I would say that he was born in 71 AD. I think so. When he was brought before me to touch and look over, the slave in charge told me that the little one was five years old. This little baby, blond and pretty, tugged on me to be let up into my lap, and when he climbed me, he touched my face and pulled on my hair. He asked me, babbling, in a language I didn't know well, why my skin was so white, and lips so red. He tapped on my chest with his little fist and asked me, "Why are you looking like the devil?" That little beautiful baby had no fear. I told him that I was from a different place, very far away. He said, "Why do you speak Latin then? because you are foreign." I told the slave who had brought me this baby that I would keep him in my house. 

The first few months of his being in my possession had been spent in a camp along the road between Herculaneum, where I had my private house, which was a villa decorated in the Etruscan style, and Pompeii, where the trade was good, and the money better. My business was in the buying, training, and selling of slaves, which for many years, and in many places, had always been my business. I ran a tight household, but the day to day minutiae were the concern of my stewards, and before the beautiful baby, I lived a mundane, directionless existence. 

By then, I had lived some few thousand years, and had done great battles, and injustices, and put away grand emotion, for these things are tiring of us, who note time only when there seems too little of it. When he entered, I began to note time. Five years old. Titus, the emperor. One hundred and twenty slaves divided between combat skills and academia, the former to be sold into the military and the latter into private employ. Four learning the household trade, in my home. Two stewards. One pretty, problematic baby. I kept him in my bed. You called him Laurent, but that is not his name. I named him Escha, which he liked.

Escha was brave to the point of foolishness, bold. The other four in the house picked on him mercilessly. Feminine, sweet, favored, he was not like them and they knew it. He called them his brothers, but they wanted nothing to do with him. Whensoever as he was punished, they reveled in it. He cried easily when tormented.

There was a melancholy, wondering side to Escha even then. I clearly remember, in the first week of keeping him, walking outside in the evening, and finding him sitting in the dirt, looking up. His blond hair was wild, the tight curls frizzy and sticking out all directions in a mass on his head. He had his knees drawn up under his tunic. It was cold for that place, and I felt his shivering as a tremor in the air. I smelled his mood, sad, on the breeze, and thought he might be quaking more from tears than temperature.

When I sat behind him in the dirt, he didn't note me. "What do you want with the moon, little slave?" I asked him. 

"Faya," he said, which is the name my intimates have always called me, "I think that my mother is dead. Do you think that she can go to the afterlife without her piece of gold? They threw her in a pit."

"Poor thing," I said. "I believe the river god takes pity on the poor. What of your father?"

"He beat me. I don't care if he wanders forever. I hope he wanders forever in the fog. I hope he is blind." He was drawing circles in the dirt with his finger.

"Ah. You have been beaten often. Now I understand your nature."

"I didn't do anything. I am a good boy."

"No, Escha. I know you are a good boy. Did they beat you in the camp?"

"With a reed rod."

"I see. When you are finished with the moon, come back inside, little one."

He nodded, silent.

When I went inside, I found my steward in the peristyle garden, Vasvius, tall and striking of look, as is my preference, and told him what I had heard. 

"The tutors will be punished for it," he said, turning from his scolding of one of the young boys, who seemed cowed. 

"They are not to beat those who are so young. They have been repeatedly told. If you do it, you destroy their attributes. It stunts their growth. I will not see the margin altered by callous tutors."

"They will be made an example of," he said. He was standing very still, hands clasped behind his back. The boy behind him hunched as if to make himself smaller. "Scat," Vasvius said, swatting the boy at the shoulders. "Let me not catch you again out of bed." When he was gone, Vasvius continued, "That one is Iovita. He is getting older and quarrelsome because of it. Something will need to be done."

"Beating those in positions of authority in public encourages disorder. Flog the teachers in private with a reed rod until they are unconscious, and when they wake, flog them again."

"Yes, very good," Vasvius nodded. In the dark, he seemed pale. There were dark circles around his eyes, as if they had sunk deeper into his eyesockets. "Is there anything in addition?"

"I would have as well, new options for stewards. Select three young men of suitable character."

"As you wish. But sir, I may still serve you. I am in good condition. I swear it." The tone of his voice did not change at all, deferential and clear.

