“Tell me a story?”

“Of course, sweetheart. Now, did you ever wonder...”

Sure, the Romans were telling the truth. Why would they lie? If you are a slave in Rome, and you keep your head down, work smart, then you can buy your way to freedom.

They don’t tell you that, at best, you earn a few coppers a day and your price is at least a decade away, oh no! They don’t tell you that after you finally reach your goal, and you have enough to pay for your life, they simply push you out the door. You leave with what you brought, nothing.

No one will hire you. The only ones who will even speak to you are those who are cursing your existence for being in their way. Even the lowest of the low, the ones who empty chamber pots and clean the public toilets, they look at you with scorn and pity.

Some leave the city, hoping for a new start somewhere, anywhere, else. Others turn to begging and pleading for scraps, most often receiving kicks and being spit on instead.

A few, like me, turned to crime. Most are caught and executed, there is no appeal for an ex-slave. But, if you are smart, you can make a decent living being a crook or a killer.

Me? I used to rob graves.

I know, I know, it is a shitty business, but it is low risk, high reward and I made a decent living. After two years, I managed to get a wife and had three children, a nice apartment in the city and a small farm that my wife’s brother worked as a share cropper.

See, we had a system. We? Oh! Yeah, we. My partner was Clesius, an ex-gladiator. He got hamstrung in the arena but was lucky enough to get a chance to live anyway. He limped after, especially when it is wet or cold, but he had saved enough to limp away from his old life. Still, the money eventually ran out and what is a crippled ex-gladiator to do for money? He can’t even train the new ones, what with his bad leg and all.

So, anyway, our system. The better graveyards, the ones with tombs dug into the cliffsides or crypts aboveground, have attendants and guards to keep people like me away. Like any kind of guard duty, it is boring and thankless work. The guards tend to be people who can’t find better work or, perhaps, the slow cousin of someone with authority.

They set up schedules and, because they are human, rarely deviate from them because that would be extra effort. The one we are going to hit tonight has a guard passing through each of the rows of tombs about every quarter candle. That is about a quarter of the time it takes the sun to move one finger through the daytime sky, but for nighttime, of course. I mean, who uses candles during the day?

So, the guard passes and we have just short of that time to get in, get the goods and get out again. We have it down to a science, almost. We move the stone that blocks the door, empty the tomb of everything, even the wrapped body, and stack it all into a cart. Move the stone back and we are out of there in less than a fraction of a candle’s time. If we don’t run into problems, we can do two tombs in a quarter candle!

Two days before there had been a crucifixion of some cult figure and a couple of nobodies. Unlike the run of the mill crucifixions, this guy wasn’t some penniless thief or diseased madman. He had offended the powers that be and that was a death sentence. Still, this one had followers, some of them quite rabid. They installed his body in a high-quality tomb, big rolling stone door and everything. That just made my job easier, see, cause some tombs have square doors that are a real pain in the ass.

Not everything went according to plan that night, of course, that would have been too easy. To start with, there was some whore weeping and wailing at the crypt door until almost midnight! The guard finally got sick of listening to her wail and drove her away with kicks and curses.

When we finally do get a chance to get in, the door moves easily but is one big, heavy bastard that takes both of us. Once inside, we hit the jackpot! A king’s ransom in gold chalices, kegs of gems and jewel-encrusted icons. There are amphoras of rare and valuable oils, chests of gold and silver coins and more chains than I could count. There is no time to waste so move fast, shoving everything we can lay hands on into the cart. We even yank off the rough shroud off the body and lug the wrapped body out to toss it on the cart.

There isn’t time to unwrap the length after length of linen on the body, and you can’t just slice through it or you risk damaging whatever jewelry or fine clothing is on the body. We didn’t even try, not at the crypt, we never did. Instead, we always waited to do it at our usual place, a cliff that overhangs the river. It made disposing of the evidence that much easier when we could just tip it over the edge.

The loot we grabbed was amazing. There was enough to set us both up for life or, as I figured it, when I slid my dagger between Clesius’s ribs and pushed his body into the river, enough to set me up as nobility in far off Britannia!

The body itself was an afterthought but I checked out of habit. Two thin silvers on the eyes and a couple of rings, hardly worth the effort, really, and it followed Clesius into the river minutes later. I admit, I almost shat myself when I heard someone call me, but it must have been the wind in the rushes. No one knew I was there so who would call out, ‘I will return, wait for me... ‘?

At home, I shushed the complaints of my wife and had her bundle up the children. We took only our clothes and the money we had saved, adding it to the wagon and we were miles from the city when the sun rose. Three days later we had a pair of expensive, but well appointed and, just as importantly for my new image, well-guarded, wagons. We joined a column of the legion who were off to fair Britannia to help tame the natives.

Do you know that those idiot cultists were making claims their prophet, or whatever he was, the corpse I sank in the river; had risen from the dead! They said he had been the son of their God and was now risen to join his father, and these absolute lunatics were building an entire religion around that nonsense.

