A Mixture of Madness, Book II of The Bow of Heaven

for
Allison and Stephany

•••

"No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness."   -  
Aristotle

•••

CONTENTS

Map

Preface:  55 – 54  BCE   -   Winter, On the March

Prolog:  19 BCE, Summer, Siphnos, Greece

Part I:  Home

Part II:  A Hardness of Stone

Epilog

Afterword

Acknowledgments

GLOSSARY
  (clicking on an underlined word or phrase in the text will take you to the Glossary and back again)

Timeline

The Bow of Heaven, Book III:  The Arc of the Arrow (excerpt)

Bibliography
 

Illustration credits

Map:  University of Austin, Texas, Historical Atlas, William Shepherd 1911

Part I:  Coming Home,
Landscape with the Ashes of Phocion
, Nicholas Poussin, 1648

Click on the image below and you will be taken to andrewlevkoff.com where you may enlarge this and other maps. If the link is not working, got to
andrewlevkoff.com/maps2
.

Preface

55 – 54  BCE   -   Winter, On the March

Year of the consulship of

Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus and Marcus Licinius Crassus Dives

“Bona Dea! What was that?!” Legionary Flavius Betto sat up, shoving Drusus Malchus awake. Betto, whose tent-mates called him Muris, the mouse, set to work upon a hangnail as if he were breaking his fast.

“It was a scream,” Malchus said, yawning and stretching. “You’re a soldier. We’re at war. You’ll hear lots of screaming. Go back to sleep.” The four other soldiers in the tent agreed with short, vehement curses.
The Celt threw a bronze mess cup at Betto but hit Malchus. Betto was lucky the two remaining members of their
contubernium
,
the brothers Broccus, were on guard duty.

Malchus casually tossed the cup back toward its owner. He was philosophical about these things. People were often throwing things at Betto, and
his friend Malchus, being so much the greater target, took his share of unintentional abuse. He was the only man in his
century
who could not wear standard issue. It would be unfair to call him fat, and more unkind than unwise. Hostus Broccus had once said that if they were ever shipwrecked together, they could make a raft of his body and a sail from his tunic. Hearing this, Tarautus Broccus had pressed a finger to one broad nostril, leaned over and emptied the other with a sharp exhale. Broccus had wiped his face on his tunic, then said he’d rather swim for it than lie on Malchus’ naked chest. Drusus had laughed along with everyone else.

“It wasn’t a scream,” Betto
argued. “It sounded more like…like the moaning of my Aunt Iunia.”

“You told me she died from eating bad mullet year before last.”

“My point exactly.” Betto began to reach for the tent flap, then thought better of it.

“It was a scream,” Malchus muttered, knowing this was an argument he would not win. He pulled his brown wool
sagum
all the way up over his head, wondering if he could fall back asleep before the next sentence was uttered.

“How could it be a scream?” Betto asked the woolen lump that was his best friend. “Have you looked outside? We’re in
Roman
Syria, not Ctesiphon. The fighting hasn’t started yet.”

“It will if you don’t shut up!” said
the Etruscan.

“That’s it. I’m wide awake now,” Malchus grumbled. He threw off his cloak, leaned forward and peered through the tent flap. “The blessed
cornu
will blow within the hour anyway.”

“It’s another omen, I know it,” warned Betto, peering over Malchus’ shoulder.

“Oh, here we go again,” said someone else.

“You think I’m joking?” Betto said. “Tell me, how did Malchus and I come to join you fine fellows? I’ll t
ell you how.” Someone muttered “again,” but Betto plowed ahead. “Because the six other legionaries we shipped out with drowned, that’s how! Remember the men who stood on the
rostra
with us in Brundisium? Well now they’re DEAD!”

“And here
you
are in the first
century
of the first
cohort
of
Legion
I
Columba
,” said
the Celt, throwing his tunic over his head.

The Etruscan
muttered, “Columba. Why name an army after a bird of peace? The Dove Army—about as threatening as a kiss on the cheek.”

“Ever have 30,000 doves shit on you?”
Malchus asked.

The Celt
continued unperturbed, “Under whose standard march the best legionaries Marcus Crassus’
sesterces
can buy. So I suggest you start acting like it.”

