by V. M. Sang
The following morning, some men came and took all the slaves to the baths and stripped them. They washed them thoroughly and took their clothes away. What would happen now? That question soon had an answer.
The men who washed them took them to a building in the market at the opposite side of the fort. They stood in a room, bare except for a table and chair under a window at one side. Guards stood by the only door, making escape impossible. A tall man entered and sat behind the table.
The man who looked them over the previous day came in. He ordered the men to take the girls out, with the exception of Avelina. Avelina cried out to Odila and tried to run to her, but one of the slaves who had bathed them, grabbed hold of her as she ran past. The Romans had taken seven girls from the village and, shortly afterwards, a slave brought two of the less pretty ones back into the room. Odila was not one of them.
Adelbehrt heard them saying the others had been bought by a brothel. He did not know what a brothel was, and the others deflected his questions when he asked. He decided, when he saw the looks of relief on the faces of the remaining two girls, that it could not be a good place. Something else to hate the Romans for. He mentally added ‘taking Odila to a brothel’ to his list of reasons to hate them.
The man in charge hung a board around the neck of each slave. Adelbehrt later learned that it gave information about the slave, including his likelihood of running away or committing suicide, as well as his name and where he came from.
They took the slaves out one at a time. He could hear people calling out something outside, but could not understand the words. When the slaves returned, the man who had taken them out, escorted them to the table by the window. People came into the room, handed over money to the dispassionate man sitting there, and then left with their purchase.
Eventually, their turn arrived. The slave merchant had left them until the last, and as they were led outside together, Adelbehrt realised they were being sold as a single lot. He could breathe once more. He could keep his promise to his mother to look after his sister.
Warm air embraced them and, as the sun shone on his naked skin, Adelbehrt blushed at being nude in front of the bustling crowd filling the marketplace. He looked around and wondered at the large numbers of people still left, since all the slaves had been sold except the two of them.
The auctioneer picked Avelina up and another man did the same with Adelbehrt and held them so everyone could see the two children. The auctioneer spoke to the crowd and pointed at the children’s blonde hair. A few aahs floated forward from the crowd, then people began to call out things. Adelbehrt decided the people were making bids for them.
They were a popular lot, if the number of bidders was anything to go by, but soon almost everyone dropped out, leaving just two men in the bidding war. Eventually, one of them held up his hand and turned away, thus indicating he, too, had dropped out. The man who had brought themout to the market place led them back into the room, and gave them plain tunics to put on.
Their purchaser walked to the table and handed over a purse of money, which the cashier counted carefully, nodded, and handed a paper to the new owner, who then came over, took each by a hand and led them out.
Adelbehrt looked at this mane He was tall, clean-shaven, with an aquiline nose and dark hair and even darker eyes. He did not look unkind, but was still the sort of man you would not want to annoy. He spoke to the children in a light tenor voice, but they did not understand him, so he called to a young man standing near the door and spoke a few words to him.
“This man says he’s your master now and wants to know how old you are,” the man interpreted.
“I have six summers and my sister four,” answered Adelbehrt quietly, looking down at his feet.
The interpreter spoke to their new master in Latin and then interpreted the next few sentences.
“He’s on his way back to Britannia and you’re going to accompany him there. You’re to call him ‘Dominus’. That means ‘Master’ or ‘Sir’. You now have your first word of Latin. You’ll soon learn to speak it though, so don’t worry.”
“I'm called Adelbehrt, and my sister is Avelina.” Adelbehrt told him, not knowing his name had been on the scroll round his neck.
“Well, Adelbehrt, you’ll be all right, just as long as you do as you’re told and show proper deference to your master and mistress. Good luck.” With that, he left them.
“What’s going to happen now?” whispered Avelina.
‘We’re going to Britannia. We must call the man who has bought us ‘Dominus’ and do as he says.”
Avelina began to cry. “Where’s Britannia? You said we’d go back to Mamma. You said you’d escape and take us back.”
“I don’t know where Britannia is, but we will escape. Somehow, we’ll get away, but I can’t promise you it will be soon.”
2
The children rode in a wagon, and their master rode a horse. A pretty, chestnut pony trotted behind, tied to the wagon. Adelbehrt found out the Dominus had bought it as a present for his son, just as he had bought the young boy and his sister for his wife and daughter. Realisation began to dawn on the boy that he and his sister were of no more worth to the Dominus than the pony.
A second wagon followed, driven by a slender slave accompanying the Dominus. Another slave, older, drove their wagon. Boxes of goods filled both.
The large wagon the children rode in bumped along the pebbly roads and the children were joggled this way and that, along with it. They sat between a large number of crates and amphorae, squashed in, as comfortably, as they could. The discomfort started Avelina crying again, and Adelbehrt comforted her as best he could, but he was only a little boy himself. Tears sprang to his eyes, but he quickly brushed them away. He would not cry. Not in front of the Romans.
