Caesar's Sword (I): The Red Death Page 6

I was fifteen and on the cusp of manhood when I participated in my first proper race. My performance that day, and the consequences of it, had a marked bearing on the course of my life.

  I recall the excitement and the terror thumping in my breast as I drove my chariot out of the Starting Gate into the arena. As usual, twelve chariots were due to compete, six Greens and six Blues. Every driver wore an ankle-length robe, belted high at the waist and with heavy crossed straps attached to our upper backs, to prevent them from swelling with air during the race and dragging us backwards. Each robe was dyed with the colours of the factions. For protection, we wore leather helmets, shin guards and chest protectors, and carried whips and daggers.

  The noise of the crowd hit me like a hammer as the gates were thrown open and I urged my horses onto the track. I had seen the Hippodrome full to capacity before, but always as a fellow spectator. To be the object of so many thousands of pairs of eyes, so much passion and hatred and vested interest, was a searing experience.

  As always during a race, the Emperor was present in the imperial box. Anastasius was still clinging to life and power, though so old by now as to be fabulous. His white-haired, emaciated figure, weighed down by the heavy golden diadem on his brow, struggled to stand and salute the charioteers as we did the customary lap of honour around the track. He acknowledged the massed cheers of the crowd with a weary grimace and an offhand wave of his withered hand, and sagged back into his seat.

  A herald announced our names in a booming voice that somehow floated above the din of the crowd and the incessant chants of “Caesar! Caesar! Caesar!” The announcement of each name named raised fresh storms of cheers, mixed with boos and insults from the supporters of the opposing faction.

  “For the Blues – Britannicus Minor!”

  The absurd name Theodora had bestowed on me echoed around the Hippodrome, taken up and repeated until my ears rang and my face burned with the excitement and embarrassment of a hundred thousand Roman citizens bawling at me.

  My hand shook as I plied the whip. This was the day I had trained so long and hard for. The day I had to survive.

  The Blues and the Greens were staggered, so I had a rival chariot either side of me as we traversed the track. I vaguely recognised the faces of the opposing drivers, though we were barred contact with our rivals, and remember thinking that in other circumstances we might have been friends. They didn’t even glance at me. Their youthful faces were hard and tense, and I knew their guts were churning with the same terror as mine.

  When the lap of honour was completed, we returned to the tunnels of the Starting Gates. The gates were spring-loaded, and when the Emperor was ready he would drop a cloth to signal the race would begin. At that moment the gates would spring open, and the chariots burst forth.

  The noise of the crowd rose to a delirious pitch and echoed like thunder inside the tunnel as the Emperor rose to his feet again. There was a pause and a drop in the noise, no doubt while the old fool looked for his cloth, and then the voices rose again and the gates flew open.

  I had practised this countless times, but never in the grip of such fear. The horses surged out of the gate, and for a moment I lost my balance. Fortunately the reins were tied around my waist – this was the Roman style, unlike the Greeks who held the reins in their hands – and saved me from an ignominious end to my first race, the more so since I knew Aquila and Leo and Felix were watching from the stands.

  There was another in the crowd whose good opinion I cared for. Her name was Elene, and she was a member of the company of female dancers that performed between races. She was about my age, a Greek from Athens and the first lover I ever took, though it was more a case of her taking me. Elene’s long, sinuous body was capable of the most extraordinary contortions, and the source of much private delight and exhaustion.

  Like every young idiot who mistakes lust for love I was eager to impress her, and win enough prize money in the race to purchase my freedom from the Blues. The latter was a faint hope, for I was one of the least experienced drivers on the track, but determined to try.

  Training and instinct took over, and my nerves quickly ebbed. The howls of the spectators dimmed to a meaningless noise as I roared and flogged my horses into a full-blooded gallop. The cart of the chariot rested on the axle, so I was shaken up and down like a pea on a drum as we flew around the first lap.

