Oh gods, she thought.
When his hand came up he held the small bag, made of her own royal Egyptian cloth, which held the Palladium of Troy. “I recognize this,” he said, turning to her. “You carried it that night. I remember. The very same one. You had it with you.”
He walked back over to the table, but he didn’t sit down. He only stood there, looking down upon her. With one hand he held the object inside while with the other he unwove the strings that were binding the bag shut. Then he pulled down on the cloth, exposing the Shard. “Tiberius,” she said, trying to keep her voice from cracking.
He looked at it and laughed. “Not a statue of Horus after all. You lied to me. Because of this. Because you’re a part of it. Just like yesterday. The fire. The lightning. The storm. It was the same as I saw that night. The same as that wind that left my cousin half blind.”
Selene swallowed hard, thankful that his eyes were fixed on the little statue and not her. “I’m sorry about what happened to Urbinia,” she said, her voice small. “But what you think you saw—”
“I know what I saw,” he snapped. “And I saw it yesterday, too.”
“I had nothing to do with yesterday,” she said, the truth of the words giving her strength.
“But you know what it was.” He stared down at her, and she could see the fierce anger in his eyes. And with it a rising, terrible passion.
“Tiberius,” she said, trying to sound gentle, trying to sound calm. “I think you should go now. The day has been long. We’ve had too much wine.” Her eyes fell to the statue still half-hidden in its bag. Thankfully, he hadn’t yet touched it directly, hadn’t yet had a chance to feel its power. “It’s just a trinket. I took it, though. You’re right. And the wind … the gods must have been angry. Like yesterday.”
“I saw it,” he protested.
Selene’s gaze returned to meet his, and she smiled, reaching up with one hand to rest it on his. “Please, Tiberius. Put it down. No more of this.”
For a second he simply stared down at her fingers upon him, and then he recoiled, eyes widening. “You filthy witch,” he spat.
“No,” Selene gasped. “Tiberius, I—”
His free hand shot forward, slapping her out of her chair. Her legs kicked the table as she fell, and her full cup of wine was flung onto the white linens of the bed. “You slapped me,” he growled. “How does it feel?”
Still stunned, Selene tried to crawl away from him, her fingers gripping and pulling across the slats in the floorboards, though she had nowhere to go. She felt but didn’t see his footsteps rocking the wood beneath her, and then he kicked her in the stomach.
Selene coughed, doubled up. She heard him let out a noise of anger and frustration, and then she heard something crash above her, the sound of something hard being broken.
She tried to say his name, tried to beg for him to stop, but there was no air in her lungs. His rough hands picked her up by the hair, and she gasped as he lifted her and shoved her forward onto the wine-stained bed. Unable to hold it back any longer, she began to cry in voiceless sobs.
“You think you’re grown up,” she heard him saying from behind her. For a moment she looked back and saw him. He’d shed some of his clothes, and his skin was pale in the lamplight, sickly and weak. “But look at you,” he said. “Just a scared little girl, aren’t you?”
His hands ripped at the wraps of her clothing, and she kicked and screamed out. He paused and punched her in the back of the skull.
“Don’t fight it,” he said. “Your mother would have taken it. She always spread her legs for Rome.”
The world was spinning, jerking as he manipulated her clothes and her body. Her face was wet with spilled wine and shed tears. She gasped as he exposed her at last and began to press into her, pronouncing that he’d make her a woman.
But she did not scream again. As she opened her eyes to look across the stained bed to where Juba would have rested his head, she saw that Tiberius had thrown the Palladium against the iron headboard. It lay there, nestled as if it were sleeping. And when he thrust into her at last, when she swallowed her horror and revulsion, she watched with hatred and hope in her eyes as the little statue rolled over.
It was broken. And through the crack in the rock she could see a blacker-than-black stone, gleaming in the lamplight.
