Keeper of the Flame (7 page)

Ares startled her with his knock, and she yelled her permission to enter. “Can you not give me a moment’s peace?” she mumbled, still bent over the charts.

“News from the city, mistress.”

She whirled on him. “From the queen?”

He shrugged. “I would not know.”

She squinted her annoyance and took the scroll he held out. She broke the seal and unrolled it quickly.

Sophia, I was unable to make good on my escape, I am afraid. I have only a moment here before they confiscate my books
and writing instruments. The Romans will set me aside, to rot in one of our city’s own prisons. Do what you can. A discovery of momentous import is at hand, and we cannot allow it to be lost.

Your faithful Sosigenes

Sophia thrust the scroll from her, letting it drop to the table. A moment later she was digging her formal himation from a chest and thrusting it over her head.

“You are leaving?” Ares’s shock rippled through his voice.

“I will go to see Cleopatra.”

Ares slipped to the table and picked up Sosigenes’s message. Sophia felt a flicker of annoyance at his presumption, supplanted by a glow of pride. Only in Alexandria were even the servants educated in language and writing. It was truly the center of learning.

She threw the himation’s corner over her shoulder and shoved a pin through the fabric. It was for Alexandria that she now fought.

“He is an old man,” she said to Ares. “With weak lungs. He will not last a week in a cell.”

“Can you not wait until the mob returns to their homes?”

“No. I cannot wait. Who knows what these Romans might do, especially if they feel the city is rising up in defiance.”

Ares smiled in suppressed amusement. “It is good to see you take care for someone.”

Sophia grabbed her letter to Pothinus and secured it beneath her cloak. “I thought you were taught to read. Did you not see in Sosigenes’s message that he has some new discovery? That is all I care about!”

“Take some kind of protection, Abbas. I will find you a dagger, a short sword—”

“I have all the protection I need, Ares. My voice and my reputation.” She slipped her sandals on and ran a hand over her clipped hair.

Ares scratched the back of his neck. “If anyone could wound with her voice and her reputation, it would be you, mistress.”

She raised her eyebrows. “What does that mean?”

He bowed and extended his hand toward the door. “Only that I am glad to see you well protected.”

She took to the lighthouse ramp with speed and descended to the Base with Ares at her heels.

Out the lighthouse’s arched entrance, she stopped only a moment before the two towering statues of Ptolemy II, each dressed as a striding Egyptian Pharaoh with a short skirt and striped nemes on his head. She tried to take some strength from the lighthouse’s patron, then fled down the flight of steps to the bottom of the Base. The causeway that led from Pharos Island through the two harbors was seven stadia long, and so named the
heptastadion
. It was a stadia wide as well, with a bridged pass-through at its top and another at the bottom to allow ships to sail from one harbor to the other. It would take fifteen minutes to walk it. She could have taken a chariot, but it had been years since she had done so, and she knew it would take precious time to ready the vehicle.

She reached the far end of the heptastadion, her heart pounding at her pace already. The warehouses that stretched along the docks seemed empty of workers today, as though the heart of the city had sucked them all into itself, before the soldiers had massed to block entrance. They roamed the streets in seeming chaos, but Sophia quickly saw the pattern in their formation.

They were ready to take the city by force.

She pushed through the line of uniforms, ignoring their shouts. She must get to Cleopatra, get her to release Sosigenes.

“You there, man!”

She blinked at the voice and paused, but then pushed on. The city beyond boiled like a stew of angry Greeks and Egyptians, Romans and Jews.

“I said stop!” A soldier was in front of her then,
pilum
across his chest, barring her way. He was young. A boy really, with the barest sign of stubble on his chin. He wore full battle armor, from his helmet to his metal apron strapped with dagger and pugio. He lacked only a shield to be ready to wage war on innocent citizens. “No one enters the city until Julius Caesar gives admittance.” His words faltered at the end as he took in her gender.

She stared him down, using the surprise. “I am a personal friend of the queen, and she has called for me at the palace. Let me pass.”

He snorted. “A personal friend of the queen, you say?” His voice rose.

