ONCE YOU KNOW, the evidence leaps out at you from every wall:
OUR MONEY's ON RUMEX:
I even spotted in rather shy, small letters on a temple column an impassioned mutter of:
Rumex stinks!!!
I knew who he was now all right. The man who had been named as the slayer of Leonidas was this year's most idolised gladiator from the Games. His fighting role was as a Samnite, not normally a popular category. But Rumex was a real favourite. He must have been around for years, and was probably lousy, but he had now achieved the fame that only comes to a few. Even if he was only half as good as his reputation, he was not a man to tangle with.
There were graffiti on bakeries and bathhouses, and a poem nailed to a wooden Herm at a crossroads. Outside the Saturninus Gladiators' School stood a small but obviously permanent group of young female admirers waiting for a chance to screan1 adulation if ever Rumex appeared; a slave walked out with a shopping basket so to keep in good voice they screamed at him. Apparently used to it, he went over and cashed in by chatting them up. They were so hot for Rumex that in his absence they were fair game for anyone.
Inside the barracks gate lurked a porter who was assembling his pension fund from bribes for taking in letters, bouquets, seal rings, Greek sweetmeats, addresses, and intimate items of women swear for Rumex. This was bad. To a civilised male it was positively embarrassing. Lest 1 should doubt that women who ought to know better were throwing themselves at this overdeveloped mongrel, two fine and fancy ladies were approaching the gate just as I arrived. They had jumped out of a hired chair together, brazenly showing flashes of leg through slit sideseams in their modest gowns. Their hair was curled. They flaunted shameless stacks of jewellery, advertising the fact that they came from well-oil; supposedly respectable homes. But there was no doubt why they were here today; they had already proffered the door porter a tip to admit them.
Cursing, I recognised them both.
I would lose them unless I did something about it. I raced up to the barracks angrily. They looked annoyed: these two hussies cruising for a hunk were Helena Justina, my supposedly chaste darling, and my irresponsible youngest sister Maia. Maia muttered something that I lip-read as an obscenity.
“Ah, Marcus!” exclaimed Helena, without batting an eyelid. I noticed that her eyelid, were brilliant with antimonised paste. “At last you have caught up with us carry my basket now.” She thrust it into my hands.
Dear gods, they were pretending I was some domestic slave. I was not having that. “I want a word with you-”
“I want a word with you!” hissed Maia, in genuine wrath.
“I hear you've been giving drink to my husband-I shall beat you if it happens again!”
“We're just going in here,” Helena announced, with the peremptory high-class disdain that had once flummoxed me into falling for her. “We want to see someone. You can either follow us quietly or wait for us outside.”
Apparently their tip had been a huge one. The porter not only allowed them in, but bowed so low he nearly scraped his nostrils on the ground. He gave them directions. They swept past me, ignoring my glares. Whistling started up as soon as they were spotted by the riff-raff inside, so I bit back my indignation and hurried after them.
The Saturninus barracks put Calliopus and his measly hutments in the shade. We passed a forge alongside an armoury, then a whole suite of offices. The timberwork was sharp, the shutters were painted, the paths were neat and swept. The slaves skipping about all wore livery. One large courtyard was simply for show: perfectly raked golden sand, with cool white statues of naked Greek hoplites positioned ostentatiously between well-watered stone urns of dark green topiary. There was enough outdoor art to grace a national portico. The shrubs were manicured into boxtree peacocks and obelisks.
Beyond lay the palaestra, again huge and smart. The peace of the first courtyard gave way to highly organised bustle: more trainers' voices yelling than at the Calliopus establishment. More thumps and whacks of punchbags, weights, and wooden swords on dummy targets. In one comer rose the distinctive arched roof. of a private bathhouse.
My two womenfolk stopped, not as I hoped to apologise, but to pin their necklines more revealingly. As they threw their stoles over their shoulders with more of a swagger and pegged back their little slips of modesty veils, I made a last attempt to reason with them. “I'm horrified. This is scandalous.”
“Shut up,” said Maia.
I rounded on Helena. “While you're shaming yourself at a school for killers, where, may I ask, is our child?”
“Gaius is looking after Julia at my house,” snapped Maia. Helena condescended to explain swiftly, “Your mother told us about that note Anacrites received. We're using our initiative. Now, please don't interfere.”
“You're visiting a damned gladiator? You're doing it openly? You have come without a chaperone or a bodyguard-and without telling me?”
“We are just intending to talk to the man,” Helena cooed.
“Necessitating four bangles apiece and your Saturnalia necklaces? He may have killed a lion.”
“Ooh lovely!” minced Maia. “Well he won't kill us. We're just two admirers who want to swoon over him and feel the length of his sword.”
“You're disgusting.”
“That,” Helena assured me quite calmly, “is the general effect we were aiming for.”
I could see they were both really enjoying themselves. They must have spent hours getting ready. They had raided their jewellery boxes for an eye-catching selection then piled on everything. Dressed up as cheap bits with too much money, they were throwing themselves into it. I started to panic. Apart from any danger in this ludicrous situation, I had the awful feeling that my sensible sister and my scrupulous girlfriend might happily turn into flirting harridans, given the money and the chance. Helena, come to think of it, already possessed her own money. Maia, married to a determined soak who never bothered what she got up to, might well decide to seize the chance.
Rumex was minded by four world-weary slaves. As a slave himself he could not actually own them, but Saturninus had ensured that his prize fighter was pampered with a generous back-up team. Perhaps female admirers paid for it.
“He's resting. No one can see him.” Resting after what the spokesman did not say. I imagined the unsavoury possibilities.
“We just wanted to tell him how much we adore him.” Maia flashed the slaves a brilliant smile. The spokesman surveyed her. Maia had always been a looker. Despite four children she had kept her figure. She combed her dark, tight curls in a neat frame to her round face. Her eyes were intelligent, merry and adventurous.
