Fic: Silentium
Sep. 2nd, 2012 09:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerTitle: Silentium
Fandom: Rosemary Sutcliff, Eagle of the Ninth
Pairings: ALL THE PAIRINGS. Esca/Marcus, Esca/Cottia, Marcus/Cottia.
Rating: PG
Beta:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
carmarthen! Who is awesome!
Disclaimer: So not mine. :(
Prompt:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
hc_bingo, learning to be loved.
Summary: Perhaps this feeling was only a thing of the moment, Esca thought, looking away from the sunlight limning Marcus and Cottia in gold. Tomorrow Cottia might be merely Cottia again, and again it would be only looking at Marcus that made him ache.
This is also over at Archive of Our Own, here.
It was not that Esca wanted to go into the Roman town with them. Someone must convince Cub that their fine new cow was neither for eating nor for frightening, and besides, Esca liked even less than Cottia to return to Roman walls.
It was not that he envied the trip. But when they returned in the evening, and Cub at last abandoned the trembling heifer and ran to them – and Cottia’s laugh peeled like silver bells, with Marcus’s deeper laugh rising beneath it – when Esca looked out at them, Marcus had one hand on her shoulder, leaning on her as once he had leaned on Esca.
And then Marcus stole a kiss of Cottia; and that, he had never done with Esca.
Esca went back in the house. The envy throbbed in his temples, where a headache had grown from the over-hot day. It was that Cottia had so many things – wealth, and charm and freedom (those unclipped ears), Marcus – so many things; and valued them so little, it seemed. She had so much, yet still was so angry.
But then, anger also was a luxury. A slave could no more wear it than he could wear Cottia’s gold eardrops, and though Esca was no longer a slave, the habits of slavery were not as easily put aside as eardrops, either.
It was a little later that Marcus came in, the amphora of wine hefted on his shoulder pulling his tunic tight against his chest, so that Esca had to look away. Cub twined about Marcus’s legs, and Esca was glad to have the distraction: he grabbed Cub by the scruff of the neck, and Marcus flashed him his sweet smile of thanks.
The smile lingered a moment, and Esca began to smile back, his heart a little fast. But then Marcus’s eyes jumped away, searching. “Where is Cottia?”
Though he had just been with her all day. Esca rubbed Cub fiercely behind the ears. “Is there more to bring in?” he asked.
“No; there was little enough worth buying,” said Marcus, peering about, as if Cottia might be hiding in the shadows like a spoiled child; and at last glanced at Esca, as though he would know where she went.
“I suppose she went to get some air,” Esca said, scratching Cub so fiercely that Cub nipped at him.
“She does not like Roman towns,” said Marcus, sounding sad enough that Esca looked up at him. But Marcus was looking out the door. “I will go after her,” Marcus said, and left Esca alone.
But Cottia returned first, eardrops flashing with reflected sunset as she came in. “Marcus is looking for you,” Esca told her, rubbing vigorously at Cub’s back so he did not need to look at her.
“I only went out to the stream,” she said. “To see that there are still free untrammeled things in the world – places that are not all straight lines and cages.”
She shivered suddenly, like a dog shaking off water. “Romans and their walls!” she cried. “Everywhere walls, as if people were cows who needs must be hemmed in, else they run off in the wilderness! Why is it so important to them, that they must control everyone all the time?”
And Esca felt he could not bear it anymore. “Cottia. What have the Romans done to you that you should hate them so?”
She grew very still, but it was no peaceful stillness; rather, the fierce stillness of a heron waiting at the edge of a fish pond. “What do you mean?”
“Your aunt and uncle took you in, and brought you up as a noble girl, with gold eardrops and your own slave to look after you, and got you Marcus for a husband. What can you complain of in that?”
Her eyes were very large in her narrow face. “My own slave to spy on me, you mean,” she spat. “To make sure I became a proper Roman girl, and not at all of the Iceni – they wanted me to forget that I even was of the Iceni! They refused to call me Cottia, and laughed at our stories, and set Nissa as a guard on me so I could not leave the house, even to our own garden, if I spoke my own tongue!”
She caught her breath, her small fists clenching, and Esca thought, A fierce warrior of the Iceni she would be. But Roman maidens did not fight, and no more did the maidens of the Iceni, since Rome had come; the blood might sing in her as it sang in him, but she could never let it free.
“Cottia – ” he began, but did not know how to go on.
“Esca!” she replied. “Do not say, because I have not suffered as much as you, that Rome has done nothing to me!”
She whirled and stormed from the house, head held high like a queen, with the sunset burnishing her hair to a tail of fire. And Esca felt small and sick and rather foolish.
Of course Cottia had suffered. At least no one had told him he must be grateful to be taken from his tribe, and made over into a Roman thing.
***
“I am sorry,” she said, and he was so surprised that he splashed into the stream, as if water halfway to his knees would hide anything.
“Cottia!” he cried. “I am bathing. You ought not be here.”
“I know,” she said. “Only I did not want to say this in front of Marcus, and anyway I am not looking.”
