by Martha Marks
“Why didn’t she just free you?”
“Not old enough.” Alexander chuckled. “I really don’t think of myself as a runaway since I had her permission to run.”
“What sort of trouble was she in?”
“Truth is, I never learned what the charges were, but with all her well-connected friends, I’m sure everything was straightened out long ago. She should be married by now.”
I hope Titus Flavius Sabinus Vespasianus the Younger appreciates how lucky he is.
“Any chance they’ve sent men looking for you?”
Alexander shook his head; then his heart almost stopped.
Theodosia wouldn’t, but Titus— If they’re married now, that makes me his runaway, too, not just hers.
Beads of sweat popped out on his forehead. Titus might be a fine young man, but he was also a Roman through and through.
Immortal Zeus! Theodosia would know exactly where I was headed. If she told Titus, there could be notices about me all over Antioch.
“Solteris was going to Corinth regularly a decade ago,” Xantho said, helping himself to another fig.
“Are you thinking of turning me in?”
“Unfortunately, there are no records of slave purchases that far back, but—”
“I’m a fool for confiding in anyone. I just felt I could trust you.”
“Solteris has a wonderful memory. If he bought your wife and son in Corinth, he’ll remember them.”
“The Romans pay a generous bounty for recaptured slaves.”
Xantho shook his head at that.
“I’m an old man, my son, with no family and no need of Roman gold. Right now, I’m much more concerned with the state of my soul. Your secret is safe with me.”
The tension in Alexander’s muscles vanished.
“Thank you.”
Safe for now, but I’ve got to be more careful. Someone may be on the watch for me.
After an interval, he leaned forward and laid his hand on Xantho’s arm.
“Tell me where to find Solteris.”
“He left two weeks ago on his annual buying expedition.”
“Could I write to him?”
“Useless. That young lunatic never knows where he’ll go when he sets out. Palmyra, Damascus, Jerusalem, Caesarea, Memphis, Tyre... He takes an army of men along. They bring back batches of the slaves he purchases for us to sell here, while he goes on to the next city.”
“Could I catch up with him?”
“You’d have a better chance of catching up with a shooting star.”
“I could ask around for slaves with the names of my wife and son.”
“They’ve probably been given other names, two or three times perhaps, depending on how many masters they’ve had. Unless you’re anxious for some long, cozy conversations with a series of Romans—and they do make up the majority of slave owners in and around Antioch—I wouldn’t recommend it. Start asking questions and you’re likely to find yourself answering others before the governor... surrounded by men who turned you in for that bounty you mentioned.”
“How long do you think Solteris will be gone?”
“Let’s see. It’ll soon be November. Four, five more months, at least. I don’t expect him back till spring.”
<><><>
There was no change in Theodosia’s condition. No friends came forward to champion her release. No commission reopened her case. And by the time the second winter began dumping its freezing rain into her cave cell, she had lost all hope.
It no longer seemed to matter that she had learned to walk again and built up the strength of her legs. Her hair hung long and shapeless around her shoulders and came out in handfuls if she tried to comb it with her fingers. She hadn’t heard a human voice—or used her own for anything but babbling to herself—since the day Nero became emperor.
Half mad with loneliness, she began inventing fantasies that reawakened dormant emotions and their corresponding erotic responses.
Stefan was a young knight (or a silk merchant, or a war-weary centurion) come to court her at her villa (or to sell fabrics, or in search of a brigand).
He kissed her in the pergola (or in the garden, or in the cove), fell in love with her, and gave up his house in Rome (or his shop, or his legion).
They rode their horses over the hills (or along the shore, or through the woods), entertained at opulent banquets, made love under the pines (or in the pool, or in her bed), and produced a dozen children... each the result of a frenzied night of passion.
For weeks, it was colossal, azure-eyed Stefan who played the lead role, and Theodosia thought nothing of it. Who else but Stefan?
But gradually, imperceptibly, another figure began to intrude.
Deep-set eyes penetrated her dreams.
Ink-stained fantasy fingers caressed her breasts.
A half-forgotten foreign inflection echoed in her head, read poems to her, spoke her name as in a faded memory.
It was a month before she let herself admit that the eyes and hands and voice in her most recent daydreams belonged to Alexander.
She dug her fingers into her filthy hair, trembling and sobbing, the first time she realized what she had been imagining. She remembered the warmth of Stefan’s body, his calloused hands on her body, his kisses... but there had been no such sensual contact between her and Alexander.
It was Alexander’s mind, his companionship, his loyalty that I loved. There was never any physical attraction. He has a wife. He loves Antibe.
Despite her denials, her mind called up—endlessly and out of sequence—a series of memories that spoke of a love she had never recognized before.
Alexander’s voice whispering her name as she lay by the river...
His arm holding her close when she told him she was pregnant with Stefan’s child...
His exuberance the day after the storm and throughout that summer...
His determination to burn the document that would have cast her into slavery...
His joy as he took her hand the night she regained consciousness...
His courage against Otho, against the legionary, against Titus and Vespasian when they wanted to take her to Caere...
