We first discovered Escha was missing around 4 o'clock. After meeting with Leechtin, I had lay down for awhile, and Vasvius had softly and comprehensively apprised me of my duties for the evening. Largely, I discovered that some of the smaller responsibilities they had already been giving me for weeks, including delegating to and watching over the younger children, and so when the master asked for Escha, it was entirely my fault that we'd lost track of him. I learned that after I had returned home with him, Vivacio had taken the other children to town in order to run errands with our cart and donkey; carts and draft animals not being allowed through the gate until afternoon. They'd gone to pick up food prepared in advance as well as fresh fruit, wine, and butter, and made it back in good time. Except for Escha. 

It did not occur to me that it was possible Vivacio had left him behind on purpose, but weeks later, it would become obvious that he had done just that. Weeks later, it would become obvious that Vivacio had for some time been deranged enough to be jealous of a seven year old, enough to want to make him disappear.

But without that knowledge, in the moment, I had no one to blame but myself, and knew exactly where Escha had gone. I thought that definitely he had gone to see the statue of Hercules he'd been rhapsodizing about earlier in the day, not only because the statue was his beloved but because it was a safe place. Trembling, my eyes cast down, I insisted that I would go find him myself, standing outside of the master's cubiculum door, but as you already know, Leechtin went himself, leaving the banquet to us.

Hearing that Leechtin would not be numbered among the banqueters, Vivacio's pale, ghostly face went livid, but he packed the emotions down tightly before speaking. "And it's you I have to watch this evening," he hissed at me, as he inspected the dishes. "If you get in my way, I'll make you more sorry than you've ever been in your life."

I tucked my chin down, trying not to look defiant. It is important to remember that Vivacio was not evil. I told myself that repeatedly, waiting to be told what to do. Sometimes he could be so overwrought that it almost made me want to laugh, because he seemed like the villain in a comedy play. But I was in no mood to laugh, and he certainly never hesitated to act on his words. Just the previous day, he had whipped Nonus viciously for dropping a plate and cracking a tile. Nonus had begged for the long slashes on his back to be rubbed with honey rather than salt, but as the weather warmed it wasn't practical to use honey, and he had fainted from the salt and from the heat. I stood my ground, but I did not sass my praeceptor.

"You will run point in the dining room, and I charge you to make certain the little ones do as told."

"I have not been given permission to hit them," I told him.

Vivacio put down the plate he had been scrutinizing and leveled me with a suspicious look. "I have seen you strike them."

"Only while I was inebriated, and I won't drink anymore," I said.

"Do you need to be a drunk to do what you are told?" he asked. 

I noticed that his fingernails were long and pointed. I thought of him hitting me and scratching me. I thought of infection. A blow in and of itself is not terribly dangerous. A dirty bite or scratch could be the end of any of us. The idea that he had filed his fingernails in such a way as to break the skin on purpose alarmed me. "No, praeceptor."

"To ignore your duty is to stain your master's honor," he told me. "To stain him is to threaten the viability of our house."

"I know," I said. What he was telling me was that if I saw a child growing tired, to threaten him with punishment. But he was also telling me that if I saw a child being dragged away to be abused, physically or sexually, to do nothing. And these things were common at banquets, especially if they ran late into the night, and it had happened to me, and as I was being asked to do, no one had stopped it. I cannot defend this practice, and I won't. I cannot defend our master's not stopping it, or not allowing it, and I won't. We were expected to be pliable, and compliant. Expecting to be abused, and not protesting it, was our duty, and yet I am still so angry about it, and for being accessory to its continued practice. In the light of day, I liked to imagine that I might be a part of fantasy, but as evening began to draw in, the reality of what might happen, especially as I saw how many courses there were to serve, darkened my spirit. I counted seven courses, and did not see that any extra staff had been brought in. It would only be us brothers, and absent Vasvius, who had often lightened the mood at such affairs and made jokes of us, that banqueters seldom would look at us as anything but children. I feared the situation was unsustainable.

When I went in to see how the younger ones were coming along, I walked in on Aulus and Nonus practicing their formal Latin together, and Cassius waxing his eyebrows in our silver mirror. 

