Notes: Part I of an ongoing story. You know me—who knows when it'll be finished? This is an AU story, based loosely on “When Fates Collide.”
Contact: viviandarkbloom@hotmail.com
Non coerceri maximo, contineri minimo, divinum est.
[Not to be confined by the greatest, yet to be contained by the smallest, is divine.]
~quoted in Friedrich Holderlin, Hyperion
I sing the song of the sword
The blade holds the light of the sun for less than a second. In its descent, the trace of an incandescent silvery arc lingers over the head of the beautiful Empress, like the outline of a fragile shell that encases all, imprisons everyone with things random and beautiful, vivid and cruel—the blue sky shot through with fissures of cloud, the stones so old that no one remembered their origins, the sand dappled with shadow and blood.
When she was a child, someone had told her that she possessed a poetic cast of mind. She's not quite sure anymore who said this—a mother, a sister, an aunt? Perhaps it was all of them and their collective voices now blended into one strain, one note blurring into silence, one increasingly distant memory. She hoards images, finding strange comfort in silver and bronze, Empress and blood, all savored quickly behind closed eyelids until she hears the Empress's savage exhale, feels the breeze of the sword bearing down upon her, and moves.
This dance
The tip of her sword rested under the woman's chin. Runty, Xena thought.
She could not fault Cato for a lack of variety. Unlike the famous cousin who also shared his name, Cato the gladiatorial impresario was less fortunate and less wealthy but more flaccid, a leader not in political circles but merely among the gladiators and slaves who brawled and died in the Circus Maximus. From his cadre of fighters she had bid him to bring her only the finest for sparring partners, and had sneered with contempt at the sight of the short woman in the mix of a furry Gaul , a strapping Syrian, and an ebony-colored Egyptian.
Regardless, she maintained her sense of humor about it—or attempted as much. An appreciation for life's shitting little ironies was important for the leaders of men. She sometimes wondered if she should commit to paper these pointless maxims that roamed through her mind; Romans seemed to enjoy these trite nuggets passing for wisdom. “I asked for your best, Cato,” she grunted warningly. “Instead, I receive your shortest.”
“Begging your pardon, Empress,” Cato nodded at the woman. “But she is the best.”
“Cato, Cato,” Xena sighed. “I think to distinguish you from your illustrious kin, we shall have to call you Cato the Comic. Or Cato the Horseshitter.” She tried again to force the Amazon's gaze upward with the tip of the sword, but the small woman's eyes remained stubbornly fixed upon the ground.
“Empress,” he pleaded, “do you not realize who this is?” Cato gestured dramatically at the small woman in a florid motion probably cribbed from his rhetorically gifted cousin. “ This is the most famous gladiator in Rome !”
Xena shot him an exasperated look. “You must be joking.” Nonetheless Cato remained staring at her with the bug-eyed earnestness of a gargoyle. “You know I don't go to those things.” When she had first arrived in Rome many years ago, Caesar had insisted she partake of a day at the Circus Maximus. That day had been hot, tedious, brutal: Men killing men, men killing half-starved, half-dead animals. No one appreciated a good fight like Xena, but without purpose, without gain—and for the mere entertainment of a couple hundred idiots—it seemed beyond foolish. These were men who, with proper training, could be soldiers, lawkeepers, bodyguards. Instead, their lives and their skill were wasted in trivial spectacle. If that was the best Roman culture had to offer, she had thought, perhaps she had made a mistake in becoming Caesar's wife, in allying herself with his city.
Cato's enthusiasm continued unabated: “Do you not read the writings upon the wall? The daily graffito? This is the Little One. The Little Gladiator.” Again he paused for maximum effect, took a deep breath that sent his jowls undulating like jellied calf brains, and launched into a mercifully abbreviated version of his usual spiel: “An Amazon taken in captivity, who murdered her master and proved untamable, unsuitable for both domestic work and the whorehouses. It is only within the ring that she achieves her full glory by realizing her wild, barbarian Greek nature!”
Xena idly probed the inside of her cheek with her tongue, while waiting—not quite patiently—for him to recognize his huge, and possibly fatal, faux pas.
“Oh, Empress!” He cowered before her, the palms of his hands waved at her in desperate surrender as if they were pale, plump flowers facing a gardener's knife.
She stymied the urge to kick him.
“A thousand pardons,” he moaned. “I beg forgiveness.”
Xena may not have known what the graffiti said about gladiators, but she did know what it said about her, at least in the beginning: The Thracian Whore, The Barbarian Queen. They steal our art, our ideas, even our gods, and I'm the barbarian. Admittedly, in the old days—at the helm of her own ship and upon seas that dictated no laws—she would have slit Cato's throat and thrown him overboard. But among all his other “civilizing” influences, Caesar had taught her the value of patience and strategy, useful tools in the machinations of revenge. For the time being, Cato's quivering and stammered apology made her happy enough; she would think of some horrible, onerous task for his true appeasement later.
“Get up,” she commanded. “You sully the sand.” Forsaking the sword, she grasped the Amazon's jaw roughly and forced those downcast eyes to meet her own. A heated glint of the emotion that drives the best warriors—rage, a state she only vaguely remembered anymore, but one that always indicated a duel of great promise—traversed the woman's surprisingly young face.
The contest might not be so bad after all.
