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“Not in a household,” Sixtus objected. “Someone would notice. There’s a thousand things that would give you away as a free man, you’d stand out like a vestal in a whorehouse. Find out where he’s having dinner tomorrow night and slip yourself in among the other linkboys and litter-bearers on the doorstep or in the nearest tavern. People talk to anyone about anything when they’re forced to wait.”

“He’ll be out at that supper-party Praetor Quindarvis is giving at his villa tomorrow night,” supplied Arrius. “Because of the Christian problem we’ve been asked to put an extra guard on the Naevian Gate.” He turned to look at Marcus. “Think you can do it?”

He nodded shakily. “I can try.”

“Would Quindarvis agree to pass you off as one of his slaves?”

“I don’t think we can risk asking him.”

They both turned to stare in surprise at Sixtus.

“Think about it,” said the old man. “From all I’ve heard—and believe me, Churaldin is a spy network in himself—Priscus Quindarvis is a climber. Look at the crowd he habitually entertains. Lectus Garovinus. Porcius Craessius. Men who are all far richer than he is, and viciously dissolute—men he can prey on. He’s supposed to spend a fortune staying in the running with them.”

“That’s what I’ve heard, too,” put in Marcus suddenly, as various bits of Felix’s gossip fell into place in his mind.

“If he’s courting Tiridates, would he want to risk it getting back to him that he’s sent a police informer in to pump his slaves?”

Arrius bit his lip thoughtfully. “You have a point. And if we ask his permission and he refuses, he’ll be on the lookout.”

“Whereas ordinarily I doubt he’s ever been in the slaves’ courtyard of that country palace of his. No—I think the best course would be to pass Marcus off as one of my own slaves.”

“Yours?” said Marcus, considerably startled.

“I admit he doesn’t know me from Tiberius Caesar—yet.” Sixtus rose and drained his winecup. “But do you think that after I call on him in the morning to thank him for the handsome recompense he sent to my slave, I won’t be able to secure an invitation?”

Marcus shook his head. He was beginning to come to the conclusion that there wasn’t a great deal that this frail, formidable old aristocrat couldn’t do.

...everyone there seemed to be completely drunk on aphrodisiacs....

Petronius

“O
NE THING YOU MUST REMEMBER.”
Sixtus held out one arm, and the burly old Greek who generally looked after his ruinous gardens draped the toga over it, arranging its folds in a simple elegant style some forty years out of date. “To be what you wish to seem is not only excellent philosophy, but also very good advice for spies. To pretend to be something you’re not is not only almost impossible, but painfully obvious. You must put an element of yourself into your persona, and you must take elements of that persona into your own heart. Temporarily, you are a slave, and you have to think like one.”

Marcus, seated on the foot of the narrow bed that was one of the few pieces of furniture the Spartan room contained, remembered Telesphorus and Dorcas at the prison, playing “wicked uncle” for the benefit of the sentry, with her life and freedom as the stake. “But all slaves don’t think alike,” he protested.

Sixtus shrugged with his eyebrows, so as not to disturb his valet in the midst of an accomplishment of one of the “great arts.” “Of course not. But slavery affects the way anyone thinks. What sort of person would you be if you were a slave, Marcus?”

“I don’t know. I hadn’t really thought about it. Pretty much the same sort of person I am now, I suppose.”

“Really? You must have an extraordinarily strong character. I’m afraid that had I grown up from childhood with the knowledge that I could be summarily punished, even unto death or several things a good deal worse, for things I didn’t do, the knowledge that I had no rights whatsoever, the knowledge that my life, my education, my body, my friends, my wife were totally at the whim of persons considerably less intelligent than myself—I’m afraid I would have turned into a terrible rogue.”

Marcus remembered Nicanor, pleading for his silence; Quindarvis saying, “The man should be put to death, and if he was mine he would be...” about a man whose only crime had been to do as he was ordered. As though he’d read his mind, Sixtus continued, “That old chestnut about the slave who’s punished for obeying his mistress’s orders to climb in bed with her is a situation that happens tragically often. Can you wonder that slaves are popularly credited with slippery morals and a propensity for telling lies?”

“I suppose under circumstances like that,” he replied slowly, “a brotherhood, a solidarity—even if it was based on whatever abominable rites the Christians practice—would be almost understandable. I mean, a slave’s life is forfeit anyway, isn’t it?”

