A Mixture of Madness, Book II of The Bow - By Levkoff, Andrew Page 0,18

me with my bath. I had been looking forward to the moment since mid-morning; had I been paying attention I would have prepared him for such a lurid unveiling. I had folded my clothes onto a shelf and had turned from him to enter the calidarium. He emitted such a gasp of pain I thought he had accidentally stabbed himself with a stilus. (This was quite possible—he was constantly picking up whatever caught his eye for inspection, testing, even tasting.) Not this time. I whirled to see a look of horror on his face that slowly melted into one of pain, then sorrow. Tears welled as he came to me. He put his hands on my bare shoulders and made to turn me around. When I realized what he was doing, I stiffened and pulled away.

Hanno looked puzzled; he held up his mutilated hands to my face. “But Alexander,” he said. “Look.”

“No!” I said, slapping his hands away. “We are not the same.”

After half a month of explaining, then apologizing, he still had not forgiven me. In the end, only an unfeigned recognition that our scars did indeed make us brothers brought a smile back to his face. It also brought a number of restless nights to my bed chamber as I contemplated my admission.

Now, Hanno was warming scented oil and wiping down an iron strigil with a towel and the heel of his hand while I soaked in the steaming waters. It was just past the ninth hour. There were at least two hours before sundown; plenty of time to clean up after the day’s work before Crassus returned from the senate, which would not sit in session after dark. Romans take advantage of the light—even for the privileged class, the day begins soon after dawn and ends at sunset. As we were in the heart of winter, each of the twelve hours of the day were markedly foreshortened compared to summer, with the result that the entire city moved at a much brisker pace, not from the cold, but from the need to cram as much as possible into the shorter workday. That morning, Crassus and I had risen in the dark, before the first hour, to review by lamplight the notes for the day’s speeches. He was in the forum by the time the rest of us were having our morning cup of water.

“I’m glad to see you’re not using the public baths.”

At the sound of my master’s voice, I leapt up and whipped round to face him, as much to save him from the embarrassment of seeing his stripy handiwork as to relieve me of the discomfiture of exhibiting it. Hanno grabbed towels, pinched together by the two remaining fingers of each hand. The weight of the larger one caused it to slip from his grasp. Reddening and repeating apologies, he handed me the smaller and dropped awkwardly to his knees. Using the fallen bath sheet, he scrubbed at the water my turning had splashed upon Crassus’ senatorial shoes, the black ones with a “C” stitched in silver thread on the top of each boot. This was the traditional emblem for the original number of conscript fathers in that august deliberative body—one hundred. Six times that number were now accommodated in Sulla’s Curia Cornelia, resplendent in their white togas. Only a few were curule magistrates, allowed to wear the toga praetexta of their ancient office, embellished by a broad purple border. Crassus was one of the oldest, most venerated among them.

“I have instructed everyone to remain in the compound, if possible,” I said, “and if they must go down into town, not to do so without an escort.”

“Good,” Crassus said, wincing as the seat Hanno was guiding to him scraped along the floor. “It’s not safe in the city. Stop fussing, boy!” Hanno abandoned his attempt to wrestle the back of the chair into a parallel position behind dominus’ legs and stood with his hands at his sides, his chin trembling.

“It’s all right,” I said. “Fetch me one as well.” That brought the smile out again. He dragged another chair to me, but I stood there dripping, my towel being of a size that made it perfect for blowing one’s nose, but little else. I held it bunched in my hand, deciding not to risk a flood of tears by asking for another.

Crassus said, “Sit.” I sat. “Hannibal,” he added, “would you mind fetching us a bowl of olives?” Hanno was off like a lurching charioteer,