B007IIXYQY EBOK (4 page)

He had always known that when he judged himself grown tall enough and sturdy enough in body to survive the life of a fugitive, he would run for freedom. Now he was nearly as tall as Grannus, and the muscles of his arms were supple and hard from lifting loads too great for a boy. When this new master led him into the streets he would break and run: the swarms of idlers, beggars and tenement dwellers crowding the vendors’ stalls would flow about him and make pursuit difficult. He would not be given a better chance. It must be so. He felt himself quickly dying, and he was not yet fourteen years old.

Wretched as this life was, it was not this that finally drove him to risk the hazards of escape. It was the knowledge that all about him behind high walls were storehouses of books, forever beyond his reach.

By a cruel trick of fortune Endymion knew of books and reading. In fact, this ragged boy knew as well as the most learned scholar in the city the writings of the Stoic philosopher Seneca. His fourth master, a bootmaker, on learning Endymion could write in a neat, clear hand, had hired him out to a scriptorium—a hall where slave scribes laboriously copied out the books bound for the bookstalls. Endymion did not remember who taught him to read; at times he caught a shadowed memory of a shimmering woman who emanated kindness, but always she dissolved in white mist; he supposed her to be a literate slave nurse who had charge of him for a time before he was sold away.

It happened that this scriptorium produced chiefly the works of Seneca, whose steady stream of treatises, tragedies and works of poetry were more than enough to keep twenty slaves employed. The words of the great philosopher became as familiar to the boy as the beat of blood in the temple, the rhythm of breathing. They lived in his mind like the words of parents might have, had his parents kept him, or the commands of a priestess or priest at a child’s first visit to the temple of the family’s patron god. One day he would be comforted by some phrase of the philosopher’s, then the next he was not certain he knew what it meant. He had heard love described as a sort of sweet torment, and he decided philosophy was the same. That the other slaves of the scriptorium were not so affected made him wonder at times if he were mad.

The master of the scriptorium rid himself of the boy when Endymion began to insert his own words into the manuscripts. Once after he obediently copied “…
the wise man is not owned by what he owns, and so is happy. And the swiftest course to happiness is to possess little or nothing,”
he added,
“Then why are not slaves, who possess nothing, the happiest and wisest of men?”

The master of the scriptorium had him soundly beaten. Shortly after, he was sold to a ropemaker who passed him on to the mule driver who sold him to Lucius Grannus.

But the half-understood ideas penned in a waking dream followed him here to the fuller’s shop, beckoning him to the world’s edge, shredding his peace, threatening with death while they promised luminous life.

All the cautions Endymion had heard throughout his life battered his ears then. Slaves in Rome cannot escape. Not your master but the whole city is your jailer. No door will open to you and every hand is lifted against you—or held out for the reward when you are captured.

“He comes with a warning, now,” Lucius Grannus was saying to Terentius, who had come to buy. Grannus was a shaggy brute with bright obtuse eyes and a look of sluggish petulance. He had begun life as a field slave on an estate in Gaul and had earned his freedom by performing as a wrestler. “He’s vicious, and he thieves,” Grannus went on. “So don’t slink off and complain of me to the magistrate, I break no law in selling him—I’ve told you his vices.”

Terentius narrowed his eyes skeptically. He had already determined that Grannus would sell a spavined donkey to his own mother. But the boy would do, he thought, in spite of Lucius Grannus. He approved of that wild and unbroken look in the boy’s dark eyes. Terentius sought intractable slaves no one else wanted. The more spirited they were, the longer they lasted turning the wheel of the great crane that his own employer, a contractor in the service of the Imperial Ministry of Works, used for raising mammoth blocks of travertine. It was the docile ones, Terentius always argued, who succumbed first.

Terentius took Endymion’s chin in a sunburnt hand and wrenched the boy’s head to one side as though inspecting an animal for soundness. Endymion felt molten rage spurt through his limbs. Not now, he cautioned himself. Be still a little longer. In a few moments I will either be free and an animal no longer, or in Hades.

“What did he thieve?” Terentius was forced to shout to be heard over the din from the street: The barks of hawkers vied with the moans of tavern songs and the hollow ricocheting shrieks from a cheap bathhouse across the narrow street.

