Keeper of the Flame

by Tracy L. Higley

  Sophia felt her breath rise and fall in her chest, which grew ever tighter. “I see.”

  “What did you say was your business here?” Bellus took a step toward her, forcing her attention back to himself.

  She straightened. “I didn’t say. I am procuring supplies for the lighthouse.”

  He nodded slowly.

  “I suppose you think that the lighthouse is nothing but a fire and a mirror. You could have no idea what is involved in maintaining the safety of the incoming ships.”

  “I am certain you are most capable of handling the challenges you face.”

  Sophia narrowed her eyes, trying to determine if there was sarcasm in his tone. “You think me a tyrant of a woman, then?”

  Bellus lowered his head, but then raised his eyes to hers. He was silent a moment, as though reading her thoughts. When he spoke, his voice was low. “I think you are lonely and bitter and angry, and you prefer that the world around you also feel the pain of it.”

  Sophia swallowed, but still she would not look away from his eyes. His words were an injury, to be sure. But not knife-sharp, not fatal. More like a large stone tied round her neck. A heavy sinking that made it hard to breathe. “I—I must go. As I said, I have critical business to attend.”

  Bellus saluted her, a mock sort of salute intended, she knew, as ridicule. “I will leave you to it, then.”

  With a glance at the Roman fleet now nearing the harbor entrance, Sophia left Bellus on the dock and jumped across to the ship. The ship carrying cargo that would never be allowed to pass.

  On the deck she glanced back, but Bellus had moved on. “We must change our plans,” she said to Erebos. He nodded, as though expecting the news and folded his hands across his wide belly.

  “Bring the ship through the heptastadion channel to the Eunostos Harbor. Dock on the west side of the lighthouse.”

  Erebos snorted. “They have left the eastern harbor unguarded?”

  Sophia looked across the water, sparkling in the afternoon sun. “I am afraid not. You will not reach Athens with this cargo.”

  “I must get to Athens—”

  “I know.” Sophia let her eyes travel to the lighthouse on the tip of the island ahead.

  She depended upon her solitude there. Needed it. But her life was worth nothing if she did not preserve her husband’s legacy, especially now that the Proginosko again promised hope for the future.

  “We will bring them to the lighthouse,” she said, as much to herself as to Erebos. “There is no other way.”

  Thirteen

  Bellus shielded his eyes and calculated the time before the two ships had the Eunostos harbor. An army clerk neared at his right and saluted. “A message, centurion,” he said, extending his hand. Bellus took the rolled papyrus absently and nodded.

  The mission had proceeded better than he had hoped. His centuria had spread through the harbor in their ten contubernia, to take the mainland docks on either side of the heptastadion that stretched out to the Pharos Island. They had blocked the entrance into the Great Harbor. The Eunostos Harbor in the west should be guarded within the hour.

  Bellus fingered the scroll in his hand. Had Caesar heard already about his success in taking the harbor? He unrolled the stiff papyrus and turned his body to shade the missive from the lowering orange sun.

  Gaius Julius Caesar, General of Rome, to Lucius Aurelius Bellus, Pilus Prior.

  I have word that your centuria is securing the harbor. I was not aware that command of my legion had been given over to you! Your orders were to occupy the lighthouse. Have your troops there by nightfall or you will be dismissed back to Rome to till your fields or shovel dung or whatever it was you did before Rome called you to be a soldier.

  The general’s seal had been heavily stamped into wax at the bottom of the letter, and Bellus could almost see the animosity that bore down on that glob of red. He crumpled the roll in his right hand and stared over the water. Word had reached the general too soon. Bellus had intended to send troops to the lighthouse, then inform Caesar that both the lighthouse and the harbor had been secured. Instead, his plan to redeem his earlier failure appeared to be insubordination.

  To his left, the lighthouse keeper still stood on the deck of her supply ship.

  Better to arrive on that cursed island before she does.

  “Quintus!” Bellus yelled toward the contingent that stood guard at the edge of the quay. One of them, his gangly young optio, turned and marched to him.

