Epta appears above him. “Here, drink.” She lifts his head with one hand and tilts water—no, broth—into his mouth. He manages a few slurps before spluttering and coughing. Pain. He tries to stop, but that makes it worse. Epta draws back, apologizing.
When he’s finished coughing, and the pain has died down, he says, as if by way of explanation, “I’ve been dead.”
“Not quite,” Epta says. “Almost, but not quite. You had a fever. You were hot to touch. Sweat all over you. I brought water from the stream and poured it on you. I thought your wound had become poison in you, but it wasn’t that bad. The goddess took pity on you. The spear point could have pierced through and that would’ve been your end, but it only struck your ribs. It just needed washing and stitching. I cleaned the puncture with vinegar and treated it with a willow paste. For the fever I gave you a tea made from willow bark. Broth from a lamb stew as well. There is meat when you’re ready for it. Cerzula is cooking just now. See? You’d be no better off if the medicus himself were here.” She paused, and he imagined she might be smiling. “But why, I wondered, did you have such a fever? And then I knew. The cut didn’t cause the fever. Instead, the fever caused the cut. I’m right, aren’t I?”
Drenis is too stunned to respond. He has never heard more than a few words issue from her mouth, and those cast so low he could barely hear them. This is Epta, the frightened one. Where did the voice she spoke with come from? When had she found it? And other things troubled him. His being hot to touch. Sweat all over him. Her pouring water on him. Washing. Stitching. Her hands on him, doing these things. It is such a barrage of intimacy and action. All of it done by her, to him, when he was insensible.
Epta sets the wooden bowl down. She looks at Drenis for a long time. He looks back. Strange, that he never looked at her too closely before. He couldn’t. It hurt to look at her. It made him think things he didn’t want to. The fullness of her lips. The perfect curve of them. Her nose is small, with freckles across it. It’s her eyes that he really couldn’t look at, though. They are outlined in blue, and then green-brown inside that, with black pupils at the center. There must be other eyes like that, but he can’t remember any.
Why has it been so hard to look at her? Two reasons. One, because when he looks at her, he sees the things men did to her. He hates that. It isn’t him. Two, he has always known that when he looks at Epta, he forgets what Bendidora looked like. That seems wrong. So considering everything, it has been best to see her as little as possible.
The strange thing now is that he is looking at her, for a long time. He has been, and she has been looking back. He remembers that she’s asked him a question only when she repeats it. “Right? You shouldn’t have been on that horse.”
The horse. Yes, he had been on a horse. He’d slapped at a fly, and then he’d fallen off. Now that she reminds him, he remembers. He hadn’t a moment before, his head still filled with the loops of dreams and the visions he thought of as death. Those things, though, are already fleeing him. It’s as if a door has opened in the back of his head and all those thoughts are draining out of him. It’s a confusing sensation.
Epta frowns. “I know that you can talk. Don’t pretend you can’t. Or is it just me that you won’t talk to? Should I get someone else?”
Drenis doesn’t want to talk to anybody else, and he doesn’t want her to go. The thought of that flashes over him, a quick breath of panic.
“I’ll go,” Epta says. She reaches down for the—
“The baby,” Drenis says. That stops her, as he’d hoped it would. They’re just words that come out, something said, a simple thought that he can handle voicing. But then he feels stupid. He thinks, Of course it’s a baby, you idiot! He wanted to say something like, No, don’t go. Stay. Explain to me what’s happened. Don’t go, Epta. Saying her name would be good. But that’s not what he said. His mind seems to have no control over his lips.
“You want to see the baby? Here.” She picks the boy up and moves him closer, holding the child by the armpits for him to see.
Drenis’s mind goes to where it shouldn’t. Who is the father? It could be anybody. Vatia himself. Or one of his Roman friends. One of the guards. Even a gladiator. He searches the boy’s features for anything familiar, a bit of Oenomaus, perhaps, or a hint of Goban or Nico. But no matter how closely he squints, he doesn’t see any particular man in him. He wonders if the boy could have more than one father, but that thought seems perverse, and he puts it aside.
