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Updated: June 3, 2025
Stopping only to call Sahira to bring the Old One a refreshing drink, Virgilia veiled herself, entered her chair, and with Martius walking by her side, was borne out of the city gate guarded by men in full uniform, armed with staves and knives, and through the road leading to the Lady Octavia's house. What a day that was!
They were the emblem of his chieftain power in that land bordering on the desert, from which he had been so rudely carried away. It was not strange that Alyrus, a barbarian, should bear in his heart a bitter hatred for the Romans and all that belonged to them. A slave, he was, and Sahira, too, but they loathed their bonds.
The Senator was pallid and shaking with fear. "Woe! woe to the house of Lucanus!" wailed the aged woman, and would have fallen if Martius had not caught her in his strong arms. The slaves, frightened, had gathered in the doorway. At a sign from Aurelius, they carried her away, while Sahira tried to assist Virgilia to calm her mother. "She is very aged," explained the lawyer.
If it stopped raining, the Senator would come to the house of the lawyer Aurelius Lucanus that evening, after sundown, accompanied by the notary. Then he summoned Sahira. "Thou wilt clothe the Lady Virgilia in her most costly garments. Thou wilt bind jewels in her hair and hang strings of pearls about her neck. Her fingers, too, shall be laden with rings.
To the lions!" It was then that Alyrus shrank back and a deadly fear seized him. What had he done? What had he done? He remembered past kindnesses. He remembered how Sahira had been saved from a life of sorrow and shame by Aurelius Lucanus. How had he repaid him? By treachery and evil. For the first time in his life, Alyrus was conscious of sin. The Christian's God! Who was He? Could he avenge?
Nor has Alyrus, who was sent on an errand by Aurelius that afternoon, nor Alexis, the Greek. Not one has come back to tell of their fate. This morning, Sahira, my Lady Claudia's waiting-maid disappeared and the mistress lies there moaning and crying. It is pitiful. Everyone is in disorder of spirit.
He sprang up, but Claudia held his hand tight in hers. "It has been attended to. Sahira wove the garlands, a slave, not my own daughter. The gods will be wrathful, of course, but perhaps we can placate them by costly offerings of gold and spices at the temple. It is of Virgilia that I would speak. What is to be done with such an undutiful child?
He gave one backward thought to those days when hundreds of horsemen acknowledged him chief, and date-palms waved their feathery arms over his tent; he remembered that he was a slave, bought with a price, and his master had struck him. And he remembered Sahira and her tears. "Because Martius, son of Aurelius, is a Christian," he replied, and in his heart was a fearsome glee.
"Let him go!" he advised. "See, he is already almost out of sight." The games in the amphitheatre on this, the first day of November attracted an unusual number of persons. The emperor was there, with all his court, and the Vestals honored the games with their presence. Alyrus sat in a prominent place, with Sahira, former slave of Aurelius Lucanus and maid to Claudia, beside him.
One thing, they did not know; that Alyrus, the Moor, justly punished for his misdeeds, never spoke again after the games in the Circus. He died soon afterward. Sahira, robbed of her freedom by the jealousy of a woman high in favor in the imperial court, who envied her beauty and the favor of the emperor, sank again into slavery, and as the years passed, became a drudge in the palace.
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