Free The Eagle of the Ninth [book I] by Rosemary Sutcliff Page B

thereafter,’ said Uncle Aquila.

VI
ESCA
     
    T HE purchase was arranged next day, without much difficulty, for although the price that Marcus could afford was not large, Beppo, the master of the circus slaves, knew well enough that he was not likely to get a better one for a beaten gladiator. So, after a little haggling, the bargain was struck, and that evening after dinner Stephanos went to fetch home the new slave.
    Marcus waited for their return alone in the atrium, for Uncle Aquila had retired to his watch-tower study to work out a particularly absorbing problem in siege warfare. He had been trying to read his uncle’s copy of the Georgics, but his thoughts kept wandering from Virgil on bee-keeping to the encounter before him. He was wondering for the first time—he had not thought to wonder before—why the fate of a slave gladiator he had never before set eyes on should matter to him so nearly. But it did matter. Maybe it was like calling to like; and yet it was hard to see quite what he had in common with a barbarian slave.
    Presently his listening ear caught the sound of an arrival in the slaves’ quarters, and he laid down the papyrus roll and turned towards the doorway. Steps came along the colonnade, and two figures appeared on the threshold. ‘Centurion Marcus, I have brought the new slave,’ said Stephanos, and stepped discreetly back into the night; and the new slave walked forward to the foot of Marcus’s couch, and stood there.
    For a long moment the two young men looked at each other, alone in the empty lamplit atrium as yesterday they had been alone in the crowded amphitheatre, while the scuff-scuffling of Stephanos’s sandals died away down the colonnade.
    ‘So it is you,’ the slave said at last.
    ‘Yes, it is I.’
    The silence began again, and again the slave broke it. ‘Why did you turn the purpose of the crowd yesterday? I did not ask for mercy.’
    ‘Possibly that was why.’
    The slave hesitated, and then said defiantly, ‘I was afraid yesterday; I, who have been a warrior. I am afraid to choke out my life in the Fisher’s net.’
    ‘I know,’ Marcus said. ‘But still, you did not ask for mercy.’
    The other’s eyes were fixed on his face, a little puzzled. ‘Why have you bought me?’
    ‘I have need of a body-slave.’
    ‘Surely the arena is an unusual place to pick one.’
    ‘But then, I wished for an unusual body-slave.’ Marcus looked up with the merest quirk of a smile into the sullen grey eyes fixed so unswervingly on his own. ‘Not one like Stephanos, that has been a slave all his life, and is therefore—nothing more.’
    It was an odd conversation between master and slave, but neither of them was thinking of that.
    ‘I have been but two years a slave,’ said the other quietly.
    ‘And before that you were a warrior—and your name?’
    ‘I am Esca, son of Cunoval, of the tribe of Brigantes, the bearers of the blue war-shield.’
    ‘And I am—I was, a centurion of auxiliaries with the Second Legion,’ Marcus said, not knowing quite why he made the reply, knowing only that it had to be made. Roman and Briton faced each other in the lamplight, while the two statements seemed to hang like a challenge in the air between them.
    Then Esca put out a hand unconsciously and touched the edge of the couch. ‘That I know, for the goaty one, Stephanos, told me; and also that my Master has been wounded. I am sorry for that.’
    ‘Thank you,’ Marcus said.
    Esca looked down at his own hand on the edge of the couch, and then up again. ‘It would have been easy to escape on my way here,’ he said slowly. ‘The old goaty one could not have held me back if I had chosen to break for freedom. But I chose to go with him because it was in my heart that it might be you that we went to.’
    ‘And if it had been another, after all?’
    ‘Then I should have escaped later, to the wilds where my clipped ear would not betray me. There are still free tribes beyond the Frontiers.’