"Come here, Donkey, and I'll paint you," I said to him, gently.

"It's Vasvius who paints me," Aulus said, a little haughty at being distracted. 

"Vasvius isn't working tonight, and I'm your new praeceptor, so you have to do what I say from now," I said, a little uncertainly.

Children always pick up on uncertainty, and subtle cues, and luckily for me, my brothers were more likely to be compassionate than derisive at signs of weakness.

"But you'll draw it wrong," Aulus said, coming to stand between my knees as I sat down.

"Why would I draw it wrong?" I asked, wetting the tip of my little finger and trying the kohl against it.

"You're not even heating it. You have to heat the pot a little or it won't be even."

"Maybe I do it differently than Vasvius. Would you stop it?"

Nonus, only ten, had taken the opportunity to fall asleep on our bed behind me, his back pressed against my tailbone. Aulus submitted to being painted, and Nonus rested his head on my lap after to get the same. 

"Don't lie on your face, little bug," I told Nonus, and he yawned with his eyes still closed.

"I want to have bread," he said to me, cutely. "Can I have some, praeceptor?"

"You'll have a little soon and eat better after our guests leave."

"Oh I never feel like eating after that," he said.

"Are you clean?" I asked him.

Nonus pinwheeled his arms a little, trying to wake himself up. "Yes, praeceptor. I washed after me and Donkey cleaned up the washroom."

We had running water in the house, and a perfectly serviceable washroom, but weren't allowed to use either. The only time those facilities were put to use was when clientele were in need. 

Cassius, by then fifteen, ignored all of this, but I could tell that he felt troubled. When the younger ones went off together to help Vivacio in the kitchen, Cassius turned to me finally and only asked, "Vasvius won't manage it tonight?"

"No, it's Vivacio," I said.

"The master has decided to keep you on in Vivacio's old position?" he asked, making the logical leap.

"That doesn't mean anything for you. He could tell you tomorrow that you're staying, or the day after that. It doesn't mean anything," I told him.

He gave me half a smile, but his eyes were fearful. "I go with honor," he sighed. "I don't need your comfort."

"Are you all right?"

"Did you see that they took Vivacio's loom away? He'll have been mad as hell," Cassius said, opening the trunk by the table, where our nice linens were folded.

"Hey, can you come here a second?" I asked.

"Yes, praeceptor," he said, half mocking, half serious. 

He came to stand in front of me and I embraced him, my cheek pressed against his waist. With gladness, I found that he began to run his fingers through my hair.

"Cry more," he whispered.

"Are you nervous about tonight? Doesn't it feel different than before?"

"What do you mean?" he asked, his fingers parting my hair carefully, ruining the part, parting it again, idle. 

Through his tunic, his belly was warm against my cheek. "You're not nervous?"

"I didn't get promoted today," he said. "It's all the same to me. The master will sit with little Escha on his lap, and Escha will entertain them all, and we'll do the dance of courses, and then afterward we'll have whatever is left. I guess I'll look forward to the ham and the beef dumplings the most."

"Escha isn't going to be there. He's missing. The master is looking for him. It's just us. I think Vivacio has some of the information they're going to be talking over."

"Well sometimes that happens. Who's coming?" 

"Local people mostly. The Festival of Hercules is somewhat soon so the Romans won't be there, because they're waiting on the trip."

Cassius played with my hair quietly, and we could hear the quiet clattering of dishes in the kitchen. Outside, a lazy wind blew through a reed windchime, making a gentle clucking noise. Already it had begun to draw dark, and Cassius said, "I'll light the lamps."

"You hate it here," I said, holding onto him, pressing my face against him. "You're being strong."

"You do, too. That's why you're so nervous."

"Not like you. You've never felt like you belong here. You're waiting for something to happen so you can get away."

"That senator's son is coming isn't he?" Cassius asked. "From last year?"

"I don't care," I said, a little too loudly.

"Are you really going to cry?" he asked. "Do you want a kiss to make it all feel better?"

"You're always trying to kiss me," I mumbled, feigning fatigue. "You and the little one."

"Give me a reason to stay," he whispered sensually.

