Octavian looked over her shoulder, through his front gardens and beyond. “This Herod I have heard so much about—I would have thought you would still be at home, hanging on every delightful word that fell from his lips.”
She kissed both of her brother’s cheeks, an obligatory peck that he did not return. “You know you are the only one whose company I find anything but tedious, Octavian.”
“Caesar. It is four years now I have been telling you that my name is Caesar.”
She exhaled and tilted her head. “Little brother, I am not one of your generals.” She waved a hand and pushed past him into the house. “Besides, how can I keep up with your name? It changes as often as the seasons. What is it now, Gaius Julius Caesar Divi Filius? Ridiculous.”
He followed at her heels. “Ridiculous that after my adopted father’s deification, I should also be called Son of the Divine?”
The anger that sparked in his voice did not suit her purposes. She stroked his arm and smiled. “Show me the new frescoes in the triclinium while we wait for the others.”
Octavian’s wife, Scribonia, lay across a couch in the dining chamber, morose and petulant as always.
“Scribonia is feeling ill these days.” Octavian seemed to feel the need to excuse her natural state of unpleasantness. “The pregnancy, no doubt.”
She gave her sister-in-law a smile, called from a false place within her. Scribonia was five years older than Octavian—Caesar—and it was no secret that she had been forced to divorce her husband and marry Octavian for political alliance. In the outrageously tangled web that was Roman politics, Scribonia’s sister’s husband, Sextus, was the son of Pompey and a man both Octavian and Marc Antony were working hard to court, since Sextus had taken control of the straits of Sicily and begun blocking grain ships sailing for Rome.
And as if the intrigue weren’t complicated enough, Scribonia had no love for Marc Antony, since it was his late wife Fulvia’s daughter, Clodia, whom Octavian divorced to marry her.
Disgusting, all of it, and barely worth keeping track of. When the histories were written of this great Roman Republic, would they tell of all the women whose lives were upended and twisted like trees in a hurricane, traded and bartered like coin in the marketplace?
And yet, perhaps what the servant girl Lydia had said was true. Power was yet in her hands.
She dutifully admired the freshly frescoed walls, then followed her brother to the receiving room. Thankfully, Scribonia did not join them. She would be no help in keeping peace.
They did not have long to wait. Marc Antony and Herod breezed into the receiving room ahead of the servant who tried to announce them. Antony was all smiles and warm embraces for Octavian, a show for Herod.
“What an honor”—the dark-skinned Herod bowed to both men—“to be received so well by the two greatest men of the Republic.”
Octavian laughed, pleased at the flattery. “Let us not forget Lepidus.”
Herod shrugged a narrow shoulder and smiled, a sly smile of conspiracy over the missing third of the Triumvirate. “Africa is a long way off.”
The three sat, and Octavian spread his hands. “But you have recently come from the coast of that great continent, Herod. Tell me of Cleopatra. Is she as beguiling as ever?” He gave a slant-eyed look at Marc Antony. “Were you able to resist her charms, as both my father, the Divine Julius, and our own Antony here were never able to do?”
Octavia exhaled heavily, her annoyance loud enough that the three men were forced to acknowledge her presence. Must they talk about her husband’s lover with her in the room? Cleopatra’s twins were born to Marc Antony before Octavia had a chance to bear him any children of her own.
Herod laughed, but it was a nervous laugh of discomfort, and his look darted warily between the two men. “She is well, Caesar, and sends her great affection.”
Antony crossed one leg over the other and folded his arms. “Let us leave off talk of Egypt. It is Judea that concerns us today. Judea and that young upstart Antigonus, who has only added to our Parthian problem by aligning with them.”
Octavian leaned forward, his gaze taking Herod’s measure. “Yes, the Judean problem. The little region continues to plague. But Antony tells me that you, dear Herod, are the solution.”
The meeting continued for some time with Octavia as spectator for the most part. Each time the exchange between her husband and brother grew testy, she interjected a soothing flattery, an inane observation, a timely reminder. And as the conversation continued, it became clear that Herod’s charm had won him yet another supporter in her brother. She breathed her relief. Thanks to Herod’s wit and her shrewdness, there would be no falling out today.
