Pello Island: Cassia (21 page)

“I’ll be damned if I’ll let that boy into my ocean,” Neptune said.  

“I’m serious, big brother, you look like hell.  Hercules is perfectly capable of destroying that rock.”

“I SAID I’D DO IT!”  Neptune held his head and closed his eyes.  The room was spinning and he flopped back into the chair.

Despite being king of the gods, Jupiter was still a bit intimidated by his older brother, a giant green madman whose anger would flare at the drop of a hat.  He watched Neptune rub his eyes and cough.  If he assigned Hercules to the task, Neptune would arrange a tsunami in retaliation.  Jupiter couldn’t risk putting the entire Roman shoreline at risk.

“Very well,” Jupiter said.  “But, please wait until you’ve recovered.  This assignment requires accuracy, so promise me you’ll wait until tomorrow.”

Neptune opened his eyes and glared at Jupiter.  His resentment toward his younger brother had been festering for years, and whenever the king gave him an “assignment,” as he liked to call them, Neptune’s anger boiled over.  But Jupiter was right – the sailors respected him and if they had indeed been praying, then he had to respond.  He’d be damned, though, if he’d obey Jupiter and wait.  He felt fine, and there was nothing wrong with his aim.

“I’ll take care of it,” he grumbled.  He pushed himself out of the chair and lumbered toward the door.

“Oh, by the way,” Jupiter called after him, “the next time you see Bacchus, tell him to pick up the lions’ droppings.  I stepped in them last night on my way to the amphitheater.”

Neptune made a vulgar gesture and left the throne room.  His stomach was churning and he knew he should wait until he felt better, but then Jupiter would have his way.  He walked to his watery green palace and grabbed his largest trident.  His head was pounding and he was seeing double.

As he made his way through the palace, he decided a touch of wine might remedy his symptoms.  He kept a bottle by the large waterfall at the back of the palace, the one he used to enter Earth’s oceans.  He opened the bottle and took a swig, and his eyesight seemed to get better.

“So there, you puny despot,” he said, holding the bottle up as if toasting Jupiter’s castle.  He put the bottle on the rocks under the waterfall and, carrying his trident in his right hand, he dove into the water.  Since one month on Olympus equaled one hundred years on Earth, it would take approximately three mortal years for him to arrive in the Mediterranean.

Cassia stood on the dock, telling him she would come in six months.  He felt the guards pulling him toward the ship that would take him to Pello Island, convicted of a murder he didn’t commit.  She stayed and watched as the ship pulled away, and he stayed at the rail until she faded out of sight.

CHAPTER 1

“At the end of the Tiber, they’ll take off the chains, boy,” said the grizzled old man sitting across from Darius.  “See, we’re almost past, that’s the end up ahead.”

A steady wind urged the tiny ship forward.  They had been traveling down the river for three weeks.  It would take another five weeks to reach Pello Island.

As he moved to the rail, Darius’ chains rattled and scraped along the wooden deck.  His wrists and ankles were rubbed raw, and as he gazed into the soothing salt water below, he cursed his father.  Every movement caused pain, and that pain reminded him that he wasn’t a nobleman any longer.

“Sea’s ahead, scum, and it’s rolling hard,” a guard shouted.

The knowledge that soon his hands and feet would be liberated lifted Darius’ spirits.  He examined the weeping wounds under the metal shackles.  The old-timer read Darius’ thoughts.

“Piss on them, boy,” he said.  Darius flinched, but another inmate sitting next to the geezer nodded his head.  “You don’t want to die from the festering, do you?”

The guards moved about the deck with keys, removing their chains.  When they removed his, Darius looked at the torn and bloody skin on his wrists.  A water barrel stood a few feet away, but as he approached it, a guard placed a spear across his chest.

“Drinking only, nobleman.”  The guard had a malicious smile on his face, and was obviously enjoying Darius’ fall from grace.  Darius backed away and sat down on the deck.

“You got no choice, boy,” the old man said. “You have to piss on them.”

Darius remembered his childhood nurse treating his cuts and bruises that way, but the thought of urinating on his wrists and ankles still troubled him.  The man was right though – they would fester if left untreated.

There were pails reserved for human waste located at one end of the deck. Darius got up, painfully shuffled toward them and peed, covering his wrists and ankles with urine.  A disgusting odor rose from the pails, and that, combined with the smell of his hands and feet, sent him over the rails, losing what little food he’d been able to consume.

Once they reached the sea, the winds picked up.  Darius doused his ankles and wrists with urine daily, and continued to vomit over the rails.  The guards began rationing the prisoners’ food as they neared the island.  Darius’ seemed to lose a few pounds every day.  He ran his hand over his ribs and stomach, and thought about bread and honey.

“There’s plenty of food on the island,” the old man said, “if you’ve got something to barter.”

When his stomach stopped grumbling, his head began to hurt.  Using both his hands, he held it tightly, waiting for the throbbing pain to pass.  He closed his eyes and thought of home, and wondered how his life had taken such a turn.

From the first day, the old man had scratched off each day they spent on the ship, drawing a line through each week.  When he drew a line through the fifth week, Darius pulled himself up off the deck and began watching the horizon.  Then one day, he saw something in the distance.

“Island ahead!” one of the sailors shouted.

“We’ll be there within the hour, you watch,” said the old man.

The island looked like a giant rock in a field of blue water.  The guards urged the oarsman to row faster, and soon Darius could see landmarks.  As the ship drew closer to Pello Island, his anxiety grew.  As weak as he felt, would he be able to defend himself, or would they kill him before nightfall?

“Line up!” a guard yelled.  “Come on, you scum, line up!”

As the prisoners shuffled toward the gangplank, the ship pulled alongside Pello’s rough-hewn dock.  Darius saw people waiting near the dock, and the looks on their faces sent chills up his spine.  These men and women had been here for years, and their smiles were meant to intimidate the new arrivals.

