Forewarnings and Three Grapes

By Jon Jacks

The flight of birds, the entrails of animals, the strike of lightning; each can divulge the future. Each, too, confirms that Martis must accept the arrogant Nerie’s marriage proposal. The Delphic Oracle will make a final pronouncement, but on their journey there Nerie’s faults become glaringly obvious. Is Martis destined to suffer a terrible marriage? Her only hope lies in a gift of Three Grapes...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jon Jacks
• Release date: Aug 19, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005866969

Jon Jacks

While working in London as, first, an advertising Creative Director (the title in the U.S. is wildly different; the role involves both creating and overseeing all the creative work in an agency, meaning you’re second only to the Chairman/President) and then a screenwriter for Hollywood and TV, I moved out to an incredibly ancient house in the countryside.On the day we moved out, my then three-year-old daughter (my son was yet to be born) was entranced by the new house, but also upset that we had left behind all that was familiar to her.So, very quickly, my wife Julie and I laid out rugs and comfortable chairs around the huge fireplace so that it looked and felt more like our London home. We then left my daughter quietly reading a book while we went to the kitchen to prepare something to eat.Around fifteen minutes later, my daughter came into the kitchen, saying that she felt much better now ‘after talking to the boy’.‘Boy?’ we asked. ‘What boy?’‘The little boy; he’s been talking to me on the sofa while you were in here.’We rushed into the room, looking around.There wasn’t any boy there of course.‘There isn’t any little boy here,’ we said.‘Of course,’ my daughter replied. ‘He told me he wasn’t alive anymore. He lived here a long time ago.’A child’s wild imagination?Well, that’s what we thought at the time; but there were other strange things, other strange presences (but not really frightening ones) that happened over the years that made me think otherwise.And so I began to write the kind of stories that, well, are just a little unbelievable.

Book preview

Chapter 1

‘I warn you right now,’ Martis’s mother snapped, ‘there’s no good fortune that will come of that horse!’

‘She’s already brought us good fortune, Mother!’ Martis responded as brightly as she could manage. ‘You know that!’

‘Has she? And what did your father do as soon as he returned? He freed all our slaves! He insisted this lump should be looked after, and given no work! Better for us, Martis, if your father had remained enslaved by the Romans, you ask me.’

‘Mother! What a dreadful thing to say!’

Despite her promises to her father that she would follow his death bed instructions to the letter, Martis had decided that an exception could be made for Caesia when it came to drawing the funeral cart.

Surely, it was truly fitting that the mare who had carried him to freedom should now bear him on his way to the otherworld?

Besides, Caesia was the only animal left on their whole farm who was capable of the task.

*

‘Your father Venthi was a fine warrior, like his father before him; he returned a hero from the wars. So we should forgive him his strange decisions once he was back amongst the peace of the farm.’

Many stopped by Martis and her mother Scarpia to offer their condolences. But Nerie, the young son of the couple running the neighbouring farm, lingered longer than most. He held Martis’s hand, and her eyes, far far longer than anyone else too.

He had patiently waited until he was the last to pay his respects too.

‘He knew what it was like to be worked as a slave,’ Martis adamantly insisted. ‘He couldn’t impose that on any other man, woman or child.’

Unlike Martis, Nerie saw Scarpia roll her eyes in exasperation as her daughter defended Venthi’s ludicrously ruinous actions.

‘As I say,’ Nerie persisted, ‘he was a man regretfully broken by his experiences.’

‘He acted through compassion, Nerie!’ Martis sighed resignedly. ‘He wasn’t a broken man!’

‘He certainly broke our farm,’ Scarpia scorned. ‘Bringing impoverishment to us all!’

‘A farm that size can only survive if it’s worked by slaves,’ Nerie agreed, smiling as he added, ‘Now poor Venthi has gone, you’re freed of his ridiculous promises to–’

‘No! Father wanted no one to suffer slavery; least of all so that he might laze and be rich!’

