Death of a Gladiatrix, Act Four: A Cruel Closed Circle

4.1 The Rewritten Truth

In a Roman winter, the marble is cold and hard as ice.

You stood before the bench of the court, the stone under your feet sending up a piercing cold. Behind the rail, curious onlookers were crowded together, craning their necks to see.

The praetor sat high above, his dark toga spotless. The jury sat on either side, senators and knights in the upper seats.

The arrangement of the seats was no different from the circus at the arena.

When everyone had taken their places, the clerk unrolled his scroll and cleared his throat.

The father of Marcus Claudius brought the charge.

He accused you — Aelia, a senator’s daughter — of allowing a gladiatrix from the North Sea to deliberately murder the Roman legate Marcus.

You heard people whispering behind the rail.

“That’s her.”

“All for that sea monster.”

“And Marcus died trying to save her.”

Someone lowered their voice, and yet was eager for the people around them to hear. “I heard she was tangled up with that gladiator long ago.”

Nothing travels faster than rumour (Fama nihil est celerius).

You did not look at the public seats.

Marcus’s family sat there, and your father’s allies and enemies. Outside the court, many more people were waiting for today’s verdict. The version of the story they loved to repeat was much simpler:

A young legate escorting a noblewoman was murdered by a savage gladiatrix. The noblewoman had been bewitched, and her family was trying to cover it up. And the great House of Claudius had lost a son who should have won glory in the east.

But…

Quid est veritas?

What is truth?

A month earlier, when you reached Rome, the city was just entering late autumn. Marcus’s body was brought back in a sealed wagon. Scylla rode beside your carriage, her cloak marked with dark bloodstains that would not wash out.

When you got home, you did not go straight to the Senate. You told your father and your aunt Claudia everything.

The rebellion in Assyria. The road through Mesopotamia cut. What was left of Marcus’s force retreating in disgrace. The night raid on the column, disguised as bandits. And how Marcus, to hide the fact that he had deserted, had not only killed with his own hand the captain of your guard, who trusted him most, but had also tried to murder you.

But you kept back one last part.

You did not say that Marcus had already been overpowered. You did not say that you had ordered Scylla to tie him up, and that Scylla had disobeyed you and cut his throat with her blade.

You only told your father: Scylla killed Marcus in the fight, protecting you.

It was not to protect Scylla.

At least, not only that.

It had been an execution. A slave gladiatrix could not execute a Roman officer, and a senator’s daughter could not order her to. If you ever dared to tell the truth, every eye would turn to you:

Did you give the order? Did you want him silenced? Did you use your rank to have a barbarian’s hand get rid of the man you were promised to?

Sometimes the truth is a double-edged blade.

Whoever grips it gets cut as well.

So the bargaining began early.

In those days, the gate of the house opened again and again. Messengers came before dawn and left late at night. Several times, passing the door, you heard low, fierce arguing inside. It was your father and Claudia.

Your family brought out the standard, the testimony, the gear of the masked soldiers and the confession of the second-in-command. They wanted the other side at least to swallow Marcus’s failure of duty, and to admit your calm and your part in surviving the “bandit” attack.

The other side brought out their family name, their honours, their old friends in the army — and a body that could no longer speak. They wanted you to admit you had been bewitched, and that Marcus was a fallen hero.

Then the bargaining broke down.

Your father had no choice but to let another version loose among the senators: Marcus had abandoned his post in the face of the enemy, faked a bandit attack, and killed witnesses to keep them quiet.

That was blade against blade.

Marcus’s family struck back even faster.

They could not let their son be a deserter.

Once they admitted it, not their name, not their connections, not their merits on the eastern front could outweigh the shame of running from battle. Add to that a disguise as bandits and an attack on the governor’s daughter, and the House of Claudius would lose far more than one son.

They could never admit it.

Very soon, they were calling Marcus’s flight a tactical withdrawal, calling the soldiers left around him an escort, and calling the night attack on your camp a border raid by bandits.

As for why he died in your tent, they had the answer ready: he had gone into the tent to protect you, and been murdered by your gladiatrix.

They hired skilled orators to tell the people in the streets about Marcus’s deeds.

