By Jove

by Marissa Doyle

  “Theodora!” The word filled the room like a trumpet fanfare, bouncing and echoing off the walls. They all turned.

  Julian stood near the main entrance to the Great Room. He wore his academic robes, deep blue with bands of black velvet. They made him look taller and more elegantly handsome than ever. Theo remembered that the commencement ceremonies would be starting shortly.

  “Julian,” she acknowledged in a quiet voice that somehow filled the room even more than his had. He blinked.

  She reached up and squeezed Olivia’s hand before pushing it off her shoulder. “It’s all right,” she reassured her. “I have to talk to him.”

  “No!” Grant said, and pulled her back. “Don’t go near him. He’ll—”

  “He can’t do anything to me, with all of you here. We won fairly, and I’m safe. I’ll shout if I need you.” She kissed him, then walked toward Julian, aware of her dust-smudged clothes and tangled hair. What did they matter? They showed that she’d fought well. What did she care what she looked like in front of him?

  To her surprise, she realized that she didn’t care. That it didn’t matter to her what he thought of her. The thought bolstered her, and she was able to look him squarely in the eyes as she approached him.

  “Theodora,” he said again, when she halted before him.

  “That was a poor trick, trying to make me think you were Olivia down there just now,” she said, shaking her head in reproof.

  “I was desperate. Do you blame me for trying one last time?” he asked.

  “No, I don’t suppose I can. But it was very clumsy. Definitely not up to your usual standards.” Her voice sounded coolly detached, even to her own ears.

  He flushed and held out his hands to her. “Theodora, don’t leave me. I love you. I love you more than I have loved any woman for thousands of years. Didn’t you feel it?” He reached up and touched her cheek.

  Behind her, Theo could sense Grant bristle. She stepped back a pace, and Julian let his hand fall.

  “I can’t deny that I enjoyed parts of our time together. Our dinners this spring were delightful. You can be a charming companion when you choose to be.” She looked down at her scuffed sneakers.

  “I love you, Theodora. You were destined to be mine. I want you by my side as my wife, bearing my sons, creating a new future—”

  “Destined? Me? Oh, really, Julian, even you said that the oracles and auguries were a sham. Come on, tell me. Why choose me as your consort? What did I have that set me apart from all the thousands of other women you’ve known over the last thousand or two years? I sincerely doubt it was my looks.” She folded her arms on her chest and stared at him.

  “Because you’re beautiful and intelligent and unique—”

  “The truth, please, Julian.”

  “Don’t you believe me?” he asked, looking wounded.

  “No, I’m afraid I don’t. Come on, Julian. Give honesty a chance. You might like it.” She was actually starting to enjoy this.

  “Don’t be sarcastic, darling. It doesn’t become you.” He sighed. “When you walked into my office that first day, I wanted you. I would never lie about that. I found you intriguing and desirable. But I didn’t do anything about it at first. These infatuations can come and go. But this one didn’t go, so I did a little research on you. Have you heard about the genealogy database maintained by the LDS in Utah? The database we maintain here makes theirs look amateurish. We’ve been at it a lot longer than they have, after all. And I found that you do indeed have some very interesting forebears.”

  This was not what she had expected. “So? Who?” Then she remembered. No way. It couldn’t be. Daddy’s story about Constantine was just a story. Why, Mom was sure he’d made up the whole thing.

  “No, he didn’t.” Julian replied as if she’d spoken out loud. “You, my dear, are a descendent of the late lamented Emperor Constantine of Rome, the first imperial convert to the new religion, the man who brought about my downfall. Before he became emperor, Constantine spent several years as an army officer in England. While he was there he had an affair with a beautiful red-headed Briton who bore him a son. This son inherited his mother’s light coloring. The general’s pulcher puer, he was called. Constantine’s fair child. Though the language has changed several times, the meaning of his name survived to this day.”

  Theo digested this information. Daddy would be thrilled, but…“So Constantine was my umpteenth-great-grandfather. That was centuries ago. He’s got tens of thousands of descendants after sixteen hundred years. So why me? What difference did that make?”

