The First Reprieve

Sam laid the last piece of charcoal upon the pile, which she had built so carefully that not a lump stood out of its place, and sat back on her heels. Her eyes went to the water clock in the corner, where the drops fell slowly into the lower bowl. The morning was not yet half spent, and the midday meal lay hours away. She had eaten nothing since a crust the evening before.

There was always another task. On most days, when at last she reached the courtyard where the household took its meals, the others had eaten and gone, and she took whatever remained on the board, a heel of bread or a spoonful of cold lentils scraped from the bottom of the pot.

More than once she had come to the kitchen door for an extra piece of bread and found Brenna in full voice, her wooden ladle rising over the shoulders of one of the kitchen boys, and Sam had slipped back into the passage before the cook’s eye could fall on her. She returned to her work instead, for if it were not done in time, the next meal would be eaten without her.

She bent until her face was almost at the floor and searched the mosaic for any grain of ash she might have scattered. Beside one foot of the brazier lay a smudge, grey where the pattern ran white. Sam rubbed it away with the hem of her tunic and turned, still on her knees, towards the atrium.

It was only Nefert crossing it, a jug of water on her hip for the plants beside the impluvium. Sam smoothed her hem down over her knees.

In the dark last night, after the lamp had been put out, the women had talked. Four of them slept in that narrow room. Nefert lay on the pallet beside Sam, while Doris and Phoebe had theirs against the other wall. Phoebe seemed to Sam hardly more than a child, and the other two could not have been many years older than she was, but it was they who did the talking, whispering across the dark which of them the Dominus would send for next. Doris had been called before. That much was plain from the way Nefert asked her what he was like, and from the laugh with which Doris told her she would have to find out for herself.

Phoebe had sat bolt upright and hissed at them to be quiet, which only sent the two older women into fresh laughter beneath their blankets.

Sam had lain on her side, for her back still could not bear the pallet, and wondered what those women could see that was merry in it. Janet had told her that a woman the Dominus favoured was given lighter work and better food. But among Sam’s own people a woman went to one man, and only when he had brought his oxen and his shield before her father and her father had accepted them. Here a man who had paid eight thousand sesterces for her might have her brought to him whenever he pleased, and the women laughed about it and seemed to long for it.

Sam sighed. She set the shovel across the mouth of the ash pot and pushed herself up from the mosaic.

A scroll lay open on the desk. One end had slipped over the edge, and the next draught from the atrium would bring it down. Sam wiped her fingers on the rag at her girdle as she went.

She had the loose end in her hand when a line caught her eye.

Roused by the slaughter at Cenabum and the labour of the siege, they spared neither the aged nor women nor infants. In the end, of the whole number, which was about forty thousand, scarcely eight hundred, who had fled the town at the first shout, came safe to Vercingetorix.

Caesar’s Gallic War. Her father had kept a few scrolls in a chest at home, brought back from his years in Rome. Every man in Rome had read this one, he had told her once.

“What do you think you are doing?”

Her head came up. Cato was already across the threshold, and his face was darker than on the day he had found the Dominus’s broad-striped tunic soaking among the slaves’ washing in the common tub.

“I… I was putting it away.” Sam shrank back against the shelves behind the desk. “It was falling.”

“You do not learn, do you.” Cato had stopped in front of her. “You do not answer back!”

Sam pressed her lips together.

Cato looked down at the scroll. He rolled it shut and laid it at the edge of the desk, square with the other rolls and the tablets, and when he turned, his palm came hard across Sam’s cheek.

She cried out, and her hand went to her face. She could already taste blood.

Cato’s grey eyes held her. “Anything in this room, anything in this house, you do not touch unless the Dominus or I tell you to. Understand?”

Sam nodded. Her cheek was wet beneath her fingers.

“Go and wait in the courtyard. Thirty-six strokes.”

Her breath went in sharply. Thirty-six. The welts from the last one had not yet closed. Sam bit into her lip, for a single word would only cost her more, and with her head lowered she went towards the door.

“Have you not forgotten something?”

Sam stopped. The ash pot stood at her feet. She took it up and went out.

---

For once Caesar rose from his council before the day was half gone, and Jack walked the short way home across the Palatine with the afternoon still before him.

It was in the vestibule, while the porter drew back the door, that he remembered the girl. Eight thousand sesterces, and in a fortnight he had not so much as asked after her. He had meant to send for her before now. Tonight, then.

