Chapter XXV: The Meat’s Bath

Under the half-moon’s gentle glow, Niko had tossed a lean muscle cut from the hog’s backbone onto one of his leather mats, this one layered with a heavy dusting of sea salt, crushed peppercorns, and bits of ground cumin. He turned the meat over this spice blanket as if it were one of his marble rolling pins, then swaddled it tight like a gifted wine.

At midmorning, the spice-crusted tenderloin lay on the preparation table. The chubby cook sliced three strips up its girth, leaving a healthy thumb-length portion uncut at the top. Deft hands then wove the strips, left over middle, then right over middle, before securing the braid with a skewer.

Welle walks the druid back to the larder, the rich aroma of pork roasting on applewood making his stomach growl with anticipation. In the cool shadows, they find a legless bed on the concrete slab, two thick pillows on its narrow mattress, its fresh linens stained yet clean.

Flames dance within the far corner, a purposeful hearth built into the larder to ensure the harshest winter never freezes what must only be kept cold.

“You’re to remain here—” he finds the leash on the ground at his feet and the druid gone. “That little shit,” he growls, rushing up the stairs.

In the kitchen he finds Niko preparing some caroenum sauce: six spoons of passum, two spoons of honey, and a knife-wipe of garum. His beaming gaze shifts upward as he passes, pointing out to Welle the location of the gangly druid.

“Get down here, now,” he demands. The welp perches atop the crockery shelf, his insouciance plucking a nerve.

Niko reappears with the steaming tenderloin on a metal tray. The rotund cook moves swiftly, sliding the hot pan onto something flat, moving Welle aside to stab the braid with a long-prong fork.

“Don’t think I won’t topple this entire thing to get you down,” Welle warns with arms folded.

The Greek’s brow dents at the mere mention of such a disaster. He deposits the meat on to a wooden counter then tips the pan into one of the sinks. Fat drips into a clay cup until a gleaming trickle remains. He sets the pan onto the stove grate and deglazes it with his newly made sauce plus two fingers of wine.

Welle notes the druid’s predatory gaze. “If you come down, maybe he’ll give you a bit,”

Niko flashes a toothy smile when the lanky Celt probes him for confirmation.

The druid hops down, planting his large feet beside Niko, who shoves a tiny bowl into his hand, filled with carrot chunks made soft with broth and olive oil. The skeletal Celt tips his head back and empties the bowl into his mouth, the lump in his long throat dancing with each deep swallow.

Niko collects the cup of fat from the sink and empties it into a tall clay pot. He pours in the pan juices and then drops the meat within the mix for a pre-serve soak.

Welle snatches the empty bowl before the druid tosses it aside, and turns to find the man’s nimble fingers advancing on the pot. He slams a lid down on it, nearly catching the druids digits.

“You keep those paws away from my dinner,” he barks.

Niko moves in behind them and promptly removes the lid.

“It’s been a long day, boy.” Welle hooks the chain back onto the collar around the druid’s neck as Niko hands the welp a ladle of water. “You’ll need to nap if Lord Skipio plans on visiting you tonight,”

The ladle lowers and morose eyes spark with a sudden interest.

“Artio’s tits,” Welle says in horror. “You enjoy getting slapped around by that walking meat with feet,”

The druid’s lips twist sideways, while Niko blinks, unable to decipher Welle’s words as he knows nothing but his father’s tongue and the Roman language.

A delicate vein of limestone divides the orchards from a colossal underground lake. Its subterranean tributaries nourish the plantation’s many wells while glacial waters gather around the villa’s eastern foundations.

Below the villa’s western yard is a cavernous marble antechamber with lake access. Young Rufus Servius and his artisans began transforming the cave under his villa to impress his new Celtic bride with grand baths. One day, while pick-axing through rock, they exposed the aquifer and its little pebbled beach.

Welle, a native of the Alps, associates hot springs and buried lakes with the Helvetti merchants who turn such natural wonders into recesses of debauchery. After experiencing the simple and elegant Servian balneum, all preconceived notions disappeared.

Narrow stairs off the foyer lead to a pale granite room, where brazier flames reveal lilac walls and a blushing concrete floor. Behind the flame’s shadow is the apartment of bathkeeper Gaanbolta.

A stout man with narrow eyes and long black hair, Gan-Gan rarely leaves his underground realm except to procure wood for the boilers or mountain snow for the frigidarium. Lady Vita says his sister married a Roman merchant, giving him a nephew who serves under Master Scipio.