If they were sensible people, they would know by now that the Roman gods are not all that particular about other gods coming around, but they do get upset if people ignore them. And claiming their god is the only god? Madness! I predicted a short and pain-filled life for those cultists!

The journey to Provincia Brittannia took the better part of a year, but we made it finally. Cesar had announced that the Britons had been overtaken by the filthy Gauls and the hated enemy was aiding Cesar’s enemies on the mainland. He ordered Caligula to take back the Provincia Britannia and, after five years or so, the twisted one did as ordered.

While there was still fighting in the north and far to the west, most of the country was, more or less, civilized. No, it was not Rome, and it would never be, as there was only one Rome. Still, no one knew us here and my gold and silver went a lot further here in the provinces than they did back in Italia!

After spreading a few coins around to the officers of the Legion, I chose Corinium Dobunnorum for our new home. It was a new settlement, only started a few years previously, but it was growing nicely. Labor, between cheaply rented slaves and the local Dobunni tribesman, who were surprisingly facile with stonework, was easy to come by.

My wife was pregnant again, we’d had very little in the way of entertainment during the long voyage, after all, and gave birth not long after we arrived. I hated that she had to have the whelp in the local inn, but our home was still months away from being finished and you do what you must, I suppose.

The next decade was one of leisure like I had never imagined. I had an office in my villa where men from the village and from the surrounding area would come to ask for advice, or buy-ins to in their schemes. I had an uncanny nose for a crook, having spend a great deal of my life as one, and my fortune continue to grow through wise investments. The raids along the coast that threatened shipping were a bother, but Corinium Dobunnorum was far enough inland, and far enough from Wales that, we rarely saw anything but a few raised voices at the tavern when rivals met.

My son caught the ague during his twelfth winter and we buried him on the grounds. My daughters, one killed by a blood sickness, but the other two safely married and out of the home now. My wife began looking unwell, but not as unwell as the looks she would give me when she thought I was not looking. Was it my fault she was looking like her own mother while I, with superior bloodlines, have remained young and hale?

I probably should have spent less time bedding the maids and more time paying attention to my wife. She killed herself. I found the poisoned chalice near her hand and the strong scent of almond in the air. The note, I burned, fearing the servants would show it to someone who could read like a civilized person, and questions would be asked.

Rufius,

My husband, I know not what deal you struck with the gods or, if it is as fortune teller has proclaimed, that you were cursed by a newborn god, but I cannot live as an ancient, withered crone to a husband who looks as if he were still twenty summers. Each day I look in the mirror and each day I despair. I cannot live like this so I have decided to end it on my own terms.

I spent the next two years seeking out fortune tellers, wise men, religious leaders and, while most of them were obvious quacks, the oddest of the bunch were surprisingly repetitive. ‘He will return and you must wait for him.‘

I knew it then. I knew who had cursed me, it was that upstart new god. The prophet, or maybe the son of that god, depending on who you listened to, was the occupant of the tomb I robbed, the one with the gold that gave me my new life. I knew, in my heart of hearts, that he had been the cause of this!

Even as I began liquidating my holdings, selling my portion of local businesses, my ships, my land, I began a campaign to wipe that pesky newcomer religion from the land. I offered bounties on the heads of their priests, rewards for their religious icons and works and payment for their temples and churches if they were destroyed.

It was no good though, they were like cockroaches. They kept coming back, feasting on the corpses of those who came before, feeding on the pain and persecution as signs they were the anointed ones, they were chosen. That kind of wholesale suffering attracts the weak of mind and spirit, and no matter how many I killed, they came back in greater numbers.

Instead, I gathered my fortunes and I fled. Back to the mainland; back to civilization. Even there, the curse was spreading. I no longer tried to wipe them out, there were too many, so I hid among them and pretended to be of them instead. I became pious and gave to their charities.

I moved every ten years or so, never staying in one place for too long. I had yet to find a gray hair and even serious wounds would head quickly. I scarred; each and every cut of a blade left behind a mark on my skin, but even those faded over time, subsumed in new wounds, new scars.

I went back where it all began, but the crypt was guarded and manned all hours of the day and night. It was a shrine now. I wasn’t sure what I had hoped for, but I had nowhere else to go.

After a couple of weeks of wandering around aimlessly, visiting the crypt again and again, I sought out the priest who watched over the crypt and asked for employment. I was hired to guard the crypt against those who would defile it. Fools. Out of spite, I made it my practice to use the place as my own, personal latrine.

Wars came and went, the world changed and so did the land. The crypt and all around it were wiped out in an earthquake and flood, so then was my job. I became an itinerant wanderer, though I have several fortunes worth of gold hidden from Rome to far Britannia. What use is all the gold in the world if there is no joy in spending it? I have done everything, seen everything of note and it all palls now.