The atrium was still after the streets, and water ran softly into the impluvium. Then, from somewhere at the back of the house, came the whistle and snap of a rod, and a girl’s cry that broke into sobbing.

“Twenty-seven.” It was Cato’s voice, and it did not hurry.

Jack stopped. Twenty-seven. That was no light correction.

He went on towards the courtyard. The rod whistled again, and the cry that followed ended in a gasp.

“Twenty-eight.”

Over the low bench beside the post lay a girl, her hair loose and hanging almost to the stones, and it was by its gold that he knew her. Her tunic had been drawn down to her waist, and the winter sun lay pale on her bare back. Cato stood over her with the hazel rod. When it fell, the sound came back off the courtyard walls, and Sam screamed into the wood.

“Twenty-nine.”

The rod rose and fell again. Jack had seen Cato take it to new slaves before, and never like this.

He should stop it. The girl was his, bought for his bed at a price no man in Rome would have paid for a kitchen drudge, and Cato was laying open the skin he had paid for. But about the courtyard, slaves had stopped in their work to watch. If the Dominus called off his atriensis in front of them, and for the new German girl, every slave in the house would know by nightfall what she was worth to him, and Cato would never again be obeyed as he had been.

Jack set his face and turned towards the tablinum.

He sat down at the desk. The brazier had been laid fresh, and the rolls and tablets lay squared at its edge. He drew the nearest towards him, and it fell open in his hands.

Roused by the slaughter at Cenabum and the labour of the siege, they spared neither the aged nor women nor infants.

He pushed it away. From the back of the house the count went on.

“Thirty-five.”

The rod fell once more.

“Thirty-six.”

After that there was no sound from the courtyard but her crying, and after a while not even that.

Jack’s hand was still flat on the roll.

He let an hour go by. The light had gone from the desk and climbed halfway up the wall before he sent for his atriensis, and when Cato came in and bowed, Jack was bending over a tablet, turning a stylus between his fingers.

“The new girl, Sam.” He did not look up. “Is she learning her work?”

Cato straightened. “Poorly, Domine. The girl does not learn. She put your tunic in with the slaves’ washing, she drops jars, and she answers back.” He drew breath. “And today I caught her at your desk. Reading.”

He let that stand a moment.

“A waste, if you ask me. But I will break the habit soon enough.”

Jack traced the stylus across the tablet. “She is not for the kitchen, Cato. And we have enough jars.” He finished the line he was writing. “Have her made ready tonight.”

Cato almost believed he had misheard. In a fortnight the Dominus had not once mentioned the girl, and Cato had taken it that he had tired of her before he had begun. Now he would have her tonight, with her back as it was.

“As you command, Domine,” Cato said. “She will be ready.”

Cato found Janet in the kitchen. She stood at the table with Brenna and two other women, and whatever they had been saying ended as he came through the door. Brenna turned back to her pot.

“The girl,” Cato said. “Bathe her and oil her skin. Leave her hair loose. A clean tunic. The Dominus has sent for her tonight.”

Janet’s answer came a moment late. “Yes, Cato.”

When he had gone, Brenna poured wine into a small jug, cut it with warm water from the hearth, and set it at Janet’s elbow.

“For her back,” she said. “It stings less.”

Janet found Sam on her pallet, lying face down with her cheek turned to the wall. She did not lift her head at the sound of the door. Janet set the basin and the jug on the floor and knelt, and for a while she only smoothed the damp hair back from her face.

“The Dominus has sent for you,” she said at last. “Tonight.”

Sam’s fingers closed on the edge of the blanket. She had known it would come, from the moment he paid for her. But she could not lie on her back now. Her shoulders began to shake.

“I know, I know.” Janet wrung out the cloth over the basin. “Just… do not fight him, child. Do as he bids you, and tomorrow will be easier for it, and the day after.”

Sam kept her face to the wall. After a while she nodded.

Janet washed the welts with the warm wine and oiled the places where the tunic would lie, so that the cloth would not cling to them. Then she helped Sam into a clean tunic and combed out her hair until it lay loose over her shoulders.

Cato was waiting outside the door. He looked her over once and nodded.

“Go up,” he said. “If he sends you down before morning, you will go over the bench again.”

“Yes, Cato,” Sam whispered.

He stood aside to let her pass.

The house was dark by then. Sam went through the little courtyard, where there was no sound but the water from the fountain. The stairs stood at the far side. She climbed them with one hand on the wall, and at every step the tunic drew across her back.

