The Villa Castimonia, Outside Roma
Pipes and flutes wailed, carried by wild drumming. A ring of gladiators, their oiled bodies gleaming in the lamplight, danced, a young woman on each arm, their faces bright with laughter. An entire wall of musicians produced a swirling, hypnotic sound, much to the delight of hundreds of revelers packed into the main hall of the villa. Anastasia, her face swathed by a gray veil, pushed her way through the crowd on the staircase. Helena, even more heavily gowned, with two veils and a positively prudish hood, followed close behind. Vitellix, his face smiling and open, led them, his shirt a virulent mustard yellow. He was wearing red-and-white-checked tights, his head freshly shaved. The Duchess kept close behind him, letting his wide shoulders clear them a path.
The creamy-white marble steps of the grand staircase were already stained with spilled wine, crushed candied figs and drifts of young men and women in all states of undress. The lanista descended the stairs into thick crowds of people who were packed around the dancers. Eeling his way through, he reached the wall, Anastasia's hand clinging to his belt. It took nearly five grains to reach a doorway only a dozen feet away.
Anastasia felt faint and ill. The air was close and hot, filled with spices and incense and the battling pomade and perfume of a great number of sweaty people. Even in her own parties-which had, in their time, been noted for their decadence-she had never seen such indulgence. Every gladiator in the city had been invited to Narses' victory party, and they hauled with them the wild patrician youth, the prostitutes and acrobats and actors and pantomimes and hustlers who thronged the Aventine and made the Subura so dangerous by night. Vitellix shouldered aside a drunken youth, his toga slipped to the floor, a crown of holly tangled in his hair, who was feverishly copulating with a young girl pressed against the door. Faces flushed, the girl crying out, they barely noticed being pushed aside.
The Duchess squeezed past, turning her head. She had seen such things before, even done them, but since the eruption of Vesuvius she had lost her taste for senseless abandon. The frenzy in the air grated on her. She saw despair hiding behind the glad smiles and the violent dancing. Is everyone desperate to feel alive? They entered the chamber beyond, Helena treading close on Anastasia's heels.
This room was dimmer, filled with thick, bitter incense. The Duchess blinked, catching sight of Vitellix stepping carefully across the floor. Deep-pile rugs, fabulously expensive, covered the room. There were many more people, most of them naked or nearly so, writhing in their own lost dreams. Some of them had the glazed eyes of lotus eaters, others were making use of the couches and cushions. The Duchess swallowed, feeling the air bite at her throat. She hurried forward, oiled limbs brushing against her ankles. A doorway flanked by porphyry naiads led into an arched hallway. Vitellix was waiting, his head cocked, listening.
"Narses has done well by the school," Helena commented in a dry tone, looking around at the walls faced with dark green marble striated with gold. "I had no idea the salary of a lanista was so generous."
Vitellix blushed, then pointed with his chin. "This villa is owned by a patron of the school. I was here once before; these rooms are reserved for the master's guests. If Diana is in such favor, she will have one or more of them for her own."
"Privacy?" The Empress raised an eyebrow. "Luxurious?" Even in the palace, her own bedchamber was rarely private, plagued as it was by servants, maids, guardsmen and her husband. "Perhaps I should be a famous gladiatrix."
Anastasia pushed past Vitellix, pacing along the hallway. Each door was painted with scenes of forests, beaches, mountains. They were cunningly done, affording the illusion of opening into some fantastic world. At the third one, she heard a hoarse voice laughing. It sounded familiar. She paused, swallowing, nerving herself, and then pushed it open.
– |Despite her haste, Anastasia's effort to snatch Thyatis away from the clutches of the arena staff had failed. She had found Vitellix among the crowd of spectators and touts in the domed rooms behind the entrance tunnel. The Gaul had been beside himself with worry, but only the dead had been carried out through the Portia Libitina. There was no Thyatis. One of the slaves, pressed with gold, had shown them a second tunnel that led from the Portia into the lower tunnels. Guardsmen had blocked their way. Despite threats and bribes, they had not been able to enter the catacombs under the amphitheater.
Anastasia was sure Narses had expected something, secreting his prize fighter away. Inquiries in the Flavian the next day revealed the master of the Ludus Magnus had posted a contract between the school and Thyatis. She would be one of his free gladiators now, who had a special relationship with the Ludus Magnus. The Duchess' opinion of the crippled man sank to a new low. With a horde of scrawny-necked lawyers involved, she was tempted to start having people killed.
