Beloved (3 page)

“You lie,” he said pleasantly. “You are a whore of Palmyra.”

“Centurion, do not do this thing,” Iris said, her voice now trembling. “Do you not have a wife, or a sister? Would you like it if someone did this thing to them?”

He looked at her dispassionately, and she saw no pity or mercy in his ice-blue eyes. “It has been a long time since I have had a fair woman,” he said, and then he pushed her back onto the bed.

Her instinct for survival made her attempt to rise, but he shoved her back brutally, and Iris’s control left her. She screamed, totally terrified. The centurion slapped her viciously with one hand, while
ripping her gown and pushing it up to her belly with the other. His knee jammed between her resisting thighs while she fought him, clawing at his face with her nails, maddened with fear, already ashamed of what was happening to her. She had known no man but her loving, gentle husband. She had known nothing but tenderness and kindness at his hands. Iris had never imagined that a man could do
this
to a woman. Even knowing it was useless, she continued to fight him because something deep within her refused to accept this horror; and the centurion in his fury at being thwarted, continued to strike her into submission. Both her eyes were almost swollen shut when she felt him gain the advantage, and thrust with a cruel, burning pain into her resisting body. Her reason finally left her as he pounded against her again and again, conscious only of his own pleasure in subduing the woman.

“By the gods,” he grunted, “this is the best piece of cunt I’ve fucked in months!”

Beneath the bed, hidden by the coverings, the child Zenobia squeezed her eyes tightly shut. She was terrified by the strange sounds above, trembling and confused at hearing her mother begging in such a frightened voice. Then her mother screamed, and she could no longer hear women’s voices, only men’s rough laughter, and words she didn’t comprehend.

Iris never heard them. She never knew that she was mounted by not only the centurion, but half a dozen other men who patiently waited their turn to violate her now still body. In the end the centurion raped her a second time, cursing when he came too quickly. In his pique he cut her throat as one would butcher a helpless lamb, swiftly, bloodlessly.

Tamar, pulled down onto her back on the cool tile floor, her garments yanked over her head, fared little better than Iris; but Tamar knew enough not to fight back. They left her still body for dead when the last man had finished sodomizing her, not even bothering to use the knife on her. She lay barely breathing while the soldiers stripped the room of the few things left in it for most of its furnishings had gone with Zabaai ben Selim as they always did. Terrified, she held her breath when they ripped the hangings from the bed, along with its coverlets. She prayed to every god she could think of that in their greedy and lustful haste they would not see the child Zenobia. Those fervent prayers were answered. Her eyes met the terrified ones of the girl, and they warned Iris’s daughter not to move, to be as silent as the tomb.

It seemed like an eternity that she lay there upon her stomach
on the cool tiles, her violated body aching unbearably. She dared not even groan for fear they would realize that she was alive. Finally, after searching through every room for valuables, the soldiers left the house of Zabaai ben Selim. She heard their horses clattering noisily in the courtyard, and wondered why she had not heard them before. Probably because they had led the animals in quietly so as not to surprise anyone left in the house. At least she now knew that they were cavalry, and that would narrow her husband’s search for the guilty ones.

Certain that they were now alone, she moaned with pain and tried to sit up. Zenobia scrambled from beneath the bed, her young face wet with tears, as she helped Tamar. The child was pale, and still shaking. She carefully avoided looking at the bed. “Is my mother dead?”

Tamar nodded. “Don’t look, child.”

“Why, Tamar? Why did they do it? You told them who you were? Why did they hurt you? Why did they kill my mother?”

Tamar spat out a broken tooth. “You cannot tell the Romans anything,” she said contemptuously, finally managing to sit up with Zenobia’s aid, her back against the bed. Suddenly embarrassed by her disarray, she pulled down the skirts of her dalmatica, which were now ripped, torn, and stained by the soldiers’ leavings. “I do not believe that they stole the camels, child. Go to the stables, get one, and ride like the wind to your father. Tell him what has happened! I cannot go, Zenobia. I must wait here.”

“It is my fault,” said Zenobia, tears welling up in her silvery eyes. “My mother is dead! If I had not been such a child, if I had been ready to leave when everyone else was ready instead of hiding like a brat.” She began to weep piteously.