  “A great deal. I desired you; the more I saw of you, the greater my desire grew. Would it not be divine justice for a descendent of my vanquisher to be the means of my renewal? For Constantine’s daughter, though many times removed, to bear Zeus’s sons?” He smiled, a tight unpleasant smile.

  She slowly shook her head. “So that’s what it was? A chance for petty revenge on a dead enemy?”

  “No, Theodora. Not revenge. More like—the completion of a circle. Our sons will one day right the wrongs one of their forefathers did to me, and once again I will take my proper place in the world. Come, my beloved.” He held his hands out to her once more.

  Theo felt Grant come to stand close behind her, felt his hands on her shoulders drawing her back. “No, Julian,” he said softly. “That’s a nice story, but it’s only one-tenth of the truth. You didn’t give a damn about revenging yourself on Constantine—the writing was already on the wall for you by the time he declared for the Christ. He was just the last straw. No. You wanted Theo because I loved her too.”

  Julian didn’t speak, but seemed all at once to swell in size, to tower over them, blocking the clear sunlight streaming down from the high windows.

  “Why not?” His voice echoed through the room as he locked eyes with Grant. “You took what belonged to me too many times to count—my due part of the sacrifice…my fire…my rightful place in the hearts of men. Yes, they always loved and respected you, even if they didn’t build you temples. They didn’t need to, because you existed in their hearts. And you didn’t care, because you were always so pig-headedly noble and selfless. But when Theodora came along, suddenly you cared about human love. When I discovered that it was you here in my very home again, I cursed you…and then I laughed. I’d found the perfect way to get back at you.”

  “Ah. So that would explain your declarations of undying love for me,” Theo put in. “I had wondered about that, you know. Look, Grant is tired and so am I. We want to go home. You lost.” She leaned back against Grant and felt his arms encircle her. “Oh. Before I forget. I believe this is yours.” She tugged at the lapis ring on her left hand. This time it slid off easily. She held it out to Julian who took it from her, his hand moving in slow motion.

  “I would appreciate the return of my ring. At your earliest convenience, of course,” Grant said with ironic politeness.

  Theo looked up at him, then at Julian, and saw that they stared at each other as they had at the symposium, blazing turquoise confronting cool implacable gray. Then, with a whirl of his robes, Julian wheeled around and stalked out of the room. Theo slumped against Grant.

  “Are you all right, my love?” he asked, stroking her head.

  “That was—it’s just—” She shrugged and blinked back tears, then buried her face against his chest.

  “It’s just that you two have been through a lot recently,” Olivia said, joining them. “Shall we go? Are you coming too, Marlowe?”

  He patted his beard and grinned. “As soon as I can pack my SpongeBob toga. You’ll love it, Olivia!”

  …

  Grant slept for nearly two days after they all arrived back at the Eleusinian Institute that evening. Theo slept too, but mostly she sat at Grant’s bedside, holding his hand and soothing him when he had nightmares in those first days.

  “I’ll bet you didn’t think you’d find yourself stuck with such a useless lump,” he said weakly to her on the third mornin
g after she had woken him from a dream in which he wept as if in the grip of despair.

  Which he probably had been, she reflected. “Of course you’re not useless,” she said aloud as she fluffed his pillows to help him sit up and gave him a cup of cocoa that Olivia had brought in a few minutes before.

  “I survived thousands of years on that rock with that cursed vulture. A month or two in a nice dark, sheltered labyrinth should have seemed like a vacation in comparison,” he replied lightly. But his eyes still stared into whatever horror had spawned his nightmare.

  “You weren’t human then, were you?” she reminded him gently.

  “No. I guess I wasn’t.” He drank more of the rich chocolate. Theo looked at him with concern: he was still weak from his time of semi-starvation in the labyrinth. Olivia had brought Asclepius in to examine him—an Asclepius who seemed quite at home with twenty-first-century medical practices, Theo was glad to see. He gave Grant an antibiotic injection to help fight the infection in his wounded foot and prescribed a gentle but nutrient-rich diet to help build up his strength once again.

