‘No,’ said Atia. ‘No thank you, that is. Please take it with you. I am certain.’ Shaquilath nodded gravely, seeming to understand. Atia closed her eyes and thought of a key hanging on a hook somewhere—a key that would soon be in her hand. And then she thought of Rab. Alive. There was no better medicine.
* * *
Rab awoke to the smell of rain. Impossible, he thought. Rains did not begin to fall on Rekem until October. Was it October already? Of course it was, for he had arrived in Rekem at the end of September and many days had passed since then. He had been loathe to count them, however, for each day he woke wondering whether it would be his last.
Rab lay on his cot listening to Plotius’s soft whimpers, followed by his terrifying scream. Plotius was having another nightmare. He had them so often that Rab had begun to expect them, though it was Rab who should have been having them. Plotius would surely be set free soon, whereas Rab was a dead man.
After many moments, Rab heard the sounds of Plotius rising from his cot and making water in his bedpan. The commander gave a loud, anguished yawn. ‘What news, Livius of Gaul?’ he called from his cell.
‘I have a new pimple on my backside,’ called Livius, drawing Plotius’s laughter.
‘And what news from your side of prison, Rab, son of Junon?’ Plotius asked.
‘The air smells like rain,’ Rab stated.
‘Are you sure that is not my piss you are smelling?’ Over the past twenty days, Plotius had softened, and the three had become uneasy neighbours.
‘I smell it, too,’ said Livius. ‘Moisture in the air.’
‘Rain in Rekem?’ replied Plotius. ‘Does that happen often?’
‘Not often, but when it rains, it pours,’ said Rab. He looked around his cell and felt a growing alarm. The stone walls had been cemented together in a haphazard fashion and Rab could pick out at least a dozen holes large enough for daylight to enter. Or water.
But that was not what really worried him. The problem with their cells was that they were located entirely under the ground. The three men had been imprisoned in what was essentially a cistern—a place where water would naturally collect. Rab studied the sandstone floor, which had been sealed over the years by the footsteps of its residents. He felt a chill.
‘In the dream I had last night it was pouring rain,’ remarked Plotius.
‘And did that dream take place in Rekem?’
‘No, it was in Hispania, in my childhood home.’
‘I did not know you were from Hispania,’ said Livius from his cell.
‘The Baetica region. My father was a centurion for the legion based there. He was in the dream also—though in truth it was more like a memory. So was my mother and my older brother.’
‘What were they doing?’ asked Rab.
‘Just the usual. My father was beating my older brother and my mother was trying to protect him. In the dream I was standing in the doorway, trying to get their attention. Our donkey cart was in danger of being washed away by the rain.’
Rab paused. ‘Why was he beating your older brother?’
‘The same reason he always beat my older brother—because he was not a real man. He refused to join the legion and do his duty to Rome.’
‘I see,’ said Rab.
‘Anyway, in the dream the donkey cart got swept away and I was running after it, screaming.’
‘I was aware of the screaming part,’ said Rab. ‘So did your brother eventually join the legion?’
‘No, unfortunately. My father beat him a little too hard one day and he failed to wake from it. But he was not a real man. Real men fight,’ said Plotius.
Rab listened closely and thought he could hear a small quiver at the edges of Plotius’s voice. ‘Of course, I do not need to tell you that,’ Plotius said. ‘Rebel leader.’
Plotius had meant it as a kind of compliment, but Rab could not take it as such—not while entertaining visions of a father beating his son to death for refusing to be a killer. And yet in a sense that was what Rab was doing with his rebel army: raising up a generation of killers.
Rab heard the soft patter of rain upon the stone ceiling. Just as he looked up, a drop landed on his check. He moved to wipe it, as if it were a tear, but another quickly took its place, and then another. And even though they were just small drops, he felt as if he were already drowning.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Twenty days. That was what Atia was thinking when the drops began to fall. She was sitting in the park’s small rose garden, wondering at the sky. It had been twenty days since Rab had been locked away somewhere in Rekem and still Shaquilath had been unable to grant Atia’s wish.
‘Soon,’ Shaquilath had reassured her. ‘Be patient.’ But how could Atia be patient when her beloved sat awaiting his own death? How could she explore the wondrous city when any moment her father could arrive and order that death delivered?
Twenty days. Enough time for the rainy season to arrive—or so it seemed. The drops fell on the roses’ small leaves, making them tremble. Shaquilath had predicted the rain that morning, but it still seemed like a miracle to Atia’s sun-dried mind. How many times had she dreamed of this moment—of feeling the caress of rain upon her cheeks?
‘A hundred drops will fall or maybe even a thousand,’ Shaquilath had said, ‘but the gods will lose their will. The real rains do not arrive until January. I have never seen a street become a river in October.’
Atia had nearly choked on her honey cake. ‘The streets turn to rivers here?’
‘Rivers like great, terrifying dragons that can swallow you up. When the winter rains come to Rekem, the entire city moves to higher ground. But do not worry. The clouds gathering now do not make dragons. They make kittens.’
