This is the third instalment of a story which will include descriptions of men abusing boys both physically and _s_e_x_ually. If you do not enjoy such stories or are under eighteen please do not read it.
The story will include some deaths but it is not a snuff story. The deaths will not be described in a provocative way and are included only for story or character development.
I write because I enjoy doing so. You are at perfectly at liberty to copy or post this story. If you do so I would be glad however if you would acknowledge my authorship.
I would be glad to receive any comments (pleasant if possible) or suggestions you care to make. Please send them to zelamir@hotmail. com. I will reply to any messages I receive other than those complaining that this story include descriptions of young boys being physically and _s_e_x_ually abused. That is what it is about. You have been warned.
Crastus settled himself back on the low wall surrounding the well. The slaves who had gathered round the edge of the courtyard drifted off one by one to get on with their work. It was some time before Varro returned holding Echios none too gently by the arm with one hand and dragging a pretty boy with a mop of curly black hair by the ear with the other. Echios had obviously made some attempt to clean himself up. His nose had clearly been broken but he had put on a clean tunic and the blood had been washed from his face.
"Sorry not to be back sooner," he said giving Echios a shake,. "It took me sometime to find our friend here."
"Where did you find that tart?" Crastus asked nodding at the boy whose only clothing was a very brief tunic fringed with tassels which reached only halfway down his bum. Forced to bend forward by Vacco's grip on his ear these totally failed to cover his plump little rump.
"This? This is Pulchellus. I found him washing the blood from Echios face and kissing the place to make it better."
"Oh the bailiff's favourite boy. Better fed and plumper than any other brat on the farm I suppose," Crastus remarked with a sneer.
"He's my own property," Echios protested. " I bought him myself. I can do what you like with my own."
"So you can, so you can, but not with what belongs to the Emperor. He'd be very annoyed if he found out that you took Marius's jewellery that should have been forfeited to him to pay off your own gambling debts."
"You'd only have taken them yourself if I hadn't got them first," Echios protested in a brief and ill judged moment of defiance.
Crastus lashed out with his foot catching Echios on his right knee. The man screamed shrilly.
"Don't be insolent. The Emperor won't be interested in what we might have done. He will be interested in what you have done, should I remember to tell him about it. But you don't want to me to tell him do you?"
Echios stared sullenly at Crastus who moved his foot threatening another kick.
"No ... No I don't."
"Say please."
"Please, please don't."
"Well then you'll have to do something for me in return. You'll be glad to do that won't you?"
"Won't you?"
"Yes. Yes I will."
"Well then you can show us the way to your office and there you can write out a couple of documents for me. Varro bring the brat along."
Echios hobbled painfully across the court yard followed closely by Crastus and Varro who kept a tight and painful hold on Pulchellus's ear. The bailiff's office was a long low room set immediately to the left of the archway. It had a bare plank floor and it's only furniture was a table, a couple of wooden chairs and an open cupboard containing a number of scrolls. Hanging from the wall just inside the door was a heavy whip and in a large earthenware pot beneath it were a number of canes of various lengths and weights.
"A bit of a disciplinarian are you Echios?" Crastus sneered catching sight of these.
"How else am I to get work out of the lazy brutes. It's the only the only thing they understand and respect.."
"And I suppose your little tart looks on laughing while you slice up the bums of less fortunate slave brats. It must be fun for you both."
Without waiting for a reply Crastus selected a cane and swung it experimentally in his hand.
"Nice springy movement," he remarked and suddenly lashed Pulchellus across the front of his thighs with it raising a livid wheal across the smooth brown skin. The boy screamed shrilly.
Crastus lifted the cane for another cut.
"Master stop him," the boy yelled desperately.
"That's enough please," Echios protested weakly.
"Enough," growled Crastus, "enough, I've hardly begun. If ever I saw a slave boy who would be improved by a sound thrashing it's that one. Still business before pleasure I suppose. Go over to that table of yours and write me out a receipt for the body of Marius and an acknowledgement that you are taking responsibility for disposing of it."
Echios limped over to the table and seated himself. He scribbled away for a minute or two in silence and then passed what he had written to Crastus who glanced through it quickly.
"That's very good," he said and Echios began to lever himself painfully out of the chair.
"No, no," Crastus said putting his hand on the others man shoulder and forcing him back into his chair, "you haven't finished yet. You see I'm going to sell Marius when we go back to Rome. Premium goods he will be on the market, a beautiful virgin boy. . Marius would loose a good deal of his value if he went to the block with his bum ripped from our _c_o_c_k_s and that would never do. You will need to provide me and my men with another boy to keep us amused on our journey the state of whose bottom doesn't matter. So just write out a another note transferring ownership of your Pulchellus to me. I know you've been _f_u_c_k_ing him but we're not fussy and by the look of you even after having your _c_o_c_k_ up his arse he'll be tight enough to give us pleasure."
"Never, I won't do it. I won't," Echios said with as much vehemence as he could muster but some how his words lacked conviction.
"Oh dear," Crastus said wearily, "and I did so hope we could our business done without any more unpleasantness."
