“What is this?” I asked, touching the smooth wood.
“It is a writing board.” Cassia lifted the stylus and fitted it between my fingers. “A tutor at a street school sold it to me. You will use it to learn your letters.”
Chapter 20
Istared at the board in perplexity. The marks on it ran from side to side, top to bottom, neatly inscribed in straight lines.
I’d seen a tutor near the ludus the day Aemil had first asked me to find his gladiators, the man admonishing the half dozen children around him while they hunched over boards like these, small faces screwed up in frustration. It was a common sight on Roman streets.
I clutched the stylus in my fist. “How will this teach me letters?”
“Like so.” Cassia pried the stylus out of my hand and ran its point through the first letter on the board, then the second. “You trace the letters, again and again, so your hand gets used to forming the shapes. Similar to training with your sword and the posts, except now you are using a pen and letter board.”
She handed the stylus back to me as though she’d explained everything. Bemused, I studied the stylus—about as long as my hand, the thin bronze stick had a point on one end, the other flattened. I’d watched Cassia rub out letters on the wax with the flat end.
I held the stylus between my thick fingers and drew it down the angled straight side of the first letter on the board.
The stylus caught on the wood and started to bend. Cassia quickly put her hand over mine. “Not so exuberantly. A light touch.”
I gazed at our fingers, hers slim and elegant, nails trimmed and clean, mine blunt, scarred, unwashed. Her touch was cool, like silk, yet her hand was warm.
I did not realize how long I stared at her hand on mine until she lifted it away.
“Try again,” she said, as though nothing remarkable had happened.
I carefully traced the first letter, two angles and a crosspiece. I tried to start with the crosspiece, but Cassia directed me to trace the two angled lines first. I had no idea why.
“That is the letter A,” she explained. “It begins all kinds of words. Aqueduct,architectus,amicus…”
I glanced up at Cassia, she composed, with a small smile on her face. How she expected me to remember all this I didn’t know, and I had traced only one letter.
The next had a long stem and two humps.
“The letter B,” Cassia told me. “Bene,Britannia.”
“Vestalis—Severina’s husband—had been in Britannia,” I said as I went on to the next letter, a continuous curve. “So he told me. Also Hispania.”
“Did he? That is interesting.”
I raised my head again. “Why is it interesting? We already knew he met Severina in Hispania.”
Cassia regarded me thoughtfully. “That he told you his history at all.”
“I think he needed someone to talk to. He only has Severina and all his servants. The house is large. Echoing. Full of furniture and nothing else.”
“A cold place, yes. So Merope told me.” Cassia leaned her folded arms on the table. “That is the letter C. Many words begin with it—canis,carus… Cassia.”
An important letter. I would not forget it.
We continued along the board. Cassia gave me words for each letter that promptly dissolved in my head. After a time, I drank a cup of wine she passed me and nibbled on a chunk of bread.
“How long did it take you to learn to read?” I asked when we’d reached the middle of the board. The letter M—medicus, mitte, Marcianus.
“I don’t remember. I was a tiny child. A few weeks, I suppose.”
“A few weeks?” I stared at the board and the letters I still didn’t comprehend, exceptLfor Leonidas and the powerfulC. “I’ll be a few years at it.”
“That doesn’t matter. As long as it’s clear in the end.”
