Search the Seven Hills by Barbara Hambly Read Free Book Online

animal weeping, and said nothing. Tullia was somewhere in Rome, in the hands of vengeful terrorists; mere was no way to find her, nothing that he could do. Yet he felt that if he remained in this airless room all day he would go mad.
    “I should see her,” he said finally, half to himself. “Even if she’s asleep, or drugged, she’ll need someone. I can’t do anything...”
    “At all events, you can offer her the inestimable consolation of philosophy.”
    “Dunno about the consolation of philosophy,” put in Felix, “but havin’ your hand held for a bit never goes amiss.”
    The philosopher’s rebuttal to this was a frigidly polite silence. Felix, unaware of having committed the gross philosophical solecism of comparing the lowest usages of the emotions with the highest ones of the mind, was busily picking through the heap of clothes in the corner in quest of a clean tunic for his brother.
    “Tell you what, though,” he continued after a moment, “if you’re going to visit Lady A. this afternoon, you really ought to wander by the baths first, elder brother.”
    “What?” blinked Marcus, jerked abruptly from his misery by the mundane. He looked down at himself and rubbed at his stubbly jaw. “I suppose you’re right.”
    “I’ll even lend you the tin, if you’re short the price of a shave,” added Felix handsomely. “Where’d you get this tunic, brother? It’s miles too big for you.”
    “I don’t know,” said Marcus impatiently. “It’s Varus’—they lent it to me...”
    “Should have known. Dashed sight better than anything you’d wear. Clean, too.”
    Disgusted with such trivialities, Marcus turned away. “Timoleon, could you—could you spare the time to walk along with me to the baths? I need to talk. I feel desperately in need of wisdom.”
    “Ah,” cried his brother, “be toddling on my way, then—come to the wrong shop for that. Good to see you’re not dead, though, Professor. Bit of a blow to Mater, what with the cost of funeral masks, and all that.” He smiled, and Marcus realized the absurdity of being angry with him for any length of time.
    “Does Mother know?”
    “By Castor, no! She’d never keep it from the old paterfamilias, and then we’d have the whole triumphal procession again about your hanging about with freethinkers and lowlivers and associating with Christians—though why if you was associating with ‘em they’d half-brain you beats me. Fine mind, Father,” he explained aside to the philosopher, “no logic, though.” And with that he finished his wine, collected his winecups, and pattered on his way.
    “But what can we do?”
    “Do?” Timoleon’s fine brow deepened. He leaned his shoulders against the brisk rough friction of the bath-slave’s towel, and considered his student gravely. “In the face of tragedy, Marcus, the most that a man can do is school his heart to bear the worst, and face Fate with courage.”
    Down at the other end of the long drying room, a fat gentleman was fussily directing half-a-dozen liveried slaves to blot him dry, rather than rub him. Through the open archways that led to the pool deck Marcus could hear the racket of men’s voices echoing in the vaulted mosaics of the ceiling. For a long time he could make no reply.
    Timoleon continued, “As Epictetus has told us in his Enchiridion, a thing is what it is. Willing it to be otherwise not only hurts you, but makes you slave to the whims of Fate.”
    “But they have her prisoner,” whispered Marcus helplessly. “They could be doing anything to her. Isn’t there anything that we can do?”
    He looked pleadingly at the philosopher, who sat beside him on the black marble bench, his faded reddish hair lank and dripping from the warm water of the baths. All around them was the quiet bustle of men coming and going: wealthy men, surrounded by clients who all but fell over one another to be the first to laugh at their patron’s jokes, senators emerging pink as lobsters