The Adventures of a Roman Slave

by Lisa Cach

  Fuck the future.

  And fuck me. Please.

  His resistance broke. He made a low cry of despair as his careful, controlled mind fled, leaving only a voracious, unthinking hunger. It swept over him and into me, and then I was on my back, the cold wet boards of the bridge under my head, the sound of rushing water filling my ears. There was a chill of air on my legs, a rough fumbling as he freed himself from his breeches, and then he was between my thighs and I was grasping him, guiding him homeward.

  I clenched against his entry, knowing it would be fierce and violent despite my swollen, ready wetness. My tightening did nothing to stop him, serving only to slow him and make each increment of his entry more intense, more consuming. I squeezed tighter, enough for it to hurt when he withdrew slightly and thrust again, harder, forcing his way inside. I wanted to feel his power greater than my own; I wanted to feel him crush all barriers I tossed up and demand possession of me.

  He did.

  I could do no more than cling to my cloak at my sides, my feet slipping on the slick wood of the bridge as I tried to get purchase and lift my hips to meet him. I kept my eyes open, watching him above me, his head and torso forming a dark silhouette against the gray sky. He thrust with the intensity of hand-to-hand combat, as if this were a fight to the death and the only acceptable outcome was victory. He didn’t seem to sense how willing his victim was.

  My pleasure started in his loss of control, then, as he moved hard and thick inside me, the passion of the physical swept me up. My body changed its inner shape with each push and retreat of his cock, my passage rippling with pleasure in the retreating path of its head. I heard the hum of my swarm, gathering in the distance.

  And then he was stiffening, his thrusts turning to a few half strokes, and I felt the pulse of his release. I wrapped my feet around the backs of his legs and my arms around his chest, drawing his weight down on top of me as he spent himself. My sex throbbed around his rod, aroused without hope of release. I didn’t care. All that mattered was that for this moment, Arthur was mine.

  “If Wynnetha marries Mordred,” he said, his breath heavy in my ear, “then may the gods help you, for I will never let you go.”

  Six days went by, filled with frustration. When I’d told Terix about my conversations with Arthur and Maerlin, he had infuriatingly agreed with them that going to Mona was a bad idea.

  “Send a message. If your mother’s there, we’ll know it’s worth going, and Ambrosius might give us an escort. It would be stupid for us to try to cross the countryside on our own; we couldn’t even make it here without nearly losing our lives or our freedom.”

  “We could go by sea.”

  He’d paled. “By Apollo’s hairless ass, promise you won’t do that to me.”

  I almost said I could go alone, but kept the words behind my teeth. He wouldn’t let me, and it would be foolish of me to try it. Having a male companion was protection, whether he was skilled with a sword or not. People treated a woman alone differently, looking upon her both with suspicion and with an eye toward getting what they could off her, or of her.

  So I’d written a message, and Ambrosius had sent it on its winding way, to be passed from hand to hand. There was no certainty that it would ever make it to its destination, or that, if a reply were written, it would find me in return. With winter coming, it could be spring or summer by the time I received a reply.

  I chafed under my enforced patience.

  And I chafed with suppressed need. With lust spent and sanity returning, Arthur had been distraught after our joining on the bridge in the woods. It was so far from how he’d wanted to behave, and so far from how he wanted to think of himself, he’d let the shining memory of our brief joy be tarnished. He’d been appalled by his rough taking of me on the ground, appalled there could be a child (though I assured him I’d taken precautions against that), appalled he had lost control of his desires and acted for his own selfish ends, and alarmed at how much he wanted to do it all again.

  He kept his distance from me, and asked me to do the same for him until we knew Horsa’s decision regarding Wynnetha’s hand.

  Out of respect for Arthur’s wishes, I didn’t chase him down and throw him on a bed as I wished to do. I spent my nights with my hands on my body, thinking of Arthur and giving myself the caresses he would not. I both dreaded and hoped for a messenger from Horsa.

  Daella, despite many tears and protestations of not wanting to leave us, had nonetheless happily moved into the town proper to apprentice with a midwife-herbalist and her physician husband. Daella’s brown eyes had sparkled with a greed for knowledge that would serve her well. She’d looked sorrier to leave Terix than to leave me, her gaze lingering sadly on him when he wasn’t looking, but she was not a girl to moon idly when there were useful things she could be doing.

  Smart girl, Daella. Smarter than me, by far.

  So Daella studied with her new tutors, and Terix trained with his. I tried to teach myself to contact Theo through my mind, or even to contact Terix, since he was closer, but the harder I tried to go into a trance state, the farther away my golden swarm flew. I didn’t know where to begin building either defenses or bridges in my mind; it was like trying to build with dry sand on a windy day. I needed a teacher.

  I avoided both Arthur and Maerlin, but spent time in the evenings with Ambrosius, playing my cithara for him and answering his questions about Sygarius and Soissons; about the journey to Tolosa to see Alaric, King of the Visigoths; about the priest-poet Sidonius Apollinaris, whose writings he had read. Ambrosius’s obsession with all things Roman was unsettling, given my own experiences with them, but Brenn explained it to me in a way I could understand.

