The Siege of Syracuse

by Dan Armstrong

  “He’s up to no good,” said Agathe.

  “Keep an eye on his left hand,” Lavinia added. “He’s not even using the towel.”

  I didn’t say anything, but I was catching on. Sure enough, Hektor’s left hand slid around Eurydice’s waist. Eurydice stiffened at his touch. Little by little, Hektor’s hand slipped down Eurydice’s hip until he cupped her right buttock in his palm. Eurydice looked off to her left, clearly uncomfortable, but Hektor’s hand remained where it was. Agathe and Lavinia fumed beside me. Even I began to get anxious.

  Like a large insect, Hektor’s hand gradually crawled across Eurydice’s backside until his middle finger settled into the crease in her buttocks. While all of us stared at his hand, Agathe cursed under her breath.

  Hektor’s hand dipped a little lower. His middle finger pushed the cloth of Eurydice’s dress up between her legs. Both of Eurydice’s hands were in the dishwater. She turned her hips one way then the other, trying to show her discomfort, but Hektor’s hand stayed to its purpose.

  “That bastard,” spat Agathe.

  Eurydice made a muted whine and with a wet hand pushed Hektor’s hand away in as inoffensive a way as she could. All the while the wet dishes that Eurydice was cleaning were piling up on the table in front of Hektor.

  But Hektor had no interest in drying dishes. His hand immediately returned to Eurydice’s right cheek and again began its downward crawl like a giant spider.

  Watching made me cringe, but Lavinia and Agathe were beside themselves. When Hektor’s finger found its way back between Eurydice’s legs, Agathe lifted a large pan full of dirty water from the sink. In five long strides she crossed the kitchen, and pretending to trip, threw the water onto Hektor’s backside.

  Hektor exploded with a loud curse. He turned on Agathe, who was sprawled on the ground, and let go with a stream of foul language. Agathe snarled back that it had been an accident. They went back and forth with vicious accusations. Amid the violent exchange, Agathe turned to Lavinia and me and gave us a wink.

  The ugly spell had been broken—for that day anyway. Hektor, as angry as I’d ever seen him, ordered me to dry the dishes and stormed out of the kitchen, presumably to the pantry and a refill of wine.

  CHAPTER 76

  Archimedes had not worked on the large parabolic array in nearly a month. He was content to bury himself in geometric riddles and deny that he had anything to do with the war machines that were mounted on the battlements of Syracuse. As far as he was concerned, he wasn’t needed any longer. The soldiers had learned how to operate the weapons. His job was done.

  Epicydes seemed to be of the same mind. He and his brother were different in this. Epicydes had never come to Archimedes’ workshop or gone out of his way to speak to the mathematician. Science didn’t interest him. The weapons worked and that was all that mattered. This might never have changed except that Hippocrates had not forgotten. He, like Hannibal, understood that Archimedes might be the difference in the war. He sent a message through the lines to his brother, asking him to check the progress of the new array. A few days later, two soldiers came to the workshop and escorted Archimedes to the warehouse where the project remained uncompleted. I accompanied him.

  The warehouse was on the tip of Ortygia, near the Fountain of Arethusa. Archimedes walked between the two soldiers with a hand on my shoulder. We passed the Temple of Athene on the way. Out on the spit with waves crashing all around, it was one of the most dynamic settings for a temple that I have ever seen.

  The warehouse was unlocked, but guarded by six soldiers. Epicydes was there waiting and led us inside. The huge array lay flat on the dirt floor with about half of its one hundred parabolic mirrors in place.

  Epicydes was a shorter, stouter version of his brother. He had grown a beard like Hippocrates’ and cut his hair short since the last time I had seen him. While Hippocrates was renown for his subtlety, Epicydes was noted for his heat in battle and his ferocious appetite for carnage once the blood began to flow. He had no patience for charm.

  “Welcome, Archimedes,” he said, “my brother has recently inquired about the progress of your work.” He used an open hand to direct attention to the mirrors scattered around the circular scaffold. Four of the guards stood behind him.

