by R. W. Peake
“Demeter,” Alex’s voice cut in as we glared at each other, “what Gnaeus is saying is true, because that’s how they can get any kind of assistance, by showing up at the nearest camp and showing that disc. Gambling that away would guarantee they would starve if times got hard.”
The Rhodian was scared, I could see, but he was also angry, and I am the one who made the first move by lowering him until his feet were firmly back on the deck.
“I apologize, Demeter,” I said, and I was being sincere, somewhat; I had not forgotten we needed him. “I shouldn’t have lost my temper like that, but as Alex said, this is something a Legionary of Rome would never do. So, if he was wearing it, he is a man who served his time under the standard.”
Whether it was the apology or the tone I used as I conveyed this subject was closed, what mattered was that Demeter accepted it with a nod and offered his own.
“I did not mean to cast aspersions on your countrymen, Centurion. I spoke in…haste. And…” his expression altered slightly, but I put a hand on him again, except this time, it was in a gesture of friendship and sympathy as I clasped his shoulder.
“And it has been,” I said, “a trying day.”
I supposed it was my understatement that made him laugh, albeit with a bitter edge, but he agreed, “That it has, Centurion. That it has.”
Returning our attention to what needed to be done, we spoke no more about killing fellow Romans; instead, we discussed how to neutralize them temporarily, but long enough that they could not raise the alarm.
“What about me?”
At first, I thought I was hearing things, but I saw both Septimus, who was now going along, and Alex, turn in surprise to Gaius, who had wisely kept his mouth shut up to this moment.
“What about you?” I demanded.
“What if I tell them I’m lost and need their help?” he replied. “They’ll be able to tell that I’m Roman by my accent.”
More out of curiosity than any idea this would go anywhere, I asked him, “And what story would you be telling them?”
“That I’m sailing with my father, it’s my first voyage, and I sneaked off our ship to see Alexandria, and I got lost.”
It was, I thought, absurd. And yet, I also realized that there was something to it. One glance over at Septimus and Alex told me they were of a like mind, and when I looked over at Demeter, he shrugged.
“It is not the worst idea I have heard, Centurion,” he allowed, and perhaps in a token that he did not bear me a grudge for earlier, he grinned, “and the gods know that the crew of the Persephone and I have gotten aboard a ship on flimsier pretenses.”
To my utter surprise, the one person who objected, and strenuously, was Bronwen.
“Surely you are not seriously considering this!” She had been sitting at the table, and she stood up so abruptly, it would have knocked the chair over if it had not been fastened to the deck. “He cannot go! It is too dangerous, and he is just a boy!”
I actually winced, thinking; oh, my love, how could you be so foolish? Now I realize it was because she had no brothers, at least that survived to be Gaius’ age. If she had, she would have known that, of all the things she could have said, this was the worst.
“I’m not!” Gaius wheeled on her, and because of where I was standing, I got a good glimpse of his face, which made me realize something; he was not just angry because he was like every teenage boy, he was wounded that it was Bronwen who said this. “I’m a Pullus, and you’re not! It’s in my blood! Just like,” he extended a hand to point at me, “your lover!”
Pluto’s cock, he’s in love with her, I thought miserably, and while I was angry, it was not at him but at myself, recognizing that my choice to ignore all the little things during the voyage, where he made sure to be near her whenever he had the chance, always eager to talk to her but suddenly not having the words to say anything when he did, which I had viewed with quiet amusement, had been a mistake, and a grievous one at that.
“He’s going,” I spoke up, and only now after the fact do I acknowledge that this was due more to the idea of postponing what would be an extremely awkward conversation than my acceptance of the idea. “We’re going to send him ahead. Just,” I held up a hand towards Bronwen, “a short distance ahead of us. And he’ll tell his story. While he’s doing that, it will give us a chance to get close enough where we can surprise them without having to kill anyone.”
With this small crisis averted for the moment, we turned to the practical matter of the size of our party.