The poems he brought to her the night of the big storm and countless other nights...
The intimacy that flowed between them whenever she set his verses to music...
The chill—the odd, abrupt shift from warmth and friendship to frigid formality—during Theodosia’s brief romance with Stefan...
That shift!
Theodosia had paid little attention to it when it happened. Now she understood: Alexander was jealous.
Jealous! But why? Wasn’t he the one who told me to go out to Stefan in the garden? Who encouraged me to marry Titus?
She shook her head, disbelieving.
Alexander isn’t shy, and we had torn down almost all those barriers before the night when Stefan and I made a baby in the forest. If Alexander loved me then, wouldn’t he just have said so?
Gradually that winter, as she slipped with increasing frequency from icy reality into the warmer world of her fantasies, another question began to take shape in her head, where it lingered and would not go away.
Could it be... it wasn’t Stefan I really loved... but Alexander?
At some point that January—on a date marked only by the frozen crust on the floor of her cell—Theodosia Varro passed her twenty-first birthday.
She didn’t even know the day when it arrived.
<><><>
Levi’s Inn stood on a narrow, twisting street in the heart of the old Jewish quarter. It was a pleasant place with a small garden, a bathhouse, a stable with horses and donkeys to rent, ten guest rooms, and a kitchen. Its clients were mostly Jews come to Antioch on business.
Active in street warfare against the Romans as a youth in Jerusalem, Joshua Levi was law-abiding now and disinclined to quarrel with the authorities. His inn was a family operation. Two sons ran the stable. Every day but the Sabbath—when guests
were expected to fast or eat elsewhere—Levi’s wife and daughters cleaned the rooms and the bath, cooked and served the meals. There were no slaves.
Few Romans found their way to such a modest inn, so it had proven to be an ideal hideaway.
In his snug little room behind the kitchen, Alexander had discovered a loose plank under the bed and hidden Theodosia’s rubies in the crevice below. Now, if he were arrested on the street and searched, at least the soldiers wouldn’t find any “stolen” rubies to identify him by.
After breakfast this morning, he donned his cloak against the January chill and set out for work. Three months ago—unwilling to waste on living expenses the gems that could buy freedom for Antibe and Niko—he had persuaded the taciturn Zamaris to give him employment as a bookkeeper and Latin-Greek translator.
The job was tedious, but it paid a bit more than his room and board. Over the winter, his stash of coins under the loose plank grew. It was his first paid labor in a decade. Each evening, as he accepted the five sesterces that Zamaris handed him, he said a silent prayer to Zeus for his continued freedom.
It was to pray, too, that he walked once a week up to woodsy Daphne, to the temple of Apollo, Greek god of music, medicine, and prophecy. “Better be a worm and feed on the mulberries of Daphne than a king’s guest,” the locals said. Alexander quickly decided they were right.
The temple—with its sacred cypress grove and the ever-flowing springs channeled around it—was a reminder that Antioch owed its founding to Seleucus, the restless Greek who had conquered Syria four hundred years before the Romans arrived.
Going “up to Daphne” was a trek on foot, but Alexander refused to waste precious coins renting a horse from Levi. That would be too dangerous, anyway. Galloping up the mountain was for Romans; the lords of the earth ignored the trudging pedestrians, who were mostly slaves. Alexander’s last face-to-face with a Roman had been many months ago. He was more than willing to walk to keep it that way.
Besides, the walk was pleasant, and the views evoked his poetic instincts. Antioch sprawled along the valley like an old dog in the sun. The Orontes bent at the marketplace and split—like a sinuous dancer’s upraised arms around her head—to form an island. The wharves jutted into the river like fingers against glass. The walls and bridges built by Seleucus, Herod, and Tiberius gleamed, polished by the years. The governor’s gray palace lorded it over the city.
A fine metaphor for Rome’s view of the world.
Needing a rest after his first climb, one bright afternoon at the end of October, Alexander had stretched out near the gate in Apollo’s thyme-scented garden. As he lay there, a solemn-faced Greek with four solemn-faced children passed, leading a white goat into the temple. Some time later, they came out... without the goat but with radiant faces.
Curious, Alexander rose and asked the reason for the transformation.
“It’s the power of Apollo.” The other man was about his age. “Pray at the god’s feet each week and those you love will be made well.”
“The tumor in our mother’s side is smaller,” said his son, a youth about twelve, “since we started coming here.”
“We live in Laodicea-by-the-Sea,” said a much younger daughter. “It’s a long journey!”
Alexander smiled at her.
“But a worthwhile one, it seems.”
This could have been my family had things gone differently.
“Our physician believes she will recover completely,” said the father. “We came today to offer a sacrifice of thanks to Apollo.”
Perhaps if Apollo can heal the sick, he can restore the lost.
Alexander wished them well and strode into the temple. There were no other visitors, but a handful of priestesses bowed in greeting.
Behind the bloody sacrificial altar, a fire crackled in a gigantic golden urn, wafting its plume of smoke to the peak of the rotunda and filling the vast space with the aroma of roasting goat. Having brought nothing to sacrifice, Alexander deposited a silver coin in the altar box and turned his attention to the temple’s divine resident... a massive figure standing directly under the gilded dome.
