by Calrabbit
It was evening in the gladiators’ quarters, the time
of day when the guards brought around the slave girls for the pleasure of those
who had fought well. Maximus had always
refused. From the day that he found his
wife and child hanging burned and crucified on the portico of his home, he had
felt no desire. Only in his dreams when
his wife came alive for him again, did he feel any pleasure.
The door to his cell opened. Two burly guards stood there. One held young woman by the arm. She had the light blue eyes and blond hair of
the forest tribes of northern
“Come on, Spaniard,” growled one of the guards. “Do us a favor. This one refuses to eat. We don’t want to lose her. She is a favorite of the men. They say it’s like forcing a virgin every
time.”
The guard pushed the woman into the room. Maximus winced that their brutality. In the light of the oil lamp, he saw that she
was more of a girl than a woman, 15 or 16 years old at most. Although she was lovely, she was painfully
thin. The thought came to him that if he
had married younger, he could have had a daughter her age.
The other guard brought in a plate of food. They were serious about not wanting to lose
her. Someone had prepared a plate of
delicacies, figs and dates, spiced meats and sweet cakes. He set the plate down on the rough table by
the cot that served as a bed. “If anyone
can give her a reason to live, you can, Spaniard.” He leered at Maximus’s loins. Maximus turned away.
On his way out the door, the guard said to the girl,
“Consider yourself lucky. The Spaniard
is the best. He might want you on a
regular basis.”
“Don’t waste your breath,” said the other guard. “She is too stupid or too stubborn to learn a
civilized tongue.” They left and locked
the door behind them.
The girl pressed herself into the corner of the
cell. “Come,” Maximum gestured toward
the food. “You have to eat.
She responded with a bitter smile.
“Well, if you don’t want to eat, at least, sit down
and rest.” Maximus approached her and
gently tried to take her arm. The girl
shuddered convulsively at his touch.
Maximus backed away and held up his hands. “I won’t hurt you.” He retreated to the opposite corner of his
cell and sat down in the floor with his back against the wall. He thought about how this girl had been used
and abused and he almost retched.
He could never understand how men could enjoy sex with
women who had no interest in or were repelled by their bodies. Yes, when he was a young soldier he had relieved
his adolescent lust with the camp followers or prostitutes. He had even deluded himself that their moans
of pleasure were authentic, until that day he heard the women gossiping while
they washed the soldiers’ clothes by the river.
He had never heard women speak with such frankness. They joked about the physical attributes and
performance of the men that they had been forced by poverty or slavery to
service. He was mesmerized as he learned
that some of the older ones, whose familiarity with men in full rut had bred
contempt, sought pleasure with each other.
After that day, Maximus could not find much desire for
their services. Were all women like
this? Did they all send men away full of
pride at their sexual prowess, only to laugh at them behind their backs? He learned the answer the first time with
Lucilla, when her body spasmed around him so intensely than he erupted inside
of her, despite wanting it to last forever.
He questioned how men could not know whether they had satisfied a
woman. Were they so clumsy or selfish or
incompetent that they had never felt the real thing?
Lucilla. Sex
with Lucilla was like everything else in their relationship—ferocious. No matter how hard he drove himself into her,
her hips rose to meet him, challenging him, defying him. Her fierce, guttural cries of orgasm would
have frightened the wild Picti of northern
She answered with that crystalline laugh that he
adored, “Is there a difference?”
Lucilla was right.
He both loved and hated her. He
loved her aristocratic beauty, her regal authority, her keen intelligence and
her sexual fire. At the same time, he hated
her deceit, her scheming, and her indulgence of her reptilian brother,
Commodus. In the end, he fled from the
incessant intrigue of the imperial family and imperial court back to the
simplicity of provincial
Paulina was the baby sister in a family of boys and,
as such, was cherished by her parents and her brothers. She responded to the world in kind. She was so open and generous in her dealings
with everyone that Maximus thought his heart would break just watching her buy
food in the market. She was the
antidote to all the killing, the brutality and the mendacity that he had
witnessed.
Maximus leaned his head back against the cell wall and
remembered the way Paulina would playfully push him down on the bed, straddle
him and then let loose her long black hair.
She would lean over and let her hair glide across his face and
chest. It felt like spun silk and always
drove him wild. Then suddenly, the image
of her charred body seared through his mind.
He felt a surge homicidal rage against Commodus, who had the power to
reach into his head and destroy even his memories.
He looked up to see the girl sitting on his cot and
gazing at the sky through the small window in his cell. “What do you see?” he asked.
She looked at him quizzically. He pointed to the window and asked
again. “Heim,” she answered. Maximus choked back tears. “Home.”
She longed for the same thing that he had all those years at the
front. Her home was the forests of the
north, instead of the bright stony earth of
Katia and her sister Ilsa were coming back from the
river. In the morning they had fed the
animals and cleaned their paddocks.
After they helped prepare the thick stew that would simmer for most of
the day, Mutti had sent them off to have a few hours of fun. Mutti knew that in a few years, Katia would
be married and have the burden of taking care of a household. She wanted her to enjoy her childhood as long
as possible.
