Chapter Text
“Keep your body pure,” he had been told, “and yours will be a great fate.”
He had not kept his body pure.
“If you are brave,” he had been told, “something good might come.”
He had not been brave.
The negotiations were long. If he cared to, Erasmus could’ve followed the conversation – it was mostly in Patran, with occasional Veretian murmuring at the other side of the table. Erasmus did not want to listen. With his eyes cast down, he couldn’t see the faces of the other men in the room. He did not want to look.
There were no men but the one he was seated next to; no sounds but his voice and his breathing and the rustle of his robes.
Erasmus sat motionless for an hour, and another, and another, hands folded neatly in his lap. No longer shaking.
He heard a sigh at his side, and spied a movement with his peripheral vision. The man shifted his posture, leaning back and to the right, elbow thrown across the arm of his chair. Tired, Erasmus realized.
There was a glass pitcher at the table, just within Erasmus’s reach. It was filled with water, not wine, and, unlike the wine ewers, still full.
Be brave, he had been told.
Erasmus reached out and took it. Then, moving slowly, as if not to disturb the air around, he took the empty goblet in front of the man, filled it, and slid it back towards him. Doing this, Erasmus did not look up for one second, but he heard the man pick the goblet up, and felt his gaze on his skin – brief, but intent.
Be brave.
When the goblet was empty again, the man placed it in between himself and Erasmus.
***
“Do you know who I am?” the man asked.
He had taken Erasmus to his rooms, and was circling his kneeling form with leisurely steps. His voice was soft, curious, not demanding.
“You are a Patran Prince,” Erasmus said.
“Which one?” the man asked, amused.
Erasmus fell silent. There were four, he knew from his lessons; three nephews and an uncle, all adults by now. From the few brief looks at the man’s face that he’s managed to catch, Erasmus remembered the beard, but not much else. However, the men at the table had addressed him as Venerable – the Patran honorific for those of the King’s family who were not immediate successors to the throne.
“You are Torveld of Patras,” Erasmus said.
The man laughed, “Correct.”
Erasmus bowed lower, feeling the cold of the floor tiles against his forehead. The uncle, then. Inside Erasmus, something shivered at the thought; he couldn’t quite place what it was.
“Stand up,” Torveld said.
Erasmus obeyed. His head was barely above the Prince’s shoulders.
Torveld took him by the chin and tilted his face up, hands moving with the gentle surety of authority that expects no resistance. For the first time, Erasmus was forced to look him in the eyes – dark, heavy-browed, thin wrinkles fanning out from the corners.
Erasmus has always known that no Prince could be unhandsome. But up to this moment, he’d been surrounded by the beauty of youth: both his fellow slaves and the Veretian Prince – the only Prince he’d seen in person until now – were like that, petal-smooth skin, stalk-slender limbs, swift movements of a garden in a light summer breeze. Torveld’s beauty was of a different kind. A kind that needn’t be fostered or protected; a pine-covered mountain range, unthreatened by time and weather.
“A precious gift indeed,” Torveld said.
At once, Erasmus’s hand slid up to the clasp on his shoulder and tugged at it, letting his tunic drop soundlessly to the floor.
Torveld did not seem surprised. He took a step back for a better look, and at once Erasmus was aware of how warm Torveld’s skin had been against his.
It felt strange to be looked at this way. Not with the cool appraisal of his teachers, not with the odd Veretian loathful desire or the plain Veretian contempt. To be looked at the way he was intended to be looked at: as a piece of art. Which his body was, every inch of it, carefully trained, tended, trained again. Torveld, of course, knew about the burned marks; Erasmus prayed they would not be much visible with his legs pressed together.
Then, a warm and sure hand reached out to touch his neck, and immediately Erasmus’s body jerked to recoil.
Realizing what happened, Erasmus stared in horror at the Prince, who stood frozen with his hand still outstretched and his brow a puzzled frown. Erasmus was a breath away from falling back to his knees, but Torveld waved his hand with a short laugh.
“You’re at no fault,” he said. “The evening has been rough on you.”
“This slave has a great wish to please you,” Erasmus said, sincerely.
Torveld nodded, “I know.”
He walked away, gesturing for Erasmus to get dressed.
“Rest here tonight,” he said.