“Two or three men together, at the time of night we are going to be moving,” Demeter had said, “will not attract much attention. But,” he warned, “it has to be soon, just after midnight. If we wait much longer, we will arouse suspicion no matter how many of us are together.”
“That doesn’t give us much time,” Alex moved to the open shutters, peering up at the sky. “It’s already close to midnight as it is.”
“It makes sense that Gaius, Demeter, and Marcellus go first,” Alex said. “Then Gnaeus, Septimus, and I will follow. We’ll give you,” he thought for a moment, “to a slow count to five hundred before we start out.”
When Demeter asked if Alex was certain he could find his way in the dark, he held up a second tablet, grinning as he answered, “This is why I counted our steps and the directions.”
Not surprisingly, Demeter was impressed; of our party, only Bronwen was clearly upset, but I neither felt it was proper nor did I have the urge to take her aside at this moment to soothe her fears. One thing this had done, however, was remind me of something, and I walked over to the chest that contained all of my personal clothing and uniform items. Kneeling down, I opened it, and after shifting around the contents, I found what I was looking for, a small leather bag. In terms of actual space and size, it is not much, yet next to the gladius and the scrolls, it is the most precious item in my possession.
“I can’t believe I forgot about it.”
I heard the words and recognized my voice, but it did not seem like my own, and when I felt a hand on my shoulder, to my surprise when I looked up, it was not Bronwen standing there, it was Alex. Which, I immediately realized, made sense, because he was the one person in that cabin who knew what it was by sight, and most importantly, what it meant.
“I think,” he said quietly, “you need to wear that tonight, given all that’s happening and what it means.”
Naturally, my seemingly unusual action drew the attention of everyone else, but I barely noticed them; what I did notice was how my hands shook as I loosened the drawstrings, then dumped the contents into my palm. As I said, in terms of its physical properties, it is not much; just a metal disc with a leather thong threaded through the small hole. It is impossible to truly explain why, but I had never taken the time to clean my father’s blood off from the identity disc that had once belonged to Titus Pomponius Pullus, and I was alarmed to see the orange spots, very tiny but still noticeable, of rust, a reminder of how blood will pit and rust iron, though nobody I have talked to knows why this is the case. I’m going to have to clean it, I thought to myself, but not tonight; tonight, my father’s blood is coming with me on this task. I could feel the eyes of everyone in the cabin on me, but it was to Septimus and Gaius I turned, understanding that, next to Alex, they would understand what was taking place.
Holding the disc up, I barely recognized my own voice as I asked, “Do either of you know what this is?”
I was not surprised that it was Septimus who understood first, actually dropping to his knees as he gasped, “That’s Avus’ identity disc!”
“It is,” I confirmed, but while I cannot say why, exactly, I thrust it out so that it was closer to his face as I said, “and that’s your brother’s blood still on it.”
Rather than recoil or admonish me for not cleaning it, Septimus reached out, his hand trembling, to touch the disc dangling from my hand. And, I do not believe he would censure me for saying, tears welled up from his eyes, but I wa
s similarly affected. Yes, it had been well more than a year since Titus Porcinianus Pullus had fallen, and almost exactly a year since I had brought his ashes to Arelate, but it made the moment no less powerful. I am not much of a believer in the gods, and how much of an influence they have on everything we humans do, yet I confess that I was certain my remembrance of that disc in that moment was no accident.
“He’s come back to Alexandria. The Prefect is here, with us,” Alex said, his voice suddenly sounding choked.
Under any other circumstances, I would have laughed at this as mystical nonsense, but I did, and still believe, that this was the truth.
