Daughter of Rome

by Tessa Afshar

  Slaves, on the other hand, only had one name. Priscilla narrowed her eyes. “Who is your master?” she asked brusquely.

  The boy gave her a thunderous look. “I am freeborn.” The words, colored with pride and a tinge of outrage, rang true. She found his accent more interesting still, which unlike his rough appearance, sounded as refined and educated as her own. Whatever he was, he was no runaway slave.

  “I believe you,” she said. “Even if you were a slave, you would be safe with us. Tell me, is it by coincidence that you are hiding in my shed, or did you follow me here?”

  The boy chewed on dry lips. “I saw you shopping in the Forum yesterday and followed you.”

  “Why me?”

  He shrugged a bony shoulder. “I remembered you from before. You had been kind.”

  She nodded. “Thank you for telling me the truth. Now wrap yourself in that piece of leather while I fetch you more food. Your arms are covered in gooseflesh from the chill here.”

  Her mind raced as she gathered another plate for Marcus. It dawned on her that she did not want him to simply vanish into the night after eating his fill. She could not bear the thought of any child running loose in the streets of this callous city. There was a mystery to the boy with his aristocratic accent and starved body. A secret he guarded with a reticence unusual for his age. Something about the desperation she sensed in him, which went beyond physical need, melted her heart. In an instant, she made a decision that would change her life forever.

  Aquila grinned lazily as he opened his eyes. His wife’s face was bent over his, her long, feather-soft hair trailing on his shoulders. He smelled cinnamon and honey on her skin, and something more feminine and flowery, which turned his mind from the concerns of the coming day to something entirely more thrilling.

  “We need to talk,” she said, her expression serious.

  He blinked the sleep from his eyes and wistfully put away thoughts of a leisurely start to his morning.

  “We have a guest.”

  Aquila sat up. “What kind of guest?”

  “An unexpected one.” She settled on the bed next to him. “Do you remember that day in the Forum when you fought the thief?”

  Aquila tensed. There had been no more attacks on Priscilla since that day, thank the Lord. It appeared as though whoever had meant her harm might have given up. He could not rest easy, however, having never solved the mystery of the matter. Who had wanted her dead, and what had driven them to give up? At the mention of the incident that still haunted his dreams, he jumped to the worst conclusion. “Don’t tell me you have seen that brute loitering around our house?” he rasped.

  “Not him,” she said breezily, unaware of the fear that had gripped him. “That same day a boy offered to carry my basket. Do you recall?”

  Aquila expelled a relieved breath. He had a vague recollection of a ragged child. “I think so.”

  “His name is Marcus. He is eight.”

  Aquila frowned. “He is here?”

  “You are about to meet him. He has been living on the streets for some time now. I found him in our shed late last night.”

  “Hold a moment.” Aquila rubbed a hand over his face, trying to rouse his tired mind. He had a feeling that he was lagging way behind his wife about something. “What is he? A runaway slave?”

  “He claims not, and I believe him.”

  “I see.”

  “I would like him to stay.” His wife looked at him with unwavering eyes.

  “For breakfast?”

  “For as long as he likes.”

  “What? No! Priscilla, you can’t just bring a strange child into our home.”

  “Why not? You brought Ferox, and you knew nothing about him.”

  “Ferox is a dog. Who is this child? What is he? For all we know, he might be a thief. Or worse.”

  “He is eight.”

  “I’ve seen younger pickpockets.”

  “He’s not a thief. He would be more well-fed if he were.”

  “Priscilla, be reasonable. We can’t just add a strange child to our household. We barely have room for ourselves as it is.”

  She rose to her feet. “Come and meet him.”

  Aquila saw the trap at once. She knew that when he saw the child, he would be moved by pity and allow compassion to overcome his good sense. The woman was shrewd. But he knew how to deal with her. “Feed him and send him on his way. I have a mountain of work to do.”

