Shadows of the Forum

Rome, January, AD 1

Cold. Cold was all that was left to her now. Had there been no chain at her wrists, she might almost have laughed. Who would have thought it? So far south of the Rhine, and she had never in her life been so cold.

Sam gave her wrists a tug. The chain rang along the line, and the woman chained beside her let out a low grumble. Sam turned to beg her pardon, but her tongue had gone as numb as her fingers.

Past her neighbour’s shoulder, a woman with a brown palla drawn over her head was haggling over a string of onions. Her little boy had already run off to the stall opposite, where sausages spat over a brazier, and stood pointing at them and calling back to his mother.

Sam held her back straight and would not let herself sway. On the road the dealer had fed his stock enough to keep them alive, and not a mouthful more. Now even the thin board on its cord about her neck had begun to drag at her. She looked down at it where it hung against her breastbone, on a worn tunic of summer wool that hid nothing. The letters stood upside down to her, painted in red.

GERMANA VIRGO

Sam lifted her chin and stared into the low grey sky above the colonnades. She let out a breath and watched it hang white in the air.

There is no snow there, nor any great storm, nor ever rain, but always Ocean sends up the soft-breathing West Wind to cool men.

Sam said it over and over under her breath. Father had loved the Odyssey. On many a winter night in the longhouse she had leaned against his side by the hearth while he told her of the heroes who sailed home from Troy, and the fire had sunk to embers before he was done.

Father.

Sam shook her head, but it would not go. The legionary dragging her into the yard, and she twisting against his grip to find her father, and there he was on his knees, both hands pressed to his belly and the blood seeping through his fingers. Behind him was the fire, already at his few scrolls.

The colonnades swam. Sam dragged in a breath of the cold air, and it burned all the way down. She let it out slowly. And the next breath hurt less.

The auctioneer climbed onto the platform and struck the iron ring on the post twice. All along the colonnade heads turned at the sound, and men began to drift over from the stalls.

“Here, citizens, here is the girl, fresh from the Rhine! Untouched, on my oath before the aediles. Sound in every limb.” He gathered her hair up off her shoulders and let it run through his fingers in the grey light. “Look at that hair, will you. The wigmakers would give a fortune for that alone. And the skin on her! She will warm a man’s bed better than any brazier, and breed him good house-born stock for years to come. Two thousand sesterces to begin!”

A murmur went through the crowd. At the back, two slaves were pushing a way through the press, and curses rose along their path. Then the men saw who walked behind them, and the broad purple stripe of a senator on the tunic beneath his cloak. One look at his face was enough to quiet them.

He was very tall. His hair was cropped close to the skull, with none of the oil that shone on the heads around him. A scar ran pale across one cheek, from the bone almost to the jaw. His mouth, thin to begin with, pressed thinner. He looked into her eyes as men at home looked at a river they meant to ford, judging the depth of it and the pull of the current. Every other man there had looked her over. Those dark eyes never left her face.

Sam did not look away.

“Two thousand five hundred!” someone called from the left.

The auctioneer seized on it. “Two thousand five hundred! Do I hear three?”

“Four thousand.” The man with the scar lifted one finger from the fold of his cloak.

The auctioneer’s brows went up, and then he was all smiles. “Four thousand from the senator! There is a man who knows quality when he sees it. Do I hear five?”

“Five thousand!” The bid came from a stout man pressed up close to the line, with rings crowded onto every finger of the hand he raised, whose eyes had not once come up as high as her face.

Under the scar, a muscle jumped once. The furrow between his brows cut deeper. For the first time his eyes left her face. They went to the back of the stout man’s head, without the least hurry. Then the finger lifted again.

“Eight thousand.”

The crowd fell silent. The man with the rings flung up his hand and turned away.

The auctioneer struck the iron ring on the post once more. “Sold, to the senator, for eight thousand sesterces!” He bowed low. “You will not regret a coin of it, noble lord. Not on the coldest night.”

Laughter broke out among the men. Some put their heads together, glancing now and then at the senator. Most of the others had already turned to look at the woman beside her.

Sam watched her new master come to the foot of the platform without hurry, his two slaves at his heels. The auctioneer unlocked her from the chain and pushed her towards the steps. “Down you go.”

Her legs had stood too long in the cold. On the last step her knee gave.

A hand caught her arm before she could fall. As soon as she had her feet on the paving, it let go. Sam looked up at his face. Nothing in it had changed.

“Move along, girl,” the auctioneer called down after her. “The senator has better things to do.” Then, in a voice gone too smooth: “Through to the yard, noble lord, if you please. You may see for yourself that she is all I swore, before the money changes hands. I would not have a man of your rank come back to me with complaints.”

