B. Alexander Howerton (6 page)

Carialla slowly, tentatively, reached for the wine goblet,
and brought it to her lips.  As the first taste of wine splashed across her
tongue, she realized how truly thirsty and hungry she was.  She grasped the
goblet with both hands and drank deeply.  When she finally lowered the cup, she
saw a beaming Andros watching her with fascination.  “Yes, that’s much better. 
Good, isn’t it?  Here, let me serve you some pheasant.”  He finished carving a
few slices, then slid some onto her plate.  In her rush to eat, she almost
forgot to observe the table manners that had been bred into her since
childhood.

Andros broke off a hunk of bread and chewed on it.  “You
know,” he said between chewing teeth, “This could be the beginning of something
big, of a new dynasty.  Alexander will take Tyre….”  The Princess’s eyes
flashed angrily at him even as she bit into morsels of pheasant.  “Oh, it’s
true, don’t doubt it.  When Alexander sets his gaze on a goal, he does not rest
until it is accomplished.  But once the city is taken, he will be lenient and
incorporate it into his empire.  The new Tyre will need rulers.  Perhaps you
and me?”  His gaze upon her became steady and intense.

“Never!” The princess suddenly screamed, picking up her
goblet and heaving it at Andros.  He deflected the projectile with his arm and
smirked.  “Well, you are a feisty one.  You’ll take a bit of taming.  But
you’ll come around.  Please, sit and finish your meal.”  The princess had
risen, intending to flee, but realizing there was nowhere to run, she meekly
resumed her seat.

As they finished their dinner, Andros related tales to the
Princess of his sea battles waged in Alexander’s name that had brought him to
this point.  He spoke of Alexander’s strategy for taking Tyre, of the blockade
that his ships had already formed to prevent supplies and reinforcements to
reach the city.  He spoke of the futility of wishing events to be different,
and that her best hope was to cast her fate with his, and to rise above her
current, seemingly hopeless state to once again sit in the royal palace of
Tyre.  It was in his power, he told her earnestly, to bring all this to pass,
if only she were willing.  She listened to all his entreaties in stony silence.

“Well,” Andros finally said, pushing himself away from the
table, “you must be tired.  Allow me to escort you back to your room.”

When the bolt had been put in place across their door,
Carialla sat on the bed and excitedly related to Nelka everything Andros had
told her.  Nelka listened, flashes of worry darting across her face.  When the
Princess had finished, Nelka, who had been a slave all her life and had been
captured and brought to Tyre many years ago from a conquered inland tribe,
thoughtfully said, “Perhaps it would be best to take this man at his word.  We
have heard the reports of Alexander for many years now.  It is true he captures
what he sets out to win.  Perhaps you could be a mediating influence on the
rule of the barbarians, once they gain control of the city.”  Determination
entered her countenance.  “Yes.  Yes, you should consent to mate with this
Admiral Andros, and make the best of your fortune.”

“Oh, Nelka, if you truly believe it is for the best, I will
do it.  Although the thought of that repugnant barbarian touching me is repulsive,
while his tribesmen are sacking our wonderful city, I will do what I need to do
to survive.  Stay with me always, dear Nelka.”  She threw herself, sobbing,
into her nursemaid’s arms.

“See, there, already the power of decision has given you
strength.  You will survive, and thrive, and who knows?  Someday you may look
back on this day as one of the most fortunate of your life.” She rubbed the
girl’s back and rocked her.

Never, thought Carialla through her tears.  She had decided
to give herself to this barbarian admiral, but a cold, hard nugget of revenge
formed deep within her heart.

The next evening at dinner Carialla gave her consent to
Andros for their union, and he was overjoyed.  They toasted to their happiness,
but the Admiral remained a gentleman and did not force himself on the girl. 
“we will wait until you are comfortable,” he whispered in her ear.  The days
passed, and the women were given more freedom on the ship.  They were allowed
to walk abovedecks during daylight hours.  Carialla took her evening meals with
Andros, and his natural good humor and incessant declarations of affection
slowly began to melt the Princess’ heart, and she found herself actually
looking forward to her time with the Admiral.

