Aries Fire (7 page)

She made sure to push him aside.  She paused in a dramatic moment with head upright and tilted slightly to her left, the way nobility did, before being escorted to an audience.  Seira momentarily buried humiliation for the sake of appearances.   

For a moment, Lem’s shoulders stiffened and his teeth made a grinding sound.

Perhaps that’s how they came to be so crooked, by holding in his intolerance, she thought.

She didn’t know why she behaved like this when angered, but her feelings told her to find extreme places. 

Seira remembered being upset with her mother for not being a true mother. True by Seira’s standards.  Hypatia’s uninvolved emotions usually caused her daughter to find a voice, any voice, to move her mother to passion. If she had gotten her attention, then she would have known if and how much Hypatia cared.  It didn’t work.  How unfortunate for others that Seira’s tantrums became a habit. 

Lem reached for her door and quietly closed it, resigned to her will. She saw the expression on his face that spoke plainly; he wanted to beat her until she cried. He was so tolerant of her temper and loyal to her position. A better servant and guardian existed nowhere.  She would have to remember to tell him that someday.

He stood next to her on her left and kept his eyes lowered as he held up his right arm for Seira’s grasp. Grabbing onto it, she led the way by one step until they reached the four steps that would lead them to the doorway and out of Hades.  Lem dropped his arm from her grasp and quickly took the stairs to bar the way of any incoming crew. 

Seira followed regally, slowly, and grew accustomed to her stink.  Perhaps she wasn’t as offensive as all that. Lem moved out onto the deck and turned to her.  He loomed in quicker than a falcon onto its prey.

“Make no mistake.  The next time your temper meets the last of my patience, there will be a war, and I will win. Never forget that, you spoiled brat.”

His sudden declaration left her dumb and feeling small. He behaved more like a brother might have than a servant should.  She ignored him.

The Captain, Alexander stood near a table feast and beckoned her to join him.  Seira shrugged at Lem in a cowardly attempt to apologize. She quickly moved toward Alexander. It appeared that he had prepared a breakfast table for her.  He was too considerate. 

That must have been all the commotion.  An unexpected appearance of a feast delighted her.  The table itself was constructed of planks of wood.  Pounded metal lain across the top. Seira had not seen metal used for such a purpose before.  Most of her household’s tables were made of wood or stone. Her fingers needed to touch its gilded crevices of warm bronze.  She pressed her palm onto it and felt its heat.  She smiled at the Captain.

“Why, you shouldn’t have, Captain,” she said.

“Would you have me keep you confined in the cargo with the fish?” he mocked. 

He suddenly flinched and he subtly, but most definitely, recoiled. He forced a smile before casually inhaling deeply in her direction as if to confirm a suspicion.

Saturn’s spite on him as well.

“But all this,” she motioned to the feast. 

She hoped to distract him.

“This is for my men.  I thought you’d like to join us, especially after… ah, having lost your stomach this morning.  I thought it might need replenishing,” he said.

“Oh,” she frowned. 

Snake in the grass.

Most of the men had already gathered around the table.  The other’s left their mundane duties. They dropped small crates, tossed aside ropes, slid down the mast, and pushed their way toward the banquet.  Crates were strewn about for sitting. They took no notice of them except to toss them aside for easier access to the food.  The men who did sit were uncommonly polite to each other. They spoke Latin and Persian and Egyptian but all seemed to understand each other. Each man grabbed and stuffed their mouths and simultaneously passed around all sorts of delicacies, figs, dates, fruit, bread, cheese, nuts, pitchers of beer, and dried fish.

“You treat your men well,” she said, a bit stung that this feast was not solely for her. 

Seira watched the display of masculine fellowship with wonder and admiration.

“They watch my back because of it.  That ship we saw…” he glanced at Lem.  Fortunately, Lem was busy stuffing his face and disregarded them. “That my men and I saw, was a sister ship, payback for a past favor.  Get your fingers in before it’s gone.  Please, sit.  My crew is a gluttonous lot,” he said, and held up an apple to her.

“No thank you.  I don’t eat apples.  They’re not pleasing to my constitution,” she replied and sat on a barrel that had been rolled over and propped up for her convenience.

