Keeper of the Flame Read online

  “Stop, Ares.” She rubbed her eyes. “I know it is impossible.” She thought of Bellus. Of his quick mind and quicker smile. A warmth rose through her neck and face. “Yes, Ares. I am sure it is impossible.”

  Sixteen

  Bellus didn’t sleep well the first night in the lighthouse, nor the second. The oppressive presence of the Keeper seemed to hover about the place, making him irritable and jumpy.

  In the makeshift garrison they forced from the storage rooms in the South and East Wings, Bellus claimed one room for his own. To furnish it, he commandeered a narrow bed, a wooden desk, and a chair. But they were small comforts, and even the privacy was not enough to ease him into sleep at the end of a maddeningly inactive day.

  When the sun woke him on the third day, he lay still for several minutes, contemplating the useless hours ahead. He would run the men through drills in the central courtyard to maintain the illusion that they were active and needed. It would fool no one, but it was better than idleness.

  Bellus had expected Sophia to haunt his steps these past few days, to make sure that her orders were obeyed. But she remained hidden, no doubt in her lair high above the dark rooms to which she had banished the soldiers.

  He rolled over in his bed, pounded the cushions into a mound, and rested his chin on his arms. His small window looked over the courtyard, and in the center the lighthouse proper rose, dark and solid. He lifted his eyes as far as he could see. Was she up there, even now, brooding over her violated fortress? What lay above the level where she had her private chambers? He guessed that more than two-thirds of the building lay above her rooms.

  What a view there must be from the top.

  The pull of exploration roused him from his bed, and within minutes he was bathed and dressed and prowling the early morning corridors of the Base.

  A familiar surge of pulse-pounding, like the excitement that accompanied a scouting mission, reminded him that he was still a soldier, even if currently consigned to playing nursemaid to a lighthouse.

  The long stone corridors lay mostly in half light, with all doors that led to soldiers’ quarters still closed. Bellus tread lightly, taking care that his sandals did not echo off the mildewed stone.

  Down the South Wing, past the soldiers’ barracks to where the Base turned, and another corridor headed north, along the western Eunostos Harbor. Several rooms lay open here, with sunlight streaming through salt-encrusted windows like flames turning grains of sand to glass. The rooms into which he poked his head smelled musty with disuse, and cobwebs clung to the corners.

  He moved down the corridor, toward the North Wing, which Sophia had emphatically told him was forbidden. On soundless feet and with measured breaths, he slipped toward the corner of the Base, fighting a smile.

  Through a window in a room to his right, he saw the movement of slaves hauling a wagonload of fuel through the central courtyard. Again, he felt the stir of curiosity to see the upper workings of the lighthouse.

  But not now.

  Ahead, movement at the corner of the West and North Wings gave him pause.

  Ares held a tray and moved with purpose toward him, head down. Bellus side-stepped into the open room, but Ares had already lifted his head. He stopped at the doorway, his forehead creased into a scowl.

  “Pilus Prior Bellus? Can I help you?”

  “Just a bit of exploring, Ares. A good centurion always gets the lay of the land, you know.” He leaned against the door frame and folded his arms.

  The young man pursed his lips. “I wouldn’t know at all. Has the mistress given you permission to ‘explore,’ as you say?”

  “A good centurion doesn’t wait for permission from the hostile natives, either, Ares,” he said with a bit of a smile.

  Ares looked him up and down. “Hmm. Let me accompany you back to the soldiers’ wing.”

  “I can find my way.”

  The two men eyed each other in silent challenge, and Bellus was not surprised when the younger man backed down. He was a peace-loving Greek, a peasant, and probably twenty years Bellus’ junior. He did not stand a chance.

  Ares bit his lip, glanced toward the North Wing, and then continued down the murky corridor.

  I don’t have much longer now.

  He hurried toward the wing that now held even more mystery. Rounding the corner with some speed, he was shocked to smack into another person.

  Both men grunted and took a step backward.

