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Lydon has learned, over the years, that there are many ways for a man to die, and that there are just as many ways for a man to kill.
He knows first hand how at that moment the world shrinks to the confines of the arena, to the gladiator and his opponent, the roar of the crowd so deafening that it feels in itself a living creature, one which works its way inside a man to become part of him, so that all qualms are forgotten, all guilt is gone, and there is nothing but the weapon in his hand, an extension of his limb fused fast to bone and flesh, and when he strikes, he’ll taste the blood that is spilt on his tongue and in the back of his throat as though it is his own blood he is spilling. As though his father was right after all.
It’s contagious, that hunger to see blood spilled, the desire to be the one spilling it. Each man and woman in the crowd envies him in those moments, just as they envy the men who face death well, but for all that they still leave thanking the gods that they’re not the ones fighting and dying in the gladiators’ places.
Sometimes he wonders if that is the reason why Glaucus regards the games with distaste – not from moral qualms, but because he fears the man he’ll be once he’s there. Better men than he have found themselves swept up in the desire for bloodshed, so that they chant and howl along with the rest. It's a kind of irresistable madness, a divine spark with its origins buried in the heart of every man, and it’s something that, until now, Glaucus has never had to face.
Lydon should hate Glaucus. Sometimes, deep in the night when he cannot sleep, he tells himself he does.
* * *
"It's probably a mistake," Glaucus mused, his voice thick with wine, "to be jealous of a goddess."
"Unpious at the very least," Lydon agreed, and Glaucus flashed him a rueful grin, bringing his cup to his mouth. It left a stain of red wine on his upper lip and he sucked it away, unthinking, as the serving girl approached, fussing around their table. She was Greek, dark-eyed and lovely, and Glaucus exchanged a few words with her in their shared tongue. Whatever he said left her flushed and laughing, until another customer called to her and she forced herself away from their table with evident reluctance. Another heart captured, Lydon thought.
They’d moved on from Stratonice’s bar to the Elephant, which was large enough and busy enough that they could fool themselves into thinking themselves anonymous, as if a man as recognisable as Lydon could ever be anonymous in Pompeii. They were drinking alone now: one by one the others had peeled away, Lepidus had joined a game of dice, and then Clodius, who had reacted to the news of Glaucus’s heartbreak over Ione with sullen brooding as though it were his own heart that had been broken. He’d left not long after Sallust had queried whether, since Lydon had once been Diomed’s slave boy, and given that he and Diomed's daughter Julia were of an age, might they not have been childhood playmates, and had she therefore ever had cause to visit her dearest friend at the gladiator barracks? It was phrased innocently enough, but the salacious meaning was clear, even if its intended victim was not. Lydon could not tell who was the butt of the joke: himself, Julia, or the stony-faced Clodius. Perhaps all three.
He was relieved they were gone. Even sober he would have struggled to follow half of their conversation, and only Glaucus made any concessions to his presence. They weren’t quite so foolish as to openly insult him to his face, but their thinly veiled comments reminded him painfully of the humiliation he had experienced at Diomed’s banquet, the insult disguised as an honour, as if he were as much the hired entertainment as the dancing girls and acrobats. They’d mocked Glaucus too, demanding to know, since he seemed so fond of fighting with gladiators, whether he had intentions of testing his skills in the arena.
He and Glaucus had met near the Theatre again that afternoon, another impromptu wrestling session, one in a long line of wrestling sessions which were beginning to feel less and less impromptu each time they met.
This time they’d been close enough to the barracks that Lydon could hear the distant bellow of the others training in the yard, the clash of metal on metal and a voice that could only be Marcus one moment berating an unfortunate soul, the next pleading with the goddess Fortuna to take pity on his incompetent fighters who were barely fit for beast slaying, and while he was in search of divine answers where the hell was Lydon?
Lydon had been well out of it, enjoying himself for once. As ever wrestling with Glaucus was almost like being a boy again, with nothing to tax his mind other than the pleasure of pushing his body to his limits against someone who he would never be called on to fight. He missed his boyhood, those long-off days when he’d grabbed every opportunities to shirk his duties and play (and there were opportunities: even Diomed, usually fretful of being cheated in the way people used to cheating others often were, understood that slave children had to play from time to time).
He recalled one sweltering summer afternoon, playing tug-of-war with the dog while Diomed’s daughter forgot herself and shrieked with laughter when he’d jerked the rag free and tumbled to the ground. Diomed had ruffled his hair, uncharacteristically indulgent. A strong boy, your son, he'd said to Lydon's father, and Lydon had grinned, breathless and only a little rueful as he scrambled to his feet, laughing until the moment he caught the look of fear in his father's eyes.