Sixtus stepped back from his valet and looked at Marcus consideringly. “I think you’re beginning to understand,” he said. “Thank you, Alexandras,” he added. “I have always felt guilty about letting your talents as a valet atrophy; I’m pleased to see one doesn’t get rusty at this sort of thing.” He turned to view himself in the polished bronze of the mirror. The toga lay in the simplest possible drape, but the folds fell like carved marble, showing off the quality of the weave and the perfect shaping of the garment itself.

“You do get rusty, a bit,” replied the big slave mildly. “That there drape’s not hardly the style no more, but it suits you, sir, better nor what the double-crossed folds in the front would, that men are wearing now.”

“I bow to your wisdom,” said the scholar humbly. “Thank you.”

“That hired chair’s gonna be here pretty quick. I’ll be back.” And with the sketchiest of bows the slave departed.

“Yet I wouldn’t call Alexandras a liar, or say that his morals are particularly bad.” Marcus looked through the open door into the colonnade in the wake of the gardener. “He seems to be pretty attached to you.”

“He’s been with me a long time,” admitted Sixtus. “I’d like to think that he trusts me. I’ve offered him freedom for him and his wife, or sale to some fashionable nobleman who would do his talents as a dresser credit, and he says he’d prefer to remain as he is—stubborn Greek. And I admit I should hate for Phyrnne to leave the household. I’ve become much addicted to her cooking.”

Marcus looked around at the stark cleanliness of the small whitewashed room. Through the latticework of vines that walled in the pillared walkway, he could see into the jungles of the garden, silent and somnolent in the late afternoon hush, where the gray cat slept on a sundial mossed over with disuse.

“You don’t have many slaves, do you?”

“Actually, I have over a thousand,” replied the old warrior mildly, “but they’re all on the estates. I suspect my steward cheats me,” he added regretfully. “And as for this house... Well, I suppose I’ve rather let things slip. One does, I’m afraid.” He looked around him at the chipped tiles, the overgrown garden, the great elegant house grown dusty and empty. “But what’s the use?”

And for an instant Marcus heard in his voice the tiredness of an old man who has been dragged from the safety of his chosen retreat, the sadness of someone who is aware that he has gone badly downhill but is not quite certain where he took the wrong turning. He felt suddenly sorry for him, and ashamed of himself for dragging him back to the noise and brilliance of the world he had quitted, to be a stalking-horse for his own affairs. But as he turned, an apology on his lips, Alexandras appeared again in the doorway, carrying a couple of cold torches, cloaks in case the evening grew chill, and an ebony shoecase containing his master’s houseslippers.

“The chair’s here.”

“Where’s Churaldin, by the way?’ inquired Marcus, as they emerged from the vestibule to find the hired chair and its six bearers waiting in the street.

Sixtus’ eyes twinkled. “I didn’t ask.”

“Boy’s pecker’s too damn long for his own good,” grumbled the huge gardener, helping his master up the step and into the litter. It occurred to Marcus for the first time that this was what Sixtus might have meant when he spoke of his slave’s “other faults.” With his dark handsomeness and that curious quality of aloof pride, the young Cymry must be enormously attractive to women. And yet he had never impressed Marcus as a womanizer, although, he reflected, his heart turning over at the thought of Tullia, sometimes there was no accounting for women.

He remembered that his father kept the slaves locked in their rooms at night. One night he’d caught the boys’ pedagogue stealing out to meet a woman and had sold him next day to a broker bound for Gaul.

Marcus was coming to understand how a talented manservant like Alexandras would prefer to dig this man’s gardens, rather than leave his house.

The villa of Priscus Quindarvis stood two or three miles from the outskirts of Rome, close to the Ardeatine Way. A walled parkland of many acres surrounded it, scattered with dark groves of cypress and plane trees, green rolling land rich in the lucid sunlight of the late afternoon. As the hired litter approached the wide steps of salt-and-pepper marble that led up to the tessellated pavements of the terrace, Marcus caught a glimpse of burnished peacocks spreading their gaudy tails in the shade of fountained arbors. Not far off through a belt of trees, zebras drank at a marble tank at the feet of an image of Pan.