He placed his hand on the back of Echios head and slammed his face down onto the table. Grasping his hair he hauled the bailiff back in his chair so that he was once again sitting upright.
"Dear, dear, now look what's happened," Crastus said sympathetically, "and you're getting blood all over your desk. I do admire the way you stick up for that boy, really brave of you when you consider what the Emperor will do to you when I report that you only remembered your loyalty to him after you knew Sejanus had been captured. I don't want to make that report. I'm a kind hearted man so perhaps on second thoughts you will..."
"Master," Pulchellus screamed wrenching himself free from Vacco's grasp and throwing himself on his knees before the table where his Master was seated, "don't do it please Master, please."
Crastus was round the table in an instant. His foot thudded into the boy's crutch. Pulchellus doubled over his hands clasped to his balls his brief tunic with it's silly tassels riding down over his back to leave his bottom exposed.
"You talk when you're spoken to brat," Crastus rasped and brought the cane hissing down across the boy's bare rump.
"That," he continued, raising his voice to be heard over the child's anguished scream, "is just a foretaste of the thrashing you're going to get this evening. Now shut up."
"Well Echios are you going to transfer the boy to me or shall I make my report to the Emperor? Come on man we haven't all day."
For a moment there was silence apart from the sound of Pulchellus whimpering. Then Echios started to write again.
"May I go now," Echios asked after he had finished writing. Crastus noted he took a great deal of care to avoid looking at Pulchellus hunched weeping in the floor at his feet.
"Just one more thing," Crastus said easily, "I would like you to show me again the place you kept Marius shut up. Come along."
"Varro bring the slut along will you and the cane too. I am going to have to help our friend here. He seems to have some trouble in walking."
Holding Echios firmly by the elbow Crastus guided him across the yard to where the door to the cellars stood open the key still in it's lock. Followed by Varro and the blubbing Pulchellus he forced him down the steps to the foul smelling cell in which Marius had been confined. It's door also was open. Crastus gave the bailiff a shove and kicking his feet from under him sent him tumbling headlong into the filthy hole. He slammed the door and shot the bolts leaving Echios in darkness. He lead the way up the stairs. Back in the fresh air he locked the cellar door and then carrying it's key with him walked over the well.
"I wonder," he said throwing the key into the well, "how long it will take the slaves to break down that door and release the bailiff after we leave tomorrow. I don't expect they will try very hard. I don't think any of them loved him very much apart from slut boy here and he of course will be coming with us."
Pulchellus wailed dismally. Crastus and Varro laughed at his misery.
------------------
Marius sat on the kitchen floor, the flagstones cold against his bare bum, his right foot resting in the substantial lap of the freed woman Selia. She was skilled in treating cuts and illnesses. Marius had many cuts and grazes on his legs and knees dressed by her in the past for he was as liable as any other active young boy to tumble and cut himself in his play. In the past though he would have been siting on the stool that the woman now occupied and she would be kneeling on the ground ministering to him.
Marius did not protest at this change. Indeed he hardly noticed it. He had relapsed into the state of dull acceptance from which he had briefly roused by the humiliation and strange excitement engendered by Crastus's fingers probing his bottom.
So much had happened to him in the past few days. His comfortable privileged world had been torn apart. He had cried a little for his father when he had been told of his death but the sheer extent of his misery had overwhelmed him and emptied his mind of all emotions but fear and hopelessness..
"It's infected," the women said pressing her thumb into the angry ring of raw flesh scored round the boy's leg by the ankle iron. Marius caught his breath and involuntarily jerked his leg as the pain hit him.
"Mariullus* stay still now. I can't do anything if you wriggle about," she chided him. (*Authors Note The Romans added ullus to the end of a word as an affectionate diminutive both of size and status. Thus "puer" boy, "puerullus" not only small boy but pretty little slave boy . So calling Marius Mariullus implies that he is both small, pretty and a slave.)
Marius was well enough liked among the free servants and slaves in the household. He was a cheerful generous spirited young lad getting into all sorts of scrapes himself but ready to intercede for any of them, especially the other boys about the place, who faced a flogging deserved or not. They had been uneasy when Echios had locked him in the cellars and most of them at least knew and a number actively helped Panychis smuggle food to him. They were even more uneasy when Crastus and his three men arrived. They knew of the execution of Sejanus and his two other children and it seemed that Marius was to share their fate. It was one thing however to feel sympathy for the boy. It was another to take action to save someone, even a child tainted with treachery to the Emperor. If you were not a Roman citizen the consequences of such an action if caught would be to be flogged and then nailed to a cross to die in long drawn out agony. They muttered among themselves while they believed Marius's life was in danger. There was even a chance that some brutality inflicted on Marcus would have prompted an attempt on their part to free him. That moment never came. Instead they had learnt that he was to be a slave. They were certainly not going to risk their own hides in trying to preserve Marius from a fate that all of them had experienced.
"The quickest way of dealing with it would be to take the hot iron too it," the women continued speaking to the man who stood beside her. "Burn it out."
