Young Writers Society

Red is the cruelest of colors. Day after day, it draws you in, deeper and deeper, until you have nothing left to give it but your life. For the men who rule, it brings color to their walls. For men who fall, it brings nothing but death.

I yank yet another chunk of stone from the ground, my hands shaking as I put it in the bucket and hand it to the man next to me.

“Faster, faster!” He shouts.

“Does it really matter?” I snap back. I hope that this is just the Hispania sun getting to me. But months ago, when I first got here, they told me the shaking would come first, and then you become a man you don’t even recognize. As it progresses, you forget your life piece by piece. By the end, you’re lucky if you recall your own name.

I am jealous of the men who get to fight with beasts, to spill their last blood for a cheering crowd. Far better to be killed for sport than to die slowly so the patricians can have their murals and their wives can have rouge.

Rouge. That is how this all started, so I suppose it is appropriate that I will die here, making more rouge for more noble women like my Aelia.

She approached my stall that summer morning…how long ago it seems now! She was clothed in red to match her vermilion-dusted cheeks, a wealthy woman to be sure. And married, most likely. She asked to see my finest pieces, so I showed her a red bowl and plate set I had spent weeks on.

“Surely your husband would love to serve his guests on such finery.”

“I’m sure he would,” she said, with just a hint of unhappiness. I heard that tone often with the wealthy women. Their husbands were so much older and often attended to other matters and prostitutes. What else could they do but wander the forum?

We haggled a bit on the price and I gave the pieces to her servant. I did not expect to see her again, but she came by at least once a week. Sometimes she bought some of my other work, but other times we would just talk for a bit. I learned her name, that she was married to an equestrian, and that he had spurned her for not being able to have a child.

“He says he’s doing me a favor by not divorcing me, because I will never find another husband.” She said one day with tears in her eyes. “I have offered sacrifices to Ceres, tried some herbal potions…I know being a wife is more about duty than bliss, but am I supposed to be barren and miserable forever?”

In that moment, I wanted to hug her, to comfort her in some way, but I knew there were too many people around. There was always gossip in the forum, and word would get back to her husband that she was embracing another man. I knew better than to risk that.

Instead I told her my story, of how I had wed Camilla the butcher’s daughter, how we had danced in joy when we realized she was with child, and how she screamed in pain and the midwives couldn’t help her. The last I saw of her and our daughter was blood.

“So you are not the only one who hides unhappiness.” I said. The way she looked at me stirred feelings I had not felt for a woman since Camilla. She had those green eyes, that rich chocolate hair, her face glowing without all the disgusting treatments other wealthy women used.

I knew that it was illegal to think of her that way, that she belonged to another man, but it seemed so unfair because he did not want her. How did he know it is her fault that she cannot conceive and not his weak manhood?

It was during the festivities of Saturnalia, that strange week when debauchery rules and slaves live as kings, that we first met at night. Her husband was out drinking and gambling with his wealthier friends, and her servants were free to participate in their own debauchery, so none would know where she went. She slipped into my apartment at midnight, not a sober witness to be seen.

If there is any mercy in this painful death, the memory of her bare skin, her lips, her cries of joy will not leave my fading mind. Her every touch seemed to burn in the most delightful way. As her namesake, the sun god, gives life, so Aelia brought new life to me.

We met several times over the next few months, always being careful so we would not be discovered. I had thought we could keep going like this, but one March morning, she came to my stall, a heavy look on her face.

“Marcus, my dear. I…I have not been feeling well.” She looked down at her stomach. “At first I thought it was a bug, but Julia says…she knows the signs…” She buried her face in her hands.

“But…Aelia, isn’t that good news? Haven’t you always wanted to be a mother?”

“Yes! But Marcus, don’t you see…My husband stopped lying with me months ago.”

“Because you couldn’t conceive a child? Well that surely helped matters.” Perhaps it wasn’t the best time for such a snide comment, but I had just found out I was soon to be either a father or a dead man. Quite possibly both. What else could I say?

“Julia said I should go to the herbalist and get something to…take care of it before it becomes a problem. That way my husband will never know.”

“Is that what you want to do?” I could see the appeal in that option. It would save us both. But at the same time, I had already lost one child. It was clear from Aelia’s wavering voice that she did not want to do that either.

I closed up my stall and we went upstairs to my apartment, trying to figure out a solution. Finally, I had an idea.

“Aelia, your husband gets extremely drunk sometimes, right? Like at Saturnalia?”

“Yes, why?”

“Well...could he not have lain with you one of those nights and he just doesn’t remember?”

“It is…very possible.” She started laughing. “He’d love that too. So virile he can impregnate his wife without even remembering!” She hugged me and I thought we had a chance of getting through this.

She told him about her condition later that night after plying him with fine wine. She’d even gotten some servants to back up her telling of events. Luckily, he bought the story and toasted to their first child.

However, as her belly grew he became suspicious. He realized that she spent a lot of time wandering about the city, far more than he believed was proper for a woman with child. Her visits grew less and less frequent. It was not until just before the next Saturnalias that I saw the boy. I just stared at him for a while, sleeping in his mother’s arms.

“He’s beautiful,” I said. “Like his mother.”

“Yes, unfortunately I’m worried about the hair.” She gently ruffled his thick dark curls, more like my hair than her or her husband’s.

“So do you think he knows?”

“I think he suspects. In fact, I think this may be the last time I can see you for a while. I shouldn’t even have risked coming here today, but…I wanted you to see your son, if only once.” She leaned in to kiss me one last time.

Our lips had barely touched when we heard shouting outside. I told her to stay in the bedroom and went down to my stall to investigate the commotion.

“You! You took my wife!” He was a small man with graying hair, his red-striped toga his most powerful weapon. That, and the slaves around him. I had heard much about my Aelia’s husband, but seeing him for the first time made the rage of Mars rush through me.

“Only because you would not have her.” A sensible man would not have provoked his superior in such a manner, but sense fled me the second Aelia walked into this shop. This man hurt her, blamed, ignored her, refused her for months on end, and now he wants to defend her honor?

“I would watch your words carefully, craftsman.” His voice became more even and he took a couple steps back. “I have friends in the courts. Who do you think they’ll show mercy on?” He smirked, as if a mere threat could stop me. The sensible part of me knew I would only lose this fight, but my very blood refused to listen. I lunged forward and swung at him, trying to fend off his slaves as the temperature rose around me. Finally I got a good hit in and knocked him down, down into the red earth…

But the streets of Rome are not red, and the sun does not burn this hot in December. There is no stall, no market, no Aelia. I will never see my son again, and the man I thought was my enemy is just another man, condemned as I am to mining the red poison.

Octavius struggles to get up, blood streaming from where he hit the rocks. The foreman shouts at us to stop fighting and get back to work.

The confusion, the rage, the tremors…I’ve seen this happen many times since I arrived. I had initially been charged with taking Aelia by force, a crime of certain death, but it was soon brought to light that she lied about Gaius’s paternity, so we were both charged with adultery. She was sentenced to banishment, but Gaius the elder argued I deserved a far more severe punishment for assaulting and blaspheming a man of his standing.

Thus I was sentenced to work in the mines, damnatus al metallum. Sentenced to never see my son, nor the woman I loved. Sentenced to mine the earth I once formed into the finest pottery. It is cruel but not unjust that I will die here in Hispania, producing the color of her cheeks, the color that sealed my fate.

My hands still shaking, I pick up the hammer and pound away, seeking that brilliant red.