The Golden Slave Page 4

  The morning was still wet, after a short rain. Where the sun struck the grass, it flashed white. A thrush sat on a bough and chanted of all bright hopes; a milk cow grazed in a meadow, impossibly red. When Phryne went among the gnarled little trees, they shook down raindrops upon her. She took a low branch in her arms and buried her face in its flowers.

  “Poor blooms,” she whispered. “My poor babies. It is wrong to take away your springtime.”

  The knife bit at the twigs; she filled her arms with apple blossoms.

  Eodan came from the villa. He crutched along as readily as a three-legged dog, bound for the stables carrying a mended bridle. The endlessly gossiping slaves had told Phryne the barbarian was clever with his hands.

  But when he saw her he halted. He had never thought much about beauty ― land, workmanship, live flesh was good or bad, no more. Now, briefly, the sight of a girl’s dark head and slim waist, with dew and white radiance between, went through him like a spear.

  The moment passed by. He thought only as he swung about toward her that ― by the Bull! ― it was a new year and she was a handsome wench. “Ave,” he called.

  “Atque vale,” said Phryne, smiling at him. His hair needed cutting again, and it was uncombed, tangled with sunlight.

  “Hail and farewell? Oh, now, wait!” Eodan reached her and barred the path. “You have no haste. Come talk to me.”

  “My task here is finished,” she said in a quick, unsure voice.

  “Must they know that?” Eodan’s coldest laugh snapped out. “I’ve learned how to stretch an hour’s task into a day. You, having been a slave longer, must be even more skilled at it.”

  The fair planes of her cheeks turned red. She answered, “At least I have learned not to insult those who do me no harm.”

  “I am sorry,” he said, contrite. “My people were not mannered. Is that why you have kept yourself from me?”

  “I have not,” she said, looking away. “It ― it only happened… I was busy―”

  “Well, now you are not busy,” he said. “Can we be friends?”

  The gathered blossoms shivered on her breast. Finally she looked up and said, “Of course. But I really cannot stay here long. The mistress has one of her bad days.”

  “Hm. They say in the kitchen that’s only from idleness and overeating. They say her husband sent her down here because her behavior made too much of a scandal even for Rome.”

  “Well ― well, it was a ― a rest cure… “

  Ha, thought Eodan, I would like to help Mistress Cordelia rest her tired nerves! The story went that Flavius needed her family’s help too much in his political striving to divorce her. And, if ever a man deserved the cuckoo sign, it was Flavius!

  Eodan clamped on that thought and tried to snuff it out. He could taste its bitterness in his throat.

  He said: “You have a Cimbrian habit, Phryne, which I myself was losing. You do not speak evil of folk behind their backs. But tell me, how long have you been here?”

  “Not long. We came down perhaps a week before your accident.” Phryne looked past a stile, over the meadow to the blue Samnian hills. Tall white clouds walked on a lazy wind. “I only wish we could stay forever, but I’m afraid we will go back to the city in a few months. We always do.”

  “How do you stand with the mistress?” asked Eodan. He hitched himself a little closer to the girl. “Just what is your position?”

  “Oh ― I have been her personal attendant for a couple of years. Not a body servant; she has enough maids.”

  Eodan nodded. His thoughts about Cordelia’s younger maids were lickerish, and their eyes had not barred him. But so far there had been no chance. He listened to Phryne:

  “I am her amanuensis. I keep her records and accounts, write her letters for her, read and sing to her when she wants such diversion. It is not a hard life. She is not cruel. Some matrons―” The girl shivered.

  “You are from Greece?”

  She nodded. “Plataea. My grandfather lost his freedom in the war of ― No matter, it would mean nothing to you.” She smiled. “How tiny our vaunted world of Greeks and Romans is, after all!”

  “So you were born a slave?” he went on.

  “In a good household. I was educated with care, to be a nurse for their children. But they fell on evil times two years ago and had to sell me. The dealer took me to Rome, and Mistress Cordelia bought me.”

  He felt a dull anger. He said. “You wear your bonds lightly.”

