The Patrician's Fortune- A Historical Romance

The Patrician’s Fortune

By Joan Kayse

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To my brother, who shakes his head and wonders what the fuss is about but who is still proud of me.

Rome 54 AD

G
ods, he hoped he didn’t scream when they drove the nails into his wrists.

He’d be damned if he gave the bastards the satisfaction.

Still, Damon’s hands trembled and the effort to quell the terror that clawed his chest shattered as a wail, equal measures of pain and despair, filtered up the hillside. He squinted through the waning light of his last day at the half dozen soldiers clustered around a figure writhing at their feet. One of them lifted an iron mallet and with practiced skill drove a spike through the man’s heels pinning him to the wood of a cross.

The soldiers laughed at the prisoner’s strangled sobbing. Damon watched with morbid fascination as the three of them lifted the crossbeam and dragged the man to an open spot in the long line of condemned prisoners. Working in unison, they lifted the instrument of execution upright. The man’s body swayed violently as the cross slid into a hole dug deep in the rocky soil. The nails held him fast and his agonized scream ripped through Damon’s soul.

“No! I beg you, please! I have a wife! I have a son!”

From beneath hooded eyes, Damon watched two soldiers unlock the chain connecting the iron cuffs around his wrists to the pleading man beside him. The young bricklayer had been the leader of the guild members, eloquent in his pleas for reason even as tempers had flared among the participants. He wasn’t so persuasive now, his feeble protests doing nothing to slow the soldiers dragging him to his death.

Four days. Fifty people. And Damon had watched every one of them die.

His gaze drifted along the row of crosses, drawn against his will to the macabre scene. An old, gnarled woodcutter. A blacksmith, who had required three spikes in each wrist and arm to impale his heavily muscled body to the wood. A youth whose only crime had been that he was the slave of the blacksmith. Damon turned away, bile rising in his throat. The crows had not even waited for the boy to die before they had started their feasting.

Each of them had been at the ill-fated gathering.

Now each of them was dead.

Damon raised his face to the darkening sky. He could pray to the gods for deliverance but they had as much faith in him as he in them and that amounted to none. Faith was for fools, his father had always said. That was the only truth Felix Cassius Primax had ever spoken.

His jaw clenched against the anger that the last thoughts he’d have in this life would be of the bastard who had sired him. An
equestrian
of mediocre abilities, Felix had spent most of Damon’s youth in the gaming houses of Rome feeding a voracious appetite for dice, women and wine.
Just wait and see the riches I will win
, he’d tell his son,
just wait
.

Damon had stopped waiting by his eighth birthday.

Unfortunately, Felix’s dreams of building a fortune on luck far outweighed his skill with knucklebones. The losses began to exceed the winnings until the day came when the only way to settle his debts was to sell everything he owned; precious heirlooms, silver and gold plate—his family.

Damon shifted his weight, pulled futilely at the thick iron chain that tethered him as the bitter memories of that day assailed him. He’d watched his father lie and steal and cheat his way out of trouble often enough to know the man would do anything to keep his accounts with the gambling dens open. So being used as collateral had not really surprised him.

But his mother, Chryse, had been shocked speechless when the slaver came to collect her children. Impossible, she had insisted. They had the wrong house. There had been a mistake. Her husband would not do this. Wide-eyed, Damon had watched his proud mother fall to her knees begging, offering her dowry jewels—jewels that Damon knew his father had sold months before—to save her children. The slavers were unmoved and as a rope was looped around his neck linking him to his weeping sisters, he’d seen his father standing in the shadows. With flat, emotionless eyes the coward had watched his family be led to the auction block.

A low—throated scream snapped Damon’s attention back to the scene below. A fire had been started to give the executioners sufficient light by which to finish their killing. They were almost done with the poor sot.

Damon’s mouth went dry. He clenched his fists, jerked at the chain tethering him to a rotted olive tree. They would come for him next.

He’d been a slave through his youth and having gained his freedom he’d spent the last eight years searching for his family. He’d located his mother and scraped together enough silver to purchase his sister Tullia from a greedy pottery maker. It had been a stroke of luck to discover his youngest sister Lita serving in the household of a prominent Senator. Left without funds, he’d had nothing to offer her master except the considerable covert skills he’d acquired in his quest.

That had been his first mistake.

Tertius Maximinus, esteemed Roman senator and clever manipulator had eagerly accepted his service as a spy—with certain conditions. The first had been Damon’s pledge to one year in his service. Except one year had turned into two and then into three.  He growled low in his throat. Three years at the bastard’s beck and call. A different type of servitude but every bit as oppressive as slavery.

Two months ago, weary of the machinations and political intrigues that had little to do with policy and everything to do with power, Damon had pressed for an end to their pact.

Only one more month, the Senator had cajoled. Finish this one last assignment and the debt is paid. Your business is your own. Your sister will be free. Fighting back a dark premonition against the deal, Damon had agreed.

That had been his second mistake.

“It’s going to rain I tell you, before morning or at least by the time the cock crows.”

Damon’s breath quickened. Two soldiers were halfway up the hill.

“How would you know?” the second guard argued. “Did Ceres come and whisper predictions in your ear?”

The first soldier stopped next to the tree and rubbed his knees with a beefy hand. “My bones know, and they never lie.”

The second soldier snorted, his gaze swinging to meet Damon’s glare. “It won’t matter to this one here. He’ll be long gone over the river Styx breaking his fast with Hades.”

“Pio, that Greek wife of yours is a bad influence,” chided the old man. “In Rome we call him Pluto.”

Damon watched the soldier unlock his chain. Hades, Pluto what difference did it make? To utter the name of either underworld god was considered bad luck. Not that he believed the superstition or that his luck could get any worse. He nearly choked on the irony.

