"Where am I?" Lucius asked.
The boy looked at him confused and Lucius realized that he had asked the question in Latin. Of course the boy wouldn't be able to understand him.
"Where am I?" Lucius asked again, this time in Celtic.
Lucius’s Celtic was not that good and, judging from the look on the boy’s face, he might have just told him he was a crazed leper. The lad could have been no more than ten years of age, and as the light revealed more of the youth’s ruddy complexion, Lucius realized that he had seen the boy before.
"I am Lucius." Lucia said in Celtic again. "Who are you? What is your name?"
The boy’s face scrunched up and then broke out in a grin that revealed a set of crooked yellow teeth.
"Do you speak Gaulish?" the boy said suddenly. "I do."
"Why, yes, I do," Lucius said, relieved because that was a language he spoke nearly fluently.
"Please use Gaulish.” The boy smiled. “Your Celtic is hard for me to understand."
"What is your name?" Lucius asked, this time in Gaulish.
"They call me Alain."
"That is an Aeduan name, is it not?"
The boy nodded and then continued dressing Lucius’s wounds.
"Then you are a slave here, of the Belgae?" Lucius asked.
"Yes, just as you are," the boy replied simply.
“Me? I’m no slave!”
“You are the slave of my lord Boduognatus, but do not worry. The lady Gertrude, his daughter, is kind and generous. She seldom beats me. Much less than my parents did, Lugus rest their souls.”
“Tell me, Alain, how long have you been here?”
“Since I was six years old, I think, but I have lost track. The Belgae raided my village, and my family was killed.”
“I’m sorry.”
Alain looked at him oddly. “I am content here. My life is very simple. I do what I am told, and I am rewarded with food. My lady Gertrude takes better care of me than my own people ever did. I have never been hungry.”
Lucius glanced around the room once more, and then said in a whisper. “Where are the guards? Are they gone?”
The boy’s face was suddenly hostile and he quickly moved several paces away from Lucius. “They are near, Roman dog. Do not try anything, or I will call them.”
Lucius heard a man’s deep belch through the open window, and knew that his guards from the previous evening were lounging just outside the door. That did not surprise him, but the boy’s tirade did.
“Why should you be so angry with me?” Lucius asked in an attempt to calm Alain. The last thing he wanted to do was alienate him. He noticed that the boy wore no chains, and a slave with such a free reign might be able to help him to escape. “I am an ally of your people. The Romans and the Aedui are friends.”
“They are no longer my people, dog, and I am no friend of the Romans. They wish to conquer us, and to make my lady Gertrude one of their whores.”
“Then why were you taking care of me just now?”
“Because I was ordered to,” Alain said testily, but then his face softened. “And because I have heard that you saved my mistress’s life, when some other Romans tried to kill her.”
“Your mistress, Gertrude, is she – “
“Your mistress, too, dog!” the boy snapped.
Lucius bit his lip to avoid back-handing the runt across the floor. “Uh, I’m sorry. I meant to say our mistress, the lady Gertrude. Is she the -“
At that moment, a young woman entered from the door. It was the golden-haired maiden that Lucius had seen at the Nervii farm, and then again last night as she had pleaded with the older man, presumably this chieftain Boduognatus the boy referred to, to spare his life. She was flanked by the two guards from last night. She took one look at Lucius, and her face broke into a smile. She then turned and said something to the guards in Celtic, and they grudgingly went back out the door, presumably to wait outside.
The maiden seemed somewhat nervous as she approached Lucius, who still sat on the floor. Then she said something to Alain in Celtic
“My mistress does not speak your tongue,” the boy said, his tone still resentful. “I will speak for her.”
“Tell her, I very much appreciate her saving my life last night.”
Alain sighed, and then relayed the words, and it prompted a sympathetic nod from Gertrude. She then spoke again, gesturing to the table, where some bread and meat were laid out.
“Burning Romans is the law of the druids, not hers,” Alain translated. “She wishes the barbaric practice would stop. She is sorry about your comrades. Would you like to eat? You must be starving?”
Lucius was uncertain as to why this woman was being so kind to him, but he wasted little time in making his way to the table. He had not eaten for several days, and suddenly realized just how hungry he was. He crammed the food into his mouth, one handful after another, taking little time to chew before swallowing, and quite forgetting where he was. After a few moments, he realized that Gertrude and Alain were watching him with astonishment, as one might watch a lion devouring a horse. He felt somewhat embarrassed and immediately began to eat in a more controlled fashion.
While Lucius ate, the woman sat down across from him and studied his face with her piercing green eyes. He tried to avert his own eyes, remembering that he was supposed to be her slave, and soon found himself staring across the table at her breasts. They were concealed and held back from the edge of the table by her dress, but Lucius’s mind could not help but ponder how lovely they had looked when he had seen them fully exposed.
Gertrude suddenly said something that startled him out of his gaze.
“She wants to know why your people turned you over to us,” Alain said. “Are you a criminal among the Romans?”
Lucius looked at the boy. “A criminal? No. I’m no criminal.”
Gertrude then slapped her hands on the table and sighed. It was the first ill-mannered gesture Lucius had seen from her.
“Did I say something wrong?” he asked.
She then said something in an annoyed tone to Alain. The boy nodded and turned to Lucius. “She says to talk to her, not me. She wants to see your eyes. A man’s soul is in his eyes. I will speak for her.”
“Alright. If that’s the way she wants it.”
Lucius did look into her eyes, and he found that it was harder than he had thought. He had seen the resemblance in her green eyes to those of his dead mother and sister back on the farm that day, and now only an arms’ length away, and faced with both of those perfect eyes, and their searching power to reach into the very depths of his soul, he wondered if there might not be some kind of sorcery in them. But he held her gaze and did not look away.
"My father is a chieftain,” The boy relayed her words exactly as she spoke them. “He has made an arrangement with a Roman senator – a man called Valens. This man gave you to my father. He obviously expected my father to have you executed.”
“Yes,” Lucius agreed.
“Why does this man want you dead? He is Roman, too, no?"
"Among my people there is infighting between families and classes,” Lucius said. “From what I've been told, it has always been that way. The old Romans fought each other when they weren't fighting someone else. They might conquer a people one day, and then befriend them the next, but all noble Romans are always suspicious of their Roman peers."
"You are a noble?”
“No.”
“But this man Valens is?”
“Yes.”
“You are not one of his peers, then,” Gertrude seemed perplexed. “How could he hate you so much to give you over to an enemy?"
"I think I hate him more than he does me. He's afraid of me, or of what I can do to him. Thinks I'll show up on his doorstep someday looking to settle the score because of what he did to my family. And that's just what I had planned to do, if I ever got to Rome, so I guess he's not a fool."
"What happened to your family?"
Lucius paused, holding back what he had kept inside him for so long. "Do you really want to know these things?"