There was no need to add anything. Among Romans who loved their circuses, the story began to grow by itself from that moment on.

Marcus was called a brave young legate.

Some said he had already made the Assyrian border safe, and had only left the main army to escort the governor’s daughter. Some said he had still been shielding you with his body as he died. Others said he had long known how savage and untameable that North Sea gladiatrix was, but because he cared for you, he had not wanted to shame you in public.

A few days later, people in the taverns were already singing a little verse.

“Marcus, Marcus, hero of Rome, died for the Empire.”

A few days after that, the House of Claudius announced that a statue would be made of him. Where it would stand had not yet been decided, but its pose was already known: in armour, sword in hand, turned to shield the woman behind him.

The truth was being weighed.

On one side, the honour of the dead. On the other, the testimony of the living.

But…

Quid est veritas?

What is truth?

When your mind came back to the court, the clerk had finished reading the charge.

You stood in the hall with your hands hidden inside your cloak, your fingertips digging into your palms, using the pain to keep your breathing deep, so that your thoughts would stay here.

Marcus’s father stood up.

The man you had once fondly called Uncle Gaius was older than you remembered, and grimmer. The edge of his black toga carried a broad purple stripe, his beard was neatly trimmed, and his eyes were sunken deep.

First he bowed to the praetor and the jury, then turned to face the room.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “my son died on the road home to Rome. He could have stayed somewhere safe and waited for help. But when he heard that the governor’s daughter was trapped, he turned back without a moment’s thought.”

Someone behind the rail sighed softly.

Marcus’s father went on. “Facing bandits and rebellion, he protected the column, and he protected the woman he was to marry. What he did not expect was that the real blade would come from the one beside him.”

His finger turned to point at you.

“She bought a gladiator — a woman trained to kill. She had that woman travel with her, gave her a weapon, and gave her the chance to get close to a Roman officer. Gentlemen! Who puts a viper on his pillow and then claims to have nothing to do with the bite?”

A low murmur ran through the crowd.

You did not lower your head.

“When my son died, his throat had been cut. Not face to face on a battlefield. Not an honourable death. A low-born gladiator, with her mistress’s permission, cut open the throat of a Roman legate.”

At last he looked at you.

There were no tears of grief in that look, only a deep cold.

“And she,” he said, “expects you to believe she is innocent. But without her guarantee, her favour, her indulgence of savage things, Marcus would not be dead.”

He paused, then lowered his voice, speaking in a trained, practised tone.

“She was bewitched by that gladiator. Young, foolish, lost in foreign tales, she mistook cruelty for freedom and disobedience for dignity. My son saw the danger. And in the end he died in front of the very woman he meant to save.”

You listened.

The morning light moved across the floor and reached the hem of your cloak. That cloth had long since been changed. The old one, soaked with Marcus’s blood, had been sealed in the family storeroom, to be brought out at the trial.

You thought of Scylla standing in the tent, the short blade hanging from her hand, blood dripping from its point.

But here in this court, everything was a lie. You were lying, your father was lying, and Gaius was lying too.

Marcus’s family wanted to save the dead man’s name. Your family wanted to save your life. And Scylla —

She was locked in the dungeon beneath the arena, waiting for judgement, just as you were.

4.2 The Scapegoat of Order

When Marcus’s father had finished, there was a short silence in the court.

Standing before the bench, you saw the praetor tap the arm of his chair with his fingertip, heard the clerk’s stylus scratch across the wax tablet, and from the public seats, bit by bit, the whispering began to rise.

Your father stood, the folds of his toga heavy. He could have argued back. He could have brought out the testimony and the evidence. But every piece of evidence carried another danger: as long as Marcus’s family insisted that Scylla was a weapon you kept, the more evidence there was, the more it would look as if you had planned it all.

As for reasons and motives, they did not matter.

“She had her slave kill him.”

“She was passing messages with a gladiator.”

“She knew army secrets and used the name of bandits to murder the man she was promised to.”

Those rumours had long since finished the story for everyone.

You heard someone in the public seats say quietly, “If she’s innocent, why doesn’t the slave dare to appear in court?”

Another answered, “Bring a gladiator into court? Should a savage stand beside a senator of Rome?”

