Mistress of Rome - Softcover

K. Quinn

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0755357930 ISBN 13: 9780755357932

Publisher: Headline, 2010

Synopsis

Passion. Treachery. Murder... A heart-stopping epic about a Jewish slave girl and Rome's greatest gladiator, who become involved in a plot to assassinate an emperor Orphaned by Rome's savage legions, Thea, a slave girl from Judaea, has learned what it takes to survive. She knows only violence until a chance meeting with gladiator Arius offers a shred of tenderness. But their bond is severed when Thea is sold again, condemned to rot in squalor. Years later, a singer known as Athena betrays no hint of her troubled past. Catching the eye of the Emperor himself, she is swept into a world of decadence and depravity. But although Domitian fears betrayal from every side, he is unaware that the greatest threat lies next to him - a slave girl who has come to be called the Mistress of Rome...

About this title

About the Author:

Kate Quinn is a native of southern California. She attended Boston University, where she earned a Bachelor`s and Master`s Degree in Classical Voice whilst at the same time writing her first novel, MISTRESS OF ROME, in the university`s basement computer lab. Now twenty-seven, Kate lives in San Diego with her fiance.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

One
APRIL, A.D. 82

The atmosphere at the Mars Street gladiator school was contented, convivial, and masculine as the tired fighters trooped in through the gates. Twenty fighters had sallied out to join the main battle of the Cerealia games, and fourteen had come back alive. A good enough average to make the victors swagger as they filed through the narrow torch- lit hall, dumping their armor into the waiting baskets.

“. . . hooked that Greek right through the stomach! Prettiest piece of work I . . .”

“. . . see that bastard Lapicus get it in the back from that Gaul? Won’t be looking down his long nose at us anymore . . .”

“. . . hard luck on Theseus. Saw him trip in the sand . . .”

Arius tossed his plumed helmet into the waiting basket, ignoring the slave who gave him cheery congratulations. The weapons had already been collected, of course— those got snatched the moment the fighting was done.

“First fight?” A chatty Thracian tossed his own helmet into the basket atop Arius’s. “Mine, too. Not bad, huh?”

Arius bent to unlace the greaves about his shins.

“Nice work you did on that African today. Had me one of those scrawny Oriental Greeks; no trouble there. Hey, maybe next time I’ll get Belleraphon and then I’ll really make my fortune.”

Arius unlaced the protective mail sleeve from his sword arm, shaking it off into the basket. The other fighters were already trooping into the long hall where they were all fed, whooping as they filed along the trestle tables and grabbed for the wine jugs.

“Quiet, aren’t you?” The Thracian jogged his elbow. “So where you from? I came over from Greece last year— ”

“Shut up,” said Arius in his flat grating Latin.

“What?”

Brushing past the Thracian into the hall, he ignored the trestle tables and the platters of bread and meat. He leaned over and grabbed the first wine jug he saw, then headed off down another small ill- lit hallway. “Don’t mind him,” he heard another fighter growl to the Thracian. “He’s a sour bastard.”

Arius’s room in the gladiator barracks was a tiny bare cell. Stone walls, a chair, a straw pallet, a guttering tallow candle. He sank down on the floor, setting his back against the wall and draining half the jug in a few methodical gulps. The cheap grapes left a sour taste in his mouth. No matter. Roman wine was quick, and all he wanted was quick.

“Knock knock!” a voice trilled at the door. “I hope you aren’t asleep yet, dear boy.”

“Piss off, Gallus.”

“Tut, tut. Is that any way to treat your lanista? Not to mention your friend?” Gallus swept in, vast and pink- fleshed in his immaculate toga, gold gleaming on every finger, magnolia oil shining on every curled hair, a little silk- decked slave boy at his side. Owner of the Mars Street gladiator school.

Arius spat out a toneless obscenity. Gallus laughed. “Now, now, none of that. I came to congratulate you. Such a splendid debut. When you sent the head flying clean off that African . . . so dramatic! I was a little surprised, of course. Such dedication, such savagery, from one who swore not an hour before that he wouldn’t fight at all . . .”

Arius took another deep swallow of wine.

“Well, how nice it is to be right. The first time I saw you, I knew you had potential. A little old for the arena, of course— how old are you, anyway? Twenty- five, thirty? No youngster, but you’ve certainly got something.” Gallus waved his silver pomander languidly. Arius looked at him.

“You’ll get another fight in the next games, of course. Something a little bigger and grander, if I can persuade Quintus Pollio. A solo bout, perhaps. And this time”— a glass- sharp glance— “I won’t have to worry that you’ll deliver, will I.”

Arius aligned the wine jug against the wall. “What’s a rudius?” The words surprised him, and he kept his eyes on the jug. “A rudius?” Gallus blinked. “Dear boy, wherever did you hear about that?”