She dropped the sword at the gladiator's feet. “All right, Amazon. Let's see what you have. Try to make it a little interesting, all right?”
With the very first swing of her borrowed sword, the Amazon nearly toppled the Empress with a ringing blow against her shield that made the Gaul fighter, sleepily awaiting his turn in the ring, leap into wakefulness, and Cato whimper with dread.
Xena back flipped over her diminutive opponent, who was shockingly unimpressed and ready for her renewed parries. And so, much to Cato's dismay and worry over not his Empress but his moneymaking Amazon gladiator, the sparring session gradually degraded into the bloody earnestness of a real fight. It continued as Apollo's chariot meandered through the sky, as Cato wrung his hands nervously, and as Xena grimly wondered when the gods-be-damned Amazon would make a mistake. Certain muscles in her back and shoulder had commenced an aching mockery with every painful, throbbing beat: You're not as good as you were, and you'll never be that good again.
The gladiator never did make a mistake, and perhaps would have continued her flawless and perhaps fatal performance had not a fortuitous rock interfered—one that threw her momentarily off-balance and sent her listing to the left. Xena's roundhouse kick, almost blocked, finally sent the small warrior to her knees. And although no one would really fault her and certainly no one could punish her, she refrained from running her sword through her bothersome opponent. For one thing, Cato would have a fit and she had no desire whatsoever to witness his teeth-gnashing, womanly wailing. Instead she merely slammed the sword pommel against the back of the woman's neck, and the Amazon tumbled heavily to the ground.
The spinning pommel tickled her palm as she twirled the blade triumphantly. And yet blood spiraled down her arm from a thick graze along her bicep. “Why, you little bitch. You got me,” Xena murmured admiringly to the unconscious figure sprawled face down in the sand. She took the moment to appreciate the muscular little gladiator: The backs of her legs were sculpted finer than any statuary she had ever seen and the visible parts of her tanned back and shoulders had been laced nacreous by the cruel, complementary arts of slavery and battle. No wonder she fought so hard, Xena thought. She hesitated, stared too long, and shook off the contemplative mood. Strutting toward Cato, she spread her arms mockingly wide in announcement of her hard-won, yet nearly humiliating, victory. “What do you want me to say? You were right—”
Then the earth disappeared from under her feet, the sky spun, and she landed upon the ground, breathless and trapped under the weight of the gladiator, who knelt upon her chest with the broadsword's point digging in her neck, poised for the death blow. The woman's eyes were a distinct green, Xena finally noticed, similar to the precious stones she saw in Chin many years ago—small stones rolled gracefully, reverentially, in the hand of Lao Ma. Jade.
“Gabrielle!” Cato's voice was remarkably deep, bold, commanding, and Xena felt a new, if perhaps short-lived, respect for him. “Hold!”
As if emerging from a dream, the gladiator blinked and shook her head. No sooner had the sword's point retreated from Xena's neck than zealous guards tackled the gladiator. From the humbling vantage point of being sprawled upon the ground, Xena watched the guards beat down the Amazon and drag her away in a furious haze of dust. She rubbed her throat. From all the emotions stewing within her, one thought rose to the top: Magnificent. As humiliating as it was, as enraged as she felt, no one had truly danced this dance with her in so long, she could no longer remember her last worthy partner. At best, Caesar was clumsy with swords and knew it; the last time she attempted sparring with him, he had merely thrown his blade upon the ground and proclaimed, “You win. I'm bored. Shall we have dinner?”
With a grunt, Cato hoisted her up from the sand and daintily commenced dusting her off. Her pride, however, remained hanging in tatters. “There has to be a better way of meeting interesting women,” she muttered.
Cato's pale, squishy hand lingered too long upon her thigh. “I'm sorry, Empress?”
“Never mind. For the love of Zeus, stop touching me. ”
“What shall you do with her?” Cato asked, after taking a generous step backward in timid yet wise retreat. “I beg you, please: Do not kill her.”
“And deny you all the profit you make off her scarred back? I wouldn't dream of it.” In case the sarcasm was lost upon him, she made it perfectly clear: “I shall do with her what I want.”
“There are other things you could—”
“Tread carefully, Cato. In execution, your ideas tend to run toward the pitiable.”
He bit his lower lip. “You could take her to bed.”
“Are you implying that sleeping with me would be a fitting punishment?”
“Oh, oh no. On the contrary. I merely suggest you can find more, ah, merciful and er, pleasant things to do with her than, um, the other thing.”
Xena hummed thoughtfully. “Yes, I see your point. Or—”
Cato smiled hopefully.
“Perhaps I could execute you instead.” Xena grinned. She turned and walked through the gate, back to the palace.
If she had meant for the smile to assuage, for it to blunt the barb of a cheerfully offered death threat, it possessed no such effect. But then, it never did. Cato lightly touched his neck.
The arbiter of mercy
In the Empress's courtyard the gladiator sits, flanked by guards. The same sunlight that is merciless within the confines of the ring is pleasant here—wreathed through fig trees, bequeathing warmth at her feet. Someone in the household plucks awkwardly at a lute. Someone laughs. She stiffens at the tentative approach of a strange, small animal; in looks, it's not unlike the lions she's seen in the ring, albeit black and sleeker. Perhaps this was how the Empress meant to execute her: through means unexpectedly small and uncommonly beautiful. Expecting the worst, she surrenders rough, manacled hands to the animal. And is startled when the beast rubs against her sensually, affectionately.