  I made the unforgivable error of focusing all my attention on my horses, and paid for it as the Green to my right suddenly swerved his chariot into mine and lashed his whip at my face. The first I knew of it was the shriek of metal as our wheels ground together, and the burning sting of my cheek being carved open. I screamed in agony, but somehow kept control of the reins and jerked them hard to the left, swinging my chariot directly into the path of another Green surging up behind me.

  Felix told me later that many in the crowd took this as deliberate strategy on my part, and split the skies with their approval. I paled at his account, which he recited with bloodthirsty relish.

  “The Green panicked,” he said, “and hauled clumsily on his reins. The front pair of his horses stumbled, and the others crashed into them. You should have seen the chaos! They went down in a tangle of bodies, and the chariot flipped over. The driver was spilled onto the track. He failed to roll aside in time from a Blue that deliberately drove over him. Oh, it was glorious!”

  The galloping hoofs and spinning wheels churned the luckless Green into mush. I was spared the sight of his messy demise, but heard the roars of triumph and despair that went up from the watching factions. I closed my ears to them and focused on catching up with the Green who had hit me with his whip. He was just a few feet ahead, flogging his horses for all they worth and exchanging insults with two Blues either side of him.

  I waited until the Blues had raced clear – despite his best efforts, the Green’s horses were labouring – and then plied my whip until our chariots were roughly parallel. He glanced to his left, and his eyes widened as he recognised me.

  A great cheer went up as we tore past the marker for the third lap. I urged my chariot ahead until I was within striking distance of the nearest of the Green’s horses. I struck out at the beast’s eye, as Leo had taught me, but missed and scored a deep graze down her neck. She instinctively swerved to her right, slamming into the horse next to her. The team panicked and plunged straight towards a gigantic obelisk of pink granite, so large the Emperor Theodosius had transported it from Egypt in three pieces and rebuilt inside the Hippodrome.

  The base of the obelisk was carved with a relief showing Theodosius giving a laurel wreath to a victorious charioteer. That was the nearest the Green would come to winning any honours. His chariot smashed into the pedestal and crumpled like parchment. The axle parted, sending the wheels spinning away in separate directions, but the Green failed to draw his knife in time and cut away the reins wrapped round his waist.

  He was dragged along the ground by his horses as they galloped away in mindless terror, until they slowed to a trot and a band of attendants were able to rush onto the track and cut him loose. By then he was cut to ribbons, though still alive, and had to be carried away on a stretcher. He survived, but his body was never whole again. Weeks later I saw him begging for his bread beneath the arch of the Golden Gate.

  The remaining Greens were hot for revenge, and their two best and most experienced charioteers pursued me like a couple of hounds after a hare. They were flamboyant, those two, and much loved by the crowd. One had grown long curly hair that flowed to his waist, and decorated the manes of his horses with green ribbons and garlands. The other sported a luxuriant Persian-style beard and whiskers.

  The Greens in the stands bellowed in rage and bloodlust as their chariots closed in on mine. We were on the eighth lap now, and I got no help from my fellow Blues: three were out of the race, one with a lamed horse and two with broken axles, and the remainder were too frightened of the veteran Greens to interfere.

  My chariot occupied the middle of th
e track. The Greens were fast coming up beside me, one either side. They doubtless intended to make a show of my demise before their adoring supporters, and flog me to a bloody pulp before forcing my chariot into the spine. I could do little to avoid this fate except urge my tiring horses in a futile bid to outrun them. If that failed, all that remained was to steer my chariot into one of theirs and hope to survive a deliberate collision.

  Fate chose this moment to guide the hand of one in the crowd. This person, along with hundreds of others, was equipped with a bag of lead amulets studded with nails, which they liked to hurl at the chariots of the opposing faction. The amulets were inscribed with curses and obscenities, and heavy enough to crack a man’s skull.

  The Greens on the poor benches had already hurled a fair number of these in my direction, along with rotten vegetables and other bits of rubbish. So far their aim had been poor. One hurled his amulet now, just as the Green with the Persian whiskers was grinning and drawing back his whip-arm.

