A Mixture of Madness, Book II of The Bow of Heaven

by Levkoff, Andrew

  •••

  Two weeks later, still ignorant of Livia’s fate, Crassus dismissed me until after the evening meal. He wanted to have a bath. If I hurried, I ought to have sufficient time. It was only an hour’s ride south of camp, a place unknown to me as a child, then denied to me as a man. Yes, I had been given permission to ride rather than walk all the way to Syria! There was no prestige in it—it was the only means of keeping pace with my master and his wants. Apollo was a reliable, if sedentary dark brown bay, but to me he was Pegasus. On the march, from my equine elevation, the endless sight and oceanic sound of thousands of men marching men six abreast almost made me feel guilty. (You may be interested to know that I named my horse for the statue at whose feet Livia and I first kissed. Yes, I have a romantic nature; it is a character flaw which should be viewed with pity, not derision.)

  The engineers had chosen a field between a sloping cherry orchard and a rushing stream that lay a mile to the east of Edessa. Fresh water and decent grazing—these were the two most important criteria for camp selection. In the distance came constant thunder from an unseen cascade whose waters raced past us with a jubilation I did not share. A light rain was falling. It was early afternoon and legionaries were still tramping into the unfinished camp from the morning’s march. My tent lay between my master’s magnificent structure—you could hardly call it a tent—and those almost as grand assigned to the army’s legates. There was my humble goatskin shelter, the standard ten feet on a side, a bug caught between giant hands. But then I didn’t have to share it with seven other coarse, foul-mouthed, reeking soldiers, did I? No sharing, but no sleeping either. For the first few nights, this blessed oblivion proved all but impossible to achieve, curled up in my cloak on the straw-strewn floor, save for a few nightmare-encrusted moments.

  Do I sound unaccountably bitter? Perhaps, but I can account for the sentiment, I assure you. I mentioned this once. You may have forgotten, but I never shall. When I had first become a slave, dragged with Sulla’s army back from Athens, a boy of nineteen, it was in a tent just such as the one which I now called home where I had catered to every need, imaginable and unimaginable, of eight men indistinguishable from the thousands surrounding me now. I recoil as I remember their callous indifference to my suffering, their almost bored creativity as each day they subjected me to some new indignation. I served at their pleasure for over a year. The decades had helped me push those memories into a corner of my mind where I shuddered to look. There it was never quite dark, but always illuminated by the same dim, yellow light that filtered down through my tent’s hide to settle on my shoulders like a shroud. Now, they came again, bright and raw and new. Old friends.

  I wrapped my sagum about me and burst through the tent flap to stand in the camp forum gulping the misty, bright air. It was clogged with the smells of wood, dirt, dust, horses, mules, and sweat. Perfume, compared to the rank, memory-laden air of my lodgings. A ride would do me good.

  I looked behind my tent across the narrow aisle at the empty patch of meadow; Betto and Malchus had not yet arrived, but I had heard that they had made a safe crossing. The tent-mates originally assigned to their contubernium had not been as fortunate. Ridiculous as it sounds, I looked upon my friends’ survival as a special favor from the heavens to me. Malchus had a way of making me see through to the best outcome of any bad situation. I needed him now. And Betto’s whining was sheer entertainment, plain and simple. Some men use bravado to hide their fear; with Betto it was the opposite: strip away his complaining and superstitious caterwauling and you will never find a braver man. I mourned for the drowned men, but took great comfort from the knowledge that at least my friends, assigned by Crassus himself to the first century of the first cohort of the first legion would be nearby. But where was Livia?

  There were no women in the army. You might find one or two in the arena, where survival depended on no skills other than your own, but here, in this machine of war where each part depended upon the other, no. No women.

