Free Search the Seven Hills by Barbara Hambly Page B

they have of examining slaves.” It came to him how monstrous it was that this slim, gentle-handed man, with all his skill and talent, would have to beg like a scullion or a concubine to be spared torture. He was a man of full life, thirty-five or so, and handsome in his way, with his close-trimmed beard and wary dark eyes. It was monstrous, thought Marcus, that he should have no more rights than a child, who at a father’s whim can be exposed upon the hillside for the wild dogs to eat.
    He supposed in his place someone else might have felt powerful, or magnanimous, to receive such pleading. But in his shabby toga, clutching his shopping basket in both awkward hands, he felt embarrassed and ridiculous. The noises in the atrium faded as Quindarvis and his train boiled through the vestibule doors. “All right,” he said quietly. “I won’t mention it to him, or to Lady Aurelia, and I’ll—I’ll do what I can to help Hylas. He’s not Quindarvis’ slave, after all; he can’t do anything to him.”
    “No,” said the Syrian doorkeeper, coming across the echoing marble of the empty hall. “But may the goddess Cybele help him—and all of us—when the master returns.” He took Marcus’ shopping basket from him and added to its contents a little bundle containing bread, some cold meats, and several sesterces: the usual handout a wealthy man gave to the clients who hung around his anterooms all day. “They’ll never miss an extra one,” he confided. “Thank you, sir.”
    From behind the curtain, Marcus heard a murmuring chorus of “Thank you, thank you...”
    The thanks embarrassed him, and the gift still more. As he hurried down the hill toward the Forum, he wondered at the terrible injustice of it, that these people should have to beg for safety, not from a judge or a lawgiver, but from a twenty-two-year-old dilettante philosopher, and not a particularly good one at that. They had shown their thanks in the only way they could, with goods pilfered from their master, and to Marcus’ eternal and acute discomfiture, he was aware that he could not have afforded to turn them down.
    For many months his father, faced with his stubborn desire to pursue a philosophic career, had refused to send him money, merely stipulating that he should come and ask for it when he was in need. He had done so, hating it, hating the old man, starving in his ramshackle room in the Subura tenement until Felix had persuaded their oldest brother Caius to change the arrangement. Caius had understood neither the philosophy nor the pride, but he was pragmatic enough to realize that with an income of ten sesterces every few weeks and a rental of a denarius per month, and no surety that that might not be raised (not to mention fluctuations in the market prices of various commodities), if his brother did not starve himself to death he would in very short order undertake disgraceful means of remedying the situation. “Didn’t know whether he meant crime or trade,” Felix had remarked, dropping the small wash-leather purse onto the plank table in front of Marcus one afternoon. “But the old paterfamilias nearly had a stroke at the thought of it. He’ll send old Straton over with one of these every quarter day. Mind you don’t blow it all on fast women and slow horses.”
    It was an improved situation. But not so improved, thought Marcus, as he pushed his way through the crowds in the spice markets that clustered at the rocky end of the Quirinal Hill, that he could afford to turn down free food, no matter what its source.
    The mob around the offices of the city bread dole was far thinner than usual at this hour of the morning. Most of them had got their tickets to the games in yesterday’s basket and would be at the Flavian already, defending their places against all comers. He passed a poster inked on the base of the statue of some defunct emperor, advertising them as being given in honor of the emperor’s victories by the praetors of the