Chapter 30

 

Arretium, circa 129 BCE

I watched as the young man left the patio, his olive skin rippling over smooth muscles, his body alive with that energy that can only be captured by youth in full bloom.

“He’s beautiful,” I offered, then stifled a laugh as I saw Marieko’s spine stiffen. “There are things I could teach him… but you already know that, yes?”

The old Greek turned to face me as I reclined on my left side and snatched another pear slice from the tray before me. His face was unreadable, a skill he thought he had perfected years ago but had been forced to re-learn in the year or so since Rufus brought me to this place. It was his only defense against me.

“My grandson is none of your concern, Felicitas,” he growled at me and this time I did laugh, but quietly.

“I like you, old man. Why do you rebuff me?”

“It is none of my concern what you like or dislike. Rufus would be displeased should you kill me—that is likely all that stays your hand.”

“Not at all! True, Rufus holds you in very high regard, so were I inclined to still your breath I would refrain for the sake of his happiness. But I do like you. I always have.”

He made a sour face, but decided to end the conversation when he heard Salia’s bare feet happily racing up the stone steps to the patio. The little girl, all of seven years old, squealed in joy as her grandfather turned and swept her from her feet, lifting her high above his head before drawing her to his chest in a firm embrace. It caught at me, that simple act—that such a dour and suspicious man could in an instant become a doting grandfather merely from the spell of a child’s love. Though I had seen such things countless times, and had long come to accept that such were always to be denied me, it brought home just how alien I still felt here among the Romans.

Rufus had taken me from my land and my people. After doing so, he journeyed with me across the frontier adjourning his mighty Republic into Spain. That in itself had been a humbling time, as I saw the power and industriousness of these people he called his own. But still it failed to prepare me for what followed when we took ship from Spain and made our way to his home in Arretium. It took all my skill at deception to hide from him the awe and wonder I felt at the works of the Romans.

Though to modern eyes all I saw would probably seem small, to me they were immense. Yet Rufus assured me what I had seen was nothing compared to the sheer size and grandeur of Rome herself. Even their roads—I knew paths and trails, the well-worn routes between villages, but nothing like these solid brick passageways, these straight and level conveyances upon which their carts and wagons traveled as we made our way toward the seaports, and the mighty fleets of ships that took us to the center of what Rufus called their “great Republic.”

It was dizzying and confusing to see one city, then another, then more and more, and to understand that though these were disparate peoples they shared a common allegiance to “Rome,” either by choice or by circumstance. But it was also the thought of the labor required to make these roads and cities and massive seaports, as well as their fine clothing and their beautiful and deadly armor and weapons of bronze and iron that impressed me so. How could any chieftain or king hope to rule them all, or muster all the energy and materials and organization to not just create all these things but to actually make them commonplace and unified? When I asked what King had begun all this, Rufus surprised me with the forcefulness of his answer.

“Only barbarians allow kings to rule them! Rome has no king!” He practically spat the words out. But then his visage softened and he smiled. “Ah, but you are a barbarian still,” he said, grinning warmly and embracing me briefly as if to apologize.

As we traveled he would describe to me the way the Romans were governed: by a huge council of men, Senators, who were overseen by men called Consuls who seemed somewhat king-like but could serve for only one year and had to share power on alternate days with another Consul. All were defended by an army of “citizens” and organized by “equestrians” and “centurions.” But at a deeper level, written laws that were beyond mere custom and which all recognized governed their actions. According to Rufus these were laws that even their greatest men, even the Consuls themselves, would prostrate themselves before. No one man, no matter how mighty or prosperous, could risk defying these laws, or what he called “the law,” without punishment.

