Keeper of the Flame (16 page)
When she again fixed her gaze on Bellus, it was with a fearsome anger, made more frightening in its calm. “Stay out of the North Wing,” she said through clenched teeth. “Do not test me again.”
Though he was never one to retreat, Bellus thought it best to leave her while the old man still held her captive. For some reason he drew his pugio and held it at his side, not missing the widening of her eyes, and feeling somehow better for it. He turned and stalked down the corridor, back to the south end of the Base.
Test her? As though she were his master? Though he did not run, his breathing was as labored as after a battle, and the beads of sweat that had begun on his neck now formed rivulets down the inside of his tunic.
This is impossible. We cannot occupy this lighthouse as though
there are no enemy forces here.
They were soldiers, and Bellus intended that they should act as such. Within minutes of reaching his room, he had scribbled out a dispatch to Caesar. It read simply and clearly:
Lighthouse Keeper uncooperative. Permission requested to treat as hostile and secure the lighthouse through whatever force necessary.
He rolled the papyrus, tied it with a bit of leather cord, then opened his door and yelled for a soldier.
Caesar would have his request within minutes, and by the end of the morning, Bellus should be free to act as he wished. Caesar would see that he took every duty as sacred. And so would she.
He ran a hand over the sheathed pugio that hung at his side and remembered the woman’s flashing eyes, the way they had flickered with a bit of fear when he had drawn his weapon.
She was not a goddess after all. And she could be subdued.
I
n the marshy fields of Pelusium on the eastern extreme of the Egyptian Delta, Ptolemy XIII’s army encamped, robbed of their boy-king, who was still in Caesar’s clutches in Alexandria. But the real power behind Ptolemy was here, reclining on silk cushions within a massive three-roomed tent central to the encampment.
Pothinus stretched his neck, stiff from reading the pile of scrolls beside him, and reached for his cup of wine on a side table. The wine was the finest Lesbos could send and had reached the encampment only a day before he had sailed in from Alexandria.
From all reports, the soldiers here had grown first restless and then complacent. As the days without action lengthened, they had settled into a miserable routine of games of chance and brawls over real and imagined insults.
Pothinus leaned his head back against the cushions and studied the series of low torches that lined the back of the king’s tent. He had felt no compunction at claiming the quarters for himself when he had arrived. Ptolemy was not here.
The tent had been set up to resemble the king’s palace quarters as closely as was possible on the field of battle. Rich fabrics in red and gold covered a large bed with cedar posts, and braziers burned bright around a raised bath area with a marble tub. Even the gods had been represented, with marble busts of Serapis and Zeus on columns at the tent’s entrance.
But one could not sit in luxury, nor command a standing army, for days on end without a plan.
Fortunately Pothinus had a plan.
He had read the battle histories of leaders gone before, had consulted with advisors. Within six weeks he could have Ptolemy’s army inside Alexandria to oust Caesar’s legion, slit the throat of Egypt’s traitorous queen, and reclaim the throne for Ptolemy. With Ptolemy on the throne, Pothinus would never be far from power.
Outside the tent he heard the men moving about, making preparations for the night. In the distance he could make out singing, the vulgar songs of half-drunk soldiers. He finished the pomegranate he had begun earlier, pulling out its red seeds, then wiped carefully at the dripping juice and rinsed his fingers in a bowl of perfumed water that sat atop the table.
The large flap of the tent’s forefront lifted, and the torches flared. Pothinus squinted past the flames. “Plebo?”
The servant he’d left in Alexandria entered on silent feet, head down.
“What took you so long?” Pothinus swung his feet to the ground. “I expected you within a day of my own arrival.”
Plebo lifted bleary eyes to his master. “The sea was rough, my lord. We were blown off-course. I came as quickly—”
Pothinus waved away his excuses. “Tell me of the old man.”
Plebo eyed the couch opposite the one where Pothinus sat and seemed to sway on his feet.
“Still on sea legs, are you, boy?” Pothinus jabbed a finger at the couch. “Sit if you must. But speak!”
Plebo sank into the cushions and closed his eyes. “Sosigenes was freed from the prison.”
“Cleopatra went against Caesar’s wishes?”
