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rosheendubh · 8 years ago

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Updated Barking draft...

Rome--early Spring, 182 some bustling district spread out from the Wealthy People's Hill... lost in the overgrowth of sprawling plazas, a virtual rabbit warren of winding, narrow lanes where the buildings on either side of the street rise like a collection of children's toy blocks, heaped, scattered, or piled along the avenues that snake past ___Basilica, bridging the ____Forum's eastern boundary... -- Despite the novelty of masquerading as a commoner, described in adventure tales by the bored sons of wealthy magistrates, or advocated by philosophers seeking their own claim to wisdom, walking in the footsteps of those born into poverty, the problem with assuming the identity/rank of a peasant was that one not only had to bear the squalor of a peasant's life, and all its myriad inconveniences, one also had to anticipate the contempt and disregard, the exploitation wrought by those occupying positions of privilege and power upon those they considered with no more thought or concern than the dust clogging the soles of their sandals. After 3 years with her mother, trudging the vast byways of Imperial territories stretching beyond the eastern provinces, into mysterious India even, Nemiane believed she had adapted to the array of the challenges inherent to the life transience and the lot of assuming the guise of an eternal vagabond. The hostel advertising the cheapest prices for exhausted venturers seeking lodging sparked the kernels of suspicion; the street vendor, too liberal with their pungent meats and fried vegetables curdled one's bowels with the visceral recall of the last experience where food had been purchased at curiously low/discount cost compared to other stalls; the knife/dagger became another bosom friend, a safeguard one kept beneath the folds of the tunica, for when tavern keepers and male caravanserai felt that female travelers journeying without men were open season for hopeful gropes and unasked for advances, even after it was distinctly clear neither Nemiane, nor her mother, were in the market for road-side romance, and the casual coupling which occurred along the lonely expanses cross-crossing Rome's domain, were strategies employed from the accumulated 1000s of miles of their long sojourn. A cry, full of a laboring woman's struggle to push a new life into the world, shudders through the din of the brothel's public hall. The soldier, outfitted in the indigo tunic, the silver buckled leather belt with the ___logo of the Praetorians, lets out a high pitched wheeze, his face moving through the various signs of agony as Nemiane, disregarding her blood-stained hands, grabs between his legs, finding the sacs of his generative organs, and strangles them in her pressured grip. Her voice is hard, past her own fatigue, clipped. "I promised if you tried groping my ass one more time, I would have you singing the castrate's tune all the way to Samarkand." He's a big man, thick featured, with shoulders like a plow ox, and a neck full of bulging muscle, especially now as his face pales in strain, victim to her merciless vise. "Venus's tits," he grunts, "I was trying to be friendly." She squeezes harder, and she hears his squealing intake of breath, his eyes bugging beneath his broad domed scalp, his hair shaven to the skin so stubble covers the ridges and creases of his skull (think the dude who played Titus Pullo in 'Rome') "And you were informed with each attempt that I was not interested." "Help," the words squeak past his tight lips. Before she can turn to see who her over-eager admirer is addressing, the creak of leather and metal armor, the heavy fall of a boot a few paces behind her, the way the boisterous patrons and brothel staff mute, retreat to other tables and less conspicuous booths, signals she's about to have a very unwelcome encounter. "Can someone explain what exactly is going on here?" Caution prickles over Nemiane, hearing the question resound with a careful/subdued aristocratic tenor. Practically hyperventilating in quick, pained gasps, her victim blurts, "Juno's mercy! She's about to--" "I was informing your man on how not to impose himself on unwilling women," she says throwing a glance at the guard behind her, still keeping her fingers latched around her unwanted admirer's privates, through the fabric of his tunic. The impression of height, an athletically built physique, lean, accentuated by the glossy black armor, a muscle cuirass, and the polished leather fringe, the trapping of gold bulla and brass studding his shoulders, a well pressed cloak hanging from his shoulder guards of deepest purple are the regalia of a Praetorian. "An unwilling woman in a whore-house," the comment spoken musingly. "Are you a freed-woman, or a slave?" She glances back at the guard, still askance but meeting his face directly for the first time, unable to keep the annoyance, against her better judgement, from her voice (she asks scornfully), "What relevance does that have?" The lift of his dark brown brows (dark brown brows rise, expectant) tells her he's not used to being questioned by those he views as civilian subordinates, and Nemiane curses inwardly at her careless slip of anger. "It's the difference between whether you are charged with assaulting my officer, or my officer indeed, deserved this provocation of attack." His looks down upon her, a spare boned face, distinguished by angles of chin and cheeks, his close trimmed beard lining his thin, wide mouth, that despite its stern set, posturing of his rank, twitches in a sublimated amusement at her apparent annoyance (think the actor who played Oberyon in S4, Game of Thrones). His helmet was left at the door upon entering, meaning the Praetorian was intending to stay for longer than a mere patrol check. She raises her chin meeting the guard's look firmly. "Free, and freeborne," she says, her victim grunting like poached boar as she tugs his precious sacs hard, his face a ghastly shade of green-gray, before abruptly releasing him from his torture. He spills over, catching himself just short of falling to his hands, bent as if he'd been punched in the gut, clutching at his belly, and so clearly wishing to clutch at his groin that's it's almost painful watching him fight for/gather his composure as he straightens, before the brothel's assorted clients. His voice is still thin/shaky for such a substantially built man. "Come, brother," he smiles shakily, his speech melting into the slur of the inebriated. "As you said, we're in a whore-house, Full of women." "Off-duty or not, you only address me as your commanding officer," the guard snaps, bringing his subordinate trooper up sharply, fighting for a semblance of his martial posture. "Do you understand soldier..." "Aul's, I mean, Aulus Vitalianus, of the First Cohort of ______," he pronounces his name and rank carefully, turning a blurry/sloppy grin her way. "Juzz't Look at her. Sheez lov'ly, and they said she waz th'midwife. Th'lazt time I's here, the midwife waz sucking cock in th' back alley fffer two denarii/assus a pop...so ta'speak." Looking back, later in that evening, that ought have Nemiane's first clue something in this situation was off. Despite the wine flask hanging off his belt, and the numerous gropings he'd forced upon her prior to this last encounter, she had detected no scent of alcohol on his breath. That observation escaped her in the moment though, only recalled with the wisdom of hindsight after she was unwillingly swept up in a series of events she had no choice but to partake in, or risk the consequences of arrest and death. He gives a lusty wink to his commander, and gestures a comradely slap to the trooper's shoulder which begets a withering glance, directed at Aulus. Aulus's attempt at ribaldry falls flat, dissolves to chagrin/sheepish cast sobering his previously garrulous actions. Despite his pigment looking like a plucked/poached chicken's, he no longer looks like a bull frog being strangled till his eyes burst out of its head. "Let me guess, soldier. This was a new promotion for you, in the last month. After toiling all those seasons along the front, marching until your skin wore off your feet, and freezing though winters so cold your piss froze before it left your cock, you now feel you've earned this, this cream at the crop of assignments. So now, you're off duty for s few days, to enjoy your leisure. And this is how you think to squander it? In menial pleasures drowning in drink and whores?" "What else is there?" Aulus asks, sounding genuinely deflated. Nemiane, bristling at the Praetorian's superior air, the arrogance he believes his rank imposes, speaks distinctly in that moment. "I'm not one of the prostitutes. I'm not the midwife. I'm the physician they summoned bc one of their women appeared to be facing a complicated delivery." Nemiane flushes under the guard's close scrutiny/the guard directs his scrutiny toward her. Never flattering with her hair color, heat flares to her cheeks, creeping across her neck, which only makes her more self-conscious of how she's failing in all counts, trying to enact the intimidated commoner. "Physician? How liberally do our foreigners lay claim to such learned arts that any village herbalist or a witch-healer might advertise to con the desperate