  “Send word ’round the harbor. We regroup at the base of the heptastadion and march across to the island. Now!” Quintus saluted and ran.

  But it was not to be so immediate. It took the better part of an hour to reassemble the centuria that had spread through the harbor at his command. When the men were lined before him at the head of the causeway to the island, four deep and twenty wide, Bellus paced before them, yelling orders.

  “Be on your guard, men! The far side of the island is renowned for its pirates. These are men that wait upon the ill luck of merchant ships on the reefs, and then prey upon them. They are lawless, they are mercenary, and they are no doubt violent. They will not be pleased that Rome brings order and light to their dark endeavors.” Men’s chins lifted, chests expanded with the pride of Rome. “But remember, also, we are not at war. We have come to Egypt as ambassadors of Rome, to collect on a debt, not to conquer. Avoid unnecessary bloodshed.”

  He raised an arm, turned to the heptastadion, and let his eyes linger on the massive lighthouse at the tip of the island. He breathed in the salt air, then swung his arm downward.

  The men marched.

  The causeway was wide enough for the men to march across in formation, shields locked. Bellus led them, feeling stripped bare without his horse. What kind of centurion led his men on foot? But the horses had been stabled in the south of the city when they had arrived here. Caesar had insisted that soldiers on horses would seem a greater threat to the people of the city. The general still wished to appear peaceful.

  And yesterday’s riot proved your success.

  The two bridges that cut through the causeway, allowing ships to pass from the Great Harbor to the Eunostos Harbor, had not been raised today. Bellus had ordered that no ships pass through until both harbor entrances had been secured.

  Seawater lapped at the rocky edges of the heptastadion, forming a counter rhythm to the beat of the heavily studded sandals of the eighty men at his back.

  The causeway angled slightly west into the setting sun. Bellus’s eyes ached from squinting across the island. Hazy shapes and rising puffs of dust in the distance caused concern.

  By the three-quarter point of the causeway, his concern had heightened. A crowd awaited their arrival on the island. With the sun behind the island’s inhabitants, they were only a silhouette of unknown threat. To their left, the island’s Temple of Isis, with its twenty-cubit statue of the goddess, seemed to give sacred weight to their cause.

  Bellus halted his troops, called a few more instructions down the lines, then turned and led them onward.

  Within minutes, the shadow became individuals, yelling and brandishing farming tools.

  Villagers, not pirates.

  Bellus urged his men forward, pushing into the crowd of people. Just as the city had its Greek, Jewish, and Egyptian districts, the village was largely segregated to Egyptians. Shouted curses rained down on the soldiers, though mostly in Greek.

  “Go back to Rome, dogs!”

  Something hurtled through the air. Bellus raised an arm to block it. A half-rotted fish, its eyeballs still intact, splattered against his leather-wrapped forearm and sprayed his face with foul liquid.

  The insult seemed to loose the crowd. They flew forward, heedless that they ran unarmed into the most elite army in the world.

  “Forward, men!” Bellus shouted. They knew enough to avoid engagement. They marched in double-time, leaving the village to their left as they moved eastward to the tip of the island and the lighthouse. />
  Bellus ran to the side of the centuria. He let the lines pass and surveyed the villagers’ attack.

  Dark-skinned men, bare-chested and with white skirts in the old Egyptian style, wove through the centuria, fists raised and faces hate-twisted. There were even women and children among them. The centuria lost its rigid pattern as soldiers stepped out of formation to avoid trampling villagers. The setting sun seemed to melt the soldier’s armor to gold and turn the sea beyond to silver, until the whole mass of men seemed like molten metal flowing around the dark chests and white skirts.

  The smell of rotted fish and vegetables turned his stomach. Where did the people get their ample supply? Had they stored it for just such a time?

  They were nearly to the second causeway, the narrower and shorter land bridge that would deposit them at the base of the lighthouse. As yet, there had been nothing more than foulsmelling garbage thrown. No soldier had drawn a dagger or lowered a pilum.

