Bellus had run uphill in many a battle. The burning of the calves, the thighs, the breath sucking hard in his chest—it was all familiar. Yet he was not many cubits up the ramp before he was forced to slow, to admit that he had never climbed a hill like this one.
You will never make it at this pace, old man.
He steadied to an even march on the balls of his feet, switching the torch to the other hand and following the uneven glow it cast ahead.
He passed Sophia’s private chamber without a pause. She was not there, he knew from Ares. But the sight of it was like a blow to his chest all the same. He climbed to quench a light that she had dedicated her life to keeping lit. She would never forgive him.
His breath came hard, chest heaving, throat burning. Still he climbed.
He reached the first platform, where her roses gleamed in the moonlight, tumbled together like pink and white shells on dark sand. He rested a moment there, let the memories, hot and painful, hurt him further.
Then upward, winding around the second tier on a narrow flight of wooden steps. He had never been this high.
The third tier, a circular structure half the height of the second, also had steps. He slowed and crept upward on silent feet. The fire was never left untended, Sophia had told him. How many would there be?
He paused, intending to draw his sword, then checked the impulse. These were Sophia’s servants, not enemy soldiers.
The steps ended on a small platform, barely enough room to stand, with a doorway to the beacon chamber. Low conversation came from within.
At least two, unless one has gone crazy with solitude.
He stuffed the torch into another wall socket, and cringed at the scrape of it against the stone. He took a deep breath and breeched the doorway, arms tense and hands curled into fists.
Two indeed.
They straightened from their crouch beside the flames, eyes wide.
In a single glance, honed by years of training, he took in the age, the build, the attitude of each, along with the surroundings.
They were boys, afraid of the battle raging below, afraid of the Roman in their tower. The fire was smaller than he expected. There was little on the platform aside from the pile of fuel, some pots, and what was probably the boys’ provisions for their shift.
All this he saw in the instant that the two boys backed away.
“We are taking the lighthouse!” he shouted, hoping to intimidate further. “If you value your lives, you will find a place to hide!” He shifted to his right, clearing a path to the doorway.
One boy, the younger of the two, darted around the fire and disappeared through the door. The other seemed caught between duty and fear.
“The light cannot go out,” he said, his lip trembling.
Bellus stalked around the central flame, summoning up a murderous glare and drawing his sword.
The boy’s eyes widened in terror. He ran around the other side of the fire and took to the steps.
Bellus sheathed his sword, greatly relieved that he had not been forced to use it. He took stock of the platform. The fire crackled over the charred pieces of wood that had been brought up on the lift, and turned the dung chips to glowing embers. The chamber smelled of the fuel and of the smoke that curled upward through a small opening in the roof. He followed it to where it obscured the stars. The entire chamber was walled with windows, and he allowed himself only a brief glimpse at the harbor so terrifyingly far below. The boats, the water, even the fires, seemed to belong to another world. He turned back to his task.
Though Sophia had explained that the curved bronze mirror on a track around the fire was responsible for magnifying the flames, it still surprised him to see how small the fire was. To think that this whole mighty structure upon which he stood, a wonder among nations, existed solely to house a fire sufficient for cooking only a few pheasants at a time!
But it was a testimony to the ingenuity of man, to make much out of so little.
And now he must kill it.
He searched the platform for the means, and found, not surprisingly, two huge pots of water standing ready for an emergency. He dragged them both to the edge of the burnt-brick pit that housed the fire, then sat back on his haunches and took a deep breath.
Do it, Bellus. You must.
He put his hands to the pots, but then looked into the flames and saw Sophia’s eyes, deep and angry, staring back. He felt physically sick.
And then he tipped them forward.
Water gushed from the clay, poured over the fire, pooled in the pit. The flames sizzled, trying angrily to consume the water. Were consumed themselves instead.
Only a few embers remained. They would not glow for long.
Bellus righted the pots clumsily. One tipped and fell. He slumped beside it, smoke and pain burning his eyes.
Had the fire glowed every night since before Sophia’s birth?
He feared somehow that the death of the fire signaled a death for Sophia as well.
Forty-Five
The color was returning to Sosigenes’s cheeks. Sophia knelt beside him, her hand on his arm, while Diogenes finished tending his cut and twisted bandages around his neck. She glanced toward the door every few seconds, waiting.
“I must look the fool,” Sosigenes croaked, eliciting a laugh of relief from his group of friends.
Ares slipped into the room and Sophia jumped to her feet and crossed to meet him at the door.
“He did not come with me,” Ares said, shaking his head. “He climbed the tower.”
Sophia looked upward, as though she could trace his path.
“I told Bellus I would take him to you.” Ares’s voice was strained. “I don’t know why he didn’t follow.”
“He is here for the light, Ares. Not for me.”
“He cares for you, Sophia—”
She smiled and drew him to the wall. “Leave Bellus to his work.” Her breathing grew rapid and shallow, her throat tight. “We have other things to speak of.”
She had kept her hand on his arm. He looked to it and then back to her face, his expression open but puzzled.
“Ares,” she began, and her voice caught. “I—I have something to tell you.” Tears rose, choked her throat, spilled to her cheeks.
