Spartacus: Swords and Ashes

“A taxing day,” Lucretia said, “of great cost.”

“A torment,” Ilithyia agreed. “You would think Timarchides would arrange enough couches and benches.”

“In death,” Lucretia mused, “Pelorus has attracted considerably more friends than he had in life.”

Ilithyia’s eyes widened in excitement.

“We are over-run!”

“Who is to say who is a friend of Pelorus, and who a chancing passer-by? There is no man, free or slave, at the door.”

“The nobler Roman would have a nomenclator to remember the names,” Ilithyia added, as if Lucretia could not possibly have known this. “My husband has a fine one who is always on hand with appointments, and reminders, and the like. No face comes to our door without the nomenclator whispering: ‘Master, it is so-and-so of such-and-such a place. His wife’s name is Calpurnia and he is secretly fucking his body slave.’”

Lucretia raised an eyebrow.

“We are the sum of those that know us,” she said. “I was barely acquainted with Pelorus, but I carry fragments of him in my mind. Things my husband has said. Things my late father-in-law mentioned. I carry pieces of his life at one remove. It is all that will be left of him.”

“Nonsense,” Ilithyia said. “He has a whole day of games to honor him tomorrow.”

“Who troubles their mind to remember who gives the games?” Lucretia said.

“Great games stay in the memory for years!” Ilithyia protested. “And it surprises me to hear you, a lanista’s wife, claim otherwise!”

“When I die, I would prefer temple offered to gods in place of games.”

“I want games. I want the best of men, a primus of primuses. I want the finest muscles straining against death in my honor. I want a crowd to see men pierced by blades, screaming in pain in my name!”

“It will be of little solace to you.”

“I want to hear them in the afterlife. I want to hear their grunts and moans. I want them to celebrate their victories with an orgy of ludiae, and when they spend their seed inside their whores, I want them to say: ‘This I do for Ilithyia.’” Ilithyia gave a little gasp of ecstatic satisfaction, and laughed at her own arrangements.

“Take it from me,” Lucretia said with a yawn, “gladiators are not the sort of creatures to dwell much on such things.”

“They live for their editors, and for those whose honors they enact.” Ilithyia pouted at her friend. “You shatter all my illusions,” she said. “The more I know of the workings of the arena, the less I crave its delights!”

“Apologies,” Lucretia said. “Today’s fight leaves me truculent and uncharitable.”

“And me parched and coughing!” Ilithyia declared. “And yet Pelorus would have been proud of the House of Batiatus, for providing such a fine show at his last exit.”

“I do not think pride was much of a consideration,” Lucretia said, setting down her goblet. She looked around her at the shadowy corners, listening for the faint noises of merriment in the main rooms. Outside, she heard footsteps approaching, unhurriedly.

“What do you mean?” Ilithyia asked. “I thought the House of Batiatus was the very core of Pelorus’s existence.”

Lucretia snorted.

“He never spoke to Verres of the House of Batiatus,” she said.

“Indeed he did not,” Verres’s voice said. The two women looked round to see the subject of their gossip in the doorway, bearing two flagons of wine.

“Apologies, my intention is not to intrude,” Verres said. “But I heard the music of your laughter from the hall and wondered if these wines would buy me audience to its notes.”

Ilithyia proffered her empty cup with a cascade of giggles.

“We are at your command, Governor Verres,” she said, gazing at him from behind her eyelashes. Lucretia managed a pained smile to match, and Verres approached with his purloined wine.

“Is it Gaulish?” Lucretia asked, noting the strange shape of its jar.

“Indeed it is,” he said. “Suffused with the flavor of barbarism!” He sloshed some of the red liquid into both their cups, while the women carefully held the drape of their sleeves out of harm’s way.

“I fear I have already had enough!” Ilithyia said.

“Ilithyia,” Verres breathed. “If you were not already taken by so noble a husband, I would be unable to resist.”

“I am sure she would not put up much of a fight, either,” Lucretia said dryly.

Ilithyia shot her a dirty look.

“If she were not married, of course,” Lucretia added hastily.

“When I have a wife,” Verres said brightly, “I shall have a wife.” He settled himself on the floor cushions that were scattered at the foot of the couch.

“No woman has laid claim to you?” Ilithyia said, her voice full of disbelief.

“It is true, I have no wife. But there are many women that can be taken to wife-even temporarily. My lesson from a young age was that the Roman way is not one of love, or even lust. But of power. Ever since the Sabines. Ever since our men of legend. The Roman way has been one of the exercise of force, if you understand my meaning?” he added, nudging Ilithyia suggestively.

She laughed in peals of glee… and then said, “No.”

“I was but a boy when I discovered what it meant to truly own a woman,” Verres continued. “She was a household kitchen slave, which kept her out of the way for most of the time. But I would see her carrying and chopping, and heading out to market.

“She would wash in the atrium when she thought herself alone. And she treasured a small, rude-fashioned pot of rouge. When she went to market she would dab the slightest dash of it upon her cheeks. Perhaps there was a grocer she hoped to impress. I never asked.”

The two Roman ladies listened in rapt attention. Ilithyia with one hand held to her chest as if to still her beating heart.

“I ordered her to follow me. She made as if to protest but… sssh… I reminded her that I was the master in the absence of my parents. Master of the house, and master of her. So she followed me into the bedchamber, and stood there, waiting, nervously.”

Verres gazed into two pairs of wide eyes, and smiled inwardly that two women should take such pleasure in the tale of the ruin of another of their sex.

“To have her trembling like a little bird in a snare. That is the joy of being a Roman man, to know that Roman virtue has woven an invisible cage around such women.”

“What a thought,” Ilithyia said. “Lost to women of our position.”

“Why should it be?” Verres asked. “You promise in marriage to give yourself to no other man but your husband. But a free woman cannot give herself to a slave-a slave is not equipped to take anything.”

“You mean legally…?” Lucretia asked.

“Legally,” Verres confirmed with a smirk. “If a slave were to seize you, his life would be forfeit. But if you seized a slave… what harm would there be?”

Ilithyia seized Lucretia’s arms excitedly, like a little girl with a new dress.

“Did you hear that, Lucretia?”

“I did,” Lucretia said, peeling her friend’s hands away. She took a deep drink of her wine and said no more.

“I am sure you do not begrudge your husbands the occasional… need, absent the delights of your good selves. Surely they should not begrudge you, either? What matters it to them if you feel a slave’s tongue between your legs every now and then?”

Verres flicked his own tongue over his teeth suggestively. Ilithyia slapped him playfully, hooting with excitement. Her face was flushed and her breathing quick.