  “Excuse me,” the other man said gently in Greek. Bellus dropped his head in apology, then studied the older man before him. Tall and rather thin, the man’s dark and deeply creased face seemed to tell the story of centuries, with eyes that held answers to questions Bellus had not asked.

  An oracle?

  He wore a pure-white tunic that set off his unusually dark skin even further. He smelled of smoky oil lamps, as though he had been too long in a closed room.

  “You are a long way from Rome,” the ancient man said, switching now to Latin. His accent was peculiar, like someone who had lived in many places in his lifetime and accumulated the dialects of each.

  “I beg your pardon. I did not hurt you, I hope?”

  The man smiled. “I only appear fragile.”

  “You live here? With Sophia?”

  The man’s lips twitched in a partial smile. “In a sense.”

  Father? Lover? Bellus felt a twist of something in his stomach.

  There was no more time for questioning, however. He felt the storm sweeping up from behind him. The old man’s eyes lifted above Bellus’s shoulder—and twinkled.

  Bellus turned in time to see Sophia’s furious charge. Her full lips were tight and the light flecks in her dark eyes flashed like a squall at sea. She wore something different than he had seen before—a white robe of the Greek fashion, with a softer fabric and gold pins fastened at her shoulders.

  She looked for all the world like a goddess of fury sweeping across the Great Sea, and though he held his ground, Bellus half-expected to be blown asunder like a flimsy ship in angry waves.

  “What did I tell you? Was I not clear enough for even a Roman farmer to understand? Did you need me to write it down for you?” She circled him and stood in front of the old man, as though her presence would render him no longer visible.

  Bellus did not miss the wrinkled hand that grasped her elbow in quiet comfort. He raised his chin. “My orders are to secure this lighthouse for Caesar and for Rome. The entire lighthouse.” He let his eyes travel from her head to her toes, communicating his disdain. “And I do not take orders from you.”

  “My lighthouse.” She took a step toward him. “Mine. It is my understanding that Egypt is still an independent land, and Rome a tolerated guest. I expect you and your loutish soldiers to conduct yourselves as guests, not as conquerors.” Her nostrils flared like an unbroken horse fighting the saddle.

  He felt his own face flush and edged closer to her. “Your understanding is exactly the problem. You are ignorant of such matters and should occupy yourself with the business of keeping your little fire burning on top of your tower. Apparently that has been more than enough to keep you busy for years.”

  Her eyes narrowed to slits. “I am not accustomed to being insulted in my own home.”

  “ ‘Think not those faithful who praise all thy words and actions, but kindly reprove thy faults.’ ”

  “There is nothing of kindness in you, centurion. Despite your knowledge of Socrates, you are of a much more savage sort.”

  “Do not let yourself become distracted by military affairs that you are not competent to understand.”

  “Ha!” She poked a finger into his chest. “You wish to speak of incompetence? I am not so cut off here that I do not hear what they are saying about Lucius Aurelius Bellus, the centurion who let average citizens overrun the palace and the eunuch Pothinus escape to raise an army. You are here as punishment for your ineptitude, and your men are laughing at you behind your back!”

  Bellus swallowed. He
tried to breathe, to break the sudden constriction in his chest. The back of his neck prickled with sweat and the battle-twitch began in his fingers.

  His hesitation cost him. She seemed to sense she had found a vulnerable spot in his armor and thrust for the kill. “You wear your title like a shield, ‘Pilus Prior.’ Very proud of it, aren’t you? Caesar’s favorite, perhaps?” She laughed. “But no longer. He has you penned up here like a disobedient dog, waiting for him to toss you scraps from his table again.”

  Bellus stepped to the woman, close enough to touch, close enough to feel her breath on his face. “If I am punished like a dog, then your precious lighthouse is the foul cage where I have been thrown, and you are the unfortunate warden forced to clean up after us ill-favored curs.”

  He thought she might attack him. The unbridled fury that swept her features brought back images of Athena the storm goddess again, and her hands formed fists at her sides. But the old man behind her had grasped both her arms now, and he folded her back against his own chest. Stiff at first, a moment later she relaxed against him. He whispered to her and she closed her eyes.

