The Adventures of a Roman Slave

by Lisa Cach

  “Why? Why do you need to know?” He lowered his hands to my buttocks and massaged them, pulling them up and apart and then down again, the motion tugging at my secret folds, and letting me feel the parting of my gates, as if they were being held open for him. “I don’t want to argue with you, Nimia. Or talk about my father’s death. There are better ways to spend the time.” His mouth went back to work on my shoulder, my breast. “Whether you have a vision or not, I want you on your back, naked, your thighs parted, your sex swollen and waiting. I want to feel you tight around me as I sink inside you.”

  My ability to think floated away. His fingertips were so close to my entrance, my folds, my stamen. I wanted to feel them against me. In me. “I need to know about your father’s death because . . . because . . .” He pulled up the hem of my borrowed gown and I felt his callused palm against the back of one thigh, his strong fingers reaching inward to caress the soft pad of flesh inside the top of my thigh.

  “Because?”

  Gods, my thoughts were scattered in the wind. I forced them back, and forced words to my tongue. This was too important. “I fear someone may have killed him, because of my vision. That they saw my vision as an opportunity.”

  “That would bother you?” he murmured over my nipple.

  “Of course! I don’t want to feel responsible for his death. And I do, I’m not sure why, but I do.”

  “If the Fates are in control as you say, then he would have died one way or the other.”

  Were the Fates in total control? If so, then all our lives were already written, and as time passed we discovered ourselves piece by piece, as if listening to an old story for the first time. Each choice we made was only an illusion, our decision already known if we could but see the whole tale. Why then the striving, and the struggles? To what end? What would be, would be.

  I couldn’t accept that. My thirst for life and for freedom had buoyed me as we fled from Sygarius. I had felt a hundred times that it was my choice whether I collapsed and gave myself up, or whether I put my foot once more forward, and continued to fight for a life of my own.

  Clovis scooped me up in his arms and carried me back to his bed, and laid me down upon the woolen coverlet. He started to undress me, undoing all the work of Audofleda and her maid. I put my hands over his on the copper girdle, stopping him from unfastening it.

  If I couldn’t accept that the Fates had already determined all, then that meant my visions did have the power to influence events, the same as I could change this present moment by succumbing to Clovis, or holding him at arm’s length.

  “Tell me how Childeric died.”

  The golden lamplight painted his features, casting shadows and polishing cheekbones, and catching like strands of sunlight in his short beard and long hair. His eyes, however, were as cold and pale a blue as a winter sky. I felt again the rushing of knowing what I’d felt the first time I saw him: this man was part of my destiny. As he gazed at me without expression, his thoughts unreadable, I felt a chill run over my skin. If not for that inexplicable knowing, I would have feared what harm he might do me. I would never have given myself to him, nor sought him out.

  Gods help me if that knowing was wrong, and I in truth knew nothing of what would be between us. From the way he was looking at me at that moment, I should have thought love an impossibility for him, and even affection an unlikely emotion.

  “You did curse my father,” he said, “the moment you told your vision. We all heard; we all knew what it meant. Whether your vision was real or false, whether Sygarius had told you to tell such a tale or not, my father’s fate was sealed, and he knew it. No true Frank would let such an opportunity go by: a sorceress, proclaiming Childeric’s kingship at an end! Everyone would believe it was meant to be. Even he began to believe it. The only question was when, and by whose hand. The knowledge haunted him. Weakened him. He became fearful, timid. His men began to think that it would be better if he were taken out and a stronger man put in his place.”

  “You know who killed him.”

  “You know who killed him.”

  I shook my head, a feeling of dread rising up within me. Dread, because I feared he was right.

  “It’s why you’ve been so persistent in asking: you already know the truth.”

  “I don’t.” I clung to denial, not wanting to believe it.

