The Divining (19 page)

I
T WAS A LONG
moment before a stunned Timonides could scramble to his feet. And then it was to rush to the small window, throw open the shutters, and thrust his head out in time to vomit down to the street below. He broke out in a cold sweat and let the night air revive him.

     The head of Bessas ...

     What had possessed Nestor?

     His mind reeling, Timonides closed his eyes and tried to think. As sweat poured from his face and dripped from his nose—as wave after wave of nausea hit him—he recalled words he had spoken earlier by the fire: "My master should just pluck the bastard's head from his neck and
scoop
the information out!"

     And there sat Nestor with his knack for two things: taking words literally, and always wanting to please. Especially Ulrika.

     "By the stars," Timonides whispered, feeling the leeks swim in his belly and come up again. He vomited twice more before he could bring his head
inside, and then it was to worry that his scream might have been heard. But the mudbrick walls of the inn were thick. Had he disturbed the others, he would have known by now. But the night continued on in its objective silence, and Timonides was alone with a monstrous problem on his hands.

     A problem that grew in size and proportion as several facts began to sink in: primarily, that Sebastianus had said Bessas was believed to have brought luck to people.

     And people didn't take kindly to holy men getting their heads cut off.

     As the immensity of Nestor's act began to sink in, Timonides felt his bones and muscles melt. He feared he was going to faint. But he had to maintain a stout heart and a clear head. What was he going to do?

     They will be coming for my son ...

     For it was certain that Nestor, who continued to stand there smiling, oblivious of what he had done, would surely not have been careful to go about his grisly task unseen, nor would he have covered his traces. Knowing Nestor, he might have even shown his "gift" to a passerby! The hue and cry could be out at that moment, the guards of the night watch stamping down the street that very minute, to take Nestor away for certain execution.

     Timonides's legs gave way and he slumped to the floor. They will crucify my son ...

     A
S HE WATCHED HIS FATHER
take a seat on the floor, Nestor thought of the gift he had just brought, and was thoroughly delighted with himself. He hadn't done it for his father, it was for the lady with the sunlight hair.

     Nestor loved Reeka and would do anything for her, she talked to him so soothingly, calming him, telling him that everything was going to be all right. He loved her voice. It caressed his inside mind. Like a mother's touch.

     He giggled when he looked at the sack on the floor. In the simple mechanisms of his mind, Nestor had discerned that Papa and Uncle Sebastianus were looking for a pool. They hoped to take Reeka there, to make her happy. But Papa and Uncle Sebastianus had seemed to be having a hard time finding the pool, and there was a man who knew where it was, but he
wasn't telling. Papa said it could be scooped from his brain. Uncle Sebastianus had said the man lived in a hut near the big statue of Daphne. Nestor remembered the statue because it looked so comical, a woman with tree branches growing out of her hair. Papa needed to scoop the pool from the man's brain, so here it was!

     A gift for Reeka, the lady with the sunlight hair.

     L
IFTING HIS WEARY HEAD,
Timonides looked up at his son, still standing in the doorway with a smile on his face, and Timonides felt his heart break into a million pieces.

     He suddenly felt big and lumpy and stupid, this astrologer who could read the messages in the stars with such precision that he could advise a fellow on whether to choose beans or lentils for supper—a man who could lift his face to the dark bowl of night, pick out Venus, and tell you exactly where she would be in an hour, in a month—a man who could close his eyes and point directly at red, distant Mars while other men would be searching wide-eyed and saying, "Where is it?"

     A man of precision and control, and yet whose life had just unraveled into the myriad fibers that had made up its fabric.

     This is it, he thought in weary surrender. This is the catastrophe that was foretold. And it is all my fault. I brought this about. I used the stars and my sacred calling for my own personal gain. I wanted to keep the girl and her healing skills at my side, and in so doing brought calamity to myself and my master's house. I alone can fix it.

     And there was only one way. Timonides the astrologer had to lie again.

     My punishment, he thought, for having lied in the first place. And the punishment, ironically, was that he was doomed to continue to lie. He could never, for as long as he lived, tell Sebastianus the truth of what had happened tonight.

     Hoisting his bulk from the floor, he searched the cold night for a plan. They must leave the city at once and be well away before the magistrate was able to determine the identity of the cold-blooded killer of Bessas the holy
hermit.
It will be easy to convince Sebastianus to move at a quick pace. He always obeys the stars
—

     Timonides groaned as he suddenly remembered Ulrika. He could not let her come along, for Nestor would continue to commit crimes to please her.

     I will tell her that I have done her chart and found that her mother is living in Jerusalem.

     
Sebastianus will ask about Bessas. I will tell him that the hermit is not to be trusted.

