The Raven and the Rose by Doreen Owens Malek Read Free Book Online

spot so that he could be on call for the mistress at all times without disturbing anyone else. It had the disadvantage of being right next to the kitchen; he could hear the skivvies in there now banging pots while cooking the evening meal. But after seven years on a construction gang he was impervious to noise and didn’t care where he slept.
    Verrix was surprised, in fact, to find himself still alive. He had prepared for death so often since the failure of the Gallic rebellion when he was eighteen that to slip away from Cerberus one more time made him all the more determined to survive. And now the prospect of freedom dangled before him tantalizingly, like the fox’s grapes hanging just out of reach. But to grasp the prize he had to keep that little minx alive for three years, and during that time he just might kill her himself.
    Larthia was a type he particularly disliked. Most Roman women were kept behind closed doors and under the thumb of their husbands, but the wealthy widow was the conspicuous exception. In his years of observing Roman culture he had seen such matrons out on the town many times, leading an entourage of slaves and ordering all of them about curtly. It made him recall with a pang the women of his tribe, working alongside the men even when heavy with child, valiant to the last when the Romans and their minions swept across the river and razed everything. All of them were gone now, most dead, the survivors scattered like himself.  
    No, he didn’t care much for Larthia Casca Sejana, but he would keep her breathing in order to get the emancipation papers that were his only escape from a future of slavery. He had known the situation when Casca bought him. The only surprise was the physical appearance of the lady in question. He still confused Latin suffixes and had thought she was Casca’s daughter at first, and so expected a fortyish matron with grown children, not a slender slip of a girl years younger than himself. She must have been married off when she was hardly out of childhood to a monied old coot; he had learned that was the custom with the Roman aristocracy. Now she had her husband’s fortune, his massive house, his troops of slaves, but she had her grandfather too, standing on her neck and making sure she didn’t stir off the mark. So she spent her time throwing money away on trifles and growing more irritable and dissipated by the day.
    Verrix stood abruptly at a knock on his door. It swung open immediately.
    “Come with me,” Nestor said, jerking his gray head in the direction of the kitchen. “I want you to help me stoke the stove. You have a strong young back and mine was bent long ago.”
    Verrix followed the stooped and shuffling man, who had grown old in the service of the Casca family and come with Larthia to her husband’s house when she was married.
      Verrix understood that his new life was about to begin.
    * * *
    Marcus entered the luxurious atrium of the Gracchus estate on the Palatine hill and handed his helmet and cloak to a bowing servant.
    The impressively large house was of concrete faced with stone, rectangular in shape, with two floors. Its entry hall roof was open to the appearing stars through a skylight and the room was lined at the left with cupboards containing masks of the Gracchus ancestors cast in wax. Ranged all around the walls were costly vases and Oriental tapestries, and underfoot was a floor mosaic of intricate pattern, many tiny tiles inlaid with mortar depicting a pastoral scene of gambolingnymphs and shepherds. Marcus followed the servant through the hall into the tablinum, a slightly raised open parlor flanked on either side by the alae , alcoves which contained shrines to the lares , the household gods.  
    Senator Gracchus and his son awaited Marcus in the tablinum, where they reclined on brocade couches, golden cups in hand. Marcus looked around at the engraved twin candelabra sitting on a side table inlaid with lapis and decorated with green