The Passion of Mary Magdalen. Elizabeth Cunningham

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СКАЧАТЬ “How many times I gotta tell you, you ain’t got no lineage now. You’re property. Mine. Until I unload you. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll keep your mouth shut and look pretty.”

      Immediately I opened my mouth again. Then I thought better of it. Confrontation and defiance hadn’t gotten me anywhere—except shackled and displayed on a slave block at the southwest corner of the Temple of Castor and Pollux in the heart of the Roman Forum.

      Not that I knew the exact address then; I wasn’t even certain I was in Rome, but I had strong suspicions. All my life I had been taught to hate all things Roman. Only Rome could be as hellish as this place appeared to me. You must understand; I had never, ever been in a city before, unless you count the port at Ostia where I was captured. Until now my knowledge of architecture was limited to round wattle and daub huts. You may think I’m an ignorant barbarian. The Romans certainly did. In fact, I had been kicked out of one of the finest schools in the world, the druid college on the Isle of Mona, where I had been studying literature, medicine, and law. So there. Not that I appreciated the opportunity when I had it. Not that I could ever go back. Not only had I been expelled and exiled—sent beyond the ninth wave as the druids so poetically put it—they were also mighty particular about their students bearing no taint of slavery.

      Now here I was in the heart of the first century’s Evil Empire—on sale.

      “A fine female specimen, no more than fourteen years old.” In fact I was closer to nineteen, but false advertising is nothing new. “In prime condition. Good breeder, would make an excellent wet nurse.” Here he slipped his hand into my rag of a tunic and whipped out a breast, aiming it at the crowd as if about to demonstrate. “What is more, the merchandise in question is a novica.” Translation: a first-time slave, a desirable commodity especially when young. “Fresh from Sardinia,” he added for good measure. Everyone there but me knew that Sardinia was a penal colony; to be a slave in Rome was definitely a step up.

      “Or so you’d have us believe,” said a balding man, swathed in complicated folds of white fringed with purple that I would later come to know as a toga worn only by men of senatorial rank. “Along with all the other lies you’ve written on that plaque around her lovely neck.”

      I had wondered about that. Though I speak five languages, I read only ogham, the sacred druid alphabet.

      “I’ve a good mind to set the aedile on you for misrepresenting your wares,” the man continued wagging a threatening finger. “If that girl has ever seen Sardinia it was only on the way from Gaul—or worse. I know a Celt when I see one. They are useless as slaves, untrainable and some of them are downright treacherous.”

      I considered loosing one of the battle cries for which my people are famous—the kind that make Roman knees rattle and Roman testicles retract, but then I thought better of it. Anything would be preferable to the holding tank, a lightless back room of a fish shop where I had woken bound and gagged after having been raped, beaten (carefully so as to leave no marks) and drugged into a reasonable facsimile of submission.

      “Now, now, now, there’s no cause for that. You got no right to drive away a man’s custom, sir. Red here is no savage. Why she speaks Latin like a senator. Go on, Red, say something for the gentleman.”

      He smiled for the benefit of the crowd and yanked my chain hard enough to remind me who was shackled and who wasn’t. Like I didn’t know. Still, I found, I couldn’t resist. I turned to him.

      “Your father,” I said in my sweetest, clearest voice, “fucked a sheep, and your mother did it with a donkey.”

      The crowd, growing now, roared and applauded. It was a good show—as long I wasn’t their slave. Pug Face jerked my chain so hard I nearly fell to my knees; then he lifted his hand to strike me.

      “No,” someone shouted. “Let her say on! She’s only proving your point.”

      His face had turned an unbecoming shade of puce, but pleasing the crowd came first. He lowered his fist, which I took as a signal to continue.

      “Which explains your face,” I said. “Though it is hard to say which coupling resulted in your unfortunate conception. Take your pick of lineage. And as Bride is my witness, I do not intend to insult a worthy animal who gives wool or one that is of use in bearing burdens. It is not the sheep’s fault that you fart in your sleep or the donkey’s that your breath stinks of rancid meat and sour wine or that the fleas desert the rats in preference for your smelly hide—”

      If he didn’t drop dead of a stroke—and I had some hope he might—or if I didn’t get sold to someone quickly, I might not live to enjoy another night among the fish guts. Oh well, death was more honorable than slavery, and now that I was on a roll I couldn’t stop to save my life. I might be speaking Latin, but I was a Celt. In other words: impossible to shut up as long as I was breathing.

      “One thing is certain,” I went on, “you are a slave and the son of slaves. You are a coward and the son of cowards. When the sun rises in the morning it turns red with shame that it must shine on you—”

      Then I felt the lash of the whip; I stopped for a moment to breathe. “And the moon hides its face and weeps,” I improvised wildly, anticipating the next stroke, knowing that watching a slave being beaten to death would be considered a mild entertainment for people who regularly watched men slaughter each other.

      But the next stroke never fell. I turned and was rendered temporarily speechless by the sight of the tall, handsome woman who had mounted the block and grabbed Pug Face’s arm, knocking the whip out of his hand.

      “Don’t mar your wares before I get a good look.” The woman’s voice was brisk.

      More swiftly than I would have imagined possible, Pug Face recovered himself and shifted smoothly into his most obsequious gear.

      “Delighted to see you, domina. Always a pleasure to do business with you. Delighted to be of service. Would you like me to remove her garment?”

      “If you can call that sack a garment. Yes, strip her. And don’t even think about telling me she’s a virgin with that mouth on her. You’re lucky I didn’t go to the aedile about that last piece of baggage you passed off as pure. Next time you say you have a virgin for sale I’m inspecting her hymen right here. As for this one, there’s no need for me to get a crick in my neck. She’s already whelped at least once. See?” She pointed. “Stretch marks. What happened to the brat?” she addressed me. “Dead, exposed, or sold?”

      Never mind that I was naked, far from any place I could call home or any people I could call mine in front of a leering Roman crowd. There are things you recover from—like being raped by a man who turned out to be my father, which is why being raped by my captor was a mere outrage. And there are things you never get over. Having a child stolen from your arms is one. I stared at the woman. I saw how hard her face was, hard as the street stones pounded into the innocent earth, smooth as the marble slabs the Romans like to pile into huge, ugly buildings. I stared till my eyes were dry and I could no longer see the brightness I’d once held against my breast. The woman made the mistake of staring back. Her face did not soften exactly, but something strained it for an instant.

      “Never mind,” she said. “As far as I’m concerned, you have no past as long as it doesn’t interfere with present purposes. Mine. Now, open your mouth.”

      “A fine set of choppers if I do say so myself.” Pug Face inanely took credit.

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