Naturally, Martis didn’t wish to make herself look such a fool in front of Nerie.

She was fully aware, naturally, that the farm was now losing so much money that it would have to be sold – and it wouldn’t fetch as good a price as it would have only a while ago, for now previously farmed and well irrigated fields had returned to scrubland. She and her mother lived now on nothing but the proceeds from a small flock of geese and litters of rabbits, the more valuable herds having been sold as they were sickening and starving.

Her father had meant well, of course; but it was all so highly impractical, this insistence that the farm had to be managed without recourse to using slaves.

Still, she had promised him that she would uphold his wishes. He had always called her britos-Martis, for he said it meant ‘sweet maiden’. And consequentially, he had scandalously left the farm to her rather than Scarpia, which had caused even greater rancour between mother and daughter.

Of course, when the pronouncements of her father’s will had first become known to everyone, Martis had insisted that the farm was more rightfully her mother’s, that she would sign any necessary agreements to make it legally Scarpia’s rather than hers.

‘So, you are prepared to go against your father’s will on this matter?’ Scarpia had pointed out cynically. ‘So why not, too, on this far more ridiculous stipulation on not using slaves? We can’t run the farm without them, Martis!’

‘No, Mother!’ Martis had sadly shook her head. ‘Don’t you see? That would be like accepting that Father was rightfully enslaved!’

‘Then…you are saying that this is your farm,’ her mother had declared resignedly.

‘It was Father’s farm; it was his will that we should abhor all forms of slavery!’ Martis had resolutely reminded her mother.

‘He’s dead, Martis!’ her mother snapped back at her now, reflecting Nerie’s own thoughts on the matter. ‘It’s easy for him to continue demanding the impossible! We can’t be held to promises made to a man who wasn’t whole of mind!’

‘We couldn’t even afford new slaves now anyway!’ Martis retorted in exasperation. ‘So…a slave-free farm it must remain!’

‘Then you’ll be glad to know that I can’t slave anymore on that farm either,’ Scarpia abruptly declared on hearing Martis’s assertion that she would continue to adhere to her father’s will. ‘It’s your farm now, Martis: I’ll take what’s mine, and leave you to make the best of it!’

*

Chapter 2

Martis recognised that her mother had every right to be angry with her father.

Even before he had returned, it had been hard enough keeping the farm going in a time of war, when taxes were higher, when brigands ran more freely everywhere about the countryside.

Worse still were the rumours of victories and defeats, none of which seemed entirely believable, so extreme were the forecasts of land being won or lost, of vast numbers of the dead.

Of most concern to them, of course, was news of how close the enemy were drawing towards their own land, or the likelihood of Venthi being amongst the dead.

It was an anxious time for everyone. But those with husbands or sons in the armies facing the fiercest fighting were naturally more afraid than anyone.

Worst of all for Martis and her mother was that Venthi had to live up to the reputation of his father, and the bravery in battle he had become famous for. He would take chances, involve himself in actions that wiser, warier soldiers would seek to avoid, despite the opportunity for draping themselves in glory.

Nothing had been heard of Venthi for well over half a year, though it had been whispered for a while now that he had been caught up in a supposedly indecisive battle in which both sides had suffered heavy losses.

At least, however, it was time when they had more than enough slaves to comfortably look after the farm. At least, that was the case until he returned, initially to ecstatic celebrations, riding into the villa’s courtyard on a proud war horse.

Before the sun had set, he had ordered and signed off the release of every slave.

But as anyone wiser could have foreseen, those who had risen to positions of power over the others didn’t enjoy their freedom for long.

*

Now that her mother had left to live with relatives in the city, taking with her the money and remaining jewellery she claimed as her own, Martis’s position was obviously worse than ever.

‘You should see sense; you should marry,’ had been her mother’s final, harshly spoken words. ‘Nerie, perhaps, if you’re lucky and he’s fool enough to take on a farm without slaves; that’s as high as