Gladiatrix Nobilis

Chapter 1 – Ludos MagnosLucretia is quickly losing her patience. She wants to get to town, but as usual Celeste is taking her time. Lucretia has asked her father, Romulus, to punish Celeste with a flogging in the past, but he never would. He treated her more like a daughter than a slave. This is something Lucretia fails to understand. Celeste is just a slave. To be fair, she is the closest friend Lucretia has. But that does not change the fact that she is a slave. And slaves should know their place. If they do not perform as expected by their masters, they should be flogged. Celeste has been with the family since she was a toddler. Lucretia has asked her father why Celeste’s mother is not also a slave in their household, but his answer was vague and it was clear he did not want to discuss it. Her stepmother, Aurelia, despises Celeste. When her father is not around, she regularly instructs other slaves to punish her. This made Celeste skittish. Lucretia thinks she acts like a street dog which has been kicked too many times. Her stepmother despises her as well, but she knows better than to instruct any of the slaves to touch her. Aurelia often tells untruthful stories to her father to try to get Lucretia in trouble with him, but he never acts on these. To show his wife some respect, he would patiently listen to her latest complaint about Lucretia. But his response is always the same. ‘I know she can be a handful, but you have to remember her life was not ideal. Be patient with her. When she grows up, she will settle down.’ This would infuriate her stepmother. But she knows not to push too much. As Governor of the Gallia Narbonensis province, her father is a very important man. Her stepmother understands that marriage is no guarantee for a wife. The law is tipped heavily in favour of the husband, especially if he is an important man like Romulus. If he wants to get rid of her, he just needs to create a suspicion that she has committed a******y. When he had an affair with Lucretia’s mother, Aurelia pushed her luck very far. But back then Romulus needed her father’s backing for his political aspirations. Now her father is dead and she and her family has nothing to offer him. She therefore has to tread carefully. As an illegitimate daughter, Lucretia should not have any standing. In any other family she would have been discarded together with her mother. Or if the family had pity on her, her status would have been similar to that of Celeste. But Lucretia refuses to see it that way. She is the only child of Romulus, the Governor of a wine and olive rich province in Southern Gaul. In her mind, this makes her a very important person as well. People may talk behind her back, but nobody dares to challenge her status openly. With her stepmother visiting her sister, who took ill, in Rome and her father politicking with the senators visiting Arelate on behalf of Augustus Caesar, Lucretia has big plans. Unfortunately, she needs Celeste for her plans to come to fruition. And Celeste is nowhere to be seen. Her instructions were clear. Bring some of her common clothes to Lucretia. But she has been gone now for almost an hour. Lucretia considered going to Celeste’s room to look for her. But it is beneath her to run after a slave. Instead, she is waiting in her own room, cursing the day her father took Celeste in. When Celeste eventually enters her room with a dress draped over her arm, Lucretia is livid. ‘Where have you been? I have been waiting for you for hours.’ ‘I am sorry Lucretia. My clothes are old. I have nothing worthy of you.’ ‘That is the idea though. I want to look like you, like a commoner. It is important that nobody recognises me.’ She grabs the dress from Celeste and turns around so that Celeste can take off the dress she is currently wearing. After Celeste helps her to undress and to dress in the old dress, Lucretia looks at herself in her hand mirror. ‘This dress will do, but my hair is too nice. Help me make my hair as hideous as yours.’ Celeste is used to these insults, but they still hurt. However, she knows her place, so she quietly loosens Lucretia’s braids, before she ties her hair in simple ponytails. When Lucretia is at last satisfied with her look, they start to walk to Arelate. Lucretia has never walked the two miles to town. They carry ladies of her status in a litter. But she cannot remain anonymous if she arrives in Arelate with six slaves carrying her in a litter owned by the Governor of the province. Within minutes of the start of their journey, her milky skin starts to sting from the spring sun biting into it. ‘The sun is burning me.’ Celeste is not sure what she is supposed to do about it. She looks around before she responds. ‘There are more trees near the river. Should we rather walk along the river?’ Lucretia nods her head and they make their way through the field to the Rhodanus river. Lucretia enjoys walking in the shade of the white poplar, ash and elm trees a lot more than walking in the direct sunlight. But she is still not happy. The road surface was smooth, but the small trail along the river bank is uneven and strewn with rocks and fallen tree trunks. ‘This path is not even fit for animals. How do you expect me to walk all the way to town on this?’ ‘This is the only path with shade. We can go slower if you prefer.’ Lucretia ignores Celeste. The last thing she needs now is for a slave to get clever with her. When they eventually reach Arelate, Lucretia is exhausted. She gulps down the cold water from the first fountain they come across. This makes her feel a lot better and the cheers from the crowed in the distance excites her. Her father forbade her to watch the games as he is of the view the arena is not the sort of place where a young lady should be seen. But he organised the greatest games Arelate has ever seen and Lucretia does not plan to miss the action. She has heard stories of how gladiators fight each other in brutal matches, or how groups of gladiators re-enact battle scenes. And she finds the idea of watching men fighting each other to the death very appealing. She also heard about gladiators hunting animals, but this does not appeal to her that much. As they hold the hunts in the mornings, she decided to only come through in the afternoon for the one-on-one gladiator matches. They enter the arena with no trouble and take their seats among the plebs. Lucretia is glad nobody recognised her, but she is disgusted by the commoners sitting around her. The fight which was in progress when they entered finishes with the retiarius trapping the secutor with his retes, a weighted net, and pressing his fascina, a long three-pronged trident, against his throat. Lucretia waits for the kill, but it never comes. A senator, sitting next to her father, watches the crowd for a while before he lifts his arm with a closed fist, signalling that the loser be spared. The crowd responds well to this, but it disappoints Lucretia. She came here to see men s*******r each other, but these two are leaving the arena with only a few minor cuts. Surely the fight should continue until one of them is dead. She turns to Celeste. ‘Can you believe that? I thought these fights were supposed to be exciting. But they stopped it just as the one was about to kill the other.’ ‘I understand that most fights end before they kill each other. The crowd only demands a kill if a fighter does not fight with courage.’ ‘That is ridiculous. Why do you need courage in the first place if the fight is not to the death?’ Celeste knows better than to respond. Luckily the entrance of the next two gladiators draws Lucretia’s attention away from her. The two murmillones are heavily armoured and carry a straight sword each. They announcer introduces them to the crowd while they face the editor’s box. When the senator nods his head, the two gladiators turn to each other with shields high and swords at the ready. They both look tentative to attack, only feeling at each other with their swords. But the moment the crowd starts to jeer, the gladiators realise they are not winning the sympathy of the crowd. They both throw caution to the wind and start swinging their swords at each other’s bodies. The sound of metal against metal reverberates through the arena and wins the crowd’s favour almost immediately. Instead of jeering, they are now cheering, shouting at their favourite gladiator to kill his opponent. The ferocity of the fight excites Lucretia. Although neither gladiator can score a direct hit with his sword, both are bleeding from cuts to their exposed torsos. The intensity of the fight stays high until one gladiator takes a direct hit across his abdomen. He drops his sword and sinks to his knees while covering the cut with his arm. His opponent looks at the senator, with his sword ready to end his opponent’s life. But once again the senator spares the life of the loser and once again the crowd appreciates this. But it frustrates Lucretia to no end. It was an exciting fight with a lame ending. She considers leaving, but then she hears the crowd roar with excitement. Into the arena walks two women. And not only two women, two women wearing sandals and subligacula only. Their beautiful bodies are accentuated by a layer of olive oil covering every exposed inch of their skins. They are armed with short swords and small shields. Lucretia has never seen other women n***d before. Although these women are not completely n***d, their upper bodies are completely exposed. And their groin area and buttocks are covered by a garment which is no more than two pieces of cloth hanging from a leather thong, tied around their waists. Both women are tall and athletic. Their skins are brown from being in the sun often, but their exposed breasts are lighter in colour. Lucretia concludes they probably train long hours in the sun, but they probably cover their breasts during training. She is slightly disappointed by this. Although she knows upper-class men prefer milky skins like her own, she finds the tanned skins of these women attractive. But their milky white breasts clashes with the rest of their bodies. If these were her slaves, she would make them train topless to ensure their bodies are brown all over. The announcer tells the crowd that these women are both free women who train as gladiatrices by their own free will. He first introduces Briana as the championess of Gaul. Secondly, he introduces Sabina, the championess of Rome. His next words intrigue Lucretia. He tells the crowd that the women agreed there can be only one championess and that this fight will be to the death. He emphasises this by saying that nobody will interfere with this fight before one of these