What a stupid little fool he’d been, and no less a fool in his first days with the ludus. If he was good enough, they said, then as a gladiator he might earn enough to buy his freedom, and he’d been stupid enough to confuse ‘good’ with ‘fast’ or ‘quick’ or ‘strong’, all of which it meant, but what it really meant was killing. They’d dangled hope before him like a ripe fig, honey-sweet and succulent, and he’d grasped for it all too willingly, only to realise too late that the fig was over-ripe and held the taint of rot.
Lydon wished he were sober. He never much liked drinking: each coin spent on wine was a coin that could not be saved, and he disliked the man he became when he drank, how it dredged up all his bitterness and loosened his tongue, only he hadn’t Sporus’s skill for sharp-tongued humour: the cutting remarks that sounded so clever in his head before he spoke came out sounding peevish.
Perhaps sensing the turn his thoughts were taking, Glaucus leaned into him, raising his voice over the noise of the crowd. "You should pay no attention to those fools I call friends, Lydon," he said. "They were laughing at me far more than they were you."
"I doubt that."
Glaucus laughed, turning to him. "It’s true," he said, and Lydon eyed him, thinking uncharitably that Glaucus could afford not to mind the insults and jibes, blessed as he was by the circumstances of his birth. He hoped his bitterness didn’t show on his face. "Probably more. Because I’m a Greek with the temerity to be wealthier than they are…"
"And handsome," Lydon added dryly, "and nobly-born."
Glaucus turned to him, his hand laid modestly over his heart. Glaucus was repressing a smile, his expression almost self-deprecating, but not quite: instead, he absorbed the flattery as though it were nothing but his right. Then he did smile, rising above the mockery of his friends with as much ease as he rose above the filth that clogged the streets of Pompeii.
"I’ve come to learn it’s a Roman pastime, a way of evening the score, or at least making themselves feel better about not being able to even the score any other way. They might pretend to scorn you, Lydon, but in reality they’re bitterly jealous that they can’t match you in athletics, any more than I can–"
Lydon opened his mouth to protest and Glaucus waved it away, laughing. "Don’t bother trying to flatter me, gladiator. We both know it’s true."
"If they spend so much of their time laughing at you, why call them friends?"
"For what reason does anyone call a man friend? They mean well, better than you might imagine from their idle cruelty. Besides–" Glaucus grinned, sipping his wine, "–as pastimes go I suspect it’s something else the Romans stole from the Greeks." He opened his mouth to say something more, then he caught himself, as if he’d thought better of it.
"What?" Lydon said.
"I was about to ask how many of your fellow gladiators you called friends," Glaucus said with some reluctance. "Given that…" He stopped, and ran his tongue around his mouth.
"Given that I might have to kill them? Or they might have to kill me?"
"That was in bad taste. I’m sorry." Glaucus’s gaze fixed on him again. "Do you have friends amongst their number?"
"Not as many as I’d like."
"That’s a pity."
"Someone," Lydon said, gazing down at the surface of the wine, "once told me it was safer that way. For men like us."
"For gladiators, you mean." Glaucus considered this. "It’s probably good advice. Although it does strike me as a lonely way to live."
Lydon snorted. "I said the same thing." But it had been good advice, he thought, and that was a truth he’d had to learn the hard way.
The wine had loosened both their tongues, and although Lydon wasn’t entirely willing in the matter he’d seemed to have lost the ability to steer the conversation away from one of the few things they had in common other than athletics.
He found himself talking of thow he’d come to first take notice of Nydia in Stratonice’s bar about a month after he’d been sold into the ludus, long before he’d bought his freedom. He’d been a callow boy, uncomfortable in his own skin, not wanting to insult Fortuna by bragging, but flushed with pride with his own growing skills, and painfully aware of Sporus, very deliberately not watching him across the busy bar. Nydia had been kind to him, as she was kind to everyone. Lydon, then more curious than attracted, had studied her over the rim of his cup, safe in the knowledge that she couldn’t see him watching her, and thinking he couldn’t have imagined someone more different to Sporus if he’d tried.
That part of it at least he wasn’t quite drunk enough to share with Glaucus.
"And you loved her from that moment," Glaucus said, smiling as if he already understood.
"No." Lydon's voice was too curt. "I loved someone else. Or thought I did."
Understanding flashed in Glaucus's eyes, the expression who knew too well how fickle the works of Venus could be. "What was her name?" he asked, reaching for the wine.