  “What would you have me do?” she replied with a flash of indignation. “I should give thanks to Artemis for a situation no worse than this ― my books, at least, and a measure of respect, and an entire life’s security. Do you know what commonly happens to worn-out slaves? But my mind will not wear out!”

  “Well, well,” he said, taken aback. “It is different for you.” And then wrath broke loose, and he lifted his fist against heaven. “But I am a Cimbrian!” he shouted.

  “And I am a Greek,” she said, still cold to him. “Your people did not have to come under the Roman yoke. You could have stayed in the North.”

  “Hunger drove us out. We were too many, when the bad years came. Would you have us peaceably starve? We did not even want war with Rome, at first. We asked for land within their domains. We would have fought for them, any enemies they wished. We sent an embassy to their Senate. And they laughed at us!” Eodan dropped the bridle, leaned against his crutch and held out shaking claw-curved fingers. “I would tear down Rome, stone by stone, and flay every Roman and leave their bones for ravens to pick!”

  She asked in a steel-cool tone: “Then why do you think it evil of them to do likewise to you, since the gods granted them victory?”

  He felt the tide of his fury ebb. But it still moved in him; and the ocean from which it had come would always be there. He said thickly, “Oh, I do not hate them for that. I hate them for what came afterward. Not clean death, but marching in a triumph, shown like an animal, while the street-bred rabble jeered and pelted us with filth! Chained in a pen, day upon day upon day, lashed and kicked, till we finally went up on a block to be auctioned! And afterward shoveling muck, hoeing clods, sleeping in a hogpen barracks with chains on, every night! That is what I have to revenge!”

  He saw how she shrank away. It came to him then that he had his own purposes for her. He forced a stiff smile. “Forgive me. I know I am uncouth.”

  She said with a break in her voice. “Were you put on the block? Did it only happen that Flavius bought you?”

  “Actually, I was not,” he admitted. “He had inquiry made for me, and bought me directly. He saw me and said with that smile of his that he wanted to be sure of my fate, so he could pay me back the right amount of both good and evil. Then I was walked down here with some other new laborers.”

  “And your―” She stopped. “I must go now, Eodan.”

  “My wife?” He heard his heart knocking, far away in a great hollowness. “He told me that he had Hwicca, too ― in Rome… “

  His hands leaped out. He seized her by both arms so she cried out. The apple blossoms fell from her grasp, and his foot crushed them.

  “Hau!” he roared. “By the Bull, only now do I think of it! You attend the mistress? And she still shares her husband’s town house? Then you have seen Flavius in Rome this winter! You have seen her!”

  “Let me go!” she shrieked.

  He shook her so her teeth rattled. “How is she? You must have seen her, a tall fair girl, her name is Hwicca. What has become of her?”

  Phryne set her jaws against the pain. “If you let me go, barbarian, I will tell you,” she said.

  His hands dropped. He saw finger marks cruelly deep on her white skin. She touched the bruises with fingers that trembled while tears ran silent down her face. She caught her lip in her teeth to hold it steady.

  “I am sorry,” he mumbled. “But she is my wife.”

  Phryne leaned against the tree. At last she looked up, still hugging herself. The violet eyes
were blurred. She whispered, “It is I who must ask pardon. I did not realize it was the same ― I did not know.”

  “How could you have known? But tell me!” He held out his empty hands like a beggar.

  “Uicca… I saw her once in a while. The Cimbrian girl, all called her. She seems well thought of by Flavius. He keeps her in a room of her own, with her own servants. He is ― often there. But no one else sees her much. We never spoke. She was always very quiet. Her servants told me she was gentle to them.”

  “Flavius―” Eodan covered his eyes against the unpitying day.

  Phryne laid a hand on his shoulder. It shuddered beneath her palm. “The Unknown God help you,” she said.

  He turned around and looked upon her, then reached out and gathered her against him. He kissed her so her mouth was numb.

  She writhed free, scraped down his ankle with a sandaled foot and clawed with her nails until he let her go. She was white; her loosened dark hair fell about her like a thundercloud.

  “You slobbering pig!” she cried. “So that is all you miss of your wife!”

  She spun about and ran.