He led Erasmus into the bedchamber and allowed the slave to undress him. Then, he lowered himself onto the bed and beckoned Erasmus to lay beside him, throwing a cover over them both.
Erasmus did not think himself able to fall asleep like this, but he’s never lied on a bed so broad and soft, and in the past month, he hasn’t lied on a bed at all. The last thing he registered before drifting off were Torveld’s eyes fixed on him.
***
Prince Torveld did not take Erasmus into his bed again: not the next day, or the day after that, or after, or after.
He did keep Erasmus – that is to say, Erasmus was never told to leave. He dressed Torveld in the mornings, and attended him during the day, and in the evenings served him in the baths and made his bed, and then, after putting out the lamps, he left the bedchamber, dismissed with a nod.
He was never told to return to the other Akielon slaves, either. Instead, Erasmus was brought to stay with the Patran entourage, who, though not slaves but ordinary servants, welcomed him warmly enough after learning that Erasmus spoke their language. When Erasmus joined them, they, by some command or intuition, silently passed the care for the Prince’s everyday needs over to him.
It was good to put his mind and his hands to work again; good to return to the familiar environment of a communal dorm with its busy bustle and the nightly camaraderie of trying to identify the giggle on the other side of the room and get it to shut up. It was good to change into Patran clothes, loose and plainly cut like Akielon garments, but much more covering. It took some time for Erasmus to get used to sleeves, more still to boots instead of sandals, but he liked it – dressing the way that showed not his body, but to whom it belonged. And it was so, so good to belong.
He just wished someone told him what exactly he was now. It had been so clear at home: his position always indicated by his age, or a pin, or lack thereof, the passage into every new state marked by a solemn ritual, and his teachers always there to remind him what was his purpose and what he was training for. But now… was he a bed slave being neglected or a table attendant being favoured? Was he to stay with the Prince forever or just until they return to Patras? Would his master still keep him so close with his entire court at hand? Erasmus would’ve accepted a negative answer just as gratefully as an affirmative, really, he would. But there was no one to ask. Just like in his younger years at the gardens of Nereus, just like in his only year at the Royal Palace of Ios, it all came down to one thing: waiting.
***
It was a different kind of waiting. Erasmus had never seen Prince Damianos; sleepless at Ios, he used to dream of a faceless might claiming him, of hands on his wrists and a mouth on his neck and a weight on his hips that did not add up into a man. He hadn’t known how it was to long for these hands, for his voice, to imagine these eyes looking at him with approval.
Unlike the dreams of Ios, these longings were hard to confine to one hour and one room and one narrow bed. Waiting spilled out and followed Erasmus throughout the day, smooth and viscous like oil, snaking about his arms and entwining with Torveld’s hair as he washed it, staining Torveld’s robes as he folded them. At his leisure hours, Torveld brought it to his lips together with the slices of fruit Erasmus gave him.
Waiting as the Patran mission left the Palace gates and set out in a grand procession towards the border.
Waiting as they crossed the land (the travel solidified Erasmus’s unflattering opinion of horses).
Waiting in Bazal.
At the Royal Palace in Akielos, the slaves in training had been taught all they ought to know about foreign lands: the customs, the ceremonials, the trade routes and the family trees. To young Erasmus, hungry for strange habits and tales and pictures, Patras almost wouldn’t count – too domestic, too agreeable. He had thought so still during the long hours of idling in a wagon; he clung affectionately to that thought.
He was mostly right. From his covered carriage, he did not see the city, but it sounded the same as Ios on the day he had been carried through the streets to the Palace: clatter of hooves, yelling of merchants and children, albeit in a different tongue, waves of muffled music. It almost soothed Erasmus, anxious as he was both on that day and now. The Palace, likewise, looked different from the one in Ios – domes instead of gables, frescoes instead of mosaics, – but felt the same: solid, secure, with thick walls and long rows of columns lining the galleries.
He could be happy here, Erasmus thought. Couldn’t help thinking, unseemly of a slave as it was.