Atia looked up at the thunderclouds roiling in the sky above her. She was not so sure about the kittens. As if to confirm her suspicion, a fat, watery drop landed on her cheek. She lifted her arm to wipe it away and cringed with pain. She had passed twenty days in Shaqulath’s tender care, yet it still hurt to move her injured arm.
Nor was her endurance even close to normal. She walked each day in the park, trying to build up her strength. But after only an hour of walking the injury in her side always began to throb and she had to stop to rest in this small rose garden.
She broke off a rose. Twenty days—and each day she moved a little closer to danger. When her father found out she had defended Rab and thwarted Plotius’s mission, there was no telling what he would do.
She was just stepping out on to the main road when she saw one of the legion’s guards bounding up the stairs of the old palace. ‘Halt!’ Atia shouted, hailing him from the street. ‘What news?’
‘It is the Governor of Arabia Petraea,’ said the guard. ‘He has arrived in Rekem. He is entering the Siq as we speak.’
Atiab braced herself against a nearby column. It was as if just by thinking about him she had conjured him into existence.
She thought about trying to run, though she could barely even walk. She considered trying to hide inside one of the tombs. There were hundreds of them to choose from, after all, and most were family tombs with empty burial slots.
Atia pictured herself curling up inside one of those small spaces in the rock and simply disappearing from the world. She could bring food and water and stay there for days. Months even.
But what about Rab?
How could she cower and hide while her own husband faced death? No. She could not sit still while a good man died. She had to be brave. She had to face her father.
Slowly, she began to walk towards the Siq. The rain was falling harder now. The canal alongside the street had begun to overflow and Atia felt her stola growing heavy with wetness.
Finally, she saw him. He was seated atop a horse in his travelling armour and short military tunic, and as he approached, she saw how his left leg bulged. ‘Greetings, Father,’ s
he called, waving. ‘Welcome to Rekem.’
He stopped his horse and squinted down at her. Was it the rain, or did his face look very pale?
‘Atia, hello,’ he said. ‘I did not expect such an enthusiastic greeting.’
She forced a smile. ‘It is good to see you, Father. It appears you have brought the rain,’ she said. She glanced behind him at what must have been a hundred soldiers. ‘Along with a good chunk of the legion.’
‘The business of Empire waits for no man,’ he said, repeating his favourite phrase. He glanced at his leg, which appeared to have been padded with many layers of fabric. And in that moment she knew that her father’s days were numbered.
She swallowed her emotion and turned to walk alongside his horse.
‘I see that your arm has been injured,’ her father said, almost as if he were happy about it.
‘A minor wound,’ she lied. ‘It is almost healed.’ She said nothing about his leg, but she noticed that every time the horse took an awkward step, he cringed.
‘How was your journey?’ Atia asked politely.
‘Rather hot,’ he said, ‘though I expect not as hot as yours was.’
‘I expect not.’
They walked along in silence. The rain poured down. As they passed the residential area, Atia noticed many people bearing rucksacks full of what appeared to be household goods. They were walking uphill, heading for higher ground.
Meanwhile Atia and her father continued downhill until they reached the steps of the palace. Several guards clustered around her father’s horse and helped him down from it. He put his arms around the men’s shoulders and leaned on them heavily as they helped him up the stairs.
Atia tried to act as though everything was normal—that the rain was not coming down at an alarming rate, that her pale-faced father did not appear to be on the verge of death. They paused at the top of the stairs and shook themselves dry beneath the wide colonnade.
‘So tell me, Atia, are you pleased with your marriage to Plotius?’
Her father would learn the whole truth from the Legate soon enough—there was no reason to lie. But lie was just what Atia did. ‘Of course, Father,’ she said. ‘But I would have been happy with whatever husband you chose for me.’
And I have certainly not already chosen and married one of my own.
‘And the camel man—you watched him die?’
‘I did, Father.’ An easier lie. Much less specific.
‘Did it not become clear to you on the journey who he was?’
‘I am afraid not, Father.’ Now the lies were piling up as if she were building a great tower of them. ‘But you must remember that I am just a woman. I often do not see such signs clearly.’
‘Quite true.’
But it was not true. Atia was a great observer and had been all her life. As a test, she tried out another lie. ‘I have also come to understand how very weak I am.’
‘Weak and lacking in fortitude,’ her father agreed. ‘You are like your mother in that way.’
But Atia’s mother had been strong and Atia herself had plenty of fortitude. She had endured three terrible husbands, after all. She had survived the Arabian desert and helped others do the same. She had even saved the Legate’s life.
The next lie she conjured she could have recited in her sleep: ‘If only I had inherited Mother’s beauty.’
‘Your lack of it has been a source of many of my troubles,’ her father said. ‘Such an unfortunate nose.’
But her nose was not unfortunate. It was strong and unique. It blessed her face with a kind of regal intelligence, or so Rab had told her.
For the first time in her life, Atia realised that she was not the only liar in her family. Her father had been feeding her lies about herself for her entire life.
He glanced at the rose in Atia’s hand. ‘And what of the roses, my dear?’
‘I’m sorry, Father?’
‘Do Arabian roses smell different than the roses of Rome?’ Atia remembered him asking her a similar question once.
‘Yes, Father.’
‘And do you find them superior or inferior?’