How did it come to pass that they all agreed to these same laws? Rufus said they were first written by Senators long dead and added to and modified by current Senators, then read to an assembly of all citizens who would decide: whether or not to accept them. It was difficult for me to grasp and dizzyingly complicated, for I had always lived among men ruled by a chieftains whose word was law when tradition had no answer. Sometimes there would be an allegiance to a greater chief or even a king, but for Rufus and the other Romans this was an offensive thought. To them the ultimate law had solidity, an unbreakable certainty far greater than any king could ever create. I did not quite fathom it but pretended to understand. In any case I accepted it: most things among the Romans were so because “the law” or “the Roman way” made them so, and for no other reason. Though it infuriated me at times, I felt small and insignificant in the presence of such power, for it had clearly made them a mighty and fabulously wealthy people.

After several months among them living in Rufus’s villa in Arretium, my sense of wonder for the Romans had eased a bit. I found the people I met to be people still. They had unusual ways and their law ruled great expanses, but taken individually they were almost as simple to fathom as any other men. It was only their politics, and Rufus’s maneuverings within that sphere of power, that left me utterly baffled. He would describe to me his plans for ascension to the Senate, then even to Consul, but the terms and assumptions were outside my knowledge. I would feign understanding, but I suspect Rufus was aware of my confusion.

Rufus would often have me at hand when visitors called, displaying me like some trophy. It irritated me and yet amused me as well. Early on Rufus told me that my name, Tiwaz?, sounded barbaric to Roman ears and named me “Felicitas.” He called me simply “Felicia” in the quiet of our bed at night. He said that it meant “good fortune.” This rankled me only slightly, as it annoyed me to have others view me as his slave. Yet I had worn many names in my long existence, and “Felicia” had a lovely and exotic sound. My old people might know me by one name and the Romans might know me by another, just as the Greeks knew Diana by the name of Artemis. I decided to accept this.

The city of Arretium dazzled me, for it was larger than any town I had seen before. The streets ran between buildings that were usually made of Roman bricks but sometimes made entirely of stone. The buildings were cut in square and rectangular patterns, with columns supporting the immense curved-tile roofs. Beautiful mosaics and lifelike painted statues abounded, and the smells were often overpoweringly exotic. The Romans ate more salted fish than anyone I had ever encountered and they loved their oils. Indeed it seemed that when they were not putting oil into their food, they were smearing their bodies and hair with it, only scraping it off in order to cleanse themselves. The entire city of Arretium seemed to smell of salt, fish, brine and olive oil.

Rufus’s own villa within the city of Arretium was most impressive. It was made entirely of stone, with beautiful mosaics on its walls both inside and out. Its stone-tiled floors covered the entire domicile, with nary a sight of the earth underneath. The rooms included quarters for his dozens of slaves and servants, a kitchen with an impressively large stone hearth, an open-air atrium with a garden in the center of it all and several bedrooms each with their own fireplace. One bedroom was set aside especially for his wife although Rufus assured me that she never visited here and would likely never use the room. Yet all viewed that room as sacrosanct. His wife resided in a supposedly even grander home with others of his family in the city of Rome itself. It was hard to imagine a home more huge and clean and beautiful than this one, yet he assured me that this was not only so, but that his family’s means were meager compared to the most powerful families in fabulous Rome.

Our lovemaking was energetic and exhausting, and it amused me that he often referred to me as his “virgin” even as he merrily had his way with me and I with him. The Romans considered any woman who had never borne a child to be a virgin—how utterly amusing a thought for one such as me! It also flattered my ego, for the Romans believed that a woman who would not conceive (“would not”—Rufus’s own phrase!) was either flawed like a whore, or even more magically powerful than other women. In the quiet of our room at night, Rufus painted this as the ultimate proof of my relation to the goddess Diana, herself an eternal virgin. Surely one so powerful as I could hardly be lowly, so I must be the goddess of his dreams. Indeed, he told me I should become Queen of a group called the Vestals, and that he wanted ultimately to become one among the gods such as myself. He wished to make me first among the Roman goddesses and he assured me he would make it so.

How could I doubt him? He was so utterly certain and he had already shown me he could do far more than any man I had ever met.

As impressive as this all was, however, it rendered me even more difficult for Rufus to deal with, for I was both his slave and his goddess at once. I also had a habit of questioning him incessantly in front of others on things he considered settled or that he thought I should already understand. But he could never stay irritated with me for long and would usually laugh and hug me and say, “Just accept it, my beautiful barbarian.”