16
THE WAY OF THE TEACHER
ELEPHANTINE, 26 BCE
As the sun rose to send its first rays of light upon the life-giving Nile, Vorenus sat upon one of the rocks along the northeastern shoreline of the island and watched Caesarion strip off the last of his clothing and walk naked to the edge of the great river.
At twenty-one years old, the young man was clearly in the prime of his life. The son of the beautiful Cleopatra and the powerful Julius Caesar, Caesarion had unquestionably handsome features, with a lean-muscled strength that spoke of both the training at arms that he’d continued to refine with Vorenus and the physical labor of a life that for the past four years had been led on the frontier of Egypt. Four years far away from the glorious palaces in which he’d been raised. Four years away from the kingdoms of Egypt and Rome that had been ripped from his grasp, unrightfully stolen from him by Augustus Caesar.
And yet as he took his first steps into the Nile, walking with his face toward the dawn and the outstretched, saffron-robed arms of the abbot waiting in the water, the young man who should have ruled the world was happier than Vorenus could ever remember him.
All because of Hannah, the mysterious Jewish girl who had taken them to the Ark, who had watched over Caesarion as he recovered from his struggle against Juba the Numidian in trying to control it. She was indeed a lovely girl, and there was no doubt they were attracted to each other from the beginning, but it was also clear that something far deeper than surface appearances drew the two of them together. Vorenus had never seen two people fall more madly in love. If he had any reason to believe in such a thing anymore, he would have called it fate.
It was, he thought as he watched his old friend Titus Pullo limping up the path among the rocks, almost exactly the opposite of the surface passion that most men counted for love.
“Did I miss anything?” Pullo asked when he got close.
“Just started. But I’ve never seen it, so for all I know he’s almost done.” Vorenus scooted over a little to make room on the rock for Pullo to sit.
The bigger man eased himself back onto the stone with a tired sigh. “Well, I’m glad I made it.”
As his friend sat down, Vorenus saw that Madhukar, one of the monks, was walking behind him. So small was the brown-skinned man—and so large was Pullo—that even in his gold-orange robes he’d been fully hidden behind the Roman. Vorenus stood at once and, turning to face the man, placed his palms together, brought the tips of his forefingers up to the bridge of his nose, then bowed.
Pullo, just having seated himself, sighed and nodded at Madhukar. “Can we pretend I did that earlier?”
The monk’s smile creased through the laugh lines upon his tanned face as he returned the greeting of Vorenus. “We can indeed, my new Roman friend. And a pleasant welcome to you, Lucius Vorenus. Your safe return yesterday pleased us.” He let go his hands and nodded toward Caesarion, who had stopped in the knee-deep water and seemed to be reciting something. “As you know it greatly pleased Joachim, too.”
Vorenus rose and gestured toward the place on the rocks that he had vacated.
Madhukar’s smile was, as ever, quick and genuine. “No, dear boy,” he said, waving his hands gently before clasping them behind his back. “You have traveled far more than I these past days. Rest, please.”
Despite the four years that he had been living among these strange monks, it still amused Vorenus that even the ones like Madhukar, who was at least two decades younger than he was, treated him like a young man. It was, another monk had once told him, because he had a younger soul—though for the life of him Vorenus couldn’t think what that meant.
“Joachim?” Pullo asked.
The monk was looking out at the river, so Vorenus casually elbowed his friend in the ribs and with wide eyes nodded hard in the direction of Caesarion.
Pullo looked confused for a moment, but to Vorenus’ great relief he caught on quickly. “He … ah, was waiting?”
Madhukar nodded, his back still to them. “Oh, yes,” he said. “We wanted him to cleanse himself as soon as he was ready, but he insisted that you be here to see it, Lucius Vorenus.”
Out in the Nile, Caesarion had walked the rest of the way to stand in front of the abbot, Rishi, who was waist-deep in the flowing waters. Once there, the young man made the same gesture to him that Vorenus had to Madhukar. Rishi’s face was shadowed by the rising sun, but he appeared to be smiling. He raised his arms, and he spoke something to the sky. As he did so, Caesarion cupped his hands into the water in front of him and brought it up over his face four times, saying something each time.
