Curses and Smoke

by Vicky Alvear Shecter

  “Will you help me?”

  Cornelia’s face lit up. She’d forever been trying to get Lucia to wear her hair in the more elegant and modern upswept styles, rather than in a plain braided knot at her nape and to dress in the fashionable colors and fabrics that could show off a woman’s body without seeming vulgar or obvious. “Of course!”

  “But only if you can get the dinner with Pliny, yes?”

  Cornelia splashed her.

  * * *

  Lucia’s leather sandals echoed through the hall as she walked to the triclinium. Who had her father invited to dine with them this time? Flames from the wall sconces flickered against the fading red-and-black frescoes on the walls of the small dining room.

  “Ah, daughter, come meet our guest,” Lucius Titurius said from his dining couch. “Quintus will be staying here with us for a few months.”

  The young man stood to greet her. “Ah, what a lovely vision of rustic beauty!” he said, bowing his head slightly.

  Rustic? Was that an insult or a compliment?

  “I am Quintus Rutilius Bucco,” the man continued, his dark eyes shining. He was slender, with thick brows over a straight nose, and his carefully curled hair smelled of expensive lotus oil. His thin lips stretched into a haughty smile. “My father owns the largest villa in Herculaneum.”

  “Oh.” What was she supposed to say to that? She smiled. “Welcome to our home. May I ask what brings you to Pompeii?”

  “The opportunity to train like the brutes your father owns,” he said pleasantly. “One must be open to all kinds of experiences, I say!”

  “So you are training here?” she asked, wrinkling her brow.

  Her father sat up and shot her a look. “We have a special arrangement for our guest. He will be staying in the main house with us and training with our gladiators as he sees fit.”

  Lucia stared at her father, trying to see if he was joking. She’d never heard of such a thing. Free citizens who wanted to train with gladiators had to sell themselves to the ludus and agree to be treated like slaves. She puzzled over this as Quintus resumed his position on the dining couch of honor. She caught him staring at her legs before she could cover them completely as she propped herself on the lowest-status couch.

  Quintus reached for his wine goblet — her father’s best silver one again. A large emerald on the man’s forefinger caught the lamplight. The golden ring that marked him as a Roman citizen of the highest rank was so wide and thick, Lucia wondered how he could even raise his hand. Well, his wealth, at least, explained the unorthodox arrangement.

  Why hadn’t her father tried to betroth her to someone like him? At least he was young and healthy. Yet something told her a patrician like Quintus would probably require her father to pay him great sums for the privilege of marrying a man of his station. The elderly Vitulus’s interest in her, she knew, was such that he had not only waived the requirement of a dowry from her father, but had also agreed to pour money into the school afterward. Lucia swallowed her disgust at the whole arrangement.

  “Your father tells me you are betrothed to Vicious Vitulus,” Quintus said to her. “Congratulations, I suppose.”

  Lucia almost choked on her wine. Carefully, she put down her goblet and cleared her throat. “You suppose? Why do you call him Vicious Vitulus?”

  “Oh, that is his nickname in Rome. Did you not know?”

  Lucia looked at her father, who was conveniently avoiding her eyes by contemplating a fat green olive.

  “Oh, do not look so alarmed, my dear,” the man said. “He is a viciously clever politician. I’m sure that is all to which it refers.”

  Quintus began asking her father about their house champion — a Germanic fighter named Sigdag. Lucia tried to drink her wine, but her throat felt tight. She had to get out of this betrothal. But how? If only her mother were still alive. Her mother would fight this arrangement. She knew she would.

  Her ears perked up when the men’s conversation turned to the recent rumblings in the earth.

  “Yes, we’ve had tremors in Herculaneum as well,” Quintus said. “The superstitious slaves are making our lives miserable.”

  “How is that?” Lucia asked.

  “We actually had some try to run away after the last set of tremors,” he said, waving a roasted quail leg with disdain. “So, of course, we were forced to brand them when they were dragged back.”