  Now Grant leaned back against his pillows and looked up at the mid-morning sun that shone in through the windows. She had tried to keep the curtains shut so he could sleep more easily but he had insisted they stay open. “I’ve had enough darkness for a while, Theo,” he’d said with a crooked smile, one that hinted at the ghosts of dimples, and without another word she’d gone and opened the shades and curtains as far as they’d go.

  The sun gleamed on the polished wood floor, scattered with intricate woven rugs. Bright tapestries covered the walls as well. Olivia and her helpers had made them from the wool of sheep raised on Eleusinian property. Theo gazed at them, remembering Olivia’s excitement when she shyly offered up the fact that she could knit.

  “But that’s wonderful! I’ve never gotten around to learn knitting! You’ll have to show us, so we can do mittens for everyone next fall.”

  “Gods wear mittens?” Theo had asked.

  “Well, no. Not now. But they will. They’ll love them,” Olivia answered so confidently that Theo hadn’t had the heart to laugh.

  “You’re quiet,” Grant said, and Theo realized he was staring at her from his pillows.

  “I’m sorry. I thought you’d want to sleep again,” she replied and peered into his cocoa mug. “Good boy. You drank it all.”

  “I’ve slept enough for now, don’t you think?” He shifted irritably, and Theo, even with her limited sickbed experience, recognized his impatience as a good sign.

  “If you think so,” she said soothingly.

  “I think so. I’ve never needed to spend time in bed recovering from anything. Now that I have to—” He shook his head.

  “It’s true of the best and bravest of men, you know,” she said. “They all need to sleep when they’re tired and heal when they’re ill. You’re in good company. Or at least in a lot of it.”

  “The best of men,” he mused, staring at the window again. “I’ve been thinking about men while I’ve been lying here. Not even I can sleep non-stop for three days,” he said as she opened her mouth to scold him. “I’ve always been rather a connoisseur of humanity, you know. It was my hobby, I suppose. I watched them, learned all they’re capable of, good and bad, marveled at all their qualities the way racing aficionados watch horses exercising at the track. Watched and tried to understand and now, suddenly, I’ve gone from being the one in the stands with the binoculars and the notepad to being the creature on the turf.”

  “How does it feel?” She reached out and took his hand.

  “I don’t know. As you said in the labyrinth, I haven’t had much time to experience it yet. Frightening in a lot of ways. When I came to myself after you’d rescued me from being a Minotaur, and I looked at you, it was—it was the most terrible thing I’d ever felt.”

  “What was?”

  His gaze dropped. “Shame. Shame at what I’d just done to you when I turned into all those horrible things even though I couldn’t help it. Shame at the anger I felt because I thought you’d betrayed me. Shame because I didn’t know what to do or say, and a heaping side order of guilt for knowing I was the ultimate cause of all of this. I didn’t realize just how crushing a weight shame can be. It makes my brother Atlas’s burden look like a bag of feathers in comparison.”

  Theo couldn’t help smiling. “A lot of humans don’t seem to have the capacity to feel it, you know. At least not as much as they should, sometimes.”

  “But gods don’t feel at all. Regret maybe, but not shame. Listen to me, Theo. When I was Prometheus, I didn’t make mistakes. My name means ‘forethought’ if you recall. Once I met you and chose to be human, I lost that Olympian sense of omniscience. I botched things up with you quite properly, and there I was, quite as ashamed as I should have been.

  “So I took refuge in an old human behavior: I blamed someone else. You. And felt ashamed of that as well. If I’d still been a god I’d have been able to see it all for the tangled web it was. I’d have seen that you were the real victim of it all. You were the one who suffered because of my trying to be human when I was a god, and then denying my human fallibility when I was human.”

  Theo stroked his hand. She’d spilled her guts to him in the labyrinth. It was his turn now. “I’m sorry that you had to go through that. If I’d only known—”

  “If you’d known, I wouldn’t have made the mistakes, would I?” His smiled was crooked.

  “But what about Julian? You were his victim, too.”

