The Divining

by Wood, Barbara

  When he heard the door, he muttered, "Go back to sleep, son, I'm all right," knowing that Nestor would worry about his father.

  But instead of mumbling his incomprehensible, "Yes, Papa, good-night," Nestor remained standing in the doorway.

  Timonides turned to frown at him. Nestor was grinning, and in his right hand he clutched a sack.

  "What's that then, eh?" Timonides said, eyeing the sack. "What do you have there?"

  Nestor's child-grin widened as he lifted the sack. "Reeka," he said with delight.

  Timonides waddled up to him, cursing leeks, innkeeper's wives, winter nights, and life in general. "A gift for Ulrika? At this hour?"

  He held out his hand, wondering what the boy had gotten into now—Nestor had a penchant for bringing flowers for Ulrika, or colored pebbles—and took the sack, thinking it held a melon of some sort, by the weight and shape.

  Praying the boy hadn't stolen it, and that Timonides wouldn't have to find the owner in the morning, and explain things, he opened the sack and peered in, wrinkling his nose, letting his eyes adjust to the dim light in the room. "What—" he began. Narrowed his eyes. Brought the sack closer. "I don't..."

  And then—

  Timonides cried out.

  He dropped the sack and tripped backwards to land on his buttocks. "Nestor!" he cried. "Nestor! What have you done?"

  For Nestor's gift was the head of Bessas, the holy man whom all of Antioch revered.

  14

  I

  T WAS A LONG moment before a stunned Timonides could scramble to his feet. And then it was to rush to the small window, throw open the shutters, and thrust his head out in time to vomit down to the street below. He broke out in a cold sweat and let the night air revive him.

  The head of Bessas ...

  What had possessed Nestor?

  His mind reeling, Timonides closed his eyes and tried to think. As sweat poured from his face and dripped from his nose—as wave after wave of nausea hit him—he recalled words he had spoken earlier by the fire: "My master should just pluck the bastard's head from his neck and scoop the information out!"

  And there sat Nestor with his knack for two things: taking words literally, and always wanting to please. Especially Ulrika.

  "By the stars," Timonides whispered, feeling the leeks swim in his belly and come up again. He vomited twice more before he could bring his head inside, and then it was to worry that his scream might have been heard. But the mudbrick walls of the inn were thick. Had he disturbed the others, he would have known by now. But the night continued on in its objective silence, and Timonides was alone with a monstrous problem on his hands.

  A problem that grew in size and proportion as several facts began to sink in: primarily, that Sebastianus had said Bessas was believed to have brought luck to people.

  And people didn't take kindly to holy men getting their heads cut off.

  As the immensity of Nestor's act began to sink in, Timonides felt his bones and muscles melt. He feared he was going to faint. But he had to maintain a stout heart and a clear head. What was he going to do?

  They will be coming for my son ...

  For it was certain that Nestor, who continued to stand there smiling, oblivious of what he had done, would surely not have been careful to go about his grisly task unseen, nor would he have covered his traces. Knowing Nestor, he might have even shown his "gift" to a passerby! The hue and cry could be out at that moment, the guards of the night watch stamping down the street that very minute, to take Nestor away for certain execution.

  Timonides's legs gave way and he slumped to the floor. They will crucify my son ...

  AS HE WATCHED HIS FATHER take a seat on the floor, Nestor thought of the gift he had just brought, and was thoroughly delighted with himself. He hadn't done it for his father, it was for the lady with the sunlight hair.

  Nestor loved Reeka and would do anything for her, she talked to him so soothingly, calming him, telling him that everything was going to be all right. He loved her voice. It caressed his inside mind. Like a mother's touch.

  He giggled when he looked at the sack on the floor. In the simple mechanisms of his mind, Nestor had discerned that Papa and Uncle Sebastianus were looking for a pool. They hoped to take Reeka there, to make her happy. But Papa and Uncle Sebastianus had seemed to be having a hard time finding the pool, and there was a man who knew where it was, but he wasn't telling. Papa said it could be scooped from his brain. Uncle Sebastianus had said the man lived in a hut near the big statue of Daphne. Nestor remembered the statue because it looked so comical, a woman with tree branches growing out of her hair. Papa needed to scoop the pool from the man's brain, so here it was!