“What do you think of him?” Epta asks.
Before he realizes it, the question in his mind comes out of his mouth: “Whose is it?”
Epta’s face goes blank. All the energy that was there vanishes. The curve at the corners of her full lips flatten. He’s said the absolutely wrong thing. He’s an even greater idiot than he knew. A huge, stupid idiot. Why did he ask that? It’s none of his business. Worse, though, the question came from a place he didn’t want to acknowledge. The child was conceived, he knew, back in Vatia’s ludus. For all he knew, Epta might not know who the father was. Or if she did, she might hate him and the circumstances of the conception. Because he asked her, she might now hate him.
Epta picks up the babe, walks on her knees toward the flap of the shelter, and disappears through it.
Alone, Drenis thinks, How stupid are you? Just a few moments back from the dead, and you are doing everything wrong.
—
Later, when the light has gone orange with the dusk, he hears the swish and crackle of the dry grass as someone approaches. He’s been formulating an apology, practicing it. He thinks he has it ready, but it flies out of his head the moment he hears those approaching feet, his words going the way of his dream memories. He becomes a fool again with no idea what might come out of his mouth. She’s walking fast, angrily. The tent flap snaps back, and—
It’s not Epta.
Spartacus peers at him. He goes down to his knees and ducks inside. His muscular bulk fills the tent, stuffs it. His head props up the sheet. He reaches out with one of his hands and places it on Drenis’s uninjured shoulder. “You had us worried,” he says. “That trick you did with the spear—don’t do that again. Next time you’re fevered, mention it to someone. And stay off horses!”
Drenis nods that he understands. “I didn’t realize,” he says.
“Next time, do. You weren’t the only one to take a fever, but none announced it quite so dramatically as you. You’re better?”
“I thought I’d died,” Drenis says.
“Well, you’re better off than that, at least. Epta, she took good care of you?”
Drenis nods.
“Good. You can thank me for that later. If the medicus had been with us, I’d have put him on you. As he wasn’t here, I sent her instead.”
Drenis is unsure whether that was a good thing or not. “Has there been word from Philon?”
“No. I hope to meet him as we head south. We do that soon, Drenis. It will be hard on you, riding in a wagon at first. Must be done, though, now, while the news of our summer of victory is fresh. We’re going to pick up support. If not here in the north, certainly in Samnium and in the south. Not all the Latin and Greek cities will stay slaves to Rome. We’re nearing the point of tipping, Drenis. If just one city of import joins us…”
Drenis completes the thought: “…more will follow. I’ll be on my feet soon.”
“Yes, good.” Spartacus squeezes Drenis’s wrist. The way he twists to do so exposes a stigma that hadn’t been there before, a silhouette of a bull, in black. “I’ll need your pretty face beside me. If we can’t sway the men, I’ll put you to work on their women.”
Drenis deflects the comment. “You have a new stigma.”
Spartacus pulls up his tunic sleeve to better expose it. “You like it? It’s after the likeness of Longinus’s standard. I’ll have others done as well. One for each time we defeat an army worth noting. I’ll point to them when we talk with the magistrates.” He feigns doing so, pointing whe
re these new stigmas will be. “This is Gellius. This one, Lentulus. This one, whoever comes next.”
Spartacus’s good mood lifts Drenis’s spirits as well. That’s the way with Spartacus. It’s hard not to feel as he does, not to believe what he believes and want what he wants. It’s a good feeling, something he realizes he missed in his fever dream.
“I won’t tire you,” Spartacus says. “I just wanted proof that you were well. I’ll send Epta with meat.” He starts to back away. He thinks of something. “Tell me, what did you say to Epta to make her like you?”
“Like me? Nothing. The only thing I said was…Just earlier, it was stupid. She would not like me for that.”
Spartacus purses his lips and makes their corners dip. “She was short with me when she came to tell me you were awake and sensible. But before—before you were awake and sensible—you seemed to have won her over. She told Astera that you had a gentle heart.”