"You watch too many romance plays," I complained, but I let him lean down and kiss me for a few minutes, because he really wanted to, and for all I knew, he was really good at it. 

"You like it," he whispered.

"Go jump in the sea, you salty fish," I said. 

The first time I let Cassius kiss me, when I was fourteen, it was an experiment. The next bunch of times, it was because I wasn't sure if I liked to be kissed by boys, or just by him. The rest of the times, it was because I no longer gave any kind of a shit what it meant or didn't mean. And it didn't go any further than that, except for a couple of times, because he was my junior, and my brother in arms, and because if we had been found out, we didn't know what might happen. Probably, I think now, if we had been caught, he would have been immediately taken back to the camp, cost sunk into training him be damned. Fraternization between us house slaves was forbidden, and that was that. It didn't mean that Cassius and I weren't always trying to get at it, because there was so little other stimulation available to us. He was under too much stress to worry about the consequences, and I was far too interested in his lips to say no.

He winked at me, and I pushed him to his feet. "Get out of here, hand of Venus," I ordered him. "Stand outside where it's dark so that you can stable the arriving horses."

"When you protest it makes me write in the dirt that I love you," he said, mocking me, smiling, pretending to be puppyish. He was not puppyish. Cassius, on the inside, was one of the most serious and dry-humored people I've ever known. 

The smell of anise and fish permeated the house, and the smell of burning oil from the lamps Cassius lit joined these, his little flame crossing from lamp to lamp in the dark. In the yard, he hung glass lamps from the few trees, and these lights would seem to float, making the night seem ours, and our house a mystic place. I painted my face, changed my clothes, made sure that my arms and legs were smooth all over, as a boy younger than myself would be. And when I went into the kitchen Nonus and the Donkey dipped their heads to me a little. They said formally, in sync, "We have made ready. We are ready to proceed."

Together, Aulus, Nonus, and I scraped a little food onto a small clay plate, and we burned it in the hearth, and we said a prayer to Vesta. I took their hands and walked them through the house, talking them through a prayer quietly to Janus, our god of entering and leaving, to Lumentius, to bless our thresh-hold. And Nonus wanted to take out the little figurines in the cupboard, our spirits of the pantry, and explain to them why they wouldn't be joining us at the table today, but we whispered him off it. Maybe we should have listened to Nonus and explained things to the pantry gods.

But by the time we finished asking the gods to bless ourselves and the house, we were already hearing "Salvete, gentlemen," outside of the house, and the nervous hinnying of uncertain horses, which Cassius, so of the sea, had a way with. He would calm them, rein them, put them up for the evening with an expert hand. From the ether, Vasvius materialized, painted and in tunic so short that in an instant I had memorized the paleness of his thighs, the contrast of gold, the way he folded his fingers together in greeting. "Quantum tempus, Master Secundus, and to you sir, and yourself," he whispered to them, in the half-lit darkness of our doorway. Largely guests tended to ignore us at first, looking for table, and it became obvious very quickly that the drinking had begun somewhere else. Seeing this, I noticed a troubled expression on Vasvius's already tense face, but as he turned to me the expression had disappeared. "I leave it to you," he said, tenderly and under his breath. 

I thought that on his fingers, on his palms, which he had been hiding, I saw something dark, like blood, but he went away so quickly in the darkness back to his room, that I could not be sure and only felt disturbed. The idea of blood made the dark seem sinister, and the laughter coming from the dining room strange. Already I could hear Vivacio speaking, in the gentle, effeminate tone he adopted in company, apprising the gentlemen of the figures to begin with, and advertising special selections. These were not the sort of men who made large selections for the military, but rather who looked for labor for personal use, and skilled work. Men of many connections. "We have a young man trained in history, who reads both Greek and Latin. He will make a fine tutor for small children, and knows an additional trade should he fall out of use as a scholar. We have also a strong young lad of handsome features, who will make a fine addition to your household stewardry, and a pliable one, and we have him with us tonight for your estimation. There are also of course, as you know, the best young bodies you may find, as you know the master can promise. Bene sapiat."

