Broken Chariots Read online

  His partner gave him a pitying look, then shook her head. “Yeah, because that’s what’s important.”

  They walked.

  Well, Ursa walked. Belbus limped.

  He limped with his shoulders up. His shoulders were always up. Even when they were down, they were up. His shoulders were up because danger could come from anywhere, at any time, and often did, and he wouldn’t be caught off-guard when it happened. Not again. He kept his head down and his shoulders up and his eyes darting this way, then that, like a cornered animal. Something being hunted. Always hunted.

  Very quietly, so his voice wouldn’t echo off the marble, he said, “I have to say, I’m going to miss this city.”

  She whispered back, “You do nothing but complain about the city. All you do is say, ‘Rome’s a shit-hole.’”

  “Well, it is,” he admitted. “But where else would you get a sword and a spear pulled on you before eight in the morning?”

  “If that tickles your fancy.”

  “It does. That’s the juice, Ursa. That’s what it’s all about.”

  “I thought it was about money.”

  “It can be about both things.”

  “Is that all it’s about?”

  Belbus frowned. “What do you mean?”

  She didn’t meet his eye for a moment. “I feel like there’s something you’re not telling me.”

  “About this?”

  “It won’t be the same on the other side of these walls,” she cautioned him. “If this works.”

  “It will. It has to. We’ll be dead otherwise, so it won’t matter anyway. There’s no possibility but success.”

  “And you won’t miss the juice?”

  “I’m getting old.”

  “You’re not old.”

  “I appreciate that, but I am. Too old for this, anyway. ”

  “What are you, fifty-five? Fifty-seven?”

  “Forty-eight.”

  Ursa stifled a laugh. “Jove, you are old.”

  He shot daggers at her. “This business has aged me beyond my years.”

  “This business ages everybody. How old do you think I am?”

  “I think that’s a dangerous question. I think I like my jaw in one piece, thank you very much.”

  She held up her hands in mock surrender. “No broken jaws. I promise. How old do you think I am?”

  He shrugged. Went low. “Thirty-five.”

  Ursa rolled her eyes. “Don’t do that.”

  “Do what?”

  “Go low.”

  “I wasn’t.”

  “You were. You went intentionally low, so low you couldn’t help guess young.”

  “I just called it how I see it.” He waited, then said, “How old are you?”

  Another laugh. She didn’t hide this one. “Forty.”

  “You got eight good years left, kid.”

  “You’re not old,” she said again, exasperated. “Well, not beyond your years.”

  “You’re kind, but... I’ve been nudged along a little quicker than most, I’m afraid.”

  He limped. Felt himself beginning to wince. The pain was coming back.

  “Speaking of...”

  He reached into his cloak. Took out a leather pouch hung from his neck on a piece of string, like a coin purse. From it, he plucked a small white tablet. Opium. He tossed it into his mouth. Swallowed. Almost immediately, he felt the relief wash over him like a cool sea tide.

  Letting out a sigh from the depths of his very being, Belbus said, “Praise be the poppy.”

  They stopped at the entrance to a vast room. A giant marble statue stood at one end, pouring a vase into the pool. By some trick of engineering, water was flowing out of the vase, forming a gentle waterfall.

  “Nice,” said Belbus.

  Pistrus was emerging from the pool, fully nude. Beads of water dripped from every inch of his musculature.

  “Very nice,” said Ursa.

  A slave boy brought him a towel. He shook his curly hair dry and padded himself down. Belbus and Ursa and the slave woman guiding them stood there awkwardly, waiting to be noticed.

  “He knew we were coming,” Belbus whispered. “He saw us. Why did he... never mind.”

  “Didn’t you always tell me not to look a gift horse in the mouth?”

  “You’re not looking it in the mouth, dear.”

  “Exactly.”

  Pistrus turned and flashed a lantern-jawed smile in their direction. Belbus knew it was fake - smiling was what Pistrus did for a living - but, boy, did it look real.

  “Belbus!” he called, from across the cavernous room. “To what do I owe the pleasure, you old sewer-dwelling rogue?”

