Free Outcast by Rosemary Sutcliff Page A

them. I am a poor man and——’
    ‘As you will. I may look at them if I have found nothing
to suit me in the meantime,’ said the most gracious lady. ‘Hirpinius, do you walk my way? No? Until our next meeting, then.’ She made a gesture to her golden Gauls: the embroidered curtain fell back into place, and the litter-bearers moved off, carrying their burden, with the maid walking beside it.
    Beric was herded back into the pen, and squatted hopelessly down again in his corner.
    The hours dragged by, and in the crowded slave-market there seemed less and less air to breathe. Three of his fellow-slaves were sold. One of them, a big negro, had been friendly, and if it were possible for Beric to feel more desolate than he did already, he would have done so as he watched the broad black figure follow his new master away. Long past noon, when the slave-market was almost deserted and the pavements threw back the heat like the blast from an oven, a man came by, glanced at Beric, hesitated, and came back. He was a young man with a broad, pleasant face, and carried himself as though used to the weight of a soldier’s harness. He spoke to Ben Malachi, but his gaze remained on Beric, and meeting it, Beric was filled with a sudden desperate hope, and got up without waiting to be kicked to his feet by the slave-driver.
    ‘How much do you want for him?’ the young man was asking, cutting short Ben Malachi’s usual flow of praise for his wares.
    ‘Only two thousand sesterces, Centurion.’
    ‘One thousand,’ said the young man.
    ‘The centurion makes a jest.’ Ben Malachi spread his hands and smiled. ‘Nineteen hundred, my dear.’
    ‘Eleven hundred.’
    The bargaining was so quick and quiet that Beric could scarcely follow it, but he understood all too clearly when at last the young man said with a little gesture of finish:
    ‘Thirteen hundred and fifty. I can go no higher.’
    ‘Seventeen hundred,’ said the Jew. ‘You will not get a good strong slave to take with you into Dacia for less than that anywhere, my dear.’

    ‘Then I must needs go without one.’
    ‘Sixteen hundred and fifty—take him for sixteen hundred and fifty!’ wailed Ben Malachi. ‘And may it never come between you and sleep that you have ruined an old man!’
    ‘I cannot go beyond thirteen fifty; I have not got it,’ said the young man, already turning away. Over his shoulder he looked back. ‘I am sorry,’ he said, not to Ben Malachi, but to Beric himself. Then he was gone: and Beric, feeling suddenly sick, sat down again.
    More time crawled by. Two more of Ben Malachi’s slaves found purchasers. The westering sun slanted across the slave-market, which had become crowded again; and still Beric sat in his corner, where the stones were beginning to cool in the widening shade. He was no longer thinking, just sitting, with his elbows on his knees and his aching head in his hands, while still the feet of the throng moved by: saffron shoes of a priest, nailed sandals of a gladiator … . He was roughly jerked out of the half stupor into which he had sunk, to find that another purchaser had appeared. Thrust forward by the heavy hand of the slave-driver, he found himself standing before a small stout man with a puckered pink face, and hot-tempered eyes of very faded blue which were looking him up and down exactly as they might have studied the points of a pony—save that probably they would have had more of kindness in them for a pony.
    After the first glance, his head went down, and he stood with stubborn, hunched shoulders, and wide-planted feet, staring at the small man’s stomach, which was round and pompous.
    ‘Is this the best you have?’ the small man was demanding.
    ‘I have a very pretty Syrian boy, Excellency——’
    ‘The whole market is full of pretty Syrian boys. I have had them before, and they thieve like monkeys.’ Excellency sounded both tired and exasperated.
    A depressed-looking man hovering just behind him said