“I hear tell that Christian virgins in training for monastic life subsist only on porridge, rice, and apples.  Keeps ‘em cleeen,” said a filthy crewman with two missing teeth. 

He whistled his ‘esses’ and mashed food fell from his mouth as he spoke. 

Unholy maggot. 

He laughed with the other men then turned in Seira’s direction, sniffing.

“Wha- “  He began to say.

Alexander quickly interrupted him.

“Sirus, attend to this deck after eating.  Seems one of you animals has forgotten himself and the use of the waste bucket. Befham? Understand?” Alexander raised his voice somewhat.

Alexander looked at her and spoke loudly. “My men are not often in mixed company, please forgive them.”

She grabbed the apple and bit a huge chunk. She filled the space of her mouth, glared at the crewman, and licked her lips. She purposely allowed spittle to run down her chin.

Alexander leaned over and casually whispered, “My dear, you are a bit pungent.  Is there anything I can do to aid in your, ah, toiletry requirements?”

“Schertainly not!” she said, a bit too loudly with a stuffed mouth. 

She wiped her chin in a wild motion.

Lem looked their way and stopped chewing.  He eyed the Captain, then Seira. She faked her best laugh and held up the apple.  She swallowed quickly then called out to him with a fixed smile on her face.

“It’s fresh. Try one, Lem,” she giggled, shrugging her shoulders.

Lem continued to chew.  He looked at Seira suspiciously.

“I only… The bottle broke. I over estimated my need for perfume,” she began stupidly.  “I tripped over my bucket and discovered I had no other pair of sandals.  That’s all,” she murmured to Alexander while ripping into a loaf of bread.

Her teeth found comfort in chewing bulk and, at the same time, her jaw tired of the monotonous motion.  Seira ate this way often enough to fill her uneasiness about life, to distract her from a feeling or a situation over which she had no control.  Flying out of the house and into a tree was a preferred remedy, but here?  There was no place to run.

Her body relished the food. She decided to give her body more of what it required.  If she couldn’t take herself away from where she was, then she had to be where she was and accept it.  Her attention to the food grew and she reached for a Persian lemon and peeled back the skin with her teeth. Seira inhaled its sweet smelling spray, her tongue drawn out for the dripping juice.  Eating became her momentary religion and prayer consumed her.  She lazily wiped the spit and juice from her chin as she grabbed a mound of goat’s cheese and slowly fingered it onto her tongue with her left hand. Seira licked every bit of white cream from her knuckles. She immersed her senses into her feeding, the way a newborn child would.

Her eyes poured over the feast table for dried fish but couldn’t find any.  She glanced to her left where she saw a greedy amount of food in a crewman’s bowl.  She pulled her knuckles from her mouth with a sucking sound, slid her hand past him, and drew a large piece of dried fish from his hoard. She drenched it in olive oil and broke it apart into little morsels. 

One by one, she stroked each morsel with her tongue, pushing bits of fish against her teeth, oiling her mouth in the course of things.  Her chin turned slippery as specks of white fish stuck to her lip and slid out of her mouth.  Seira used her tongue to retrieve what pieces she could. The rest, she wiped with her fingers and returned them to the fish soaking in her wooden bowl.  It was a pleasure-filled passion to yield to every feeling in one moment.  She took a crust of bread and licked the loose crumbs from it. She used the rest to mop the oil from her chin and mouth.  Seira was finally sated.

“That’s enough,” she said.

She threw the bread onto the table and sighed aloud.  She looked up and saw the crewmen staring at her. Sirus, opposite her, sat open mouthed, his tongue drooling from his lips.  Another had grasped an apple in each hand. He squeezed them tightly and rubbed one lip against the other from side to side. They leered at her and she frowned.

“What?”  They looked away reluctantly. She turned to her right and questioned Alexander.  “What?” 

He leaned on the table, head held up by one arm, and grinned at her. Seira grimaced then casually looked away somehow feeling subjected to mockery. Surely the sea air had dissipated her odor?

Lem stared at her with a deadly expression; nostrils flared. If no one cared to include her then perhaps she didn’t care to be included.

It would be better to be appreciated from afar, she thought. 

A quiet rest was in order. She meticulously wiped the crumbs of food from her juppe when she instantly felt what was there all along; an unmistakable lust hung thick in the air.

