Curses and Smoke

by Vicky Alvear Shecter

  Tag lifted his head. “What’s that?”

  “Showmanship,” the old Samnite whispered theatrically. “Crowds love the boys who know how to act their hearts out.”

  “I don’t understand how that applies to me.”

  Pontius gave the whip a small snap in the air. “I have to draw blood, but I won’t go so hard as to make ye pass out,” he promised. Then, leaning in and lowering his voice even further, he added, “But ye can make it go faster by making it sound like I’m killin’ ye, understand?”

  Tag swallowed and nodded.

  “Now. Into the hallway, and grab that rope over yer head.”

  Once freed from his chain, Lucia’s dog, Minos, raced to the corner of their property. Lucia scrambled after him, climbing over the portions of the crumbling old city wall that led out into the woods toward the slopes of the mountain.

  Yet another tremor hit, giving her the perfect excuse to disappear for even longer. If her father even noticed her absence — which he might since Vitulus was visiting — she could just say that she was doing her duty by making sure the slaves weren’t stealing from them in the chaos. She quietly thanked Poseidon, the Earth Shaker, for the tremors.

  Once off the property, she swept up the long edges of her tunica and tucked them into the corded belt under her breasts to keep the fabric from snagging. Then she wound her way along her secret trail, amidst wild laurel bushes, spiky ferns, and cypress trees. Once far enough into the forest — when she could no longer see the wall — Lucia called for Minos. The dog darted out of a thicket toward her, panting hard. She stroked his head. “Good boy.”

  They headed for the small spring on the western edge of the woods. But when she saw it, she stopped cold.

  What in Pluto’s cave? Most of the water was … was gone. Disappeared. Maybe she’d made a mistake — maybe this wasn’t “her” spring. But no, there were the large willow and the three poplars…. Yet the reeds and ferns that normally surrounded the spring looked parched and burned. She circled the shrinking pool and sniffed. The air was heavy with sulfur. Had Pluto reached up and stolen their water, leaving the telltale smell of the underworld as his signature?

  The thought spooked her. She backed slowly away, holding Minos by his collar, then turned and ran toward her wooded hideout, the dog at her heels.

  She relaxed only when the great tangled mass of vines and branches that made up her private woodland cave came into view. Crawling inside, she inhaled deeply of the soothing moist earth and pine scents. Sunlight filtered through tangled green and brown branches, infusing the cave with a mellow glow. Her secret hideaway had seemed enormous when she and the medicus’s boy had built it years ago. They’d been able to almost stand straight up in it then. Now she had to bend and stoop.

  Lucia sat and moved aside the old blanket and the piece of wood that covered the hole where she kept her secret things. She opened the oiled leather pouch and pulled out a wax tablet and stylus. Quickly, she cut her observations about the disappearing spring into the wax: the circle of mud, the burned-looking reeds, and the strong rotten-egg smell.

  But noting the phenomena did not tell her what it meant. What could have caused it? Had Pliny the naturalist ever written about such an oddity? She made a mental note to look through the third book of his Natural Histories, which dealt with local geography.

  Minos suddenly jumped up and raced out of the cave. Lucia heard a rhythmic crunching of grass and leaves, which meant somebody was approaching. She froze. A young woman alone in the woods was vulnerable to all kinds of abuse. The footsteps drew closer. Why wasn’t Minos barking? She shoved the tablet away in its hiding place and strained to hear what was happening.

  Minos was whining. Gods, was the interloper hurting him? No, the voice she heard sounded more like murmuring than attacking.

  She crawled out of the opening to see her fearsome dog on his back, having his belly rubbed by a dark-haired man.

  “Minos!” she called, her mind whirring. Her dog was supposed to scare people away. Now she would have to command whoever this was to keep her presence here a secret. Hopefully, he was a slave and not a freedman — slaves were much easier to control.

  “He remembers me,” the squatting stranger said, curly head bent over the dog. Then he looked up at her and stood.