Arius shrugged. They had all been waiting in the dark under the Colosseum before their bout, nervous and excited, fingering their weapons. Here’s to a rudius for all of us, one of the others had muttered.

A man who had died five minutes later under a trident before Arius could ask him what it meant.

“A rudius is a myth,” Gallus said airily. “A wooden sword given from the Emperor to a gladiator, signaling his freedom. I suppose it’s happened once or twice for the stars of the arena, but that hardly includes you, does it? One bout, and not even a solo bout— you’ve got a long way to go before you can call yourself a success, much less a star.”

Arius shrugged.

“Such a dear boy.” Gallus reached out and stroked Arius’s arm. His plump fingers pinched hard, and his black peppercorn eyes locked onto Arius’s with bright curiosity.

Arius reached out, picked up the tallow candle beside him, and calmly poured a stream of hot wax onto the soft manicured hand. Gallus snatched his burned fingers away. “We really will have to do something about your manners,” he sighed. “Good night, then. Dear boy.”

As soon as the door thudded shut, Arius picked up the wine jug and drank off every drop. Letting the jug fall, he dropped his head back against the stones. The room wasn’t spinning anymore. Not enough wine. He closed his eyes.

He hadn’t meant to fight. He’d meant what he’d told Gallus, standing in the dim passage underneath the arena, hearing the roars of the crowd and the screams of the wounded men and the whimpers of the dying animals. But the sword had been placed in his hand, and he’d gone out with the others in the brisk group battle that served to whet the crowd’s appetite for the solo bouts, and he’d seen the African he’d been paired to fight . . . and the black demon had uncoiled from its self- devouring circles in his brain and roared joyously down the straight and simple path of murder.

Then suddenly he had been standing blinking in the sunlight with another man’s blood on his face and cheers pouring down on his head like a swarm of bees. Just thinking about those cheers brought an icy sweat. The arena. That hellish arena. It spoiled his luck every time. Even slaughtering its guards had failed to get him killed. After that savage beating seven months ago, he had awakened in bed. Not a soft bed; Gallus didn’t waste luxuries on half- dead slaves. Dragging himself painfully into the light, he heard for the first time Gallus’s voice: high, modulated, reeking of the slums.

“Can you hear me, boy? Nod if you understand. Good. What’s your name?”

Hoarsely he croaked it out.

Gallus tittered. “Oh, that’s absurd. A Briton, aren’t you? You barbarians always have impossible names. Well, it won’t do. We’ll call you Arius. A bit like Aries, the god of war. Quite catchy, yes, we can do something with that.

“Now. I’ve bought you, and paid a pretty price, too, for a half- dead troublemaker. Yes, I know exactly why you were sentenced to the arena. You were part of a chain gang making repairs on the Colosseum, until you strangled a guard with his own whip. Very foolish, dear boy. Whatever were you thinking?” Gallus snapped for his little slave boy with the tray of sweetmeats. “Well, then”— eating busily— “you can tell me for starts how you ended up working a chain gang in the Colosseum.”

“Salt mines,” Arius forced out through swollen lips. “In Trinovantia. Then Gaul.”

“Dear me. And how long have you been working in those sinkholes?”

Arius shrugged. Twelve years? He wasn’t sure.

“A long time, clearly. That explains the strength of the arms and chest.” A plump finger traced over Arius’s shoulders. “Hauling rocks of salt up and down mountains for years; oh yes, it builds fine men.” A last lingering stroke. “One doesn’t learn to use a sword in the mines, however. Where did you learn that, eh?”

Arius turned his face toward the wall.

“Well, no matter. Time to listen. You’ll do your fighting for me from now on, when and where I say. I am a lanista. Know what that is? No? I thought your Latin was a little rough. Everything about you is a little rough, isn’t it? A lanista is a trainer, dear boy, of gladiators. You’re going to be a gladiator. It’s a good life as they go— women, riches, fame. You’ll take the oath now, and begin training as soon as those bones patch up. Repeat after me: ‘I undertake to be burnt by fire, to be bound in chains, to be beaten by rods, and to die by the sword.’ That’s the gladiator’s oath, dear boy.”

Arius told him hoarsely what he could do with his oath, and collapsed back into blackness.

It had been days before he could get out of bed, weeks before his bones were whole, and nearly five months before his training in the gladiators’ courtyard was complete. His fellow fighters were petty criminals and bewildered slaves scummed off the bottom of the market: a cheap cut- rate bunch. Arius slid indifferently into the school’s routine: just one more thug with Gallus’s crude crossed- swords tattoo on his arm. Better than t...

About this edition

• Publisher: Headline
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0755357930
• ISBN 13: 9780755357932
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1