  A gift for Reeka, the lady with the sunlight hair.

  LIFTING HIS WEARY HEAD, Timonides looked up at his son, still standing in the doorway with a smile on his face, and Timonides felt his heart break into a million pieces.

  He suddenly felt big and lumpy and stupid, this astrologer who could read the messages in the stars with such precision that he could advise a fellow on whether to choose beans or lentils for supper—a man who could lift his face to the dark bowl of night, pick out Venus, and tell you exactly where she would be in an hour, in a month—a man who could close his eyes and point directly at red, distant Mars while other men would be searching wide-eyed and saying, "Where is it?"

  A man of precision and control, and yet whose life had just unraveled into the myriad fibers that had made up its fabric.

  This is it, he thought in weary surrender. This is the catastrophe that was foretold. And it is all my fault. I brought this about. I used the stars and my sacred calling for my own personal gain. I wanted to keep the girl and her healing skills at my side, and in so doing brought calamity to myself and my master's house. I alone can fix it.

  And there was only one way. Timonides the astrologer had to lie again.

  My punishment, he thought, for having lied in the first place. And the punishment, ironically, was that he was doomed to continue to lie. He could never, for as long as he lived, tell Sebastianus the truth of what had happened tonight.

  Hoisting his bulk from the floor, he searched the cold night for a plan. They must leave the city at once and be well away before the magistrate was able to determine the identity of the cold-blooded killer of Bessas the holy hermit. It will be easy to convince Sebastianus to move at a quick pace. He always obeys the stars—

  Timonides groaned as he suddenly remembered Ulrika. He could not let her come along, for Nestor would continue to commit crimes to please her.

  I will tell her that I have done her chart and found that her mother is living in Jerusalem.

  Sebastianus will ask about Bessas. I will tell him that the hermit is not to be trusted.

  Telling Nestor to go to bed, assuring him that his gift was good and that Papa was pleased, Timonides went to his travel pack to bring out his box of charts and instruments. The old astrologer felt the weight of the world on his back. He did not want to do this—he did not want to lie again, to blaspheme and commit sacrilege, to outrage the gods and bring their wrath upon his head. But he had no choice. He must save his son, even at the risk of his own immortal soul.

  When he had cradled Nestor as a baby, Timonides had learned a primal truth: that it was not the parent who created the child, but the child who created the parent. And while others saw a simpleton, Timonides the believer in the transmigration of souls looked beyond the homely features and thought of the migrant soul that might lurk behind them. Perhaps Nestor possessed the reincarnated soul of the greatest philosopher who ever lived.

  Either way, precious son or great philosopher, Timonides could not let him be executed.

  Lighting a lamp, Timonides got down to the business of casting his master's horoscope, hoping to find some truth to mix in with the falsehood. He did not go through his usual ritual of bathing and praying and changing into clean robes, for the lie would only make him filthy again.

  But as Timoni
des went through his calculations, wrote down figures and degrees and angles, noted sun signs and moon houses, as Antioch slept and the stars wheeled overhead unconcerned with the star-reader at the Inn of the Blue Peacock who perspired over his equations and numbers, he saw a new and unexpected indicator emerge.

  He froze. Whispered an oath. Rubbed his sweating face. Picked up his pen and re-calculated.

  Finally Timonides sat back in shock. There was no question: the aspects of the progressing and transiting planets to that of Sebastianus's birth planet definitely indicated a new direction for him! The gods, through their precise arrangement of heavenly bodies, were crisply clear in their new message: Sebastianus was to take a turn southward from Antioch—he and Ulrika were now both to take a southern journey together.

  Timonides closed his eyes and swallowed with a dry throat. Calamity upon calamity! His doom was sealed, for not only was he going to falsify a horoscope, he was now going to disobey the unmistakable, divine message in the stars.

  Sick at heart, but knowing he had no choice, and that they were running out of time, Timonides hurried across the hall to pound loudly on his master's door.