Another soldier drew close and her soldier turned to him. “The old woman here says she’s the queen’s best friend. Shall we let her through?”

Old woman
. She was barely old enough to be the boy’s mother! Was she such an old woman already?

“Of course!” The other soldier laughed. “Perhaps we should escort her there ourselves!”

Sophia opened her mouth to call down curses on their heads, but she was saved the trouble by the sudden escalation of shouts in the street beyond. Both soldiers turned, then ignored her to run to the fray.

She followed them.

Hundreds of Alexandrians thronged the Canopic Way through the Beta district. The granite-paved street was wide enough for two chariots, but today was filled with shouting and shoving citizens, fists raised in angry protest. Rows of Roman soldiers marched in furious succession, shouting orders and obscenities in turn.

Sophia followed in the wake of one centurion, toward the royal Alpha district. Ptolemy XII’s massive palace loomed ahead, with its two enormous sphinxes on granite platforms, guarding the entrance.

She could move no faster than the mass of people who smelled of cooking spices and sweat. The odor mingled itself with the sun reflected from the white marble buildings, and a sharp pain knifed at her temples.

The chaos took her breath away and made her long for the quiet isolation of her lighthouse. The blurring white of himations, the bobbing dark heads of the city’s Greek and Egyptian residents, the shiny metal and brown leather of the Roman soldiers, the shouts in Greek and Latin and Egyptian and Hebrew—all swirled and buzzed around her until she felt dizzy and sick. She bounced from one person to the next, stumbling and struggling to keep her balance.

Like a goose in the crowded harbor, tossed around in the wake of a dozen ships.

She raised her eyes and looked northward, to her lighthouse watching over the city. Unlike the goose, she could not take flight. She moved ever closer to the palace. Not much longer.

And then a pinch of her elbow and a harsh whisper drew her up short.

“Is this Sophia, descended from her dark tower?”

She half-turned her head, though she recognized the spiteful voice. “Pothinus.” Her hand went to her waist, where the message she’d written him hid under her clothing. “I did not expect to see you in the city.”

He bowed. “Nor I, you. But of course you have heard that your student has returned.” He still spoke into to her ear, pressed close by the crowd. “I did not realize your affection ran so deep. To risk this violence . . .”

“I have come for the good of Egypt.” She pulled the scroll from her waist. They were nearly touching now, and she tried to pull away. “Here, you must read this. The Romans—”

“Any harm the Romans cause is well aided by your young queen.” Pothinus looked over her head, distracted by the mob.

“Pothinus, I ask you to put former animosities aside, for the good of the city.”

He smiled down on her, and the expression seemed strange on his face, as though it creased the skin in unfamiliar ways. “Why Sophia, I have no animosity toward you. In fact, your husband and I were the closest of friends.”

Someone fell against her and cursed. “Then for the sake of my husband, you must do something for the Museum.” She pressed the scroll into his hand and he nodded once. The crowd shifted, carrying him away from her. She watched him go, watched him speak to many he passed, and realized that he was helping to incite the violence, not quash it.

She could not tell if it was his words, or simply a shift in the mood of a fickle crowd, but the tension seemed to tighten around her. There was a momentary hush to the random shouts, as though the people held their breath for something far more dangerous. Sophia held her breath as well and looked to the sphinxes.

Accusations erupted into swinging fists. A collective yell went up from the crowd, and they moved as one toward the palace. Sophia was caught up in the swell, like a piece of sea grass carried on the tide toward the shore.

The soldiers responded. Pila were lifted high above heads, smashed down on the worst offenders. Screams of pain and fury shredded the air. Men dropped at her feet.

Ahead, a centurion barked orders to his legionaries. He held the short
vitis
, the grapevine staff that signaled his authority. It was Bellus, the Roman who had invaded the sanctity of her lighthouse.

His eyes darted left and right, with the watchful awareness of an able commander. He yelled to several soldiers, who snapped to the troublemakers he indicated, and directed his men from an island of complete control. Not one movement or word was wasted. Sophia fought the wave of people and stayed rooted to the ground, struggling to watch.

