The Beasts In The Arena

by Sophia McDougall

Genres: Fantasy

Synopsis

A gripping short story, set in the world of Romanitas, plus an extended extract of Romanitas, chronicling the fortunes of the Roman Empire in a paralellel modern world . . . The Roman Empire stretches from India in the East to the Great Wall of Terranova in the West. A runaway slave girl with a strange gift sets out to rescue her brother and seize her freedom, while the young heir to the Imperial throne discovers a plot against his life. For all three, the only way to survive may shake the Empire to its roots. A fast-moving, compelling story, brilliantly imagined - CONN IGGULDEN [A] hugely imaginative debut - DAILY MIRROR A thoroughly good read ... vividly imagined ... elegant, lively writing - SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

Release date: August 22, 2019

Publisher: Gollancz

Print pages: 128

Sample

 

 

 

The lion died the same night as the Emperor.

It was Musca’s daughter who found the corpse. Merulina liked strolling through the vivarium in the mornings, would even sometimes take over the feeding from the slaves. Still, she sent the nearest boy to tell Musca, rather than coming herself, and when Musca came, she had already let herself into the cage and was sitting with the lion’s head in her lap, sadly stroking its mane. “Poor old Lollo,” she crooned. Outside the cage, her large white mongrel Caudex was whining softly, gazing reproachfully at the girl and the lion. Not out of sympathy with Lollo, as far as Musca could tell – jealous at the attention Lollo’s body was getting.

Musca grimaced. “Stop that,” he ordered Merulina. “We don’t know he wasn’t diseased.”

“You were just old, weren’t you, Lollo?” Merulina hummed fondly into the beast’s ear, and turned damp eyes to her father. “I always wanted to stroke him,” she said, laying her hand over a heavy golden paw.

The lion had been at the vivarium for fifteen years – most of Merulina’s life. But she had never seen him at work in the arena – that, Musca had always felt, was not a sight for young girls. Natural that she’d be upset, it was a part of her childhood gone, and she’d always been fond of the animals. Musca was sorry too, in a way. He’d certainly lost a valuable asset, though he couldn’t have expected poor Lollo to last many more years. And there was certainly something pathetic about the limp, soft blond corpse with its huge, sad, velvety dead face. Still, he could not forget that the heavy body had been nourished, in part, on human flesh. No one who hadn’t deserved it, surely, but still, he could remember the screams. He shivered, watching his daughter fondle the thick mane, and felt strange, primal relief that the creature he’d owned all this time was dead at last.

“I’ll have him stuffed,” he told Merulina. “You can stroke him then if you must.”

The news of the second death did not arrive until the next day, but then it flashed at electric speed across the longscript cables of the Roman world.

Musca was in the arena that morning with Balbillus, who ran the human side of the business’s modest spectacles, discussing how many of their small stock of hyenas they could reasonably afford to let the bestiarius kill. Musca liked to hang on to as many of his animals as long as he could. You could make more money out of exhibiting an animal regularly over the course of its life than by throwing it away, however dramatically, in a single day – especially nowadays. Balbillus had at first resented having to justify every beast that set hoof or paw in the ring, let alone died there, but the lower, steadier returns the vivarium brought in had helped keep the little arena in profit through some hard years.

“You can have the big one in the show. Just don’t kill it,” Musca was saying, “The kids like that one. We need it, especially with no Lollo.”

Then Balbillus’ wife Sarria came running across the sand waving a news-sheet and calling her husband’s name. Musca only glimpsed the headline before it was in Balbillus’ hands.

HAIL EMPEROR NASENNIUS

“Gods above,” said Balbillus, and covered his mouth.

“What?” said Musca, looking over his shoulder. For a foolish, dizzy second, he almost wondered if he’d been getting the Emperor’s name wrong all these years. Then he seized the sheet of paper and, after frowning through several columns of shrill praise, found what he was looking for: The Emperor Arcadius has died after a short illness. It was in very small print.

“Nasennius,” wondered Musca, “I’d never even heard of him.”

The shocked look briefly vanished from the couple’s faces: they met each other’s eyes, complicit in exasperated amusement and Musca flushed. “The Emperor’s brother, Gaius Musca,” said Sarria patiently,

Balbillus looked virtuous. “I’ve always said a citizen ought to keep up with what’s going on in Rome.”