Like the druid, Gan-Gan is a man of little words, his mind on drain valves and feeder canals. One almost forgets he exists until new moon days when he drains the caldarium and gives its wall stones a good scrub.

Welle follows the bath’s new master through the vestibule, where the brazier’s light brings two doorless entries. One leads to a candlelit latrine, the other to a dressing room. Here, the strapping Roman peels off his tunic and tosses it at Welle, who hangs it on a wooden peg.

Meat with feet—that’s how Welle defines men the likes of Lord Skipio. His hairless brawn is a roadmap of the Gallic War, with pale pricks and long-healed lines that fade when compared to the hash of scars on his left pectoral and neighboring bicep.

“You want to know how I got burned?” he asks, no longer speaking to Welle as a slave, but as a man. Almost an equal. “That druid did this.” There is a strange pride in his voice as if the mesh of healed skin was a cherished gift from the rangy Celt.

“Lord Planus wrote me of your father’s passing,” says Welle, averting his gaze.

“So, you have seen his letters,” he accuses playfully.

“I can read,” Welle remains guarded in unfamiliar territory.

“Why didn’t you write back?” he asks.

“Lady Vita got the same letters and responded in kind.” Welle explains. “Why send two letters when one suffices?”

“Your letters,” says the Roman, his head cocked. “Are not as anticipated as Vita’s,”

“Why not?” asks Welle. “Does he hold her in lesser regard?”

 Curious green eyes take inventory of Welle’s scant tunic.
“Are you not bathing?”

“I bathe after dining,” Welle tells him. “I’ve got a keen sense of smell and dislike cooked food stink on my person,”

The sturdy man’s thick lips spread. “I’m nose blind to most things,”

“Clearly,” says Welle, thinking of the druid as he follows Lord Skipio.

The palaestra, cut from natural limestone, houses a floor of sizeable green tile, each square set vertically around a narrow pool that runs the room’s length. Meat won’t swim laps here until the glacial water alongside the villa develops icy skin. Welle finds the notion of purposely entering brisk waters inane. His reedy figure breeds a sensitive constitution.

He hugs himself while following the naked Roman down to the sunken frigidarium. Candles burn in high creches and cast their light against bronze ceiling panels that swallow the darkness. This chilly space will be last on the Meat’s agenda.

“I hear you shaved our prisoner today,” he says, bounding over marble through the expansive cavern, eager for a report on his prisoner.

“No,” says Welle, wary of the massive lake slumbering beside them. “I trimmed those curls and then rid them of lice,”

Opposite their marble walk is a dry fountain, with grime climbing its back wall.

In spring and summer, storms fill the impluvium upstairs, inundating the sublevel cistern, which overflows its excess into this chamber. Water spills over the knickpoint, gentle falls that rush through an ornate floor canal.

That serpentine canal to the lake sits dry, yet Welle smells its dampness.

“He didn’t hurt you, did he?” he asks over his shoulder.

“No,” says Welle, welcoming the heat along the caldarium’s threshold. “He seems to know what’s good for him, that one,”

Mist hangs heavy in the natural light, which shines down from a glass floor in the villa’s enclosed side yard. Though most of the thick, transparent glass sits over the lake chamber, its light engulfs the caldarium, a private haven where steam builds thick enough to ensure a bather’s complete privacy.

Meat collects a leatherbound ball from a stone trough as Welle wipes down a teak bench.

“Toss with me,” he says playfully.

Welle sits and then crosses one leg over the other.
“I don’t do that sort of thing,”

“You don’t work up a sweat?” he laughs.

Welle grabs a towel from one of the wicker baskets and dabs his neck.
“One need only sit in this room to sweat,”

Laughing, the muscular Roman extends his arms and holds the ball out. His feet are unmoving when he draws a circle with the ball, his arms going eight revolutions to the right before he begins circling it to the left.

“Do you speak the druid’s language?”

“There’s a marginal commonality.” Welle rises and grabs a strigil from a standing shelf. “But it’s easier going with Greek,”

“That’s how I talk to him,” the sweaty man grabs the swinging flesh between his legs. “Greek, and some of this,”

“That’s a language I use sparingly, Lord Skipio,” says Welle.

Meat sits with his knees up and his feet flat on the tiles. Clasping the ball away from his chest, he twists his torso to the right, nearly setting it on the ground before bringing it back to his knees and then twisting to the left.

“Just keep him fed and clean. That’s all I ask,” he pants, doing three sets of twenty.

Jumping to his feet, Meat raises the ball high over his head, the golden hair under his arms wet. He squats as if about to sit in an imaginary chair and then stands up straight again, keeping the ball above him.

