Why do
Ben-Hur and
Dear and Glorious Physician read almost exactly the same? They're beautiful pieces of work, but how creepy is that?
Lucanus is about to whomp two unsuspecting wrestlers, winners of some two-bit competition, panting lapdogs of the Augusta, and probably homosexual
1st Wrestler - I can wipe that annoying smirk off your face and smash in that annoyingly perfect nose for 10 sesterces. In three seconds.
2nd Wrestler - I can totally throw you, dude. In TWO seconds. I bet 12 sesterces.
Lucanus - For 14 sesterces, I will proceed to show off my heavenly body and blind you all with it! Actually, I'll settle for winning this pathetic match. But I'll look pretty while I'm doing it.
~~~~~~~~
The sun closed in half-sleep.
"You are an insolent young fellow," the stranger said good-naturedly. "But a useful one, of that I
have no doubt."
"Useful? To my friends. Who are you, to command and give orders to a free man? I answer to no one." Except his mother and master and elders, he thought sourly.
The world would whirl free were it not shackled to its place.
"I request assistance," the youth corrected reprovingly. His horse shifted restlessly beneath him.
Nubrin stared ahead stonily.
"Very well. If that is your answer..." he extended a pale patrician hand, callused only by paper, the nails white against the faint inked blue of his fingers.
Crescent moons in the twilight.
The silversmith apprentice glanced at the hand, and looked at the face, smooth and guileless with youth. But he was younger still, and accepted the peace offering for the honesty it had not.
The sky purpled, like a bruised eye.
Roughened with work, already brown, veined and great-knuckled, Nubrin's hand reluctantly accepted the young man's, nearly translucent in its delicacy--the beast and man. Then he felt the comforting pressure of the ring pass from his grasp, as nimble fingers, quick as silver minnows, relieved him of it.
Clumsily and too late, he grabbed for his lost possession. The horse whinnied nervously at his nearness and cantered back.
"This is mine." For a gut-twisting moment Rubrin thought he meant the ring, but the youth referred to his answer. "Show me the way to the castle, like a good boy, and on your return I will ply with more glass and stone than this tinsel piece."
The boy shouted with rage. "It is made of purest silver!" That this smiling monster would dare steal from him, and then mock what he stolen, was unbearable.
"Be not unduly disturbed," the stranger said calmly. "Your ring will be returned to you in time. You have only to do as I ask. Ah," he warned, the dying light flickering in his eyes like flames over a still lake, in something akin to humor, "do not approach too near. Hermes does not like you, and he may regrettably flee your great hulking presence, taking me--and your precious bauble."
Rubrin looked over his shoulder in undecided anguish, wondering if the fury of his waspish mother would kill him before he was flayed alive by the painful whipping of his master.
The village lolled on the hill made red by the setting sun, white sores on a swollen tongue.
"Let us go," he snapped. "One day, may you know the value of what you hold--the meaning of silver will burn in your godless veins."
The stranger held his peace, laughing at the boy who spoke such nonsense in his childish tantrum.
Rubrin led the way through the forest. Often Hermes, when not shielding from direct combat, tried to bite him from behind.
"He has a foul temper, like his namesake."
The boy gritted his teeth and determined not to answer at this new stone hurled at him, curiously, to observe the response.
"Not the Grecian god, of course. An old, insufferable acquaintance, white as a maggot, growing only more loathsome with intimacy. He spoke often of his father's father's brother's uncle, who in some respect had struck a bloodline directly to the cousin's sister's aunt of Joseph, husband of the most virtuous Mary. This impressive lineage entitled him to many things, namely being a pompous ass less worthy than this poor beast." He nudged the horse back onto the path from its berry-grazing.
Rubrin clamped his lips in a vice. Those who spoke of pompous white asses were themselves sententious white-palmed monkeys.
"What was that?"
"I said, do you always speak to yourself? A habit acquired from engaging in too much vacuous conversation?"
"Surely, boy, you are not of this place. A nobleman's bastard, are you? A foundling discovered in the leaves of the forest, a bush in the fields? A seventh son sent out to the country and forgotten? Tell me."
Rubrin muttered something rude under his breath. Wet black earth churned beneath feet and hooves, water welling up in the imprints.
"Alas, I am my father's son. And while I doubt the possibility of such a union, it is certainly fascinating to ponder."
"I am not a boy! I am a man, worthy as any to claim a trade and earn a livelihood." He cast a sullen, vicious glare at the smiling, pale fox on the horse. "Unlike some, I must eat the sweat of my brow."
