Arena Read Free Page A

you and me, old Chaerea was a decent bloke, but he never had much support among the Guard. He forgot the golden rule. Praetorians stick by the Emperor through thick and thin.’ He paused, took a calming breath and continued. ‘Anyway, after Caligula died, a few unsavoury types crawled out of the woodwork, announcing that they were opposed to Claudius becoming emperor. One or two of them had the idea that they deserved the job instead. Or worse, wanted to turn Rome into a republic again! To have us return to the dark days of civil war and bloodletting on the streets …’ The guard shivered at the thought. ‘Obviously the Emperor can’t rule with dissent in the ranks.’
    ‘Obviously,’ Macro said.
    ‘Right. So we’ve had to spend these last few months rooting out the ones who were opposed to Claudius and making them disappear.’
    Macro made a face. ‘Disappear?’
    ‘Yes,’ the guard said, his eyes darting left and right to check no one was snooping on their conversation. ‘We quietly take them off the streets, bring ’em to the palace and deal with them.’ He made a throat-slitting gesture. ‘Senators, knights, magistrates. Even the odd legate. The sons get exiled, or worse, thrown into the ludus. The list seems to grow by the week. No one is safe, I’m telling you.’
    ‘Not sure I like the sound of that,’ Macro said tersely. ‘Soldiers shouldn’t get involved in politics.’
    The guard raised a hand in mock surrender. ‘Hey, don’t look at me. You know how it is. Orders are orders. If you ask me, it’s those freedmen the Emperor has been surrounding himself with we need to watch. You should see the way they talk to us. But they’ve got his ear.’
    The guard straightened his back and approached a set of wrought-iron gates at the entrance to the imperial palace complex. A blast of cool evening air swept through the street as the guards ushered Macro up a wide staircase leading into a dimly lit hall with marbled walls and a bas-relief frieze depicting the famous battle of Zama, the decisive victory against Carthage masterminded by Publius Cornelius Scipio, the great reformer of the Roman military. They swept along a vast corridor and cut through a lavish garden adorned with fountains and statues and surrounded by marble arcades. Beyond, Macro could see the rooftops of the Forum and the columns of the Temple of Castor and Pollux. Arriving at the opposite side of the garden, they climbed a flight of stone stairs and entered a large hall with an apse at the far end. The guards escorted Macro across the hall to where a shadowed figure stood at the step of a raised dais used by the Emperor when he was holding court.
    The man at the dais was not the Emperor. He had the dark curly hair and sloping nose of a Greek. His smooth skin and willowy physique suggested he had never done a day’s hard labour. He wore the simple tunic of a freedman, although Macro noted that it appeared to be made of fine-spun wool. His eyes were black like the holes in a stage mask.
    ‘Ah, the famous Macro!’ the freedman said with an exaggerated tone of praise. ‘A true Roman hero!’
    He approached Macro, his thin lips twisted into a smile.
    ‘Leave us,’ he ordered the guards in a sharp, shrill voice. The Praetorians nodded and paced back down the centre of the hall. The freedman followed them with his dark eyes until they were out of earshot.
    ‘You have to be careful who you speak around these days,’ he said. ‘Particularly the Praetorians. They have the misguided impression that his imperial majesty owes them an eternal debt. What is the world coming to when the guards think they hold sway over the most powerful man in the world?’
    Macro bit his tongue. He’d heard that after Caligula had been assassinated, Claudius had been discovered hiding in the imperial palace by members of the Praetorian Guard. Desperate for stability, the Praetorians had promptly acclaimed as emperor a fifty-year-old man with practically no