and gullible." It's the gratified sneer, the arrogance, superiority she can't abide in his tone. Drilling him with her gaze, she raises her hands up like an orator, her fingers covered in glistening membrane, and dried blood. "I'm not a quack. What other evidence do you need?" She sees the disgust stir across the Praetorian's face, recognizing the source of fluids staining her skin. A wail echoes through tavern from a hall which branches off from the adjoining kitchen lying behind the bustling serving bar, at their right. "Withstanding the fact I would have been performing a favor for the rest of womankind," she says, her glance dropping to Aulus's groin, "sparing them the travails that poor creature is suffering right now bc of this churl's attentions." Aulus's hands slide to his groin, trying to shield his privates from the poison in her look. "You think this piece of pig shit is the father?" Derision in the Praetorian's voice tells her otherwise. Nemiane's seething/ire dims, curiosity/caution skewing her brow. "He's not? Then why would the Praetorian be so...oh." She trails off, seeing the warning light of the guard's gaze, her mind racing through the myriad possibilities in reflection to her own question. A chill crawls over her skin, and she swallows, trying to moisten a throat gone suddenly parched/dry, gaze skirting to the back hall beyond the kitchen, then meeting the Guard's warily, the entire situation of a random slave-girl's delivery imbued with a new portent. His nod is almost imperceptible, the flash of his grin, ironic, a grim humor reaching his eyes. "Quick wits will ensure a healthy income, doctress. I'm sure you now appreciate how much your fate is tied to your patient's unfortunate situation." Another scream rattles through the back hall, stalling the raucous laughter, the cavorting of the brothel clients with the attendant women, before they carry on with their antics of binge drinking and binge coupling. Aulus's ill-timed comment, soaked in the soul-searching of the sop, does not soothe Nemiane's anxiety. "That waz 'ow my m'ther zounded 'fore she died birthin' my baby zister." He adds a sniffle, bordering on outright blubbering, "She died too, th' next year, from a flux. Zo zad, grow'n up, nev'r t'know yer mother." "Hades Incarnate!" The Praetorian mutters, ripping his intaglio ring off his index finger, grabbing Aulus's hand, and dropping silver band into his palm with an impatient disgust. "Get yourself back to the barracks, man. My escort is outside. They'll see you safe through the streets." "Ye-yez, zir," he garbles past a magnificent snorkel of snot sucked back into his nose. "I nev'r even go'to zay g'd-byyye!," he wails, as The guard pushes Aulus toward the door, his expression one Nemiane knows too well from her own experience, having sought refuge in the bland regard of professional nonchalance when listening to one of her patients back home explain why trying an enema of boiled chicken feet, toadstool (some other fungus with curious properties), and ground salmon bones/guts sounded like a brilliant idea to relieve a mild episode of constipation, and wondered where the raging rectal inflammation and bleeding came from after. She sees the Praetorian's momentary lapse, the slip in his mask of sternness, pure frustration before he turns to address her. "You're serving under the imperial sanction, doctress." She lets the silence between them lengthen/linger, her hands still raised out in front of her. It's when he blinks, as though trying to fortify himself before her cool regard, she realizes, in that moment, how new he must be to his rank and it's commiserate duties. She assures with a quick, mocking/grating smile, ingratiating smile, meant to be grating as well, "Don't worry, soldier, she'll not die by my hand." He bridles beneath her nonchalance. "Guided by Hippocrates, no doubt." Heedless of the etiquette she's broken in not awaiting his permission to be dismissed, she tosses the words back over her shoulder (she replies with a heedless glance back over shoulder), "Soranus, actually. And _____(female gynecologist of antiquity who wrote on obstetrics and WH). Hippocrates understood much, but knew little, especially of the gravid woman. And for your knowledge," Nemiane adds, waiting for the young woman to join her, who just entered the tavern from from outside, and approaches from behind the Praetorian, "while I might question the midwife's judgement in timing on when to offer consult regarding the health risks inherent to the prostitute's profession--"the pretty brown-haired (ringlets gathered back from her face in a bun) woman, just shy of her second decade has the sense to look apologetic, catching Nemiane's eye as she takes in the encounter between her and the Praetorian--"I can assure you, she was definitively not performing favors of fellatio in the back alley for 2 asses a mouthful of spunk." He sputters some garbled response insisting he wasn't the one who had made that accusation while Nemiane, strangely satisfied, watches the showdown commence from a righteous midwife. Demetria feeds him a furious look. "So, Virius Lupus? You think I suck men off to earn some kind of side income? Is that the rumor you've been spreading?" Virius Lupus, all arrogance wilting beneath the force of the petite midwife's indignation, her chin raised, hands planted firmly on her hips, can only manage an awkward/stiff rally/tripping/stuttering/falling over his words. "No. No, I wasn't the one who-there was an off-duty officer--" "Yes, it's actually your off-duty officers who seem to be the problem right now. One of them apparently wouldn't listen when one of the ladies refused services bc of the sores around his mouth. He complained. She submitted, and now the herpetiform has spread to their nether regions. You might drill into your men standards of hygiene, so they would respect our standards of maintaining a clean brothel, rather than spreading their pustulance to women whose livelihoods depend on the integrity of their sheaths." Stiffly, Virius Lupus says, "I'll take his name, lady, if you can supply it, and see he gets evaluated accordingly by the barracks medic." Demetria informs him darkly, "Don't worry. I'll be sure he's reported to your camp prefect. Which should be your job, not mine." With a stomp of her foot, she storms past him, to the passage/aisle behind the serving bar, disappearing into the kitchen. Nemiane turns to follow, knowing she shouldn't curdle/stir the pot. But she can't resist giving him a shrug of mock sympathy, glancing in the direction of the angry midwife, and back at him. Virius Lupus doesn't appear particularly chagrined/put in his place/threatened by the midwife's lashing. He seems thoughtful, Nemiane keenly aware of his watchful gaze, as she turns, beckoned by the cries resounding from past the kitchen. A harried waitress complains to her coworker at the bar, whisking another round of drinks up, how she wishes they would just cut the brat out, before all the patrons scatter, thinking they're skinning dogs alive in the back rooms. -- She shakes her head, fighting the contractions wracking her body. "You need to push, or this child will never come." Nemi tries to keep her voice calm, but the edge of her own endurance, a sharpness pierces/edges her words. She's been at this for nearly 6 hours. The mother, for almost twice that. "Push! Now!" She wills as another convulsion writhes the woman's protruding belly, like a sand dune rising out of the desert of her flesh. Nemiane peers between her legs, her fingers slick with the fluids of birth, shining in scarlet mixed with the translucent juices of amnion. "No. I can't anymore. I don't want to. I don't want this child born," she gasps, forces the words out past her heavy breaths and sobs. Demetria, who was supporting one leg, hooked over her shoulder, while holding the girl's hands, trying to lend what strength she might through touch, throws Nemiane a troubled glance. The mother's face is slick with sweat, her thick strands, a honeyed brown, are plastered to pale cheeks, sunken and hectic pink with the exertions of the birth. Her eyes dull, taking on a dimming which blunts their hazel shade, bright, pretty she must be if she weren't enduring this torture of her current state. Nemiane recognizes the exhaustion as her body goes slack, and the girl's head falls back, released for precious moments from the impulse of emerging life, and she gulps air into her lungs. She can see how the the infant's scalp, mattered with moisture and slim, pale blue, retracts back up into the birth canal. It reminds Nemiane of a mole retreating from the light back to its burrow beneath the earth, of its ruggarated brow palpable to her touch, its squished features she can define with her fingers, a nodule of the nose, the squishy recesses of its closed lids, the cleft of its round chin, all facing the wrong way, up towards the mother's belly, her hands wedged into the woman's distended vagina, the outer tissue swollen and bruised. There's no need to tell that to the exhausted girl, who, Nemiane suspects, never had a choice in the matter of the child's father, nor the mode of its conception. Nemiane's meets the girl's eyes over her swollen belly,/captures the girl's hollow eyes with her own, her voice low, and urgent. "Listen to me. This can go one if two ways. Either you let your body bring forth this child, and