  “Tell Hippocrates that I have proceeded as far as possible,” said Archimedes. ‘The task is beyond me. I can do no more.”

  Epicydes came up close to Archimedes. “My brother is convinced that you can do anything. Keep at it.” He pronounced these last three words with a visible gnashing of his long teeth.

  It made no impact on Archimedes. He addressed the Carthaginian general with his usual profound earnest. “This project needs an accuracy we can’t attain with the means we have available. The work is demanding enough in its engineering, but we don’t have tools equal to the precision called for.”

  It wasn’t clear if Epicydes understood the implication. He wasn’t as comfortable with technical concepts as his brother. It made a very bold man hesitant. “Do what you can. Hippocrates wants something he can use in the field by spring.”

  Archimedes continued in his soft, low voice, a grandfather speaking to a group of children. “I have no interest in building weapons anymore, Epicydes. For your brother or anyone else.” He scanned the soldiers before him as though from the height of a great mountain. “You may do what you want with what is here. I’m through with it.”

  “You would be wise to reconsider,” Epicydes said, clearly unprepared for this kind of resistance.

  “I already have. I want no more part of this war.” Archimedes put his hand on my shoulder to show that the interview was over. He directed me to lead him from the building.

  Two soldiers blocked the doorway. I expected an ugly confrontation.

  Epicydes spoke out. “Let them go.” The guards stepped aside.

  We walked back to the tower without disturbance. Archimedes’ hand remained on my shoulder the entire way. I could feel that he was still trembling from the confrontation.

  CHAPTER 77

  The Roman blockade was able to seal off entry to Syracuse by land, but not by sea. The wind held the key to the Great Harbor, not Marcellus. Over time, ships both large and small gained entry. This didn’t mean life inside the city was easy. Conditions were grueling for the poor, but the essentials did get through to the wealthy and the military. Epicydes never considered surrendering the city for lack of supplies.

  This frustrated Marcellus no end. He was convinced Syracuse was critical to Roman success in the larger war. He maintained the blockade through the winter, hoping that something might change. During this time Himilco and Hippocrates, knowing their troops couldn’t get past the Roman camps, retreated to Agrigentum for more comfortable quarters. In a sense, both sides admitted to a stalemate, but the stakes were so high that neither was quite ready to give up.

  In the spring a group of noblemen who had been exiled from Syracuse by Hippocrates came to Marcellus’ camp outside Leon. After being interrogated by the guards, they were escorted to Marcellus’ tent. They told him they wanted their city back. The said they could get support from within. They could gain control of one of the gates, and with proper timing, they said, Marcellus could have access to the city.

  Already tired of the blockade, Marcellus agreed to work with the exiled noblemen. Unfortunately, all of these men were well known within the city. They would be arrested as soon as they presented themselves at the gates. One of the noblemen, however, had escaped from the city with two of his personal slaves. It was decided to use one of the slaves as an agent.

  The following day, the slave approached the Hexapylon. He told the guards that he supported Carthage. He had run away from his pro-Roman master and needed sanctuary. He was allowed in.

  Over the next two weeks, the slave spoke with other slaves he knew in the city. He told them they would be freed if they helped him in his plan. One by one, he gathered a group of eighty defectors, prepared to risk their lives to comman
deer the Hexapylon in the middle of the night and allow a thousand Roman soldiers into the city. After they had agreed on a night, one of the slaves slipped out of the city to notify Marcellus that a plan was in place. Two torches waved from the top of the Hexapylon would signal that the gate was in their control.

  The day before the Hexapylon was to be taken, Epicydes learned of the plan from a slave, Attalus, who resented not being invited to join the conspiracy. All eighty slaves were rounded up that night and executed. The following night, a thousand Roman soldiers stood in formation until daylight waiting for a signal that never came.

