Keeper of the Flame (39 page)

Bellus fell against the wall, caught his breath. Replaced his pugio. Then stumbled back to the platform.

His shoulder bled, but the Egyptian’s knife had glanced off the muscle there.

But Sophia
. Oh, Sophia.

Pothinus jerked his head left and right, as though searching for another way off the platform. Below them, Bellus heard the second centuria crash through the wooden door. Bellus fought the conflict for a moment between revenge and concern for Sophia, then left Pothinus to the Roman legionaries that even now filled the Base.

He ran to where she lay, her breath shallow and eyes fluttering. Pothinus pushed past them both and took to the ramp.

“Where are you hurt?” Bellus ran his hands over her arms, her legs, searching for blood and finding none.

She swallowed. “I—I do not know. My stomach. My ch—chest.” Her breath caught.

Bellus dared not turn her. He felt carefully for broken ribs, fearing a pierced lung. She did not cry out at his touch, which eased his concern.

But something was wrong. Her face seemed even more bloodless than before.

“The moon is full,” she whispered. “He will finish tonight.”

“Don’t speak, Sophia.” Bellus stood and rushed to the platform’s wall. Beneath him, he could see the harbor battle beginning to slow but not yet won. He could see the island, the heptastadion. The pocket of fighting near the village was nothing to what he could see was coming. It looked as though Caesar had released several hundred soldiers to the island.

He returned to Sophia, knelt beside her, and gripped her hand. “There is no way to bring a physician yet. Rest now.”

She lifted her free hand to touch his face, smiled, and tried to breathe deeply. “You came back,” she whispered.

Bellus wrapped his own trembling hand around her fingers and held them to his cheek. “Where else would I go?”

The strength of her arm failed and he lowered her hand to her side. His eyes filled with tears borne of fear and of longing.

Sophia moistened her lips, tried to speak.

“Rest, my lady,” he said, his voice thick in his throat.

She shook her head. “I must tell you.” The words were soft, like a fragile silk thread spun through the night, like the petals of the flowers that surrounded them.

“Tell me,” he said.

Her chest rose and fell with labored breaths. “I never thought . . .” Her face twisted in pain, and Bellus gripped her hand. Her words came in a rush then, as though she feared she would run out of time to say them. “I never thought I could love again.” She smiled, full and sweet. “Lucius, you taught me to love again.”

He kissed her fingers, tears blurring his vision of her.

She spoke again. “I know—I know you came for the light—”

He moaned, her hand still held to his lips. “I am so sorry, Sophia. I had to put it out. Caesar would have killed you all—”

She pressed her fingers weakly against his mouth. “I know. I cannot save everyone. That is the past.”

Her own eyes filled and overflowed. He brushed away the tears that ran along her temples. “It was not your fault, Sophia. What happened to Kallias and your baby. It was not your fault.”

She smiled. “So much to tell,” she whispered. Then sucked in breath as though a fresh injury assailed her.

“Not now,” Bellus said, though he knew it could be forever.

She nodded, and he knew she thought the same. “It is better this way.”

“I cannot live without you, Sophia.”

She smiled again, her lips white. “You will go back to Rome. A hero. Go back to your beautiful woman.”

He frowned. “What woman?”

“Valeria. Your letter.” Her eyes fluttered. “She is beautiful, you said.”

Bellus lifted her head to cradle it in his hand. “No, Sophia! I never—When I threw that letter at you, it was to prove that outward beauty is nothing. She is vapid and selfish and stupid. You could not think that I would want—”

Sophia’s eyes closed, but her face seemed to light from within and her smile came from a place of peace.

Bellus pulled her upper body to his lap, leaned over her precious face, growing still. “No, Sophia. No.” He bent his head to hers, kissed her with all the longing in his heart. “Do not leave me. Not now.”

Her body relaxed in his arms and his tears flowed over her like an anointing.

“I love you,” he whispered. “Sophia, I love you.”

He knew nothing then, except that when he looked upon her, he saw that she seemed transformed into the most lovely creature he had ever beheld. Like a goddess come to earth, come to enchant him, to steal his heart and capture his soul and leave him nothing more than a shell, aching for the beauty he had once known.

