The woman who called herself Hypatia, on the other hand, was smart and tough. Somehow, she didn’t mind the work and used her clients to gain favors and influence. She invested her money according to tips she got in bed. Out of the boss lady’s hearing, she would say she intended to run her own house someday. Her friend Hera was a simple woman whose goal in life was to get along and be liked by as many people as possible. There were other women in the house, but they did not live there, so Julie didn’t get to know them.
At night, she kept to her room unless called. She sat on her narrow bed wishing she had a real door she could lock instead of a flimsy curtain. She listened, and heard all the little sounds of the brothel at night. It was not as raucous as she imagined it would be. Bursts of laughter filtered through the walls now and then, or singing. (Luxuria had a hired singer, Clio, who entertained some nights. She was not one of Luxuria’s ladies and kept a scarred bodyguard around at all times to remind amorous patrons of her virtue.) As the night drew on, the sounds got fainter, harder to identify. Sighs. Gasps. Sometimes weeping.
Where was Leigh? Where was the German guy, Hans? What had happened to them all? Sitting alone in the dark, Julie could not imagine their fate.
Julie was always the first one roused by the housekeeper. Because she was the newest member of the household, she had to accompany the housekeeper, a stone-faced woman named Abdica, to the forum for the day’s food. Julie was surprised to discover the Latins kept almost no food on hand. They didn’t have refrigerators, or canned goods, or vacuum-sealed, pasteurized anything. Fresh or not so fresh, food had to be bought every day and woe to Abdica if they ran out of anything before the next market. Luxuria had her man Ramesses slap the housekeeper—or any of the women—if they broke any of her rules. By the time Julie was there a week, she got backhanded, just once, for not getting Hypatia’s undergarments clean enough.
“What do you expect?” she said when Luxuria made her take the offending garments. They were dingy gray, not white as demanded.
“I don’t have any . . .” She wanted to say “bleach,” but she couldn’t think of the word. She stammered out, “Niveus—candidus—albus—,” but none of these were right. For her defiance Luxuria had Ramesses slap her down. Julie fell to the floor, stars going off in her head from the blow. Dazed, she let loose a string of choice invective. Ramesses drew back his hand for a second blow for his own sake, but Luxuria stopped him.
“You’re no child of gentle birth,” she said. “You curse like a riverboat man.”
“Think so? You should hear my friend Melodia. Now she can cuss.”
In the forum one morning, Julie spotted Linh. She was wearing a rather nice gown, pale red, with a matching scarf draped over her head. Two little kids had her by the hands, and two others followed behind her, a boy about thirteen and a girl about fourteen. The boy had a wicked leer, while the older girl looked distinctly pained. So did Linh.
Julie dared leave Abdica’s side to speak to her. She called her name, and it came out “Linnea! Linnea!”
“Julia? Is it you?”
They clasped hands. Up close, Linh looked exhausted. Her dark eyes were ringed with shadows, and her nails, once clean and elegantly shaped, were chipped and dirty. Linh explained she had been taken to be a governess at the home of a Republic official, Antoninus Livius the Younger. Livius’s four children were supposed to be in her care, but they were each in their own way such terrors that poor Linh felt like their hostage, not their governess.
The younger children, Gaius and Drusilla, were spoiled brats who expected to have everything they wanted because their father was a minor member of the government. The older boy, Drusus, was a lecherous creep. The oldest child, Helen, thought she was too old to have a governess, especially a girl only a couple years older than herself.
Linh explained all this in hushed tones while Gaius and Drusilla darted around them, poking and pulling each other’s hair. Drusus kept sticking his face too close to Julie’s or Linh’s, trying to listen in. Helen hung back, twisting her elaborately curled hair around one finger and trying to radiate all the boredom she could generate.
“Are you all right?” Linh asked. “I mean, have they made you—?”
“No, no,” Julie replied. “I make like Cinderella most of the time: wash clothes, scrub floors, run errands.”
