“Here, come and sit down. I expect you’re hungry. I’ve some bread and cheese here. Will that suit you?”
Pliny waited while the boy crammed the food into his mouth with both hands and washed it down with large gulps of water.
“Now, then, what’s this all about?”
“About the young master, sir. The one we’re all scared of.”
“Balbus’ son? Why are you afraid of him?”
“Well, he has a curse on him, doesn’t he? We all spit in our bosom whenever he comes around the stable. Which he did, sir. I mean the day Master disappeared. The young master rode out with him. ’Twasn’t even daylight when they left. Roused us all up to saddle the horses.”
“The horses. Was Aulus’ horse a chestnut?”
The boy nodded vigorously. “The one you brought back, sir. Which Mistress said weren’t ours, but it is. She said she’ll sell us all to the quarries if we breathe a word to anyone. But I can’t stick it there no more, and so I thought…” His voice trailed off. He gazed hopefully at Pliny.
Pliny let his breath out slowly. “Clever lad. Let no one ever discount the intelligence of a slave, even the humblest. You’ve a pretty good idea what this information is worth, don’t you?”
“Will you buy me off the estate, sir? Otherwise—”
“You drive a hard bargain, Epaminondas,” Pliny smiled. “All right, I’ll pay for you. Do you like horses?”
“Yessir, I love ’em. Hope to ride my own someday.”
“Well, perhaps you will.”
Pliny summoned the optio and told him to have Epaminondas thoroughly scrubbed, fed, and handed over to his stable master with instructions to find him suitable duties.
***
He had not seen Fabia since the day of Balbus’ funeral. The passage of time had taken a toll on her appearance—her hair was unkempt, her face unmade—while, if anything, it had increased her natural obduracy. Her feet were planted firmly in the doorway, her arms crossed, as though she really intended to physically bar them—Pliny, Suetonius, Marinus, and four lictors, led by Galeo—from entering. Behind her could be glimpsed her muscular freedman, a second bulwark.
“I will speak with your son,” Pliny said again, making an effort to keep his voice low, “with your permission, madam, but, if necessary, without it.”
“He isn’t here.”
“Really? And where would he go? He isn’t well, is he?”
She said nothing but thrust out her chin at him.
“Lictors!”
Three of them moved her aside, pinning her arms behind her when she tried to wrestle with them. The freedman raised his fists and took a step forward, but hesitated when Galeo threatened him with his cudgel.
“Search the house and grounds,” Pliny commanded.
“Tyrant! Bloody tyrant!” Fabia screamed, her voice hoarse with tears of rage.
Pliny went immediately to the little room off the atrium where he had found Aulus hiding before. It was empty now. “Marinus, go through the rooms on this floor. Suetonius, take two of the men and search the grounds. I’ll look upstairs.”
And it was Pliny who found him at last, cowering behind a clothes press in his mother’s bedroom, doubled up with his arms over his head.
“It’s all right, it’s all right now. No one will hurt you.” He spoke softly, as though gentling a frightened horse. “I’ll call your mother now.”
Fabia crouched beside her son, wrapping him in her arms, shielding him with her body, a lioness protecting a sick cub.
As Pliny and Marinus watched in silence, Aulus kicked out his legs and threw back his head. His eyes turned upwards until only the whites showed, his tongue protruded between his teeth, and foam gathered at the corners of his mouth. Fabia put a twisted rag between his teeth, rocked him, stroked his head, and murmured in his ear while he writhed and twisted in her arms.
“Fascinating,” Marinus breathed. While Pliny, rational man that he was, felt the atavistic urge to spit rise up in him—the ancient apotropaic magic to ward off the Sacred Disease—so strong was the fear of it.
After two or three minutes the boy’s tremors subsided. His eyes closed and he went limp as a rag. Fabia continued to rock him.
“He’ll sleep for an hour or more,” Marinus whispered. “When he wakes up he won’t remember what happened.”
“Is there something you can do for him?” Pliny asked.
“Nothing that she isn’t doing already.”
“Then we will wait.”
***
It was well past midday when Aulus’ eyelids fluttered open. They had carried him to his own room and laid him on his bed. Fabia sat beside him and hers was the first face he saw. But