From deeper within the shadows behind the boy, one of the guards dragged an older man. He was dressed no better than the lad, but unlike the boy, his grey, whiskered face was made of a clay that had long ago set into a resentful scowl.
“Put your arms down, fool,” he growled at the child. The boy winced at the man’s voice, slowly lowering his arms in unison without unlocking his elbows, as if he were setting down an invisible basket.
“Can you speak?” domina asked. “What is your name, child?”
“Hanno!” the boy shouted proudly, his head shaking for emphasis, his arms springing up again into the air.
“Domina,” I whispered in her ear, “the boy is what we in Greece call an ‘idiot.’ He is malformed in both mind and body. Let me put a coin in his bowl so that we may depart.” I dropped an as, then another into the wooden bowl and was taken aback by the boy’s reaction. His attention, which had been riveted to the kind smile on my lady’s face, whipped from her visage to mine; his jaw dropped, his eyes widened, and he yelped with what I was to learn was his unflappable state of ear-splitting enthusiasm. His squeal of gratitude, and now his outstretched arms were directly squarely at me. That others were witnessing a communication between myself and this unfortunate…well, I was discomfited. I thought to reply with a curt word of comfort or a nod of my head, but I could only stand with my hands at my sides, pinned by his idiot grin.
“Are you the father of this child?” Tertulla asked, her blue eyes narrowed ever so slightly. She had not yet condemned him, but she was close.
“I am not,” he answered. His tone was enough to cause a second guard to take hold of his other arm. “But we took him in, and fed him, and kept him alive, which is more than most would have done.”
“What do you mean, ‘we took him in?’”
“My wife found him, in the woods near Norba. He’d been left for the wolves.”
“Where is your wife?”
“Dead. Died birthing. Took the baby with her, too. Been two years now. ‘Couldn’t keep the farm up without her, so me and the boy moved to town.”
“I see,” Tertulla said. What she saw was much more than what this scrofulous miscreant was saying. Remembering my first days of enslavement, thrall to eight legionaries in the hidebound misery they called a tent, I wondered what else the child had suffered at his hands. “Despicable,” she spat. “You couldn’t find work, or maybe didn’t even look. Why bother, when you had the child? Was not the poor boy sympathetic enough with all his fingers?”
“I done no such thing!” His eyes darted about, looking for an escape he would not find. “I never hurt him.” His wild eyes told a different tale. The child could not help the subhuman condition of his birth; as distasteful as it was to look upon him, I might at least pity him. For his ‘caretaker,’ I felt nothing but revulsion.
At that moment, Crassus, mounted and glorious, came into the thick of us. Eurysaces (sired by Ajax, now put to pasture) bent his ink black head and to the delight of the boy nuzzled his cheek. One dumb creature recognizing another.
“What mischief are you up to, columba?” my lord asked.
Domina told him. Crassus thought a moment, then, from a height loftier than even that afforded by his horse, handed down his judgment. “You will accompany my men,” he said, pointing at the boy’s soon-to-be former caretaker. “Tomorrow, we will go to the courts and for the sum of 500 sesterces you will relinquish any and all claims upon this child…to me. Is that clear?”
“Really, dominus, is that necessary?” I said. “I’m sure we can find the boy a suitable home.”
“I just did,” Crassus said. “Clean him up. Tend to him. Make your mistress happy, atriensis.” There was no brooking that tone.
Domina reached up and squeezed her husband’s hand. A look passed between them, of gratitude and something more.
As the guards dispersed the crowd that had gathered, I sighed and held out my hand to the boy. He made to pick up his begging bowl. “Leave that,” I snapped.
Using his thumb, he pointed to the coins and said, “Yours.” To my surprise, his pronunciation of this difficult word was acceptable.
“No, yours. I’ll keep them for you.” I bent down to collect the money, then offered my free hand to him. He took it in both of his. The feel of those four bony hooks clinging to the soft meat of my palm made my bile rise. I helped him stand, and as soon as he got to his feet he threw his arms around me with such ferocity I was compelled to take a step backward to keep my balance. Oh, the stench! If I could not wriggle free of him, I would have to burn my tunic. I would most certainly incinerate his.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” he kept repeating, his forehead pressed hard upon my chest. He might just as easily have been thanking me for holding his money as freeing him from that monster. I was clueless, and frankly too distraught to care.
Before getting back into her carriage, Tertulla laid her hand on my shoulder. “It will be all right. You’ll see.”
Waiting until the ironclad wheels of her carriage began to roll, the guards snickered. One said, “Look, Alexander has a new puppy.”
After spearing them with one of my most well-honed glares, I told the boy, “Now, you must let go so that I may mount my horse.” The rest of our procession had already started to move off. Once asked, he complied straightaway. Now that’s a welcome change. I looked round for someone to help me mount. Because of my height, I could have flung myself up and into the saddle, but preferred to avoid such an unseemly display. This proved to be unnecessary, for looking down I saw that the boy had dropped to one knee and was offering to assist me. He had linked his four fingers in such a way that the backs of his thumbs and wrists provided the area of lift I required. Perhaps he would have some utility after all.
But not at this occupation. A few of the guards had lingered to watch; they laughed as my weight drove the slight child’s hands almost to the ground before I hauled myself up by the pommels, legs swinging wildly. Not having the strength to drag myself up all the way, I dangled between heaven, earth and soldiers’ mirth. Something solid met my soles; recognizing it for the boy’s bent back, I pushed off as lightly as I could and pulled myself inelegantly into the saddle to the sound of enthusiastic applause.
“Get up, boy,” I said. The child Hanno did. I was not surprised to see that in spite of the fact that I had knocked him down, his smile had remained intact. I felt obliged to add, “Thank you.”
We walked on, Apollo instinctively slowing his pace for the benefit of the lad. My horse, it must be said, was more attentive than I, for it was only after we had restarted our journey that I looked down to see that the boy’s oversized head was not his only irregularity. He walked with a pronounced limp, pushing off with his undersized left foot which he planted at ninety degrees to his right. The sight of this asymmetry distressed only those who witnessed it, for the boy had long ago adjusted his style of locomotion such that he was completely at ease with it. He rested his hand on my leg, frequently glancing up to bestow upon me his undiluted grin. If he wasn’t irritating me with that look of gratitude, he was staring with unabashed wonder at every mundane sight we passed. Further proof of his insanity. Any being exhibiting such complete contentment with the world and his place in it must be lacking any true understanding of it.
I would like to be able to tell you that on that day my heart went out to the boy, but suffering the touch of his two fingers on my calf, all I could feel was another headache coming on.
And that was how Hannibal came to be in our midst. Yes, I know, that was not his true name, but within a week the familia had changed it for him, from Hanno to Hannibal. It was inevitable. At least he and I had that in common. The difference was that as in most things, the boy perceived this as kind treatment. Hanno loved the change, skipping about the domus repeating his new name over and over again. I snagged him in the colonnade and holding hands, we walked back to my tablinum.