Infamia, Part xi-a
Infamia, Part xi-a
XWP AU, Xena/Gabrielle
Notes: Apologies for the long lull between updates. As previously with part x, this part turned out much longer than expected, hence it's divvied up into (a) and (b). Part xi-b will follow directly after this.
Previous parts: part i/
part ii/ part iii/ part iv/ part v/ part vi/ part vii/ part viii/ part ix
part x-a/
part x-b
Stay gold
The rose petals are familiar; the triumph this time, strangely hollow.
This morning in Alexandria-cool and subdued, like a sea after an exhausting storm- the winds predict a change of season. These winds, unnamed to outsiders, seem apropos for a change in ruler: For it was only yesterday that Cleopatra sat alone on the Ptolemaic throne for the first time. The orator at the coronation, one Ptahhotep, spoke of a new age, a silver age-at least until he caught the glinting, critical eye of the Empress and hastily upgraded this to a golden age.
Were Xena’s own years in Rome falsely gilded as well? Years ago, her whirlwind encounter with Caesar culminated in a golden laurel upon her head, rose petals in her cleavage, a never-ending triumph, a wine-soaked debauch of a banquet, a chain around her waist, and a new beginning. Even if she began her reign as Empress with a skull-crushing hangover and blissfully ignorant about what exactly transpired with the naked female slave in bed with her and her new husband that morning. It’s different this time. For one thing, it’s not her triumph. The machinations are hers, yes, the strategies successful: Grain will go to Rome, Pompey will be remembered as a great man sacrificed in a time of crisis, and Egypt will have a beautiful new queen and significantly improved relations with the Empire.
Xena sits, facing the wide window of the bedchamber. Clouds skim the sky. Hours earlier the rumblings of a rainstorm woke her, a damp wind whipped through the room. Clutching at a robe she had staggered out of bed, grabbed a cup filled with the last of the good wine, and flopped into a padded chair to watch the storm’s entertainment-threads of lightning stitching the sky, the driving rain revealed in brief moments of illumination. Mission accomplished. Time to go. At daybreak she had drifted back into sleep briefly only to wake at clatter in the courtyard below-perhaps merchants heading to market, something dropped from a cart-and still stalled at the same strangely disheartening conclusion: Time to go.
She swirls the dregs of the wine.
Since her arrival in Alexandria months ago, however, she hasn’t a word from anyone-Caesar, Antony, not even a reproach from the Senate about Pompey, and the Senate did so love to excoriate her-no missives have landed on her desk, a niggling fact that contributes heavily to her sense of unease. Although Antony, not much of a letter-writer, would only be motivated to correspondence by bad news. And Caesar? Do I really miss my husband’s odd, self-centered ramblings?
The shrouded body in Xena’s bed groans, stirs, and sighs.
And then there is Cleopatra. Intimate relations with the queen possessed the tenor of closing negotiations, as if the careful mutual possession of one another’s body were a cultural exchange, the establishment of a satrapy upon hospitable yet foreign lands. In other words, pleasantly educational yet devoid of passion. “That was nice!” Cleopatra had exclaimed after the first time they slept together, as if they had just promenaded seaside on a beautiful day. Xena had certainly heard far worse things about her bedroom performances-you seem more aroused by yourself than by me, someone, probably Quintus Fabian’s scurrilous wife, had complained-but nice had the dull ring of a dutiful suitor, someone she neither wanted nor wanted to be. However unrealistic the expectation, what she had wanted, what she had hoped to get from Cleopatra, was a purity of passion.
As she rises from the bed the first thing Cleopatra reaches for is not a robe, but a cup of wine abandoned the night before. Few members of royalty display such confidence in the nude, thinks Xena. But-her appreciative glance glides over the perfectly proportioned pulchritude of the Egyptian queen, the subtle planes and curves of her breasts, her belly, her thighs, the warm brown tint of her skin-how many queens and kings would have a body like that?
The new ruler of Alexandria drinks deeply from the cup. “Thought I had worn you out.”
Amused, Xena purses her lips. “You think highly of yourself.”
“Oh, I forgot. You are Xena the Insatiable, the Empress of the Erotic. A legion of lovers borne aloft on the strength of your reputation precedes you.” The enchanting smile that so beguiled Xena the first time they met is offered on cue. “So tell me, what would wear you out? An orgy?”