  I didn’t know about the failed conspiracy when it happened. Word of it leaked out weeks afterward. Those were especially lean times on Ortygia. Kitchen work and copying occupied almost all my waking hours. I only had a few opportunities to leave the island and none to leave Achradina. I often thought of Moira. Six months had passed since I had last seen her. I didn’t even know if she’d survived the Roman catapults. Much like my mother, Moira had become someone it hurt to think about.

  Food preparation had deteriorated from Hektor’s creations to bare sustenance. The soldiers weren’t starving, but we were cutting it pretty thin. Getting the most out of what we had became the guiding principle. Hektor took to this with surprising flair. He prided himself on his knowledge of plants and herbs. He claimed certain combinations of herbs aided digestion. Others added nutrient value to the grains that were the bulk of what we ate. He kept a larger force fed with less through intelligent cuisine, or so he said.

  Agathe didn’t believe a word of it. She claimed that everything Hektor said or did was part of an elaborate scheme to seduce and—now that he was divorced—marry Eurydice. Each passing day seemed to bear this out. Tensions rose in the kitchen. Hektor’s humor became more caustic; Agathe’s comments more acid. Work became harder because the good spirit we’d had was lost to Hektor’s unbidden hunger for Eurydice.

  Eurydice, inured to life as a slave, was an easy target. No part of her body was not groped over the period of any week. Agathe and Lavinia, now linked by shared grief, were all that kept Hektor in check.

  At least once a day, Hektor would arrange the work so that he was with Eurydice, while the rest of the staff was working on chores of their own. At these times, Lavinia and Agathe were at their most vigilant, always keeping an eye or two on Hektor.

  One afternoon Agathe was managing two fire pits, grilling a sturgeon that Hektor had caught off the rocks at the tip of Ortygia. Lavinia and I were marching around the quern milling barley, and Eurydice was hunkered over the big cutting board, chopping onions, garlic, and basil leaves from the kitchen garden.

  Suddenly Hektor was standing beside Eurydice. From where I was, walking in circles around the mill stone, I only caught sight of them through half of a turn. This meant that when I was seeing them, Lavinia wasn’t, and vice versa. Agathe had to turn her head to see them, which she did just about as often as she could.

  Hektor began by complimenting Eurydice on her work. He gave her a few tips on how to tilt the knife just so for cutting garlic and went on at length about the beauty of her hair. Then he was touching her, gently at first on the arm, before moving on to her shoulder and back.

  Lavinia and I took turns watching this progression. I could measure Hektor’s advances by the expression on Lavinia’s face. Hektor took great pleasure in stroking Eurydice’s ample posterior. Eurydice allowed this out of necessity, but whenever his fingers got into the act, she would push him away or find a reason to turn aside. If this didn’t suffice, Lavinia or Agathe would find a way to intervene that seemed like part of the work. Hektor knew what they were doing, but it had evolved into a kind of game in which Hektor deliberately pushed the limits.

  I saw Lavinia’s eyes widen, then her mouth open. Half a turn later, the same happened to me. Hektor had lifted his tunic to the top of his thighs. His right hand was underneath, too clearly fondling himself, while his left hand stroked Eurydice’s bottom. Eurydice certainly knew he was touching her, but she didn’t know what he was doing behind her back.

  The quern stopped when I had a full view. Lavinia had already seen too much. From the expression on her face I thought she was going to vomit. Agathe had no such weakness. She strode across the kitchen and levered the butcher knife out of the chopping block. Hektor, transfixed with pleasure, had no idea she was coming. Raising the knife over her head, Agathe took two long strides and thwacked the knife into the table where Eurydice was dicing onions—about a foot from Hektor’s elbow. It made Eurydice jump, but Hektor may have stained his tunic.

  “Here’s the butcher knife, if it will help, Eurydice,” Agathe said as though it were nothing.

  Hektor straightened his clothing and hustled out of the kitchen in the direction of the latrine, mumbling to the gods.

  Agathe took a well-deserved bow.

