Author's Note: "Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated." –Aristotle
Disclaimer: A slave owns nothing; I own no more.
Life was good.
Esca had been so worried, and then so relieved, that Stephanos had laughed at him. "If being put firmly in your place is all you need to keep you happy, I think I can help you to achieve and maintain contentment for a long time to come." Esca smiled in response, but wisely said nothing, thereby escaping a scolding.
Stephanos reminded him of his grandmother, who had spent his childhood lovingly nagging him into good behavior.
He had certainly not expected a Roman household to be like this.
After some little hesitation, Esca had set up a target in the disused atrium that separated the private apartments of the house from the two shops that faced the street, less to keep his practicing out of his master's sight than to save himself from having to swim out into the stream to retrieve stray arrows.
At least that's what he told himself.
He didn't understand why Aquila and Marcus didn't use the front door, which led from the atrium through the fauces and vestibulum that separated the two shops to the street, but they didn't.
Uncle and nephew came and went came and went through the side door that opened off the wide central corridor, just as Stephanos did. Only Esca used the front door, because it was the quickest way to reach the baker's in the left front shop, where he went each morning to fetch the huge round loaf that formed part of the man's rent. Visitors seldom came to the house; the few who did seemed to know to use the side door.
So the atrium was deserted. To Esca, that made it perfect. He said nothing to Marcus, nothing to anybody. He didn't request time away from his labors, just set up the target, and snatched a few minutes or an hour whenever he could to practice whenever the Roman was busy with something else. Like tonight: he was busy sleeping.
It was dangerous to sneak away while his master slept, in light of Marcus' proven propensity to wake and ask for wine or water, or other assistance. Tonight, however, Esca expected his master to sleep much more deeply than was his wont, just as he'd drunk more deeply that evening at cena.
The dinner party, the first since Marcus' injury, had not been a success.
Esca didn't understand it. The men were friends of Uncle Aquila, retired soldiers, just as the old Roman was—just as Marcus was, come to that. One would have thought the men had a lot in common, but the… 'entertainment' only served to make the young Roman irritable and morose. Perhaps he hadn't liked this army.
Yet he always spoke of it to Esca as though he had. As though to be a Roman soldier were the greatest thing in the world. Esca had shuddered, thinking about it as he'd removed the bow and arrows from the chest he'd been assigned in which to store his own 'possessions,' which currently consisted of the said bow and arrows, three hand-me-down tunics, two worn and nearly threadbare pairs of bracchae, and his battered sandals.
Cunoval's dagger, of course, was still kept in Marcus' treasure chest, along with the military armilla he was so proud of, which celebrated his honor and faithfulness with the engraved words 'pia et fidelis.'
Honor and faithfulness.
You're not very good.
He needed to practice his archery.
He couldn't sleep anyway.
A nearly full moon shone overhead, casting sufficient light into the weirdly exterior interior of the atrium to allow him to place all his arrows in the target anyway, even if most of them had failed to hit the bullseye.
No wonder old Bairrfhionn had been so insistent that they practice all the time. He could feel his muscles beginning to remember what to do, his old skill beginning to return, but it was a slow business. It would take many days (and nights) of practicing to bring his performance up to a level that would please a Roman centurion.
And Esca was determined to please him.
He sent a quick prayer to the Morrigan for her aid, and one to Llew for his, then one to Nodens. Who else should he try to propitiate?
The moon's brightness had certainly helped him tonight.
"Esca."
The voice startled him, but not badly, because its tone was quiet, almost reverent.
The speaker was not Marcus, nor Stephanos, nor Aquila.
Nor any man.
Esca turned and rose from his seat on the atrium's sole stone bench in a single fluid movement.
The woman was tall, probably taller than he, though not so tall as Marcus. She wore a white shift that fell smoothly to her ankles, exposing her bare feet. Her long blonde hair fell in crimped waves down her back, over her bare arms.
She was as pale in the silver moonlight as spirits were said to be, but this was no ghost.
It was the weaver, Linnea, who had the right front shop. He'd been sent there to pick up a tunic for Marcus one day, and as soon as he'd seen how she'd tamed the cloud of wool under her arm, the fine thread streaming from her fist obediently to her drop spindle, just as it had always done for his mother, he'd been lost.
Her lovely face was raised now to the brightness in the sky, and she smiled at Esca like a dream lover. Something expanded in his chest, taking up all the room he normally used for breathing. Please don't let me wake up. Not yet.
"That's her name, you know," Linnea told him. "Esca. Her secret name. Not 'brightness' as people call her, nor the 'Queen of the Night,' as the sailors have it."
He knew. It was forbidden to call the moon by her name. He swallowed, but found he couldn't say anything.
Her smile widened. "But you know that, don't you, Esca?" She winked. "You share a secret with the moon. And a name."
"The oak priests say it's bad luck to say it," he managed to rasp.
"How could it be bad luck, Esca," she asked, "to say so lovely a name?"