Fighting Fit by Annie Dalton

Author:Annie Dalton [Dalton, Annie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lazy Chair Press
Published: 2013-06-20T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

I woke to find lamplight flickering confusingly in my eyes.

Dorcas was shaking me. “Get dressed!” she said in a fierce whisper. “Leave this house and take Aurelia Flavia with you.”

Aurelia rubbed her eyes drowsily. “Is there a fire?”

“You’ve been betrayed, little mistress,” Dorcas told her. “Your brother has found out you follow the teacher from Nazareth.”

We jumped up and began to fling on our clothes.

“Why are you helping me, Dorcas?” Aurelia said from inside her tunic. “You still follow the old gods.”

“I follow my heart,” said Dorcas in a low voice. “Some people say a teacher who says such things must be insane. But I say his is a better madness than Nero’s.”

Aurelia was still frantically getting dressed when we heard the sound of tramping feet. The Praetorian Guard, Nero’s police, had come to arrest us.

Reuben came running as soon as he heard the commotion, so they arrested him too.

Aurelia’s father watched it all from the door of his study. “I showed her nothing but kindness and this is how she repaid me,” he said in disgust.

“I love you, Pater,” Aurelia called desperately. “I always loved you!”

I heard desolate howls from Minerva’s kennel as we were led away.

The guards marched us through the early morning streets.

Aurelia was looking around her, wide-eyed, as if she had suddenly realised how beautiful her world was. The sun was rising and birds sang joyfully from hidden gardens. The air was full of mingled scents; roses from the flower market, eye-watering fumes from the street of the leather workers, heady incense from a shrine.

I was trying hard not to think about what would happen when we stopped marching and reached our destination. I just put one foot in front of the other; left right, left right.

People kept calling out to know why we’d been arrested.

“We bagged us a few more Christians!” a guard shouted back cheerfully.

The mood immediately darkened. “Filthy vermin,” a woman screamed. One man spat in our faces. “You’re going to die today, Christian scum!”

Outside a semi-derelict apartment block, people pelted us with rotting fruit, and someone started throwing stones. Everyone despised us, the guards included.

“I don’t understand people like you,” a guard said contemptuously to Aurelia. “We’ve got perfectly good Roman gods and goddesses. But you have to have your own special god, it makes me sick.”

“Why do you care which god she worships, man?” Reuben asked. “She’s not dissing yours, is she?”

“Reuben!” I hissed. “You’re not meant to hold philosophical discussions with the guards.”

The guard was still ranting. “All Christians are in league with the barbarian hordes. You want to burn Rome down around our ears.”

When we reached the amphitheatre, crowds of Romans were already queuing to go in. We were taken to a row of cells and a guard booted us in through a door. I just had time to see the gruesome straw on the floor, then the door slammed behind us and we were plunged into total darkness.

We’ll be fine, I told myself. Any time now, that door will open and Orlando will walk in.

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