“Well, I know Arcadius had a son,” Musca protested irritably. It was true, though, he’d never followed politics with any interest. And he was not particularly inclined to mourn for Arcadius: the main thing Musca knew about him was that subsidies for arenas, especially those out of Rome, had dwindled away to almost nothing. Still, wasn’t this happening rather faster than it was supposed to? He read the sentence about Arcadius again. “I wonder if that’s the kind of illness that comes on after being smothered or stabbed?”

Balbillus let out an anxious giggle, but swallowed it abruptly. “Stop that,” he hissed.

“I’m just joking,” said Musca.

“It’s a stupid joke.”

“Oh, come on.” But they all three stood quietly for a moment, listening to the sounds of the slaves sweeping the sand and the gladiators practicing with their clubs, and trying to gauge who was within earshot.

“Let’s just hope,” said Balbillus, carefully, “that the new Emperor likes the games,”

A week later, a longscript message arrived.

“TO GAIUS MUSCA, GREETINGS FROM QUINTUS FALERIUS, ASSISTANT ARBITER OF PUBLIC CELEBRATIONS. THE EMPEROR WISHES TO COMMISSION YOUR LION FOR HIS INAUGURAL GAMES.”

Musca moaned a protest to the gods.

There had been offers for Lollo from Rome before, of course. There were plenty of rich men who couldn’t see why a little southern city like Lupiae should have a lion of its own when Rome hadn’t. “But why should Rome have everything?” Musca had always said. “If they want to see a lion let them come here.” The coast railway would take them most of the way. While Arcadius might have been flatly uninterested in the fate of the arenas, he had, at least, spent a lot of money on the new transport machinery.

But an Imperial commission was a different matter. And could Lollo not have held on another week?

But there was nothing to do but tell the truth, and he sent the boy to the longscript office with the reply:

“PROFOUNDLY REGRET UNABLE TO ASSIST. LION DEAD."

There was no reply.

Musca decided to forget it had ever happened, and didn’t mention it to anybody. Balbillus was worried enough about the business as it was, and there was no point in spreading the disappointment to him too. Merulina, on the other hand, would probably only have been glad that at least poor Lollo had been able to die quietly at home, and Musca wasn’t in the mood for hearing it.

Oh well, he told himself. You can’t lose what you never had.

Although the fact remained that he had lost Lollo, and even long past his prime, Lollo had still been one of the vivarium’s chief attractions. You had to go a long way, these days, to see another lion.

But the sting faded. Musca read about Nasennius’ acclamation in a news-sheet and thought it didn’t really make much difference who was Emperor. Lollo’s death continued to affect his daily life much more. He and Balbillus had agreed that when Lollo came back from the tannery he’d be placed, on a small podium, in the lobby. But that still left the question of what to put in Lollo’s place.

With all the unrest in Africa, it was harder than ever to come by large animals.

“We might be able to get a Tupian Serpent,” he suggested to Balbillus. “There’s one in a shipment coming across to Lapurdum. But you never know if they’ll survive the journey and if it does, Rome might start bidding for it.”

“How are my boys supposed to fight a serpent anyway?” complained Balbillus. “How are you going to train it? What if we put it in front of a crowd and it doesn’t do anything?”

“Lollo didn’t do much, towards the end – but he still kept the punters coming in.”

He continued working in his study in the little lodge at the entrance to the vivarium until late into the evening, and he was finally about to put out the gas lamps and go downstairs, when one of the slaves tapped on the door, and said in a faintly incredulous tone: “There’s someone here from Rome to see you, sir. From the Palace, he says.”

Musca’s first thought was not of the longscript exchange with the assistant arbiter, but of that foolish crack he’d made over the news-sheet the day of Nasennius’ succession. No one could really care what the Praepositus at a little southern arena that didn’t even have a lion any more said, could they?

He went downstairs, something chilly twisting in his gut.

A tall, gaunt young man with dark curls ruthlessly slicked down against his skull stood in the lobby. His expression was calm, his dress neat and sober, but his lips were tight between the long nose and chin, and there was faint damp flush across his beaky face, which perhaps accounted for the impression of tightly restrained untidiness, about to erupt.