He looked over his shoulder, and saw that it was true. She stood under the birches, her back to the stream, the sunlight shooting gold threads through her hair. It seemed to burn right through her white gown, so he could see a shadow of her form through the cloth.
His face heated. He looked hastily away as well, fixing his gaze on the mossy bank. He had always seen that she could be beautiful, but this was a different thing. Before she had been as a sunrise, lovely but beyond reach, and now it seemed he could touch her. Wanted to touch her, even as he wanted Marcus. He ducked into the stream.
When he got up again, cool water streaming from his hair, he said, “It is in my heart that I am sorry too. I should not have spoken harshly to you.”
“Harshly, yes; but you spoke true,” she said, her voice small and hard. “I have no right to be so angry, when I have suffered so much less than you. I forget, because you bear it so well – you bear it as a warrior ought to bear suffering – while I whine like a Roman, instead of enduring like a warrior maiden of the Iceni.”
He looked at her again, and his heart hurt to see her back, stiff and straight to fight off shame. “You know the tribes are not composed only of what is high and noble,” he told her. “Sometimes we whine, even as the Romans do.”
She laughed, her hair shimmering in the sunlight as she shook with giggles. She glanced over her shoulder at him – then saw that he was still naked, and whipped to face front again, her small hands clenching and unclenching at her sides. Her ears, already sun-tipped, grew redder than her hair.
He wanted her to look at him – and to like what she saw – and that thought pushed him from the stream to pull his tunic over his head. The sun would dry it soon enough. “Perhaps I envied you that anger,” he admitted, coming up to stand beside her.
She turned to look at him, eyes huge with surprise. “You! Envy me!” she cried. “How could you? I have always envied you. You went on that secret adventure with Marcus, when I had nothing to do but stay home and wait, and before that, you were always with him – ” She checked herself. “I know you did not choose to be, and perhaps you did not love to be always with him then; but still, I envied you for it.”
Esca’s heart lightened, as if it had been bound by a metal band that had now been struck away. “Perhaps we need not envy each other anymore,” he said, and brushed her hand with his – and then wished he had not done so, for he seemed to feel the butterfly touch burning up his arm.
Cottia didn’t seem to feel it, or notice any change in Esca. “He doesn’t trust me as he does you,” she said. “In some ways he sees me as a child, still.”
“Well,” said Esca. “In some ways, you are still young.”
She didn’t flare at him, as he expected, but took the remark and examined it. “I am impulsive,” she said. “And I have a foul temper. Among the tribes, do they mislike these things so much as the Romans do?”
She did sound like a child then, and Esca remembered how young she had been when she left her tribe. She had refused to learn to be a Roman woman, but did not know how to be a woman of the Iceni. “No,” he said. “But we live among the Romans now.”
“No,” she said impetuously. “In town we do, but on the farm it is only Marcus and me and you, and Marcus will only be as Roman as we let him.” A smile lightened her face, a flash of joy that made her fox-sharp face beautiful. She caught his hand, and caught up her skirts with the other hand and ran toward the house.
Esca let her pull him. An easy run; yet his breath seared in his lungs, and his heart pounded. With each breath her small round breasts pressed against her gown; her cheeks flushed, and the curls escaping her braids caught the sun so they flamed like fire around her head.
As they draw near Cub leapt to his feet, tail wagging in welcome. Marcus waved too, and Esca’s rough breathing snagged entirely as his eyes traced the lazy line of Marcus’s body sprawled on the roof.
Then - “Hai! Cottia!” Marcus called, and Cottia loosed Esca’s hand and ran to Marcus. Cub danced around her legs. “Esca,” he added, a friendly afterthought, as he leaned off the roof to tug Cottia’s hair. She batted his hand away playfully.
The old envy clogged Esca’s throat, and he slowed. He meant to change course, to leave them alone. But then Cottia kirtled up her skirts to climb on the roof, showing white skin and an old puckered scar on her knee, and Esca could not look away. He could almost taste the shape of that scar on his lips.
A cold sickness gathered in Esca’s belly. It was not right, to look at Cottia this way. It was wrong, all wrong, because she was Marcus’s wife; and Romans did not share what was theirs.
Marcus leaned down, catching Cottia’s hands to pull her up beside him. Cub danced about below, barking and scrambling at the wall as if he wanted to climb up to join them. Marcus twined his fingers through Cottia’s hair, and they smiled at each other, as though in all the world there were only the two of them.
That was right, Esca reminded himself. It was right that Marcus should look at his wife thus – and only his wife, and not his armour-bearer – and she only at him.
“Esca!” Cottia cried, and he felt her voice in his gut, and found it hard to breathe again. “Come you up here too.”
And Marcus smiled at him too, and Esca found himself backing away. “Na,” he said. “Na; I need to see the cow.”
And Cub, seeing that Cottia and Marcus were not coming down to him, trotted after Esca instead, twining around Esca’s legs and tripping him up as he went.
Perhaps this feeling was only a thing of the moment, Esca thought, looking away from the sunlight limning Marcus and Cottia in gold. Tomorrow Cottia might be merely Cottia again, and again it would be only looking at Marcus that made him ache.
