"Aulus likes to throw things when he's upset, so you'll know. Nonus hides. Cassius, you don't have to worry about. Escha, has ways," I said, washing my hands. 

All morning, I had been teaching Nataniellus about the house, and as the sun got higher and lunch approached, the questions became more personal. I always washed my hands and arms out back before lunch if I could find the time. He had been with us for a week or so, and had followed me around back without a word. He knew that I took pride in being clean if I could be.

"That's vague," Nataniellus said, drawing out the syllables. His tone was, as ever, half-mocking, but harmless, tender at the same time somehow. I was not really used to hearing tenderness, and it tickled my ear in a pleasurable way.

He sat down on an old backless curule seat the little boys had earlier that morning dragged out of the dining room to throw out. Vivacio had been looking over the furniture and judged its red cushion seat a little too worn, and the lacquer on its arm rests too rubbed away. Nataniellus sat on the curved chair sideways, with his back against one armrest, and his legs crossed over the other. How the chair had been saved from the side of the road I didn't know, but I thought, "Thank you, Venus."

Nataniellus has good legs, well-muscled in the thigh and in the calf, which in a tunic could sometimes make him look stout and sturdy, but when naked this effect disappeared completely, and the thickness of his thigh and usually hidden curve of his waist instead made him like a woman. See so he was like a broad bean in reverse, a man clothed but a woman when peeled. Have you ever peeled a broad bean? Anyway, lying across the chair like that, his legs were good. 

"If Escha is unhappy you'll know it," I said, washing my hands in a bucket of fresh water the children had brought from the well. "If he's really upset, you won't. We do numbers and letters the first half of the week and rhetoric and stewardry the second half. In the morning we do most of the household work, upkeep and that, and in the afternoon the more long term stuff. Things we don't have to do everyday, like scrub between the tiles or polish the silver. Cassius takes care of the horses every day and Aulus and Nonus have little fingers and get low easily so they take care of house cleaning most of the time. If there's a big job usually we all help out, but we're supposed to protect our hands. Our laundry goes out for that reason. We don't do that."

"What does Escha do?" Nataniellus asked, uncrossing his legs and crossing them again.

"He's supposed to get the eggs in the morning but I usually have to go with him because he's petrified of the chickens. Anyone his size would be I guess. He's only seven, but you know, he's got to toughen up. Besides that usually he helps out but lately we let him wait for the master."

"Why?"

I shrugged and grinned at him, foolishly happy to have been put in charge of helping him.

He yawned without covering his mouth, arching his back a little against the armrest and pointing his toes. "Where are the boys now?" he asked.

"By the orchard. When the weather's nice, we like to eat outside."

I had all sorts of questions, but I held my tongue.

I want to digress a little, to help me concentrate more. Nonus is here with me in my room, and sitting next to the dark window in a white wicker chair. With his pretty brown hair pulled back, he looks younger than he was when he died, and he leans his cheek against the white wallpaper. He's troubled. Lately, Nataniellus asked me to do this work of writing for him. Nonus has found out about it and wants me to stop. I ask him why and he only opens his mouth and looks away. I ask him if he wants to write it, since it needs to be done, and he says, "It doesn't need to be done," in his crisp way that means no offense. I want to avoid hurting his feelings, since lately he has been alone too much, and though I trust Nonus, I have seen him talking to people he should not be talking to. He has been talking to people I think of as dangerous, though they are younger than we are. He has been making friends I do not trust. I don't want any wall between us. But I have been asked to do this. Nataniellus told me that he does not feel comfortable leaving something worse than he found it. He means to give you back the story he stole, and one better. But things are so complicated right now, and he is so distracted.