An Ethiopian doorman in livery of red silk met his master’s guests on the steps. As Sixtus stepped from the litter Marcus had a quick look at the front of the villa, the high walls white and brilliant as meringue in the slanting sunlight, the pillars of the two-story porch pink marble, their garlanded capitals basalt and gilded malachite. Statues of gods and heroes—Hercules, Venus, Mars, Helen, Alexander—stood among the shrubs that flanked the terrace, half again life size and carved out of black marble, with draperies of red porphyry so fluidly carved as to appear to be agitated by violent winds. Even the immortals, grinned Marcus to himself, wore the uniform of the household. In the dim shade of the pillared porch two guards, ex-gladiators by the look of them, in silver armor and crimson plumes, stood to attention as Sixtus passed between them and out of sight into the shadows of the house, with Alexandras padding humbly at his heels carrying his slippers. For all the notice the kingly old aristocrat paid them they might have been bootscrapers.

The bronze doors shut. Marcus was on his own.

There was a big courtyard at the back of the house where the litters were taken. Two or three were there already, including an equipage of gold and ebony that would have done for the pharaoh of Egypt and must have required at least a dozen bearers. Only one guest seemed to have come from town in a cisium, and the brightly painted two-wheeled sporting carriage was drawn up at one side of the gate, its shafts resting on an abandoned bench. Marcus, whose ribs still smarted from the kick he’d collected from the Christian kidnappers, tried to picture riding in the unsprung vehicle even under the best of circumstances, and felt slightly ill. Dead drunk, its passenger would be likely to die of seasickness before they ever reached the gates of Rome.

Marcus had a story ready that would account for his inexperience, but no one in the slaves’ court paid him much attention. There were already upward of thirty assorted bearers, linkboys, and footmen lounging on the benches; many of them evidently knew one another well. (As they must, he reflected—as well as their masters and mistresses knew one another. Everyone in Rome went to the same parties.) Someone had already got up a dice game in the shade of the porch. A couple of men started flirtations with the maids who emerged from time to time from the steamy confines of the kitchens; one of the Nubian bearers, stripping off his gold loincloth and jewels, challenged all comers to wrestling, and soon the courtyard was a fog of aureate dust.

Someone called out a greeting. Another litter was coming through the arched gateway, its gilded lotus-blossom shafts borne on the shoulders of eight men. Tiridates had evidently turned out his whole fleet of chair-men to carry him in comfort to and from the party. Marcus recognized one of the men at once—the right-front corner man, with his bruised face and his white teeth flashing in a grin as he returned the greetings of his friends. The other man he wasn’t so sure of—he thought he knew him, but like most Romans, Marcus was bad at recognizing slaves.

He started to move toward them, not to speak but simply to establish himself as part of the scenery, when a small, light-boned hand touched his arm, and a woman’s voice purred, “Haven’t seen you before, have I, pearblossom?”

Marcus turned, startled, gasping, “Uh—there must be some mistake...” and found himself looking, not at another kitchen wench, but at a woman who was clearly one of the guests at the feast.

She pursed painted lips at him, and murmured, “Oh, I don’t think so.” Insinuating fingers wound in the fabric of his tunic; gentle, insistent pressure drew him into the shadows of the porch. “My, but you’re a good-looking one.”

Marcus knew that this was patently untrue. But he returned the compliment, stammering, “Uh—you’re very—very beautiful—er—too,” although, as he was drawn closer to her, he knew that this was untrue, too. The makeup gave the impression of beauty, rouge blossoming delicately on a background of white lead, lapis and malachite painted around the rather protuberant blue eyes, the whole surrounded by a stunning coiffure of snailshell curls built up six or seven inches above that fair white brow. But closer inspection revealed the haglike lines buried under the cheeks, the disguised puffiness beneath the eyes, and all the pastilles in the world couldn’t cover the wine reek on her breath.

“Do you think so?” she crooned.

Marcus hastily disengaged his hands from where she was guiding them. “I—er—yes, yes of course. But they’ll be missing you at the banquet...”

“Oh, that!” She shrugged half-uncovered shoulders, and staggered slightly, falling against him. “You know, I’ve always preferred to take the first course in private... if you know what I mean.”

Marcus backed hastily and bumped into the wall of the alcove into which she’d led him. She giggled thickly, her hands sliding down his body, “You be good to me,” she purred, “and I’ll be good to you...”