  When she again fixed her gaze on Bellus, it was with a fearsome anger, made more frightening in its calm. “Stay out of the North Wing,” she said through clenched teeth. “Do not test me again.”

  Though he was never one to retreat, Bellus thought it best to leave her while the old man still held her captive. For some reason he drew his pugio and held it at his side, not missing the widening of her eyes, and feeling somehow better for it. He turned and stalked down the corridor, back to the south end of the Base.

  Test her? As though she were his master? Though he did not run, his breathing was as labored as after a battle, and the beads of sweat that had begun on his neck now formed rivulets down the inside of his tunic.

  This is impossible. We cannot occupy this lighthouse as though there are no enemy forces here.

  They were soldiers, and Bellus intended that they should act as such. Within minutes of reaching his room, he had scribbled out a dispatch to Caesar. It read simply and clearly: Lighthouse Keeper uncooperative. Permission requested to treat as hostile and secure the lighthouse through whatever force necessary.

  He rolled the papyrus, tied it with a bit of leather cord, then opened his door and yelled for a soldier.

  Caesar would have his request within minutes, and by the end of the morning, Bellus should be free to act as he wished. Caesar would see that he took every duty as sacred. And so would she.

  He ran a hand over the sheathed pugio that hung at his side and remembered the woman’s flashing eyes, the way they had flickered with a bit of fear when he had drawn his weapon.

  She was not a goddess after all. And she could be subdued.

  Seventeen

  In the marshy fields of Pelusium on the eastern extreme of the Egyptian Delta, Ptolemy XIII’s army encamped, robbed of their boy-king, who was still in Caesar’s clutches in Alexandria. But the real power behind Ptolemy was here, reclining on silk cushions within a massive three-roomed tent central to the encampment.

  Pothinus stretched his neck, stiff from reading the pile of scrolls beside him, and reached for his cup of wine on a side table. The wine was the finest Lesbos could send and had reached the encampment only a day before he had sailed in from Alexandria.

  From all reports, the soldiers here had grown first restless and then complacent. As the days without action lengthened, they had settled into a miserable routine of games of chance and brawls over real and imagined insults.

  Pothinus leaned his head back against the cushions and studied the series of low torches that lined the back of the king’s tent. He had felt no compunction at claiming the quarters for himself when he had arrived. Ptolemy was not here.

  The tent had been set up to resemble the king’s palace quarters as closely as was possible on the field of battle. Rich fabrics in red and gold covered a large bed with cedar posts, and braziers burned bright around a raised bath area with a marble tub. Even the gods had been represented, with marble busts of Serapis and Zeus on columns at the tent’s entrance.

  But one could not sit in luxury, nor command a standing army, for days on end without a plan.

  Fortunately Pothinus had a plan.

  He had read the battle histories of leaders gone before, had consulted with advisors. Within six weeks he could have Ptolemy’s army inside Alexandria to oust Caesar’s legion, slit the throat of Egypt’s traitorous queen, and reclaim the throne for Ptolemy. With Ptolemy on the throne, Pothinus would never be far from power.

  Outside the tent he heard the men moving about, making preparations for the night. In the distance he could make out singing, the vulgar songs of half-drunk soldiers. He finished the pomegranate he had begun earlier, pulling out its red seeds, then wiped carefully at the dripping juice and rinsed his fingers in a bowl of perfumed water that sat atop the table.

  The large flap of the tent’s forefront lifted, and the torches flared. Pothinus squinted past the flames. “Plebo?”

  The servant he’d left in Alexandria entered on silent feet, head down.

  “What took you so long?” Pothinus swung his feet to the ground. “I expected you within a day of my own arrival.”

  Plebo lifted bleary eyes to his master. “The sea was rough, my lord. We were blown off-course. I came as quickly—”

  Pothinus waved away his excuses. “Tell me of the old man.”

  Plebo eyed the couch opposite the one where Pothinus sat and seemed to sway on his feet.

  “Still on sea legs, are you, boy?” Pothinus jabbed a finger at the couch. “Sit if you must. But speak!”

