I smiled. “I hope you’re right.”
CHAPTER 35
Troglius was not the sort to seek me out. If I didn’t stop by his tent at meal time, I would never have seen him. But I did. Somehow talking to Troglius in our one-sided conversations was important to me. If nothing else, he was a set of ears to listen to my trials and tribulations when there was no one else who would.
About a week after I had located him, I discovered he and I had some free time that overlapped. I told him that I had lived in Syracuse for three years and that I had only gone into the city once since arriving. “I’d like to go again and look around a bit. Are you interested in coming with me?” I wanted to go to Ortygia. I wanted to visit the tower where I had spent so much time with Archimedes, just to see how much things had changed.
Troglius surprised me by saying he would go. We hiked from the camp to the city’s south gate. We both wore Roman tunics and had no trouble entering the city. We walked due north on Via Intermuralis, the main artery in the city, following the wall that separated Syracuse into an eastside—the Tyche district—and a westside—Achradina. Even after the clean-up that Scipio had ordered, Syracuse was not the city I had known. The stunning temples were either gone or partially deconstructed. All the Greek statuary was gone. Homeless people with hungry eyes wandered the streets just as they had during the siege. Street thugs hung out on the corners waiting for night to fall. The city didn’t feel safe. That was one reason I had asked Troglius to accompany me. He appeared more beast than man and wasn’t the sort to pick a fight with or attempt to rob.
When we reached the north end of Via Intermuralis, I showed Troglius the entrance to the tunnels beneath the city. They dated back two hundred years and hadn’t been used in decades. We retraced our route on Via Intermuralis to Achradina. The gate was open and had no guards so we went in. The agora no longer had a market. The Altar of Concord had been removed from the forum after the siege. Only its base, a large rectangular block of limestone, remained. A man stood on it and spoke out against Roman rule. Before we had crossed the agora, two soldiers had come and hauled him away.
Access to Ortygia was at the south end of the agora. The narrow island was separated from the rest of the city by a canal and a fortified gate. It served as a sanctuary of last resort should the city be besieged. I knew this only too well. I had lived on the island during the last six months of the Roman siege. The gate was open, but guarded by Roman soldiers. Wearing our red tunics, we were allowed to pass without a question. During my time there, the gate had always been closed and entry highly restricted.
The island was no different than the rest of the city. Stone from deconstruction was everywhere. A visitor who had never been there before would not know if the city were being built or taken apart. The entire scene filled me with a profound sadness. It had once been my favorite part of Syracuse.
I led Troglius to the six-story tower where I had lived. As we crossed the yard, I saw a gray cat sitting in the sun. I was sure it was my old friend Plato, but when I tried to approach it, the cat ran off. Either it wasn’t Plato or the war had turned him skittish.
The tower door was open. We walked right in. It was much the way I had last seen it, filled with the leftover debris of a complete sacking. I climbed the stairs to the top floor with Troglius trailing behind. I didn’t try to explain what I was feeling when we entered the vacant workshop.
The broken tools and furniture scattered around the chamber had not been touched in the six years since the Roman takeover. This room, once a laboratory at the leading edge of Greek science, was now little more than a wasteland. I was so saddened by the condition of the workshop, and the memories I associated with it, that I was reduced to silence. I stood before the east facing window just staring out at the sea, recalling the first time Archimedes told me to watch a ship disappear over the horizon as verification of the curvature of the Earth. Africa was two hundred miles across the sea to the southwest.
When I turned away from the window, trying to push through my emotions, Troglius asked me, “Is this where the magnifying glass came from?”
“Yes,” I said, surprised that he might have made such a connection. He was one of the few people I had shown it to. “It was a gift from my master, Archimedes.”
“You were once a slave?” It was the first question he had ever asked me about my life.
“For three years. Marcellus freed me after the siege.”
“Where’s the lens? I don’t see the cord that’s usually around your neck.”
Troglius thought the lens’ was magic and found it tremendously fascinating. While tent mates, he had slipped the leather pouch from around my neck while I was asleep. It was a point of contention that we talked about afterward. That short conversation had proven to me that Troglius was a more thoughtful man than most realized. It was also the beginning of our friendship.
I had the spyglass with me, hanging on my belt in open sight, as though it might be a drafting tool. I had shown it to my mother and Sempronia, asking them never to mention it. For reasons I can’t truly explain, I wanted to show it to Troglius. “Can you make a promise to secrecy?” Archimedes had asked me the same question in this room six years earlier.
Troglius came across the room, his eyes looking off in two directions. One then the other met mine. “Yes, I can keep a secret.”
I took the spyglass from my belt and showed it to him. “I call this device a spyglass.” I touched the fat end of the device. “The magnifying lens is here.”
He looked and nodded.
I touched the narrow end. “A smaller lens is here. When they are used together, they can be quite powerful. Watch how I use it.” I put the small end to my eye and aimed it out the north window toward the city. I gently twisted the tubes to focus on a parapet across the moat. “Do you see what I am doing? Turning these tubes one inside the other?” I handed the device to Troglius. “It clarifies what you see.”
