Din of Battle

Cassie sat down beside the fountain and tipped her pouch out onto the paving. The knucklebones clattered free and rolled apart, small and pale from Brenna’s stockpot, one of them worn almost round from years in her fist. She did not raise her head. Only her eyes went up, as far as the corridor, where dark hair showed at the edge of a column and drew back again. She lowered her eyes to the bones and began to lay them in a ring.

She had peeped at him the day before, when he first stood in the atrium in his fur cloak, his legs wrapped in breeches like the barbarians Cato was forever warning her about, and she had not been able to keep her feet still. A child, in this house, at last. Most days she played alone. Mamma had more work than hours to do it in, and Phoebe, who used to crouch on the doorstep with her a few summers ago, had a broom in her hands now from morning until dark. Cassie did not dare go up to him herself. Nor would the new boy come into her courtyard. She knew that much, though she could not have said how. So today she had brought her bones to the peristyle, where the paving ran rougher than the worn stone before her own door.

Cassie stole another look. The boy had not moved, but now his whole head showed beyond the column. She smiled down at her bones.

At dinner last night, Mamma had called him a very naughty boy for running out of his bath with nothing on. Cassie had clapped a hand over her mouth to keep the laugh in, picturing him flying across the courtyard with his bottom bare. But she did not like Mamma bathing her either, and Mamma had never once taken the strigil to her. He must be very brave, to run from Mamma.

She wondered how long he would stand behind that column before he came to her game. She put out one finger and nudged a knucklebone a little to the left. The ring had to be perfect.

Behind the column, Skaara had wrapped both arms about the stone and stretched his neck as far as it would go. What in Donar’s name was she doing? That was not how the bones were played. Did she know how to play at all? Not that he cared. Knucklebones were a game for girls. But he had played them with his sisters since he could walk, and not one of them had ever beaten him. And now the girl was only fussing the bones into a ring, as solemn over them as a priest over the lots. Skaara’s arms came down from the column, and his hands closed into fists. This was wrong. He had to show the Romans how the bones were played.

Skaara strode out to the fountain and stopped short of the ring. There he stood. Whatever he had meant to say had gone clean out of his head.

Cassie sat up very straight and gave him her widest smile. “Do you want to play with me?”

Skaara found his tongue. “What you play?”

Cassie’s brow puckered. Then she remembered Mamma saying he came from far, far away, and perhaps that was why he could not talk the way other children did. “Knucklebones. Do you not have them where you come from?”

“We have. Of course we have.” Skaara dropped down cross-legged on the paving. “But you play wrong.”

Cassie frowned again. The boy talked so loudly. And he said she was playing her own game wrong, when there were ever so many ways to play the bones. But it had taken him such a long time to come near. She did not want to drive him away now. “What is your way?”

Skaara looked at her a moment longer. Then he reached into her ring and snatched up five bones, leaving a gap where they had lain. Cassie looked at the gap and said nothing. He tossed them high, his eyes following them up and down again, and turned his hand palm down beneath them. The bones came down with a small dry clatter and settled, all five, on the backs of his fingers.

Cassie gasped. She had only ever seen Tata Jack do that.

Skaara let out a short breath through his nose. He tossed two of the bones into the air and sent the other three up after them, higher. Again his hand turned flat beneath them. The two came down first, and then the three, and all five lay safe on the back of his hand.

Cassie sprang to her feet and clapped.

Skaara looked at her without a flicker. “I not acrobat.”

Cassie poked out the tip of her tongue and sat back down. “You play even better than Tata Jack. I have never seen anybody catch the bones like you.”

Skaara had no idea who Tata Jack might be. The praise sat well with him all the same. He looked down at the bones still lying in her broken ring, then up at her face, and one corner of his mouth tucked up. “You want play with me? With stake?”

“What is a stake?” There was so much this boy knew that she did not.

Skaara huffed. “I win, I take your bone. You win, you take my bone.” His fist closed over the five. “Stake.”

Cassie went quiet. She could never do a trick like that. But to give in before the game had even begun seemed wrong somehow. She lifted her chin. “But you have no bones.”

Skaara untied a small leather pouch from his belt. He took his time over the knot. Then he tipped the pouch, the bones tumbled out onto the paving, and one by one he set them in a straight line.

Three of them were bones, bigger than any Brenna had ever boiled for her. Two were bronze, rubbed so bright they shone like the Corinthian ewers in the atrium. Beside them lay a piece of glass, of a deep blue she had seen only in Tata Jack’s best cups.

The last one looked like a drop of Brenna’s honey gone hard, and the sun shone right through it. Was it glass? No glass she had ever seen looked like that. Cassie leaned closer. Deep inside, no bigger than a grain of millet, hung a tiny winged thing, caught in the middle of its flight.

If she won, it would be hers.

“Play?”

Cassie looked up. The boy was watching her with one brow arched high. He picked up the honey-coloured bone and turned it in the sun, a little out of her reach.

“I… I cannot catch the bones like you,” she admitted.

“Hm.” Skaara stroked his chin the way his father and his uncles stroked theirs, though there was not yet a hair on it. “You catch one, you win. I not catch five, I lose. Fair?”