give it a chance at life. Or you die, drained of blood and spirit. And I cut this child out, who may still have a chance at life, but now without its mother to raise, love it, or protect it." "You have to say that. You're a physician," the young mother says, a sullen defiance that causes Nemiane to lift her brow, her lips twitching in a smirk, as the girl grimaces in the advent of another building contraction, her abdomen going rigid, distended where Nemiane pushes gently into the crest of her protruding navel, her fingers braced gently at the mouth of the birth canal, preparing to ease the pliant flesh to allow the infant's passage. The young mother starts panting rapidly as the contraction builds. Demetria positions herself, this time, at the head of the pallet, grasping the girl under her shoulders, as she catches Nemiane's eye, and Nemiane nods in silent agreement. Her face skewed with straining, the mother has no breath to protest when Demetria hefts her upward into a squatting posture. Nemiane catches her from the front, easing her onto her hands and knees. "What...are you doing?" the young mother asks through her broken gasps. Nemiane strokes back the lank strands of hair off her forehead as the girl lifts her head. Fear and pain are etched across her face. "You contractions are coming quick and strong now. This position will ease the transit of your baby. With your next push, put everything of your anger, your grief, into this. Even your hatred, child, for what was done to you in conceiving this baby. And then let it out, and never think of it again." "How-how do you know?" She chokes out as another constriction begins to work across her belly. "Doctress." Demetria's voice is calm, but her glance imperative/urgent, signaling for Nemiane to take her place in back of the young mother. "The same way I know that when your baby comes facing backward, you'll have an easier time of it forward. Bc I've done this a long time, child." Nemiane sees the mother's gaze/concentration turns inward as the stricture coursing over her body forces her head down, and she groans with the building contraction. Demetria comes to her front, cradling the girl's head against her breast as she uses one arm to keep the mother's heavy belly supported from underneath. In these pressured/harried/frenzied minutes from pushing to the baby crowning, there's little care for dignity, the girl resembling a lowing heifer, in her unorthodox posture, desperate for the evening milking. Demetria lets the the girl crush her shoulders, her thin arms strangling around her waist, her face buried in the midwife's lap. Nemiane crouched behind the mother, has her hands placed within the blood engorged birth canal. Her instructions imbued with a low voiced confidence/calm, which combines into the potent chant of Demetria's vigorous coaching, cheering the struggling mother to the finish line with all the vigor of spectator at the games, rooting her favorite charioteer. Nemiane guides the child's head down through the pelvis, the infant's skin slick, the skull which feels like the cracked exoskeleton of a crab/shellfish/chips of an eggshell, pieces of its skull, molding/grinding to her gentle touch along its transit. A last violent cry erupts as the young mother drains all of herself into that final contraction which descends into a silent, shuddering moan, her body frozen into that last, wracking convulsion which finally expels the baby, maneuvered by Nemiane to free its shoulders from the entrance of the canal as it emerges, slippery as an eel with matter and birth waters spilling from between the girl's legs. Clinging to Demetria, still prone on her knees, she casts/peers wearily back, trying to catch a glimpse of the being she's brought into the world. "It's-it's too quiet. It should be crying." "It takes a few moments sometimes," Nemiane reassures, looping the birth cord about her wrist, as balances the infant in her hands, blue-skinned as a ____fish. The baby, plumb and well-formed, and patently a male, Nemiane observes, begins squirming like a beetle thrown/turtle thrown on its back, puffy eyes blinking open, moist membrane sticky over his lids. A wet gurgle slips between his lips, mouth gaping open, and his chest retracts, fighting for a first swallow of air. Brown stained mucus dribbles down his dimpled chin. As smoothly as an orchestrated script, Demetria helps the young mother onto the pallet, rolling her onto her back, while Nemiane blows gently into the child's mouth, forcing his lungs to fill, and the infant to cough, gagging as his he writhes, regurgitating more thick brown fluid, and a thin cry, grows in strength with each gulp of air, his skin warming from blue into the faintest pink, his cheeks ruddy with every loud wail. Demetria settles the girl back, and grabs a clean linen towel off a pile near the pallet. She takes the newborne from Nemiane, rubbing his chubby arms and legs, warming miniature hands and feet as the child continues squalling. Nemiane kneels between the girl's legs, gently putting tension on the cord to bring forth the afterbirth. "Sometimes, they stool if the mother has been a long while in labor. The fluid gets into their lungs." The girl rises up on her elbows to bear down, passing the jellied mass. Through her grimace, she asks, "She'll be alright though? She's whole." Nemiane wraps the placenta in cloths, sliding the swaddling aside as Demetria places the wailing babe, folded in a blanket warmed by the kitchen brazier against the mother's breasts. With quick, efficient motions of habit, Nemiane ties off the cord between two pieces of twine, and clips the segment, the child finally freed from that leash of primal dependence connecting it to its mother's womb. "She is a he," the midwife says with a benevolent/peaceful/definite smile, "and he is beautiful." She draws out his tiny hands and feet, perfect in their number and proportion, showing the young mother how to guide his questing/rooting mouth to her nipple. She's hesitant to fold him in her arms at first, but in moments of her son latching, instinct takes hold and the child's cries fade into the peaceful sound of suckling, and she lowers her head, brushing her face across/sweeping her cheeks across the downy fine wisps caked against his scalp. Aggressively massaging the mother's lower belly, Nemiane feels the uterus firming. To Demetria, she says, "You know to use the yarrow--" "--and an infusion of coagulating/astringent herbs with moistened cobweb," Demetria says smartly/brightly. She bustles around the cramped confines of the kitchen backdoor/pantry/larder, discarding bloodied rags and mixing up the concoction to wad into a banting/packing, applied to against the mother's raw nether region. You aren't the only one who's studied Soranus, doctress." The girl relaxes, relieved that the discomfort of Nemiane's check is past. Satisfied by the mother's status, Nemiane slanting/grants her an amused glance her way, Demetria's expectant gaze melting into smile, a shared moment of mirth. Placing the packing between the girls legs, she shifts to the girl's side, stroking a lank strand of hair back from her hollowed cheek. "Rest now, child. I'll see you get some privacy, tonight anyway. It's a damn shame, having a new mother and her babe recover in a brothel larder," she mutters, hastening over to the entrance, poking her head out into the kitchen aisle. She flags down one of the brothel slaves, instructing them in a firm voice, and explicit instructions, to retrieve a clean stack of bed linens, towels, and a fresh night-dress/robe from one of the cabinets. Nemiane wipes her hands with a vinegar wetted cloth, then wipes them along her stained apron/equivalent clothing. Kneeling on the floor by the end of the pallet--the brothel couldn't even supply a foot stool to sit upon, let alone a birthing chair for the mother--Nemiane focuses on sifting through her medical chest, taking inventory of contents used and those remaining. "I'll be here through to dawn, child. And in every half an hour to check on you and the babe." A single, hopeless sob, dies away into the silence of the girl's misery, her eyes shining and empty upon Nemiane. "She will kill him. Knowing he's a boy, she will see him dead." The mother hugs her child to her, the baby having drifted off into a peaceful rest. She weeps raggedly into the little form bundled in her arms. Frowning, Nemiane exchanges a look with Demetria who returns with a stack of fresh bedding and clothes, directing the slave carting a large ceramic basin of steaming water to place the container at the side of the pallet, and shows her off promptly. "No need for them to be hearing all of that," she says. "Come girl, you'll feel better after you've bathed, and slept." She takes the newborn from the young mother, placing the boy on the pile of clean bedding. Then, she takes a clean cloth, helping the exhausted mother wash up, combing out her dark blonde waves, and change into a fresh robe of soft wool to cover her nakedness, Nemiane switching out the single threadbare sheet to s fresh covering before they situate the young mother with her child back on the worn pallet. It's a sorry nest for a newborn and his mother to spend a first night. "You see," Demetria assures, handing the newborn back as the young mother cradles him possessively against her breast. "He'll be right next to your side, the safest