She was not pressing the slaves. She knew how to get what she wanted, and what Maia wanted tended to be a tad different. My youngest sister sometimes failed to follow the rules. She still had hopes. She disliked compromise. I worried over Maia.
“Leave whatever you've brought. I'll see that he gets it.” The response was offhand.
Helena adjusted the gold collar at her throat; she was playing the nervous one, the one who was afraid they would be named in the scandal column of the Daily Gazette. “He won't know who sent it!” He W\1n't care, I reckoned.
“Oh I'll tell him.” The minder had given the brush-off to plenty before them.
Helena Justina smiled at him. It was a smile that said these two were not the same as all the others. If he chose to believe it, the message could be perilous-not least for Helena and Maia. I was in despair. “It's all right,” Helena assured the man, with all the confidence of a senator's daughter who was up to no good. Her refined accent announced that Rumex had acquired himself a delicate devotee. “We didn't expect special treatment. He must have lots of people who are desperate to meet him. He's so famous. It would be such a privilege.” I could see the men thinking this one was really innocent. I was wondering how I had ever hitched myself to a girlfriend who was actually so much less innocent than the rude tightrope walking acrobats I had hankered for first. “It must be hard work for you,” she commiserated. “Dealing with people who have no idea of allowing him any privacy. Do they get hysterical?”
“We've had our moments!” the spokesman had allowed himself to be lured into a chat.
“People throw themselves at him,” Maia sneered knowingly. “I hate that. It's disgusting, isn't it?”
“All right if you can get it,” laughed one of the slaves.
“But you have to keep a sense of proportion. Now my friend and me-” She and Helena exchanged the cloying glances of dedicated followers talking about their hero. “We follow all his fights. We know all his history.” She listed it off: “seventeen wins: three draws: twice down but the crowd spared his jugular and sent him back. The bout with the Thracian last spring had our hearts in our mouths. He was robbed there-”
“The referee!” Helena leant forwards, stabbing her finger angrily. This was some old controversy, apparently.
“Rumex was tripped.” I was impressed by their research. “He was winning, no question, then his boot let him down. He'd had three hits, including that tricky one when he did the cartwheel and cut up under the other man's arm. He ought to have been given the fight.”
“Yes, but accidents don't count,” put in one of the slaves. “That bastard the old Emperor Claudius used to have their throats cut if they fell by accident,” someone else said.
“That was in case they were fixing it,” said Helena.
“No way. The crowd would spot that.”
“The crowd only sees what it wants to see,” suggested Maia. Her interest seemed genuinely passionate. It looked as if the finer points of the Rumex loss against the Thracian would be haggled over for the next three hours. This was worse than overhearing a row between two half-drunk bargees on pay night.
My sister stopped. She beamed at the minders, as if pleased to have shared with them her knowledge and expertise. “Can't you let us in just for a few moments?”
“Normally,” explained the spokesman carefully. “Normally there wouldn't be a problem, girls.” So what was abnormal today?
“We have money,” Helena proposed bluntly. “We want to give him a present-but we thought it would be nicer if we could just see him, to ask him what he really wants.” The man shook his head.
Helena clutched her hand to her mouth. “He's not ill?” Over-indulgence, I thought to myself. In what, it seemed best not to speculate.
“Has he been hurt in practice?” gasped Maia, with real distress.
“He's resting,” said the spokesman for the second time.
I let myself speculate after all. Everyone knows what top gladiators are like. I could imagine the scene indoors. An uneducated thug, provided with indecent luxury. Gorging on sweated suckling pig, dousing it in lashings of cheap fish-pickle sauce. Reeking of impossibly scented pomades. Swilling undiluted Falernian like water, then leaving half empty amphorae unstoppered for the wineflies. Playing endless repetitive games of Latrunculi with his sycophantic hangers-on. Pausing for three-in-a-bed orgies with teenage acolytes even dafter than the two rash women who were debasing themselves outside his quarters now…
“He's resting,” said Maia to Helena.
“Just resting,” Helena answered her. Then she turned to the group of minders and exclaimed, with innocent lack of tact, “That's such a relief. We were afraid of what might have happened to him-after what people are saying about that lion.”
There was a small pause.
“What lion?” asked the spokesman in a patronising voice.
He stood up. He and the others adopted a well-practised shepherding technique. “We don't know anything about no lion, ladies. Now, excuse me, but I'll have to ask you to be moving on. Rumex is very particular about his training regime. He has to have absolute quiet all around him. I'm sorry, but I can't allow any members of the public to hang about when there's a risk of disturbing him-”
“You don't know about it, then?” Helena persisted. “It's just that there is a terrible rumour running round the Forum that Rumex has killed a lion that belonged to Calliopus. His name was Leonidas. It's all over Rome-”
“And I'm a gryphon with three legs,” asserted the chief minder, evicting Helena and my sister from the barracks area ruthlessly.
Outside in the street again, Maia swore.
I said nothing. I know when to carry a basket with my head down. I walked quietly behind them as they stalked away from the gate, making sure I looked like a particularly meek boudoir slave.
“You can stop playing the know-all,” scoffed Maia to me grumpily. “It was a good try.”
I straightened up. “I'm just agog at your encyclopedic knowledge of the Games. You both sounded true arena bores. Who fed you the gladiatorial lore?”
“Petronius Longus. We wasted time on it for nothing, though.”
Helena Justina had always been shrewd. “No, it's all right,” she told my sister in a satisfied voice. “We didn't manage to see Rumex, but the way those men made us leave so rapidly when we mentioned Leonidas says it all. My guess is that Rumex has been deliberately quarantined. Whatever happened when the lion was killed, Rumex was definitely involved.”