The Broken Souls

by Rivka Spicer

  “That’s all I needed to hear.” He cut her off and leaned in to kiss her, igniting a hot burst of desire that flooded through both of them. “You are the reason I carry on when my arms are too heavy with exhaustion to lift my weapon, when my grip is slick with blood. The glory and gold are nothing compared to the look in your eyes as I walk away intact once more. You are the reason I live Empress.” He rolled her over onto the cot, laying his heavy frame along the length of her reassuringly. “You are the reason I live...”

  When Faustina left she rushed to be home before her husband and was suitably arranged in bed with what she hoped was a convincing expression of pain when he arrived.

  “Are you alright?” He asked, concern clouding his tone and Faustina instantly welled with guilt. “I heard you were unwell.”

  “It is just a headache husband.” She lied and he smiled softly.

  “I shall send someone up to massage your head.” He kissed her and left to get on with business while Faustina lay in bed and wondered how she was going to survive this. Surely love and guilt were never intended to tear a woman apart so?

  Over the next eight weeks Faustina and Julius embarked on an epic love affair, snatching every moment they could to be together and taking yet greater risks when they could not. Faustina even managed to be with him in his room before he went into the arena, lovingly blessing each piece of armour as she placed it upon him in the hopes that her love would protect him from a fatal blow. Every moment they were apart tore off a little shred of her soul so that she ached to see him and after a time she realised that he was just as in love with her as she with him.

  They thought they had kept it a secret but somehow, somewhere they had gotten careless and one hot summer morning Faustina was summoned from her palace garden into the presence of the Emperor. She knew the instant she walked in that he had discovered her infidelity. It was written in the rage that contorted his features and the fury that seethed almost tangibly around him.

  “Wife I have discovered that you have been rutting with a gladiator.” He spat, and in three quick strides he had stormed across the room and slapped her. “How dare you!” Faustina lay where she had fallen, dazed but aware enough to remain silent for fear of incurring further beating. “A gladiator! Was an Emperor not good enough for you?” He roared and then, to Faustina’s surprise, she saw tears in his eyes. “How could you do this to me?” His tone broke. “I love you! I gave you all there was to give in the known world! Do you not love me in return?”

  “Of course I love you husband.” She replied quietly, sitting up slowly as her head spun with the force of the blow.

  “So why did you do it?”

  “I don’t know.” She sobbed helplessly. “I saw him in the parade and I just…I don’t know. I wanted him. I couldn’t help it.” Marcus Aurelius turned icy quiet in his fury.

  “It is just as well that I love you wife, for I will let you live. But this will never happen again, do I make myself clear?”

  “Yes my Lord.” The instant he left the room Faustina fled the palace and headed for the gladiator pens where she knew Julius was preparing for the day ahead, not caring who saw her.

  “Faustina what are you doing here like this?” Julius was angry until he saw her tear-ravaged face with the bruise spreading across her cheekbone and then he sighed. “He found out didn’t he?” Faustina nodded, too racked with sobs to speak, and so Julius enfolded her in his huge arms until she became calm enough to talk.

  “He called me in this morning.” She explained, wiping tears that still dripped from her eyes. “He told me it must never happen again and that he would let me live this time, but I came to warn you. Do not go out there today Julius, I beg of you. Walk away.” But Julius had other ideas.

  “Run away with me.” He urged. “We can go and live somewhere they’ll never find us and grow old together. I have made enough money to keep us both.” Despite herself Faustina was horrified.

  “The Empress of Rome become a Gladiatrix?” The thought was repellent. Gladiators were the scum of society in terms of the caste system but the women that followed them were even worse. There was a noblewoman that had left it all years before to become a female gladiator because she fell in love and she was still ridiculed in the forum gossip. “Julius I love you but I cannot. My life is here in Rome. I would die if I were exiled to the far reaches of Gaul. He would find us, you know he would. There is nowhere we can hide.” Despite his hurt Julius could see that she was right and he cupped her soft cheek in one rough hand.

  “I understand. A precious flower such as you needs to be cared for often, not left in exile in the cold.” He kissed her deeply and then went back to preparing himself to fight, sponging down with cold water.

  “Please Julius! He will kill you!” Wept Faustina. “Don’t go out there today!”

  “I must.” He said simply. “It is all I have left if you will not love me. I do not wish to live without you. I would rather die.”

  Kim, Mara and Nkara all listened with sick fascination as Jen went on to describe the scene that they recognised from her dream, where she had dressed Julius in his armour and kissed him goodbye for the last time.

  The royal guards had found Faustina weeping on the floor a few hours later when Julius still had not returned from the arena and they bundled her in a blanket before lifting her into a curtained litter and bearing her back to the palace. To her horror, the heart-broken Faustina saw several black-robed Chaldean priests leaving the palace as she arrived and she shuddered. They made her skin crawl. She knew her husband greatly valued their advice but she could not help but feel that they were in some way evil and she had an awful feeling that their presence had something to do with the morning’s events.