“Why four?” Pullo asked. He waved away something that buzzed around them on the morning air.
“One for each of the four truths,” Madhukar said without looking back. “The truth of suffering. The truth of the origin of suffering. The truth of the end of suffering. The truth of freedom from suffering.”
Pullo made an agreeable sound, as if he understood, but Vorenus didn’t need to look at his old friend to be sure that the same confusion was on his face that was so often on his own whenever the Therapeutae spoke of their strange ways.
Rishi lowered his arms and, pressing his palms together, once more made the customary gesture of bowing to the young man while touching his forefingers to the space between his nose and brow. Caesarion returned it, and then he took two steps into the deeper water and ducked beneath the surface.
“They call it cleansing,” Vorenus said to Pullo. He kept his voice quiet, for this was, he knew, a solemn moment.
“A cleansing of what?”
“I would say his soul, but Madhukar here would probably correct me on that. He’d say it is only cleansing his body.”
“So I would,” Madhukar agreed.
Caesarion appeared, repeated words after Rishi, then immersed himself once again.
“Why the river? This town has baths doesn’t it?”
“A still bath would not do,” Madhukar said. “Proper cleaning requires living water, which washes away the impurities.”
Vorenus saw Pullo staring out at the silty water of the Nile. He smiled. “Not cleansing from dirt, Pullo. I asked.”
Again Caesarion appeared, and again he spoke something before disappearing under the water.
“Does he do this four times, too?”
“A good guess.” Madhukar’s voice was quieter now. “But it is three times. The first for the wisdom of right view and right intention. The second for the promise of ethical conduct through right speech, right action, and right living. The third for the assurance of focus to achieve right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration. Together these are the Teacher’s Eightfold Path to release from suffering.”
Vorenus had often heard the Therapeutae talk of the Teacher, though they said little of who he was beyond cryptic comments that he had lived in another country far to the east. They were reluctant to say more, Caesarion once explained to him, because they wanted to emphasize the Teacher’s humanity. To exalt him, they feared, would lead people to honor him beyond what he was, perhaps even to worship him. Having seen firsthand how the people were taught to honor Cleopatra as a living goddess—and how they tried to do the same to Caesarion even when he disdained the notion himself—Vorenus thought their concern was indeed valid, even if it did leave him wanting to know more about the mysterious Teacher.
Out in the Nile, for a third time Caesarion spoke, went under, and at last reappeared. He once more exchanged bows with Rishi and then the two men started making their way toward the shore, both beaming.
“It is done.” Madhukar’s voice sounded proud, though Vorenus suspected it was more pleasure at another’s joy than happiness for himself. If there was one thing he’d learned about the Therapeutae, it was that they were selfless almost to a fault.
“He’s converted, then?” Pullo asked. “He’s one of you?”
Madhukar at last turned back around to face them. “Yes and no. Ours is not like other faiths. One does not need to convert to anything to act properly. When the Teacher was asked how to become like him, he answered that a man needed only to act as he did. He taught that it is not our rituals or our beliefs that make us right or wrong. It is the truth of our deeds. Your friend is set upon that path now.”
On the shoreline, Caesarion was exiting the water with Rishi. Other monks approached, bearing saffron robes. Everyone was smiling.
“But wasn’t that a ritual?” Pullo asked.