***
He tried to keep a distance between himself and Cottia. The sea-foam camaraderie that had grown up between them died, and soon she rarely spoke to him without a brittle anger biting in her voice. Her ill-hidden hurt pained Esca, but he dared not soothe her and undo the distance he had wrought between them.
He waited until after the harvest, for they could not bring it in without him; and his breath still caught in his throat at the scent of her skin as she worked beside them, the sun bright in her hair. When he did not dream of Marcus, he dreamed of her.
So. If the feelings would not leave, then he must.
He was a coward, perhaps, but he could not bear to face them both at once. He waited until Cottia must go to Calleva, for her aunt insisted she visit. He and Marcus built a fire under the stars, because the night was gentle for so late in the year; and as they sat beside it, Cub sprawled between them, Esca said, “It is in my heart that I must leave.”
Shadows danced across Marcus’s face as he stared at Esca, too surprised to speak. “Leave!” Marcus said. “Why leave?”
Esca poked a stick at the logs. They sat in a long silence, until a log snapped and sent a plume of sparks into the night, and then Marcus asked quietly, “Is it that I have been unkind?”
“No!” said Esca. He stood, and paced, and wiped his sweaty palms on his tunic. “No, it is...”
He could not go on. Cub lifted his head and whined, then came to his side.
Esca had not meant to explain. He had half-thought Marcus would not mind, that he was so happy with Cottia now that he had no need of Esca. But looking at the painful flinching at the corner of Marcus’s mouth, he cursed himself for a fool. Marcus was like Cub in his desire to be liked; and like Cub, he would hate to be left.
Esca twined a hand in Cub’s rough fur, and his heart tightened. To Marcus, he might explain; but Cub could not understand.
“It is not that you have been unkind. I do not think you could be unkind,” Esca said. “But I...”
He did not speak for so long that Marcus said, a stumbling uncertainty in his voice, “You need offer no explanation to me; you are a free man, and can go as you please – so if you are unhappy, then – ”
“I am not unhappy,” Esca said, because he could not bear for Marcus to think so. “Or – if I am, it is my fault alone, and none of yours.”
Marcus watched him, frowning now: not in anger, but trying to understand. Esca found he could not look at him, but stared down at Cub, who pressed against Esca’s legs. He must have some dog in him, to be so docile.
“Let me begin again,” Esca said. His face felt hot, his whole body under his tunic prickling with sweat. “I lost the habit of speaking freely when my ear was clipped, but let me try to find it again.”
Marcus watched him, dark eyes bright as the fire limned his strong-boned face. “It was not so bad – ” Esca had to swallow before he went on. “It was not unbearable, when I was only envious that you seemed to have no more need of a armour-bearer, now that you had Cottia. I – envied Cottia so, for having you.”
Marcus reached out, but Esca raised a hand to stay him. If he could not say it all now, he did not think he could ever say it. His hands tensed in Cub’s ruff. Cub yipped and moved away. Though he stood hard by the fire, Esca felt suddenly cold.
But he must finish. “But then as I came to know her – as we’ve been living here – and she is – everything that I would want in a wife, except that she is already yours. And so you see I cannot stay here. I can do none of us any good by staying here, so I have to leave.”
He lifted his chin defiantly to look at Marcus. Marcus stared at him, a crease between his brows; then rose and strode around the fire.
Esca tensed for a blow. How else could a man react, on hearing that his best friend would make him a cuckold? But Marcus stopped just past an arm’s length away, staring at Esca as if transfixed, then reached out slowly, slowly, as if he gentled a skittish horse. “So you are saying,” he said, “that you must leave, because you’re too much in love with both of us?”
Esca almost flinched from the bluntness in Marcus’s voice. But he nodded, short and sharp.
“Esca,” said Marcus, and took a step forward, and touched Esca’s arm, gentle but firm: taming a horse indeed. “That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard.”
Esca began to laugh, bitterly, for that hit him worse than a blow would have. “I know,” he said. “I know. A slave – ”
“You are not – ” Marcus began, but Esca talked over him, his voice rising.
“ – an ex-slave, then,” he said, all bitterness in that ex, “in love with a Roman centurion, and the centurion’s wife – ” He caught a deep breath, and turned away from the firelight. “It is a ridiculous thing.”
“No!” said Marcus. “No, that is not what I meant. Esca! You might as well say, how could a poor crippled ex-soldier think he deserves the love of a beauty like Cottia, or the – the loyalty – or – anything of the son of Cunoval?”
Esca could only shake his head. He understood each word, and yet he could not understand the whole: it was so different than he had imagined Marcus could say. Marcus huffed under his breath, and stepped closer, and suddenly his hands were on Esca’s forearms, lightly. Esca could have pulled away.
“Esca,” he said. “I would not have you leave. It is in my heart – ”
He fumbled for words, then shook his head and stepped closer again, so close, too close, hands sliding up Esca’s arms. And suddenly it seemed that Esca’s legs could not hold him, for he fell against Marcus’s chest; and Marcus’s bad leg gave way, and they ended in the dirt beside the fire, and for a moment the feel of Marcus’s body beneath him seared Esca, as though their tunics were air and nothing stood between them.
