Nobody Loves a Centurion(45)

“What made you different?”

“I was Greek, or at least half-Greek, and therefore exotic. I wasn’t connected to any of the local tribes, so I wasn’t likely to betray them out of tribal loyalty.”

“So how did Vinius acquire you?”

“My mas—that is to say, my former master was among the envoys sent by Rome two years ago to treat with King Ariovistus. He met with them on the east bank of the Rhine, in order to keep up the fiction that he was not maintaining a presence in Gaul proper.”

“These Germans may not be as politically unsophisticated as we often think,” I mused.

“They have little liking for subtlety,” Molon said, “but they are adept at just about everything that helps to expand their power. They like to fight, but they would rather intimidate than fight, and they are quite willing to negotiate until they are strong enough to attack.”

“You begin to prove your value already. Did Vinius buy you?”

“I was among the gifts given to the envoys. Titus Vinius asked for me personally and the others acceded willingly, since they thought me to be by far the least valuable of the presents.”

“A pardonable mistake. Did he acquire Freda the same way?”

He looked at her with a smirk. She glared back. “No, she was given to him by a Suebian chieftain named Nasua a few months later.”

“Why?” I asked him. “And who are the Suebi?”

“They are an eastern tribe who arrived on the Rhine about the time of that embassy. As to why, the German chiefs are great gift givers, and they are always trying to outdo each other in generosity. Nasua leads jointly with his brother, Cimberius. It seems Cimberius sent a splendid, jeweled goblet to the Roman Proconsul, so Nasua presented Freda to Vinius in front of all the chiefs and dignitaries. He said she was a captive princess of some tribe far in the interior, but I think she is just some cow tender’s daughter he had tired of.”

Freda snarled something and boxed him alongside the head hard enough to send him staggering several steps.

“What did she say?” I asked him. “It sounded uncommonly vile.”

He grinned, exposing many gaps. “She told me how pleased she is to be the property of so handsome and noble a Roman as yourself, sir.”

“And I was almost beginning to believe what you said. But tell me this: Why have you never sued to have your freedom returned? If your father was a citizen of Massilia and you were taken captive by raiders from across the Rhine, then your slavery is unlawful and may be set aside.”

He shrugged. “My mother was just a concubine. My father had a legitimate son by his Greek wife and never acknowledged me. There is little point in suing. Freedom is a greatly overrated commodity, anyway. For most of us it just means freedom to starve.”

I got up as Hermes returned with the lamps. While he arranged them inside the tent, I watched Freda watching me. No fear there, just a coolly fierce calculation.

“There you go,” Hermes announced as he came out. “It’s lit up like a forge in there.”

“You and Molon make yourselves comfortable out here,” I told them. “Freda, come with me.” I ducked through the doorway and sat on the edge of my cot. The ropes creaked beneath me as I tugged at the laces of my boots. Freda came in. “Close the flap behind you,” I told her. She did so, a slightly contemptuous twist marring the perfect beauty of her lips. In the distance I heard a trumpet call; a lonely sound, even in a crowded legionary camp.

With my boots off I lay back, lacing my fingers behind my head. It gave me a casual look and concealed their trembling from her. “Come closer,” I said. The tent was not a large one. A single step brought her within inches of where I lay.

“What do you want?” she asked in a tone that said she knew very well what I wanted.

“Take your clothes off,” I told her, keeping my voice amazingly steady. She hesitated, radiating defiance. “Freda,” I said patiently, “there are three men before whom a woman should never be ashamed to undress: her husband, her physician, and her owner. Now get out of that barbaric costume.”

With an even more extreme curl to her lip, she reached up and unfastened the fibula that held her hide tunic at the left shoulder. The swell of her breast kept it from falling and she tugged it down to her waist. Then she had to push it past the broad curvature of her hips. Beyond that resistance, it fell to puddle around her ankles.

The sight of a barbarian woman’s body can be shocking to one of refined sensibilities. Highborn Roman women carefully remove every strand of hair that appears from their scalps on down. They often have even their slaves given similar treatment. Even Gallic men depilate themselves except for their scalps and upper lips. Germans think it best not to interfere with nature in these matters. Unlike many Roman men, I do not find a woman repellant in her naturally hirsute state. Rather the contrary, in fact, and never more so than in Freda’s case. She looked like a raw young animal, not a polished marble statue.