“Probably a certain combination of top-notch courtesans, horny sailors, good wine-” And gladiators? Or just one in particular? The mysterious little gladiator now spends her days in thrall to the library and the cunning old librarian, Apollonius, who had petitioned to have the gladiator replace the giant guard whom Xena had so thoughtlessly killed months ago. (The late lamented behemoth was now buried under a pyramid courtesy of Pullo, who had been quite proud of his idea: “They’ll never find ‘im now!”)
“All things you could find in Alexandria,” Cleopatra offers, before staring dismally into her cup. “Except, perhaps, good wine.”
Xena laughs.
“For all my, ah, limitations and disappointments, I am heartened that at the very least I amuse you.”
“Forgive me.” Xena says it with perfunctory haste while nodding at gray skies. “My mood matches the weather.”
“No offense taken. Alexandria’s winter is rougher than one imagines.” Xena hears her careful nimble tread across the marble, feels her delicate fingers at play along a silky seam of Xena’s robe. “Is something troubling you?”
“Omne animal post coitum triste,” the Empress murmurs. “Do you know that saying?”
“It’s all Latin to me, dear.”
“‘All animals are sad after sex.’ I think that same sadness occurs after ceremonies, celebrations, triumphs-the inevitable comedown after scaling such great heights, don’t you think? All the promises made-one wonders if they will come to fruition.”
“I think you’ve spent too much time among the Romans.” The wry retort is an unlikely yet effective prelude to Cleopatra straddling Xena’s lap and lacing her arms around Xena’s neck-like an albatross, the latter thinks unkindly, as dread and desire, a bitter familiar alchemy, commingle within her. “Actually, no,” the queen continues, “let me amend that: I never know what you are really thinking. Or saying for that matter.” Carefully Cleopatra regards her, monitoring the effect of this unusually frank admission, a dramatic departure from the politesse and rhetoric that adumbrates every single conversation they’ve ever had.
Then Cleopatra touches her lips-tracing for truth or demanding desire, Xena is not sure which-and Xena claims an index finger with her mouth. Her tongue touches the tip of the finger, and Cleopatra’s eyes respond with simultaneous eclipses of both irises. “Is there something in particular you wish to know?” Xena growls around the finger in her mouth.
Reluctantly Cleopatra removes her finger from Xena’s mouth. “Yes. A very simple question, really: Now what?”
“I have more or less achieved what I set out to do here. So there is only one thing left to do: Return to Rome.” Xena presses her face against the queen’s throat; her lips brush an undulating tendon.
Cleopatra hisses at the contact. “That is-all well and good for you, but for Alexandria?”
Debriefings during foreplay: for Xena, not an unusual occurrence. “There are troops coming from Pergamum. They will be under the command of Marcus Aemilius Lepidus-a good leader, a bit unimaginative, but he knows how to take orders and how to give them. A temporary measure, of course, until your base of power is fully stabilized.”
“Good.” The trail of smugness across Cleopatra’s countenance disappears as she kisses her benefactor. “Now, will you permit me the opportunity to sadden you once more? I promise this time that the heights we achieve will be well worth the descent.”
“Go on.” Xena settles back into the chair, which encourages the parting of her robe. “Impress me.”
The world's first graphic novel
In her time as a gladiator, Gabrielle has been struck with any number of blunt instruments, everything from a mace to an oar, and cut or stabbed by an impressive variety of knives and swords, but there is no weapon she fears and despises more than the whip. The whip, the stylus that inscribed the introduction to slavery on her back, provided a foretaste of a kind of pain and humiliation she had never before experienced. The particular pain of a whip was excruciating as well: A sting blossoming languidly into deeper, sharper pain, not unlike a blade buried slowly into the skin.
So when the library’s latest thief, his stolen treasures slung in a saddlebag across his back, brandishes a whip that licks painfully, mockingly, around Gabrielle’s wrist as she reaches for a sword, the enlightened world she has inhabited for the past several months collapses dramatically under rekindled rage. He’s quick with the whip, but not quick enough to avoid her grasp. It bites into her skin again as she grabs it and reels him in for a crippling kick. She is on him then, beating him senseless with bare fists until her knuckles are flayed, until Apollonius is bellowing-his thin, quivering voice surprisingly loud and robust-for her to stop. Please. Stop.