  Lucia averted her eyes. The young man wore only a loincloth. Was he one of her father’s gladiators? What was he doing way out here? Damn Minos for not chasing him off. “I am Lucius Titurius’s daughter, and I will report you as off the property if you do not immediately return to the barracks.” She hoped she sounded strong, because she didn’t know what she’d do if the man was dangerous.

  “I know who you are, Domina,” the young man said. “And I am not one of your father’s gladiators. You do not recognize me?”

  She looked back at the young man, forcing her gaze to stay upon his face. After a moment, the name came to her. “Tages?”

  He nodded.

  The medicus’s boy. Her old childhood friend. She cleared her throat. “I thought you were in Rome.”

  “I was, Domina. And now I’m back.”

  Lucia stared up at him. Could this tall young man really be the same boy who helped her build her shelter in the woods? “Why are you dressed as a gladiator?” she asked, noticing cloth bunched up in his right hand. His near nakedness was highly improper. “You … you must put your tunic back on in my presence,” she said.

  “I am not dressed as a gladiator,” he said. “I just need to keep my injuries open to air until I can find my father and get them treated.”

  She shook her head. “Your injuries?”

  He turned his shoulders to show her. Lucia gasped at the sight of the raised, bloody welts. He was the slave getting whipped earlier? But why? What had he done? She grasped for something to say. “Do they hurt terribly?” she asked, realizing too late that it was a stupid question.

  “The lashes? I’ve had worse.”

  Worse? Heat flooded her cheeks, as she knew that her father had likely ordered the punishment. Still, being whipped for disobedience was a reality for slaves, wasn’t it? Why should she feel ashamed?

  Except that she suspected — knew, really — that Tag had probably not done anything wrong. If her father was in a bad mood — or in this case, irritated at being called away from his rich guest — he would order a beating for the slightest real or imagined infraction.

  An awkward silence grew between them. The young man shook out his tunic and draped it over his front. “Why are you out here?” she finally asked. “Did my nurse send you to fetch me?”

  “No, Domina, she did not. I am here to visit my old hideout.”

  “Your old hideout?” She laughed. “It’s mine.”

  He clenched his jaw and looked to the side. “My apologies. Yes, of course it is yours, Domina.”

  Her smile dissolved. She’d meant her response as a playful quip — a reminder of how they’d once teased each other. “Please don’t call me domina,” she said. “You never called me that when we were children, and I don’t like hearing it now.”

  He nodded.

  “And by the way,” she continued, exaggerating her playful tone to see if she could draw out the mischievous boy she remembered, “I consider the cave mine because I did all the hard work. I cleared the spot and found the vines and …”

  His head shot up. “Not so! I was the one who dragged all the heavier branches to make the walls and —”

  There he was. She grinned at him as he continued.

  “— piled up the vines to make the roof and did all the heavy lifting….” He trailed off when he registered her grin. He smiled back at her, seeming to breathe out at the same time. “So, you still come out here. I thought you would have abandoned it by now.”

  “Oh, no,” she said. “I make it out here as often as I can, especially when Metrodona is napping. She thinks I’m spinning wool when she sleeps.” Lucia rolled her eyes.

  He chuckled. They both knew she�
�d never been any good at the skills all Roman girls were supposed to master.

  “You should come inside,” she said, stepping away from the opening. “I’m curious what you think of our giant ‘wooded castle’ now.”

  When he bent over to enter, she averted her eyes again, not wanting to see his raw lashes up close. After giving him a moment to settle in, she crawled in after him.

  “This place used to seem huge,” he observed after draping his tunic over his front again. “Now look at us.”

  The cave did suddenly feel very crowded. Lucia hugged her knees, making sure her hem was tucked under her feet to cover her legs.

  “I dreamt of this place while I was in Rome.”

  “What was Rome like?” she asked.

  “Big, loud, crowded, smelly. Imagine Pompeii, a hundred times bigger and a thousand times smellier, and you’ve got Rome.”

  “Did you see the emperor?”