And then Cub leaped on them, barking, because he loved to wrestle, and they had to tussle him away. They ended sitting again, Cub between them; and Marcus smiled shyly at Esca, and Esca had to bite his lip and look away to keep from smiling back just yet. “I thought you were forgetting me,” he said.
“Oh – ” Marcus looked embarrassed. “Well, we are newly wed, Cottia and I, and...” He rubbed the back of his neck, looking so sheepish that Esca had to laugh. Marcus smiled too, but then he grew grave again. “And I thought also that it would be better to put a space between us, because I believed that you did not want me. You never spoke of it.”
“But it was for you to speak,” said Esca. Marcus looked perplexed, and Esca felt a surge of exasperated fondness for him. “It’s always for the stronger to pursue,” he said. “I was your slave and then your armour-bearer, and now I live on your farm, so it was for you to speak.”
“But that is why I could not speak,” said Marcus. “It was your part to serve me, so you could not have refused.”
“I could indeed,” Esca snapped. “How else did I end up in the arena?”
Marcus paled. “I would never have sent you to the arena.”
“I know,” said Esca, impatiently. “And I knew it then; so I could have told you no, had I wanted to, which I did not – ” He swallowed, and then honesty forced him to add, “Once I was free, at least.”
“But how was I to know – ” Marcus began, then gave his head a shake. “So. That is all past, and I am speaking now. I love you, and I want you to stay; will you?”
There was a flare of joy in Esca’s heart, like heat lightning on a summer night, and he felt almost frightened by its brightness. “It cannot be that easy,” he blurted. It was too much, too good, and he did not trust it.
“Why not?” Marcus asked, and brushed his knuckles against Esca’s arm. Esca almost flinched away. “If we love each other – then that is easy enough, no?”
If he had Marcus – it would be enough. He might still yearn for Cottia; but still, Marcus would be enough. Cottia – what would Cottia say? “Cottia,” he said, and could say nothing more.
“We needs must talk to Cottia, I think,” Marcus said. And then, hesitating: “Will you leave? If Cottia does not…”
“If she does not like us together? Then I would have to leave.”
“I do not think she will mind.”
Esca gave way to exasperation. “She is no docile Roman wife; I cannot think she will be happy to share you.”
Marcus made as if to disagree, then paused, and said, “What use is there in us arguing? Only Cottia can tell us that.”
That was true enough, so Esca did not press the point, and they sat in silence. Between them, Cub gave a huff of contentment, and nuzzled his head against Esca’s knee.
Marcus broke the silence. “And anyway that is not what I was asking. I meant, if she does not want you, as you want her: will you leave then?”
Esca could not think what to say to that. Marcus’s love was astonishing enough; he had not thought even to hope for Cottia’s.
“I do not see that it matters,” he said at last.
“Why not?” said Marcus.
“Well – she is your wife – “ Esca stuttered. But Marcus just continued to look at him, and Esca said sharply, “I cannot think you would like me to – ”
“If you both wish it,” Marcus asked simply, “then why should I mind?”
There were a great many reasons why, and Esca gave them all; but Marcus proved indifferent to each. “We must speak to Cottia,” he said, again and again; and at last Esca agreed.
***
Marcus had the telling of it. Esca insisted on that. “She would never do a thing to hurt you,” he said. “And if you do not tell her you don’t mind – ” He tried not to sound incredulous, though he still scarce believed it. “If she does not hear it from your lips, she would not believe it.”
Besides, he was not sure he could tell it to Cottia. It had been hard enough to reveal himself to Marcus; he did not think he could do it again.
So the night Cottia returned from Calleva, Marcus told it all to her. Esca could not read her expression for the shadows dancing over her face.
Cottia looked at him. “You,” she said incredulously, “are in love with me?”
Esca wished himself in Caledonia. “So it would seem.”
She hurled a chicken bone at his head. “Well, you have a funny way of showing it!” she cried. “You slink away like a cat when I come near, and stare at me as if I stole your last crust of bread, and act as if you hate me!”
“I am sorry,” he said. “I will try to be kinder.”
She glared at him a moment more, but not with her heart behind it, and suddenly she gave up trying and smiled. “Do you try, then,” she said. “If you are half as kind to me as you are to Marcus, I will love you too.”
Esca looked at Marcus then. But no envy soured Marcus’s smile; only a tinge of worry touched his mouth. “Of Esca and I,” said Marcus. “Cottia, will you mind?”
A thinking frown came on her face, and Esca’s heart made to beat out of his chest. But Cottia’s changeful face warmed to a smile, and she said, “How can I know? We must just try, and see.”
Fandom: Rosemary Sutcliff, Eagle of the Ninth
Pairings: ALL THE PAIRINGS. Esca/Marcus, Esca/Cottia, Marcus/Cottia.
