The Bow of Heaven - Book I: The Other Alexander

by Andrew Levkoff

  ***

  You must know by now that it was Sabina’s jealousy that threatened Tessa. The healer was the most intelligent woman I had ever met, but she was also arrogant. Perhaps she believed she could act with impunity. If one believes there is no risk, it is easy to gamble everything of value.

  ***

  When she lost the sight in her left eye, Crassus stepped in and insisted she take to her bed. He told Sabina that if Tessa’s condition did not improve by morning, he’d be forced to call in outside help. Sabina admitted to dominus that Tessa must have been poisoned. Her condition was grave, but she would do all that she could. When he heard this, Crassus put the entire estate on alarm: no one could enter or leave without his knowing.

  By then of course, it was too late. Now that she lay abed, she was too weak to leave it. Sabina asked that she be brought to the clinic; Crassus himself carried her there in his arms. In the night she wet the bed four times; it hardly mattered for the bedding was already soaked through with her sweat. Tessa’s heart raced, then slowed, and her breathing became erratic. The healer gave her theriake, a Greek antidote for poisoning. It was her own formula of herbs and spices ground with opium into olive oil. She worked through the night, joined by many of the familia, including Crassus, who stood vigil with the young gardener.

  Conspicuous by his absence was Ludovicus.

  Something Livia had said to her mother when we came upon her in the western wood kept nagging at me. When Sabina asked her what is found in short supply at the main house but is lavishly abundant in the forest, Livia replied “people.” Her tone was mocking, of course, but it set me thinking. There was something else the healer could find a great deal of out at the boundaries of the estate: privacy. Almost in that same moment, I realized why the priests’ hoods had seemed so familiar, yet somehow menacing. My uneasiness grew.

  It is an effortless matter to draw conclusions from a narrative that takes you by the hand as I have done, but to believe the unthinkable in the midst of events that swirl about you in a confusion of emotion and distress, that, I hope you will see, is a more challenging task. Yet I curse myself for my slow-wittedness. I could not change the outcome for Sabina, for the law of Crassus is unforgiving. I could not recapture the look in Livia’s eyes that died on that day of judgment. But I might have saved a life.

  It was the night that Tessa died. All of us, myself included, believed that Sabina labored frantically to revive the gardener. But I had to know. I summoned Malchus, told him to don socks as well as his heaviest caligae and meet me at the tool shed. There we collected shovels and rakes, and with lanterns raised high headed to the western wood. It was easy to find the spot, for as we approached it stood out from its surroundings, natural in aspect, but unnatural in fact. A patch no larger than three by six feet was covered with a layer of moss, twigs and bark made to resemble the rest of the forest floor. We raked this aside; I warned Malchus to let nothing touch his exposed flesh.

  We found nothing, except merely circumstantial evidence: Sabina had planted something here, then removed all manifestation that she had done so. This was enough to report to Crassus, but would I do so? Could I do anything that would reshape me into a wedge between mother and daughter? And that, in Livia’s eyes, would be the least of my crimes should I continue down this path. I was almost ready to take relief from our failure when Malchus said he thought that perhaps Sabina merely wanted to plant some flowers. Why do you say that, I asked him, since I had told him nothing of my suspicions. He pointed deep into the hole where he had been digging. We lowered our lanterns and there at the bottom lay a single, battered, purple bloom.

  “Don’t touch it!” I said as Malchus reached for it. I put on a pair of gloves, exhumed the flower from its intended grave and dropped it into my belt pouch. One itch had been scratched satisfactorily, for the flower’s hooded shape was a perfect mimic of the priest’s cowl.

  The gods, now intent on guaranteeing my undoing, laughed as they brought my own eyes to our next discovery. As we hurried away with our prize it was I, not Malchus, who chanced upon a small, pale glow beside a mossy granite outcrop. We delayed our race back to the house to investigate. The lanterns illuminated the destruction of any hope for me to remain in denial: a single daisy, its short green stem flat and mangled, its white petals and yellow heart crushed and lifeless.