  ULRIKA WAS NOT ASLEEP when the knock sounded at her door. She had been awakened earlier by a cry, and she had lain in the darkness trying to discern if it had been real or dreamed. And then she had heard muffled voices, a spell of silence, followed by footsteps across the hall, a banging on a door, and more muffled voices, but loud this time and sounding urgent.

  She had been about to get out of bed to see what the trouble was, when a knock announced someone at her door, and she opened it now to find Sebastianus on the other side. Clearly roused from sleep, he had hastily thrown a cloak over his shoulders, and underneath he wore only a loincloth.

  When he stared at her for a moment, Ulrika became aware of her own lack of clothing. She wore only a night dress—a thin shift that reached her knees—and her hair was undone and tumbled over her breasts. She felt naked.

  Collecting himself, Sebastianus said, "Ulrika, Timonides says your mother is in Jerusalem."

  "My mother! What—"

  The astrologer pushed his way through, waving a sheet of papyrus. "Yes yes, there is no doubt of it. Your mother is there, living with friends."

  She blinked, looked from Sebastianus to the astrologer. "But why are you doing a reading at this hour? And why my—"

  Timonides spoke rapidly. "A dream woke me up, ordering me to look out my window, where I saw a star streak across the sky. I knew this was a message that I must cast my master's horoscope, and there it was! A new message from the gods. My master is to leave Antioch at once for Babylon and you are to go to Jerusalem."

  "We did live for a while in Jerusalem," Ulrika said, "in the house of a woman named Elizabeth."

  "Yes yes," Timonides said as he shambled out of the room, talking as he left, "you must go at once to Jerusalem, reach your mother before she leaves. The house of Elizabeth ..."

  Timonides's voice faded down the corridor, and Ulrika found herself alone with Sebastianus, their eyes meeting in the dim light, unspoken words on their lips.

  "My mother can help me," Ulrika heard herself say, breathless at the sight of Sebastianus's bare chest, glimpsed between the folds of his disarrayed cloak, wondering why she wasn't more excited by the astrologer's news. "She will tell me where Shalamandar is, and the Crystal Pools."

  "I will take you to Jerusalem—"

  Ulrika placed her fingertips on his lips. "No, Sebastianus, you are to continue eastward. You must depart at dawn, as the stars command."

  They fell silent, held by the night and by their mutual desire. Longing burned in their eyes, and each knew the other's yearning. But both were bound by duty and oaths spoken long before Sebastianus and Ulrika had ever met.

  He found his voice. "I will send Syphax and a contingent of men with you so that you are well protected."

  "Thank you," she said, thinking that once again this strong and powerful man had come to her rescue. Ulrika knew Syphax, a stony-faced Numidian from the northern coast of Africa who hired himself out as a bodyguard and mercenary. He had escorted and protected Sebastianus's caravans for six years, and she knew he could be trusted.

  Sebastianus added, "He will see that you are safely delivered into your mother's care in Jerusalem." He looked at her for another long moment, and then on an impulse took her by the shoulders, drew her close, and said in a husky voice, "Ulrika, all going well and the gods willing, I will arrive in Babylon within six weeks. I plan not to depart for the Far East until the festival of the summer solstice, for the day after is the most propitious day in the year to begin a long journey. After you find your mother and learn the whereabouts of Shalamandar, join me in Babylon. I shall wait until the last possible moment before departing for China."

  "Yes," she whispered. "I will join you in Babylon." She reached up to touch Sebastianus's jaw, and when her fingertips met the fine, bronze-colored stubble of his beard, she saw—

  Sebastianus frowned. "What is it?"

  Ulrika opened her mouth but couldn't speak.

  He waited, wondering if she were receiving a vision. He had witnessed it before, had seen her delicate nostrils flare, her pupils dilate. The color left her face, and the skin at her temples grew taut.

  Outside, over the sleeping city of Antioch, a cloud sailed across the moon and bright stars, plunging the rooms of the inn into darkness. Momentarily blinded, Sebastianus and Ulrika felt their other senses heighten. Sebastianus felt Ulrika's warm skin beneath his hands as he continued to hold her shoulders, making him think of the softness of swans and mist. Ulrika smelled the rain still on him, reminding her of verdant forests and meadows. He heard her gentle respirations. She felt his warmth.