The soldier wound the chain in his fist. “It’s been a long four days, though the extra pay we received for hurrying the executions will make it worthwhile. Let’s be done with it.”

Extra pay? Damon’s legs shook as they pulled him to his feet. These cretins were paid extra to rush them to their deaths?

Staggered by the revelation, it wasn’t until he stumbled over a rock and the two soldiers jerked him upright did Damon realize that he was almost to the foot of the hill. He was going to be crucified. Sizzling, hot rage surged through him. He was not ready to die. Not today.

Digging his feet into the rocky soil he managed to wrench his left arm free from the soldier’s grasp. Using the momentum, Damon pushed against the other man, throwing him off—balance and slamming him to the ground.

Taking full advantage of surprise, he turned and raced back up the hill, clawing at the dirt for leverage. Sheer determination gave his weak limbs strength. Lita would not live the rest of her life as a slave, not as long as he was alive.

Over the rattle of his chains, he heard his captors shouting for him to stop. He curled his lip in disgust. Typical Roman arrogance. Believing that a simple command would be obeyed. Were they too stupid to realize a damned man obeyed no one?

Cresting the hill, he glanced over his shoulder. Four of the soldiers were within a dozen paces of him. Sliding down the side of the hill would give him a few moments start. With any luck—and it would take a great deal of it—he’d lose them among the gnarled vines and thick leaves of the vineyard not a hundred paces across the road.

At his first step dizziness washed over him like a wave taking down a drowning man. A roar filled his ears, his vision dimmed. He fell to his knees, pitched forward and rolled down the hill.

The blackness surrounding him broke apart in pieces, one portion with each kick delivered by the soldiers. He wrapped his arms around his head, protecting himself from the blows.

“Miserable piece of shit,” growled one of the soldiers. “You’ll pay for making my knees hurt chasing after your worthless hide.”

Damon wanted to laugh at the ludicrousness of the statement, but it came out a grunt of pain as the bastard swung a hobnailed boot into his flank. What higher price could he pay than his life?

Through the fog in his brain, Damon heard their curses as they dragged him back over the hill, toward the fire where he was forced to his knees. The chains binding his arms were removed and replaced with coarse hemp rope wound tightly around each wrist, while a soldier on either side of him held his arms taut, away from his body. What small bit of his tunic remained was ripped away, leaving him clothed in only his tattered loincloth.

The first bite of the lash took him by surprise. The muscles in his arms bunched in a futile effort to pull free. Again and again the whip fell, stripping the skin from his shoulders. He bit his lip to stifle a moan as another stroke sliced his skin. Damn them. Damn them all to hell.

Sweat poured from his body, mixed with the blood running in hot rivulets down his back, pooling around his knees. Two more lashes and the soldiers released their hold. Damon collapsed. Panting and struggling to stay conscious, he struggled to prop himself up with his arms. Squinting through his swollen left eye, he met the glazed eyes of the bricklayer.

The man was breathing heavily, arms bound so tight to the crossbeam that his hands were already beginning to mottle. Damon’s gaze trailed down the length of his trembling body, lingering at the huge spike clotted with blood that pinned his ankles to the wood. He watched dully as the soldiers picked up the cross and dragged him away.

Damon dropped his head and stared at the blood dripping in the dirt between his hands. Damn, it wasn’t fair. Tullia and his mother were safe. Only Lita was left. He clenched his teeth against the sorrow that welled inside him. He had failed to keep his promise. He had failed to reunite his family.

The noise of wood scraping across dirt brought Damon’s head up again. A cross-
his
cross-fell with a thud before him.

“Lift up his legs, Pio,” ordered the soldier with the decrepit joints as he grabbed Damon by the scruff of the neck, flipping him with one smooth motion onto his back. Damon gave a token struggle but in the end they stretched him out easily along the vertical beam of the cross.

The cross was hard. He stifled a moan as the soldiers dragged him along its length, slivers of wood digging into the cuts on his back, until his arms were lined up with the crossbar. The ropes around his wrist were quickly looped around the wood. Two more lengths of hemp were fastened at each elbow and shoulder. The soldier’s weakened knees seemed strong enough when he planted his foot on Damon’s chest to pull the cords taut.

“Why aren’t we binding him like the rest?” Pio asked.

Damon blinked to clear the sweat from his eyes. He was certain he wasn’t going to like the answer to that question.

“Pio, you’re new to this detail,” answered the older soldier, tying off a knot. “There are different ways to crucify a man. Most times, we bind their arms and spike only their feet. The weight drags the air from their body. It’s over in a few hours and they die.”

Pio looked confused. “That’s what we want, isn’t it? To kill them?”

Damon met the older soldier’s beady gaze, not even flinching when the imbecile spat at him, hot spittle hitting his cheek and seeping into the mat of his beard.

“Oh, they die, all right. But there are ways to make sure they take their time doing it.” He held up two crude wedges of wood. “We put these under his feet, use wood blocks to nail his arms in place. That way, he can’t get loose and when he can’t get the breath he needs, he’ll push up to try and breathe.”

Pio grinned with morbid delight. “And every time he does, it’ll rip the flesh just a bit more.”

His friend nodded in satisfaction. “The pain will be excruciating. It’ll take him days to die.”

Damon squeezed his eyes shut. For once he did not gain any pleasure from being right.

He cracked his eyes open and tried to swallow the panic closing his throat as he watched Pio select a long iron spike from a leather bag. The old soldier rejected it. Probably not blunt enough, Damon thought bleakly. Rummaging some more, he found one that met with his friend’s approval. His executioner bent down on one knee and positioned a square of wood over Damon’s right wrist.