Chara’s body had recovered slowly. She didn’t have the strength she’d had before, but she was becoming stronger every day. She missed her baby like a physical ache—an ache she was learning to deal with it. She started working the fields with her father again. She looked up at a noise and spotted Nicias at the edge of the field. She had expected him, but she was still shocked to see him. It had been many months since she had seen him last and he looked no different.
“Do you want me to speak to him?” her father asked. She considered it for a moment.
“No, I will do it.” She wasn’t entirely sure why she couldn’t let her father do it, maybe she felt that her father might remind him of her mother presence in their house. Her mother’s absence going unnoticed was the key to the whole plan and she couldn’t risk anything reminding him of her.
She walked over to the edge of the field where he was mounted on a large gray horse she’d seen before, her heart beating quicken as she approached him. She had prepared for this moment for weeks. He looked so large and intimidating sitting high above her and she was small compared to him even when he was on the ground. He did look a little more drawn than the last time she had seen him, perhaps the troubles the Spartans had been experiencing over the last year had been weighing on him.
“You know why I am here,” he said his hand was resting on his thigh as he looked down on her.
“There is nothing for you to come for, the child was stillborn,” she said looking up at him. The sun was behind him and it hurt to look at him, she had to look away.
“You must know that there are dire consequences for deceiving me in such things.” The warning in his voice was clear.
“I am not deceiving you,” she lied. She tried to look at him again, but the sun was making it impossible to hold his gaze.
“Show me your cottage,” he ordered. She stood still for a moment then turned in the direction of their small house. She could hear the hooves of the horse behind her as she walked. She felt his presence there even if she didn’t see him.
He dismounted when they arrived and tied up the horse to the empty oxen pen. He walked into the small house while Chara waited outside. She felt her stomach clench with nerves as he search even though she knew there was nothing for him to find as Chara had hidden well as physical reminders of her mother. If he were to notice that her mother was gone it would be now. He came out and searched every space around the outside.
“Where is your brother?” Chara felt her stomach flip. He remembered Doros, which was not a good thing. It would have been much better that Doros was here, but his absences stretched more and more of late.
“He is in the village, working with one of the other families, helping with the sowing.”
“Why isn’t he working here?”
“Their need was greater.” She wasn’t sure he would believe it. She held her breath.
“Don’t deceive me on this,” he repeated quietly.
“I’m not. There is no child. We had to build a pyre for it. It didn’t live at all.”
He stepped a bit closer and took a hold of her neck. It wasn’t a rough hold, but it did force her face up to him. He was looking her in the eyes, looking for a lie. He seemed to accept whatever he saw there and Chara suppressed a sigh of relief.
“We are not compatible,” he said. Chara felt angry and insulted at the statement; it wasn’t true and she had the most beautiful baby to prove it, but she couldn’t afford to voice such a sentiment to counter an insult.
“No,” she confirmed. He hadn’t let go of her neck, he kept his hand there, his wrist was heavy and warm on her shoulder. Chara kept her eyes on his abdomen.
“Perhaps that is for the best. I don’t mind telling you that I dreaded today,” he said in his deep voice. It hadn’t been something she expected hearing, Spartans never confessed weaknesses, fears or dreads. He moved his hand along her shoulder. “I am to get an estate soon,” he said. “It will be further to the west, I have been told, and of a decent size.” Chara wasn’t sure why he was telling her this. “But not yet, there is too much trouble at this moment. When the troubles settle down and we have gained our position again.”
She was relieved that he had changed topics. He seemed to have accepted her assertion and she now had to stay the course and not say anything stupid.
“I must rest now, it has been a long night—a long year in truth. Come to me tonight.” He stepped away and walked toward his horse and Chara watched as he easily mounted. Once seated he looked back at her and smiled.
Chara let out of a sigh once he’d left, but just for now as he wasn’t done with her.
Chapter 12
Chara stood outside the heavy wooden door protecting the Menares house and waited to be let in. The same Helot servant let her in as before. So much had happened since the last time she was here, but on the other hand, nothing had changed from what she could see. She knew the way to the room where Nicias would spend time with her.
She felt strange being there, it was an added element of risk engaging with him more than she already had, but on the other hand, she could make things infinitely worse if she refused. She could not let slip that there was anything out of the ordinary, and this was ordinary—a Spartan using a Helot girl for their needs was not something anyone would bat an eye at, and that was what she needed right now—calm ordinariness.
He wasn’t in the room and she sat down on the bed. She could tell that the bed had been slept in and not tidied. He really had meant it when he’d said he needed to rest. The room smelled of him, she recognized the scent immediately.
As before, she was scared, but for entirely different reasons; she wasn’t scared of him or the act they would engage in, but of something going wrong—not that she could think of anything that would go wrong. It wasn’t like she was going to blurt out that the baby was living and in Athens. There were a few people who knew the truth and she trusted them implicitly.
