DISCLAIMER: From the small effort I made to research this time period, I’m certain all history majors will judge this story complete and total fiction. This would bother me more if it were not a work of, well, fiction. Yes, I could have tweaked instead of twisted what we know about antiquity. It probably would have made very little difference to the main concepts of the tale. But, this story is most unusual for me. It is coming to me as it is regardless of what history tells us about the past. Perhaps, I’m channeling a distant ancestor tired of our history being ignored. Maybe she’d like the Celts to get their due. We saved civilization but nobody seems to care what we were doing before that. I mean, I’m sure we were busy building our own civilization before we were consumed by a cultured carried on a tide of faith.
FEEDBACK: Tell me you love it, hate it, or could not care any less… p.phair@comcast.net
WARNINGS: Many of my customary vices; all sorts of sex, rape, violence, foul language, tortured history, evil, good, wicked awesome good, theft, lies, transgressions, slavery, war, hunger, despair, and all around very barbaric behavior.
PROMISE: As long as the ancient Celt haunting my dreams continues to tell me this story, I’ll keep writing it down. This is what any generation would call a…
Fair Trade
by phair
Chapter 3
The moon was high in the night sky when Ainninn returned to the rooms her host porvided. She was surprised to see a candle still burned. However, she was not surprised to see Finntan was keeping the flame company.
“Blame me not if you are in a foul mood when the sun shines above us again,” Ainninn said with a voice hoarse from hours of conversation.
“Did the evening go in our sway?” Finntan ignored her teasing to ask about the negotiations.
“It went as good as we could hope for with the Romans. Father will be compensated with foods and wines and a few coins in exchange for safe passage from the shore to the next clan’s territory beyond the mountains.” Ainninn had a question of her own to ask, “What of the warrior slave? Did you obtain her?”
“Yes, she’s in your sleeping chamber but wait a moment more with me before off to bed,” Finntan rose from his chair as he spoke. “I would ask you to hear me out on one matter which I feel most strongly about.”
Ainninn cocked her head and grinned. “I hear you out on all things. It is too hard to silence your booming voice.”
“I wish for you to follow this advise tonight,” Finntan ignored her jest to explain. “I bound the woman hand and foot and secured her to a ring bolt diven into the stone floor for just that purpose.”
“You were right to give me warning. Otherwise, I’d not be inclined to hear this through,” Ainninn said bitterly. “I will listen but I’m most unhappy doing so.”
Finntan maintained a steady voice in spite of her displeasure. “We know only one thing for sure about this woman, she is fierce in the fight. Both of us need to take some rest. There is no means for us to keep a careful watch with any certainty we’ll not drift off to the land of dreams and elves. For your safety, which your father charged me to keep, I tied her down and she should remain so until we both are rested.”
“Did you tell her why you treated her so roughly?” Ainninn saw the logic behind Finntan’s action but the idea of chaining the battered slave grated against her nerves.
Finntan shook his head as he answered, “She said naught to me. My words evoked no movements from her. The Nile dweller’s skilled tongue was no better than mine with the woman. Mery tells me in the moons the woman has been under Paullus’ control, she failed to learn the most basic Vulgate. Greek, Latin, Egyptian have all been tried. They even tried an Iceni slave’s prattle. The woman stares like a post when commanded to obey and must be prodded with a whip to act. And, Mery said what little the woman does speak she makes no known human sounds she can decipher.”
Ainninn said, “You make good points. She can not understand and we are too exhausted to guard against any harm she might want to cause us. I will abide by your logic. I’m sorry to doubted your wisdom.”
“Ainninn, I know why your heart breaks with this. The memories of your mother’s anguish maybe distant but that would not make them less sharp.” He saw her duck her head as she tried to hide the truth from him. “Girl, your mother turned your father’s heart. He accepted she bested him in all things which could matter to his fame. Yes, she began as his slave. He was often heavy handed with her but she prevailed. The memories bother you more than they troubled her when the blood ran hot in her veins. I swear this to you.”
Ainninn could only nod a reply. She knew her voice would betray her weakness. Finntan’s bear like embrace was a welcome support.
“Had she not died with fever, I’ve no doubt she would have accompanied your father on this journey. He would have proclaimed her to all of Rome his Queen,” Finntan whispered hin Ainninn’s ear. “Now, we need to be off to bed. Your place is to the west and mine is to the east. I envy you the closer berth to home.”
“Why two? We traveled here nearly sharing a bunk and now we are on opposite sides on the hall?” Ainninn asked as she regained some humor with his words.
Finntan blushed as he replied, “The Nile dweller and I, well, she’s been seeing to my needs. Our noise would keep you from your rest. Our noise might keep the dead from their rest.”
“You tease me,” Ainninn gasped. “You bedding a wench of foreign blood? Tell me no.”
“I can not. The woman is sweet and gentle to me. She offered a number of bodies to pick from but I liked the way she touched me in the baths. Her soft fingers are tender but firm,” he confessed.
“Don’t keep her waiting, man. Do what you want but be gone from me,” Ainninn grinned as she spoke. “Indulge tonight. Perhaps, we’ll make the tide by midday.”
“You’re lips to Gnim’s ears.”
Ainninn watched her friend depart for his room before extinguishing the candle he kept his vigil by. She stretched and took a deep breath before heading for her chamber. The slave might be restrained but Ainninn did not want to show any weakness in spite of her exhaustion. No need to let the woman think there was a means to gain an upper hand under a new household.