Apollo’s arms, legs, and head were brown-veined marble. Amethyst eyes stared out under a laurel crown of gleaming gold. His wooden torso was draped with a silver fabric that glinted in the sunlight reflected off the marble floor. In one hand, Apollo held a golden lyre. His mouth was open. Clearly, he was singing.
It was the lyre that caught Alexander’s attention.
Alone in the shrine, he stared at the instrument, then at the face above it. After a while, he stepped closer... no longer seeing amethyst eyes in a face of hard marble, but gold-flecked pupils in a soft frame of backlit curls.
Transfixed by the vision, Alexander half expected the lips to move and the slender fingers to sweep across the golden lyre-turned-cithara.
Standing there without awareness of time—his breath constricted, his misty eyes switching between the lyre and the mouth open in song—he found himself praying... not for word of his wife and son but for the safety and survival of Theodosia Varro.
“I abandoned her!” he whispered to the marble god. “I convinced myself that she’d survive, that someone else would save her, that everything would turn out right. All this time, I let myself believe... I counted on her marriage to Titus.”
For months, a tiny, nagging voice inside his head had been struggling to be heard, but he had always quieted it.
The voice was shouting now.
But you knew that would not happen! She was destroyed that week! You knew it! You knew it… and you abandoned her!
He took a few more steps forward and fingered the hem of the god’s silver robe.
“Send me word of her, O Apollo, I pray you. If she is still alive... help me find some way to save her.”
<><><>
The next day, Alexander bought writing materials, sealing wax, and a scroll ring from his employer. That night, he battled his fears and his judgment into silence and wrote a cautious letter to the only pure-bred Roman in whom he had even the tiniest bit of trust.
Esteemed Lady: One who places confidence in you above all others seeks word of a mutual acquaintance whose fate I do not know.
Often in the past, in that lovely lookout by the sea, you teased me for more information than I could rightly share with you. Now I must beg the same of you and hope for better results than you obtained from me.
If you are indeed the true friend she believed you to be, please send me word of her.
With greatest deference and a plea for discretion,
Respectfully, A.
He reread the letter, rolled the parchment, sealed it, and addressed the scroll ring to Flavia Domitilla at the villa of Lucius Sergius Silus in Rome. For the return address, he put that of Xantho, the only Antiochian he trusted. The next morning, he gave a special tip to the courier who carried mail from Zamaris’ tent downriver to the ships at Seleucia Pieria.
And every week since then, October through January, Alexander had gone up to Daphne to beg Apollo for news of Antibe, Niko, and Theodosia Varro.
Chapter Twenty-four
It was the third week in April. Pale-yellow native crocuses had bloomed around the temple of Apollo and in the gardens of Daphne, followed by acres of early roses. Even Antioch was redolent of spring as the almond and pear trees swelled with buds, the larks with song.
Alexander left Zamaris’ tent when his work was done and hastened to the shop of Solteris.
“Come tonight,” the note had read. “You have a letter.”
Without a word, Xantho led him to the back room. Alexander took the scroll and inspected the tag hanging from its sealed ring.
“For Alexander,” wrote a delicate hand, “care of Xantho, at the shop of Solteris, Antioch-near-Daphne, Syria.” There was no return address, no identifying mark stamped into the wax.
He slit the seal, unrolled the scroll, and held it up so his friend—who now knew all about Flavia and Otho and Titus and Gaius
and Antibe and Niko and Stefan and Lycos and Theodosia—could read along.
Flavia’s letter was more succinct than his own had been, and there was no signature.
Alexander: She is in a cave cell below the Carcer Tullianus, still alive at last report. No one is allowed to see her. All efforts to free her prove futile. We have bought her villa. Write to me there if need be. Glad you are safe.
Xantho turned his ever-curious eyes to Alexander’s.
“What’s this Carcer Tullianus?”
It was a while before Alexander could answer. His eyes burned. His ears rang. There was a pounding in his throat. He dropped into a chair, bowed his head, and rubbed his fingers hard into his temples.
“The Carcer Tullianus,” he said at last, half choking, “is the dankest, dirtiest, deadliest prison in the whole rotten Roman Empire. A place of torture and death.”
“How long do you suppose your lady’s been there?”
Alexander made the calculation.
“Must be sixteen months, if they took her right away. I can’t imagine how she’s still alive.”
“Maybe she’s stronger than you think.”
“She is strong, but not that strong! So, all this time, as I was sailing off in search of my own happiness, breathing the clean air of Greece and Syria, rejoicing in my freedom... Damn them! And damn me, too, for leaving her to that fate.”
“What else could you have done? If those patrician friends of hers can’t save her—can’t even get in to see her!—what could a slave hope to accomplish?”
“I only know I abandoned her to her enemies. I’ve got to do something to make amends for that. I don’t know what, but... I will do something. And in the meantime, I’ve a wife and a son to find, if your wandering friend ever decides to come home.”