by Allen Werner
And then they made eye contact.
Rugerius Fabbro returned from his distant place of idle thought and sneered before lowering his lustful gaze on the rest of her body, especially her narrow hips and legs. His glare made Anthea extremely uncomfortable, self-conscious. She was hot and perspiring. She reached down with both hands to ensure that her tattered blue frock still covered her nether regions. It did, but just barely. She wished she could have pulled the hem all the way down to her knees but the way she was pinned between these two men and the fabric bunched up beneath her, there was no way it was going down any further. She was not accustomed to revealing this much of her legs to anyone.
‘Did he violate me while I was unconscious?’ There was no soreness. She didn’t feel defiled. Her undergarments were wet but she recognized the scent immediately. ‘I must have soiled myself.’ Another thing to be self-conscious about. But there were other odors permeating the rickety coach, odors far more pungent than her own soiling. ‘These men stink. All three of them. Urine, blood and God knows what else.’
“What are your intentions?” The words were meager and no one heard her speak them. The carriage groaned louder. Anthea surrendered to her feebleness. She heaved a wearisome sigh before spotting a silver flask resting on the velvet bench beside Rugerius’ left thigh. ‘I’m so thirsty,’ she thought. A defiant sureness arose inside her heart, demanding she refuse any charity from these monsters. ‘I want to be fearless. I do. Be tenacious and refuse food and drink.’ But she was suffering as she had never suffered before. Such hardship was completely new to her. ‘Wine, water or ale, I don’t care what it is. I need something.’ Slowly, shamefully, her left hand lifted. She pointed at the container.
Rugerius stared at her raised hand and the extended finger for a long moment before following the course of it to the flask. He then spent an equally exorbitant length of time staring at the container.
‘He’s playing dumb with me,’ she thought hotly. ‘I am no dog and I will not beg. If he thinks I will, he is remiss.’
Just as her arm started to fall back down to her side, Rugerius chuckled and snatched up the container. He tossed it to her lap. The carriage struck another noticeable bump and Anthea surprised even herself, reacting quickly and catching the flask before it slipped away.
“Water,” he ruffed at her, “just water.”
Rugerius leaned to his right. He edged back a corner of the drawn curtain covering the window on the door so he alone could peek outside.
Anthea moaned as she once again rethought her willingness to accept this charity, this flask of water. ‘Will he think me weak for this? What the hell do I care what he thinks? I must survive. But he knows this too. Should I refuse the water? Should I fast in protest, starve myself and dehydrate? Would it mean anything to him if I did? Would it be valorous?’ She closed her grey-green eyes momentarily. ‘But I’m so weak. I’m so tired. I’m so damn thirsty.’ Anthea was stunned how simply her mind vacillated just then. She couldn’t recall ever being so indeterminate. It was a finer line between decision and indecision than she had ever supposed possible, so quick to cross in either direction. She had never known such uncertainty. But yes, she had. ‘My wedding. I was indecisive about that also. I had grave concerns. There were so many variables and mysteries. Now all that anxiety seems pointless. I should have never been so troubled. Those minor issues were nothing compared to the evil I now face.’ She glanced at Rugerius to give evil a face. Her thoughts raged against herself. ‘It seems the older I get, the more problematic it is to live with the choices I make.’ She remembered a portion of Pero’s letter, the one she had shredded into sixteen pieces and condemned to the flames. He said, ‘My fears have become my palisades. I cower behind regrets, timid and shaking.’
Anthea steeled her resolve. ‘To hell with my fears. I shall overcome.’ Brave and sure, the Greek beauty lifted the flask to find the intimidating scowl of Sarcinus etched in the metal. ‘I’m not scared of you.’ She popped the black plug from out of the top of the container and drank down a mouthful. The water inside was cool and ran sweetly down the back of her throat. Gaining in confidence, she stole three more sips before replacing the plug.
Rugerius chuckled again.
Anthea despised his taunt and tossed the container back on the seat beside him, part of her wishing she had possessed the daring to hurdle the metal object directly at his face. Rugerius didn’t flinch as the flask bounced off the back of the coach seat. It slid forward across the red velvet and dropped onto the floor.
