Robert Fabbri: The Racing Factions

The seventh dolphin fell as the Green chariot, its driver punching the air, crossed the winning line in front of the White faction’s seats; the Greens’ joy was completed by the sight of the White charioteer being carried away, quite evidently dead.

‘Where’s your master, boy?’ Magnus asked as the slave approached.

The old man pointed to the colonnaded walkway above the seating. ‘Up there, sir, next to the statue of Neptune.’

Magnus tugged at the sleeves of Marius’ and Sextus’ tunics. ‘Come on, lads; let’s cash our bet with the man himself so that we can have the pleasure of seeing his face.’

His Crossroads Brethren grinned in anticipation of Ignatius’ expression as he counted out what would, in all likelihood, be his biggest pay-out of the day. The thought of supplementing the considerable income paid to the South Quirinal Crossroads Brotherhood by local traders and residents in return for protection from rival Brotherhoods was a cheering one. They barged past the old slave, who was immediately set upon by other Green supporters who had laid wagers with Ignatius and were now keen to claim their winnings.

The noise of the crowd died down as teams of public slaves poured on to the track to remove mangled chariots and the carcasses of horses and to clear it of thrown objects in preparation for the next race. Magnus and his brothers forced their way to the steps leading up to the walkway and negotiated a path through the tangle of individuals using them as overflow seating. Eventually, after pushing through the crush of people, who, unable to get a seat, were obliged to stand along the colonnade, they managed to get to the walkway that ran along the entire Aventine side of the circus.

‘Now where’s the statue of Neptune?’ Magnus muttered, looking along the carved images of gods and great men that punctuated the colonnade; between them, at regular intervals, were wooden desks at which bookmakers sat counting coinage and clacking abacuses, surrounded by piles of wax tablets, and guarded by thuggish-looking men with cudgels. ‘There it is; I’d know Neptune’s trident anywhere.’

Ignatius’ four guards shifted warily, nervous at being approached by three men just as brutish as themselves; they slapped their cudgels into the palms of their hands, feeling their weight with threatening intent.

Magnus raised his hand in a conciliatory gesture. ‘No need for that sort of behaviour, lads; we’re here to collect our rightful winnings from my old friend Ignatius.’

The man seated behind the desk looked up, midway through tallying a pile of bronze sesterces; his face was as fearsome as those of the men guarding him: lantern jaw, broken nose, dark eyes sunken beneath an overhanging forehead. His attire, however, was not that of a street thug: those days were long behind him, their memory preserved in the livid scars on his left cheek and well-muscled forearms; beneath his white, citizen’s toga he wore a saffron-coloured tunic of finest wool and around his neck, falling to the pectoral muscles on his expansive chest, hung the heaviest and longest gold-linked chain that Magnus had ever seen. ‘Magnus, to what do I owe this dubious pleasure?’ His voice was deep and gruff and his accent betrayed his lowly roots in Rome’s poorest district, the Subura, although he did his best to cover it. ‘I trust that I’ve been having a good afternoon at your expense?’

‘A very good afternoon for the first nine races, Ignatius, you took forty-five in silver off us; a pity about the last race though. Give him the receipt, Sextus.’

Ignatius leaned forward and took the proffered piece of wood bearing his signature along with the number of the bet. ‘Two hundred and eleven.’ Taking up a wax tablet from the top of a pile, he scanned it quickly, raising his pronounced eyebrows and tutted. ‘It seems I owe you money.’

‘It does look that way.’

Ignatius pulled out a heavy-looking strong-box from under the desk. ‘I’d better pay it then, although I don’t understand why you came all the way up here for such a trifling amount when you could have saved yourself the trouble and had one of my slaves pay it out.’

‘Yeah, very funny, Ignatius; that’s going to be your biggest payout today. Now get on with it.’

Ignatius shrugged and unlocked the box; he scooped out a large double handful of silver denarii and began to count them out into stacks of ten. When he had completed four and a half such piles he stopped and pushed them across the desk, toppling them with a metallic clatter.

‘That’s our business completed, I believe.’

‘I may not be able to read, Ignatius, but I can certainly count, and that is nowhere near two hundred denarii plus our original twenty-five stake.’

‘You’re absolutely right, my friend; that’s forty denarii and your original five stake.’

‘We put down twenty-five. Sextus, tell him, you laid the bet.’

Sextus nodded slowly at the memory. ‘Yeah, Magnus, the slave was a young lad with curly black hair; I gave him twenty-five in silver on the Green’s first chariot at eight to one.’

‘Well, my friends, I’ve written down on my ledger: bet two hundred and eleven, Sextus, five denarii, Green first to win, eight to one.’ He picked another tablet up from a different pile and proffered it to Magnus. ‘And this is the slave’s record of all the bets he took on the last race; it says exactly the same thing, but I suppose it’s a waste of time showing it to you gentleman as it probably just looks like a collection of squiggles to you.’

Magnus knocked the tablet away and jabbed his forefinger towards the bookmaker’s face. ‘Listen, Ignatius, I don’t give a fuck about what you wrote down; we made a bet and expect it to be honoured.’

Ignatius remained unruffled; he added another five denarii to the fifth pile. ‘Take the money I owe you plus, as gesture of goodwill, an extra five so that we’re completely even on the day’s transactions as I’ve recorded them; in fact, I’ll even make it easy for you.’ He scooped back the fifty denarii. ‘You can have it in gold.’ He smiled, coldly and without mirth, in a take-it-or-leave-it manner and placed two golden aurei on the desk with a couple of hollow clacks. ‘And now piss off before I’m forced to have my lads break open your skulls.’

Magnus tensed, as if he was about to leap over the desk, and felt a heavy hand clamp on to each shoulder.

‘I wouldn’t, mate,’ a voice growled in his ear as the other two guards squared up to Sextus and Marius.

Magnus’ eyes locked with those of Ignatius; he breathed deeply, suppressing the urge to explode into foolhardy action. After a few moments, feeling an icy calm settle on him, he shook himself free from the restraining hands, looked with menace at their owners and then scooped up the two aurei. ‘We’re not even, Ignatius, not by a long way. I now owe you and I pay my debts. Always.’ With a final glare at Ignatius, he pushed past the heavies and walked calmly away.

‘What are you going to do, brother?’ Marius asked, catching Magnus up.

‘Go back down and find that slave.’

‘I swear to you, master,’ the young slave pleaded through gritted teeth, ‘I wrote down twenty-five denarii.’

‘And you gave Ignatius all the money?’ Magnus pulled back the lad’s thumb even further as Sextus, looking puzzled, sat with a massive arm around him as if they were having a friendly chat. Marius stood right in front of the group to block the view of the slave’s pained face, but no one in the crowd was taking any notice; their attention was held by the twelve chariots in the second-to-last race parading around the track.

‘Yes, master. Ignatius blinded the last slave he caught cheating him.’