A fraction of an instant less and Lydon’s hesitation would have been entirely indistinguishable from the normal ebb and flow of a conversation already somewhat strained through drink and circumstance. "I've forgotten," he lied. Badly.
Glaucus gave him a steady look. Something seemed to pass between them, some glimmer of understanding.
Lydon was drunker than he realised. When they left the bar, the ground seemed to tremble beneath his feet. It felt less like one of the small earthquakes that plagued the city, the scars of which were still being patched up, than the way the ground had seemed to continue to pitch and toss beneath his feet when he’d returned to dry land after a trip on Glaucus’s boat. It reminded him of the way he continued to dream of the arena for days after a game, waking up with the impact of a strike still aching in his joints, not an earthquake, but the way he’d felt after returning to dry land after a trip on Glaucus’s boat, feeling the pitch and sway of the deck in his bones.
He straightened, drawing in air that was mostly clear of the reek of the oil lamps and sweat in an attempt to clear his head which was doomed to failure from the start. They had to extricate themselves from the attentions of a couple of women from the lupanar, recognisable in their cheap togas, and once they’d shaken them off, they both had to make room for some other patrons pass inside, pressing together to make room on the narrow pavement rather than risk falling into the reeking gutter.
Something was going to happen. Lydon could feel the anticipation – or was it dread? – clenching like a fist in his chest, closing around his heart and throat all at once. A sudden surge of longing rushing through his veins, like the flood of adrenaline before the games.
What he ought to do, what he would have done if he wasn’t drunk enough to let the bitterness take hold of him, was return to the barracks, crawl into his own bed, alone, and let sleep claim him.
By now they both knew he wouldn’t.
* * *
Glaucus’s garden was a peaceful place, sheltered from the noise and dirt of the streets of Pompeii. During the day, no doubt it would have been a riot of colour and beauty, but now it was dark, the rich colours faded to shades of grey and silver, but the flowers had been chosen with care, night-blooming to ensure the air was richly layered and perfumed with scent. No question whose gentle hand was responsible.
Nydia was gone, remaining with her mistress Ione. Glaucus had told him this casually, as though it hardly mattered, but he kept his back to Lydon as he spoke.
Gone or not, he could still feel her presence in the flowers and the smell of the earth, as though if he turned his head he might see her sitting on the ground, plaiting flowers into a wreath, her face composed as her fingers twisted the stems with artless confidence and brushing over the brushed silk of the petals. The moments when she was happiest. She carried it with her afterwards, in the semi-circles of dirt beneath her fingernails, in the expression of peace that would linger on her face for hours afterwards, her unseeing eyes focused inwards, towards the garden she held cradled in her heart, as though so long as that remained there nothing could touch her. He’d envied her that inner peace, wondered if it wasn't that which had drawn him to her, more than the woman herself. Just as he’d wondered if it wasn’t this garden she loved, rather than Glaucus.
Had Lydon been more sober he might have found it simpler to untangle his regret at her absence from his relief that she was gone.
He didn’t want to see her here, or to be reminded of how Glaucus had trapped her like a songbird, caught her and tamed her and set her in a gilded cage from which she’d never want to escape. More to the point, he didn’t want her to see him here, even though he couldn’t be sure whether she’d guess his reasons.
He should never have come here. He should have returned to the barracks after all, to his cell with the flaking plaster scrawled with obscenities and the air thick with the reek of sweat and seed and fear, of too many men living in too small a space. And he wondered idly, although he knew he was being uncharitable and bitterly so, whether Glaucus had ever taken a breath of air so laden. He doubted it. Not so much as a single breath, even once in his entire life.
Then he turned, and saw Glaucus watching him, leaning against a column. How long he’d been standing there, Lydon didn’t know.
"It’s a beautiful garden," he said too quickly, wondering how much he’d shown of his true feelings. Whatever his true feelings even were.
"It’s all Nydia’s work," Glaucus said as if Lydon might not have already known. "I only wish she could see it for herself.
I would have given her a garden, Lydon thought, and tried to swallow down the bitter knot in his throat. As if whatever scrubby patch of land he might have been able to spare her on their farm could ever match up to a place such as this, which had been set aside purely for pleasure and tended for with care and love.
"I can see her hand in it," he said and wondered why exactly they were still talking about Nydia.
Glaucus took a sip of wine, tilting his head up towards the moon. The silver light bathed his face, and in that silver light he seemed to have become as still and cool as marble, as though with his painted hair and eyes and the lips stained berry-dark with wine he’d been fashioned by craftsmen of skill, carved out from unliving stone with each perfect curl exquisitely detailed.