  “He watched everything they brought slowly die away in Britannia,” Brenn said. “He saw the roads fall apart, the coins stop changing hands, the protection of soldiers disappear. The latrines clogged, the water stopped flowing, trade with foreign lands all but ended, and with it the knowledge of the outside world. He wants the best of it to be returned to his people. He never experienced the worst of it.”

  So I plucked my cithara and told my tales, and tried not to scoff at Ambrosius’s vision of the Romans as the masters of a golden age.

  When he was free of his training duties, I spent time with Brenn.

  We had little in common, past memories of my mother—mine as faded as his own. It was incredible to me that I had come from a meeting on a mountainside between this man and Ligeia; it was equally as incredible to him, which was at least a feeling we could share.

  We slowly began to forge a bond based on conversations and cider, and stories of our lives that we shared with both more caution and more openness than might otherwise happen between strangers. I had no fear of him using anything I told him against me, but I also felt unwilling to say much about my sexual exploits, despite their having been a driving force in my life. I didn’t think he’d want to hear about the Dionysian orgy Sygarius had carried out for my supposed deflowering, or about my seduction of Alaric. He wouldn’t want to know that weird sex gave me visions of the future, and the weirder the better.

  That was something only Maerlin could fully understand.

  In my chafing and frustration, I almost missed Maerlin. He was at least an interesting distraction. And though he couldn’t teach me all I needed to know about harnessing my powers, he could give me a start.

  As if he could sense my weakening resistance to his unnatural charms, Maerlin tracked me down early one frosty morning, soon after I had risen.

  “Do you want to go for a ride?” he asked.

  “Just a ride, or a ride to somewhere?”

  “A ride to something.”

  “A mysterious something is better than the aimless nothing I had planned for today.”

  He looked at me with his brows raised in question, then gave me an uncertain smile. “Is that a yes?”

 
; “Why not?”

  So I donned my warmest clothes and my lambskin cloak, and accepted Maerlin’s help mounting a chestnut mare. Bone decided to come with us; he was no doubt as bored as I was with the confines of Ambrosius’s villa.

  “How far is this nameless something?” I asked when we were on our way, trotting abreast through the fog, on the road away from the villa. It was still early enough that frost limned the grass in white, as well as the bare, purple-red branches of brambles near the ground. As we rode up the hillside, we emerged from the mist of the valley and into a day that promised bright sunshine and clear blue skies. It was as if we’d entered another world, high apart from the damp darkness below. No clouds meant colder weather, but it was a trade I was willing to make: I was not a creature meant for soggy climes. I turned toward the sun like a flower, petals unfurling.

  “Aren’t you curious about where we’re going? You haven’t asked,” Maerlin said.

  “I’ve been savoring the anticipation of finding out. You won’t spoil that for me, will you?”

  He scratched his thigh. “Does that mean I’m not supposed to tell you?”

  “Your choice.”

  He shifted in his saddle. He obviously wanted to tell me, but had to weigh it against my apparent enjoyment of the mystery. In truth, I was curious where we were going; seeing Maerlin suffer in indecision, however, was more entertaining than knowing. I let him fidget, and turned my attention to the countryside. I saw little of it, my thoughts soon wandering instead to Arthur, and the strange contradiction of his easygoing charm and affability versus the sadness and the hint of fatalism in his eyes.

  We’d been riding in silence for some while when Bone flushed a doe out of a thicket; she went bounding away in graceful, impossibly high leaps. Bone watched her go in surprise, then loped back to my side as if I could explain it to him.

  The small event was enough to break the quiet between Maerlin and me, and I found myself asking about Arthur. “Has your brother always been so sad?”

  Maerlin lowered his chin and stared at me, long enough to make me squirm. “You’re attracted to him.”

  My mistake had been that of an infatuated girl: it was always revealing, when one asked about a handsome member of the opposite sex. There were no innocent questions. I threaded my fingers through the horse’s dark mane, pulling them through the rough hairs like a comb. “He’s an attractive man.”

  “Women always notice the sadness. It draws them, like flies to spoiled meat.”

  “Hardly a flattering image, of either the women or your brother.”

  He puckered his mouth, like he’d taken a swig of vinegar when expecting wine. “I’ll never understand the appeal male sadness has for women. What happiness do they hope to find, bedding a melancholy man? The common man has more sense: he looks for jolly women to take under his covers, women who will giggle, and sigh with pleasure. Not dripping, dreary clouds of desolation.”

  “Are you jealous?”

  “Not of Arthur’s appeal to women.”

  “What do you envy, then?”

  Maerlin’s smile was lopsided, wry; he seemed to be looking at himself and finding a figure worthy of derision. “His way with men. Even when we were children, it was Arthur to whom the boys were drawn; Arthur whose attention they wanted; Arthur whose ideas were listened to, even if I had been the one to give him the idea. Men have always followed him, without his ever seeking to be their leader. They like him.” He looked up at the sky, his gaze following the flight of a hawk. “No, it’s more than that,” he said, his eyes coming back to me. “They love him. Naturally, effortlessly, as if it were only as the gods decreed, Arthur brings forth devotion in men.”

  “It’s a rare gift.”