Rating: PG
Beta:
carmarthen! Who is awesome!Disclaimer: So not mine. :(
Prompt:
hc_bingo, learning to be loved. Summary: Perhaps this feeling was only a thing of the moment, Esca thought, looking away from the sunlight limning Marcus and Cottia in gold. Tomorrow Cottia might be merely Cottia again, and again it would be only looking at Marcus that made him ache.
This is also over at Archive of Our Own, here.
It was not that Esca wanted to go into the Roman town with them. Someone must convince Cub that their fine new cow was neither for eating nor for frightening, and besides, Esca liked even less than Cottia to return to Roman walls.
It was not that he envied the trip. But when they returned in the evening, and Cub at last abandoned the trembling heifer and ran to them – and Cottia’s laugh peeled like silver bells, with Marcus’s deeper laugh rising beneath it – when Esca looked out at them, Marcus had one hand on her shoulder, leaning on her as once he had leaned on Esca.
And then Marcus stole a kiss of Cottia; and that, he had never done with Esca.
Esca went back in the house. The envy throbbed in his temples, where a headache had grown from the over-hot day. It was that Cottia had so many things – wealth, and charm and freedom (those unclipped ears), Marcus – so many things; and valued them so little, it seemed. She had so much, yet still was so angry.
But then, anger also was a luxury. A slave could no more wear it than he could wear Cottia’s gold eardrops, and though Esca was no longer a slave, the habits of slavery were not as easily put aside as eardrops, either.
It was a little later that Marcus came in, the amphora of wine hefted on his shoulder pulling his tunic tight against his chest, so that Esca had to look away. Cub twined about Marcus’s legs, and Esca was glad to have the distraction: he grabbed Cub by the scruff of the neck, and Marcus flashed him his sweet smile of thanks.
The smile lingered a moment, and Esca began to smile back, his heart a little fast. But then Marcus’s eyes jumped away, searching. “Where is Cottia?”
Though he had just been with her all day. Esca rubbed Cub fiercely behind the ears. “Is there more to bring in?” he asked.
“No; there was little enough worth buying,” said Marcus, peering about, as if Cottia might be hiding in the shadows like a spoiled child; and at last glanced at Esca, as though he would know where she went.
“I suppose she went to get some air,” Esca said, scratching Cub so fiercely that Cub nipped at him.
“She does not like Roman towns,” said Marcus, sounding sad enough that Esca looked up at him. But Marcus was looking out the door. “I will go after her,” Marcus said, and left Esca alone.
But Cottia returned first, eardrops flashing with reflected sunset as she came in. “Marcus is looking for you,” Esca told her, rubbing vigorously at Cub’s back so he did not need to look at her.
“I only went out to the stream,” she said. “To see that there are still free untrammeled things in the world – places that are not all straight lines and cages.”
She shivered suddenly, like a dog shaking off water. “Romans and their walls!” she cried. “Everywhere walls, as if people were cows who needs must be hemmed in, else they run off in the wilderness! Why is it so important to them, that they must control everyone all the time?”
And Esca felt he could not bear it anymore. “Cottia. What have the Romans done to you that you should hate them so?”
She grew very still, but it was no peaceful stillness; rather, the fierce stillness of a heron waiting at the edge of a fish pond. “What do you mean?”
“Your aunt and uncle took you in, and brought you up as a noble girl, with gold eardrops and your own slave to look after you, and got you Marcus for a husband. What can you complain of in that?”
Her eyes were very large in her narrow face. “My own slave to spy on me, you mean,” she spat. “To make sure I became a proper Roman girl, and not at all of the Iceni – they wanted me to forget that I even was of the Iceni! They refused to call me Cottia, and laughed at our stories, and set Nissa as a guard on me so I could not leave the house, even to our own garden, if I spoke my own tongue!”
She caught her breath, her small fists clenching, and Esca thought, A fierce warrior of the Iceni she would be. But Roman maidens did not fight, and no more did the maidens of the Iceni, since Rome had come; the blood might sing in her as it sang in him, but she could never let it free.
“Cottia – ” he began, but did not know how to go on.
“Esca!” she replied. “Do not say, because I have not suffered as much as you, that Rome has done nothing to me!”
She whirled and stormed from the house, head held high like a queen, with the sunset burnishing her hair to a tail of fire. And Esca felt small and sick and rather foolish.
Of course Cottia had suffered. At least no one had told him he must be grateful to be taken from his tribe, and made over into a Roman thing.
***
“I am sorry,” she said, and he was so surprised that he splashed into the stream, as if water halfway to his knees would hide anything.
“Cottia!” he cried. “I am bathing. You ought not be here.”
“I know,” she said. “Only I did not want to say this in front of Marcus, and anyway I am not looking.”
He looked over his shoulder, and saw that it was true. She stood under the birches, her back to the stream, the sunlight shooting gold threads through her hair. It seemed to burn right through her white gown, so he could see a shadow of her form through the cloth.
His face heated. He looked hastily away as well, fixing his gaze on the mossy bank. He had always seen that she could be beautiful, but this was a different thing. Before she had been as a sunrise, lovely but beyond reach, and now it seemed he could touch her. Wanted to touch her, even as he wanted Marcus. He ducked into the stream.