She knows the Empress watches her, knows it is a matter of time. Will there be a mock trial, or will she be dispatched quickly? Either way, death will be welcomed.
In the interim Xena sulks, bathes, sulks, gruffly dismisses the healer who fusses over the cut on her arm. And sulks a bit more. She still has no idea what to do with the gladiator—seen through the portico sitting on the bench at the north end of the courtyard. Caesar would advocate a quick trial followed by an even quicker execution; no doubt word that a gladiator—no, The Most Famous Gladiator in Rome , apparently—nearly killed the Empress during a sparring match has reached the Forum. At this very moment, she was no doubt losing face throughout the city.
But Caesar is not here; his obsession with Gaul continues unabated and Rome , teeming, mistrustful Rome , is in her hands. And of all the living beings in Rome, the one she trusts most—Timon the cat, a gift from a cowering Ptolemy, tough enough to survive the stormy ride from Alexandria to Rome—has already passed judgment: From the portico she sees that he is currently in thrall to the gladiator's touch, to the gentle, callused fingertips sunk into his black fur.
When the gladiator is brought before her, she still does not quite know what to do. Even though she concedes that perhaps Timon has the right idea: To surrender is to conquer, perhaps? It seemed one of those epigrammatic statements Lao Ma always murmured, a world of susurrus meaning collapsing on itself in the span of a few simple words. In pointed contrast to the unconsciously proud bearing of her body—shoulders back, legs apart, hands clasped at her waist, with the fresh white chiton draping perfectly about her in soft, ardent worship—Gabrielle's head hangs subservient, her eyes once again intent on studying the ground beneath her feet. She expects punishment as surely as anyone, from one second to the next, expects to breathe.
Shame is a contagion, and Gabrielle's shame is palpable; Xena is ridiculously puzzled at experiencing it herself. Here is a magnificent fighter, a real warrior who should be out leading armies into glorious battle and conquering faraway lands, not gutting drunkards, has-beens, and half-lame animals for the amusements of the Roman rabble. A real warrior, Xena thinks bitterly. Like I used to be.
She drums fingers against a pile of parchment on the table before her. In Caesar's absence the city, unfortunately, does not run itself. “As one barbarian to another”—the comment from Cato still stung—”where are you from?”
The response is so low, so soft Xena almost doesn't hear it. “ Potidaea .”
“I've probably passed through it—it's not far from my glorious ancestral home.” Xena thinks of her mother, the tavern, the odor of stale mead and food that always clung to her clothes regardless of how often she beat them against a rock. Even though she's sent her mother enough coin to have the tavern gilded in gold and precious stones, the old woman still works every day and occasionally sends Xena letters threaded with the usual quiet maternal recriminations: Maphias is married now, Xena. Did you know? Of course not. Now he would have been a good choice for you. Absently she brushes a quill against the parchment before her—a work order for cleaning the city's aqueducts. No, she is not a warrior anymore, or even the captain of her own ship. She is what they call an administrator . It's longer and it sounds better than being a warrior or a captain or a sailor, but it is infinitely more boring, even though Caesar had said admiringly that she was an excellent administrator, he always knew she would be, why, she had kept that rag-tag crew aboard that ship of hers so neat, so efficient, so organized—”Wait. I thought you were an Amazon.”
“I am.”
Xena detects a hint of pride in the response, but it doesn't add up. “Look, if Cato is pimping you as an Amazon, fine, but don't try to tell me there are Amazons in Potidaea , of all places.”
The gladiator's shoulders stiffen. “I left the town when I was young. I was adopted by the Amazons.”
“You ‘left'? You ran away?”
“There were slavers—my parents made certain my sister and I escaped.”
Memory falls like a wave. This particular one always trickles in, lapping in unassumingly and pooling insignificant facts at her feet, until it frantically mounts an all-consuming wall so quickly that she cannot escape the eventual drowning crush of it all, the saturation and distortion of every thought, feeling, image. She knows she will never escape it: The battle for Amphipolis, the taste of victory that turned bitter-black in her mouth as she inhaled the ashes from her brother's funeral pyre. “Cortese.”
And she sees the name has a similar effect upon Gabrielle. The gladiator meets her eyes briefly, a single word escapes her lips in a ragged breath. “Yes.”
“You know he's dead now?” Xena asks, with more softness than intended.
This time, shock and surprise mix in with the barely contained fury.
“A Roman legion took out his army at Corinth .” Sadly, it was not a legion she had led; it was not her sword that had sliced through his neck. “The general sent me his head. I didn't find it worthy to place on a shrine near a piss hole, let alone the Forum wall. I threw it into the streets for the dogs to gnaw upon, for the children to use in games. For all I know, they could still be bouncing Cortese's skull up and down the Appian Way .” She pauses. “But you—” Is she crying? “—you wanted to kill him yourself, didn't you?”
“Yes.” There was a world of rage and regret in that sibilant affirmation: The gladiator wishes she had been the one to kill Cortese, that she could have saved her home, her family. Perhaps she thinks if she had, she would still be in Potidaea , she would be married, she would have children, she would be a freewoman with a full life. But it was not meant to be. Xena wishes she could tell the gladiator that there is always a price, but she knows that survivors desperately need the fragile fictions of the lives they never led more than the gods they were supposed to believe in.