“Sophia!” Ares held both her arms now. “What is it? Tell me.”
She was sobbing now, trying to stop it, trying to speak, to unveil the truth, the impossible truth. “Pothinus,” she managed to whisper.
Ares’s grip on her arms tightened. “Did he harm you?”
She shook her head. “He told me something. Something I never knew.”
“He would say anything to hurt you, Sophia. Do not—”
“No, no. He thought I knew. He—he didn’t know—” She covered her mouth, felt the tears drip over her hand.
Ares was nearly crying now himself, and he pulled Sophia to his chest.
“Ares,” she sobbed, her voice muffled against him. “Ares, you are my son.”
He pulled back, looked down on her, wiped her face with his hand. “Sophia?” His voice was a whisper, as though he dared not take her words for their apparent meaning.
She blinked up at him and brushed tears from her chin. Her shoulders heaved. “I have never told you all of it. How I lost my baby and my husband in one night, to a storm at sea.” She was stroking his arm now, unconscious of the gesture. “We were shipwrecked. My family, Sosigenes, Pothinus. All of us. I was washed up on Antikythera, along with some others. Pothinus found his way to Crete. My husband and my baby—I never knew where the sea had taken their bodies.” The last words came with laughter, and Ares pulled her close again, as though certain she had lost her mind.
She pulled away, her heart racing. “Listen to me, Ares. My baby—he did not die as I thought. A sailor rescued him, one with a disfigured face. Weeks later, that same sailor, he came at night to the lighthouse.”
Ares studied her eyes, falling into the spell of her story.
“I did not k
now why he came that night, but now I know. He came to bring my baby back to me.” She gripped his arms.
“I do not understand. What became of your son?”
She smiled through the tears. “A servant woman claimed him as her own. Made me believe she had hidden her pregnancy. I thought the dreadful man I had seen that night was her lover.”
Ares swallowed and took a step backward, his eyes dark and his own breathing shallow now.
Those eyes. How did I never see how like Kallias’s they were?
“That servant’s name was Eleni, Ares. She claimed you as her own. She—she took you from me, my own son. My own son.” The tears fell afresh, matched this time by the tears of her baby boy who stood before her, tall and strong and so much alive.
And then he was in her arms at last, and the pain and the loneliness and the isolation fell away in an embrace that bore the sorrow of twenty years and the hope of the future.
Sosigenes was there beside them then, smiling in happy confusion at master and servant. Sophia laughed and cried at once and pulled him into their circle.
“Sosigenes,” she said, taking his hand and the hand of Ares together, “I would like you to meet my son. Leonidas.”
Ares’s blinked at the unfamiliar name. She laughed again with the wondrous irony of the name’s meaning. “Yes, son of the lion. But we will call you Ares, I think. Warrior. Your father would have liked that.”
Sosigenes still smiled but glanced between the two. “I do not understand—”
“I barely understand it myself, my friend,” she said, and then retold her story with more laughter than tears this time. When it was done they embraced again, all three.
And for one accustomed to isolation, Sophia found herself unable to let go of these two precious ones.
“Sophia,” Ares finally said, pulling away, then laughed and shook his head. “Mother,” he whispered, causing Sophia’s tears to flow again. “What of the Romans? Of Bellus?”
She breathed deeply. “I told you, Ares. He is here because of the light, under Caesar’s orders no doubt.”
Ares shook his head. “I do not know his intent, but I can tell you that he is here for you.”
She dismissed the thought with a shake of her head.
They stood huddled together, and now Ares and Sosigenes faced her, each with a hand on her arm.
“Sophia,” Sosigenes said, “I do not know if the boy—if your son—is right about the Roman. But I do know that your heart has only begun to open here. There is more, much more.”
She swallowed and tried to catch her breath.
“You can feel it, Sophia, I know you can. The lady of the lighthouse is beginning to know what it means to find a community with others. You must embrace it fully now.”
Sophia tried to pull away, but the two would not allow it. Her mouth had gone dry and her hands trembled.
“Who else, Sophia? Who else is calling you to relationship?” Sosigenes eyes were twin fires, burning into her soul.
She thought of all he had taught her. “Your God,” she whispered, a tiny bit of belief taking root.
“Yes, my dear girl.” He touched her cheek. “And you must open your heart to His love, to His atonement, to His forgiveness.”
She could barely speak the words, the foundation of all her doubt and fear. Her eyes shifted to the floor and she breathed out the awful truth, feeling its piercing pain. “I do not deserve to be loved.”
Sosigenes smiled and pulled her to himself. “No, my dear Sophia. You do not deserve it. Not one of us does. And that is the glorious wonder of it all.”
Something within her grew still and silent then, as though she had entered a holy place and found that it was her own heart. It had been filled with the words of the Jews’ history and prophecies she had read, with the stories of Sosigenes, which had beaten back all the deadness of her own religion with a living light she saw in the old man’s eyes and heard in his prayers. She nodded, unable to speak, but knowing this was the only way. Only a love that would love her first.
“And I believe,” Sosigenes said, pointing upward, “that another calls you forward as well.”