  ***

  “Seize her!” Malchus shouted as we burst into Sabina’s clinic. The legionary’s inertia answered his own command as he crashed into the healer, knocking her to the floor. I slapped the spoon out of Tessa’s mouth, but she swallowed involuntarily.

  “What is the meaning of this?!” Crassus shouted, grabbing the sleeve of my tunic amidst the shouts and screams of those present.

  “Where are you emetics?” I demanded of Sabina, who was still pinned to the floor by red-faced Malchus.

  “She’s too weak,” Sabina said with an emphasis meant only for me. “You’ll kill her.”

  “Give her water. Now, master, for the love of Flora, if you want her to live. As much as she can drink.” Crassus released me and nodded to Eirene who ran to fetch a cup and pitcher. “In the old school room,” I called after her. “It’s closer.”

  “For gods’ sake, man, let the woman up,” Crassus said. Malchus pulled Sabina roughly to her feet. “Gently, Malchus,” dominus commanded. “I will know what this is about before anyone is maltreated. No one is accused of anything. Yet.”

  I knew the words must come but they lodged in my throat, a lump of ruined futures.

  “Alexander!” Malchus urged.

  “I accuse,” I shouted, as if volume were needed to regurgitate the unspeakable. Unable to look at my old friend, I stared at the floor at Crassus’ feet. “I accuse Sabina of attempting to murder this woman.”

  The silence that followed was interrupted only by the rasping of Tessa’s breath. Eirene returned. I raised Tessa’s damp head and the tearful scullery girl brought the water to Tessa’s lips. The little she managed to get down made her choke.

  “You’ll kill her,” Sabina repeated.

  “Eirene, step away. Let no more be done. Alexander, I have no reason to doubt you, but if you have maliciously kept Sabina from administering to Tessa, so help me .... Both of you, go with Malchus. He will keep you safe and separate till morning. The rest of you, except you, Betto, go to your quarters and pray to our lares domestici to preserve this woman. Betto, fetch another guard, stay by Tessa, do nothing but watch over her. We will let the gods decide if she lives or if she dies.”

  Just before dawn, the gods chose death. Tessa’s shallow breath rose to a gasp, then stopped. Crassus sent a rider to Ostia to notify her parents and to pay their owners more than the man and woman’s worth for allowing them to come to Rome for a few short days to collect the body. While we waited, Crassus held court.

  ***

  The day was grey but looked unlikely to rain upon us. “The accuser shall speak first,” announced Crassus from his seat in the tablinum. He had turned it to face the peristyle where the household had gathered, standing, at my request, on the gravel paths, avoiding the few decorative patches of lawn. Livia sat by Sabina. I would have given anything to have had a private moment with her, but there was no opportunity; the first words she would hear from me would be those that condemned her mother.

  “Dominus, if I am upheld in these proceedings, we must replace all the soil in our flower beds. To prove to you why we must take this extraordinary measure, I have asked Malchus to bring these three strays, bitches in fact, from the streets.” The familia murmured, and I was fairly certain I heard Nestor, scrawny and hateful, ‘there’s only one dog I see up there ought to be put down.’

  “Keep them at a distance,” Crassus said to the guards holding them by short, rope leashes. “I’ll not have fleas infesting the domus.” I emptied the contents of my belt pouch onto a table just below where Crassus sat. With a tweezers, I raised the drooping purple bloom for all to see. “In Greece, we call this lykoton
on, ‘wolf killer.’ Hunters rub their arrows on its petals, its leaves, its stem, but mostly on a ground up paste made from its root.”

  “How is it,” Crassus asked, “that a young Athenian philosopher comes by such knowledge?”

  “Dominus, Aristotle was succeeded by Theophrastus, acknowledged even by Romans as the father of botany. I have read De Causis Plantarums, and have seen with my own eyes the carefully guarded corner of the Lyceum gardens devoted to aconitum napellus. It is beautiful, but deadly.”

  I instructed the guards to force the dogs to sit on disparate patches of ground throughout the peristyle. Nothing happened. “I expected this,” I said, trying to sound confident. “Now the flower beds.” The dogs were moved. “Make sure they sit; do not let them lie down.”

  “What difference can that make?” Crassus asked.