Above them, the moon poured its full face upon the open roses, and the sky sprinkled dew like tears.

Forty-Eight

L
ow voices. Muffled by Egyptian flax. Pinpricks of light. More darkness.

Sleep.

Hands probing. Whispering. Light and dark fluttering. Falling, falling. Darkness again.

Warmth. Sun-warmth on her face. Heavy, heavy lids struggling to open to the morning sun, to the night’s torches, to the sun again.

And then a face sharpening into focus before her, a beloved face, smiling, smiling at her.

“Ares.” Her voice was dry as the western desert, her tongue thick and her throat burning with a thousand suns.

“Drink,” he said.

Watered wine moistened her lips, gentle as morning rain. She sucked at it greedily.

Time passed, she knew not how much. When she awoke again, the afternoon sun slanted through the windows of her private chamber.

Her wakening did not go unnoticed. Ares was beside her in a moment, kneeling at her couch, touching her hair. Sosigenes stood behind him. At the edge of her vision, Diogenes.

“How long?” she croaked.

Diogenes bustled forward. “You’ve been sleeping two days, Sophia.” He laid a hand on her forehead. “We had some trouble with fever, but it seems past. Your injuries were all of the internal sort. Not much we could do but watch and wait.” His eyes softened. “And pray.”

She lifted her hand to weakly grip his. “Thank you.”

He snorted. “Do not thank me. Thank these others.” He extended a hand to Ares and Sosigenes. “And your Roman. They hauled me up to that the rose garden of yours like a pile of dung fuel on that cursed lift. Imagine!”

Sophia smiled.

“Do not laugh. They brought you down in the same manner, my lady!” He shook his head at the indignity, then turned his head to a noise at the door.

She tried to follow his gaze but did not have the strength. The men before her backed away.

And then he was there beside her, on his knees, her face in his hands.

“Speak to me, Sophia,” he whispered. “Say my name.”

She reached for him. “Lucius. Pilus Prior Lucius Aurelius Bellus.”

He threw his head back and laughed, as though he had held the laughter in clay pots for many years.

Ares knelt beside them.

“Lucius,” she said, but put her hand to her son’s face.

“I know,” he laughed again. “Your son. Back in your arms.”

Tears sprang to her eyes. “Ares, bring me the engraved box on my desk.”

He returned a moment later. She struggled to sit up, and the two men helped her. Ares laid the box in her lap. She lifted the lid, studied its contents.

“For you, Ares.” She brought out the granite device and the little marble to place in his hands. “Your father made it. He was a good man.” She found his eyes with her own. “I do not know how I never saw him in you.”

Ares’s eyes shown as he took the device.

Sophia reached into the box again and brought out a small object. She held it to Bellus, suddenly uncertain.

He smiled at the blue scarab stone in her hand, then closed his own fingers over it. “We do not need luck, Sophia. Someone greater than us watches over our affairs.”

The door scraped open again, and more men poured into the room. Sophia smiled at each of the scholars who had made the climb to see her. She held out a hand as they clustered around her.

The room was so full. Overflowing with people. Full of color and light, laughter and life. Sophia fell back against her cushions, and contentment and belonging spread through her, warmed her.

The men talked among themselves, but Bellus’s attention was all for her.

“What of the battle?” she asked him.

He nodded, his face grim. “The fighting has been fierce, with many losses on both sides. But when word of Roman reinforcements marching around the Delta came to the city, the people yielded. The Egyptian army still stands afar off. They cannot win.”

Sophia nodded, her heart heavy for the people, but glad the battle had ended. “Any word of Cleopatra?”

“She presides at Caesar’s side in the palace. Her brother Ptolemy has been sent to join his army.”

“A death sentence,” Sophia said.

“Perhaps. We must wait to see what becomes of Egypt in the hands of Cleopatra and Julius Caesar.”

“Pothinus?”

“Executed. Yesterday.”

Sophia sighed and laid her head back. “So much death.”