Your fingertips touched a small hard thing. It was the leather cord bookmark from your mother’s old book. Before you left the house, you had hidden it inside your clothes. The years had worn the leather soft, like your mother’s hand.

Your father began to speak.

He spoke slowly and carefully. He said the numbers in Marcus’s company did not match its official strength. He said the so-called bandits had known the layout of the camp perfectly. He said the captain of your guard had died by a Roman short sword, not a bandit’s dagger.

But with every sentence he spoke, Marcus’s family pushed the question back onto you:

If the company was wrong, why didn’t you point it out at the start?

If things were so dangerous, how could the gladiatrix at your side get close to Marcus in the confusion?

If Marcus had already been overpowered, why wasn’t he handed alive to a military court?

As the last question fell, you looked at the place where Scylla should have been.

She was not in the court. She was locked in a stone cell beneath the arena, in a darkness that never saw the sky, waiting for the result of this trial.

Marcus’s father spoke again.

“If she claims she knew nothing, then she was bewitched by that slave. If she knew, she is an accomplice.”

You wanted to speak, but now any defence would be rolled into another question. If you said Scylla had saved you, they would say you were protecting a murderer. If you said Scylla had killed against your order, they would ask why you were still covering for her.

Before you could speak, there was a rustle of cloth from the back of the public seats.

It was not loud, but it made the whole court turn round.

Claudia had come in.

In that instant every whisper in the court was gone. In the silence, even the praetor sat up a little straighter.

The Chief Vestal should not be drawn into a criminal dispute like this — least of all one involving a noble betrothal, the army, and a slave who had killed. What she tended was the sacred flame, not a scandal.

The praetor frowned. “Lady Claudia.”

She gave him a small nod.

“I know this is not the temple,” she said. “And I know my office should not be used for worldly ends.”

No one answered.

She came down from the public seats, and the crowd opened a narrow path for her without being asked. Marcus’s father watched her, and for the first time, doubt showed in his face.

Claudia stopped beside you.

You smelled the faint ash and frankincense on her clothes. When you were small and ill with fever, you had smelled this same scent come close to your bed, night after night, and it had made you feel safe.

And now, it had come to your side again.

“But today, someone is trying to make a young woman out to be a murderer,” she said. “Since you gentlemen are willing to listen to stories, I can offer you another one.”

Marcus’s father spoke at once. “Most revered Vestal, this case—”

“That gladiatrix did not come because of Aelia.”

Claudia looked towards the jury.

“Scylla, a slave from the North Sea, born Sifra. She is the child raised by two gladiatrices of years ago, Amazonia and Achillia. The older men among you will remember that show at the Vestalia. She later found her way into Rome’s slave system and became the gladiator she is today.”

You stood beside her and felt your heart knock against your ribs, again and again.

She had found out.

When she said “I will find out”, what she had found was not North Sea legends, not which slaves your mother had once helped. It was Scylla’s link to those two names. You remembered what Scylla had said by the fire.

“They were my mothers.”

Now, coming from Claudia’s mouth, those words were no longer a confession in the night. They had become evidence, for anyone to use.

Marcus’s father seized on it at once. After all, what he wanted was not your life, but his family’s honour.

“Revenge,” he said. “You all heard it, gentlemen. This slave did come for revenge.”

Claudia did not deny it.

“She hates Rome,” she said. “That is hardly strange. Rome has given her reason enough.”

Several people in the court frowned.

She went on, her voice still level. “But Aelia did not order her to kill Marcus. She bought Scylla as a guard for the journey. Scylla killed Marcus later because of an old grudge, because of the chaos, because of her own violence and her will to revenge.”

You turned to look at her.

She did not look at you.

In that moment you finally understood what she was doing. She was pushing you away from the blade — and pushing Scylla out in front of everyone. She was clearing your name in the cleanest, most effective way there was.

Not because it was the truth. Only because it was an ending everyone could accept.

A noblewoman bewitched by a slave can be forgiven.

A barbarian slave driven by revenge must be dealt with.

The praetor was silent for a long time.

