Tales of Ancient Rome by S. J. A. Turney Read Free Book Online Page A

from his back with the barbed lash. He’d not screamed. Why would he? They were only slaves.
    He really wished he could scratch his nose, but his arms were tied fast to the crossbar of the hastily manufactured crucifix. There had been some intelligent irony among them, in the end. They’d crucified him using the very timber and nails he’d been beating them for misusing.
    A raven cawed in a nearby tree, watching him with anticipation. He could swear it was almost drooling as it watched its meal start to sag and fade.
    Marcus Aelius Pacutus looked out over his latifundium with a professional, practiced eye and nodded to himself.
    Time was up.
     
    A Reading
     
    Spurius Bulba took a deep breath and swallowed nervously. Glancing up surreptitiously he eyed the waiting folk. The handsome, chiselled features of the central figure, master of this grand palace and employer of unfortunate wretches, watched expectantly, his advisors gripping their togas in anticipation. Spurius swallowed again.
    It had not been an easy morning.
     
    The very first thing he had seen when he opened his eyes was the image of Castus the moneylender, his face a mixture of violent anger and hungry amusement. He’d been meaning to pay Castus back all month but, as was always the case, whatever money came into his hands seemed to evaporate whenever he passed by one of the thermopolia where men gathered to play dice. The dice didn’t like him, and his few satisfied customers had joked that he was safe anyway, since his entire being was anathema to chance itself.
    Castus had been surprisingly accommodating. The Syrian thug with him broke the fourth and fifth fingers on Spurius’ left hand, which is the most excruciating way to wake up, but also allowed him an extra week to pay. It could have been worse, for sure.

     
    Donning his tunic and quickly splashing water over his face and his ever-unruly hair with the bald patch that allowed the shining dome of his intellect to rise through like the Capitol, he quickly rifled around his table. The only furniture in his small room apart from the rickety bed and the washstand, the table was a permanent dumping ground for anything and everything. Broken wine pots mingled with unwashed underwear and the lead curse tablets he kept just in case. He’d been tempted to use one on Castus, but had relented, as they were costly, and it seemed like throwing good money after bad. Somewhere on the table, amid the chaos, a former meal had gone mouldy as the general reek announced, but he wasn’t over-keen to excavate and locate the errant fungus.
    The search turned up, along with unspeakable things, seven copper asses. Seven asses! It wouldn’t even buy a morning snack. Grasping the coins as though they might flee and reaching for his work bag, Spurius had left his room, hurried down the grubby, badly-maintained stairwell and out of the insula into the street.
    Jerusalem. Not the nicest city in the world, but one of the few that would have him. In the past eight years since he had left Rome via Ostia at high speed with bruisers chasing him intent on extracting blood, he had spent brief times in almost every great city of the empire.
    Narbo had been nice for a while until the debts mounted up and he’d had just enough left to take ship, the moneylenders baying after him like hounds. Tarraco had been more civilized still, but he’d soon been found out and exiled by men of import. He’d tried Syracuse for a time, but the moneylenders there were shrewd and shunned him. Epirus had made him shudder. Everyone had been far too clever and pleasant. He’d felt like a turd in a bathhouse his entire stay, and it remained unique as the only city he had ever left voluntarily.
    Athens had been pretty nice, despite the fact that a notorious lover of boys had taken a liking to him and followed him around, trying to get into his breeches. Still, a heavy bet on the track races there had seen him fleeing north on a stolen donkey with no