Ira watched the carcass being slung over the side of the ship. “It is surprising he did not kill me, with those great feet of his,” he said to himself. “Ptolemy’s One God must have shielded me.”
Asmodeus interrupted Ira’s musings while remaining hidden in a coiled rope on deck. “No, you are alive because you are too great a warrior to be vanquished by an ordinary enemy.”
“But he wasn’t my enemy,” Ira said. “After all, you were the one who frightened him into rearing. And you are my enemy!” He pounced on the pile of rope, but Asmodeus evaded him and ran for the opposite side of the ship. He dived down a rat hole and waited for the black cat to begin a vigil at the entrance. “You have to come out sometime,” Ira told the invisible rat and settled himself to wait.
Asmodeus smirked to himself. He enjoyed placing doubts and fears into their minds, causing the cats to worry.
“What an honor—to be pounced upon and devoured by the greatest warrior this poor ship has yet seen!” he began.
Ira sighed. “Don’t try compliments, Asmodeus. They won’t change my mind about catching you.”
“No, no, no—what I tell you are not mere compliments, but facts. You are in truth a great warrior; you marched and learned with the other soldiers strategy and planning—or perhaps not. Even with Ptolemy, you never did pay close attention to your lessons, did you?”
“I did, too!” Ira protested. “It’s just that I had other important things to do. So of course the girls listened to Ptolemy more. I had to learn to pounce and to kill far more readily than the two females. They lack my instinct for the death blow,” he concluded, a bit smugly.
“And you do indeed possess that, my young cat,” Asmodeus agreed, his voice silken. “Thanks to you, I no longer have any companions with whom to pass a quiet hour or even to share a bit of bread—”
“A bit of bread!” Ira laughed. “You and your disgusting companions were destroying several bushels of grain a day, with your droppings fouling what you did not stuff into your greedy faces.”
“Well, they are all gone now,” Asmodeus snarled. He drew a deep breath, trying to calm himself. “I alone and a few frightened or injured mice are all that remain.”
“So what do you want?”
“A truce?”
“Why should I grant you a truce?”
“Because when we arrive in Tyre, I shall leave the ship and live ashore the rest of my days,” Asmodeus promised.
“You aren’t going to return to our tower outside of Lepcis Magna?”
“No, and neither are you.”
“What do you mean?” Ira asked, startled.
“You cannot convince me that a warrior of your stature, of your hunting skills, would meekly consent to live out the rest of his days in a dreary tower, where nothing exciting ever happens. Unless you count the odd butterfly or beetle that sometimes becomes bewildered and lost within its walls? Or perhaps,” the rat added nastily, “you want to listen to Ptolemy maunder on and on about prophecies and religions and parchment scrolls until he draws his last breath. You will be too aged yourself by then to set forth once more to see the world.”
Unwillingly, Ira thought back to the weeks and weeks of lessons he’d endured, listening to Ptolemy’s patient instructions. Those weeks were boring. I’m glad Abishag listened so carefully; sometimes I got to doze in the sun instead of having to pay attention every second.
He shifted his position beside the rat hole. “A soldier must do what is right,” he replied.
“Is it right for the old cat to expect you to give up everything you have fought for during this long journey and submit to his learned knowledge once you return? You cannot convince me that you do not long to stay with Gracus, because you and he are of the same mind,” Asmodeus said craftily. “Two warriors, marching off to foreign lands and tremendous battles. Think of it! Think of the cheers that would greet you as you returned triumphant from your latest campaign, standing regally in Gracus’s chariot and being admired by the crowd.”
The picture the clever rat painted became very clear to Ira’s imagination. He envisioned himself and Gracus attired in new armor. The fact that he could not have borne the weight of the metal armor, even had it been made so tiny, never occurred to him. He basked in the imaginary adulation and reveled in his status as an acclaimed warrior. Bowls of heavy cream and plump doves would be his breakfast daily.
“And you would forgo all of this, for a corner in a musty tower, glad to catch a handful of warmth from a stingy fire in the dead of winter.”