They were first transported to the secluded part of the Palace where slaves dwelt. That, too, was similar to Ios. They arrived in the afternoon – at the hour when the green courtyard was almost empty – and were allowed a few hours of respite. As the sun began to set, old Isador, the Keeper, came to take them for a viewing. King Torgeir desired to see what treasure his brother had brought from his journey. All of them dressed back into Akielon garments – except for Erasmus, who was given a Patran robe to put over his tunic. It did not look very flattering on him, the buttercup yellow of the fabric clashing with the honey yellow of his hair. As they made their way through unfamiliar passages, gates, and colonnades, led by Isador in a graceful chain, Erasmus was very aware of how much he stood out.
Yet, the pounding in his ears was only half timidity.
Yellow was Torveld’s colour.
Isador led them into a vast garden, and lined them into two equal wings on either side of the white-tiled path, women and men separate. For some time, they knelt there in silence; then, at the wave of Isidor’s hand, prostrated in unison.
Coming down the path were footsteps of several people. Isador greeted them formally; then commanded the slaves to get up.
Erasmus, keeping his gaze properly lowered, counted four pairs of legs. The attires of all four seemed equally fine – surely, viewing the new slaves was a very minor occasion for the King, – and one of the hems, embroidered with gilded vines, was well familiar to Erasmus.
Torveld.
The company strolled leisurely along the two rows of slaves. Erasmus, in the middle of his line, heard them making light-hearted remarks to one another – three men, one woman. Then the steps reached him, and stopped.
“Look up.”
Erasmus obeyed.
Torgeir was old. His hair and beard were completely white, and, though his back was straight and his step sure and even, he was less tall than Torveld. His voice was softer, too, either with age or with royal idleness. Yet, his gaze was dark and sharp against Erasmus’s skin. It seemed that this gaze drowned out the sounds; that not only the voices, but the birds and the wind in the garden fell silent.
For one endless minute, the King studied Erasmus, his head tilted thoughtfully to the side.
Then, the King laughed.
“You deserved this one, Torveld,” he said, and moved along.
Only then Erasmus noticed that he had been holding his breath.
Having reached the end of their formation, Torgeir pointed at several slaves – three women, one boy – and left together with his companions.
Isador beckoned two of the guards and gave them instructions. The slaves picked by the King were to go with Isador; the rest were to be escorted by one of the guards back to the empty courtyard; and Erasmus was to follow the second guard to Prince Torveld’s quarters.
Heading away as he was told, Erasmus thought that he might never see some of their group again.
The tugging in his chest was only half sorrow.
***
They were good people, Torveld’s slaves. The Prince’s residence within the Palace was a large square building, closing in on an inner yard with a narrow columned gallery around it. Unlike the Palace slaves’ dwellings, it was alive and busy, the usual bustle of a big household at the approach of evening. Erasmus was shown about the house by a lively dark youth named Pelagis, and handed his livery: a long white tunic, a shorter garment to go over it with a colourful design running along the hems and fastened with a narrow belt (a dalmatica, Pelagis explained), and a pallium – a long strip of thick brocade that was meant to rest on the shoulders and hang down the front, all the way to his feet. It was the pallium that served as an insignia of the Prince’s staff – the one Pelagis wore was identical, pale yellow with rich gold-thread embroidery.
His collar and wrist-cuffs were taken from him. In Akielos, masters covered their slaves in jewelry to show off their wealth; in Patras, exquisite fabrics were used for the same purpose.
It was more layers than he has ever worn, Erasmus thought with some intangible excitement. And, with relief: his dress, unlike Torveld’s, involved no pants.
Torveld’s slaves were good people. As he spent more days with them, Erasmus found that they were good slaves, too – well-trained, efficient and heartily loyal to their master. They had, however, a strange levity about them, an almost tongue-in-cheek way to go about their duties that Erasmus was not sure he approved of. As if their service was a pageant, and behind it they were a part of something greater; as if they all shared a secret that neither Erasmus nor the Prince was in on. The unusual privacy prevailed in their everyday life, too: more elaborate clothes meant that they had to be fitted to suit Erasmus, and, consequently, that the owned what he wore. Likewise, the room he slept in had only two beds – the other belonged to Pelagis.
When Pelagis laughed, “We won’t be sleeping here at the same time often,” Erasmus understood that he was also Torveld’s bed slave.
Also?
