Empire - Saylor Steven (книги без сокращений TXT) 📗
Domitian looked down at him. “Are you sure this pitiful wretch poses a threat to me, Catullus?”
Catullus lowered his voice to a whisper. “Dominus, if the magician Apollonius has truly escaped, then this one must be made to suffer in his place. His punishment must be public, and it must be made to fit his crime.”
Domitian nodded. “I know what to do with him.”
Lucius was taken not to the cell where he had previously been held but through a series of narrow underground passages to a much smaller cell, large enough to hold only one prisoner. He was allowed to keep the fascinum. From the whisperings of the guards, Lucius gathered that they had been instructed to take it from him, but they were all too afraid to touch it.
His cell was a bare, windowless cubicle of dank stone with iron bars on one side. Beyond the bars, set too closely for him to stick his head between them, was a curved hallway, dimly lit by indirect sunlight. From somewhere nearby he heard wild animals – the growling of lions, the snorting of aurochs, the yelping of dogs. The air was heavy with the odours of straw, dung, and urine, and the smell of the raw meat that was fed to the carnivores.
From elsewhere he heard the clashing of swords and gruff voices – the sounds of gladiators training – and realized where he must be: in the cells beneath the Flavian Amphitheatre. If he recalled correctly, the next occasion for games in the amphitheatre was five days away.
By the alternation of darkness and light he was able to mark the passage of the days. At night the hallway was unlit and the darkness of his cell was absolute. The blackness of the nights terrified him at first, but in his imagination he sought the company of Apollonius and was comforted. It seemed to him sometimes that the Teacher actually spoke to him during the night, but in such complete darkness he could not tell if he was awake or dreaming, or even if he was alive or dead. “Be calm,” Apollonius said. “Though my body is far away, I am with you.”
On the fifth day, Lucius awoke to a great tumult of sounds from near and far – the blare of trumpets, men shouting and laughing, gates clanging, and the steady hum of a vast crowd, punctuated at intervals by roars of excitement. The amphitheatre above him was filled with people, and the games had commenced.
The punishment of criminals was a part of the games. Lucius had watched such exhibits many times, until he had become a follower of Apollonius and ceased to attend the games. Though he had sometimes imagined himself in the role of the hunters in the arena who stalked exotic prey, he had never imagined himself as one of the wretched criminals forced to fight to the death or to become the prey of savage beasts. And yet, that was to be his fate.
Had Apollonius foreseen this outcome? Why had the Teacher fled, saving himself, only to abandon Lucius to a horrible and humiliating death? Why had he not used his magic to take Lucius with him?
For a brief instant, Lucius fell into despair. Then his spirits suddenly lifted. He felt a sense of lightness, as if a great weight had been lifted from him. Even his shackles felt lighter. He decided to surrender himself completely to the Teacher, to trust that Apollonius had foreseen this moment and had sufficiently prepared Lucius to face it calmly and with dignity. All was for the best.
When the guards came for him, they were surprised by his demeanor. They were used to seeing men who cringed, wept, struggled, and begged, or who fell limp or went stiff and stared into space. But Lucius looked them in the eye, nodded to them amiably, and stood up to follow them.
They removed his shackles. His arms and legs felt weak and stiff after such long confinement, but he was glad to be free of the restraints. He stretched out his arms and spread his fingers wide. He kicked out his legs and lifted his knees, testing his control of his body. It was a good thing that in his final moments he would be able to feel like man again, however briefly.
They took off his tattered tunic so that he wore only his filthy loincloth. Around his waist they fitted a leather belt with a sheath; in the sheath was a knife. He pulled it out for a moment and saw that the blade was very dull. They handed him a bow and a single arrow. The bow was weak and poorly strung, and the head of the arrow was made not of metal but of cork. From a distance, the spectators would not be able to tell that the weapons were useless.
As they proceeded down a hallway, the roar of the crowd grew louder. They arrived at a gate made of iron bars. The gate opened. The guards lowered their spears, but there was no need for them to drive Lucius into the arena. He walked barefoot onto the sun-heated sand, squinting at the brightness of the day.
He had beheld the enormity of the amphitheatre from the stands but never from the arena floor. The magnitude of the crowd was staggering. The imperial box looked very small amid the vastness, and the people within it seemed like figures in a picture. Lucius spotted Domitian and the empress, and also the emperor’s small-headed companion. The most highly favoured members of the imperial family were there, including the emperor’s beautiful niece Flavia Domitilla, along with her husband and two of their young sons. Earinus was there, and close to the eunuch, Lucius saw with a slight shock, was Martial. Would he make a poem of what was about to happen? Amid the courtiers, Lucius saw Catullus, and also Epaphroditus.
There was a hush. A crier made an announcement. The words echoed oddly in Lucius’s ears. He was unable to make out anything the man said, except his own name: “Lucius Pinarius…”
His name sounded strange to him, a collection of sounds that had nothing to do with what he was. “Lucius Pinarius: I am called Lucius Pinarius,” he said to himself. “I am in a place called Roma. I am about to die.”
Lucius strode to the very centre of the arena and turned in a slow circle, gazing around him.
He felt that he was at the precise centre of the cosmos, surrounded on all sides by the whole population of Roma, and by the city itself, and by the vast empire and the lands and oceans that lay beyond it. Every eye in the amphitheatre was upon him; he was the focus of every gaze. And yet he felt not exposed and vulnerable but strangely isolated and protected. All around him was ceaseless noise and swirling chaos, but in the place where Lucius stood there was silence and stillness. He stood in the pupil of the eye of the Divine Singularity. Had Apollonius known that he would feel this? Was that why the Teacher had guided him to this place and this moment?
He heard the clanging of a gate and turned to see that he was no longer alone in the arena. A lion had been released. The beast looked about, sniffing the air, then spotted Lucius. It crouched for a moment, tensing and flexing its haunches, then sprang forward and ran straight towards Lucius.
Of what use were the bow and arrow? Even if Lucius took aim and struck the beast, he would only aggravate it. Lucius cast them aside.
Of what use was the knife? There was a slim chance that even with such a dull blade Lucius might inflict a wound on the beast; he might even, by some miracle, fatally wound it. But by the time that happened, the lion would have mauled him, and in the best possible outcome they both would die. Lucius felt no desire to kill the lion. He drew the knife from the sheath, which greatly excited the crowd, then cast it away, which elicited cries of derision and mutterings of confusion.
Lucius looked at the belt around his waist. What would Apollonius think if he saw Lucius wearing a garment made of leather? Lucius undid the belt and cast it away.
He suddenly loathed the touch of the filthy loincloth against his flesh. He did not want to die wearing it. He pulled off the loincloth and threw it to the ground.