– |The room was opulent and garish, decorated with an astounding amount of brocaded red, green and yellow drapery. A huge bed, crowned by four carved posts, filled at least half the chamber. Gauze drapes covered the posts and hung down on three sides of the plush expanse. A man's feet were sticking out from under the gauze. Bits of clothing, armor and discarded bottles of liquor covered the floor. Like the lotus room, the floor was piled deep with carpets and rugs. Anastasia's sandals sank into them. There was another laugh, a hoarse, smoky voice.
"Lower, slave, lower! Yes, that's it… aaaah!"
At least two masculine voices answered with the sounds of laughter and oiled flesh on flesh. The Duchess grasped the embroidered gauze and flung it aside, face still and cold, revealing a tangle of bare limbs and sweat-dampened hair. Thyatis was lying back on a huge mountain of pillows, one leg hooked over the shoulder of a brawny young man. He and his companion were attending to her.
"Oooo! Dears, we've a guest. No-I haven't given you permission to stop!"
Thyatis pushed the man's head back down, tangling her scarred hand in his thick, curly hair. "Hello, Anastasia. What do you want?"
The Duchess took hold of the nearest post, her fingers wrapping around the thigh of a carved sylph. Her fingernails turned white with the pressure of her grip. "Hello, Thyatis. I've come to fetch you out of this place."
"Have… oooo!… you?" Thyatis' face flushed and her lip curled. She met Anastasia's eyes with a glittering anger, but the Duchess refused to look away. After a moment, a petulant look entered the woman's face. Grimacing, she pushed the two boys away, a hand caressing the smooth cheeks of each. "Sorry, sweets, but I've got to deal with this rude person. Go find someone else to play with."
The boys scuttled away, gathering up their clothing-skimpy silk confections that showed off their fine thighs and muscular, smooth chests. Helena watched them go with interest, winking at one. The boy simpered back, his kohl-rimmed eyes a luminous green. The Empress closed the door after them, then stood against it, a handkerchief pressed against her nose. An overbearing cloud of incense drifted in the room. Vitellix was still outside, in the hallway.
"I am done with you." Thyatis' voice was bitter and filled with venom. "You have no hold on me, Duchess. You should go unless you would like a pair of boys yourself?"
"No. I am done with that life. Please, Thyatis, I need your help. Come with us, I have a litter waiting outside. Vitellix is in the hallway-in this throng they won't even notice that we've left."
Thyatis stepped off the bed, her naked body gleaming with oil and wine. A strange expression was on her face, compounded fury and grief. She loomed over the Duchess by nearly a head.
"You need my help? For what? To murder someone, to make them disappear, to clean up the Emperor's dirty laundry? To die for you?"
Anastasia stepped back from the raw hatred in the woman's voice, a hand coming up to her breast. "I need you at my side, Thyatis. Prince Maxian is still alive! We have to do something."
"The Prince? Alive? How shocking!" Thyatis' voice grated like a knife on stone. Her face paled, becoming almost arsenic white. "He threatens the very Empire, I suppose! Do you think that I don't know he survived? I saw him escape in his iron servant!"
The Duchess was forced back again, her face turned away from Thyatis' shouting. "I did not know if you knew. Who knows what happened on that mountain, save you and he?"
"I know." Thyatis stopped shouting. Her voice was low, almost choked. "I know everything that happened. Listen, Anastasia, I will not fight for you again. I will not take the lives of the innocent. These games, they are my penance. I hope-no, I pray-that the spirits of the dead will find comfort in my acts, that they will fill their cold bellies with the blood I spill in the arena. Oh gods, let them fly to the golden fields! Let them be waiting for me with glad smiles!"
Thyatis fell to her knees, her face an anguished mask, but no tears fell. Anastasia knelt at her side and tore her veil away, bending her head close. "Thyatis, daughter, listen to me. Please come home. Until I saw you were alive, I thought I had lost everything. But you live and I have found some hope."
"Hope?" Thyatis drew back, her eyes dark, disgust plain on her face. "Hope of what? Of sending me out to kill for you, to die, in the end, like the others? Like Nikos, incinerated? Like Krista, burned to a crisp, then her poor dead body dragged away?"