  “Wait!” he cried. “Wait, let me tell you ― I only―”

  She was gone. He stood upon the fallen blossoms and cursed. Hwicca would have understood, he thought in wrath and desolation; Hwicca is a woman, not a book-dusty prune, and knows what the needs of a man are.

  He looked down, and up again, and finally north, toward Rome. Then he picked up the bridle and went on to the stables. That day he contrived to be given a task at the forge, shaping iron, and the courtyard rang with his hammerblows until dark.

  The days passed. The flax was sown. They paid less heed to the ancient festivals now than formerly; once these acres had belonged to free men; now it was all one plantation staffed with slaves. But some custom still lived. The week of the Floralia was observed, not as immoderately as in Rome, but with a degree of ease and a measure of wine.

  On the day before the Floralia the physician examined Eodan’s leg. “It has knit,” he grunted. “Give me back my crutch.”

  Eodan asked wearily, “Will they return me to the fields?”

  “That is not my province.” The physician left him.

  Eodan walked slowly out of the villa into the walled flower garden behind the kitchen. His leg felt almost a stranger to him. No matter, he would be running in an hour. Running hence? They were not going to make a field hand of him again! It ground away, not only the body, but mind and pride and hope, until a mere two-legged ox remained.

  Phryne was talking with one of Cordelia’s maids. She saw him and said, “Enough. Come with me.” The girl’s eyes lingered on Eodan as she went by. He swore at Phryne; in all the time since the orchard morning, she would not speak to him ― the winds take her! He considered how to get the maid alone.

  “There you are! And well at last! You’ve been loafing too long, you lazy dog, and eating like a horse the while! Come here!”

  Eodan strolled toward the major-domo. He rubbed his fist, looked at it and back at the man’s nose, nodded and said: “I did not hear you. Would you repeat your wish?”

  “There, there are some ― heavy barrels to move,” stammered the major-domo. “If you will kindly come this way…”

  Eodan was willing enough to trundle the wine casks about. It was a glory to feel his strength returned. And the villa was all in a bustle ― they were hanging up garlands everywhere, the girls giggled and the men laughed, o ho ho, tonight! Eodan drew a pretty wench, a maid, into a corner, they scuffled a little, she whispered breathlessly that she would meet him in the olive grove after moonrise or as soon as she could get away….

  The Roman correctness of household eased. Men helped themselves openly to wine, laughed with their overseers, drew buckets of water to pour over sweaty skin, combed the fleas from their hair and wove garlands. Eodan, rolling a great cheese from the storehouse, chanted a Cimbrian march for his friend the groom.

  “High stood our helmets,

  host-men gathered,

  bows were blowing

  bale-wind of arrows―”

  But no one understood the words.

  At sundown the lamps were lit with those sulfur-tipped sticks Eodan still thought a rash risk of Fire’s anger. The villa glowed with a hundred small suns of its own. He stood in the garden with Mopsus. “I must go in now and help feed my fellows,” he said.

  “So, so. A good feed tonight. A good feed. My granddaughter used to live for Floralia night ― or was it my daughter, she was a baby too, once… I wonder, though, why Mistress hasn’t asked any highborn guests. It isn’t like Mistress not to have fun when she can.”

  Eodan shrugged. He had seen Cordelia often enough, seated on a couch or borne in a litter, but his world had been far from here, even in the house; she rarely entered the kitchen or the stables. She was only a task his little maidservant must finish before joining him under the olive trees.

  He went back into the villa. At its rear were the rooms where the household’s male property ate and slept. As he passed out of the kitchen toward those chambers, he saw Phryne.

  The lamp that she held turned her pale skin to gold. He moved forward, smiling, a little tipsy, meaning only to explain himself to her. She lifted her hand. “Stop.”

  “I’m not about to touch you,” he flared.

  “Good!” Her mouth twisted upward. He had seldom heard so whetted a voice. “I was sent to fetch you. Come.”

  She turned about and walked quickly toward the atrium. He followed. “But Phryne, what is this?”

  Her fist clenched. “You do not know?”

  He halted and said harshly, “If I am about to be sent back to the barracks―”

  She looked over her shoulder. Tears stood in her eyes. “Oh, not that,” she said. “Be not afraid of that. Be glad! You are about to be honored and pleasured.”