He held the tube to his eye and did as I had instructed. I talked him through the entire process. I could see it in his body when the upside down image in the glass came into focus. He became very still, then lowered the spyglass and turned to me in question.
I nodded. “Yes, the lenses together can make things in the distance appear closer and upside down.”
He put the tube to his eye again and aimed it at Mount Etna. Its snow capped peak was just visible above the horizon to the north. It took him a moment to find his target and bring it into focus. When he lowered the spyglass a second time, he gave it back to me as though it was too much for him to hold, like it was a precious gem or a piece of Jupiter’s robe. “I don’t understand,” he said with a mixture of anxiety and awe. “You have said the lens is not magic, but it must be if it turns everything upside down. How else can this be explained?”
“It’s simply a tool that makes use of the natural properties of glass. That’s all I can tell you. It’s not magic, but it is powerful. I believe it could be useful to a field marshal.”
Troglius looked out the window to where he had aimed the spyglass, then back to me.
“I have thought about showing it to Scipio.” I probably shouldn’t have said this, but if Troglius was to be a friend, I had to trust him. “It could help win the war.”
Troglius shook his head. “No, we can win without magic. Keep it to yourself. I will never say a word.”
“So said Archimedes, Troglius. Perhaps you’re right.” But I had already made up my mind. Once I felt Scipio was the right man—and I hadn’t determined that yet—I would show him the spyglass.
From the tower, Troglius and I headed farther south on the one-mile spit that was Ortygia. Suddenly we were outside the tenement housing where Agathe had lived. It was the one part of Syracuse that had not been heavily plundered. The Temple of Apollo and the Temple of Athene were gone, taken away stone by stone, but all the lesser buildings were intact.
I was curious if Agathe were still alive, but she was not someone I r
eally wanted to seek out and visit. We continued south to the Fountain of Arethusa at the southernmost end of the island. We got a drink of water from the spring and watched the waves crash on the rocks.
On our way back I saw a young boy, no more than seven years old, standing outside the tenement housing. He had unruly red hair and a lightness about his movement that caught my eye. If I wasn’t mistaken, this boy was Eurydice’s son Gelo, the illegitimate offspring of Syracuse’s last king.
I called his name. The boy looked up. I approached him, speaking in Greek. “Do you remember me?”
The boy shook his head as his eyes strayed to Troglius standing behind me.
“My name is Timon. I’m here as a friend.”
The boy eyed the two of us suspiciously.
“Do you live with your mother?”
He nodded reluctantly.
“And Agathe, is she here too?”
Gelo looked over his shoulder. An older woman, thin as a rail and not nearly as pretty, came out of the nearest building. It was Agathe. She saw us talking to Gelo, surely noted our red tunics, and came right over to us, placing her hand on the boy’s shoulder. I had grown from a boy into a man since last seeing her and wore a closely trimmed beard.
“What do you want?” she demanded angrily, not recognizing me. “Leave this boy alone. Next you will want to recruit him.”
I struggled not to laugh. Agathe had not a changed a bit. Even Troglius had not scared her. “Agathe,” I said, “don’t you remember me? Timon, Archimedes’ slave.”
She squinched up her face and gave me a long, hard look. “So what?” she said. “You’re wearing Roman red. Why are you here?”
“I’m a scribe with the army. My duties brought me to Sicily. I chanced to see Gelo as I walked by. How is Eurydice?”
Gelo called out his mother’s name.
“Quiet, boy,” snapped Agathe. “Eurydice is fine. Why would you care?”
“She was once a friend. That’s all.”
Eurydice came out of the tenement. She was only a few years older than I, but her face seemed older. The times had been hard on her. She was still an attractive woman, but she had once been gorgeous. “Gelo, what do you want?” she asked, viewing Troglius and me as intruding Romans.
“This man asked about you,” said the boy.
Eurydice gave me a second look. “Timon!” All of her radiant beauty returned with her smile. “It—it—it is you!” She opened her arms and embraced me.
I remembered the last time I had seen her. She had been victimized by the plundering Romans after the siege. She had been a hollow shell of herself and hadn’t said a single word to me. Just hearing her voice now—even with the stutter—filled me with joy, reminding me that time did have healing powers.
I told Eurydice the short version of my time in Rome, and how good it was to see her. She had no stories to tell, but said that she and Gelo lived with Agathe. The reunion was, as I would have expected, bittersweet. Syracuse had not fully recovered from the siege, nor had the inhabitants.
On the way back to the camp, Troglius commented on Eurydice’s beauty. “Is she married?” he asked, a man of silence suddenly inquisitive.
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“And her father, is he alive?”
“She was sold into slavery as a child.”
“She looked at me without turning away. I think she’s a good woman. When we return from Africa rich with plunder, I will ask her to marry me.” Though he faced me, his eyes stared off in opposite directions. He was about as ugly a man as I had ever seen. “Please don’t tell anyone.”
“One pledge is worth another. I won’t say a word,” I tapped the spyglass at my hip, “if you never mention this in the company of others.”
Troglius nodded.
“And please, don’t let anyone take it from me.”