The Admiral decided to engage his squadron of triremes on a
mission to patrol southwards from Tyre to ensure that the sympathetic Egyptians
did not try to smuggle goods to the besieged Tyrians.  About a week after the
Princess’ capture, Andros’ men spotted an Egyptian vessel in the distance.  The
women were escorted belowdecks and bolted in their room as the Greek trireme
gave chase.  They once again heard the horrendous noises of battle about them
as the Admiral’s ship rammed the Egyptian craft.  The Greeks leapt aboard,
killed the Egyptian crew and pillaged the cargo.  Carialla cringed in her room,
covering her ears with her hands in a vain attempt to block out the screaming
and crashing.

After the battle, silence reigned for a while.  Then Andros
came knocking.  He entered beaming, holding before him a captured prize.  It
was an oddly-shaped stone, slightly smaller than a man’s head, of myriad
colors, some indefinable.  It rested in an ornately-wrought gold stand, which
resembled three shapely women kneeling, facing outward and leaning forward, grasping
each others’ hands around the base of the stone, making a receptacle for it. 
The stone seemed to give off a glow of its own, lighting Andros’ exuberant
face.

“Isn’t it lovely?” he exclaimed.  He presented it to
Carialla.  “I give it to you as a token of my love.”

Nelka dropped to her knees and made the three-fingered sign
of protection against demons.  “Great Melkart protect us.  That is the stone of
Isis.  The Egyptians must have been bringing it to Tyre as a sign of
allegiance.”

Confusion passed briefly across Andros’ face, then he
lightened again.  “All the better.  Isis would not allow a sacred relic of hers
to be captured by any but the destined rulers of Tyre.  Come.  We will make it
our centerpiece at dinner tonight.”

Carialla could not explain it.  Perhaps it was the energy
Andros had acquired from winning his battle.  Perhaps it was the more than
usual amount of wine she drank.  Perhaps it was the radiance of the Isis stone
in the center of the table.  Whatever the cause, after the dinner, she found
herself entwined in Andros’ arms, kissing him passionately.  They made love
that night, and every night thereafter.  Carialla was becoming more accustomed
to her lot, and even caught herself experiencing affectionate thoughts toward
the barbarian admiral.  Nelka even softened to the handsome red-haired Greek.

Months passed.  Life aboard the Greek trireme settled into
as much of a routine as it could, punctuated by frantic raids against enemy
ships.  Carialla began to fall deeply in love with her Greek admiral, but his
mission caused him to sail frequently within sight of her beloved island city. 
She would lean on the gunwales and gaze wistfully at the rising towers,
remembering a happier, simpler time.  She often had the chance to observe the
progress of Alexander’s landbridge to the city.  He had almost reached the
walls, but catapulted stones and burning pitch kept him from crossing the final
distance. 

She had gleaned from the snippets of conversations she had
overheard between Andros and his officers that a major assault was being
planned, in order to allow the landbridge to be completed.  Andros’ fleet was
preparing to flank the head of the landbridge on either side and shower the
walls with as many arrows as possible, while Alexander’s troops would rush as
much mud and stone as they could off the end of the wooden trestle that had
been built on the land spit, to quickly give it more volume.  They would then
rush up their catapult and siege engines and hammer at the walls of Tyre until
they could gain entrance to the majestic city.  The attack was to be made three
days hence, and Andros was preparing furiously.  He nevertheless found time to
call for Carialla in the evening.

She entered his chamber and found him hunched over his
charts.  He looked up and smiled briefly at her, then turned back to his
charts.

“Dear, you look tired,” she said soothingly, rubbing his
shoulders.  “Come, relax with me.”

He pushed the charts aside as he stood, turned, and took her
in his arms.  “That would be most pleasant right about now.”  He picked her up
and carried her to his bed.  She giggled in delight as he dropped her onto the
mattress.  She reached out and undid the belt of his tunic.  He parted her robe
and sucked at the dark nipple of a breast. She moaned as she removed her robe
and slid it to the far side of the mattress, against the wall.  He pulled his
tunic over his head and let it fall to the floor.  He climbed on top of her,
kissing her lightly from her neck down to her mound of dark hair, then back up again,
ending at her mouth.  She parted her lips, and they kissed passionately,
intermingling their tongues.  He reached down and began to massage the soft,
warm area between her legs, and she parted them to give him greater access.