“You work at a house of pleasure?” asked Drusus. His lip was covered with fine black hair, and his thick eyebrows met atop his nose. “I want to go! Can you get me in?”
“In about ten years,” Julie said dryly.
“It would be worth it if you’ll be there,” he said. He brushed a lock of hair away from Julie’s ear. She swatted his hand.
“I won’t be.”
“Then I should come sooner. How’s next week?”
“Oh, come right on!” Julie said with mock enthusiasm. Drusus grinned until she added, “If you want a fast kick in the family jewels!”
It took Drusus a moment to figure out what she meant. He reddened. Grabbing Julie by the elbow, he made a very crude threat. Linh called to Helen to restrain her brother. Twisting her curl, Helen looked away.
Julie smiled sweetly. “There’s a very large man at Luxuria’s who follows us girls, making sure no one molests us. His name is Ramesses, and he’s killed fourteen men with his bare hands.” She held up her hands as if wringing an imaginary neck. “Want to make it fifteen?”
The color left Drusus’s face. He let go.
“Never mind, little Venus. Linnea looks after me very well!” He wrapped an arm around the taller girl’s waist. She shuddered and brushed him off.
Abdica called Julie sharply.
“Gotta go. Where are you staying?”
Linh said, “The house of Livius, on Messenger Street.”
Just then, Gaius dived under Linh’s gown and wriggled between her feet to escape the wrath of his sister Drusilla. Linh gasped and stepped back quickly, bringing her knees tightly together.
“Behave yourself!” she said, voice quavering.
“Can we talk again?” asked Julie.
Before Linh could answer, Abdica stomped through the forum crowd and seized Julie by the braid in her hair. Julie yowled. She didn’t fight back. If she did, Luxuria would have Ramesses beat her.
“Bye, Linnea! We gotta talk again!”
“Have you seen any of the others?” Linh called as Julie skipped backward, painfully drawn by her own hair.
“No! Ow, damn it, stop—!”
She disappeared into the crowd. After solemnly warning the Livius children to behave, Linh walked on. Helen had flute lessons with a music master in the park by the temple of Mercury. After that, Drusus had rhetoric and mathematics with a tutor at the Academy of Philosophers in the Silent Forum. Gaius and Drusilla were along simply because their mother wanted them out of her hair for the morning.
With much cajoling, she got the Livius children to the park. Officially it was called the Field of Mercury, and it was used by teachers, philosophers, and other learned types as an open-air classroom. Linh delivered Helen to her teacher, Master Mediatus, and looked the other way when Drusus snuck off on his own. He was probably going off to peep in the girl’s bathhouse or harass other people’s sisters in the park.
She sat down on a marble bench. Gaius and Drusilla chased each other in and out of the shrubbery. As long as no blood was spilled, Linh didn’t care. This was the first time she’d been able to sit down since waking up this morning.
It wasn’t long before a familiar face walked by, reading a scroll.
“Elianora!”
Eleanor Quarrel looked up from her reading. She regarded Linh blankly.
“Do I know you, citizen?”
Linh blinked in surprise. “It’s me, Linnea. From the—from the ship.”
She let the scroll crawl shut. “What ship, citizen?”
Linh bit her lip. Most of the Carleton people had lost all memory of their former lives, but the teens who had witnessed the great flash of light that night at the farm seemed immune to memory loss. Now here was her friend Eleanor, acting like she had no idea who Linh was or how they’d gotten here.
“Don’t you know who I am?”
“A girl of good family, I can tell by your manners and speech. Where did we meet before?”
Linh drew in a breath. “On a ship. You had to sail without your mother. We played games together on the voyage.”
Mention of Eleanor’s mother caused a ripple of recognition. “My mother is . . . dead,” Eleanor said slowly. “She died in the provinces of . . . plague.”
Linh leaned out and took her by the hand. Drawing the unresisting Eleanor to her, she said in a low voice, “Do you remember the boy in black? Aemilius?” That was how Emile’s name came out in Latin.
Eleanor slowly sat down. “I remember . . . a boy who wore black. He bothered me, then he—he—”
“He saved you when the ship was sinking!”