Plebo shook his head. “Someone paid well to get him out. He and all the Museum’s scholars disappeared.”
Pothinus creased a wrinkle into the white cushion beneath him. “But I am certain you located them?”
Plebo swallowed and blinked heavily. Pothinus thought perhaps the man looked a bit green. “No one knows where they have hidden.”
Pothinus jumped to his feet and paced the tent. The torches seemed to respond as well. One of them smoked and sent curling black fingers toward the roof. A servant appeared to tend to it.
“There are rumors,” Plebo said, “that it was Sophia of Pharos who paid for their escape.”
Pothinos halted and held out his hands. “That’s it then. If she is protecting them, Sosigenes
must
be working on the Proginosko. Did you see it, Plebo? Tell me you saw it.”
“I saw nothing. There is also a centuria posted in her lighthouse.”
“Caesar is protecting the scholars? I thought he wanted—”
“I believe the soldiers know nothing of any old men. Caesar wants the lighthouse only.”
Pothinus laughed, feeling it in his stomach. “Poor Sophia. From recluse to host, and not of her choice.” He ran a hand through his full hair. “But she must know where it is.”
“Why is this thing so important?”
The arrival of three others cut short Pothinus’s reply. His generals filed into the tent behind a servant, their faces appropriately somber. Pothinus turned from Plebo and waved them in.
“Come, men. We have every reason to attack Alexandria soon, and it is time to plan the movement of the troops.”
He joined them at a large wooden table spread with a map that covered the Great Sea to the Nubian cataracts, and from
the Western Desert to Sinai. An oil lamp beside the map created a circle of light. Pothinus tapped a long finger on Pelusium and looked up at the general, Marwan. “How long will it take to march to Alexandria?”
Marwan’s glance went from Pothinus, to the map, to his fellow generals. Pothinus turned to the others, and their eyes also shifted away like guilty children.
“What is it?” he asked, with a growing dread.
Marwan answered. “The men, they are not convinced.”
The wine in his stomach seemed to sour. “Not convinced of what?”
Marwan sniffed and scratched his neck. His fellow general, Razin, cleared his throat. “With Ptolemy not here—”
“He is a child!” Pothinus rapped his knuckles against the table. “Everyone knows that I am his advisor.”
“The people favor a ruler, even a child. Not a eunuch my lord.”
“Whom do they expect to recover their king, then? Shall we sit in the fields until Ptolemy becomes man enough to fight his own way out of Caesar’s hands?”
Again the generals looked everywhere but to him. He raised his voice, and it sounded even to him like the desperate roar of a wounded animal. “Who?”
“Arsinôe arrived several days ago.”
“Arsinôe! She is barely older than her brother Ptolemy, and younger than her sister who already holds Alexandria!”
Razin nodded. “Still, she is noble-born.”
“And a woman!”
“Ganymedes accompanies her.”
Pothinus spat. “He is nothing more than a tutor. Not even a
politician. I was once a scholar in the Museum! Did you know that? Surely you have told the men that it is in their best interest to remain loyal to the ruler who has recruited them, paid them . . .” The guilty expressions of the men before him stilled his tongue. The generals were silent. The tent grew hot.
Pothinus turned from them, blinking away the anger that threatened to show as weakness. “And what does the girl Arsinôe propose?”
After a pause Marwan answered. “She proposes nothing as yet. Simply moves about the men, speaking to them, encouraging them.”
“Of course,” Pothinus turned back to study the map. “There is nothing that wins the loyalty of battle-weary soldiers like a pretty woman in their midst.”
“She speaks like a true Ptolemy—”
Pothinus slammed the wooden table, and the oil lamp jumped. “I care nothing for what she says.” He put his fingers to his temples. “The people are fools. Here, and in Alexandria. They would ignore intelligent leadership in favor of seductive charm. Fools. Leave me. I will call you later.”
The generals glanced at each other, then backed away and fled the tent. Pothinus stared at the tent flap, still fluttering in the night air.
“What will you do now, master?”
Pothinus started, having forgotten Plebo’s presence. The room beyond lay in shadows now, and Pothinus crossed his arms, aware that others could lurk unseen in the darkness. “Win them back, of course. Win them back.”