  The smile Belbus returned to him looked more like the fissure in a piece of flint than anything human.

  “Pistrus, you pompous jackanape, the pleasure is all mine.”

  Pistrus gave a hearty laugh.

  “Are we going to stand shouting across the various spaces of your villa all day, or are you going to be a gracious host and invite us mere mortals over to dwell in your semi-divine presence?”

  Pistrus gave an expansive gesture to a series of four reclining couches arranged in a square around a central table. His ‘entertaining area’.

  “By all means,” he said, magnanimously. “Make yourselves at home.”

  The slave who had guided them extended her open palm in Pistrus’ direction, to confirm that, yes, they were actually allowed over there.

  “What have I done to deserve such blessings?” Belbus said.

  But the woman was already gone, back to her duties elsewhere.

  Ursa watched her go. She said, “You’re right, you are off today. Normally, that would have had the help in stitches.”

  Belbus pursed his lips, thinking. “Maybe she doesn’t speak Latin.”

  “She spoke to us when we came in.”

  Belbus remembered. “Maybe she doesn’t speak it well.”

  Ursa scoffed. “Yeah, that’s it.”

  “She had an accent, didn’t she? A funny little... Cappadocian, you think?”

  Ursa ignored him. They went in.

  Pistrus had wrapped the towel around his waist and was reclined on one of the couches. The slave who brought the towel now fed him purple grapes from what seemed an impossibly-large bushel.

  He opened his mouth. The slave boy popped a grape onto his tongue. Pistrus chewed. Swallowed. Opened his mouth again. By now, the slave boy had picked off another grape and was ready to repeat the process. The cycle repeated half a dozen times without incident, until Pistrus made an expression like he’d just been fed excrement and spat the grape in utter disgust.

  “What is this?! Excrement?”

  The boy went still as a statue.

  Pistrus attempted to slap the lad, but corporeal punishment was a tall order, reclined as he was. Instead, he gestured the boy in close with a finger. The boy came near. Pistrus slapped him. A nice back-hander. The charioteer’s championship ring gave the boy a welt, but he made no sound. Not so much as a whimper.

  “Nice,” Ursa muttered.

  As he passed the pool, Belbus noticed an intricate mosaic-tile design on the walls and floor beneath the still-rippling water.

  “Very nice,” he said, without sarcasm.

  Belbus sat down opposite Pistrus, Ursa between them. Pistrus turned back from the lad to face his guests, trading apoplectic rage for winning smile in the space of a heartbeat. The still-damp curls hung perfectly to frame his chiselled face.

  Goddamn him, Belbus thought, as he mirrored the smile through the tarnished, rusted bronze of his own face. Goddamn him straight to hell for that smile and those good looks and all his good fortune.

  The slave boy set the enormous bushel of grapes in their gilded dish on the table and left the room with his eyes downcast.

  “Hard to find good help,” Pistrus said.

  They both gave a “Hmm” like they knew what he was talking about.

  Neither Belbus or Ursa recline
d on their couches. They sat in the middle with their elbows on their knees, treating the seats like common benches.

  If Pistrus was disgusted, he didn’t show it. Belbus figured he would if he did, and since he didn’t, concluded he wasn’t. On the other hand, he didn’t rise to match his guests either. He continued to recline, in a gesture that could be read as passive-aggressive, domineering, purely ignorant, or some combination of the three.

  Belbus had no idea what to make of it. He felt himself beginning to sweat.

  Pistrus reached out and picked a grape and popped it into his mouth, proving that he could do it himself after all.

  “What’s this?” he said, looking at Belbus’ neck and touching his own neck. “Catch yourself on a bramble bush? A particularly feisty morning romp, perhaps?”

  Belbus frowned, then remembered. He touched his neck, pulled his hand away, and saw blood. He quickly dabbed it dry with his cloak.

  “Price of entry, I’m afraid.”

  Pistrus clucked his tongue. “He is an ornery bastard. I’m sorry about that. Truly. Wine?”

  Ursa went to refuse, but Belbus perked up.

  “A little breakfast wine? Sure, why not?” Sensing reluctance from his partner, the bookie nudged her. “Last I checked, we were in Rome.”

