4
Thanks so much to montypython61 for all the awesome reviews! You are keeping me going and encouraging me…this story is for you!
And a warning to all you readers: this story is going to get worse before it gets better…much worse. But I promise you that the ending will be worth it. So please stick in there, review, and no flames please.
When Calliliana awoke the next morning, she lay still for a moment, staring vacantly at her surroundings. The bed she lay upon—naked, as it were—was made with the finest Egyptian linen that she had ever seen before in her life. The room was no larger than was her room in Maximinus' villa, but it was adorned with greater opulence by far than was hers. Leander favored a much more simplistic and beautiful style of decorating within his home—he preferred to spend most of him time in his lush gardens anyhow.
At first, the girl was content to simply lie in the strange bed, gaze at her foreign surroundings, and attempt to collect her scattered thoughts. Where was she? In whose bed was she reclining so comfortably? Where was her husband…?
Her husband! At the thought, the maiden's full faculties were mercilessly restored, and she sat up with a strangled cry—only to be met by pain screaming from every muscle in her body. "Oh my Lord," she cried aloud in anguish, as the hot, bitter tears soaked her face, "What have I done? What have I done?" For it was then that she remembered the night before in all of its hideous detail.
"…Tonight you ARE a slave girl. MY slave girl…if you wish your husband to live, you will do exactly as I say…this is the only choice…"What could she have done? Leander, her beloved, beautiful Leander, would have died a death of the most painful infamy known to man. What could she have done, other than comply completely with the wishes of her tormentor?
She had allowed him to carry her unresisting form to his room, and there…oh there, he had had his way with her! The maiden doubled over in agony at the memory and pressed a hand to her mouth to smother the bile filling it. Marcus Agrippa was as cruel with a woman as he was with his prisoners—to this she could attest with all certainty. When she had cried out, he had struck her, when she had attempted to plead for mercy, he had threatened her husband with various tortures so heart-rending, it had seemed to the pitiful young woman that her very blood curdled within her veins.
Calliliana looked down at her naked body and took stock of it; there was not an inch of flesh without some mark or another upon it. She was covered in livid, hideous bruises the size of a denarius, and many parts that had escaped bruising were decorated with raw-looking red marks. Every time the young woman moved, her body wailed aloud in protest; she had been used to the tender loving of her husband, whose main concern was pleasing her and avoiding her pain at any cost. Agrippa had been so rough with her, her body recoiled in horror as she recalled the pain that he had inflicted upon her body, so newly divested of its glorious burden of child.
At just that moment, the door to the room opened. Calliliana stifled a scream and clutched the linens about her quivering form—but it was only Lavina, the young slave who had readied her the night before. She entered the room shyly, her eyes cast upon the floor, and every movement of her body seemed slightly afraid. "Thus are those who serve this man," thought Calliliana to herself as she watched her, "they…we…live in fear!"
"What do you require this morn, Domina?" Calliliana narrowed her eyes at the girl.
"Nothing…save this." She crept towards the edge of the bed and sat there, a pleading look on her youthful face, tears shining in her eyes—tears of stained and tarnished innocence. "Please, I beg of you, look at me. I am not, I swear to you, some whore that this man has purchased for the night. I have a child, a son whom I adore, and a husband who is my life…it was for him I did this thing." The slave woman still did not meet her gaze; her dark eyes flitted restlessly across the room. Calliliana bowed her head and gave vent to her bitter anguish, her sobs racking her aching body and filling the room with their sound. "P-please," she stammered, her white hands clasped before her breast, "please. As one woman to another, meet my eyes. Do not condemn me as a whore, as I am sure that many will do, now. Let me know that God is good to me still, that I have one friend left to me in this dark and bitter hell which is my life. Please…look at me." Lavina slowly raised her eyes to meet the face of the young woman whose beauty she had so admired and wished to possess the night before.
She was still beautiful, oh so beautiful, as she sat there, the crystal tears splashing from her emerald eyes down her marble face. Her hair was still arranged as it had been the night before, though now it was so mussed and tousled it made a veritable haystack of gold around her face (which was still oddly becoming). Lavina moved closer to the weeping girl, reached out a hand to touch her…it was then she saw the marks upon her.
Not one surface of the girl's body, save her face, had escaped without some mark or another upon it. The slave girl doubled back in horror—this lovely young girl appeared as if she had just undergone the most punishing of tortures. She had.
"Oh, Domina," Lavina whispered, as she gently stroked the girl's hair, "Oh, my lady, what has he done to you? Why did you allow him to do it?" Calliliana wept the harder at this.
"To save him who I love! My husband is condemned to death—death this very day, and your wicked master made it very clear to me that unless I submitted to him, unless I gave myself to him 'in the manner of a slave girl'…my husband would die. I did what he bid me…" The young Greek doubled over in a fit of weeping so great, her words came out only in a strangled whisper, "I think now I have done wrong. Leander will never want to look at me…or touch me…or love me again…after what I have done."
"Surely your husband is a good man," soothed Lavina, who felt her own tears traverse their way down her cheeks, "he will know that you have done what you did to save him!"
"But I am nothing!" wailed the heartbroken girl. "I am used; useless! I am tarnished silver, I am broken glass, I am lusterless gems…" her voice fell so low the servant had to bend close to hear it. "I am nothing." Lavina lifted the maiden's face in her own work-worn hands, and gazed upon her reddened face.
"Never say that! I take it, by your words, that you are a follower of the Christ." Calliliana nodded. "Did he not say that He would never leave you, nor forsake you?"
"Then where is He?" the maiden murmured listlessly. "He is not here, that is certain." Lavina shook her head.
"God moves in mysterious ways, my friend. He is with you in the darkest places, even though you cannot see Him. He is in the dungeons with your husband now, though perhaps the man might not sense it. And He is with you, in your prison." Calliliana met the woman's gaze.
"How do you know so much about The Way?" she asked softly, her full lips trembling with sorrow. Lavina sat down beside her and artfully massaged her back, careful to avoid the places marked by the cruelty of her despicable master.
"Your prayer that God would send you a friend now was answered. I follow the Way myself." Calliliana attempted to turn and gaze upon her new-found friend, but the woman would not allow it. Gently forcing her into a comfortable position on the bed, she offered, "My master is gone for the day, and you are safe. If he forced you once, it is not likely that he will force you again—at least, if he is to keep his word." The woman's last words struck fear into Calliliana's heart more forcefully than a blow.
"If he keeps his word?" she gasped in horror, as she rose again to a sitting position. "You mean I did all of this…" Lavina gently pushed the maiden back down upon the bed.
"Hush. Do not worry, my dear. Now this is what I shall do: I will salve your wounds, then get you dressed and send you on your way. You must be eager to return to that bright-eyed babe of yours!" Calliliana nodded; she had been too numb with grief to even think of little Leander. Now she realized, in a state similar to panic, that her poor little son must be famished with hunger.
"Yes, I must go to him." Lavina began mixing various herbs she had brought with her into soothing salves and balms—she had had an idea the young woman would be in this condition, and had come prepared.
"Good, you are thinking of other things now. And perhaps, your husband will even be home waiting for you when you return! Surely you realize that he must love you all the more for what you have done.
"Yes…" Calliliana murmured, as the tears filled her eyes again and teetered precariously on the edge of her lashes, "…perhaps."