  To his surprise, she turned her back and left the room without a single objection. He breathed a sigh of relief. That had proven easier than he expected. He washed, combed his hair, cleaned his teeth, and dressed in a wool tunic. Pulling out his rolls of papyrus, he spent some time studying the upcoming orders, prioritizing tasks, and planning the dates he needed to start each item for a timely delivery.

  He wondered if enough time had passed for the urchin to have finished eating. Some extraordinary aromas were wafting out of the front chamber. The smell of soft cheese and honey mingled with that of flour and cinnamon frying in oil. His mouth watered and his belly grumbled.

  Aquila had learned from experience that Priscilla could create culinary magic on the modest charcoal brazier they kept on a shelf beside the door. He decided that he need not deprive himself of his wife’s heavenly cooking. Even if the boy had lingered in the house, Aquila knew himself to be immovable on the subject. In fact, best to address the matter as soon as possible.

  He stepped out, his mind made up. He discovered the child occupying a stool, the plate on his lap mounded with various kinds of pastry and honeyed eggs. Lollia and Priscilla, still busy cooking, were adding a new offering to the pile as Aquila watched. Like most modest houses in Rome, they did not own a proper clay oven capable of producing bread. But someone had already walked over to the local bakery to buy a fresh loaf of quadratus and cut a thick wedge for their guest.

  He studied the boy. His face and hands had been washed recently, judging by his clean skin and wet hair. The rest of his painfully thin body was covered by a crust of dirt, liberally pocked with scabs and bug bites, and probably crawling with vermin.

  “Aquila, this is our guest, Marcus,” Priscilla said without turning her head away from the pan. To the boy she said, “This is my husband.”

  The child spared him a brief nod. Aquila nodded back, hardening his resolve.

  Priscilla tasted batter from a bowl. “I will have sweet cheese pastry ready for you in a few moments, Husband.”

  “You can have one of mine,” Marcus said. “You don’t have to wait.” The child held out his plate.

  “I . . .” Aquila found himself lost for words. He had tasted his wife’s libum, a Roman pastry made with honey and soft cheese. He was not sure he would be willing to share his with anyone. Yet this stray, who by the look of him had eaten little food in the past month, was giving his away. He swallowed hard. “Thank you,” he said, reaching out to take the offering.

  “They are the best I have ever eaten,” Marcus said with a nod.

  “Me too,” Aquila agreed.

  Something about the boy nagged at him. He had dark eyes, almost black, too serious for a child of eight. Aquila was willing to bet those eyes had seen things children had no business seeing. His features were comely and typically Latin, with full lips and an aquiline nose that still had the unfinished look typical of a growing child.

  It came to Aquila in a rush, the incongruity of the boy’s confident manner and highborn speech. Give him a decent haircut, a clean tunic, a vigorous bath, and he could fit in perfectly in a villa in the Esquiline. The paradox tugged at his curiosity as strongly as the boy awakened his pity. He determined to resist both.

  Aquila ate in silence, wondering how long before he could politely suggest that their guest be on his way. Benyamin, who must have been awake for some time, came into the room, a garment folded over his arm. “Peace, Aquila,” he said cheerfully. “I thought you were never going to come out of your chamber.” He turned to the boy. “Here. Try this.
It will hang on you, but it’s the smallest tunic I own.”

  Their guest took the gray robe. “My thanks,” he said. Carefully he set the garment down on a shelf. “I am filthy. I don’t want to ruin your clothes.”

  “Would you like to go to the baths?” Benyamin asked. “There is a large one near here. I would be happy to accompany you.”

  Aquila stared at his uncle, openmouthed. It was a conspiracy, he realized. And the old man, like Lollia, had thrown in his lot with Priscilla.

  The boy’s face solidified into a mask of horror. “No! I don’t want to go.”

  Aquila did not know what had made Marcus so anxious at the mere mention of the place. But he couldn’t bear to see the child so haunted by terror. “You don’t need to go to the public baths,” he said, coming to his feet. “Priscilla and Lollia can heat some water for you. They’ll help you wash in the back room.”

  The boy’s shoulders relaxed. “They are girls,” he said after contemplating the offer.

  “That is true. Would you rather I gave you a hand?”

