Blood Games

HIS MOVEMENT through the shadowed night was fluid, was powerful, was beautiful. His grace was not the grace of a dancer, whose splendid ease is born of meticulous, disciplined years, but rather it was his natural condition, an aspect of self as much as his musical voice and arresting eyes.

He had entered Rome at dusk through the Rudusculana Gate on the south side of the city. This was one visit he did not want the officious Praetorians to know of, and he had realized that his movements were noted only through the Viminalis and Collina Gates at the northeast end of the city walls. As an added precaution, he had worn a long red cloak and wide-brimmed hat which were the mark of Greek mercenaries. He had answered the officer of the Watch in heavily accented Latin, and swore long and comprehensively by Ares when he was required to surrender his sword.

The first touch of summer was on the air, and the night was warm. Streets were filled with people though the sun had been down for more than an hour. Near the Circus Maximus, the wine shops and whores were doing a brisk business, and away on the Oppius Hill, the Golden House glittered with lights.

Saint-Germain had discarded the red cloak and hat near the entrance to a shop that sold meat-filled breads, knowing that it would not be remarkable there, where many soldiers ate. He had made his way up the Aventine Hill behind the Temple of Juno toward the luxurious houses near the crest. Now his dark Persian clothes blended with the night, his soft tread unheard over the omnipresent roar of the city.

At the house of Cornelius Justus Silius, he had climbed into the stableyard by way of a tree that overgrew the high walls. He had hesitated on the high branch, crouching low as he listened to the conversation of the slaves who cleaned out the stables. Their language was an odd mixture of Latin, Cimric and the dialect of Roman Africa. From the sound of them, they had been drinking, and in confirmation, two of the voices burst out in a loud, tuneless rendition of the bawdiest, bloodiest of the gladiators' songs.

With this cacophony to cover any sound he might make, Saint-Germain dropped from the branch and slipped across the stableyard unseen and unheard. He went swiftly, darkness moving against darkness, until he had worked his way around the house to the new wing where Olivia's room was.

As he stopped beside a gnarled apple tree, a soft, agonized wail sliced the night. Saint-Germain felt the sound go through him like steel. It was Olivia's voice. There followed sounds of a scuffle and another cry, and then Justus' voice, strangely breathless.

"Lie still for him! There!"

Saint-Germain had already begun to move toward the window when he saw the slave who had guided him to Olivia's room waiting near the garden entrance to her wing. Cautiously he sank back into the shadows. He wanted a moment, only a moment, and then he would be across the narrow garden and in her window.

Peculiar, panting laughter came from the room, a quick, scrabbling sound, and then Justus' hoarse order, "Away! Let me!"

Saint-Germain's hands had tightened into fists and it was an effort not to rush into the house, regardless of the slave who waited at the door. Only his concern for Olivia, and knowing that a reckless attempt on her behalf would be more dangerous to her than none at all, kept him from this action.

Some little time later the door opened and a ruggedly built Greek came out. He swaggered a little as he walked, and in response to the waiting slave's question, he said, "Oh, he won't be satisfied until he sees her split in two by an ass' cock." His laughter was low and contemptuous. With the other slave, he strolled away toward the low building near the stables.

The sounds from Olivia's room continued awhile, and Saint-Germain moved to the window. The stonework was regular and left enough projections that Saint-Germain knew he could climb it. He set his fingers on the stones and began to move up the side of the building toward the tall windows of Olivia's room.

Justus had left her as soon as he was finished, and now Olivia lay alone on her disordered bed. The lamps were still burning, and it made her shame worse. It was bad enough that she be treated this way, but with so much light...She shook her head miserably. Justus had been pleased with his Boetian bodyguard, and her body ached from his assault. She wanted to cross her arms to cover her breasts, but there were too many scrapes and bruises for her to stand to touch them.

A noise at the window brought her upright in her bed. What would Justus require of her now? She bit her fingers to keep from screaming, refusing to give him that satisfaction.

It was not the door that opened. For an instant it seemed that the night was invading her room, and then Saint-Germain stepped off the sill and came silently across the room toward her.