place in all the world, and the only place a child needs to know it is loved." The girl's tears abated, as Demetria predicted, but the hollow/defeated/resigned look/haunted look/air of the waif hasn't left her eyes. Kneeling beside her, Nemiane gently reaches for the girl's hand. When she tries turning the girl's wrist up. The young mother clutches her arm to her chest, then let's her hand go soft in Nemiane's grasp. There, on the underside of her forearm, a tattoo of a pisces, two fish in a concentric circle from head to tail, had been scratched into her skin in dark blue ink. "This child was conceived in sin," she whispers, gazing at Nemiane in misery. "Your god is not only just, but merciful," Nemiane says softly. "The sin does not belong to you." She squeezes the young mother's hand, trying to offer/imbue a measure of comfort/confidence to conceal her own ambivalence of the future facing the young mother and her infant. "You follow the teachings of the Christ?" Curiosity eases the girl's sorrowing expression. Nemiane, not wishing to give offense, ruefully replies, "I'm familiar with many teachings, child. I choose those which align with my conscience." Her childhood had been full of competing theologies between her mother's titular goddesses of the Briganti, her uncle's claims to some Druidic restoration resisting Romanitas of occupation, and her grandfather's adherence to the faith of an extinct Jewish pauper, Nemiane reached maturity having little belief in anything divine other than the pantheon of dogmas that did little to improve the lot of human suffering other than reinforce hierarchies of dominance and submission of the powerful upon the weak. Nemiane wasn't about to indulge the girl's piqued interest in her religious views, turning the focus back to the immediate circumstances of the young mothers present situation. "You should sleep now. You'll need to recover your strength." The girl's eyes droop, her small, fleeting smile sad as she nods, hearing Nemiane's mild tone. Demetria makes a scornful noise. "How is she supposed rest in a kitchen larder with the rats and roaches?" The girl rests her weary gaze on Demetria as the midwife fluffs a down pillow, helping the mother to lie back, her sleeping newborn, now fed, cradled by her side. "I feel safer here than in a gilded palace, caged with those monsters who--"the words breaking off. She blinks back her tears, features stark with fear and a heartbreaking resignation as she studies her child. "She'll see us both dead. She'll not abide a boy child while she's given the emperor no living heir." Her words fill Nemiane with a slow broiling anger. "There is no one of you or your child who will be harmed. Not this night, or any night thereafter, under my watch," she vows, past her own caution/dread, suspecting, as she can see Demetria does as well, by the way the crease of concern across her midwife's brow grows deeper, who the girl means. The young mother's moist eyes overflow, tears trickling down her thin/wan cheeks. "You may not be adherents of the Christ, but you both have good souls. I am grateful for that, and will ask my God to bless you." Demetria dabs them away with a soft wool kerchief. "Spare your prayers, girl," she says, her teasing smile warding the sting out of her words. "From the sounds of it, you'll need all the divine mercy you can beg for yourself and your child." Nemiane, with a wry glance between the young mother and the midwife, says, "Speak for yourself, Demetria. I, for one, willingly accept favors from any divinity in this line of work." Her tone/comment even evokes a passing shadow of a smile from the young mothers, who yawns in her fatigue, exhaustion finally claiming her. Nemiane strokes the wisps of dark blonde back from the girl's forehead. Only when her eyes have dropped shut completely, and breathing grows long and regular, her infant snuggled at her side, does Nemiane finally hunker back to her heels, drawing in a long, quiet sigh. Demetria eyes her knowingly. She gestures to the doorway, out to the kitchen. "Go get some refreshment before you faint on your feet." About to protest, insist she's fine, despite the sudden grumble from her stomach, and a wave of dizziness, Nemiane finds herself overridden by Demetria's admonition. "You're no use to me if you're passed out on the floor from lack of nourishment." She lets Demetria lead her out to the kitchen, sitting her down at the servants' table. Two hours past midnight (however that translated in Roman time), the only staff remaining are the head cook's assistant, a boy, scarce into his teens, left with the undesirable overnight duty of stirring the morning porridge for the brothel ladies. In a dingy corner, a rag-garbed girl, her cheeks dirt-tinged, her body as thin as reed, with a mess of brown knots atop her head, that Nemiane can almost see the lice squirming through the tangles, works over two large bronze tubs, her hands immersed in steaming water as she washes a selection of platters, pots, and drinking vessels. In minutes, Demetria procures a roll of grainy textured bread, soft herb cheese, and early spring greens soaked in fish garum. Nemiane sips a cup of hot nettle tea, the beverage, the nourishment, reviving her out of the stupor, and clearing the drowse from her mind. Demetria takes a seat on the stool across the table from Nemiane, pouring herself a cup of the herbal brew. "You should get some sleep," she says, meeting her eyes/studying her/watching her through the steam curling up from vessel in her hands. Nemiane rubs the gritty feel from her eyes with a finger and thumb, blinking away the tired ache between her temples. She gives Demetria a wry look. "Where exactly am I supposed to put up? In one of the prostitute's cubicles?" A low chuckle reaches her ears from Demetria, her pretty features bright with humor/merriment/amusement. "Oo--perhaps not. With your luck, the entire Praetorian would come beckoning." With exaggerated groan, Nemiane rolls her eyes up to the ceiling. "Ugh! Spare me the onslaught. Two was plenty more than one needs to encounter of that lot in a night." Scraping the last chunk of bread and cheese through the pungent fish oil, Nemiane washes down the food with a final swallow of her beverage. A glimpse up to a high window set above the cook stove for ventilation tells her it's still in the dark tide hours of morning. She resigned herself, hours ago, to the possibility of a sleepless night, one of many already tallied through the years of her trade. "I'll be here till daybreak anyway. You should go home--"she arrests the midwife's protest with with a raised hand"--and relieve me within the hour after dawn. Any post-parturition complication that might arise will be most likely over the next few hours. I would have to be summoned regardless. It's easier for me to stay right now. It's a superstition founded on experience." Seeing Demetria bristle at the notion the midwife may be inadequate to managing any potential crisis threatening the young mother's recovery, Nemiane hurriedly adds, "Because you will have your hands full over the next few days taking over their care." Demetria's pinched/pursed lips relax, the quick, playful ease returning. "A fine salvage, doctress. I almost might have been offended." With food and drink in her, and now laughter, Nemiane feels a refreshing surge of energy. She rises from the high table, Demetria following after her, each thanking the sleepy eyed youth by the cooking hearth, and the wisp/waif of the girl-child kneeling as she empties more water from an urn lifted of the fire-pit into the wash basins. Demetria lights an oil lamp, raising it in front of them to cast its soft orange glow about the small space of the larder. The young mother looks up at them as they enter, crooning a sweet melody under her breath while her baby suckles at her breast. Demetria's soft spoken encouragement brings a tired smile to the girl's face as she checks on the infant's swaddlings. A brief exam of the young mother reassures Nemiane of her improving condition. She cleans her hands on a woolen towel, placing it in a basket with the other soiled cloths/fabrics. Frowning as her eyes move over the closeted room, Nemiane says, "I wish I could offer a more suitable environs for you and your babe to rest." "It's alright," the girl says is quietly. She replaces the shoulder of her nightgown, her son having fallen back into a twilight doze, belly full, and warm near his mother's body. She tucks the blankets closer about his rounded cheeks, stoking back a white blonde lock from his brow. "It's said Mary bore her child in a stable shared with asses and oxen," a wistful, ghosting smile, Glancing between Demetria and Nemiane. "You are so kind. That is more than I could have hoped since the emperor..." her words dying away to tears. She shakes her head, arms tightening about her child, burying her face against his. The young mother's situation reveals itself to Nemiane in her trailing words, inciting a stone weight of pity, and a cold, slow burning anger churning deep inside her. She rises to her feet, trying to contain her anger, but her words are thick with her emotion. "Sleep, child, and Don't fret yourself through this night. No one will harm you." knowing her words are meaningless, but they're the best she can muster in the moment. Striding out of the room into the kitchen passage, Nemiane slows her