"We have to fight!" The Duchess was still kneeling, and her voice was plaintive. "The Prince is a monster! He still lives, Betia has seen him lurking in the Flavian. You know what he is capable of! We failed, we together, but we must try again. That child must be stopped."
A ghastly look came over Thyatis' face and Helena, still standing by the door, silent, unobserved, thought it was like the very pit of torment had opened in the young woman's face. The lamplight caught in those sea-gray eyes and burned with a leaping flame.
"I know failure. You know nothing of it." Thyatis spit, catching Anastasia on the side of her face. The Duchess flinched, but could not rise, transfixed by the horror in Thyatis' eyes. "Failure is only a grain-a single grain-from victory! I had him, Anastasia, I had the Prince in my hand. His body was broken, pierced with arrows, his heart transfixed with my sword. My fist was in his hair, drawing back his neck for the final blow!" Thyatis' hands clenched into rigid claws and she stared into some abyss only she could perceive.
"One cut! One blow! One swift chop and his head was my trophy! But I turned away." Tears came, choked out like her voice. "There was a commotion-that thing, the homunculus was among the men, slaying. I ran to help. I thought that the Prince was dead! Who knew his power? Who could grasp that while any spark of life remained in him, he could rise up, his shattered body made whole?
"Do you know what is worse than failure? Worse than seeing your friends die, smashed down by an impossible power? Worse than seeing Nikos try and fail to make good my mistake? Worse than watching Kahrmi and Efraim lunge into certain death at the monstrous hands of this boy? Do you?"
Anastasia, speechless, shook her head.
"This is worse. Knowing, knowing that you could have ended this, knowing that forty thousand innocent people-mothers, husbands, children, cripples, slaves-all died, choking on poisonous gases, burned alive, crushed beneath a rain of stones, drowned by a violet sea, because you turned aside for just… just a grain! It was only a moment! Just the tiniest moment!"
Rage boiled up in the woman, her tendons standing out stark against her flesh. Thyatis loosed a guttural howl, ripping the bedpost free, tearing the gauze. Her muscles twisted under the gleaming skin and she grasped Anastasia by the shoulder of her gown. Thyatis raised the length of wood, screaming. "This is worse! Knowing that four little children, innocent, who went to the seashore because they wanted to see a sea serpent, who wanted to run in the surf and catch octopuses and be sea monkeys, are dead because of one moment! I loved them, Anastasia, and they are dead because of my failure. Baiae is destroyed. Not one house stands. Everything is ash and ruin…"
Her voice trailing down, Thyatis suddenly let go. The Duchess slumped to the floor, her makeup in ruins, streaked with tears.
"Get out." Thyatis turned away, her back stiff.
Anastasia rose from the floor, unable to look at her adopted daughter. She moved to the door but was barely able to walk. Helena caught her hand, taking her weight, then turned the latch for her. Vitellix was right outside, his face pale. The door was only thin wood and veneer-he had heard everything. The Empress shoved the Duchess into his arms, then closed the door again. Her face was still and calm, like a statue. She unfolded her fan, letting the click of it draw the gladiatrix's attention.
"I know what you have lost," Helena said to Thyatis' back. "You have my sympathy and prayers. My name is Helena Julia Atreus. If you ever need my help, come to the Palatine and ask for me. It will cost you nothing, for the debt that Rome owes you is greater than I can repay."
Thyatis turned, her eyes hollow. "You mock me, lady."
"No. Never." Helena replaced her veil, which had come loose from its tiny silver pins. "Remember this, in the days to come, that the Emperor has freed you. You have left one kind of servitude; do not rush to take up another. Narses is an honorable man, in his own way, but your grief will not find an answer on the floor of the arena."
The Empress put her fan away, then stepped close to Thyatis and raised her head. Gently, for the redheaded woman was trembling, Helena pressed her lips to one cheek, then the other. Tears brushed her lips and then she turned away. Again, Vitellix was waiting outside the door, holding Anastasia, who had drawn the edge of her cloak over her face.
"We are leaving," Helena said. "Now."
The lanista nodded, though his eyes went to the door.
"Not now," Helena said softly, putting a hand on his arm. "It would do no good."
"What about my daughter, Ila?" Vitellix's voice was charged with emotion. "We have to find her, too."
"I think," Helena said, glancing at the door, "she is well protected."