by Dan Wallace
“Here, lover boy, come to Mama,” she said, pushing his head down on her enormous mammaries. She tried to push a nipple into his mouth, but he kept ducking. She gave up and started working up his tunic to bring them together. She slipped her hand down and grabbed his pisser, pulling on it and stroking it. Then, she tried to tuck it within her as she began to move against him, rhythmically.
At first, he struggled, but she was too strong. Then, he became very still. She relaxed, and he squirmed free, skittering off of her, past Cassius, and out the door. He headed down to the marketplace where he found Manius sitting on a fountain wall. He sat next to him, neither one saying a word. When they finally made their way back, they found Cassius asleep on the tabletop and Mater Venus gone.
The brothers grew into stout young men through the years, which made life easier. None of the other hustlers wanted to take on the Casca boys, their double envelopment too much to handle. Because of this, fights with other gangs became rare. They fought each other, however, all of the time, brutal encounters that left blood, scars, and broken limbs. No matter how well they worked together controlling outside threats, the rage between them never seemed to end. They warred over food, the spoils of their thievery, or simple insults. Lucius might have moved to another place, but their safety depended on watching each other’s back. With things going so well, eventually they moved out of the falling-down shack of their father’s to the top floor of an insula close in to the local market. There, the pickings were convenient and easy.
They eventually found their own way to the carnal side of life, too, first with women they knew, street walkers. Money bought quick encounters and no entanglements. Sometimes an occasional partner demanded more than they were willing to pay. But a raised fist usually ended that, though sometimes Manius let go with a backhand anyway. A quick trip to a taverna afterwards picked up their spirits, and sometimes another girl or boy.
When they were sixteen, Manius brought a woman home. Her name was Ariadne, a lovely girl from the countryside. Her father had been a veteran, an Italian auxiliary given a small plot of land for services rendered in the first Pydna engagement, when Paulus Aemilianus destroyed the Macedonians. For some reason, though, Ariadne’s father had lost the land and the family’s livelihood. Her mother said he drank and gambled it away. But her father had said he’d been cheated by some agent of a rich patrician who had stolen his small farm to add to his huge estate. In any case, her family had moved to Patavium to find work. Soon after, her father disappeared. Her mother looked to her oldest daughter to bring in some kind of an income, which led lovely Ariadne to enter the street trade. Before she’d been at it long, Manius found her.
“She’ll be staying with us for a while,” said Manius.
Mildly bewildered, Lucius said, “Why?”
“Because I like her. You stay away from her, though, she’s mine. If you don’t, I’ll have your head.”
They were twin brothers, thought Casca, draining his cup. How could he stay away?
“More wine?” the bar maid asked.
Casca nodded. He said, “You never told me your name.”
“Yes I did. You’ve forgotten it already? Maybe I shouldn’t get you another cup.”
Casca disregarded the embarrassment that flashed through him and said, “Tell me again― your name, tell me.”
“Hah! Why should I? You’ll just use it to try to talk me into bed.”
He pouted, “That’s not fair. I told you mine. Do you still remember it?”
She laughed fully, charmingly. “You wear your name on your face. For the rest, you needn’t have bothered.”
“I gave you my full, proper name because I thought you were trying to talk me into bed.”
She laughed again, sounding like wind chimes, her eyes crinkling. He was in love, suddenly, with the most beautiful woman in the world.
He had fallen in love with Ariadne, too. She straightened up the rooms as though they were her own little home. She shopped at the market for greens, decent fish, and freshly butchered meat. Then, she cooked them farm meals. For dinner, she placed flowers on the table. She sang.
Manius came and went, sometimes just stopping to eat, other times bringing a full jug of wine that he took into the sleep room with Ariadne. Lucius would leave for the streets then, staying out for as long as he could. When he returned, usually Manius was asleep or gone. If his brother was still in the insula and awake, Lucius could hear them talking, mostly arguing until Manius yelled for Ariadne to shut up. Then, Lucius left again, coming back later or bedding down someplace else.