Later, in tiny alcove that all the scholars and librarians now recognize as hers alone, she awkwardly bandages her hands-the left more damaged than the right, because she did not want to waste her dominant fist on the thief-the reeking salve retrieving the memory of the Empress neatly bandaging a similar wound for her while asking so many disturbingly lucid questions. How long ago was that? The Empress had given her special dispensation to work and dwell in library, and she has taken generous advantage of this gift; the disadvantage, however, is that she rarely sees Xena these days. The ceaseless preparations for Cleopatra’s coronation and the tedious renegotiations of the satrapy meant that the Empress was never away from either Cleopatra or the palace for long.
She tightens the bandage and wonders if they are in love. She wonders if Cleopatra is capable of love; in the Egyptian queen she recognizes aspects of herself-the woman is a consummate survivor. Every action a beautiful, confidant risk. Xena, on the other hand, is inscrutable as usual. In her recent observations and interactions with the Empress, Gabrielle detected no major differences in her behavior, but admittedly Gabrielle is an expert neither on love nor Xena. All she will admit to herself, however, is that she misses that unexpected companionship, that inexplicable kindness. All the more disappointing now that it was gone. Apollonius, she thinks, will have to do. She winces. The old man was clearly displeased with her, and rightfully so. Time to make amends.
She finds him in a common room, at a table with piles of uncatalogued scrolls and bossing around Damianos, one of his assistants. “No, these go into cases. They’re originals, very old and fragile yet of supreme importance-not unlike me, Damianos. And these over here are but pale imitations.” He glares at Damianos, thus finishing the analogy. “Go purchase the cases.” As the minion scurries off, the librarian turns his withered mien to Gabrielle, settling his glare on her hands. “You’re still bleeding.”
“It will stop soon.”
“You’re not touching a scroll until they’ve healed properly. I can’t have you bleeding all over everything.”
“All right.” For an apology, she hopes meek acquiescence will do.
The librarian sighs. “You’ve done the law’s work for them. Beaten as badly as he was, I doubt they’ll do much more to him.”
Gabrielle twitches. Looking down at her bandaged hands, she sees he is right-they are bleeding again, soft bright blots of ruby red permeating the linen. “I don’t like whips.”
Apollonius raises an eyebrow. “Who does?” Thoughtfully the old man rolls parchment in his hands. “But had I been standing there instead of you, I may have been cut to ribbons by that whip. You are who you are. For years you’ve been steeped in the language of violence-I suspect by now it’s your native tongue. But you are more than capable of acquiring other ways of expressing yourself. I see that potential in you.” Momentarily absorbed in the shuffle of scrolls around on table, as if it were a game of sorts, he startles her when he speaks again. “Have you read Sappho yet?”
The gladiator is half-amused, half-irritated. “For someone who dislikes Sappho, you’re awfully fond of promoting her work.”
“Eh. Perhaps I should petition her for a fee. But in your quest to acquire language, knowledge, ideas, you must be well-rounded, and I grudgingly concede she is vastly superior to her idiotic contemporaries.” A quick smile graces his thin, long face. “You need some poetry in your life. Some-passion.” The expression lingers, deepening into sweetened melancholy as his gaze drifts and focuses on a point no one else can see in the territory of the past. “The battle of the bedroom can be far more rewarding than you think.”
Dear Gods. Gabrielle rubs her neck, uncomfortably reminded of her father’s randy mood in springtime: slapping her mother’s behind and talking incessantly of stallions going to stud. Then she smiles begrudgingly. If that, she thinks, is the worst of what she remembers about her father, then all the better. Still, she needs no life lessons from the old librarian.
Hours later, as she digs through dull Livy with freshly bandaged hands, Damianos approaches her as a maiden would a wild horse. Among Apollonius’s librarians he is the most timid-which means that he piques a certain sadism within the old man, who always chooses him for tasks of a bizarre nature or anything remotely outside his needle-thin comfort zone. Which meant anything remotely connected to Gabrielle: Indeed, Damianos is terrified of her. Not so long ago, in that life distinctly connected to and dominated by the ring, she relished engendering such raw fear in anyone. Now she feels a clenching of certain muscles in her stomach that somehow produce a throb of empathy rippling through her. That she still remembers what it’s like to be terrified of anything is, perhaps, remarkable. As he stands, quietly trembling, a particularly thick scroll clutched in both hands as if it were a miniature staff and he would use it in feeble defense against her, Gabrielle consciously employs a softened tone: “What is it, Damianos?”