  CHAPTER 78

  Spring turned to summer. The blockade, though imperfect, steadily added to the tensions within the city. My life changed little. The copying grew tedious, and Hektor’s lewd behavior became painful to watch. But I had no right to complain. A large portion of the populace was starving; I had food.

  One afternoon during this increasingly difficult summer, while I copied a geometry proof and Archimedes sat at his desk deep into another, I heard a sound in the tower stairway. A scrape? A sandaled footstep? Plato, sunning on the south windowsill, cocked his ears.

  I could always recognize soldiers on the stairs because they made no effort to be quiet. The thud of feet and clank of armor was a giveaway. Hippocrates was capable of stealth, but Epicydes was not. I wondered if Hippocrates could have returned to apply pressure to Archimedes?

  I heard it again. The light scrape of leather on stone. Or was it the movement of a window shutter? Plato leapt off the sill. He crossed the room cautiously. I stood up, eyes on the door. The door pushed open wide enough for an eye to peek through. Someone was there. I froze where I stood. The door swung open a little wider. Plato darted away.

  “Moira?” I said barely as loud as a breath. I put a finger to my lips and took a quick look over my shoulder. Archimedes was on the other side of the universe. I tiptoed out to the landing.

  Moira was wearing a long, pale blue chiton, a sign that she had passed her fourteenth birthday and was now considered a woman. Her hair was collected in a bun on top of her head and covered by a scarf that matched her chiton. She burst into a smile. “This is where you live? Up in this tower?”

  I put my finger to my lips again. It had been many months since I’d seen her. She was taller and there were new curves to her body. “Yes, my room is on the floor below,” I whispered, thrilled that she was there—that she was alive! “How did you get in?”

  She ignored my question and peered into the room through the door. “What’s all that stuff in there?”

  “Too much to explain,” I said. “But how is it that you are here? Achradina is closed up tight.”

  “It was harder getting away from my grandfather than getting through the gates.”

  “But how did you do it?”

  “I used my charm,” she said with a smirk.

  “What about getting onto the island? You had to get past the guards there, too.”

  “I told them I worked in the kitchen.”

  Why not? That was how Lavinia and Eurydice got in. “And the guard at the entry to the tower?”

  “He’s a lout. He didn’t even see me slip past.” She laughed, then put a hand over her mouth. “Enough questions. Don’t you want to know why I’m here?”

  “Well, to see me, I hope.”

  “More than that. I saw the man with the red mark on his cheek.”

  “Where?”

  “At the garden just a few days ago. I followed him.”

  “And you know where he lives?”

  “Yes, that’s what I came here to tell you. I can take you there.”

  “But I can’t leave here without permission—and there are the guards
.”

  “If it’s important to you, you’ll find a way. I found a way to see you.”

  “It is important to me. As important as seeing you now.”

  “Then there should be no problem.”

  “But I have a master, and work that I must do.”

  “And I have a grandfather and chores that I must do.”

  “So what’s your grandfather thinking right now?”

  “Nothing,” she said, coming up close to me, turning her head as though she were trying to see inside my eyes. “Because he thinks I’m somewhere else.” She skipped away to the stairwell window. “My, what a wonderful view you have.”

  I was still thinking about how I could slip off the island and out of Achradina.

  “I can see the Temple of Zeus!” Moira exclaimed.

  “And the Roman camp.” I went to her side and pointed to the southwest.

  She turned to me “What do you do here?”

  “I work with one of the greatest mathematicians in the world.”

  “Mathematician? What’s that?” She turned away before I could answer and looked inside the workshop through the partially open door. “Is that him with the white beard?”

  “Yes. Don’t go in!”

  But it was too late. She slipped into the room and hid behind the heavy maroon curtains that hung all around the room.

  I went into the room after her, but couldn’t see where she was. I looked over my shoulder to see if Archimedes was watching, then prodded and poked my way down one wall and up the next without finding her. All of a sudden she appeared beside the door and darted back out to the landing.

  When I caught up with her, she was sitting on the stairs. I sat down beside her. Plato came out of the workshop and sat behind us.