***
Torveld kept him close, in his chambers and in his study, in the dining hall, in the King’s parlour (It wouldn’t do to keep him hidden in your house, brother), by the shaded pond in the gardens. Erasmus was a quick learner; in about a week of Palace life, he knew the pace of Torveld’s step, his favourite incense and favourite cuts of meat and how much pellets of sealing wax to melt for his signet ring. And, in the three weeks of his service since the night in Arles, he knew the feel of every part of Torveld’s body: the muscles of his shoulders, the scars and the blisters, the knee that would give out first and the stubble on his neck that needed shaving.
Every part of Torveld’s body except his hands.
Erasmus was settling in, and his waiting with him.
One day, he heard it.
In the morning, as he walked back into his room after visiting the baths and found Pelagis – sitting on the side of his bed, still undressed, with a kithara on his knee. And there it went, Erasmus’s longing. It trickled down the strings and down Pelagis’s arm, it pooled in his lap and fell to his feet like dewdrops, and the coils of his hair and the lines of his bare arms were achingly familiar, sharp and black against the dawn-filled window. Your friend is a triumph. He performs every night.
And Erasmus, dumb in the doorway, clutching his want to his chest.
“What is it?” he asked when Pelagis stopped playing, half-whisper.
Pelagis looked up at him.
“I’ll think of a name when I finish it,” he smiled.
Erasmus said, “Venerable will love it when he hears it.”
Pelagis said, “Venerable won’t hear it. It’s not for him.”
Erasmus stared at him, confused.
“How can that be?”
Pelagis carefully put the instrument aside, and leaned back onto his hands, looking at Erasmus with his honest eyes.
“The Prince owns my body, not my heart.”
Erasmus frowned. Phrases of protest swirled about his tongue: but where is the virtue in that? How is it different from hired servants? from Veretian pets?
“What good is a heart if it isn’t given to someone?” he asked.
Pelagis opened his mouth to reply, but right at that moment they both heard the sound of steps coming down the passage.
It was an errand runner from the Prince, carrying a thing and a message.
A thing: a length of red ribbon.
A message: the Venerable Lord will have Erasmus in his bed tonight.
Erasmus fell to his knees and bowed, silently.
“What’s the ribbon for?” Pelagis asked when the messenger left.
Erasmus sat up.
“It’s an Akielon custom,” he replied, a wild smile tugging at his lips.
At home, a slave’s hands would be tied with a ribbon before their First Night.
By now, Erasmus had mostly made his peace with knowing that this great event, a milestone of a slave’s life that he’d been preparing for ever since he remembered himself, was not going to happen for him. There were so many reasons it couldn't; they stretched all the way from the night garden in Ios to the half-lit cargo hold of a ship and to the night garden in Arles. And yet…
And yet the silk gently slithered between his fingers, cool and real.
He wore it on his wrist for the rest of the day, proud red against the white of his sleeve. A compliance, a promise back. A boast – just a little bit.
When he and Torveld met, Erasmus saw the Prince’s glance sweep over it, followed by a faint smile.
Neither talked.
He talked with Pelagis instead; the boy, bewilderingly, said that there was no special protocol Erasmus was to follow now. “You just get ready and go to him,” he said.
(Erasmus didn’t mean to be judgmental of his new homeland, he really did not, and Patras could not be called uncivilized by any means; it just had room for progress, he thought).
Just get ready and go to him. After the supper, after two hours of playing the kithara for him and his visiting niece: Erasmus was just as good a musician as one learns to be, with no natural brilliance of Kallias, Pelagis, Astacos, but on that evening he had a cluster of small bells on his ankle, and tapped his heel to the rhythm of the melody. An Akielon accompaniment to Akielon songs – those were the only ones he knew, but the Patrans welcomed the novelty.
The supper, of course, didn’t end after just two hours. Eventually, however, Erasmus was kindly dismissed and replaced by Pelagis.
Outside the dining hall, the Palace was quiet. The slave baths were wholly empty – the others were still busy serving their master and his guests at the table. Erasmus was quietly glad to learn that. “Just get ready and go,” Pelagis had said, but getting ready was not a “just” thing.
He is about to present his master with a gift. He must make sure the gift is worthy.