Far away from crowded city, the Palatine is quiet. The wind hypnotizes with its tune, moves through the trees with the same grace and confidence of skilled fingers on a lyre, and stops. Xena pushes away from the parchment-laden table and allows silence to solder a finishing touch, an indelible finality, to their tenuous connection. She cannot execute the gladiator. What, then? What do you do with a woman who was alternately wild and broken, whose rare and contradictory qualities added up to a brand of strange innocence? Using Gabrielle as another diversion within the tedious ring of her marriage seems unworthy somehow. And yet. Long ago she tired of the exquisitely bored and boring Roman noblewomen, sneering dignitaries' wives, the unimaginative and uninspiring slaves unable to conceive of pleasure for pleasure's sake. Scarred and muscled, tanned and callused, this creature before her is far more a woman than any she's encountered since setting foot into this damned city.
“So.” Xena rises from the table. “Why do you think I got you cleaned up?”
“For a trial,” Gabrielle speculates quietly, tonelessly.
“Well, if you're really as famous as Cato claims—I don't need you making an ascent to godhood, minor though I'm sure it would be. I don't need all the attention. No, if I were going to have you executed, I would have had my guards kill you earlier, all without a moment's hesitation. And your head would already be dripping from a mount in the Forum.”
Sensing that, for the moment, her life is safe—or perhaps she just does not care anymore for the game of appeasing the Empress—Gabrielle runs sardonic. “So I would rate higher than Cortese, at least.”
Xena's laugh—soft, sputtering—indicates her surprise. “You would,” she said quietly. “You're definitely a better warrior than he.” Now she stands before the gladiator who, if momentarily puzzled, now understands the purpose in the Empress's touch, in the hand that brushes back damp blond bangs from her forehead and travels along the contours of her cheek.
Gabrielle's cheek is surprisingly soft, her sunburnt skin blazing against the back of Xena's knuckles. No doubt due to the slaves' efforts with the strigil, her arms, shoulders and legs glow in warm, flesh tones. This close, Xena can smell the sweet oil, almond-tinged, that they used in bathing the gladiator.
“Well?”
A plum-colored bruise forms a moat of pain around one of those wonderful eyes.
“It could be no worse—than other times.”
Xena bites back a laugh, the retort on her lips— that is certainly the worst compliment I've ever received —dies, and she recoils at seeing in this insulting concession what it really is: an indirect confession, and no less painful because of it. And helplessly, compulsively, she contemplates those “other times.” Did she ever really doubt that Gabrielle's gutted master deserved what he got? Every unwanted attention, every humiliating fuck, every moment on her knees are scars unseen, all the more uglier and unsightly than any on her body, because Xena's brutal imagination forms them.
The Empress sighs. “I don't force anyone into my bed.” She nods at the door. “Go.”
Finally the gladiator looks at her, truly, and those fascinating eyes reflect a mosaic of relief, panic, and blatant suspicion.
And perhaps disappointment? Xena wonders. Oh, you rampant egotist. “Go before I change my mind. Cato will be thrilled to have you back. And make up some lascivious tales while you're at it—tell everyone what horrible, deviant things I did to you in bed. They'll be impressed with you surviving all of it.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why—would I lie about that?” The gladiator pauses, her voice ringing on a note of wonder: “You have treated me well.”
Xena opens the door and the rush of cool air from the hall brings a guard, his crimson cloak aswirl; an edge of the fabric twines gently around the gladiator's wrist, and Xena envies the humble cloak. Beautiful. You're beautiful. “Why, it's good publicity, Gabrielle of Potidaea.”
The delicate balance
Thousands of rose petals? Scraps of red parchment? Poppy blossoms? Whatever they were, they were sacked in huge canvas bags, lumpen in a collective heaviness that only stirred to life whenever slaves darted by—and they did so frequently in the staging area of the triumph, even while creating a generous berth around the Emperor and his mistress and discretely ignoring the former's hands roving affectionately over the latter.
Together, Xena and Caesar—the Emperor uncharacteristically, boyishly exuberant on the eve of his triumph, of presenting his future wife to Rome —circled a motionless gilded chariot. “I forgot to mention this.” As he stood behind her, his hand rested proprietarily upon her hip, his chin upon her shoulder. “While you're riding, old Lycurgus will be with you—”
“Who?” She frowned, hoped that she did not snap at him, for she was alternately nervous, confused, aroused. It was everything she had wanted. But it was happening far too quickly.
“One of my slaves, Xena. The one you threatened to kick.”
His mocking humor relaxed her, and she leaned into his embrace. “That could be any number of them, actually.”
He laughed. She loved the rich, indulgent tone of it. “Listen to me, you beautiful animal.” He nipped at her ear. “This is important. He will be behind you in the chariot, holding the laurel above head. And then he's going to say something to you that may sound strange, but—”
“Ah, I knew it—he does have a drinking problem, doesn't he?”
“No, my dear. It's an incantation. Part of the ceremony.”
“You are going to kill me with all your ridiculous Roman ceremonies.”
