Author's Note: You must live for another if you wish to live for yourself. –Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Disclaimer: A slave owns nothing; I own no more.

Esca set the plate of bread and fruit on the little table, along with a cup of water, then looked at his master, uncertainly. "If you don't care for this, I could bring you—"

"It's fine," Marcus told him indifferently. His gaze remained fixed on something out in the garden. He made no move to touch either cup or plate.

Would he actually eat anything? Esca wondered. "If you'd like, I could—"

"You can go."

The Roman did not say, I have no use for you, as he had that first day, but the Briton knew the dismissal was an order from which there was no appeal. He wished to help so much, but he didn't really know what help to give. And his master wished only for him to make himself scarce. Not knowing what else to do, Esca obeyed, pulling the door softly closed most of the way, but leaving it open just a bit, in case Marcus should change his mind after all, and call for him.

"How's your master?" Regina, the oyster-seller who had given him Aquila's message that first day, greeted him in the market.

"Mending." Esca pressed his lips together, then slid the top lip across the bottom, wondering if he should say any more.

"But?" she asked.

Esca shrugged. He'd grown up in the bustle of a hillfort. The silence of the villa depressed him. "But I wish they'd have some visitors. It's lonely."

"Well, the young one's been wounded." She thought about it. "I suppose Old Aquila does his socializing at the bathhouse, like they all do."

Esca eyed the old woman speculatively. "He often goes there of an afternoon, yes."

"Perhaps the young one should accompany him. Meet people. Make friends. He's not from around here, you know."

He hadn't known, really. Well, he knew he was a Roman, but not where he was from, exactly. He thought about asking, but he'd talked enough already. No sense revealing any more of his ignorance. "A long hot soak would be just the thing for his leg," he remarked instead.

Aquila himself was thinking along the same lines as the oyster-woman. "It's time you were out in the world, Marcus."

"Out in the world," his nephew muttered. "What world? I've been honorably discharged from the world."

"Then you must make yourself a new world," the old man stated brightly.

The forced cheerfulness made Marcus' teeth ache. He rubbed his bad leg, hoping the action would ease that pain. It didn't. "This has made my new world, uncle."

"Come to bathhouse with me. There are people you should meet. Part of that new world."

The younger man stared down at his leg. "With this?"

"With that. The heat will do it good."

"No."

"Mar-cus—" Aquila drew the syllables out and up in that way he had when his nephew was displeasing him.

"I said no."

Defeated, Aquila departed for the bathhouse alone. Esca checked to see if Marcus wanted anything.

He didn't.

No surprise there.

Well, he'd been purchased partially to lighten Stephanos' load, so maybe the Greek had something he wanted done.

To get the younger slave out of his hair, the older finally consented to allow the boy to clean old Aquila's study.

Scrolls filled square shelves along one wall. More were strewn across a table. Esca tried to concentrate on the work he was supposed to be doing, but the books drew him. Romans and their books. He wiped his hands on his tunic, picked up a scroll, and unrolled it.

He forgot about cleaning, forgot about the time passing.

"Can you read that?"

It was Aquila. Esca jumped, nearly dropping the scroll.

"I forget something, and decided to come home to fetch it." The graybeard grinned at the slave, a crocodile smile. "And what do I find in my study?"

"I was just—"

"Snooping?"

"Stephanos told me I should cl—"

"Oh, you were cleaning that scroll, were you?" Aquila cut him off.

Esca didn't know what to say.

"Why don't you read to me what's so interesting?"

The Briton looked again at the scroll. "Caretake this moment," he read. "Immerse yourself in its particulars. Respond to this person, this challenge, this deed."

Aquila took the scroll from him, and read, with emphasis, "'Quit evasions. Stop giving yourself needless trouble. It is time to really live; to fully inhabit the situation you happen to be in now.' Do you know whose words those are?"

Esca shook his head.

"They are the words of Epictetus. A slave," he eyed his nephew's slave challengingly. "Now get out of my study."

At cena, Esca brought in the big bowl of porridge, then seated himself silently, trying to assess how badly he'd disgraced himself with the older men. Stephanos had been none too pleased to hear that Aquila had caught him perusing one of the scrolls, and his ears were still ringing from the dressing down the old Greek had given him.

Aquila did not seem to be angry. In fact, he made no reference to the matter at all, talking instead of the men he'd met at the bathhouse, how relaxing the hot water had been, how invigorating the cold.

"It would do your leg a world of good," he advised his nephew.

Marcus didn't want to discuss this again. "I already told you—"

The old man interrupted with the surprising assertion, "It's not just me. Esca thinks so, too."

Esca looked up in alarm. Three pairs of eyes were trained on him, two of the pairs with disapproval. But Aquila was smiling, his crocodile smile. "Don't you, Esca?"

It was a test, somehow. He wondered what the correct answer was. He had no idea, so spoke the truth. "Yes, I do."

Marcus didn't look at Esca, only at his uncle. "And why exactly should I care what my slave thinks?"