  She was marched up the steps and through the palace, past whispering servants and disapproving senators, barely glancing left or right – stuck in her own walled misery. They took her to the royal bedchamber where Marcus Aurelius was waiting for her along with yet more of the black-robed priests and a bloody form lying prone on the floor. It took Faustina a few moments to register who it was and then she sank to her knees screaming soundlessly in horror. Julius blinked slowly up at her, alive but barely, and tried to whisper something, his lips forming a silent ‘I love you’.

  “Do you love him?” Marcus Aurelius asked in a bizarrely detached tone, and Faustina couldn’t help herself. She nodded, reaching out for the fallen gladiator.

  “It is as I thought.” He sighed and turned to the priest. “Let us do this thing.”

  The next thing Faustina knew she had been stripped of her clothes and was standing naked beneath her husband’s glare while the priest leaned down with a wickedly curved knife. Before she could react he had cut a gaping hole in Julius’ throat and blood spurted everywhere. Screaming, Faustina threw all her weight at her guards as they struggled to hold her from running to her lover. It eventually took four of them to control her, picking her up and throwing her to the bed where they each sat on a limb to restrain her movement.

  Faustina screamed her throat raw while they collected her beloved Julius’ blood in an earthenware bowl and daubed it all over her.

  “Calm down wife.” Marcus Aurelius ordered irritably at one point. “They say this will cure you of your love for him.” But I did not want to be cured! Shrieked a voice somewhere in the maelstrom of Faustina’s agony and she gave over to weeping, her throat no longer able to give voice to her screams.

  She almost didn’t notice when Marcus Aurelius thrust into her until a new kind of pain registered on her senses and she looked up at him through teary eyes while he laboured over her as she was covered in the blood of the man she would love for eternity.

  Eventually shock settled in and when Marcus Aurelius reached his climax and pulled out of her she lay unmoving on the bed in a daze, unable to even say her own name. All she could think of or see was the face of Julius as he had tried to tell her he loved her. She wanted the world to stop and let her follow him. She
would rather die than live a lifetime with the memory of what had just happened to her. The priests may have told Marcus Aurelius it would cure her of her infatuation, but in reality she saw it for exactly what it was – a clear warning of what would happen if she ever dared threaten the might of the Roman Empire again.

  As Jen finished recounting the sorry tale, she flipped over violently and vomit sprayed across the floor as the memories threatened to overwhelm her. Not giving a damn about her shoes, Kim stepped through it and wrapped Jen in a hug.

  “It’s alright hon.” She whispered, cradling her friend protectively. “You can come back now. We’re all here.”

  “Kim?” Jen was still weeping, her pain from the memory so raw she felt it as though it were fresh.

  “Yes, it’s me. I love you.” Kim stroked Jen’s hair as she wept, wondering how on earth they were going to bring her back from this one.

  It took an hour before Jen had stopped crying enough to listen to Mara and Nkara and she sat cuddled up next to Kim who rhythmically stroked her back as though comforting a child.

  “Well I think it’s fairly safe to say that the decision that broke the balance was your choice each time of duty over love.” Mara explained simply. “Love like that happens only rarely and has the power to change history. It’s the kind of love that myths are made of and yet each time you were too strong, or too weak depending on which way you look at it. Your sense of duty and fear of the unknown made you choose the wrong man. You chose duty when you should have thrown it all to the wind and followed your heart.”

  “So what are you saying?” Jen frowned. “I’m going to meet someone in the next few months that I will fall in love with and that I should leave Tom?” Mara smiled gently and sorrowfully.

  “That is entirely your decision to make Jennifer.” She pointed out as tactfully as she could. “I cannot tell you what to do. You may decide that the pros of staying with Tom are worth it this time around and choose to leave your soul the way it is. After all, you have a lot to lose. I remember reading in the social papers that this is as much a marriage of business practicality as of love. It has not been an easy decision in the past and it will not be an easy decision now. You have a responsibility as the daughter and heir to a large business empire to make careful and tactical decisions in all aspects of your life. Tom is a good match.”

  “My family would never speak to me again if I left him.” Jen couldn’t take it all in, she was still shell-shocked from her memories. “Can we do this later? I need some air.” Without waiting for an answer she got up to leave the room, walking a little unsteadily.

  “Go with her.” Mara told Kim and Nkara quietly. “She will need you.”

  They followed her at a short distance as she wandered out across the lawn where some of the students were performing relaxing exercises.

  “Will she remember any more?” Kim asked Nkara quietly as Jen walked slowly towards a wooded area and Nkara shrugged.

  “It’s possible. Why?” Kim sighed.

  “The story didn’t end there.” She admitted. “A child was born out of that unholy union – a half-mad monster that went by the name of Commodus. Most people remember Caligula or Nero fiddling while Rome burned, but Commodus was an evil to rival them both combined. It’s not certain how much of the circumstances of his conception he discovered but as a man he took to fighting in the arena himself. He invented the cruellest, most perverted and agonising punishments for the pettiest of crimes. He was a very sick man.”

  “Given how he came to be on this earth, are you surprised?” Nkara tried to mask her horror with an attempt at humour but Kim didn’t laugh.

  “If she remembers any of that it may push her over the edge.” She pointed out, and Nkara sighed.

