Enemies at Home Read Online Free PDF

broken out of the womb to defend Aviola and his wife, whose property it was … What is her role here?’
    ‘Oh, she’s just Myla. Been with us for years. She does whatever is needed. You’re bound to see her pottering around. Feel free to ask her for anything.’
    ‘What – even though she just gave birth?’
    ‘I had her back on duty straightaway. She knows what is expected. She was
verna
– born in the house.’
    ‘As her child will be,’ I commented. ‘Boy or girl?’ The freedman looked blank. ‘What is this baby Myla has produced?’ He shrugged; he had no idea. ‘Don’t you have to list it as a new possession?’
    ‘A scribe’s job,’ Polycarpus reproached me huffily. ‘I run the home. I never touch anything secretarial.’
    Melander, 20, scribe, was in the Temple of Ceres.
    The steward must have seen my face so he decided to elaborate. ‘I have to know manpower numbers, yes, and their capabilities. We use them young, carrying the odd towel or basket, but I don’t want any disturbance, no little wobbler going arse-over-tip. So I’m not interested in a babe-in-arms that will probably die in the next few years anyway. It’s no use to me until it’s decently walking.’
    I said that was fully understandable.
     
    Polycarpus was not to know that I had once been a small child in a house where I was expected to fetch and carry for people who viewed me as a commodity. I tried not to dislike him for this conversation – though I did not try hard.

5
     
    A s afternoon subtly became twilight, the youth Dromo reappeared. He had been taken away by Faustus, but came whistling back with a high-piled handcart. The aedile must feel guilty about my bare room, so his slave produced various items to improve my comfort: writing materials; a set of bowls, beakers, spoons and scoops, all on a tray; two cushions and a bolster, with embroidered covers; a couple of floor-mats; a small side-table with curved legs; three lamps, oil to put in them and a lighting flint (a thoughtful man); even a comfortable lightweight wicker chair. And a cudgel.
    ‘What?’
    ‘That’s for me to use,’ protested Dromo, grabbing it as I tried its weight.
    ‘For protecting me?’
    He sniggered. ‘No! For protecting all this stuff of my master’s. I bet I know what they are like here. He’s asking to have everything pinched. Don’t you go looking at that handcart; I’ve got to take it back.’
    I smiled at his presumption that I would snaffle a handcart for personal use. Mind you … ‘You can take it tomorrow when I send you over to Faustus with a report.’
    ‘You think I’ll forget it!’
    I knew he would. Dromo regarded himself as the archetypal clever slave, but really he was much less clever.
     
    He slouched off into the colonnade outside my room, where he started making himself a nest, laying out the best of the mats, then arranging his choice of crockery around it with the cudgel as a phallic centrepiece. I pottered indoors, doing what I knew he would consider suitable women’s work like positioning cushions. I soon grew tired of that.
    I marched out and was about to begin investigating the apartment’s floor-plan when someone arrived with my supper. Dromo snatched it from the take-out waiter (who would be annoyed because he lost his tip). I was ushered back to my room. Dromo disapproved of where I had put the side-table, so he moved it, plonked the tray down, relocated my chair too, rattled me up a bowl and spoon, then produced a napkin grudgingly.
    I lifted covers and found two kinds of cold bar food, one beaten-up bread roll, a wilting side salad and some spotty fruit.
    ‘I expect I have to make do with your leftovers,’ said Dromo, fixing me with a glare.
    ‘What if there aren’t any?’ I asked mildly.
    ‘Better be, or I’ll starve.’
    Gods, this was hard work. I remembered why I did not own slaves myself.
     
    I soon gave up on my unpalatable dinner, so took what I didn’t want to Dromo then set off to