  The missile crunched into the side of my flimsy helmet, piercing the leather and scraping hard against my skull. I was knocked off my feet, flopped over the side of my chariot and hung there. Stars wheeled before my eyes as the track hurtled past, just inches below my face. Hot, sticky blood flowed down the side of my cheek and left a red trail in the dust.

  My chariot tilted sharply under the sudden shift in weight and for a few terrifying moments wobbled along on one wheel. My horses didn’t slow their pace, or else the cart would have overturned and crushed me under it.

  My reins were jerked savagely to the left as I fell, and my horses followed suit. The Green with the long curly hair was forced to draw on all his skill to avoid the collision. He succeeded, just, and my chariot rattled away to safety.

  It came to a halt just below the marble seats where the senators and other wealthy men of the city enjoyed a privileged view of the races. Attendants rushed to calm my horses and release them from the traces, while kind hands picked me up and laid me gently on the ground.

  I was still dazed, and my vision took some time to clear as someone pressed a sponge soaked in vinegar against my bleeding head.

  “Be careful with him,” said a rough, vaguely familiar voice – it was Aquila – and I was lifted carefully onto a stretcher. I blinked, and glimpsed a row of gorgeously-robed old men standing and clapping as I was carried out of the arena.

  “Britannicus! Britannicus! Britannicus!”

  The senators were not alone in applauding me. My nickname echoed around the Hippodrome like a storm. I tried to protest, but no-one heard my feeble bleats.

  God threw a cloak of darkness over me. My eyes dimmed, and I knew nothing more until I woke in the sanatorium.

  Chapter 9

  The Blues and the Greens wisely kept their own sanatoriums in separate wings of the Hippodrome, or else the patients would have tried to do each other mischief. My head injury was not serious, and healed far quicker than the whip-mark on my cheek, which left a permanent white scar as a memento of my first race.

  After examining my skull and stitching up my cheek, the Greek doctor ordered that I should keep to my bed for no longer than a week.

  I had plenty of visitors during that time, mostly from fellow Blues eager to congratulate me on my part in the race. We had won, and one of our charioteers had finished half a lap ahead of the enemy. My role in eliminating two of the Greens early in the race, and then distracting their two best men, was deemed vital.

  My first visitor was Felix, fresh from his own exploits in the arena, where he had beaten two Green boxers senseless and fought a third to a draw. He had grown into a squat, brawny young man, entirely suited to his trade. His face, which might otherwise have been handsome, bore the marks of years of pummelling, and his blocky fists were forever swollen and bruised.

  “One half of the city sings your praises,” he said excitedly, “while the other half wishes you in the lowest circle of Hell. Do you know what I saw yesterday? People in the street making and selling clay dolls in your image for Green supporters to drive pins into. What do you make of that?”

  “I think it is madness,” I groaned, lying back on my pillows and rubbing my head, “most of what I did in the arena was more accident than design.”

  Felix patted my knee in sympathy. “I’m afraid it doesn’t matter. Passions are running very high at the moment, and the violence on the streets has worsened since the race. Some of our more extreme supporters are using your name to taunt the Greens. There are fights every night. One man has already died from a knife-wound.”

  Clashes between rival gangs of Blues and Greens was nothing unusual after a race, but the knowledge that I had indirectly caused a man’s death distressed me.

  “That was my first and last race,” I said weakly, “I am done with it.”

  “I cannot comfort you there, either. The prize-money was considerable, but most of it has already been shared among the other charioteers. Leo will be along later with what is left.”

  Leo did come, late in the evening when I was drowsing under the influence of some foul-smelling narcotic the Greek doctor had dosed me with. His insouciant manner was exaggerated by drink, and his darkly handsome features took on a malevolent appearance in the murky half-light of the sanatorium.

  “Our latter-day Achilles,” he said, stopping at the foot of my bed, “slayer of more Greens than the plague. I salute you.”

  I caught a whiff of strong wine on his breath, and he swayed slightly as he smiled that old crooked smile I had come to know and loathe. He carried a box of some dark polished wood in his hands.

