The Golden Slave by Poul William Anderson (best desktop ebook reader TXT) 📖

have had him, the last of them perhaps only yesterday! Mark my words, it is the sign of an unruly heart. It is such men who lead slave revolts. If he were mine, I would geld him and sell him to the lead mines."

"Some men were born gelded," said Phryne coldly, and left. She could almost see the crisscrossing of thin white lines on Eodan's shoulderblades. She avoided him for a while, uncertain why she did so.

And the springtime waxed. Each day the sun stood higher; each day a new bird-song sounded in the orchard. One morning fields and trees showed the finest transparent green, as if the goddess had only breathed on them in the night. And then at once, unable to wait, the leaves themselves burst out and the orchard exploded in pale fire.

It happened Cordelia was complaining of a headache again; she must lie in a dark room and make everyone creep by. Phryne, who considered her mistress as strong as a cow, found an excuse to leave the villa. She would gather apple blossoms and arrange them for Cordelia's delight.

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, they 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 thunder-cloud.

"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