Suddenly, he felt an odd movement of her arm, and reached
back instinctively to grasp her wrist.  He turned to look at what she was
holding.  She had reached into her robe at the far side of the bed and
withdrawn a dagger, which she held poised above his back.  Holding her wrist,
he turned a wrathful face on her.  She was crying.  “I love you, but I love my
home, too.  I cannot allow you to take the city.  I cannot bear the thought of
barbarians treading upon my favorite places.  I’m sorry, my love.”  She pulled
her arm holding the dagger down with all her might, but it barely moved against
the restraining grasp of the Greek.

Confusion, then sorrow crossed Andros’ face.  “I could have
loved you deeply,” he wailed gravely.  “I intended to make you a queen,
radiantly shining across the area under Tyre’s command.  We were to have
children, and found a dynasty that would last a thousand years.”  He grimly
clamped his lips together, then slowly began drawing the arm with the dagger
down.  As he did so, he turned the point so that it was aiming at Carialla’s
heart.  She struggled to resist, but he had her pinned, and she could not even
slow the inexorable progression of the dagger.  “I’m sorry, my love,” he said
softly, and a tear escaped from his eye as the tip of the dagger broke her soft
olive skin, just above her left breast.  She cried out once, then ceased to
struggle as the dagger entered her heart.

He bent down, kissed her lightly on her now unmoving lips,
then sat up and turned away from her, sitting on the edge of the bed, his hands
on his knees.  As he struggled to gain control of his emotions, his eyes came
to rest on the Isis stone on the dinner table.  It seemed to glow slightly
brighter.  Andros wondered if it could possibly have absorbed Carialla’s
fleeting soul, carrying it to the goddess Isis.

“Hello?”

“Hi, is this Julia?”

“Yes.  Who is this?”

“This is Alan.  How are you?”

“Alan?  Alan! I remember you.”

“Yeah, from the wedding.”

“How did you get my number?”

“You know, it was kind of tricky.  I had to call my friend
Steve to get Jim and Jane’s number, then I called them and got yours.”

“Pretty resourceful.”

“I have my ways.  So how are you doing?  Have you recovered
from that wedding yet?”

“Yeah, but it took a while.  That was quite the party, wasn’t
it?”

“Yeah, it took me about three days to bounce back.  So, I
was wondering, are doing anything Friday night?”

“I don’t know.  What have you got in mind?”

“Well, a few of us were planning to go down to the BOB and
check out Troll For Trout.  I was wondering if maybe you’d like to come along. 
We could have dinner there before the band starts playing.”

Julia’s sudden intake of breath was quickly followed by a
very enthusiastic “Yeah.”

“Great!  Hey, do you like those guys?  I should have asked
first.  I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, no, yeah, that’s fine.  I mean, sure I like them.”

“Good.  Great.  Well, ah,  how shall we do this?  I mean, do
you want to meet down there, or should I pick you up, or how shall we do this? 
Whatever you’d like to do is fine with me.”

“Well, I don’t know.  Let’s see, I work till four thirty,
then I’ll want to shower and get ready.  Why don’t you come over around six
thirty?”

“Great.  I’ll see you then.”

“Yeah, this ought to be fun.  See you then.”

“Hey, wait.  I don’t know how to get to your place.”

Julia laughed nervously.  “That’s right. That would have
been great.”  She gave Alan directions to her apartment.  “So, I’ll see you
around six thirty?”

“You can count on it.  See you.”

“Bye.”

Alan buzzed Julia’s apartment at six twenty-seven.  He held
a bottle of Blush Chablis in his hand.  He had fretted over what to wear, then
finally settled on the old standby of black jeans and a denim shirt, covered
with his favorite sweater, which was basically black with saturated patches of
color strewn asymmetrically about.

“Hello?”

Alan leaned closer to the speaker grill.  “Hi.  It’s Alan.”