Tamar sighed deeply. She ached in every joint, and she wanted to scream at Zenobia that it was indeed her fault for delaying them so that the soldiers caught them unprotected. Then she looked at the child’s face, woebegone at the loss of her mother. “No, child,” she said firmly, suddenly even believing it, “you must not blame yourself. It was fate, the will of the gods. Go now, and fetch your father.”

“Will you be all right?” Zenobia sniffed anxiously.

“Bring me a pitcher of water, and I will survive. Then you must go, but be careful.”

“I will leave by the back gate,” Zenobia promised.

Tamar nodded wearily. She suddenly felt very tired, and very, very old. She would survive, if only to see those who had done
this to her, and so wantonly murdered Iris, punished. She sat in the midday heat after Zenobia left her, watching almost dispassionately as two large horseflies buzzed about Iris’s brutalized body.

Zenobia left the house, going by way of the kitchen garden to the stables where three impatient and cranky camels waited, chewing their cuds. She felt nothing. Neither grief, nor anger, nor fear. She was numb with shock remembering her mother’s pleas for mercy. Never had Zenobia heard Iris’s voice as it had sounded this day—begging and terrified. The echo of it still rang in her ears, and she believed it would haunt her for the rest of her life.

Absently, she patted her own camel, an unusually mild-tempered blond beast. Mounting it, she guided the animal through the back gate of her father’s house, after leaning down to unlatch the lock, and out onto the desert road. The camel moved swiftly, taking bigger and bigger strides until it seemed to be flying just above the road.

Zenobia sat atop its back and firmly settled into the red leather saddle, her white linen chiton pulled up to leave her golden legs free to manipulate her mount, her agile mind racing. Why had the men hurt her mother? She did not really understand at all, for she had never known anything but kindness and indulgence from the men in her life. Her father and all of her older brothers spoiled her terribly, as did their close friends. She knew that men sometimes beat their wives, for she was not entirely sheltered; but that was within the realm of the respectable. Everyone said that a woman needed correction occasionally. Still, she had never seen her father beat his wives, and her mother did not even know the men who had attacked her. If Iris did not know them then why were they angry with her, and why did they hurt her, kill her? She simply could not understand.

Was brutality then a trait particular to the Romans alone? Was it some peculiar form of madness that afflicted them that made them turn on innocent strangers?

She goaded the camel to greater speed with her little heels, for ahead she could see the dust of her father’s caravan. Soon she was passing the groups of families who made up their tribe. All waved and called out to her in greeting as her camel galloped by them. Their smiles were indulgent, for she was a great favorite with everyone in the tribe, and not simply because she was their leader’s daughter. Zenobia bat Zabaai had always been a merry, kindly child. At the head of the group she could see her father,
and her eldest brother, Akbar. She began to wave at them, to call out frantically, her young voice sounding hollow in her ears.

“Hola, little one!” Akbar called in a teasing voice. “Want to race that flea-bitten old nag against my champion?” Then he saw her pinched and pale little face, and turning to his father cried out, “Father, something is wrong!”

The entire caravan was stopped and, dismounting his own camel, Zabaai lifted his young daughter down from hers. A crowd began to gather about them.

“What is it, my flower?” the chief of the Bedawi asked. “Where are your mother and Tamar?”

“The Romans,” Zenobia began. “The Romans came, and Mother is dead, and Tamar is grievously hurt!”

“What?!
What is it you say, Zenobia? The Romans are our friends.”

“The Romans have killed my mother!”
she screamed at him, her control finally gone, the hot tears beginning to pour in dirty runnels down her small face. “Tamar hid me beneath the bed. I could not see them, but I could hear them. They did something to my mother that made her scream, and cry, and beg them for mercy! I
never heard my mother beg!
I never heard my mother beg, but they made her beg, and then they killed her! Tamar is so fearfully hurt she cannot even rise from the floor. You must come home, Father!
You must come home!”