  Lucia suppressed a shudder. She’d recently seen a branded slave — a Celt with red hair and pale, sunburned skin. The letters FUG, for fugitivus, had been burned on his forehead, the skin still an angry, puckered pink. He’d also worn a wooden plaque that said, If found, return to the Villa Hortensia, tied with rope around his neck.

  “Not only that,” continued the guest, “but our neighbor’s eel piscina has been compromised; it overflows with rotting carcasses. Something in the water is killing them. When the wind is right, the smell is horrendous, but what can we do? The owners are traveling and their slave staff keeps dwindling away, so it’s a right mess.”

  “We’ve had some odd events here in Pompeii as well,” Lucia chimed in. “Recently, I came upon a spring that completely disappeared. I did not know that was even possible.”

  “You came upon a spring? Out there? By yourself?” Quintus asked, pointing with his chin to the city walls.

  Lucia swallowed. “Oh, no, I mean, one of the slaves told me about it. And … and my nurse heard about a goat herder on the mountain who lost a goat when the ground opened beneath the animal, and then closed up again.”

  “The tremors are also making the gladiators very nervous,” her father added. “They claim the giants under the mountain are restless and want to burst forth in a battle to destroy the world.”

  Quintus laughed. “Oh, of course those brutes would see perfectly natural events as some form of physical battle.”

  “How do you know they are perfectly natural events?” Lucia asked, popping a honeyed mushroom into her mouth. “Added up, it all seems terribly unnatural to me. I have been looking through Pliny’s Histories to see if there is any record of —”

  “Lucia …” her father interrupted.

  Quintus took another sip of wine. “Oh, it’s fine, Lucius,” he said. “I find it charming that a girl growing up amidst such barbarity is educated at all.”

  Again, insult or compliment?

  “What did you think of the production of Phaedra at the theater last month?” Quintus asked Lucius.

  It took Lucia a moment to realize how smoothly her comments about Pliny had been dismissed. But her father only stared blankly at Quintus.

  The young patrician laughed again. “Oh, I am sorry, I forgot to whom I was speaking. What did you think of Nuceria’s champion being felled by the falling sickness? Rumor has it that a curse was put on his ludus —”

  “There should be a law banning curses!” her father interrupted, his face reddening.

  “Yes, but then what would the ignorant poor do for entertainment?” Quintus quipped, taking another swig.

  Lucia nibbled on a piece of celery covered in olive spread, swallowing a sigh. How long before she could slip away without causing offense? Clearly, her father was bending over backward to accommodate the rich young man, but she didn’t have to be a part of it, did she? When the arrogant patrician began lecturing her father on the proper way he should manage his gladiator slaves — and worse, when her burly father allowed it — she knew she had reached her limit. She “accidentally” knocked over her clay cup of wine and yelped. A slave came running.

  “Oh, no, I’ve gotten wine on my dress,” she said with mock concern. “I must rinse it before it stains. May I be excused, Father?”

  “Of course, of course,” Lucius Titurius said, not even glancing in her direction.

  “It was a pleasure meeting you, sir,” she said to Quintus as she scuttled out of the room.

  “The pleasure was all mine,” he called after her.

  Healer!” yelled Pontius from the training yar
d. Tag rushed out of the room, almost colliding with his father. Pontius was moving toward them, holding a dazed-looking Quintus, who was bleeding copiously from the nose.

  “What happened?” Tag and his father asked at the same time.

  The overseer addressed Damocles. “I think he broke it.”

  “I’ll handle it,” Damocles said. “Bring him into the treatment room.”

  “No,” Quintus said. “I want the younger medicus to treat me.”

  Tag groaned inwardly. “I am mixing medicines,” he said, hoping that would get him out of treatment duty. He’d much rather his father dealt with the annoying patrician.

  Pontius nodded. “Go with the senior healer.”

  Quintus crossed his arms and locked his knees. “I am not going with him. I said I want the younger healer to treat me.”

  “I don’t have time for this,” growled the overseer. “Tag, take this idiot and let your father finish the potion mixing.”

  They could not contradict the command. Tag told his father quickly what he was mixing, and they traded rooms. It was clear by the set of his father’s jaw that Damocles was angry too. How could one rich asinus irritate so many people at one time?