To keep their business in order, they needed to be seen together, a united front. Aside from discussing their next move, however, more and more the brothers had little to say to each other. Lucius seriously began to think about separate quarters again. Slowly, the situation was sickening him, as though he had a disease that ate away his insides every day. If he didn’t rein in his thoughts, his mind would be consumed by the awful irony of Ariadne being with his twin brother who was not like him at all in any way. Better to move, Lucius decided. He began to look in earnest for another insula.
He found one just a block away, an important factor in their mutual safety. Feeling satisfied and relaxed, he sauntered back to gather up his belongings and to tell Manius of his move. When he arrived, he found Ariadne alone, cutting up some peppers, shallots, and other vegetables.
“Where is Manius?” asked Lucius.
Ariadne shook her head, “I don’t know. Sit, have something to eat.”
He shrugged and sat at the table. She piled mixed vegetables into a shallow wooden dish, then poured olive oil liberally over top. Lucius spooned a mouthful up and began chewing.
“Minerva’s tits, this is good! What did you put into it?”
Ariadne put her finger to her lips, “Shhh! I used a little bit of the coin Manius left for a pinch of pepper and some sea salt.”
“Pepper! Salt! Fortuna bless you, don’t tell him for sure. He’ll accuse you of robbing his tuck!”
She laughed as he took another spoonful. She had pushed her hair back behind one ear, holding it in place with a single, yellow blossom. Beautiful, he thought.
Ariadne sat down across from him. “My father loved delicious things to eat, and he didn’t care what he spent to buy the best. He shared, too, holding up some delicacy and saying, ‘Taste. Life is no good if you don’t have good things to eat; taste!’ And so, we would try it, me and my two little brothers. My mother, too. He shared even when he was broke. Pheasants eggs, a single stuffed piglet, anything he could find to go with the usual fare. I never got over that,” she said, her big brown eyes gleaming. She reached a hand over the table and touched Lucius’s forearm. “You remind me of him sometimes. You share.”
Lucius felt a wave flood through his entire body, neither a shiver nor a shudder, but a sensation that seemed to change him on the spot.
“Enjoying yourself, brother?”
Manius stood leaning in the doorway. “Such a pretty sight. It’s like dreaming the happiest moment of my life. I see my woman feeding, caring, and caressing me, except for the nose. That’s when it becomes a bad dream, know what I mean?”
“I was just eating, Manius, no reason to get pissed.”
“Oh really? Even when you’re moving out? Do you plan on taking her with you?”
Lucius’s hand froze, his spoon halfway to his mouth. “What? Where did you hear that?”
“I keep an ear out.”
Lucius spun around in his chair. “Have you been spying on me?”
“Don’t feel so special, Naso. I spy on everyone, everything. It’s my nature.”
Lucius raised and lowered his head slowly. “If I find anyone shading me, Capito,” he spit, “I’ll gut him. Then, I’ll come for you.”
“Why wait?” Manius said, straightening up, his hand on the hilt of his knife.
“No, no, no!” cried Ariadne, rushing over to grab Manius’s hand. “Stop it, you are brothers!”
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“Shut your bitch mouth up!” Manius said, pushing her by her face hard to the floor.
Lucius leaped to his feet, his hand grasping his knife.
“That’s right, come on,” said Manius. “I’ll cut your ears off through your throat!”
Lucius started forward, but Ariadne stepped in his way. “No, Lucius, no, he’s your brother. Go, leave.”
He stared at her furiously, ready to throw her out of his way.
“Please,” she said, holding him back by placing her hands on his chest, “go now.”
Lucius shook, trying to still himself. He gritted his teeth in a vicious, death grin and began to move slowly sideways to the door.
“That’s right, slither like the eel you are. Just look back once and I’ll cut your stomach out through your ass!”
Lucius turned, snarling, but Ariadne implored him, her eyes full of terror.
“Crawl out of here, you rat louse. I want to be alone to mount my woman!”