Above, the gallery ran round the open well of the court. The chamber was only a few steps from the stair, yet she stood a long while at the top before she could make herself go on. Gaius, the Dominus’s attendant, sat on his heels beside the door with his chin on his knees. He glanced at her once before returning to the tile he had been studying. The door was ajar. Inside lay a small antechamber, and to one side a curtain had been drawn back. Beyond the curtain, Jack sat at a low table with a lamp at his elbow and a scroll open before him. Sam knelt on the floor before him and bowed her head.

“Sir.”

Jack looked up from the scroll and leaned back in his chair.

“Stand up. Turn round and take off your tunic.”

For a moment Sam stayed on her knees. Then she pushed herself up and turned her back to him. The cord at her waist would not at first loosen. When at last she had drawn the tunic over her head and let it fall, she crossed her arms over her breast and waited.

Behind her, the chair did not so much as creak.

Jack sat very still. He had expected the thirty-six. They ran in dark ridges across her back from shoulder to waist, and where they crossed one another the skin had split. Beneath them lay older marks, already yellowing, from some earlier day. She was thin, too. The blades of her shoulders stood out sharp under the lamp.

“Enough,” he said. “Cover yourself.”

Sam gathered the tunic from the floor and drew it on, and stood with her eyes lowered, waiting.

Jack turned his head towards the door. “Gaius.”

The boy was there at once.

“Supper. Enough for two.”

Gaius went. Jack returned to his scroll, and Sam stood where she was with her eyes on the floor. Neither of them spoke.

It was some while before Gaius came back. He set a tray on the low table, with bread and oil, cheese and olives, pork in garum, a dish of dried figs and a jug of honeyed wine. Then he backed out of the room.

Jack nodded at the table. “Sit and eat.”

Sam’s eyes went from the food to the Dominus, and she did not move.

Jack tore bread from the loaf and dipped it in the oil. A piece of cheese followed it before he had finished chewing. Then he glanced at her and sighed. He drew a plate towards him, put bread and cheese on it with a few olives, and pushed it across to her side of the table.

“Come here and eat. It’s not a trick.”

Sam came to the table. She did not take the stool, but knelt beside it, as far from him as the table allowed, and took the smallest piece of bread from the plate. She ate it slowly, with her eyes on his face.

The bread was soft, and still warm from the hearth. She took a larger bite. Before it was down, she was already reaching for the young cheese, so soft that it ran over her fingers. It went into her mouth with the bread still unswallowed, and a few olives after it, until her cheeks were full.

Sam reached for the plate again and looked up. The Dominus had stopped eating. He was watching her.

Her hand went to her mouth to hide the food she was still chewing. With the other she tried to wipe away the oil that had run down to her elbow, but it had already left a mark on the front of the clean tunic Janet had put on her. Then her shoulders began to shake.

Jack looked away. After a while he pushed a square of linen across the table towards her.

“Wipe your face,” he said. “Then eat.”

Sam hid her face behind the cloth. “Thank you, Sir.” It came out barely above a whisper.

When her plate was empty and she had grown quiet, Jack spoke again.

“What were you reading today?”

Sam drew herself up on her knees. “Sir, the scroll was falling. I only…”

“I asked what you were reading.”

“Caesar, Sir. On the war in Gaul.” She lowered her face, but her eyes came up to his once more.

The corner of Jack’s mouth moved. He could see why Cato had trouble with her. He leaned back in his chair, one finger tapping on its arm.

“From tomorrow you will work in my tablinum and in this room. Tablets, scrolls, lamps, my clothes, whatever wants tending.” He nodded towards the adjoining alcove. “You will sleep there, and you will stay within call. Clear?”

Sam turned and looked at the alcove in the corner of the chamber, its curtain drawn back at one side. To sleep so near him? But there would be no Cato.

“Yes, Sir.” She bowed her head low.

Jack nodded once. “Eat. There is enough. I’ll have salve sent up for this.” His hand moved vaguely towards her back.

Later, when the lamps had been trimmed low and the house was asleep, Sam lay face down on the narrow pallet in the alcove. The blanket over her was of soft wool, one of his own, and it smelled faintly of the cedar chest it had lain in. Her stomach was full, and no rod waited for her at dawn.

Sam turned her face into the wool, and after a while it was wet beneath her cheek.

She was asleep before the last lamp guttered.