She was more than glue. She was the oil that could keep the gears of Rome running. Perhaps unseen and unappreciated, but valuable nonetheless.
And when the histories of the Republic were written, perhaps there would be a line or two about her.
Thirteen
Your visit with your brother went well, I trust, mistress.” Octavia sailed in, unwound the blue stola from her shoulders, and flung it across the bed. “Excellent. Your Herod will get all he needs from Rome. And Antony still serves as a lubricant between Herod and my brother, rather than an irritant.”
The political machinations of Egypt and of Rome held little interest for Lydia, but it was good to see Octavia’s spirits lifted. She took up the blue stola from the bed and hung it with others of its kind.
“But I received some disturbing news in the courtyard, I am afraid.” Octavia dropped a ruby necklace to her dressing table. “What do you know of this piece?”
Lydia frowned. “You wore it two nights ago, I believe. Nothing more.”
“It was handed to me by Herod’s girl, Riva. She claims she took it from you. That you stole it.”
“What?” Lydia’s breath shallowed.
“The truth, Lydia. That is all I require.”
She hesitated. “I do not know the truth, my lady. Only suspicion and guesses, and it does not seem right—”
“I am not giving you a choice. I will hear your suspicion and guesses, if that is all you have.”
Lydia ran a hand through her hair, tangling it in the curls at her neck. “Riva has taken a dislike to me. I don’t know why. I think perhaps she covets the position of handmaid to Herod’s future wife, which he has promised to me.”
Promised was perhaps too strong a word. Even now, Herod might have already agreed to leave her behind.
“I would guess she is jealous of nearly everything about you, Lydia.” She waved a hand. “But go on.”
Lydia lifted her palms and shrugged. “I can only assume that she stole the necklace herself, to make her accusation.”
Octavia nodded and seemed satisfied. She turned to her dressing table and laid the ruby necklace across it. “All the more reason for you to rid yourself of that awful Jewish lot—or whatever it is that Herod calls himself—and stay with me.”
Lydia’s heart raced against this news. “You flatter me, my lady—”
“I know you will object. But I have decided.”
Lydia raised pleading eyes.
“I must keep you near, to keep the darkness at bay.” She inhaled deeply. “And I will give you a good life. No troubling with a husband or ruining your body with children.”
These assurances only frightened Lydia further. She had no wish to be alone forever. She dropped to her knees and clutched Octavia’s hands. “Please, my lady.”
Octavia’s eyebrows lifted, but she returned Lydia’s handclasp.
“Please, you must know that serving you these last few days has been my pleasure—more pleasure than I ever had serving Cleopatra, I assure you.”
At this, the corner of Octavia’s lip tugged into a pleased smile.
“But, my lady, I must go to Judea. I beg you to let me go.”
“I need you, Lydia.”
“You will find another. I know you will. Find someone old and ugly and kind—someone Anto
ny would not even notice.”
Octavia laughed. “Good advice.”
Lydia smiled with her. “Please understand that it is only my duty to Judea that takes me from you. I am so grateful for your trust in me.”
“Duty?”
“I cannot explain. But there is someone in Jerusalem I must see. It is where my mother was born.”
“Ah, family.” At this Octavia pulled her hands from Lydia’s grasp and turned away once more. “Family means something very different to Roman nobles than it does to the plebs and servant class, I’ve found. You all know loyalty, where we know only treachery.”
“But you are smart, my lady. You will protect yourself and your children.”
Octavia seemed lost to her thoughts for a moment, but then nodded. “Yes. Yes, I will.” She lifted the ruby once more, draped its gold chain across her hand. “And you must fulfill your duty to your family as well.” She opened Lydia’s palm, pressed the cool ruby against it, and closed Lydia’s fingers over the stone. “Perhaps this will help.”
