Ruso and the Root of All Evils

74

It was midday before Ruso finished trying to clean up the huntsman’s shredded shoulder and put it back together, all the time wondering if it would have been kinder to suggest that the man were swiftly finished off. He stayed to supervise the dressing, then took Gnostus’ advice and went to find some lunch. Gnostus’ view, unfortunately expressed in front of Tilla, was that since the lunchtime entertainment was only a few criminals, there wouldn’t be much for the medics to do unless the beasts turned on their trainers.

‘What does he mean?’ demanded Tilla as they left the stuffy confines of the lamplit room for the relative cool of the corridor.

Ruso muttered, ‘Executions,’ through a dry throat. ‘Come upstairs, we’ll get something to drink and you can tell me about Calvus and Stilo.’

‘Executions of people with animals?’

‘It’s not much different to what happens in Deva,’ he assured her, realizing now how little attention he had paid to the gruesome death sentences meted out within a few paces of the fort. ‘Just on a bigger scale.’

She gestured towards the steps that led out to the glare and bustle of the arena seating. ‘And all those people come here to watch this thing happen?’

‘Not really,’ said Ruso. ‘It’s not the star attraction.’ He took her arm and steered her towards a crowded exit. ‘Which means there’ll be queues building up at the lunch stalls.’

He got her as far as the exit before she stopped dead. This, he supposed, was some sort of achievement, although the man who shoved past them both with ‘Get out of the way, will you? Bloody foreigners!’ was clearly unimpressed.

He drew her aside. Standing in the shade of a massive pillar as the lunchtime crowds flowed out into the sunshine, he decided to cut short the inevitable argument. ‘I can’t do anything about it, Tilla. There are twenty thousand people here who — ’

‘I want to see it.’

‘No, you don’t. Come and tell me about Calvus and — ’

‘Do not tell me what I want!’

‘Trust me. You don’t.’ He knew it would be useless to explain to her that the victims were all criminals sentenced to death in a fair trial. Useless even if it were true, which it probably was not.

Standing close so as not to obstruct the exit, he noticed for the first time how the sun had bleached her hair. How unfashionably and delightfully freckled her face had become. He said, ‘Why would Calvus and — whatever their names are — why would they come to Nemausus?’

From somewhere inside the arena came a shrill scream, followed by a ripple of laughter.

The familiar eyes gazed into Ruso’s own. Instead of the determination he had expected, he saw fear.

‘Come and get something to drink,’ he urged her, annoyed at being made to feel responsible for whatever ghastliness was going on in there. ‘You can tell me all about Arelate.’

‘If it was me,’ she said, ‘would you be there to see me die?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ The words came out more harshly than he had intended. ‘What I mean is, you wouldn’t — ’

She was gone before he reached the end of the sentence, dodging round the wandering spectators and back into the shadowed entrance tunnel.

‘Tilla!’ he yelled, plunging after her, apologizing as he stabbed a passing foot with his stick. ‘Tilla, wait!’

He need not have worried. By the time he got there she had already been grabbed by an usher and was being firmly escorted back down the steps. The usher looked relieved to see him. ‘I was just saying,’ the man said as another hideous shriek issued from the arena and the crowd yelled advice and abuse, ‘military veterans only in these seats. Women and slaves is round to the right and higher up.’ Evidently the man could not decide which category Tilla fell into and was taking no chances.

Tilla said, ‘I must see.’

‘Why?’ asked Ruso.

‘Because it is what your people do.’

‘Yes, but — ’

‘I want to understand.’

More spectators brushed past them, voices rising and fading down the corridor. A couple of men sharing a joke. A small boy wailing and his mother demanding: ‘Why didn’t you say you needed a wee before we sat down?’

Tilla said, ‘Your family come to these games?’

‘They’re up there,’ said Ruso, pointing vaguely in the direction of the women’s seats and adding, ‘Marcia thinks she’s engaged to one of the gladiators. He’ll be on later.’

‘So you let your sisters watch this?’

‘Everybody watches it.’

‘That is why I must see.’

‘Please don’t.’

‘If you are ashamed, why are you here?’

It was not a question he wanted to consider. He took her by the arm and led her back up the steps. ‘I’m a veteran,’ he informed the usher. ‘Twentieth Legion, served in Britannia.’ He tugged open his purse and handed the usher a coin. ‘Just let the lady stand at the top of the steps for a minute, will you?’

A naked man and woman were chained to a post in the middle of the arena. The man had a placard hung around his neck which read ‘TEMPLE ROBBER’. The woman’s pale rolls of fat wobbled as she caught sight of the bear. Someone in the crowd shouted an insult, and laughter rippled around the stadium. The men with whips stepped forward to encourage the bear to do its duty.

The deaths he had paid for Tilla to watch were deliberately hideous. ‘It’s supposed to discourage crime,’ he heard himself saying as the crowd mocked the woman’s frantic efforts to burrow under the corpse of her companion.

Tilla did not seem to hear him. Her eyes were fixed on the execution. Beneath the freckles, her face was an odd colour, and he suspected she was about to be sick.

‘It’s finished,’ he said, taking her by the arm as if she were the only one needing support. ‘Come down now.’

As she turned to descend the steps without arguing, he glanced across at the seats of honour. Resplendent in a dazzling white toga, Fuscus was leaning sideways to chat to his companions, leaving one hand holding a silver winecup in the air as if he were saluting the prisoners dying beneath him.

It was only as he followed Tilla down the steps that Ruso’s mind registered who he had seen up on the balcony talking to Fuscus. The two men who were not really from Rome, not really investigators, and not really called Calvus and Stilo.