  “I sometimes think that whatever share of that gift was meant to be mine, it was given to him instead. It’s the only way to make sense of how one brother should be so adored, and the other so loathed.”

  “That’s going a little far, isn’t it? I have heard no one speak of loathing you.”

  His lips tightened in a brief, cold smile. “I’m not seeking sympathy, or a softening of the truth. Better to know the truth, and work within it, than continue fighting against that which cannot be changed. I am unlikable.”

  And yet he did fight against it, didn’t he? The magic tricks he performed in Horsa’s hall, his “surprise” introduction of me as Brenn’s daughter, his face showing his eagerness to witness our pleasure, and to have been the author of it. He still sought to please, still sought acceptance. Would it be less painful for him to stop trying, I wondered, in the face of the unremitting rejection?

  Maybe he wasn’t even aware that he still tried.

  And might it not be worse for everyone, if he did give up . . .

  I shivered at the thought of a man with Maerlin’s powers, were he to care not at all for the feelings of others. What damage might he wreak, if no one mattered to him at all?

  “I’ve even come to believe,” Maerlin went on, “that to have had Arthur’s gift would have been a hindrance. It would have kept me from honing my own talents, pursuing my own interests. Being solitary has made me well suited to my travels and studies. I envy his way with people, but I would not be myself if I shared it.”

  “Do you share his need to serve his family, and his tribe?”

  “Family.” He laughed and shook his head. “Blood lays no claim to me. Nor does tribe.”

  “Then why stay here? Surely there are places of greater learning, where there would be more to interest you.”

  “There are. I have been to many of them, farther away than you can imagine. What point to learning, though, if you make no use of it? If no one’s life is made better by what you have discovered, and the skills you have developed, then what’s the point?”

  “So you do care about serving your people.”

  “I care about Arthur.” He flicked a cautious, sideways glance at me, as if shy to admit it. “There is something uniquely good about him. Something importantly good. I don’t know how to explain, or even if it can be explained. But I’ve always known both that he was worthy of my help . . . and that he needed it.”

  I raised my brows. “Needed it?”

  “Needs it. Will need it. Has needed it, always. Not for leading men into battle, of course,” he said, waving off the idea. “From the moment I first saw him, I’ve had the sense that he would grow to be a great man without my help. But with my help . . . he could become a legend. Immortal, in the minds of men.”

  “Like a Roman emperor, believed by his people to be a demigod? Or the Christians’ Jesus?”

  “Just so.”

  “I don’t think he has any such ambitions,” I said, remembering what Arthur had said about expecting his name to be forgotten.

  “A good man would not.”

  “So raising Arthur to the level of a god will be a worthy use of your learning.”

  Maerlin smiled and looked at me, and this time the smile touched his eyes. For a moment I saw Arthur’s sadness in Maerlin’s green gaze. “A fated use, I think.”

  “I’m surprised you believe in fate. You seem too rational for it.”

  “Who among the Phanne do not believe in fate? You can’t do otherwise, when you see the future and are helpless to change it.”

  We rode a short ways in silence, my mind churning. “Are we helpless, though?” I finally burst out. “I keep feeling that if only I could understand my visions, I could change their outcomes. Maybe we already do change them—maybe that’s the reason they’re so vague.”

  “To allow alternate results?”

  I nodded. The idea had only come clearly to me as the words left my mouth, but I felt the power of them, the rightness.

  Maerlin must have felt it, as well. His face went slack as thoughts ran through his mind, and then his eyes widened ever so slightly. “That . . . shine
s a new light upon our talents.” He lowered his chin and stared at me from under his brows again, examining me as if surprised to find I had ideas that merited his attention. “What is your fate, I wonder? Whose greatness are you going to serve? Clovis’s?”

  I gave a harsh shake of the head. “He is not a good man.” Another truth I hadn’t fully understood until I spoke it. “Maybe I’ll serve my own greatness.”

  “A conqueror of countries?”

  “No.” I shook my head again, confused by myself. “I don’t know what I mean.”

  He nodded, as if that made perfect sense. “You know your purpose is out there,” he said, sweeping his hand across the landscape before us, “and you know you have not yet encountered it.”

  That was a more optimistic take on my future than I myself had; I had no faith that such certainty about my place in the world would ever emerge. It was a comforting thought, though, and I wished I could believe it. “Yes. I suppose. At the moment, all I can think about is finding my mother, and reconnecting with my son.”

  “You’re like Arthur, then, and your people mean all.”

  “What else do any of us have?”

  It wasn’t a question that needed an answer. We rode several more miles in silence, both lost in our own thoughts. I snuck occasional glances at Maerlin, trying to make sense of him, and of my own shifting feelings toward him. He was alternately cold and vulnerable, self-absorbed and self-sacrificing, wise and naïve. At this moment I liked him, and yet I was wary. He might at any moment turn and bite, like a bad-tempered horse.

  At midmorning we crested a long chain of hills, the breeze whipping my hair across my face. I captured it in a loose braid as we followed the ridgeline toward its treeless peak, where I could see the silhouette of a small structure, of scaffolding, and of one or two people at work, going in and out of the building.