The Story of the Vampire, L (Completed | Featured )

Part 10 - Herculaneum Burned

In the summer of that last full year in Herculaneum, my Escha often came to me scraped up and blooded. I would ask him, "Wherecome you by such injury?" and he would tell me that he was climbing the fig trees on the side of our hill, and that Iovita was shaking him out of them. "Don't climb, little one," I would tell him, and he would say, "I want to eat them. I want to eat the figs," and that the sweetest ones were high in the upper branches. I told him that if he was hurt, it would do too much damage to me, but he would keep coming, bleeding and smelling sweet. 

"We got eggs this morning when the sun came up," he would tell me, chattering and playing with my jewelry, which of late he had wanted to try wearing. "Tonight we'll have those and some lamb. We got some olives at the market, all kinds. I want some goose tomorrow. I want some mushrooms, but the ones I like they aren't selling yet." He would chatter and I would listen. 

One evening, as summer waned, I looked up to find Nataniellus in my doorway, who had seemed so uneasy after our argument in the peristyle. "I brought figs and honey, some cheese," he said, holding up the large ceramic dish. "Will you eat them?" 

"And the children?"

"They are cracking crabs in the garden. I think they've had enough of figs. They were offered this plate, first, I assure you." I smelled the sweat on his skin, those hottest days of the year, and the potent, heady scent of fear, and anxiety.

I gestured for him to come, and he sat on my bed across from me, legs crossed and plate balanced between his knees. "Have one," he offered. 

He took a fig by its narrow stem, and squeezed the bulbous lower end so that it split, and the pale flesh inside unfolded like a blooming flower. He turned it inside out with his clever fingers, and dipped it in the honey. Looking into my eyes, he sucked the sweet juice which had run down his arm.

I took a deep breath in, closed my eyes, and let it out slowly. 

"Your little one, Escha," he said. "He plays so rough. The other children can't keep up with him. It makes me laugh. He takes off at a run and we always catch up with him panting and red in the face. His voice is going hoarse from his throat being dry from sucking wind all the time while he's running. He wants to taste everything at market, and he's always tugging on the hem of my tunic to buy him things."

"I find him very sweet," I said.

"Oh, sweet?" he laughed. "No, no," smiling, "he is very vain and greedy but he's so cute. He wears your ring on his thumb and when he asks for things for free at market, he gets them. Between his cuteness and the gold, they think him some rich patrician's son and us all of his slaves chasing after him like children after a goose."

"Should I speak with him?" I asked, watching him lick sweet juice from his clever fingers. 

"No, I don't think so," he said, looking into my eyes, sucking on his fingertips. "He's that age. I would let him enjoy the little pleasures of being seven years old and easy to love," sucking his fingers slowly, "I am under no illusion that he led an easy life before he came to you, and the other boys make it hard on him sometimes as well. They will keep him grounded. I assure you that."

"Do you miss the brothel still, Orpheus?"

He shook his head, putting a salty olive on his tongue. No, no.

"I enjoy you singing songs of my children more than any other I have ever heard." 

"What of your former stewards?" he asked me, as if he had been thinking of it long.

"What about them?"

"Do you wonder where they've gone? Do you think they have betrayed the children?"