A Mixture of Madness, Book II of The Bow of Heaven

by Levkoff, Andrew

  My head was swimming. “We have not, dominus, no, not today. Perhaps tomorrow. She will want to hear every detail of Publius’ arrival.”

  “Well?” Crassus asked.

  “Well…?”

  “Did you teach Publius to listen?”

  I sighed. “Your son knows a good commander must listen, after which he needs to be heard, dominus.”

  “I can only give you half my thanks, Alexander,” said Publius.

  “Am I not commander here?” Crassus asked. “Now both of you, pay attention. Alexander, prepare yourself: you will take umbrage with this stratagem.” Crassus turned to his son and said, “You should have seen the color drain from his face at Zenodotium.

  “You better than anyone know how much this war will cost, Alexander, and what an extra year encamped in Antioch will mean, provisioning the army and auxiliaries, to say nothing of feed for the animals. We need money. So I have mapped out the perfect solution while we wait for the spring campaign.” Dominus looked pointedly at his son. “It is a three-pronged strategy that will not only restock the treasury, it will keep the cohorts occupied and sharp until we unleash you, Publius, on your next conquest.

  “First, we levy contingents from every sizable Syrian town, from Antioch to the Judean border. We don’t need more auxiliaries, so at the first cry of hardship, we will reluctantly accept a fair equivalent of silver as compensation for each village’s lack of patriotism.

  “Step two. We march south and pay a visit to the good people of Hierapolis.”

  “Dominus, no,” I said, horrified.

  “I know this city,” Publius said, his eyes widening to sapphires. “You don’t intend—”

  “I do. There sits the Temple of Atargatis, and we shall have it.”

  “Now there is a plum worth picking. Father, I did not believe you had it in you.”

  “Nor did I. Dominus, it is sacrilege, madness.”

  Crassus sighed and pinched the bridge between his eyes. “Why must you continually urinate on the flame of our ambition. You have become short-sighted, Alexander, and frankly, tiresome.”

  “I am unhappy,” Publius said, “to see my father vexed by you. Is this how things have changed in my absence? Why should we care, in any case?” Publius asked, nodding to a servant for more citron water to be poured. “What is Atargatis to us?”

  “Publius, you are changed if you can no longer reason it out. Atargatis, Astarte, Inanna, Ishtar, Isis, Artemis; these are all one goddess known by many names.”

  “There is nothing wrong with my reason, or my memory. Though I do not recall such impertinence from you.”

  Publius rose off his couch and wrested the sword from his father, who said, “Proof, then, that you were not paying attention.”

  “Of course I am changed, tutor,” Publius continued, ignoring Crassus. “Who do you think it was who set me on this path? Are you not proud of your handiwork? I am a Roman.” He held the sword out in front of him, balanced on his open palms. “This is who I am.”

  “I did not teach you the sword. I taught you philosophy, mathematics, honor, integrity. Have you forgotten those?” I said, my voice rising.

  Publius had the great sword half-sheathed, but stopped. He turned his head to me. “Have you, tutor, forgotten your place?”

  “So you are reconciled, then, to a few more less strenuous months on the west bank of the Euphrates?” Crassus asked of his son, as if none of this altercation was in progress.

  Publius shoved the sword home and stood. “I have heard, now that we speak of it, that the doors to the temple are fifteen high and covered in hammered gold. The statue of the goddess is molded of solid gold and studded with precious stones.”

  “My lord, we do not need the money,” I pleaded.

  “Do not forget the pilgrims,” dominus said, “who trek hundreds of miles to lay an unending stream of rare artifacts and offerings at her feet.”

  “I’m beginning to like this plan,” said Publius, clearly enjoying my distress.

  “It is settled. We will go to Hierapolis. I say we do need the funds, and the army needs the discipline of the engagement,” Crassus said.

  “We do not need the money,” I insisted, “and will prove it, if you let me. Are you speaking, dominus, of the discipline the men displayed at Zenodotium,” I said.

  “Mind your tongue,” Publius snapped.