  “What?”

  “In fact, the highest honor and the noblest pleasure of which you are capable.” She stamped her foot, caught her breath and strode on. He followed in bewilderment.

  They crossed an open peristyle, where the first stars mirrored themselves shakenly in a mosaic pool. Beyond was a door inlaid with ivory, Venus twining arms about beautiful Adonis. A Nubian with a sword stood on guard. Eodan had seen him about ― a huge man, cat-footed, but betrayed by his smooth cheeks and high voice.

  Phryne knocked on the door. “Go in,” she said. “Go on in.”

  Someone giggled, down in the flickering darkness of the corridor. Eodan pushed his way through, and the door swung shut behind him.

  He stood in a long room, marble-floored, richly strewn with rugs and with expensive furnishings. Many lamps hung from the ceiling, till the air seemed as full of soft light as of incense. The window was trellised with climbing roses.

  A table bore wine and carefully prepared food for two. But there was only one broad couch beside it.

  Cordelia was stretched out on the couch. Light rippled along her gown. It was of the sheerest silk; her flesh seemed to glow through. She sat up, smiling, so that her copious breasts were thrust at him. “Hail, Cimbrian,” she said.

  Eodan gaped. The blood roared in his temples.

  She stood up, took a big two-handled silver cup and walked across to him. Her gait was a challenge. When she stood before him he could look down the loose open front of her dress. “Will you not drink with me?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said, in his own tongue, for Latin had no such simple way of agreeing. He took the goblet and hoisted it in hands that shook. He was no judge of wine, nor would he have cared tonight, but he noticed dimly that this was smooth and strong.

  “I have watched you go about,” said Cordelia. “I wanted to thank you for your ― services ― but it seemed best to let your wound heal first. And then today I saw you lift a cask I would have set two men to carry. I am very glad of that.”

  He handed her back the cup, still mute. “All of it?” she laughed. “But I wanted to share it w
ith you. As a pledge of friendship. Now we must pour another.”

  Her thigh brushed his as she turned. He gulped for air. “Come,” she said, took his hand and led him to the couch.

  The flask gurgled as she poured from it. “My husband was wrong to set a king to work in his fields,” she went on. “For I will not believe you were anything less than a king of your people. Perhaps we two can reach a better understanding ― for a while… “ She looked up at him, slantwise. “It will depend on you, largely.” She lifted the beaker again. “To our tomorrows. May they be better than our yesterdays.”

  They drank in turn. She sat down and drew him beside her. “I have tried and tried to pronounce that barbarous name of yours,” she said. “I will give you another. Hercules? Perhaps!”

  Suddenly her mouth was hot upon his.

  She stood up, breathing heavily. “I meant to eat first,” she said, quick slurred words through curling sweet smoke. “It would be leisurely, civilized, with much fine play. But that would be wrong with you, I see that now.” She reached out her arms. “Take off your tunic. Take off my gown. Let us keep the Floralia.”

  Much later, when the wine and the food were gone, the lamps burned out and the first thin gray creeping into the eastern sky, she ruffled his hair and smiled sleepily. “I will surely call you Hercules.”

  V

  After festival time, the latifundium went back into harness. Up in the villa there was the measured pace of days ― housework, garden work, much dawdling until some overseer went by, backbiting gossip, petty intrigues for women and position, sometimes after dark a furtive Asiatic ritual of magic or mystery. A womanish world. Eodan considered himself well out of it.

  But riding through the fields, where the sun and the whip blistered a hundred naked backs and all a man’s dreams finally narrowed to the day’s hoeing and the night’s shackled sleep, Eodan wondered with a chill how he had remained himself even for those few months he served. Winter had helped ― days on end where he sat idle with the others, dozing, cracking fleas, once or twice knocking a tooth out of someone who offered him loathsome consolations… Nevertheless, he searched himself as no Cimbrian had done before and knew that his servile time had indeed touched him. He went more warily through life, slowly learning how to guard his words. He would never again live wholly in the moment’s joy; he would always be thinking beyond ― where would the next attack come from, or how should he himself attack?