"We've had our moments!" the spokesman had allowed himself to be lured into a chat.
"People throw themselves at him," Maia sneered knowingly. "I hate that. It's disgusting, isn't it?"
"All right if you can get it," laughed one of the slaves.
"But you have to keep a sense of proportion. Now my friend and me-" She and Helena exchanged the cloying glances of dedicated followers talking about their hero. "We follow all his fights. We know all his history." She listed it off: "Seventeen wins: three draws: twice down but the crowd spared his jugular and sent him back. The bout with the Thracian last spring had our hearts in our mouths. He was robbed there-"
"The referee!" Helena leaned forwards, stabbing her finger angrily. This was some old controversy, apparently.
"Rumex was tripped." I was impressed by their research. "He was winning, no question, then his boot let him down. He'd had three hits, including that tricky one when he did the cartwheel and cut up under the other man's arm. He ought to have been given the fight."
"Yes, but accidents don't count," put in one of the slaves.
"That bastard the old Emperor Claudius used to have their throats cut if they fell by accident," someone else said.
"That was in case they were fixing it," said Helena.
"No way. The crowd would spot that."
"The crowd only sees what it wants to see," suggested Maia. Her interest seemed genuinely passionate. It looked as if the finer points of the Rumex loss against the Thracian would be haggled over for the next three hours. This was worse than overhearing a row between two half-drunk bargees on pay night.
My sister stopped. She beamed at the minders, as if pleased to have shared with them her knowledge and expertise. "Can't you let us in just for a few moments?"
"Normally," explained the spokesman carefully. "Normally there wouldn't be a problem, girls." So what was abnormal today?
"We have money," Helena proposed bluntly. "We want to give him a present-but we thought it would be nicer if we could just see him, to ask him what he really wants."
The man shook his head.
Helena clutched her hand to her mouth. "He's not ill?"
Overindulgence, I thought to myself. In what, it seemed best not to speculate.
"Has he been hurt in practice?" gasped Maia, with real distress.
"He's resting," said the spokesman for the second time.
I let myself speculate after all. Everyone knows what top gladiators are like. I could imagine the scene indoors. An uneducated thug, provided with indecent luxury. Gorging on sweated suckling pig, dousing it in lashings of cheap fish-pickle sauce. Reeking of impossibly scented pomades. Swilling undiluted Falernian like water, then leaving half-empty amphorae unstoppered for the wine flies. Playing endless repetitive games of Latrunculi with his sycophantic hangers-on. Pausing for three-in-a-bed orgies with teenage acolytes even dafter than the two rash women who were debasing themselves outside his quarters now…
"He's resting," said Maia to Helena.
"Just resting," Helena answered her. Then she turned to the group of minders and exclaimed, with innocent lack of tact, "That's such a relief. We were afraid of what might have happened to him-after what people are saying about that lion."
There was a small pause.
"What lion?" asked the spokesman in a patronizing voice. He stood up. He and the others adopted a well-practiced shepherding technique. "We don't know anything about no lion, ladies. Now, excuse me, but I'll have to ask you to be moving on. Rumex is very particular about his training regime. He has to have absolute quiet all around him. I'm sorry, but I can't allow any members of the public to hang about when there's a risk of disturbing him-"
"You don't know about it, then?" Helena persisted. "It's just that there is a terrible rumor running round the Forum that Rumex has killed a lion that belonged to Calliopus. His name was Leonidas. It's all over Rome -"
"And I'm a gryphon with three legs," asserted the chief minder, evicting Helena and my sister from the barracks area ruthlessly.
Outside in the street again, Maia swore.
I said nothing. I know when to carry a basket with my head down. I walked quietly behind them as they stalked away from the gate, making sure I looked like a particularly meek boudoir slave.
"You can stop playing the know-all," scoffed Maia to me grumpily. "It was a good try."
I straightened up. "I'm just agog at your encyclopedic knowledge of the Games. You both sounded like true arena bores. Who fed you the gladiatorial lore?"
"Petronius Longus. We wasted time on it for nothing, though."
Helena Justina had always been shrewd. "No, it's all right," she told my sister in a satisfied voice. "We didn't manage to see Rumex, but the way those men made us leave so rapidly when we mentioned Leonidas says it all. My guess is that Rumex has been deliberately quarantined. Whatever happened when the lion was killed, Rumex was definitely involved."
Twenty-one
I WAS ALL set to play the heavy-handed paterfamilias, berating them.
"We could have got in if we had really tried," interrupted Maia.
"At what price?"
My sister smiled at me wickedly.
I made the mistake of commenting that I had once been glad that Helena had found a friend amongst the Didius family, but I had not expected to see her being led astray so shamelessly by Maia. The two of them groaned and raised their eyes to the heavens. Then I realized Helena 's air of studied neutrality meant that their coming here had been her idea.
Luckily for those disreputable scamps, that was when the lanista Saturninus returned home with his troupe of animal keepers, dragging a cart containing the escaped leopardess. It had taken them time to arrive here because the curfew on wheeled vehicles meant they had to manhandle the cage and the beast. They were sweating over the task but obviously wanted to replace her safely on their own premises before there were any more accidents.
I bundled my outrageous womenfolk into their conveyance, from which they peered out unrepentantly.
"I suggest that you pair of Messalinas take yourself home and knit boot socks like proper domestic matrons-the best of wives, whom Famia and I won't mind mentioning on our tombstones one day." Maia and Helena laughed. It sounded as if they were intending to outlive Famia and me, then take unsuitable lovers and throw away their children's inheritance at some tawdry leisure spa. "I would escort you but I have urgent business. I," said I haughtily, "will go in and attempt to see Rumex-now you two beauties have queered my pitch!"
The door porter failed to recognize me. Without my basket and bossy womenfolk I was a citizen; slaves, of course, are invisible. It was a dodge I had used before when I wanted to stay anonymous.
I asked to see Saturninus. The porter told me the master was not at home. I pointed out that I had just seen the master entering, so the lag answered that whoever I was and whatever I had seen, Saturninus was not at home to me.
I could have tried charm, or simple persistence. But with Helena and Maia watching, I took out my official pass as a Palace auditor, held it half a digit from the porter's face. Then I declaimed like a little schoolboy orator that unless his master wanted to be denounced for obstructing the Census, the elusive Saturninus had better see me at once. A slave was summoned to show me the way.