The wax tablets passed along the jury seats and were collected again. Some whispered together. Some looked at Claudia, and then at you. Marcus’s father no longer objected. For him, this story was good enough. Marcus kept his name as a hero, Aelia became a foolish and pitiable girl, and all the blame would be carried by one slave.

When the brazier was about to go out, the praetor read the verdict.

Marcus Claudius was an officer who died protecting Rome. The House of Claudius was granted permission to raise a statue to him, its inscription to be written jointly by the family and the army.

You heard someone in the public seats quietly breathe out in relief.

Then came your name.

Aelia, having judged poorly under fear and allowed a foreign slave near an officer, would from now on be placed under the supervision of her family.

Last came Scylla.

She was not standing in the court. She was in a stone cell underground, guarded by two soldiers. She could not hear her own sentence.

The clerk read: The gladiatrix Scylla, born Sifra, for murdering a Roman officer, disturbing public order, and harming the honour of the city in the name of revenge, is returned to the arena. She is sentenced to nine days of combat in succession. Each day she will be pushed out onto the sand to face beasts, criminals and professional gladiators.

Until death — or until she lives through the ninth day.

There was a satisfied murmur from the public seats. They liked bread, and they liked the circus.

“That’s good.”

“Let her pay her debt in the arena.”

“A sea monster should die on the sand anyway.”

You looked at Claudia.

She had returned to her seat, her hands folded. She did not look at you, and she did not look at Marcus’s family. Beneath her white veil, those eyes slowly closed.

Outside the court, a cold wind blew into the colonnade, howling as it brought in the decree of winter.

People in the street were talking about Marcus’s statue — that the sculptor had been hired and the stone already chosen. The young officer would stand in the Forum in armour, like Trajan’s Column, lasting to the end of human time.

People passing by would look up at him. Children would ask who he was, and the grown-ups would answer:

That is a hero who died for Rome.

And at the next Vestalia, Scylla would walk into the arena again.

The same city would applaud both things.

4.3 Between Hatred and Debt

After the trial, time passed quickly. People remembered the lies and made up rumours, but no longer cared about the truth.

You went to the Forum.

Rome’s dusk was hiding in the shadows of the colonnades and in the water stains on the stone.

The Forum was empty. No orators performing, no great festival — hardly anyone at all. In the middle of it, Trajan’s Column was slowly taking shape.

Huge blocks of stone were being stacked, section by section. With every blow of the masons’ hammers, grey-white stone dust fell and was blown away by the wind. Many scenes were already clear on the stone: columns of marching soldiers, troops crossing a river, prisoners kneeling, the emperor standing high above them, one arm slightly raised.

The stone would remember those great deeds forever. But it would never record the smell of scorched earth, or the cries of pain.

Nor would it carve the women and children strung together on chains, the little shrines smashed by the roadside, the blood not yet dry in the way stations.

The Romans wound the stories fit to be looked up at round and round the column, layer after layer. Later generations would see only civilisation, victory, and the profile of the emperor’s authority.

Not far away, work had also begun on Marcus’s statue.

A few bunches of flowers lay around the base, already wilting. The statue was still a rough block, but the breastplate was thick and the shoulders broad. The nose and cheekbones had been roughly cut, and deep grooves had been opened where the eyes would go. The mason said they still had to be finished as the family required.

Younger.

More resolute.

The eyes must look east.

As if he had never fled that land.

And behind him, your own figure had been reduced to a vague, panic-stricken shadow.

You stood there, looking at the unfinished face of the statue. Marcus’s father had already won him the pose he would be remembered in after death. In armour, sword in hand, protecting a Roman noblewoman, dying for the borders of the empire.

You remembered a line you had once read.

Simulacra vultus imbecilla ac mortalia sunt, forma mentis aeterna.

The images of a face are frail and mortal; only the form of the soul is eternal.

But the stone in front of you was about to give him a different soul.

Every time the mason’s hammer fell, the false mark cut deeper. What had really happened could only stay in the bodies of the living — like the sound you heard in your dreams at night, the sound of a blade going into Marcus’s throat.

You still remembered that moment.

When the blood hit your face, what you felt was not only horror.