“My lady—I cannot—”
“Yes, you can.” She smiled conspiratorially. “You should have seen Riva’s face when I insisted that you had not stolen it—that I gave it to you as a gift.”
Lydia pressed her lips together, fighting a grin.
Octavia patted her cheek. “I was in a dark place when you arrived, Lydia. It is different now. This is the only way I can thank you.”
“You found the strength within yourself, mistress. It was not I.”
“But it was you who showed me that the strength was there to be found.” Octavia gave Lydia a quick embrace, then pulled away, eyes shining.
Lydia swallowed against the sudden emotion that tightened her throat. Another good-bye.
“Now go, Lydia.” Octavia smiled. “Judea—and your family—awaits.”
Fourteen
Lydia! Tie that flap down!”
Riva’s shrill voice matched the whistle of hot wind tearing through the encampment tent, ripping at any vulnerability.
She did not need Riva’s instruction. Her hands were already straining at the leathers that laced the tent corners. The thin strips were a futile match for the desert that baked them dry and brittle, as it did the nerves of every member of Herod’s staff. The leather bit into her hands, already cracked and bleeding. She breathed a curse at this place forsaken by all the gods.
Did the soldiers, whose tents ringed this one, feel the attack by heat as furious as any enemy troops?
They worked at a feverish pace, each of them, inside Herod’s massive command tent. He had gone out to meet Silo and could return at any moment, for the meeting that would be the culmination of the four brutal months since they had landed at Ptolemais, far north of this desert wasteland.
David hauled tables and couches from the loaded wagons they had brought south through the mouth of the tent where other servants relieved him and moved them into place. Riva and the women scurried in and out carrying amphorae of wine and water, baskets of breads and cheeses, olives and dates—all the stores that remained since their march began. Lydia focused on hanging the curtains to divide private from public areas inside the tent and unrolling woven carpets in a pointless attempt to block the sand.
Yes, the sand. It was everywhere. In the eyes, the ears, the mouth. Caked under fingernails and crusted on eyelashes. When they had first landed near Galilee and traveled through mountain passes and along verdant streams, the country had seemed more beautiful than even her native Alexandria. But here on the border between Judea and Idumea—the region of Herod’s birth—the relentless white-hot sky seared the spirit into something harder than any pot she’d ever fired. Perhaps it explained Herod’s seemingly indestructible nature. But at least they traveled on land, not another frightful ship.
“They are coming!” David’s voice shot through a gap in the tent flap along with a slice of sunlight. He dropped the flap at once, an ineffective barrier.
Lydia’s heart hammered. The tent preparations were unfinished. She looped the gauzy curtain’s purple embroidery over the bone hook extending from the upper tent seam and hurried with the others to stand outside the tent. She held a palm above her brow and peered across the endless orange-beige to where tiny explosions of sand and the occasional flare of sunlight on metal signaled an approach.
Herod had arrived at last with Silo, the Roman general ordered by Marc Antony to help Herod liberate Judea from the hands of the Parthian-sympathizer Antigonus.
They came from the east, with the cerulean-blue Salt Sea stretched out like a dead thing, broad and flat at their backs. Silo’s legions marched in the shadow of the lone mountain that held the reason for their coming.
Masada.
Lydia’s gaze strayed to the plateau atop the massif’s blood-red cliffs. From this distance it was impossible to see a single living soul, nor the defenses that made Masada the safest fortress that could hold the women of Herod’s family—his mother, his sister, and Mariamme, his betrothed.
But below it was a simple matter to see the spread forces of Antigonus, who had been laying siege to Masada for nearly a year. Herod’s tent was pitched at a careful distance from the Jewish troops, and the ragtag army of soldiers Herod had raised in Galilee camped behind them. When their ship landed in Ptolemais and they learned that Rome had not yet rescued Masada, Herod once again used his connections and support to rally together a willing band. In spite of his non-Jewish lineage, many powerful Jews were attracted to his cause. Some had suffered atrocities under Antigonus, and many saw the Jewish king’s alliance with the Parthians as betrayal.