  Taking Pontius’s lead, Tag grabbed Quintus by the upper arm and guided the slightly unsteady young man into a treatment room. He could hear Pontius yelling at the other fighters as he reentered the sandpit.

  He inspected Quintus. Blood coated the man’s upper lip and chin. His nose was already swelling. “Who hit you?”

  “No one.”

  Tag raised his eyebrows at him as he prepared a vinegar wash in a terra-cotta bowl. “So how —”

  “My own shield.”

  “I don’t understand….”

  Quintus mimicked holding up a shield. “Training exercise. We were supposed to run full speed into the barrels with our shields up, but I wasn’t holding mine high enough, so when I crashed into the barrel, my nose had an intimate encounter with the metal edge of the shield.”

  “Ouch.” Tag shuddered in sympathy. He began washing the injured area with a sea sponge soaked in the vinegar. Quintus closed his eyes and tried not to wince.

  Tag looked for the source of the blood. There was a cut under the nose, but the bigger issue was its crookedness. Clearly broken. He pressed around the bridge and Quintus hissed in pain. “I’m going to have to push this back into position,” he said.

  “Is it going to hurt?”

  “Yes.”

  Quintus groaned.

  “The alternative is to leave it, but it will heal crooked. Some gladiators prefer this because it makes them look more dangerous.”

  There was a gleam in Quintus’s dilated eyes. “Oh, my father would love that,” he muttered.

  “But you are not a gladiator,” Tag reminded him. “And your noble patrician profile would be ruined. To get it back in place, I need to make the adjustment now before the swelling makes it more difficult. Here, bite this.” He gave Quintus a roll of leather indented with teeth marks to put in his mouth. Then Tag dipped his pointer finger into the vinegar wash and slowly inserted it into the right nostril until he could feel the protrusion. Quintus panted through the pain. “On the count of three,” Tag instructed. “One … two …”

  He pushed hard from both the inside and outside of the nose until it snapped back into place. Quintus howled.

  “… three,” Tag said, removing his finger. He rinsed his hand in the vinegar and mopped up a new flow of blood. Eyes still squeezed shut, the patrician spit out the leather bit. “The worst is over,” Tag said.

  “Anybody ever teach you to count, boy?” Quintus asked, squinting up at him. “Also, why didn’t you give me some poppy tea or wine before you cracked my face?”

  Tag paused. “Our gladiators never get such accommodations.” Giving the man something to ease the pain hadn’t occurred to him. Gladiator slaves were expected to learn to withstand greater and greater levels of discomfort, so Tag had been instructed never to offer relief unless he was performing surgery of some kind. And even then, he was to use only enough to keep the patient from interfering with the treatment.

  “Well, I’m not a real gladiator.”

  Tag tightened his mouth to keep from saying anything sarcastic, and turned to Castor, whom he had heard sneak up behind them. The boy held up his own small finger and stuck it up a nostril, pretending he was snapping his own nose back into place.

  “Be careful you don’t damage anything,” Tag teased him quietly. “My fingers are too big for your nose if you break it by accident.” The boy whipped out his finger and hid it behind his back.

  “Castor will escort you to your rooms in the big house,” he told Quintus.

  “No, you must take me.”

  “I have other work to do.”

  “You are to escort me,” he commanded.

  Tag swallowed a sigh. “Yes, Dominus,” he mumbled, assembling his face into an impassive mask.

  Quintus leaned heavily on him as they ambled toward the house, and Tag barely controlled the impulse to shove him off and call him a weak-kneed mundus excrementi. He’d sent many a fighter right back into the training pit after snapping a nose back in place. It was all he could do to keep his tongue.

  When they entered the atrium and spotted Lucia reading in the shade, Quintus acted even more debilitated, forcing Tag to not just hold him by the upper arm, but to put his arm around his back to steady him. Knowing the reason for Quintus’s added dramatics left him wanting to break the patrician’s nose all over again.

  “What has happened?” Lucia cried, rushing over.