All around her violence surged. An elbow shot out from the crowd, caught Sophia on the lip, and knocked her head back. She righted herself, licked her lip, and tasted blood. For the first time she felt fear. Why had she come to the city?

The mob parted again and she saw Bellus, as through a tunnel. He turned toward her in that moment, and she imagined that he saw her too. That he recognized her. That the slight but sudden tilt of his head came from surprise.

And then both Bellus and the sun were blocked out by the towering presence of two Roman soldiers. One of them poked at her shoulder with the tip of his pilum. Sweat ran from his forehead. “Move along, fool!”

Sophia swatted the shaft away like an irritating gnat, and the other soldier tried to grab her.

“Keep your savage hands off me!”

The riot seemed to fall away then, and Sophia saw the pilum rise slowly above her, saw its wooden shaft and iron point bisect the cloudless blue sky, watched as it swung toward her in a beautiful, fluid arc.

She closed her eyes to wait for the blow.

Seven

A
s the mood of the Alexandrians grew taut and snapped, Lucius Aurelius Bellus cursed the soldier who had commanded this centuria before him. The man must have had a lust for blood that he ingrained in his men, a passion to crush the opposition with brutality, unthinking of strategy that might prevent losses on both sides.

Bellus shouted orders to his men to surround and subdue with as little bloodshed as possible. This they interpreted to mean they should batter every vocal citizen to the ground.

It should never have come to this.

“Close up! Tighten left!” The ranks turned and reformed.

But it was too far gone. The streets swelled with the frenzied mob, and his men had tasted blood. One young soldier swept alongside him, the red-smeared blade of his
gladius
swinging in wide, chopping strokes.

Bellus yelled, the boy turned, and Bellus saw the battle rage in his eye, a look he knew well from both sides. In a flash, he was back in the fields of Gaul, thick in the fray. Blood and sweat and spittle flying. Gladius thrusting, thrusting. Distinguishing himself, achieving rank.

He shook himself back to the present, fighting the same fury that devoured the young soldier. Alexandria was not Gaul, and these citizens were not enemy soldiers.

“First Sixth! Hold only!” His voice barely rose above the din. He swept his own pilum in front of him, clearing a space from which to survey the actions of the ranks.

A channel opened up, and he bore down into it. Ahead,
one figure refused to submit to the soldier telling him to move. Bellus lifted his eyes to the man’s face, then caught his breath.

Her again.

Dressed as a man, as she had been when they met in that cursed lighthouse. With her hair clipped in the fashion of men, it was an easy mistake.

The soldier beside her yelled once more, but her eyes were on Bellus and she seemed not to hear. He saw the soldier’s pilum heft above the woman’s head.

Bellus rushed forward, yelled at the soldier to stay his thrust.

The shaft sliced the air. The woman closed her eyes. Bellus jabbed his leather-covered arm above her head and took the weight of it against his forearm.

He heard the crack. Years of experience told him the bone had not broken. He hissed at his soldier. “Use your weapons on dangerous men, not harmless women!”

The soldier’s eyes widened at his centurion’s chastisement. He backed away, into the mob.

Bellus stepped close to the woman, shielded her with his body, and let the battle storm around them. “You should not be here.”

She turned her face up to his. She was not beautiful, not at all. She wore only a white himation, and her short, dark hair was threaded with white. He guessed they were roughly the same age.
And you have seen your share of battles, too, I can see.

No, she was not beautiful. But she had the most intense eyes he had ever seen, eyes like polished black granite, with flecks of light that hinted at depth. The sounds of the fighting faded for a moment as he looked at those eyes. “Go back to your lighthouse . . .” What was her name? “Sophia.”

She spoke to him then. Her voice low and strong, carrying to him in spite of the battle din. “I do not take orders from Romans.”

Impulsively he slipped an arm around her waist and pulled her through the crowd. It took her only a few moments to loosen his grip and flash those dark eyes. “How
dare
you!” Her lips curled into a snarl. “This is not your city, and I am not your subject.”