“A gentle heart?” Drenis asks.
“You should see your face! You look most perplexed.” He continues backing away. “Maybe she just liked wiping sweat from your head and chest and tipping water into your mouth and cleaning the bedding when you peed that water out.” He catches his head on the top of the entry slit and pauses there a moment. “I’m joking, but not about this—Epta needs a man who is gentle with her but strong as well. Who better than you?”
With that, he ducks his head and slips through the opening, leaving Drenis even more confounded than when he’d found him.
—
Later, Laelia comes instead of Epta. He has nothing against her. She is a kind girl, he knows. She is generous and has large, dark eyes, and he’s thought previously that she’s made Astera softer than she was before. All good things. She’s not Epta, though. “Where is she?”
“Epta?” Laelia says. “She sent me. I can do for you as she was. I don’t mind.”
But he does. “Please,” he says, “tell her to come back.”
Laelia looks at him for a long moment. She says, “I’ll tell her you want only her.”
Which sounds good when she says it. But once she’s gone, he worries. Will she really tell her that? And why, without his knowing it or thinking it, does it sound so true?
—
Epta comes back. Drenis doesn’t notice when. He must’ve slept again. He wakes, like the first time, aware that the dreams are over and that she’s moving nearby. He hears the baby making faint baby noises. He half-hopes that he didn’t actually ask that stupid question. Perhaps he dreamed that part of it, and he will find she hasn’t been offended.
It’s dimmer than before, and he can feel the dark of night outside like a sinister presence, beyond the thin sheet. In the shelter an oil lamp casts a flickering, smoky light. He turns his head. Epta is more shadow than highlight, but he studies the parts of her he can see: her dark hair, a bare shoulder, the thin stretch of her arm as she works at something. The baby cries out, and she reaches that arm back to soothe him, exposing just enough of her side for him to sense the shape of her breast beneath her plain tunic. It’s a small breast, he knows. Kastor would joke that it’s not a breast at all, but to Drenis everything about her shape is just right. Bendidora was the same. At least, he thinks so. Her features have grown more and more vague over time. He hadn’t liked to acknowledge that before, but it’s true.
Drenis straightens when Epta swings around toward him. She moves closer, on her knees. Unlike Spartacus, she doesn’t seem huge. She seems the right size, perfect for this space. Her face is in shadow. He can’t read her at all and doesn’t know if she’s about to be kind to him, or savage. It doesn’t help that she pauses, just a silhouette, and stays that way for a time. She reaches one hand out and touches the babe, and then she speaks.
“I’m not afraid of you,” she says. “I could’ve cut your throat anytime I wanted to. Do you know that? I’ve seen everything about your body, and I’m not scared of it. Are you embarrassed? Does it make you angry to know you were powerless and I strong?”
Does it? Is he? He doesn’t have an answer for either question. What matters more is that he would never want her to be afraid of him.
“I cared for you,” she says. “You wake up, and then what? You look at my son and say, ‘Whose is it?’ Just like a man to ask that, because men think all things belong to them. A man must’ve created this. Whose is it? Who owns him, and me? That’s the way you think.”
“No, that’s—”
“You called him it. Like he’s a camp dog. But he’s not an it. He’s mine, of course. I made him. Nobody else. I, with the Great Mother’s blessing. I named him. Just me. I chose it because there was no man who could demand to do it. Do you want to hear it?”
“Yes. Tell me his name.”
“Deopus,” she says fiercely, not so much in answer to him as in defiance of him. The boy starts. His whole body jerks and then holds still. Epta leans over her son and tickles his neck with her fingertips. “You know your name already. Smart boy. Not like this one here.”
Her hair is a brown that, when the lamplight touches it, shows reddish hues. Drenis holds his breath, wanting her to pull it back so that he can see her face again. She might be touching her nose to the infant’s. He can’t see but wishes he could. He knows that name and what it means. Deopus. Son of god. The temerity of it—a woman naming her child in honor of the gods, with no acknowledgment of the man who planted the seed—is astounding.
