Lynne Banks - Tiger, Tiger

Thick vines were joined to the cubs’ prison and by them it was dragged on to the back of some unalive thing that nonetheless moved. It was pulled by animals whose feet made a hard, clattering sound against the ground. The cubs looked about them. There was sunlight, but not filtered through greenery. It flooded unhindered over green and yellow stretches of ground. The tigers had never left the jungle, never seen fields and crops, and these puzzled them, but at least it was natural earth and growing things – they could smell them and they longed to be free to bound away and seek safety and a hiding place. Freedom was something they had not forgotten.

Behind them came the other captives, dragged along like them. The bears, on their hind legs, held the prison-trees and roared at the crowd. The jackals pawed and whined. The monkeys leapt about, twisting their heads and gazing here and there with their little bright eyes. The two surviving dogs lay licking their wounds. The elephant stood swaying on her huge feet.

The motion went on for a long time. After a while, the cubs grew tired and lay down and slept.

When they woke up, they saw that the natural scenes had gone. Now they could understand nothing of what they saw. They were moving among many two-legs and behind these were big cliffs of stone that had caves in them where two-legs were passing in and out, or standing in the higher ones, looking out. Their interesting but nose-wrinkling smell and the noise of their mouths were everywhere.

The cubs dangled their tongues and let the scent of warm edible flesh enter their noses.

The Lady Aurelia was reclining on a couch on the balcony of her bedroom. She was twelve years old but already so beautiful and womanly that her father, the Emperor, had issued a protective edict that no man might be alone in her presence without his express permission. The balcony overlooked the palace gardens, and beyond them, three of Rome’s fabled ‘seven hills’ could be seen, covered with a mixture of sun-bleached stone buildings and cypress trees, their stately dark fingers wagging at the sky as if admonishing the gods for not giving Aurelia enough to do.

Her mother had hinted again, only that morning, that Aurelia was indulging in too much idleness and daydreaming. As a Roman emperor’s daughter she already had some duties, but they were not of a kind to alleviate the boredom she felt in doing them or in looking ahead to doing them again tomorrow. She had her regular lessons, of course, but only the musical ones actually engaged her, and that was as much because of the charms of her music teacher, a young Assyrian with coal-black curly hair and nervous but excited eyes, as for any fascination with the lute. Her other tutors were old and deadly dull, and didn’t seem to realise that she was quicker-witted than they were, and usually grasped what they were mumbling at her long before they’d got to the end of their meandering sentences.

Aurelia had all the intelligence that her clever parents could bequeath her. But it seemed it wasn’t going to do her much good.

Of course, her looks would do her good, if being helped to a rich husband was considered good. The son of a senator, perhaps, or an officer in the Praetorian Guard. She was aware that her mother was already on the lookout for a suitable match, though she would not be expected to marry until she was thirteen, or even fourteen if she were lucky.

She sighed from her very depths. Other young girls – the few her parents considered suitable for her to associate with – seemed to talk and think of little but beautiful young men and marriage, but the idea of following in her mother’s footsteps – marriage at thirteen, motherhood a year later, a life of matronly duties and domesticity – appealed to Aurelia about as strongly as being tied up in the arena and fed to the wild beasts, like those strange, death-inviting Christians.

No, no. Of course not, not that. Aurelia stopped sighing and shuddered. She turned her mind away, accompanying the mental trick with a swift quarter-turn of her head. She had learnt early how to swamp ugly imaginings with pleasant ones.

‘I am so lucky, not to be a Christian,’ she said aloud. This was part of the ritual of drowning fearful or unpleasant thoughts.

She was lucky. She had grown up knowing that she was. This was part of her cleverness, because others in her fortunate situation might have taken it entirely for granted, and not bothered comparing themselves with others. But from her earliest childhood Aurelia had observed the difference between the way she lived and the way the common people of Rome lived, in their several social layers, right to the bottom where there were slaves and the poor. It was a very great difference, and she pondered it every time she left the palace.

Even inside it, the palace servants, though relatively comfortable, led lives of terrifying insecurity. Once, five years ago, she had seen one of her own handmaids cruelly flogged. It had happened as a direct result of Aurelia complaining about her for some trifle. When a young child witnesses such a thing and knows herself to be the cause, she learns some lessons. The simplest would be to harden her heart. That’s what others did. But Aurelia learnt something better – to control her temper and to deal with her servants herself.

But she had learnt something more from hearing her maid’s screams. She had found out her place in the world, that she had power, and that her father had much more – almost an infinite amount. Later she grasped something of what power means. What she didn’t yet understand was why some have it and others lie under its lash. If her tutors could have taught her that , she would have listened to them with all her attention. But when she asked them, they seemed not only unwilling, but unable to answer. Some of her questions scandalised them.

‘All societies have hierarchies,’ she was told. ‘All societies have higher and lower, masters and slaves.’

‘It must be terrible to be a slave!’

‘You must not entertain such thoughts. Waste no pity on slaves. They have no responsibilities, no traditions to maintain, no laws to make and keep. They have no concerns about food and shelter. They only have to do what they’re told, and live out their simple lives in peace and order.’

‘And the animals?’

‘What animals?’

‘For example, the animals in the arena that are set to fight the gladiators, and each other. They’re usually killed in the end, and they’ve done no wrong. Why do they have to be hurt?’

Her teacher stared at her.

‘Why does any living being suffer? It is all the will of the gods. It is their design. It is blasphemy to question the order of nature. Surely you’re not questioning your father’s right to show the people signs of his power, to entertain them with circuses?’

Aurelia was silent. But on another occasion, she asked: ‘What is Christianity? Why is it so dangerous that people are killed for it?’

This time her tutor threw up his hands. ‘Don’t you know that Christians don’t believe in our gods – that they’ve set up a single, all-powerful god above ours? Could any heresy be worse? Come, enough of this idle tongue-wagging! You must stop asking foolish questions and get down to the study of the heavens.’ He wagged a finger at her. ‘Sometimes it is hard not to suspect you of harbouring heretical thoughts.’

Heretical thoughts. Thoughts outside what was permitted.

Aurelia knew she had many such thoughts and questions. With good reason this simple fact terrified her, and she tried to suppress them. Even being Caesar’s daughter would not save her from some dreadful punishment if it was believed she criticised him, even in the privacy of her heart.