Yes, I was not immune to flattery. To this day I still am not, I confess. It is one of my many failings.

“You are my beautiful, beautiful Felicia, my virgin goddess and my soul,” he often said to me during and after our nightly lovemaking. “With you at my side I know I can accomplish things greater than any man has ever dreamed.”

I believed him, for I so very much wanted to believe him.

Thus I found myself with Rufus in his incredible home in Arretium. All there called me Felicitas and I was considered his most favored and beloved slave. Neither Rufus nor I spoke of how I was a God among others, not to anyone. I still chafed a little at this, for while I had been a slave many times before, I felt I had left that part of myself far behind. When I felt the instincts of a slave returning to me, I felt repulsed, yet sometimes allowed myself to go through the motions—if only to help further his plans. It was difficult, yet sometimes seductively easy, for this was different from other forms of slavery. I now had a master who viewed me as an equal.

I do not know that I can describe to modern ears why this bothered me in some ways but flattered my ego in others. Still, Rufus would often beat his slaves for failure; he felt it necessary to maintain discipline, as did most Romans. I even once saw him cut the tongue out a young male slave who dared to speak to me crossly. But he always treated me as his most favored and valued of properties and would tolerate no rudeness toward me from any of his other slaves (save one), nor from any other member of his household.

Rufus was in most ways more powerful than any man I had ever encountered. He was also so very beautiful in form and grace, with nut-brown skin and searing, onyx-black eyes, hair like black wool, and he possessed a form as hard as it was fluid. His short stature held an incredible energy and self-assurance. When he was occasionally self-deprecating (in his privacy with me, if not before others) it was intoxicating. While he had a wife, in his eyes I was first among his women. He was shorter than me in a way I sometimes found comical, but his short stature only accentuated the resonant power within him. He sometimes drew a small chuckle from me, yet I never forgot that he had been able to humble me in a way no man ever had—in a way that I would have instantly killed any other man or woman for trying. While I was not sure I loved him, he surely loved me—and he saw me as the key to his own ascension to power and immortality. It was an alluring dream and one that flattered my ego all the more.

Rufus told me many times I could walk away whenever I wished and it seemed arrogant—yet he thought he would be nothing without me, which I found irresistible. Though he did not speak this aloud to anyone but me, it was clear all who served him knew his regard for me. Indeed, all but one of his many slaves and servants deferred to me in even the smallest of areas.

Marieko was the perennial exception. When he could not otherwise avoid me, he made it clear in both his manner and posture that he dissented, and that he thought very little of his master’s decision to elevate me to such a high position in the household. Yet somehow this never offended me. In some strange way it endeared him to me. There was always my demon-lover Rufus to flatter my ego, after all.

“My beloved Felicia—my lovely Felicitas! In our nights together as man and woman in my own bed, do you not know what it portends? For I take you, but in so many ways you take me, while the gods look upon us and favor us. Divine destiny must have set us together and surely it all promises that you and I shall be together forever!”

Forever. He used the word “forever” constantly while we were alone. He did not want his other servants or friends to hear it, but he believed that with me by his side he would be able to live forever, and that the two of us would come to rule the entire Roman world with might and justice and wisdom. I cannot describe it fully, for it was a wonderful vision. He was a man who had bested me and then showed me he thought himself less than me, one who wished to join me. He believed that with me he, too, would live forever and we would be together for eternity.

In response I did little but smile, sometimes a bit giddily. I was hoping beyond hope, believing beyond reason, that he must be right. In any case, for now I would be his Felicitas and I began to understand myself to be his helpmate. To modern eyes this must seem so very primitive, yet it seemed so very right. Indeed, our conversations on the matter became more passing strange with time, not less. Every night we would pray certain rituals of his making to the gods. And once every week, at night and in private, I would open the veins of my forearm to fill a cup with my blood that he might partake of it in his pursuit of immortality and godhood.

