Enjoy!
Just a reminder, this is an unedited extract. It goes to my editor at the end of September.
It took my breath away. Set into the
side of a hill, the semi-circular tiered seating faced a massive stage edifice
that would have once been covered with slender marble columns and frescoed
panels. Only a few now remained, their fading and chipped surfaces a sad
reminder of its past glory.
‘Wow!’
‘In its day, it was stunning,’ Marcus
said.
How had it survived so long, through
the rise and fall of empires and history’s most tumultuous events. If only
these walls could speak. I glanced at Marcus’s profile, at the sad little smile
tugging at his mouth, as he stared at the stage. He was living history.
‘What are you remembering?’
‘My father first brought me here when I
received my toga virilis. I was sixteen. The play … I don’t recall the
name anymore, but it had a young actress. She appeared naked on stage.’ He
laughed and shook his head. ‘My father thought it was about time I got
acquainted with the female sex.’
‘Oh my!’ I laughed with him.
‘Come, I’ll show you something.’ We
wandered down to the front rows of seats. At the beginning of the third row,
Marcus pointed. ‘Take a look.’
Carved into the stone were letters and
numbers, EQ GIII. ‘What does it stand for?’
‘ “Equites Row 3.” This row was
reserved for the cavalry unit stationed here.’
‘Front row seats? Why were they so
lucky?’
Marcus pursed his lips. ‘Mmm … let me
see. We defended the empire, kept the city safe, built the roads and
aqueducts….’
‘Okay, okay, I get it,’ I laughed. I’d
forgotten Marcus had been a military commander of a cavalry unit. Had he sat
here? Had he known some of the men?
‘Move along four seats and look
closely.’
Along one side of the stone seating,
smoothed over by age was a barely visible scratching: MAR. ANT. PUL. I gasped.
It could only be the abbreviated letters of Marcus’s name. ‘Your seat?’
He nodded. ‘I got bored during one
pantomime. A few days later I was assigned as commander to the Frisian Cohort
in Britain.’
And his whole life changed.
I blinked up at him. ‘Do you wish you
never received that command?’
‘No. The only regret I have is that one
particular day.’
He fell silent. As the wind howled
through the columns, I fancied I heard the whispered voices of long ago—the
excitement of the crowd, voices calling out greetings; the shuffling of feet on
the stone steps, their centres worn by the weight of thousands over the
centuries; the laughter and banter of the soldiers in the front rows. All
beneath a statue of the emperor, whose sightless eyes surveyed the crowd from
his niche above the stage.
(copyright Tima Maria Lacoba) 
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