SEAT OF POWER

one  word  prompts

     IN  HINDSIGHT,  CRASSUS  MINOR  realises as he takes a woozy meto in his arms,  it might have been better to take meto to the physician than his own tent.  alas,  marcus had hardly known anything was the matter until he saw meto’s knees buckle.  he dove to grab him,  awkwardly snatching him out of the air before either of them could crumple in the mud.  he had looked around uncomfortably as he breathed before pulled meto into his arms.  it was dark,  the camp was silent,  with only sentries calmly milling about.  perhaps it was marcus’s lone judgement that had him heading to his own tent.

       he is careful to be ginger when he stoops down to rest him on his bed,  not minding the dirt on the secretary’s sandals as he covers him with his own blanket.  marcus goes to the metal carafe and pours a shallow cup of water,  thinking that keeping this quiet might be best for the time being.  to say that meto is the hardest worker in camp is not to discredit the methods of the soldiers or generals.  some might say,  crassus minor might say,  that he works too hard.  and now it finally shows.  though perhaps it isn’t tactful to let everyone see,  and marcus won’t let that be his decision to make.

“Stop.”

Camilla’s voice is sharp, cutting through the silence that lays heavy between them. She stands there in the doorway of the living room, a frown on her face. She doesn’t like it. She doesn’t like when Charles speaks like this because it means he’s been drinking, and…nothing good ever comes from it.

She takes a step back, swallows hard. Her heart pounds in her chest, hands shaking at her side, but she balls them into fists and shoves them into the pockets of her skirt. “I do love you, Charles. You’re my brother…but you’ve done things that makes me trust you less.” How can I ever trust you again? “If you would stop doing this to me, then maybe I could love you like I did when we were younger, but that’s entirely on you, not me.”

     A  MILD  VERTIGO  HOLDS  charles tightly as if pulling him in circles through a pool of water.  his head spins slowly as he stares down at the dusty persian rug with bits of broken glass on the ochre tassels.  he imagines himself squinting up at the ceiling light to see his vision is kaleidoscopic.  he leans back in his armchair,  his hand holding his crystal glass hanging from the arm.  a slow sigh surrenders from his lungs and he dreads inhaling again.  

fleetwood  mac

       he tries not to stare at meto,  sitting stiffly and busying his hands with organising his parchment,  taking his pen,  dabbing it in the ink.  the sound alone was enough to transport him back to that red - tiled veranda out in the garden,  sitting with his brother on cushions and listening half - heartedly to lessons on grammar and geometry while meto listened along with them.  he had been much different then,  of course.  his short hair accentuated his scrawniness,  the smoothness of his skin revealing a face teetering on the edge of malnourishment.  he hadn’t the strength to speak up for himself,  let alone grant people permission to sit in his presence.  his lips twitch with discomfort as he remembers reaching over and snapping meto’s stylus,  snickering as crassus reprimanded him for his mathematical errors,  

       “publius?”  the laughter sputters from his chest before he can think to stop it.  he has been compared to his brother for his whole life,  usually to expose the shortcomings and disappointments of marcus himself  (  ‘a more sensitive disposition’ is what his mother calls it.  ),  but such a comparison was the last thing he would have expected from meto,  due to their strained history.  “no,  no;  warring and marauding are his delights,  not mine.  i....well,  i am more interested in other pursuits.”  chiefest of them,  at the moment,  is laundering finances and properties from his own father.  crassus minor is an unremarkable man,  but his knowledge is formidable,  and his ideas threatening,  and caesar has a use for such a mind,  even if it is embedded in the head of another crassus.  he shifts in his chair and quiets.  he isn’t sure if meto is aware enough of the hidden small fortunes within the transactions between crassus and caesar that are so easily overlooked in the ledgers and manifests,  and crassus minor is not in the practise of detailing his own criminality aloud.  resting his hands in his lap,  he changes the subject.

     HE’S  BEEN  PREPARED  FOR  THIS,  for confrontation,  for a while now,  a few days less than a fortnight.  the summons came on a blustery fall evening,  and with them a name mentioned in caesar’s letter that sounded unsettlingly familiar in his mind.  it gnawed at the fringes of crassus minor’s memory as if he were trying to recall a holiday from years ago,  trying to make faces of names,  people from neat scrawl on a damp piece of parchment.  

       frustrated,  it led him to rifle through his father’s accounts,  flipping through years of ledgers and guestbooks,  scanning through endless lines of meticulous penmanship detailing every household matter from the counts of feathers in pillowcases to outputs of silver mines in africa.  he found the name in the manifest of slaves,  and suddenly a deluge of memories returned to him,  permeated by grammar lessons and the afternoon sun coming in the atrium,  and the awkward exchange of glances as dinner was served.

       years away from his family have re - carved marcus from entirely different stone,  leaving him chronically humiliated by the disposition of his former fallen state and its constant reminder that lived on in his father and younger brother.  constantly,  he reveals that dreadful shame,  in some never - ending emotional prostration to remedy what he can never remedy.  and yet,  in a way,  marcus is glad that shame is the worst he has to live with.  it is a luxury he knows that others cannot indulge in.