Ashes Under Uricon
Chapter 2. River (360)
By Mihangel
Amnis ibat inter arva valle fusus frigida,
Luce ridens calculorum, flore pictus herbido.
Through the meadows ran a river; down the airy vale it wound,
Smiling mid its radiant pebbles, decked with flowery plants around.
Tiberianus, Amnis ibat
Life was good, at that age. Next day, because Nonius was a traditionalist who kept Saturday as his day of rest rather than the new-fangled Sunday, there was no school. I spent the morning with the gang of my three closest friends.
We roamed and larked as eleven-year-olds always have and always will. We went out to the dam where the aqueduct takes off from the stream, and threw flowers into the water -- a poppy, a daisy, a dandelion, a cornflower -- and followed them as they drifted the mile to the town, and ran shrieking through the gate to see which should arrive first at the reservoir inside the walls. We watched the waterwheel turning at the northern mill and poked our noses into the dark and dusty interior and annoyed the miller. We kicked an inflated bladder around the cattle market until the superintendent chased us off. We dodged through the crowded streets, stopping here and there to watch the weavers at their looms, or the bronzesmiths fashioning brooches, or the glass-blowers and enamellers, or the blacksmiths at their clanging forges. We spent our small change on bread and cheese and ate it squatting in the market colonnade, in an empty space not yet taken by a stallholder, while we played knucklebones. We held a little competition, in a back street, to see how high we could pee up a wall. We passed the temple of Epona bedecked with horses' heads and, sobering, dropped in to leave our insignificant offerings of a sweetmeat or a crust, for Epona, as guardian of horses, was important to the Cornovii. Behind the temple, we found the horse-fair arena was empty, and for a while we kicked our bladder around that.
By now we were hot and sticky and close to the Sabrina.
"I'm going for a swim," declared Amminus. "Coming?"
"Yes!"
"Yes!"
"Not me," I said. "I want to think."
The others, to whom thinking outside school hours on a summer's day was a fool's game, dashed down to the river, stripping as they ran. I had arranged with Bran for an early bath at home, and the sun told me there was still a good hour to spare. I sat on the brink of the low cliff that sloped down from just outside the rampart almost to the water's edge. Below me lay the roofs of the row of warehouses, one of them stocked with my father's pigs of lead and ingots of copper. In front of them was the long timber wharf. Moored to it today were only a couple of small and shallow-draught barges, one unloading olive oil and fish sauce all the way from Spain, the other stone-coal from the gorge a mere dozen miles downstream. The grimy porters heaving amphorae or sacks ashore would doubtless, when their work was done, join the bathers in the Sabrina.
The rest of the wharf was lined with naked male humanity, sitting, shouting, laughing, squealing, jumping off and climbing up; little boys minded by older brothers or slaves just as I had once been minded by Bran; in-between boys like my friends revelling in their freedom; almost-men boys studiously ignoring their juniors; grown men, young and even middle-aged, taking a break from work to cool off or to wash. The water bobbed with swimmers' heads and sparkled with their splashes. While the current was quite fast, at this time of year only toddlers would be out of their depth. Debris caught high in the bushes showed how winter floods could rise, but in winter only the hardy or the foolhardy bathed here.
To my right, on the pebbly beach just upstream of the wharf, some women were washing clothes, pounding them with stones as they sang a traditional song. From round the corner beyond came shrieks from the bathing place reserved for girls. They were segregated, in theory, but we used to spy on them. Of course we did. We were boys. Anyway, they spied on us. And here was our only source of information in that department, for paths could not cross at the public baths where it was female-only in the morning, male-only in the afternoon.
Downstream to my left, below the men's pool, was the ford on the road to Cunetio and Bravonium. A loaded hay-waggon was creaking in from the country behind a plodding yoke of oxen. An empty mule cart was rattling out of town, followed by a horse-rider, probably a government official, officiously yelling at it to get out of his way. Below the ford two fisherman in coracles were spreading their net. Beyond them the river, bordered by smiling meadows, finally lost itself to sight behind a thicket on the bank. Above it the sharp twin peaks of Cordocum poked up remotely through the haze. Behind me, much closer, rose the ever-present lump of Virocodunum and its hill-fort. Between them stretched the long wooded ridge of Vindolocum. Midsummer rested green and luscious on the quiet hills. And our river was good. Our playground, our highway, our fishery and our laundry, our river was undoubtedly good. Thank you, Sabrina, I said to her. You are kind to us.
