A Mixture of Madness, Book II of The Bow of Heaven (63 page)

“Thannuh,” I rasp as the soldier reaches the top of the beam, but the sounds I emit are unintelligible.

He laughs. “You sound like me now. Worse.”

I want to say that I do not understand, but what comes out instead is, “Wahr.”

“Water? Is that what you want?” The dim face that leers down at me over the top of the beam is a nightmare of exposed teeth and gums; I remember that the rest is a scarred ruin left by the pox. It is a face made for the night. Palaemon reaches down and holds a camp cup in front of my own exhausted features. He moves the rim just below my lips. Then he stops.

“Ah’ff phulled guard duty for you. Phretty funny, don’t you think? ”

While he’s talking, my stomach muscles cramp involuntarily and I buckle. My forehead knocks the cup and water spills to the ground. As if he’s talking to a child Palaemon says, “Aleckthander! See what youff done!” He looks at what little is left in the brass cup, then drinks it. He makes an exaggerated sound of satisfaction, then sets the cup on top of the beam behind my head.

“You din’t really think you were getting any, did you?” My disappointment is so severe that a tear rolls down into my mouth. It is hot and salty and might as well have been burning oil. Thankfully, the moon has set and it is too dark for my tormentor to notice. I slump back down, too exhausted to even attempt to keep my knees bent and my feet flat against the post. My breath is shallow and labored; strange, animal sounds that must be mine sing to its rhythm. I pray for death.

Palaemon rambles on. “Ah came uffere for something else. Ffeelus says there’s some chance we might get killed in this war. You will be dead for certain, but if Ah don’t surfife, Ah don’t want to meet up with you in Hades. Effryone knows about your skill with a knife, so Ffeelus says if Ah’m so worried aboudit Ah should make sure you can’t take reffenge on me once Ah get to the underworld.

“Ah’m just going to take your thumb is all. ‘Probly won’t hurt any worse than anything else. You might not even feel it.”

I am vaguely aware the man above me is saying something about my hand. I say, “Hanno?”

“You’re far gone, you are,” he says. “Still, you might scream. Thass why Ah brought this.” He reaches down out of sight and comes back with a rag which he balls up and forces into my mouth. He whispers conspiratorially, nodding toward the other guards. “Ah din’t menshun this to the
m.”

With one hand, Palaemon flattens my own right hand against the face of the beam. I grunt with the additional insult, but it is almost as if someone else’s thumb is being pulled away from the rest of his hand, high and taut. There is a flash of polished iron as Palaemon draws his dagger, holding it above the beam while he decides on the best place to draw the blade. “Wha d’you think, should be chust like cutting a chicken wing.”

He knocks loudly on the beam, then is silent.

•••

A little after sunrise, Palaemon’s watch was relieved. I had neither witnessed the break of day, nor, as the evening had progressed, did I expect to be extant for its arrival. At some point during the night I had come to the conclusion that I would never gaze upon the chariots of Helios again. This one example that life was subject to certain limitations ranked as minor compared to a thousand other shocks of loss. I was more than reconciled to my fate.

The tale of the attack spread like quicksilver throughout Antioch, eventually, some weeks later, even reaching my own ears. Every school child could repeat the grisly details to his comrades; every adult whispered to each other of reprisals to come. But they didn’t.

The legionaries who walked, then ran to the charming hill just outside the northern gates of the city came upon a scene of carnage. About their small campsite, one soldier lay beneath his cloak, his throat slashed. A second had been shot in the side. He had fallen and rolled over the campfire and apparently had been put out of his misery by a second arrow. His legs and midsection were still smoking. A third man was some distance away from the others, but he too, had died of knife and arrow wounds.

The furious Romans looked up the hill, blinded as the sun rose behind it. Shielding their eyes against the light, they saw an empty cross, but one that was not completely unoccupied. A brass camp cup, the split foot rest and an iron
pugio
lay on the dewy ground, but Palaemon still claimed his place atop the ladder, his chin resting on the beam, his arms hanging over the cross. The back of his neck was securely fastened to the wood by the smooth shaft of a Parthian arrow.