A tub of hot water, a couple drops of oil. Sandalwood or cinnamon for stimulation, he remembered from his lessons. But the Prince liked lavender. Stay in the tub long enough to relax your muscles, but not so long as to become drowsy. Pick up a towel; pat the water off without rubbing too hard.
His eyes glazed over for a moment as his hand passed over the scars on his thigh.
It will be alright.
Again his gaze shifted towards the shelf with the oils and landed on one of the vials, dark glass, bigger than the others.
It wasn’t the custom in Akielos. It was in Vere.
He wasn’t supposed to do it. He was unsure he wanted to.
He thought of the Prince’s hands, big and firm and calloused.
He thought, for some reason, of Kallias.
And there wasn’t a part of his body that remained untouched anyway.
Erasmus sighed and reached for the vial.
When he emerged from the baths, the festivities still weren’t over. As Erasmus walked past the dining hall, he heard the muffled sound of Pelagis’s kithara, playing a traditional Patran tune, with some voices singing along. He crossed the courtyard with its quiet fountain; the gallery with its ornate chapiters; the main hall with the ceremonial fresco of the Prince beside his late wife, titled in gold: Sevastos Torveld, Sevasta Vasilia. Erasmus’ steps, deliberately calm and steady so as not to arrive flushed, echoed loudly off the marble floor.
The Prince’s bedchamber was empty – another spark of relief. If this were his First Night, he would’ve been escorted here with music and chanting; yet, now his heart craved secrecy.
If this were his First Night, he thought, looking over the tidily made bed, he would be lain here, naked, with his hands tied above his head, to wait for his master. But there was no one to wrap the ribbon around his wrists, and he knew from Pelagis that the Prince liked to undress his lovers himself.
Erasmus took off all his clothes save for the long white tunic. Then, facing the entrance, he knelt. And waited.
“I knew you Akielons appreciate a ceremony,” Torveld said as he walked in to the sight of Erasmus prostrated. His voice was warm, with just a tinge of tease to it. “Rise.”
Erasmus obeyed.
It was like the first evening they met: him in the middle of the room, and the eldest and last Prince of Patras before him, hastelessly contemplating his form. Except now Torveld stood closer; except now, when a warm palm cupped his cheek, Erasmus slightly, ever so slightly leaned into the touch.
“You were trained as a bed slave,” Torveld said, quietly. “How much skill do you possess?”
Erasmus hesitated.
“None, Venerable,” he confessed. “My training has been... prematurely ended.”
He’d only been through one year of learning out of three. He’d never gotten to the last, most important stage of it; he’d never gotten a taste of the customary pleasure drug. He and his peers had been taught how to foster or tame desire, but not how to artfully fulfill it.
Torveld’s fingers fondly toyed with the curls at his temple.
“The Regent of Vere would not have appreciated being sent undertrained slaves,” the Prince laughed softly. And then, leaning very close to murmur in Erasmus’s ear: “I do, though.”
Was it the words, or the low rumble of a voice, or the hot breath against his skin, or everything at once, but a small whimper escaped Erasmus’s chest and earned him a kiss.
A real kiss.
His lips that have only ever known forceful desperation now met with an unhurried, persistent demand. Blindfolded, he still would’ve known he was being kissed by someone who has the right to.
Erasmus closed his eyes and tried his best not to kiss back, to only tilt his head as his master’s touch commanded, to grab his own tunic in needy fistfuls and not Torveld’s as the Prince’s hands got a hold of his waist, traveled up his body, fiddled with the single button on the back of his collar. He tried his best not to moan when the kiss was broken and Torveld moved away, guiding him towards the bed by his wrist.
The pillows were cool against his heated body. Erasmus was vaguely aware of Torveld pausing to remove and discard his own robe – then felt himself sink deeper into the bedding, pinned down by the Prince’s weight.
“Come, now,” he heard a breathy whisper against his neck, and, as if obeying the order, the fabric slid down his shoulders, opening his chest for more fervent kisses.
Below, Torveld’s hands were fumbling through the messy folds, over his knees and up his thighs, finding their way, making their way, meeting no resistance.
Erasmus wondered if the cliffs of Ios knew what he knew when the sea washed over them, spilling its hunger against their breast in bursts of white sparkling drops.
He wondered if they were as eager to arch open and welcome the waves and the ships.