  My tongue, it seemed, had a mind of its own. “Millions of our subjects worship Atargatis,” I protested, “millions more again whom Rome would conquer. She is the Great Mother, goddess of fertility, creativity and destruction. The moon is her sign, as powerful as the sun. Do this, and plant a forest’s worth of rebellious seeds.”

  “Let them grow,” said Crassus. “Winning this war is everything. All else is vapor.”

  “Why do you bother, Father. We have been too kind to this one for too long. Remember what you once told me: after forty, they become intractable. Alexander, your time is past.”

  Crassus said, “Now, I won’t have talk like that, Publius. Alexander understands. He knows we don’t begrudge these children their bedtime stories. Let Atargatis rule the night, so long as the people know that Rome rules the day.”

  Though I was reeling from what this newly minted stranger had just spat at me, I said what needed to be said. I had never done otherwise. “Dominus, Syria is your province to govern with a just and even hand. Have you forgotten the reception Gabinius received at the hippodrome the day before he departed Antioch? They will hate you for this, my lord. Is this the legacy you seek, to be reviled, like Pompeius on the day of the elephants?”

  Publius was before me in an instant. As his hand came across my face, he spoke in measured, disciplinary tones. “Know your place.”

  “That’s enough,” the elder Crassus said. “Alexander and I have played this game for over thirty years. You have been away at war. He and I like to wage our own every now and again, don’t we, Alexander?”

  “May I have permission to speak without being struck?” I asked.

  Crassus nodded, but Publius said, “That depends on what comes out of your mouth.”

  I rubbed my burning cheek. “My lord, what will men say when they hear the name of Marcus Licinius Crassus a hundred years hence, a thousand?”

  Publius looked at his father, and dominus considered, then spoke. “Alexander, I do not care, for I shall not be there to hear it. You know my purpose. I am steadfast in it.”

  “Good for you, Father. Now tell us,” Publius said, not without a little malice, directed straight at me, “the third part of this exercise.”

  “Perhaps it is better if I do not hear it,” I said. “I beg permission to withdraw.” In my mind’s eye, I heard the arrhythmic echo of Sulla’s axes thunking into Plato’s sacred olive groves for his siege engines, the buzz of the stone balls from his catapults and the screams of the vanquished as the bloodletting began. It was the year I had become a slave, and the year Athens was raped. The Romans had violated the sanctuaries at Delphi, Olympia and Epidaurus. On the day I was taken they had tramped into the Agora and seized statues, paintings and dedicatory shields that had graced the Stoa of Zeus Eleutherios.

  It is all happening again, and I ride with the looters.

  “You must hear it,” said Crassus, “for I want to give this gift to you. I know how you value the study of foreign cultures, anthropology, sociology and, you know, things of that nature.” Who is this man now talking? Who is it who listened? “You must put the rest of it out of your mind, Alexander. I command it. I want you at my side when we step inside a place where only one other Roman has ever set foot. We will enter their Holy of Holies, but unlike politic Pompeius Magnus, we cannot afford to be merely sightseers.”

  Publius shrugged without understanding, but I felt my knees begin to buckle. “Tell me you will not do this thing,” I said, water rising to weigh upon my lower eyelids.

  “I tell you we will. After Hierapolis, we continue south into Judea, and Jerusalem.”

/>   Chapter XXXIV

  54 BCE - Fall, Antioch

  Year of the consulship of

  Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus and Appius Claudius Pulcher

  I don’t remember leaving, or walking the short distance to my rooms, or even writing the first draft of the letter. I must have moved with ghostly quiet, for thank Somnus, both Livia and Hanno were still sleeping soundly when the rising sun slipped a sliver of red through the drapes and across the table where my head lay on ink-stained hands. I rose stiffly, gingerly lifted the final copy from the table and crept from the room.