  He lay his full length against my side, one leg over mine, holding me in place while his fingertips traced over the links of the girdle: across my waist, over my hip bone, down to the valley of my sex, where he pressed the metal against my sex, hard, almost hurting me before releasing the links and resuming his casual stroking of my belly. “Our tribe of Franks, the Salians, are only one among several, each with their own leader. There is no king of kings among the Franks, uniting our tribes, though we need one if we’re to take Gaul. My father had long ceded any attempt to be that king of kings. Our brother tribes are both our rivals and our allies, and as Childeric weakened, they grew bolder. There were rumors that Danoweg, of the River Franks, wanted to bring the Salians under his banner. He wanted to be our king. With Childeric as weak as he was, there were plenty who would have abandoned us to fight under a stronger man; a man who might go on to lead all the Franks. I couldn’t allow that to happen. I couldn’t let him take the destiny that is meant to be mine.”

  “But Childeric was your father,” I said. Clovis’s winter eyes showed no emotion, and a chill filled my gut. He’d murdered the man who gave him life. “Your family. Your mother’s husband, your sister’s father. There is no bond stronger than that of family.”

  “The Salians are my family. I had to cut off the diseased limb before it killed us all.”

  Clovis pulled up the hem of my gown, his hand sliding up my bare thigh. He shifted his body so that he was half on top of me, his leg wedging my thighs apart. I lay still, too stunned by what he’d revealed, and too frightened of what he was, to move.

  “Does your mother know?” I managed to ask, my voice hoarse.

  He chuckled. “She held his arms down while I smothered him. My mother despises weakness.” His thumb stroked the soft flesh of my inner thigh, then brushed over the crest of my folds, sending a shiver of sensation through my sex even as I cringed inside. The hand that stroked me had murdered the one man whom he should have defended unto death.

  “If I had known what would come of it,” I said, “I would have done all in my power to speak not a word.”

  He came fully over me, both his legs between mine, the gown now pushed up to my waist, baring my body. He rested his elbows to either side of my arms, caging me under him. He still wore his short leather breeches beneath his tunic, and I felt the slickness of the tanned leather as he pressed the hard ridge of his staff against my tender sex. “You have no need to apologize, Nimia. I hadn’t meant to take the kingship from him so early, true, and I would rather have had a few more years to build both my name and alliances. I know I’m young to rule; too young, in many eyes. Fortune had her own plans, though, and it was either take the opportunity your prophecy gave me, or lose everything. I’m not upset with you for forcing my hand.”

  “I wasn’t apologizing for that.” I thought of Childeric as I had seen him, a bluff, hearty man who had leered at me with healthy lust, drunk deeply of his wine, and laughed with his men. Regret and a great sadness welled up within me. If not for me, he would still be leading his soldiers, a confident, comfortable man who’d found his contentment in life and worked with Sygarius to keep Soissons safe from the Visigoths. Tears spilled out the corners of my eyes and dripped down my temples. “I’m sorry that my words destroyed your father. I’m sorry for the tragedy my prophecy wrought. I should never speak another.”

  “The gods gave you such a gift to use it,” Clovis said, and nuzzled my neck. “They want you to use it for me.”

  I shook my head, and pulled my arms up from my sides and pressed my hands t
o his chest, trying to push him away. “No.”

  “Why else should we be together, now? It was fated. I need your visions, Nimia. I need one tonight.”

  “I won’t do it. I won’t sentence another man to death.”

  He pressed his hand down over my sex, his long fingers sliding the length of my folds until one tip pressed at my outer gates. He swirled it there, gathering moisture. “You’ll give me a prophecy.”

  “No. Stop it, Clovis. Get off me. Don’t touch me.” I struggled under him.

  “Shh,” he soothed, even as he used his weight and his strength to keep me pinned. “Shh. I’m not going to hurt you; you know that would be of no use to me. It will be pleasure I give you, until you see what I need to know.”

  “It’s wrong. I won’t do it.”

  His finger dipped within me. I squirmed under him, trying to get away from his unwanted touch, but he held me down and his finger slid deeper, deeper, and then curled upward, thrumming a hidden spot in my passage that I hadn’t known to exist, and sending shimmers of sensation out through my sex. I sucked in a breath.