The carriage struck another major rut before careening through a sharp turn that forced everyone in the coach to tumble sideways, Anthea and her guardsmen to the right. Anthea’s head ended up resting in the lap of the young guard beside her. The youngster laughed as she pushed up off him as quickly as the carriage righted itself.
Rugerius Fabbro appeared immune to all the jostling. He was composed and balanced, hardly affected by the bumps, no matter how jarring. He didn’t lean in the least during that last violent turn.
“What are your intentions?” Anthea voice had returned. The water had helped. “Where are we going?
The curtains on both sides of the coach were batten down to prevent the clouds of dust being generated by the horses and the wheels from getting inside. Rugerius pointed at the window he had just peeked through and invited her to figure it out for herself.
“Have a look.”
Anthea didn’t wish to play games with him. She wanted simple answers to her simple questions but the opportunity to be liberated from her confinement on the bench between the guards seemed a small victory.
Anthea tore herself away from the pinning and fell. On hands and knees, she crawled across the trembling floor of the coach to the curtain. She untied the latches and toggles restraining the heavy red cloth and tossed it fully away. Peering through the smoke, the breeze baptized her hair with dust and leaves. Recognition came quick. They were on a hill quickly approaching an enormous coastal city. She had only been in the capital of Campania once before but there was no mistaking the distinctive skyline, the bright blue waters of the Bay of Naples churning in the horizon behind it.
“Parthenope!” Her heart sank as she said it.
Rugerius laughed and so too did the guardsmen.
Anthea was ready to voice her complaint but something else was happening to her. A queasy sensation mimicking motion sickness fluttered nervously inside her stomach. She remembered how she felt moments before losing consciousness. This sensation was eerily similar but somehow different. The regression was coming upon her slower, more purposeful and dare she think it, self-inflicted.
“Poison?”
The smoky clouds dusting her view of Parthenope grew dimmer and altered into an eerie shroud, a veil of night. It kept getting lighter and then darker. She fought against the transformation with a yawn, a brisk shaking of the head. It did no good. Nothing could clear her mind. Finally, she turned back to face Rugerius. Everything inside the coach was dreamy. Sounds were warbled. The anxious groans of the carriage’s wooden body melted into the noise of the spinning wheels and the horse’s neighing. The golden tassels dangling from the ceiling were pretty, little girls in summer frocks, showering her head with welcoming petals, just like the day she arrived in Parthenope. ‘Aw, they are all so beautiful.’ She spotted the flask she had drank from lying on the floor nearby. The golden tongue of the snarling purple dragon seemed to slither out towards her but she wasn’t scared of it. Just amused.
“What have you done to me?” Anthea whispered.
Rugerius chuckled again.
Anthea was tired of his chuckling.
“Just a sedative. I knew you would eventually thirst.”
Rugerius’ voice seemed more slurred than usual, distorted and distant, as if it had to travel down a long tunnel before reaching her.
“But no worries, my Lady. I know how much you loathe our fine city. Your stay in Parthenope will be brief. I’ve a boat waiting at the
docks.”
“A boat?” It was nearly impossible to speak now but Anthea somehow managed. “A boat? Where do you intend to take me?” The sedative was working quickly now. She imagined she was back home, standing on the shores of Sounion, watching a proud merchant ship sail back and forth before her, hypnotizing her with its relaxing passage.
The speeding conveyance jerked yet again and Anthea’s head came to rest on Rugerius’ hard right knee. She knew exactly where she was but she didn’t care. She was wholly numb to nearly everything.
The Castellan grabbed her short brown hair and dragged her face down across his inner thigh until her mouth and nose rested on his codpiece. She inhaled deeply and the scent trapped in the old fabric seemed bland and common. ‘Thank god I cannot smell anything.’
“Be glad it is still buttoned,” Rugerius joked to the amusement of the guards.
‘Disgusting pigs.’ She smiled. She couldn’t help it. Her mind was not in synch with her body. One was offended, the other comforted.