  The gallery was chilly at this hour. The citrons in the courtyard watched my treason in bitter stillness as I unlocked the letter box, rolled my forgery, sealed it, waited for the wax to dry, then broke the seal and swept the debris into a pouch. After tucking the letter I had written in Tertulla’s hand back amongst the rest of the correspondence, I closed and locked the box. What a stroke of luck, you might say, not only that my lord and lady’s seals were identical, but that that they used the exact same color of wax. You may thank me for this romantic notion. In retrospect, my fortunes would have fared far better had a more random selection of utensils forced me to think twice about my pernicious meddling.

  While I shivered at my task, shaking only a little from the cold itself, I could not stop thinking about the changes that had come over both my masters. War had hardened Publius, as it must. He and I were lovesick when last we met, between the distractions of lady Cornelia and Livia, neither one of us could have been the keenest judges in contests of discerning character. His cruelty and arrogance were hidden from me, and to be honest, I was blinded by and eternally grateful for his bravery, or to be more precise, his sense of timing.

  Throughout the previous evening’s nightmare conversation, dominus appeared and disappeared, confident and commanding one moment, lost and uncertain the next. The wise Crassus would never dream of sacking the temples of Hierapolis or Jerusalem. He had never committed an act so foolhardy in all his long career. It was as if some daemon had possessed him, and I knew that monster’s name. I had half a mind to steal the portrait of Caesar he wore around his neck and crush it underfoot. His grey eyes went in and out of focus, sharp, then dim. I believe that when that faraway look came upon him, his thoughts were of Tertulla. But you who read this understand it served my purpose to think so.

  Marcus Crassus' love for Tertulla was a great an unsullied thing, once. Theirs was a marriage celebrated throughout Rome as the paragon of partnerships, a bond unbroken for thirty-four years. If they could but look at each other through the eyes of their youth, there had to be a chance they would see the tragedy of this misadventure. I was there through all those years; I saw them newly wed, helped them build their homes, raise their children. No one knew the playful spirit and happy, stubborn intelligence of my lady from those days better than I—no one except her husband. I remember the banter between them the nights Crassus left with our fire brigade to make cheap purchase of some burning apartment building. The heat in their bedroom as lady Tertulla tried to coax her young spouse back to bed was enough to require the brigade’s expertise. It was embarrassing. But it was wonderful.

  As atriensis, half my time was spent reviewing or turning away applications; every servant in Rome wanted to be a part of the familia of the house of Crassus. That, more than anything else I might remember, may be the greatest monument to the quality of the bond between this man and this woman.

  Had so few months passed since Caesar had come between them? Khronos, the master deceiver, made those two-and-a-half years feel like the thirty that had come before. Time is the most unfair of gods, stealing from us a joyous hour in a moment, but over the same span, allowing us to languish in our misery for what seems like an age.

  Time was taking its toll on Crassus, devouring him from the inside out. He woke from sleep haggard and ill-rested, plagued by the incessant chatter of his constant nighttime companions, Guilt, Shame, and Vengeance. More each day, dominus paid heed to those voices and would hear no other. They were his advisors now, urging him to bring this plan of destruction to light ever since Luca. Now here we were; he had made his nightmares a reality, not just for himself, but for tens of thousands who must also heed the madness of his daemons.

  Was I the only one left who could still remember that better time, now locked away in a place neither dominus nor domina could reach? That is why you need a steadfast, reliable atriensis, one with long years of experience, one who knows all the secrets of the familia. Because, like a good atriensis, I believed I had the key.

  Why should I care, you ask, especially now? I had a love as great as theirs once was. She was here, now; I had but to return to my bedroom to hold her in my arms, warm and gentled by sleep. And what of Livia? How could I take this chance and risk losing her all over again, this time for good? Livia the woman and Livia the wife would never understand why I, with only the thinnest sliver of success, would gamble everything. I had to trust that, should all be lost, Livia the slave would understand.

  There was more. I had a son whose face even now began to grow indistinct in my mind, who if I saw today I might not recognize, and if I failed and perished, I would never know. Yet if I died, half the condition would be met that would set him free. And though I would never, ever wish for Livia’s death to complete the bargain, in my own idyllic image of a world without me, I prayed for compassion, prayed that Livia would return to Felix and that my lord and lady would give them their lives. What else could I do?

