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Pia
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The General’s Daughter
A Sentimental Story
A Sentimental Story
The General wiped his forearm across his face, his nostrils still filled with the bitter scents of battle. It was over, and the only sounds now were the shrieks of carrion birds as they soared over the plain and the murmur of the spring by the little grove of olive and fig trees.
Sheltering in the scant shade sat a group of young girls, their faces downcast. The unwanted prize of the enemy’s concubines that came with the remnants of the baggage train. He wandered towards them, removing his plumed helmet. They were a comely lot. One in particular caught his attention, squatting down, her back to a tree. Between her legs blue beads hung from a string that circled her hips, another few beads laced into her dark curls that fell over her bare shoulders. Her breasts were full and heavy, as were her lips. Around her left ankle was a narrow iron shackle, hammered tight closed for the man who once owned her, now a corpse rotting on the field of battle.
His men were sitting around the spring, washing away the dust of the day, cleaning their weapons; they had done well.
He turned to his servant, “Tell them they can do what they want with the women, but I want none left by the time I return. And tell them not to waste any nails on them.” With that he turned and walked to the field tent that had already been erected for him. Inside he pulled off his armour and waited while the servant filled the tin bowl with water from the spring, cooling it with slivers of ice he scraped from the block that had been wrapped in layers of straw, wetted cotton and leather. The General plunged his hands into the water, splashing it into his face, then lay down on the campaign cot, closing his eyes.
His mind took him back to his villa in Rome. He saw his daughter, Giulia, by the turquoise reflecting pool, her black hair pinned up with a pearl comb, the gold double Grecian swirl of the jewel he had bought her for her birthday wrapped around her arm, the brilliant sun shining through her thin stola, accentuating the line of her budding breasts.
Outside he could hear the intermingling of laughter, shouts, screams and cries as his soldiers went about their work.
The sun was beginning to fall towards the Western horizon of the great plain when he awoke. Leaving off his armour, he buckled his sword to his side and walked from the tent towards the circle where his men had lit a fire. They were drinking from a wineskin that they were passing around. One man was accompanying another on a crude wooden flute. He was singing mournfully of wives and daughters left far behind, as others tapped the rhythm on their legs.
The General walked towards the grove of trees and smiled to himself. His men were indeed ingenious when it came to devising ways of slaughter. Hanging upside-down from a branch, her hair trailing on the ground, was the first, her body hacked open from her sex to her ribs, blood pooling beneath her. Then a face smiled at him, beautiful lips wide open, dark eyes staring, her neck severed, her torn body lying yards distant from the tree from which she gazed. The dusty ground was littered with arms and legs, hacked from the lithe bodies that once pleasured their masters. A skin, almost perfectly flayed from the body, hung from an olive branch.
He walked further into the grove, and saw the girl he had first noticed hanging by her wrists from a fig tree, her toes dangling inches from the ground, her body painted red from the blood that had flowed from the gashes which had once been her breasts, a thick piece of olive wood forced between her legs, deep into her, the inside of her thighs slicked with what looked like dense black treacle, oozing from the wound. He looked up at her face. She was still lovely he thought. And then he saw that she was looking at him, her head rising just very slightly from her chest, her lips open, a string of drool running from one to the other. She was mouthing something, but was incapable of making a sound. He realised he understood her: “Mother… mother…”.
“I said I wanted them all dead” he barked to his servant, “get her down”.
The servant called over a couple of the soldiers and they cut the ropes that bound her, allowing her to collapse onto the dusty soil, gasping and groaning as she fell, then stretching out her legs to relieve as best she could the agony between them. She looked up at the General, and he at her.
“What’s your name, girl”?
She tried to talk, but words would not form. She coughed a stream of liquid onto the sand. She tried once more.
“My master… he… called me Julia…”
The General raised her face to his, holding her chin, staring into her dark, lost eyes.
“Kneel, get on your knees”.
She did as he instructed, slowly, the pain evident with every motion of her body.
He took his sword from its scabbard, stood behind her and placed the point at the nape of her neck.
She felt the sharpness of the blade, the sudden coldness as he leant heavily onto it. Her mouth foamed crimson. Her eyes filled with the light of the setting sun. Then all was black.
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