They marched with him south along the coast, skirting Samaria, and took the critical seaport of Jaffa in Judea, then passed through Herod’s Idumea and subdued resistance there. Turning east they marched for Masada. Word came that Silo’s forces were coming down from Jerusalem as well but had been ambushed by Jewish nationalists, supporters of Antigonus.
Herod sent troops to join the Romans and put down the nationalists. It had been a long and uncertain four months, with Herod leading the troops and his staff still traveling with him. But now at last, the Roman legions would join with Herod’s, and they would take Masada.
Lydia flexed her shoulders and dropped her hand. David had shouted his warning too far in advance. In the desert you could see a fire ant crawling across the horizon, and they would all surely turn to stone if they waited in this heat. Waves of it blurred the legions into a mass of iron and leather, the troops advancing like a horde of insects themselves, with helmets plumed in red to match the cliffs of Masada.
“I will be finishing in the tent.” She escaped the heat and continued her preparations, but the reinforcements arrived sooner than she thought possible.
Herod and Silo swept into the tent with a haze of grit clinging to them. “Water, girl.” Herod waved a hand at her, his voice etched with sand.
Silo sank to a couch, dropped his head back onto its rolled arm, and began unfastening the leather across his chest. “Tell me again why this land means more to you than a hill of dung.”
Herod swung on him, but Lydia placed the cup of tepid water into his hand before he could answer. In the enforced pause he seemed to collect himself. “You forget I was raised in a place much like this, Silo. Have you been privileged to see the Nabatean kingdom? To walk in the shadow of Petra’s magnificently carved cliffs?”
Silo grunted. “Give me the hills of Rome any day.”
“Or the hills of Jerusalem?”
Lydia crossed the tent to give water to Silo. He accepted the cup, his eyes narrowing at Herod’s insinuation.
“Do not lay the blame for Ventidius’s actions at my feet.”
Lydia moved to continue with the curtains. Several other servants worked inside the tent as well. The two powerful men took no more notice of them than if they were deaf and mute. Little wonder servants sometimes knew more than the royals and heads of state whom they served. Lydia sat cross-legged with the tent fabri
c warming her back, stitching repairs into a leaf-green curtain’s hem and listening.
“Ventidius?” Herod was saying. “Tell me, is it only your general who has Antigonus’s coin lining his purse? Do not be modest, Silo. You can take a bribe as well as Ventidius.”
Silo fluttered a nonchalant hand and closed his eyes.
Herod strode to the couch and kicked at the man’s leg where it draped to the floor.
Silo shot up, scowling. “Do not forget who is the conqueror and who is the vassal, Herod.”
“And you should not forget who is the close friend of Marc Antony and has the favor of Caesar Octavian and the Roman Senate. The same Rome who ordered your legions to relieve my family.” He jabbed a thumb toward the unseen plateau hovering above their tent. “They have sent word that they are nearly dead of thirst up there. If the recent rains hadn’t added to the cisterns, their blood would be on your hands.”
Silo took a long drag from the water in his cup. A silent taunt but still effective.
Herod whirled away toward Lydia.
She bent her head to her stitching, forgotten in the heat of the conversation. The closer they had come to Masada, the more anxious Herod had grown. The charming politician of Rome had become the forlorn husband-to-be, desperate to see his beloved. The transformation had surprised Lydia.
Herod folded his arms and studied the pattern of one of her elaborately embroidered curtains already hung, his gaze tracing the leafy detail as though it contained a map of battle strategy. The design seemed to calm him, thankfully.
“It is time to get them down from there, Silo. Time to bring the battle to Antigonus. I ran like a whipped dog a year ago, but I return with the strength of Galilean supporters at my back and the might of Rome at my side.” He turned to the general. “Masada is their last stronghold here in the south. We take this, and the Parthian-lover will have little but Jerusalem. The city will easily fall into our hands.”
Lydia met David’s gaze where he worked setting up food stores. His face lit with subdued excitement and he nodded once, a tiny movement, to acknowledge that he had heard. The boy wanted nothing more than to go to Jerusalem.
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