His breath and kiss were warm and ticklish against her neck, his embrace tight but not suffocating. It was good, they were good together, but sometimes in nights too thick under the spell of silence and darkness—the strongest breeder of doubts—she wondered if it was all good enough. “No, Xena, listen. He's going to say to you: 'Remember, you are mortal. You are only a woman.'“
This bothered Xena considerably more than practicalities of the ceremony, for already she was dully, oppressively aware that she is only mortal, only a woman; to be constantly reminded of it by a drunkard seemed an annoyance more burdensome than the routine, daily torture of speaking Latin. She squinted skeptically at the chariot, dismally recalling how Lycurgus always reeked of bad wine. “How is he supposed to fit in this damn thing with me?”
“I trust that with your excellent reflexes—” Caesar spun her around and pulled her toward him, admiring the perfect pirouette as she resisted falling into his arms; her hand splayed—an elegant spider—across his cuirass in an effort to maintain her unshakable poise. This mere motion prompted a quiet yet no less significant surge of confidence: To him, this was an affirmation that, despite the impulse of it all, he had made the right decision to choose her. “—it will not be a problem.”
He would always throw her off balance, he thought, and she would always land with impeccable grace.
The woman who will be
The grain of the kitchen table seems finer than the ridges on her hands. Today the ridges are heightened into vermillion relief by thin lines of dried blood—cusps around her fingernails, inlets along her knuckles. She makes study of the lines, reading them slowly, carefully; her hands are a primer on death. Today's object lesson is what to do when a fellow student tries to take the one thing you've decided will never be taken from you again, even if it is also the one thing you cannot imagine anyone wanting from you ever again. So you beat him to death with a rock and your bare hands. You breathe fear into every living creature within your reach and awe into the man who owns you. The lessons limn over one another with each passing day. Why wash your hands?
And then Cato's youngest daughter, Adriana, skips into the kitchen and places Gabrielle's wrist in the gentlest manacle ever—her own soft, young hand—and tugs with insistent playfulness.
Gabrielle looks up from the lesson. Keeping her in his home with his family is a perfectly calculated risk on Cato's part: A house of women soothes the savage in all of us, he had said. Blessed as he is, and with a daub of merciful luck, Cato is correct. For in Adriana she sees much of her own sister, Lila—so much that she believes she must be remembering Lila's qualities incorrectly, or somehow imposing them wrongly upon this sweetly bullying, spoiled girl, or just indulging in the kind of wishful thinking that blindly, happily intrudes upon the relentlessness of not only other memories, but her own reality.
Or maybe all of it.
“Come,” the girl says. “Don't you want to see the woman who will be the Empress?”
Gabrielle smiles briefly, shakes her head shyly.
“Don't be silly!” Adriana pulls harder, and is not above contorting herself comically to amuse the slave, twisting like a skein of silk caught in a fierce wind, until Gabrielle relents and rises.
Yes, she is a pet—the beast adored, an Amazon gladiator-in-training, a tax break thanks to a new law passed by Caesar, better protection than a dog. She trains every day, sleeps on a pallet in the kitchen, is constantly plied with food by Cato's daughters. This morning the girls had employed her in a taste test of dates from different sellers in the city. The ones from Lydia are better, aren't they, Gabrielle?
She had agreed.
Cato and his wife, Adriana Major, are already on the balcony, waiting for a glimpse of Caesar's Greek lover. Scant days ago his triumph entered the city and this exotic woman, who rode as proudly as he did, was at his side, bedecked in armor, weapons, and colorful clothes. Since then the news reader in the Forum reported that her Latin was acceptable, her teeth in remarkably good condition, and that Caesar had spoken before the Senate on how she was an “important new ally to Rome .” Rumors had it that he had already undertaken the delicate operation of divorcing his wife, Calpurnia, who was from a respected, well-connected family.
Public opinion, of course, was divided among the loyalists and those who favored an alliance with the Greeks that a marriage with Xena would bring. Regardless, all were curious to witness Xena walk, presumably unafraid. among the people. Apparently it had been her idea to conduct a walking tour of the city, bit by bit, to familiarize herself with the streets and the people, for the plebes to see that she is no monstrous barbarian.
Noise from the crowd swirls through the air. Cato stretches his stubby neck. First, a small brace of soldiers push into the intersection. Then: “That's her.” A throb of excitement ripples his voice.
She stands apart from everyone, even the soldiers, and quietly surveys the streets. She is tall, wears black and gold armor and a cape, and a sword hangs at her side. Her black hair mimics the subtle fluttering of her cape. Despite her imperious bearing, she smiles easily. She recognizes someone in the crowd and walks over to Gurges the merchant, who is there with his young son. After a brief exchange with the merchant she kneels and speaks with the boy.
“Working the crowd, very good,” Cato murmurs.
Adriana Major concedes, “She is very attractive.”
Cato sighs in rapturous agreement, which only makes his patient wife raise an amused eyebrow. “What? I was only thinking of poor Calpurnia! You know she won't marry again.”
“Poor Calpurnia, my foot,” scoffs Cato's wife. “She'll be fine. She has more money than the Senate combined.”
“True enough.” Cato falls silent for a while—until he is stuck by a brilliant master plan: “Our soon-to-be Empress is a fighter, they say. She may need some bodies to practice with.” As if sensing that Gabrielle is standing behind him and flexing a hand that feels achingly empty without a weapon in it—as indeed she is—he turns abruptly to address her: “But not you. I haven't gotten my money out of you yet, girl.”
Adriana Major, who has clearly reached that stage in marriage where the moral shortcomings of one's spouse are more amusement at best and irritant at worse and not a vast failure of character, chuckles. “You never stop, do you?”