Bellus smiled sadly but glanced at Ares and the camaraderie of the twelve men in the room, then smiled.

“And also life.”

Forty-Nine

S
ophia was still thinking of life five days later, as she stood in the shade of the Museum’s portico, surrounded by friends and by family, and with Bellus at her side, ready to recite the vows she never dreamed she would speak again. She wore a dress of finer silk than any she’d ever owned, and the female servants in the lighthouse had insisted on weaving flowers through her hair and layering jewels on her neck.

The city was damaged but healing, as she herself was. The Library fires had destroyed many scrolls, and the warehouse fires even more. No one would forget the night that Alexandria burned.

But as she looked across the harbor to the lighthouse, its beacon lit by the sun once again, she knew that as the city would never be the same, she was also forever changed.

She would return to the lighthouse, but it would not be to hide. Already she had plans to open the tower to visitors, to give others a chance to be awed by the breathtaking view. She had learned that if she did not open her heart to love, hate would take it by force.

On the street a few steps below, she watched Sosigenes speak with a dark-skinned man seated on a camel, with a pack of traders on camels behind him. Sosigenes patted the man’s leg and nodded, then turned and climbed the steps toward her.

“They leave tonight and will be across to the East before the next full moon. It will be safe there.”

Sophia watched the trader move away, a large pack secured to his camel. “Will they know how to use it?”

Sosigenes turned to watch the traders. “Do not fear. The magi there have ways to search the skies for knowledge, ways that even I do not understand.”

Bellus wrapped an arm around Sophia’s waist but spoke to Sosigenes. “What do they search for?”

The old man’s smile held the riddles of the ages. “For the Long Awaited One. The consolation of Israel.” He lifted his eyes to the sky. “I have waited for the Messiah for many years myself, but I believe, my friends, that I may not have much longer to wait.”

Sophia barely noticed when another joined them, but Bellus turned her to face a man she had only met once. Julius Caesar stood on the portico, a confident smile on his thin lips, his hair combed forward over his forehead. “Your
corona vallaris
, Pilus Prior Bellus,” he said, and held a gold crown to Bellus. “Well deserved. You have honored Rome with your duty here in Alexandria. He glanced at Sophia. I am pleased to see you settled into a new life.”

Bellus closed his hand around the crown and nodded.

Caesar turned to Sophia and to Sosigenes beside her. “It seems I have been imprudent in my attempt to waylay Alexandria’s scholars,” he said with a bow to Sosigenes. “Your citizens have made that clear. And someone else”—he looked to a chariot that awaited him in the street—“has assured me that this magical device of yours was nothing more than a ruse created by Pothinus as an excuse to attack the lighthouse.”

Sophia looked to the chariot, to Cleopatra who lounged inside. The queen gave her a small wave, a tiny smile.

Sophia nodded to her former student and smiled in return.

“Still,” Caesar said to Sosigenes, “I should like to speak with you soon about rectifying this ridiculous calendar of ours.”

Sosigenes bowed, and then Caesar was gone, down the steps and into the chariot beside Cleopatra. It lurched forward, and Cleo was lost to Sophia’s view.

She turned her attention back to those on the portico.

Bellus. Ares. Sosigenes. The scholars.

Husband. Son. Father. Community.

The mistaken belief that she must make herself worthy before she could be loved had been her curse for many years. But as Bellus lifted her hand to his lips and smiled, she knew that it was only the love that had the power to change her. The love of Bellus, of the One God, and of the Redeemer to come.

As the curse that had held her captive for so long fell away, she breathed deeply of the Alexandrian air and spread her arms wide to embrace them all, to share the flame within her, and to see herself reflected in their eyes.

Finally free.

Fully loved.

In a lofty tower set high above a teeming city,

There lived a solitary woman

Whose guilt and pain had long ago turned to ugliness.

And when the ugliness became its own prison,

And the pain of rejection too much to bear,

Loneliness seemed the only answer.

Until there came the whisper of Beauty

The promise of Love

In one so unlikely she nearly missed it.

He did not ask her to change first,