He clears his throat several times in such a phlegmatic fashion that her empathy is rapidly weakened, and croaks in a cracked voice: “Apollonius bid me to bring you-this-scroll-Sappho.” He sits the scroll on the bench-an offering at the altar of the irrational gladiator-beast- and takes a generous step backward.
“Oh.” Listlessly, like a child undecided about a new toy, Gabrielle pokes it; prosaic Livy has so worn away at her she cannot for the moment even imagine reading for pleasure. She reads because she must know. She has lost too much time. She must know why her life is the way it is.
Damianos clears his throat again, and she squelches the desire to slap him. “He says it is of special interest.”
“Special?”
He dissolves into a fit of corrosive coughing before finally managing it: “It’s-illustrated.”
Together they stare at the scroll-she now befuddled, he still terrified. “Well.” Gabrielle picks it up. “So what?” More of a rhetorical question than anything, but it sends Damianos scurrying out of the alcove. Sighing, she places it on the bench again, ignores it for another hour until she can bear Livy no further, and then finally allows idle curiosity to take over.
Apollonius had said Sappho was a lyric poet, whatever that meant. As far as illustrations went, she expects something simply decorative, like flowers and other flora. Fauna? Maybe a sheep? A rendering of Aphrodite? All she knows is that poetry is about nature or worshipping the gods. But the scroll unfurls and the first thing she sees is a beautifully rendered and rather explicit drawing of two women locked in erotic combat, limbs so utterly entwined it is impossible to tell where one body ends and another begins. It reminds Gabrielle of a tale related to her by a drunken mariner about a mythic sea creature of many fantastic limbs that destroyed his skiff and ate his cargo of dates and spices.
And yet somehow, as the days pass and the images grow familiarly fantastic to the point where, when she finally attends to the text, she discovers in the words of the poet something more potent and amazing, something she’s never know before.
This, apparently, is passion.
tbc
XWP AU, Xena/Gabrielle
Notes: Apologies for the long lull between updates. As previously with part x, this part turned out much longer than expected, hence it's divvied up into (a) and (b). Part xi-b will follow directly after this.
Previous parts: part i/
part ii/ part iii/ part iv/ part v/ part vi/ part vii/ part viii/ part ix
part x-a/
part x-b
Stay gold
The rose petals are familiar; the triumph this time, strangely hollow.
This morning in Alexandria-cool and subdued, like a sea after an exhausting storm- the winds predict a change of season. These winds, unnamed to outsiders, seem apropos for a change in ruler: For it was only yesterday that Cleopatra sat alone on the Ptolemaic throne for the first time. The orator at the coronation, one Ptahhotep, spoke of a new age, a silver age-at least until he caught the glinting, critical eye of the Empress and hastily upgraded this to a golden age.
Were Xena’s own years in Rome falsely gilded as well? Years ago, her whirlwind encounter with Caesar culminated in a golden laurel upon her head, rose petals in her cleavage, a never-ending triumph, a wine-soaked debauch of a banquet, a chain around her waist, and a new beginning. Even if she began her reign as Empress with a skull-crushing hangover and blissfully ignorant about what exactly transpired with the naked female slave in bed with her and her new husband that morning. It’s different this time. For one thing, it’s not her triumph. The machinations are hers, yes, the strategies successful: Grain will go to Rome, Pompey will be remembered as a great man sacrificed in a time of crisis, and Egypt will have a beautiful new queen and significantly improved relations with the Empire.
Xena sits, facing the wide window of the bedchamber. Clouds skim the sky. Hours earlier the rumblings of a rainstorm woke her, a damp wind whipped through the room. Clutching at a robe she had staggered out of bed, grabbed a cup filled with the last of the good wine, and flopped into a padded chair to watch the storm’s entertainment-threads of lightning stitching the sky, the driving rain revealed in brief moments of illumination. Mission accomplished. Time to go. At daybreak she had drifted back into sleep briefly only to wake at clatter in the courtyard below-perhaps merchants heading to market, something dropped from a cart-and still stalled at the same strangely disheartening conclusion: Time to go.
