Keeper of the Flame (29 page)

This should never have been.

“You’ll have to go around it, woman.”

She heard the derisive jeer behind her but ignored it. The wall before her seemed to also seal up something in her heart. But she would not allow this to be the end. She would not be ruled by Rome, and she would not be ruled by the Alexandrian mob.

Cleopatra slipped along the wall to a narrow side street where she could detour and reach the royal quarter. Her pace quickened as she went, resolve strengthening her legs.

The royal quarter had been taken over entirely by the Roman legion, and Cleopatra expected less activity when she reached it.

Instead, she found more.

Roman soldiers, their iron chain mail glistening in the sun,
criss-crossed the streets, yelling to each other and forming clusters of angry concern.

What is happening?

She stopped a soldier. “Has the Egyptian army come?”

He shook off her hand. “Them we can fight! But we cannot fight nature!” He hurried on.

A slave neared, an old man who had probably given many years to the palace, bent and broken under a lifetime of servitude. At the corner, she grabbed his arm. “What is it? What is this disaster?”

He looked up at her with bleary eyes. For a moment they seemed to clear in recognition. “The water. Brackish and tainted.”

Cleopatra looked across the streets, toward the nearest cistern. “How?”

The old man shrugged. “Salt water somehow. Started here, and the rest of the city said we were crazy. But now the lower parts are saying so, too.”

She let him go and started toward the cistern.

“Be careful, my lady,” the old slave called.

He has served too long at my table to be fooled by Jewish clothing.

Soldiers huddled around the cistern’s lip, drawing water and taking turns in the tasting.

“Let me through.” Cleopatra pushed one aside. She cared little for subterfuge now. She grabbed a cup from a young soldier, who objected, then lowered his head to her.

One sip convinced her. The cisterns, and therefore the canals, had been compromised.

And if the rest of the city were also complaining, it must be the entire web of underground cisterns.

For all their weapons and training, the Romans could be defeated by this one simple thing: dehydration.

And from the expressions she saw on each soldier’s face, they knew it well.

Thirty-Two

W
hen Pothinus formulated his plans in his tent on the plains of Pelusium, he had never imagined that the whole of the Egyptian army would be at his back. But in the blue-green of the Great Sea, twenty ships rode at anchor, fifteen stadia off the coast of Alexandria, waiting for their moment of glory.

Pothinus stood at the rail of a mid-sized quinquereme, one that held one hundred soldiers to man the oars, and Arsinôe and Ganymedes besides.

He had intended to summon part of the troops in secret, those loyal to him and Ptolemy, to take the lighthouse and secure the Proginosko. Before he could set his plan into motion, Ganymedes had declared that the entire army would move on the city. To reclaim Ptolemy as rightful king, Ganymedes said. Which everyone interpreted to mean
put Arsinôe on the throne
.

And so now they floated, an army of ships bobbing in the sea, and Pothinus paced the wooden rail, his eye on the distant lighthouse. They were near enough to see the black finger pointing upward from the coast, to see the sun’s rays reflected back across the waves from its summit. But too far to reach out and pry the Proginosko from Sophia’s greedy fingers.

Ah, but he would have it.

Pothinus wrapped his hands around the rail and studied the lighthouse, imagining the secrets it held. His memory slipped back to the night he had left, running from Caesar and his legion, sailing out under the lighthouse’s ever-watchful eye.

The ship lifted over a swell and dropped again. Foamy water slapped at its hull. Pothinus filled his chest with the salty air and smiled. Perhaps he had left like a meek lamb. But he returned as a hungry lion, with the might of Egypt behind him.

Plebo appeared at his side.

“Did you tell him?” Pothinus asked, without turning his head to acknowledge his diminutive slave.

“He will come,” Plebo said under his breath. Pothinus shook his head, amused at the little man’s cloaked whisper.

Plebo enjoys the subterfuge of politics as much as any royal Ptolemy.

“This time we will do it right,” Pothinus said.

Plebo sniffed. “I recruited the man whose name you gave me—”

Pothinus waved away his objection. “It is the mark of wisdom to make corrections midstream when they are warranted. You should have seen that he would not be effective.”