  He chuckled. “Being in Rome doesn’t mean you ‘run into’ Titus Caesar. It’s a very big place. Although I did see Vespasian once before he died — from afar — as he toured the construction site for his great amphitheater.”

  She scowled.

  “Why are you making that face?” he asked.

  “Because I blame the amphitheater for Father’s insistence on marrying me off. The man promised him money for new gladiators so he can break into the Roman market.” As the owner of a gladiatorial school, her father often took his champions to Rome in a bid to rent them to Roman sponsors. He rarely succeeded, though — his school just wasn’t big or famous enough.

  “Still, if your betrothed is rich and noble, what is the problem?”

  “Vitulus is forty-five years older than I am! His nose-hairs are longer than my eyelashes.”

  Tag barked a laugh and his face transformed. It made her want to make him laugh again. “Do you remember that summer we found a nest of baby hedgehogs?” she asked.

  He blinked at the sudden subject change and nodded.

  “Do you recall how they looked, those tiny, wriggling gray-tipped babies?”

  He nodded again.

  “Well, every time I see Vitulus’s gray nose-hairs quivering, I think of those little baby hedgehogs. It is like they are trying to tunnel up his nose with every breath.”

  “Ugh.” He laughed.

  “Father is constantly going on about how rich he is. Surely the man owns a pair of scissors!”

  “If he is that rich, he probably owns several — as well as people devoted to doing little else than cutting his body hair,” he agreed, still chuckling.

  “Yes, and they need to be whipped for forgetting about his nose —” Her hand flew to her mouth as if she could shove the words back in.

  Tag’s smile disappeared and he looked away.

  “I’m sorry, Tag. I was just trying to be funny. I wasn’t thinking.”

  He turned back to her, eyebrows up. “You apologize to a slave?”

  “I apologize to an old friend.”

  He examined her curiously, and she forced herself to gaze steadily back. This was Tag, her childhood playmate. Their differing status had not mattered when they were children, and it shouldn’t matter now in the place they’d built together.

  “Thank you,” he said quietly.

  “Tag, why were you sent away?” Lucia blurted out.

  His expression closed. “Pontius said I could learn more at his friend’s school in Rome.”

  They both knew that was only part of it. The silence between them grew thick again. Lucia plucked at the hem of her dress. Finally, she cleared her throat and said, “I’d better get back. Maybe Father and Vitulus will have drunk enough wine not to notice how long I’ve been gone.”

  “And if they do notice?” he asked.

  She looked down at her dress. “I’ll … I’ll say that one of the household slaves got injured, and that I got dirty helping the young healer fix him up.”

  “No, don’t say that,” he said. “He’ll know I was … busy.”

  “Right. I’ll say I was helping Metrodona. Come on, Minos,” she called as she crawled out.

  “Domina —” he blurted.

  She looked back in. “Out here, call me Lucia.”

  “Luciaaa,” he said, as if recalling how it felt to say her name as easily as he once had. “I am … It is good to see you again.”

  She beamed at him. “It is good to see you too, Tag,” she replied. “Welcome home.”

  The next morning, Tag rested his chin on his hands as his father swabbed his back with fresh honey. He knew the treatment was necessary to keep the swelling and fevers away, but that did little to lessen the pain of actually having every welt pressed on with the sticky stuff.

  Almost worse than the physical pain, though, was waiting for “the lecture” from his father — the one where Damocles told his only son that it was his job not to incite the master. Yet his father hadn’t said a word when he’d first washed his lashes with vinegar the night before, and he wasn’t saying anything now. The silence was unnerving.

  “Apa, are you feeling all right?” Tag asked.

  Damocles grunted, dismissing the question as if he was already tired of it.

  Tag closed his eyes. What was happening to his father? Damocles’s changed appearance still took him aback — the parchment skin, wispy white hair, and permanently stooped shoulders. Where had the vigorous man he remembered gone? How could his father have aged so much in just three years?