  And then the cloud sailed on, like a great trireme across the ocean of night, and starlight washed once more into the small room at the inn. Sebastianus saw a pale, feminine face. She saw eyes the color of a meadow.

  "There is treachery in your party," she finally said. "One of your men, who is close to you, will betray you."

  "Who? Which one?"

  "I do not know. I cannot see his face."

  The truth was, there was no face to see, for it was not a true vision that had just visited her, but a feeling. As her fingertips had touched Sebastianus's face, the most overwhelming sense of disappointment and disillusionment swept over her. Utter betrayal. Like a physical blow, and it was going to knock the spirit out of Sebastianus Gallus.

  "Is it perhaps one of Primo's recruits?"

  She shook her head. "He is a friend."

  "I trust all who are close to me," he said, "but I also trust you, Ulrika, and your instincts. And so I will be careful and watchful. We will say farewell in the morning, when we depart at the caravanserai."

  Ulrika watched him cross the hall and slip into his own room. Closing her door, she stayed with her back to it and whispered to the gods, "Please take care of this man. Watch over him. Bring him safely back to me."

  Sebastianus didn't even have to knock. Ulrika already knew he had come back, that he stood now on the other side of her door. She opened it and there he was, the cloak gone, bare chest and arms exposed, a look of hunger and uncertainty on his face. He held out his hand and Ulrika saw the scallop shell from an ancient altar in Galicia. "Take this," he said. "It holds great power."

  She took the shell, vowing to wear it always.

  "I need to touch you," he whispered.

  She looked up into his eyes and felt them embrace her, draw her inside, into his mind and heart. "And I, you," she said.

  They reached for each other at the same time, arms gliding perfectly against each other, slipping into and around the right places, with Ulrika delivering herself into a refuge she had yearned for and Sebastianus drawing a sweetness to himself that he had hungered for. Their mouths met in heat and passion. Each tasted the other. Hands hurriedly explored, grasped, kneaded. Words came whispered breathlessly through clenched lips: "I want—" "I ne
ed—" "You are—" "We are—"

  Ulrika pressed herself to Sebastianus and felt his hardness. She burst into flame, or so it felt, her skin so hot now and damp and wanting to be devoured by the Galician's mouth. And Sebastianus wanted to delve into her, to join his body and life force to hers, to become part of her, making her part of him.

  But then they heard a crash, and heavy footfall, and the grumpy voice of Timonides in the next room as he was apparently packing his bags and complaining, and speaking very loudly of the urgency with which they must be going.

  Reluctantly, Sebastianus drew back. "It seems we are not to know a moment alone together," he said, glancing toward the wall which almost vibrated with the energy of the astrologer's industry. "Timonides meant it when he said the stars have commanded us to hurry."

  Why? she wanted to ask, hating the feel of his withdrawal, the cold air that rushed between them, the awful emptiness that now filled her arms. And the burning of her lips, the tingling on her tongue. She did not want to stop.

  "Ulrika," Sebastianus said as he drew her close one last time, "I want to stay with you, be with you. But Timonides is right. I must go. To love you and to enjoy your love in return—such a privilege and luxury cannot be mine, not now that I am under Caesar's command."

  He bent and kissed her forehead.

  "Ulrika, Ulrika," he said, filling his mouth with her name. "It is said that Eros, the god of love and desire, is continually taking humans apart and putting them back together. And it is true! My former self has been utterly shattered and re-shaped. The man I once was, so guarded in his feelings, so in control of his heart, no longer exists. Why Eros singled me out for this particular joy, I do not know, but I still firmly hold that I am not deserving of it.

  "I do not want to leave you! But I must do as the stars dictate, for it is the will of the gods. No man can defy his stars, for they map out his destiny. This I believe most passionately and with all my heart: there is an order to the universe. And if the gods deem we not join again in Babylon, then I pray that you find what you are looking for, and the answers to the mysteries within yourself. And when I come back from China, and surely I will for the stars have promised, I will search for you, and I will find you, my dearest Ulrika."