Джерейнт Джонс - Siege

‘This is your show, darling. I’m just the humble quartermaster.’

‘All right then.’

She walked away to the centre of the wrestling ring that was drawn out on the storeroom floor. The eyes of the drinking soldiers caught the movement, and there was a noticeable drop in volume as they watched her take centre stage.

‘Shut up then, you tarts,’ Metella ordered the few soldiers who had yet to quieten down. ‘Same rules as last night. You register over there with Plancus. Price of entry is a day’s rations. You’ll get matched up against someone your own size, and winner takes the scoff. You want to bet for coin, it goes through Plancus and me, or my fist goes through your fucking head, understood? You can bet in your groups, but house takes a twenty cut. Don’t like it? Fuck off. We’ve got plenty more who want to come in.’

There were no dissenting voices. The soldiers on the benches had come to win food or make money. So had the whores whose arms were draped about the men’s necks.

‘Right,’ the burly woman concluded. ‘Plancus? First two names.’

An old soldier stepped forward as Metella moved away into the crowd. He walked with a severe limp, his hip dropping low with each step.

‘Met him a couple of years ago,’ Titus confided in me. ‘Solid bloke. Worked with us in Minden.’

I thought back to Titus’s black-market trading in the army’s summer camp – how his deal with the Seventeenth Legion’s quartermaster had led to Roman blades in German hands. Titus’s twisted sense of honour had compelled him to kill that man for his deceit, and so I could only imagine that he had found Plancus to be innocent of any part in it.

That grey-haired veteran now called out a pair of names belonging to men of the Nineteenth Legion. Plancus’s voice was as tired as his legs: the man must have been close to sixty, pushing two terms of enlistment within the legions.

‘What do you get out of this?’ I asked Titus as two muscular soldiers entered the ring. Both carried themselves with confidence, flexing shoulders as they eyed their opponent.

‘Besides entertainment?’ he grunted. ‘Half of the door,’ meaning the money that was collected for entry. ‘And half of what the house takes on bets.’

I didn’t need to be a mathematician to see that it would be a profitable night for him. ‘That’s a big cut. How did you get them to agree to that?’

The big man smiled. ‘Metella’s an old friend. And she might be built like a war galley, Felix, but this is a man’s world.’

I had little to say to that. There was no doubt in my mind that women played the tune of men’s hearts and heads, but in the world’s eyes only a man could stand to the fore in business or power. Roman society was built on subjugation, and that extended to gender as much as social class or nation of birth.

‘Coin on the dark-haired lad?’ Titus then offered me.

‘Why not? It’s your money, after all.’

We lapsed into silence and watched as the two soldiers went at it, both content to dispense with caution and to charge at their opponent, looking for the quick opening and win. Wrestling was a mandatory part of training in the legions, courage and strength being highly valued virtues, and both fighters were looking for victory through those means, rather than tactics.

‘My bloke’s got this,’ Titus grunted, assured. ‘Look how the other lad keeps trying to duck out from under his grip. He’s goin’ to end up on his face.’

The wrestlers stood locked in a vice-like grip, the veins of their biceps like pipes as they clutched at each other’s necks and shoulders, each fighting for the leverage that would allow them to flip their opponent on to the floor. Sure enough, my man looked as though his neck was buckling.

‘Loser’s going to be a lot more hungry than if he just stayed on half-rations,’ I noted.

‘That’s what makes it interesting.’ Titus was clearly proud of his ability to turn a profit from disaster. ‘They’ll double down then, and be back for the next one. They’ll hold grudges. They’ll get desperate. We’re under siege, Felix. People aren’t goin’ anywhere, and so for distraction they’ll pay anything. With or without those pay chests, I’m going home rich.’

‘To find your son?’ I asked, trying to keep my tone casual. Titus had shared a secret with me as the army had died: that his boy, thought lost with the navy, had surfaced alive, but in trouble. I had never referred to it since.

Titus said nothing. If it was possible to make silence violent, then he did so. His face grew taut. I saw the warning signs of his anger, and let my curiosity die.

‘You were right,’ I said instead as the dark-haired soldier finally tripped his opponent, sending him sprawling on to his front and giving up his back so that he was quickly pinned to the floor and defeated.

Titus simply grunted as cheers came from the bet’s winners, and jeers from the angry losers.

Plancus hobbled back to the fore as the defeated wrestler stormed away in disgust. ‘Next one’s a treat!’ the veteran announced. ‘Come up Macro, Nineteenth Legion, and… Fuckin’ ’ell. I’m not gonna try and read this name. Something foreign. Who’s the Syrian?’

A lithe archer raised his hand and stepped forwards, doubtless taking his cue from the look of puzzlement on Plancus’s lined face. The archer was tall for an Easterner, and measured up well against the smirking Roman who now rubbed chalk into his hands and spat on to the boards for luck.

‘Smash him up, Macro!’ a man called from the benches, and others soon followed his example.

‘Put him on his arse, the cunt!’

‘Hammer the raping bastard!’

I looked at Metella, and saw a satisfied smile tease her thick lips. The animosity towards the archer was palpable, easily drowning out the support of the dozen or so of his comrades. Amongst these angry taunts were calls for bets, coins changing hands rapidly. No matter the outcome of the match, Metella and her associates would harvest a pretty profit.

‘Fight!’ Plancus called, hobbling quickly to be out of the way.

Unlike the first pair, both men began to circle at a low crouch, eyeing their opponent. They would be judging distance, and speed. Power and strength. Calculating if an opening in their opposition’s guard was a weakness or an invitation to a counter-attack. Watching them, I thought back to my own days in the wrestling circle, and how my stomach had tightened with anticipation and excitement as I eyed my challenger as a wolf does a sheep. How my chest would swell with pride as my father would pull me from the ring, and lift me on to his thick shoulders, victorious…

‘Ten on the Syrian,’ I offered Titus.

I was ignored. Titus’s eyes were fixed on someplace far from Germany, led there by my asking about his son.

The Roman made the first move. It was a quick lunge for a leg, but the Syrian was quicker, spinning out of harm’s way. It was a risky play to open up his back and his blind side, and I wondered if the Roman would have the sense to see it, to feint, and to take it when offered again.

He did, and half lunged.

Just as the Syrian had wanted.

This time there was no spin. No evasion. The Syrian held his ground, and the Roman, only half committed to the lunge, didn’t have the momentum either to fully pursue it, or to pull back. Instead, he caught the Syrian’s knee fully with his jaw.

‘He can’t do that, the shit!’ a man roared as the Roman hit the floor, unconscious.

‘That’s fucking bollocks!’ another shouted.

‘That’s bullshit!’

‘Cheating bastard!’

Soon the air was thick with accusation. The Syrian had the sense to leave the ring, narrowly ducking a mug that was thrown at his head.