Keeper of the Flame (22 page)

Achillas rubbed at a stubbled chin with grimy fingers. He was shorter than Pothinus, as were most Greeks, but with a thickness of body that few would want to face on the battlefield. They walked through the tents and sidestepped the orange fires with their embers twirling into the night. The smell of roasting meat mingled with the usual tang of soldiers encamped far from home and luxury.

Achillas lifted his chin toward the reedy plain, dotted with fires like stars in the black night. “The girl still sends whispers through the troops, promises of wealth and time away from battles.”

“She offers what she does not have.”

Achillas shrugged. “She may soon have all she could desire.”

Pothinus slowed and studied Achillas. “You said the troops were still loyal.”

The general scratched at a place under his leather. “They still believe that Ptolemy should be on the throne, as his father desired, perhaps with Cleopatra. But few of them believe a woman should be co-regent. Not Cleopatra nor Arsinôe.”

A soldier approached with a metal plate of roasted goose and offered it to Pothinus. He took the plate and bowed his thanks. The soldier did not move. Pothinus obligingly lifted a slab of the meat to his mouth and tore off a smoky bite. He chewed and swallowed the tough flesh quickly. “Good man,” he said to the soldier.

Now be gone
.

The young man disappeared back into the night, and Pothinus shoved the plate at Achillas. “So the troops will follow my orders?”

“Arsinôe is telling them that she desires to restore Ptolemy as well. She says that while you sit on your hands in your tents here, she will send to Alexandria to have Ptolemy rescued from the Roman.”

Pothinus drew up his full height and scowled into the darkness. “Then we shall have to find a better way.”

Achillas punched him lightly on the upper arm. Pothinus pulled away.

“May the gods be with you on that one, Pothinus,” Achillas said and pointed upward. “Because I am beginning to believe they favor Rome.”

Pothinus gazed again over the starry plain. How many of them would he sacrifice to gain the throne for Ptolemy?

How many would I not?

The night had chilled, and Pothinus retreated through the tents to the royal enclosure that he had assumed for himself. He had barely washed the dirt of the fields from his feet and reclined on one of the low couches when the tent flap lifted and two figures slipped in, unannounced. Pothinus lifted his upper body from the couch, then forced himself to relax when the faces of Arsinôe and Ganymedes appeared in the bright light of the tent’s torches.

Achillas followed quickly. No doubt he had been watching and feared that treachery was in the air.

Arsinôe glided forward and stretched herself upon the opposite couch, as though she were an invited guest. She was a striking girl, younger than Cleopatra by only a few years, and hovering between the innocence of youth and the hard edge that came early with Ptolemaic rule. She raised her black eyes to him, and Pothinus smoothed his hair back with a hesitant hand.

“It is good to have the nobility among us.” Pothinus eyed the lumbering Ganymedes who had come to stand behind the girl’s couch.

“Hmm,” she said. “I will say ‘thank you,’ though I am quite certain you are not sincere.”

Ah, I was wrong. The innocence has already fled.

Pothinus reached for a cup and raised it to her. He drank alone, and the small slight of not offering her any wine did not go unnoticed. Her lips drew together and Ganymedes seemed to tense and puff out his chest.

“Will you join us, Achillas?” Pothinus gestured to the couch that sat at a right angle to his and the girl’s. His general came forward and lowered himself slowly.

Arsinôe wore a strong perfume, floral and heady, and as the
inside of the tent grew warm with the abundance of lit torches and braziers, the air took on a torpid, sleepy feel. Pothinus struggled to keep his wits sharp. “I hear that you intend to rescue the boy. Most ambitious, and likely to bring the wrath of the entire Roman legion down upon you. And those few you command.”

A flicker of challenge sparked in the girl’s eyes, and Pothinus thought them sharp, as though daggers could shoot from them if she so wished it.

She reached for a platter of figs on the table between them and waved away the flies that hovered there. “We shall see.” She lifted a fig to her mouth. “There may be more soldiers who wish to see the boy free than you think.”

