There is SO much homework to be done. I swear my desk will probably collapse at any minute.
Palomia touched my knee and I screamed. Palomia, oldest charge, aggressive and scrappy, beautiful like an angel because of grooming and the constant need for ingratiating games, lay over me in bed.
"Be quiet. If you scream bloody murder we'll all be in trouble."
I screamed. Another boy, Ilinia, middle brother, precious but unthreatening, covered my mouth, reaching across the bed, "Shut up."
I tried to extricate myself from the tangle of limbs and received a kick in the back, "Stop it," soft voice.
Palomia was always hurting me when I slept with them; it was like a game.
Though often wandering far on their own during the day, we all shared a room during the night in the back of the house, servant's quarters. Though far more extravagant a lodging than usually recommended for those of such station, often the bed seemed very small with five people in it. The four boys who I shared it with whenever Leechtin did not call me to her chamber at night did not pretend that I was their equal at all, but rather something to be teased, pinched, and made fun of.
"Kiss him. He's a little angel. I wonder what's so good about him. Feels the same if you pinch it," Palomia said, pinching the small of my back.
"Stop," I demanded, curling up.
"Get off me," grumbled Cassivio, mysterious and hateful cherubim, in the small space.
Palomia bit my neck and I screamed, thrashing wildly round and beating him on the shoulders with my fists. He was much bigger than me and used to being hit with a closed fist, so I smacked him with my small hand. Sweet Palomia laughed and bundled me to his chest where I always slept. I am sure he thought of me as a pretentious little brother. The others, closer to my age, were never as demonstrative.
***
Leechtin wound her fingers into my hair and looked into my face solemnly. She was investigating me, going over my seven year old skin. These things were never insidious. They did not feel strange. She undressed me and found the place where Palomia had pinched me on my back, touched it, looked for more and found none of it. She wasn't immune to the knowledge of how they tormented me, playfully or not.
She dipped my head back into her basin of water, washing my hair.
She always worried on my behalf, and I'm sure that when I got older I would feel suffocated, but I was so much more selfish then.
"You are carving your name in my heart," she would whisper, desperately, and I would ignore her as time went on. As a child it was not the case because I heard every word.
She would dress me in clothes that she made herself, strange but in Herculaneum with its port and associated peoples not notable, untangle my hair. She had a surprising tenderness toward me. She had always had it.
In Herculaneum, Leechtin was something of a social character, very connected but also unknown. She was not a name known by the average person, only by those who were key, and looking back on it I'm sure she was part of slave trading in some way, buying and selling for precious sums to those looking for specific traits like beauty, strength, something to do with character. I'll never know it for sure, but there were too many whispery parties, too many strange moments. There was plenty of money. From what I could see, she had no enemies and no rivals, never for long anyway.
The villa was sumptuous, the finest accommodations on the inside. The weird thing was the lack of mosaics, lack of statues, lack of faces or bodies in the artworks. They weren't representative; she didn't care for that kind of thing, and it was her house only. She spited the gifts of her associates. I can't lie and say that there weren't specific instances which I remember enraged her on that front, gifts of boys in particular she did not relish but were given often. She had a very specific taste that way, I must remark without pretense.
It would be very foolish to try to pretend that Leechtin does not feel something special for children which is not sweet, but there are sides similar to it. I should know more than anyone. I wouldn't trust anyone to tell me how it was. I know quite strongly that predilection in her the best. She had the ability to be both very beautiful and very ugly, but I have tried very hard not to condemn her for either beauty or ugliness.
That is how I have felt. It is how I feel.
***
What was Herculaneum? It was something that ended very quickly. I was nine before anything changed. There was enough of being tossed around and enough of being coddled in between my seven and my nine. The parties stopped, and Leechtin's mood turned darker. Sometimes she would pull my hair or throw me out of bed, pull me screaming from the servant's quarter or dump me in the fountain.
She only tried to drown me once. I forgave her. I loved her.
***
It happened quickly. She was holding me near the fountain as always, maybe a little tighter than usual, murmuring words that I couldn't hear. She had stiffened and I had tried to look up and swiftly I was underwater, struggling to untangle myself from her arms and screaming from the cold that knocked the breath out of me. She did not push down my head but merely held me under, arms made of immovable marble forcing me to the granite bottom, and it was over as fast, more arms pulling me away and lifting me out. Screaming, yelling, slamming door.
Safe with Nataniellus, I struggled to get out of his arms because I wanted to get back to her, back to Leechtin. I had to.
"She'll kill you," the new lover said, always being kissed, always being fondled, the new captive.
I scratched and bit his arms so that he would drop me and he protested when I pushed him aside and ran out.
And she was not murderous, sitting where she had been left, holding her arms open for me while the darkness made patterns through the window.
I didn't cry. She did.
***
It wasn't the only time she tried to kill me, but it was the only one that required intervention. After Nataniellus came into the villa, she was even moodier than she had been when Vasvius defied her and the parties stopped. She was always whispering in my hair where I couldn't see her, and the words didn't make sense. Sometimes she would cry, usually she wouldn't. I was always her favorite child, and she gave me even greater reign then and I could do whatever I wanted.
No longer did I wait in the servant's quarter for her whim; I could go find her and while never happy to see me, she was always happy to have me.
I was never jealous of Nataniellus. I don't think that he really thinks that Leechtin and I were lovers then. I think that it is only something he accuses Leechtin of when he rides off into his furies. It was a great period of reflection for him, in his new master's house. Leechtin wanted his affection very much then, without wanting to give very much at all. I didn't know anything about the new lover's origins. He was shy about me, and I didn't have eyes for anything but my purpose.
I don't wonder that it's how most of the children I have tortured felt about me, though I have never had the natural passion for it that others have. It was better then, you see, because I have become a very ugly thing.
It was easy in Herculaneum. Wander in the daytime, go home at night, lie in the cool courtyard or under the fountain, on the marble. On the nights increasingly often when Leechtin wouldn't find me I might fall asleep in one of those places. I remember it fondly, waking up in early hours out of doors.
Sometimes Leechtin would come scoop me up while I dozed, waking me with little protest. There was always a cool place where she was concerned, warm coverlet or not.
I'd give anything to have one more night like that.
***
Would it be completely obvious to say that I've been victimized by others a lot and often? Would it be awful to say that I have let myself be taken advantage of and allowed myself the luxury of the resultant melancholy far too often? I have been indulgent, a drunken playboy. I have also been a victim of my circumstances, created or not; why has it been so difficult to find somebody, or some part of myself that can find a healthier way to cry about it? Why do I do these things to myself over and over again?
Sometimes I think Leechtin knows about it, how I inflict pain onto myself, but I don't think it ever occurs to her to wonder why. She has hinted at it, but far be it for her to dally on my personal situation in the face of her own great want for comfort. Is it more selfish for me to ignore her desperation for my embrace so that I can sit in front of mirrors and wonder about myself? I have been absorbed by it for some time, as it is easy to be absorbed by things when everybody imagines that you are dead and no one comes to talk to you.
In Herculaneum, there was never anything but thin protection for the uninitiated.
Let us not think about that time in my life anymore. I wasn't in control of it. It is not my story.
Let us imagine, for now and forever, that everything I have done has been done with good intentions. The bad tempered self must be left out. I do not feel that I can bear it. It would be cruel to say that I have inherited it, and for my life it would not ever be true. I don't know that things had to turn out this way at all.
I am not able to be charitable to myself.