Outside the sounds of the men and their singing had hushed, and Pothinus imagined that they whispered among themselves
of the eunuch who had settled himself in the king’s tent as though he commanded the army.
The Ptolemaic family had a long and bloody history of removing rivals in the simplest way possible. A knife between the ribs as one slept, a trickle of deadly poison in the bottom of a cup. With Arsinôe and Ganymedes here, Pothinus felt his mortality as surely as if the time and place of his death had been named.
He turned to Plebo, still reclining on the couch with the strange greenish cast to his skin. “The Proginosko. I must have it.”
Plebo opened one eye.
“It is a wonder, Plebo. You cannot imagine. With this piece that Sosigenes is resurrecting, one can track the movements of the heavens—the stars and their orbits, the path of the sun and the earth. Time itself becomes the servant of the one who owns the mechanism. He can number the days and seasons with unheardof precision, the eclipses of the moon and the sun, the tides and floods.” He sank to the cushions. “In all the history of man, Plebo, we have struggled to master time and have only succeeded in making guesses. Even now, the calendar has drifted so far from the correct date, that summer is called autumn. But with the Proginosko . . . Master of time.”
Plebo sat up. “But the army? What of the troops? Do they care if it is Metageitnion or Pyanepsion?”
“Perhaps they are heedless of the date. But this one piece of knowledge will set its owner apart as master of the heavens, Plebo. To the Egyptians, such a spiritual and superstitious people, the Proginosko will make him a god. And to the knowledge-lusting Greeks, he will hold the key to time itself.” Pothinus closed his eyes, imagined the Proginosko in his hand. “Can you not see it? This one invention will unite the country under the man who
holds it. With it, Ptolemy will become feared, loved, revered. And followed. Caesar, with all his brutish soldiers, could never compete. Nor could the little girls who think to rule the country.”
He reached a leg across to Plebo and kicked at the servant’s arm. “I must have it, Plebo. Immediately.”
The man’s eyes narrowed. “How—”
“You must go back at once to Alexandria.”
Plebo raised himself to sitting, his mouth open. “My lord, I cannot.”
“Of course you can.” Pothinus stood, the decision made. He went to the table, pulled out a blank papyrus scroll and ink from a small box there. “I will give you instructions for Dhakwan, whom you should find somewhere about the palace. He is always available to me for whatever unpleasant tasks I have.” He began scribbling a message, while estimating the drachmas it would take to complete the task.
When he turned back to Plebo, the man was horizontal upon the couch again, whether asleep or unconscious, he could not tell.
Pothinus sighed. Why did it seem that he alone cared for the best interest of Alexandria and of Egypt? Cleopatra would sell all of Egypt to Rome. She cared nothing for the people as he did, only the power.
No matter. Within days he would have the Proginosko in his hand, the country would be his, and Sophia and Sosigenes would no longer be a problem.
T
he platform atop the first and tallest tier of the lighthouse’s three divisions stood more than a hundred cubits above the Alexandrian harbor, affording a view of the city and the sea that few had ever witnessed.
Here, beside the chest-high walls, Sophia stood and let the robust wind buffet her, let it try to sweep her from her feet. She leaned forward into it and felt a hint of moisture in the air, blown in from the solid clouds that hovered below the lowered sun in the west.
When the coolness had revived her flagging energy, she dropped to a cushioned bench and welcomed the shelter of the walls.
It had been a week since the Romans invaded her peace. Thankfully they had confined themselves to the Base and not breached her sanctuary on this platform. Still, the lighthouse felt no longer her own. Her hands balled at her sides to think of the soldiers tramping the lower levels, giving orders to her servants and expecting to be treated like guests. The scholars had been more appreciative guests, though Sosigenes’s continual whisperings about the love of his One God continued to disturb her spirit.
This platform was her special place, accessed by no one other than herself. It circled the second tier of the lighthouse, through the center of which servants endlessly hauled fuel upward for the fire. Those who tended the fire and the mirror ascended to this height, but they knew to keep moving, past Sophia’s platform, upward to the beacon chamber.
From the ground, no one would have suspected the delights the platform held, placed by and cultivated for Sophia alone. No less than seven species of roses grew here, crowded into raised wooden planting beds that lined the walls.