We made our preparations quickly, though not without problems. Namely, since I would not be wearing a sagum, the plan called for me to wear a paenula, but not only did it look ridiculous, making me seem like I was wearing someone else’s that I had already outgrown, most importantly, it would not hide my gladius. This was not a problem for the others, although Gaius would not be wearing one; I did relent and allow him to carry a pugio, more to forestall another teenage outburst than any thought that he would need it. Finally, with Demeter’s help, we came up with a solution, strapping the sheath to my back, though not in the normal way where the grip was several inches above my shoulder, placing it so that it was instead just below my left shoulder. It made it more difficult to reach, but after practicing with it a couple of times, I felt confident I would be able to draw it. The other difference was that the harness was strapped to my body underneath the large civilian’s tunic I was wearing, thereby removing the need for some sort of covering, and I happily discarded the paenula. Demeter also broke out cudgels from his weapons store, which I had been concerned about, thinking that these would be hard to conceal, until I saw them. Since these are for use in the cramped confines of a ship, their handles were cut down so that they are just a bit longer than a standard pugio, and they were attached to everyone’s baltea to dangle opposite their main weapons, which I know the others got tired of hearing me admonish about how they were not to be used unless absolutely necessary.
When Demeter held the last cudgel out to me, I smilingly refused it, assuring him, “I don’t need that to knock someone senseless.”
“No, I suppose not,” he said, laughing.
Nothing had been said, especially by me, but it was easy to see that for this, Demeter had silently shifted command onto my shoulders, for which I was thankful, since I had somewhat expected a clash of wills on the subject.
Opening the cabin door, I held a brief inspection of each of them, just as if I was doing the same for my Century before we went into battle, and once I was satisfied, I sent them up on deck, so I was the last one out of the cabin, giving Bronwen and me a moment of relative privacy. She had been almost completely silent, save for her outburst about Gaius, and now she was pale, but I could tell that she was doing her best to appear unconcerned.
Taking her into my arms, I assured her, “Everything will be fine, meum mel. We’re going to be fine and we’ll be back with that bastard and find out where whatever money he has is at.”
“I know.” She smiled up at me, the worry expressed in her eyes as she mouthed brave words. “I know you will be successful, Gnaeus.”
“And then, we can go home.”
“Home?” Suddenly, she looked confused. “Whose home?”
This was the moment I realized that we had never discussed anything other than the immediate future. While it was a conversation we would have to have, this was not the time, but the seed had been planted in my mind as I wondered, what if she no longer wanted to come to Ubiorum with me?
“Yes, we’ll have to talk about that,” I answered awkwardly, and I felt her stiffen in my arms, her eyes suddenly narrowing, then immediately going wide and, worst of all, filling with tears.
Pluto’s balls, I had to stifle a groan, this is a nightmare. Here I was, about to risk everything, and now I had to worry that the woman I thought was mine was either having second thoughts or she thought I was having second thoughts, or the gods only knew what was going through her mind. I actually opened my mouth to say something to her when, from behind us, someone coughed, and we spun around to see Alex standing there.
“We need to go, Gnaeus.”
Honestly, I suspect that I looked like a man who is on the verge of drowning who was just thrown a rope, but I also knew I could not just leave.
I kissed her, then promised, “We’ll talk about this later.” I do not know why, but this was the moment it first occurred to me to ask, “Do you feel safe, us leaving you here? I mean,” I added needlessly, “with the rest of the crew here?”
She did smile then, but it was not of the kind that always made my heart fill, which I understood when she said, “After what Demeter did to Lykos today, my love, I think I will be much safer than you will.”
I felt a bit foolish when she put it like that, because she was certainly correct, though I did not say anything more, leaving her in the cabin as I scrambled up the ladder behind Alex.
“Demeter, Gaius, and Marcellus have already left,” Septimus informed me, and before I could ask, added, “and I’m at two hundred.”
I picked up the count as we stood there next to the plank, and I was heartened to see that while it was certainly not as busy as it was during the day, by the light of the large oil lamps hung from a tripod in the center of the Heptastadion every twenty paces or so, it was easy to see the activity. Most importantly, it was not all one way, in the form of crewmen returning to their vessels, as men I assumed had just been relieved from standing watch went hurrying up the causeway towards the city. Finally, Septimus reached five hundred, and we walked down the plank, whereupon I realized something.