M
y thumb was not among the detritus. Still attached to my unconscious body, it and I were already many miles east of Antioch.

When Crassus was informed of the murders by Antoninus, he thanked the legate but gave no orders for
a counterstrike. It was no coincidence that the general had requested the worst soldiers from among each of the legions to be picked for this particular guard duty. (Velus Herclides had been called but, preferring the warmth of his tent, had bribed his way off the list.)

Before retiring to his quarters where his wife awaited him,
Crassus sent word for the
medicus
, Livia, to attend him. His bunions had immediate need of the palliative relief only her pungent, brown balm could bestow.

•••

“I told you I would not forsake my charge.” The rag was moist against my lips, the voice familiar. Eyes closed, I listened politely (something deep within told me this was the correct behavior), but I was far more intent on wresting what drops I could from the damp cloth. I could not feel my body, only a great thirst. He spoke again. “We will remain here till you are fit for travel. Sleep, my friend. You have suffered greatly.” I considered opening my eyes to see where “here” was, but drifted away before I could lift a single eyelash.

•••

It was a thin soup, most of which made rivulets down either side of my chin, but it was warm, and it was good. I was swaddled from the neck down in long strips of muslin. My wrists had been medicated and bandaged as was my right heel—apparently one of the nails which had split rather than secured the foot rest had caught my foot while I dangled. I was propped up against a palm whose fronds chattered overhead. Before me, two horses drank from the pool of an oasis; a makeshift sling hung from a boxthorn bush. Somewhere in my mind I knew I must still be wracked with pain, but that Alexandros was far from the one thinking and feeling—his pain barely mattered. Drugged, thank the gods.

“Do you remember,” Melyaket said, taking a sip from the bowl himself, “when we were by the river hunting the
mescejn
? I told you then. Marcus Crassus bid me watch over you, and so I have. Though not very well, I’m afraid.”

Crassus
. Very bad memories began blooming like the sewers backing up when the Tiber overflowed its banks. I grunted—the distant Alexandros had begun walking closer at a frighteningly brisk pace.

“See what you’ve done,” said another voice, deeper than Melyaket’s. “Let him be.”

“Here,” Melyaket said, forcing a bitter liquid into my mouth. “Your healer is not the only one who knows how to extract juice from the poppy.”

I had
many questions, but I also wanted very much for that other Alexandros to go away.

•••

“Eight days!” I cried. “Where is Livia?” My swaddling had been removed and I was dressed as they were, in plain tunic and belted baggy pants. I could sit up on my own, even walk to the water and back to my place by the palm.

“
Surrounded by seven Roman legions,” Melyaket said, “the safest place she can be. They’ll march from Antioch before the last almond flowers have fallen.”

“He’s very poetic, isn’t he,” Hami said, eating a dried plum. Hami was as tall as I, but broad and powerfully built. His head was completely shaved. Like Melyaket, he looked to be in his early twenties.

“Rhapsodical,” I replied, “but what does he mean, and where are they going?”

“Hierapolis, end of Aprilis,” Hami said.

“I must go to her.”

“That way,” Hami said. He spit a seed westward.

“Alexandros,” Melyaket said, “you are in no condition to travel
, least of all back there. Think about it.”

I did think about it, and realized I had something else to say. “Thank you.”

“I should have been there sooner.” Gently, he rested a hand on my bruised shoulder. “I only expected one or two guards.”

Hami smiled and said, “Sorry you had to wait, but coming to me for help was the first smart thing this one’s done since we left Sinjar.”

Melyaket bowed gracefully toward his friend, then said to me, “As if he would recognize ‘smart.’ I have something for you.” He ran to his horse and returned with a scroll and a red purse tied with gold threads. He held them out to me, but I took the letter from him first.