Madhukar nodded. “When our forefathers came here from the east, they brought one truth, but they found another. From the Jews they learned of a powerful belief in the one God, a supreme being Who had created heaven and earth. We came to spread the wisdom of the Teacher, but we are not so arrogant to think that there are no other truths in the world. So we learned from the Jews about their faith that was built around God, a faith built of and for the earth. For the Jew, you see, faith is about how to live properly in this world, how to make each and every act more sacred, more befitting the divine spark that gave us life. This moved our fathers, for ours, too, is a faith about living properly. Not for a deity, and not for this world. For what god would create such suffering in this world? But here, on this island, at this temple, our forefathers met Hannah’s people, and we learned of their secret belief in the death of that one God, and the ways in which this brought about both freedom and suffering. We saw the ways in which this was like our own thoughts, and we saw fit to bring our peoples together into a fuller understanding of who we are. As Therapeutae, as the Greeks began to call us, we view the teachings of the Jews and that of the Teacher as two sides of the one very real truth: there was one God, our creator, Who set in motion the wheel of life and Whose death brought us into the cycle of suffering that we may learn in time to lift ourselves out of life and into the wholeness of being with what remains of His universal presence. So we bring together many of the ways of both peoples. Joachim, your young friend, has set himself upon the path of the Teacher in right wisdom, conduct, and focus. But he has also undertaken the ritual of baptism in order to become one of the Jewish people.”
“He’s a Jew?” Pullo asked.
“And one who follows the Teacher. He is both, you see.” Madhukar turned to Vorenus, who had been watching their exchange with interest. “It is indeed good that you were here for this,” he said, though the look of happiness on his face turned to one of sorrow. “It is a misfortune, however, that you suffered such losses on the way.”
“Thank you,” Vorenus said, bowing his head slightly. “Khenti was a good man.”
Madhukar nodded slowly, closing his eyes for a moment. “He carried much with him, I fear.”
Vorenus nodded, trying to digest what this meant among the monks. Though he had tried hard to learn it alongside the young man they knew as Joachim, the Therapeutan way of thinking remained as immeasurably strange to him as it surely was for the confused Pullo. Caesarion, however, had latched on to it quickly, declaring that it was, among all the philosophies in the world, the closest to his own beliefs.
It was also, Vorenus suspected, a kind of bridge for Caesarion between his own beliefs and that of Hannah’s Judaism.
As if bidden by the thought, Hannah came out onto the shoreline and embraced Caesarion in a powerful hug. She had been waiting, Vorenus knew, in a small room that kept her from seeing the young man’s nakedness. It was a strict rule among the Therapeutae—as it apparently had been among both the Jews and the disciples of their Teacher—that men and women were to remain modest among one another outside of marriage. They were also segregated during their times of communal gathering in the temple. Having seen how u
nfocused Pullo could be around women, Vorenus understood the principle, even if he did think that they went a little far in having a short dividing wall cutting their sanctuary in half.
Still, the segregation wasn’t as bad as it could be, Vorenus supposed. Caesarion had told him that the Teacher had apparently advised men to practice complete celibacy in order to better concentrate upon their meditations. Their Therapeutan descendants, however, had adapted to the Jewish acceptance of worldly passion and pleasure—albeit confined to marriage. “In the end life is suffering,” Caesarion had once told Vorenus, “but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t very real joys to be shared.”
And so it was in moments like this. Vorenus watched as the monks smiled and laughed while the two young people shared their embrace.
Caesarion was going to marry her. Vorenus was certain of it, and he couldn’t be happier.
“What is it that you worry Khenti took with him?” Pullo suddenly asked.
Vorenus blinked back to the two men beside him. “Ah, my curious Roman friend,” Madhukar said, “he took what he has been. What he has done. These things will carry with him in his next life.”
Pullo’s brow furrowed. “The Elysian Fields?”
“There are those who speak of such things. Of a life beyond in a heaven. I have not died in this life, so perhaps it is so.”
“But you don’t believe in it,” Vorenus said.
“Just so. As I have told you before, our Teacher showed us another path, another way. To continue in life is not our goal.”
“You want to die?” Pullo asked.
“In a manner of speaking. In truth we want to live to be released from life.”
“That’s death.”
“This is not so.” The monk’s voice was gentle and soft as the breeze. “It is release.”
Pullo looked confused, and Vorenus let out a little chuckle. “I’ve heard these same things, Pullo. They didn’t make any sense to me, either.”
“But I do want to understand,” Pullo said.
The Gates of Hell Page 18