Endymion ran up Mercury Street, knowing he had to inform the one true friend of his short life of his fate. Then he would go and hide in the Cloaca Maxima—the city’s Great Drain—and tomorrow, the gods willing, he would escape from the city. He stopped halfway down the short, steep street and cast a pebble at the shuttered first-story window of Pollio’s bakery shop. Within moments a man with drifting white hair, an unobtrusive ghost, materialized in the doorway and began descending the stone steps with timid care, as though he feared he might step in something unpleasant. The old man’s testing glance flicked from side to side, stopping suddenly at the sight of the boy. His smile was as the boy imagined a hermit’s would be—tentative and shy from lack of use.
“Lycas,” Endymion cried, embracing him with boyish vigorousness. “I’ve run away.”
Lycas grasped the boy’s shoulders, frail desperation in his hands. “That is children’s foolishness, Creon.”
“You’ve fallen two names behind—it’s Endymion now. And it’s true.”
“It is death, boy,” he whispered, thrusting his face into Endymion’s, transfixing the boy with bleary eyes. “Reading’s the cause of this. Books are worse than wine, I say, you read one and you need another—there’s no end to it. What ails you that you cannot content yourself with just living on under the sun? Grannus at least did not beat you every day.”
“I—” he began, and stopped, seeing no use in telling Lycas he wanted to be a philosopher as Seneca was. He already believes I’m half mad, the boy thought. Why worry him more by proving it to him? “I want to…to belong to no one but the gods.”
“The rats in the slaves’ prison belong to no one. Is it so glorious? They say those rats are large enough to take a hound. By sunfall tomorrow you’ll know if it’s true.”
“Lycas, it’s been done and cannot be undone. Can you get me some crusts and oil and maybe a—Lycas, you are ill.”
“The same sickness. It has settled on the lungs.”
“What is being done for it?”
“Nothing this time. I’m too old to treat. For certain it’s the Island for me this time.” When masters did not want to pay for the treatment of sick slaves often they abandoned them on the tiny Island of Aesculapius—the god of healing—that broke the brownish-yellow waters of the Tiber.
“That is against the law.”
“You have not changed. When you grow up you’ll realize a law’s but words, my boy. One bribe is worth a hundred laws. Pollio does as he wills.”
“Then I shall live—if only to return and punish him for that.” Something dark and brilliant flashed in the boy’s eyes then, and it frightened the old man, for it was a passion that might challenge kings. Such determination could only bring trouble into the life of a slave.
“A pity all this is, my poor…what name did you say?…Endymion. You would have been tall, and comelier than Paris. Here, take these, my boy.” Lycas fumbled with a pouch that hung from the thong that girded his tunic.
“Your grain tokens! I can’t—”
“Spargus can always steal me more.” He pressed them into Endymion’s hand. “Now be careful where you barter them. You don’t want stolen grain tokens added to your troubles. Now stay away from—”
From the street both heard the cheerful melodic call of the crier, “Boy, fair of feature, dark hair, dark eyes, run off from Grannus’ shop…”
“Nemesis!” Endymion whispered, looking swiftly up and down Mercury Street. “Get inside, quickly, you must not be seen with me. Curses on all life. Lycas, one day I will help you. I promise it as I live, and I swear it on this amulet. I do not know how I’ll do it, but I will.” He gave Lycas a quick clumsy embrace and was off.
Lycas felt misery welling in his chest as he watched the boy bound up the street in springing strides. What would become of that haunted child? His only flaw was that perverse urge to question the natural order of things. The old man was ashamed, he loved that boy so much. Love was a useless and troublesome emotion for a slave.
As Endymion struggled through the throng in the Via Sacra, making slow progress toward the Great Drain, he was forced to halt at a crossroad, for some sort of procession approached, making its way toward the Palace. He heard the rhythmic tramp of the way-clearers’ feet, the snap of their whips, and a soft chorus of cries of “Clarissimus”—“Illustrious One”—the crowd’s traditional salutation for a great man. Endymion felt a start of panic as he realized his progress would be barred for many moments, but as there was no sign anywhere of Grannus or the crier, he calmed his fears.