You saw Marcus’s face — that face that always had everything in hand — finally twisted, finally out of control. In that moment, beneath all the shock, the cold and the disgust, something very quick and very bright passed through you.

He was dead.

You would not have to marry him.

You would not be sent to a distant province, would not become his wife, would not sit at the table of a governor’s house on the frontier listening to him tell his flight as courage and his fear as strategy.

You had been almost wild with joy — and that joy was harder to bear than his blood.

You could not lie to yourself any longer. You had imagined Marcus’s death. And Scylla had made it happen for you.

Without your noticing, footsteps came from behind you. A soft, familiar rhythm.

Claudia stopped beside you.

She did not speak. She only stood there quietly and looked at the statue with you. When the mason saw her, he put down his hammer and chisel and bowed his head.

“The mason will carve his eyes better,” you said.

Claudia looked up at it.

“The family will insist on it.”

“They won.”

“They kept the part that had to be kept.”

You turned to look at her.

“So did you.”

She did not argue.

The wind swept across the Forum, bringing the smell of stone dust and dead flowers. The mason packed up his hammer and left, and in the evening wind the Forum was suddenly quiet.

“I know the truth,” you told her.

At the edge of your vision, you saw Claudia’s shoulders tremble very slightly.

“Which part?”

“About my mother’s death.” You looked up, past the statue, at the blood-red setting sun. “Scylla lied to you. Back then, to get away, she told the bandits where my mother would be.”

Claudia lowered her eyes.

You went on. “My mother saved her. But in the end she lived, and my mother died.”

The words fell somewhere between the statue and the setting sun, and there was no echo.

You had thought it would hurt to say it. But when the moment actually came, your voice was calm, as if the sharpest part of the fact had been worn smooth by the years. It was still heavy, but it no longer stabbed.

“I know,” Claudia said.

You looked at her.

“You know?”

“I haven’t known long,” she said. “A little longer than you.”

Your heart missed a beat.

“So that’s why you said those things in court.”

“Yes.”

“You handed her over.”

“Yes.”

The answers were so calm that for a moment you could not speak.

You turned back to Marcus’s unfinished face. You could not see what it would truly look like, but it was already enough to imagine its future solemnity.

“You knew who she was all along,” you said. “That’s why, at the trial, you said she was the child of those two gladiatrices.”

Claudia did not deny it.

On the other side of the Forum, in front of Trajan’s Column, the stone hammers began to fall again, each blow striking into the dusk.

You went on. “I read the records. Amazonia and Achillia came from the North Sea. They were sisters. They were sold into Rome together and trained as gladiators. The records say they avoided fighting in the same match for a long time. But in the end, for the festival, for the drama of it, they were made opponents.”

The sunlight of that Vestalia seemed to fall on your face again, along with the heat and the noise of that year.

“Scylla says they were her mothers.”

Claudia sighed softly.

“I hate her,” you said, then breathed deeply until the trembling was gone from your voice. “But she was only fourteen then. She only wanted to save her mothers. Anyone else might have done the same stupid thing… And I still hate her. She let my mother die on that mountain road. She knew who I was from the very beginning, and she said nothing.”

The air carried the bitter smell of stone dust and grit.

“Sometimes I want her sent back to the arena. I want a lion to tear open her chest. I want the beasts to drag out her heart, her liver, her lungs, and let the people in the stands look as long as they like…” You drew a slow breath and went on. “Then I wouldn’t have to think about her saving me. I wouldn’t have to think about her keeping watch outside my tent every night. I wouldn’t have to think about how, when she killed Marcus, part of me was wild with joy.”

When you had said the last words, your clenched fingers had gone stiff from gripping so hard.

There was no reproach in Claudia’s eyes, and no pity. She only listened, as if in the temple, waiting for a confession that had stopped halfway.

“But she really did save me.”

In the distance someone pushed a small cart across the paving stones, rattling.

“If it weren’t for her, Marcus would have killed me. He would have come back to Rome and taken this statue’s place in being looked up at.”

You looked up at your aunt.

“I don’t know how to face her. But I know we lost our mothers on the same day.”

As soon as you said this, the Forum seemed to grow empty in an instant. Every sound shrank back behind the column, the scaffolding and the statue, and only silence was left.