CHAPTER 36
In the days following my trip to Ortygia, I found myself thinking about all the people I had known during my first stay in Syracuse. I knew for certain that several of them had not survived. Excepting Agathe, Eurydice, and Gelo, I didn’t know anything about the others. One of them was the Sicilian girl Moira. She was my age and had been my closest friend when I lived in Syracuse. Unfortunately our friendship had come to an ugly end after the siege when I learned that she was supporting her ailing grandfather by selling herself to the Roman soldiers. At the time I could barely face her. I left Syracuse hating her. In the years since I had seen more of the war, its collateral damage, particularly to women, and the extreme measures one might have to pursue to survive. Now, despite the heartbreak she had caused me, I felt I owed her an apology for the things I had said to her. I decided to look for her, and should I find her, admit that the war made all of us do things we wouldn’t under other circumstances—myself included. I was twenty-three. She would be twenty-two. Maybe we were older and wiser and could find some peace between us.
The first chance I had I went back into the city. Moira’s grandfather had owned a small farm south of the city and sold his produce at the market in the Tyche district. Moira might have returned to her grandfather’s farm. Perhaps I could find her at the market, where I had first met her, selling “the best figs in Sicily.” I didn’t ask Troglius to accompany me. If I should find Moira, there was no telling how she would react, and I wanted to take that on alone.
I entered the city through the south gate and headed north on Via Intermuralis. The street climbed onto the plateau in the northwest portion of the city known as the Tyche district. When I had been in Syracuse the first time, there had been two markets, one in Achradina, with luxurious merchandise and high prices, and one in Tyche, where produce and more common goods were sold. This was where I went.
The market was busy, but the number of vendors was considerably less than before the siege. I explored the market one aisle at a time. I went slowly, but methodically, assuming I would recognize Moira though six years had passed. I had always enjoyed going to this market, saturating myself in the sounds and smells and bustle of everyday life, but I didn’t find Moira. I had known the odds were slim. I went back to the camp thinking I would try again on another day.
A week later I had a free morning. It was a warm sunny day. A few billowy thunderheads drifted like warships across the sky to the east. I decided to head south into the farmland instead of going into Syracuse. Moira had once pointed out her farm to me from the steps of the Temple of Zeus. I had never been there, but I knew the general location. I followed the dirt road that wound through the small farms and pastures with no real expectation of finding Moira, just glad to get away from the camp.
Not long into my walk I noticed two young men coming the other way on the road. They appeared to be farmers. One of them had a sack of something—potatoes as it turned out—over his shoulder. When they got close, I acknowledged them with a nod of my head. The man with the potatoes took one step and swung the sack with all his might into the side of my head, shouting, “a god insulting Roman,” as he connected.
I was knocked to the ground and was further kicked and beaten by the two men. Clearly it was the wrong day to go anywhere without Troglius. They left me lying in the weeds along the road with a bloodied nose, a split lip, and a pounding headache. When I finally managed to climb to my feet, I spit out a thick wad of bloody saliva, then opened and closed my mouth to see if my jaw still worked.
Seven or eight cows grazed in the pasture beside the road. I could see several farm buildings and an orchard beyond the pasture. Maybe I could find some water there to clean myself up before returning to camp. I crawled through the rail fence, lost my balance, and fell to the ground.
Gaining my feet, I weaved across the field to the closest farm building and found a trough of water. There was a well beside it. I used a rope to pull up a bucket of water and washed the blood from my face and hands. As I was standing there, looking for a way to dry my face without soiling my tunic any worse than it was, a woman shouted at me. “What are
you doing at my well?”
The woman crossed the yard from what appeared to be her home, with a little girl gripping the hem of her chiton and a slightly older boy trailing behind.
“I’m sorry,” I said turning to face her. “I met with some difficulty on the road.”
My condition didn’t seem to faze her. Perhaps she hated Romans also. “What can you pay for that water?” she snapped getting closer.
That’s when I recognized her. “Moira...?”
She stood back, suspicious that I should know her name.
I realized that with my beard and the wounds she might not recognize me. “It’s me, Timon. Don’t you remember me?”
She tilted her head, appraising me from a distance. She took a few steps forward, both children now hanging onto her dress. “Timon? Archimedes’ slave? You left for Rome years ago.”
I smiled. “That’s right.” She was a woman now, not an impish girl. Her hair was pulled back in a long brown ponytail. Light beads of moisture dotted her forehead. Even wearing a worn, wool chiton, towing two dirty children, she was the picture of pastoral beauty. “I returned two months ago. I’m a mapmaker in the army.”
She came up close to me. “It looks like you’ve taken a couple of bad hits.”
“From two of your neighbors. Must have been my tunic,” I said, looking at the ground.
“Come to the house. We need to do something about those cuts on your face.”
The house was a one-room, mud brick structure with a thatch roof. I sat on a stone wall with a child on either side of me, while she went in to get a clean towel. She used water from the well to reclean the wounds. As she dabbed at my face, I could smell her, not some fragrant perfume, but the sweat of a woman who worked all day in the sun.
“Is this your grandfather’s farm?” I asked.
“It was. He died shortly after I last saw you. I sold it to the neighboring farm to survive. They own the orchards, but I manage them for a portion of the profits.”
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