She swirls the dregs of the wine.
Since her arrival in Alexandria months ago, however, she hasn’t a word from anyone-Caesar, Antony, not even a reproach from the Senate about Pompey, and the Senate did so love to excoriate her-no missives have landed on her desk, a niggling fact that contributes heavily to her sense of unease. Although Antony, not much of a letter-writer, would only be motivated to correspondence by bad news. And Caesar? Do I really miss my husband’s odd, self-centered ramblings?
The shrouded body in Xena’s bed groans, stirs, and sighs.
And then there is Cleopatra. Intimate relations with the queen possessed the tenor of closing negotiations, as if the careful mutual possession of one another’s body were a cultural exchange, the establishment of a satrapy upon hospitable yet foreign lands. In other words, pleasantly educational yet devoid of passion. “That was nice!” Cleopatra had exclaimed after the first time they slept together, as if they had just promenaded seaside on a beautiful day. Xena had certainly heard far worse things about her bedroom performances-you seem more aroused by yourself than by me, someone, probably Quintus Fabian’s scurrilous wife, had complained-but nice had the dull ring of a dutiful suitor, someone she neither wanted nor wanted to be. However unrealistic the expectation, what she had wanted, what she had hoped to get from Cleopatra, was a purity of passion.
As she rises from the bed the first thing Cleopatra reaches for is not a robe, but a cup of wine abandoned the night before. Few members of royalty display such confidence in the nude, thinks Xena. But-her appreciative glance glides over the perfectly proportioned pulchritude of the Egyptian queen, the subtle planes and curves of her breasts, her belly, her thighs, the warm brown tint of her skin-how many queens and kings would have a body like that?
The new ruler of Alexandria drinks deeply from the cup. “Thought I had worn you out.”
Amused, Xena purses her lips. “You think highly of yourself.”
“Oh, I forgot. You are Xena the Insatiable, the Empress of the Erotic. A legion of lovers borne aloft on the strength of your reputation precedes you.” The enchanting smile that so beguiled Xena the first time they met is offered on cue. “So tell me, what would wear you out? An orgy?”
“Probably a certain combination of top-notch courtesans, horny sailors, good wine-” And gladiators? Or just one in particular? The mysterious little gladiator now spends her days in thrall to the library and the cunning old librarian, Apollonius, who had petitioned to have the gladiator replace the giant guard whom Xena had so thoughtlessly killed months ago. (The late lamented behemoth was now buried under a pyramid courtesy of Pullo, who had been quite proud of his idea: “They’ll never find ‘im now!”)
“All things you could find in Alexandria,” Cleopatra offers, before staring dismally into her cup. “Except, perhaps, good wine.”
Xena laughs.
“For all my, ah, limitations and disappointments, I am heartened that at the very least I amuse you.”
“Forgive me.” Xena says it with perfunctory haste while nodding at gray skies. “My mood matches the weather.”
“No offense taken. Alexandria’s winter is rougher than one imagines.” Xena hears her careful nimble tread across the marble, feels her delicate fingers at play along a silky seam of Xena’s robe. “Is something troubling you?”
“Omne animal post coitum triste,” the Empress murmurs. “Do you know that saying?”
“It’s all Latin to me, dear.”
“‘All animals are sad after sex.’ I think that same sadness occurs after ceremonies, celebrations, triumphs-the inevitable comedown after scaling such great heights, don’t you think? All the promises made-one wonders if they will come to fruition.”
“I think you’ve spent too much time among the Romans.” The wry retort is an unlikely yet effective prelude to Cleopatra straddling Xena’s lap and lacing her arms around Xena’s neck-like an albatross, the latter thinks unkindly, as dread and desire, a bitter familiar alchemy, commingle within her. “Actually, no,” the queen continues, “let me amend that: I never know what you are really thinking. Or saying for that matter.” Carefully Cleopatra regards her, monitoring the effect of this unusually frank admission, a dramatic departure from the politesse and rhetoric that adumbrates every single conversation they’ve ever had.
Then Cleopatra touches her lips-tracing for truth or demanding desire, Xena is not sure which-and Xena claims an index finger with her mouth. Her tongue touches the tip of the finger, and Cleopatra’s eyes respond with simultaneous eclipses of both irises. “Is there something in particular you wish to know?” Xena growls around the finger in her mouth.