Before him, beneath the shimmering disk of the moon, loomed the Palace of the Caesars; dusk washed it a uniform shade of blue-white so that it seemed a single floating form, at once delicate and awesome, a haunting testament to power on earth. Its multitude of shivering lamps alight in tier upon tier of moon-pale colonnades made it appear an earthly firmament ablaze with stars, which seemed fitting to the boy since gods dwelled there. Sweet spicy scents that slowed the limbs drifted from the Palace, filling him with heavy pleasurable sensations as though the multitude of delights to be known within could send out their own intoxicating vapor. A debilitating longing, stinging, bittersweet, settled on him as he thought of all that was housed within—more books than he could read in a lifetime and wise ministers who used philosophy to decide the fates of distant nations.
Then the procession came abreast of him and he could see the Palace no more. Three ranks of red-liveried attendants were followed by friends and clients on foot, all robed in purest white. Above them a grand litter gently swayed, shouldered by eight Bithynian bearers; the covered chair was hung with rose-garlands flung at it by admirers. Endymion guessed there was some great banquet tonight at the Palace, and this litter bore the guest of honor.
Then a second litter came up behind the first; it was this one that caused him to take a quick breath. It was starkly plain, not even curtained, leaving its occupant visible to the people.
A bolt of excitement shot through him. Seneca. Of course. Who else would be carried about in such a shabby litter? The chair came closer and now he recognized the living face behind the portrait busts everywhere on view. The boy supposed that as First Advisor to the Emperor, the great philosopher dined nightly at the Palace. Very likely, every day at dusk he passed this way.
All thought of danger fled Endymion’s mind. He fought his way through the press of people, desperate to get close. He pushed his way between a Tuscan farmer and a silk merchant, then suddenly found himself nearly in the litter’s path.
Seneca was reading as he was borne along, squinting as he held a bronze hand lamp close to a bookroll, his nobly proportioned bald head bowed.
The statues of him do not do him justice, the boy thought. They do not capture those eyes, how they seem to love the world, how they teem with enough knowledge to fill the bookrolls of a dozen rich men’s libraries. Or all the patient kindliness in that face, or that visible firmness of purpose. I can hear him declaring aloud a slave is a man, not an animal to be beaten, that the bloody contests of the arena are wrong; I see him looking with dark scorn at those who call him foolish or mad.
Was the philosopher reading from one of his own works, perhaps a copy that he, Endymion, had penned? What grand thoughts upon the nature of the universe flickered through that magically complex mind even as he gazed upon him?
Endymion did not hear the cry behind him, “Boy, dark hair, dark eyes, black amulet about his neck…”
Then the biting stench of urine enveloped him. Unnoticed, Grannus had slipped up close behind him. With him was a man of the Vigiles, the city’s police-firemen, in leather armor and steel cap; from one of his hands hung a coiled length of rope. The boy spun around, but too late; the rope snapped about him, binding his arms to his sides. A second rope slid over his wrists, burning his flesh. Someone kicked him from behind, and he fell into the path of the litter bearers of the philosopher. He muffled a moan, refusing to cry out, enraged that his one lapse of attent
ion had brought about his destruction. The Fates used his love of philosophy to bait him like an animal.
“Got the little hellion!” Grannus exclaimed through heaving laughter. “It pays a man to keep his body in soldier’s condition. A small cross is all we’ll need for this one.” He kicked the boy in the stomach.
But Endymion somehow managed to struggle up. The litter’s progress was halted while the bearer who had half stumbled over the boy righted himself. For one instant the gazes of boy and philosopher met.
And in Seneca’s eyes, something jumped. It was, for a quick, sharp moment that seemed full enough to hold a life, as though they knew one another. The old man felt he turned a corner into some timeless place and collided with himself as a child. How well Seneca knew that look of ardent young eyes brimming with questions that would drive one to madness if not followed to their end.
Even Grannus paused, put off balance by the oddness of the moment.