I was woken from my reverie by a new sound, as a squad of scruffy soldiers splashed across the ford, cursing raucously at having to wet their boots. Present-day Romans were not what they were. Aeneas would not have complained. This pampered lot was no doubt on its way from Bravonium to Deva and would stop off at the state hotel, of which they had free use at the civitas' expense.
But it was time to get home. I made my way along the grass of the cliff-top. Ahead of me, after a couple of hundred paces, loomed a bush, and in front of it, nicely hidden from the girls' bathing place but emphatically not from me, was a naked girl squatting wide-legged for a pee. She had not seen me. I stepped softly and was within a few paces, enjoying an excellent view, before she spotted me and straightened up, squawking and clutching at her breasts; which gave me an even better view of what interested me more. I grinned to myself as she fled. She was Senovara, daughter of Lovernius the stonemason, with an attractive face, an attractive body, but a reputation of being more prim and proper than was good for her. The boys would be green with envy when I told them. They might even accuse me of making it up, which would be grossly unfair.
I turned in through the postern gate and cut across the town, nodding to my friend the policeman who was as usual bored, his only real job being to chuck drunks out of taverns. I wrinkled my nose at the putrid stink of the tanyard, savoured homelier stenches from the cattle market and backyard pigsties, half-closed my eyes to the acrid fumes of stone-coal from a bronzesmith's hearth. Then I smelt the wood-smoke from our own little bath suite. Our household was modest and economical, and our bath was heated only when it was needed in the afternoon and early evening. Mamma's was the first slot, followed by mine and then by Tad's. Our slaves bathed as convenience allowed.
I found Bran in the dining room, on his knees and washing the mosaic floor with its simple design of stylised flowers surrounded by a wide border of meanders. I flopped down beside him and helped, and when the floor was done and the dirty water poured down the drain, we went to the bath. As Bran began to oil me, I got down to business with my first question.
"Bran, can I ask you something? About last night, when you didn't want to join us at the table. Yet you'd been happy for me to wait on you at your meal. I know you'd already had wine, but even so . . . Why did you say no?"
He looked at me consideringly, as if debating whether I was old enough to understand.
"It's complicated. You're free, and you can do what you like. I'm a slave, and I can't. That's the usual rule. Even in this house . . . well, everyone knows what you expect us to do, and what you don't expect us to do, and you respect our feelings. When your father said that if the Romans hadn't brought wine to Britain you'd be drinking beer, he knew it wouldn't offend me, because he knew that my family prefers wine. He might have said that if the Romans hadn't brought the custom of lying on couches for meals you'd be sitting on benches or stools. But he didn't, because he knew that we still prefer benches, like all the Irish do, and lots of Britons too. Saying that might have made me feel, um, uncivilised. So he didn't say it."
I nodded. I was following him perfectly. Bran had paused in his oiling to concentrate on what he was saying.
"In the same sort of way," he went on, attacking my legs, "you're considerate about giving us orders. Even in this house we can't say no, if we're ordered to do something. But we can say no if we're asked in the right way, like 'would you care to join us at table?'. And you'd never even ask us to do something we might think was unreasonable, let alone order us. The other way round, never can we order you to do anything, even in this house. And we have to be careful about what we ask. None of us would have dreamed of asking you to wait on us at table last night. But you offered to. You asked if you could, off your own bat. It wasn't unreasonable. It was almost a joke. But not a real joke," he added hastily, "because we could see you were serious. We didn't play along with you just because you're young, or because you're my master."
He had finished oiling me and was wiping his hands.
"And there's another thing. If it had been my father who was invited to join you at the table, he might have said yes. But he's the same age as your father. I'm not. I respect your father enormously, but I'm never as, well, as comfortable with him as I am with you. But I knew he wouldn't be angry, or even disappointed. So I said no."
"But if Tad hadn't been there, and I'd asked you to join me, would you have said yes?"
"Yes. Almost certainly yes."
"Ah!" Now for my second question. "Bran, something else. Who scrapes you in the bath?"
He was surprised. "Why, nobody. I have to scrape myself. My father respects my privacy. He'd never come in when I was bathing, any more than yours would when you were."
"And you can't scrape your own back." I took the plunge. "Bran, would you like me to oil and scrape you? Now?"
His blue eyes gazed at me for what seemed an age. "Thank you, Docco," he said softly, coming to a decision. "Yes, I'd like that."