And he, by turns equally affectionate and oblivious, can only reply: “Never, love.”
Gabrielle watches the woman who will be the Empress move along down the street and out of sight. If she had been an innkeeper's daughter in Amphipolis—as they claim of this Xena—would she now be poised to rule the world? Were she and Xena different sides of the same coin? Why even contemplate it? Mere foolishness to think such a thing, to envision her image smelt upon brass. Then she wonders if Xena is truly fond of the man she is rumored to marry, as fond of him as Cato is of his wife. Never, love. Never love.
The woman in the distance recedes from view. And Adriana, who possesses a bright future as a merchant's wife, is all business as she once again tugs at Gabrielle's arm: “Servia and I have some pomegranates for you to try now.”
Prelude to the afternoon with Faustina
She had wanted to wear armor to her wedding.
The advisors had protested frantically; even Caesar himself had buried his face in his hands, as if his nascent empire would surely collapse at the sight of him marrying a woman in armor. In the end he was, as usual, undone by indulgence of his lover: He married his fully armored barbarian queen. And the crowd loved it. She was a mate worthy of a strong emperor, a conquering city.
That was then, in a time before he started tinkering with the calendar and constantly mulling over his legacy, before his obsession with Britannia. Now Xena wants to wear an appropriate yet stunning dress for a woman who will barely register her presence—let alone, desire her—in a crowd of riff-raff as she, that infuriatingly gifted and beautifully inscrutable gladiator, fights for her life in the ring. Threaded through the days that have passed since she was not only defeated publicly but privately by the gladiator is the single, niggling refrain of why. A thousand questions reduced to one ringing word that pursues her through days manic with activity and nights spent in inebriated, insomniac staring games with the cat.
Xena silently demands the attention of Faustina, her “personal attendant” as the more cultivated Romans call their housebound slaves, selected for her duties because she speaks Greek—courtesy of a now-deceased Thracian husband—accented with sardonic Roman truth. The old woman raises an approving eyebrow at the Empress's outfit, but it is not enough. “Does it look all right?” Xena demands doubtfully, runs a hand down the side of the royal, violet-colored peplos. “Good, but not over the top?”
Rotting teeth notwithstanding, Faustina smiles broadly. “You always know how beautiful you look.”
“I'm not fishing for compliments, old woman. Is it appropriate?” Even after so many years, she is always unsure the moment she steps outside the villa—of how she looks, how they will react to her: amusement, disdain, or condescension? Fear? Caesar's spoiling of his prized wife has had its downsides.
“It is lovely. Perfect for the day.” The attendant's gnarled fingers resume their nimble sewing, and then stop abruptly. “You are going out?”
“Yes. Which means you are too.”
Faustina glances up, surprised. “Where are we going?”
“Circus Maximus. You get to carry my sword again.” Xena gives her an irritated look. “Don't cut yourself this time.”
Faustina is befuddled. “We're going to the Circus Maximus?” she echoes.
“That's what I said.”
“ Domina, today is for the gladiators.”
“I know.”
“You hate the gladiators.”
“I know.”
“Then—why?”
“Stop dawdling and put on your best rags.”
An epiphany dashes across Faustina's face, the expression not so quick as to avoid the notice of the Empress.
“What?” Xena grunts.
Quickly Faustina assumes a stony, irreproachable expression, predictably copied from a statue of Vesta, but the mystery of the bronze goddess copies poorly onto aging flesh. “Nothing.”
“Faustina, you know I am fond of you, but if you don't tell me what you're thinking, I'll dangle you by the ankles out the window, whereupon you'll lose control of your bladder and your piss will follow an very unfortunate downward trajectory.”
“Greek animal,” Faustina mutters.
“Did you call your husband that as well, dear?”
The slave can think of worse ways to spend her old age than trading teasing insults with the most powerful woman in Rome . Of course, the Empress is accustomed to getting her way, and one wonders to what lengths—defeated, she sighs. “You want to see the gladiator. The Little Gladiator.”
Xena's own personal graffiti squad—a band of mouthy urchins happily incapable of censoring themselves and delighted to tell her that a wall near the baths says she has fellated the entire Senate—has reported no scrawls linking her in any way to the Little Gladiator. The woman knows how to keep silence, Xena thinks. But Faustina? “You're more attentive than I give you credit for,” she concedes with a narrowing of her eyes. “Maybe I should dangle you off the balcony.”
“You know I always keep your secrets!” Faustina protests. “Besides, it was obvious you didn't—with her—at that time.” Squirming under her mistress's oppressive, icy glare, she is helpless in blathering further: “She left your chambers quickly, and with a distinct look of confusion upon her face. Those who leave your chambers are many things, but usually baffled is not one of them. It was—most peculiar.”
“We were discussing Pythagoras's theorems.”
“A unique seduction technique, domina .” Faustina gazes appreciatively at the Empress's dress. “But perhaps a more traditional approach will work.”
“Shut up, old woman.”