  But in that moment there came a mighty roar, and Bellus knew immediately that the worst lay ahead.

  A swarm came up and over the rocks that lined the small cove known as the Port of Pirates. Fifty men, Bellus guessed. Swords held aloft, and the indignation of violated territory in their upraised voices. “Hold!” Bellus shouted to his men. The command spread immediately across the line.

  The villagers sensed their peril and kept moving, tripping through the centuria to get free. For a few moments, the entire village seemed trapped between the incoming wave of soldiers and the rushing river of pirates. Bellus feared a wholesale slaughter. He ran back and forth in front of the troops, gladius drawn.

  “Disengage from the peasants!” he shouted to his men. And to the townspeople, “Get back to your homes!”

  Finally the glut of innocents cleared, and Bellus lowered his right fist, signaling to the men that they were to move forward and take the lighthouse, by whatever means necessary.

  They marched. The pirates ran. Undisciplined and untrained, they hurtled screaming into the perfect lines of soldiers and their shields.

  The clang of sword on sword, the hoarse grunts of attack and the screams of injury all lifted from the stones of the island. Bellus lunged and slashed with his own sword. The stubbled and dirty face of a pirate rose before him, and he thrust with his short dagger, without thought. He had not been on the ground in battle in some time. It was terrible and wonderful at once, this freedom to give oneself to the fight.

  But it could not last long.

  Fourteen

  Below the island, where the lowered heptastadion bridge blocked their passage from the Great Harbor to the Eunostos Harbor, Sophia stood on the deck of the ship she’d hired, yelling curses down on the head of the Egyptian bridge keeper who moved slower than a mid-winter canal to get the bridge cranked open.

  “The soldiers,” he had said when they first approached, pointing to the line of Romans disappearing across the dust of the heptastadion. “They did not want the bridge—”

  “The soldiers are not here now!” Sophia rocked forward on her toes. “And they do not command the island!”

  The Egyptian’s shrugged shoulders spoke what they both were thinking: It looks as though they soon will.

  Why had the Romans abandoned their positions around the harbor and begun marching to Pharos? Could it be in response to her telling Bellus she would bring the supply ship there? Did they somehow know that she carried something of far more worth than food and fuel?

  If the Romans went all the way to the tip of the island, she had no idea how she’d land this ship and hide the twelve men away. But why would they go there? Certainly they would cross and then head west, away from the lighthouse, to the Eunostos Harbor entrance. Perhaps they would board ships there and drop anchor to examine outgoing ships.

  But I need to sail through there to circle around to the lighthouse.

  “Faster, you lazy pack of slaves!” she called to the dozen barebacked men who turned the crank that would raise the bridge.

  The sun seemed weighted, rolling downward to the horizon at twice its normal pace, threatening to leave them passing through the Port of Pirates in darkness.

  Finally the wooden platform creaked to a halt above their heads, and the ship’s captain signaled the oarsmen to take them through. Sophia gripped the rail to still her trembling hands and kept her eyes set to the west, willing the ship to slice through the water with speed.

  With her face raised to the spray of saltwater, she watched the mass of gleaming armor and snapping red pennants advance across the heptastadion and felt like a contender in one of the stadium’s chariot races.

  She glanced at the steps that led down to the inside hull of the ship and thought of the Proginosko. This prize was worth far more than any race.

  Now that she had made the decision to allow the scholars to invade her peace, to hide away in the only place she could escape from the world, she simply wanted to get them there.

  The race continued, with her ship sailing round to the far side of the island, where they could dock immediately below the lighthouse, and the Roman’s centuria marching across the heptastadion. She watched their measured steps, though her ship had sailed too far now to hear the beat of their sandals.

  The ship’s captain joined her at the rail and watched the soldiers in silence for a moment. The sun turned the water to diamonds. “I am a trader, mistress. Not a warrior.”

  “I only ask you to sail, Erebos.”

  He jutted his chin toward the marching soldiers. “And if they are on the other side to greet us when we put in?”

  “I will handle it.”