Ira shivered, completely caught up in the rat’s machinations. I cannot return to that! I must stay with Gracus—he understands what a soldier needs. I cannot return to the tower. The girls will have to go without me.
He turned and left the rat hole, thinking deeply as he retraced his steps to Gracus’s cabin. He didn’t hear Asmodeus snicker as he watched the young cat leave.
Later that same morning, Kezia was having a fruitless search for a mouse. Although she wasn’t really hungry, she was bored and wanted something more challenging than her fifth bath of the day. She was down in the hold, searching and sniffing, when she heard Alexos’s step upon the ship’s ladder. Well, at least he will talk to me and pet me and tell me how pretty I am, the little tabby thought and ran out to greet the captain.
He did see her, even in the poor light and with his limited vision. “Good morning, little lady!” he called across the sacks of grain. “I am but counting my stores—as you yourself are, perhaps?” And he chuckled, rightly assuming she was mouse hunting again. He started to move one of the grain sacks when he realized the leather thong at the mouth of it was untied. He climbed up on top of the neighboring stack of grain sacks so he could reach and retie the thong—and suddenly screamed horribly. A snake had stuck its head out of the mouth of the untied sack and was flicking its tongue at Alexos.
“I am a lady cat, but I also know how to kill snakes!” Kezia cried, and it seemed as if she flew to the stack of grain sacks. She caught the snake before it could crawl away, seizing it behind its head and holding it firmly. The snake thrashed and fought, striking her several times with loops of its hard body. It flailed itself free of the grain sack and kept thrashing.
Alexos, pale and sweating, looked around frantically for any sort of weapon. “I must not let the snake kill her!” He spotted a trident and grabbed it up. He slashed wildly at the snake, not even hearing the running feet of his men in his panic.
Kezia nimbly sidestepped the trident hitting dangerously close to her and kept her hold on the snake. Finally, after being hacked many times by the tines and with Kezia’s sharp teeth penetrating its spinal cord, the snake died, and the cat dropped it at Alexos’s feet. He turned a ghastly shade of green but managed to stammer out, “Th-thank you, most honored lady! You have saved me from a terrible death!”
Some of Alexos’s seamen ran up just then, panting, and the captain began relating the wondrous tale of the cat’s courage to his circle of listeners, who looked in awe at the tabby. Kezia purred and sat down to wash herself, for she felt she stank badly of snake. As she washed her right ear, it stung, and when she looked at her paw, it was covered in blood. Just then Alexos turned and saw her paw.
“The snake has bitten her!” he bellowed and rushed to her. Anxiously, he examined Kezia, searching for the marks of fangs. “Praise Poseidon! The snake has not harmed her—but I myself must have hurt her with the trident.” He knelt in front of her as she sat on some sacks of grain. “Forgive me, my little one. My witless attempts to help you kill the snake have injured you. My sorrow is deep.” Tears stood in his eye as he carefully washed her torn ear with wine and then tied a soft bit of cloth about her head, to hold the ear close so it could heal.
After Alexos’s ministrations, Kezia crept away to the cats’ basket in Gracus’s quarters, where the other two found her after searching for an hour.
“Now you are acclaimed a warrior,” Ira said, dashing up to the basket and speaking half
enviously and half in jest.
“Are you still hurting?” Abishag asked. “Can we help by licking it for you?”
Kezia showed her two closest friends a woebegone face.
“I am now hideous,” she said to them and whimpered. “My appearance is no longer comely, and I am ashamed. I was a beautiful kitten, a lovely youngster, and a graceful lady cat. Now I am as ugly—as ugly as poor Alexos.”
“You need never be ashamed of your looks when you have saved a friend’s life,” Ira said stoutly. But secretly he wondered whether his foster sister was being punished for her immense vanity.
“What have they tied about your head?” Abishag asked.
“Alexos said it would make my ear heal faster, but I do not think so. It hurts and burns, Abishag. Please do something!” Kezia cried.