And Endymion spoke. It was a grave impertinence for a slave to speak to anyone freeborn if not addressed first, and to address a man with the rank of Senator was a criminal act. But rank is of little importance to one so close to being dragged out of the world, and he had a boy’s pure trust in a hero whom he imagined to be all-knowing.
“Please, I beg your kindness,” he began; there was such self-possession in his tone that Seneca saw clearly how he would look as a man.
“I would be a learned man, as you are. I…I know by heart your treatise On the Brevity of Life and your essay On Anger. Speak for me and you shall not regret it. I will serve you all your days.”
“Rabid pup,” Grannus shouted, jerking him away. “Stuff a rag in his mouth.”
Seneca met the boy’s eyes for an instant more, quite evidently moved by his plight. He raised his right hand, ordering the bearers not to move.
Then a man of the crowd cried out to Seneca. “Clarissimus! Did Socrates own five hundred cedarwood tables, twelve estates and forty million in gold—and half the isle of Britannia?”
Seneca’s glance shifted warily about. Not this again.
“Read us an ode!” came another strident voice. “I’ve been in the country of late—I haven’t heard the latest in brazen, shameless flattery!”
Seneca scowled at his tormentors, looking like some disgruntled river god.
In these days it seemed to the philosopher that the people let no opportunity pass to make sport of him, and the taunts stung all the more because somewhere in the stillness of his mind he suspected he deserved them. He was rich enough to ransom an emperor. And he had written lyrics in praise of Nero’s mother Agrippina that made him queasy to recall. Now people pointed to the boy, nodding and smiling knowingly. And saying what? That Seneca was so much the slave of passion that he could not make the short journey to the Palace without pausing to secure a boy for the night’s dalliance?
When Seneca turned back to Endymion, it seemed to the boy that a curtain dropped in the philosopher’s eyes. With a sharp gesture of his hand Seneca motioned his bearers to move on.
Endymion felt no pain as Grannus struck him across the mouth, for the pain inside was worse. The world’s heart was ripped open; within was nothing but worms and rot. The great man was ruled not by his philosophy, but by others’ opinions, like any common shopkeeper. Endymion guessed that even the philosopher’s reading in public was merely for show—the people expected him to have a bookroll always in hand. As Grannus kicked the boy to the ground once more, Endymion felt as though his soul had been crushed under horses. If all good did not rest in Seneca, then where was it? Not in any man, surely. He knew then that even if the Fates softened toward him and granted him long life, never again would he be able to see another, not even an emperor or king, as greater than he was.
He knew the desolation of one adrift on the night sea.
As Grannus and the patrolman of the Vigiles led the boy down Mercury Street, and to his execution, a voice arresting as a trumpet fanfare brought all three to a halt.
“Lucius Grannus! Stand there!”
Spitting a curse, Grannus turned round. Unknown to the fuller and the boy, the call of the crier had attracted the attention of another man—the guest of honor borne in the first litter.
The garlanded litter had been set down. Its occupant, a man of late middle years, approached them at the stately, unhurried pace of one accustomed to making others wait. His face, possessed in his youth of an ascetic handsomeness, had long since settled into pleasant and comfortable softness; retreating black and silver hair accentuated a formidable forehead. He had the look about him of one who neglected the body for the mind—his complexion was pallid; his hands were cushioned and dead-white. A once-firm body was beginning to go gently to fat, and about his eyes were deeply engraved lines from long nights of squinting over faded manuscripts by lamplight, reading the great works or dictating books of his own. Though there was a hint of indulgence about his eyes—he had the look of one who would deliberate long before issuing a punishment and then worry over it later—he was quite obviously the sort of man only a fool would attempt to deceive; when roused, as he was now, those eyes had the ruthless directness of a hawk’s. His toga was immaculately white; on the tunic beneath was just visible the broad purple stripe of a senator. He had the barest limp, which somehow only added to his dignity.