Adelbehrt worried too because he could not understand the Dominus. His new master spoke Latin all the time. The boy sat in the wagon, frowning as the Dominus stopped the wagons and spoke to the slave driving theirs. The older slave got down, and the Dominus took his place on the driving seat. The slave approached the back Why the line break here? It’s still the same sentence!of their wagon. He looked quite old to Adelbehrt, but he was in fact, only in his late thirties. He had short brown hair, brown eyes, and a smiling mouth.
“The Dominus told me to come and speak to you,” he said in their language. “You can’t understand Latin yet, and I can speak your language, so I’m to help you.”
He smiled at the pair, and although Avelina stared at him with round eyes, Adelbehrt managed a weak smile in return.
“My name’s Marcus,” the man went on, “and I’m a slave, like you.” He jumped onto the wagon between the crates and amphorae that filled much of its bed, and sat down. “I think the Dominus wants me to help you both to learn some Latin so you’ll be able to understand what he wants of you, and also for when we get back to Londinium. You’ll need to understand the Domina and the little Domina when we get there.”
Adelbehrt looked at his sister, who once more sucked her thumb. “I'm worried about Avelina. She’d stopped sucking her thumb some time ago, but now she’s started again. She’s hardly talking, either. She used to be such a chatterbox before.”
Marcus looked at the little girl and leaned forward to stroke her hair. She drew back and huddled against Adelbehrt, eyes wide with fear.
Marcus studied her for a few minutes. “I think she’ll be alright eventually. It’s a terrible thing for a little girl to be taken from her home at only four. That’s how old you said she is? It can’t have been much better for you, though, Adelbehrt. You’re only—what?—six?”
Adelbehrt nodded in reply. “I miss my mother and baby brother.” He looked down at the planks of the wagon. “And my father too, of course. But he’s dead.” Tears sprang to his eyes and he blinked them away before they could fall. He looked at Marcus, eyes gleaming with unshed tears. “I have to be strong to look after my sister, you see.”
Marcus looked a nice man, Ad
elbehrt thought. Could he trust him though? After a few minutes, the boy decided he would trust him. After all, Marcus was a slave too, and he and Avelina would need all the support they could get against the Romans.
The wagon continued to bounce along the road, making for an uncomfortable ride. The other wagon followed, resulting in slow progress.
Inns or mail posts had grown up at regular intervals along the straight roads they travelled. The children slept with the slaves each night, Marcus and another man called Paulus. Paulus was everything Marcus was not. A taciturn man whom Adelbehrt thought did not like children very much. At least, he had as little to do with them as possible.
Marcus on the other hand continued to be friendly and talked a lot to them. He told them the Dominus was a merchant who lived in one of the cities of Britannia. He called the town Londinium and told Adelbehrt it was in the south of Britannia. The Dominus, he explained, had married a British woman whom he had met on one of his trips to Britannia, and he settled there with her. They had two children so far, a son of seven and a daughter of four. Marcus thought Avelina would be for the daughter.
She would learn how to wait on a young Roman lady, while Adelbehrt would probably be a house slave and learn how to wait tables, and be taught other duties. The Domina would most probably want to show her new slaves off to friends of the family.
“They will all be jealous that the Domina has a new slave,” he told them.
“Why?” asked Adelbehrt, curious.
“You are very attractive children, you know,” Marcus told him. “The Dominus was very pleased to be able to buy you. Your light hair is unusual. Then there’s the fact that you are children, and the Domina will be able to train you herself. That’s always a good thing. She can teach you how to do things in her own, preferred way.”
Adelbehrt nodded, and Avelina continued to suck her thumb.
Marcus began to teach the children a little Latin as their journey across Gaul progressed. They would have to learn this new language as it was the only one spoken in the household, or in most of Londinium for that matter. Some of the local barbarians, he told them, spoke their own language, but it was not like Adelbehrt and Avelina’s language.
As they travelled, he patiently pointed out things and gave the children the Latin word for them. He laughed at Adelbehrt’s attempts at pronunciation, and made him repeat the words until he had them right. Avelina sat sucking her thumb during these lessons, watching with big round eyes, but she said nothing.
Adelbehrt struggled a bit with Latin, but he tried hard. He wanted to be able to understand what the Dominus and his wife wanted him to do. He had heard tales before the Romans took him prisoner of beatings if slaves did not do as they were told quickly enough, and he became afraid it might happen to him and his sister if they could not understand what the Domina asked them to do.
By the time they reached the coast, he had learned quite a few words, although he could not yet speak Latin beyond that.
Adelbehrt marvelled at the Roman roads, in spite of not wanting to think of anything good of his captors. The Romans built their roads straight as the crow flies and they paved the surfaces, unlike the roads where he came from.
When they left Mogantiacum, they travelled west and continued in that direction until they came to the city of Durocortorum, in Gaul. They stayed there for a couple of nights for the Dominus to do some business, so Marcus told him. After that, they took a road in a northward direction. The wagons trundled on for just over three weeks, until they reached the northern coast of Gaul.
Adelbehrt stood looking over the crashing waves. He had never seen any stretch of water so huge. He could not see the other side. He had thought the Rhenus big, but he had never imagined a stretch of water so large the other side was invisible. Marcus called it the Oceanus Britannicus, and told him they were going to cross it.
