"I see." She found a chair and sat down, elbows on knees, looking at
her folded hands.
"What is your name?" he asked.
"Phryne." Though it meant nothing to him, she was obscurely grateful
to hear no sniggering reference to her historic namesake's profession;
why did they never remember that the first Phryne had modeled for
Praxiteles, and forget what else she had been?
"I am Eodan, Boierik's son. Are you a Roman?"
She started, met a smoldering in his eyes and laughed a little. "Zeus,
no! I am a Greek. A slave like yourself."
"A well-tended slave," he fleered. He was drunk--not much, but enough
to loosen the wariness learned in the dealers' pens. "A darling of the
house."
Anger leaped in her--it stung that he should snap when she had offered
only help--and she said, "Are you so brave to make war on me with your
tongue?"
He checked himself. As he sat rubbing his shaggy chin, she could almost
see him turning the thought over in his mind. Finally, pushed out with
an effort that roughened it: "You are right. I spoke badly."
"It is nothing," she said, altogether melted. "I think I understand.
You were a free man. A king, did you say?"
"We have ... we had no kings," he mumbled. "Not as you seem to mean the
word here--what little I've heard. But truly I was a free man once."
A gust of rain went over the tiled roof. The hearthfire leaped and
sputtered; smoke caught Phryne's eyes, and she coughed and threw back
her cloak. Eodan's gaze fixed on her.
She knew that look. Every woman in the Roman world knew it, though the
high-born paid it no heed. A slave girl must. It was the look of a
man locked away from all women for months and years, lucky to have a
rare hurried moment in a strawstack at festival time. The penalty for
attacking expensive female property could be death, if her owner cared
(Phryne doubted Cordelia would) ... still, a desperate hand might seize
her one night. She stayed close to the villa when she was here.
She said quickly, "I have heard Master Flavius telling he was a
prisoner among your folk for four years."
Eodan laughed, deep laughter from full lungs, but somehow grim. At last
he answered, "Flavius was my slave."
"Oh--". A hand stole to her lips.
Still he looked at her. She was not tall, but she was lithely formed.
The simple white dress fell about long slim legs, touched the curve of
thigh and waist, drew over small firm breasts. Her hair was of deep
bluish-black, piled on a slender neck and caught with a bone fillet.
Her face did not have classic lines; perhaps that, and her quietness
when Roman men were about, was why she remained a virgin at twenty. But
more than one lovesick slave had tried to praise deep violet eyes,
smoky-lashed under arching brows, a wide clear forehead, tilted nose
and delicate chin, soft mouth and pale cheeks.
Eodan lifted his cup. "Be not afraid," he said. "I cannot leave this
chair before they bring me a staff."
Phryne received his bluntness with relief. Some of the educated
household men simpered about so she could vomit. She could give no
better reason, in all honesty, for not taking a lover or even a
husband. Cordelia had not forbidden her, and the memory of a certain
boy was chilly comfort.
"I should think," she whispered, leaning close lest it be overheard,
"that if you treated Flavius kindly--and he did not look much abused
when he came back--he could have found something better for you than
field labor. That destroys--" She stopped, appalled.
Eodan said bleakly, "Destroys men. Of course. Do you think I have not
seen what a few years of it do to a man? He could have done worse, I
suppose--resold me to the games I hear tell of, or as a rower on a
ship. But he could never trust me running about a house, even another
man's house, as freely as you do."
"Why not? You can have no more dreams of escape. You have seen
crucified men along the roads."
"Some things might be worth a crucifixion," said Eodan. He made no
great point of it; his tone was almost matter-of-fact, wherefore Phryne
shuddered.
"Hercules help me, why?" she breathed.