Olivia stretched out her arms toward him, feeling suddenly giddy. Then she wondered. He was so silent that she feared he was a dream conjured by her mind to soothe her.

Saint-Germain saw her hesitate even as he noticed the marks of cruelty on her flesh. He stopped. "Olivia?" he said so softly that the murmur of the wind seemed louder.

"Saint-Germain?" Her voice was only a little louder. "It is you?"

He took her outstretched hands. "Of course. I had your note this morning, and you said you had to see me. For you to attempt something so dangerous as that note, I knew your need was urgent. Was it this?" His eyes went to the bruises on her arms and breasts.

Fatalistically she shook her head. "No. Not really. It's nothing new." Her fingers tightened. "I am frightened, Saint-Germain, and there is no one-"

"Not your family?" he asked quickly, thinking that they would be surer protection than himself.

"No." She swallowed against the despair she felt rising within her. She had no one else to turn to, no one else she felt she could trust, yet there was no reason for Saint-Germain to help her. She was just a woman whom he had pleasured.

He wanted to ask her why she could not go to her family, but instead, as he sat beside her, said, "Surely you haven't done anything to merit their anger. What is so dreadful that you can't speak of it to your father?"

It was a sensible question, she knew, but her face turned scarlet and she tried to pull her hands away from him. "It isn't anything they could help with."

"Could, Olivia? Or would." He bent to kiss both her hands. "Why do they tolerate what Justus does to you? Have you told them?"

"I can't," she said in a suffocated tone.

"Do you want me to speak to them? Is that why you asked me to come to you?" Saint-Germain met her eyes fully, and felt that strange pull she exercised on him.

"No. I don't know why I asked you. I can't do anything about it. You can't, either. But I felt so terrible." She was determined not to weep. Her father had taught her the Stoic philosophy, and her mother had told her to accept her station with dignity. To shed tears before this stranger, again, was too daunting.

"Worse than this?" he demanded, his eyes lighting with fury.

"Not...like this. He's selling my slaves. When we married, I came to him with five slaves, and now they're all being sold, and he's replacing them with his own creatures." Her voice caught, but she went on resolutely. "He told my father that I would be allowed to keep my slaves. He would have sold them last year if he hadn't given his word to my father. Now, it isn't important." At last her indignation was sparked. "They aren't his! They're mine! The law says that a husband has no right to any portion of his wife's property, even if he's bankrupt. That's his precious Divus Claudius' law! But he's selling my slaves!" Suddenly she realized she was shouting, and she stopped, frightened. "Is there...?" she whispered uneasily.

He made a quick gesture, listening. They waited in silence but no one came. Saint-Germain moved closer to her. "Where does he watch?" he asked softly.

She nodded toward the hidden door, then glanced back at him, her fright reborn. "You don't think he's there now, do you?"

He knew it was possible, so he avoided her question. "Get up and cross the room. Open the door as if you're expecting him. If you can, smile." Saint-Germain slid away from her into the shadow of the bed hanging as Olivia got up.

Walking across the room, which seemed now to be huge, she tried to convince herself that this was a foolish precaution, but her inward quaking could not be touched by this stern good sense. She had experienced too much of Justus' caprice to feel protected from him in any way. At last she got to the door and pressed the release. It swung open and she held her breath, fixing a grimace on her mouth.

The little room was empty. She stepped into it and tried the latch on the door to the connecting passage that led to Justus' rooms, but it was locked. With a deep sigh she closed the door once again. Until that moment she had not known how much she dreaded facing her husband a second time that night. She turned toward Saint-Germain. "Nothing," she said quietly.

He had stepped out of his concealment behind the hangings. "How long have you lived this way, Olivia?" A frown clouded his face. Judging by the new wing on the house and the elaborate preparations for observing Olivia, Justus had intended this for some time.

"At first it didn't happen very often," she said unhappily. "He would tell me to ask this man or that to sleep with me. They weren't men I would have wanted to ask." She stopped and looked at Saint-Germain, about to apologize, but saw his knowing expression and went on. "I thought it would stop, or I would get used to it, but...Justus never comes to my bed unless someone else does first. He says that it is necessary for him. I'm afraid to try to show him...otherwise." Again she faltered. The sympathy in Saint-Germain's face was almost forbidding. "He wants to see the act done without affection or tenderness or any pleasure but his. Tonight was the first time he helped. He held me for his bodyguard." Her face had paled.