You stood there and said everything. But you could not do what the judge had done, and give Scylla a single name.

Murderer.

Saviour.

Slave.

Daughter.

Sea monster.

Claudia was silent for a long time.

The light slowly faded. When the statue’s eye sockets had become pools of dark shadow, she finally spoke.

“Aelia,” she said. “Come with me.”

“Where?”

“To the temple.”

Claudia turned, her white robe brushing the edge of the stone steps.

“There is a story,” she said, “that I never finished telling you.”

4.4 The Child by the Sea

At night the Temple of Vesta was quieter than by day. With the worship and the noise gone, only the sound of the burning flame was left.

You walked down the long corridor, and the priestesses keeping watch outside stepped aside. No one asked Claudia where she was going, and no one asked why you were coming in.

Because she was the Chief Vestal, and had been here for thirty years.

Her rooms were simpler than you had imagined.

A bed, a wooden cupboard, a bronze lamp. The window was very small, and the dusk outside looked from a distance like a piece of deep blue glass. The smell of the sacred flame seeped in from the inner sanctuary, mixed with charcoal ash, wool, and the bitterness of laurel.

She sent her maid away and closed the door herself.

Then she took out a small wooden box and set it on the table. Her hands were the ones you knew — long, pale, the nails neat.

Over the years those hands had led you by the hand, smoothed down your collar, and, not long ago, taken you out of the court.

“You know how the Vestals are chosen,” she said.

You nodded.

“Chosen from noble and respectable families, between six and ten years old, sound of body, of a clean family line. Once chosen, a girl leaves the power of the world and enters the power of the goddess.”

She said it as if reciting an ancient law.

“We serve the sacred flame and protect Rome. We are the voice of the goddess Vesta in the city. And so our bodies no longer belong to ourselves — still less to any man.”

The flame gave a small jump.

She opened the box. Inside lay sealed rolls of parchment.

“We have many privileges. We can give testimony in court without first swearing an oath, because our existence is the oath. We may make our own wills, dispose of our own property, and leave that property to other women.”

You looked at the parchment.

“This is my will,” she said. “I have left everything I own to you.”

The lamplight fell on the wax seals, and the flame pattern on them gleamed faintly.

“In the arena, a Vestal’s gesture is enough to change whether a person lives or dies. People are willing to believe it is not one woman’s judgement, but the voice of the gods passing through her body and into the world.”

Claudia closed the box.

“But all of this rests on one condition.”

You looked at her.

“A Vestal must never break her vow of chastity,” she said, word by word. “To lose her chastity is to break the vow. And once that happens, it can never be undone.”

You were both silent. Only the sound of the sacred flame burning came from far away.

Claudia looked at the lamp flame. It was a long time before she spoke again.

“Now, I will tell you a story.”

Her gaze went past you and settled on a blank patch of the wall. Claudia’s voice slowly filled the whole room.

Many, many years ago, there was a young Vestal.

She was sixteen, and had already worn the white robe for six years. She had long since learned to pray before the sacred flame, and to let people read holiness in her silence. But beneath the white robe she was still young, and still rash.

At that time, the world seemed to her a hazy cloud of mist, never quite clear.

That year, the night rain in Rome was very heavy.

Inside the temple the flame was well protected, but outside the door, water ran down the steps. The rain covered the sound of crying, and the pain carried away the fear.

The sacred flame was very close to her. Its light leaked in through the crack of the door and fell on the linen soaked with blood. She bit down on the cloth and did not dare to cry out. The person she trusted kept watch in the outer room, footsteps stopping again and again, and moving away. She was in so much pain she wanted to roll on the floor, to scream. So she bit the linen and tore at her white robe, until…

She gave birth to the child.

When the child dropped into her hands, it was as small as a lump of flesh that had not yet taken shape — wrinkled, red, its cry very thin, but enough to destroy everything.

It was proof of her crime.

Not a rumour, not an enemy’s accusation, not a misunderstanding that could be explained away. It was her own flesh and blood, and the proof that she had broken her vow. A wrinkled, red, moving little life, struggling in her palm, crying, its lips instinctively searching for her finger. Her breasts ached, and milk had already soaked her white robe. She looked down at the child, her pale fingertips still wet with blood.