Lucius left, and headed to the nearest drinking house. In a matter of minutes, he drained a full jug of wine. No question about it, he thought, sooner or later, he was going to kill his own brother. In the meantime what could he do? What could he do about Ariadne?
He called for another wine jug, but when it arrived, he slammed it down on the table, smashing it to bloody red smithereens. Ariadne pushed him out to save him, and now she was alone with Manius.
Lucius ran out of the taverna and sped back to the insula. Just as he reached it, he heard a blood-chilling scream. He bounded up the stairs, pulling his blade as he ran, and burst through the door.
A woman sat next to the bed, rocking and wailing, holding Ariadne’s hand. She saw Lucius, shrieked like the one he’d heard below, and ran from the room. Lucius ignored her, staring down at Ariadne’s still form. She was dead, he thought, murdered by Manius.
But she stirred. Life lifted him as he closed in on her. She moved her head slightly back and forth, and he could see that her face was bound with bloody bandages. He leaned down and carefully lifted the edge of the wrappings. She moaned from the pain even though she was unconscious.
Her face was a mass of red ribbons where Manius had drawn his blade back and forth.
Lucius sat down on the edge of the bed, his eyes streaming. Beautiful Ariadne, he thought. Please live, he prayed.
“I heard her cry out,” a woman’s voice said. Without looking, he knew it was the woman who had run. “I was afraid to come in. I saw you rush out, bloody, which made me more afraid. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t just ....”
“It wasn’t me,” he said. “Can you wait here with her? Take care of her?”
The woman didn’t respond.
“I won’t hurt you,” he said. “It wasn’t me, it was my brother.”
He got to his feet. She sidled by him and sat next to Ariadne.
“Take care of her,” Lucius said, thrusting a handful of coins at her. Get her a psychic. I have to go, now, to kill my brother.”
He bolted down the dark stairs two at a time, swinging on the bannister as he turned the corners. When he finally reached the bottom, he pulled his knife and burst from the front doorway.
In the blinding sunlight of the marketplace, Manius stood leaning against a vegetable cart, his arms crossed over his chest. Lucius launched himself from the doorway and Manius met him, whipping out his knife. They crashed into each other, stabbing and slicing, sending bloody spray into the hot afternoon breeze. Each tried to grab hold of the other, trying to stab with their free hand. They twisted away from each other in a grotesque dance, pulling an abdomen in at a thrust, rolling away from the arc of a sweeping slice, colliding with their two shoulders trying to dislodge the other’s hold while stretching away from the knives in the opposite hands.
A quick pivot landed them both onto the vegetable cart, which collapsed beneath their weight. On top, Lucius tried to yank Manius into the range of his knife. But Manius used the momentum of Lucius’s pull to twist past, turning and tugging his brother toward his knife’s point. Lucius ducked down and took the stab in his forearm, slashing up at the same time to open a gap just below Manius’s sternum. They pulled apart for a moment, screaming roaring shouts before closing again, the crowd around them yelling at them in approval, calling out savagely for more.
The brothers slapped together and tried stabbing each other in the back, when suddenly blinding light came from pain, numbness. Again and again, Lucius felt blows to his back, side, his legs, and most of all, his head, causing him to roll into a ball on the dusty ground. Petrified, he attempted to edge away, his knife lost somewhere in the street. But again and again, blows to either side fixed him where he was.
At last, he gave up, failing Ariadne and ready for Manius to finish him off. Instead, the blows tailed off, coming again only if he made any move to leave. Slowly, he pulled his forearm over his face, shading his eyes, which he opened slightly to see what went on.
“This one’s done, Severus. What about that one?”
Lucius heard a muffled voice reply, though he couldn’t make out what he said.
“Okay, get him up and over here.” The man standing over him grabbed his hair and pulled him to his feet. “All right, let me have the other one.”
Lucius opened his eyes when he recognized his father’s voice, then felt crushing white pain as his head was brought together with Manius’s. They both sat down, holding their heads in agony, exhausted.
“You stupid donkeys, bleeding each other in a common marketplace. Well, if you want to fight, you’ll fight. You’re old enough.”