As the crowd shrank back to give him room, they exchanged looks of simple disbelief. What could such a man as this care for the doings of a fuller and a runaway slave? For this was Marcus Arrius Julianus, one of the half-dozen most influential men of the Senate; his ancestry, rich with illustrious names, could be traced to the time of the First Punic War. Any citizen in the crowd could have recited to a traveler from afar all there was to know about this man. He was one of Seneca’s dearest friends. Lately he had returned from the province of Upper Germania, where he had served as military governor at the fortress of Mogontiacum on the Rhine until he was called home for the honor of a consulship, which meant he was nominally co-ruler, for a short time, with Nero, though in reality it was an empty honor, for Nero shared power with no one. A master of many disciplines, he was as familiar with the arts of the architect-engineer as he was with military strategy, the history of nations, and the natural sciences. He was celebrated as the greatest living authority on the savage Germanic tribes, the Chattians, Hermundures and their neighbors, and had completed thirty volumes of a proposed fifty-volume work on their customs and beliefs. It was well-known he fervently wished to retire but that Nero’s military council would not allow it—and that the cause was a renegade Chattian chieftain named Baldemar, who had been ravaging the frontier towns of Upper Germania for a decade. This Chattian chief sent no emissaries, refused to give hostages and would not negotiate; clearly a war was needed to control him. But Nero would not order a campaign—he needed all his resources to pay for his sumptuous stage plays and extended days of chariot races—and both Nero and his council firmly believed Marcus Arrius Julianus the only commander able to control the Chattian chieftain through diplomacy. Because of Baldemar, it was commonly said, old Julianus would likely die in the barbarous wastes of Germania.
“He’s coming for you, Grannus,” called out a voice in the crowd. “It’s that toga full of moth holes you gave him for one washed just once!” A raw burst of laughter came from the curious who paused to watch. As Marcus Arrius Julianus approached the boy, the soft, hissing call, “Clarissimus!” followed him like a wake.
“Grannus smells like a goat’s behind.”
“You’re supposed to wash the clothes in it, Grannus, the clothes.”
The Senator suppressed a displeased look as the mild breeze brought him the first scent of Grannus. He nodded at the boy. “Turn him around,” he said with soft finality. “I want to see him.”
“He’s mine, fair and paid for, most noble one,” Grannus said, bowing awkwardly too many times, his red lips stretched into a broad smile. “He’s uncommonly vicious—you’d not want him.”
Mar
cus Julianus ignored Grannus. Gravely the Senator lifted the boy’s chin. Grannus seethed with irritation, too intimidated to protest. Endymion met the older man’s worried but gentle eyes for a moment, then cast his own down, faintly embarrassed because he did not know what was expected of him. Then carefully, solemnly, and almost as if he feared it, Julianus drew the amulet from the boy’s tunic and turned the pouch of black leather over in his hands. Endymion was aware of tension in the older man’s face, as of profound emotion under tight control. During all this, Grannus lowered his shaggy head and made a rough sound in the back of his throat—he was a hound held in check while a larger hound snatched his bone.
“My good man, you are mistaken,” Marcus Julianus said finally in a voice of smooth dismissal. “The slave is mine. But to avoid inconveniencing you over the error, I will buy him from you. Nestor!” he called to an immaculately groomed freedman-secretary who smelled of hyacinthus oil. The Senator nodded curtly at Grannus. “Pay him. The whole purse. At once.”
Nestor dropped a purse heavy with coins of gold into Grannus’ cupped hands. Grannus started when he peered inside. He would not have gotten as much had he sold his entire shop. Greed warred briefly with his eagerness to see the boy punished. Then he grinned, displaying yellowed horse teeth, first at Marcus Arrius Julianus and then at the crowd, as though to say, I got the best of this situation after all.
He pushed the boy, still bound, in the direction of his new master.
The crowd did not know what to make of this, but gossip would not be stopped for lack of information. As the story was told and retold in every tavern, the motive of this strange scene was attributed to lust, in spite of the fact that Marcus Arrius Julianus was one of the few aristocrats of whom no stories whatever filtered down of a passion for young boys.
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