“He cannot,” she said, too quickly, with a denial borne of instinct.
Ares smiled. “You must find out.”
Sosigenes nodded his agreement. “It is time.”
They each embraced her, as though commissioning her to battle. She felt herself grow numb with fear, stunned at what she contemplated.
“Go,” Ares whispered. “You must go.”
And she did. She crossed the room, opened the door. Slipped from the North Wing, through the courtyard. Found the ramp. Began the climb.
The numbness gave way, leaving every sense heightened. She felt each step, heard the battle that continued in the harbor. She smelled the musty stone of the tower, tasted the salt of her own tears.
And she climbed.
Past her private chamber where she had hidden for so long. Shedding her isolation with each painful step. “The keenest sorrow is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities.”
Yes, she felt that keen sorrow. Felt it swell in devastation through her heart, yet somehow give strength to her climb.
She was nearly to her roses when she heard the yelling.
It bubbled up from below, echoing through the central shaft. They had breached the Base, had entered the tower itself.
She slipped out to her garden platform. The roses were open to the moonlight tonight, their blooms spread wide, so vulnerable and so beautiful. The scent of them drowned all others, as though the city were not filled with smoke.
She stood at the doorway, listening.
The voices below were too muddied together to distinguish words. But they were moving upward. She waited, her heart pounding.
Their shouted conversation grew clear. Greek, with some Egyptian woven through. Not Latin. Not Romans.
But they would find a Roman when they reached the beacon chamber.
She strained to hear. How many?
Two, she thought. Or perhaps three.
She searched the platform for a weapon. An unlit torch. Several heavy terra cotta pots.
Should she yell to warn Bellus? Or remain silent, to attack in surprise? Her hands fluttered in indecision, then settled on the torch.
They would have two tiers to climb after her attack. That should be time enough for Bellus to ready himself.
She waited.
They pounded upward, heedless that she stood outside the door at the top of the ramp, the torch held out from her body like an oily club.
Slap, slap, slap. Their sandals beat an even rhythm. Sophia pictured them circling upward, measured their progress.
She took a deep breath, adjusted her grip on the torch. And then the first came into view.
She swung. And she yelled.
The Egyptian soldier dropped like a stone thrown into the sea.
But it was not a second Egyptian soldier who violated the purity of her rose garden.
The entrance filled with the tall figure and patrician face of Pothinus.
Sophia’s torch dipped. She jerked it aloft again.
“Come, Sophia,” Pothinus said. “We are not brutish soldiers, we are scholars. I have come for the Proginosko and nothing more. No one need be hurt.”
Another soldier appeared behind Pothinus. Sophia raised the torch but he caught the end with both hands and wrenched it from her.
She scowled. “I would sooner let the Romans have it!”
Pothinus laughed. “Yes, one in particular, I hear. But I doubt even the Proginosko could purchase the affections of a Roman for you.”
The truth of his words pierced the vulnerable place in her heart, but still she had hope for the scholars and the Proginosko. She could not defeat Pothinus herself.
But she had opened her lighthouse to another, one who might be their only salvation.
Forty-Six
Cleopatra stood on the roof of the royal palac
e with the harbor and the city burning beneath. Her eyes were not on the flaming ships, however. Nor the riots in the streets, nor even the lighthouse and its yellow flame.
Instead, she watched the man at her side, his chiseled profile fit for sculpture, his shoulders held back and his chest out.
“How goes the battle?” she asked, not taking her eyes from him.
His brow puckered. “We have them running.”
She did not know whether his words were truth or mere bravado. With all the scheming and backstabbing and even royal assassinations she had witnessed in her privileged life, Cleopatra was still unfamiliar with war.
She shifted between overflowing flower pots to get closer to the wall. “The warehouses are burning.”
“Hmm.” Caesar’s response told her nothing.
“So much fire.”
He glanced at her. “Do not blame your burning city on me. Your crazed citizens are the ones shooting their flaming arrows as though they are nothing but children’s toys.”
Cleopatra held her tongue. His mood was dark.
Her mind played with possible outcomes.
If the Romans should fall to the incoming Egyptian army and the city’s mob, would she be able to convince the people of her right to rule alongside her brother? Or would her father’s wishes, his will, be disregarded?
Caesar crossed his arms over his chest and growled at some loss below.
If the Romans crushed the Egyptian army, would Caesar let her stand at his side? After all these weeks together, still she could not be certain of his feelings.
It is all waiting now. Between two armies, her fate hung suspended, uncertain.
She could do nothing now to sway the affections of the people. But she was not powerless. Not by far.
She sidled closer to Caesar, wrapped a warm hand around his upper arm, still crossed and tensed.
“We must finish this tonight,” he said. “The army is close, too close.”
“The Egyptian fleet was foolish to attack without their army in place.”
Caesar laughed, a condescending sort of chuckle that made her shoulders tighten. “Silly girl.”
She realized her mistake. Caesar had engineered the start of the battle early, to weaken the fleet and the city before the army’s arrival. She tossed her hair back over her shoulder and studied the chaos below, breathing so hard she felt her nostrils flare.
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