Her eyes followed him as he entered the room. He walked over to the table and poured some wine into a goblet. Chara watched his straight back as the light from the fire accentuated his muscular form.
“Do you want wine?” he asked turning to her. She shook her head, the last thing she needed was wine to loosen her mind and her tongue. His eyes watched her for a moment. “You look as I remember you.”
“I didn’t realize that you had any cause to remember me.”
“There was nothing else to think of where I was.”
Chara felt a flash of concern cross her features before she controlled her expression. She hadn’t anticipated that he would think twice about her after he’d left. She didn’t know what this meant; she had no personal experience with Spartans and their ways. “How long are you staying?”
“Just tonight,” he said and sat down on a chair by the fire. “Come,” he said.
Chara stood and walked over to the chair. He had a way of unnerving her, leaving her unknowing what to do or what he would do. She wasn’t strictly afraid of him, but she felt both tension and anticipation when he called her to him.
“I have missed you,” he said. He hooked a finger in the simple leather belt around her waist and pulled her toward him. He was pulling her off balance until she sank down into his lap, to his warm, firm body. “I missed your curves and the way you smell. I have spent every moment with grumpy, desolate soldiers for months on end, thinking of nothing but getting back here.”
Chara wondered if he was saying these things for her benefit. The cynical part of her wondered if these were things they said to play on the emotions of young girls. She wondered how easy it would be to fall in love with someone like him. Perhaps if she didn’t have so much riding on her keeping secrets, maybe she would be open to letting such words and sentiments sway her.
His hand travelled up the side of her face with his thumb stroking her along her cheek. It continued along to stroke across her lips and his eyes seemed to follow where it went.
“So pretty,” he said
and pulled her into a kiss, his lips touched hers softly. Chara had trouble reconciling the gentleness in his touch with the man he was. This gentility was disconcerting and it brought questions to her mind that she didn’t want to consider, foremost being what he really wanted from her. In her mind, Spartans deprived and humiliated. The relationship between them was that of grossly unequal adversaries; it was what she had been led to believe all her life. Not that she was fooled by these gentle touches; she was here because he’d ordered her to be.
He deepened the kiss, drawing her closer. She couldn’t deny that this had been the kind of kiss she had always dreamt of, she just hadn’t seen the person giving to her being one of the enemy. Additionally, there was something very exciting about having deceived him. It was a perverse feeling, but it made her feel stronger. She had achieved something extraordinary; she had imposed her will and gotten her way—she had won a battle. Although she knew that strength was an illusion in some respects because he could quite probably snap her like a twig, and likely would if he ever found out what she’d done. But it was still there, a quiet strength, a confidence that physical strength wasn’t all encompassing—there was other ways of fighting back.
He pulled back from the kiss, but not away from her. She could hear his heavy breathing and feel the tension in his body. She didn’t understand why he was stopping. There was a part of her that didn’t want him to stop or to slow down and it wasn’t just that she wanted to reach the end of this night as quickly as possible; there was something very heady about knowing she had asserted her will over his.
He was playing with the neckline of her tunic, brushing his fingers lightly along her skin underneath, it made her skin prickle along her chest and shoulders.
“Your skin is so soft,” he said not much louder than a whisper. The back of his knuckle continued down the front of her tunic, down over the sensitive skin of her breast to the nipple. Chara felt the sensation trail all the way down into her belly. She hadn’t anticipated that her body would respond to his touch when she came here tonight, but it did. She wasn’t sure whether she should feel ashamed about that. There was something very exciting about it, on an abstract level. And, the more this was kept on a physical level, the less likely they were to engage in conversation and it was easier if she didn’t have to watch what she said.
He was watching her neck; she could feel his eyes on her skin like a caress. It looked like he was preparing to say something. Chara didn’t want more conversation. She leant in tentatively and kissed him. He stilled for a moment then moved suddenly to draw her even closer. She was straddling him now and it seemed the atmosphere in the room had changed, intensified. The gentleness was gone, replaced by something more adamant, more pressing. His eyes searched out hers and she was staggered by the need she saw there. She hadn’t meant to do that, to unleash whatever it was she had by kissing him.
He moved out of the seat, carrying her without any effort. She could feel all of him how, every hard plane of his broad body. He placed her down on the bed and descended his body on hers. His breathing was heavy and so close to her ear it made it seemed like the only sounds in the world was their breathing. His mouth came down on hers. There was no gentleness now, it was urgent and demanding. There was a part of her that seemed to rejoice at this new resolve.
His hands were on her thighs, stroking up the exposed skin around her hips. She felt the hardness of him against her most sensitive part—the part that seemed to tense with the friction, pulse at the touch. She was slightly shocked to realize she wanted this. She decided that she would think about what kind of person that made her later. For right now, it was intensely exciting, sensations drove her to seek out more friction.