Rugerius Fabbro started petting her short brown hair, massaging the scalp as though he were a kindly sort of gentleman offering comfort. And even though it was him doing this, Anthea acknowledged that it felt good. It felt good to be stroked tenderly. Anthea diminished even more.
“Soon,” Rugerius assured his sweet young prisoner, his voice a slow purposeful whisper, “it will all be over and you won’t remember any of this.”
Anthea was relieved to hear that. She wanted to forget everything. Her mind had been tainted by unimaginable, ungodly horrors. ‘All those massacred souls. All that blood. So cruel. So forgettable.’ And then a wee small voice of concern penetrated the subconscious and raised an objection. ‘Won’t remember? How is that possible? How can I ever forget?’
Anthea was too undone by the poison now to heed the small voice’s concerns. The fear of forgetting everything dissipated and the thought of Pero de Alava suddenly warmed her spirit. Internally and externally she beamed. Her former lover’s sunburnt expression was all she saw, those piercing blue eyes that always melted her and gave her hope. The contours of his handsome face came into clear, sharp focus and she embraced Rugerius’ leg tighter. ‘My husband. I will never forget you. I swear I will never …’
Chapter 6 – Vesuvius and Parthenope
Excited, her heart racing madly, Anthea Manikos clenched a wet rail on the starboard side of the Seppioline, a large merchant ship breasting through strange blue waters. She leaned precariously into the wind, her fresh tan face catching cool ocean spray, long brown hair whipping wildly behind her, her golden dress ruffled and snapped, clinging ever so taut to her young body. Around her neck hung a choker of fine pearls, glittering gems only serving to enhance her already immaculate, radiant smile. Anthea had not stopped grinning since the day they departed Greece.
June had finally come and she was going to wed.
To the east, towering high above an equally menacing forest of twisting pines, oaks and chestnut trees, an enormous black mountain yearned to touch the clear blue sky.
‘It’s magnificent!’ She gushed, eyes sparkling.
“Vesuvius,” Nikitas Manikos interrupted, noting the curiosity in his daughter’s grey-green eyes.
Viridian purred the strange word as if summoning the silent mountain. “Vesuvius. What a wonderful name. Has there ever been anything to rival it?”
“Indeed,” Nikitas laughed, “it is far blacker and fouler than anything we grow at home.”
‘Home.’ The word brought with it a moment of grief but Anthea refused to entertain it. Ilios Spiti, Sun House, the Sounion estate of her birth, had already been banished to the lowest recesses of her memory.
The glory of mythical Greece had succumbed to the might of history. It had been reduced and wasted by the hostile onslaught of pokeweed, vleeta, privet and purslane. The vegetation scaled the celebrated marbled walls of great temples, Delphi, Epidaurus and Athens. It consumed the flagged roads connecting the former empire, reclaiming with patience what civilization could only borrow. The jagged, rugged, mountainous landscape excreted gloom. Nowhere lay the vibrant colors of life, the gaiety of optimism. Nowhere that was but near the sea where things were still abundant, lush and bristling with hues of blue, green and yellow.
Unhappily, for young Anthea, even the days and nights she spent sitting on the colorful shores could not prevent her mind from drifting abroad. Her mother, Penelope, had passed, and she envisioned fantast places, magical ports and other worlds.
Her old life on that barren rock called Greece was far behind her now. She was going forward. Italy was home. Parthenope held so much more promise. She was twenty-one years old and engaged.
Anticipating even greater wonders to come, Anthea Manikos watched as the forlorn mountain of Vesuvius began to gradually push off further behind them. At times the expectancy of the future was nearly unquenchable. She felt as though it wasn’t coming fast enough and she could leap from the racing ship’s wooden deck and outswim everyone to port. She reached into her pocket and squeezed an ivory box with a worn rosary inside. It had been her mother’s rosary before she passed. Now it was hers. ‘If needs be,’ she assured herself, ‘God is merciful. He would grant me wings if I asked Him. I know he would. I would soar higher than a cormorant towards my intended.’
