by Gwynn White
“Come here, girl,” Constantia said, her voice cracked and weakened from exhaustion. Petra knew she had been in labor for at least a day already.
“Yes, Era Constantia.” Petra locked eyes with the woman, avoiding Clarius’s gaze burning a hole in her head as she passed him by. At one point, she thought he would reach out and strike her, but instead, he stood like a stone in the center of the room, his growing anger at her presence as tangible as the child who would not come from his wife’s womb. It must have been Constantia who called for her and not the master.
Petra knew what was in his mind. He wished her dead and at the same time hoped she would keep his child alive. Petra’s heart raced in time with her breathing. The skin along the surface of her arms tingled with fear.
“The baby is turned, girl. I can feel it.” Constantia grabbed her arm hard, but Petra did not cry out. She set the tools aside and moved around to the other side of the bed so she could gauge how far along the woman was. Petra tried to remember her mother’s teachings, but all her thoughts were focused on one thing: the mortanine poison.
“What’s wrong with her, girl?” the master demanded. “What do you see?”
Petra avoided his gaze, knowing she would not be able to stop herself from spitting in his face. She took stock of the contents of the room. The house slaves had brought in all the necessary items. There was a hard couch for the mother’s resting periods between labor pains and a softer couch for resting after the birth. Next to the hard couch where Constantia lay stood Diantha’s birthing chair, a tool of her trade she had carried with her since their days in Greece. It offered strong support to the mother’s back and a crescent-shaped opening in the seat through which the child would eventually pass.
On a nearby table lay a small amphora of olive oil for massaging the belly as well as bottles of salt and honey to scrub mucous from the baby’s skin after birth. Warm water filled a bowl and cloth strips were stacked at the ready.
All this was useless in the end. A single glance at the poorly presenting cervix and the shocking amount of blood loss told Petra everything she needed to know. This woman would likely die and the baby along with her if it were not stillborn already. Perhaps Diantha could have saved them with her decades of experience, but Petra had never even seen a breech birth, much less delivered one. To confirm it, she patted Constantia’s thigh to have her open wider and examined her. She probed inside gently and realized what she felt was only one of the baby’s feet. She couldn’t locate the other foot at all. Blood had soaked the bed and covered the poor woman’s legs.
Petra did not look at the master as she finally responded to his question. “The baby is breech.”
Constantia moaned at the confirmation of her suspicions. “It’s too much, Clarius. I must have a tonic for the pain.” She leaned onto her side with a hand to her belly as the contractions started again.
“Give her something, girl!” the master shouted with a dismissive wave of his hand.
Petra hesitated. This was the moment, when she would choose life or death: for Constantia, for the baby… for herself.
Faced with this woman’s agony, she poured through the supply bag looking for anything to ease her pain. It wasn’t truly Constantia and this baby she wanted to suffer—it was the master himself. She knew the mother and baby would die whether she helped or not. The poison would end her suffering faster if nothing else.
“Do it now!” Desperation tinged Clarius’s angry shout, as his wife’s contractions reached a fever pitch. He grabbed the bag and dumped it out all over the couch beside his wife, who was screaming from the pain. He threw the instruments to the floor, recklessly sifting through the contents for something useful.
“I have no true tonic,” Petra said evenly.
“Then what exactly is in this phial here, girl?” Clarius held up the mortanine poison, and Petra resisted the overwhelming urge to snatch it back from him.
“I—I don’t know what it’s for or…,” Petra said, backing away from the master, “…or if it would harm the baby.”
“Give!” was all Constantia could get out before a contraction left her speechless.
Petra knew the woman was in excruciating pain. Wouldn’t it be a mercy to give her a quicker release? Petra looked up at Clarius, then, an overarching revenge filling her chest, shivers and heat vying for dominance inside the layers of her skin.
The master took one last look at the liquid in the phial and handed it to his wife. The woman took it, the greed of relief shining in her eyes.
“No!” Petra screamed. Then her vision blurred into a vision of her mother out in the midday dust as the blood poured from her open neck and her body crumpled into the dirt at the master’s feet. Mother… Mother, please come back to me…
The vision faded into darkness. Petra shook her whole body, trying to rid herself of the images of death, of murder. When she opened her mind to reality once more, death looked out through Constantia’s eyes as she clutched the half-empty phial in her trembling fist.
Petra stared as a strange expression came over the woman’s face, as she began to understand something was horribly wrong. She looked straight at Clarius as he slowly turned to stare at her, confusion and anger flashing in his expression.
“Now we are even, master.” Her voice was steady but held none of the real contempt she wanted to feel. She felt empty, hollow, ashamed.
It took him only a moment to realize what she meant, and only a moment more to strike her senseless.
Petra ended up against the wall in the corner of the room, her jaw on fire, blood filling her mouth from a gash the master had ripped open in her lip, her ears ringing. She kept her eyes closed, waiting… for what, she knew not. Would it be a dagger? A whip? Or perhaps stones or a crucifixion.