gladiatrices lies lifeless in the sand. Lucretia is very excited by this. The senator will not stop this fight before she sees one of these women kill the other. She is also intrigued because these women fight by choice. Nobody told her about the female fights and nobody told her that anybody but slaves fight in the arenas. Unlike the male fight before it, this fight starts fast and furious. The women move much faster than the men. They are light on their feet and dance in and out as both swing their swords, trying to slice their opponent open. Briana has the first success when the point of her sword brushes past Sabina’s chest, opening a thin cut. Sabina barely notices this. She has been cut many times in her career and this is a very minor cut. As Briana comes in again, Sabina lifts her shield slightly higher to deflect her sword. But Briana goes low and opens a deep cut to Sabina’s right thigh. But a split-second later Sabina’s sword finds its target. As Briana came in, Sabina thrusted her sword past her own shield towards Briana’s body. The hit to her leg took away some of the power of her thrust, but her sword still sinks into Briana’s side. Both women are shocked by the other’s success. Sabina has used her move many times and none of her opponents ever managed to wound her. Briana moved in and out quickly. She did not spot the thrust, but even so, her movement makes it very difficult for opponents to wound her. Luckily for her she was on her way back when Sabina’s sword made contact with her. The wound is deep, but it could have been a lot worse. Sabina tests her leg, and finds that she cannot put any weight on it. She knows the fight just became much more difficult for her. Without movement, she is a sitting duck for her opponent. But her sword work is superior to that of any other woman, so she is still confident she can finish her opponent off. Briana knows not to get careless. Her opponent is a good fighter and may still carve her to pieces if she comes within range without proper defence. She starts to circle to her right, forcing Sabina to turn with her. Sabina struggles to keep up as she has to put weight on her wounded leg to turn. However, she keeps her shield between her and Briana, making sure her opponent cannot catch her with a quick lunge. As the crowd starts to jeer, Briana plants her feet and quickly moves back to her left. Sabina is caught by this move and is too slow to react. Her shield protects the left side of her body, but her right side is exposed, except for her sword which she holds close to her body to protect against any swings from Briana’s sword. But she has no protection against the quick thrust to her right side. The sword enters her body just under her ribs, forcing Sabina to sink to her knees. Normally the fight would be over after such a serious wound. The senator would observe the crowd before he makes the decision whether the fallen gladiatrix lives or dies. But this is a fight to the death and nobody, except for herself, can save her now. Sabina knows she has no chance on her knees. With all the effort she can muster, she forces her body to rise. But as she gets back on her feet, Briana thrusts her sword into her chest, piercing her right lung. Sabina sinks down to her knees again. Although she wills her body to rise again, she simply does not have the strength to do it. It dawns on her she is about to die. When the organiser of these games offered her this fight, she thought it would be an easy win. She has fought against the best gladiatrices in Rome and were victorious in all her fights. When the organiser offered a bigger purse for a death match, she immediately accepted. No gladiatrix from the provinces could be good enough to beat her, and she really did not care whether her opponent lived or died. Now she is the one who is about to die. The weight of her shield pulls her left arm all the way to the sand, and she can barely hold on to her sword. Briana slowly moves in. Although she knows the fight is won, she does not want to give her opponent any opportunity to wound her again. When she realises Sabina is unable to lift her shield or sword, she swings her sword and decapitates her mortally wounded opponent. The crowd, including Lucretia goes wild when Sabina’s headless body falls forward into the sand. Lucretia is so caught up by the moment that she does not notice Celest’s glum expression. Unlike Lucretia and the rest of the crowd, she finds these fights barbaric and revolting. Blood quickly turns the surrounding sand a dark red. Briana watches her fallen foe for a few seconds before she lifts her arms in triumph. As guards help Briana from the arena to receive medical attention, Lucretia turns to Celeste. ‘Come, I want to talk to her.’ Celeste is flabbergasted. ‘Why? They will not allow us near the gladiators.’ But Lucretia either does not hear her, or does not care what she has to say. She gets up and makes her way through the crowd to the exit. Celeste quickly follows her, wondering how much trouble they will get into now. They have to walk halfway around the arena before they reach the entrance to the dungeons where the gladiators are kept. Their timing could not be better. Three of the four guards have gone to watch the fight between the gladiatrices and have not returned yet. The fourth guard went around the corner to relief himself in an alley between the arena and a ludus, where gladiators train for their fights in the arena. Lucretia does not hesitate. She walks down the stairs into the dark dungeon. Once inside, she almost turns around. The stench is overwhelming. But she steels herself and continues towards an area where there is some light. A sound to her left makes her jump. As her eyes are getting used to the dark, she can just make out metal cages either side of her. Inside these cages are men and a few women. Lucretia assumes these are gladiators, but she does not stick around to ask. Although they are locked in cages, she feels threatened by the idea of deadly killers surrounding her. Without thinking of Celeste, she increases her pace until she reaches the source of the light, a small room lit by two torches. Inside are the victorious gladiatrix, a person who are tending to her wounds and a giant of a man. It surprises him to see the two women entering the room. But then his face changes. Lucretia ignores him and heads straight for the table on which the gladiatrix lays. But the man grabs her by her arm. ‘Madam Lucretia, what are you doing here?’ This surprises Lucretia. She has never seen this man before, how does he know her name? But then again, she is the daughter of the Governor of Gallia Narbonensis. Many commoners probably know her, and she definitely does not care to know any of them. She quickly composes herself. ‘I want to talk to the gladiatrix.’ ‘Your father will not be happy that you came here.’ ‘My father will be very upset that you grabbed my arm.’ The man immediately lets go of her arm. He looks at Celeste. ‘You should know better than to allow her to come here.’ This enrages Lucretia. ‘How dare you? She is a mere slave. I am the daughter of the Governor. How dare you suggest that she has any level of control over me?’ The man looks at her with sad eyes. ‘No disrespect meant. I was merely pointing out that a person of her standing should know how dangerous it is for a lady like yourself to be close to these vicious fighters.’ Lucretia does not respond. She gives the man a condescending look before she walks closer to Briana. Without even realising it, Lucretia talks down to Briana, the way she talks down to everybody she considers being of a lower standing than herself. ‘What is your name?’ Although the announcer introduced the two gladiatrices, their names were not important to Lucretia at that stage. Briana looks at her for a few seconds, deciding how to react. She heard Lucretia is the Governor’s daughter. And making enemies with somebody of her standing is never a good idea. She gives Lucretia her best fake smile. ‘Briana, how can I be of service?’ ‘Why are you fighting in the arena? You are a free woman. Why would you engage in activities reserved for slaves and criminals? ‘There is honour in pitting your skills against the skills of an opponent in a game where your life can be taken in an instant if you make a mistake.’ ‘Your opponent lies dead now. Her body will probably feed the lions tonight. Where is the honour in that?’ ‘She fought with courage. She died while doing what she loves to do, entertain the crowd. I will ensure she gets a proper burial, even if I have to use part of my winnings to pay for it.’ ‘Is that why you do this?’ Briana frowns at her. ‘Do you fight to entertain the crowd?’ ‘That is one of the reasons. It is a fantastic feeling when the crowd chants your name. But for me the money is the main reason why I fight. I do not need a man to care for me. Fighting gives me an opportunity to look after myself.’ Lucretia does not understand this. Why would any woman feel this way? It is the way of the world. Men work so they can take care of their wives. Women give men strong sons and the emotional support they need to be successful. Why would a woman risk her life to support herself? But she decides not to stress this point. ‘How does it feel to kill another woman?’ ‘It is part of the game. We both knew one of use would die. I made sure it was not me. During the fight my focus was to kill her. She was my enemy and killing her was my job. But now, I am sorry that she had to die. She had good skills and I would have loved to face her again.’ The man interrupts them. ‘Madam Lucretia, it is getting late. It is not safe for you to return home in the dark. Please allow me to escort you home.’ Lucretia knows he is right, but she still wants him to understand he should not interrupt her while she is talking to somebody else. ‘I will tell you when I am ready to go.’ She turns back to Briana. ‘When do you fight again?’ ‘I am not sure. The sponsors of the games negotiate the fights with the owners of the ludi.’ ‘I thought you were a free woman. Why does an owner of a ludus decide when you fight?’ ‘I am a free fighter. But I still have to train at a ludus and only the owners of the ludi can arrange fights for me.’ ‘I want to watch your next fight. Let the owner of your ludus get word to me.’ ‘I am honoured and will personally make sure he informs you when my next fight will be.’ Lucretia turns back to the man. ‘You may walk us home now.’ He bows his head slightly, takes his sword and leads the way past the gladiator cages into the street. Lucretia is not in the mood for a conversation and she makes this crystal clear to the man when he tries to make conversation.