Tiger, Tiger: Chapters 6-8

His trainer knew it, and told him, fairly glowing with a ferocious pride, as if he’d built the tiger—bones, sinews, fangs, and claws—with his own hands.

He paced his cage vigorously, and even ignored the scraps of meat that were given to him to whet his appetite.

His will to pounce, to rend, bite, and tear, was fully aroused, seasoned, and seething for outlet.

“That impertinent youngster of mine thinks it’s time your daughter was given the greatest experience in the known world,” the senator mentioned, as the masseur pummeled him.

“That impertinent youngster of mine thinks it’s time your daughter was given the greatest experience in the known world,” the senator mentioned, as the masseur pummeled him.

Caesar said, only half jocularly, “In a respectful way, I hope.”

This was somewhat remote from the truth—Marcus, in the privacy of his home, often had to be rebuked for a spiteful tongue—but it was vitally important for the senator to put any thoughts of disrespect to rest.

His father noticed at once and a mild word of mockery nearly escaped him, but he stifled it.

Aurelia, for her part, entered the Colosseum with calm, steady steps, her head, draped with a blue and silver palla, poised, the picture of youthful dignity.

He put Aurelia next to Marcus, and, with a regal gesture, indicated the seat on her other side to Julius, who took it with a humble bow.

This unseemly conversation, luckily, couldn’t be overheard because of the deafening roars of the vast crowd, which had begun as Caesar’s party entered the box and didn’t die down for long minutes.

Their glittering brass helmets and breastplates shone like pure gold; the short swords they brandished also caught the brassy sunshine with twinkles of light that flashed in the eyes of the crowd.

“No harm will come to that old fellow,” he said jovially.

Thumbs-up meant a reprieve, a pause in the game, a sign of something well done.

He knew it was a sickness, that his fascination for it was unwholesome, even depraved.

Her mother’s eye-shutting ploy came into play almost immediately.

But when he was enmeshed in the cunningly flung heavy net, and the brass spikes rang against his helmet and felled him, struggling and threshing, to the sand, after only a few minutes of battle, Caesar did not even bother to rise.

Caesar’s dark skin flushed darker still, and he scowled and looked away from her. He didn’t deign to answer.

She had a terrible, sick feeling that if this went on, and if she stayed here until it was over, she would never be able to feel the same about her fellow citizens again, and with this thought her mood slipped into one of abject dismay.

The winner received plaudits from the crowd and his life from Caesar’s upturned thumb because the fight had lasted fully fifteen thrilling minutes.

He had half hoped she would start screaming and swooning, so that he could show his manly superiority.

Again, a suspenseful hush fell on the thousands of spectators as they waited avidly to see what would happen.

And suddenly—so suddenly that the whole crowd of forty thousand people reacted at once and many leaped to their feet—from out of that very door in the floor of the arena shot a tawny streak like a long flame.

Aurelia sat spellbound—paralyzed, as this apparition, moving with incredible speed, lashed out seemingly in every direction at once, and in moments three of the “hunters” lay sprawled amid the false jungle.

A spear that whistled past him—reminding him of his trainer’s proddings—simply enraged him more, so that he pursued the thrower in an avenging bound, and tore out his throat.

He remembered his hunger, lay down—but warily—beside his first victim, and began to eat the man’s entrails.

“You silly girl, do you think I’d have such a rare and valuable beast killed?” said her father testily.

Marcus hardly knew how to deal with the aftermath of that fateful day at the circus.

He developed, as man-eaters will, a taste for human flesh, which added to his enthusiasm for the occasions when he was allowed to hunt down and eat two-legged prey, and maintained his growing reputation as the sanguinary star of the circus.

If things had continued as they were, he might have lived out this placid, unnatural life until he died of old age.

But there were cataclysms ahead for him—for all of them.

“That’s not genteel, Aurelia,” said her mother reprovingly. ‘‘Now, I want you to do this, and I will arrange it. But you needn’t mention it to your father. He has such strong ideas about protocol.”

“That’s not genteel, Aurelia,” said her mother reprovingly. ‘‘Now, I want you to do this, and I will arrange it. But you needn’t mention it to your father. He has such strong ideas about protocol.”

The visit was arranged discreetly, between the two mothers, who were sisters.

“Now, Marcus, I want you not to be servile. No exaggerated humbleness. Behave to her just as usual. That’s what she will want.”

This time, however, he miscalculated, so the first thing that happened after they arrived and Boots had been let out of his cage was that he squatted, there on the scrupulously washed and polished mosaic floor of Marcus’s private apartment.

When the collation was brought in and set out on a low table, Julius noticed how Marcus directed the slave to serve Aurelia her drink first, and how with his own hands he cut a small bunch of purple grapes from the big bunch, laid it on a gold plate, and handed the plate to Aurelia.

But as the sun began to sink behind the red-tiled roof on the west side of the atrium, casting long shadows of the flowering vine that partly roofed the open space, she was aware of feeling a reluctance to leave.

So when, reluctantly, Aurelia stood up and said it was probably time she went home, Marcus suddenly dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper.

They went through an opposite archway and into a covered passage. This led to the servants’ quarters at the back of the villa.