The master’s voice was far away. He was shouting, yes, but not at her. There was something about the baby. He wanted it out. The woman was screaming as if death was only moments away. Petra remembered: it was. Constantia was in her death throes now. At any moment, it would all be over. And, in a few moments more, it would all be over for her too.
Strange noises came from the bed. The woman was hysterical. No, no, it was the master himself, grunting with effort, shouting as though a madness had entered him. Petra didn’t understand a word, but she had heard the sounds before. She dared to look up. The master was ripping the dead child from its mother’s womb. Blood streamed from Constantia’s corpse, covering Clarius’s arms and the pale cloths surrounding her.
Petra brought her hand up to her mouth, covering the cry that would not come. The master stared at the blue-skinned infant in his hands, shaking the boy until his head lolled back against his mother’s leg.
“My son, my son…” the master said over and over, as if by saying the words he could will the boy back to life.
Petra watched all of this almost unseeing. Somewhere in the recesses of her mind she remembered she was the architect of this bloody scene. Soon, the master would have his own revenge and hasten her own inevitable end.
The smell of sickness and blood hovered thick in the air. Petra finally noticed the throng of horrified servants who had gathered in the hallway. They dared not enter. They stared at her, accusation and shock burning in their eyes. Only one wore an expression of relief. It was Constantia’s personal slave, the young girl who could never please her mistress, no matter how hard she tried. The girl was glad, at least, the woman was gone. Petra fixed her mind upon the slave girl, clinging to her as if she were a hand outstretched to save her from drowning.
The master laid the boy down at last and looked at his wife’s face with a finality. With a hand on her bloodied leg, Clarius finally looked full and long at Petra. She stared back at him, and they remained locked in mutual hatred for what seemed an eternity. She realized, then, even if she did somehow escape death this day, that hatred would never dissipate, never die.
When the master finally spoke, his voice was dispassionate. “I am going to revel in your
death, slave girl. When it is done, I will put your head on a pike for all the slaves to see. I will not order you down until the birds have pecked your skull clean. I will burn your bones until there is nothing left of you but ash and all memory of you is gone. Then, and only then, will we be even.”
2
The Master
July 13, 2 BC
Petra heard the master’s threat as if through a dream. She did not see him through her hazy vision. She saw only Lucipor before her, his eyes willing her not to look away from him. He said the words again, only this time they were a whisper.
Love me enough to live…
I couldn’t do it, Lucipor. I couldn’t let this go.
The master rose from the bed. She knew because his shadow fell across her body as she crouched against the wall.
Clarius took hold of her wrist and yanked her up to her feet, banishing the comforting image of Lucipor’s beautiful, soft eyes. She did not fight, unsure if it would prolong a more painful death or quicken it. She only hoped Lucipor would not be there to witness it. She didn’t think she could bear that.
Silvipor stood in the outer corridor beyond the room’s portal. “What is your command, Master?” he asked, and his question felt like a betrayal to Petra. She reminded herself he was not truly one of them and turned her face away, wiping the seeping blood from her mouth, her jaw aching fiercely from the master’s hand.
“Fetch me a rope. I am not to be disturbed otherwise.”
“Yes, Master.” Silvipor strode away without a glance in her direction. It surprised her Clarius’s most loyal slave never suspected what she would do, but then he didn’t know of her mother’s poison.
With a strange sort of detachment, Petra realized the master had some sort of torture or hanging in mind. She felt herself floating outside of her body, wholly separate from her physical form, as if she were entering one of her own vivid memories. Was this a kind of self-protection? Was her ability to see images that weren’t there going to save her from the pain—from death? What would it feel like to die? She determined not to cry out, no matter what the master inflicted upon her. He would not conquer her. She had already destroyed his lineage, his family. As he had destroyed hers. She did not regret it. And if she could figure out a way, she would kill him too.
“Come, murderess. Your death awaits.” Clarius’s voice, laced with certainty, made her anger boil over. She would not make this easy for him.
Petra struggled against him now, straining to wrest his fingers from her wrist. He stopped and backhanded her. Stunned and seeing strange lights within her vision, she shook her head, trying to keep her wits about her as more blood poured from her mouth. The master dragged her through the rest of the house and out into the deserted courtyard beyond. They crossed over the mosaics of the goddesses, and Petra cried out to them silently, begging them for mercy. For herself. For her father, a slave these many years in Rome. For Lucipor.
It was then that Petra glimpsed Lucipor in the flesh. He was running across the courtyard, carrying an unwieldy scythe in his hands. His face… Oh, goddess, his face. He meant to murder Clarius. She shook her head vehemently at him and stopped her struggle, letting the master yank her along. Yet Lucipor did not heed her. He had the same murderous look in his eyes that fueled Clarius.
Petra knew he, too, would soon be dead. And it would all be for nothing. What was she, anyway? Merely a summer dalliance for a slave as handsome as Lucipor. He could have gone on to fall truly in love, to marry another, worthier slave. Maybe they would even have been freed for good service and went on to live long lives among their children and grandchildren. But now, on this night, he was going to give his life foolishly in defense of hers, and she had no way to stop him.