Reluctantly Cleopatra removes her finger from Xena’s mouth. “Yes. A very simple question, really: Now what?”
“I have more or less achieved what I set out to do here. So there is only one thing left to do: Return to Rome.” Xena presses her face against the queen’s throat; her lips brush an undulating tendon.
Cleopatra hisses at the contact. “That is-all well and good for you, but for Alexandria?”
Debriefings during foreplay: for Xena, not an unusual occurrence. “There are troops coming from Pergamum. They will be under the command of Marcus Aemilius Lepidus-a good leader, a bit unimaginative, but he knows how to take orders and how to give them. A temporary measure, of course, until your base of power is fully stabilized.”
“Good.” The trail of smugness across Cleopatra’s countenance disappears as she kisses her benefactor. “Now, will you permit me the opportunity to sadden you once more? I promise this time that the heights we achieve will be well worth the descent.”
“Go on.” Xena settles back into the chair, which encourages the parting of her robe. “Impress me.”
The world's first graphic novel
In her time as a gladiator, Gabrielle has been struck with any number of blunt instruments, everything from a mace to an oar, and cut or stabbed by an impressive variety of knives and swords, but there is no weapon she fears and despises more than the whip. The whip, the stylus that inscribed the introduction to slavery on her back, provided a foretaste of a kind of pain and humiliation she had never before experienced. The particular pain of a whip was excruciating as well: A sting blossoming languidly into deeper, sharper pain, not unlike a blade buried slowly into the skin.
So when the library’s latest thief, his stolen treasures slung in a saddlebag across his back, brandishes a whip that licks painfully, mockingly, around Gabrielle’s wrist as she reaches for a sword, the enlightened world she has inhabited for the past several months collapses dramatically under rekindled rage. He’s quick with the whip, but not quick enough to avoid her grasp. It bites into her skin again as she grabs it and reels him in for a crippling kick. She is on him then, beating him senseless with bare fists until her knuckles are flayed, until Apollonius is bellowing-his thin, quivering voice surprisingly loud and robust-for her to stop. Please. Stop.
Later, in tiny alcove that all the scholars and librarians now recognize as hers alone, she awkwardly bandages her hands-the left more damaged than the right, because she did not want to waste her dominant fist on the thief-the reeking salve retrieving the memory of the Empress neatly bandaging a similar wound for her while asking so many disturbingly lucid questions. How long ago was that? The Empress had given her special dispensation to work and dwell in library, and she has taken generous advantage of this gift; the disadvantage, however, is that she rarely sees Xena these days. The ceaseless preparations for Cleopatra’s coronation and the tedious renegotiations of the satrapy meant that the Empress was never away from either Cleopatra or the palace for long.
She tightens the bandage and wonders if they are in love. She wonders if Cleopatra is capable of love; in the Egyptian queen she recognizes aspects of herself-the woman is a consummate survivor. Every action a beautiful, confidant risk. Xena, on the other hand, is inscrutable as usual. In her recent observations and interactions with the Empress, Gabrielle detected no major differences in her behavior, but admittedly Gabrielle is an expert neither on love nor Xena. All she will admit to herself, however, is that she misses that unexpected companionship, that inexplicable kindness. All the more disappointing now that it was gone. Apollonius, she thinks, will have to do. She winces. The old man was clearly displeased with her, and rightfully so. Time to make amends.
She finds him in a common room, at a table with piles of uncatalogued scrolls and bossing around Damianos, one of his assistants. “No, these go into cases. They’re originals, very old and fragile yet of supreme importance-not unlike me, Damianos. And these over here are but pale imitations.” He glares at Damianos, thus finishing the analogy. “Go purchase the cases.” As the minion scurries off, the librarian turns his withered mien to Gabrielle, settling his glare on her hands. “You’re still bleeding.”
“It will stop soon.”
“You’re not touching a scroll until they’ve healed properly. I can’t have you bleeding all over everything.”
“All right.” For an apology, she hopes meek acquiescence will do.
The librarian sighs. “You’ve done the law’s work for them. Beaten as badly as he was, I doubt they’ll do much more to him.”