“Books,” Grannus answered aggressively, sensing Terentius doubted all he said.

“Books?
The wretch
reads?”

Grannus grinned. “He can turn the wheel all day and read Greek love poems to you at night. Like getting two for one price, is it not?” Grannus’ laughter made Terentius think of a panting dog.

Endymion coughed. “He is diseased,” Terentius said.

“Not so. It’s only the sulfur fumes.” Grannus indicated the whole shop with a gesture of a hairy hand. “They all cough.” Behind him the Syrian slaves whose task was to tread the clothes in the vats were seated on a bench, noisily lapping an evening meal of cabbage, beans and vinegar water—more like animals feeding at a manger than men taking a meal. Over them an owl was carved into the wall, the symbol of Minerva, the patroness of fullers. Terentius guessed the raw patches on the treaders’ legs were caused by the urine, which was collected from the public tanks set out in front of every tenement for the fullers’ use. Now that the sinister liquid was undisturbed, the two great vats in which the clothes were trod looked like squares of black marble marking a tomb. In the dimly lit room beyond, other slaves still worked, draping tunics and togas on wickerwork frames and spreading them over burning pots of sulfur; the thick foul smoke made him feel he had come upon a fissure to the underworld. Terentius was grateful he worked beneath the sun.

“He’s comely. Quite the proud young colt,” said Terentius, noticing how carefully the boy watched him, the somber eyes flickering with restless intelligence. Terentius gathered up some of Endymion’s silken black hair and fondled it. This hair is too long for a slave, Terentius thought; it would only breed lice. When his hand moved lazily down, drawn to the boy’s thigh, Endymion pulled sharply back. “Not trained for other duties, I see,” Terentius said affably. “All right, Grannus, I’ll give you fifty. I’ve five more to look at today; I’m a man in a hurry.”

“I said I’d sell him, not give him as a gift.” Grannus put a hand the size of a frying pan around Endymion’s shoulders and pretended to lead the boy away. “Well, my boy, your fortunes have turned. Looks like you get to live out your life romping in piss after all. You’re lucky I have you—this man’s so loath to part with his money the only meat you’d get is the roasted flesh of the boys that get crushed under the slipped blocks.”

“Come back here, Grannus, you mule. Sixty. And not one sesterce more. I could get a skilled mason for that. And there better not be anything else wrong with him. Wait, and what is this?”

Terentius fumbled in Endymion’s dirty tunic and held up an amulet about the boy’s neck, holding it close to the smoking Medusa lamp suspended from the ceiling. “What sort of amulet is this? It’s an odd one.”

“Who knows or cares? I won’t charge you extra for it.”

Terentius held it to his nose. “Smells like dirt. He’s got a bag of dirt around his neck. I want it off him. It’s some witchery and it’s filthy.”

Grannus pulled a small knife from his belt and reached for the thong on which the amulet was hung. Endymion’s eyes flared.

“You will not touch it!” The boy’s clear young voice pulled both of them up short like a hard yank on a rein. The Syrian treaders looked up briefly before resuming their contented feeding. Terentius laughed in surprise, as though a mule had acquired human speech.

The black leather amulet had hung around Endymion’s neck always. He supposed his father or mother had put it there, those shadowy parents who must have been. Who else would have done so? All he had of a family was this pathetic bit of evidence that once, he must have had one. Protecting it was a reflex of survival, like protecting his own heart.

Grannus’ bristly cheeks reddened. “Here’s one last lesson in manners.” He took up his leather strap and lashed it hard across the boy’s face.

Endymion’s soul was dry tinder, bursting into flame. He erupted into motion without thought, feeling he vaulted out over a dark chasm. Perhaps he would clear it, perhaps not—he no longer cared.

He raised his bound hands and struck the hanging Medusa lamp, sloshing hot oil into Grannus’ face. The fuller yelped. While Grannus was still blinded, he kicked him with one determined blow to the back of the knee, toppling him into the urine-filled vat. Then while Terentius watched, immobilized with surprise, Endymion sprang for the open door, swift and direct as the arrow from the bow.