She wanted more. His mouth was teasing her skin and it seemed to set her nerves on fire wherever he touched. Her tunic was bunched up over her stomach and his fingertips were teasing the skin near her belly—the touch making her muscles contract. She had never wanted anyone like this, hadn’t even realized it was entirely possible, but she let it claim her—not sure she could do anything else with it.
His mouth returned to hers and she welcomed his tongue. It teased her, stroking herself, coaxing hers to meet his. She felt overwhelmed for a second, like things were out of control, but the sensations called her back, tempting her. He moved, readjusted and she could feel that he was about to enter her. She felt both curiosity and fear, because this was unchartered territory as far as she was concerned. Tension in her escalated as he pushed into her, the sensations flared indescribable and she felt like she needed to move. Her body stretched to accommodate him and she acknowledged the feeling of fullness it brought. Somehow her body felt open to him in a way it hadn’t before.
He moved back and pushed into her again, the sensations only became stronger and she felt again like things were out of her control—not that she could stop this. Her body was well beyond her command, instead it was in tune with the sensations building deep inside her. She wasn’t sure she could take any more, but he didn’t stop, just stroked the fire higher. The sights and sounds jumbled together and she couldn’t keep them straight anymore, the sensations were crowding everything else out. He pushed into her hard, groaning deeply as he stayed deep inside her. Then something happened, a culmination of some kind, it stole everything from her, held her captive as strong waves of sensation flowed through her, flowing around the point where they joined.
Chara didn’t know what to think when it passed. She had just been privy to something she’d been unaware of, yet she knew deep in her gut that it had been there all along.
He pulled out of her and rolled onto his back, breathing heavily and uncontrollably. Her body felt languid, but her mind was a bundle of confusion. She knew instinctively that it was supposed to happen, but it confronted her all the same. She didn’t know what to think or what it meant.
She sat up on the side of the bed trying to get a hold of the emotions and thoughts that were chasing around her head. She felt like she needed to get control back, needed to get a hold of herself. She turned to look back at the man who was still recovering from the act they had just completed. His arm came down from where it had been resting across his eyes and he looked at her. He looked relaxed and almost a little bit sleepy.
“When I receive my estate, I want you to live there. You will have a comfortable life there,” he said. The pieces of his intent came into place. He wanted her to be with him for longer than this, which was why he was telling her about the estate that was being given to him—she’d been too distracted to notice at the time. She looked him over with new eyes. He wanted something much more from her than a night of copulation, or maybe he just wanted this over and over. He stroked her arm with the rough palm of his hand.
“I will send for you when it’s time,” he said with a smile.
She was never going to see him again. He was leaving in the morning and she wouldn’t be here when he got back; she would be in Attica, starting her new life with her daughter.
He pulled her down into the bed and she rolled into his warm solid body. In some manner, her deception was taking a darker turn in her mind, but it couldn’t be helped. Whatever hopes he had for her would just have to be quashed. The allure he offered, she could not afford to dally with.
Chapter 13
Chara returned home. She didn’t know if it was safe to leave yet. She wanted to go, but she couldn’t do it too soon. Nicias had just left and she didn’t want her absence to be noticed as corresponding with his. He had gone south, some campaign around Cythera, and Chara had no idea how long he would be gone. If no one else, he would know if she was gone. She had to have everything sorted by the time he got back.
“Seen your lover lately?” Doros asked when he got home one afternoon. Chara ignored the comment.
“We have to talk Doros.”
“About what!” he said aggressively.
“About mother, about my baby.”
“The Spartan spawn.”
“W
e’re going to live in Attica and you have to come with us. It’s the only way. They will only accept us if you come.”
“Why would I want to go to Attica?”
“Because we need you to—and why wouldn’t you? They have land, they need people.”
“So I can replace the Spartans with the Athenians? No thanks. This is our land and it was our long before they came. I am not leaving—they should be leaving.”
“Be sensible Doros, they are not leaving. In Attica you would be free—bound to no one.”
“We’ll drive them out,” Doros continued, not listening to her.
“They aren’t going to let you. They have nowhere to go—you won’t be able to just drive them out. We need you to come with us. We need to start a new life.”
“I am not running away like a coward.”
“This isn’t about being a coward; it’s about doing the best for your family.”
Doros snorted and walked away from her.
“You can’t turn your back on us,” she called after him. She’d hoped he’d be more co-operative, but he was too caught up in his own anger to think about others. She would have to keep trying; she needed him to come with her. She had broached the subject with him if nothing else. Underneath his anger, he didn’t want his family hurt, she was sure. He would have to think on it for a while and let it sink in.
Chara left for Athens two weeks after Nicias had left. It was a risk being absent, but she had agreed with her father that she would go and try to sort things before returning for a while. If her absence was noticed, they would say she had gone to market with some of the others in the village to help sell produce. It would be a stretch and the story might be doubted until she returned. It would also bring suspicions that she was harboring her baby somewhere. She had to act quickly, so they could be gone for good. She’d asked her father to speak to Doros in her absence.
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