pace, letting Demetria catch up to her. The midwife's eyes are full of concern. "Pardon, doctress, but perhaps you should reconsider, and take your own advice, catch some sleep yet. You've had a long evening. Everything seems exaggerated when we're upset, and reactions come stronger/heightened than normal when we're past our stamina." Nemiane's laugh is short, ironic. "Past my stamina? How new do you think I am at this?" Taking a slow breath, she steadies her mind, trying to ease Demetria's consternation/worry, and calm her own sense of impotency towards the young mother's circumstances. "She didn't deserve this, however it happened." "And you want to do more for her, don't you?" Demetria's words float into the darkness, softly between them. "Something that might actually protect that poor girl and her baby." Nemiane nods once, briefly. "Yes." A muted glow of mounted torches seeps past shuttered windows, and between the fissures in the wood of a heavy oak door leading to an alley winding in back of the brothel. Demetria pushes the door open, and they step out onto a sheltered stoop covered by an awning of boiled ox hide/tent material(??). The odor of stale cook fires, rotting food, and sewage hangs in the damp spring night, thick in their nostrils and smudging the stagnant/still damp of the alley. The midwife considers her with a sniff and turn of her mouth, appraising. "Call it a silly intuition, especially bc I only just met you tonight. There's something about you, though, I could almost believe you won't desert that girl to her fate until you've tested any chance that might open up an escape for her." With a rueful/wry look, Nemiane says/ returns her comment with a rueful look, "Tonight my aspirations are of a more humble bent, like trying to get a breath of fresh air for a few minutes." Demetria tests/inhales the foul air of the alley, her face crinkling in disgust. "Uck! You'll have better luck finding a magic carpet for the girl." Sharing a smile, Demetria places her hand on Nemiane's wrist with a gentle/light pressure before disappearing back into the brothel. "Relax for a few minutes. I'll be here for another hour yet. I've some things to finish up with a few of the other girls." After the midwife leaves, the silence of the shadows, the alley, descends in that expectant stillness/hush of predawn. Nemiane tips her head back, rolling her shoulders and neck, trying to relieve the knots in her muscles the strain from the last few hours have left her. Seeking a glimmer of stars through the fretful clouds in the strip of darkness visible high above the narrow lane, All she sees/can decipher is a strip of black, the heavens crowded out by the jumbled rooftops, adjoining balconies from business fronts and tenement blocks reaching seven stories high. The rattle of pipes, the trickle of water draining down tile gutters from the earlier rain, rushing in streams toward the plaza cistern at the end of the lane, to eventually wash out into the Tiber carries the echo of damp, dank caverns, and subterranean gloom, places buried far from the warmth of sun and life. Emperors were known to indulge whims of vengeance with a unique cruelty that could rival some of the gruesome executions she had remembered reading in the histories she had been exposed to by her tutors as a child. Anyone who had studied the briefest of passages from ______(historians up to mid 150s), knew how the Vestal____ had been forced seal the entrance to her own tomb, having run afoul of Domitian, and condemned to a slow death beneath the earth. With what had she become embroiled? Palace slave girls, bastard sons of emperors, Praetorians inexplicably hovering around a squalid ____Subura brothel. Nemiane had accepted the summons to attend the girl's delivery with welcome relief, an excuse to escape the banquet held by the emperor, to which her uncle, as a senator of some renown, had been invited. (Frustration, often mystification/perplexity filled the years since her own adolescence, yearning for something far beyond the predictable mold of a woman born to provincial nobility, and Like her mother before her, using that privilege of rank to indulge her fancy, lose/embrace/immerse herself in the study of medicine.) As obscure as the causes of illness, securing any hope in an effective treatment often proved, such challenges were far more familiar, and woke/provoked far less anxiety than did the thought of mingling for hours on end with the sophisticates of Latin aristocracy, whose bloodlines ran back to the founding of the Republic, or so most of the fine adorned women, and their arrogant husbands liked to expound until Nemiane's glazed/distracted/ look stifled them into sputtering silence, unimpressed by antiquated pedigrees, and they strode away, faces full of disdain and voices tinged with antipathy, remarking on the uncouth refinements of provincial idiots. Nemiane held rather differing views on Royal bloodlines, provincial or otherwise, having been raised in the shadow of Roman and British heritage, and a hundred years worth of a traitorous queen's legacy shadowing everything of her upbringing. A restless girl whose childhood had been spent in that savage wild country beyond the Antonine frontier, Nemiane's first memories were of scampering with her cousin, Vanora, across a crag filled lands of wind, heather, and majestic forests, where cold, mountain air dizzied in its purity, full of the music of crashing seas and quiet/hush flower thick/strewn valleys fed by sparkling falls and fast flowing rivers/streams. Her first lessons had been amongst a community of priestesses who still followed mysteries Rome had never vanquished from that savage north country, learning to decipher the language of the trees, and read the choreography of the moon and stars upon the silhouettes of leaf and flower in the altered seasons/unseen forces of spirits animating breeze or wave upon the erratic weavings of men's lives. Torn at age ten from the only world she had ever known, wide swept skies and lush moors, wild (bird pierced) wind that would always whisper through her heart, she was brought back south of the Hadrian divide, to join her grandfather's civilized court, in Isirium Brigantium. A decision, Nemiane discovered as she grew to maturity, that had been the outcome of a bargain struck long before her birth, the truce which had severed any tie of love or devotion between her mother, and her mother's twin brother, who were the heirs to the tribal kingship of the Brigantine nation. It was the impotency of that title, a neutered puppet-magistrate accountable to the legionary and civil authorities out of Eboracum, Londinium, which had led Nemiane's uncle to sow the seeds of rebellion amongst discounted members of Britannia's northern tribal nobility, and erupted into the chaos of wide spread revolt that swept over the Hadrian frontier. It was her mother's own strategizing, fearing the consequence of Roman retribution, counter-plotting against her own rebel brother and his fellow conspirators, and carelessly offering herself on the _____Plains, in marriage to the young legionary tribune assigned to stamp the Brigantine into submission. And like her four times great grandmother, Cartimandua a hundred years before, renewing the fealty of the Brigantine tribes to Roman occupation. Such was the impression Maeve must have made, a fearless eyed/bright eyed young woman, barely fifteen, clad in the white robes of a queen and priestess, proud of form, lithe, dangerous as a spear, tangles of her black hair blowing about her face in the early spring squall blasting across the land, facing the contigent of the VI's commanders, that Antius Crescens Calpurnianus had accepted her proposal of peace in that very moment, against the vehement objections of his older brother, Claudius ____, now Pompeianus. *Line from old GL--story*. Nemiane had heard the rendition multiple times through her youth, after arriving at in Isirium Brigantium, where the genteel Romanized nobles praised the wisdom of her mother's decision that had led to the desertion of the war bands faithful to her uncle's cause, who saw more to lose than gain in her uncle's ill-planned act of sedition/rebellion that was ultimately doomed to defeat, and leaving the sorely outnumbered insurgents to the mercy of Roman spear and blade. Grief overtook Maeve's brother, and Medrau became Mryddin Wyllt, witnessing the slaughter of his fellow warriors, an amalgam of ruffian dreamers and recalictrant Druids, witnessing the betrayal of his sister to his cause, and madness turned him into a deluded, wandering hermit, lost in Caledon Forest, haunted by the bloodied ghosts who fallen that day before the banners of the Eagle. With a familial heritage like that, Nemiane had arrived at her own private decision, early in those first years joining her grandfather's court, that any path leading to power or authority was fraught with far too much risk to make such struggles worthwhile. Despite the indoctrinated customs of Latin society pounded into her head, she never quite assimilated herself to the genteel society of Romanized Brigantines who populated the dining halls, the fine country estates of her grandfather's relatives, the refined couture of continental/Italian/Latin aristocrats and officers who were stationed in Eboracum, calling at the legionary mansion occupied by her family as her father rose in rank