  “I took on one of your burlier brutes,” Quintus said. “The beast broke my nose.”

  Tag’s jaw dropped as he stared at the patrician.

  “Oh, my,” Lucia said. “Does it hurt much? Can I get you anything — some wine, perhaps?”

  “I am taking him back to his room to rest,” Tag said, trying to pull the man away from Lucia.

  But Quintus turned back to her. “Oh, wine would be divine right now! Do you know that your healer didn’t offer me any pain medicine?”

  Lucia looked at him wide-eyed, as if to ask, Is that true?

  “Wine, willow bark, and poppy tea are expensive,” Tag said coolly. “The master wants his gladiators to be able to withstand pain.”

  “I will have some strong wine sent to your room,” Lucia said.

  Quintus put on a pitifully pained expression and said, “No, no. Let me rest here in the shade with you. Help me to the bench.” Lucia went to Quintus’s other side, and he put his arm around her shoulder, shifting his weight toward her. Tag fought not to roll his eyes. They eased Quintus down where Lucia had been sitting.

  “I will leave you now,” Tag said. He turned and walked rapidly away.

  “Wait! Healer!” Lucia called. He stopped as she caught up to him. “I need to know what to do if he should …” She looked at Quintus. “… if he should grow dizzy or ill.”

  Tag turned toward her. “He will not grow dizzy or ill except to gain sympathy from you,” he said quietly, watching Quintus puff up with her concern for him. Suddenly full of energy, the patrician began gesturing to a servant about what refreshments and other comforts he required.

  “I know that,” she said softly as they continued walking farther away. “I just wanted to say hello…. It’s been several days since you told me about the stable boy’s foot.”

  She looked up at him, and his heart began to pound. Had she always had golden lights in her eyes? How could he not have noticed that before? “The boy’s foot is healing as well as can be expected.”

  “Good,” she said. “I’m glad.”

  “Hey, what are you discussing over there?” Quintus called. “I’m in great discomfort here!”

  Lucia turned. “I’m just instructing him on how you must receive pain treatment in the future.”

  Quintus smiled and then winced at the pain it caused in his nose. Tag noted with disgust that as soon as Lucia turne
d her back to him, the patrician began combing his fingers through his hair to fix the oiled curls that he had sweated out of order.

  “You really do not like him, do you?” Lucia laughed at Tag’s expression.

  “He’s a spoiled baby. Plus, he brags that he is going to seduce you.”

  “What?”

  “Yes. Ever since he learned that the men are strictly forbidden from even looking at you, he’s been telling the other fighters that not only does he share the house with you, but soon you will share his bed too.”

  “Ugh!”

  “I thought I should warn you.”

  “Thanks for letting me know.” She sighed with irritation. “Well, I’d better get back to being a good host.” She turned to leave, but Tag stopped her.

  “Wait, Domina,” he said, looking anxiously over at Quintus and lowering his voice even further. “I … er, was planning to head out to the woods later this afternoon.” He cleared his throat, flushing slightly. “Just in case you might be planning to … um …”

  “What a coincidence,” she said, her eyes shining. “I was going to head out there later too, right after Metrodona leaves for the market.”

  She gave him a wide smile, turned on her heel, and glided back across the courtyard to tend to the patrician.

  Tag forced himself not to grin as he returned to the medical rooms.

  But much to Lucia’s chagrin, Metrodona insisted Lucia go with her to the market that afternoon.

  “Why do you want me to go with you?” She had planned to see Tag in the woods. She’d told him she was going to their hideout!

  “The Egyptian is expecting you. He is going to read your face and your palm. It’s important to know your future before the wedding!”

  No amount of pleading or complaining could dissuade her nurse, and when Metrodona began asking what she’d planned instead, Lucia had no other choice but to relent.

  They set off, ambling in the shade of the multistoried insulae that towered over the well-worn stone road. Lucia slowed her pace in time with her nurse’s sluggish, rolling gait.

  “You know, you could have bought your freedom ten times over if you hadn’t spent so much on these charlatan fortune-tellers like the Egyptian,” Lucia said.