When he got up again, cool water streaming from his hair, he said, “It is in my heart that I am sorry too. I should not have spoken harshly to you.”
“Harshly, yes; but you spoke true,” she said, her voice small and hard. “I have no right to be so angry, when I have suffered so much less than you. I forget, because you bear it so well – you bear it as a warrior ought to bear suffering – while I whine like a Roman, instead of enduring like a warrior maiden of the Iceni.”
He looked at her again, and his heart hurt to see her back, stiff and straight to fight off shame. “You know the tribes are not composed only of what is high and noble,” he told her. “Sometimes we whine, even as the Romans do.”
She laughed, her hair shimmering in the sunlight as she shook with giggles. She glanced over her shoulder at him – then saw that he was still naked, and whipped to face front again, her small hands clenching and unclenching at her sides. Her ears, already sun-tipped, grew redder than her hair.
He wanted her to look at him – and to like what she saw – and that thought pushed him from the stream to pull his tunic over his head. The sun would dry it soon enough. “Perhaps I envied you that anger,” he admitted, coming up to stand beside her.
She turned to look at him, eyes huge with surprise. “You! Envy me!” she cried. “How could you? I have always envied you. You went on that secret adventure with Marcus, when I had nothing to do but stay home and wait, and before that, you were always with him – ” She checked herself. “I know you did not choose to be, and perhaps you did not love to be always with him then; but still, I envied you for it.”
Esca’s heart lightened, as if it had been bound by a metal band that had now been struck away. “Perhaps we need not envy each other anymore,” he said, and brushed her hand with his – and then wished he had not done so, for he seemed to feel the butterfly touch burning up his arm.
Cottia didn’t seem to feel it, or notice any change in Esca. “He doesn’t trust me as he does you,” she said. “In some ways he sees me as a child, still.”
“Well,” said Esca. “In some ways, you are still young.”
She didn’t flare at him, as he expected, but took the remark and examined it. “I am impulsive,” she said. “And I have a foul temper. Among the tribes, do they mislike these things so much as the Romans do?”
She did sound like a child then, and Esca remembered how young she had been when she left her tribe. She had refused to learn to be a Roman woman, but did not know how to be a woman of the Iceni. “No,” he said. “But we live among the Romans now.”
“No,” she said impetuously. “In town we do, but on the farm it is only Marcus and me and you, and Marcus will only be as Roman as we let him.” A smile lightened her face, a flash of joy that made her fox-sharp face beautiful. She caught his hand, and caught up her skirts with the other hand and ran toward the house.
Esca let her pull him. An easy run; yet his breath seared in his lungs, and his heart pounded. With each breath her small round breasts pressed against her gown; her cheeks flushed, and the curls escaping her braids caught the sun so they flamed like fire around her head.
As they draw near Cub leapt to his feet, tail wagging in welcome. Marcus waved too, and Esca’s rough breathing snagged entirely as his eyes traced the lazy line of Marcus’s body sprawled on the roof.
Then - “Hai! Cottia!” Marcus called, and Cottia loosed Esca’s hand and ran to Marcus. Cub danced around her legs. “Esca,” he added, a friendly afterthought, as he leaned off the roof to tug Cottia’s hair. She batted his hand away playfully.
The old envy clogged Esca’s throat, and he slowed. He meant to change course, to leave them alone. But then Cottia kirtled up her skirts to climb on the roof, showing white skin and an old puckered scar on her knee, and Esca could not look away. He could almost taste the shape of that scar on his lips.
A cold sickness gathered in Esca’s belly. It was not right, to look at Cottia this way. It was wrong, all wrong, because she was Marcus’s wife; and Romans did not share what was theirs.
Marcus leaned down, catching Cottia’s hands to pull her up beside him. Cub danced about below, barking and scrambling at the wall as if he wanted to climb up to join them. Marcus twined his fingers through Cottia’s hair, and they smiled at each other, as though in all the world there were only the two of them.
That was right, Esca reminded himself. It was right that Marcus should look at his wife thus – and only his wife, and not his armour-bearer – and she only at him.
“Esca!” Cottia cried, and he felt her voice in his gut, and found it hard to breathe again. “Come you up here too.”
And Marcus smiled at him too, and Esca found himself backing away. “Na,” he said. “Na; I need to see the cow.”
And Cub, seeing that Cottia and Marcus were not coming down to him, trotted after Esca instead, twining around Esca’s legs and tripping him up as he went.
Perhaps this feeling was only a thing of the moment, Esca thought, looking away from the sunlight limning Marcus and Cottia in gold. Tomorrow Cottia might be merely Cottia again, and again it would be only looking at Marcus that made him ache.
***
He tried to keep a distance between himself and Cottia. The sea-foam camaraderie that had grown up between them died, and soon she rarely spoke to him without a brittle anger biting in her voice. Her ill-hidden hurt pained Esca, but he dared not soothe her and undo the distance he had wrought between them.