  “I’ll take the pretty one,” Marcus said, lifting his chin and pointing to Priscilla.

  The boy was no fool, Aquila had to concede. “You will take Lollia and be grateful. I am keeping the pretty one for myself.”

  How he began to discuss arrangements for where the child would sleep that night, Aquila never knew. But before the hour was up, they had all agreed that Marcus would sleep in the workshop with Lollia. The next morning, Aquila found himself volunteering to teach Marcus the leather trade. By that evening, when he tucked the boy into his makeshift bed, Aquila had already forgotten his intention of asking him to leave.

  Eighteen

  PRISCILLA DISCOVERED that Marcus knew how to read and write Latin with the facility of a much older child. In time, she came to the conclusion that he must have received rigorous tuition from a capable teacher at some point, though he slithered away from studying with the agility of an eel in water.

  He preferred physical activity to almost anything. Give him a wooden sword, and he could spend hours in imaginary battle. Aquila, who still remembered some of the training he had received as a boy, sometimes engaged Marcus in a sparring match, teaching him the basics of sword craft and wrestling. Those were the moments the boy sparked to life.

  The previous week, Aquila had taught him a new maneuver. Marcus had practiced it for hours until there were blisters on his fingers. Yesterday he had finally mastered the move. As soon as the family finished eating supper, he had pulled Aquila outside to demonstrate.

  Priscilla watched them, boy and man dancing about each other in a tight circle, their concentration intense. When Marcus had performed the maneuver, Aquila had thrown his toy sword in the air before catching it with a flourish and whooping with excitement. “That was well done, boy!” he cried, ruffling Marcus’s dark hair, every bit as taken up with the success of the drill as his pupil.

  And then it happened. Marcus smiled. For the first time since she had met him, that boy stretched his lips and grinned with genuine happiness. Priscilla’s belly twisted at the memory.

  Thanks to their care, Marcus’s body had recovered from the months of living without proper shelter. He had filled out, growing healthy, gaining strength. But some dark weight still pressed him.

  He seemed leery of strangers and avoided the workshop if customers were visiting. The wealthier the patron, the more quickly he made himself scarce. He refused to share his full name with them. Refused to tell them the reason a boy of his affluent background should have ended up on the streets. Whatever his secret, Marcus guarded it closely. Priscilla was determined to extricate the boy’s story from him. She knew he would never be whole until he confided in someone.

  Her hands worked mindlessly on a tent as her thoughts whirled, Aquila stitching in companionable silence across from her. The hour had grown late and her back had started to ache. She stretched and set the leather aside. “Bedtime for me,” she said.

  Aquila nodded. “I will join you as soon as I finish this section. It won’t be long.”

  She circled past him to where Marcus lay on his mattress, his breathing quiet as if his dreams harbored no monsters.

  During the day, Marcus’s clever tongue and general air of wary independence fooled one into forgetting how shockingly young he was. In repose, he looked his age. Just a little boy.

  Carefully Priscilla bent to give him a light kiss on his forehead. If he had been awake, he would not have allowed the liberty. She had tried to hug him once. He had submitted to her show of affection, standing like a wooden stick in her arms, too polite to push her away. She had received the unspoken message and learned to curtail any demonstrations of tenderness. She felt surprised by how often she had to quash the urge to kiss or hold this child. He had wormed his way deep into her heart.

  She sighed and retreated to her own bed. A few minutes later, Aquila crawled in next to her. “Are we visiting Pudens tomorrow night?” he whispered.

  “We are. Pudentiana told me this morning that he has some news for us.”

  “What news?”

  “She would not say.”

  Aquila turned on his side and huddled up close to kiss her full on the mouth. Drawing back, she wrinkled her nose. “You smell like the inside of a sheep’s belly.”

  He grinned. “I was at the tanner’s earlier, looking at leather samples. I will go to the baths in the morning.” He was quiet for a moment. “Marcus still refuses to accompany me there. It’s as if he is afraid of the place.”

  Priscilla nodded in agreement. “He doesn’t mind washing with a bucket.”

