He was singing now; the weird melody penetrated even to the corridor.
"What a strange song!" said Aurelius Lucanus, cutting a piece of tender chicken, roasted on a spit before an open fire in the kitchen so tiny that there was scarcely room for the cook and his attendants to move about. Yet here, they prepared the elaborate dinners, served with the utmost nicety, in which Romans delighted. "It is different from anything I ever heard."
Two men were carrying around the table huge platters of food. One was Alyrus, the Moor, who was not only a porter, but a general factotum. His duties were many and various, from sweeping the floors and keeping their highly-colored mosaics clear and shining, to accompanying his master to business, as he had done this morning, and assisting the man who served at table. He was sent, also, with Virgilia when she went to pay a visit to some of her friends, or when, in former times, she went to see one of the Vestal Virgins, and worshipped at the shrine. There had been some talk of her taking the vows of the Vestals, who held a very high position in Rome, but both her father and mother felt that, as an only daughter, she could not be spared from home, Marcella, one of her companions, had always entered as a novice. In all her seventeen years of life, Virgilia had never been alone outside of her father's house. It was not the custom for young girls to go upon the streets unaccompanied. Even when she paid a visit, Alyrus or one of the other slaves was waiting in the ante-chamber, to obey her lightest call.
The other slave, who followed Alyrus with a glass carafe of iced water, was named Alexis. He was a Greek, from near Ephesus, seized as prisoner by one of the victorious generals, sold to Aurelius as Alyrus and Sahira had been. He was unusually handsome, very tall, with broad, well-formed shoulders and a face and head like one of the ancient pagan gods, whose statues have come down to us from the chisel of Phidias, the Greek sculptor. His skin was fair and his hair yellow as gold. Between him and the dark Moor who walked near him, there was the difference between light and darkness. It was not a difference in physical beauty, altogether, although Alyrus bore not only the disfiguring scar on his face, but smallpox scars, he was not altogether unpleasing in appearance. The difference lay chiefly in the expression of eyes and mouth. Alyrus was satirical, sneering, critical; Alexis was gentle, yet commanding; benign, yet firm.
Both slaves became alert, as the Master had been, listening to the song of the water-carrier, now becoming less and less distinct.
Alexis's eyes shown, but Alyrus cast a malignant glance at Martius, whose face was flushed.
"What a strange song!" repeated the lawyer. "It seems to be religious in its type, yet I never heard it at our functions or in the temples. Who was that man, Alyrus? Thou, who sittest ever at the doorway and hast an insatiable curiosity about our neighbors, wilt surely know."
Alyrus frowned at the implied reproof which was, after all, for the Moor kept closely to himself, except when information could serve some end.
"It is Lucius, the water-carrier," he said, as shortly as he dared speak to his master. "It is a Christian song that he is singing."
"Ah!"