“How could I know that—”

A lean soldier slid to the rail beside Pothinus, and Plebo’s voice dropped away.

“Good,” Pothinus said. “I see that you are a man who knows where his loyalty will best be rewarded.” He watched the man from the corner of his eye.

The soldier, Shadin, shrugged one shoulder. Though his bones seemed to protrude in sharp angles, Pothinus could see that there was a wiry strength to him, one conditioned by many years in service. He had a reputation for extracting information from those unwilling to give it. “Your slave mentioned drachma. That is what I know.”

Pothinus frowned. He had hired one simple mercenary
before, without success. He needed something more this time. He turned on the soldier. “You are loyal to whomever pays?”

Shadin eyed him and hesitated, as if unsure what truth would best serve him. “I am loyal to Egypt, and I fight for her king. Though them that joins me is not always clear.”

Pothinus allowed the soldier a tight smile of approval. “Then let me tell you how we are going to put Ptolemy back on the throne.”

But a sharp-fingered jab in the side silenced him. He glared at Plebo, who jerked his head over his shoulder in the direction of the steps that led from the hull.

Arsinôe ascended, Ganymedes on her heels.

Shadin disappeared, confirming to Pothinus that the soldier understood much.

The two joined Pothinus at the rail. Arsinôe tossed her hair behind her, letting the wind catch it, and smiled. “It will not be long now, Pothinus. We will soon take my brother from the Roman dogs.”

And then what?

“Reports are back.” Ganymedes stared over the water, but his smug smile was too large to miss. “The cisterns are failing. The soldiers are in a panic.”

Pothinus pressed his lips together, felt his jaw muscles tighten. “You are a fool, Ganymedes.”

“We shall see.”

Arsinôe laughed. “You two are much alike. Two old dogs fighting over the same scraps.”

Pothinus bowed slightly to the naïve girl. “Alexandria is much more than a scrap, my lady. Perhaps in a few years you will better understand—”

The flash of hatred in her eyes stopped him.

“Do not underestimate me, Pothinus.”

“It is you who overestimates your teacher, here,” he said, thumbing Ganymedes. “He knows nothing of warfare and has only succeeded in weakening your greatest ally.”

She frowned. “What ally?”

Pothinus laughed. “I see that he does not even inform you of any opinions contrary to his own. The people, my lady. The people of Alexandria are your greatest ally.”

Arsinôe gazed out to the coastline. “The water.”

“Yes, the water. In tainting the cisterns with salt Ganymedes weakens the Roman troops, it is true. But we could have defeated them, coming in from the sea, and with the army marching from the east and all of the city formed into volunteer militias at the Romans’ backs. But now, as the soldiers dehydrate, so does the city.”

Ganymedes put his hand on Arsinôe’s arm. “We do not need them. The army is enough.”

Pothinus snorted. “Perhaps. But when you subdue this one Roman legion, what people will you rule? And who will rise to your aid when the rest of Rome descends upon us? The people will not soon forget.”

Ganymedes spoke only to Arsinôe. “Ignore him and his weak-willed fears, my lady. He has been a woman longer than he has been a man.”

Pothinus locked his arms behind his back and tried to focus on a gull that circled the ship. He had long endured the insult of being a eunuch. He would not allow a man such as Ganymedes to bait him into useless scrabbling in the dirt. Not when the Proginosko was so close.

Arsinôe giggled at Ganymedes’s joke. Pothinus swallowed and lifted his chin, following the flight of the gull.

The two were gone moments later. Pothinus reached to the case at his feet, lifted it to the rail, and rested it there. It was the size he remembered of Kallias’s Proginosko. He held it between his hands, imagining the new device.

In the sea ahead, he watched the water stream alongside the rope that held the next ship at anchor. The ship strained at the rope, anxious to move forward just as he was.

Almost unconsciously he stroked the case in his hands, remembering the beauty of the Proginosko, its gears and dials whirring with the knowledge of the heavens.

Shadin was at his side again. Pothinus placed his case at his feet. “You will wait until nightfall. I will make certain those on watch are paid well enough to not raise an alarm. Take one of the smaller sloops and row with haste to the lighthouse.”