to legate. Nemiane's brothers, three older siblings, Reminses/Priscus, the eldest of Maeve and Antuis's brood, Gesius and Marcus, the middle twins, never seemed affected by the isolation, the dissociation afflicting/tormenting their youngest sister. Amid the daughters of the Roman elite in Eboracum, the Ophelias, Emilias, Julias, and Octavias of various distinguished families, Nemiane felt like a displaced weed uprooted amid a field of fine garden roses/flowers, or a wolf cub amid a pack of lap dogs. Vanora had been as intimate as a sister to her, sharing every moment from waking to sleeping, exploring every secret of stream, ravine, mountain path, and seaside cliff, even wrapped in each others arms, huddled together on a rough reed mat that had been their resting place in the roundhouse they shared in the community of initiates, a glorified hut as Nemiane came to see, later exposed grandeur of classical architecture, but for all that Roman majesty, there were only empty halls and and echoing corridors, that reflected the emptiness in her own soul, no fellow sister, or cousin, or even close female companion who ever filled that void in the remaining years of her girlhood. In the vacuum of her loneliness, Nemiane found solace in study and scrolls, her grandfather's library a denizen of strange texts, obscure philosophies, and mystery cults, professing his Christian beliefs mingled with manuscripts of the Alexandrian schools of science and natural philosophy, this benefit of her mother's status as a native princess, where British women still held a certain privilege of autonomy left over from the days prior to the Roman invasion, that Maeve insisted all of her children receive a formal education, even convincing Antius of the benefit to the common folk and rural peasants, encouraging their daughter to receive formal training in a profession often thought more appropriate to the sons of scholars, wealthy tradesman, and philosophers. So, physic became her abode, Hippocrates, his successors, Nemiane's succor in the lonely years of her adolescence. Medicine was full of its own frustrations, often impugned by the limitations of understanding disease, how an effective treatment might be rendered, the sufferings of patients she served, often abiding in the most destitute of rural subsistence or urban filth/squalor. For all of that, she would still choose crouching between the legs of an abused slave girl, troubleshooting a the potential complications of a pending birth, than mingle for untold hours of boredom, serving as a set-piece to the Imperial family, awkwardly navigating the ceaseless prattle of court fashions, the latest scandals, insipid questions about the supposed promiscuities of British women in the Roman histories, or devising some empty sympathy about the rising price of slaves for an elite who bled/poured exorbitant amounts of money into their own private mansions, replete with fish farms, and marble floored/gold paved bathing halls designed to host dinner parties, in Italian resort towns like Baie. Indeed, Nemiane had once been reprimanded for having pointed out that very paradox at a dinner hosted by one of her father's distinguished commanders, on a visit to Londinium years ago. One hardly required any intelligence or keen understanding to see this mess of an emperor's bastard son, and a Christian slave girl's life was the kind of situation that promised only trouble. The challenge now, was how one extricated themselves gracefully wo raising suspicions from the palace of some counter-intrigue, and avoided becoming further involved. The awareness formed a permanent knot between her brows which hadn't eased in the passing hour with these ponderings, in fact, only increased the weary ache engulfing her head so to the point where her scalp actually felt sore. Undoing the linen wrap securing her hair, Nemiane closes her eyes, trying to relax her mind as she massages her fingers through her scalp, trying to ease the constricted vice trapping her skull, untangling a mass of springing curls that hangs down the span of her back, the ends feeling coarse and stiffened by accumulated oils. She intends to take a good, hot bath when she returns to uncle's villa, and scrub away the residue, bodily and in her mind, of this evening. -- The sound of rickety floorboards beneath booted feet shatters/breaks her fleeting tranquility. Out of the shadows emerges the Praetorian from earlier, pausing at the threshold of the stoop. Scowling at him, she hastily coils her hair back into the linen band. "You're still here," she comments, annoyed at how self-conscious his scrutiny makes her feel. "Till dawn, or the child was delivered," he answers. A fitful torch from down the hall throws enough light across his features that she can just make out the way he regards her, a little too much interest glowing in his dark eyes, following the brisk motions with which she tucks a last curling tress into the the wrap. He steps out into the small space, seating himself next to her, bearing two wine goblets. "Royal women pay half their dowries to don wigs woven from hair that color," he says. "Only in Rome would people pay the equivalent of all Britannia's wealth/worth for someone else's hair." His laugh at her sardonic tone is short, muted. He mistakes her glance directed at the wine goblet her offers her as suspicion. "It's well watered, I swear. A pity, really for such a fine vintage." Nemiane says nothing, accepting the delicate vessel with a raised brow, before looking back out to the alley, where the strand/string of buildings, puddled recesses in the lane, timber framed awnings and the dark nooks of streets channeling further into the heart of this slum all gradually take shape from the graying light. Even in the pallor of pre-dawn, the liquid, scented of sun ripened berries, and spice-leaden moist earth after a summer shower, filling her nostrils, is so deep a red, the vintage appears black, like old blood. Nemiane sips the wine, full bodied, lush as the berries with which its bouquet perfumed the air, chasing away the foul odor of garbage and feces heavy in the alley. Swallowing, she is still keenly/acutely aware of the Praetorian's steady, expectant gaze. Virius Lupus, was that how Demetria had addressed him? "Honey in firelight," he says softly. "Darker though, like aspen leaves in an autumn sunset/copper/auburn shaded leaves of tree/ just before they fall." Nemiane skews a doubtful look at him. "I think your sleep deprivation, or your wine, has addled your brain, soldier. I thought you had sent my over-eager admirer home for being too drunk." He swirls his cup, raising it to his lips with a quick flash if white, well-formed teeth. "My single indulgence, and only at the downside of my shift." Bringing the goblet away, his smile disappears, but this new warmth, the companionable/amiable ease of his manner hasn't, leaves her feeling on edge, leery of his motives. "British wealth for British worth. My nurse, while I was a boy, was a British woman, a slave, the wife of some insurgent tribesman or other. A good woman, actually, when she had finally accepted her fate. --"That would have been a hard course to accept, if she had been free before that." --"She hated my father, but she came to love us children, I think, perhaps as replacement for her own. She remained loyal to my family, even after I freed her when I had come of age, paid for her grave stele the year after when she had passed from an ague." --"How generous of you." "Like I said, a good woman. But she was as illiterate as a fig, and even more so in the Greek medical texts I would imagine." --"Britannia has been known harbor a Greek or three somewhere upon our misty shores. Even a few physicians amongst them, it's said." --"A few? Is there any Greek who isn't a physician? And you're not Greek. What would take a woman so far from her homeland, to live alone in a city like this!" "A quest for knowledge, and to plunder the secrets of the East, discover the wisdom of sciences that have been lost from my homeland, or more surely never existed there at all," she replies with an expansive gesture. Humor quirks his mouth at her melodramatic flare. "That's a grand aspiration/sojourn. And what have you found so far?" "A few scripts, a few scrolls, a valuable insight here and there, and...whole lot of lonely soldiers." His laughter rings down the alley. "And frustrated affections, I Presume, strewn all across the provinces. A pity really. I had hoped-- "Continue hoping soldier," she bristles, she smiles, through her bridling, but there's an edge to her words, which doesn't seem to off put him. With a crestfallen sigh/crushed look, he grumbles with a teasing grin, "Women like you are the reason why establishments like this exist." Nemiane can't contain her chuckle, shaking her head. "Oh, I beg to differ, soldier. Establishments like this exist bc men always need women who will tell them what they wish to hear, even if they have to purchase such testimony in return for words or moans." His releases a sharp breath, toasting her with his raised goblet. "You're merciless, lady." "Doctress," she corrects him with a pointed look before taking a swill from her wine. Its spice/piquancy slides down her throat, and she rests the empty vessel on her knees, fingers clasped about its stem. The faintest blush of light just skims the highest rooftops, clay/stone