"Then we must be more careful next time," Saint-Germain said as he reached to pinch out the lamps. "I cannot erase what has been done to you, but if you will let me, Olivia, I will do all I know to give you those things you want: affection and tenderness and pleasure." He opened his arms to her.

Three steps brought her to his side, and she leaned gratefully against him. He was more than a head taller than she, his body was stockily trim and strong, and as his arms circled her waist, she felt him bend to her, moving to be closer to her.

Saint-Germain held her so, unmoving, for some little time. The shape and pressure of Olivia's body filled his mind. From the gentle motion of her breathing to the upward stretch of her arms, he felt how real she was. There her hip nudged him, slightly below his own, and there the curve of her arm rested inside his arm. It was a kind of privacy that he wanted and had not dared to seek.

Finally he kissed her. Her body trembled as her lips parted and she clung to him with an unexpected ferocity. He lifted his head and looked down into her face. "I want you, Olivia," he said in a low, deliberate voice. "You know how I want you."

Her answer was a tightening of her arms. There were no words for her to tell him, but they were not necessary. She loosened her hold as he lifted her into his arms and carried her easily the few steps back to her bed. He kicked the rumpled blankets aside and lowered her to the unblemished sheet, bending over her as he did, his mouth close enough to hers to brush kisses there. It was joyous to give her will, which had sustained her through all the torment Justus had forced upon her, over to an even stronger will that was set on seeing her fulfilled. Her eyes closed as he sank down beside her.

In the past when Saint-Germain had experienced such merging of desire, it had been cloaked in the compelling bonds of religion. This had all that convergence of purpose, but now it was done for its own sake. Everywhere he touched Olivia, he could feel the passion of her in his hands. Her demand increased with his, and she strained to draw him nearer. Saint-Germain moved eagerly over her body, riding the inexorable tide of her longing. He received her with elation, sharing her release. His arms sheltered her as she pressed against him in sweet delirium.

Only much later did his doubts return. He lay looking up at the bed hangings and painted ceiling in the gloom. Olivia slept with her arm across his chest, her head in the curve of his neck. Was Aumtehoutep right, after all? Had he been right all along? Saint-Germain tightened his hold on Olivia as his senses flooded with the whole force of his loneliness, so long denied. What was it about this woman that called him so? Why did she and her uncertain smile penetrate his long-established defenses so effortlessly? If her life had been otherwise, had she married an honorable man, she would have found this affair repugnant. She turned in her sleep and he moved to accommodate her, rolling toward his side and lifting his arm so that she could nestle in the curve of his body. The sound of her breathing was precious to him, and the way fawn-brown hair lay in disorder against her neck.

She curled nearer, smiling, and with a little yawn came awake. "Oh. Good." Her head nuzzled his shoulder. It was wonderful, she thought dreamily, to wake in Saint-Germain's embrace.

"Sleep, Olivia," he murmured, lightly kissing the curve of her ear. "Sleep."

It was tempting to obey him, but she heard the rueful tone in the soft words and she looked at him. "Is anything wrong?"

"No, nothing's wrong." His hands stroked her, soothing and relaxing. "Hush."

She was quiet some little time, then said, "I know that you're concerned. If it's about what you do to me, I don't mind, truly." She put one hand to his hair, letting the loose short curls slide around her fingers.

"It's not that, not entirely." He stared up at the ceiling, thoughts, memories, shifting, and finally he spoke. "Most people, when I have come to them, have regarded me with awe and fear. Both emotions have their uses. A few others accept my ways because there are advantages in compliance." His face twisted briefly with distaste. Tishtry was good to him, and his admiration for her was genuine, but her matter-of-fact tolerance of his favor was not binding, and she had never denied that, given her choice, she would prefer more ordinary pleasures. "I have been willing to make do with adoration or terror or concession. Now, I don't know. I don't know." He closed his eyes, but that didn't help. Too many images crowded in on him, too many losses, too much isolation. Making a strange sound that was compounded of grief and hope, he pulled Olivia closer to him, holding her tightly as his turbulent feelings roiled within him.