  “Aquila ordered me to bring this to you,” he added, lifting the lid so I could see the contents, “and Aquila’s word is law.”

  Inside was a laurel wreath set on a purple cushion, and a number of silver coins. A very small number.

  “I might have spent some of it on the way here,” said Leo, stifling a belch, “the wine-shops near the Black Gate are most distracting.”

  He was mocking me, of course, and trying to make me lose my temper. It took an effort of will to deny him the satisfaction. We had never been friends, though he recognised my value to the Blues as a charioteer. Leo was a dark and subtle character, and kept his true motives well-hidden.

  “My thanks,” I said with strained courtesy, “please leave the box at my bedside. I shall treasure the wreath.”

  “I will see you soon, Britannicus,” he called out as he left, “very soon.”

  I have no memory of what became of that wreath. Wretched thing. The Romans set great store by these symbols of victory, and crowned their Emperors with them. To me it was a worthless arrangement of leaves.

  Elene, my Greek lover, did not come to visit me. This further soured my spirits, and I went in search of her as soon as I was judged fit enough to leave the sanatorium. Mindful of my unwanted celebrity, I borrowed a hooded cloak before venturing out into the streets.

  Most of the athletes had quarters at the Hippodrome, but Elene was a mere dancer, and rented lodgings above a shop in a poor back-street not far from the arena. I looked there first, but the shutters were fastened and the shopkeeper claimed not to have seen her all day.

  I eventually found her in a darkened corner of a nearby inn, picking moodily at a platter of bread and mizithra, a white cheese made from goat’s milk. Elene was picking listlessly at her food, and seemed more intent on listening to the doleful melody plucked by a lyre-player on the little stage.

  She did not look at me as I fetched a spare stool and sat next to her. I was used to her unpredictable moods, and waited patiently for her to break the silence.

  “I have lost you, Britannicus,” she said after several aeons had gone by.

  “Lost me? What do you mean?” I demanded. Her narrow Hellenic features, which I was used to seeing alive with passion, wore a sombre, defeated expression that made her look old. She bit her lip and slowly shook her head.

  “You did too well in the race,” she replied, still ref
using to look at me, “four days ago I received a message at my lodgings. It was a warning. I am instructed to let you go.”

  The thought of anyone warning or threatening Elene, whom I thought I loved, filled me with rage. “Who gave you this message?” I hissed, earning a black look from the musician onstage. “Was it from the Greens? Do they mean to strike at me through you?”

  “No,” she replied calmly, “not the Greens. I would have scorned any threat from them. But I dare not ignore this.”

  “Dare not? Who has the power to frighten you?”

  Elene finally turned her face to mine. Tears glimmered in her eyes as she laid her hand on my wrist. “You must come with me, Coel,” she said sadly - she was one of the few who addressed me by my real name – “if I must hand you over, I would do it quickly.”

  Baffled, I allowed her to lead me out of the taverna. She ignored my barrage of questions and led me through the streets towards a section of the waterfront known as the Harbour of Julian. Here there was a small port, much-used by merchants and visiting dignitaries due to its proximity to the Hippodrome and the Great Palace.

  It was nearing midnight, but the waterfront was still packed with vessels, and their tired crews labouring to unload cargo and passengers. Elene led me through the chaos and towards a row of warehouses at the rear of the harbour.

  We descended a narrow flight of steps leading to a stone archway. The archway was deserted save for a dead-drunk beggar lying in a pool of his own urine, but from somewhere I could hear music and laughter.

  “Where are we?” I whispered. “Why have you brought me to this place?”

  For a ghastly moment I thought she had betrayed me to the Greens, and half-expected dark figures to emerge from the shadows, moonlight glinting on their blades.

  She placed a finger to her lips and crept towards a section of the wall entirely lost in darkness. I heard whispered voices, and then the jangle of keys and the scrape of timber. A thin line of light appeared in the wall and revealed a small doorway.