He waited until after the harvest, for they could not bring it in without him; and his breath still caught in his throat at the scent of her skin as she worked beside them, the sun bright in her hair. When he did not dream of Marcus, he dreamed of her.
So. If the feelings would not leave, then he must.
He was a coward, perhaps, but he could not bear to face them both at once. He waited until Cottia must go to Calleva, for her aunt insisted she visit. He and Marcus built a fire under the stars, because the night was gentle for so late in the year; and as they sat beside it, Cub sprawled between them, Esca said, “It is in my heart that I must leave.”
Shadows danced across Marcus’s face as he stared at Esca, too surprised to speak. “Leave!” Marcus said. “Why leave?”
Esca poked a stick at the logs. They sat in a long silence, until a log snapped and sent a plume of sparks into the night, and then Marcus asked quietly, “Is it that I have been unkind?”
“No!” said Esca. He stood, and paced, and wiped his sweaty palms on his tunic. “No, it is...”
He could not go on. Cub lifted his head and whined, then came to his side.
Esca had not meant to explain. He had half-thought Marcus would not mind, that he was so happy with Cottia now that he had no need of Esca. But looking at the painful flinching at the corner of Marcus’s mouth, he cursed himself for a fool. Marcus was like Cub in his desire to be liked; and like Cub, he would hate to be left.
Esca twined a hand in Cub’s rough fur, and his heart tightened. To Marcus, he might explain; but Cub could not understand.
“It is not that you have been unkind. I do not think you could be unkind,” Esca said. “But I...”
He did not speak for so long that Marcus said, a stumbling uncertainty in his voice, “You need offer no explanation to me; you are a free man, and can go as you please – so if you are unhappy, then – ”
“I am not unhappy,” Esca said, because he could not bear for Marcus to think so. “Or – if I am, it is my fault alone, and none of yours.”
Marcus watched him, frowning now: not in anger, but trying to understand. Esca found he could not look at him, but stared down at Cub, who pressed against Esca’s legs. He must have some dog in him, to be so docile.
“Let me begin again,” Esca said. His face felt hot, his whole body under his tunic prickling with sweat. “I lost the habit of speaking freely when my ear was clipped, but let me try to find it again.”
Marcus watched him, dark eyes bright as the fire limned his strong-boned face. “It was not so bad – ” Esca had to swallow before he went on. “It was not unbearable, when I was only envious that you seemed to have no more need of a armour-bearer, now that you had Cottia. I – envied Cottia so, for having you.”
Marcus reached out, but Esca raised a hand to stay him. If he could not say it all now, he did not think he could ever say it. His hands tensed in Cub’s ruff. Cub yipped and moved away. Though he stood hard by the fire, Esca felt suddenly cold.
But he must finish. “But then as I came to know her – as we’ve been living here – and she is – everything that I would want in a wife, except that she is already yours. And so you see I cannot stay here. I can do none of us any good by staying here, so I have to leave.”
He lifted his chin defiantly to look at Marcus. Marcus stared at him, a crease between his brows; then rose and strode around the fire.
Esca tensed for a blow. How else could a man react, on hearing that his best friend would make him a cuckold? But Marcus stopped just past an arm’s length away, staring at Esca as if transfixed, then reached out slowly, slowly, as if he gentled a skittish horse. “So you are saying,” he said, “that you must leave, because you’re too much in love with both of us?”
Esca almost flinched from the bluntness in Marcus’s voice. But he nodded, short and sharp.
“Esca,” said Marcus, and took a step forward, and touched Esca’s arm, gentle but firm: taming a horse indeed. “That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard.”
Esca began to laugh, bitterly, for that hit him worse than a blow would have. “I know,” he said. “I know. A slave – ”
“You are not – ” Marcus began, but Esca talked over him, his voice rising.
“ – an ex-slave, then,” he said, all bitterness in that ex, “in love with a Roman centurion, and the centurion’s wife – ” He caught a deep breath, and turned away from the firelight. “It is a ridiculous thing.”
“No!” said Marcus. “No, that is not what I meant. Esca! You might as well say, how could a poor crippled ex-soldier think he deserves the love of a beauty like Cottia, or the – the loyalty – or – anything of the son of Cunoval?”
Esca could only shake his head. He understood each word, and yet he could not understand the whole: it was so different than he had imagined Marcus could say. Marcus huffed under his breath, and stepped closer, and suddenly his hands were on Esca’s forearms, lightly. Esca could have pulled away.
“Esca,” he said. “I would not have you leave. It is in my heart – ”
He fumbled for words, then shook his head and stepped closer again, so close, too close, hands sliding up Esca’s arms. And suddenly it seemed that Esca’s legs could not hold him, for he fell against Marcus’s chest; and Marcus’s bad leg gave way, and they ended in the dirt beside the fire, and for a moment the feel of Marcus’s body beneath him seared Esca, as though their tunics were air and nothing stood between them.