tiles glinting ruddy/rouged in the first touch of the sun. "Till dawn? Your shift is done, soldier." "Virius. Virius Lupus. If Demetria has no compunction addressing me by my name, then her fellow colleague ought not either." Nemiane frowns, turning away from his intent dark eyes, pondering/contemplating the alley in silence, her reflexive sauciness/mockery/irony/wry/ruefulness lost in the sudden awareness of how crowded is the small stoop they inhabit, seated next to one another, shoulders, arms almost touching, the heat of his body, a scent of leather and sweat, warming the air she inhales, makes her a feel a little lightheaded, the sensation not eased by her wave of exhaustion that's crept back, dragging/dulling her mind. He's handsome, with an easy grace that must characterize his true nature rather than the stiff-lipped authoritarian he came across as in the public hall. Nemiane senses he's also quite conscious of his effect on women, and perhaps were she not occupying this charade of a common working woman/working class commoner, indeed, assuming the rank of her true identity, she may have been more inclined to indulge a flirtation. Though she would also wager that had he known her true rank, the niece of Claudius Pompeinus, he wouldn't have been so relaxed in his comportment. His words, his actions, the subtle suggestions alluded in his comments, reflect a man who views himself as her superior, for all his familiarity, an officer of the Imperial Guard, thinking Nemiane, in the grim chastity required of her livelihood, fearing the dread of wasting away as a shriveled maid, would be awed by his status, an easy conquest, if irregular novelty, in the monotony she imagined he indulged, bedding rich, lonely widows, and the nubile young wives of crusty old senators. The buildings lining the narrow street begin to animate with the growing light. Shutters from upper story windows opening, the entrances fronting the cobbled path/lane unlocking, and the morning staff of various shops and vendors, heading out to face the day. "You'll be blasting /eating/carving a new window into the launderer's keep if you keep staring at the siding like that." He seems taken aback when she turns/tears her gaze off the building face across from them, and searching his face, asks, "What would have happened at dawn had she not yet delivered her child?" "They would have induced a Caesarian procedure," he answers in a flat voice. "Gods Minions, you people," she says under her breath, looking down into her wine glass, trying to contain her derision/disgust before she dares look up again. "Would they have at least allowed me the appearance of an elective decision?" "Or brought in their own surgeon." "Butcher, you mean?" There's a rueful light in his eyes. "Fortunately, her baby was born before dawn." "Fortunately, her labor didn't turn out to be as complicated as initially feared." "Will she recover?" *Do you care*, the thought hanging bitter in her mind. Instead, she replies, "Yes, I believe so, at least in body. Her child is strong, and will give her spirit back a will to live too." "A boy?" "A boy," she says carefully, recalling the young mother's dread/fear for her child's future, at the mercy of the Augusta. "Your eminence!" The words reach them down the hallway. The cook's assistant appears from the kitchen, earlier drowsiness/somnolence chased away by the urgency speeding his steps toward the Virius Lupus. With a garbled apology to Nemiane, the boy gushes something into the Praetorian's ear. Nemiane pretends to be distracted, trying to not listen too closely, but apprehension/her disquiet churns in her stomach, able to just make out the words 'palace' and 'his majesty'. Virius nods, a distracted tight concentration/urgency suffusing contracting his jaw/clouding darkening his already lean/intense features. He sends the youth away with a coin, waiting until he's disappeared into the kitchen before turning to Nemiane. "My regrets, doctress, being unable to prolong sharing your company. It seems I've been summoned under haste by the emperor." With a tip of her head, she tries to keep her reply casual/light/uninflected. She needs to know what's happened. Her mother and uncle had been in attendance at the palace tonight. "There's nothing one can do but comply to the call of duty." He hesitates at the doorway a moment, facing her, an unspoken question in his eyes. She arches an eyebrow, prompting him to speak. "Your name, may I have it, in case I ever cross your path again?" A rueful sniff, a ghost of a smirk, and Nemiane honors his request. "Neva." "Neva." Her name sounds like an exotic or magical property, something foreign and mysterious upon his lips, the way he tests out the short syllables. "How Latinized. How is it spoken in your island's tongue/native tongue?" "Nyvein/Nyfain." The way he watches her, seeming to contemplate her rather, with those dark eyes awakens a flutter of desire, a shiver across her skin that also constricts her breath, a whisper of warning at the edge of her sleepy sense that tells her to be wary, not trust him. She lets him take her hand as he unties a coin purse, secured beneath his belt. Undoing the strings, he places a small vial/philter, cloudy liquid in a corked container of blue Phoenician glass, into her palm, along with the purse that she feels, is full of coin. Her drowsiness bursts into a blaring trumpet of alarm buzzing between her ears, the swish/rush of blood from her pounding heart loud as her mind races a few beats ahead of his words. "A gift for the young mother, and her babe. From the Augusta. A medicament meant to fortify her recovery, and thicken her milk. It's to be administered only by you, as I'm sure you understand...doctress." So this is the moment of reckoning, the precipice upon which Nemiane precariously balances, sucked into the rotten corruptions of power play and Imperial intrigue. She says nothing, merely focusing beneath lowered lids, upon her hands like ice where rests the blue glass vial/shimmering blue vial/clear blue vial and the purse, bulging with coin, her palms turned up, cradled in his strong, gentle fingers, an almost a caress, the way his thumbs slowly circle the soft flesh of her inner wrists, the pulse thrumming away there. "That's 100____coin, solid silver. For your services tonight. Spend it on something pretty, like a new gown, or a some ruby ear drops from India." Finally collecting herself enough to sublimate her rising contempt, turn the anger at this ultimate act of injustice against the young mother and innocent newborn into a disguise of sarcasm, Nemiane looks up at him, her gaze level, tone dry. "Perish the thought that some women might find such fripperies nonsensical. What use would I have for earrings or a new gown? I would rather spend such funds on a few offices to rent for examination rooms." Virius's lazy grin tells her he's hardly offended at her arched/bristling reply. Heat and hunger glow from his shadowed/scorching gaze, not bothering to hide his keen/scorching appraisal of her looks "You do play hard, don't you? Such virtue. What does Minerva find tempting in the wooing of her affections?" Nemiane raises her chin, her eyes locked with his, responding to his desire by letting the thick, heavy silence lengthen between them. He shifts forward, seems about to close the space between them, perhaps thinking to sweep her into an embrace, claim her lips in a passionate kiss. "Integrity." She lets the word drop like a metal platter clanging through a silent temple, full of the cool authority she learned to wield through the years, following her mother's lead, that brief crack in her commoner's guise, harkening her true status. As she anticipated, her chilly tone catches Virius off. He pulls himself straight, the light in his eyes changing, his expression growing cool, still humoring her with that infuriating, subtle/ironic grin. Like he's laughing at her and himself, having rolled a gamble to see how far he could push his wager until she either succumbed or pushed back. He does manage to get away with raising the hand in which she holds the vial to his lips. Hearing her sharp inhale, at the brush of warm breath and softness, he says with a teasing glint, "So, you have some fire with that ice in you after all...Nyvien." Wisely, noting how she stiffens at the liberty taken, Virius frees her hands, reiterating in his mellow, articulate voice, that the medicine must only be administered by her, and no other. Containing her fury behind a clenched jaw she hopes Virius merely reads as her indignation for his presumptuous flirtation, Nemiane tries to keep her voice smooth, features carefully schooled to calm, looking him directly in the eyes. "Of course, I understand completely." With a small bow, he straightens. Through the doorway, he exits down the hall, passing into the kitchen, and out of sight. It's only then that Nemiane lets her fatigue/weariness/fear take over, and she slumps back with a great sigh, against the wall of the small porch. The coin bag and medicine vial burn like coals, clutched in her stiff fingers. Tipping her head back to strip of gray sky, brightening by the minute to a washed out blue, scored with wafts of light, curling clouds, a cool breeze hushing down the alley, airing out the dampness of the previous night, she fills her lungs with another great breath, trying to seek the freshness sweeping with