If Lydon were of a more cynical bent, he might have wondered whether Glaucus wasn’t entirely aware of the effect, but when he took a step towards Glaucus and those painted eyes shifted towards him, Lydon stopped dead, his mouth suddenly dry.
Glaucus’s house seemed unnaturally still, even for the house of a bachelor. Lydon might have thought the two of them entirely alone, as though Glaucus’s slaves – and surely a man as wealthy as him must have slaves – had melted away. He’d never known privacy like this, not in Diomed’s house, which had been a riot of constant noise for as long as he could remember, and certainly never in the barracks, where everyone knew each other’s business, the friendships and rivalries, who was fucking who, which of them wept at night.
Glaucus met Lydon's gaze with a challenging one of his own. His expression was a troubled mixture of apprehension and amusement, his lips pressed into a line that suggested he was trying not to smile. He held out a cup of wine, and as Lydon reached out to take it, knowing that it was unwise to keep drinking, that he ought to leave, that he had no business being here of all places, their fingers overlapped.
Of all the places his mind could have gone, it was to Sporus, a time long ago when the accursed man, his breath wine-sweet, had pressed his hand over Lydon’s chest, and not just on his chest but directly over his heart. Unexpectedly gentle.
Guard your heart, Lydon.
He wanted to bring his hands up to Glaucus’s face, to touch him as he imagined Nydia might, and Glaucus, as if sensing his thoughts, pushed himself away from the column. The breeze felt like breath on his skin. Lydon closed his eyes, brushed the pads of his fingers against Glaucus’s cheek, as lightly as he could. His touch would be rough, his fingers calloused. He was half-expecting Glaucus’s skin to be as smooth and chill as marble, but instead found it warm, with the slight prickle of a coming beard.
Glaucus tilted his head back. Lydon’s fingers pushed into his curls at the base of his skull, and he brought his mouth to Glaucus’s. Coming beard or not, his lips were as soft as a woman’s, and when he gripped Lydon’s wrist the skin of his hand was smooth, free of callouses.
He was wealthy and spoilt, and Lydon should have hated him. He’d tried to, after Glaucus had bought Nydia, saving her by making her his property, body and soul, but every time, without fail and no matter how bitterly he’d tried to kindle those sparks of hatred, they died off before they could catch and grow.
It had never been in Lydon’s nature to hate for long – forgiveness came too easily to him, as much as he might wish it otherwise. There was too much of his father in him.
Guard your heart, Lydon, Sporus had told him. But he didn’t need to guard his heart, not with Glaucus, who for all the mockery of his friends would never have to fight in the arena. It was a mistake, of course, like so many things were, but Glaucus would never spend the last moments of his life choking on his own blood, while the jeers and baying of a bloodthirsty crowd hounded him into the afterlife, and it was this truth he clung to as Glaucus gripped his hand and tugged him between the columns of the portico and inside.
Except of course that it wasn’t true at all.
* * *
It’s his father he blames at first when he learns that it is Lydon, of course it is Lydon, who is to act as executioner: his father and his father’s god and every Christian in Pompeii, made scapegoats in this just as they are in everything else.
Glaucus’s cell is a cramped squalid little place and it reeks. Frightened men exude their terror in their sweat and piss and the stink of fear has sunk deep into the walls, so thick in the air Lydon can taste it in the back of his throat. Breathing shallowly through his mouth doesn’t help, but he’s used to the smell. He’s grown more than familiar with it over the years.
He kneels on the ground by the window that opens high up the wall of the cell. Glaucus’s fellow prisoner, Olinthus, is already asleep, and Glaucus is drowsing, although he starts awake at Lydon’s arrival and rises to his feet.
"Lydon," he says, almost smiling as he boosts himself up to the window. "To what do I owe this pleasure?"
"They want me to fight you."
Glaucus nods as if he’s expected this all along. His shoulders droop, and Lydon can’t tell if it’s from despair or relief. "I'm sorry for that," he says. "Although I suppose it’s preferable to being torn apart by the lions. I am glad to see you, Lydon, I just wish you could have brought some better news."
"So do I," Lydon says. He eyes Glaucus more closely, taking note of the grime matting his dark curls. "Have you been able to sleep?"