  He wondered, for the millionth time, where he and his father would be if greedy Romans hadn’t caused his family’s downfall. Tag’s great-great-grandfather had been a highly respected haruspex, an Etruscan priest and healer of the Pompeian old guard. After the Romans invaded, a newly installed magistrate plundered the Pompeian “colony’s” wealth like a greedy child. When Tag’s ancestor threatened to complain to the Senate in Rome, the magistrate had him executed on a trumped-up charge of treason. Then he took the family’s property and sold the rest of them into slavery.

  True, Tag’s family had it better than most, in that they’d been put into the service of healing rather than the mines, but he still burned with the indignity of the dishonor to his family. His late mother had never let him forget that his blood was of noble Etruscan heritage. “When you were born, the prophetess Lasa came to me in a dream,” she often said. “She held you to her breast and said you would free yourself from Roman chains — that you would lead your family into freedom. It is your destiny to be free, you see, to reclaim your sacred heritage.”

  “But how, Ati?” he had always asked. “How will I become free?”

  “Shhhh,” she would whisper. “Your apa does not like it when I talk of these things. The gods will reveal your path when you are ready.”

  Well, he’d been ready for a long time, and no gods had emerged. So he’d taken to figuring out a way for himself. In Rome, the fighters he’d treated encouraged him to train as a gladiator, and as his skills grew, winning his freedom in the arena seemed like a viable option. But the training ended with his summons back to Pompeii. Somehow, he needed to convince Pontius to let him fight with the others.

  “Ow!” Tag grunted when his father patted the last lash with honey — a little too heartily, he thought.

  “At least we didn’t have to cauterize these,” Damocles said.

  Tag sat up and rolled his shoulders.

  “This is all your mother’s fault,” the old man continued. “I must talk to her again about how she needs to stop encouraging your pride. It will only get you killed one day. Do you think she’s back from the market yet?”

  He turned away, carrying the bowl of honey and the linen rags out of the room. Tag stared openmouthed after him. His mother had been dead for almost a decade.

  With a troubled heart, he went to the small shrine of the healing god Asclepius in the corner of the medical room. The smoke-smudged ledge was crowded with flowers, herbs, and a small statue of the bearded god, leaning against a staff on which a fat sna
ke wound itself.

  A small crystal rock caught his eye. Lucia had found it in the woods years ago, he remembered, and with large, shining eyes, she had begged him to offer it to Asclepius for help when her mother went into labor. Clearly, the god had rejected the sacrifice — in double measure, considering the loss of the baby.

  Tag removed the crystal and asked the god for forgiveness in case he was insulted at their oversight in leaving it there. It was his father’s duty to purify the shrine every year on the healer’s day. Had Damocles not performed the ritual at all while he’d been gone?

  Reaching into a dirt-stained plant-collection bag, he pulled out a fresh sprig of verbena, appreciating the plant’s clean, citrusy smell. He then lit singed wood chips with a small oil lamp in the shape of a man’s hand. When the fire sparked, he sprinkled a tiny amount of myrrh to release the scent that appealed to the god.

  Riffling through a box of small terra-cotta body parts, Tag wondered what votive to use for his father since he didn’t know exactly what was wrong with him. He recalled that Damocles sometimes rubbed his face when confused, so he picked a clay head and placed it beside the smoking bowl.

  Guide me, O god, in healing my father, Damocles. I beseech thee to extend your hand and balance the humors that are confusing his thinking and disordering his speech. Show us —

  A little boy flew into the room, skidding to a stop at the sight of Tag. The child put his hands on his hips. “Where’s the healer?”

  “Why, is someone hurt?”

  “No,” the boy said, still looking suspicious. “Are you stealing the medicus’s magic herbs?”

  Tag blinked. “No, I am the medicus’s son. Back from Rome to help him.” Quickly, he finished his prayer and turned to the child. “Why are you looking for my father?”

  The barefoot little boy shrugged. “The cook told me to get out of her kitchen. When I asked her what I should do, she told me to go bother the medicus. So here I am.”

  Tag wondered if the grimy little slave child was a recent purchase of Titurius’s. Then it came to him. “Hold on. Are you Castor?”