Cassie stared at the honey-coloured bone between his fingers. “If I win, I can pick any of your bones?”

“Yes.” Skaara held out his hand, and let the bone sit in the middle of his open palm.

“All right.” Cassie rose onto her knees and gathered up five of her bones. She tossed them only a little way. If they did not go so high, perhaps they would be easier to catch. But they were back on the paving before she had even turned her hand over. Cassie let out a heavy sigh and sank back onto her heels.

Skaara did not laugh. He only gathered five of his own bones, tossed them, and caught them on the back of his hand without a glance at her. Then he reached across and took one bone from what was left of her ring. Cassie pressed her lips into a thin line.

They played on. However Cassie tossed her bones, they would not stay on her hand, while his came down every time as neatly as sparrows settling on a branch, and after each round his hand reached across and took one more from her ring. The ring became a crescent. The crescent thinned to a scatter of pale bones.

When his fingers closed on the little round one, her favourite, worn so smooth it might have been a pebble from the fountain basin, Cassie bit down hard on her tongue. She did not want his honey bone any more. She wanted her pebble back.

Five of her bones were left. Cassie gathered them up and drew a long breath, and under it she said a prayer to Jupiter the way Mamma had taught her. Then she threw them high. Her eyes went after the highest, and as it came down she turned her hand palm up and closed her fist on it.

“I got one!” She beamed.

Skaara shot to his feet. “This not count.”

Cassie scrambled up too. “You said catch. You never said how.”

“All know.”

“Who says?” Cassie did not budge.

Heat rushed into Skaara’s face. All Romans were liars. Father said so. He swept up the little heap of bones he had won from her. “Roman cheat! Thief!” And he flung them into the fountain.

Cassie watched her bones arc through the air and drop into the basin. The fountain splashed down in a steady stream, and her bones went under without a sound of their own. Her pebble went down with them. Where they had fallen the water went on churning, and she could not see a single one. Cassie stood quite still.

The heat went out of Skaara’s face as quickly as it had come. He glanced about him. There was no one else in the peristyle. He looked back at the Roman girl and made up his mind. If she hit him, the way his brothers did, he would hit her back, and she would learn what it cost to cheat. If she ran off to tell, the way his sisters did, well, girls always did that. They told, and then the grown-ups gave you a hiding. But he doubted anyone in this house would clout him the way his mother did.

But the girl did not hit him, and she did not run. She crouched down and felt about on the paving for the few bones that had not gone into the fountain, gathering them into her palm one by one. She made no sound. Only her shoulders shook. A dark spot appeared on the stone beside her hand, and then another.

“Cassie! I have been looking for you everywhere. You are late for your lesson again.”

Skaara looked up. The mad woman from yesterday was coming towards them across the peristyle.

The girl called Cassie turned. “Mamma, my… my bones.” Her chin crumpled.

The mad woman stopped at the fountain. Her eyes went from Cassie’s wet, blotched face to him. Skaara looked down. “Oh, love.” She gathered Cassie up in both arms. He could feel her eyes on him. But she only turned and carried her off towards the courtyard.

Only then did Skaara lift his eyes. Cassie had buried her face in the crook of her mother’s neck, her arms locked tight about it. Her mother’s head leaned down against hers. One hand moved slowly up and down her back, and she was murmuring something into Cassie’s ear. The back of Skaara’s nose began to prickle.

He brought his fist down hard on the rim of the fountain. His knuckles stung, but the prickle in his nose was gone. He pulled his tunic over his head, untied his breeches and tossed both onto the paving. Then he climbed onto the rim and dropped into the basin. The water closed about his knees.

Skaara waded through, cursing the spring cold under his breath. A pale shape showed on the bottom and he lunged for it. As he knelt to close his fist on it, he saw another. He pushed on towards the falling water, and it drummed on his head and shoulders as he groped about the bottom for the rest. Why had he thrown them so hard?

It took him a long while. In the end he had seven of the nine, and the last two would not be found. One of them, he remembered, was the round one, worn so smooth it hardly looked like a knucklebone any more. He had wondered why she kept it. Now it lay somewhere on the bottom among a hundred pebbles just like it, and he could no longer tell the bone from the stones. He closed his fist on the seven and climbed out of the basin.

When he was dressed, he gathered up his own bones and dropped them one by one into the pouch. Each had come from one of his brothers and sisters on the morning he left. The amber was Ganna’s. He had never thought she would part with it.

He gathered up Cassie’s bones and went the way her mother had gone. The passage brought him out into a smaller courtyard that looked like no other part of the house. The walls were bare plaster, with nothing painted on them anywhere. On the far side stood a low wooden bench and a tall post with iron rings set into it. He could guess what they were for.

He looked about him. He had no idea which door was hers. From the corner room came the clatter of pots, and he went towards it.

“Young master.” Gaius came out of the kitchen, wiping his hands.

Skaara stopped. “Cassie. Which room?”

Gaius pointed to the door in the opposite corner.

Skaara walked over and set the seven bones down beside the doorstep. Then he was gone into the corridor.

