Doctor Who_ Byzantium! - Keith Topping [67]
Ìt is a beautiful morning, yes?'
Vicki spun around, and slipped from her rock perch, landing in the mud on one knee.
Òh well, that's just the bloody limit,' she shouted angrily, looking down at her filth-splattered toga. 'As if I haven't got enough to worry about...'
She glanced up to find the somewhat bemused face of Papavasillion, the genial old man that she had met at the Georgiadis horse some nights earlier.
It seemed a lifetime ago.
Ì'm not going back,' she said flatly. You can tell them that the next time you see them Thank them very much for their hospitality. I'm grateful, I truly am. But I've had enough of trying to fit in like a square peg in a round hole. I don't belong here.'
Ì know that,' said Papavasil iou, sitting on the rock that Vicki had recently vacated. 'None of us truly belong anywhere.'
Vicki sighed loudly. ‘Look, don't trade any of that philosophical babble with me, old man, I'm really not in the mood.' Then she saw the look of hurt on Papavasilliou's face and felt like a shoplifter. ‘I'm sorry,' she said, feeling very upset. Ì didn't mean to take it out on you. But there's a lot going on in my life that you don't know about.'
`You mean that your new guardian regards you as a headstrong and naughty little girl. That she punishes you for things that you do not deserve. That no one hereabouts understands you or your needs. That you feel threatened, alone, betrayed. That you wish you could be with those who would treat you as an equal...?'
Vicki was impressed at this remarkable piece of insight.
`Something not wholly dissimilar to that,' she said, trying not to sound too blasé. 'And about a million more things that I could mention, but we'd be here all day.'
Papavasilliou's aged and lined face cracked into a broad smile. Ì have no pressing engagements,' he said. ‘That is the beauty of being old. I have nothing but time on my hands.' He patted one hand on his knee. ‘Come, little one. Sit by me and tell me of your troubles.’
Ian Chesterton was beginning to enjoy the luxurious breakfasts within the Vil a Praefectus. Here, even the slaves ate like kings, as Ian found out by taking many of his meals with Drusus and his staff.
This morning, he had woken early and arrived in the mezzanine vestibule to find only a lone serving girl drinking a bowl of milk Ian smiled at her and the girl averted her eyes from him.
He had seen her around the villa on several occasions; sometimes with Felicia waiting upon the lady Jocelyn, sometimes undertaking the tasks that Drusus had given her with fellow male slaves. And sometimes, like now, on her own, her head bowed in silent contemplation.
It was a well-known fact (which Barbara Wright had spotted some time ago) that it was the quiet birds that always got Ian Chesterton's attention. She was peach, this slave girl, her dark brown eyes and dusky Mediterranean complexion reminding Ian of the kind of women you see on the cover of twentieth-century travel magazines advertising holidays in exotic locations the likes of which he could never afford.
`Hello,' he said brightly. Ì'm Ian.'
'I know who you are and from whence you have come,' the girl said, her eyes still fixed to the floor. ‘I have heard much about you.’
`None of it good, I hope,' Ian said with a cheeky grin.
'Oh no, sir,' the girl said, raising her head and looking horrified at the prospect. 'All of it good.’
Ian was as embarrassed as she was, his joke having spectacularly backfired. ‘And you are...?' he asked, trying to wrestle the initiative back from complete defeat.
`My name is Dorcas,’ the girl replied.
‘Ah,’ said Ian, remembering a snatch of conversation with Fabulous some days before. 'You're the Christian, right?
You and another of Thalius's slaves have asked to have your religion recognised?'
'Yes, sir,' she said, and returned to looking at the floor