I accepted all this as I accepted so many things from him. But after more than a year like this, something began to irritate me. It began as a small notion, but quickly grew into suspicion, then anger. I had been intrigued by the power of scrolls since I first saw Rufus use one. There were runes, and of course I was familiar with runes. But these runes were varied and intricate beyond any I had ever known and they were carried upon these scrolls. Rufus would study them and pronounce they had “told” him this or that story or fact. Sometimes he would create small sets of runes upon thin squares of pressed wood and send them off to some person, only to receive others back claiming this person had now spoken to him as if he were present in the very room.

“Ah, Lucius says there shall be a feast on the first of next month at the governor’s estate,” or “Martinus says all is well at the tax office.”

I would strive to hear voices, but it quickly became clear to me that the runes themselves conveyed a very complex meaning. Rufus would leave scrolls about his room as he ruminated upon them. He seemed unconcerned when I might take one up and examine it. My ability to read humans, to see the workings of their minds, was and is strong. Yet while I could see no guile in him, I began to wonder if he had found some way to counter my own ability to understand the thoughts behind his eyes. My pride would not allow me to ask the meaning of these things—instead I grew angrier and more resentful until I convinced myself he sought deliberately to keep understanding of these things from me.

It came to a crisis without warning one evening more than a year after our arrival together in Arretium. We had taken our meal in his bedroom, an oddity he was known for amongst his servants. Every night we followed a precise ritual: first our meal, then lovemaking, then certain chants and small sacrifices to Jupiter, Pluto, and Diana. Once a week he would drink of my blood and this was to be one of those nights. I had not understood that I would take issue with him this night, but after our meal, as we moved to his bed, my anger was suddenly fierce within me, though I gave no outward sign of it.

Rufus reached for me and I let him draw me towards him across the bed even as I rolled out of the soft wrap I wore, then slid my naked body up along his until our mouths met and we kissed. His powerful arms encircled my waist, pulling me to him, his body like a granite statue beneath me as I felt his manhood stiffen against my thigh. Our lips parted and I bit playfully at his nose, rolling with him as he urged me over onto my back, then his face moved, his mouth sliding down my neck before nuzzling into my breasts. I gave a soft cry of encouragement and Rufus’s hands moved, sliding up and down my body with firm assurance, delving between my thighs while I reached down to grip his member, encouraging him to move up further. Then, as he pressed me back, easing between my open thighs, he lifted himself up, looking to my face.

I slowly slid my free hand between us, tracing my fingers up his breastbone until I reached the point where his neck began. Two of my fingers suddenly turned hard and pressed forcefully at that soft spot in his throat. He gagged and drew back, but I kept pressing even as I heaved beneath him, throwing his balance astray when he reached for my arm. I twisted beneath him and his body stiffened as my grip on his penis tightened most threateningly. I forced him onto his back, that huge, powerful body of his suddenly as a child’s doll in my hands as I straddled his belly. Suddenly my right hand released his penis and darted to the tableside where our dinner platter lay, seizing up the knife and bringing its point to his throat before he could react.

There was no fear in his face, but as he looked into my eyes I saw a certain doubt creep in. I reinforced it by sinking the edge of the blade into his skin. Should he make any sudden move I could open his throat with a mere twitch of my wrist.

“You keep secrets from me,” I hissed at him through clenched teeth, “You would rule me, my fine Roman. You would call me Queen amongst gods, but you are at my mercy. This little play-act, this fiction of me as your slave, you would make it a reality, an eternal servitude!”

“Felicitas…” he began.

“Tiwaz?!” I shriekd, “You will address me by my name, not yours!”

“I… I don’t understand,” he said. There was still no fear in him, but I expected none; he was certain I was deadly serious and that would suffice.

“You keep secrets from me, secrets of power. You flaunt them before my very eyes as if they were nothing, but I am no fool! I see them, and I know them, Talmudius Africanus Rufus!” I spat each of his names with vehemence, feeling him respond to each word as if to a physical blow. “I have sought them out, but they are powerful and arcane… they are secrets that must be shared and given, not spied upon and stolen!