     Telling Nestor to go to bed, assuring him that his gift was good and that Papa was pleased, Timonides went to his travel pack to bring out his box of charts and instruments. The old astrologer felt the weight of the world on his back. He did not want to do this—he did not want to lie again, to blaspheme and commit sacrilege, to outrage the gods and bring their wrath upon his head. But he had no choice. He must save his son, even at the risk of his own immortal soul.

     When he had cradled Nestor as a baby, Timonides had learned a primal truth: that it was not the parent who created the child, but the child who created the parent. And while others saw a simpleton, Timonides the believer in the transmigration of souls looked beyond the homely features and thought of the migrant soul that might lurk behind them. Perhaps Nestor possessed the reincarnated soul of the greatest philosopher who ever lived.

     Either way, precious son or great philosopher, Timonides could not let him be executed.

     Lighting a lamp, Timonides got down to the business of casting his master's horoscope, hoping to find some truth to mix in with the falsehood. He did not go through his usual ritual of bathing and praying and changing into clean robes, for the lie would only make him filthy again.

     But as Timonides went through his calculations, wrote down figures and degrees and angles, noted sun signs and moon houses, as Antioch slept and the stars wheeled overhead unconcerned with the star-reader at the Inn of the Blue Peacock who perspired over his equations and numbers, he saw a new and unexpected indicator emerge.

     He froze. Whispered an oath. Rubbed his sweating face. Picked up his pen and re-calculated.

     Finally Timonides sat back in shock. There was no question: the aspects of the progressing and transiting planets to that of Sebastianus's birth planet definitely indicated a new direction for him! The gods, through their precise arrangement of heavenly bodies, were crisply clear in their new message: Sebastianus was to take a turn
southward
from Antioch—he and Ulrika were now both to take a southern journey together.

     Timonides closed his eyes and swallowed with a dry throat. Calamity upon calamity! His doom was sealed, for not only was he going to falsify a horoscope, he was now going to disobey the unmistakable, divine message in the stars.

     Sick at heart, but knowing he had no choice, and that they were running out of time, Timonides hurried across the hall to pound loudly on his master's door.

     U
LRIKA WAS NOT ASLEEP
when the knock sounded at her door. She had been awakened earlier by a cry, and she had lain in the darkness trying to discern if it had been real or dreamed. And then she had heard muffled voices, a spell of silence, followed by footsteps across the hall, a banging on a door, and more muffled voices, but loud this time and sounding urgent.

     She had been about to get out of bed to see what the trouble was, when a knock announced someone at her door, and she opened it now to find Sebastianus on the other side. Clearly roused from sleep, he had hastily thrown a cloak over his shoulders, and underneath he wore only a loincloth.

     When he stared at her for a moment, Ulrika became aware of her own lack of clothing. She wore only a night dress—a thin shift that reached her knees—and her hair was undone and tumbled over her breasts. She felt naked.

     Collecting himself, Sebastianus said, "Ulrika, Timonides says your mother is in Jerusalem."

     "My mother! What—"

     The astrologer pushed his way through, waving a sheet of papyrus. "Yes yes, there is no doubt of it. Your mother is there, living with friends."

     She blinked, looked from Sebastianus to the astrologer. "But why are you doing a reading at this hour? And why my—"

     Timonides spoke rapidly. "A dream woke me up, ordering me to look out my window, where I saw a star streak across the sky. I knew this was a message that I must cast my master's horoscope, and there it was! A new message from the gods. My master is to leave Antioch at once for Babylon and you are to go to Jerusalem."

     "We did live for a while in Jerusalem," Ulrika said, "in the house of a woman named Elizabeth."

     "Yes yes," Timonides said as he shambled out of the room, talking as he left, "you must go at once to Jerusalem, reach your mother before she leaves. The house of Elizabeth ..."

     Timonides's voice faded down the corridor, and Ulrika found herself alone with Sebastianus, their eyes meeting in the dim light, unspoken words on their lips.

     "My mother can help me," Ulrika heard herself say, breathless at the sight of Sebastianus's bare chest, glimpsed between the folds of his disarrayed cloak, wondering why she wasn't more excited by the astrologer's news. "She will tell me where Shalamandar is, and the Crystal Pools."

     "I will take you to Jerusalem—"

     Ulrika placed her fingertips on his lips. "No, Sebastianus, you are to continue eastward. You must depart at dawn, as the stars command."

     They fell silent, held by the night and by their mutual desire. Longing burned in their eyes, and each knew the other's yearning. But both were bound by duty and oaths spoken long before Sebastianus and Ulrika had ever met.

     He found his voice. "I will send Syphax and a contingent of men with you so that you are well protected."

     "Thank you," she said, thinking that once again this strong and powerful man had come to her rescue. Ulrika knew Syphax, a stony-faced Numidian from the northern coast of Africa who hired himself out as a bodyguard and mercenary. He had escorted and protected Sebastianus's caravans for six years, and she knew he could be trusted.