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‘Cockfight!’ pants Sophe the nine-year-old street urchin as she skids to a halt in front of the wine bar. |
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The wine bar should be closed for Saturnalia like other businesses, but the owner, Superbus, is offering free drinks to regular customers and she can hear happy chatter coming from the drinking room. Superbus himself is eating a sausage in a vine- leaf wrapper and chatting across the polished marble counter to his friend Mestrius, who is standing on the pavement. Everyone in Pompeii knows Superbus loves to gamble and Sophe hopes she might get a reward for this news. ‘Cockfight!’ she says again, in a dramatic whisper. ‘There’s going to be a cockfight near here!’ Both men look at her with interest. ‘Have they started yet?’ Superbus asks. Sophe shakes her head, still a little out of breath. ‘Where?’ Superbus says. ‘Not far,’ Sophe replies. ‘I’ll show you for the rest of that sausage and a quadrans.’ ‘Deal!’ He tosses her his sausage and calls over his shoulder, ‘Scumnicolus, keep an eye on the bar! No more than three free drinks per customer!’ He comes around the bar and out onto the pavement. ‘Coming?’ he asks Mestrius. ‘You bet!’ says Mestrius. He drains his cup and puts it on the counter. ‘We’ll both bet, if we’re in time!’ laughs Superbus. |
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Munching her sausage, Sophe steps out into the crossroads. She kisses her right hand towards the lucky bird painted on the front of the rival bar on the opposite corner, then heads north up the alley, grinning at the realisation that two of Pompeii’s best-looking bachelors are following her. She can hear Praeco the town-crier announcing noon as she leads them past the closed doors of Mestrius’s house and the shuttered shop front of Papilio, painter and dealer in pigment. Coming towards them is a big-nosed slave with spiky hair, fresh from the baths by the look of it. Sophe likes Amarantus; he once gave her his half-eaten piece of bread when he saw her begging in the rain. ‘Where are you going, master?’ Amarantus asks Superbus. ‘Cockfight!’ whispers Superbus. ‘Join us!’ Amarantus pauses, shrugs and turns to follow them. Sophe carries on up the alley, left onto the Street of Abundance, then stops abruptly before the wide-open doors of the house on the corner. ‘Don’t just stand there,’ hisses Superbus. ‘Lead on.’ ‘We’ve arrived!’ says Sophe, gesturing dramatically behind her. ‘This is the place.’ ‘By Hercules!’ says Superbus. ‘It’s Vatia’s house. I didn’t know he hosted cockfights.’ Sophe shrugs. ‘He just bought his first bird, a beautiful Rhodian named Hector.’ ‘You know he’s our neighbour,’ Superbus says to her. ‘You could have just told us the fight is here.’ ‘Then I wouldn’t have got a reward.’ She flings out her arms to block their way. ‘I want my quadrans.’ Superbus rolls his eyes, then reaches into his belt pouch and tosses her two coins. ‘Use the second one for the baths,’ he says with a grin. ‘You’re filthy.’ Sophe nods as she slips the coins in her own greasy belt pouch. She has no intention of wasting good money on the baths. Vatia’s doorkeeper, a bald and hairless man named Infantio, appears from the depths of the house. ‘Do you have an invitation?’ he says in a high voice. ‘You know me,’ says Superbus. ‘Your master has dined with us many times. And this is our neighbour Mestrius and my mother’s slave Amarantus.’ Infantio hesitates, but Superbus pushes confidently past. ‘Where’s it happening?’ he asks. ‘In the fruit orchard,’ says Infantio, ‘but they’ve probably started … Hey!’ This last is addressed to Sophe as she hurries after the three men. ‘I’m with them!’ she lies. As they come into the atrium a huge black watchdog leaps at them. Sophe gasps. The snarling dog is held fast by a red leather collar and iron chain. ‘By Hercules!’ says Superbus, pressing his hand to his heart, ‘he almost frightened my soul out of my body.’ The others laugh nervously, and they all give the creature a wide berth as they hurry deeper into the house. Sophe follows, her eyes darting eagerly here and there, checking for valuable objects. She has never been in Vatia’s house and is disappointed to see most of the wealth on the walls. Every room seems to have a fresco. In one room, a giant snake twists around the trunk of a painted fig tree. Sophe kisses her hand to it, for luck, and hurries on into a small garden courtyard. |
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If this is the orchard, it is very disappointing. There are only three trees: a bare fig tree, an apple and a strange tree bearing a bright yellow fruit she has never seen before. Sophe reaches up and twists one off. Although it looks strange – it is egg-shaped with a pitted waxy skin – it smells wonderful. Glancing around, she secretly drops the yellow fruit down the front of her tattered tunic. Half a dozen men are crammed into one corner of the small garden, all talking excitedly. She can tell from the stripes on their tunics that they are mostly highborn. As she comes up behind Superbus she hears Mestrius ask, ‘What’s the contender called?’ ‘Odysseus,’ says Superbus. ‘He looks like a loser to me.’ ‘Me, too. Let’s put our money on Hector.’ ‘I feel sorry for Odysseus,’ murmurs Amarantus. ‘I’ll wager a sestertius on him.’ |