Traffic on the Appian is murder and Xena arrives late to the match. The crowd openly admires their now-beloved barbarian empress and cheer at her unexpected arrival. It's something, she thinks. The sun is merciless upon her neck, but she doesn't mind. She squints into the bright, gold ring of the circus. She sighs. Someone interprets this as a protest against the heat and holds a parasol over her. Nothing matters except the woman in the ring—unarmed and trying to outrun the net that licks at her feet and legs like corrugated flames as she makes a final desperate dive and roll toward the only weapon within easy reach and when that weapon, a spear, is in her hand and her body in an elegant torque she throws it with unerring precision toward her challenger, who collapses with the spear quivering in his chest. A black circle of blood slowly unfurls from the fatal wound. And the gladiator remains on her knees, head bowed in helpless exhaustion amid the deafening, roaring, collective siren call of bloodlust that emanates from every being in the Circus Maximus. Except Xena.
The goddess among them
If you can help it, never show weakness. Never bleed too much.
Iolaus himself had said it was worthless advice, because no one can control blood.
She rises from the sand, twisting awkwardly on her heels, and presses the back of her hand against her mouth. No weakness. How many years has Iolaus been gone now? Her mentor, her teacher, the one who said, as long as they underestimate you, you'll move as a goddess among them.
If moving as a goddess includes slow, stately limping. The sun is so hot she can hear it, thrumming against the cartilage of her ears, hissing as it cauterizes an open wound on her shoulder. Her nostrils quiver with the effort of composure, with the task of breathing. The healer lingers near the portal, holding the bowl. She focuses on the bowl, imagines a chalice held by a high priest, or pomegranates held by a beautiful woman— wait, why a woman, why would I think of a beautiful woman? —or the freshest, clearest water, like the streams near her home. The bowl is empty. Her mouth is full.
She had a dream recently, troubling in its happiness: She walked in a forest—younger, hair longer, with a woman who resembled the Empress, a woman who had a marvelous, rich laugh, who seemed happy in her company. Why? Why a woman, why that woman?
In the sheltering cool of the portal, still pursued by a furious legion of whys, she spits a stream of weak, watery blood into the bowl.
With priest-like portentousness, the healer gazes into the bowl. “No tooth.” His disappointing frown is more a dour accusation than any words. “We'd get good coin for a tooth.” Ever since her debut at the Circus, he has waited patiently for the prize of a molar. Something to sell to the adoring masses, the profits split evenly between them.
Gabrielle rubs her jaw. Her misfortune was another person's talisman, a lucky charm sewn into a pouch. Loss into gain, pain into notoriety, life into dreams. Through bitter alchemy the waking world would again that night crystallize into the illusia of fragmented sleep. For the moment she closes her eyes, wishing she were already there.
Good coin
No one in the training camp really knew the woman; only a few knew her name. All that sparred with her needed only to know that she was tall, sinewy, kohl-eyed, and lethal—these facts detailed by those opponents to the ever-bored Charon on their way to the land of the dead. Still, when challenged to a match by the mysterious woman, Gabrielle knew she could not refuse without losing face.
Gabrielle did, however, fleetingly reconsider the values of cowardice when she was on her knees with the woman's arm snaked around her neck in a serpentine death grip. The tiniest contraction of her opponent's arm, the most miniscule reflex, put unbearable pressure on her windpipe. She slackened her body to slip the deadly bind but achieved no success, she tried scraping together a fistful of sand to fling in the woman's face but her fingers could only create helpless eddies and paths in the sand, miniature landscapes worthy of Rome's finest engineers. As the world dimmed a heightened awareness of being cheated flooded through her. This is not—
Before the world went black she thought of ships, strange lands, mythical creatures, gods, battles, someone always at her side. All the stories of her childhood distilled into a final death dream. But she awoke later not in some perfect Elysium but in the camp's infirmary, unable to speak, her neck swaddled in a cloth soaked in a foul-smelling liniment.
Iolaus's one good eye, bright blue with mischief, was the first thing she saw. The old gladiator was sitting on the edge of the cot, smiling. He dribbled cool water from a skin against her lips. “I have to thank you,” he said.
She tried to speak, but could only grunt.
“Oh. Neferi said not to talk. That'll come in a few days. But you know why I give thanks, don't you?”
She was too drained to look inquisitive.
“You finally gave me a good reason to kill that bitch Alti.”
Alti. Why the name reverberated within her, she did not know.
“Cato paid me good coin to watch over you. But this is favorable sign from the gods too, don't you think?” Iolaus smiled again. She had always marveled at the ease with which he did so, why the kindness he possessed had never been leached out of him through years of beatings and hardship. “They only bestow good fortune onto those favored and destined for greatness, Gabrielle. When you are the driving force behind an act for the greater good, it bodes well for you, for everyone connected with you.”
The “greater good”? She had never heard of anything so ridiculously naïve in her life. This strange philosophy, this sunny optimism was distinctly at odds with role she grew into day by excruciating day: a professional murder. She would remain fond of Iolaus until the day he died, and forever grateful for teaching her how to survive in the ring. Even though she could never conclusively decide if he himself were fortunate or foolish. She had a hard enough time discerning the truths of her own life.
The master of the horse
Marc Antony lounges with practiced grace upon a fleet of pillows and gazes with critical languor at a bowl of figs. Finally, much to the relief of the nervous attendant, he chooses one. Even then, spinning within the axis of his grip, the fruit undergoes one last mercurial examination before it is popped into his mouth.
