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"And who might you be?" Calliliana stood before the jailer, attempting to still the fearful quivering of her slender form. The man behind the large desk covered in papers was hardly taller than was she, but at least twice as large. His thick head was devoid of any hair, except for a few straggling, oily wisps that clung to his crown. His brown eyes were the color and clarity of mud, and his greasy smile revealed two rows of badly broken, rotted teeth. The smell of the man alone was enough to make the stomach of the girl churn; she began to fear greatly that she would vomit right there in front of him.
"The wife of one of your prisoners, Sir. I have not seen my husband in three weeks and I wish to tell him…" the man dismissed her plea with a wave of his hand.
"Name of the prisoner?" he barked. The sound of his voice reminded the girl of the crack of a whip, and she trembled.
"Leander Maximinus." The guard stopped looking through his ledger, and a grotesque, leering smile lit up his broad face. With a movement as fluid as rancid oil pouring from a jar, he stepped forward and grasped Calliliana by her shoulders. The girl attempted to cry out, but he clamped a firm hand, smelling of putrescence, over her mouth and nose.
"It is said," he murmured, half to himself and half to the struggling woman, "that the wife of Maximinus is lovely indeed to behold." Without concern for her hair, the grotesque man ripped her shawl away from her face. Calliliana gasped in surprise and indignation, which was quickly supplanted by fear as she met the hungry look churning the mud-waters of the man's eyes.
"Let me go!" she cried, pushing against his mountainous chest with all of her strength. He laughed and clutched her tighter, so tightly that the maid felt she would swoon with the stench of his unwashed body.
"It is better by far than I thought. Oh, you are lovely, you little slave-whore. Wife, you say? Ha! I doubt it. However, I will allow you to see your 'husband'—but not until you give me what I want!" He grinned at her mockingly and roughly tore his fingers through her luxuriant tresses. "Most others must give me gold to see their prisoners." He clenched his fists in her hair and moved his lips over it greedily. "Your gold suits me much better." Tears of fear and humiliation were coursing down the fiercely burning cheeks of the maiden.
"Please…please…let me go," she begged, her voice pitiful. Her tormentor merely laughed at her again, moving his mouth closer to hers…closer…closer…
"What is the meaning of this outrage?" Never since she had been rescued from the slave auction had the voice of a man been so welcome to the girl. She felt the jailer's hands slack and slip from her, and she turned with joy in her eyes to meet him who had saved her honor…only to come face to face with Marcus Agrippa. The very blood in her veins seemed to thick with cold and her eyes grew wide.
"You…" she started, stepping back. Agrippa ignored her, strode towards the jailer, and dealt him a furious blow to the side of his head.
"How dare you molest this woman?" he barked, his voice full of murder. The man cowered on the floor beneath him, shaking his head and mumbling.
"Forgive me, Commander, it will never happen again." Agrippa snorted.
"See that it doesn't. However, as a little reminder…" his sword flashed from its sheath and bit the man neatly on his fat right cheek. The man shrieked as the blood ran down his face and slowly made a mark upon his filthy tunic. Agrippa squatted down until he was on eye level with the man. "Do I make myself clear?"
"Yes, Sir."
"Then I suggest you go. Another will be found to take your place." The man stood and scampered hastily from the room with one hand covering his face, a few drops of blood left on the floor the only sign that the man had ever been head of the jail. Then, and only then, did Agrippa turn towards the girl.
"Why have you come here?" he asked. Calliliana noted that his voice was strained and rough, as if he wished to prevent her from seeing any emotion that his hard heart might be capable of holding. She decided that she might use this hidden emotion to coax out some sympathy for her husband.
"Sir," she murmured, falling to her knees on the cold stone floor and ignoring the pain it inflicted upon her, "my husband is innocent. I know that; there is no better man under the sun! He has not been home in three weeks, Commander, and I have much to tell him."
"Such as?" Agrippa had crossed the room and now sat where the banished jailer had reclined. With his stern, rugged face and ebony eyes that burned her heart like coal in a fire, the young woman felt that she was being judged as she knelt thus before him.
"Sir…he has a son!" She moved then, just enough for Agrippa to note that her figure, indeed, had returned to its former loveliness. He restrained a sigh as he contemplated it; she was beautiful beyond compare. With the restored splendor of her body added to the glory of her face…oh, how he wished to leap from his chair and take her right then, right there, as was his right! Suddenly, then, another thought occurred to him. A son, the girl had said? This man whom he loathed had one to carry on his name and to inherit his fortune. He stifled a growl low in his throat. This was more than he could bear!
"Stand up," he said to the maiden. She did so, a curious look on her lovely young face.
"May I…may I go in now?"
"NO!" he thundered, turning away as if to leave. "NO YOU MAY NOT SEE HIM!" Calliliana shrank back slightly, but a fire was beginning to burn in her own eyes.
"I have come all this way to be with him. I have left my child and my home and traveled many miles here, without escort, without even a horse to carry me. I am weak, Sir, weak indeed still from the birth of my child." She walked up to him then, and there was a light in her face so intense it frightened the trained soldier. He nearly trembled before her, before this small, frail little woman, before he stopped himself. Forcing her face to within a few inches from his, she whispered, "And you are mistaken. I will see him. I will see him! I will not leave until I see him!"
"Listen to me, Wench!" Marcus grasped the girl by the arm and forced her up against a wall. He, in turn, placed his face near to hers. "You may see him on one condition: that you never treat an officer of the army of Commodus like that again! Be thankful that I can be merciful to beautiful women, Girl. I could have taken anything from you for what you just said!" There was barely a flicker of fear in the girl's face.
"Then take me to my husband!" Agrippa pulled away from her so fast, Calliliana fell to the ground.
"Stay here!" he commanded her, and disappeared into the black gloom of the hallway; painfully, she slowly drew herself up on her knees and gazed after him as he left. Only then, once she had ascertained that she was finally alone, did the maiden give vent to the bitter emotions that she was feeling. Her body shook and trembled violently; she clamped her jaws together tightly so as not to let her delicate teeth rattle against one another and break. Tears of humiliation, pain, and anger flowed freely down her fiery face as she attempted to forget the feel of the loathsome jail-warden's hands upon her.
"Oh God," she moaned, letting fall her face in her cold hands, "strengthen me now! After all this…I must see him. Please, please let me see him!"
The maiden allowed herself to weep for a few moments, then hastily dried her eyes. "Stop, you little idiot," she commanded harshly, as she wiped frantically at her face. "I must look lovely for him…greet him with a smile on my face to match the joy in my heart at seeing him again! No more tears, now." Shivering still from the extent of her tumultuous emotions, Calliliana curled up on the floor, focusing her tired eyes on a small window near the top of the wall. The afternoon sun shone brightly through the grating and fell upon her form as thus she lay, illumining her as the sun's rays on a curled flower. "Hurry, Leander," she whispered, her words melting against the stone floor. "My courage will not sustain me much longer."
"What have you done to so incite his wrath?" Leander let himself relax against the touch of the young slave boy's cool cloth on his face, on his body, sponging away the blood and filth from many days.
"I do not know, Adrian, other than that I follow Christ." Leander noted that Adrian's ebony eyes seemed to grow only wider and more surprised as he listened to the prisoner speak.
"But you must know the horror of what they are going to do to you…?"
"If I must endure this trial, I shall. And I shall hope to do it with grace." The boy stopped tending him then, and looked at him with concern in his face and doubt in his eyes.
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