Douglas Jackson: Caligula

It was a weary and disheartened Fronto who returned from his mission. The animal dealers at the trading camps on the coast all told the same story. They had few animals to sell and those they did possess were low in quality and high in price. He had hired guides and made the arduous trek into the mountains, but the news was the same. The game either was hunted out or had fled south, and the predators that lived off it had followed. He was venting his frustrations on Rufus by the menagerie gate when they were interrupted by a shout.

'Cornelius Aurius Fronto, you old lecher. You were in Mauretania, but you did not tell me you were going. I might have put some business your way.'

Fronto excused himself and went to meet his visitor, a tall, bald man in a threadbare tunic which hung loose on his thin frame. He spent thirty minutes in deep conversation with his guest, and when he returned to resume his discussion with Rufus the big man looked uncharacteristically thoughtful.

'Who was that?' Rufus asked, his curiosity getting the better of him. Fronto shrugged as if it was of no consequence, but Rufus persisted. 'One day it might be important for me to know this man. You are always telling me knowledge is profit.'

'His name is Narcissus,' the trader said reluctantly. 'He buys and sells commodities.'

'What kind of commodities?'

Fronto didn't answer directly. 'He is the freedman of one of our senators, a minor member of the imperial family. He is very clever, perhaps the cleverest man I know. He speaks seven languages and a dozen native dialects. Sometimes I use him as an interpreter. Sometimes I do him a favour.'

'A favour?'

'Yes. When it suits me I will carry a message to a certain person in a certain port. In return, I receive another message, which I pass to Narcissus.'

'So the commodity he buys and sells is information? Then he is a spy?'

Fronto turned to face Rufus with a dangerous look. 'No. Not a spy. A businessman. He buys and sells, just as I do. If the information eventually reaches the ears of Tiberius that is of no interest to me.'

'He must be an important man, this Narcissus,' Rufus said thoughtfully.

Fronto answered with a superior wave of his meaty hand. 'Oh, Narcissus would like to be important. And rich. But he will be neither. His senator is a crippled nobody and Narcissus's choice of horse is as poor as his choice of sponsor. It is well known at the Circus that if Narcissus backs Red, the gods will favour Green. Come — we have work to do.'

It did not take the animal trader long to discover that all was not as he left it.

Rufus was standing beside the lion pens speaking to Cassius, the head keeper, when a snorting sound behind him made him wonder if one of the enclosures had been left unbarred. But it was Fronto, and he was furious.

'What in the name of the immortal gods have you done? I didn't give you permission to separate the young cats from the adults. You'll ruin them as you did the leopard.'

Rufus had known this moment would come, but he was not prepared for the cataclysmic power of Fronto's wrath. He had hoped to be able to explain his plan earlier, but somehow the moment had never seemed right. Now their faces were so close that the younger man could feel the rage radiating from Fronto like heat from an open fire.

'I left you in charge here, because I believed I could trust you,' Fronto roared. 'All you had to do was keep things running smoothly, but you couldn't help yourself, could you? Don't deny it — I know all about it. I've heard what you have been doing with the lions. Petting them, sitting in the cage with them, feeding them by hand. Jupiter!

You've even been wrestling with the bloody things. When they go into the ring they won't fight the gladiators, they'll try to hug them to death.'

Rufus opened his mouth to speak, but the modest sign of defiance only served to make Fronto angrier.

'You're too soft. I wanted you to have all this, but I didn't work my way from a farm in Etrusca to become a Roman citizen so that you could throw it all away. You will never be anything but a slave. You can move out of the house and back into the slave quarters tonight. Get out of my sight.'

Rufus refused to move as the bigger man tried to force his way past, and Fronto was as much surprised by the weight of the shoulder which halted him in his tracks as by the edge in the boy's voice. Boy? Perhaps no longer. This was a different Rufus from the one who had waved him off three months ago.

'I know how many animals you brought back on the ship. Eight. Six kudu and two mangy cheetah. How long do you think we can stay in business without animals? You're not a fool, Fronto. You know the answer as well as I do.'

'The answer is to go as far as it takes to find new stock,' Fronto spat back.

'No. The answer is to keep the stock we have alive, to find a way of winning the crowd without sacrificing them. We can use the animals again and again. It could earn us a fortune.'

Fronto laughed incredulously. 'Now who is the fool? The mob only wants blood. It has only wanted blood for a hundred years. Do you think you can wean them off it with a few clumsy tricks?'

Rufus looked steadily into his eyes and the trader broke off, his anger beginning to ebb away like a wave retreating down a pebble beach.

'At least let me try.'

Fronto recognized the determination in Rufus's eyes. There was a certainty in them that left the contemptuous refusal on the tip of his tongue stillborn. For a moment he saw himself in the young man before him: stubborn, impetuous, unscarred by the thorns of failure. His anger faded completely and he shook his head at his own weakness.

'The gods save me, but tell me what you want to do.'

In the weeks that followed Rufus spent every waking moment with the big cats. He found they were as individual in their moods and habits as any human, and it seemed natural to give each of them a name, although he was careful not to allow Fronto to discover this.

'You will be called Diana,' he told the smaller, but more agile, lioness. 'For you will some day be a swift hunter.

'And you are Africanus,' he whispered in the ear of the big male, whose mane would soon turn from its present fluffy fringe into the great symbol of power and strength that would awe everything, man or beast, he confronted. 'For you are a brave and mighty conqueror.'

When obedience had become a habit, he was certain he could make them do anything. The only question was what?

He sought out Cupido at the gladiator school, where he found the athlete going through a series of intricate movements under the watchful gaze of his lanista, the school's owner and the manager who organized his fights. Sabatis was watching from the edge of the training ground, and Rufus joined him, looking on fascinated as the naked Cupido pirouetted and danced, his sword glinting in the sunlight as it carved lightning patterns in the air around him.

'Make yourself comfortable: he'll do this all day. Wears me out just watching him,' the big man grunted.

It seemed impossible that anyone could keep up such a pace. But the gladiator never faltered as the sun grew higher in the morning sky, though Rufus could see that his muscles were shaking with the effort and sweat ran in glistening torrents down his tanned body. Finally, at a signal from the trainer, he halted, his chest heaving as his tortured lungs sucked in the warm air. Rufus stayed in the shadows and watched Cupido nod as the trainer spoke quietly to him, outlining where improvements could be made.

At last, the lanista handed the gladiator his tunic and walked off. Cupido joined Rufus in the shade. He sat back against the wall with his eyes closed and sipped from a flask of tepid water.

'So, you have come to join us, Rufus? You would like to fight beside me in the next games?'