Through a narrow gate they came into a small yard behind the platform. It reeked of old straw and urine. In the middle stood a wooden bench.

The auctioneer clapped his hands. “Strip her.”

Two of his men took hold of her. One dragged the tunic up over her head and off, and the other caught her arms behind her before she could cover herself. The air of the yard closed on her bare skin, and the shivering she had held down all afternoon took her whole body.

She fixed her eyes on the packed earth between her feet. The tears came anyway. With her arms held fast, she had to let them run warm down her cheeks.

Through the wet she could make out a pair of black boots, a few paces off. The auctioneer walked round her. He prodded the curve of her hip, then lifted one of her breasts in his palm and weighed it like a pomegranate at a stall.

“Flawless,” he declared. “Not a mark on her. And sealed, noble lord, tight as a Vestal. But if you want proof…” He nodded towards the bench. “Have her laid down there and I will open her for you. A quick look, nothing more. You may see for yourself.”

A sharp sound broke from Sam. The stripping she had borne, and those hands. But to be laid on that bench and inspected in front of them all.

Sam twisted against the hands that held her and threw all her weight forward. The men only shifted their grip, and held her tighter.

When she lifted her eyes, the senator was looking at her face, as he had while she stood on the platform.

“No,” he said flatly.

The auctioneer blinked, and recovered at once. “As you wish, noble lord. Only, most buyers like to be sure, at such a price. It costs nothing to look.”

“I said no.” The senator turned to the auctioneer. “I will take your word for it.” He stepped in until the shorter man had to tip his head back to meet them. “And if I find you have sold me anything other than what you swore, I will come back for you. Your tongue will be nailed up on my door before the month is out. Do you understand me?”

Sam saw the apple of the auctioneer’s throat move up and down. “Yes, noble lord. She is exactly as I swore. On my life.”

The auctioneer stepped back and wiped the sweat from his forehead, cold as the day was. Then he was smiling again. “Not every slave needs marking, noble lord. But the northerners are a slippery people. Turn your back and they are off into the night, and once one gets as far as the Alps, no man sees her again. A small mark on the thigh would settle it. My men can do it here and now, for a modest fee, of course.” He spread his hands. “Then she stays yours.”

Sam went rigid in the men’s hands. On the road south she had seen it done once, in the dealer’s pens. A boy who had tried to run. They held him face down over a trestle, and he screamed until his voice gave out, and the whole pen smelt of meat on a fire.

Sam’s eyes went to the senator. He had said no once.

But he was not looking at her. He drew a ring from his finger, a heavy thing of plain gold with a seal cut into it, and tossed it to the auctioneer. “Use this. Be quick.”

The auctioneer caught it. “At once, noble lord.” His men had her down on the bench, flat on her stomach, one of them bearing down on her shoulders. The other forced a strip of leather between her teeth. “Bite on that, girl. It helps.” Then he moved down the bench and pinned her legs.

Her cheek was pressed to the wood, and from there she could see a brazier in the corner of the yard, the first fire she had come near all day. The auctioneer took up the ring in a pair of tongs and held it in the coals until the gold glowed a dull red.

Before the gold touched her, she could feel its heat on the back of her thigh. She was shaking so hard that the bench rattled under her.

Then it pressed down.

For one moment it felt only like the snow on the high passes of the Alps, where the cold had bitten her fingers until they burned. Then the pain came. Sam screamed into the leather and threw her whole body up against the hands that held her, and could not shift them an inch. It went on and on. And there was the smell again, meat on a fire, and this time it was her.

She did not know when it ended. The men hauled her up off the bench and set her on her feet, and her legs would not hold her steady. She clutched one arm across her breasts. Her other hand went behind her to the burn, and stopped short of touching it.

The auctioneer dropped the ring into a bucket of water, where it hissed, wiped it on his tunic and handed it back. Then he took Sam by the arm and pulled her across to the senator. “She is yours, noble lord. May she serve you well.”

The senator slid the ring back onto his finger. Then he unpinned his cloak and put it round her shoulders. It was thick crimson wool, as heavy as her father’s winter cloak had been, and it still held the warmth of his body. Sam drew it close about her with both hands.

He held out his hand. “Come,” he said. “And do not think of running.”

Sam stared at it. Only after a moment did she lay hers in his. The palm was hard with old calluses, and it was warm. His ring pressed against her fingers, still cold from the water.

---

The litter swayed as the bearers took the steep street up the Palatine, the poles creaking on their shoulders. Sam sat huddled at the foot of the couch while the senator, her new master, reclined on one elbow among the cushions. She had his cloak drawn tight about her bare body. It smelt of wool and oiled metal, and under that of the man himself.