“Are you keeping that druid as a pet?” Welle asks.

The dripping Roman tosses the ball aside and approaches him.

“Do you have any idea what I went through to acquire him,” he huffs, then presents his wet back. “I watched him steal my horse, kill my father, and murder countless soldiers on the field,”

Welle steps up, scented oil bottle in hand.
“I could say the same of your father, Lord Skipio,”

Silence comes, and Meat’s breathing settles. Muscles tense beneath Welle’s touch as he slathers clove-infused oil on the man’s shoulders.

“Your mother,” he says. “There was no reason for it, and I’m sorry,”

“There was plenty of reason for it,” Welle reflects, shaking the bottle over his cupped hand and loading it with oil. “She entered his tent and tried to murder him in his sleep,”

Rubbing his hands together, he slaps them onto Meat’s muscular back and kneads. Tendons soften as slick fingers work their way down to the buttocks and then the legs.

“Your father?” Meat inquires softly.

“—died by his own hand.” Welle removes the two strigils from his pocket. “Before that, he provided for his children, even the bastards,”

“Did you know him?” Meat asks, taking the strigil offered.

“Somewhat.” Welle shaves the grime from the man’s chiseled back. “Why give a child your name when it’s easier to throw money at his mother,”

“I’m invading your privacy,” he says suddenly, dragging the metal curl up his groin and collecting a layer of oil.

Welle gives a start, unseen by the Roman.

“It’s fine, Lord Skipio.” He wipes his strigil clean with a rag before starting on the man’s legs. “My father is no longer with us,”

“If your tribal government hadn’t sentenced him to death, Caesar would have,” says the Roman, finishing his chest. “He got the last laugh. Killing himself before his execution,”

Welle pauses when his father’s dying face flashes to mind. His half-brother’s maniacal laughter brings more pain. He wishes for nothing more than to forget the migration and the Roman attack that followed.

“How many sons did he have?”

“Legitimate? None.” Welle grabs a fresh strigil. “Bastards? Five that I know of, and I’m number three,”

“Two of them died fighting at Octodurus.” He scrapes clean his arms. “The other two, I hear, are still there. One is a slaver, yes?”

“Lysandra Oppelia is the slaver, not her son. Little Marcus does as he’s told.” Welle reflects on his choice of words. “We’re near the same age, he and I, but I still think of him as little,”

“I remember that Oppelia bitch.” Lord Skipio tosses his strigil onto the floor. “She demanded you as payment for providing Commander Galba with information,”

“I will always be grateful to Lord Planus for his charity.” Welle thinks back on his days hiding in the Roman camp, sleeping in the tent of a man kind enough to ask for nothing in return. Before guilt becomes him, he glances up and examines his work. “You’ve got a spot,”

Lord Skipio turns his head, trying to examine his back.

“Pop it,” he orders.

“I will not,” Welle proclaims. “It’s not ready,”

“Ugh,” he growls. “Get rid of it,”

“Nothing can be done until it crests white,” Welle grimaces. “Doing anything now will tear the skin,”

“I don’t care,” he groans. “Blackheads, whiteheads, any heads, they have to go,”

“After a soak, it’ll be easier,” Welle assures, lip curling.

A handsome profile. “Is it something I can reach?”

“No,” Welle assures. “Don’t scar yourself any more than you are,”

“I cannot tolerate a blemish,” he says. “It must be squeezed out,”

“I don’t like that,” Welle announces. “I don’t like thinking or talking about popping things. It’s horrid,”

Lord Skipio grins. “You never get spots?”

“Not if I can help it,” Welle says.

The caldarium’s round pool overlooks the cavern lake, and its three surrounding walls provide no room for benches.

Welle doesn’t follow him into the hot water. Instead, he sits on its stony hedge and hands him a cloth-wrapped cake of bergamot soap.

“You know,” Lord Skipio pauses from scrubbing his underarms. “We protested razing the oppidum,”

“I recall Planus roping you all into a mass dissent, but in the end, Rome does as Rome does.” Welle joins him in the water, tunic still on, and with a clay bowl, rinses away his suds. “If a position cannot be held, it must be destroyed,”

“Doesn’t make it right,” he mumbles. “You may go,”

After this sudden dismissal, Welle steps from the tub.

“Lord Skipio,” he says. “It wasn’t my intent to make you melancholy,”

A gentle smile comes with a shallow laugh.
“I was about to say the same,”

“The war is over,” he assures. “We must pass it, and let it pass us,”

Sadness clouds those green eyes.
“It wasn’t a war, though, was it Welletrix?”