“Ah, but we all wish to see him free, Arsinôe.” Pothinus eyed Ganymedes behind her. “Though some of us have the benefit of wisdom guiding our actions.” His hand went to his gray head again, this time with the confidence borne of age.

Arsinôe looked over her shoulder at Ganymedes, and something passed between them that Pothinus could not see. Ganymedes nodded slightly, as though he understood her silent request. Arsinôe returned to watching Pothinus. “Let us not talk of battles and politics,” she said with the voice of a little girl. “Such boring matters.” She shrugged prettily and leaned to the table to pour herself some wine.

Pothinus studied her movements.
What has happened?

He played her game, passing the time with conversation about philosophy, nature, and history. Achillas removed himself from the conversation after some minutes, claiming that his duties called to him. Ganymedes followed not long after. Apparently the lout had no interest in their conversation.

The night wore on, Pothinus’ eyes grew heavy, and he sought for a way to end the girl’s visit. When Ganymedes returned, he felt almost relieved. No doubt he had come to return Arsinôe to her tent.

But the girl’s eyes shifted to her tutor, again sharp and cunning. The huge man bowed once.

She sighed and turned a smile to Pothinus. “We talk of history, my friend. Of those who came before us and seized what they wanted through the power of their will.”

“Some of them had the right of birth to do so, and some of them did not.”

“Ah, but in the end that did not matter, did it?” Arsinôe drew herself up and stood before him. “You speak of wisdom, you claim worthiness by virtue of your age. And yet, it is really
power
that matters, Pothinus. And power can be wielded at any age.”

She turned and left, Ganymedes at her side.

What has the whelp done?

He was left alone only a moment. Plebo, his personal slave sent to get rid of the dreadful Sophia and bring back the scholar Sosigenes, appeared inside the tent’s entrance, his eyes wide.

“Yes, Plebo. That was indeed Arsinôe. Much has happened since you departed. Now tell me—”

“You have not heard!”

“Of course I have not heard, you fool! You have just arrived.” Pothinus swung his legs over the side of the couch and flexed his fingers, knuckles popping.

“Achillas is dead!” Plebo’s lower lip seemed to tremble.

Pothinus frowned. “No, it was Sophia you were sent to take care of. And bring Sosigenes and the Proginosko.”

“My lord.” Plebo’s voice slowed as though he were the tutor.
“I have just arrived, and the camp is abuzz. Achillas has been found at the edge of the encampment, a blade between his ribs. Arsinôe is moving among the troops, assuring them that she is in control, that Ganymedes will serve as their new general, that they have nothing to fear. The incompetence they have served under will not be tolerated . . .” Plebo grew silent, as though he feared his master’s reaction.

But he need not have feared, for everything inside Pothinus seemed to grow still, as though he had turned to marble, an unyielding sculpture of the man he had been. Within the stillness, his mind grasped at only one thought:
I must win them back. There is only one way.

He pounded the table. “Where is he?”

“They are bringing his body—”

“Not Achillas.
Sosigenes
. Where have you put him?”

Plebo swallowed, the knob in his throat bobbing twice. “There was some difficulty.”

Pothinus closed his eyes. “It was a simple task. Did you not find the man I sent you to?”

“I found him, paid him, sent him on his way. But he was slain by a Roman.”

Pothinus’s eyes snapped open. “A Roman? Why would a Roman care—”

“You forget there are a hundred of them in the lighthouse.”

Pothinus stood and lifted his head to the gods. “This can mean only one thing. The Proginosko is there, and Caesar thinks to use it for himself. He has surrounded one old man and his patroness with a hundred trained soldiers for protection.”

He thought of his comment to Achillas earlier.
We must find a better way.

The gods had given him his answer.

He fixed his gaze on Plebo again. “It is time to move. Time to gather those still loyal to the king and take back what is ours.” He reached for his cup of wine and tossed it back in one gulp.

“We will attack the lighthouse.”

Twenty-Four

S
ophia paced before the fire in her private chambers. Three days since Bellus discovered her secret—the cache of intellectual giants hidden away in the storage rooms of the North Wing.