Petra barely noticed when Silvipor handed a rough cord of rope to Clarius. She stared at the rope, feeling a grey despair filling her chest and limbs.
“Leave us,” she heard the master say, finally noticing he was leading her into the men’s bathhouse on the opposite side of the villa’s courtyard. Secluded and deserted at this time of day, her screams would echo easily against the stones, which would please him greatly, she thought with dispassionate reasoning.
Being a woman and a slave, she had never been allowed in the baths, so she was strangely curious what it looked like. Torches burned against the gloom of the darkened circular room. It felt cavernous and at the same time the humid air encroached upon her, making her breathing quicken.
She realized this would be the last place she would ever see, and she regretted she had not shouted to Lucipor to stay away when she still had the chance. The other slaves—perhaps Silvipor—would have killed him by now. That thought reminded her to struggle, and her fantasies had her striking Clarius dead and racing out to rescue Lucipor. But it was just the madness that had overtaken them all. She tried to pull away from Clarius once more, but he was far too strong. His muscles bulged, he stood a head and a half taller, and his anger gave him a strength she could never hope to overcome.
He dragged her into the warm pool, until the water came up to her knees. She stumbled a bit, feeling confused at the comfort of the warm water surrounding her, the beauty of the torches, and the strange lights thrown up against the stones from the reflection of the pool. Beauty and comfort at a moment such as this? Was this a gift to her from the goddess or some new torture?
The master worked with quick precision, pulling her arms back around one of the columns surrounding the pool. When he circled back, he leered at her, his face too close for her to see anything but the hot anger in his eyes.
“Your blood will soon fill this pool, girl, and I will bathe in your death.”
Petra didn’t think. She kicked him as hard as she could. He let out a laugh, until they both heard shouts at the door of the bathhouse. With a sinking heart, she heard the distinctive sound of Lucipor’s voice. For a moment, it brought her joy. It meant he was alive, but she knew it could not be for long. He was merely a boy, and these were men he would be fighting against.
The master ignored the shouts as he reached into the pouch at her waist. She realized she had completely forgotten the mortanine. He pulled the phial out and flashed it before her eyes.
“How would you like to die, girl? A slice to the throat in honor of your mother? Or would you prefer to honor my dead wife and child with a bit of poison to help you on your way?” He laughed again and unstoppered the phial, its clear, deadly poison sloshing within.
“You drink it, Master,” she said, proud her voice was so steady and passionless, despite the blood she swallowed from the tear in her lip. “Your wife awaits you. I will even pay Charon’s toll for when you cross the Acheron to Hades.”
This set him off. Clarius grabbed her by the hair and roughly pulled her head back. To her own disgust, she cried out from the pain. “No. You will drink and drink and drink until I hear your dying breath.” He raised the phial up to her closed mouth and held her nose to force her mouth open.
“Let her go, Master.”
Petra twisted her face around to see Lucipor. He held the tip of the scythe to the master’s neck. Petra wanted to tell him with her eyes to leave them. She was dead anyway, but he had a chance to escape. Yet he would not look at her.
“You are a fool, boy. You wish to die too? I will hasten you to your end. But first you will watch.”
“Release her, or I will kill you.”
“The girl’s breath is running out, boy.” The master held the poison up to her lips. He was right. Her lungs seized as she strained against the ropes, trying in vain to break free.
Look at me, Lucipor, she wanted to scream. Run as far away as you can. You cannot save me.
Still his eyes watched Clarius’s every move.
Petra shook violently, holding onto the last of her air, and then it all happened at once. Her mouth burst open, and Clarius tipped the phial into her mouth as Lucipor sliced a gaping hole across his master’s throat. And so Petra’s end began.
3
<
br /> The First Death
July 13, 2 BC
Petra spit the poison out into the master’s face as he dropped the phial into the pool and released her to clutch at his throat. She was pleased, at least, to see much of the mortanine and blood from her lip had entered his mouth. But not all. She had ingested most of it, and now she felt the poison begin its deadly work.
Amid Lucipor’s shouts and the clatter of the scythe on the stones, she felt a strange tingling spread out from her jaw and move quickly into her limbs. She felt her chest heave and her breathing come hard. Weakness washed over her, and she slumped against the ropes holding her against the column as Lucipor jumped into the pool beside her.
“Gods above, Petra. Let me take the poison from you.” He held her head in his hands as he had done when he spoke of love to her not an hour ago. How things had changed since then…
“No, the poison will kill you too.” With every word, she found it harder and harder to speak as a painful numbness spreading throughout her jawline and limbs turned into stabbing pains. “I murdered that poor woman and her baby, Lucipor. Let me die as I deserve.”
Lucipor seemed not to hear her. He glanced over at Clarius, who had fallen back against the stone steps of the pool, his neck gaping wide and gushing blood down into the pool. “Clarius is dead. You, at least, have that comforting thought to carry you into death.”
“Go now,” she pleaded, hiding her eyes from Clarius’s hideous body. “Live for me.”
“There is no life in me without you.”
