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students lounging in various stages of undress at the cubicle doors.
    Xenophon’s thick fingers circled the wrist of a girl in a white gown and sky-blue shawl. Seeing me, he released her. I enjoyed his look of dismay when I said, “I’m glad you turned her loose, Xenophon, because she’s the one I chose for tonight.”
    His black brows thrust together. “Then choose again.”
    “No, I won’t. You’ve already had your sport today at my expense. Now I’ll have mine at yours.”
    I paused. “Unless you care to settle the dispute with fists.”
    Growls from the other inmates stayed the Greek’s hand. Loud complaints that he’d used me unfairly upset him, for he enjoyed and even needed the admiration of his fellows to sustain him. I did not. I was ready to tell them to mind their own affairs when I realized that none of them, except perhaps Syrax, cared a whit about me. Xenophon was a bully and they enjoyed watching him squirm.
    The Greek thought over my invitation. Then he moved forward a step. I doubled my hands, ready to fight. A lash cracked as Fabius appeared.
    “Into your cells, into your cells! You’ll bring the watch with your racket. We have trouble enough smuggling these women through the streets. Xenophon, what’s wrong with you? You look as though you swallowed poison.”
    “Nothing, master Fabius. Nothing we won’t settle later.”
    He caught the waist of a plump Phoenician wench and shambled off to his cubicle. There being more than enough women, Syrax managed to procure two for himself. The last I saw, he was entertaining them with anecdotes of his intimacy with many famous persons in Rome. Fabius snapped the whip again and threatened loudly, but he threw me a grudging glance of approval when he noticed the girl had wandered unbidden into my cell.
    Turning, I saw the tallow light glow through the cheap cloth of her tunic, limning the slenderness of her thighs and the round high peaks of her breasts. At the hall’s end guards marched in, depositing at each sill the night’s ration of wine. I waited outside until the men passed with mine.
    The jar was chilled. Or perhaps the flesh of my palm was hot.
    The girl waited. I stepped into the cell and drew the curtain, surprised to discover that I hardly felt the hurting of my back; that an immense loneliness filled me suddenly; and that the girl was very beautiful.
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Chapter III
    “DO YOU PLANto stand there all night holding that wine jug?” she asked, laughing.
    Page 12

    Embarrassed, I thrust it to her. “Help yourself.”
    “Oh, I don’t care for any right now, thanks.” She sat on the couch and removed her sandals one by one. “I only wanted to see whether you had manners. Not many in this place do.”
    She indicated the tear in her tunic made by Xenophon. Her red mouth formed a professional smile. Her hair, brown and lustrous, was piled and piled upon her head in a profusion of coils and ringlets, after the current fashion. She was plainly arrayed except for the whore’s kohl blackening her eyelids. A spiced scent of perfume hung around her. She seemed hardly older than I, but was fully developed, with a woman’s breasts and long legs.
    While I helped myself to a draught from the jar, thunder boomed again. Somewhere in the darkened maze of cells a girl shrieked in a frenzied way. I had a peculiar impulse to pull down a rag from a wall peg and scrub this girl’s face clean.
    “My name’s Acte. Or did you hear that?” Her voice was pleasant, less shrill that those of her sisters. “Who are you? Perhaps you prefer to remain nameless.”
    “Cassius. And that’s a strange remark. Don’t you have any stomach for the work?”
    “Would I be here if I didn’t? I’ve visited the school several times in the past two months. So you’re Cassius. I’ve heard about you. They call you Cassius the Cur.”
    A tightness filled my throat “Who does?”
    “Oh, men here. They say you growl whenever you