Keeper of the Flame (20 page)

But something about the conflict drew him farther into the alley.

The woman turned her head to him.

On the heels of startled recognition, blood rushed to his head and pounded in his ears.

Sophia!

She turned back to her attacker quickly, without a flicker to betray his presence.

Good woman.

Years of training took over. He moved forward on soundless feet, and his arms hardened as though iron flowed into them. His pugio found its way into his hand, an extension of his arm.

He was behind the Greek in a moment. He snaked an arm between them and gripped the man’s forehead with his palm. The Greek’s hair was greasy under his hand. Sophia’s eyes were on Bellus, dark and wide with a vulnerable fear he had never seen. A surge of anger flowed through him. The Greek stabbed blindly backward with a knife, trying to strike Bellus. In one quick motion he pulled the man’s head backward, saw the target vein pound perfectly in the villain’s knobby throat, and brought his dagger across it in a soundless, smooth slice.

The man stiffened. A gurgle sounded in his throat, mingled with Sophia’s cry. And then he fell at Bellus’s feet with a satisfactory thud, like a poor man’s skinny goat offered for sacrifice.

Sophia’s knees buckled, and Bellus reached to catch her, dropping the pugio to avoid another injury. A scrawny cat ran through the alley past their feet.

And then he saw the blood. At first he thought her attacker’s blood had sprayed on her, but it ran too heavy down her throat, and spread across the neckline of her tunic like a petal-torn red rose.

“Sophia!”

Her eyes were open, but she was silent.

He bent and retrieved his pugio, then lifted her into his arms and strode from the alley. He found Capaneus where he had left him, picking meat off the leg of some bird.

The slave jumped up, eyes wide.

Bellus climbed onto the cart, placed Sophia on the floor at his feet, and grabbed the reins. He said nothing to Capaneus, who stood open-mouthed, simply yelled to the horse, which took off at a trot.

The reins were tight and coarse against his hand. When he had navigated through the worst of the crowds, he glanced down at Sophia. Her throat still bled. He did not think it was fatal, but his chest felt constricted nonetheless. “Can you press your chitôn against the wound, Sophia?”

She was silent still, but unwrapped the fabric from her shoulder and held it against her chin.

The sky opened then, sending the first heavy drops like scattered arrows, then a curtain of water that drenched them in moments. The entire city seemed sheeted in gray, and they swam alone through the fog.

Another glance at Sophia. She had lifted her face to the rain, as though to let it wash away the attack. Her chitôn grew pink with watered blood, and she blinked away the rain that assaulted her eyes.

He snapped the reins against the horse’s flank and took a corner so sharply they nearly toppled.

Across the heptastadion, empty of all travelers and beaten with angry waves, and then past the Pharos village and the short causeway that led to the lighthouse. He steered carefully around ruts and stones and drew the cart up close to the entryway.

A moment later she was in his arms again, in the front hall of the Base.

Ares rushed to them. “What have you done?” He reached for Sophia. Bellus turned away, putting himself between the servant and Sophia.

“She has been attacked. Light a fire in her chambers and bring bandages.”

A look of resentment flashed in Ares’s eyes and he glanced at Sophia, as if to get different instructions. But the woman was silent in Bellus’s arms, huddled against his own pounding chest.

Ares hurried ahead of them, through the inner courtyard and up the ramp.

Halfway to her chambers, Sophia stirred in his arms. “I can walk,” she whispered. “Put me down.”

“I will not.”

“It is too far.”

“I have carried armor heavier than you for miles across the battlefield. Be quiet.”

Amazingly, she was.

By the time they reached Sophia’s private chamber, a fire
surged at the side of the room and Ares had brought a basin of water and clean rags.

Bellus tried to lay her on the white-cushioned couches, but she resisted. “On the floor,” she said. “By the fire.”

He glanced at Ares, who then flew to the bed in the adjoining chamber, ripped a covering from it, and returned. With a flick of his wrists, he snapped the royal blue fabric taut and let it float to the floor beside the fire. Bellus kneeled and laid Sophia on it, and she exhaled as though relieved, though whether to be in her room or out of his arms, he wasn’t sure.

Ares hovered.