I think of how he looked at me those first few days in Herculaneum, and I think that he looks at me similarly now. And I think that just as it was then, things are changing for us now, and the life we thought we might lead has been altered. We do not quite know what will happen, now that Laurent is dead. I recognize that it has been hard for the others to accept his passing, but we here are beyond that. We must quickly assess our own safety, and this project must be a bond between us, between Laurent's new world and his old one, for we are all of us better united. We must grow a dialogue between us. I understand that. I understand that is why you are doing this, and why Nataniellus is taking it seriously. Without Laurent making that bond, suddenly our world may become so much smaller, and us alone again without friends, and how many bodies will stack around Laurent's before we are all settled again? I hope that we may all remain friendly, and choose together how to settle scores. There is hurt on both sides, and there are some of you who must die, and what do you want in exchange? But that part of the story will come, and I hope you will understand us by then. There are certain things we must see happen before we may call our friendship good, and returning the story we stole is the first part. Nataniellus did not mean to hurt you, Mini. He thought that taking Laurent's book from you would settle things, but Leechtin did not want the book. We do not know what he wants, these days. Nataniellus thought that giving Leechtin the book would comfort him, but it hasn't. He wouldn't even look at it. I hope you will understand that the theft came under strain. 

These days, I see in Nataniellus's eyes a panic, a faint crazed look. As I have said, I recognize that look. And now, just as it was in Herculaneum, this look makes things possible that shouldn't be. Even while he reclined, when I looked up at him to see if he was listening, I saw him look back at me with that exasperation, like an inability to hear. A restlessness, like an animal trapped. But that sort of look, I think, while it can seem an animal look, is one confined to people. It is a slave's look, of wanting what cannot be wanted, to run, of strain, of obligations. Or I read it that way. How can I know what is truly in another man's heart? When I gestured to him he pointed his toes briefly and rolled to his feet so that we could go to lunch.

There, under the shade of the trees, was a familiar scene. Four boys, a wooden plate of late ripening figs and bean soup to accompany, a creamy, thick pottage full of lentils, which was my favorite. With pleasure, I saw that for a treat there was a little pot of honey for the figs, already nearly too sweet for my mouth. I sat without ceremony for a bowl of pottage, taking the serving bowl out of Cassius's hands, who yelped and slapped at my retreating arm. His hands, from working with the horses too much, had been growing increasingly rough, and I felt a callus scrape across my skin. I looked into his eyes and found him breathless, his lips parted in the heat. He was sitting with a child on either side, Nonus and Aulus both finished with lunch and dozing in the sun under his arms, the leaves making shadow patterns over them.

"Where's Escha?" I asked, as I gestured for Nataniellus to sit.

"Where do you think? He's in a tree with his bread. He's afraid that someone will take it," Cassius said, trying to sound gruff, but failing to sound like anything but a soft, sweet cupid to me. "Salve," he said to Nataniellus. 

"Why should he be afraid that someone will take it?" Nataniellus asked, reaching for his own bread to eat.

The grass tickled my legs, and the sunlight warmed me, and the pottage warmed me just as much, and I'm certain that the pleasure of all this made me moan, which caused Cassius to look at me like I was a beast. "Damn this is good," I said, in reproach.

"Where are you from that you don't understand?" Cassius snapped at the interloper, "Because someone might. What do they do where you're from? How are you so old and so soft?" referring to Nataniellus's body, his dainty hands. Nataniellus even had pretty, soft feet.

"Who would take his bread?" Nataniellus asked, without reaction to the rudeness. His features were calm, and his reddish hair almost orange in the sunlight.

"Our teacher," I explained, taking bread to dip into my pottage. "Our teacher has forbidden Escha to have bread, since a few days ago."

"Why?"

"For being too fussy about his food."

"Is that all?" Nataniellus asked.

"Well, who knows the real reason?" I said. 

"He'll be down out of the tree soon though, once he sees Iovita's here," Cassius said, leaning back carefully so as not to wake the children. 

At Nataniellus's look, I said, "Because if he doesn't come down I'll get him out."