The patient Abishag finally worked the bandage off Kezia’s head, then she licked her torn ear until Kezia fell asleep.
“Will she be all right?” Ira asked Abishag as they left Gracus’s cabin to go claim their usual fish for dinner.
“I think she will be just fine,” Abishag said. “And if the cut becomes infected, Polla will tend to her ear, for she loves Kezia, too.” I wish someone cared for me as Alexos does Kezia, Abishag thought sadly. He was trying to defend her from the snake, rather than killing the serpent because of the threat to himself. And Gracus and Polla dearly love Ira, their “little soldier.” I wish someone loved me. I miss Ptolemy, and even the old astronomer. I wish our journey was over. I want to go home . . .
That night Gracus had another dream of the cats. He had gone to his bunk in the cabin thinking about Alexos and the snake. He is astonishingly afraid of serpents, Gracus thought. I wonder what has happened in the past to make him fear them so. In his dream, he saw past events repeated: Ira, hurt and lying in the dusty road; Kezia, half drowned when Citus rescued her after Abishag had clung valiantly to her to prevent the tabby from being swept away in the current; and now Kezia again, rescuing Alexos from sure death by snakebite. Then it seemed he entered a path or a corridor—he saw the three cats walking away from him. When he called them, they ran from him, not stopping to look at him or even turning their heads. A long, long time passed in his dream, and yet he still searched, looking at each small black cat when he saw another one, searching for Ira with his crooked leg. He woke after a restless night and lay there sweating. The gods obviously want them to stay together. But then why would I search for only the one? My heart knows that I am fondest of my “little soldier,” true, but I would not separate the three from one another.
11
TYRE AT LAST! The seamen cheered as their ship sailed into the mouth of the harbor, and each man insisted on touching all three cats before disembarking. The two seamen who had muttered about having the cats aboard presented the felines with a wooden cage, whittled from a small cask, filled with crickets as a delicacy for them.
“Where to now, Alexos?” Gracus asked the captain as they stood for a moment on the deck.
“Well, I am not—by the gods! That ship! Look, Gracus! It is a ship of my countrymen—it is from Athens. But who sails upon it?”
A great, graceful ship was highlighted by the rays of the morning sun.
“It must indeed be Kaspar!” cried Alexos. “Come, Gracus—come with me and meet a man unlike any other you have met.”
Gracus shrugged. “Well, why not? I assume you will be in harbor for a day or so, at least until you have met with your grain merchant and settled accounts. May we all stay aboard with you until I report to my new commander?”
“Yes, of course you shall stay with me aboard ship! Remember, I was to ask a reader of entrails or an oracle if your little tabby, who saved my life, might be safely parted from her companions and remain with me.” Alexos paused for a moment. “In truth, we received our answer when the storm quieted upon the three’s appearance. But I shall send word to Kaspar, who is also my kinsman, and ask him to dine with us this evening. You shall be amazed at the stories he has to tell us. He is revered as a wise man in my native land.”
Gracus nodded. “I must speak to this man also. I have had yet another dream about the cats and confess I am puzzled as to its meaning.”
“Then be certain to relate it to Kaspar this night. He will divine what it foretells.”
That night everyone dined very well, as Alexos had hired three cooks from neighboring vessels to produce a feast “fit for a king,” as he told them, and sent men to the markets for supplies. Kezia, Abishag, and Ira were clustered close together in their basket, trying not to fall asleep after their own miniature feast.
Over cups of fragrant hot wine laced with spices, Gracus told Kaspar of his first and then his latest dream about the cats, all of whom woke abruptly when they realized he was speaking of them. Ira began to scramble out of the basket.
He reached Gracus’s caligae just as the centurion said quietly, “If it would not offend the gods, I would be greatly tempted to keep my ‘little soldier,’ as I call him. See, he comes to me to be petted”—here he leaned down and gently caressed Ira’s sleek sides—“and seems to respond to my very thoughts about him. It is almost as if he speaks Latin.”
Kaspar nodded. “You have had the protective harness he wears made for him.”