“That one’s mine,” yelled a man carrying a stick.

“This shouldn’t take long,” said another as he pounded his fist into his hand.

Darius kept looking at the guards to see if they would control the crowd, but most of them were laughing.  They kept looking at him, the patrician prisoner, as though they were placing bets on how long he would survive his internment.  As he shuffled toward the gangplank, Darius felt his knees getting weaker.

When the first man stepped onto the dock, three men pounced on him, took his sandals, beat him, and threw him into the sea.  The next man hesitated, and the guards tossed him onto the dock.   As the prisoners clamored to stay onboard, the guards behind them held up their spears and pushed them toward the gangplank.

“Nobleman, welcome to Pello Island,” one of guards said, as he picked up Darius and hurled him over the rail and into the ocean.

He entered the water face first and felt the salt water go up his nose and down his throat.  The waves pulled at his legs, and he tried crawling, but his hands sank in the sand.  As he struggled to keep his head up, he felt someone pulling him.

The sand scraped his legs as Darius was dragged out of the water.  He was dropped on his back, and the brightness of the sun struck his eyes. Darius felt like a ragdoll, his arms and legs useless to him.  He squinted, trying to see the face of his savior, but the person’s back was to the sun.  He looked at the feet of his protector, and saw the hem of a woman’s dress.

“My name is Livia,” she said, still standing over him.

Darius was gasping for air.  He choked, and salt water gushed from his throat.  He continued to cough, and then was able to sit up.  Livia knelt down beside him, enabling him to see her face.

Livia appraised Darius.  His clothes hung on him, and his face, covered with a scruffy beard, looked gray, but she could see he was handsome.  Obviously, the trip had taken its toll on him, and he would need some fattening up.  She finally decided that he would do.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

 “Darius,” he answered.  He smiled gratefully at her and she noted his teeth.  They were dingy, but they weren’t black, and he still possessed most of them.

“You’re not a thief,” she stated.  Darius shook his head.

He studied Livia’s face.  She was a bit older than he, and she wasn’t very pretty.  She did, however, possess a voluptuous body.

Someone approached them from the dock and Livia stood up.  Darius hadn’t noticed the large stick she held in her hand.

“Mine,” she snarled.  She lifted the stick and lurched toward the interloper.  He ran away, looking back once to see if she had followed him.

“Can you get up?” she asked.

Darius was still breathing hard, but he nodded his head.  Livia took his arm and helped him off the ground.  He followed her to the docks, and she began picking through the supplies left there.

“Look at those beggars,” she said.

The others islanders were grabbing whatever they could, but Livia’s eye caught the edge of something familiar sticking out of a crate and she pounced on it.

“Ah, yes,” she said as she put the bottle of olive oil in her sack.  She looked at Darius and noticed he was looking at her breasts.

“Don’t get any ideas, young man.  I need you to keep the wolves from the door, that’s all.”

She grabbed a sack of seeds from the pile of supplies and handed it to Darius.  She then grabbed a hoe and shovel.

“Let’s go,” she said, “someone might have been expecting that oil, and we don’t want them to know we have it.”

Livia walked away from the beach with Darius stumbling along behind her.  The seeds were heavier than they looked, and twice he almost dropped them.  She led him to a path winding up the side of the cliff that stood several yards away from the shore.  As she walked in front of him, Darius noticed the sway of her generous hips.

“It’s the first house at the end of this trail,” she said. 

Livia had tied her long brown hair into a bun at the nape of her neck, and Darius could see scars peeking above the neckline of her dress.  There were scars on her ankles too, probably caused by the shackles she wore on her journey to Pello Island.

A small house had been built on a natural foundation cut into the cliff, offering a clear view of the docks.  There was another ledge just above Livia’s house, and someone had erected a slightly larger house there.  That house had a flat roof and was built into the hill at a precarious angle.  A woman sitting on the roof waved at Livia.

“Hello, Rhea,” she said.  “I didn’t see Janus at the docks this morning.”

“He’s working for Primus today,” Rhea replied.

Livia laid her sack on the ground while she opened the door.

“Let’s get these things inside,” she said.  “I don’t trust these beggars.”

  They took their plunder into the house, and Darius collapsed into one of the two chairs in the room.

“These chairs are well-built,” he remarked.  Then he ran his hand over the table top.  “Someone with skill built this furniture.”

Darius noted rugs and vases strewn about the room – little touches that seemed out of place in the rustic setting.

“I had help when I arrived.  Two men sent with me.  They built the furniture and the house.”  Livia sat on the bed.  “Tomorrow you can collect some pine needles, and we can use this old blanket to wrap them.  It will be softer than the bare floor.”

She tossed him a threadbare blanket that must have been 10 years old.  “I have one to cover you as well.  You can sleep by that wall.”  She pointed at the other side of the room.

Darius thought of the patrician’s bed, the bed where he and Cassia had made love, with its feather mattress and silk sheets.  His body slid deeper into the chair, and he sighed.

Livia got up and collected some vegetables from a small basket near the door.  She put them on the table and sat down.

“Here, eat,” she said.

He grabbed a tomato and took a bite.  The juice ran down his chin and onto his tunic.

“I’ll teach you how to fish and farm,” she said.  “I know you probably aren’t used to hard work, but it makes the time pass.”

Darius just kept nodding as she spoke.  He was so grateful to have food and a place to sleep that he was willing to agree to anything she said.

As they finished their meal, Darius looked across the table and saw that her eyes were brown. She had a sweet countenance, but the lines around her mouth and between her eyebrows told him she’d had a hard life.

“Why did you pick me?” he asked her.

“You looked harmless,” she said with a smile.  “And you didn’t look like a thief.”