The girls had gathered the spring wildflowers by the
river and had weaved them into garlands that they placed on their heads. They made bouquets to decorate the supper
table. As the afternoon wore on, it was
time to go back and help Mutti serve supper to their brothers and father. They skipped and sang on their way home. It had been a beautiful day. They slowed down as they heard strange
sounds, coming from their village. It
seemed to Katia that she was hearing the strangled screams of animals and
feeling the pounding of hooves. She
dropped her flowers and broke into a run.
When she came near the clearing, she saw soldiers on horses, riding
through the village, torching their huts.
The men were attempting to fight, but were being cut down.
She started to run toward her family hut, when she saw
Mutti come out. “Katia, Ilsa, run!” she screamed.
Then Mutti picked up a piece of firewood and attacked one of the
soldiers on horseback. The soldier
grabbed her by the hair and ran his sword through her body.
“Mutti, Mutti,” Katia screamed over and over.
In a flash, he understood what Marcus Aurelius had said
the day he was murdered, “I brought the sword, nothing more.” The Roman armies had brought Roman law to
most of the known world. They had
brought the genius of Roman engineering and architecture. They had brought their elegant and precise
language that supplanted barbarian tongues.
But they had also turned strong and brave men like
Maximus stroked the girl’s hair and kissed the top of
her head. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, “ he repeated.
Would it always be like this? Would civilization always have to depend on
fear and brute power? The Christians who
he had seen die in the arena did not believe that. He had watched them make crude crosses out of
branches, which they knelt before as they waited to be torn apart by
beasts. How odd, Maximus thought, that
they had transformed a mode of torture and execution into the symbol of their
faith. Maximus had never paid much
attention to Christianity. He preferred
the traditions of his ancestors. He had
heard of their teachings, that all men were brothers and that the meek would inherit
the earth. Their idea of returning good
for evil was alien to his soldier’s mentality.
He felt more kinship with the contentious Jews, who
had rebelled against the Empire twice in a hundred years. They fought desperate, hopeless battles for
their freedom. In
Maximus did not think he was capable of believing in a
brotherhood of love or a kingdom of justice, but there had to be something
better than this.
The girl had cried herself to sleep in his arms. He gently stretched his legs out on the cot
and lowered them both down. “This is
what it must be like to have a daughter,” he thought as she slept on his chest. To have someone who trusted you completely
and believed that you were strong and wise enough to protect her. He fell asleep with his cheek against her
hair.
Maximus awoke before the girl and slipped off the cot,
trying not to disturb her. He watched
her sleep and tried not to think of anything beside how sweet and lovely she
looked. These moments were a gift from
the gods and should be appreciated accordingly.
He wanted to be the first thing that she saw when she woke up so she
would not be afraid. Her eyes finally
fluttered and she sat up. She saw
Maximus and smiled.
He took the tray of food and offered it to her. She shook her head, but continued to
smile. Maximus nodded and put his hand
over his heart. He understood. He wanted the same thing she did, but he had
tasks to perform first. Until last
night, he had only wanted revenge for the murder of his family. Now he also wanted something else. He did not even know what it was. He did not have a vision of how the world
could be different, but there had to be men that did. Maybe the gods had given him his strength and
skill in battle to contribute in some way to that vision.
“Katia,” the girl had called him back from his
thoughts.
“What?”
She tapped her chest, “Katia.” She got off the bed and came to sit by him on
the floor. She pointed to his chest,
“Du?” she asked.
“Maximus,” he answered, pointing to his own chest.
“Maximus,” she repeated in her harsh accent, then
giggled.
He laughed too.
“I’m glad you find my name so comical.”
For a few moments, she looked like a child again. Then they heard the guards in the hall and the
smile vanished from her face. They both
stood up as the guards opened the door to his cell and entered.
One of them walked over and picked up the uneaten
plate of food. “I’m disappointed. I thought you were more of a man than that,
Spaniard.”
Maximus felt his stomach turn. For a second time, he would be powerless to
protect the innocent. He looked over at
Katia. She was staring fixedly at the
guard’s mid-section. He followed her
gaze and understood instantly. In a
single movement, he disabled the guard with an elbow blow to his larynx, pulled
the short sword from the guard’s belt and handed it to her.
In the confusion of his attack and the ringing of the
fallen tray on the stone floor, Katia rewarded Maximus with a joyful smile,
looked up at the patch of sky in the window, and sliced across her throat with
the blade. She remained standing for a
moment as her blood sprayed Maximus and the wounded guard. Then her body crumpled to the floor.
As he looked at her fallen body, Maximum thought that
the Roman armies had conquered the world, but they could not defeat this one
small soul.
While the wounded guard grasped his throat, the other
came over and threatened Maximus, “You will be punished for this, Spaniard.”
“As will we all,” came his calm response.
Maximus turned his back on the horrific scene. The guards grumbled as they picked up Katia’s
body and carried it out of the cell.
When he was alone, Maximus sat down on the cot and put
his face in his hands. Realizing that
his hands were wet, he looked down at them.
His face had been covered with Katia’s arterial blood. He did not clean it off. He rubbed her blood on his arms and chest.
That afternoon when he marched into the arena of the
Colisseum, Maximus wore Katia’s blood as his armor.
