Buch lesen: «Mastered By Her Slave»

Chapter One

Rome, 80 AD

She examined the captive’s hands, searching for a sign from the gods. Her very life rested upon this choice.

“Do you favor him, Clodia? Or shall we look at some others?” asked her sister, Davena.

Clodia ran her finger down the man’s stomach, sensing him shudder. He was one of so many, his bare torso pressed between so many others—a tragic horde of ill-fortuned souls filling the marketplace with their misery.

“The mango says these are from Pompeii,” her sister added. “Can you imagine? Surviving the eruption of that terrible volcano? Such brave boys!”

Clodia marveled at Davena, how easily she sauntered past the men she called “boys,” breathing in the smell of a pink gardenia while her own slaves cooled her with ostrich-feather fans.

Clodia herself could not pretend any enjoyment. She found the slave market shameful, the essence of Rome’s brutality. Yet she knew that coming here was the least of her sins.

She was the wife—no, the widow now—of mighty general Paulinus, the man who captured Queen Boudica and brought the wild tribes of Briton to their knees.

“Glory to Gaius Suetonius Paulinus,” the guests had cheered at her husband’s funeral games. But Clodia could not bring herself to join them. It was no secret that her husband had been a butcher. Over ten thousand Iceni women and children slaughtered in a single battle. Ten thousand innocent lives erased. All for the glory of Rome.

Clodia begged the goddess Minerva to erase her thoughts. But no matter how much she wished to forget Paulinus’s deeds, she could not. Neither could she escape the thought that in some sense, the blood her husband had spilled was on her hands, too.

And now, as the Fates would have it, so was his money.

Paulinus had no men in his family. No sons, nephews or brothers to carry on the Suetonius name. By law, then, Clodia inherited everything.

It was the worse fate she could have ever imagined. Paulinus came from an old Roman clan, the kind who found Roman law tedious. It was said that Paulinus’s sister, his closest blood relative, had already set a price on Clodia’s head. Or so they whispered at the baths.

Clodia looked up at the man before her. Somehow, she had not let go of his hand.

“Apologies,” Clodia murmured, placing it gently by his side. His finger grazed the back of her hand, igniting an invisible spark where it touched.

When she looked up, the man was peering down at her, a curious gaze in his blue-gray eyes. But before she could blink he was looking forward again, his eyes fixed on some invisible horizon.

He was lean, filthy, and smelled of the sea. His hair was thick and yellow and grew in serpentine ropes that mingled with his beard, which grew so long and tangled it seemed stolen from Medusa herself.

He was a ghastly vision, but his power could not be concealed. He stood two heads taller than Clodia, his arms full, his legs long and solid as tree trunks.

But will he do what I require, when the time comes? There seemed no way to be sure.

At the edge of the piazza, Clodia spied the long toga of the city’s most famous gladiator trainer, the procuratore of the Ludus Magnus. The man’s slight build and delicate manner belied a boundless ambition. Even Clodia had heard of his efforts to maintain the favor of the emperor with increasingly bloody spectacles.

Now, the procuratore’s assistants were surveying the captives, who appeared to have been plucked from every corner of the Empire. There were war-weary souls from Judea, black-skinned Numidians from the Mauretanian sands; and rebels from Germania and Britannia, with eyes the color of stormy seas. At the procuratore’s commands, the largest, healthiest-looking men were being marked on the cheek with ash.

If she did not act, Clodia knew that the man before her would also be tagged for the gladiator school. And for him, as for the others, there would be no education. The inaugural games needed victims as well as heroes, and Emperor Titus had made no secret of his desire to anoint his new amphitheater in a river of blood. In two short days, these men would most certainly be dead.

Damnati ad gladium. Gladiator’s bait.

“This Numidian is nice,” called her sister from across the way. Clodia pretended not to hear. The procuratore and his crew edged closer.

Clodia faced the man before her and drew a breath. “Will you protect me?” she asked aloud, knowing he was not permitted to speak. Then, impulsively, she stretched to the tops of her toes whispered in his ear, “And will you obey my command, when the time comes?”

Clodia noticed the man’s chest moving. His lips tightened. Glancing down, she perceived a new fullness in his loincloth. Was it a slave’s wrath he now fought to suppress? Or had her words somehow aroused him?

“Clodia, have you decided?” asked Davena, rejoining her sister.

“What?”

“Are you unwell, sister? You look red as wine.”

“No, I’m fine. It’s just the heat.” Clodia fanned her face with her hand.

“By Juno’s peacock, Clodia, why did you not bring a fanner?” Davena motioned to a feather-bearing slave. Then she regarded the man. “So it is this one, then?”

“Yes.”

Davena studied the man closely, her eyes scanning the entirety of his body. “With a little training, he shall make a fine guard,” she concluded. Then she lowered her voice and nudged Clodia. “He seems quite willing to rise to the occasion.”

“Do not be ordinary!” Clodia exclaimed. Still, her heart would not stop beating.

“Really, Clodia. You should try to enjoy him. You cannot stay in mourning forever.” Davena held out her gardenia. “But are you sure you will not reconsider our invitation? Come live with me at Father’s villa? It would be safer, you know. Sensible.”

Sensible, indeed.

A move to her father’s villa would be extremely sensible. Sensible for Davena, who made no secret of her unending boredom. And sensible for her father, whose newly-widowed daughter now carried with her the wealth of a great general’s estate—a dowager to be properly managed.

But Clodia was not to be managed, not anymore. She smiled back at her sister, then shook her head. “Gratitude, dear sister, but I should like to stay in Rome.”

“Then you are mad,” Davena said, pulling the gardenia back to her nose. “But do your worst. Father will have a new husband for you soon enough.”

Clodia watched Davena walk away, wishing to explain her plan, to make her sister understand. She loved Davena dearly. But sharing would not be safe. Davena was notoriously indiscreet. Even now, she was discussing Clodia’s intended purchase with a well-dressed woman Clodia recognized from the Esquiline.

Davena was speaking so excitedly that Clodia did not notice the procuratore, who had arrived by her side and was inspecting the man. “Now here is a gladiator,” he announced, clasping his hands together as if beholding a sacrificial bull. “Mark this one,” he told his assistants.

Clodia gathered herself, then stepped forward. “I’m sorry, honorable Procurator,” she said firmly. Then she held up her coin purse, heavy with aurei and denarii. “He is already taken.”