“Think of this now. What if all the slaves in that household swore a pact that they would rise up together? What if a god bound them to it, and they stayed true? We’ve proved that this can work. That’s why many who were in Vatia’s ludus are not there anymore. That’s why Vatia is dead, and we live. If we could do that, the slaves of some villa can. And if they can, the slaves of every villa can. Every city and mine and field of the country can.” He pauses, jaw loose as if there’s a thought between his teeth that he doesn’t wish to crush. “Now do you see?”
Of all the people gathered there, it’s a boy who answers. One of the sheep herders from this area. He is, Spartacus thinks, the twin of the girl whom Astera has taken to her side. He says, so quietly Spartacus just barely hears it, “We? We are the army?”
The boy on one side of him knocks him with a knee. The one on the other hisses for him not to be stupid.
Spartacus locks his eyes on the twin. “Yes, we who have risen are this army. But it could be more than just us.” The twin has the answer. Spartacus can see that. He just needs to pull it from him. “Who else could make the army of the risen?”
“Slaves,” the boy says. “All of them. All of us, I mean.”
Spartacus shines a grin on the boy and whispers, “Yes. You have it! What is your name?”
“Hustus.”
“Stand now, Hustus. Let us change places.” Spartacus motions him up. He pulls him out from the spot he had occupied and spins himself to take his seat instead. He shoulders in among the other sheep-herding boys, thin-limbed and spare next to his bulk. Looking up at the stunned boy, he says, “You have it. Now tell them so that they will have it too.” He motions toward the restless ranks around them.
For a moment, the boy looks as if he’d rather bolt from the company than open his mouth. But this boy, Spartacus already knows, does not have a shy nature. It just takes him a few glances at his audience for him to find his voice. He opens his mouth, and he tells them.
Kaleb
“You are sure you want the Ethiopian to stay?” Marcus Terentius Varro asks. He indicates whom he means with a waggle of his finger. “I don’t mind these others hearing us, but this one…his eyes are a tad too clever.”
Marcus Licinius Crassus purses his lips before responding. He does this often, always looking, briefly, as if he’s deciding what to say from among a selection of choices. He says, “I trust no living being with more of the intimate details of my dealings than I do Kaleb here. Not even my wife gets the earful of complaints he does. We have no secrets, do we, Kaleb?”
“No, master,” Kaleb says. “Nothing within me is unknown to you.” He raises his eyes from the tablet he’s pressing figures into for only the brief moment he speaks. He knows that Crassus wants him always to be at work, even when he’s engaging him in conversation. Words delivered, he looks down again.
“See?” Crassus smiles at his guest. Kaleb doesn’t see the smile, but he doesn’t have to. His master’s voice has a different tone to it when the edges of his lips are raised. He can see the features of his square, heavy-jawed face with equal clarity whether he’s looking at him or just imagining him. He knows, even, when strands of his gray-streaked hair fall in front of his eyes. He’s tested it before. Looking down, he waits until he thinks the troublesome lock has swung free. If he can, he glances up. Each time he’s been right. He doesn’t even feel a need to test it anymore.
“Yes, but this matter is delicate,” Varro says. He adjusts the folds of his toga, seemingly displeased with the way the drape falls. “Delicate, indeed.” His fingers sort through the tray of morsels wrapped in grape leaves on the small circular table beside him. Having squeezed several morsels, he finds one that he likes the feel of. He plucks it up and shoves it into the right side of his mouth. He always does that. Kaleb suspects the teeth on the left side pain him. Chewing, he says, “The slaves are likely wagging their tongues into a storm as we speak.”
“That has nothing to do with Kaleb. He, as you can see, is not wagging his tongue. Besides, he was here when the messenger arrived. He knows the news just as do you and all of Rome.”
“Yes, but he doesn’t need to know how we’re going to respond to it.”
Crassus inhales a slow breath. “You should have another drink, Varro. Should I call for uncut wine?”