  Camp followers grew like a scruffy, wagging tail with each day’s march. In this quotidian, aberrant reflection of the legion’s art, a child’s grotesque imitation of its parent’s craft, you would find slaves of wealthy soldiers who could afford more than the one servant assigned to each contubernium, sellers of anything from blankets to good wine, and it was here you could also discover women in profusion. They might be merchants, selling fresh bread, their bodies, fish oil or cook pots. Or they might be “wives” of the men, who were not theoretically allowed to marry, though those were few, true and hardy to make this trip. But inside the camp itself, nary a one. Within our walls was precision, engineered and obsessive, everything in its place, each man accounted for. Give me the name of any soldier, his legion, cohort and century, and I could walk across our vast encampment of an evening and point to his tent with unerring regularity. The squalor and chaos of the army’s bustling town, reborn each night outside our walls, would give me greater challenge. When Octavius met up with us, that is where I would find Livia.

  •••

  That is not where I went now. I walked with contrived purpose down the length of the parade ground, past the rostrum where Crassus could address the assembled troops, past the tent where the standards were housed, past the sacrificial altar, down to the rear gate and the picket lines where I had left Apollo. Flags placed by the engineers who had arrived hours ago still marked the boundaries of the camp and also the location of the four gates. The ground had been leveled and cleared, the sod for the ramparts collected, and work by the legionaries not guarding the rest of us was proceeding with such orderliness and efficiency it surpassed even my own captious standards.

  Since there were no enemies about, Crassus had allowed the trench around the camp to be dug to a depth of only three feet. The dirt was thrown inward to build the rampart, faced with sod and finished with logs. The palisade in this friendly territory was only five feet above the ground, its floor and outer wall bound with stakes carried by each legionary. It took these men a remarkably short three and a half hours to erect the entire encampment which, when complete, would house our abbreviated army of four legions plus auxiliaries. To make our evening’s home we stole from the landscape an enormous rectangle 1,300 by 1,800 feet, consuming over 50 acres. Each day. When the army was completely reassembled our encampment would grow to over 60 acres.

  I found Apollo and told a stable boy to prepare him. Just as I was about to step up onto the mounting stool I overheard a voice from the palisade calling out to someone down the line. “Linus, you slug!” he shouted. “My dead grandmother would have those stakes tied off by now. Pretend there’s a five-story insula right across the street; it’s burning and any second a wall of fire is going to come crashing down on your head.” That voice! Like a saw pulling through wood, so familiar, but I could not place it. Until I heard the man say the word “fire.”

  “Ludovicus?!”

  The big man with the shaved head and eyes the color of rainwater on a stormy day turned in my direction. His skin was so darkly tanned he looked as if he’d already been to Parthia and back. He squinted, then recognition dawned and he shouted, “My favorite Greek! I heard you were here. Come on up, so I can see how bad you look. That’s an order!”

  “Hah!” I called back, making my way up the planed logs that served as steps. “If I remember correctly, the last time we spoke it was you who were taking orders.” Then I lost my wind as Ludovicus grabbed my arm on the last plank and pulled me into what I have learned to call a “Roman crush.” All along the palisade legionaries of lower rank were tamping down dirt, laying boards or tying stakes. It seemed we were the only two at rest in the entire camp.

  “Yes, but not from you! I see, stork, your ‘feathers’ have either fallen off or turned white.” I was elated to see him, but should I have been?

  “What are you doing in uniform? You should have been pastured years ago.”

  “They tried,” he said, twisting his features into a mask
of rage, “but I made a face and the bull fainted.”

  Ludovicus had been a freedman, part of the Crassus familia when I first came to the house. Over the years, he had been promoted from handyman to commander of Crassus' fire brigade, and together, we had “engineered” the acquisition of many buildings on behalf of our patron. Whenever a fire broke out, we would rush to the rescue, but only begin putting out the fire with our pumps and hoses when dominus himself had negotiated a purchase price a fraction of the value of the ruined property.

  “What happened to your career in farming?” I asked.

  “Let me put it this way: the army beats shoveling shit onto a field that’s already covered in shit. I quit that latifundium in Cremona and joined the engineers over ten years ago. Then I discovered I enjoyed swinging a sword more than a hammer. Next thing you know I’m with Pompeius fighting pirates in Cilicia. That was great fun, that was. Bit of a lull after that, but then I heard, along with everyone else in Latium, that Crassus was building an army, and here I am.”