Cassius Casca pushed his sons before him surrounded by his troop of soldiers and his optio, Severus, shouting at the crowd to leave. Since the fight seemed to be over, most of them had returned already to their own business.
Cassius enrolled them both in the militia, making sure that the officer in charge understood exactly what was to be done. They trained. Day and night, they worked on mastering their weapons, pilum, gladius, shield, long spear. The one fast rule was that they were not allowed to fight with each other anymore.
But it didn’t matter to Lucius. He had to know what had happened to Ariadne, if she lived or died. If she had died, so would Manius. If she lived, who knew?
After a good month of training, the militia guards relaxed their watch over the twins. Lucius could tell by the banter between himself and the other men, the building of good will. He waited, though, until he thought that enough time had passed. Then, one evening, he slipped out of the barracks and ran back to their old insula.
He hid in an alley until dawn. Once the sun had risen, he entered and climbed the seven flights to their old place. Outside the door, he knocked quietly. No one answered at first. He knocked again, more firmly, and the door snapped open.
“Yeah?” A man twice his age stood in the doorway, holding a cudgel. “What do you want?”
Lucius casually rested his hand on his knife. “I’m Lucius Casca. I lived here. I’m looking for a girl, an injured girl. She lived her, too.”
The man, filthy in a rotting tunic, swung his head back and forth. “Naw.”
He moved to shut the door when Lucius put his sandal in the doorway. “Hey, what the...?” the man said, raising the cudgel. By then, Lucius had his knife point pricking the man’s neck. “Her name was Ariadne. She was hurt, bad.”
“Listen, we’ve been in this hole for maybe three weeks. There was no girl, here. None. I swear by Apollo’s prick!”
Lucius pulled back the knife and pushed the man back into the room. He started down the stairway. Dead, he thought. If not, where could she be?
He had a thought and went back up to the seventh floor. The man had stuck out his head, but when he saw Lucius coming up the stairs again, he pulled back and slammed the door shut. Lucius could hear the bolt fall as he went to another door. He knocked.
The woman who first had found Ariadne appeared in the doorway.
“You’re back,” she said. “She’
s gone. As soon as she healed up as best she could, she left. I told her you would be back, but she just shook her head and said, ‘No more.’ Only the gods know where she is now. Only Juno can say how she can make a living.”
Lucius thanked her and left. He walked slowly back to the barracks, crying without tears. When he arrived, they stripped him to the waist, strung him up, and gave him ten lashes for desertion. Manius laid them on.
After he had healed, they marched. Outside of Patavium, they patrolled the roads, ever on the hunt for bandits. If they found them, they would make short work of them, crucifying any who survived. Manius and Lucius excelled in such melees, surprising the cutthroats with their ferociousness and fearlessness.
Manius particularly enjoyed slaughter, loving the soldier’s gladius for its range compared to the knife. Lucius dispatched his foes with his great strength, but little elan, opined Manius. Lucius ignored him, knowing well the rules that Centurion Casca had laid down for them, even in his absences. If one of them killed the other, he would die.
Still, the forced peace eventually bred an uneasy truce between them. Manius cajoled Lucius for his coldness around him, even joking about his sour puss. He never crossed one line, however. He never mentioned Ariadne. Her name, her existence, disappeared between them. Fighting back to back again closed over the wound as well, though without ever healing it.
The militia captain began to notice the Casca brothers, not only for their withering attacks in battle, but also for their keen intelligence. They never entered an engagement without gauging the terrain, the strength of the forces before them, or seeking out a good escape route should things go wrong. Before long, both brothers had been promoted to optios.
Cassius Casca returned, this time to recruit for Quintus Caecillus Metallus’s war against the Macedonian pretender Andriscus. A praetor, Publius Iuventius Thalna, was first to challenge Andriscus, who had brought the four republics of Macedonia together. Andriscus whipped Iuventius Thalna and immediately seized Thessaly. Metallus intended to destroy Andriscus. In just a few years, he had.