“No, this is fine.” Varro picks up the chalice that has thus far sat neglected. He twirls the liquid.
Kaleb has seen his share of powerful men, yet he still marvels that power and status seem to fit so few of them like a well-tailored garment. Varro, he is sure, would be highly strung no matter his lot in life. Just as Crassus would hunger for more coin no matter the vastness of his wealth. Of course, his observations on Varro are not his alone. Before the consul arrived, Crassus said, “I’ll have to calm the fool to keep him from overreacting. That would be worse than not reacting, harder to recover from if the populace takes note. He’s unlikely to understand this.” Crassus speaks to Kaleb often like this when it’s just the two of them. Kaleb knows the man isn’t exactly speaking to him. He’s speaking to himself, sure that Kaleb’s ears are his ears. He thinks the space between his slave’s ears are his too, a repository of facts and figures that he can access as it pleases him. He owns Kaleb, after all. Why wouldn’t this be so?
“I think I hear Gellius now,” Crassus says, sounding relieved not to have to spend any longer with just Varro for company.
They wait as if listening for whatever telltale signs Crassus has heard. The balcony is tiled in an elaborate mosaic, sea colors beneath their feet. Dolphins leap up the balustrade that rings them. Above them the sky over Rome. A layer of smoke hangs in the air, the product of thousands upon thousands of fires. The smog taints but doesn’t completely hide the sky beyond it, bright with the new-turned season and heavy with white clouds that seem content to sail above the world, not rain down on it. Morning, though late enough that the sun has its full strength.
A house slave, Umma, appears, leading Lucius Gellius into the courtyard. Kaleb can’t help but touch her with his eyes. He only lets them pass over her, checking her. Verifying. She directs the other senator with a wave of her slim arm, asking if he’d like anything of her. Gellius says, “Not at the moment.” He says it curtly, but when she bows and moves away, he turns to watch her.
“What is she?” Gellius asks.
“Her mother was from Syria,” Crassus says, “but that particular lineage was diluted in Umma. She’s somewhat more Roman than her mother.”
Gellius lowers his lanky frame onto a vacant chair and extends a hand. The boy charged with filling their wine cups has a chalice in his fingers almost instantly. “And was that your doing? This Romanization of the Syrian race.”
Crassus purses his lips disapprovingly. That, without actually answering, is answer enough for him. Kaleb knows what Crassus won’t say, that he doesn’t like to spill himself inside slaves. He finds something unnerving about seeing his features in the chattel he owns. Most masters could not care less; Crassus is unusual about a number of things. This is one. He asks, “Have you interest in her?”
“I might. The girl that I’ve been topping up recently has a rash of some sort. Down there, I mean. My physician said it shouldn’t matter. It’s just a weakness of hers that shouldn’t affect a man like me. Still, it turns my stomach. This girl…What do you call her?”
“Umma.”
“She doesn’t have a rash?”
“Not last I checked,” Crassus says. “My youngest would know more about it than me. I’ll sell her if you’re interested. Publius is rather too keen on her. He could use a rest.”
“You’ll rob me blind if I show too much interest.”
“Oh, you’ve already shown too much interest, friend,” Crassus says. He’s smiling again. “Just think on it. We can talk price later.”
Kaleb pauses, his stylus pressed into the clay of the tablet. He can feel his pulse through his fingertips. We can talk price later. He hears the words fro
m Crassus’s lips, but they’re in his head. Trapped there, it seems, a ribbon of them that came in through his ears and can’t find a way out. He closes his eyes, head turned just slightly in the event that Crassus looks at him. He tries to replace Crassus’s words with his own, the ones he says often, needs often.
He thinks, Serve him well, and he will free me. Once free, I will buy Umma.
He tries to take comfort in the thought. He has for some time now.
