A Roman Ransom by Rosemary Rowe Read Free Book Online Page A

mistress this was very good,’ I said, after a few minutes, leaning back to pant and rest my spinning head. ‘Or, better, I will tell her so myself. Where is she now?’
    ‘She has gone to have a rest.’ Junio held another spoonful of warm gruel to my lips. ‘The poor lady has scarcely slept since you fell ill. She has hardly left your side except occasionally to snatch an hour or two of sleep – and even then she always made sure that there was someone here.’
    ‘You?’
    He grinned again. ‘Who else could be trusted to keep an eye on you?’ A shadow crossed his face and he looked serious suddenly. ‘Though it was worrying. You were hot and cold and shivering by turns, talking in your sleep – thinking that you were back in slavery again and that your wife was lost. You threshed about a lot as well – shouting out her name and struggling.’
    I shuddered at the memory. ‘I kept dreaming that the pirate boat had come and the slavers were snatching us apart.’
    He made a sympathetic face. ‘We tried to comfort you. Many an hour she has stood here by your side, whispering that you’d found her now, and everything was well – but you didn’t even know her when she spoke to you.’
    ‘Poor Gwellia.’ This time I said the words aloud.
    He gave the grin once more. ‘Poor all of us,’ he said. ‘We servants had to sleep in the dye-house first of all – since it was obviously impossible to stay in here – but then Marcus sent down his slaves to help us build another sleeping room, next door to this. Kurso and I did most of it, but Cilla helped – once she had got the idea of how to weave the walls from osiers, and daub them with manure and clay to keep the water out. It’s very snug, with a hearth, a wooden bench and everything, so that those who were not watching you could sleep, or work or cook without disturbing you.’
    Kurso and Cilla! I had half forgotten them. I was so accustomed to my little threesome here – myself, my wife and Junio – that for a moment I’d failed to remember that I now had other slaves. Of course, I had acquired them in the last few months, much to Gwellia’s delight – though both times it had been more or less by accident, as a kind of payment for my services. ‘How are they both?’
    ‘Much as usual. They’ll come and see you, now you are awake. When they come in, that is. Kurso is out with the chickens now and Cilla is gathering kindling for the fire. They have been a great help while you’ve been ill – Kurso hasn’t broken anything for days.’
    I grinned. Poor Kurso had been a kitchen boy before, but he had been so ill treated by his former owners that he was really too nervous to work in the house. He could still run faster backwards than forwards, and jumped every time you spoke to him – usually dropping any dish he held – but he had found a kind of contentment in tending our chickens, goats and kitchen crops, and helping in the workshop now and then. Cilla, on the other hand, was skilled. She was a gift from Marcus’s house, a plump, bright, cheerful little maidservant who helped with household chores and generally waited on my wife – when Junio wasn’t making eyes at her.
    If they hadn’t been in servitude, there might have been a real romance between those two, I thought – but of course liaisons were forbidden between slaves. I had once or twice considered the idea of rewarding Junio with his freedom in the end, but when I had discussed it with the boy he had sworn that he would publicly refuse – which would make him my bondsman in perpetuity. Anyway, he was too young to manumit. That was a problem for another day.
    I said now, ‘I shall look forward to seeing both the others soon, and my new sleeping hut as well. Marcus has been very good, it seems. You know he was even talking yesterday of having me moved up to his house? It’s almost a pity I’ve recovered quite so well. I might have enjoyed a day or two of luxury – Marcus’s slaves