Olivia put her arms around him almost absentmindedly. This outburst of emotion perplexed her. She had been so caught up in the prison of her own torment that she had little comprehension of the distress in others. Now, in the dark with Saint-Germain enfolding her in his desperate embrace, she felt the somnambulistic nightmare that had become her life loosen its hold on her, so that she would be able, in time, to break free of it; in Saint-Germain's anguish, she found salvation from her own.

There was a kind of peace, a tentative calm that descended on Saint-Germain as he clung to Olivia. He had not been able to speak those words before, to admit how keenly he felt his separation from humankind. He took her face between his hands. "For whatever forlorn reason you've accepted me, I am grateful. I give you my word that I will not desert you, that I will not repudiate this union."

"And is this all our union?" Olivia asked wistfully. She had not wanted her ravishers to touch her, but Saint-Germain she welcomed with her whole being.

Saint-Germain shrugged slightly, a sad, rueful smile on his lips. "Yes. Among my kind, nothing else is possible."

"But it must be possible," she objected reasonably. "How else do you continue?"

This was a question Saint-Germain anticipated with dread. "We continue...through contamination. Those whom we take to ourselves, if they come knowingly, eventually become like us. If you were to taste my blood, the change would be certain, but if you give yourself to me, that, in time, will accomplish the same thing." He explained this flatly, meeting her eyes with difficulty.

"And I? Will I be like you?"

"Eventually. If we continue to love each other." It was a hard task to say these words while Olivia studied him, uncertainty in her eyes. "Perhaps I should have warned you. You may still send me away and suffer no hurt from me. As I have said, it takes time to change."

Send him away? The thought itself was painful and she reached for him convulsively. "No."

Misunderstanding her, he said, "If we lie together five or six more times, it is likely to happen. More than that and it is assured. Listen to me, Olivia-I will be your ally, if you like, and ask nothing more of you. But I will not abandon you to your husband. With the blood there is a bond, and I may not, I cannot refuse it." He had seen more beautiful women, he thought as he spoke to her. He had slept beside them or visited them as a dream, and had left them, sated but hungry. With Olivia, he could feast on the light in her eyes. This was not the strength of the bond holding him to her, it was not even his need. Olivia herself, her unique self, was the tie, and would have been, he thought, if he had never touched her.

"Don't leave me," she said softly.

"I have said that I won't."

"And lie with me. Love me." She was caught in his arms, engulfed by the force of his passion. As his beautiful small hands warmed and opened her, she had the fleeting thought that if this rapture was what it was to be like him, she would delight in the change he spoke of, seek it eagerly. Then the thought was gone and all that remained in the universe was his searching nearness, and the soul-shaking spasms and elation.

Neither of them wanted to part, though the quickening of the breeze indicated that dawn was near. "A little while more," Olivia murmured to Saint-Germain's shoulder.

"A little while more,"-he paused to kiss the place below her ear where her jaw and neck made a sweet indentation-"and your slaves will be up, and I might be discovered."

She knew this was so, and reluctantly released him. "Go quickly, or I'll call you back."

Those words alone were enough to stop him. "Do not be too long, Olivia. Send for me as soon as possible." He had one foot up on the sill of her tall windows.

"Soon. Yes." Her bed already felt empty and cold, and the gathering of the sheet around her did not make her warmer.

"Each day at sunset," he said in a different tone, remembering that they would need to be very cautious in future, "a fruit seller will pass your house. If you have need of me, ask for berries from Dacia, and say on what day you will want them. On that night, I will be here. I will not fail you if you call me, Olivia." He saw her start to extend her arms to him, and he knew he must leave. With a quick, affectionate gesture he turned away and dropped silently into the garden below.

He had traversed the garden and was almost to the tree over the stableyard when he heard a voice behind him.