—
Had he a mind to, Kaleb could have declared the moment of his birth to be the beginning of his enslavement. He was born property, after all, his arrival noted on a tablet. He went unvalued that first day and through the first years as well, for such is the lot of babes that one cannot put too much faith in their growing into worth. In those early years, his main chore was to live, to grow, to become someone who would eventually validate his existence. There was a measure of freedom in this. Surviving. A difficult task, but one done on his own terms.
Before his master ever said a word to him, his mother explained the things possible in the life before him. She believed there was more than one path forward if one was quick enough at choosing. Seeing his mind was nimble and his body slight, she pressed him to learn numbers and letters. She said he should exercise his mind in the same ways other boys made their bodies sweat. He didn’t want to, but he did nonetheless.
And so doing he came to his first master’s notice, not because of his slim frame but because of his quick mind. He was sold at seven to a man who trained boys as scribes. That was the last he saw of his mother. He was locked up for over a year, and during that time she must’ve been sold away. Or died. He never knew which. He learned to write. He jostled with boys his age and got beaten by boys older. On occasion his master thrust himself into his anus. Or into his mouth. The man was relatively gentle, though, and for Kaleb such was just the order of things. He could look down on laborers for the toil they endured. He saw nothing of himself in the stooped back of field hands, and he despised the ignorance of so many—both free and slave. He was born male, which meant his lot was better than half the population from day one.
Crassus came into his life in his nineteenth year. He would always remember the night as one of soot and coughing, flame and destruction. He’d remember that Crassus, in commenting on his blackness on first seeing him, did not mean his Ethiopian skin. He meant the smoke-black that covered him from head to toe. That night there was a fire. It started in the housing units pressed up against the scribes’ academy. Late summer and dry, with a night breeze to betray the ill will of some god. The fire spread so quickly, Kaleb thought it a living thing. Surely it had to be. How else could one explain the way it sniffed out fuel? The way it climbed walls? It slipped in this window and out that one. It inhaled like a laboring beast, and when it exhaled, it blew out doors and burst shutters from their hinges.
His master ran the streets delirious, calling for help even as he urged his young slaves—his pupils—to brave the fire to grab items of value. He cursed them for not having buckets and water. People gathered to watch, nervous lest the fire spread, excited to see others suffer. So long as they were safe, the misery of a fire was a fine amusement.
Crassus arrived, behind him a corps of slaves so laden with equipment they looked like soldiers ready for the march. But instead of sword and spear and shield, they carried ax and hook and bucket, ladder and blanket. They led mules that pulled tubs sloshing with water in creaking carts. Everything needed to fight the blaze. Why then, Kaleb had wondered, did they stand near enough to feel heat on their faces and yet do nothing? They crossed arms and made small talk, pointed and joked and ignored the ravings of the men whose properties were burning. Crassus, garbed in a casual night tunic, bandied with his men as if they were old friends.
Kaleb’s master had accosted him, pleading for him to release his men to fight the fire. Kaleb, panting, scorched, and coughing, was near enough to hear Crassus’s response. His men, he said, were here only to ensure that the fire didn’t spread. As their lives were valuable to him, he wouldn’t otherwise let them risk themselves for a property that was not his own. When Kaleb’s master offered to pay, Crassus pursed his lips, considered the possibilities, and proposed the sum that would buy the brigade’s labors. Exorbitant. The man could not even pretend to be able to pay the amount. Crassus then, with an air of benevolence, offered to purchase the property from him. The whole row of burning structures. He’d buy them all. He’d take on the cost of rebuilding. He made the offer sound generous. As the walls began to crash in—the building an inferno now—the various owners came to terms.