  Finally, what of the changes that had come over me? Had I lost my mind? Had I grown as callous as Crassus in my willfulness? Would that I had been as mindful as that, for I might have been able to see alternative paths. No, it was something else that drove me now, a singular motivation that rudely shouldered all others aside—if Crassus was gone, what had become of Alexandros? I could not allow the man I had grown to revere and respect to disappear, for without him, I too would fade away.

  It was too late for second thoughts. I harkened back to Menander, who commanded, “Let the die be cast.” As I walked back through the brightening halls of the Regia I said to the playwright’s ghost, “It is thrown.”

  •••

  It was a beautiful morning for my undoing. As quietly as I could, I had drawn the curtains opposite my work table and opened the doors leading out to the small balcony overlooking the island, the river and the city beyond. The sun had tired of painting the bellies of the eastern clouds, deciding instead to punch through them with rays of yellow-gold. Up there, where infinity had meaning, it looked so peaceful. I wondered with some longing what it might feel like to ride those celestial beams in silence, save for the rushing of the wind, to go wherever the starry morn would take me, to let go of thought and will. And just at the moment when Livia wrapped her arms about me from behind, I realized that once, long ago, I had been cordially invited at the point of a sword to do just that here on earth. But it was hardly the same thing.

  She kissed my neck and I turned from the sunrise to her parted lips. With her tongue, she pushed the leaves of macerated mint into my mouth and snaked them about in such a way that my hands pressed lower to the small of her back, then lower still.

  “No.” She pulled away from me, hips first. “I must leave early for the fort. Andros! You look awful,” she said. “Did you get any sleep at all?”

  “Not very much, vulpecula. Come back here.” She shook her head, walking quickly to the lectus where she’d thrown her healer’s tunic. “I was restless,” I said, watching her pull her night tunic over her head. “Guests arriving, lots to do. Don’t trouble yourself about me. Go patch up a broken legionary. I’ll be fine.”

  “Who said I was worried about you? Can you take Hanno today? Octavius has half the army training, the other half on parade.”

  “He and I will have a grand time in the palace. If he ever wakes up.”

  He did, about an hour later. Hanno insisted on getting himself dressed, and I donned my f
inest inner and outer tunics, black over white, since today was the day a procession of princely visitors would arrive to make obeisance to the new Roman governor and place before him their grievances, mostly remnants from Gabinius’ prior mis-administration. Indoors, I had no need for my steel slave plaque, or any markings for that matter, but I decided to wear my single phalera, the gold disk Crassus had given me before our departure from Rome. This, in addition, as always, to the simple necklace hidden beneath my tunic on which hung a single, worn scallop shell, a charm I never removed.

  Hanno and I ate a light meal of fruit and bread, then we went to check on dominus. He was dressing in his senatorial toga for the occasion, and none too happy about it, as the day promised to be warm. Father Jupiter was in no mood for a hug, from either one of us, so after receiving a list of letters I was to compose, written in a scrawl only I could decipher, we returned to our quarters. I pushed the doors to the balcony wide open to feel the light breeze that every now and then would talk to the curtains who, respectful of my concentration, whispered their reply against the stone floor. Nothing sets the mood for a productive day’s work like a fresh pot of ink, a full tin of reed pens, a new roll of parchment sheets, and my cherished Nile River parchment weights (a gift from Livia when she’d first returned from Egypt). Behind me, Hanno sat cross-legged on the floor playing his favorite game of catch, tossing a balled up piece of parchment back and forth, trying to snag it with the articulated fingers of his gloves.

  It occurred to me investigate. “Hanno, where did you get your ball?”

  “I caught it! You saw it I bet you did.”

  “I did. You are much better at that game than I ever would be.”

  “I know,” he said seriously and somewhat sad. “You are not a good catcher like me.”

  “That is true. I am a fairly accomplished thrower, however.”