  Clovis licked my neck, and then whispered in my ear, “Whatever gave you the idea that you had a choice?”

  I’m not going to enjoy it if I’m being forced.”

  “The same way you didn’t enjoy being forced to have sex with Sygarius?” He pulled his finger out, only to replace it with two. It hurt a little as he forced them inside me; I was still so narrow, and unused to intrusion. Yet even as I felt the pinch of entry, my passage seemed to yearn for more. My body wanted to be stretched and filled, no matter what my mind said. The heel of his palm came against my folds, rubbing gently as his fingers thrust within me, finding again that secret spot.

  “That . . . was different,” I managed to say. My hips wanted to rock in rhythm with his hand, but I held them still. I didn’t want a vision. I didn’t want to catch sight of the future and have Clovis use it to choose whom to kill next. “Pleasure was Sygarius’s only goal.”

  “For his own sake.”

  “For mine as well.”

  “If that were true, he wouldn’t have kept you a slave. He would have left you free to choose to stay or go, and trusted that he gave you such ecstasy that you would never want to leave.” He eased his fingers from me and unfastened the copper girdle.

  “Is that what you think you’ll do? Give me so much pleasure that I forget all else?”

  “I know I will.”

  His arrogance enraged me, and I struggled to roll away from him. “You are a boy compared to Sygarius, with a boy’s experience of women. You’d stick your rod in me, thrust it with the careless vigor of a rabbit, and think me impressed.”

  He grabbed me around the waist and hauled me to him, and in the wrestling struggle that followed he dragged my clothes off over my head. He pushed me belly-down onto the coverlet and held me there with a knee on my back while he stripped off his own clothes. “I don’t know why you’re fighting me, Nimia,” he said, injury in his voice.

  My head was turned away from him, my cheek pressed to the wool, my breath coming in pants. My hair was tangled over my face, obscuring my view of the lamplit room. He was too strong for me to fight; my only defense from giving him what he wanted was to distract myself from his caresses. I tried to think of foul things: public latrines; the white horses being slaughtered; leprous beggars crawling in the street.

  His knee came off my back, and then I felt him tracing the spiral tattoos over my thighs and buttocks. He traced a line across my buttocks and then toward my gates, pulling my thighs apart to continue his trailing course. He stopped near my entrance, his fingertip hovering there for several moments, and then with both hands he lifted and parted my buttocks. I felt him staring at my loins, examining them, and then felt the vibration of his laughter.

  I pushed up on my forearms and looked over my shoulder at him, confused and wary. “What?”

  “You, my lovely Nimia, were made to be fucked.” He rolled me onto my back and knelt between my thighs. His mentula stood up, long and thick and eager, a thatch of dark gold hair at its base. But instead of using it, he took hold of my knees and lifted them while spreading them wide, opening my hairless folds to his gaze. His eyes traced a pattern over my sex, and he laughed again.

  “I don’t know what you’re laughing about,” I said, embarrassed.

  “You’ve never looked at yourself?”

  “I have.” I saw fragments of my loins when I plucked the hairs, using a small mirror in my palm.

  “But have you looked, at the whole pattern?”

  I shook my head, growing curious despite my embarrassment. I knew the patterns of my tattoos where I could easily see them, but viewing the whole of the design would have meant access to a large mirror, and crouching naked in strange positions was sure to raise questions in anyone who saw me.

  “Wait here,” he said, dropping my knees and crawling off the bed. His rigid staff bobbed as he moved, and my eyes seemed unable to leave its thick, upright curving length, its skin painted soft gold by the lamplight. My entrance pulsed once in mute pleading.

  No, I can’t want him. He’s vicious. Power-hungry. His only thoughts are for getting what he wants. He has no heart.

  He returned to the bed with a silver mirror, and an expression on his face of such eager, boyish delight that all my certainties of his badness began to fall away. “Look!” he said, and held the mirror near my loins.