Quickly Pothinus whispered to Shadin a description of the Proginosko he was to retrieve, and the old man who must come with it. He struggled to keep his voice even and low as the reality of having the Proginosko in his hands gripped him. With it, he would no longer suffer insults from Ganymedes or anyone.

“Do whatever you must to gain the box. I chose you because I am told you are skilled in such matters.”

Shadin grinned. “Most know nothing but the sword to get what they want. They kill first and seek answers second.” He waggled an eyebrow. “I have other ways. If there is people with answers, those answers will be mine.”

Pothinus nodded, satisfied. He had engaged such services many times before. Though they bobbed in the water in a ship smaller than the palace’s royal court, the ship was only
a scaled-down version of the palace, filled with secret plotting, betrayal, and in-fighting, in which Pothinus was well-skilled.

“He must be kept alive,” Pothinus said, hating the admittance. “The scholar, Sosigenes. I need him. But the woman—” He lifted his eyes to the lighthouse that he felt certain held his treasure. He felt almost a physical hunger for it now. Soon. Soon it would be his.

“If she gets in the way, kill her.”

Thirty-Three

T
he afternoon dragged in the Base of the lighthouse. In his cramped quarters, Bellus tried to keep his eyes from blurring over the lines of ink on the papyrus before him.

High above him, he knew, Sophia hid in her chambers, unwilling to emerge.

So much the better. He did not need to see her now.

He rubbed his eyes and traced the scrawl again, but the words of the Jews’ Septuagint were lost on him. He shoved the book to the side of his small table. Then shoved it again and watched it fall to the stone floor.

A soldier does not concern himself with religion and philosophy.
Not a real soldier, at least. His father’s words.

Many times since he had earned the rank of centurion he wished his soldier father would have lived to see it. But not today. What would he think of Bellus now, trapped in this lighthouse, with no other task but to study the history of an archaic people? Even if that history did whisper something to the part of him he had long denied.

He pushed away from the table and went to seek out more fitting company.

Hours later, he sprawled in the sand of the central courtyard, cup in hand, with some of his men, attempting to join in the coarse jokes and stories of blood and glory. They sat in the shade of the lighthouse, their backs against its granite wall.

When a messenger appeared beside him with a smart salute, Bellus barely looked up from his wine.

“Caesar requests your presence,” the young soldier said.

Bellus snapped to his feet. “When?”

“Immediately.” The boy peered down his nose at the rest of the soldiers who still lounged in the sand. “And you are to ready your troops. Without delay.”

“Ready for what?” Around him, the men slowly lifted their attention to the news.

The soldier shrugged. “Ready to move. That is all I know. But Caesar wants Lucius Aurelius Bellus to appear in the palace.”

Bellus swung to his men. “Spread the word. Pack up. We are at last getting out of this prison.”

The men scrambled to their feet, then dispersed.

Bellus pivoted and nodded to the soldier. “I will dress and come at once.”

Within minutes he had procured a horse from the lighthouse’s small stable. It did not cross his mind to ask Sophia’s permission. As the horse’s hooves pounded across the heptastadion, Bellus did not look back.

With any luck, he would not have to. It appeared that his exile had ended. He kicked at the horse’s flank, urging him to fly.

In the royal quarter of the city, soldiers congregated in tight groups in the hot streets, and the citizens were notably absent. Bellus slowed to a canter and scanned the clusters of men. There was a tension in the air. Something was happening.

The Egyptian army?

But it did not appear that the city was under attack. In the distance, the siege works built by the Alexandrians stood in place, and Bellus could see the makeshift stone barricades erected in the wide avenues. But no Egyptian soldiers flowed through the streets, and the Roman army had not formed for battle.

What is it?

Soon enough he was dismounting in the palace courtyard, with a nod to the young groom who relieved him of his horse. He slapped the boy’s shoulder and crossed the garden to the wide steps of the palace, where a group of fellow centurions clustered.

Caesar appeared on the steps above them as Bellus reached the group. At his side was the enigmatic Cleopatra, and they looked down upon the soldiers like deities from on high.