"A moment!" The accent was that of Roman Africa, and when Saint-Germain turned, he saw a huge man of swarthy complexion and rough, scarred features. "What's this? What's this?" the Tingitanian demanded as he hefted a large club.

Saint-Germain made no answer. He silently cursed himself for the folly of being seen, but there was no time to be cautious or they would be discovered, which would put Olivia, and himself, in great danger.

The club moved in a quick whooshing arc as the stablehand swung it at Saint-Germain's head. "Sending Persians to spy on Senators now, are they?" the Tingitanian demanded.

By the time the club passed the spot where it would have struck Saint-Germain, he had turned and taken the Tingitanian's shoulder, letting his opponent's weight be pulled by the motion of the club. Another two steps and he was behind the stablehand.

Surprise turned to fury as the Tingitanian fell heavily to the ground. He took up the club, scrambling quickly to his feet to avoid the second kick the foreigner had aimed at his ribs. "Treacherous Persian!" he shouted, thrusting the club at Saint-Germain.

He had to be quick. That shout would be certain to rouse the slaves in the stables. Saint-Germain sprang forward, pushing the club aside and leaping upward at the same time to drive his feet into the Tingitanian's wide, flat stomach. The stablehand collapsed, folding in the middle like a faulty hinge. As he lunged forward, Saint-Germain reached for his chin and snapped his head back with practiced, deadly efficiency. The Tingitanian slumped to the ground and did not move again.

By the time two of the stable slaves had run from their quarters in answer to the shout they had heard about Persians, Saint-Germain was two houses away, going down the hill toward the Circus Maximus, where half a dozen of his bestiarii would appear that day.

As he walked through the gate leading under the stands, he heard the cough of a leopard nearby, and farther away, the sleepy, halfhearted protests of the gladiators' whore.

TEXT OF A LETTER FROM THE EMPEROR NERO TO THE FOREIGNER RAGOCZY SAINT- GERMAIN FRANCISCUS.

To the distinguished stranger from Dacia, who is not a Daci, Ragoczy Saint-Germain Franciscus, my imperial greetings:

Doubtless you have heard that the Emperor of Armenia is to honor me and all Rome with an official visit, and you must be aware of the importance of this visit, which will seal the peace between Rome and Armenia forever.

You have, among your slaves, an Armenian woman, called Tishtry, I believe, who is a bestiarii with two teams of trained horses. This Tishtry has appeared in many of the Games and has won singular recognition for her skills and her beauty. It would be a great compliment if this woman would prepare new feats to honor Tiridates on his visit, for she is not only a woman of great skill, but as an Armenian, any honor given to her must be a compliment to King Tiridates as well. I am gratified to know that you will do everything in your power to aid in my plans to receive Tiridates with all the splendor that Rome can offer a visiting monarch.

There are a few other matters I wish to mention about this visit: I plan to have a great venation, and I am told that your supply of animals is quite remarkable. You have half a dozen pards in your stock at present, and, I am reliably informed, may get more. I will want all you have and double that amount. Those magnificent cats will certainly impress the Armenian and Persian guests. Some of those African big-horned deer would be good to have. Also a few of those Asiatic goats, the large ones with the heavy coats. Wild boars are always good in venations, for they are strong, bad-tempered and unpredictable. If you should happen to know of some easily available, they would be most effective for the hunt. I would be particularly pleased if you happen to find any ounces. Pards are well enough, but the ounce is so fine a cat, and so rarely seen, that I would be eternally grateful to you for procuring me half a dozen of them for the venation. That big black-and-white bear you imported from the East would also be more than welcome.

If it seems to you that I impose upon you, it is more a token of my respect for your expertise and abilities. I would not make such demands of most of my Romans, for I know that they would not be capable of accomplishing them. You are another matter. You have demonstrated again and again your capacity for doing what would appear impossible.

The time is short, and it is necessary that you go to work at once to get these creatures. I have delayed coming to you because I believed the promises of my Romans, who have yet to procure me more than fifteen hippopotami and one white rhinoceros and a few dozen lions who have yet to be trained to eat men. I look forward to hearing of your progress on my behalf.

From my own hand on the sixth day of June in the 818th Year of the City,

Nero Caesar