Watching, Kaleb hadn’t quite understood. At that moment it had seemed Crassus was acting kindly. He gave the owners something for properties that would soon be worthless. What’s more, he bought several of the pupils that Kaleb’s master could no longer house and support. Wasn’t that also a kindness? He was giving them something from the ashes of nothing. In so doing, Kaleb passed into Crassus’s hands. Only afterward, when Crassus had come to favor him and speak plainly with him—and when Kaleb had seen variations on that horrible night repeated—did he understand how everything Crassus had done was designed to turn a profit. That night his men had gone to work as soon as their master had documented his ownership of burning buildings. They put out fires, saved what could be saved, and in the months following they rebuilt, making the units taller, with smaller, more numerous apartments. And then he let them out at rates that earned back his investment in no time. That was one of the many ways Crassus built upon his fortune. Once he recognized it, Kaleb not only admired it, he was glad to have a hand in it.
Was he a slave yet? Still not exactly. Why call him a slave when his position was preferable to the work most other people labored at? He slept in small rooms, yes, but those small rooms were in palatial accommodations in Rome, in seaside and countryside villas all over Italy. He did not overly tax his body. He did not go hungry. He knew so much of the goings-on of the nation that he felt himself a hand in it. Crassus, thinking of his desires, sent a woman to sleep outside his room. Inside, when he wished for her. She was not pretty to look in the face, but she had a shapely back and shoulders and neck. Taking her from behind, Kaleb found beauty in her, as much as he needed. All this considered, his life was measures better than most.
But that was before he laid eyes on Umma. Then he became a slave.
—
Umma arrives on the patio carrying two saucers of prawns. The muscles of her full arms stand out, as does the curve of her hips. When she bends to set the saucers down on the low table, her shift droops in a manner that reveals her breasts. Kaleb tries not to see.
Gellius does the opposite. He sits upright, adjusting the folds of his toga in his lap.
“Enjoy,” Crassus says. “Fresh caught this morning, of course. Alive when they went in the pot. And for you, Gellius, a platter is garlic-free. I know you’re against the stuff.”
Umma begins to rise, but Gellius sets a hand on her back, stopping her. “Kind of you,” he says, speaking to Crassus. “The shells…they’ve been left on.”
“Of course,” Crassus says. “They stew better that way.”
“Surely. Only…as much as I like to consume the creatures, peeling the shells upsets my fingers. It didn’t used to bother me as a boy, but with age comes infirmities. Would you object to having this girl peel for me?”
Crassus indicates with a shrug that he doesn’t object. He grabs a prawn from the seasoned bowl. He shakes off the twigs of oregano and peels it, his thick fingers making quick work of the crustacean’s shell. He rips it off and flicks the translucent armor onto the tabletop. There’s a comment in this, Kaleb knows, but the senator it’s directed at is distracted.
Gellius rubs his palm in circles at the base of Umma’s neck. Kaleb tries not to watch but fails. Without a word, she positions herself on her knees, reaches into the saucer, and begins to shell. She keeps her head bowed. She doesn’t look at Kaleb. She’s
good that way, better disciplined than him.
“So,” Gellius says. He watches Umma from an angle he clearly likes, but he is not talking to her. “How seriously do we take any of this? Personally, I think it already has people breathing rather more heavily than it should. A few gladiators have killed a lax lanista and gone on a binge of rape and pillage. This Vatia was a pathetic fool who mismanaged his ludus. And the garrison at Capua—they hardly merit mentioning. Do you know that the miscreant slaves came upon them at night, while they were enjoying the wine of an absent landowner? If they hadn’t all been killed, I’d be calling for their heads right now. The situation has been terribly mishandled.”
“Agreed,” Crassus says. “So now that we are united in our the collective wisdom, who do you propose we send to deal with it?”
With an air of gravity, Varro says, “Remember Sicily.”
“The last I checked, this is not Sicily.” Gellius nearly snaps this, but then he smiles, indicating that Umma should raise a freshly peeled prawn to his mouth. She has to look at him to do so, which he seems to like.
“And pray it stays that way.” Varro wipes droplets of sweat from his forehead. The sun has moved since he first sat down. It’s nearly fallen below the level of the western apartments, but some last rays illuminate his face. He snaps his fingers. The slave standing behind Crassus, doing nothing really with the fan he holds, moves around to shade him.
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