"Hail," said a voice in the door.
Phryne stepped back with a stab of terror. Master Flavius looked at her. He carried a bucket in either hand.
"I think it amused the redbeard to have me wait on you," he said. His mouth quirked. "He has not heard that Rome has festivals every year wherein the Roman serves his own household slaves."
"But I am no more a slave!" said Phryne, as much to herself as to him. She had seen little of this man; she was bought in his absence and served his wife, whom he avoided. But he was a master, and no decent person would—But I have gone beyond decency, she thought; beyond civilization, at least. I am outlaw not only in Rome but in Rome's mother Hellas.
The knowledge was a desolation.
Flavius poured the water into a tub screwed to the floor. It slapped about with the rocking of the ship. He glanced at her, sideways. Finally he said, with a tone of smothered merriment, in flawless Greek: "My dear, you will always be a slave. Do you think because that white skin was never branded your soul escaped?"
"My fathers were free men in their own city when yours were Etruscan vassals!" she cried, stamping her foot in anger.
Flavius shrugged. "Indeed. But we are neither of us our fathers." His voice became deep, and he regarded her levelly. "I say to you, though, the slave-brand is on you. It was burned in with ... fair words on fine parchment; white columns against a summer sky; a bronze-beaked ship seen over blue waters; grave men with clean bodies and Plato on their tongues; a marching legion, where a thousand boots smite the earth as one; a lyre and a song, a jest and a kiss, among blowing roses. Oh, if the gods I do not believe in are cruel enough to grant your wish, you could give your body to some North-dweller—you could learn his hog-language and pick the lice from his hair and bear him another squalling brat every year, till they bury you toothless at forty years of age in a peat bog where it always rains. That could happen. But your soul would forever be chained by the Midworld Sea."
She said, shaking, "If you twist words about thus, then you, too, are a slave."
"Of course," he said quietly. "There are no free and unfree; we are all whirled on our way like dead leaves, from an unlikely beginning to a ludicrous end. I do not speak to you now, the sounds that come from my mouth are made by chance, flickering within the bounds of causation and natural law. Truly, we are all slaves. The sole difference lies between the noble and the ignoble."