"That's not the real reason," said Aulus sleepily, little voice groggy. "You'll try to fight Vivacio again. It's too thrilling to miss. Fight him any time, for us." As he woke, he rolled his head against Cassius's chest, who breathed in deeply to make him laugh.

"I don't like to fight," I said, mouth full.

"Complete lie," Aulus said, closing his eyes again.

"Wake up now," Cassius said.

"Why so you can leave?" Aulus asked, unafraid to use the normal volume of his voice, as Nonus had always been a little hard of hearing and slept like a rock in a storm. Aulus reached out and took Nonus by the crown of his head and shook him ineffectually. "Aye, Nonus. Oh here comes Escha," he said, freezing Escha in his tracks.

I turned to see Escha, as he took his bread out of his mouth without biting it, leaving a wet place in the shape of his mouth behind. "You better eat that bread now," I threatened, pretending not to see his wild blond hair and how badly he needed a bath.

"I want a fig?" Escha asked, and I gestured for him to come sit on my lap.

"You can have some if you eat your bread," I said, while Escha was opening his mouth to say something else.

"Prostituta?" he asked, pointing at Nataniellus, who hadn't eaten anything. Whore?

"Why did you have to say it in such a rude way?" I blurted.

Nataniellus didn't say anything for a tense moment, only sitting back a little and wiggling his fingers at the child. "Veni huc," I heard him whisper, come here, as if to himself, and Escha went. 

"How do you know?" Nataniellus asked, taking Escha into his arms and tickling him delicately. "Are you a whore, too? Do they make whores so pretty and so curious?"

"I don't know," Escha said. "I don't think I am. I don't think so," laughing and eating his bread. "You are very pretty and old. Also, you sit like a woman. I think that Venus made you for a man."

For a moment Nataniellus looked at the rest of us over Escha's head, me, Cassius, and Aulus who had one eye open. The look was fierce, daring us to speak against him. I shrugged and dipped my little finger in the honey.

"Oh thanks a lot, you animal," Cassius murmured. "Your dirty finger in the honey is exactly what this day needs."

Escha ate his bread quietly on Nataniellus's lap, biting and chewing with exaggerated politeness, and then, in a way that only Escha could do, he tipped his baby chin back and kissed Nataniellus on the jaw, more than once, and just like everyone else in Escha's life, Nataniellus only laughed and stroked the boy's hair. A charming child, capable of spontaneous affection.

We weren't seeing much of Vivacio in those days, but when he was around it was enough for us to be reminded that we were growing to despise him, even if I wanted to resist such a simple reaction. Thinking of him brought back memories of the culling, that Cassius and I had survived, and the memory also that there hadn't been any pleasure in his eyes then, at grasping the others to take away. I remembered my awe of him, which competed with the fact of his presence, his spite and vicious nature. I tried to tell myself that he hadn't denied Escha bread as revenge for Nataniellus's presence, but the correlation felt obvious. Since the banquet Vivacio had seemed weak to me, and preyed on the children. But that seemed long ago, though it was close at hand, and soon it would feel more distant still.

I cannot tell you in detail what happened with Vivacio that same evening in the house, when our bellies were still warm from pottage. I wasn't there. I didn't see the beginning of it. All afternoon, I had been down in Herculaneum, in town, comparing the cost of winter staples with vendors. We would rely on them to get through the winter, and it was my job to make sure we got a good price on things like grain. When I came back up the road, I was sweating and dog tired.

I remember that when I came into the house, holding wicks in my hand to light the lamps, the first I knew about something amiss was a sound. How queer it was to hear this sound, new to my ears, of my master shouting. It ran me cold and I did not know what to do, though the sound was coming from away, far down the atrium in the direction of the nicer chambers. What to do? Paralyzed. Light the lamps? Flee? 

"Carissime," I heard, in a low but urgent hiss, and when I looked it was Cassius in the doorway of our little room, gesturing at me to come quick. Carissime, our word for each other that meant we were family, brothers, loved. 

