The Queen's Handmaid (12 page)

Riva launched herself from the wall and ran for the door. Pushing past Lydia, she shot her a look as black as death itself and kept running.

It had happened so quickly. And the aftermath was quick as well. The slave hoisted the dead man over one shoulder and carried him out without a glance at Lydia, nor a concern for the blood on the floor or the contents of the room.

She dared not check on the scrolls yet. Someone else could appear.

But the words of Riva’s attacker burned through her mind.
“I know you brought them from Alexandria.”
What would anyone think
Riva had brought? Something worth crossing the sea? Something worth killing for?

A shudder ran through her, a delayed shock at the attack, perhaps. Or an omen for the future.

As a substitute for checking the scrolls, Lydia pulled the necklace from under her tunic and ran a light finger over the embossed surface of the pendant.

David skidded into the room. “Lydia!” He sped to her and took her shoulders in his hands. “Are you hurt? I heard—”

She released the pendant and patted one of his hands. “I am well, David. He—it was Riva he attacked.” But had he been alone? Was there another, waiting to strike again? And what would Riva do if she realized the attack was meant for Lydia?

David spun a circle in the room, surveying the disorder. His brows knit together.

“He was searching for something.”

Lydia swallowed, the action an effort. Oh, what a relief it would be to tell David of the scrolls, of the task Samuel had given her. Perhaps she could even pass the task to him. With his Jewish blood and his ties to Judea, he should be the one to deliver the scrolls to the Temple steps.

She spread shaky palms. “Whatever it was, he did not find it.”

David’s gaze fell on her pendant. His lips parted and he took a quick step toward her. “What is this?” He lifted it from her chest.

She pulled it from his grasp and took a step backward. “It is nothing. Just something Samuel gave me.”

But at his wide-eyed look, she paused before secreting it beneath her tunic again. “Why? Do you know what it means?”

He took a breath, paused, and exhaled again. “I . . . I don’t know what it means, but the symbol: it is Hasmonean. It is Jewish.”

“Samuel gave me the necklace just before he died.” She turned away, started straightening sleeping mats into orderly rows. “He said it belonged to my mother.”

“Your mother! I thought you had no idea who your parents were.”

She kicked some loose straw that had spilled from a gashedopen mat to the pool of blood. “I don’t. And he told me nothing more. Only that my mother gave him the necklace for me, before she gave me up.”

“Lydia, do you know what this means?”

She picked up a bundle of another servant girl’s clothing and replaced it on the girl’s mat.

David grabbed her hands and squeezed, waiting for her to meet his look. The silence of the room closed in around them.

“Lydia, you belong to the House of Israel.”

Her mouth went dry and her hands trembled in his.

“Yes, Lydia. If this pendant was your mother’s, then it could only mean she was a Jewess. And therefore, so are you.”

You
belong
. . .

A people. A place.

“But why—why would Samuel not tell me of my parentage?”

“Perhaps because he understood what it means to be Jewish.” David’s sad smile made him look wise beyond his age. “The conquest by Rome is only the most recent for our people. When Julius Caesar’s ally Pompey began his siege against Jerusalem, my father was only a boy, but he remembers it well. Twelve thousand Jews killed, and our king and High Priest stripped of his throne to become a client kingdom of Rome. But we are accustomed to such.”

Lydia nodded. “Samuel taught me of your people’s exile in the lands of Persia.”

“Yes, Babylon and Assyria, Ptolemies and Seleucids—there has been very little time of peace for our people. We are hated in our own lands and hated wherever we travel. This is why Samuel would not tell Cleopatra of your parents. You are a Jew. That is enough.”

“But someday that will change?” Because of her scrolls, burning in their hidden place in the corner?

“Oh yes.” David’s face glowed. “Yes, one day our Messiah-king will come and rescue us. And I believe it will be soon.”

“Samuel seemed to think so as well.”

David sat straighter. “It must be soon. With Gentile dogs on the throne, surely HaShem will not tarry. Perhaps we have mishandled our affairs as a people in the past, but at least it was
Jews
who were our kings.”

“And yet you serve Herod.”

He grinned. “To be close, Lydia. To be close to the action when it happens. When our people rise up against Rome and throw off the yoke forever. Surely this is the fullness of time!”

The
fullness
of
time.
Samuel had used such a phrase when he spoke of the scrolls and their importance to his people. A flutter of something tickled her belly—apprehension, excitement.

Destiny?

She had given too little thought of late to the task given by Samuel. Was it as important as he had said that she deliver his scrolls to the Chakkiym who watched for this Messiah?

Was this why Samuel had been so intent on training her in the ways of his One God? If so, could He also be
her
God? Could she belong to Him?

She had no time to think on the significance. One of Herod’s advisers poked his head through the door. “Herod is about to leave for the Senate meeting. All staff in the courtyard.”

David released her hands and they headed for the door. It pained her to leave the room in such a state, but there would be time after Herod’s grand departure to return and repair.

To return and to think.

The combined staff of Herod and Marc Antony were arranged in two parallel lines running through the courtyard into the front hall and out the door to the graveled garden beyond. The lines buzzed with the murmurs of dozens of people, the words jumbled and confused.

Lydia assumed a place at the end of the line, tried to calm her features and shaking limbs into serenity. The faces of the stiffbacked staff in the line across from her blurred in her vision.

Antony and Herod emerged, talking and laughing between them, and paraded through the channel, without a real glance at anyone. A chill breeze blew through behind them, as if it would sweep them into the tumult of Rome.

“Not to worry, my friend.” Antony slapped Herod’s shoulder. “No one has forgotten your father’s favors toward Caesar years ago. Nor who is more capable of rule.”