Epta doesn’t lift her head, but the edge that comes back into her voice shows that it’s directed at Drenis. “I leave food for you because Spartacus asked me to. But that’s the end. You can live; I’m finished. Find someone else. I’m sure you can, with your face. A stupid girl will come to you and eat your insults like they’re sweet things. The food is there beside you. Reach it if you can.”
“Don’t go,” he says when she picks the boy up. “Epta, don’t, please. I don’t want you to.” Then he tries to say something instead of that. It doesn’t feel right, at the moment, to mention what he wants. It’s too much like a demand. He starts again. “I have only loved one woman. Only one. She was to be my wife, but—”
She cuts him off. “That’s what you say to me? You talk about the only woman you love?” She hisses and starts to back quickly away. “I liked you better when you were feverish and babbling. Then you made sense.”
“No, that’s not what I’m saying! You didn’t let me finish.”
But she’s gone, through the flap and marching away. He hears her angry footfalls, and then the baby’s crying, growing fainter quickly. Drenis lies there, dumbfounded by himself. He meant to say the right thing. He meant to let her know that he was a man who could love one woman, and that if he had loved Bendidora before, he could love her, Epta, now. Why hadn’t he found a better way to say that? Why hadn’t he known it was true before he began to fumble his way toward it? Why didn’t he think before he spoke? Because he didn’t, he’s left with longing in his chest. It feels as if part of his spirit is rising out of him, pursuing her. He puts a hand on his chest. It doesn’t stop the sensation. It’s painful, in a different way than the throbbing of his spear wound. But still it hurts.
—
She comes back the next morning, declaring it’s just for one more day, and only because Spartacus asked it of her. “Fine, I said. One more day. Tomorrow you ride in a wagon, and we go south. I won’t ride in a wagon. I can walk, so I will. Someone else can wash your sheets.”
She sets Deopus down on his bottom and presses a rattle into his chubby hand. His fist closes around it. Drenis wonders where she got a rattle. From a Roman household, most likely. “It’s just barley for you this morning,” she says. “Watch him, and I’ll get it.”
Before she can leave, Drenis hauls himself up onto one elbow and twists to face her. It hurts, but he tries not to let it show. “Epta? I’m sorry. Yesterday…you left before I finished what I meant to say.”
“You had more insults?”
“No. I never meant to
insult you. You make me say the things I don’t mean instead of the ones I do.”
“I make you? Why would I do that? Why would I make you insult me?”
Shit. He’s doing it again. He steadies himself. “I don’t mean that you make me. Just that my words get jumbled when I talk to you.”
She crosses her arms. “Then tell me what you wanted to say.”
“I want to say,” Drenis begins, “that because I’m a man who can love one woman…I’m strange in this way. Different from what I should be. I don’t know why, but it’s true. I loved this other woman, but she’s lost to me.” He pauses. “I meant to say…that the same thing in me that made me love her could make me love you. If you want me to.”
For a long, long moment, Epta stares at him, her arms still crossed, her face defiant. He begins to think he must say more, that she’s waiting for more. He doesn’t have it, though, and he fears saying the wrong thing.
So it’s Deopus who speaks for both of them. Shaking the rattle furiously, he says, “Vrom, vrom, vrom, vrom! Vroooaaaahhhmmm!”
Epta tries to hold to form, but she can’t. She cracks. Smiles. Dips her head and lets her hair fall in front of her face.
And Drenis loves her.
—
It’s not easy distracting Deopus. Distress is written in the wrinkles of his forehead, mistrust in the intensity of his eyes. Every time his face begins to crumble and he starts to cry out, Drenis does something. He scoots nearer. He dances his fingers between them, pretending his hand is a galloping horse. He makes nonsense sounds. He grins, raises his eyebrows, puffs air into his cheeks. It’s exhausting, not to mention painful with every movement. Each effort buys him a shorter reprieve than the one before. He keeps at it. No matter what, it seems very important that Epta not return to find the boy distressed.
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