Without more ado, he unbuckled his belt, slipped off his tunic, untied the string of his drawers and stepped out of them, and lay down to be oiled. I was no stranger to nude male bodies. I spent countless summertime hours naked in the river with my friends, and we often oiled and scraped each other, occasionally at the public baths when our pocket money could run to it, more frequently in one domestic bath-house or another. But my friends were all much the same age as me, and we could not boast a single body hair between us. Nor were older bodies a total mystery. I had seen plenty in the river and at the baths, all the way from pubescent to geriatric. But never, I reflected as I poured oil from the flask on to my hands, had I been at such close and intimate quarters with an older body.
For all that Bran was fourteen to my eleven, we had grown up together and I still thought of him as a boy rather than an incipient man. I constantly saw his torso and his legs, but it was many years since I had seen him totally naked. I had expected his equipment to be larger than mine, and so it was, considerably larger. But for some reason I had not expected him to have hair. Yet there it was, a bush of already some size, though fine rather than coarse. All this, as I oiled him, I carefully avoided, just as he avoided mine, and I did not allow my fingers to stray into his crack. At first he lay tensely as if he did not fully trust me, but soon he relaxed, and when he was done we clopped in our sandals to the hot room.
To show him that roles were being fully shared, I sloshed water on the scorching floor to raise steam, and we lay down together on the slab. He was very quiet, and I looked at him sideways. His eyes were shut and his hands behind his head. In his armpit were wispy hairs. I had noticed those before; and, now that I thought about it, his voice had been deepening over recent months, though so gradually that I had hardly noticed. I had simply failed to put two and two together about his emerging manhood.
"This is so strange," he said out of the blue.
"But good?" I asked anxiously.
"Yes. Good. I never thought I'd be with a free man, a citizen, almost on an equal footing."
"Well," I laughed, "when you're both starkers it's difficult to be unequal, isn't it?"
"Oh no. It's easy, believe me. To be equal, there has to be the same freedom on both sides. The freedom to give. A free man has it. But a slave can't give to a master, not freely, because he's under an obligation. You know that some masters, um, exploit the fact that their slaves can't say no? Take advantage of them? Impose themselves, especially when they're both naked?"
He was putting it delicately, I realised, for my supposedly delicate ears. But I knew from hearsay what he meant. There were men, even Britons, even in Viroconium, who had that reputation. And I read his comment as a warning, if not for the present, at least for the future. Not that I needed the warning.
"Yes, I know. But Bran, don't worry. I'd never dream of, er, taking advantage of you." I meant it, with all my heart.
"No. You wouldn't. I know that. Shall I scrape you?"
By now we were both sweating hard, and he went into his usual routine. When he had finished my back, "Roll over," he said.
I twisted my head to grin up at him. "Who said a slave can't give his master orders? You just ordered me to roll over!"
He responded by smacking me playfully on the backside. Never had he done such a thing before. I rolled over, wearing not only my grin but my normal erection. He was standing beside the slab and I could not see below his waist, but I sensed a sudden worry in him.
"I'm sorry," he said, "but I'm in the same state as you. Would you rather I went?"
"Of course not!" I cried. "If you don't mind me like this, why should I mind you? We're equals like this, or as equal as we can be."
"There are things that equals can do together, which unequals can't. But yes, we're as equal now as we can be, as long as I'm a slave."
"Good. But Bran." This was the cue for my third question. "You said yesterday you wouldn't accept freedom just as a reward for good service. Does that mean you'd accept it for some other reason?"
"Yes," he said slowly. "I might, if the circumstances were right. But that's in the future, if it ever comes at all. I can't see that far ahead. Let me do your front."
An enigmatic and unsatisfying answer, but I could press no further. He did my front as usual, and then it was his turn. I slid off the slab, and as I was feeding my feet into my sandals he lay down on his belly. I had missed, for the moment, seeing what I was hoping to see. I took a great deal of care in scraping his back clean of sweat and oil and dirt -- plenty of dirt from the stoke-hole -- and I did not trespass. But there was fine down on his thighs, which intrigued me.
"Bran, does scraping take the hair off? Rather like shaving?"
"I don't think so. There are plenty of hairy men around who must have been scraped for years."
"That's a pity. I don't want to be hairy."
"Maybe you won't be. After all, your father's not very hairy, is he?"
"That's true. Right, back done. Roll over."
Bran seemed to be summoning up courage, and hesitated. But he rolled over, and I drank in the sight. As with naked male bodies, I was no stranger to erections. My friends, like me, regularly sported our little ones in the bath, and we had even seen a few in the public baths where men often made assignations, and we had giggled at them. But, to me, an erection seen at close quarters on a handsome and maturing young man was a complete novelty, and a fascination. It did not, as such, turn me on, for I was too young for desire. But, like all my friends, I knew what erections are for. I knew all about what men get up to with men and with women. Like the rest of our community in those days, we talked about it without shame or inhibition. We did not yet have to guard our tongues. In my age-group it was no more than salaciously theoretical talk, for the practical and personal application lay in the future. None the less, even if I had no desire, I did have a boy's full and boundless share of curiosity.