  “Julian.” Grant closed his eyes. “Just another mistake on my part. I should have remembered that he has always been more human than I, and that he shares something with men that I never understood or felt—the desire for revenge. No, that’s not entirely fair to men. I’m human now, and I can’t say I feel an overwhelming need to avenge myself for what he put me—us—through. I simply never want to lay eyes on him again.”

  “Hear, hear,” Theo agreed fervently.

  “Did—did you love him?” Grant asked, after a silence.

  She took a deep breath. “No. But I liked him, once. I was flattered by his attention last semester. It’s hard for us imperfect humans not to like those who profess to admire us.” She squeezed his hand and smiled. “But he had to drug me with water from the river of forgetfulness to force me to forget whom I really loved.”

  Grant shifted uncomfortably on his bed. She peered down into his face, pale against the white linen of the pillows.

  “That wasn’t quite the answer you were looking for, was it?” she continued. “I’m sorry, Grant, but I won’t lie to you. Shame may be a terrible thing to feel, but it has its uses—it makes us try to do better next time. We humans are led astray by our secret needs so easily. I needed to be loved, to be thought desirable. Julian knew that, and played it for all he could.” She shook her hair over her shoulders and smiled to herself. “One good thing came of my time with Julian. It taught me the difference between infatuation and love. That’s a lesson that has to be experienced to be learned. Remember that I feel shame too, Grant. I hope we can forgive each other.”

  He turned his head fretfully away from her. She turned it back and saw that his eyes were bright with unshed tears.

  “I don’t need to forgive you for being human. It’s why I fell in love with you. But now I’m the imperfect human one,” he whispered, his voice rough. “I want both infatuation and love. I want to hold your love in my heart like a crystal chalice, and kiss you till your lips are swollen and your breath comes short. I want to take your body and give you my soul in return. Will you let me? Can it be both?”

  This was not how I’d pictured it would happen, Theo thought as he pulled her onto the bed with him. I thought it would be out on a mountaintop, under the stars. Or in a sunny meadow surrounded by nature. Not in a rather narrow bed in the infirmary at the unromantic hour of ten thirty on a Wednesday morning.

  She looked up at his gray eyes, dark and serious with desire, and touch
ed his cheek. He covered her mouth with his, sweet and demanding, a kiss such as she’d dreamed of for months. “Yes,” she whispered when he finally released her lips.

  “Yes what?” He was making short work of her clothes.

  She helped him, then pulled his t-shirt over his head and let her hand wander down to his scarred side. She caressed it and he shivered as her hand dropped lower. “It can be both.”

  “Oh, Theo. My Theo.” He explored her with his fingertips, teasing, probing, stroking, until she was sure she must be glowing like a bonfire. Just when she was sure she couldn’t wait another second he slid over her, and her body hummed with anticipation…and with rightness.

  “I love you, Grant,” she murmured, moving her legs up to cradle him.

  “I—love you—” His voice trailed into a soft groan as he entered her, going slowly at first, tentatively inching deeper until she gently bit his lip and moved against him, pulling him hard inside her. His breath caught, and then he buried his face against her hair and met her rhythm, hard and so sweet, so very very sweet, until the sweetness rose in a flood, immobilizing her yet carrying her along in a headlong rush. She felt Grant inside her, caught in the same flood, and held him close, rocking against him until breath and conscious thought returned.

  He lifted his head and kissed her, his mouth moist and soft against hers. “Oh, Theo…oh gods, I love you!”

  She returned his kiss, stroking his damp shoulders and back. “I told you it could be both,” she whispered.

  …

  They went down to the commons for the evening meal, Grant straight-backed and proud for his first foray out of the infirmary though still pale, his hands constantly straying to touch Theo’s hand, her hair, her shoulder. Theo herself smiled and blushed at Marlowe’s cheerful, “Hey, they’re outta bed!” and accepted his loud smack on one cheek.

  Others clustered around them then; Theo watched, bemused, as nine tall, handsome women, all different yet clearly related, whispered and jostled each other as they waited to greet her and Grant. She found herself exchanging pleasantries with ibis-headed Thoth and potbellied, elephant-headed Ganesha, whose small dark eyes twinkled wisely at her as he patted her head with his trunk.