Three days, during which he had kept his word and not told Caesar. This she knew because the scholars were not seized. And because every time she saw Bellus, whether passing him quite unexpectedly in the South Wing of the Base or seeing him by chance when he gave his requests to the kitchen staff, he would whisper reassurances to her, or catch her eye and wink.

But it was late afternoon and he would not be about his morning errand in the kitchen, nor his midday stroll through the South Wing to inspect the troops, nor even his occasional early afternoon nap in the central courtyard’s sunny sand. All the places she might happen upon him. Unexpectedly.

And so she paced.

When her feet grew tired, she climbed to her garden and searched for distraction. A cutting she’d been nurturing cried out for her attention. The little plant was fighting for life, struggling to reach for the sun, and for reasons she did not fully understand, Sophia felt a deep and desperate longing to see the flower succeed and flourish. She pruned a bit of its growth and aerated the soil at its roots and found herself whispering a prayer that it would somehow grow in beauty.

But even her roses could not hold her today, and finally, with an exasperated sigh, she left the platform and hurried down the ramp.

The front corridor of the Base, where the soldiers were housed, lay in stillness. It was the hour when the men were required to do little in the way of drills, and not yet time for the rowdier entertainment of the evening. The sun through the windows of the South Wing fell in squares in the corridor and warmed the stone. Sophia passed from one yellow pool to the next, her head down but ears trained to distinguish voices in each separate barracks room.

She found the room she sought, passed it slowly, then stopped on the other side of the door and retraced her steps to stand outside. In the room Bellus was speaking to his men. She held her breath, remembering the painful words that had once drifted to her in this hall.

But this was a history lesson.

She stood, fascinated, as Bellus related the history of Alexandria to the men. He told of Alexander’s visit to this north coast of Egypt, of his affection for the spot as a place to build his greatest namesake city.

“Ordered his men to map out the future streets with barley flour, he did.” Bellus’s voice rang with admiration. “They say the birds came and pecked at the grain, and Alexander’s soothsayer declared that Alexandria would one day feed the world.”

Sophia turned her back to the wall and leaned her shoulders and head against the warm stone beside the doorway.

“From the beginning it was a thoroughly Greek city in a foreign land. When Alexander died and his kingdom was sliced up between his three generals, Ptolemy took Egypt for himself and showed great wisdom, for the Nile has given Egypt more grain than she could ever use.”

“And the lighthouse?” one of the men asked. “Did he build that, too?”

“His son, the second Ptolemy, was responsible for this magnificent structure.” Bellus’s voice changed direction, and Sophia imagined him looking through the windows to the courtyard, where the lighthouse rose above them.

“The city was located in such a strategic location, it was destined to become a great trading center. But only if ships could find it in the flat coastline and then navigate the waters, broken by sandbanks and shallow reefs. Only in a city of great minds, where mathematicians like Archimedes and Euclid had already been expanding the body of knowledge for years, could a structure of this scale ever have been completed.”

“What is it like up there, Bellus? How far can you see?”

“Perhaps he does not look out the window when he is up there,” another soldier joked, his meaning clear. The men laughed.

Ares chose that moment to round the corner and ask Sophia in a voice that would have carried halfway to Memphis, “Can I help you with something, Abbas?”

Sophia flushed and shook her head, but Bellus was already at the doorway. “Sophia.” His small smile said he knew she had been eavesdropping. “I was just about to tell my men what an amazing view you have graciously permitted me to see from the upper levels of your lighthouse.” He extended a hand into the room. “Will you join us?”

Sophia bit her lip and glanced to Ares, who raised an eyebrow and said nothing.

She ducked into the room, refusing her second thoughts. Bellus followed.

About two dozen soldiers lounged in various positions. She scanned their faces, saw the amusement there. She swallowed and felt her face flush.

“Men!” Bellus’s voice was sharp, a tone much different than
that of his history lesson. The soldiers knew it well and jumped to their feet as one, straightening tunics, sporran, and spines. Their eyes fixed, unseeing, on some point behind her, they snapped into two horizontal lines.

Bellus walked back and forth in front of them, inspecting each in turn. “Have you forgotten that the lady is our host?”

“No, Pilus Prior!” Their voices barked out the response in unison.