‘Superior,’ she said. A truth amid the lies—like a rose amid thorns.
He peered at her closely. ‘There is something different about you,’ he said.
‘The journey did me good, Father,’ said Atia. Another truth. ‘I found happiness.’
Instead of congratulating Atia on that happiness, or on her supposed marriage, or on anything at all, her father gave a mighty harumph. He gazed out across the open-air reception hall. ‘It is just like Julianus not to send an escort,’ her father grumbled. ‘Where in Hades are his offices?’
‘At the back of the palace,’ said Atia, pointing across the hall.
Her father started out across the large open space, his soldiers making a tight formation behind him. He paused in the middle of it, breathless, and motioned the soldiers on. Then he turned to Atia. ‘Are you stupid, Atia?’ he called. ‘You stand there like some dull-witted child. Accompany me at once!’
Never again, Atia thought. In anything.
‘No, Father,’ she called back. She hardly knew her own voice.
‘What did you say?’ The rain was coming heavily now. It was pounding down upon the courtyard’s fine marble floor and had soaked through her father’s crimson cape.
‘I lied to you, Father,’ Atia shouted above the din. ‘I am not married to Plotius. I am married to Rab, the rebel leader!’ Her father gripped his stomach as if she had delivered him an actual blow. ‘Rab is a good man,’ she said, ‘and I love him!’
Her father’s eyes blazed. ‘You dirty, disloyal, contemptuous little harlot!’ he shouted. He began to limp back towards her. ‘Come here this instant!’
Atia shook her head and stood her ground. ‘All my life I have lied, Father,’ she continued. ‘I have lied to you about my feelings. I have lied to others about your malicious acts. I have lied to myself, telling myself that you are a good man. But you are not a good man and killing is no way to get power or to keep it.’
He was closing the distance between them, his expression murderous. ‘You will suffer greatly for your disloyalty, Atia. You and the damned Legate.’
‘The Legate Julianus is a good man,’ she shouted. ‘He seeks peace and justice for all the people of this province. He is what a real Governor should be.’
‘Julianus is a traitor,’ shouted Atia’s father. ‘I will kill him myself!’
Suddenly, Julianus’s voice resounded across the hall. ‘Whom will you kill, Governor Severus?’
Julianus was not alone. What seemed like half of his legion had appeared beneath the colonnade. The soldiers were fanning out into the hall and greatly outnumbered her father’s own military escort, which had been quietly surrounded.
‘Traitor!’ shouted her father. Abandoning his pursuit of Atia, her father turned and began limping towards Julianus. But in his haste, her father slipped on the slick marble and fell on to his injured leg. ‘Ow!’ he shouted.
The last thing Atia saw before she turned down the palace steps was Julianus arriving before her father’s writhing figure and offering his hand.
‘Goodbye, Father,’ she whispered.
She took the long way around the palace to her living quarters and, by some miracle of the gods, Shaquilath was there when she arrived.
‘My father has arrived in Rekem.’
‘I know,’ said Shaquilath with a strange grin. ‘It seems he brought the rain.’
‘You knew that he was coming?’
‘The desert has ears.’
‘He is not long for this world, Shaquilath.’ The two women shared a look. It meant that there was hope for the Nabataeans yet.
Atia heard the loud drum of thunder. ‘Please, tell me where Rab is now?’ she begged. ‘I must find a
way to free him.’
‘And you will free him,’ said Shaquilath. She held up a small key.
Atia nearly swooned. ‘How?’
‘I told my husband that the prisoners needed to be moved to safety.’ Shaquilath gazed out of the window at the rain, which now seemed to be coming down in sheets. ‘That part was certainly true.’
Shaquilath handed the key to Atia. ‘I have spoken to my husband about reopening the copper mines. He thinks it is a genius idea.’
Atia smiled. Hope, indeed. ‘I have a feeling that you have had great influence in that particular opinion and many others.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Shaquilath with a wink.
‘Now tell me, where is Rab?’
‘In the swathe of rock just to the west of the Great Temple. Look closely and you will see a set of stairs carved into the rock’s base.’
‘I owe you the debt of my own life,’ said Atia.
Shaquilath was shaking her long, curly locks. ‘There is no debt, for we are sisters.’ Atia gave a deep bow, then turned to leave.
‘Atia?’
‘Yes?’
‘Be careful. I was wrong about this storm. It is no kitten.’
* * *
Rab stood atop his cot, which had now become submerged. What had begun as a few drops, and then a few puddles, had grown into something of a pond inside his cell—a pond that was rapidly becoming a lake.
If the rain did not stop soon, he realised, they would all be drowned.
He laughed aloud. For countless days he had waited in terror for the appearance of his executioner. He never could have dreamed that his killer would trickle in on liquid legs.
‘Rab, why do you laugh?’ shouted Livius.
‘He laughs so that he does not cry,’ replied Plotius.
‘Why does the water rise so quickly?’ asked Livius.
The ignorance of the question struck Rab as funnier still and he laughed louder. When he finally regained his wits, he said simply, ‘Water is the desert’s greatest blessing, and also its greatest curse.’
‘Are we going to drown, then?’ said Livius, his voice trembling.
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