If she were found out, she would be buried alive.

So she gave an order.

Take the child away.

Get rid of it.

When she said it, she did not cry. She did not even raise her voice. The person she trusted picked up the child, wrapped it in cloth and hurried away. The door closed again, and the sacred flame went on burning.

She sat on the edge of the bed and let the pain left in her body spread, little by little, into her bones.

Later, she went after them.

Not at once.

First she washed her hands. She washed them again and again, until the skin between her fingers turned white and wrinkled, until she had to stop. Then she changed her clothes and pressed a cloak over her chest to hide the milk seeping through. She told herself she must not go, must not look, must not know where the child had been taken.

She went anyway.

At night the shore was wet and black. The waves came in, and in, and the sea kept rushing up to slap against the wooden boats tied there. She hid behind the rocks and saw two women from the North Sea.

They wore sealskin and coarse wool, their hair tied up with bone pins and cords. Their faces were a purplish red, their hands rough. They smelled of fish and tar — the kind of smell that made Roman noblewomen cover their noses.

And yet when they picked up the child, they were so gentle.

One of the women bent her head and pressed her forehead to the child’s face. The other took off her own leather robe and wrapped the child tightly in it. The child stopped crying. Its lips moved, and it made a strange, warm, gurgling laugh.

The sixteen-year-old Vestal stayed hidden behind the rocks and did not step out.

She watched those two women carry the child away.

In the years that followed, she never made another mistake.

She kept the night watches, prayed, took part in the rites, served the sacred flame. Her hands were always clean, her robe always white, her words always fitting. People said she was more mature and wiser than the other Vestals her age. Every day she looked a little more like what Rome needed.

But some things do not die. Whatever has once existed leaves a mark.

More than ten years later, two North Sea women were brought into Rome. They became a novelty, a fresh circus to make the Romans cheer. They became Amazonia and Achillia.

They became gladiators.

Perhaps that was the will of the gods, perhaps it was fate… Following the shadows of her two mothers, that child came back to Rome too.

She ran through the dust and, by chance, stopped a carriage. She knelt in front of it, her forehead almost touching the ground, and begged the Vestal inside to save her mothers.

The carriage curtain was lifted a crack.

The Vestal saw. She saw those eyes.

Sea-grey.

Showing a little blue-green in the light.

They were not a stranger’s eyes. Nor were they a colour that happened, by chance, to appear in a northern barbarian. And so she knew: her crime was still alive. It had come back to the streets of Rome, knelt in front of her carriage, and found her to beg for help.

Scelera ipsa nefasque sua per se nota ferunt.

Crime and sin reveal themselves by their own nature.

The Vestal closed the carriage window, as if she could shut her own crime outside it.

Her attendants dragged the child away, and the carriage went on. The streets were crowded that day. No one would remember one foreign child.

But the Vestal remembered. She went back to the temple, bathed and changed her clothes, but she could still smell blood. Just as, fourteen years before, on that night, she had not been able to wash her hands clean in the copper basin, however hard she tried.

Later, she went to the arena.

She knew Amazonia and Achillia were to be put in the same match, because Rome loves that kind of ending. Two North Sea women, sisters who had raised the same child, becoming each other’s death in front of everyone.

The stands were packed. Flowers and coins fell together onto the sand.

The drums began. The people saw the Vestal come into the arena, and every eye began to wait for the hand beneath the white robe.

The Vestal could have saved them.

With just one gesture, she could have made the people believe it was the will of the gods. She could have let those two women leave the sand. She could even have given that child hope.

But — but those sea-grey eyes had already come to the streets of Rome.

If the child begged one more time, if anyone looked at her once more, the night of fourteen years before could leap out from beside the sacred flame at any moment.

Claudia stopped. She was staring at that white wall as if in a trance, as if, through the plaster, she could see the sacred flame blazing in the inner sanctuary.

She closed her eyes, and her voice dropped.

“And then that Vestal held out her hand, thumb down.”

In that instant it was as if you heard the voices of tens of thousands in the arena, joined into one.

Death.

