the whip told us apart.
Activity approached a more normal bustle after we had passed into the large storeroom where dry goods, earthenware amphorae, terracotta pots and brass pans were neatly inventoried. A large wooden work table stood at the back of the dimly lit room and it was toward this that we headed.
There was a commotion outside in the room we had just left. Livia rushed in. I gripped the cloak tighter about my nakedness. She ran up to us, bowed to my lord, then turned to me, twin streaks reflecting dully under her shining eyes. Laying her hands lightly over mine she said, “You are a stupid man.” She put a hand on my cheek, rose up on her toes and kissed me quickly on the mouth, then fled the way she had come.
I had not the wits about me to know whether or not her action was spurred by pity or affection, but in that moment I did not care. I turned to Crassus and said, “I am ready.”
***
In point of fact, I was not. At least the memory of her touch would be an oak around which I could wrap my psyche and cling while both dignity and hide were being stripped away. Would Crassus be equally girded? Like any high-born Roman, he was raised on civility and oratory, but bred to violence. He had led armies and slaughtered thousands. He was an educated tactician and an underappreciated commander. But in his own home, upon a trusted and I hoped beloved servant, to perpetrate such brutality with personal and immediate intimacy – this was new to him. I hoped the prospect of it was turning his stomach as much as it was mine. Then I remembered the day he had branded Nestor. I shuddered involuntarily.
There was neither door nor drapes at the entrance to the storage room, but Crassus posted two men in the doorway, their backs to us. I thought to myself, the sound will carry. He bade me bend over the thick wood of the table. I called for Atticus and another cook to hold my arms outstretched. They begged to be excused, but I begged in return for their help – I feared I would be unable to hold myself steady for the duration of my chastisement. I shrugged the palla from my shoulders and handed it to Atticus. He folded it neatly and laid it aside.
Naked, I spread my hands toward the far side of the table, but as I stared down at the stained and worn grain of its surface, my bile rose and I retched pitifully on the very spot where I was to lay my head. I apologized in sputtering half-sentences as someone wiped it away. This is going to happen now, I thought, laying my cheek against the wood warmed by the acid contents of my gut.
The short length of the leather strips forced Crassus to stand close enough for me to hear his breath. I closed my eyes and began to pray. I am not a brave man, nor am I built for the rigors of the field. I had no idea what to expect, but surmised that like other distasteful events, such as a visit to a non-Grecian dentist, the expectation would be worse than the reality. It was a vain hope.
No one who has not endured the lash can be prepared for its agony. Soaked in brine, then dried to a crackling stiffness, a lorum is elegantly engineered to strip away stubborn defiance and expose not just flesh, but the cringing animal within, the howling thing no man wants the world to see. It is a miner’s tool, designed for digging through layers of pain, searching for that rich vein of humiliation.
The beastly sound that the first strike blew from my mouth was wild and unknown to me. A shriek strangled by shame into a whimper, caused by a stinging, biting blow that made the muscles beneath my skin ripple in involuntarily waves. The first of twenty.
Crassus grunted with the effort of each stroke. Though the blows fell with equal force, each taught me a new way to experience pain. I lost count in the confusion of my own cries. My master did his best to keep the strips of hide from intersecting previous blows, but I am tall and thin and my back too narrow. It was not long before the leather thongs crossed older welts and bit deeper. As the blood started to flow,