A curtain of transparent red silk had been laid over the doorway to the triclinium, and Vivacio pushed this back delicately with the back of his hand, gesturing for me and the two younger boys to enter and serve the first round of wine. I noticed with some alarm that Vivacio had decided to make this service "Greek" in style, with cups twice as large as usual, but I was in no position to say a word against it. The master never started the evening in that way, saving it for the last rounds, lest the bargaining grow too fierce, and both tongues and knees too loose. The move immediately struck a chord of anger in me. He knew what would happen to those in the dining room if these rich gentlemen devolved into drunkenness, and I knew for a fact that he hoped it would become uncomfortable for us as punishment for imagined slights. 

And the evening did devolve, and so did my mood, as I observed the younger ones dodging curious fingers and sometimes not fast enough, as one of the older men caught Nonus and kissed the side of his neck wetly, and laughed at him, and how the boy's hands shook after that. Cassius whirled in with plate after plate, without stopping to give me so much as a glance, but I heard them haggling, and as was usual, comparing his physical merits rather than his skill, and after awhile I settled into a funny numbness, my body barking for a drink, and my head beginning to ache. And it was in this numbness that it happened, and I could only stare like an open-mouthed fool, both hands clutching the amphora of wine to my chest.

Vivacio was directly in my line of sight by the red silk curtain when the senator's son grabbed him by the wrist, the same senator's son who had grabbed me and dragged me away in the previous year. To words I couldn't hear, Vivacio drew back, and gave a shout, his white-blond hair in the man's fist, and he dropped the plate of figs he was carrying, and I think I did say, "Siste!" stop! just as it happened, as Vivacio slapped him as hard as he could with his left hand. That man did not even think about it, he only folded our praeceptor's hair over his wrist again and pulled on it, sending Vivacio to his knees, but Vivacio was a wild animal already. And Aulus must have seen that before I did, because he darted forward to put himself between them, and prevent Vivacio from committing an offense that could not be taken back, because to do more than Vivacio had done would mean a swift death, by law. And Nonus fled to get Vasvius, which I reflexively moved to stop, but couldn't, because I had never seen anything so sensational, pushed aside by several of the men who leapt up from table, and in the crush I saw one of them grab Cassius by the neck, and I could not do anything about that, paralyzed with fear.

"Abi!" Vivacio shouted, and I looked away from how they stripped him, his skin powder pale, and I broke from the room, and from the house with its dark corners, unsure of when I had begun weeping, moaning, shaking, and in the night I saw figures coming up the road, and Escha's blond hair in no one but my master's arms.

I fled to them quite without my head, crying words I couldn't quite hear, and then felt Vasvius's strong hand on the back of my neck, and patting me on the back hard enough that I heard it reverberating in the chamber of my chest. 

With cold horror I realized that Vasvius had begun sobbing openly, and the master let down Escha gently, and pushed me aside with tender but firm hand, so that he could embrace his steward, and I sat and held Escha in the grass, who had begun to cry purely from anxiety at the scene.

"Do the guests remain?" I heard from above me, my face buried in Escha's curls, the cool wind blowing through my clothes.

"I've seen them out the back way, Sir, and they are saddling horses. They were going to cut him, Sir. They were going to cut him root and stem, and they did not do it, but Vivacio has the knife, Sir, and he won't give it up, he threatened the children," and Vasvius shuddered and could only say over and over, "Punish him. Master, punish him, punish him," and a gout of wailing that mirrored the terrible sounds I heard from Vivacio's cubiculum later on, as terrible as the sound of guttering on his own blood. 

"Me," I heard Escha said, trying to get away, to get to his master, reaching for him, who was already striding away toward the house.

"Don't do that," I said, through tears, trying to hold onto him so he couldn't go running into danger.

"No, me," he insisted, a mess of tears and throat raw from crying, "together," and he wailed for the master, cuffing me by accident with the gold ring newly laid on his finger.

All evening Escha tried to get away from me, until he tired himself out from fighting me, never regaining his Latin in his distress, unable to explain that he knew he was the only one who could comfort our master, and stop him from doing violence, and love him as only Escha knew how to love.

And in the morning, awful silence, except for my brother Cassius weeping softly in the triclinium, scrubbing the tile, alone.