“Whoreson! Spawn of a snake!” Grannus shouted, sputtering, as he struggled up, his mane of hair plastered to his head by the liquid of the vats. “Ajax! Syphax!” he cried out to his two sturdily built doorkeepers. “Get him or I’ll see you whipped to the bone!”

As Grannus hauled himself out, soaked and dripping, he growled to Terentius, “On your way. Out of my shop. I’ll not sell him now, I mean to have him crucified.” Then Grannus sprinted out after the boy and the pursuing doorkeepers, loud squishing sounds from his sodden sandals accompanying every stride.

As Endymion burst into the crowded street, the first rush of freedom made him feel like a young god. The sluggish air of the Subura, reeking of burnt garlic and dung, seemed to him fresh and bracing as a sea wind. His feet pounding the lava cobbles of the street seemed to shout “I can live!” His blood surged in a joyous torrent. With every sense he thought: And this is how I will live—I will outrun and I will outthink whatever comes for me.

From behind him came sharp quick shouts, frantic scuffling. He half turned once to see Ajax and Syphax, followed by Grannus, in vigorous pursuit.

“Runaway!” Grannus bellowed as he ran. “Friends! Neighbors! Help. Runaway boy!” After a moment’s hesitation—the thought of parting with any sum was painful to him—he shouted out, “Reward. Twenty sesterces!”

The neighbors and idlers who saw the boy erupt from the door of Lucius Grannus’ shop knew at once that this was a runaway. But for long moments no one stirred; half looked on in wine-soaked apathy, while the rest would not aid Grannus because they despised him—all had heard reports that the fuller was in the habit of returning worn clothes for garments given to him new, while occasionally passing a once-washed toga to an obliging Praetor’s clerk so that no one dared prosecute in the courts. But after a moment two brown-skinned boys, sons of an Ethiopian freedman, became excited by the reward; they sprinted after Endymion, eager as young hounds.

Endymion knew he had to free his hands—he ran too awkwardly with them bound. The street sheltered him as he knew it would; to the regular chaos of the Subura were added crowds of poor free workers with sacks of tools slung on their shoulders, returning at evening to their tenement rooms, ranks of haughty attendants accompanying the occasional wealthy man in his litter as he returned from the law courts, schoolchildren singing or fighting as they moved through the street, and ragged lines of priests and priestesses of Cybele, striking blunted swords against shields with less fire and energy now as they departed their temple than when they set out in the morning.

Endymion darted between two donkeys daintily picking their way over the cobbles, both laden with great baskets of plums projecting precariously on either side. One reared, pitching plums into the street. As his pursuers stumbled and slipped in them, Endymion forced a path through a crowd about a barber’s shop. In the short moments when he was concealed, he skidded to a stop and thrust his hands into a sausage vendor’s brazier. He ground his teeth in agony as the glowing charcoal singed his flesh as well as the cord.

He looked up and met the eyes of Ajax and Syphax, no farther off than the width of the street. They burst forward with renewed energy. Endymion forced himself to calmness. Once more he put his hands into the brazier.

The sausage vendor turned and came for him, shouting. Ajax lunged at the boy, seizing the cloth of his tunic. Endymion jerked his hands apart with all his strength. The cord broke.

The boy dropped to the street and rapidly rolled over once; the cloth of his tunic ripped. All Ajax got was a torn bit of it as the Endymion scrambled up again. Sausages tumbled into the street, to be snatched up instantly by beggar children who fell on them like a flock of crows. Endymion shot forward again in a frenzied run.

He dashed round an auctioneer’s platform, struggling through knots of people, stepping on feet, nearly knocking a public notice-writer off his ladder. Then he was caught and slowed by a playful group of prostitutes with great gold hoops in their ears, their silken tunicas and shawls vibrant as parrot feathers. They grasped him by the waist, slowing him, aggressively fondling him. He looked back and saw Grannus’ wet head bobbing above the crowd as the fuller swiftly gained ground. Before him, the throng grew thicker. The first blush of freedom had faded, and now dull terror crept in. The crowds were an evil mire, hindering him, holding him, sucking him down.