“We are fine, Ares,” Bellus said, still kneeling at her side.

“That will be all.”

The servant’s feet didn’t move. Bellus looked upward into his eyes and saw a mix of anger and something more. Jealousy?

Their eyes connected for only a moment, then Ares apparently remembered his place and backed from the room.

“The boy cares for you very much,” Bellus said to Sophia as he reached for one of the rags Ares had left.

Her voice was low. “He hasn’t known a mother for many years.”

She lay on her back, and Bellus knew the bedcovering gave little relief from the hard floor. “Let me move you to the couch.” He glanced to the next chamber. “Or the bed.”

“No.” The word was sharp. “No, this is fine.”

Bellus left her for a moment to retrieve small cushions from the bedchamber. He was there only a moment, but the femininity of the room, with its rich fabrics enveloping the bed and ornately carved furniture, surprised him.

He propped a cushion under Sophia’s head and then dipped
the rag into the basin of clear water and wrung it out. “What happened? Who was that?”

Sophia swallowed. “I don’t know. He wanted money, I suppose. I am often recognized when I go out.”

Bellus stroked the cloth across her throat, taking care not to get near the wound until he could assess it. The rag left a wet streak across her bloody throat. He wiped again, gently. The rag turned pink in his hand as he washed the blood from her neck and then her upper chest. She stilled beneath his hand, her eyes on him. He could see her pulse, pounding in her neck. Oddly, he was aware of his own beating heart as well, which seemed to speed faster here than it had in the street with her attacker.

Battles I know. Women, I do not.

The fire snapped beside them, and she jumped. Bellus touched her arm with his free hand. “Lie still.”

He bent closer and leaned his head to the side until it nearly rested on her belly, to examine the cut. With a clean rag, he washed the blood from it. It had stopped bleeding, and he was careful not to reopen it. She trembled a little as he cleaned it, and he thought again of the petals of a flower, bruised and crushed.

Her teeth began to chatter.

“You are soaking wet,” he said.

“So are you.”

He shrugged. “I am accustomed to harsh weather.” He went to the bedchamber once more and came back with another covering, but then changed his mind. “You should change your clothes.”

Her eyes widened.

“The cut has ceased its bleeding. With careful tending it should heal without a problem. But you need to get dry.”

“And you think to stand there and watch me?” A little of the old fire had come back into her voice.

He straightened. “Why should I want to do that?”

She pulled herself to sitting. “I have no further need of you. You may go.”

He scowled, staring her down. “I will stay out here while you dress in dry clothes.”

She stood. “You said yourself that the wound is nothing.”

“I didn’t say it was nothing. I said it should heal. I want to be certain you do not reopen it.”

“Tell Ares to send for the physician when you see him in the Base.”

“I have treated more wounds on the field than any physician has ever seen.” He met her stare for some moments, and then she shrugged.

“Do as you like.” She brushed past him, bumping his shoulder with her own. He didn’t turn, but the place where she had touched him seemed to spark with heat.

He quoted Homer to himself, uncaring if she heard.
“ ‘Do thou restrain the haughty spirit in thy breast, for better far is gentle courtesy.’ ”
He lowered himself to the bedcovering beside the fire and waited with his back to her bedchamber. She returned in a few moments. He could feel her standing behind him, as though deciding what to do. And then she circled and kneeled. He grabbed at the extra covering he had brought and wrapped it around her shoulders. She relaxed before the fire.

They stared into its flames for some minutes, wordless. And then he felt her shift and knew she would speak. He did not turn.

“Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you for rescuing me.”

He dared not look at her. “I was pleased to be of service to
you. But Sophia . . .” He paused, then forged on. “That was no beggar looking to rob you. What did he want?”

She was silent, and for a moment he thought she might tell him the truth. “I suppose you do not believe he could have been preying on my womanhood.”

“I never said that! I only want to know if you are in danger.” His face felt hot, from the fire no doubt. “It is my duty to secure the lighthouse, and that means its inhabitants as well.”

“So we are your prisoners, now?” She turned to him. “Should I have asked your permission before going to the agora, centurion?”

He drew his shoulders back. “Perhaps if you had, you wouldn’t have come back wet and bleeding!”

