Author's Note: Lucretia was a Roman woman raped by the son of the last Etruscan king, Tarquin the Proud. After confessing the crime to her husband and his friends, she committed suicide. Lucius Junius Brutus (Marcus Junius Brutus' ancestor) then paraded her body about Rome, stirring the people to revolt, heralding the formation of the Republic.
Disclaimer: I claim no ownership of "Rome" or it's characters.
Lucretia
A woman screamed and Brutus heard it.
The cry was not a shrill one, more of a moan, more of a retching sigh, more of a plea. And it followed him.
As he walked through the Forum it became a pipe in his ears. As he strolled through the streets it mixed with the drone of each foreign voice, each rolling tongue. And as he sat in the Senate, sat resplendent in his white toga edged with red, it became a command, an order from clay cold lips.
Save me. Save me, Brutus.
Men who heard voices were mad. Men who obeyed their primal needs were wretches. But Brutus was neither. Or perhaps he was both.
His Mother was convinced otherwise, convinced that a savior lurked within his ungainly limbs, convinced that he would carry the knife, bear the bludgeon, wield the whip that would set the Republic free.
Brutus did not believe her.
Certainty was a thing of the past. Absolutism reserved for the gods and Caesar perhaps. He had been sure of nothing in his life, had believed only in goodness as a boy, had expected the moon to rise every night only to see it hide behind a cloud.
Everything changed.
Except that cry. Except her shriek.
Save me. Save me, Brutus.
His name, hallowed, holy, once praised. Now soiled, now stained, now ablaze in the ashes of Rome's freedom.
She was always there to remind him that he had failed. And she pursued him through walls, along marble columns and past the putrid puddles that peppered the streets. Chased him through temples and tents and even onto the barren field of battle.
Save me. Save me, Brutus.
He had given her a name. He had pinned a face to the nightmare that haunted him even in the milky dawn.
Lucretia.
Lady of virtue. A woman of the age when Rome's flowers were indeed flowers and not painted, porcelain mockeries of their sisters.
Lucretia.
That violated wife, that wounded bride. And his ancestor, the last man to wield the Junii name with glory, had avenged her, had spilled impure blood on the stones of the city.
Save me. Save me, Brutus.
She implored him yet again. She came to him in dreams and sat perched on his bed, a wilted woman, a sorrowful siren with hair down to her waist and a gaping wound in her chest that stared at him in the dark.
"Save me," she would say, hand touching his, imparting both a sense of mortality and eternity. "Save me, Brutus. Save us all."
There was a mad dog at the gates of Rome now. A mad dog that needed chasing away. An ancient desire hummed to life within the incessant beating of his breast. And all the while he heard Lucretia, heard her crying, begging, screaming.
Save me, Brutus.
It was on a day in March, a bright, sun-smiling day that he at last took heed, that he at last listened. And when the knife was in his hand, the blade fitted inside Caesar's flesh, she finally fell silent.
Author's Note: Thanks for reading. Please take the time to review. I cherish all feedback.