Her eyelids fluttered. “Yes.”
“Have you seen him? Or anyone else we used to know?” Linh asked. From the mulberry bushes, a loud squall erupted. Gaius or Drusilla had finally hurt themselves.
“I work in the pharmacy of Dr. Dioscorides,” Eleanor said. “I’ve seen no one.”
Linh glanced at the scroll as she rose. It was a list of recipes for medicines, with things such as rose petals, six drachms; oil of olives, two digits, handwritten in columns.
“I have to go,” Linh said, pressing the fallen scroll on her friend. “I hope to see you again.” At least she knew where Eleanor was living, with a druggist named Dioscorides.
She dashed off to find the children. Drusus came loping across the green park, pursued by a pair of glaring scholars. There was no telling what he did to offend them.
Alone on the bench, Eleanor said aloud to no one, “That was one of my friends.”
Beside her a handsome young man about twenty years old appeared out of thin air. He wore a short kilt and loose tunic that displayed a lot of his lean, muscular chest. A circlet of green laurel leaves crowned his head.
“Yes, that one,” he said. “I’ve been watching her and the others.”
“They do not seem at home here.”
The beautiful young man frowned. “No, they don’t. I wonder why?”
“Something protected them,” said Eleanor vaguely.
Sharply her companion replied, “What protected them? Or who?”
“I don’t know, but they do not seem at home here . . .”
He took hold of her wrist tightly. The scroll fell to the grass.
“Who am I?” he demanded.
“Apollo, god of light, bringer of music, and lord of the Future.”
He released her. “Very good. Whom do you serve, Elianora?”
“Dr. Dioscorides.”
“That is true for now, but I have plans for you . . .”
Linh gathered the children of Antoninus Livius around her. Helen’s lesson was over. It was time for Drusus’s schooling. She cast a look back at Eleanor. She was still sitting on the marble bench, gazing at the monumental skyline of Eternus Urbs. Though alone, her lips moved now and then as though she was talking to somebody.
“I want you to see the girl Linnea again,” Apollo said, “and anyone else like her who is not at home here.”
“Why should I see them, God of Light?”
“I want to know what they think and do.”
“I will tell you all, lord.”
“You may remember, too. I wish to know more about you.”
Even as he said it, memories came flooding back to her. Eleanor remembered the condo in Cape Town with her mother, going to the beach, eating curry at the market, her mother’s face. She remembered, but everything seemed distant and without meaning, like scenes from an old movie.
“Good. Recall everything. I would understand you newcomers and your ways.”
Apollo stood. His feet trod the air as he hovered a good five inches off the ground.
“Go now. I shall be watching you.”
He abruptly turned away, blurring into nonexistence. Shivering, Eleanor wrapped her arms around herself.Goosebumps covered her arms. The God of Light is with me, she thought over and over. Apollo is with me.
Chapter 17
The Army of the Republic was a lot like a football team.
Leigh Morrison discovered this quickly, and it helped him a lot coping with the strangeness of the situation. He and other recruits were yelled at, made to run in groups, and fight in close formation. The only thing missing was a ball. Of course, none of Leigh’s former coaches wore armor or beat slackers with a wooden rod.
“Quick time, quick time!” the centurion roared. A block of one hundred men, all recruits clad in dirty tunics and flimsy sandals, had to run as hard as they could without trampling on the man in front of them—or get trampled by the recruit behind. The red-haired centurion whacked every man on the outside edge of the formation as he passed him. Leigh got his share of “encouragement.” The drillmaster’s name was Gordius, but everyone called him Rufus Panthera, the Red Lion.
“Worthless filth!” he bellowed. “None of you will last a day against the barbarians! Sword-fodder, that’s what you are! Cordwood! No, cordwood is useful, you can burn it. You dungheads are corpses in waiting!”