  “I’ll pop into the herbology lab this afternoon and put something together for her that should prevent further dreams from surfacing. Other than that, all I can do is give her the healing she asks for.”

  “Can you heal a broken heart?” Kim didn’t mean it to sound critical and Nkara didn’t take it that way.

  “I can’t change it, but I can make it more bearable.” She said honestly. “I can take some of the pain away. That is the gift of an empath. But she needs to ask, I cannot do it without her permission.”

  “What is this place?” Jen called back to them and Kim gasped. Without realising it they had walked into a clearing and into a huge circle of standing stones. It was an awesomely impressive sight.

  “Mara would be able to tell you its real name but we all call it Little Henge.”

  “As in Stonehenge?” Despite herself Kim was amused and Nkara laughed.

  “Well yes actually. It’s built of the same stuff – Presceli bluestone. This is our holy place. Mara had it built when she first moved in here twenty-five years ago to serve as somewhere we could hold our rituals, especially for the great festivals. It’s built on one of the most powerful ley-lines in Britain. I can’t remember the exact astronomical significance of it but it’s supposed to act as a giant calendar. I think it might be based on the original layout of Stonehenge but I’m not sure. It’s certainly more impressive when you can view it up close. I visited Stonehenge once and they make you look at it from behind a fence 20 metres away!”

  “It’s huge!” Jen couldn’t help but state the obvious. Each of the standing stones in the outer ring was at least thirteen or fourteen feet high, six feet wide and four foot deep with matching lintels. There was a smaller ring within the outer ring of shorter stones, about four feet high and rounded so that the women could see over them, but the whole thing was at least a hundred metres in diameter.

  “Apparently it took two years and over a hundred workers to build it.” Nkara explained absently as she ran a loving hand over one of the stones. “Can’t you feel the energy in here? I like to think of the rocks as the bones of the earth.” Even the sceptical Kim had to admit there was an odd, almost expectant feeling to the place like the very air was waiting for something. All Jen could sense was a feeling of age. Nkara was right, wherever their birthplace, these ancient stones really were the bones the earth was built upon.

  “Is this where the Beltane whatsit is tomorrow night?” She asked and Nkara nodded.

  “Don’t worry about being able to find it in the dark though. The path here is lit up.” She told them. “Come, we should go eat. Are you up to lunch?” Both she and Kim studied Jen, who looked pale in the midday sunlight, and she sighed.

  “I guess so. I should eat…” She didn’t sound convinced and Nkara came closer to her.

  “Will you let me take some of your pain?” She asked softly. “I can help. Let me do this for you, as your friend. Will you trust me?” Jen felt tears welling again, and she dashed them away as she nodded.

  “Okay.” She let Nkara lead her to the centre of the stone circle and they faced each other as Nkara clasped Jen’s head in her hands and leaned in so that their foreheads were touching. Exhaling slowly, Nkara relaxed and Jen seemed to deflate a little with her.

  Jen could never explain afterwards what had happened or what it had felt like, but when she left the circle it was with a lightness in her chest as though a great weight had been lifted and she felt ready to start the fight for her soul.

  Chapter eight

  Over lunch some of the normality returned to their friendship as Jen shook off the remnants of her remembered pain, but there were still times when she fell silent and gazed into the middle distance. Both Kim and Nkara felt a twinge of sadness each time they noticed it, unable to imagine what she must feel like or even what she was thinking, but they didn’t say anything. They didn’t know what to say. How could you find the words to comfort someone who was living through what Jen was? It defied every sense of normality, even in the strange world of the Manse.

  Their afternoon in the spa was both relaxing and uplifting for all the girls. They started with a facial and hot stone therapy, before moving onto massage, which was followed with a haircut and blow dry. They fi
nished just in time for dinner feeling hugely relaxed and totally stress-free. They rushed through getting dolled up and their taxi was waiting for them out front to take them to Kim’s promised steak dinner at a local restaurant.

  They celebrated in style and by the time they staggered back through the doors of the Manse it was well after midnight and they were all somewhat tipsy.

  “Thank god breakfast is a half hour later tomorrow!” Giggled Nkara as they traipsed upstairs. “I’m going to be so broken in the morning!”

  “Just make sure you have a few pints of water before you sleep.” Jen advised her. She couldn’t help it; she’d always been a sensible drunk.

  When Jen reached her room she took her own advice and was sitting in her windowsill with a large glass of water watching the moonlight on the trees when suddenly she began to cry. She didn’t know why she started, but even though she’d had a wonderful afternoon she’d been so traumatised by the morning’s events and now that she was tired she wasn’t dealing with it at all well. Every time she had a moment to herself all she could think about was her pain and loss. As she cried she realised what a great love it must have been each time for the heartbreak to last over four thousand years. How could she have thrown it all away for duty? Up until now it had been so easy to deny that it was her and she still tried to shy away from it, but deep inside she realised that you couldn’t feel that kind of anguish from another person’s thoughts or something your head just made up. There were still things she needed to do for her own sanity to confirm it, but she’d reached a turning point in her thoughts and it was a tough one to swallow. It was time to accept that these were memories and they were hers and she needed to deal with them before they destroyed her.