“Finntan thinks of everything,” Ainninn muttered to herself when she saw the slave was not just chained but also gagged and blindfolded.
Her voice brought an immediate change to the bound woman. Muscles stiffened to the limits of her teathers and she cocked her head slightly as if to pick up a scent on the breeze. Of course, seated in chains on the cool marble floor with her back to the wall there was little else the woman could do.
The metal cuffs around her wrists and ankles were tightly fastened together and shackled to a ring bolt between her feet. A metal collar around her neck was on a short leash to the same ring bolt. The restraints allowed her to rest her forehead on knees but forced her to keep her legs bent toward her chest. Sweat glistened on her cleansed and naked skin from hours of enduring the stress the position caused her body.
Ainninn moved like she would on a hunt. The woman responded by turning her head toward each step Ainninn took. A step to the left and the woman’s weight shifted ever so slightly to keep what she could not see approaching her directly in front of her body.
“It would seem she has, at least, an animal’s wit for tracking game,” Ainninn noted casually in her native tongue.
The woman stopped following the movements with Ainninn’s words. She cringed a little closer to her legs. It was not in preparation for a beating. It was an action more of dissappointment than defensiveness.
“You know my words. Don’t play false with me. I’m fair and patient but will not play a fool’s game,” Ainninn warned and saw the woman shrink down a little more but there was a slight dip of her head in aknowledgement. “Have you understood your master all along and this ignorance of speech you display is but a rouse to avoid your burdens?”
Ainninn reached down and pulled the gag free. The woman’s chin was deeply purple from the hit with the sword hilt during the battle’s finally minutes.
“Had I understood the Roman honks, I would have suffered much less from their whips,” she answered firmly but in a hoarse voice that betrayed her fatigue. Her accent was thick and barely intelligible to Ainninn but the question was clear, “You are a Gaul? A distant cousin of my tribe, perhaps? Your words are very close to my own but the inflection is hard ignore. If you but slow a bit it will be easier for me to get your meaning always.”
Ainninn stepped up next to her and the woman flinched.
“I meant no familiarity. I wish only to follow your commands well. If you are wont to beat me, please kill me instead. The pain is too heavy as it is. Increasing it will make my suffering unbarable,” the woman’s voice dropped into a whisper.
Ainninn knelt next to her and pulled the blindfold free. The woman blink against the weak light from two candles. Bruises ran along her sun bleached yellow hairline on the left. A deep cut was stitched closed on her right temple. Ainninn placed a hand on either side of the woman’s face and looked into her blue, gray wolf-like eyes.
“Never let an opponent know you suffer. Surely, they will inflict just enough more pain to maximize your grief but not enough to let you squirm your way to final freedom in death.” Ainninn tipped the woman’s head side to side watching the grimaces and changes in her eyes, “Too many hits to the skull will free you from waking but it will be miserable days before your body gives up its ghost. How many blows connected today?”
“I can not remember.”
“What can you remember?”
The woman was quiet for a moment before lifting hardened eyes to meet Ainninn’s own. “I killed more than two men and cut one to the bone so deep he’ll never walk again and trapped a beautiful beast for slaughter. Had you not ended the match, I would surely be suffering no more. Tell me if you are Gaul or not so I might curse your interferrence freely without troubling any common ancestors.”
“Do I look like a Gaul?” Ainninn chuckled as she sat back on her haunches. “When last did you see skin like mine covering a Gaul?”
The woman stayed serious in spite of Ainninn’s humor. “You’re no Gaul by the look of you. I guessed your heritage entirely by your words. Are you captured booty like me?”
“No, I’m free born of my father. My mother was the prize he held in bondage. I’m half a Celt and that is all of me that matters to anyone. What of you? The Romans call you Viking.”
The woman laughed at the thought.
“So worldly our hosts are they can not tell a tall Norse boatman from a squat axe wielder from the east,” Ainninn mocked them too. “So, are you Germanic? You words are not as good as theirs. Still close enough for me sift out the meaning. What are you and what name do you carry? Tell me so that I may stop calling you Viking; a promotion beyond your reach.”
“I’m a Suebi. My people live across the Rhine. Our words are similar but not exactly Gaul like. Unlike you, my head can not hold another’s babbling. They tried to make me listen but it was for not.” She grimaced then, “I was only able to understand the whip’s tongue and they wielded it liberally carving a litany on my back.”
“A name, you have one or should I shout Suebi when my whip needs a target,” Ainninn said with a yawn.
“Are you my leash holder now?”
Ainninn gave her a stern warning, “Answer my questions, do not provide your own. If you forget your place with me and press your own agenda, your back will be bared for my litany.”
“Pardon,” the woman lowered her gaze. “I can not tell what the Romans call me, if it’s a name or a curse. Among my own people, I was called Dru.”
“I’ve no need to change that. Keep it and say it so when asked.” Ainninn could not contain another yawn. “I need a bed to find some rest before the sun comes again. You should sleep too. Don’t expect much of your condition to change with me. All that is altered is where you’ll serve not that you’ll serve.”
Dru said nothing. Her eyes smoldered and her mouth twitched with an ache to speak. But, she managed to keep her peace.
“It is good you heard my warning about your tongue but mark this too,” Ainninn said and slapped Dru’s cheek lightly for effect. “If you can not mask your anger keep you face to the floor and show me nothing but a respectful bow.”
Dru shruddered slightly but managed to reply, “Yes, Mistress.”
Ainninn stood feeling the full weight of the new title but refused to show weakness to her new slave.