---

Do not lay my bones apart from yours, Achilles,

but let them lie together, as we were reared together in your house,

when Menoetius brought me there from Opoeis, a small boy still,

because of a grievous killing,

on the day I slew the son of Amphidamas.

I was a child, and did not mean it.

I was angry over the knucklebones.

Then the horseman Peleus took me into his house

and reared me kindly, and named me your companion.

So let one vessel hold the bones of us both,

the golden urn your lady mother gave you.

Philemon held his hand out, lifted his chin and stood waiting. No clap came. The tips of his ears went pink, and he let the hand drop and smiled at her.

Sam pressed her lips together. She did not dare ask another question. In the space of an hour she had heard how the quarrel began, and how many bones Cassie had owned, down to the two still lying at the bottom of the fountain, one of them her favourite. She had heard a great deal about the boy’s own bones, which were very fine. And now she knew that Patroclus had been sent to the house of Peleus over a game of knucklebones.

“There is more.”

Sam’s eyes widened.

Philemon cleared his throat, his hand already rising again.

The knucklebones of Love are madness and the din of battle.

A single clap sounded from the doorway. Others followed, at an unhurried pace. Philemon turned. The Dominus leaned in the doorway, clapping, and there was no expression on his face at all.

“Domine.” The pink in Philemon’s ears spread to his cheeks. He swung back to Sam. “The draft. I’ll work on it tomorrow.” He snatched up the nearest tablet from the corner of the desk, and was gone.

“What was that about?” Jack’s eyes followed Philemon’s back out of the room.

“It seems knucklebones are up to no good at all, Sir,” said Sam.

Jack watched her turn back to the desk and square the tablets into a stack. He shrugged. “Brenna is serving dinner early. Skaara will join us tonight. Gaius says he went straight to bed after his bath yesterday and did not stir until late this morning.”

“Yes, Sir.” She set the last tablet on the stack and turned.

Jack laid his hand at the small of her back and steered her towards the triclinium.

Everything was ready. The dishes waited on the mensa, and Sam’s stool stood in its usual place to the left of his couch. To the right of it was a seat that had not been there before, a carved chair, taller than her stool.

Skaara came in, with Gaius a step behind him.

Jack waved Skaara to his chair. Sam stood until the boy was seated and Jack had settled on his couch, and only then took her stool. She poured his wine first, then took up the knife and cut the bread and a wedge of cheese for his plate. Across the mensa, Gaius bent beside Skaara’s chair and ladled stew from the common dish onto the boy’s plate, the sauce dark with garum.

Skaara left his food untouched. His eyes went from Sam’s busy hands to Jack, who had just taken up his cup and raised it to his lips. The boy tipped his chin towards Sam without troubling to look at her. “She your wife?”

The cup stopped short of his lips. “No.” He took a small sip, his eyes on the edge of the mensa.

“She slave?” Skaara’s chin had not moved.

A muscle moved in his jaw. No answer came.

“Yes, young master.” Sam laid down the knife and looked the boy full in the face.

Skaara’s eyes stayed on Jack. “Why she sit at table? Eat with us?”

“Because I wish it.” Jack set his cup down on the mensa and gave the boy one level look. Then he took a chicken leg from the dish and laid it on Sam’s plate.

Skaara’s eyes rested on the chicken on Sam’s plate. Then he took a piece of bread, dipped it in the sauce and bit off a large mouthful. His cheek twitched at the taste. But he chewed on, slowly, with great determination.

Jack gave a small shake of his head. He pushed the dish of roast chicken across the mensa towards the boy. “This one has no garum. Sam hates it too.”

Sam wiped her fingers on her napkin. Then she lifted the lid from the small jar in front of her and set the jar before Skaara.

Butter.

With a nod to Jack, Skaara took some of the chicken. He bit into it, and this time the chewing came easily. He did not touch the butter all through the meal.

---

The bronze bird swung above the bed. Grace caught at it whenever it dipped within reach, and Jack, lying beside her with his mind elsewhere, drew it free again without looking. He had not told her about the Curia tonight.

Sam sat on the cathedra a little way off with a half-made doll in her lap. The little sword he had carved with such care lay forgotten at the foot of the bed. Grace had never looked at it twice. Cassie’s rag doll, though, made her shriek every time.

“I wonder what is holding up the work at Caesar’s house,” he said. “A few rooms. It has taken forever.”

Sam straightened the seam between her fingers. Not a month ago he had told her that half of Caesar’s house had burned. She knew better than to correct him.

He let Grace catch the rattle again and patted her round belly. “You can take your dinner up here while the boy is with us, if you wish.”

“I will eat where you wish, Sir.” Sam bit off the thread.

His hand went still on Grace’s belly. Then he scooped her up. “I’ll put her down in the nursery.”

Sam rose and kissed the baby on both cheeks, and watched them go through the curtain. From beyond it came his voice, low and conspiratorial, and a few words of it reached her. “…no sharp tongue… Promise Tata.”

Sam bent to put the doll away, and only when the lid of the basket was closed did she find a smile on her lips.