Sights and smells overwhelmed Marcus from both past and present the moment the door to the wine shop's warehouse opened onto the street. A tremble hit his knees. Farley glanced around.
"Stop dawdling," he said irritably in Latin.
Marcus clutched the man's luggage with sweating hands and followed the rest of the group toward the Time Tours inn on the far side of the Aventine Hill from the great Circus. They headed down the Via Appia toward the hulking edifice of stone bleachers, rising in tiers to the arches high overhead. When the rest of the group turned left to skirt the Aventine, Farley surprised him by heading the other way, toward the Capitoline Hill.
"Mr. Farley-"
"Be quiet and follow me!" Farley snapped.
Marcus glanced once at the tour group disappearing into the crowd. Then, hesitantly, he followed Farley. He'd given his word. And he needed to clear this debt. But the longer they walked, passing the Capitoline Hill and moving through the great Forum, where the rostrum towered with its glittering trophies of war, the battering rams of ships taken in battle, the greater grew Marcus' sense of wrongness.
"Mr. Farley, where are you going?" he asked in English as they left behind the Forum.
"To a place I've arranged," Farley answered carelessly.
"What place?"
Farley glanced over his shoulder. "You ask too many questions," he said, eyes narrowed.
Marcus stopped dead in the street, setting down the man's bags. "I believe I'm entitled."
Farley's mouth twitched at one corner. "You? Entitled?" He seemed to think this outrageously funny. "Hand me that bag. That one."
Marcus stooped without thinking, handing it over automatically. Farley opened it
And the next thing Marcus knew, his face had slammed into a brick wall and Farleys fist into his left kidney. He gasped in agony and felt his knees begin to go. Farley held him up with a fist twisted through his tunic. The next moment, Marcus' hands were manacled in iron chains.
"Now listen, boy," Farley hissed in his ear, "you're not in La-La Land any longer. This is Rome. And I am your master. I paid good, goddamned gold for you and I intend to do with you as I see fit. Is that clear?"
Marcus tried to struggle, knowing even as he did that any fight was hopeless. Farley put him on the ground with another punch to his kidney. He groaned and lay still at the man's feet.
"Get up."
Marcus fought to catch his breath.
"I said get up, slave!"
Marcus glared up at him through a mane of fallen hair across his eyes. "Bastard!"
"Get up, slave, or l'll have you branded as a runaway"
Marcus blanched. The letter F burnt into his cheek ... He struggled and lurched, but finally made it to his feet. Curious onlookers shrugged and returned to their business. Farley fastened a long rope to Marcus' chains, then signaled to a couple of idle fellows at a wine stall, their sedan chair leaning against the wall.
"You, there! Is your chair for hire?"
"It is, noble sir," the broader of the two said eagerly, setting aside a chipped earthenware mug of wine. "You have merely to tell us your destination."
In a daze of disbelief and growing terror, Marcus watched Chuck Farley climb into the sedan chair and accept his luggage, which he balanced on his lap. The porters struggled and grunted to get him airborne and settled onto their shoulders. "Come here, slave!" Farley snapped. "I don't want you getting tangled up in traffic and causing me to fall!"
Marcus stumbled behind the sedan chair, wrists weighted by the heavy cuffs. Chains clanked with a sound of buried nightmare. He remembered being chained ... chained and worse. Ianira! he cried silently. What have I done, beloved? If opportunity had presented itself, he would cheerfully have plunged a dagger through Chuck Farley's black heart. But he knew opportunity would not present itself.
The porters carried Farley to an imposing villa, where one of them pounded on the door. A slave chained to the interior wall of the entryway opened the door and bowed low, asking their business.
"Tell your master the man he was told to expect has arrived," Farley said, his Latin flawless. "With the goods, as promised."
The slave bowed and passed word to someone deeper in the house. A moment later, the porters had set down their burden, sweating and gasping for breath as though they'd just carried five men, rather than one. Farley paid them and sent them away with a wave of his hand. Then he turned to Marcus, an unpleasant smile lighting his eyes.
"This way, if you please, young Marcus. You are about to meet your new owner."
He wanted to run. Everything in him shouted the need. But in broad daylight, with hundreds of Romans to take up the cry "Runaway!" trying to bolt now was tantamount to suicide. He swallowed down a dry throat. Farley jerked him off balance with the rope, dragging him forward into the villa. He said in an ugly whisper, "You'll have to work a few years to pay off this debt, boy."
Marcus felt sick-sick and trapped. He knew in his soul that no man had the right to own him, but that was in a world two thousand years away. Here, now, to gain his freedom and satisfy the law and his sense of honor, he would have to obtain his purchase price, somehow. Or compromise the values he'd come to believe in so highly and simply run.
It was even money at the moment which he would choose.
Then he was stumbling into the presence of a wealthy, wealthy man. Marcus actually went down, catching himself on hands and knees. Gods ... He had seen this man many times, at public functions, on the Rostrum, in the law courts. Farley was selling him to ...
"Farlus, welcome! Come in, come in."
"Your hospitality is gracious, Lucius Honorius Galba. Congratulations, by the way, on your election to curule aedileship."
Tremors set in, chattering his teeth. Lucius Honorius Galba had been elected curule aedile? As powerful as his hated first master had been, Galba was a thousand times more so. Escape this man? Impossible. Galba glanced down at him.
"This?' the man said, disdain dripping from his voice. "This cowering fool is the valuable scribe you offered for my collection?"
Farley jerked on the rope. "Get up, slave." He said to Galba, "He didn't wish to be sold from my household. And he doubtless knows your illustrious reputation very well." The smile Farley gave Marcus was cool as a lizard's. "I assure you, he knows his job well. I purchased him some years back when the estate of one of the plebeian. aediles was being disposed of due to the man's death. As to the terror, his desire to make a good impression has left him shaking like a virgin."
Galba chuckled. "Come, boy, there's nothing to fear. I'm a fair man. Get up. I have need of a new scribe and your master, here, has offered a fine trade, a very fine trade. Come, let's see a demonstration of your skills."
Marcus, hands trembling as Farley unlocked the chains, wet his lips, then took the stylus and wax tablet handed him.
"Now," Galba said with a slight smile, "let's see if you can take this down properly."
The stylus jittered against the soft wax, but he did his best to take the dictation, which ranged from a partial letter to a business partner to household accounts to cargoes and trade sums earned at interest. Galba nodded approvingly over the result.
"Not bad," he allowed, "for a man trembling in terror. Not bad at all. In what capacity did you serve your plebeian aedile, boy?"
Marcus' voice shook as badly as the rest of him. "I kept records ... of the races, at the Circus, the inventories of the wild beasts for the bestiary hunts, and the records of gladiators who won victories and those who did not ... ."