  Ursa sighed.

  “She’s a little hungover,” Belbus explained.

  Ursa slapped his knee.

  Pistrus seemed to notice her for the first time. His mouth curled in a knowing grin. “A big night in the big city?”

  Smiling through her embarrassment, she said, “Something to that effect.”

  Pistrus sensed wiggle room. “We are in Rome.”

  Belbus chimed in, “When you’re here, you do as we do.”

  “Are you not from here?” Pistrus said, suddenly intrigued.

  Ursa couldn’t tell if what lurked behind the question was threat or genuine curiosity, or curiosity of a less-innocent kind.

  “Not originally, no.” Eager to change the subject, she turned her palms out in resignation. “Why not? Breakfast wine it is.”

  The men smiled. Pistrus, abandoning his line of enquiry, turned to a slave girl standing idly in the corner. He motioned her over sharply. She nodded, retrieved a pitcher from a bench beside her, then approached and filled three of the four waiting cups on the table.

  “I have to say...” Pistrus began, as the girl handed him his wine. “I should be mad at you.”

  He was talking to Belbus, who feigned innocence even as he was handed his cup. “Me? Whatever for?”

  Ursa scoffed. “That should be inscribed on your tombstone.”

  She nodded politely to the slave girl as she received her drink. The girl returned to her post by the corner.

  “You promised me better odds on the race last month. Equirria One.”

  Belbus drank, and as he swallowed, he jutted his chin out in a show of contrition. “I did. I admit it. But what you lost on the odds, you made up for in exposure.”

  Pistrus laughed like it was the oldest trick in the book. “Exposure?! What need have I of exposure? You go down into the slums and ask a blind, deaf mad-man the name Pistrus, he’ll sit up straight and give you a whinny.”

  Belbus and Ursa swapped a glance. Huh?

  “Point being?” she said.

  “Point being, there is no one in the city who doesn’t already know my name.”

  Belbus said, “I agree. By ‘exposure,’ I don’t mean it in the crude sense. Anyone can have exposure. Hannibal invades Rome and terrorises the population and slaughters armies and burns cities and threatens even Rome itself; he has exposure. But do people love him? No. Not like they love you.”

  Pistrus shrugged. “So what? They loved me before.”

  The bookie shook his head. “No. They knew you before. They didn’t love you. When it was just you and Crassus left - you remember? - and you were coming up on the finish, and he tried to ram you against the wall, but you pulled back on the reins so he went ahead and slammed his full weight against it and came a cropper, and you charged forward unimpeded, what did I do?”

  Pistrus flexed his jaw. Didn’t want to admit it.

  “What did I do?” Belbus said again.

  “You told me to go back.”

  “I made eye contact with you and I pointed back up the track to his wrecked chariot and his dead horses and him mangled in amongst it all. You had such a hard-on for the finish line you could barely see it.”

  The charioteer frowned. “The hard-on or the finish line? Or Crassus?”

  “The finish line,” Belbus said. “And what happened?”

  “I went back.”

  “And then what happened?”

  Pistrus sighed like the petulant child that he was. “They cheered.”

  “Come on, Pistrus,” Ursa said. “They didn’t just cheer.”

  “Fine!” he admitted. “They cheered louder than I’ve ever heard a crowd cheer. Louder even than when Daelios of Corinth killed a lion with his bare hands in the arena. They showered petals on me as I hauled that battered body from the wreckage and took it with me. They roared as we crossed the finish line together, and Crassus embraced me like a brother and he wept.”

  Pistrus had whipped himself into quite a state remembering the moment.

  “I wept with him,” he said, voice trembling. “It was so...”

  He made a semi-frustrated noise as words escaped him.

  “That was when I made you immortal,” Belbus said. “Without me, Equirria One would have been another notch on your belt, another pay day. Yes, you had won more races than any man in the history of the circus. What was one more notch to Pistrus Magistrum Equitum?”

  The charioteer let out a breath. Chuckled. He raised his cup in a toast. Couldn’t deny it.

