The Emperor Series Books 1-4

‘I saw him prepare for those matches. The cloth he used allowed in enough light to see the outlines of shapes. That was all the edge he needed. After all, his opponents thought he was blind.’

‘Take a big purse for hiring trainers. The circus will be the place to find them, but I will want your eye for the sound of limb and honour.’

‘I am, as always, your man, sir. I will send a message tonight to collect the tickets on the estate purse. If there is nothing else?’

‘Only my thanks. I know how skilfully you keep this place afloat. While my senatorial colleagues fret at how their wealth is eroded, I can be calm and smile at their discomfort.’ He stood and shook hands in the wrist grip that all legionaries learned.

Tubruk was pleased to note the strength still in the hand. The old bull had a few years in him yet.

Gaius scrambled away from the door and ran down to see Marcus in the stables. Before he had gone more than a little way, he paused and leaned against a cool, white wall. What if he was still angry? No, surely the prospect of circus tickets – with unchained lions no less! – surely this would be enough to burn away his sorrow. With renewed enthusiasm and the sun on his back, he charged down the slopes to the outbuildings of teak and lime plaster that housed the estate's supply of workhorses and oxen. Somewhere, he heard his mother's voice calling his name, but he ignored it, as he would a bird's shrill scream. It was a sound that washed over him and left him untouched.

The two boys found the body of the raven close to where they had first seen it, near the edge of the woods on the estate. It lay in the damp leaves, stiff and dark, and it was Marcus who saw it first, his depression and anger lifting with the find.

‘Zeus,’ he whispered. ‘Tubruk said he was sick.’ He crouched by the track and reached out a hand to stroke the still glossy feathers. Gaius crouched with him. The chill of the woods seemed to get through to both of them at the same time and Gaius shivered slightly.

‘Ravens are bad omens, remember,’ he murmured.

‘Not Zeus. He was just looking for a place to die.’

On an impulse, Marcus picked up the body again, holding it in his hands as he had before. The contrast saddened both of them. All the fight was gone and now the head lay limply, as if held only by skin. The beak hung open and the eyes were shrivelled, hollow pits. Marcus continued to stroke the feathers with his thumb.

‘We should cremate him – give him an honourable funeral,’ said Gaius. ‘I could run back to the kitchens and fetch an oil lamp. We could build a pyre for him and pour some of the oil over it. It would be a good send-off for him.’

Marcus nodded and placed Zeus carefully on the ground.

‘He was a fighter. He deserves something more than just being left to rot. There's a lot of dry wood around here. I'll stay to make the pyre.’

‘I'll be as quick as I can,’ Gaius replied, turning to run. ‘Think of some prayers or something.’

He sprinted back to the estate buildings and Marcus was left alone with the bird. He felt a strange solemnity come upon him, as if he was performing a religious rite. Slowly and carefully, he gathered dry sticks and built them into a square, starting with thicker branches that were long dead and building on layers of twigs and dry leaves. It seemed right not to rush.

The woods were quiet as Gaius returned. He too was walking slowly, shielding the small flame of an oily wick where it protruded from an old kitchen lamp. He found Marcus sitting on the dry path, with the black body of Zeus lying on a neat pile of dead wood.

‘I'll have to keep the flame going while I pour the oil, so it could flare up quickly. We'd better say the prayers now.’

As the evening darkened, the flickering yellow light of the lamp seemed to grow in strength, lighting their faces as they stood by the small corpse.

‘Jupiter, head of all the gods, let this one fly again in the underworld. He was a fighter and he died free,’ Marcus said, his voice steady and low.

Gaius readied the oil for pouring. He held the wick clear, avoiding the little flame and poured on the oil, drenching the bird and the wood in its slipperiness. Then he touched the flame to the pyre.

For long seconds, nothing happened except for a faint sizzling, but then an answering flame spread and blazed with a sickly light. The boys stood and Gaius placed the lamp on the path. They watched with interest as the feathers caught and burned with a terrible stink. The flames flickered over the body and fat smoked and sputtered in the fire. They waited patiently.

‘We could gather the ashes at the end and bury them, or spread them around in the woods or the stream,’ Gaius whispered.

Marcus nodded in silence.

To help the fire, Gaius poured on the rest of the oil from the lamp, extinguishing its small light. Flames grew again and most of the feathers had been burned away, except for those around the head and beak, which seemed obstinate.

Finally, the last of the oil burned to nothing and the fire sank to glowing embers.

‘I think we've cooked him,’ whispered Gaius. ‘The fire wasn't hot enough.’

Marcus took a long stick and poked at the body, now covered in wood ash but still recognisably the raven. The stick knocked the smoking thing right out of the ashes and Marcus spent a few moments trying to roll it back in without success.

