he released his arrow.
He began to move, but the blurring shaft reached him as he turned, knocking him onto his back. The armour had saved him and Brutus blessed his gods for luck as he rolled. He came up to see Renius punch Livia’s husband flat before facing the last of them, who stood terrified, with his arms quivering under the strain of the bow.
‘Easy, boy,’ Renius called to him. ‘Go down to your horse and go home. If you fire that thing, I’ll bite your throat out.’
Brutus took a pace towards Renius, but the old gladiator held out a hand to stop him.
‘He knows what he has to do, Brutus. Just give him a little time,’ Renius said clearly. The young man holding the taut bow shook his head, looking pale with tension. Livia’s husband writhed on the ground and Renius pressed a foot onto his neck to hold him.
‘You’ve had your battle, boys, now go home and impress your wives with the story,’ Renius continued, gently increasing the pressure so that Livia’s husband began to claw at his foot, choking.
The archer eased his grip and took two paces away.
‘Let him go,’ he said in a heavy accent.
Renius shrugged. ‘Throw your bow away first.’
The young man hesitated long enough for Livia’s husband to go purple and then threw the bow over the rocks behind him with a clatter. Renius removed his foot, allowing Livia’s husband to scramble up, wheezing. The old gladiator didn’t make a move as the two young Greeks put distance between them.
‘Wait!’ Brutus called suddenly, freezing them all. ‘You have three horses you don’t need down there. I want two of them.’
Cornelia sat with her back straight, her eyes bright with worry as she faced Antonidus, the one they called Sulla’s dog.
The man was merciless, she knew, and he watched every change in her face as he questioned her with a terrifying concentration. She had heard nothing good of Sulla’s general and she had to fight not to show fear or relief at the news he had brought. Her daughter was asleep in her arms. She had decided to call her Julia.
‘Your father, Cinna, does he know you are here?’ he asked, his voice clipped as his gaze bored into her.
She shook her head slightly. ‘I do not think so. Sulla called for me from my husband’s home outside the city. I have been waiting in these rooms with my baby for days now, without seeing anyone except slaves.’
The general frowned, as if something she had said didn’t ring true, but his eyes never left hers.
‘Why did Sulla summon you?’
She swallowed nervously and knew he had seen it. What could she tell him? That Sulla had raped her with her daughter crying at her side? He might laugh or, worse, think she was trying to blacken the great man’s name after his death and have her killed.
Antonidus watched her writhe in worry and fear and wanted to slap her. She was beautiful enough for it to be obvious why she had been summoned, though he wondered how Sulla could have been aroused by a body still loose from birth.
He wondered if her father had been behind the murder and almost cursed as he realised there was yet another name to add to the list of enemies. His informants had told him Cinna was on business in the north of Italy, but assassins could have been sent from there. He stood suddenly. He prided himself on his ability to spot a liar, but she was either witless or knew nothing.
‘Don’t travel. Where will you be if I need to bring you back here?’
Cornelia thought for a moment, fighting the sudden elation. She was going to be released! Should she return to the town house or travel back to Julius’ family estate?
Clodia was probably still there, she thought.
‘I will be outside the city at the house where I was sought before.’
Antonidus nodded, his thoughts already on the problems he faced.
‘I am sorry for the tragedy,’ she forced herself to say.
‘Those responsible will suffer greatly,’ he said, his voice hard. Again, she felt the intensity of his interest in her, making her own expression seem false under his scrutiny.
After a moment more, he stood and walked away across the marble floor. The baby awoke and began to whimper to be fed. Alone and deprived of a nurse, Cornelia bared her breast to the child’s mouth and tried not to cry.
Tubruk awoke, cramped and stiff with cold in the darkness of the slave house. He could hear other bodies moving around him, but there was no sign of dawn in the chain room where they slept and were made ready for travel.
From the first hours with Fercus, working out the details, it was this part that he had barely allowed himself to consider. It seemed a small worry with the possibility of torture and death to come if the attempt on Sulla’s life had failed, or if he was caught escaping. There were so many ways for him to suffer a disaster that the night and day he would spend as a slave had been pushed to the back of his mind, almost forgotten.
He looked around him, his eyes making out shapes even in the dark. He could feel the weight of the metal cuffs holding his hands to the smooth chain that clinked at the slightest movement. He tried not to remember what it had been like the first time, but his memory brought back those nights and days and years until they clustered and murmured within him and it was hard not to cry out. Some of the chained men wept softly, and Tubruk had never heard a more mournful sound.
They could have been taken from distant lands, or had slavery forced upon them for crime or debt. There were a hundred ways, but to be born to it was worse than all the rest, he knew. As small children, they could run and play in happy ignorance until they were old enough to understand they had no future but to be sold.
Tubruk breathed in the smells of a stable: oil and straw, sweat and leather, clean human animals who owned nothing and were owned in their stead. He pulled himself upright against the weight of the chains. The other slaves thought he was one of them, guilty of something to have been beaten so badly. The guard had marked him as a troublemaker for the same reason. Only Fercus knew he was free.
The thought brought no comfort. It was not enough to tell himself that he was just a short journey from the estate and freedom. If you are thought a slave and if you are chained in darkness, unable even to rise, where then is precious liberty? If a free man is bound to a slave coffle, he is a slave, and Tubruk felt the old nameless fear he had felt in the same room decades before. To eat, sleep, stand and die at another’s whim – he had returned to that and all his years of pride in winning his way to freedom seemed ashes.
‘Such a fragile thing,’ he said, just to hear his voice aloud and the man next to him grunted awake, almost pulling Tubruk over as he struggled up. Tubruk looked away, thankful for the darkness. He did not want the light to come through the high windows to reveal their faces. They were heading for short, brutal lives in fields, working until they fell and could not rise. And they were like