Zabaai ben Selim felt his legs go weak beneath him. He knew what had been done to his wives even if his innocent young daughter did not. His only question was why? With a howl of outrage, pain, and grief he began to tear at his beard and his clothes. Then, when the first onslaught of his anguish passed he began to give orders, and the caravan was quickly turned about. However, Zabaai ben Selim, his elder sons, and his daughter did not wait for the others. Remounting their camels, they quickly rode back along the desert road to the outskirts of Palmyra, where his house stood in the bright midday sun. They rode so hard that the following caravan met their dust, which still hovered in the air, turning it yellow in the heat.

Tamar was but half-conscious when they arrived, and now Zenobia finally dared to look upon her mother’s violated body, gasping with horrified shock at what she saw. Iris’s body was sprawled grotesquely upon the bed, her pale-blue dalmatic and her snowy interior tunic ripped away to expose her lovely breasts, which were bruised and bleeding. There were great purple blotches
on the insides of her milk-white thighs. Her beautiful sweet face with the gray-blue eyes blackened and tightly shut in death, the tender, red mouth viciously savaged and bitten, was barely recognizable. Those who had known her would have been horrified to see how battered her beauty was now.

“Mama!”
It was a cry torn from deep within Zenobia. She stared in sorrow at her mother’s murdered body, unable to fully comprehend, now that she had looked, unwilling to believe that Iris was really dead.

“Take the child out,” Zabaai commanded tersely to no one in particular. “She should not have seen this! Take her away!”

“No!”
Zenobia whirled to defy her father, but she was shaking with shock and grief. “I had to see, and now I will never forget! I will remember what the Romans did!”

Akbar didn’t even argue with his small sister. He picked her up with a strong arm, and carried her weeping from the room. She nestled deeply into his arms as if trying to escape the truth, and her bitter sobs tore at his own heart. Wearily, he sat down on the stairs leading to the lower level of the house, and rocked his little half-sister.

Iris had been several years younger than he was when his father had brought her back from Egypt those long years ago. He had imagined himself in love with her for a brief time. He suspected that she had known, but she had never embarrassed him, or played the flirt. She had treated him with respect. A tight sob escaped his own throat.

Zenobia’s voice shattered his memories. “Why did they kill her, Akbar?
Why?”
She was looking up at him now, her little heart-shaped face dirty and wet with her tears.

“They killed her because they are Roman pigs,” he said angrily. “Everyone not born a Roman they call a barbarian, but it is they who are the real barbarians. They say that Rome was founded by two orphan brothers left on a hillside to die, but rescued and suckled by a she-wolf. I believe it! They are wild animals to this day!”

“What did they do to my mother, Akbar?” she asked fearfully.

He hesitated, not sure he should answer her. She was yet a child. She could even be his own daughter. He had a boy her age. He wasn’t sure how much she knew of men and women. Still, he knew from past experience, Zenobia would not be put off.

“Do you know, little flower, how a child is conceived?”

“Yes,” she said softly. “Mother had been telling me of these
things, for she said that I would one day be a woman in my own body. When a man makes love to his woman a child is the natural result of their union. It is good, my mother said.”

“That is correct,” he answered her.

He did not elaborate. She understood enough that he might explain, and so he said, “The Romans forced your mother to make love with them, Zenobia. When a woman is forced it is called
rape.
The Romans raped your mother, dishonoring her, dishonoring our father, our family, and the Bedawi. When they had finished with her they then cut her throat so there would be no witnesses against them. My mother they assumed dead without the knife.”

Zenobia was silent a moment, and then she said. “Was Tamar raped, too?”

“Yes,” he said in a tight voice. “My mother was also raped.”

“Is that why she hid me, Akbar?” Zenobia asked. “She did not want me to be raped?”

“Had
you
been raped, my sister, the dishonor would have been the worst of all, for you are a maiden, and have never known a man. Part of your value to your future bridegroom will be in your virginity. A man marrying a maiden does not like to travel a road already well traveled by others,” Akbar said solemnly.

She became silent again, and snuggled deeper into his lap. She understood now why her mother had cried, and begged the Romans. She had been attempting to save her virtue, and her husband’s honor. What awful beasts the Romans were! Zenobia wanted vengeance!