The will of the gods.

“Amazonia and Achillia died.”

Claudia said.

You sat across from her and made no sound. It was as if you saw again the sand at dusk from your childhood — the two women with wounded shoulders still standing straight, and the red cords, so alike, falling and soaking through with blood.

At last you remembered why their end had never had a clear picture in your memory. That day you had not seen the end. Your father had taken you away, because: something had happened to your mother.

When Claudia’s voice came again, it was low, like distant thunder at the edge of the sky.

She said:

On the same day, the Vestal’s sister died on a mountain road.

When the body was brought back to Rome, the child was still small. That child, dressed in black, sat in the atrium of the house. She did not cry, and she did not speak. She only watched the door. When the Vestal walked over, she looked up.

Her eyes were exactly like her mother’s.

The Vestal looked at the child, and it was as if she saw her sister as a little girl, looking back at her across the years.

From then on, the Vestal often went to see the child.

People said it was an aunt caring for her poor niece. The temple quietly allowed it, and Rome accepted it. But every time she walked into that house, the Vestal knew she had not come to give love.

She was stopping in the middle of a divine will that had never ended — looking back at her own crime, praying that her devotion might bring it all to an end.

But fate is never fixed, and her sin still found its way back to her, many years later…

That abandoned child, Sifra, had also become a gladiator.

She had a new name: Scylla.

When the Vestal saw her again, there was no need to make sure. Those eyes, set in an older face with sharper edges. The Vestal could even see her own young self in that face. She regretted it all. Warmth rose in her chest. She longed, very much, to hold this child gently, just once.

But it was too late, far too late… She could not tell her the truth, could not speak of their blood, could not admit the past.

And besides, she knew the child would never accept her. Her two mothers were dead — dead in the arena, dead under the hand the Vestal had held out that day.

The Vestal decided to give her freedom.

She looked into the slave contracts in secret, called on old connections, and even made use of her own sister’s daughter — the girl who had once held her hand as a child, always skipping and jumping along… Only this once, she told herself. I will lie to that child only this once.

So she secretly sent the clay tokens for the games to the young officer, and urged him to invite her sister’s daughter. She had the owner of the gladiator school speak rudely, to provoke her sister’s daughter into buying the child.

And then she stepped forward herself and showed the child a way out.

She looked into the child’s eyes, and dared to look only for a little while. Then she told the child: go. Leave Rome. Go back to your North Sea. Go back to the goddess of the sea wind and the tides that Amazonia and Achillia once believed in. That is where your mothers’ souls are buried.

Just take Aelia to the eastern province, and you will be free.

The child said nothing, and set out on the journey. Day and night, the Vestal hoped — hoped that she would never come back to Rome.

But the child did not go.

She stayed, to watch over another woman’s daughter.

Claudia sighed wearily. She had finally finished, and fell silent.

You looked at her. So many things slowly closed together in that moment: Scylla’s eyes, the words Marcus left behind as he died, Claudia’s silence after the gladiator school, and her words in court — “she is the child of Amazonia and Achillia”.

Claudia stood up and went to the basin of water.

She put both hands into the water. Her face was reflected on the surface, and then broken up by her fingers. She washed slowly — between her fingers, her palms, her wrists — not missing anywhere.

The clear water did not change colour.

She spoke quietly, as if to you, and as if to herself:

“Cheires men hagnai, phrēn d’ echei miasma ti.”

My hands are clean, but my soul is stained.

Water dripped from the backs of her hands back into the basin, and ripples spread out without a sound.

This was the whole of the story.

The Vestal who gave birth in secret beside the sacred flame was Claudia.

The child who was abandoned and carried away by the North Sea women was Scylla.

Amazonia and Achillia died by Claudia’s gesture.

And your mother died because of Scylla’s escape when she was young.

The one who had defiled the sacred was right there. And yet the sacred flame had not gone out, the temple had not fallen, and Rome had not stopped turning for a single night.

The lamplight threw shadows on Claudia’s white robe, and all that had been buried in the years — blood, milk, sea salt, sand, the ink on your mother’s pages, the grey-blue light in Scylla’s eyes — seeped out from deep within the weave of the cloth.