Gabrielle twitches. Looking down at her bandaged hands, she sees he is right-they are bleeding again, soft bright blots of ruby red permeating the linen. “I don’t like whips.”
Apollonius raises an eyebrow. “Who does?” Thoughtfully the old man rolls parchment in his hands. “But had I been standing there instead of you, I may have been cut to ribbons by that whip. You are who you are. For years you’ve been steeped in the language of violence-I suspect by now it’s your native tongue. But you are more than capable of acquiring other ways of expressing yourself. I see that potential in you.” Momentarily absorbed in the shuffle of scrolls around on table, as if it were a game of sorts, he startles her when he speaks again. “Have you read Sappho yet?”
The gladiator is half-amused, half-irritated. “For someone who dislikes Sappho, you’re awfully fond of promoting her work.”
“Eh. Perhaps I should petition her for a fee. But in your quest to acquire language, knowledge, ideas, you must be well-rounded, and I grudgingly concede she is vastly superior to her idiotic contemporaries.” A quick smile graces his thin, long face. “You need some poetry in your life. Some-passion.” The expression lingers, deepening into sweetened melancholy as his gaze drifts and focuses on a point no one else can see in the territory of the past. “The battle of the bedroom can be far more rewarding than you think.”
Dear Gods. Gabrielle rubs her neck, uncomfortably reminded of her father’s randy mood in springtime: slapping her mother’s behind and talking incessantly of stallions going to stud. Then she smiles begrudgingly. If that, she thinks, is the worst of what she remembers about her father, then all the better. Still, she needs no life lessons from the old librarian.
Hours later, as she digs through dull Livy with freshly bandaged hands, Damianos approaches her as a maiden would a wild horse. Among Apollonius’s librarians he is the most timid-which means that he piques a certain sadism within the old man, who always chooses him for tasks of a bizarre nature or anything remotely outside his needle-thin comfort zone. Which meant anything remotely connected to Gabrielle: Indeed, Damianos is terrified of her. Not so long ago, in that life distinctly connected to and dominated by the ring, she relished engendering such raw fear in anyone. Now she feels a clenching of certain muscles in her stomach that somehow produce a throb of empathy rippling through her. That she still remembers what it’s like to be terrified of anything is, perhaps, remarkable. As he stands, quietly trembling, a particularly thick scroll clutched in both hands as if it were a miniature staff and he would use it in feeble defense against her, Gabrielle consciously employs a softened tone: “What is it, Damianos?”
He clears his throat several times in such a phlegmatic fashion that her empathy is rapidly weakened, and croaks in a cracked voice: “Apollonius bid me to bring you-this-scroll-Sappho.” He sits the scroll on the bench-an offering at the altar of the irrational gladiator-beast- and takes a generous step backward.
“Oh.” Listlessly, like a child undecided about a new toy, Gabrielle pokes it; prosaic Livy has so worn away at her she cannot for the moment even imagine reading for pleasure. She reads because she must know. She has lost too much time. She must know why her life is the way it is.
Damianos clears his throat again, and she squelches the desire to slap him. “He says it is of special interest.”
“Special?”
He dissolves into a fit of corrosive coughing before finally managing it: “It’s-illustrated.”
Together they stare at the scroll-she now befuddled, he still terrified. “Well.” Gabrielle picks it up. “So what?” More of a rhetorical question than anything, but it sends Damianos scurrying out of the alcove. Sighing, she places it on the bench again, ignores it for another hour until she can bear Livy no further, and then finally allows idle curiosity to take over.
Apollonius had said Sappho was a lyric poet, whatever that meant. As far as illustrations went, she expects something simply decorative, like flowers and other flora. Fauna? Maybe a sheep? A rendering of Aphrodite? All she knows is that poetry is about nature or worshipping the gods. But the scroll unfurls and the first thing she sees is a beautifully rendered and rather explicit drawing of two women locked in erotic combat, limbs so utterly entwined it is impossible to tell where one body ends and another begins. It reminds Gabrielle of a tale related to her by a drunken mariner about a mythic sea creature of many fantastic limbs that destroyed his skiff and ate his cargo of dates and spices.
And yet somehow, as the days pass and the images grow familiarly fantastic to the point where, when she finally attends to the text, she discovers in the words of the poet something more potent and amazing, something she’s never know before.
This, apparently, is passion.
tbc