  He laughed. “One woman against a hundred Romans?”

  Sophia wiped seawater from her eyes, blinking away the sting. “You might be surprised.”

  Sosigenes stumbled from the steps. “Sophia?” He came to stand beside her.

  She shook her head. “You need to stay below. We cannot take any chances.”

  He placed a hand over hers on the rail. “You are sailing to Athens with us?”

  Sophia sighed and inclined her head to the heptastadion. “Not Athens yet, I am afraid. I am taking you back to the lighthouse.”

  He followed her indication and scowled at the soldiers marching toward Pharos. “These Romans are like grasshoppers, eating away at the health of Egypt.” He wrinkled his nose. “But why back to Pharos when the Romans are crossing to the island?”

  “They want the harbor entrance. They will remain on the western end of the island, I am certain.” Sophia grasped his hand. “Please, now, my friend, stay below.”

  He smiled. “All will be well, Sophia,” he said, in that tone of an oracle he sometimes used. She thought of Homer’s Iliad: “He knew the things that were and the things that would be and the things that had been before.” Sosigenes patted her cheek, nodded, and returned to the steps.

  They soon rounded the end of Pharos and headed back toward the east on the other side. The soldiers were no longer visible, but Sophia kept her attention on the main road out of the village, expecting the red standards on poles and the marching lines to appear at any moment.

  The sun threw the long shadow of the boat before them, as though they chased a phantom ship they could never catch.

  When they rounded into the Port of Pirates, even Sophia prepared to go below deck. There was no use inviting trouble. This port was not regulated by the royal family, and it reeked of rotted fish and brackish water. But the port appeared deserted, so Sophia stayed on deck. They sailed across the bowl-shaped harbor toward the base of the lighthouse.

  Sophia breathed out her relief that they had somehow missed the soldiers in their march toward the Eunostos Harbor entrance.

  Erebos shouted commands at his oarsmen. “There!” He pointed to the small dock set up for lighthouse deliveries.

  The captain’s shout seemed to echo over the island and come back to them, louder than it had gone out. Sophia frowned and lifted her head. Erebos halted in mid-command. His glance
turned sharply to her.

  Another shout, and another.

  The boat glided toward land, with all hands stilled.

  And then on the raised strip of rock above them, as sudden as a sandstorm whips out of the desert, a mass of confusion swelled.

  Sophia sucked in her breath. Roman soldiers! Covering the island, they slashed with swords, thrust with spears. And pirates, driving through the mass of soldiers with their crude weapons.

  The ship went unnoticed. They simply floated there, suspended by the shock of the battle that raged above them.

  She had never seen trained soldiers fight. Not like this. It was like a dance, slow and beautiful and tragic. She traced the line of a sun-kissed sword as it sliced the air and found its mark on the neck of a pirate who would have put his tapered pike into the soldier’s gut. The red plumes of the Roman’s helmets were like sprays of blood fanning through the dusky air.

  Bellus. Was he there, among them? Safe?

  She gripped the ship’s rail and pulled her gaze from the glowing armor, to the dark hulk of the lighthouse that hung over them, watching in silent detachment. “We must put in!”

  The captain roused and nodded once, then shouted a command to the oarsmen. Within moments a sailor jumped from the prow to the dock and secured the ship. Sophia did not wait.

  “Come,” she called down into the hull. “Quickly!”

  The twelve elderly men began their ascent, blinking in the sun that seemed a horizontal beam across the sea now.

  She touched each as they passed her, urging them forward, all the while her attention on the fighting not far to their right. She wished for a sword of her own.

  Hold them a little longer, my island pirates. Never before had she been grateful for the parasites that gave her island a bad name. And yet, even as she wished them success, she thought of one Roman whom she did not care to see harmed.

  “Go, go!” she hissed to the scholars. Each gingerly stepped from the prow to the dock, which swayed beneath their feet with the pitch of high tide. Seawater surged upward around the white limestone rocks that lined the island, leaving them darkened and coated with slippery green algae.