Afraid of a group of old men, Bellus? What would Caesar say?
But thoughts of Caesar led him to remember that his general anxiously searched for this treasury of wisdom he had discovered. Better not to think of Caesar.
She took him from table to table, introducing him to each of the men in turn, explaining their special area of interest. He marveled over the tedious translation work of one, the intricate machinery of levers and dials created by another. In the corner, nearest the small window set high in the stone wall, one scholar worked over pots of cuttings.
“This is Archippos,” Sophia said. “And his roses. He is creating a new species that will be more drought-resistant.”
The old man patted her hand. “We could not continue the work without this fine woman.”
They weaved through the white-robed gentlemen, and Bellus asked questions until he was certain he would annoy them with his interruptions. Finally they reached Sosigenes, of whom Sophia had spoken often during their evenings together.
The tall man was bent at the waist, peering into a metal box of some interest to Bellus, covered as it was with gears and dials and markings in both Greek and demotic Egyptian. Sophia touched his back lightly and he straightened and turned.
His weathered face was creased heavily with the lines of age, and though Bellus had assumed he was Greek, he was no longer certain.
“Sosigenes,” Sophia was saying, “this is Lucius Aurelius Bellus, the Roman soldier of whom I spoke.”
Sosigenes bowed. “Centurion.” His eyes held suspicion, but no fear. “It is good to meet you. Again. Sophia assures me you are to be trusted with our room of secrets.”
Bellus bowed. “She honors me with her trust, as you do with your time.”
“How goes the work?” Sophia bent over the mechanism.
“Fine, fine.” Sosigenes circled the front dial with thumb and forefinger and turned it a quarter-turn. “I was aligning it—” He looked again to Bellus, then back to Sophia.
“Speak freely, Sosigenes.”
The two talked together of the mechanism’s testing, and gradually Bellus came to understand the piece’s intended use. Following on the heels of understanding came the realization of the power the thing could yield.
“This must not be allowed to fall into the wrong hands,” he said, interrupting the two.
Sophia turned briefly to him and nodded, as though to recognize his impassioned warning, then returned to talking with Sosigenes.
Bellus watched her, her face animated and her hands fluttering as she spoke. They laughed together over some small error, and Sophia wrapped an arm around the older man’s bony shoulders. Something akin to jealousy flared, building heat in Bellus’s face and tightening the muscles of his arms. He shook his head to clear the feeling.
She noticed him there again and pulled him into the conversation, bringing him to the table to more closely examine the piece. Behind him, she spoke quietly in his ear. “The Proginosko will tell us more of the heavens than we have ever known and create a calendar without drift, at last. It is near to completion and requires only a few weeks more of testing, as the moon waxes.” Her voice was low. “You see now, Bellus, why I had to keep them here, to safeguard them. The Proginosko is too important.”
And you have trusted me with it.
Bellus again saw the flash of Caesar’s face in his mind.
Trapped between Sophia and Sosigenes, he felt unable to breathe. He pulled away from Sophia’s voice.
What have I done?
The older man seemed to sense his discomfort and moved aside. Bellus escaped to the table that held the water pitcher and refilled his cup. He drained it, still facing the wall.
The knowledge that Sophia had trusted him with something so precious, to her and to the world, sent his thoughts careening. He felt the clash of duty and friendship keen and sharp in his chest and wished that he could command his emotions as he would his men—marshalling them into line with none outside the boundaries he imposed. It made him angry that he could not.
“Bellus, what is wrong?” Sophia stood behind him.
“Nothing.” He did not turn.
“You have seen enough?”
He could hear the confusion in her voice. “Too much.”
A coldness seemed to grow between them. “Tell me,” she said, “tell me that I have not endangered these men by bringing you here.”
He turned on her. “I will keep your secret, Sophia, but you were foolish to share it. Who am I? I am a Roman centurion.”
She shook her head. “That is not all you truly are. You know this.”
“I know nothing but Rome and duty.”
Her lips formed a line, a hard, straight edge without mercy. “Yes, it was foolish of me to forget. To think that you cared for anything more than war and conquest.”
He reached for her without thought, then caught himself and lowered his arm. “We are here on a military assignment, and what is good for Rome is good for me.” He lifted his chin, hating himself. “Keep your scholars to yourself, and I will tend to my men.”
He set the cup on the table, too hard. The room quieted once more. Bellus looked into the faces of men for whom he had great respect, then pivoted sharply and let himself out of the room.
Behind him, he heard the door swing shut again and lock from the inside.
Twenty-Seven
The days wore on, and Sophia chose to watch the city gird itself for war from the windows that pocked the face of the lighthouse from base to tip. There were rooms at every level as one ascended the spiral ramp, with glass panes that afforded every view of the city, yet kept Sophia remote from all that transpired below.
Including the centuria that marched and drilled and wasted their time.
This morning Sophia took her breakfast tray from Ares and pushed it across her desk.
“You are not hungry?”
Seated with labor charts before her, Sophia kept her back to Ares. “Later,” she said.
“You have not been down in days.”
“You bring me everything I need.”