"What's going on?" I hissed back, hurrying in his direction across the tiles, which were still slick from the splashback of late afternoon rain.

"Shut up and get in here," he said, still with that urgency.

"I'm scared," I said, reaching him and finding the rest of them huddled inside, except for Escha. "Why always Escha? Where is he?"

"You don't know, you didn't see," I heard Aulus say, hiding in the shadow cast by our bed. "It's Vivacio. It's bad. Even Vasvius came out to see. Iovita, what's wrong with Vasvius? Do you know what?" he asked, his voice seeming to grow younger and younger as he admitted his fears. "Is he dead? He looked like the dead walking, as pale as the grey belly of a dead fish. Carissime," he said, using that same word to show me he was being serious, "we have to get out of here. We will all die, too."

"You're scaring Nonus," I murmured, unsure, looking to Cassius in the dimness to confirm or deny what I was hearing.

"I don't know, Iovita," Casius said, shaking his head. "You didn't see."

"Go ahead and tell me so I can decide what to do."

The little ones helped him tell it, especially Nonus whose eyes were the best. As evening had come and darkness had fallen, the three of them had been finishing with the housework and checking that they had all their tools to put away. They were doing so under Vivacio's eye, in the atrium. Cassius had looked up and seen a shape coming out of the dimness, and saw that it was Leechtin with Escha in his arms. For a little while, we had been seeing a bit of Leechtin here and there where he hadn't been before, and so we had been trying to get used to his presence in our lives, but still there was something so unsettling about him, in the very fact and solidity of him, that bordered upon the limits of reason. "The master gestured to us very sharply to go," Cassius told me, "and I gathered the little ones. He had let go of Escha and I tried to get him, too, but he dodged me, and I didn't dare stay a moment longer. From the beginning, the tone was heated. The master asked Vivacio, 'What is it that you have been doing?' very sharply like that, and I thought, 'Mighty heaven, he's going to do something about Vivacio. He's actually going to do something,' but it wasn't like that."

"What was it like?" I asked, sitting down on the bed in the dark. As soon as I sat, I felt the mattress depress on the other side, as the little ones climbed up, too.

"It was personal between them. It quickly got so personal. Escha's right. That man is a prostitute. That Nataniellus. He's from the dockside whorehouses, and he's here sharing the master's bed. I wouldn't dare repeat to you what Vivacio said, and Aulus is right, after we heard those things, we saw Vasvius come out, and he saw us looking, and said silently, 'Valete,' Good-bye. Carissime, the child is not lying to you. He looked like the dead. What do you think it means? Do you think we are all dying tonight? Are we saying good bye to each other? Carissime, what should we do? I have never been so terrified in my life, and we have been together long," he whispered.

And then, before I could respond, we heard the screaming begin. "Di Omnes, what is it?" Aulus begged, invoking the gods. There came no answer. After some time, it stopped. And then for long days, three days, strange sounds like I had never before heard a man make for so long. I will tell you what that sound is like. Once, in the camp, while we were practicing our swordplay, a boy made a lunge too low and too close, and sliced another boy from hip to sternum. The boy lived only a few minutes, holding his intestines in with his hands, and without an eye for any of us, made that same sound I heard. It is a sound for dying, of pain beyond such a word, and understanding. If you have not heard it, how can I describe it to you? But if you are dead like us, certainly, you have heard it. Likely that you have inflicted a wound that has caused it. I have.

That sound was my teacher, understanding that he was dead and yet somehow still living. And when that sound stopped, it was because he was gone, and we never saw Vivacio or our dear Vasvius again.

Valete. I would have liked to have said good-bye.

And I found Escha curled up in Vivacio's bed, the sleeping master clutching him, and Escha's young brown eyes wide open, and his hair soaked up with blood. For three days Escha had been there as the master slept, held fast, Escha had soiled himself, grown dehydrated, and when I tried to touch him, he bit me like a feral animal, baring his teeth at me, his sweet, fox face mad with delirious fever.