  “I want to be certain their genitals come in contact with the soil. You see, lykotonon need not be ingested to be poisonous. It can be absorbed through the skin.” The dogs looked wide-eyed and terrified, but otherwise unremarkable.

  “Enough, Alexander. Get to the point. We understand that you are claiming Tessa was poisoned from contact with this flower, evidence of which is dramatically and overwhelmingly non-existent. But even if you are correct, what proof do you have that Sabina had anything to do with it? Tessa was not the only one with symptoms.”

  “My toes were numb,” Betto called out.

  “Mine too,” cried another.

  “Because you stopped to smell Tessa’s handiwork,” I said. “As you leaned in, your toes touched the soil on which Sabina had sprinkled the pulverized root of aconitum. The effect would not be lasting. But Tessa trod those beds barefoot day after day. Dominus, may I speak with Sabina?”

  “You may.”

  “Sabina, are you in love with Ludovicus?”

  “No. Definitely not.”

  Why should she help? “Let me rephrase. Is Ludovicus your lover?”

  “Again, no.”

  “Was he your lover?” Silence. “Shall I ask him? He’s standing just to your left.”

  “We have shared a bed, yes.”

  I turned again to Crassus. “I came upon Sabina during one of my walks in the woods at the western end of the estate.” At least I could leave Livia out of this tragic narration. “She would not let me inspect the blue and purple flowers she was growing there. She intimated they preferred shade, but I know for a fact that lykotonon will thrive in full sun as long as it is irrigated well. The only reason, then, to plant it so far from the house was if she did not want anyone to know she was growing it. And when I first approached, she dropped what I at first thought was a bundle of rags, but which now I surmise must have been gloves with which to handle the lethal plant. Do you deny it?”

  “I do not,” Sabina answered.

  “But,” Crassus said, “you have still not established that she was growing this lykotonon.”

  “If someone will ask me,” Sabina said, “I will answer.”

  “Are you growing this flower in our woods?” Crassus asked.

  “Yes. I was.”

  “You were growing it,” I said. “But not anymore, for your purpose has been achieved. Dominus, last night, I went back into the woods, taking Drusus Malchus with me. The site which Sabina had refused to show me had been concealed. We had to dig up the entire plot to discover this solitary flower. No leaves, no roots, just this single bloom. It is clear that Sabina did not want the place found.” Malchus affirmed that I spoke truly.

  “This herb,” Sabina interjected, “has many beneficial uses, dominus. It can reduce fever, excessive beating of the heart, and I have used it many times to reduce the pain of scrapes and superficial wounds. But the atriensis is correct to say that it can be highly poisonous if misused. Naturally I planted it far from the house so that no one would come in accidental contact with it. And once I had harvested an ample supply for the clinic, what else should I do but remove all trace of it? I planted it far away from the house and discarded the remains so that no one would accidentally come upon it and make themselves ill.”

  The household stirred, leaves rustling in a wind that had turned against me. Crassus said, “Alexander, I don’t know what petty grievance you may have against our healer, but I am disappointed in myself to find that I may have misjudged you.”

  “Dominus,” Sabina called out above the murmuring of the familia. “Alexander had good reason to wish me ill, if you will hear it.”

  “Go on.”

  Sabina spoke of her plan to buy her freedom and that of her daughter, of my love for Livia and of the fact because of Sabina, the two lovers must eventually be parted.

  Crassus shook his head slowly from side to side. The familia grew quiet. Finally dominus said angrily, “Get those dogs out of here.”

  “May I speak, lord?” Drusus Malchus said. He was holding a rake.

  “What is it?”

  “With humbleness, to end this hearing now would be unfair. Our proof is not yet complete.”

  “What more do you have to say?” Crassus asked impatiently.

  “Sabina,” I said, earning an instant glare from the master that made me stutter, “Sabina was jealous of Tessa.” While I spoke, Malchus began scraping away the top layer of soil in the flower bed closest to the tablinum. “I noticed it the first day I came before Pío.” I spoke rapidly. “Tessa stormed into the house, right through your tablinum. I remember because she did not stop to put on house slippers. She was barefoot.”