Seira raised her eyebrow and her posture.  She suddenly realized that even though she might have appeared as any noble woman, she ate like a prostitute, inhaling and digesting the weakness of men. Added to that was her sweet and sour stench.  She wished they would stop their stares.  It made her uneasy.

The men slowly resumed their gorging and glanced at her for only moments at a time.  Her mother told her that she had to learn patience and to be more sensitive with those less intelligent, so she forced smiles at these stupid men who were ruled by their bodies. Why had she not seen their faces masked with lust?  Theon was right, her gifts as a seer and as a woman were yet untrained.  Perhaps in time she’d be more suited to social audiences.  Seira would see to it that, in the future, her presence in any group must come from a position of power.

She hoped for a miraculous wind to abruptly bring them to the shores of Ashkelon.  Her embarrassment was heightened by her defensiveness. Once they reached port all she needed to do was find a way beyond Lem’s guard and then escape somehow. She wished she knew how to perform magical incantations. For now, she had to go wherever the damned ship went.

Alexander, the great captain of courtesy, discussed something in private with one of his men while Seira let her jaw sink into the palms of her hands. She was sleepy and still unaware that her every emotion or thought showed itself on her face.  A charming, innocent quality that she would need to relinquish if she was to become the all-powerful woman she desired to be.

Her eyes tried to roll back into their lids, but were mesmerized by the crew’s movements.  Instead of wandering off individually, they moved in pairs or triads, like schools of fish subservient to currents.  They swayed to the right, then to the left. Her head swayed with them.  Whoever dreamed of wanting to be on the water all the accursed time?  Movements were so restricted and dependent on weather. 

We’re not moving fast enough… and the smell. 

Her eyes caught sight of land and it roused her a bit.

“What’s that country?” she asked Alexander and pointed to a mass of land barely visible. Apparently she had not heeded her geography lessons.

“Where?  Oh, that’s Bur Sa’id,” he said. “It’s a popular port, but we’re not stopping there.”

Her eyelids drooped.  She had her fill of food and the monotonous swaying entranced her.  She couldn’t fight sleep any longer.

“I think I’ll go below as the sun has become too hot for me.” 

She stood.  Alexander stood with her.  Lem wiped his hands on his tunic and lumbered over to her.

“If there’s anything else I might do, please,” said the Captain as he bowed.

“I’m going to rest a while, Lem.  Why don’t you stay here and see how much more your stomach can hold?”  He frowned, not knowing if he had been insulted, then nodded.

“Bar the door,” he whispered as he leaned toward her.

When Seira reached her room a crewman passed her in the tight hallway.  He curtly nodded and looked toward the floor and sniffed.

“What are you, a dog?” she snapped as she slammed her door.

She pushed her satchel of books in front of it.  It was an entire sack dedicated to the teaching of mathematics.  She turned her nose up at it.

Turning from the door she nearly tripped over a trunk. 

What’s this? 

She undid the hook and opened it to find cloth pockets filled with sandals and shoes. 

Even with all of his generosity and graciousness, she was still surprised by him. She was touched by Alexander’s thoughtfulness.

Some of the shoes were adorned with jewels.  Were they real?  What kind of merchants did he deal with?  She pulled all of the shoes out of their soft homes and laughed.  This was more fun than shopping at the marketplace.  Her sleepiness faded for the chance to do something different.

A bowl of lemons sat near the water bucket.  Did Alexander play with her?  There was much she needed to learn about men.  She bit into the peel and she reacted. This was not a sweet Persian lemon. She squirted the sour juice into the bucket.  Sour lemons made her salivate and tear. 

Never mind, she thought.

 Seira immersed her feet into the lemon water and wiggled her toes as she chewed on a piece of tart lemon, adjusting to the taste, and affably cleansing the taste of fish from her mouth.  She rubbed her hands vigorously against her feet until she was satisfied the smell of foul matter was gone.  She sniffed the lemon and then her feet.  Yes. The putrid odor finally dissipated.  After lightly scenting her feet with the remainder of her violet and lavender oils she wiped her feet again. She didn’t want to stain the new and soft, silken shoes.

“Ah,” she moaned.