“And perhaps if you savages hadn’t invaded our city, it wouldn’t have turned into a nest of violence!” She gripped the edges of the fabric wrapped around her in tight fists.

Bellus shook his head. “That was no Roman whose throat I cut today.”

“Ah, so only we Greeks are violent? Is that what you propose?”

He snorted and faced the fire. “You are impossible, woman. I do you a kind deed, and somehow you find a way to blame me for its necessity.”

She shrugged. “There is little these days that is not the fault of you and your legionaries.”

He bore holes into the smoldering wood with his eyes. “You should stop talking. You’ll reopen your wound.”

She laughed. “Is that the way you win an argument? I thought you were of a stronger intellect.”

Bellus stretched his legs in front of him until his sandals nearly touched the fire, then leaned on one elbow on his side
and faced her. He said nothing. She looked down on him, swallowed, and turned her face away.

He hated conflict. In spite of all the battles, all the scrambling for position in the Roman army, he was not his father, and at his core he wanted only peace. Sometimes that meant walking away from a fight.

Today he was not walking away. But he would not be drawn in.

He plucked at the threads on the fabric beneath them, up close to her thigh. He felt her tension, like reins on a horse that strained at the bit to run free. The air seemed charged, as though the storm had not yet broken. He lifted a hand, meaning to trace a line down her thigh.

I have lost my mind.

He let his hand drop and closed his eyes.

In his mind, he saw again the Soma, the crystal sarcophagus of Alexander the Great, installed in the city far below them. The conqueror’s lifeless body, close enough to touch but shrouded in stone.

But no, she was not cold and lifeless. She was more like the fire that burned every night atop the lighthouse. Fiercely hot—and completely out of reach. A single flame, isolated, yet dutiful.

“You do not need to stay,” she finally said, her voice low.

He sighed. “You have no further need of me, I know.”

He pulled himself to his feet. She kept her eyes on the fire. Again, a desire to reach out to her washed over him, but he stayed his hand, and frustration replaced the desire. “Should you find that you do have need of another human being, you can always send for me.”

She was silent a moment, then turned her face to him. “Should I ever find I have need of someone, you would not be the one for whom I send.”

They locked eyes for one angry moment, and then he turned and left her sitting beside her fire. Alone.

Twenty-Two

F
our days passed, and the cut on her throat was healing. Sophia sat on the edge of her bed and angled a small polished bronze beneath her chin to catch sight of the wound. The slice was neat and the edges had come together correctly, though there would certainly be a scar. She had a flash of the throat of her attacker, opened and gushing. She shuddered and laid the bronze on her bed.

It had been too long since a visit to the temple, and she felt the need this morning to pay respect to the gods.

It was still early when she slipped from the lighthouse. No soldiers nor servants impeded her, and she chose to walk. She tried to enjoy the sounds of the morning and the sunshine, still too hazy to build the heat. But thoughts of her attacker plagued her, and she kept her eyes up as she walked.
“To him who is in fear, everything rustles.”
Sophocles did not help her today.

The sun could not penetrate the heavy shroud she felt within. Since the attack and Bellus’s rescue, she had been restless, yet inactive. She had spent too many hours gazing out to sea from her chamber windows or sleeping on her couches.

The Temple of Serapis had been built by the Greeks, but unlike the palaces and public buildings, it was thoroughly Egyptian in architecture, with square-cut doorways and flat walls that leaned slightly inward. An attempt by Ptolemy Soter to convince the Egyptians that this new god was actually one of theirs.

She tried to shake off the doubts that were becoming pervasive of late. How could this manufactured Greek-Egyptian god
claim her worship? How could he be a god, when he had not existed a few centuries earlier?

Sophia crossed through the sun-washed courtyard, passed the mighty statues of the Apis Bull, and entered the darkness of the temple.

Inside, the thickly columned hall, with its carved reliefs spread on every wall, was still dim, with only one fire burning in a low brazier on the side. She found herself the only worshipper, and the heaviness of the dark interior descended on her at once. She felt sealed up, as if she had been brought to one of the underground tombs of the ancient kings and left there to await the afterlife.