He merely stared at me, his eyes filled with confusion. To my anger, I could not tell if he were feigning or not. “You will share with me,” I whispered, leaning forward and putting more pressure upon him, “or you will die.”

He stared into my eyes for long moments and then spoke in careful, level tones.

“I will share all I have, anything you desire… but I still do not know of what you speak.”

“I am no fool! I have seen you, seen others of your kind wield these powers! You have an entire room full of these secrets and you let me wander there thinking I’ll not understand and not bother to wonder! You flaunt these things, these scrolls…”

Suddenly his eyes widened in surprise. I think he might have laughed had he not been certain I would slit his throat for it.

“Of course,” he sighed, and chuckled a little nervously. “You cannot read, can you?”

And so I found myself that next morning on a sun-drenched stone patio engaged in light verbal sparring with an old Greek, envying him his family and the joy they gave him. Once Marieko sent Salia on her way he turned his gaze fully upon me and his displeasure was clear. I tried to imagine his reaction when Rufus handed him the task of teaching me to read and write, for I felt certain it must have been an interesting moment. He seemed fond of Rufus, but at the same time he held him in a sort of disdain, somewhat as if he were a father looking upon a son who simply had not turned out as well as he had hoped. I was even more amused when I came to understand Rufus’s chief failing in his eyes was that he was Roman rather than Greek.

If he had somewhat conflicting emotions regarding Rufus, he had no such confusion regarding me: I was a barbarian and a dangerous barbarian to boot. He never truly forgave me that episode in the hunting camp when I tried to strangle him and he never turned his back on me again. In an odd way I found that endearing, for it was the one thing that made sense to me in the midst of all the new and confusing ideas I faced here among the Romans. It also added to my amusement at how sourly he accepted his task, becoming even more curt and dismissive than ever before.

There we were, he disgusted and disdainful, me amused and yet hiding my nervousness that I might not be able to understand this magic.

“For the love of all that is proper in this world,” he finally barked at me, “stop lounging like an idle whore and sit up straight!”

It was an inauspicious beginning.

He thrust a red wax tablet and stylus at me, then pulled up a wooden stool and sat stiffly upon it, holding a tablet of his own. I sat up with the tablet in my left hand and a stylus clutched uncertainly in my right, while Marieko sat across from me glowering unhappily.

“Let us begin. Repeat after me: Alpha…” He would draw the shape and show me. “Beta…” He would draw it and show me again. “Gamma… Delta…”

I slowly began to repeat the words, one after the other.

“Nefas” he said whenever I got it wrong—which was often at first. So I would stumble and repeat, feeling almost like a child, but unwilling to end the game. “Fas,” was all he said whenever I shaped the rune correctly. I think his frown may have actually deepened whenever that happened.

“Now, write the letters out.”

I tried. He would show me one shape, demand that I name it, and then draw it as he had drawn it. When I had first learned the Seafarer tongue—called Greek by these people—only the women had known what symbols meant but today it was considered ill form to teach women these things. Still, I slowly wrote out the letters, taking care to put every slash and dot in the correct spot.

The first morning was hardly promising. It ended somewhere around “theta,” which I drew poorly. He slammed his own tablet down, muttered something about barbarian women and stomped away. I was too relieved to be angry myself.

Yet the next morning he and I both returned. And the next. And the next. Soon I could make all the shapes and name them, and we began creating groupings of them in order to form words. Then we began doing so in both the Greek and the Roman.

Other than repeating the sounds for me, he rarely said much. “Nefas. Iterum Attemptabis.” I would try, again and again each new task, usually finally earning at least one grudging “Fas” before ending a day’s lesson.

“In lingua Barbarae iterum” he would command after I finished some string of Greek symbols. His estimation of the Romans was not much higher than it was of me. I doubt I ever saw him happy about anything, save possibly the plays of Euripides.

