“Election?”
“Get with it, Red. You didn’t think this circus is really for his son’s putting on the toga, did you? That’s just the occasion. The man is running for praetor. By all the gods, Red, look, do you see? That’s Domitia Tertia. Sitting in the second row, behind Livia with some of the Vestal Virgins. That whore has testicles any man would die for!”
“Why do people always think of testicles when they admire someone’s nerve?” I complained. But I had to admit, if only to myself, that Domitia Tertia had a certain style. She’d thumbed her nose at the conventions of the ruling class; she ripped them off on a regular basis; she broke laws like fingernails, and they fawned on her for it.
“For the love of Isis!” Dido exclaimed.
Isis, Isis. People called on her an awful lot. Now the name meant something to me. But what?
“Red, see way up there?” She took my head between her hands and positioned it.
“Is that our Helen?” I marveled. “In the box with Aetius? Doesn’t he have a wife who’s some sort of relation to the Divine Augustus? Where is she?”
“Childbed,” said Dido. “When did having a wife ever stop a man from having or flaunting a mistress? Hell, a box is nothing. He’s setting her up in her own house. Maybe you didn’t hear about it yet. He just bought Helen.”
“Bought her! I thought Domitia Tertia never sold her whores.”
“Oh, she does. If the price is right.”
But Joseph hadn’t bought me. He’d refused. Now he’d gone off somewhere. Where? Where I wanted to go. Where I would give anything to go.
“That’s one way out of the Vine and Fig Tree, but not the one I want,” said Dido.
“Why not?” I asked.
“When I leave there, honey, I am going to belong to no one but me.”
No one belongs to himself, I remembered my beloved’s words again, but I did not speak them to Dido. I just nodded. I knew exactly what she meant.
Succula finally clambered into the row, stepping over Berta and squeezing in next to me, “Red, sweetie, you’re here. I was afraid Bone would send you home.”
“How many bets did you make, Succula?” Berta asked. “The girl’s a sibyl when it comes to the races,” she said to me.
“Trouble is,” said Dido, “she hardly ever gets to collect her winnings. Bunch of crooks out there. She never learns.”
Succula shrugged. “It makes the races more exciting.”
The mimes were now mock-fighting their way out of the arena; the crowd had already lost interest in them. I could feel the collective energy gathering, rising in anticipation of the chariots. Suddenly horns blared from every direction, filling the huge elliptical bowl with sound. There followed an extraordinary moment of hush. Then the thundering of hooves began and the horses and chariots blazed into the arena. The crowd found its deafening voice again, but I could still feel the vibration of the hooves through my seat. No stranger to chariot racing, I leaned forward, curious about the Roman style. From that distance it took me a moment of close scrutiny to realize what I was seeing. Then it hit me. Hard.
“Ow, Red!” protested Dido. “Stop digging your nails into me. The race hasn’t started yet. They’re just parading.”
“Dido,” I said. “The charioteers are Celts, at least two of them are. See that one?” I pointed to a big lion of a man, his bare arms swirling with woad, his chariot built in the graceful style I remembered. At home our warriors fought bare-headed, their hair limed and sculpted into fantastic spikes. Here they wore helmets. That was the only difference.
“Well, of course, Red. Didn’t you know? They use Celts, Scythians, and Thracians for chariot races. Prisoners of war. It could be worse. My people they hunt and capture and use for bestiaries. Wait’ll you see those shows. At least no one is slaughtered or eaten alive in a chariot race.”
I don’t know why it hadn’t occurred to me that the Romans would import their athletes; they enslaved anything that moved. At druid college I had heard horror stories of war captives paraded in chains through the Forum. Most Celts killed themselves if they could to avoid that fate. I had never thought about what happened to prisoners after the parade. I’d assumed they were executed—or died of shame.
I looked away from the ring to my own hands clenched in my lap. I did not want to watch my combrogos (the companions, as we called each other) demonstrate their prowess for the entertainment of Romans. Their shame was my shame. It knotted my stomach; it pressed against my heart. And there was something else, hovering at the periphery of my memory, something deeply agitating. I was torn between wanting to push it away and needing to know what it was.
I closed my eyes, and everything around me receded, except for the sound of the horses’ hooves and the cry of a bird. I was back on Mona, the druid isle, in the teaching grove. Warriors galloped towards us from the Menai Straits still covered with dirt and blood from battle.
“Do you come from my father?” cried Branwen, my friend, my foster-sister.
“Branwen, daughter of King Bran the Bold, your father and my king is still living.”
“Anu!” Branwen let out her breath. For an instant her muscles relaxed; then she braced herself.
“King Bran has been taken captive. Unless—may the gods give him strength and cunning—unless he has escaped, he is on his way to Rome.”
I forced myself to open my eyes again. I searched the field and found him, the charioteer with the broad chest and the arms like big oaks. Arms that could lift you as if you weighed nothing, a chest that smelled of the earth and its goodness, that rose and fell like a gentle sea.
“Red, what’s the matter?” asked Succula. “You’re crying.”
I just shook my head. I couldn’t speak yet.
“I…I don’t…I can’t believe,” I stopped, as if saying it might make it so. “I think, I think one of those charioteers might be my foster-father,” I finally managed, my hands shaking as I pointed. “That stupid Roman helmet makes it hard to see his face.”
“The Gaul? He’s the one I’ve got my money on. Did you say he’s your father? I thought your father was dead.”
“No. My foster-father.” I said impatiently. Then I reminded myself: Succula had never had a father at all. I could not expect a Roman street child to understand the meaning of foster kinship to my people, how such ties were as strong as blood and wove a complex web of loyalties among the tribes. “And he’s not a Gaul. He’s from the Pretannic Isles. Succula, you placed bets on him. What’s his name?”
“Sia, Sia something with a B. I’m sorry, Red. Those barbarian names are so hard to pronounce. Everyone just calls him the Big Gaul.”
“Bran?” I pressed. “Could it have been Bran?”
“I don’t think so, Red, but I’m not sure. Look, they’re in place now.”
The huge Celt was positioned second from the inside; there were seven chariots in all. If you have ever looked across a crowd, straining to see someone you thought you’d never see again in this life, you have some