W 1

Screaming. Pain. The sounds of anguish. The smell of death. The ground rattled with the galloping of hooves. Bones were broken; skulls, crushed. Dust flew everywhere along with speckles of blood flying off of slashing swords and stabbing spears.

The screaming. The pitiful howls. The smell of carnage.

It never ended.

oOo

“Marius. Decimus Marius, wake up.”

He opened his eyes, his body giving a small start; both his hands twitching, his arms raised halfway as if to ward something off. His vision met the ceiling dimmed by shadows that overthrew the sunlight which drifted in through a small window high on a wall above his head. The silence of the confines greeted him. The faint sounds of daytime drifted in through the windows. It was morning.

“Wake up now, Aula Claudia is asking for you.” The wrinkled face of the head maidservant loomed worriedly over him, appearing in his line of vision.

“Are you feeling ill?” she asked.

He moved his hands to cover his face briefly, heaving a sigh as he shook his head. He was still waking up from his sleep. It had been a long while since he last had that particular dream, and even longer since the actual event took place; still it haunted him as if it had happened just the day before. He ran his tongue under the roof of his mouth where he had tasted the coppery liquid that he sensed was there just moments ago but of course discerned nothing more than his own saliva, thick and sticky in its staleness.

Sensing the old woman still beside his bed, he rubbed his eyes and sat up. “I’m awake. Thank you, Calidia,” he said slowly, groggily. His long hair fell forward, framing one side of his face. It reminded him that he needed to wash it as well as attend to his other hygienic needs. He yawned.

…like his breath, for example.

A gentle hand swept back the hair that curtained half of his face, prompting him to look at the woman who might well have been his own mother. After five years under her care, he was beginning to be sure of it; Servia Calidia just had that motherly air about her, and it helped her in her duties as the maidservant with the most authority in the merchant’s household.

“Dear child, you look pale,” she murmured worriedly, placing a hand on his cheek. “Come, I will help you get ready so you can have your stomach filled.”

He let her fuss over him without complaint. It was better to go with the wishes of the old maid than to try to prove his independence as he had so many times during the first few months of being under her supervision all those years ago.

There he sat in a warm bath as he washed his hair in sweet-smelling rose water; and as he rubbed at his arms and chest, his senses filled with ambrosia, he was drawn inwards to his thoughts. He was a naturally quiet person; with a slender face that was matched only by his slender build. Next to another man, he might have been mistaken for an athletic woman, but if he were to stand next to a woman, his masculinity would speak for itself. He glanced down at his arms, and at his legs distorted in the water; they looked like ghostly limbs against the royal blue tiles.

He sometimes thought that he was supposed to be a woman; but somewhere in the other realm, he didn’t quite make the transition. No…

He stood up from the bath and started to dry himself. He didn’t like the idea of being called Decima Maria besides.

…but it was his androgyny that got him into Tiberius Claudius’ villa in the first place; rather it was his androgyny that caught the merchant’s appreciative eye. He still remembered what the slave trader said to him that day as he was handed over to the merchant’s servant: “You fetched me my highest price today, boy. If I could, I would get you and sell you all over again.”

The trader’s lewd laughter still rang in Marius’ ears even as he dried them with a towel.

“That was the end of your suffering,” a gentle voice broke into his thoughts.

Marius looked up, seeing the old maid enter with his change of clothing. “Calidia,” he said quietly.

The old maid’s eyes were downcast as she walked further inside, but he could tell that they weren’t when she stood at the archway. How else could she have made such a comment? He set the slightly damp towel aside and turned around, waiting to be clothed.

“Don’t use that voice with me.” He raised his eyes to the ceiling at her light scolding, wondering why he even bothered. Servia Calidia was one of the few people who truly had authority over him, and one of the few who often exercised it.

Her voice became clearer as she neared and stopped directly behind him. “I’m not a young maiden anymore,” she continued, “and I’ve seen that same look on your face when Tiberius Claudius came home with you.”

He remembered it; feeling apprehensive, feeling lost. He was led to the back; snuck in like some cargo to be stored for later use. He was washed of his stink and grime; his hair trimmed to even out the ends that were burned off; his bruises salved. He was to be a present for someone special.

“That was a long time ago.”

“Indeed it was,” she chuckled as she started to dress him in his tunic, “my, you’ve grown so much since then.”

He was a beautiful child. Everybody said so. Everybody must have said so even before he found himself with the slave traders, naked and abused. Even then his beauty must have shown through his injuries and his blatant humiliation for the merchant to have selected him among all the others in that noisy, crowded, stinky marketplace.

“Then,” he murmured, very well aware of her attention on his back, “do you like what you see?”

“Save your arrogance for your mistress, Decimus Marius,” came her sharp retort.

It wasn’t that he was arrogant or conceited. It was far from those ideas what he really felt about his so-called beauty. To him, it was a curse that continued to haunt him every day; a curse that earned him scorn; a curse that made him an abomination to be marveled, looked at, admired.

Owned.

He remained quiet, and nothing more could be heard than the faint rustling of cloth as the servant helped him dress. The silence allowed him a little time to himself before the day’s duties took his privacy away.

Yes, it was a duty. Everything to him was a duty that needed fulfilling. Even as he now sat by the window to eat his breakfast, he considered it as a duty to feed his stomach. His long and silken hair, alluring and red as rust, was combed all the way down to his back to dry in the sunlight. That was duty, too.

Everything down to breathing was a duty for his body was no longer his to own. He had merely become a tenant to his self; a caretaker left to tend to the possessions of his mistress. What little moments he could have to himself… that was all he had.

“Where is he? What is taking him so long?”

“Please, he is not yet ready.”

“Then I will help him get ready.”

Marius looked up at the sound of a familiar voice just beyond the archway. It was not at all unusual to hear it at this time of day. What was unusual was to hear it within the servants’ quarters; and what was more unusual was to hear the underlying impatience laced with it.

He set his empty bowl aside and stood up just as she entered, as anyone who served under her would do. It was what he would always do; and as he lifted his gaze, he couldn’t help but fall back a little.

However prepared he was to serve her that day wasn’t apparently enough to brace him for the vision that stepped through the threshold.

She was wearing a white palla, but the cloth was different from the usual wool garb she wore. It was thinner, it gave away her slightest movements that confirmed its lightness, rippling as if in water; with a soft sheen when the sun hit it that it gave the illusion of almost glowing, made the beholder think she was of ethereal descent.

It took his breath away.

Her slender body was encased in the softest, fairest skin. Her head, crowned full with long wavy locks that might have outshone the sun itself in its radiance, featured the most delicate, most deceitful face. How could he not think her an angel? a goddess?

Right then that face was flushed, whether from the exertion of coming all the way to the servants’ quarters or from something else, he wouldn’t know until much later.

“They said you were not yet ready,” she said quietly, her unblinking emerald eyes on him.

“I have only just finished eating, my lady..” he replied, his tone carrying his apology. Marius shifted his gaze to the floor; he could never allow himself to look at her fully.

A silence stretched on, quite unnaturally, inside the room. He could hear the servants’ busyness outside, and he could also hear the discreet shuffling of sandaled feet just beyond the archway.

“Then nothing else could be arranged for,” she murmured; and as if she had also noticed the same thing, “Will you accompany me now, Marius?”

It wasn’t a request; although she had formed it in a question, it was her command.

He belonged to her.

“Yes, my lady.”

That was why he obeyed.