“It’s been almost five months, Flavius,” Malchus said. “You need to let it go. You’re driving everyone crazy.”

“You don’t understand,” Betto persisted. “Thousands of men drowned. I don’t suppose you call that a
good
omen, do you?”

“Think on it, my superstitious friend,” Malchus said, “there is a reason the gods gave you a mouth that closes and ears that don’t.” This got a laugh from the others, who had now resigned themselves to being well awake by the time Diana’s Hymn sounded.

“Scoff if you want,” Betto said. “But between the tribune’s curse and the ill wind that took our brothers, I’d say someone in the command tent isn’t praying hard enough.”

A voice in the dark
said, “The proper sacrifices were made to Neptune and Tempestates. The legion’s augur confirmed our crossing at that inopportune time has been absolved. There’s an end to it.”

“There’s an end to it
, all right,” Betto groused. “If by ‘it’ you mean us.” He joined the others and started dressing. At least his pre-dawn nerves, Malchus told him cheerfully, would enable them to beat the morning rush to the latrine.

•••

“This is not the way. We’re in the wrong wing! Give me that!” I seize the torch from the slave. “See my
atriensis
in the morning and instruct him to flog you. Ask for Alexander. Now be gone!” Athena, protect me—not here again. Not again, I beg you.

I point the sputtering torch down a dark hallway and see that it
is too short to be my own. In the dark, they all look alike. The spirits of a house come alive at night. Torchlight sets them free. Too many columns. Too many shadows. No one about. Even the slaves are abed. I’m drunk. How can I be drunk and dreaming?

Luca
.

They say the entrance to Hades is at Avernus, but
for me it lies here, somewhere in this house. No matter where I walk, in the end, the torture of the pit awaits me. I’m so tired. If I could but sleep a dreamless sleep. Come nightmare, do thy worst and let me rest. I hurry now past columns that throw grasping shadow arms. There is the garden atrium, rain splashing into the impluvium and blowing spray in gusts over the slick tile floor. I slip on a wet spot and fall to my knees. The torch skids, hits a clay planter head-on and goes out with a hiss and a small explosion of sparks.

That is the sign. I am close now. I get to my feet and grope
along the walls until finally, I hear a woman’s voice, low and urgent. It doesn’t sound like my wife. More words, then a grunt as if someone has been struck. I draw my
pugio
from its scabbard for the hundredth time, swearing that
this
time I will plunge it into the traitor’s neck. I make my way down the hall, past two empty
cubiculae
. I squint at a wall painting, recognize the image of Orpheus and Eurydice, the viper curled around her ankle. Now it comes.

Knowledge spurs me not to greater speed, but turns my feet to stone. They scrape on the stone floor as I drag myself forward, my mind silently screaming, ‘Awake
n! Awaken!’

The
cubiculum
has no door, and the heavy drapes that separate it from the hallway are partially drawn. I peer past the curtains. The room is dark, and I can hear more than I can see. The rhythmic grunts of the man in the room are occasionally echoed by a woman’s groan, whether in pain or pleasure I cannot tell. There is also the intermittently rhythmic thump of a chest of drawers as it is knocked up against a wall.

Forms beg
in to be discernible out of the murk. Two bodies face the wall, leaning over the waist high wooden chest. A man whose head is turned away from the doorway has his tunic pulled up above his waist and stuffed into his belt. His pale, exposed buttocks moves in a short arc, up and down, like comic moons unsure whether to rise or set. I can see the prominent bald spot on the back of Caesar’s head as he hunches over my wife’s right shoulder.

“Haste, Julius,
” she says, “or my husband will discover how boring you are.” Her last word turns into a grunt as Caesar responds with a vicious thrust that practically lifts Tertulla off her feet. I gag as I always do. Does she mock him, or encourage him? I can never tell. The left shoulder of her tunic is torn. Did she struggle? Or is this more evidence of their ardor? I know as I follow the slender line of her bare arms, up to her shaking shoulders, past her neck and the ringlets of hair that half obscure her cheeks, that whenever I force myself to gaze just a little higher, I will find that she is looking straight into my eyes.