This frightened him, but he kept his fears to himself, partly out of pride, but also because he did not want to transfer his fears to his sister. Her tears had dried up a bit towards the latter part of the journey through Gaul, but she was still not the happy, chatty little girl he had known in their home village. She had withdrawn into herself somewhat, Adelbehrt thought, and she still clung to him at night as he chanted his ritual.
“I hate the Romans. They crucified my father; they took my family away from me;they took my home from me; they took my friends from me; they put Odila in a brothel.” Then he added, “They took my freedom from me.” As he stood on a dock in the town of Gesoriacum early the next morning, waiting to get on the big boat taking them across this terrifying stretch of water, he realised if they did escape, a return to his own land would be nearly impossible. How could he cross this vast expanse of water again?
As he thought these thoughts, it began to drizzle, as if the sky itself lamented his plight. He almost cried again, but remembered his vow to himself that he would not allow the Romans to make him cry ever again. He put his arm around Avelina.
“Don’t be frightened.” He spoke as much for his own benefit as that of the little girl. “The Romans cross this water all the time. I’m sure we’ll be safe.”
Avelina crept closer, as though she did not believe him, and he felt her shivering. The drizzle felt cool and their thin tunics did little to keep them warm. This was supposed to be summer, he realised, but the sun seemed to have forgotten. It was as cool as autumn.
They had to wait until the oxen that drew the wagons, the Dominus's horse and the little pony, had been taken aboard the ship before they boarded. A large merchant vessel was to take them across the stretch of water to Britannia.
To the children the sea looked massive. The Rhenus that they had lived beside, although a large river, did not prevent them from seeing the opposite bank. Here, the sea seemed to go on forever. Adelbehrt knew it did not do so because the Romans crossed it regularly to Britannia; nevertheless, the young lad felt it a daunting task to cross this vast sea.
In any event, the crossing turned out to be not as bad as he thought. The wind came from the south, and although it made it cold on the merchant ship, it blew them steadily towards the land over the sea. He stood in the stern of the ship, looking towards the land as they left it—the land he would probably never see again. The wind blew his hair back as it filled the sails, blowing them to a new life.
Adelbehrt suddenly felt an excitement course through him. Yes, he was a slave and, as such, had become the property of the man who had bought him, but Marcus had told him he was a good master, and did not often beat his slaves. True, he had taken more notice of the pony’s welfare than that of the children on the journey so far, but Adelbehrt reasoned it had probably cost more than they had.
As the land disappeared, he felt the swell of the waves driving the deck up and down. He smiled. He found the motion pleasant. The drizzle still fell, but he did not think of taking any shelter. He wanted to watch the sailors move about the ship and pull ropes to adjust the sails. They seemed to work as a unit, knowing exactly what to do. This life, he thought would be an exciting one. More than sailing on the Rhenus. Fishermen went out to catch fish back home, but this was much more exciting! The sailors had to overcome more dangers here and that idea thrilled rather than frightened him.
Avelina stood with him for much of the first part of the journey. To his surprise and delight, she started asking questions. He could not answer them of course, as she asked about the land they approached. He took her to the front of the ship (‘the bow’ he heard the sailors call it) so they could see the land when it appeared.
After a while, however, he became weary of standing. The drizzle had stopped and he sat down on a coil of rope next to Avelina, who shivered again. Marcus approached and sat beside the children.
“What’s Britannia like?” Adelbehrt asked the older man.
“Depends where you mean, lad. Where we’re to land, there are tall white cliffs. The town where we’ll dock is called Dubris. It has a port at the mouth of a river. Then we’
ll pass through rolling green hills. You won’t see many rivers in that part of the country, at least not like the ones you’re used to. There are a few small ones—little more than streams really. About five or six days into the journey, though, we’ll come to a large river called Thamesis.”
“How far will we travel before we come to where the Dominus lives?”
“The Dominus lives with his family in Londinium and, in the summer, in a villa in the country. Londinium is on the banks of the Thamesis. He’ll go there first, I expect, but he won’t stay long this time.”
Marcus smiled amiably at the boy. “As you've probably gathered, he’s a merchant and he’ll want to trade some of his goods before leaving the city. Last year there was a storm and lightning struck one of the buildings. It caused a fire that destroyed, or badly damaged, many buildings and homes. Some of the goods he has will cheer up the people and, after that, the rebuilding, so he’ll want to take advantage of that. People lost a lot of stuff that needs replacing.”
Marcus stood and walked to the rail of the ship, where he turned and leaned back. “The Dominus’ home wasn’t burned, but he’ll go to his villa in the country after he’s finished his business. The family always stays there in the summer. It’s common in Rome for the rich to go to their villas during the summer to escape the heat of the city. It isn’t so important here in Britannia because the summers aren’t so hot, but the Dominus likes to keep this status symbol, even here in Britannia. Anyway, there’s the harvest to get in and it’s pleasant in the countryside.”
Adelbehrt chatted to Marcus, who taught him some new Latin words, until the Dominus called for him. The children continued to sit looking towards the horizon, waiting to catch a glimpse of their new home.
