Sibyl swallowed hard. "I—I know Rufus."
Benigna's eyes widened. "Rufus? How can you know Rufus?"
"He's—he's not here?"
"No. Should he be?"
"Yes. They should have brought him last night. By wagon. We came on the ship together from Rome."
"But—why?"
Then realization struck the young girl. She fell to her knees and threw protective arms around her child. "No! Please tell me Master won't sell her to that horrible Xanthus, please..."
Lucania clung to her mother's tunica, eyes suddenly dark with fear. Sibyl touched the little girl's bright hair. "Shh... No one's sold anyone yet. And they won't. I swear to you."
Benigna's glance was frightened, hopeful, skeptical in rapid succession. "You, a slave, swear to me?"
Sibyl drew a steadying breath. No time like the present to start the ball rolling. "Yes. I swear it. As I am sibyl, I swear it."
All three women started violently.
Sibyl plunged on. "The mountain on which this house is built will roar with fire and thunder before Bericus does such an evil thing."
All three women turned frightened gazes toward the unseen summit of the volcano. Everyone had felt the earthquakes all through the night, for miles around.
Sibyl whispered, "And if the mountain does roar, Benigna, try to get into a doorway. The house may fall. And if it does, a doorway is the only safe place."
"Yes," Benigna whispered, face white with terror. "As doorways represent the gateway between this world and the next, such a gateway could be the only safe place. I thank you for the warning, sibyl. But how can you be here? Enslaved to Bericus?"
"By a mistake he shall regret," Sibyl said tightly. "Soon."
Again, all three women blanched.
"I— Please forgive me, but Master will beat me if you are not prepared as ordered," Benigna whispered miserably, still clinging to her child. "I am only a poor slave, far from my home. Please do not blame me or mine."
Sibyl shut her eyes. So much for asking help to escape the house. She just nodded. They wrapped her in a soft robe and escorted her out to the peristyle garden, where they sat her down in a chair placed on the sunny portico. Quintus, surly and silent as ever, followed and took up a watchful stance. While the sunlight did its work drying her hair, the women rubbed perfumed salves into her hands and feet. Once her hair was dry—and an unruly mass of curls it proved to be, Sibyl noted wryly as they struggled with it—she was allowed to eat a light breakfast of bread and cheese. Once they had tamed her hair, the slave women applied cosmetics. Sibyl grimaced and endured the ritual.
Lucania played on the soft grass at her mother's feet, making cooing noises and occasionally smiling up at Sibyl. Sunlight turned her hair red-gold, her eyes the same sunny amber-green as Charlie's when he smiled. Tears prickled behind Sibyl's eyelids. Lucania was a beautiful little girl. She had her mother's face, her father's eyes and smile and hair. Terrible images of the skulls she'd dug out of volcanic mud tortured her, superimposed over Lucania's face. A few of the skeletons they'd found had been children younger than Lucania. Much younger...
We'll get her out. We have to.
The women preparing her finally finished. When Livia held up a polished bronze mirror, Sibyl hardly recognized herself. The women had pulled her hair back with gold combs. Benigna had woven a strand of tiny pearls into it. The makeup was garish by modern standards. Heavy black kohl outlined her eyes, Egyptian style, making her eyes appear twice as dark—more nearly pine than emerald. Rouge reddened her cheeks and lips. She looked—and felt—like a cheap whore. Sibyl endured in silence when Alcesta rouged her nipples and genitalia.
She couldn't bring herself to see if Quintus still watched.
The linen gown they wrapped her in could have been made only in Egypt. She'd studied tomb paintings of these pleated, transparent sheathes. She'd wondered even then how many hours a slave woman had labored to sew down and press all those tiny pleats into the cloth. The material was even more transparent than the paintings had indicated. When sunlight fell across her, Sibyl felt she might as well have been dressed in sunbeams.
She wondered if Bericus enjoyed Egyptian fantasies in general or if this were just one of many passing whims. She closed her eyes and tried to think about Charlie, about her battered old VW, about classical Latin verb conjugations, about solving complex integral equations... .
If only she'd said yes to that kid in her calculus class, the one whose interest had scared her spitless. Sibyl stiffened her spine and stared at the far portico wall. She would endure anything in order to survive long enough to escape.
Livia made a clucking noise and fussed with her earlobes. Sibyl winced as the woman struggled to unfasten the little silver posts she'd picked up in the Naples airport. Pierced earring posts and backs were a modern development in the history of pierced-earring wear.
Livia finally mastered the secret and removed the earrings, then replaced them with massive gold hoops. The wires were almost too thick for the holes in her ears. The earrings were extremely heavy. Within minutes her earlobes ached from the weight. Benigna slipped gold armbands onto her upper arms, added bangles to her wrists and ankles, and produced soft house sandals of kid leather for her feet. As a finishing touch, they hung a heavy, Egyptian-style collar of gold and lapis over her neck and shoulders.
Sibyl thought wildly that when they found her skeleton, they'd think she was an upper-class Egyptian lady visiting Herculaneum at just the wrong time. She couldn't restrain a semihysterical hiccough of laughter.
"What is it, sibyl?" Benigna asked fearfully.
"Nothing," she choked.
The woman murmured something intended to be soothing, but Sibyl paid little attention. The sun had moved ominously closer to the zenith. Underfoot the floor vibrated to a never-ending rumble.
God, how can they be so blind?
"She is ready for the master's pleasure, Quintus," Livia said. Sibyl's flesh crawled like cold lizard skin. She clenched her fingers tightly to keep her hands from trembling. Benigna bent near and whispered, "Be brave. Do whatever he bids you at once, no matter what, and he may not beat you. I will try to help you afterwards, sibyl."
She drew a shuddering gulp of air. God...
Bericus arrived at the far end of the garden. She followed Quintus on trembling legs. She had very little attention to spare for the fountains which splashed quietly all through the sunlit space. The flowers were a blur of color, too confused even to notice types. Golden sunlight fell in a blaze of summer heat across her skin. The hot light turned the linen dress to a wisp of nothing.
Bericus' eyes ravished her well before he laid so much as a finger on her body.
"Master," Quintus bowed, "your new slave, Aelia."
"You may go," Bericus said curtly.
She noted the tell-tale bulge his excitement made in the front of his tunic. She had to gulp back panic. The balding, sallow-faced Roman stalked in a complete circle around her, smelling of sex and cruelty. She thrust back memory of his mere "examination" and steeled herself.
"They tell me," he said softly, his gaze fastened hungrily between her thighs, "that you have no memory of yourself, Aelia."
She willed her voice not to waver. Now or never... "They lied."
He halted and lifted his gaze to hers. His brow rose slowly. "Is that so?" Bericus pursed his lips, then resumed his pacing. Without warning, he seized her arm from behind. Bericus twisted it savagely, nearly to breaking. Sibyl cried out, panting against the agony.
"They lied, Master," he hissed.