“Oh, hi.  Just a moment, OK?”

“Sure.”  Alan absently twisted the brown paper bag around
the neck of the wine bottle as he turned slowly around in a manner he hoped
appeared casual, examining the neighborhood.  Julia lived on the right side of
the upper floor of a large, ornately designed red brick house in the Heritage
Hill district.  All the houses in this neighborhood reflected the opulence of a
bygone era, and most of them had now been divided up into apartments.  A sharp
buzzing brought him whipping around, and he realized Julia had remotely opened
the door for him.  He pushed the heavy oaken door open and stepped into an
elegantly appointed foyer.

“Up here.”

He glanced up to see Julia waving at him over an ornately
carved railing.

“Hi.  How are you?” he asked in a voice that he hoped
sounded casual.  He had forgotten how beautiful she was, and was almost
rendered speechless.

“Just fine.  Come on up.”

He walked as casually as possible up the stairs and entered
her apartment through the door she held open.  “Nice place,” he said, looking
appreciatively around at the minimalist modern furnishings, which somehow
seemed to fit into the older style of the architecture.

“Make yourself comfortable.  I’ve got to do a couple more
things.”

Alan held up the brown bag with its tightly-wound top.  “I
brought some wine.”

“Great,” she said, rushing off to the bathroom and fumbling
with her earring.  “You can find glasses in the kitchen.”

Alan went through a small alcove lined on both sides with
overloaded bookshelves into the kitchen, and proceeded to search the cupboards
for wine glasses.  He heard Julia snort sarcastically in the bathroom.  “Of
course the glasses are in the kitchen.  Where else would they be?  There in the
cupboard to the left of the sink.”

“Found ‘em,” Alan called.  “Now I need a corkscrew.  Don’t
tell me.  Let me guess.  In the drawer on the right of the dishwasher.”

“Have you been here before?”  Julia chuckled.

Julia finished getting ready, and they each drank a glass of
wine, sitting on her living room couch, trying to come up with appropriate
small talk, and dreading the awkward silences.  They devolved into watching her
white long-haired cat Snowflake wash herself on the chair across the room.

Finally Julia quickly swallowed the last little bit of wine
in her glass and said, “Shall we?”

Alan hopped up rather quickly.  “Sure.  If we get there soon
enough, we can probably get in before it gets too crowded, and we have to wait
forever for dinner.”

“OK,  I’ll get my coat.”

Alan parked on the street by the Monroe Mall amphitheater,
and they strolled across it to the BOB, an old, renovated warehouse which was
now a four-story bar and restaurant in the heart of downtown.  Alan remarked
that he loved to come down in the summertime to the Blues on the Mall series on
Wednesday nights.  “You ever come down for that?”

“No, but I’ve always wanted to.  Maybe we can go together
next summer.”

Alan felt a little zing as he realized she had implied she
would still like to be doing things with him by that time.

They chose to have dinner at Bobbarino’s, the Italian
restaurant on the second floor.  They were seated at a cozy, softly-lit booth
amongst the large wooden restained pillars and beams of the old furniture
warehouse.  The exposed ductwork and rafters were painted in warm, inviting
colors.  “I love what they’ve done to this place,” Alan remarked casually.  “I
love that big circular hole in the middle of the whole place.  You can lean on
the railing and look all the way up and down to the different floors.”

“Yeah,” Julia replied, “and it’s a good thing they put a net
there, to keep the drunks from bombarding the people below with beer mugs.”
They chuckled.

They ordered dinner and drinks and looked around as casually
as possible at the other diners.  Finally they could not avoid paying attention
to each other, and both racked their brains for a topic of conversation.

“So,” Alan started,  “You’re a schoolteacher.”

“That’s right,” Julia nodded slowly.

“Do you like it?”

“Oh, I love it.  I’m so fond of my kids.”

“What grade?”

“Second grade, this year.  And you?  Jane tells me you do
something with computers?”

“Yeah, I install new computer systems and networks for
Compumark.  Mostly the jobs are here in town, but sometimes I have to do a
little traveling.  So you talked to Jane about me, eh?  Is that how you decided
that it was safe to go out with me?”