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Sophe can’t see, so she clambers up the bare branches of the fig tree. From up here she has a bird’s eye view. The owner of the house, Vatia, is holding his prize cockerel Hector, a magnificent white specimen with a blood-red comb. A man she doesn’t recognise holds Odysseus, a scrawny brown bird with mad eyes and tattered feathers. Cocking her ear, Sophe learns the man is called Crepitus and that he’s from Nola. One of Vatia’s slaves, a pear-shaped man named Fructus, is marking bets on a wax tablet. Another one, a tall skinny man with bushy hair named Florus, is taking money. Then all the men go quiet and shuffle back to give the birds room to fight. Both owners squat and hold their birds about an arm’s length apart over a pretty section in a corner of the mosaic walkway. The birds flap and struggle, eager to fight. |
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‘Fight!’ cries Fructus. As Vatia and Crepitus let go, the cockerels fly at each other in silence. Sophe has seen enough cockfights to know that they are meant to fly up and then stab down with the sharp spurs on the back of their heels. But true to his name, crafty Odysseus does something completely unexpected. Instead of attacking with spurs, the scrawny cockerel flies up over Hector then strikes from behind, pecking the base of his opponent’s neck. This stuns the bigger bird in exactly the same way a priest’s axe stuns a bull. Scrawny Odysseus then uses his razor-sharp beak and a few moments later the bloody head of Hector plops onto the dirt. For a few moments Hector’s body flaps and staggers, then it topples over and lies still. Odysseus crows his victory. Sophe is so astonished that she almost falls out of her tree. The men are also stunned into silence. All except for Amarantus, who bet on the underdog Odysseus at odds of forty to one. He is now shouting out praise to Dionysus. Later, as Sophe is searching the tablinum for small but valuable objects that can be dropped down the front of her tunic, she hears voices just outside. Superbus is saying. ‘I’ll give you fifty sesterces for Odysseus.’ Sophe goes closer but stays out of sight behind a cupboard. ‘Marcus Fabius Superbus!’ cries Mestrius. ‘You are mad! You can’t afford to pay that much.’ ‘Quiet! I’m trying to save the wine-bar. Fifty sesterces.’ ‘All right,’ says a voice she recognises as that of Crepitus, ‘but you have to take his friend Polyphemus, too. They’re inseparable.’ ‘Is Polyphemus a good fighter?’ comes Superbus’s voice. ‘No. He only has one eye. But Odysseus won’t fight unless Polyphemus is nearby.’ ‘You’ll let me have them both for fifty?’ says Superbus. ‘Yes,’ says Crepitus. ‘But you don’t have fifty,’ Mestrius hisses. ‘No, but Amarantus just won forty and I’ve got ten. Amarantus! Come here!’ ‘Yes, master?’ ‘Loan me the forty sesterces you just won!’ ‘But master …’ |
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‘I’ll pay you back. Look! I’m going to commemorate the moment with a tribute to you.’ ‘No, master! Not on the wall! Vatia will think I did it!’ Sophe wants to know what’s happening, so she slips out of the shadows to watch. Superbus is using a bronze stylus to scratch something on the wall near an obsidian mirror set into the plaster. It is a profile of Amarantus, a caricature featuring his big nose and spiky hair. Then Superbus draws bearded Vatia, too, and adds the inscription HAIL, AMARANTUS, HAIL! Later, as Sophe trots behind them, she hears Mestrius ask, ‘Why did you pay so much for those cockerels? You told me you were up to your ears in debt!’ ‘I am,’ says Superbus. ‘But I have an idea. We’re going to hold our own cockfights in the wine-garden. And these scrawny creatures,’ he holds up the wicker cages with a grin, ‘are going to get us out of debt.’ ‘How?’ says Mestrius. ‘By this time tomorrow, every betting man in Pompeii will know that Odysseus attacks from behind. Nobody will wager money against him.’ ‘I’m not going to make him fight,’ says Superbus. ‘I’m going to sacrifice him and his one-eyed friend Polyphemus.’ ‘What?’ cries Amarantus. ‘I’m going to dedicate them to Mercury and then bury them in the wine-garden. Then we’ll host cockfights there. For such a great sacrifice the god will be sure to prosper us.’ ‘But Saturnalia will soon be over, and gambling will be illegal again,’ says Mestrius. ‘All I need is a messenger who knows every gambling man in Pompeii.’ Superbus glances over his shoulder and winks at Sophe. ‘And I think I know just the person.’ |