  When Malchus had cleared a sufficient space he picked up one of the bitches who, as he neared the flower bed began whining, complaining and struggling against him. Malchus forced it down in the cavity he had made, kneeling to hold it still with his massive arms.

  “I can’t remember a time I ever saw Tessa wearing sandals,” I continued. “The day of the Vulcanalia, Sabina and I passed each other in the atrium. She had her cleaning supplies and must have been returning from Ludovicus’ quarters where she had been tidying up. She loves to clean,” I added weakly. “As she passed me, she was muttering angrily to herself, but one word was plainly clear: ‘barefoot.’” The whispers swelled again. “Sabina was clutching something in her free hand, something which I believe Malchus and I discovered last night in the woods.”

  “Yes, Crassus said, irritated. “We know all about the poisonous flower.”

  “No, dominus. It was this.” I reached inside my tunic and dropped the cut and mangled daisy onto the table. Everyone craned to see it, and everyone knew instantly what it meant.

  Betto said, “Tessa would rather have shaved her head than wear her hair without those daisies.”

  “Ludovicus,” I called, “did Tessa come to you on or before the Vulcanalia?”

  “Answer,” Crassus said when the battalion commander hesitated.

  “She did, but ...”

  “Sabina,” I asked, did you find a daisy in Ludovicus’ room and assume they were lovers?”

  Before the healer could answer, the dog held down by Malchus howled in obvious agony and scrambled free. It ran in circles, panting and flinging spittle in all directions before it stopped, vomited and fell to the ground, shaking violently.

  “Put that animal out of its misery,” Crassus ordered. Malchus slit its throat.

  “This is ridiculous,” Sabina said, unnerved. “All right, yes, I admit I was jealous. And perhaps I wanted to make her sick. But kill her? Never! Walking barefoot in lykotonon can’t kill you.” Livia was staring open-mouthed at her mother.

  “It can with a little help from your poison antidote.”

  “You are a fool, Alexander. You said it yourself: theriake cures poisoning, it doesn’t cause it.”

  “May I explain, dominus?” Crassus nodded. Lykotonon slows the heart and breath. The primary ingredient of theriake is opium, which depresses most bodily functions, including respiration. To administer this medication to a person knowing they were suffering from lykotonon poisoning can only be construed as an attempt t
o kill them.”

  Finally, the healer was silent. “I am so sorry, Sabina,” I said. “Forgive me, Livia, I had no choice.”

  “You always have a choice!” Livia shouted through her tears.

  Sabina looked up at me with such hostility that I understood in that instant that I had never known her. She leered at me and made to put her arm about her daughter, but Livia jumped as if she’d been bitten. “Get away from me!” she screamed. She leapt up and fled the peristyle. No one, not even Crassus, made an attempt to stop her.

  Sabina’s face melted from hatred to humility. “Marcus Licinius Crassus,” she said, “master of this familia, I beg mercy. I confess to jealousy. I confess to hatred. Of these things I am guilty. But I do not confess to murder. I did try to save Tessa’s life. I swear. Anyone could have poisoned the soil. The evidence before you is tattered, full of supposition, spoken by a man who would do anything to keep my daughter near him.”

  “Now I am convinced,” Crassus said. “You are right, slave, there is evidence here of a circumstantial nature. But this is not a court and I am in need of no proof in order to pass judgment. Yet shall you have it. The single unassailable, indisputable fact in all that I have heard today is that Alexander himself has brought this case against you. What more proof do I need of your guilt? He loved your daughter. She has fled, not just from you but from him. Look at what he has sacrificed in the name of justice.

  “Alexander, I do not like being wrong, and I do not like apologizing. More than once you have placed this meal before me and forced me to eat.” He rose from his gilded chair and sighed. “Before this assembly, before my familia I say to you – apologies.

  “Now, to Sabina I say this: you have killed an innocent girl. You have committed a heinous and brutal murder based on an assumption. Did you even confront the commander with your suspicions? It matters not. An attack on a member of my family is tantamount to an attack upon my person. But I want to hear you say it. So tell me, tell everyone here assembled: did you kill our Tessa?”