"No, but not for want of trying. When I drop off, the ground shakes or I dream of my blood soaking into the sand or one of the lions..." His voice breaks with bleak despair, then he swallows and forces himself on. "I'm sorry it will be you, but at the same time, I find myself relieved, because I know you will be merciful and make it quick." He squeezes Lydon's arm. "I also know you have little choice in the matter. It's cruel, for you as well as for me, and I'm sorry for you, Lydon."
"Sorry for me?" In disgust, Lydon shakes his head, a quiet wave of bitterness sweeping through him. If he was in the cell, he might have gripped Glaucus by the shoulders and tried to shake some sense into the damned fool. Instead he looks away, clenching his jaw. "Why aren't you angry?"
Glaucus gives a soft laugh. "I am angry. Believe me, I am, but it is Arbaces who deserves my anger, not you." He casts a glance over his shoulder. "Perhaps I've just been spending too much time with Olinthus. I'm not much of a Stoic, and the gods know I wouldn't make much of a Christian…"
Olinthus’s influence, damn him. Lydon was afraid of this. He knows too well how persuasively Olinthus speaks of Christ, the seductive tale he weaves of forgiveness and all-encompassing love. It’s as treacherous as the net of a retiarus, and the illusion of hope it offers to the desperate is just as easily underestimated until it's too late, particularly for one who has never been desperate before. Glaucus has never once in his entire blessed life faced hardship. It's not a life that could ever have prepared him to die in this way, in infamy and humiliation. There are some advantages to having been born a slave.
He’s already shaking his head, urgently lowering his voice. "Listen to me. When it comes to it, I want you to fight me."
Glaucus almost laughs. His smile is genuine. "And if they wanted us to wrestle," he says, "I might have a chance. A slim one. You were being kind when you said we were well matched."
"Fight me–"
And instantly the smile is gone. Glaucus’s eyes flood with sudden anger. "And give them what they want?"
"What they want is a spectacle," Lydon insists. "We can give them that. If we fight well enough, it might be enough to satisfy them. Enough that they might be willing to spare you. It's your only chance, Glaucus."
"My only chance is that I am an innocent man. If I fight, it will be an admission of guilt. I am not going to fight you, Lydon."
He growls deep in his throat and slams his palm against the bars in frustration. The worst of it is, he can already picture it, can see Glaucus across the sand, watching him approach. Throwing down his weapon and bearing his throat. "Glaucus–"
"Don’t ask me to, Lydon," Glaucus says, his voice twisting. "I will not fight a…"
"A friend?"
Glaucus swallows, then lifts his gaze to meet Lydon’s, his eyes dark. "More than a friend, I hope," he says.
Lydon weighs his words before replying. "More than a friend," he agrees. He means it as a kindness, a small lie, but once the words are out of his mouth he knows it isn’t a lie at all, although he wishes desperately that it was.
And he wonders how the life of a father can possibly be weighed against that of a lover?
He could free Glaucus. Together they could make for the docks and escape Pompeii. He knows, of course, the price his father will have to pay: Diomed can be vindictive and this would be a humiliation too far. But then there is his father, who would rather see Lydon die a martyr than follow the path chosen for him, because a freedom bought with the blood of others is no kind of freedom at all.
What he wants is to hear Glaucus beg for his freedom, and he cannot be sure why, whether it is because he lacks the courage to make that decision until he hears the words from Glaucus’s lips, or if it is because, if Glaucus asks him to make that choice, then it means that Lydon will have a reason to truly hate him, once and for all. Although he’s not certain he could hate Glaucus, even then.
Glaucus shifts his grip on the bars so that his fingers press over Lydon’s, clinging on so tightly his knuckles are white. The only word that leaves his mouth is Lydon’s name, and he no longer sounds resigned but frightened and terribly young.
Lydon leans down, pushing his arm through the bars. He wraps his hand around the back of Glaucus’s head and pulls him close. Glaucus is trembling, and Lydon wonders if they have lashed him, whether his skin is still as perfect and unblemished by scars as Lydon remembers. And if so, how much longer that will last. The kiss is clumsy from the awkwardness of their positions, rough with grief, desire and the desperation of a man who sees his death approaching. Something else Lydon is painfully familiar with, and when the kiss breaks off and Glaucus pulls away, his expression is steady, almost calm.
"I'm not going to fight you," he says.
"You will," Lydon says. Because he knows something of human nature, and he knows something of what it means to kill, but most of all he thinks he knows the kind of man that Glaucus is, and that he is not a man who will stand there and watch his death approaching without resisting. And if he fights, he'll have a chance, however slim. They’ll make it good, Lydon will make certain of that.
They'll make it good and, gods willing, they’ll live or die together.