He wondered if the shards of rock falling into the water with deafening sighing was them coming undone like him.
***
He wore a red ribbon again, and again, and again. It was a new one each time, no longer a surrogate for a foreign ceremony, but a ritual in its own right. Erasmus relished each day of anticipation, the certainty, the propriety of it; relished each time being a bearer of good news for nobody but one man to hear.
At first he felt a slight awkwardness towards Pelagis, now so often left alone in their bedroom, but when he tried to talk about it, the boy inexplicably replied that there were more interesting things to do.
Before that first night, he’d asked Pelagis about their master’s intimate habits. The answer he received was short and practical: that it was best not to undress right away; that the Prince’s hands would be safe but his teeth could leave marks; that age was already affecting his stamina, so a slave could expect being done after just one round; that after the act Torveld preferred a time of quietude rather than being fussed over by his lover.
All that proved to be true. It was also but a sliver of truth.
Pelagis had said nothing about the way being stripped by Torveld’s hands made one feel like a land under conquest; omitted the unbearable tenderness of the sleeping Prince’s breath against the skin of one’s nape; failed to mention how much this one round counted.
Erasmus eagerly drank in each discovery. The open-eyed kisses. The tickle of a beard against his most sensitive parts. The heated half-intelligible praises raining into his ear.
“Yes, just like that. You’re so good. You feel so good, Laurent.”
He barely registered it, half a moment before his climax, through the blindness of his face being pressed into the pillow. For a short while he doubted his ears: as some seconds later the weight lifted off his back, as a comforting kiss landed between his shoulder blades, as the Prince laid himself beside Erasmus and gently tugged on his ear to face him. His eyes were clear as he looked at Erasmus, no trace of delusion, just simple, sincere content.
But Erasmus knew he hadn’t heard wrong.
What grace, he thought as Torveld fell asleep, as the breath-hot daze of pleasure wore off and gave way to another thrill, crisp and cold. What grace. To reach this new height of submission, to be a vessel both for his master’s love and for his beloved, to abandon the prideful role of an object and become a means to an end. What grace, what bliss – to surrender himself to the point of being absent in his own body.
And just at the moment when his body felt the most his.
Erasmus lay with his eyes wide open, hands desperately pressed to his mouth, trying to contain laughter.
***
On the first day, he wondered what he should do now. On the second day, he wondered how he should go about it. On the third day – the day the next ribbon arrived – he wondered if he had the courage to do it.
Be brave, he had been told.
When at nightfall Torveld entered his bedchamber, he found Erasmus not kneeling but sitting on the edge of the bed. He was dressed strangely, donning something akin to traveling clothes – pants and a short robe and a cloak, – and there was something about his posture that made him seem taller.
His shoulders jerked at Torveld’s arrival, an impulse restrained at the last moment, but he did not stand up or bow.
Instead, Erasmus extended his hand, skin almost pale against the deep blue of the sleeve, and said:
“Good evening, Torveld.”
There was a long, dreadful moment of silence. Then, realizing he’s made a mistake, Erasmus dropped to the ground before Torveld, pressing his forehead to the cold floor, thinking stupid, how stupid, how could he ever dare—
A firm hand pulled him up by the arm, and he rose, unsure on his feet.
When at last he brought himself to look up at Torveld, the expression he saw was more terrifying than wrath, than scorn, than disgust.
Sorrow.
“I don’t think we should do it tonight,” the Prince said quietly. “Go, take a rest.”
Then, as if in afterthought, he pressed a kiss against Erasmus’s forehead, and let go.
If there were words to say, Erasmus didn’t know them. It was only after he returned to his room and shut the door that he managed to unclench his jaw, letting out a dry sob.
Nothing more would come out.
Erasmus undressed and lay down, numb and quiet, paying no heed to Pelagis’s empty bed.
He tried to think of the Prince. His mind recoiled from the image.
In his stead resurfaced another figure, slender and light-limbed and unasked for as ever, but Erasmus was too tired to resist.
I miss you.
The aching of each stolen touch, the burn on his lips and the burn in his eyes, the pangs of belated realizations, spasms of pity, grief, regret, gratitude. All the plain, straightforward, comfortable pain.
I miss you, I miss you, I miss you.