  A part of me wanted to hate this mountain of muscle, but it was a small part. Even with cause, he was a very hard man to dislike. Some would say, if only in an indirect way, I had cause enough. But the truth was, Livia’s mother was to blame, not Ludovicus. Sabina had loved the brigade commander with singular ardor; none of us ever imagined the depth and breadth of her jealousy until it was too late. It had never been proved that Ludovicus was cheating on Livia’s mother with Tessa, the gardener, but Sabina had all the evidence she needed. Before she could be stopped, Tessa was dead, Sabina was on her way to the mines in chains, and Livia had taken back her heart and left me devastated and alone.

  “You two!” a very unhappy voice yelled from below. It was Lucius Vinicius, primus pilus of Legion V, a position of high honor. He was smacking his vine stick into his hand so hard it whistled. The sound made me think of Livia. Which proves that almost anything could remind me of her.

  Vinicius was transparently unhappy with his posting; he had hoped to be awarded primus pilus of Legion I, but that honor had been given to Vel Corto, an Etruscan, which rankled even more. He hadn’t even been assigned as high as Legion II. To him, it was a disgrace. But he had been told that in Crassus' army, tradition was followed to the letter, unless merit proved the old way the wrong way. For the same reason, there were no military tribunes on the general’s payroll. Crassus called them “ducklings.” They were the darlings of the senate: their downy chins were too young to have gained any real experience, they made lots of noise and waddled around in circles without doing much of anything. Useless on the battlefield.

  “Mercury’s feathered testicles, centurion, what kind of example are you setting for your men? You, slave. On your way or I’ll have you striped!”

  “Sir!” Ludovicus saluted and gave me a look that said, we’ll continue this later. Go.

  “Centurion,” I said, turning around to face him. I wasn’t wearing my gold disk of immunity, for there was little need of it in camp. I hated wearing it, hated even more making use of it, for what was a slave doing with a vine stick, even if it was round and gold? Besides, it was heavy, clanked against my “identity” plaque and in any case, everyone in the army knew Crassus' first slave, Alexander. “I sincerely hope it won’t come to that. I shall descend on the instant.”

  To his credit, when he recognized me, Vinicius did not wilt. “Sir, you have no business on the palisade. These men are on a tight schedule. You’re obstructing the completion of the fortifications. However…I apologize. Sir. From behind I thought…you look just like…”

  “No need to apologize,” I said. “It is difficult to distinguish between one six-foot-one, balding slave in a tunic and another. The camp is overrun with us.”

  The centurion opened his mouth to speak again, thought better of it, turned on his heel and walked away. We could hear the slap of his vine stick against his thigh fading down the rampart. I pitied the next underling who crossed him, and knew that the only thing that stood between me and a flogging or worse was the universal knowledge that I was the general’s personal, inviolable pet. I would never earn that centurion’s respect, but I had been wrong not to try. Oh well.

  “That was both surprising and gratifying,” Ludovicus said. “Vinicius is cruel. His men hate him.”

  “Then Legion V is weak. Shall I tell the general?”

  “Don’t bother. From what I hear, these Parthians are nomads, scattered and disorganized. Even Vinicius will distinguish himself. Now, what was I going to ask you? Oh yes, I remember—let’s hear it, Alexander, have you joined the brotherhood of men since I saw you last? Or are you still paying visits to the left-handed whore in your tent?”

  I was too old to blush. I think. “It is comforting to find that some things never change, Ludovicus. Like your manners.” I suppose my cheeks did color. A year or so after I had first been given to Crassus, Ludovicus had volunteered to pay for my entry fee into the world’s most non-exclusive clubs at one of his favorite brothels. The outing had the unintended consequence of underscoring both my ignorance in all matters amorous and the certainty that I would die a virgin.

  “Livia and I have formed a contubernium,” I said. “We have a son.”

  “You and Livia?” Ludovicus’ look was one of suspicious incredulity. “But you…her mother…”

  “That was twenty-five years ago. We fell in love, once in youth, then again as man and woman. I am the most fortunate of men. So, to answer your uncouth question, in my entire life, there has been only Livia, and Livia only has filled my life entire.”