For several weeks this was how it would progress, out there on Rufus’s patio except on days when it rained. Marieko would teach and I would write, learning by rote without much true understanding. It was grueling on both of us and on occasion his irritation would get the better of him, sending him off growling about unwashed barbarians while he left me to copy some string of writing over and over again. Yet he always returned the next morning and we would press ahead. Although he clearly hated this task, it became clear at some point that once he was started Marieko was far too stubborn to give up, even with a student as hopeless as me.

My pride aside, I became too embarrassed to quit, although I thought about it every morning as I contemplated returning to those accursed wax tablets yet again.

We were some three weeks into the lessons when suddenly I understood the essence of it. It took me so unexpectedly as to be almost a physical blow.

“Nefas!” he grunted with irritation as my hand jerked and I mangled a “theta.”

Yes. He had seen me err yet again. But suddenly something was different. He did not sense it but I did. My head spinning, I finished the rote line of shapes, but then I simply sat there, staring at the tablet in my hand and some of the other tablets, my eyes roving back and forth. He stared at me as I looked up at him.

Suddenly, I could understand the connections between the various things I was doing. It became so clear to me, so easy to understand that I could hardly believe I had not seen it before. Before he spoke again I said his name. “Marieko.” His bushy gray eyebrows shot up toward his bald pate, but I ignored the implicit question in his eyes. Instead I turned to the tablet and spoke his name aloud again, slowly making the sounds: “Marr-eee-eck-oh.” And as I made each sound, I scrawled a shape. Then I looked up at him and turned the tablet to him.

His eyebrows scrunched back downward as his brow furrowed, then arched back upwards in surprise.

As plain as day I had just written his name.

I had never seen it written before.

“Fas,” he said, seeing the comprehension dawning in my eyes. “Fas.” His face may have become a bit gentler. Perhaps. A bit.

“Homerumne legeritus esses?” he asked, a grudging smile on his face. I looked at him blankly. Though the Iliad has since become one of my favorite books, until then I had never so much as seen it performed. But the next day, he introduced me to his old friend Homer, and the Iliad, and together we began to read each morning from it.

It was stimulating, for the tale was thrilling, especially when I learned that the goddess Diana played a major part in it. Yet it was also most difficult, for he would read a line from the Greek and expect me to write the Latin. But in this manner I would reinforce my understanding of both languages. Perhaps it was not the easiest or best way of going about it, but it worked for me and more importantly, it worked for him.

After I truly understood the magic of reading and writing, Marieko’s attitude began to thaw somewhat. He still neither trusted nor approved of me, but he loved to speak of literature and was always (after some needling) willing to answer my questions or point out new things I should read. As it turned out I loved the written word even more than he did—and at the end of two months, I was fluent and literate in both languages.

I had also begun to learn far more about the gods of the Romans and Greeks than any of my prayer sessions with Rufus had ever taught me. Soon it was more than just Homer, but also Plato, and Aristotle, and Aeschylus, and—Marieko’s favorite—Euripides. Soon our daily lessons ended as I began to study on my own, but always from then on Marieko was happy to talk to me about anything I had read and to make recommendations and answer questions for me.

It was as if an entirely new world unfolded before me, made up of a glorious tapestry of words nearly as ancient as me. After those first months any time Rufus wondered at my whereabouts he would find me in his library, poring over the volumes upon volumes of texts he had collected there. Rufus was proud of his collection and even took time to read from them from time to time. I on the other hand all but made that library my home. I drank in the works of Herodotus, his Histories opening my eyes to the unknown and heretofore unknowable world beyond the horizons. I consumed Xenophon’s Hellenika; I read Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey a second and then a third time. The tales of the gods fascinated me, as did the philosophical works of many major and minor Greek and Roman thinkers.

This new and engrossing world largely drove out all other activities during the day. The only thing that could draw me away was Rufus’s return to the villa in the afternoon, and even then I would find myself planning which texts I would absorb next. Rufus laughingly proclaimed that teaching me to read had been his gravest error.

I would have given anything to make that last the truth.