Ares’s silence spoke much. She turned and frowned. “Yes?”
He shrugged. “I like him.”
She went back to the charts and tore a piece of barley bread from the small loaf. “Who?”
“You know who. The Roman.”
“Yes, you’ve mentioned that.”
“You were going along well there for awhile, reading together in the evenings—”
“Ares!” She stood, arms crossed. “My evenings are of no concern—”
“I have been talking to the old man.”
She sighed. “Now what?”
“He tells me that you were not always this way.”
“You weary me, Ares.” Sophia dropped to her chair again.
“He tells me that when you were young, you were carefree, happy. He said that you could always make him laugh.”
Sophia scowled. “I’m sure you found this quite astounding.”
“No. I asked him what would make you happy again.”
Sophia brushed crumbs across her chart with careful fingers, amassing a tiny pile. “And what did he say?”
“He said that you must believe that you are loved, even if you do not deserve it.”
“Ha!” She flicked the crumbs to the floor. “Sosigenes believes his god of love should spread his sentiments to everyone else. A pretty notion, but wholly untenable.”
“He says that you have been under the curse of sorrow for so long, you have forgotten how to be happy.”
Sophia eyed him narrowly. “Sosigenes should focus on his calculations and numbers and leave my heart to the physicians.”
Ares shrugged. “He seems wise to me.”
“He talks too much.”
“Still,” Ares said, and Sophia huffed. “Still, I see how the Roman speaks to you, how he watches you when you walk across the Base or attend to matters in the kitchen.”
Sophia rubbed at an invisi
ble spot on her chitôn. “Does he? Watch me, I mean?”
“Always.” She could hear the smile in Ares’s voice.
“Then the Roman should be instructed in appropriate behavior.” She waved Ares away, then stared at the closed door when he had left.
They would be drilling in the courtyard. She waited until Ares would have reached the Base and moved on to other duties, then crept from her room and descended to the first south-facing room.
The small space was overfilled with old pots, many cracked and tipped. Sophia twisted through the mess to the blurry window and pressed her forehead hard against the pane.
Indeed, in the courtyard below, eighty soldiers formed ten tight lines of eight. A solid block of belonging, far below her lonely perch. And in front, one man whom she would have recognized even if he hadn’t stood apart.
It had been days since he had left her with the scholars. They had passed each other, been courteous. That was all. Their camaraderie had been lost that day, and she did not understand the reason.
Enough.
She picked her way out of the room, ran lightly down the rest of the ramp, and emerged in the courtyard, blinking against the sun and panting. The troops stood in their formation with their backs to her. Bellus still commanded from the front, but too many bodies blocked her view of him.
The courtyard smelled of the peculiar soldiers’ odor of leather and sweat, which she was coming to recognize, and seemed almost as familiar as the scent of sand and salt and fish she knew so well.
Bellus yelled out “Incedo dextro!” The men yelled “Dextro!” in response, and then the block swung right and marched, their sandals kicking up dry sand in the courtyard.
When the area before her had cleared, Sophia crossed to the other side. Bellus’s back was to her as he marched along with his troops. She watched him march, and the V of muscles in his calves looked as solid as his shield. The centuria reached the other end of the courtyard, Bellus gave a shout of “Incedo sinistro!” and they pivoted and faced her.
Sophia lifted her chin to the oncoming horde, though she noticed no one but Bellus, whose face betrayed his surprise.
Still they marched.
Sophia held her ground. When he was only a few inches from her, Bellus shouted “Desino!” and the group took two more solid steps and ceased their movement as one.
“Did you come to witness the finest army in the world, mistress?” Bellus asked. “Or was there something else?”
Sophia smiled serenely, and hoped it communicated a certain haughtiness. “Your men spend much time in the sand. And then track it all over my lighthouse on the bottoms of their sandals. Unless you have servants of your own to clean up after them, I will thank you to have them clean their shoes before entering the Base.”
It was a minor irritation, one she had settled on as she ran down the ramp. Her heart beat a little unevenly at the contrived complaint. “Or perhaps,” she added, raising her voice, “you would like one of my servants to show you how to sweep out the corridors?”
The ripple of amusement that ran through the men did not go unnoticed by Bellus. His face darkened. “I apologize most sincerely for the carelessness of my men. In the future I will instruct them to leave every grain of sand in the courtyard where they found it.”
Sophia rubbed the back of her neck, frustrated with his composure. “I would not want to tax the men unduly, knowing how accustomed to leisure you have allowed them to become.”
Bellus’s eyes went from dark to stormy then, and she silently congratulated herself. He grabbed her arm without a word and dragged her to the courtyard entrance.
She said nothing as he pulled her. His fingers were hot on her skin. He yanked her through the doorway, and several feet down the stone corridor, then spun and faced her.
“What do you think you are doing?” His voice was low and threatening, and a sheen of sweat had broken over his brow, dampening the curl that always teased at his right eye. He still held her, and his fingers dug into her arm like bands of iron. He stepped closer. “Not in front of my men, Sophia. Never in front of my men.”