"The boss said he did not want the boy permanently marked. He wants to get the very best price for him."
The woman looked down again at Marius's leg with it's broken skin and chafed flesh.
"The infection is only in one or two places I suppose," she remarked. "Where the edges of the fetter bit into his flesh. I could cut it out and it would probably heal cleanly. Boy's flesh mends well."
She twisted round on her stool, turning her back on Marius and tucking his right leg firmly under her arm. She picked up a small knife, the light glinting on a short wickedly sharp blade, from the table beside her. She bent her head and cut down into the healthy flesh directly above one of the puss leaking sores disfiguring the boy's smooth tanned leg.
A scream was wrenched from the depths of Marius's lungs. He collapsed backwards on the floor rolling about in his agony his hands drumming a frantic tattoo of pain on the flagstones. Selia fought to keep hold of his captive leg. His wildly flailing left foot caught her in the small of the back almost knocking her off her stool.
At a shout from her a well muscled half naked youth darted forward and caught old of Marius's left leg. The watching man deliberately placed his foot on the boy's chest pinning his shoulders to the floor.
Selai waited till the boy was still and putting the knife back down on the table turned on her stool to face him.
"Mariullus," she said quietly staring straight into his eyes, "I know I am hurting you. I will hurt you a great deal more before I have finished with you but not half as much as I will if you dare to kick me again. Do you understand"
"Yes.. .yes Miss," Marius sobbed.
"Well to help you remember and give you a taste of what you can expect but only a taste..." She ground her thumb into the ring of raw flesh. Marius's screams rang out again. His mouth was distorted into a rictus of pain. His eyes rolled back in their sockets until the pupils were hidden. Then she turned round and settled once more to her work.
For almost half an hour she sliced away at the infected areas while Marius lay writhing and screaming on the floor. At last she was finished with the knife. Selia opened a small jar of ointment. . She dipped the tip of her right index finger in the unguent and using her left hand to open the cuts that she had incised in the boy's leg, she worked it into the wounds. Marius's felt that his veins were filled with liquid fire. His howls redoubled in volume. The youth his chest glistening with sweat fought to control the boy's thrashing limbs while Selia oblivious to Marius's sufferings roughly bandaged his tortured flesh.
"It should heal well enough," she remarked raising her voice over Marius's screams. "Maybe a slight puckering of the skin but nothing more."
"The boss said we were to leave the sores uncovered," the man remarked.
"You'll have to wit till the cuts stop bleeding before doing that," Selia remarked. "Leave the bandages on for tonight and see how it looks tomorrow morning."
Marius's cries decreased in volume to a low constant low whimper. Selia looked down at him, his face smeared with snot and tears, his body trembling convulsively. She bent down and holding him under the arms lifted him on to her knees. He wriggled close to her burying his face against her shoulder, a thumb stole into his mouth. Selia cuddled him tightly one hand cupping his firm boy's rump the other round his narrow shoulders.
"That's the worse over Mariullus," she said gently. "We've just got to get you nice and clean for your Master. You don't want to think he's got himself a grubby little slut for his new boy do you?"
Marius shook his head slightly and mumbled something. Selia seemed to understand him for she continued.
"No you can't help being dirty shut up in that dark horrid cell." She moved the boy slightly on her lap so that his body was turned away from her. She reached out to draw a rag from a bowl of warm water from the table beside her. She took the Marius's small prick between finger and thumb and peeled back his foreskin. She wrinkled her nose. His prick under the foreskin was coated with dirt. She began to wash the filth gently away. The boy stirred uneasily.
"A little sore my pet? She asked indeed the skin beneath the dirt was red and inflamed. "You couldn't help it this time but you must learn to keep yourself clean now for your Master. A master wants his boys clean and sweet smelling."
"Well that's that bit of you done. The next bit you'll enjoy." She lifted Marius off her lap and stood him on the floor. She put the flat of her hand in the small of his back encouraging him to bend forward.
She washed along the cleft of his bottom.
"You've got to learn to keep yourself clean here too," she remarked sponging his crack with the damp cloth. Marius's prick stiffened and he pushed his bottom further out towards her.
"That's right my love," Selia cooed softly. " Open your bottom up for me. You're going to make a good little whore I can see," she laughed pushing the cloth between the lips of his anus. Marius gasped as she forced her finger further into him and his _c_o_c_k_ stood up straight and hard.
When Selia was satisfied that Marius's bottom was clean she handed the soiled cloth to him.
"Get rid of this in the fire and come back to me," she ordered.
Marius trotted obediently off, speeded on his way by a good natured slap from Selia's open hand on his bum. He did not make any attempt this time to hide his erection.
Selia watched him smiling indulgently as he made his way back to her his rigid pricklet wobbling in front of him.
"Could he have something to eat before you take him to his Master?" She asked Crastus's man. "He must be hungry and he has had a hard time."
"The Boss has not come back to the house that I've seen," the man shrugged, "so why not?"
A moment or two later Marius was squatting beside the kitchen fire spooning a bowl of oatmeal gruel hungrily into himself apparently oblivious of the bustle about him.