She stared at her knees. Each time the bearers jolted, the burn on her thigh flared again.

He had not even paused. The auctioneer had barely named it, and the ring was already off his finger.

Yet the other thing he had refused.

Mercy? Or only a man who would let no other hands touch what was his?

The auctioneer’s voice came back to her. May she serve you well.

Tonight.

Tonight he would take what he had paid for.

“Your name.”

Sam glanced up. He had been watching her from the cushions. For how long, she did not know.

“The board said Germana Virgo. What is it really?”

“Samantha, Domine.” Sam straightened. “Jacob’s daughter, of the house of Carter.”

“Sam-an-tha.” The senator tilted his head and tried it slowly, the foreign syllables awkward on his tongue. “Too long.” He considered her a moment. “Sam. That will do.”

She blinked, but did not protest. Her father had called her Sam.

“As you wish, Domine.” She lowered her eyes. A moment later they came up again and met his.

In all his years under the standards, Jack O’Neill had learned that captives kept their eyes on the ground. Few men cared to meet his for long. This one held his gaze like a legate’s sister.

In camp, only the young tirones had ever met it like that, in their first week, before they learned better.

“Not Domine,” he said. “You call me Sir.”

Her eyes widened a little.

“Yes, Sir.”

Jack grunted. “Your Latin is good. Who taught you?”

Sam hesitated before answering. “My father, Sir. He brought scrolls home.”

“Scrolls?” Jack shifted up on his elbow. “You read them?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“What did you read?” Jack sat up a little straighter.

“Histories, poetry, maps of the heavens. Whatever my father could find.”

He huffed. “A bed-slave who reads. The gods must be laughing.”

At the foot of the couch, Sam drew the cloak closer about her and seemed to grow smaller inside it. Her eyes did not leave his face.

Jack watched her a moment longer. Then the litter came level as the street flattened, and the bearers slowed and lowered it to the ground.

“We are here.” Jack swung his legs off the couch and drew back the curtain.

Past him, Sam saw a high wall rising into the dusk, blank but for a pair of tall doors studded with bronze. Torches burned on either side, and the studs caught their light. Jack took her by the wrist and drew her out after him. She came down barefoot onto a mosaic of black and white stones, where wolves ran after a stag across the threshold, and caught at the cloak as it slipped from her shoulder.

The doors stood open, and on the threshold waited a tall, spare man in a tunic of spotless white, his grey hair cropped as short as a soldier’s.

“Domine.” He bowed.

“Cato.” Jack gave a curt nod. “This is the new girl.” He pushed Sam forward with a hand at her back. “Eight thousand sesterces. More than I ever paid for a Greek grammarian.”

The atriensis looked her over once, from her tangled hair to her bare feet on the mosaic. Eight thousand. For a half-starved German girl who could barely stand.

“A rare prize, Domine. Shall I have her bathed, oiled and made ready for your chamber tonight?”

Jack’s eyes went to the girl, and his brow twitched, so slightly that anyone but Cato, who had served him since he was born, would have missed it. The Dominus took his pleasures where he found them, and he had never been one to leave a bought thing untouched. Beside him, the girl seemed to shrink still further into the cloak.

“No.” Jack was already turning towards the doors. “Not tonight. Clean her up. Put her to work tomorrow.”

“As you command, Domine.” Cato bowed his head to his master’s back.

Sam watched the Dominus go in through the doors and away into the lamplit house. The cloak about her shoulders felt suddenly thinner. She was alone in the vestibulum with the grey-eyed stranger.

“Come, girl.”

He led her through the atrium, past the dark water of the impluvium, and on beyond the household shrine into a small court where a fountain ran between beds of herbs. From there a narrow way brought them into a second court. It was paved with rough stone and smelt of smoke from the kitchen. Low doors ran along both sides, and through one that stood ajar she saw pallets laid close together on the floor. Near the far wall stood a tall post of oak with iron rings set into it. Beside it was a low wooden bench, worn pale along the middle.

Cato stopped in the middle of the court and turned to face her. “Look well, girl.” He nodded towards the bench. “A light fault, and you go over that for the rod. Afterwards you stand at the post through dinner, with nothing in your belly.” His eyes moved to the post. “Worse, and you hang there until morning.”

He watched her eyes go wide, and move from the bench to the post and back.

“You cost the Dominus eight thousand sesterces. I do not intend to see a coin of it wasted on a German who cannot be taught.” He folded his arms. “Step wrong once, and you will learn here. Do you understand?”

Sam nodded. Her eyes had not left the two dark shapes.

“Speak.”

“Yes,” she whispered.

“Good. Go and wash. Tomorrow you work.”