Rufus watched the unfolding drama with growing dread. Now it was time to stand up for the man who had befriended him. He would accuse Protogenes. But his body would not respond. He was paralysed by fear. No matter how he struggled, nothing would break the iron bonds of self-preservation that held him to the couch. Suddenly he found it difficult to breathe and his head began to spin.
Through his panic, he barely heard Caligula's chilling whisper in his ear. 'Watch, elephant boy, watch every moment and understand how the Emperor rewards those who betray him. Look away but once and I will have your eyes sewn shut.' Then he heard the rattle of the chains.
Fronto heard them also, and began to plead his innocence in an incoherent babble of words. At first Caligula found his ravings amusing, but he quickly became irritated.
'If that man says one more word you will slice out his tongue, and if he raises his hands to his Emperor you will cut them off,' he told Chaerea, who had appeared behind Fronto with two of his Praetorians.
Chaerea ordered his guards to bind the condemned man with the heavy chains they had brought, but Caligula's fertile mind had concocted something more entertaining.
'No, it would be much too fitting to chain a man who has spent his life chaining animals. Let him be beaten instead.'
Chaerea, puzzled, looked round for his thick wooden staff of office.
'Let him be beaten with his chains.'
The Praetorians looked at each other, then doubled the long chains into manageable lengths. Chaerea nodded.
And the beating began.
The two burly Germans concentrated their aim on Fronto's shoulders and body, drawing grunts of pain from the old man, though the thick folds of his toga absorbed much of the force.
'No, no,' Caligula shouted impatiently. 'His head.'
Now Fronto learned the true meaning of horror. The heavy metal links smashed into his unprotected face and head, gouging into his flesh and pulverizing bone and sinew. His agony must have been terrible, for a high-pitched mewing began in the back of his throat, rising to a full-blooded scream. The scream changed instantly to a choked gurgling when a roundhouse swing by one of the Germans hammered into his open mouth, smashing teeth into fragments and shattering the bones of his lower jaw. In minutes, the Praetorians had trouble gripping chains that were slick with bright crimson, spattered with slivers of bloody scalp and clogged with matted strands of Fronto's long hair.
All this Rufus watched from some place of refuge deep inside his mind. A place where he was safe from Caligula and all his kind. A place only a membrane from screaming madness.
He noted that when Fronto, or the thing that had been Fronto, slumped forward, making it difficult for the chains to strike where Caligula, bright-eyed with excitement, directed them, the Emperor ordered the two senators closest to the animal trader to hold his head up. He noted how, as the beating continued, the top of Fronto's head, now mostly white skull decorated with just an occasional tuft of hair, was transformed from a solid dome into a soft, amorphous mass. And he noted that in the background, among the Praetorians surrounding the walls to ensure that none should interfere with the process of Caligula's justice, one stood more rigid than the rest. Cupido watched helpless, his eyes mirroring Rufus's agony and blood running down his chin from the gash where he had bitten through his lip.
Finally, the Emperor waved a hand and the Germans paused, breathing heavily.
Caligula approached the piece of human wreckage that had been Fronto slowly, peering for some sign of life. The animal trader's eyes were swollen shut and the once-proud hawkish nose was beaten flat across his face. A triangular piece of skull had been knocked from the right side of his head just above the ear, leaving a hole through which could be seen a yellowy-pink mass that, on closer inspection, appeared to quiver.
Drawn to this window into the human head, Caligula delicately placed his forefinger in the opening, and was rewarded by a raw, rasping noise from the approximate position of Fronto's nostrils, accompanied by delicate bubbles of blood which expanded then burst with a gentle click, a phenomenon which clearly delighted the young Emperor.
'Quite amazing. He still lives. He must have been very strong, Protogenes. I wonder how long you would have lasted?'
Protogenes's ravaged face paled, but the question was clearly a rhetorical one, because the Emperor continued wistfully: 'A pity, really. Who will seek out our animals now?'
Chaerea motioned to his guardsmen to remove the dying man, but Caligula intervened with a smile. 'No, leave him where he is. He has been fine company. He deserves to enjoy the rest of the evening.'
Fronto was still in his place on the couch when a dream-walking Rufus was escorted from the palace that night. There were no tears when he returned to the elephant house. The animal trainer's living death was beyond mourning. Some instinct made him create a nest of hay in the barn itself. It was not until later that he remembered Caligula's words. 'A little bird tells me… a little spy.'
In the in-between world Rufus now inhabited it seemed appropriate to be summonsed a second evening.
Fronto remained in the seat of honour opposite the Emperor and Caligula introduced him animatedly to a reluctant group of aristocrats who tried, with difficulty, to hide their disgust.
The hideous form still fought for every tortured breath, but only the gods knew how. His battered head was terribly swollen, and the tight-stretched skin varied in colour from bright blue to black. From the wound above his ear a thin stream of yellow pus ran down the side of what had once been a face.
The Emperor was clearly as captivated by his living exhibit as he was by the gold statues lining the walls, or the rich paintings adorning them. When the old man at last let out a final snoring breath, he wept as if someone else had caused his death.
Rufus did not have the luxury of tears. For him the moment of parting had come when the first blow was struck. The rest was nightmare.
But he was still able to register surprise when Caligula, eyes damp with tears, turned to him and said: 'Here is your former master. He was our friend and companion. Take him from here and give him an honoured funeral as a good servant should.'
Then the Emperor and his guests stood in dignified silence as the same Praetorians who murdered Cornelius Aurius Fronto, the animal trader, wrapped him gently in a white shroud and carried him from the room.
The little group was bathed in moonlight as Rufus directed them across the grass and through the trees to Bersheba's barn. There the soldiers deposited their burden on the ground and stood for a moment in silence.
'I have no wood to cremate him,' Rufus said.
The Germans looked at each other. 'You'll have to bury him. Can't just leave him lying about,' the taller of the two said. 'Over by the wall would do. Not too many tree roots.'
'Can you help me?' Rufus pleaded.
'Not us, lad — we're soldiers, not gravediggers. He was your friend, you give him a nice send-off.'
'I will help you.' The voice came out of the darkness. The Praetorians turned, each right hand on its owner's sword, but they relaxed when they recognized one of their own.
Rufus stood over Fronto's body while Cupido fetched a pair of shovels from the barn. They dug in silence because there was nothing to say. The ground was hard and the tall Praetorian was wrong about the tree roots. They spread tentacle-like through the earth, and Bersheba was roaring grumpily for her morning feed by the time they filled the grave over the shattered remains of Cornelius Aurius Fronto.
Rufus knew there were words that should have been said, and dedications he ought to have made, but he did neither. Instead, he stood, with Cupido at his side, over the raw earth mound that was Fronto's only memorial, fleeting images of their time together flashing through his mind. Fronto and the rhinoceros. Fronto laughing as yet another circus trick ended in disaster. Fronto with the great heart and the endless generosity. That was when the tears came, dripping steadily from his chin to form small patches in the disturbed soil. As he wept, Cupido laid a hand on his shoulder.