus smiled. ‘That was just a little performance for my benefit, so that I could wring another drop of revenge out of the situation. I could never afford to let you be bought by someone who might well listen to your story and believe that you had been wronged.’

‘So what will you do with us?’ Marcus asked anxiously.

Decimus looked down through the bars. ‘I could have you killed, young man. Quietly strangled and have your bodies thrown off a cliff into the sea. I could do that.’ He paused to let his words have their effect. Marcus recoiled in terror.

‘However, as I live with the memory of the wrong your father did to me, so you will live with the memory of how you were made to pay for his deed.’ Decimus stroked his pointed chin. ‘I have a farming estate in the Peloponnese. It is in a small valley surrounded by hills. It is hot in summer and bitterly cold in winter, and I spend as little time there as possible. However, the soil is good for barley and the slaves of the estate are worked hard to add to my fortune. That’s where I will send you, to live out your days working, under the whip, as a slave in my fields. There you will die, forgotten and unmissed. General Pompeius will never, ever, learn of your fate, or that of Titus.’

He took a deep breath and smiled faintly. ‘A fitting revenge, don’t you think?’

Marcus felt a brief moment of dread, but then he was seized by rage and a desire to clamp his hands around the throat of the tax collector. With a shrill, animal cry, he lunged through the bars, clawing at the man’s tunic.

‘Marcus!’ his mother shouted. ‘It won’t help us!’

She pulled him back and held his arms tightly as Decimus chuckled. ‘Quite a temper on him. But there is courage too. He is a soldier’s son and no mistake.’

Livia’s eyes blazed. ‘He is… my son.’

Decimus looked puzzled by her response but before he could say anything, Livia looked at him pleadingly.

‘Whatever happened between you and Titus happened years ago. He is dead and you have had your revenge. There is no need to inflict this on me and the boy.’

‘Ah, if only that were possible. You must understand this from my perspective, my dear. If I let you both go now, with Titus dead, it would only be a matter of time before the boy sought to avenge his father. Isn’t that right?’ He smiled at Marcus.

Marcus glared back and nodded slowly. ‘One day I will find you, and I will kill you.’

His mother’s shoulders sank in despair. ‘Decimus, he is only ten. He doesn’t know what he’s saying. Show him mercy and he will remember mercy.’

‘If I show him mercy, I will merely be signing my own death warrant. He must disappear like his father, as must you.’

Livia thought quickly. ‘Let him go. Send me to your estate. As long as I am your hostage, he will do you no harm. Isn’t that right, Marcus?’

Marcus looked into her eyes and understood that she was begging him to agree. But there was never a moment’s doubt in his sense of determination to do his duty and see that justice was done to the memory of his father. Of course he was afraid, scared out of his wits by the terrible fate Decimus had prepared for them, but there was a cold hard fury – stronger than his fear, stronger even than his grief or his concern for his mother. He shook his head.

‘I’m sorry, mother. But this man is right. While I live I will think only of paying him back for what he has done.’

‘You see?’ Decimus raised his hands in a helpless gesture. ‘What is a man to do? I’m sorry, but there it is. You will both go to the estate, and there you will work until you die. Farewell.’ He nodded solemnly and then, before he turned away, he stared a moment into Marcus’s hate-filled eyes. ‘You would have grown into a fine man, Marcus. It is a shame that it should end this way. I respect you and would be proud to have a boy like you for a son. Such a pity…’

Then he walked away, at the same slow pace, with a slight rolling gait. Livia watched until he had disappeared out of the entrance to the yard before turning on her son.

‘You little fool!’ She grabbed his arm and held him in a tight grip, making Marcus wince. ‘Are you trying to get yourself killed? You’re just like your father, all fine principles and no common sense. I told him he could never win. I told him…’ She stopped abruptly and clenched her teeth.

‘Mother, you’re hurting me,’ Marcus said, glancing at his arm.

Her gaze dropped and then she let go of him and covered her face with her hands. ‘I’m sorry, my darling. So sorry. Forgive me.’ She started to cry.

‘Mother, don’t,’ Marcus said. He felt as if his heart was being torn apart. He touched her cheek gently. ‘I love you. I’m sorry.’

She lowered her hands and kissed him on the forehead. ‘Oh, Marcus, my little boy. What is to become of us?’

At first light the driver of the wagon came to collect them, holding a club and watching them warily as he ordered them to climb back into the cage. As soon as the cage door was closed and locked, the driver clambered on to his bench, picked up his whip and cracked it over the heads of his mules. The wagon lurched forward and then rumbled out of the slave auctioneer’s yard. Marcus shuddered as the wagon passed the stage where he had stood the day before. For an instant he relived the terror he had felt at the thought of being parted from his mother. The market square was empty, apart from the handful of beggars sleeping in the arches of the portico.

As they passed through the town gates and down a broad street lined with small houses, Marcus felt his mother nudge him.

‘We must escape,’ she whispered with a nervous glance towards the driver. ‘We have to find a way to get out of here.’

‘How can we?’

His mother smiled faintly. ‘There is a weak spot.’ She nodded towards the driver. Marcus looked up at the broad shoulders of the man sitting on the bench, slightly hunched forward as he held the reins and occasionally clicked his tongue to encourage the mules to keep up their pace.

‘Him?’ Marcus raised his eyebrows in surprise. ‘He’s too big for us to manage. We’re not strong enough.’

‘There is a way, Marcus, but you must do exactly as I say.’