Tiger, Tiger: Chapters 9-12

The senator’s villa, much more modest, of course, but still spacious and luxurious, had been recently built, and was on the outskirts.

There were no terraces here, because there was no vista—Romans saw no point in gazing at nature.

The hill the villa was built on rose quite steeply behind it, and all that could be seen from the back of the house were a few distant olive groves, clawed out of the hillside, and the hill itself, reaching up and casting a morning shadow over the whole edifice.

The precious wine flooded out and spread its dark, pool amid the broken shards of the earthenware pot.

The strong evening odors of green things and living things were in his distended nostrils, drawing him toward them more powerfully than the smell of goat or wine.

Meanwhile, Aurelia and Marcus, blithely ignorant of what was happening, hurried back to the atrium, to find the former sleepers wide awake and one, at least, in a state close to panic.

She could reprieve him from the cataclysm he thought had befallen him.

Their jesting lie had turned into nightmare truth.

The two servants slunk away.

It was sheer accident and because of some stupid ape of a servant that he got out!

“The Lady Aurelia is leaving now,” he said curtly.

The lamps had been lit now and there was a deceptive normality about the big stone rooms with their colorful murals, animal skin rugs, embroidered drapes, and comfortable gilded furniture.

Marcus drew several deep breaths, his mind coming out of its frightened torpor.

So, although he went bounding quite happily away from the senator’s villa and spent half an hour strolling and rolling about in the scrub, sniffing the air with all its myriad enticing smells of food and freedom, by the time it was completely dark he was already bewildered and hungry and lost.

He made a few halfhearted forays after small creatures that crossed his path, but they easily evaded him.

If only Julius had not been too distraught to look at the ground for signs of footmarks, he might have found his charge quite quickly, and put his own agony to an end.

So he found an olive tree and sat down on the inhospitable ground at its foot.

How he would face the mighty Emperor and confess his dereliction of duty, he could not foresee.

Aurelia was asked a few essential questions, was briefly soothed and handed over to her nurse, who was brusquely summoned from her peaceful retreat.

This was the most powerful man in the world, and, some said, the most ruthless and intolerant.

“Mean to her? It will mean she has lost her pet tiger. That’s all. She is Caesar’s daughter. She must learn to sustain such trivial losses.”

Something not to be expected, the sort of intervention that, had Boots been a man, with some belief in the gods, he might have ascribed to divine power, happened as the first dawn light was creeping into the eastern sky over the sleeping city and the wild countryside around it.

A shepherd named Rufus, out early with his goats to let them crop the scanty grass while the dew was still on it, spotted a strange bright striped thing sticking out from under a rock and thought it was a snake.

But though his brain was dulled, or perhaps because of that, he had a strange affinity with dumb beasts.

From them, his eyes, and then his caressing hands, roved to the animal’s neck, where the earliest rays of the sun were bringing out the twinkle in the gold and jewels that embossed the leather collar half lost in the long tawny fur.

From them, his eyes, and then his caressing hands, roved to the animal’s neck, where the earliest rays of the sun were bringing out the twinkle in the gold and jewels that embossed the leather collar half lost in the long tawny fur.

While Marcus lay trembling with fear and guilt, and Julius in chains tracked Boots into the hot, dry hinterland, Aurelia was in her mother’s private apartment, where she had been summoned.

Oh, spirits of my ancestors, prayed the daughter, no less fervently. He may be only a slave, but he is a man, a good man with a noble heart. Don't let my father have him killed! If that happens I shall not bear it!

But although Aurelia was a pious girl, she feared she couldn’t trust any of the household gods, or indeed great Jove himself, to save Julius.

He had several hiding places where he lay up during the day and he only came out at night to hunt and explore and search the air for telltale hints of Aurelia in the wind.

Meanwhile, he contented himself with throwing the youth into a prison adjoining the Colosseum to await his fate.

She promptly poured herself a goblet of wine and quaffed it down, smacking her lips.

Then she said cannily, “And I suppose I am not to mention this errand? Or let this little piece of writing, which doesn’t look long enough to say what you told me it says, fall into the wrong hands?”

“I know. We can’t always love only where we should. He’s a handsome stripling. And I’ve seen how he looks at you.”

One day, Boots was seen in one of the side streets south of the city. In hours, the whole of Rome fell into ferment.

She furtively passed him the small papyrus roll that the nurse had brought back from her clandestine visit to Julius’s cell.

She furtively passed him the small papyrus roll that the nurse had brought back from her clandestine visit to Julius’s cell.

The writing under her writing—scrawling and ill-spelled like a child’s—said: The date is set.

She was pacing the floor, wringing her hands, her tears almost spouting from her eyes.

“Their men are cowards, though! When they’re given weapons, they refuse to fight.”
“They’re martyrs.”