  Ludovicus laughed and shook my hand. “If you could tame that firebrand, perhaps it is you who should have been teaching me about women. I am well-pleased, Alexander.” Thinking more on it, he added, “Isn’t she about half your age?”

  “Yes, if I were twenty-four and she were twelve. She’s here, you know. Or will be soon.” The centurion’s grey eyes widened. “She’s a medicus,” I said, “like her mother. Crassus insisted she work in the camp hospital.”

  Ludovicus frowned. “In that case, I’d better pray to Mars I don’t get wounded and wind up under her knife.”

  •••

  An hour south of our encampment, in the shade of Mount Vermion, with directions from a villager in the town of Mieza, I found the Nymphaion. Approaching the glade with reverence, I slipped from Apollo, and while he grazed, walked slowly along the path to the base of the escarpment. It seemed impossible that the place had been abandoned, yet the columns of the portico were overgrown with vines of orchid, the stone benches crowded round by beds of mossy campion, as if their pink stars, now extinguished by the season, had huddled close, straining to hear the echoes of words spoken here three hundred years ago. Spikes of mullein, their yellow blooms now brown and sere, stood like withered sentinels; Nature would still pay homage to this place, even if man did not.

  My feet walked where he had walked. My lungs inhaled the same air that he, with each exhale had imparted the wisdom of physics, politics and ethics to his young charges. A father had sent his thirteen-year-old son to this untroubled spot, away from the bustle of the capital, to study for three years with the great philosopher. It is said that this Alexandros, one greater than I or any other who ever shared that name, would in later years never go to his rest without two comforts beneath his pillow: the unsheathed dagger of the vanquished Darius, and a copy of The Iliad, edited and annotated by his teacher, Aristotle.

  I could not tarry, for the sun had already descended to the stony brow of the mountaintop. I bowed my head to let this place of reason and science infuse me with its neglected peace and hope that somewhere along the road ahead the same would lie in store for me and those I loved. Apollo came when I called, and we made our way back up toward the Via Egnatia. The path was narrow and the trees grew thick; I did not see them till they were upon me. Scouts, Roman, their lances lowered, surrounded me almost before I could give the password chosen when the army split. If it was a full turma there woul
d be thirty-two of them, led by a decurion. By the look of them, these men were as high-strung as their mounts.

  I reached for my disk of immunity; Pan’s hoof! Now, when I needed it, I had rushed off without it. That was a mistake I fervently wished to be given the opportunity to make again.

  “Sand!” I cried.

  Their captain looked surprised and responded, unable to keep the disappointment from his voice, “‘And Blood.’ All right, you’re one of us. But whose slave are you? He must be rich to give you a name plaque of silver. Hand it here.” The lances remained pointed at an unfriendly angle.

  “It is not silver. It is urukku steel.” I saw no harm in acquiescing, considerably more by refusing.

  “There is nothing written here. It’s blank. Is this a joke?”

  “I’m afraid it is. My owner has me wear it as a symbol of his trust in me.” The captain stared uncomprehendingly. “That I will not run away,” I added.

  “Look at the swirls of color. I once saw a sword of Margianian steel, but Margiania is east of the Mare Caspium. Almost as far as Bactria. How did you come by this?”

  “Our trading partners’ reach extends far to the East. That is all I am permitted to say.” I held out my hand and the decurion returned the small, chained breast plate. I hung it about my neck.

  “I don’t think I like your attitude, slave.”

  “Few do. Alas, captain, it is my only possession: an abundance of attitude.”

  “For the last time, who owns you?” My tunic sank under the pressure from the tip of his spear. But I decided I was more afraid that Apollo would step forward than I was of this soldier. Something in his eyes told me he wasn’t in a killing mood. And that made me impertinent.

  “My master, decurion, is your master.” A few of the riders laughed. The look in the captain’s eyes went cold. Had I misjudged him? My father always told me my mouth would be the death of me. Although I doubted the man would actually go that far. However, any length, I thought, glancing down at his spear, would be too far.