Pelargós
,

You are alive. Don’t scold me for restating the obvious—that has been the only thought in my head since
dominus
summoned me. He told me you were taken from the cross by a Parthian raiding party. I don’t know why you were saved or by whom, but whoever they are, I will kiss their feet in gratitude when we meet.

The gulf that separates us now is as wide as death from life.
Dominus
will not release me, and you cannot return:  if I die in the war, Crassus will free Felix. Like you, I must discover how to become a living ghost, then we will find a way for the three of us to be together again. We will cross this divide, I swear. Look for me.

Livia

“I don’t understand. How did you come by this?” I asked.

“The same way I got this.” Melyaket opened the pouch and dropped my heavy gold
phalera
and its purple ribbon into my hand. Almost in shock, I ran my thumb over the etched likenesses of Crassus and myself; turned it over and saw the enigmatic riddle which still meant nothing to me.

“
Dominus
?” I asked incredulously.

“General Crassus said for me to tell you, ‘guard it well, you might have need of it.’”

“Let me see that,” Hami said, grabbing it out of my hands. “Look at this—‘Alexandros, beloved of Crassus. Harm him, harm me.’ What a hypocrite!”

“Did he give you my slave disk?” I asked Melyaket.

“He gave me only what you see.”

Hami said, “Why are you still calling him
dominus
? You’re with us now, Alexandros. You’re
free!
Mithra’s
bloody bull! I saw with my own eyes what they did to you, what
he
did to you. How can you speak of Crassus with anything but hatred?”

“Hami,” said Melyaket. He sounded exasperated. “How many times do I have to go through this? Crucifixion was the only way the general could save Alexandros’ life.”

Suddenly, a dream flitted across my consciousness—a man on a skittish horse.

“So he was doing Alexandros a favor?” Hami said. “I suppose that Roman who was about to slice off his thumb was doing him a favor, too.”

“I understand,” I said. “Melyaket is right, Hami. My crimes were punishable by death in any number of ways. Crassus could have had me beheaded or had a sword thrust down my spine. He could have ordered a scourging and nails for the crucifixion, but he didn’t. He wanted me to survive, to give you as much time as possible to rescue me.”
How the solution must have satisfied him—vicious and kind in the same, clever stroke. Too harsh a parting, Crassus, too harsh.

•••

Cut from the umbilicus of Marcus Crassus after 32 years, I was newborn, dressed in foreign garb, among new friends, heading to a new destiny. The general and his son, men I no longer knew, would soon march on Hierapolis and Jerusalem. I grieved for the Marcus Licinius Crassus of my younger days, the student of Aristotle, the orator, the rhetorician, the kind father, the adoring husband. That man was gone, yet enough of him remained to enlist the aid of Melyaket to engineer my escape. It was regrettable that my master’s magnanimity first required me to weep, cursing death for a coward. Though I have made lukewarm attempts at the urging of others, I have never been able to bring myself to despise him.

A
s a slave, I had always complained that I existed in a world without choice. It was a fine excuse to wash my hands of life. What were self-responsibility and self-reliance to me? I was allowed no self—Crassus set the limits of my world, and I was safe within them. I had never had to fight for anything—now I had never felt so powerless, or more alone.

Somewhere across the desert, Livia carried on without me. Melyaket, Hami and I would make our way to the fortress at Hatra. When we got there, I would be on the wrong side of the Euphrates.

•••

I have fallen asleep yet again. Another exasperating interruption from the completion of my work. I
smell the sea and feel a stripe of hot sun lying across my bald dome. I don’t remember putting this pillow beneath my head. I hate being coddled. I sit up and roll the kinks from my neck. Citrus and bergamot perfume the warm, unruffled air. But here’s a welcome surprise! She has placed a fresh bowl of figs and a cup of honeyed wine on the table, an island oasis amidst the unruly seas of my scrolls.