  I tilted his hold on the mirror until I could see myself, feeling awkward to be lying there while we both examined my crotch. I saw a spiral of concentric ovals drawn upon my most secret parts, the outermost ring starting above the hood of my stamen. The bottom half of the spiral was out of sight below my sex. “It’s a spiral.”

  He shook his head. “Hold the mirror.” When I did so, he gently parted my folds, revealing a line drawn along one side of my inner wings, the line ending in a hook shape that curled around the entrance to my passage. Another line bisected the first, crossing from inner thigh to inner thigh across my stamen. “It must have felt like being burnt with molten iron, to have that drawn on you there,” he said.

  Flashes of early memory came to me: bitter herbal potions to lull me; ointments to dull sensation; crying and trying to be brave while my mother, surrounded by the other women of the Phanne, put these first marks upon my body. I must have been no more than three or four years old.

  “It’s not a spiral like the other marks; you know that, don’t you?” he said.

  I shook my head.

  “It’s a labyrinth. Like the one Daedalus built to hold the Minotaur.”

  I stared at the design, then holding the mirror with one hand, used my other to press a fingertip lightly against my entrance, then follow the path outward, turning and curving from one side of my sex to the other, until I lost track of the path because it was too difficult to reach.

  “It comes out here,” Clovis said, touching the entrance to the maze, above the peak of my hood. He dragged his fingertip down to the sensitive flesh above my stamen and swirled it, making me gasp. “It seems to instruct any man where to start. And where to finish.” He touched my entrance.

  “That can’t have been the purpose.”

  He took the mirror from my hand and tossed it aside. He settled his length on top of me, his mouth even with my breasts, his torso holding my thighs open. “Why not?” He put his mouth over one nipple and sucked, rubbing his tongue over the pink pebble.

  Gods, it felt good. One hand stroked slowly up and down my side, pausing at my hip to knead my curves. His hand felt hungry on me, as if wanting to eat me.

  “There has to be more meaning,” I said, struggling to stay present; to not let myself float away on the sensations he was creating. “Any man knows where to start and finish.”

  “Even boys who fuck like rabbits?” He nipped my nipple, making me flinc
h, then soothed the injury with his tongue. “I’ll make you regret those words, Nimia.”

  I already did. I could hear the distant buzzing sound that signaled the approach of a vision; an approach that for whatever reason I always saw as a golden swarm of bees coming toward me.

  Clovis rolled onto his side, taking me with him and hiking my leg up over his hip. His mouth went to work on my other breast while his hand stroked my buttock and thigh, his fingertips skimming my folds. It was the lightest of caresses, barely a whisper, and all the more devastating for that. His touch teased, making me want more. There was no satisfaction for me in that sweeping pass: only frustration and hunger.

  And the growing hum of bees.

  I forced my mind to function. The labyrinth: I should think on what it meant. Puzzling on that would surely provide distraction enough . . .

  He pressed a fingertip against my opening and held it motionless there, his touch too light to penetrate. It wasn’t enough; I needed more. The moments passed and I felt my entrance pulse, begging him to come in. The buzzing grew, and my vision began to cloud with shimmers of golden wings. I rocked my hips against him, trying to force him inside me.

  “There we go,” he said with satisfaction. “There’s no point in resisting.”

  “No! I won’t!” I cried, and threw myself into one last desperate struggle to free myself from his touch and the coming vision. I flailed against him, taking him by surprise and gaining space between us. I scrambled off the other side of the bed and was halfway to the doorway when he caught me, pulling me against his naked body, his mentula like a tree limb against my belly, impossibly hard and surely twice the width of my poor small passage.

  Clovis reached for something, and then before I knew what he was doing, he was tying my hands behind my back with a thick strap of leather. “Has your time as a slave made you want it like this? You can’t let yourself enjoy it unless you feel you have no choice?”

  I shook my head in denial, but I didn’t know if there was truth to his words. How could I? I had so little experience. I’d never lain with a man who loved me, and wanted to share the joining as if sharing a part of himself. “Don’t do this, Clovis. Please.”