Outcast by Rosemary Sutcliff

it too, and that was the thing of all others that Glaucus would never forgive.
    Again the thunder muttered; nearer this time, and Venetia, who hated thunder, began to snort and shiver.

VII
    THE DARK DAYS
    G LAUCUS did not forgive. There were many small and indefinable ways of making life wretched for a slave, especially a slave who had been born free, and he used them all, with a delicate skill. They did not at first amount to very much, though they added a good deal to Beric’s unhappiness; but Beric had an uneasy feeling that the son of the house was merely keeping his hand in until the chance of some bigger hurt came his way.
    Presently Hippias hobbled back to his horses and Beric returned to his work in the house. And the house was a busy place in these days, with the wedding so near. There was a ceaseless coming and going of merchants and jewellers and lawyers, and Lucilla’s friends were for ever arriving to talk about the wedding and be shown Lucilla’s new clothes and jewels, and going away again, chattering together like a flock of many-coloured birds. Nigellus wore a permanently harassed expression, and the cook, who was a Campanian and excitable, was almost off his head. The Lady Poppaea passed several times a day from purring contentment to tears and tantrums, and the master of the house fussed and fumed so that his usual pink turned to purple, and when he had to go away for a few days unexpectedly, on business, his entire household heaved sighs of relief.
    The day after he left, Beric encountered the Lady Lucilla in the shadowed colonnade of the inner court. All afternoon the garden had been full of girls, laughing and chattering, gay in their pretty flower-coloured tunics, playing little idle games with a hollow golden ball engraved with Greek dancers, eating honeyed apricots and admiring the bride’s new bracelets. But now they were all gone, and in the cool
of the evening the shadowed court seemed very quiet, with only the drowsy crooning of the coral-footed stock-doves to break the stillness. He was surprised to see that although it would soon be dinner-time, the Lady Lucilla had changed into an old tunic and bunched her hair out of the way with a riband.
    ‘Oh, Beric,’ she said as soon as she saw him, ‘now I need not send for you. I am tired of talking about clothes, and I noticed this afternoon that with all this excitement nobody has remembered to pick the figs on the terrace, so I am going to pick them now. Go you and fetch a basket, and come and help me.’
    ‘Yes, my Lady.’ Beric touched palm to forehead, and went quickly to do her bidding.
    On the way back he met Glaucus, who raised an eyebrow at the sight of the big willow basket he carried, and demanded to know what he did with it.
    ‘It is for figs,’ Beric told him. ‘The Lady Lucilla has bidden me to help her gather the figs on the terrace.’
    ‘The Lady Lucilla is a great deal too fond of slaves’ company,’ said Glaucus. ‘I must remember to speak to Valarius about it,’ and he walked on. Beric looked after him for a moment, with a frown deepening between his eyes, then continued on his way.
    He found Lucilla waiting for him by the fig tree which grew against the blank wall of the slaves’ quarters, at one end of the terrace, and they set to work, searching for the figs among the cool, many-fingered leaves. For a while they picked in silence, though once or twice Beric caught Lucilla glancing at him sideways, as though she had something she wanted to say and she was not sure how to begin. The silence lasted until he climbed on to the flat coping of the parapet to reach some figs on the topmost branches, and then she said quickly: ‘Oh, Beric, do be careful! If you slip you will be in the Forum in a score of pieces before you stop rolling!’
    ‘I shall not slip,’ Beric said, turning with a hand on a knotted branch to look out and down. Far below him lay the
Forum area, the heart of Rome, with its pillared and porticoed