“All right,” he said. “What have you got?”

“Excuse me?”

“I’m Falerius. I sent you a longscript,” said the stranger impatiently. “If you haven’t got a lion, what have you got?”

“Oh! Well, of course, for the Emperor, I’d be happy to do whatever I can,” said Musca.

Falerius only nodded and bared clenched teeth in what might possibly have been intended as an encouraging smile.

“I’ve got a couple of crocodiles,” offered Musca.

“No, no, crocodiles are no good; everyone’s got crocodiles. He’s seen crocodiles,” said Falerius rapidly, raking a large, raw-knuckled hand through his hair and then grimly smoothing it down again, leaving a stray curl protruding from the side of his head like a single horn.

“Well, I’d better show you round,” said Musca.

They took electric lanterns and went out to the vivarium.

The night was warm and Merulina had finished shutting up the monkeys and was walking Caudex past the enclosure that held Bellona the sea-elephant.

She said politely “Good evening,” but Falerius’ eyes were instantly fixed critically on Bellona and he did not appear to hear. Merulina cocked her head curiously at her father.

“He needs a beast for the Colosseum, urgently,” said Musca in an undertone, not wanting to disturb Falerius’ scrutiny.

“Not Bellona!” said Merulina, springing up as if to throw herself to the sea-elephant’s defence

“That’s what she’s for, Merulina,” sighed Musca. “She’s a … a warrior, not a pet.”

This was partly for Falerius’ benefit, but Falerius was frowning dubiously. “Striking creature,” he said, voice throbbing with strain. “But how fast can it move?”

“Faster than you think. Of course, she’s a female, so she’s not quite as aggressive. It takes a certain amount of staging to set up a decent fight with a sea-elephant, but it is possible …”

“That’s not what he wants,” groaned Falerius, sounding so distressed that Merulina began to soften slightly.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“Things are a little tense in Rome, what with everything,” said Falerius through his teeth. “And … I … I’ve landed in this job rather … abruptly. There were supposed be some rhinoceri coming up from Lundae, but the rebels sabotaged the train line … They should never have tried to transport them that way in the first place.”

“Well, there are always the hyenas,” said Musca, soothingly. “They can be quite nasty when they’re roused.”

Merulina had no particular affection for any of the hyenas, so she led the way to their enclosure without complaint. But Falerius grimaced at them mournfully and said, “Scavengers.”

“They’re not just scavengers. You don’t want to get on the wrong side of them, I can tell you. Anyway, they’re definitely fast – you can stage a perfectly decent beast-hunt with hyenas, we do it here.”

“I want a fighting animal,” said Falerius. “Not a hunt, not waste disposal. Something dramatic, something worth watching. Something I can pit a fighter against in an honest duel.”

“Well, to be frank, other than bull-fights… you don’t get a lot of that sort of thing any more.”

“I know you don’t, why do you think I’m here?” Falerius said wildly, with another grab at his hair. “What is that?”

He was pointing at a fat, grey-feathered, hook-beaked bird pecking at its feed in its cage. It stood almost a metre high.

“That’s a Menuthasian Pigeon,” said Merulina, proudly. “We have two. They’re quite friendly.”

Falerius stared at it hollowly. “I am so fucked,” he announced.

Musca scowled. “Will you kindly not use that kind of language in front of my daughter?”

Falerius didn’t listen: “I can’t put an oversized fucking pigeon in front of the Emperor. Especially not a friendly one. Oh gods! This is a disaster. He wanted a lion. He’s obsessed with having a lion! He remembers lions from when he was six! And I’m going to have to tell him there aren’t any left!”

“What?” said Merulina.

Falerius turned suddenly to Musca: “When did it die?” he demanded.

“What?”

“The lion,” hissed Falerius despairingly.

“The nineteenth,” said Musca.

Falerius went pale. “Don’t tell anyone else that,” he breathed. “Gods above, you don’t want that to get around.”

“What? Why?”

“The Emperor, Heaven bless him,” said Falerius carefully, “is a man who likes his omens and portents, shall we say. Letting him know the last lion in the world died the day he took the throne is not going to go down well. You don’t want to be anywhe. . .