Soon the Seppioline would slip into the Bay of Naples. A raucous, sunbaked crowd would be gathered on the docks to cheer as she disembarked. And then it would finally happen. At the end of the plank, his eyes warm and welcoming, her dark-haired fiancé would be standing, awaiting her with open arms; the Castellan of the city, Rugerius Fabbro.
Anthea’s father had finalized the details of this commitment during his last stopover in Italy, sometime in the dead of winter. Sir Rugerius was not present. He was off on some torrid affair of state, so neither she nor her father had yet met the intrepid Castellan; but they both envisioned that a man with such noble upbringing and valorous prestige would be utterly delightful, stately and moral.
‘A man of God,’ Anthea mused fancifully.
Anthea’s father, Nikitas Manikos, was a wholesaler of raw minerals and stone excavated from mines in Laurion. The old man had great capital but chose to keep it close to him, living Spartanly in the land of Attica.
Ilios Spiti, their eight-room, two-story home, was isolated, built plainly and squarely enough from cold granite on a flat open rock in the middle of a barren field. Few trees and even less vegetation tended to sprout around them so when the wind kicked up from any direction, it was a tempest.
The compound at Ilios Spiti was nearly always dreary. They employed only a handful of domestics and day laborers during most months of the year. Nikitas would bring in a few extra hands for special events and holidays. To say Nikitas Manikos was frugal would be a kindness. The man was downright miserly but Anthea never begrudged him that virtue. Her needs were sufficed. They never lacked for the basic amenities and had just enough creature comforts and furnishings to keep the place welcoming and presentable should unanticipated callers arrive on their doorstep; which they hardly ever did.
But the contentment she expressed with Ilios Spiti was not heartfelt. The fantasies about life in faraway lands, places filled with charm and enthusiasm, feasts and committees; and people, lots and lots of people, continued to flourish. Anthea Manikos was a sociable sort unlike her father. She wanted to gallivant with artisans and musicians, gossip with ladies of style and grace. She wanted to walk down halls brimming with colorful streamers and flags. The occasional trips she and her father would make by burro and packhorse to the larger cities in Greece, metropolises like nearby Athens, had opened her eyes. She saw how those who had been blessed with similar wealth were living. The older Anthea got, the more she dared to dream of imitating them. ‘But father prefers this humble life of solitude,’ she chastised often. ‘He tolerates the Court and its officials because he has to. He has a reputation to maintain, necessary acquaintances to placate. He much prefers the company of lather
ed laborers and egregious sea captains, hardy miners and common farmers.’ Picturing Nikitas standing shirtless in his thrice-mended old pants and worn boots, near a washing table with piles of new ore, always brought a smile to her soul. It was his favored attire for most occasions. ‘Good honest perspiration,’ he would contend with a healthy bellow. “Real men perspire when they work.” And then he would dab his forehead. “Am I sweating, Love?” It was disgusting because he was always sweating. “Yes, father, you are sweltering.”
Anthea lightly brushed her fingers over her olive-skin arms, teasing the goosebumps that had appeared with a second of warmth. ‘This place is magical.’ They were getting near their destination now. She could feel it the air, the shift in the tide. The Bay of Naples was in sight. Anthea inhaled, her small chest rising noticeably, proudly.
Hesitant to lose sight of it, although that would be nearly impossible, Anthea managed to pull her attention away from the black mountain to appreciate the playful dance of three lively porpoises leaping through the waves beside the ship. Her smile continued to broaden. She spoke to her father without looking at him. “They say Parthenope was a siren who drowned herself in these very waters after her sultry singing failed to entice brave Ulysses to the rocks.”
The Captain of the Seppioline, Orio Polani, strode up to the railing beside Anthea with his weathered thumbs dug snugly inside a wide black belt. “That is how all you Greeks tell it,” he interjected politely. Orio was a rugged, dashing, forty-something seaman with short black hair and a thin black mustache. He had average height but was stoutly built, his shoulders wide and square. He boasted readily of several distinctive scars marking his arms, neck and face. He referred to them as emblems of valor from repeated wars with hooks, ropes and pirates. Early in the voyage, he did not hesitate to regale Anthea with his tall tales, some of which included trident-bearing merman.