Sophia tried to pull away. He gripped her a moment longer, then shoved her from him. She smoothed her chitôn. “Why are you angry with me?”
“Why?” He paced before her. “You parade across our drills, accuse me—”
“Not today. Since—since I showed you—”
He held up a hand. “I have not been angry. But I am here with a mission, Sophia. It was foolish of me to get caught up in books and conversation.”
“Conversation with me.”
“Yes, with you! Who else?”
She turned away, wrapped her arms across her chest. “You would not feel that way if I were young and beautiful.” The words spilled out, and then she hated herself for them.
Behind her, Bellus groaned. “What kind of madness is this?”
She did not turn.
“Women,” he muttered, “I am through with you all.” She heard the crispness of papyrus pulled from his tunic and faced him again.
He used the back of his hand to swipe the dark curl from his eye.
She would trim that curl if he asked.
“There,” he said, and threw a flattened roll of papyrus to the stone between them. “Read that if you want to see how a beautiful woman behaves!”
He stared at her for one long moment, then brushed past her to the courtyard doorway.
“And then, by Jupiter, let me do what I came here to do!”
Twenty-Eight
Sophia read his letter. She read it once, with a hasty desperation, then again with deliberate focus, scraping every bit of meaning from its loopy flourishes.
Hours later, the letter still rested on her desk in her darkening chambers. Sophia did not bother to dress the lamps around the room. A tiny wick in alabaster pooled light in a lonely circle on her desk, bleeding onto the edge of Bellus’s letter. Sophia sat before it, no longer needing to study the words. They had burned across her mind hours ago.
She touched the papyrus with a fingertip.
See, I have written to you on your Egyptian papyrus, Lucius. Is this piece not lovely? You would laugh to hear the story of my finding it in the marketplace. I had gone that morning to search out the newest fabrics from the East . . .
Valeria. She talked of fine robes, of glittering jewelry, of feasting and dancing in the triclinium of her father’s house.
A beautiful woman, Bellus had said. Yes, and it radiated from every line, written in her own hand, in large and confident letters.
The oil lamp sputtered and nearly died. The circle of light shrank, leaving the letter in darkness. And Sophia as well.
A pervasive and heavy silence weighted her chambers tonight. Though it was earlier than her usual time, she stirred, thinking to continue her worthless vigil in her bed, with the coverlet drawn over her head. The two months of the Proginosko’s testing were beginning to seem a lifetime, and with the constant threat of Roman violence hanging above the city, even the air seemed weary with waiting.
But the door burst inward without warning.
Sophia swung in her chair, then stood. She could not mistake the figure outlined in the doorway, even in the darkness.
“Cleopatra!”
The queen of Egypt paused, panting.
“Why do you insist on keeping yourself so far above the city, Sophia? I am ready to collapse from merely reaching your door.”
Sophia crossed the room and led the woman to her couches. When Cleopatra dropped herself heavily onto one of them, Sophia used a reed to light a low brazier near the wall. The bowl flamed to life and a hazy smoke wafted upward.
Cleopatra wore robes of scarlet tonight, and she lay like a red gash against Sophia’s white couch. She had belted her robe with gold, and a string of gold pieces was woven through her abundant hair, in the Greek fashion. But around her neck she wore the royal pectoral of gold links that had graced the throats of Egyptian Pharaohs through the millennia.
Sophia was struck once again by the strength and beauty she exuded and glanced in the direction of Bellus’s letter. Her own tunic seemed a dirty gray, and her hair too short to braid anything.
She dropped to her knees beside Cleo’s couch and laid her head on the young woman’s arm.
“Sophia,” Cleopatra said, “are you ill?”
“In my spirit only.”
Cleopatra sighed. “As am I. There has been word from the army.”
Sophia lifted her head. “In Pelusium?”
“No longer, I am afraid. They march this way.”
“Achillas will attack the city?”
Cleopatra laid her head onto the cushions and rested the back of her hand on her forehead. “Achillas is dead. My sister Arsinôe had him murdered and has placed her tutor Ganymedes as general. But Pothinus has convinced them to join with those loyal to my brother, and the whole army marches toward Alexandria to reinstate Ptolemy on the throne.”
“And Caesar still holds Ptolemy?”
“Yes, the brat is being ‘protected’ in the palace, under guard.” She closed her eyes. “Sophia, I am afraid.”
Sophia stroked the girl’s arm. “Caesar will not allow you any harm.”
“I hope you are right.” Her eyes flicked open and she caught Sophia’s gaze. “I carry his child.”
Sophia exhaled, as though the breath had been struck from her chest.
Cleopatra smiled. “Nothing to say, my teacher?”
“I am certain you act as you see best.” Sophia moved to another couch and reclined.
Cleopatra swung her legs to the floor. “Yes, I do. My father’s foolishness left Egypt too indebted to Rome to ignore, and too weak to fight her off. We must ally ourselves with the Romans. Caesar will be their ruler when he has finished his campaigns, I know it. And what better way to ally Egypt to Rome than to bear a child who will have one foot in each of the two great kingdoms?”
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