‘Pavo! Pavo!’ the crowd chanted, over and over. The same people who had been roundly booing him only a short while earlier, the recruit thought. Up in the podium a Praetorian guard clumsily shuffled his way past the podgy imperial high priests and whispered something into Pallas’s ear. The Greek freedman furrowed his brow, then turned to Murena and muttered something. Abruptly the two men rose from their seats and followed the Praetorian out of the arena as the master of ceremonies handed Claudius a victory palm and box of coins to present to the victor. The Emperor accepted the coins with a cold and distant look in his greying eyes. He looked displeased. He scowled in disgust and looked in the direction of Pavo with stony-faced contempt as the chanting of the victor’s name swelled in the plaza.

Pavo stared defiantly back at the Emperor. He barely noticed the officials dragging Britomaris away with a meat hook, just as they had dragged away Titus months before. They left a streak of blood stretching like a tongue from the arena entrance to the place where the barbarian had fallen. His limbs were the same pale colour as his face. The feverish look in the barbarian’s eyes, and the way he had foamed at the mouth, troubled Pavo.

Then the pair of officials who had been stationed at the arena entrance grabbed Pavo and hurried him away from the floor towards the corridor and a flight of stairs leading up to the podium, where the trainee would accept his prize from the Emperor in person. Pavo was still running his eyes over the galleries as the officials hauled him down the corridor, the hoarse cheers of the crowd echoing off the dank walls, the air stifled with hot dust and sweat, the crowd shrinking from view.

‘Where the hell did he disappear to?’ Pavo wondered aloud of the optio.

‘You mean your friend? The soldier?’ the older official with the rotten teeth snarled. ‘Don’t worry. You’ll get to see him soon enough. In fact, we’re taking you to see him as soon as you’ve collected your prize . . .’

Macro awoke with the din of the crowd buzzing in his ears. The optio shook his groggy head and acquainted himself with his surroundings. He was back in the small room on the western side of the plaza he and Pavo had occupied in the build-up to the fight. But the two Praetorian guards now blocked the doorway, and Macro’s young charge was nowhere to be seen. A dim image came back to the optio through the haze. He recalled stumbling across the surgeon’s counter, and witnessing the Praetorian dipping Britomaris’s spear tip into a bowl of poison.

The image forced Macro to shoot upright. He rushed towards the door but the Praetorians blocked his path. ‘What in Hades’ name is going on?’ the optio rasped.