  Plebo sank into the cushions and closed his eyes. “Sosigenes was freed from the prison.”

  “Cleopatra went against Caesar’s wishes?”

  Plebo shook his head. “Someone paid well to get him out. He and all the Museum’s scholars disappeared.”

  Pothinus creased a wrinkle into the white cushion beneath him. “But I am certain you located them?”

  Plebo swallowed and blinked heavily. Pothinus thought perhaps the man looked a bit green. “No one knows where they have hidden.”

  Pothinus jumped to his feet and paced the tent. The torches seemed to respond as well. One of them smoked and sent curling black fingers toward the roof. A servant appeared to tend to it.

  “There are rumors,” Plebo said, “that it was Sophia of Pharos who paid for their escape.”

  Pothinos halted and held out his hands. “That’s it then. If she is protecting them, Sosigenes must be working on the Proginosko. Did you see it, Plebo? Tell me you saw it.”

  “I saw nothing. There is also a centuria posted in her lighthouse.”

  “Caesar is protecting the scholars? I thought he wanted—”

  “I believe the soldiers know nothing of any old men. Caesar wants the lighthouse only.”

  Pothinus laughed, feeling it in his stomach. “Poor Sophia. From recluse to host, and not of her choice.” He ran a hand through his full hair. “But she must know where it is.”

  “Why is this thing so important?”

  The arrival of three others cut short Pothinus’s reply. His generals filed into the tent behind a servant, their faces appropriately somber. Pothinus turned from Plebo and waved them in.

  “Come, men. We have every reason to attack Alexandria soon, and it is time to plan the movement of the troops.”

  He joined them at a large wooden table spread with a map that covered the Great Sea to the Nubian cataracts, and from the Western Desert to Sinai. An oil lamp beside the map created a circle of light. Pothinus tapped a long finger on Pelusium and looked up at the general, Marwan. “How long will it take to march to Alexandria?”

  Marwan’s glance went from Pothinus, to the map, to his fellow generals. Pothinus turned to the others, and their eyes also shifted away like guilty children.

  “What is it?” he asked, with a growing dread.

  Marwan answered. “The men, they
are not convinced.”

  The wine in his stomach seemed to sour. “Not convinced of what?”

  Marwan sniffed and scratched his neck. His fellow general, Razin, cleared his throat. “With Ptolemy not here—”

  “He is a child!” Pothinus rapped his knuckles against the table. “Everyone knows that I am his advisor.”

  “The people favor a ruler, even a child. Not a eunuch my lord.”

  “Whom do they expect to recover their king, then? Shall we sit in the fields until Ptolemy becomes man enough to fight his own way out of Caesar’s hands?”

  Again the generals looked everywhere but to him. He raised his voice, and it sounded even to him like the desperate roar of a wounded animal. “Who?”

  “Arsinôe arrived several days ago.”

  “Arsinôe! She is barely older than her brother Ptolemy, and younger than her sister who already holds Alexandria!”

  Razin nodded. “Still, she is noble-born.”

  “And a woman!”

  “Ganymedes accompanies her.”

  Pothinus spat. “He is nothing more than a tutor. Not even a politician. I was once a scholar in the Museum! Did you know that? Surely you have told the men that it is in their best interest to remain loyal to the ruler who has recruited them, paid them . . .” The guilty expressions of the men before him stilled his tongue. The generals were silent. The tent grew hot.

  Pothinus turned from them, blinking away the anger that threatened to show as weakness. “And what does the girl Arsinôe propose?”

  After a pause Marwan answered. “She proposes nothing as yet. Simply moves about the men, speaking to them, encouraging them.”

  “Of course,” Pothinus turned back to study the map. “There is nothing that wins the loyalty of battle-weary soldiers like a pretty woman in their midst.”

  “She speaks like a true Ptolemy—”

  Pothinus slammed the wooden table, and the oil lamp jumped. “I care nothing for what she says.” He put his fingers to his temples. “The people are fools. Here, and in Alexandria. They would ignore intelligent leadership in favor of seductive charm. Fools. Leave me. I will call you later.”