That was typical of the abuse Rufus dealt out from sunup to sundown. Leigh’s group was training to be infantry of the legion, the toughest job in the army. Only the biggest and strongest recruits were taken for the infantry. Lesser men became archers, cavalry, or skirmishers. The officers took one look at Leigh and passed him on to the infantry. It was a compliment, in a way. He soon regretted it.
Nothing he did was right. He was slow, Rufus yelled. He was clumsy. He was weak, no better than a woman. Why didn’t he put on a dress and go home? Leigh gritted his teeth and avoided looking the centurion in the eye. Guys who did that lost teeth—or eyes.
Slowly the group of one hundred men shrank. After a few days, they were ninety. More drills in the hot sun, more route marches through swamps and hills, and the century lessened to eighty-one. Leigh wondered what happened to the men who were gone. Usually they vanished overnight, their bunks empty in the morning. No explanation was offered, and wise recruits did not ask questions.
He avoided making friends. Leigh was convinced he could get away at some point, and he did not want friendships getting in the way. It wasn’t hard being alone. Like football tryouts, there was a lot of competition among the recruits. Some of them played the tough guy, trying to outman everyone else. Others were morose or miserable, homesick, or just plain terrified. Though Rufus and the other centurions casually beat them, real punishments were far worse. A man from the next century group was flogged nearly to death for insubordination. Desertion was punishable by decimation. Leigh heard about how entire units were punished by having every tenth man put to death. No one in Leigh’s group ran away. If anybody tried, the other recruits would have dragged him back.
Leigh had to admit Roman methods were effective. He was in good shape, but after a couple weeks training, he felt stronger and tougher than he ever had in his life. They began to wear heavy leather armor and spar with wooden weapons. Rufus yelled a little less and hit them less often.
At the end of six weeks of training, Leigh’s group was drawn up on the Field of Mars, outside the permanent camp. A ranking officer, introduced as the proconsul, gave a short, dull speech about honor and duty to the Republic. A battle standard was consecrated to the god of war and given to the group. Henceforth they were skirmishers of the XI Legion.
Rufus barked, “Levius Moro!”
That was Leigh. He doubled to the front of the line and stopped dead in front of the centurion and pro
consul. Long before, Leigh learned the Romans didn’t salute. That practice didn’t start until the Middle Ages.
“Is this the man?” said the proconsul. He was an older man, with white sideburns and eyebrows, and a trace of white whiskers on his chin. From his heavy muscles and scarred hands, Leigh reckoned he’d been quite a fighter in his youth.
“Yes, dominus,” said Rufus.
The proconsul nodded, and Rufus thrust the standard into Leigh’s hands. It was a pole about six feet high with a brass plaque on top shaped like an open scroll. The numbers XI were molded into the metal. Atop the plaque was a crouching animal. It looked like a dog, but Leigh figured it was meant to be a wolf, symbol of the XI Legion.
“For your steady work, your obedience, and your strength, Centurion Gordius has nominated you to be aquilifer of this century,” said the proconsul.
Leigh shot a quick sideways glance at Rufus. Like his JV football coach, Rufus yelled a lot but recognized Leigh’s good attitude and hard work. The aquilifer was next in rank to the centurion. He carried the standard and protected it in battle. Now Leigh was corporal to Rufus’s sergeant.
“You have the makings of a real soldier, Levius,” Rufus said gruffly.
“Thank you, centurion! And thank you, Proconsul!”
He went back to the ranks, carrying the standard. It wasn’t light. Idly, Leigh wondered what kind of damage he could do if he swatted somebody with it. The standard wasn’t only a physical burden. A legion’s standards were sacred. The men were expected to die to protect it, and as aquilifer, Leigh was supposed to be the first man to fall defending that pole.
The proconsul and Rufus exchanged a few words, then the older man departed. Rufus called Leigh forward again. Apart from the other recruits, the centurion addressed Leigh in the most normal tone of voice the American teen had ever heard him use.
“You have a new task, Aquilifer. Pick a maniple of men from the recruits for duty in the city tonight.”
Sweat trickled under the rim of Leigh’s leather helmet. He wasn’t allowed to wipe it away while listening to a superior.
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