He is rarely so discerning about women, Xena thinks. Indeed, as he had entered the villa earlier he carelessly tossed his cape over Flavia's waiting arms and gave the old woman a smoldering look that would ensure her rapturous dreams for nights on end. The Empress is the exception, of course. Their respective loyalties to Caesar keep those selfish desires in check, beautifully sublimated through sexual gossip that was—based on Antony 's rather graphic descriptions of his conquests—no doubt more gratifying than the actual act itself would have been.
His salacious interrogations, briefly interrupted by slave, now continue: “What about Marcella?”
Irritated by yet another nonsensical scroll from Alexandria about a delay in grain shipments, Xena looks up, scowling. “Who?”
“Agrippa‘s wife.”
“Oh. She makes a horrible face when she climaxes.”
“At least you got her to that point.”
“Yes, but she nearly broke my wrist.”
“Better your wrist than my cock.”
In spite of herself she laughs. The slave brings more figs. She rereads the scroll from Alexandria again, imagining vivid ways of torturing its fey, useless rulers. Antony mutters something about the wine tasting like goatherd spit as his nostrils flare. “Nothing new to report?”
“The Ptolemy are a bunch of shrieking, cowardly little bitches and if I had my way I would kill the lot of them.”
“Even though they are of Greek heritage?”
“Blood is no guarantor of good character.”
“Why Xena, you're quicker than Martial after he's had a flagon of wine.” He gazes wistfully into his now-empty cup.
“I'm not giving you another drop to drink. Now tell me: Did you come all the way from Bithynia to rehash your old conquests with me?”
“Aren't you the least bit curious about the uprising in Bithynia ?”
“Not particularly. If you hadn't been successful in defeating them, you wouldn't be here right now, magister equitum. ” She uses his title mockingly: Master of the horse—Caesar's lieutenant, his right hand. His presence in the city means his power now eclipses hers. It only bothers her when she allows herself to dwell upon it.
“Your Latin becomes better and better.” Antony snags a missive tucked inside his grieve—and sends it sailing into Xena's lap. The vermillion eye of Caesar's broken seal stares up at her. The parchment reveals the distinctive slant, the bold thickness of her husband's hand and his usual arch tone— Stop mucking about in Bithynia, kill them all if you have to, and return to Rome. The time comes for the next move. Await my orders.
The note slips through her curious fingers, and a second round of whys —a welcome distraction from her idle obsession with the gladiator—plague her anew. Along with who, what, and where.
Antony shrugs elaborately. “It's not my fault that your husband writes me more frequently than he does you.”
“'The next move'? What in Hades is he talking about?” You will rule Rome with me, he had said the night he returned for her, as her ship had tilted with seductive precariousness. Long ago she had mastered the art of balance on the sea, but here he was again, as promised—a wandering star, bright and unknown, from which she could navigate a thrillingly new course. It was not the route to power she had ever imagined; she had been far too disillusioned and disciplined to envision anything in life coming to her with ease. But Rome , at her feet? Was she now the bigger fool for accepting rather than rejecting this troublesome bounty?
Antony rises to take his leave as Faustina scurries in with his cape. “Your guess is as good as mine. But I suspect it concerns the ever-present thorn in our sides: Egypt .”
“And yet, he says nothing of it to me.” Is this what you gave up your freedom for?
“You run the city,” Antony replies simply. “Need you worry about conquest as well?”
“ He does.”
“He is Caesar.” The old slave settles the cape over his broad shoulders; he turns with a flourish, nearly knocking Xena over with his cape, as his knuckles graze Faustina's flaccid chin. “Faustina, my dear, if you were twenty years younger—”
“Try thirty,” Xena corrects, as the attendant shoots her a mock-dirty glance.
“—ignore the Empress, my dear. Clearly she has not been serviced in a very long time. But as I was saying, if you were younger, I would indeed give you a night to remember.”
While normally she could parry with the best of them, the old woman only gapes, helplessly silent as statuary.
This impresses Xena. “I'll be damned, Antony . You've left the crone speechless.”
As Faustina totters off in a sexual haze, she admits to herself that it has been too long. How easy would it be to invite Antony to bed? What consequence could there be when it would clearly mean nothing to them? But then, that was the problem—she had no idea, really, what mattered to him. The long, low light from the torches on the wall ennobles his dark beauty, softens the sharp peaks of his eyebrows, his cheekbones. His eyes glow with nonexistent warmth, his lips ripen with the pulsing undercurrent of shadows. If only, she thinks, the entire world could be viewed in the theatre of the vulnerable dark, illuminated by torch and candlelight alone—what a beautiful deception, what a world of inconsequence.
The gladiator, however, needed no such trick of the firelight.
If Antony had sensed her moment of weakness, he allowed it to pass. Losing your touch, Antony . Or am I perhaps too valuable to you somehow? “If I hear anything further from him, you'll know, of course. And—” He smiles, but this time the artistry of the flame cannot remove or transform the cool assurance of the predator, barely perceptible in the twitch of his mouth. “—I shall expect a similar courtesy.”
She echoes both the words and the smile. “Of course.”
He nods at the Caesar's note, abandoned among other parchments. It is an admirable calculation, leaving it with her. “We must be prepared for what follows.”
“Which is?”
Antony laughs. “Do you really think I know any more than you at this point? That wouldn't be any fun at all.” Dramatically elegant as usual, he ruffles his cape in farewell and she is alone with the firelight and the questions that will provide ample tinder for a restless night.