As I worked down Bran's firm chest and belly, I could not keep my eyes off his proud display.
"I can't wait to be like that," I said, nodding at it as I meticulously bypassed it with the strigil. "But there's still three years to go."
"It may be more for you, Docco. I think I've, um, bloomed earlier than most."
That prompted me to risk a new and unplanned question which had been in my mind ever since he stepped out of his drawers. With my other friends I would have had no qualms, but Bran was different. His personal territory was different. So I asked it with some trepidation, and phrased it carefully.
"Bran, can you make seed yet?" I knew about seed, but it was another theoretical knowledge.
"Yes. These last six months or so." He hesitated again. "And I've used it, too."
"What do you mean?"
"That I've, well, put it in other people."
My first reaction was further shock that my companion, my friend whom I still thought of as a boy, had already become a man without my knowing. My next and ignoble reaction was jealousy. He was my Bran, wasn't he, my slave, not other people's. But worthier thoughts at once took over. In this realm he was his own master, or he should be, and I was glad for him. Envious, too, that he was so far ahead of me on the path to manhood.
"Well done! With a girl, or a boy?"
"Both. One of each."
There were plenty of slave boys and girls in Viroconium, and I could not possibly ask who. That was too personal, with Bran. But other questions might be permissible.
"But Bran . . . girls . . . babies?"
"It's all right if it's during their safe period. Don't you know about that?"
I did, theoretically again. "Oh yes, I was forgetting . . . But Bran, what's it like? I mean, being in a girl or a boy?"
He screwed up his nose. "You're too young to understand. I'm not trying to be superior, or off-putting, but you can't. Not until you begin to bloom. It's, well, it's the same sort of thing as doing it by yourself, but better. Much better. And you can't really understand even that yet, can you? I wish you were older."
"So do I."
He thought a bit more.
"Oh, I can't really describe it, Docco. It's ecstasy. That's the nearest I can get."
There, as I scraped his legs and tried to visualise ecstasy, the conversation languished. But when I had finished and everything seemed to be over, he suddenly said, "Docco. Would you like to see?"
"See what?"
"See me make seed, by myself. It might give you some idea of what it's like."
I looked at him in astonishment. Of desire, as I said, I had nothing. But of curiosity I had plenty, and now of gratitude, and even of humility.
"I'd never have asked you to do that."
"I know you wouldn't. That's why I'm offering. Like you offered to wait on us last night. Like you offered to scrape me."
Was he really right that a slave can not give freely? Or was he offering in repayment for my offers? I was not sure, but it touched me deeply.
"Well, if you really don't mind, yes please."
"But you won't tell anyone, will you?"
"I won't, I swear. Not a soul."
He smiled at me, grasped himself between fingers and thumb, and began to manipulate his foreskin up and down, faster and faster. His round tip emerged and disappeared, emerged and disappeared. His left hand fondled his balls. The technique was familiar. A year ago I had learned it from my friends. But, while it was undeniably pleasant, with me it generated nothing approaching ecstasy, still less any visible product. What fascinated me now was that it was sending Bran into another world. He closed his eyes, he bared his teeth, he groaned, he panted. After a while, a little clear fluid began to ooze out.
"Hold my hand!" he gasped.
I held his left hand. He worked away ever faster, his grip tightening, and suddenly he arched his back with a great cry from his depths. Out shot a squirt of white liquid which splashed on his neck. Five more, ever smaller, landed in drops on his chest and belly. The pressure of his hand nearly broke the bones in mine. As I watched spellbound, he sank back sweating, panting still, and his erection slowly subsided. I had an inkling at last of what lay in store for me.
Looking back over the years, I can now see that Bran had after all answered my third question, the unresolved one. He would accept his freedom if it were offered in love. All the signs were there. But, may the gods forgive me, I was too young to read them. Yet, having an inkling at last of what love might mean, I leant down and kissed him gently on the lips.
"Thank you, Bran," I said.
He raised himself on his elbows and kissed me back. "Thank you, Docco."
That moved me more than all that had gone before. As I lowered my face to hide the tears, my eyes lit on his body again. Down through the smooth meadows of his chest and belly a river was trickling, to lose itself in the thicket below.
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