“Yes, well.” Herod looked worried despite Antony’s instruction. “Antigonus has that cursed Hasmonean blood, which makes him favored by the Jews regardless of ability.”

And then they were gone, passing out of earshot and then out of the house.

Lydia exhaled, her shoulders dropping with the weight of Riva’s attack and David’s revelation.

Riva was at her side a moment later, breathing on her neck. The girl’s dress was torn and her hair still tousled, but the perfume she wore bespoke elegance. Like the scent Lydia had purchased for Octavia in the Forum market.

“This was your doing, little Egyptian.”

Lydia leaned away, studied Riva’s pinched expression. “My doing?”

“Do not think I am a fool. That brute was looking for
you.
He thought I was you. Said you had taken something from Alexandria and he wanted it back. I should have known you were a thief.”

David crowded in between them. “Lydia is no thief!”

Riva scowled. “No? Do not be so sure, boy. And you”—she pinched Lydia’s arm—“do not be so certain you will serve Herod’s new wife. That is a position best left to someone more qualified.”

Bitter words burned in Lydia’s throat, but Riva’s revelation distracted her. Was this the intruder who had killed Samuel? The second man in Alexandria? She scowled at the thought. His death at the hand of the slave had been too quick, then. He should have suffered as Samuel had.

Herod and Antony returned in high spirits, talking of the speeches given by the professional orators Antony had hired to endorse Herod and degrade Antigonus, that conspirator with the Parthians, archenemies of Rome.

The vote had been unanimous, apparently. Not only troops to take on Antigonus, but the unexpected conferring of a new title for Herod: “King of the Jews.” Though from the good-natured teasing Lydia overheard, she doubted the title was much of a surprise to either man.

But as evening approached, there would be no avoiding Riva in the shared room. Lydia lingered in the darkness of the courtyard before bedding down, delaying the confrontation.

“There she is again, pretty as the spirit of a goddess in moonlight.”

Lydia smiled and sighed.

Varius was beside her at the central fountain in a moment. He rested a light hand on her shoulder. “So glad I found you before it was too late.”

“Too late?”

“To see the reflection of the moon in your eyes.”

His words should have brought her pleasure. Perhaps they did. But the events and discoveries of the day had been too much. She wanted only to be alone with her thoughts.

She smiled at him. “Perhaps tomorrow night. I need to attend Octavia.”

A flicker of annoyance crossed his face, but then his pleasant look returned. “Tomorrow, then. I shall look forward to it.”

She should go to Octavia but lingered instead in the courtyard, her thoughts tumbling like water over rocks. Such conflicting emotions she had experienced in the past few days. The warm connection to Octavia, however formal. The fluttery attraction to Varius, with his eloquent words and cool touch. All reasons to stay here in Rome. And yet, the strange and wonderful feeling of David’s assurance that her pendant meant she had a place to call home.

But even more than this newfound personal connection to Judea, Lydia had something precious to her people—
her
people
—secreted in the corner. Though they had not claimed her, they needed her. What was she doing, making herself needed here in Rome?

Perhaps this time she would not try so hard to keep herself apart, to make herself important to someone without letting
herself need them in return. The desperation to belong and to be important was a selfish and petty thing she had seen in Riva’s eyes. Lydia would not be that person any longer.

She had undertaken Samuel’s mission out of loyalty to her mentor. But something was changing. The charge he had given her was becoming
her
mission.

Could she let go of her vow to return to Egypt? She would go to Jerusalem, no matter the cost. Learn more of the Jews’ One God. Find the Chakkiym and deliver the prized scrolls. Samuel had devoted his life to protecting them. She would do nothing less.

And with the decision, she felt a solidity, a peace, and a strange sort of tethering—as though a rope had been tied round her waist, anchored far away on the steps of the Temple of Jerusalem. Pulling her gently, but irrevocably, toward home.

“Have you tired of me as well, Lydia?” Octavia’s flat voice emerged from the shadows. “Your thoughts are only for the poet, I suppose. But why should I be surprised?”

Twelve

T
he stricken look of guilt and regret in the girl’s eyes pricked Octavia with a bit of compassion. She huffed and waved a hand.

“Don’t go to tears over it, girl. Simply come to my chamber. It grows late.”

“Yes, mistress.”

Octavia walked slowly to her chamber, feeling the hem of her dress trail across the mosaic of the courtyard and the scrape of her sandals across the stone pavers of the shadowy peristyle. It was a trick she had practiced of late—this deliberate movement and heightened sensitivity. At times it seemed the only thing between her and the numbing darkness. Since Claudia Minor’s birth three months ago, Octavia had been unable to lift the curtain of sadness that seemed to weight every new day.

She went through the motions of preparing for bed, allowing Lydia to remove her dress and sandals, to slip the gold bands from her arms and remove her beaded earrings. She sighed as Lydia unfastened her hair and let the unruly curls fall about her
shoulders. The girl had a gentle touch. Already Lydia had found time to arrange Octavia’s scattered jewelry into a pleasing arrangement, and there was a vase of fresh white roses on the entry table that had not been there earlier.

“You will come in the morning, first thing, Lydia.” Octavia slipped into her bed, and Lydia smoothed the bedcovering over her.

“Yes, mistress.”

But morning came too early, the sky still dark in the east, and Octavia kicked at the coverings that had tangled about her feet as she struggled through the night. What kept her from sleep? Was it the same cold deadness she had felt in her spirit these last months?

No, there was a fear there, a whisper of fear that must be rooted out.

It had begun when that Arab-turned-Jew had arrived, his charming smile and winning manner making him an instant favorite in the house.