“This is the first time I’ve actually stepped off the ship,” I muttered, not with any real purpose in mind. “I’m in Alexandria.”
“Is that where we are?” Alex spoke up behind me. “I was wondering.”
I heard Septimus snickering, which I ignored other than to grab my ass with both hands in a gesture I was certain they knew. Leading the way as I was, I immediately became acutely aware of the curious glances thrown my direction that, while happening frequently, suddenly became more meaningful in my mind. Our berth was about halfway down the Heptastadion, making it not a short walk, and with every step I took, the more certain I became that all eyes were on me, to the point where I was expecting to see a section of Roman Legionaries waiting at the end of the Heptastadion, ready to question how a Roman Centurion from the 1st Legion came to be in Alexandria. It sounds foolish now, yet in the moment, I was sweating more heavily than the temperature called for, and I did not bother hiding my relief when, crossing the last bridge that obscures the view of the terminus of the city side of the Heptastadion because it is arched high enough to allow ships to pass under it, I saw nothing and nobody standing at the end of the quay. Alex noticed, asking me why I was behaving as if we had accomplished our task, and when I opened my mouth to explain, I realized how it would sound, so I offered a shrug and nothing more; fortunately, he did not press me. Once we reached the end, I stepped aside so that Alex became the leader, and we did pause briefly next to the last oil lamp as he studied the tablet.
“What are you doing? Did you forget already?” I was only partially joking.
“No.” He did not look up as he shook his head. “I’m memorizing everything because I doubt we’re going to have enough light for me to read the directions.”
“Oh.” It was all I could think to say since he was probably right.
I know it was not that long, but I felt as if we had added another five hundred to the count before Alex finally looked up, and without a word, began walking down the first street that ran perpendicular to the Heptastadion and paralleled the Eunostos, which meant we were heading in the opposite direction from the royal quarter. At first, we were far from alone, but my eyes were roving about looking for at least a pair of men who would be wearing helmets and carrying the rectangular shields
of a Legion of Rome. The Heptastadion divides what is a huge anchorage into two parts, and the beginning of the Rhakotis quarter starts there on the right side when facing the city. At first, it seemed as if it would be a straightforward matter, given how Alexandria had been laid out by the Macedonian king, with every street at right angles and laid out in a grid, something that I only learned recently is from where our plan for a Legion camp came. However, once we penetrated no more than two blocks deep, with the harbor to our back, things changed dramatically in more ways than one. Following a street that suddenly came to a dead end because a building had been placed, seemingly in the middle of the street, as if some giant had dropped the structure there because there was space, we had to change direction. Without hesitation, Alex made a right turn that took us deeper into the district, and now there were only a handful of people out in the streets, while there were only flickers of light appearing through the cracks of the shutters from some of the buildings lining the street. As Alex had predicted, there were no torches, no lamps of any kind to help illuminate the streets, but I did not need light to see how most of these buildings were in varying stages of disrepair. Now, the few people we saw were evenly divided between men and women, but it was only the women who called out to us in the native tongue, which of course we did not understand. It only took one of them to lift the hem of her gown to expose her lower body to translate the words they had been speaking, and I could not refrain from having some fun.
“You know,” I kept my voice low, and I spoke in Greek, “the whores of Alexandria are famous the world over. It seems a shame not to find out why.”
Septimus chuckled, but Alex was not amused.
“Would you be quiet?” he snapped. “I’m trying to remember when we make our next turn.”
I did so, feeling chastened and a bit embarrassed since I was the one who was supposed to be in command of this. And, for a moment, I was certain that I had disrupted his concentration to the point I had gotten us lost, because we were walking directly towards another structure that blocked further progress down the street, but I could not see an intersecting street before we reached it. When he came to a stop, I was prepared to be chastised again for my error; however, this was not the case.