‘This is hopeless. Where's the dignity in this?’ he said angrily.

‘Look, we can't do any more. Let's just cover him in leaves.’

The two boys set about gathering armfuls and soon the scorched raven was hidden from view. They were silent as they walked back to the estate, but the reverent mood was gone.

CHAPTER FOUR (#u0a9cf12d-51a6-5de0-b23e-0ab6561e1a0e)

The circus was arranged by Cornelius Sulla, a rising young man in the ranks of Roman society. The king of Mauretania had entertained the young senator while he commanded the Second Alaudae legion in Africa. To please him, King Bocchus sent a hundred lions and twenty of his best spearmen to the capital. With these as a core, Sulla had put together a programme for five days of trials and excitement.

It was to be the largest circus ever arranged in Rome and Cornelius Sulla had his reputation and status assured by the achievement. There were even calls raised in Senate for there to be a more permanent structure to hold the games. The wooden benches bolted and pegged together for great events were unsatisfactory and really too small for the sort of crowds that wanted to see lions from the dark, unknown continent. Plans for a vast circular amphitheatre capable of holding water and staging sea battles were put forward, but the cost was huge and they were vetoed by the people's tribunes as a matter of course.

Gaius and Marcus trotted behind the two older men. Since Gaius' mother had become unwell, the boys were rarely allowed into the city proper any more, as she fretted and rocked in misery at the thought of what could happen to her son in the vicious streets. The noise of the crowd was like a blow and their eyes were bright with interest.

Most of the Senate would travel to the games in carriages, pulled or carried by slaves and horses. Gaius' father scorned this and chose to walk through the crowds. That said, the imposing figure of Tubruk beside him, fully armed as he was, kept the plebeians from shoving too rudely.

The mud of the narrow streets had been churned into a stinking broth by the huge throng and after only a short time their legs were spattered almost to the knees by filth, their sandals covered. Every shop heaved with people as they passed and there was always a crowd ahead and a mob behind pushing them on. Occasionally, Gaius' father would take side streets when the roads were blocked completely by shopkeepers' carts carrying their wares around the city. These were packed with the poor, and beggars sat in doorways, blind and maimed, with their hands outstretched. The brick buildings loomed over them, five and six storeys high, and, once, Tubruk put a hand out to hold Marcus back as a bucket of slops was poured out of an open window into the street below.

Gaius' father looked grim, but walked on without stopping, his sense of direction bringing them through the dark maze back onto the main streets to the circus. The noise of the city intensified as they grew close, with the shouted cries of hot-food sellers competing with the hammering of coppersmiths and bawling, screaming children who hung, snot-nosed, on their mothers' hips.

On every street corner, jugglers and conjurors, clowns and snake charmers performed for thrown coins. That day, the pickings were slim, despite the huge crowds. Why waste your money on things you could see every day when the amphitheatre was open?

‘Stay close to us,’ Tubruk said, bringing the boys' attention back from the colours, smells and noise. He laughed at their wide-mouthed expressions. ‘I remember the first time I saw a circus – the Vespia, where I was to fight my first battle, untrained and slow, just a slave with a sword.’

‘You won, though,’ Julius replied, smiling as they walked.

‘My stomach was playing me up, so I was in a terrible mood.’

Both men laughed.

‘I'd hate to face a lion,’ Tubruk continued. ‘I've seen a couple on the loose in Africa. They move like horses at the charge when they want to, but with fangs and claws like iron nails.’

‘They have a hundred of the beasts and two shows a day for five days, so we should see ten of them against a selection of fighters. I am looking forward to seeing these black spearmen in action. It will be interesting to see if they can match our javelin throwers for accuracy.’

They walked under the entrance arch and paused at a series of wooden tubs filled with water. For a small coin, they had the mud and smell scrubbed from their legs and sandals. It was good to be clean again. With the help of an attendant, they found the seats reserved for them by one of the estate slaves, who'd travelled in the previous evening to await their arrival. Once they were seated, the slave stood to walk the miles back to the estate. Tubruk passed him another coin to buy food for the journey and the man smiled cheerfully, pleased to be away from the backbreaking labour of the fields for once.

All around them sat the members of the patrician families and their slaves. Although there were only three hundred representatives in the Senate, there must have been close to a thousand others. Rome's lawmakers had taken the day off for the first battles of the five-day run. The sand was raked smooth in the vast pit; the wooden stands filled with thirty thousand of the classes of Rome. The morning heat built and built into a wall of discomfort, largely ignored by the people.

‘Where are the fighters, Father?’ Gaius asked, searching for signs of lions or cages.

‘They are in that barn building over there. You see where the gates are? There.’

He opened a folded programme, purchased from a slave as they went in.