Marcus saw his face fall slack and empty, like the face of an idiot, and was concerned. He touched his master's elbow. "You can still give it to him, sir," he said. "It's a good present for an invalid."
Archimedes began to cry soundlessly. He raised his head and stared blindly at Marcus. "He's dying."
"So I was told," replied Marcus evenly.
"I should have come back last year."
That was what Marcus had said at the time. Now he shrugged and said only, "You're back now. Sir, he dies after a good life, with all his family about him. No man can ask the gods for more."
"He lived on scraps all his life!" Archimedes replied fiercely. "Bits and pieces, hours snatched here and there, nothing! Oh, Apollo! Pegasus, hitched to a plow! Why should the soul have wings, if it's never allowed to fly?"
This made no sense whatever to Marcus. "Sir!" he said sharply. "Bear it like a man!"
Archimedes gave him a look of astonished incomprehension, as though Marcus had addressed him in some unidentifiable foreign tongue. But he stopped crying and wiped his face on his bare arm. He glanced at the door at the far end of the courtyard, then sighed and walked toward it, the box in his hand. Marcus picked up the jar of perfume and the lute and followed him.
Arata and Philyra were both in the sickroom, finishing the work of preparing the invalid for the day. When Philyra saw the lute in Marcus' hands her face went utterly still, but her eyes awoke into a sudden intense life. Archimedes glanced back at his slave and jerked his head, and Marcus bowed and handed the jar of myrrh to Arata, then bowed again and offered the lute to Philyra. Her face flushed as she took it, and her hands curved over the sounding board with a fiercely possessive tenderness. She looked at her brother and breathed, "Medion!" — half in protest, half in adoration. But Archimedes was not looking at her.
Phidias had slowly levered himself to a sitting position to accept his own present. He took the ivory box in his trembling hands and studied the picture on the lid. "Apollo and the sweet Muses," he observed softly. "Which one is Urania?"
Archimedes indicated her silently. Urania, Muse of Astronomy, stood at Apollo's elbow, pointing at something which lay on the low table in front of the god- the puzzle, probably. Her diaphanous draperies were identical to those of her eight sisters, but she was distinguishable from them by her crown of stars.
Phidias smiled. "Next to the god," he said quietly. "Just where she should be." He looked up at his son, his yellowed eyes still full of his smile- looked in the luxurious confidence that here at last he would be understood. "She's beautiful, isn't she?" he asked.
"Yes," whispered Archimedes, the expected understanding going through him in a warm flood. "Yes, she is."
3
Archimedes kept to his agreement to meet the guardsman Straton by the naval quay that evening.
The rest of the family had accepted his decision not to follow his father's career as calmly as Philyra had. Arata, in fact, was relieved to find him searching for any work: she'd worried that he might not appreciate the necessity of earning money. She fussed about to ensure that he looked an aspiring royal engineer, and sent him off bathed and barbered and dressed in his new tunic and cloak. He tried to avoid the cloak- too hot for June! — but his mother draped it firmly about his shoulders. "It looks distinguished," she told him, "and you need to impress this man."
"He's only a soldier!" Archimedes protested. "He's just going to tell me who I should really talk to!"
"Even so!" Arata declared. "If he's impressed, he'll pass that on to his superior."
She wanted to send Marcus with him, too: a gentleman ought to have a slave in attendance. Archimedes was nervous, though, that they might meet the Tarentine mercenary Philonides again. He explained to his mother and sister what had happened at the docks.
Philyra listened to the account with indignant astonishment. She glanced at Marcus' impassive face, remembering the bruise on his side. "That's outrageous!" she exclaimed angrily. "We have a right to keep our own slave! You should have taken that stupid mercenary to a magistrate, and complained."
Archimedes just shrugged. "I wouldn't threaten a mercenary!" he said with feeling. "And courts are chancy places, especially with a war on. I don't know what sort of Italian Marcus is- do you?"
Philyra glanced at Marcus again, startled this time. She had never connected him in her mind with the great new power to the north. Yes, she'd known he was Italian, but there had always been wars in Italy, and in each war some prisoners always ended up in the Syracusan slave market. It had always been enough to call them simply "Italian" and assume that slavery had absorbed all the differences between them.
"Well, what sort of Italian are you?" she demanded bluntly.
Marcus' face was carefully blank. "I'm not a Roman," he muttered. "Roman citizens are never slaves." Then he added, in embarrassment, "Mistress."
"It doesn't matter what sort he is," said Arata resignedly. "If the question were raised in a court, we'd have endless trouble trying to prove anything at all. Better to avoid courts if we can." She clapped her hands and jerked her head at Marcus. He retreated back into the house, relieved.
Archimedes started for the door, but Arata caught his arm and drew him aside before he reached it. In a voice too low for the slaves to overhear she said, "My dear, have you given any thought as to whether we should sell Marcus?"
"No, of course not!" said Archimedes, surprised. "We don't have to sell him just because he's Italian!"
"Not that," whispered Arata, gesturing for him to keep his voice down. "We don't need four slaves, especially since your father sold the vineyard, and we can't afford to feed them. If we don't sell Marcus, it will have to be Chrestos. We couldn't sell Sosibia, not after so many years, and little Agatha- it wouldn't be right, my dear."
Archimedes hunched his shoulders unhappily. He understood now. His mother wanted him to start looking for a good buyer for one of the slaves right away. The decision about who to sell and where was his to make- because it would not be right to throw this sort of decision onto his father, not now, and the women lacked any authority in law.
He did not want to sell anybody. Marcus would hate to be sold, he thought absently. He would really hate it, no matter who the buyer. He liked Marcus, relied on Marcus: he could not possibly inflict such a humiliation upon him. But Chrestos- he could remember holding Chrestos as a newborn baby. How could he take money for a member of his family? Money wasn't worth it. He hated to think about money at the best of times.
"There's no hurry!" he protested at last. "The money I brought back from Alexandria will last us for a month or two, and after that, anything could happen. There's a lot of money in engineering. We could all become rich! It would be stupid to sell people if we don't need to."
Arata sighed. Some people might get rich from engineering, but she did not believe her son ever would. He was too unworldly, too softhearted. Like his father. She couldn't even complain at it: it was a quality she loved in them. She did not like postponing hard decisions, though, especially in such uncertain times. "If we wait until we're hungry," she pointed out quietly, "we'll have to take the first buyer that comes along. If we sell now we can choose a good home for him."
Archimedes squirmed uncomfortably. "Can't we at least wait to see if I get this job?" he pleaded.
His mother sighed again, resignedly this time. She did not want to sell any of the household slaves, either, and it was true they had a month or so of grace. She nodded, and her son gave a sigh of relief.