"As you were," I said, turning to leave him.

"Faya, give me blood," he said, to my turned back.

"The more you beg the more you starve," I told him. "You will not build stamina by drinking as if at a drunken bacchanal."

"Faya, please. I have had them bring you the most beautiful boys they could find. You found one that you liked. I have done all that you have asked of me. Please, give me one reward. Please, for what love you ever had of me. I feel as if I am already dead." Even begging, his voice seemed steady and deferential, never wavering, unemotional. 

"Who do you imagine you are speaking to?"

"I have served you since I was a boy. Do not treat me like this. I will die."

"I know what it would take to bring about your death. I will not be spoken to of blood."

"I suffer," he said, as if reciting from a book, measured.

"You suffer so that you may live. I will expect your return in the evening with your three. Take Vivacio with you."

"He will complain that a steward's duty is in the home."

"You have my permission to strike him."

"Thank you." 

As I walked through the atrium and sat on the bench there, a small figure came running through, and, seeing me, stopped himself. Escha came and sat beside me, climbing up with the assistance of my robes as handhold. While I took down my hair, he watched in silence, and then he said, "Will you keep me for always?" 

When I didn't say anything, he tugged on my sleeve. I gave him a golden pin to hold, and he held it across his open palms. I laid another there. He sat frozen, elbows crooked and hands ready, given duty. 

In the atrium, there was a rectangular reflecting pool, and a section of ceiling cut out to match it. Recently it had rained much, filling the pool with water which caught the light of the moon. It seemed light to me, with the moon at half fullness, but I wondered a moment if the child could see much. At the last rain, I had seen him sitting on the marble floor, little figure, chin tipped up, watching the water flood in from above, speckling him with stray droplets. For a moment I had stood there, enjoying his enjoyment, savoring the breeze from the water on my bare skin. While I took down my hair, it occupied my thoughts.

"Master, do not trade me. I can learn anything. I am very obedient. If you want to, you may flog me, and I will not scream, because I am very very good. Say you won't trade me away."

There were frogs croaking somewhere far away, beyond the child's hearing. It reminded me of my youth, and for a moment, I was not there at all, sitting by a reedy bog in Egypt, eyes closed. I breathed in, smelling sulfur and listening to the hushed breath of long grass. A tug at my sleeve woke me. When I looked over, the child was looking up at my face, directly into my eyes. He had the light of the moon scattered across his features. "Say so," he said. "Master, I know that you do not like to say much. I know that sometimes you are confused. The others think you are merely distant, but it's not true, is it?"

"Do as you are bid and think of no more."

"Yes." 

"You will learn to write. You will learn to read. Are you not excited?"

I thought of Vasius, who had been brought to me at the age of ten, who had grown in twenty years to run all of my affairs, and asked as his reward to be made conquerer of death, as he thought me. I thought of his shadow, the steward he had been training for ten years, Vivacio, so pale he could hardly be seen, who had begun to seem tormented, become argumentative, lashing out at the young boys in the house and contradicting his senior. I am not inclined to worry, but necessity drives reaction. With the removal of Vasvius, my business would shrink, which had been planned. Elimination of Vivacio would mean destruction.

The child pushed his head under my arm, having dumped my pins on the bench with the impatience of youth, and folded his arms around me, as far as he could reach. I thought that his hair was a fright, tickling my arm with its wildness, and sat very still, unused to being touched. He took a deep breath, in and out.

"I know how to card wool," he said.

"Neat."

"I'm hot," he whispered, voice muffled against the fabric of my robe.

"It is cool now, little one."

"I'm hot."

"Come," I said, lifting him into my lap, untying a knot at my throat. When my skin was bare, he laid his cheek by the center of my chest, where the heart is. He sighed a deep sigh at my coolness, and in my arms, slept. Against my skin, he was as a little flame. He was always hot like that when he was living. He seemed always at his own private temperature. And if he noticed my lack of breath, he never said a word. 

In the following days, when I examined his legs, where he had been flogged for most of his life, I found his bones a little bowed from the severity and frequency of the beatings he had sustained. I doubt he even remembers that as a small child, he walked with a bit of an unsteadiness. But because of that, and you will know this, he never achieved much of a height.