the current, blown from the heights of of the metropolis, diffused/diluted by the stench of sewer and refuse drowning these lower districts. Slowing her racing heart with each breath, Nemiane's wit and determination gradually return/restore themselves. A calculating glance to the objects in her grasp, and she lifts herself from her support against the wall, her gait, full of purpose, taking her along the the Praetorian's path, back into the kitchen where she finds Demetria setting out clean cloths and dressings. Nemiane's medicine chest is on the table top, its varied instruments and medicines neatly sorted into respective compartments. The cauldron, hanging off an iron tripod over the cooking hearth, bubbles with a morning porridge, honey and ___nut filling the air. The thundering/booming/rumbling voice of the tavern keeper carries past the door from the pub beyond, as he barters with a delivery man over a cart load of pastries, sweet cakes, salted pork, and eggs, to be offered the morning customers. Thankfully, they're alone in the kitchen for the moment. Noticing Nemiane's troubled expression, Demetria puts down the length of linen she had been rolling. With a puzzled little smirk, she says, "The brothel ladies adore him. Something about that dark, broody look seems to attract the female passions. Pardon, doctress, I didn't think you were so susceptible." Nemiane's expectant silence/skeptical/eloquent lift of her brow, elicits a burst of laughter from Demetria. "Oh! Oh my, he's not used to being subverted/rejected." "Demetria, I have to go." The midwife sobers, gaze stilling on Nemiane, hearing the gravity/tension in her voice. "And I don't anticipate being able to return later today." Seeing the unspoken question in Demetria's face, Nemiane says, "Whatever happened last night in the palace may have affected people I know. I have to be sure they've not come into harm's way." Demetria regards her with a new found caution, head cocked slightly. "High ranked patrons, doctress?" A quick nod, and Nemiane says past the brief shaft of guilt for the evasiveness, "To say the least." Demetria's attention falls to the objects contained in Nemiane's grasp. "They're a dangerous commodity to mix with, doctress. What's that you have?" Nemiane opens her fingers, holding out the glass vial and coin bag, and Demetria's face hardens, looking as though she would incinerate the the very flesh off Nemiane's hand. "Give me those." Nemiane's fingers curl around the pieces, drawing her hand back. "And what do you intend to do with them?" "Tell Virius Lupus to swallow whatever rat poison is in that vial for himself, and if that doesn't do the trick, I'll make him hand feed every coin in that purse to a cobra until he's in throes, foaming like a rabid dog." The wrath contorting Demetria's pretty features recedes into confusion at Nemiane's abrupt laugh, relief flooding through as she says, "Oh, I could kiss you right now...were I of Sappho's persuasion, anyway." Indignation floods Demetria's voice as she bristles, her cheeks flushed in high color. "You were testing me." Nemiane takes one of the midwife's hands, placing the glass vessel and the purse there. "I had to know I could trust you." A small chuckle chases away Demetria's short-lived hostility. "I could kiss you, doctress. I knew you weren't such a sellout/swindler/ambitious freak/lacking morals/so easily bought." Nemiane's fleeting smile conveys her enticement. "I'm afraid the customers wouldn't know how to handle that kind of titillation, dear," making Demetria blink in surprise, giggling when she adds, "And we wouldn't want to steal custom from the regular staff, would we?" Quickly recovering herself, Demetria's sly smile and wink leaven the flirtation to a light hearted jest. "I'll have to choose a more complicated case to monopolize your attention next time." "You'd have me back?" Nemiane asks with a teasing/taunting glance as she locks the lid of her medicine chest. Solemnity suffuses Demetria's voice/reply. "I would sacrifice my eye-tooth to learn from your expertise." With a wry sniff, Nemiane says, "I'm not sure what expertise was employed of which you weren't already capable." She hefts the leather carrying strap attached to her tote over her head and across her shoulder, Demetria's open pleasure at her words, the most inspiring of sincerity she's seen all night. Eyeing the vial and coin purse in Demetria's hand, she fails to keep the her anxiety out of her voice when she says, "Be careful. I'm not the only one here courting danger by deception." Demetria snorts, bursting into a short, contemptuous laugh. "Please, you mean Virius? He wouldn't dare harm me. He's my...brother." The floor rocks, sways as Nemiane chokes on the twist of news, steadying herself, her shock, against the table until her mind works through the new convolution. She recalls Demetria's bold manner in her earlier public/verbal chastising/flaying of the Praetorian in the tavern. Her cast down scowl, the way she peers up hesitantly at Nemiane, as though she's both fearful and resentful of the reaction she expects from Nemiane is borne upon the hesitation/expectation in her voice when she adds softly, "He's smart, but not when it comes to resisting the wiles of scheming young empresses. I don't divulge our relation often. It gets tiresome explaining why a woman might insist on laboring/toiling in my profession when she comes from a family of evident means." Five, maybe six years she has on the younger woman in age and experience, and nary but the better part of a night and morning as professional colleagues unified in their purpose to protect their ward, but the midwife's confession glows through Nemiane with the warm sunshine of discovering a kindred soul. "You'll have no judgement from me on that point, Demetria." Her smile is bright, her black eyes, so very like her brother's, Nemiane now sees, full of warmth. "Guard yourself." "And you," Nemiane returns. She shakes her head, stopping Demetria from picking out any of the coin from the purse. "I don't require it. Use what would have been my fee for your own funds." Demetria motions with the money bag, about to protest, when Nemiane suggests gently, "Were it I, I would use the rest of the coin to find a safe haven/shelter for that poor mother and her babe. Someone that you trust, who will keep them out of the way from Imperial spies and their lackeys." Approval stirs over Demetria's keen gaze. "Oh, I do like how you think." By the tone, Nemiane can already see the midwife testing her options. For good measure, she adds, "And give your brother back the vial unopened," letting Demetria's innate cleverness speak for itself. "Yes. Nothing inspires a sense of commitment like self-preservation. He'll find any reason to avoid Bruttia Crispina's wrath in order to conceal her failed plot," she nearly purrs. Nemiane adjusts the strap pressing/impinging her into her shoulder. "I need to go." Demetria nods, growing focused. "You'll do best to exit out the front, as though nothing were remiss/amiss." Nemiane follows her directive, heading towards the front kitchen passage. She turns one last time, imparting her respects. "Gods guard you, Demetria." "And gods preserve you, doctress," the midwife answers. Her next words, revealing the cause of Virius's sudden exit, pour into Nemiane's ears/wash through Nemiane like the surge of a cold surf, fighting down a wave of bile/nausea/acid filling her mouth, as she tries to slow her rapid breath/fear roaring through her stomach to shreds with her poise. Demetria's gaze rests deep and troubled upon her, her smooth forehead crinkled in worry/thought, color drained from her face. "You must be more connected to the Imperial family than I suspected." Nemiane's fingers form talons into the edge of her kit/wooden sides of her kit, punctuating her warning with a slow shake of her head, her words sounding brittle, empty. "No more, Demetria. In case I'm caught. Don't ask anymore, for your own sake. The only thing," she shapes the words carefully, her voice as piercing as her commanding will into Demetria's eyes, "that matters now is the life of that mother and her child. Remember that." Demetria's breath catches harshly in her throat, as she moistens her lips, trying to find her voice. "Of-of course," she stumbles out. Nemiane has no time to pity or comfort the younger woman's rattled composure, as the awareness awakens in her of just who and what they have dared. She can only hope her instincts aren't wrong in judging the midwife has both the intellect and gumption enough to steer the murky waters into which she has inadvertently drifted. Murmuring a last parting, Nemiane Inhales deeply, setting her mind to what she's about to confront back at her uncle's mansion. Moving toward the tavern hall almost against her own volition, she pauses, Demetria's words catching her for a moment, at the entry way leading from the kitchen. "You are a rare one, doctress. I'll remember that as well." She doesn't glance back, but nods over shoulder, acknowledging the portent in the midwife's words. And settling her gaze forward, Nemiane heads on her way, out across the quiet space of the brothel's tavern, now emptied in the early morning hour.

#Arthuriana #King Arthur #Merlin #Guinevere #Morgan le Fay #Nimue #Lucius Artorius Castus #Nemiane #my own crazy take

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