Douglas Jackson: Caligula

He picked himself up, patted Africanus on the back and limped slowly across to where Fronto stood. 'I hope you haven't come to gloat again,' he grunted.

'On the contrary,' Fronto said grandly. 'I have come to allow my newest entertainer to show me his work in all its perfection, though it seems I may have arrived at the wrong moment.'

Rufus's mood lightened and he smiled. 'You missed the best part.' 'I do hope so. Because in two weeks I will be sharing the experience with several thousand of my fellow citizens, and they may not be quite so forgiving.'

Rufus felt his stomach lurch. 'Two weeks? I can't be ready in two weeks.'

'I'm afraid you must, Rufus. The audience is invited. The ring is ready. The whispers already spread about this new phenomenon. It is much too late to turn back now. Besides, I spent all morning painting the posters.'

'But — '

'No buts. The deed is done. Now get back among your hairy friends and make me laugh.'

Fronto persuaded Cupido's lanista to give his less experienced gladiators the opportunity to perform in a bloodless contest before an audience who wouldn't demand their deaths if they were not properly entertained.

Rufus and his animals would provide the climax to the event. At least that was the plan.

Two weeks later, he sat alone in the darkness beneath the Taurus. Above him, he could hear the thunder of feet on the floor of the amphitheatre and the clash of iron as Cupido directed his gladiators in a mock battle of such terrifying reality that the mob roared their approval, despite the lack of gore. He had never been so scared in his life.

Twice he had emptied his bowels in the latrina which served the performers, and once he vomited bile from a stomach which burned and twitched with nerves. His hands shook so hard he could barely hold the short legionary sword he had been clutching convulsively for the last hour.

Everything was going to go wrong.

He tried to run through the details of the act in his mind, but all he could think of was the consequence of failure. The humiliation and the shame. How could he face Fronto and Cupido after the faith they had placed in him? How could he have had the audacity, the stupidity, to think he was capable of this?

Five thousand people were out there beyond the darkness, waiting. Waiting for him. Rufus. Rufus the slave. Rufus, the slave who had never achieved anything in his life. Rufus the slave who would soon be standing frozen in the sunlight as the great mob bayed with laughter and howled for him to be dragged out of their sight and replaced with a true entertainer.

He could not do it. He would not do it.

He stood up, legs shaking uncontrollably, and began to stagger to the door, away from the terror that gnawed and tore at him as if he was already a victim of the arena.

Then the lions roared.

They roared with excitement. They roared because for the last week they had listened to these same sounds of battle in their enclosures beneath the ring. They roared because they were ready.

Rufus stopped, frozen in the act of reaching for the door. The lions roared again. And the sound echoing through the dark chambers returned to him the courage he feared had deserted him for ever.

His head, which had been filled with nothing but panic, cleared, and it was as if he had been blind and could suddenly see again. His hand stole to his throat and the lion's tooth charm that never left him. He took a deep breath, and his body was shaken by one last convulsive spasm.

He turned to find himself looking directly into two eyes still filled with the light of battle. Cupido removed his helmet and his hair was plastered to his head like a crown of molten gold. How long had he been there?

But the gladiator, if he had seen anything, was careful to say nothing.

'Five minutes, Rufus. My fellows are just going through their final set pieces. Here. Use this instead of the gladius.'

Rufus looked curiously at the cloth-wrapped bundle he was being offered.

'Take it.'

He took the parcel from the gladiator's outstretched hands and unwrapped it. He was left holding a sword so long it could almost have been a spear and an outsize gladiator's helmet of the type used by the murmillones. Both objects looked as if they should be incredibly heavy, but Rufus discovered they were surprisingly light.

'Try them,' urged Cupido.

Rufus handed Cupido the sword and with two hands placed the helmet over his head. It was so big it covered his whole head and sat on his shoulders, but the eye holes were cunningly placed so that, although it looked from the outside as if he should be unable to see anything, his vision was hardly more impaired than if he had been wearing a normal helmet.

'Do I have to wear this?' he demanded, his voice muffled by the allenveloping headgear. 'I must look stupid.'

'You do. That's the point. Try the sword.'

Rufus did as he was told and held the weapon in front of him.

'Wonderful. You look like a nobleman who has just been handed a turd. Wave the blade about a bit.'

Again Rufus did as he was asked. He was surprised to discover that when he swung the sword the blade quivered back and forth as if it had a life of its own.

'My armourer made it from a bad batch of iron,' Cupido explained. 'The edge is so dull it wouldn't hurt a fly. And when you try to stab something it will just bend back on itself. Go on, try it. Lunge at me.'

Cupido was wearing a polished iron breastplate and he insisted until Rufus could refuse no more.

'See, you couldn't pierce a piece of cheese. You might as well be waving a branch at me. Now, are you ready?'

Rufus removed the helmet and looked directly into the piercing grey eyes. He nodded.

'Yes, I'm ready.'

Cupido clapped a hand on his shoulder and squeezed hard. 'Then go and give the mob what they came for.'

The walk that brought Rufus to the trapdoor beneath the arena was the longest and loneliest he had ever made. The maze of tunnels seemed to go on for ever and, although he encountered several people he knew, they treated him as if he was invisible, turning their eyes away, as if to look at him was to share his fate.

Finally he stood on the wooden platform that would lift him directly into the centre of the arena. Above him, the roars of the crowd were magnified by the empty shaft. He stood, head bowed, waiting for the signal that would tell him the instant the mob's attention was on the climax of the gladiatorial battle.

It came, a huge shout from fifty throats in the same instant: ' Roma victor.' He nodded to the workman who operated the levers, and the platform began to rise a few inches at a time.

The brightness as he emerged slowly into the sunlight blinded him; then his vision cleared and he found himself in the loneliest place on earth.

He had been here before, when the stadium was empty, rehearsing for this day, but nothing had prepared him for the wall of screaming faces and the explosion of sound. For a moment the panic that had threatened to unman him in the depths of the arena returned, but then he heard Cupido's voice inside his head: 'Make them laugh and they will love you.'

Rufus the slave became Rufus the clown.

The crowd in the tiered stands saw a bewildered, childlike figure, small and lost in his oversized helmet, awkwardly holding a sword twice as long as a legionary's gladius. The helmet turned, slowly, taking in its strange surroundings. Why was it here? The helmet appeared to have a life of its own, which had little to do with the body beneath it. The helmet cocked to one side, searching the stands. Surely someone in this crowd of lords and ladies could give it a clue. What about you, sir? The helmet's eye slits looked directly at one of the toga-clad patrons in the expensive seats close to the edge of the arena.