  “I humanised you to them, Pistrus. When they saw you help Crassus, they said to themselves: here is a man worth bearing up on our shoulders.”

  “Then perhaps I owe you a lot more than the vig,” the charioteer said, with a haughty laugh.

  Belbus gave a snort that, luckily, Pistrus didn’t catch, for at that moment, the slave boy returned.

  He cleaned up the red spittle and the half-chewed grape with a dry cloth, then a wet one, then the dry cloth again, careful to use the other side and not stain the marble.

  He kept his eyes down the whole time, then left once more.

  The bookie’s gaze fell from the boy to the grapes in the gilded dish. These weren’t the itty-bitty berries of the hoi polloi, he noticed with mounting envy, but what he could only describe as the fruit of the gods. No grape in the bushel was shrivelled. Each one perfect. Large and taut and round and juicy. Misty, not glossy. Catching the light but not reflecting it. He imagined them being grown on a vineyard and by a vintner beyond the reach of those not obscenely wealthy. One whose location was guarded more closely than the mountain trail to that Olympian palace of Zeus.

  Gods, Belbus hated him. Pistrus, not Zeus. Although, yes, Zeus a little bit too, for making those grapes available to him.

  In a better mood now, Pistrus said, “And why am I graced with your presence this fine morning? Isn’t there some drunken brawl you could be profiting off somewhere?”

  He chewed open-mouthed, and laughed, amused with himself for making such a witty observation. Belbus wondered if his ears were bleeding.

  “I suppose there is,” he said. “But I didn’t see any on the way over, so I stuck with my original plan.”

  Pistrus raised his eyebrows. “Which is?”

  “To offer you a deal.”

  “A deal?” Pistrus said, sounding doubtful. “Not something that will tarnish my immortal reputation, I hope?”

  “Not if anyone finds out. May I?”

  Belbus had leaned forward to take a grape, but paused with his hand over the bowl. Pistrus gestured for him to go ahead, and he did. He had to know what those grapes were like. Belbus plucked one from the stem. As he bit into it, there was an explosion of flavour and juice in
his mouth that went halfway to making his eyes roll back in his head. Maybe it was the opium. Either way, the grape didn’t disappoint, and only made Belbus loathe his host all the more.

  Pistrus narrowed his eyes in suspicion, though his interest was clear. “And what are the odds of them finding out?”

  He rolled a grape casually between his thumb and index finger to show how nonchalant he was.

  Belbus shrugged. “It depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On how good of an actor you are,” Ursa interjected.

  Pistrus turned. Studied her like a new-bought vase he wasn’t sure fit with his home’s decor. “Ulyssa, right?”

  “Ursa.”

  “Ah. I prefer Ulyssa.”

  “Well... it’s not my name.”

  “Pity.”

  Belbus could feel his partner bristle. She did a good job of hiding it.

  “Tell me, Ursa...” Pistrus really put some emphasis on the name. Trying it out. Tasting it. Still not liking it. “What does my acting have to do with it?”

  “With the race?”

  “Yes, with the race.”

  Ursa stared at him. “What, you want me to say it?”

  Pistrus stared back at her. Then at Belbus. Then he laughed.

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “I assure you we are,” Belbus said.

  Pistrus swung his legs around and sat up. All the better to impose his adonic musculature on them. “The Equirria? The biggest race in the Julian Calendar and you want me to throw it?” He scoffed. “Keep your dirty fixing to the lower games. Chariot racing is the sport of kings.”

  The slave boy returned and took up the cluster of grapes once again. He plucked a single grape and went to offer it to his master, but the only movement his master made was to stare openly at Belbus, then Ursa, then Belbus again.

  When the grape was not taken, the boy retracted his hand and stood there, awaiting instruction. The welt on his face seemed to burn.

  “Why on earth would I do such a thing?” Pistrus said. “What could you possibly offer me greater than all you see around you?”

  Belbus looked around at the elaborate furnishings, nodding with approval. “It is something. Wouldn’t you agree, Ursa?”

  “I would.” She had followed his example and was drinking in the villa with exaggerated awe. “I don’t know if we have anything that even comes close.”