“My servant, Citus, crafted it for him, and he wears it as proudly as any plume or badge of honor.”
“There are two more, you said?”
“Come, cats!” Gracus called, and Kezia and Abishag jumped out of the basket and ran to Gracus. They all sat at the centurion’s feet to watch faces and listen.
“I do not wish to alarm you,” Kaspar began, speaking slowly, “but somehow these are cats about which many dreams are being cast.”
Alexos turned to face his kinsman with his good eye. “What do you mean?”
“For months now, I have watched the heavens. There are signs and portents of great events about to occur; a magnificent star is in the east and nightly grows brighter.”
Abishag caught her breath. The star! The star Ptolemy spoke of—he was right! I thought it was getting bigger!
“I await two companions: Melchior from Alexandria and Balthazar from Antioch. They are to meet me here in the harbor and then we shall purchase camels and set off on the last leg of our journey.”
Alexos waved a hired servant over to fill the wine cups again. “Where are you going? And why have you said there is something significant concerning these three cats?”
“As for the cats specifically, I know not. I only know that I have dreamed of them accompanying us as we travel to find the Messiah.”
In the stunned silence that followed his words, the cats’ eyes were as wide and round as any ocean pearls.
Abishag nearly wept. “We are to go with them,” she whispered to Kezia and Ira. “Did you hear? We shall be taken with them as they search for the King of Kings. Just as Ptolemy said.”
Gracus swallowed hard. “The Messiah?”
“Yes, He is soon to be born Who shall rule the world.”
The centurion could not grasp the staggering implications all at once. “He is then the next emperor?”
“I do not think He will necessarily rule upon this earth. But I do know that myself and my companions have been chosen by the One God to complete this journey and then tell others of what we have learned. Look.”
Kaspar held out his left hand to Gracus and Polla. Alexos retreated to the shadows as the other two gazed at Kaspar’s strong, open hand. Upon the lined palm a star was emblazoned clearly.
“Melchior and Balthazar also have this mark upon their palms. None of us would have known about this common star were it not for my kinsman here—come, do not try to fold yourself within the darkness, Alexos!”
Alexos leaned across the table, his face within the glow of candlelight once again. “It but serves to show how a garrulous seaman can spread tales, my Kaspar.”
Kaspar laughed. “He has denied any part of being an agent to speed the old prophecie
s to fruition. But to return to other signs: Melchior brings three doves, which were sent to him in the middle of an unusually violent storm in Alexandria, and about which he had dreamed the night beforehand. Balthazar brings three rings—one of wood, one of stone, and one of metal—which he directed a servant to dig up from the roots of an old cedar tree after having dreamed of the treasure beneath it.”
Ira felt the skin along his backbone ripple in a shiver. This is almost scaring me, he thought. Surely the old cat at home couldn’t have known of all of this. Or if he did, he would have told Abishag, for she was the one, of all of us, Ptolemy loved most. I wonder if she’s ever realized that.
The tabby cat was lost in daydreams of splendor. This man, this wise man, as the humans have called him, also says we go to discover the King of Kings. I am going to live in a palace after all! I shall have silk pillows to sleep upon and jeweled collars by the dozen.
“And my dream was very simple: I saw three cats—two black and one tabby—traveling with us, in search of the place where the star will come to rest.”
Soon the dinner participants separated. Kaspar promised he would return for the cats as soon as his other companions were ready to set forth. “I shall have baskets crafted for them, so they may ride upon camels and move swiftly through the desert night.”
Gracus chuckled at the thought. “You must see that the little soldier’s basket has lower sides, then. For he does want to see where he is going; I think he plans his campaign ahead of need. And he marched many miles with my men as I trained them. He may wish to walk at times.”
Asmodeus, crouched in the thickest shadows, spat and curled his lip. “He may wish to walk at times.” My stomach heaves at the simper! Curse them! I must plan carefully so I may also ride and not walk. I would dwell most happily in only one of those palaces that continually are promised to these undeserving, juvenile upstarts. Prophecies! Bah!
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