Outcast by Rosemary Sutcliff Page B

was allowed outside the gates, and even, with one or two others, sent out sometimes to exercise the horses; and it would have been so easy to escape, only there was nowhere to escape to.
    Then came a morning when the promise of spring was suddenly fulfilled as with a fanfare of trumpets; a morning when the hazels would be flinging their yellow pollen to the wind along the wood-shores of the north, and the curlews would be calling. And something within Beric seemed beating and beating for freedom, until he felt bruised with its beating.
    But he was not the only one to feel the spring that morning, for the Lady Lucilla, who always had breakfast in her sleeping-cell in the usual way, suddenly decided to have it in the garden. It so happened that Beric entered the kitchen just as the tray was ready, and the cook thrust it into his hands, saying: ‘It is for the young lady. Take it out to her, there’s a good lad. She’s on the terrace.’
    Carefully carrying the tray set with little hot loaves and wild honey, Beric made his way across the inner court with its fountain and its lemon and myrtle trees in slender stone jars, and out into the small garden. The shadow of a flying bird darted before him over the grass, and in the brown shade of the ilex tree beside the terrace steps were a host of tiny pink flowers that looked as though they too were winged and might take flight at any moment.
    The Lady Lucilla was sitting on the curved stone bench in a kind of bay of the parapet, with nothing but sky beyond her, for the garden of the Piso house was on the very brow of the Viminal, and beyond the terrace the hill dropped steeply to the heart of Rome. She was playing with a small white kitten with golden eyes, and did not look up at the sound of Beric’s sandals on the pavement.
    Beric hesitated, wondering suddenly whether he ought to have put the tray down somewhere and brought out a table first; he did not know; it was the first time he had actually
waited on any of the family. ‘My Lady,’ he began at last, ‘may I put this on the bench, while I fetch a table?’
    She looked up at him. ‘Oh, it is you, Beric. Yes, set the tray here beside me. I shall not want a table.’
    Beric bent and set the tray carefully where she bade him, poured water into the silver cup and shifted the napkin so that it was towards her hand; and straightened again to find her still watching him. ‘You did that very well,’ she said.
    ‘Thank you, my Lady.’ Beric stood straight before her, waiting to be dismissed.
    But Lucilla did not dismiss him. Instead she said: ‘I saw you bring back the new Icenian mare from exercise yesterday.’ And then, as he did not answer: ‘You are British, too, are you not?’
    ‘I——’ Beric began, and hesitated, gazing at the parapet behind her. ‘I am from Britain.’
    Lucilla did not seem to notice the hesitation. After a moment she said with a small contented sigh, ‘Isn’t it lovely that it is spring again? The cyclamen are all coming into flower under the ilex tree, and soon the swallows will be back … Do you have swallows in Britain, in the spring?’
    Beric’s gaze slipped away over the parapet into the faint opal mist of the morning, out of which the hills of Rome rose into the sunlight. But they were other hills that he was seeing. ‘Yes, we have swallows in Britain, in the spring.’
    The Lady Lucilla bent her head quickly over the kitten in her lap, then looked up again and said with a catch in her voice: ‘That was stupid of me. I am sorry—I did not think.’
    Beric stared at her in surprise, at the warmth in her voice as much as her words. ‘My Lady, it—it makes no difference. I was remembering the swallows already, this morning.’
    ‘Were you? I am so sorry,’ said the Lady Lucilla again.
    There was an uncertain silence. Beric shifted his weight from one foot to the other, realizing that she knew no more than he did what to say next, or how to break off the small, half-shy exchange