  “His cleanliness is not the issue. No self-respecting Roman can hold up his head if he is terrorized by the very mention of the baths. He will be mocked by friends and associates alike. We can’t keep him sheltered for the rest of his life. He must learn to face this fear.”

  Priscilla rubbed her forehead. “That is no easy task. He breaks out into a cold sweat if I even mention the matter.”

  “And yet, the more we delay, the harder it may be to help him.”

  Priscilla bit her lip. It wasn’t that she disagreed with her husband in principle. But the thought of what that little boy would have to go through in order to find freedom made something in her chest tighten.

  In the morning Priscilla sent Marcus to buy bread for breakfast while she prepared a thick porridge. Benyamin and Aquila had departed early to deliver a couple of awnings, leaving an indignant Marcus behind so that he could have his Greek lesson with Priscilla. He lingered over the food as long as he could, wiping the bottom of his bowl with a piece of crust.

  Not for the first time, she wondered how he had survived months of homelessness. “What did you eat when you lived on the streets?” she asked, wondering if he would avoid answering the question.

  It was this or study Greek verbs, however. For once, he deigned to explain. “Sometimes I found things in the garbage outside the taverns. Eventually I learned that the best way to obtain food was to help the local sellers. The ones who set up their stalls for the day and leave in the evening.

  “If you offer to move their baskets in the evenings, when they are packing up and tired, they may give you a bruised fruit or a bit of old bread in appreciation. I could not lift as much as the bigger kids, but the women liked me. I knew how to sweet-talk them.”

  Priscilla grinned. “I can imagine.”

  His eyes twinkled. “You would not have lasted half a day selling food on the streets, Priscilla. As soon as someone like me came along, you would have given away all your food and gone hungry yourself.”

  She nodded in agreement. Her smile vanished as a thought occurred to her. “Were the sellers ever mean to you?”

  “Plenty. Sometimes they would curse you and scream obscenities. Others let you do lots of hard work and gave you nothing in return. Those were the times I collected my pay without permission.”

  “You stole?

  He shrugged. His eyes went dark
and flat. He had done what he could to survive. But survival had come at a price. A price he was not proud of.

  “Where did you sleep at night?”

  “Often I did not. Nights were dangerous. So I kept moving, staying in busy streets, especially near the warehouses. Those remain open at night while workers load wares on carts. If I could find a private little shed like yours, I would sneak a few hours of sleep. But mostly I slept during the day. I took naps near fountains, bridges, or aqueducts, where crowds lingered.

  “I could never stay asleep for very long. After an hour, I would have to move and find a new place. Bad things happened to kids who slept too long and forgot to watch their backs.”

  “Marcus.” She had to clear her throat and start again. “Marcus, you will never have to stay awake again because you are afraid to close your eyes. Not as long as I breathe.”

  A slow flush started at the boy’s neck and worked its way up to his cheeks. He dropped his head and swallowed. When he lifted his face, the old guarded look had returned. “Does that mean I don’t have to practice Greek?”

  “It means you have to practice more. Now that I know how clever you are, we are moving on to bigger verbs.”

  Marcus rolled his eyes, then leaned over to examine the contents of the pot. Priscilla assumed he wanted more porridge and was about to serve him the leftovers. Instead he said, “I know where a couple of younger boys go, late in the mornings. Could we take them the rest of the porridge, do you think? After we are finished with your dreadful verbs, of course?”

  She reached a finger and gently brushed his hair away from his forehead. Her own son, had he lived, would have been five years old by now. Perhaps she, too, would be living on the streets today if her brother had discovered her condition. Her little boy could have been one of the hungry children who did not dare to sleep at night for fear of unspeakable violence. She squeezed her eyes shut, warding off that painful image.

  “Every day, Marcus,” she promised. “We can bring them food every day.”

  “I want you to look at a house on the Aventine,” Pudens told them the next evening after Priscilla and Aquila finished their teaching. He knew Aquila planned to move to a more suitable residence as soon as he had saved enough.