Julia quickly glanced down at her hands, hiding a smile. 
“Yes, I checked your references.  It seems as if you’re not a serial killer or
anything.”

Alan laughed incredulously.  “Thanks for the vote of
confidence.  I bet you two had a good gossip session about me.”

“Well, she did tell me about some of your finer exploits.”

Alan put his face in his hand.  “Oh no.  What did she tell
you?”

“Oh, nothing important,” Julia responded coyly.

The waitress brought their drinks just then.  Alan had
ordered a red ale, and Julia stuck to blush chablis.  Alan held up his pint
glass.  “Well, here’s to nothing important.”  They clinked glasses.

The combined effect of the atmosphere of the restaurant and
a few glasses of beer and wine put them both at greater ease, and before long
they were laughing and sharing stories, and were amazed at the inevitable
overlap of tastes and interests.

“This is amazing,” Julia said, catching her breath after
gulping wine a little to quickly.  “I can’t stand Sandra Bernhart either.”

“Oh, I know,” Alan enthusiastically responded, “And Courtney
Love should just be blasted into space or something.”

Julia laughed, putting her hand to her chest.  Alan noticed
how beautiful she looked, laughing.  Her mouth spread to dominate her whole
face, revealing her wonderfully white teeth.  Her long nose wrinkled at the
sides, and her eyes disappeared into slits behind those wonderful dark
eyelashes.  Her dark eyebrows were perfectly formed, giving a mysterious,
timeless cast to her face.  Her cascading straight black hair, falling to her
shoulders, framed her face perfectly.

“This is incredible,” she gasped, recovering from her
mirth.  “It’s almost as if I’ve known you before or something.”

“Naw, it’s probably just coincidence.  Do you believe all
that reincarnation stuff?”

Julia feigned reproach.  “Careful, young man.  I’ve read
Shirley MacLaine, Betty Eade, And the Celestine Prophesies.”

“Oh, gosh.”  Alan rolled his eyes.

“Now, come on.” Julia lightly slapped the back of his hand. 
“How do you know it’s not true?  I mean, some things you just can’t explain any
other way.”

“Like what?  That we like a lot of the same stuff, and have
a lot of the same friends, but never met before?  Pure coincidence.”

“Oh, you’re so unromantic.  What if we’ve known each other
before?  What if we keep running into each other in every lifetime?”

Alan snorted.

“It’s possible!” Julia protested.

“So is the Detroit Lions winning the Superbowl, but it’s
highly unlikely.”

“Well, let me loan you a couple of those books, and we’ll
see if you don’t change your mind….  Hey, there’s Jim and Jane.”  She waved
them over.

In a short while Carol, then Steve, then some other mutual
friends showed up.  Before long they had a long table full of carousing,
laughing friends.  Eventually the strains of a Troll For Trout tune wafted up
from the floor below, and the gang went down to the bar area where they were
playing and danced for many hours, closing the place down at two A.M.  Alan had
switched to water somewhere around twelve, and convinced Julia he was alright
to drive.  He parked the car on the street outside her apartment, and walked her
to the door.

“That was a whole lot of fun,” Julia said, smiling.  “We’ll
have to do it again sometime.”

“So, can I call you again sometime?”

“Certainly,” she said with a sardonic smile, softly slapping
his chest with the back of her hand.

They reached the door, and Julia fumbled in her purse for
her keys.  “Someday I’m going to have to get a bigger purse…  here they are.” 
She unlocked and opened the main door, then turned to face Alan.  “Thank you
for a wonderful evening.”

“You’re welcome,” he answered, then was silent.  After an
almost awkward silence, he jerked his head slightly forward, then quickly
backward, like a bird, not sure if he should try to kiss her or not.  He then
pushed his head forward more slowly, stopping before he met her lips.  She completed
the connection, giving him a brief, closed-mouth kiss.  She pulled back. 
“Well, goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” He said, holding up his hand in farewell,
already backing away.  “I’ll call you.”

“Please do.”

They both had wonderful dreams that night.