"I prefer more satisfying fare. Delicate sweetmeats, mellowed wine--I do not suppose you have tasted the vintage from--" he became silent, considering. "But of course, you would know only that disgusting brew, beer."
The birds ceased their twittering as, far away, the blazing sun fell into the sea. Rubrin pointed. "There, can your close-sighted eyes see your benighted castle on the hill? Or has peering at smeared letters in mouldy books destroyed them?"
"I can see well enough to know that, should I by some mishap fling this ring into the distance, it is too dark for you to find it again."
Goaded, Rubrin lurched forward. Hermes neatly stepped to the side and, encouraged by his rider, continued on the path. The stranger did not turn back.
"Wait!" Rubrin cried. "My ring, you cursed thief!" He danced about in impotent rage, mud splattering on his reed-shod feed.
The stranger hesitated, lifting his head to study the imposing, threatening structure. "Come for it tomorrow. I promise, you shall have it then." And he went on his way.
"And so my grandfather asks him, trembling, 'Shall I live?'"
"Well, did he?"
"The physician bowsed his head and answeredanswers, 'You shall sin again.' That very day, my grandfather rioses from his bed and resumesd his normal habits."
Rubrin laughed, reluctantly. His ring glittered hotly on his finger as the sun strutted revealingly above in its revealing new clothes.
"Perhaps even the physician did not know the extent of your grandfather's wickedness, for he would live to sire your father, who would in turn be responsible for your creation."
"Deserving of hell and all its misery for that blunder," Damien said agreeably.
As night threw its dark cloak protectively around theover day, Rubrin trudged home after his unfortunate meeting, miserable and afraid. Harsh growls rumbled threateningly through the trees; creatures whistled in shrill voices, nestled in damp leaves.
Rubrin hurried in silence, all the stories told by the elders ancients filling his mind with strange dread. Cold seeped like some a black noxious black liquid into his skin. Nameless fear gnawed at him, as though he had swallowed a wolf alivewhole and it now ate away his insides.
The squinting eye of the moon lent him no light.
His mother had shrieked to heaven at the sight of him as finally, Rubrin finally returned home, dripping with muck rubbed from trunks and vines. She lamented having such a son, who thought nothing of causing so much worry to his parents, and such a husband, who only smiled in relief at finding him safe.
"Hello, mama," Rubrin had said sheepishly in a weak attempt to halt her tirade. She bubbled afresh, pouring scalding water on him and scouring away the dirt, occasionally striking hitting him with the brush handle for emphasis.
"--and to think, for my pains and worries you can only say, 'Hello, mama.' Do you offer explanation for where you have gone? Do you repent for the trepidation you put in my heart? No. You--"
Rubrin had been clenching his hands at the smarting of the motherly beating, but where the firelight would have danced from the silver ring, was only his grimy skin.
His mother froze, dangerous storm clouds gathering in the pale watery blue of her eyes, which riveted to his hands. Rubrin felt nailed to a splintered cross.
"I see old Irum has at last got it into his head to adjust that ring," Rubrin's father said loudly, before his wife's incoherently flapping lips could press words into being. "I always said, 'It's far too small for the growing hands of my boy."
"Oh?" Natalia gave him one last scrub with the bristles. She visibly swelled with pride at the sight of her abject, shivering son, who had indeed sprouted up so quickly he had he split his worn trousers only the last moon, an incident she was about to relate yet again when, thankfully, the baby cried.
Only thatis morning, Rubrin had snuck from his home, a thief stealing away having stolen nothing, before going to the silversmith Irum for his daily duties.
The bright sieve of day drained his fears of the plast night, and he passed change word through the forest without anxiety, self-consciously mocking his own fears. On his arrival, he found the youth lounging about outside, not waiting, as Rubrin was quickly informed, but bored with the placid green flora around him and the somber grey stone behind.
He tossed the ring at him, and Rubrin covered his eyes, seeing it come towards him as a band of fire.
The stranger introduced himself, and by means of some magical cleverness contrived to pry open Rubrin's disapproving mouth. They were soon conversing easily, if warily, of themselves.
Rubrin never quite knew how it came about.
And now Damien was telling him loftily, "I have principles. They're entirely immoral, yes, but they are principles."
"And when I utter false truths ... let them be the hope of the world."
"They are all it believes in."
"And whose lead do they follow, eh? Pretty fools who prattle about nonsensical mysteries and solving nothing."
"I am flattered, if not a little insulted."