And then Cub leaped on them, barking, because he loved to wrestle, and they had to tussle him away. They ended sitting again, Cub between them; and Marcus smiled shyly at Esca, and Esca had to bite his lip and look away to keep from smiling back just yet. “I thought you were forgetting me,” he said.
“Oh – ” Marcus looked embarrassed. “Well, we are newly wed, Cottia and I, and...” He rubbed the back of his neck, looking so sheepish that Esca had to laugh. Marcus smiled too, but then he grew grave again. “And I thought also that it would be better to put a space between us, because I believed that you did not want me. You never spoke of it.”
“But it was for you to speak,” said Esca. Marcus looked perplexed, and Esca felt a surge of exasperated fondness for him. “It’s always for the stronger to pursue,” he said. “I was your slave and then your armour-bearer, and now I live on your farm, so it was for you to speak.”
“But that is why I could not speak,” said Marcus. “It was your part to serve me, so you could not have refused.”
“I could indeed,” Esca snapped. “How else did I end up in the arena?”
Marcus paled. “I would never have sent you to the arena.”
“I know,” said Esca, impatiently. “And I knew it then; so I could have told you no, had I wanted to, which I did not – ” He swallowed, and then honesty forced him to add, “Once I was free, at least.”
“But how was I to know – ” Marcus began, then gave his head a shake. “So. That is all past, and I am speaking now. I love you, and I want you to stay; will you?”
There was a flare of joy in Esca’s heart, like heat lightning on a summer night, and he felt almost frightened by its brightness. “It cannot be that easy,” he blurted. It was too much, too good, and he did not trust it.
“Why not?” Marcus asked, and brushed his knuckles against Esca’s arm. Esca almost flinched away. “If we love each other – then that is easy enough, no?”
If he had Marcus – it would be enough. He might still yearn for Cottia; but still, Marcus would be enough. Cottia – what would Cottia say? “Cottia,” he said, and could say nothing more.
“We needs must talk to Cottia, I think,” Marcus said. And then, hesitating: “Will you leave? If Cottia does not…”
“If she does not like us together? Then I would have to leave.”
“I do not think she will mind.”
Esca gave way to exasperation. “She is no docile Roman wife; I cannot think she will be happy to share you.”
Marcus made as if to disagree, then paused, and said, “What use is there in us arguing? Only Cottia can tell us that.”
That was true enough, so Esca did not press the point, and they sat in silence. Between them, Cub gave a huff of contentment, and nuzzled his head against Esca’s knee.
Marcus broke the silence. “And anyway that is not what I was asking. I meant, if she does not want you, as you want her: will you leave then?”
Esca could not think what to say to that. Marcus’s love was astonishing enough; he had not thought even to hope for Cottia’s.
“I do not see that it matters,” he said at last.
“Why not?” said Marcus.
“Well – she is your wife – “ Esca stuttered. But Marcus just continued to look at him, and Esca said sharply, “I cannot think you would like me to – ”
“If you both wish it,” Marcus asked simply, “then why should I mind?”
There were a great many reasons why, and Esca gave them all; but Marcus proved indifferent to each. “We must speak to Cottia,” he said, again and again; and at last Esca agreed.
***
Marcus had the telling of it. Esca insisted on that. “She would never do a thing to hurt you,” he said. “And if you do not tell her you don’t mind – ” He tried not to sound incredulous, though he still scarce believed it. “If she does not hear it from your lips, she would not believe it.”
Besides, he was not sure he could tell it to Cottia. It had been hard enough to reveal himself to Marcus; he did not think he could do it again.
So the night Cottia returned from Calleva, Marcus told it all to her. Esca could not read her expression for the shadows dancing over her face.
Cottia looked at him. “You,” she said incredulously, “are in love with me?”
Esca wished himself in Caledonia. “So it would seem.”
She hurled a chicken bone at his head. “Well, you have a funny way of showing it!” she cried. “You slink away like a cat when I come near, and stare at me as if I stole your last crust of bread, and act as if you hate me!”
“I am sorry,” he said. “I will try to be kinder.”
She glared at him a moment more, but not with her heart behind it, and suddenly she gave up trying and smiled. “Do you try, then,” she said. “If you are half as kind to me as you are to Marcus, I will love you too.”
Esca looked at Marcus then. But no envy soured Marcus’s smile; only a tinge of worry touched his mouth. “Of Esca and I,” said Marcus. “Cottia, will you mind?”
A thinking frown came on her face, and Esca’s heart made to beat out of his chest. But Cottia’s changeful face warmed to a smile, and she said, “How can I know? We must just try, and see.”
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no subject
Date: 2012-09-03 11:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-04 01:25 pm (UTC)And Cottia! Cottia is so much fun to write! Oh, Cottia, never change.
no subject
Date: 2012-09-03 04:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-04 01:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-13 07:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-14 02:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-13 02:26 pm (UTC)Oh, and I love Cub.
Lovely work, I really enjoyed it.
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Date: 2012-09-14 02:08 am (UTC)And Cub. It's hard to go wrong with a wolf-dog.
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Date: 2012-09-14 03:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-14 10:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-15 08:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-16 05:04 pm (UTC)