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

Part 8 - Delirious Fever

"Aulus likes to throw things when he's upset, so you'll know. Nonus hides. Cassius, you don't have to worry about. Escha, has ways," I said, washing my hands. 

All morning, I had been teaching Nataniellus about the house, and as the sun got higher and lunch approached, the questions became more personal. I always washed my hands and arms out back before lunch if I could find the time. He had been with us for a week or so, and had followed me around back without a word. He knew that I took pride in being clean if I could be.

"That's vague," Nataniellus said, drawing out the syllables. His tone was, as ever, half-mocking, but harmless, tender at the same time somehow. I was not really used to hearing tenderness, and it tickled my ear in a pleasurable way.

He sat down on an old backless curule seat the little boys had earlier that morning dragged out of the dining room to throw out. Vivacio had been looking over the furniture and judged its red cushion seat a little too worn, and the lacquer on its arm rests too rubbed away. Nataniellus sat on the curved chair sideways, with his back against one armrest, and his legs crossed over the other. How the chair had been saved from the side of the road I didn't know, but I thought, "Thank you, Venus."

Nataniellus has good legs, well-muscled in the thigh and in the calf, which in a tunic could sometimes make him look stout and sturdy, but when naked this effect disappeared completely, and the thickness of his thigh and usually hidden curve of his waist instead made him like a woman. See so he was like a broad bean in reverse, a man clothed but a woman when peeled. Have you ever peeled a broad bean? Anyway, lying across the chair like that, his legs were good. 

"If Escha is unhappy you'll know it," I said, washing my hands in a bucket of fresh water the children had brought from the well. "If he's really upset, you won't. We do numbers and letters the first half of the week and rhetoric and stewardry the second half. In the morning we do most of the household work, upkeep and that, and in the afternoon the more long term stuff. Things we don't have to do everyday, like scrub between the tiles or polish the silver. Cassius takes care of the horses every day and Aulus and Nonus have little fingers and get low easily so they take care of house cleaning most of the time. If there's a big job usually we all help out, but we're supposed to protect our hands. Our laundry goes out for that reason. We don't do that."

"What does Escha do?" Nataniellus asked, uncrossing his legs and crossing them again.

"He's supposed to get the eggs in the morning but I usually have to go with him because he's petrified of the chickens. Anyone his size would be I guess. He's only seven, but you know, he's got to toughen up. Besides that usually he helps out but lately we let him wait for the master."

"Why?"

I shrugged and grinned at him, foolishly happy to have been put in charge of helping him.

He yawned without covering his mouth, arching his back a little against the armrest and pointing his toes. "Where are the boys now?" he asked.

"By the orchard. When the weather's nice, we like to eat outside."

I had all sorts of questions, but I held my tongue.

I want to digress a little, to help me concentrate more. Nonus is here with me in my room, and sitting next to the dark window in a white wicker chair. With his pretty brown hair pulled back, he looks younger than he was when he died, and he leans his cheek against the white wallpaper. He's troubled. Lately, Nataniellus asked me to do this work of writing for him. Nonus has found out about it and wants me to stop. I ask him why and he only opens his mouth and looks away. I ask him if he wants to write it, since it needs to be done, and he says, "It doesn't need to be done," in his crisp way that means no offense. I want to avoid hurting his feelings, since lately he has been alone too much, and though I trust Nonus, I have seen him talking to people he should not be talking to. He has been talking to people I think of as dangerous, though they are younger than we are. He has been making friends I do not trust. I don't want any wall between us. But I have been asked to do this. Nataniellus told me that he does not feel comfortable leaving something worse than he found it. He means to give you back the story he stole, and one better. But things are so complicated right now, and he is so distracted.