The Bow of Heaven - Book I: The Other Alexander

by Andrew Levkoff

  Crassus stood considering, twice about to speak and once holding his tongue. “This interview is over. I shall ask no more questions regarding the attempt on Alexander’s life, for I fear to hear the answers and what they will demand of me.

  “Pío, you have served me well, but what would you have of me? There must be payment, and it must be public. This is my will: nine days hence you and this entire household will escort Nestor to the forum. There his crimes will be announced and you will mete out his sentence. You will bind him with a collar like the dog he is; upon its iron face you will have inscribed the words, ‘PROPERTY OF M. LICINIUS CRASSUS. RETURN AND BE REWARDED.’

  “After the collar is affixed, across his forehead you will brand him fugitivus with the letters FVG so that all may know his shame.”

  “No, dominus, no!” Pío cried. Crassus was unmoved.

  “I know your part in this, Pío. Let your punishment be the administration of his. And consider yourselves fortunate that when that day is past you will both yet draw breath.”

  ***

  Pío never had to carry out Nestor’s awful sentence. I don’t think he could have done it in any case, such was his feeling for the little Greek. It was the day before punishment was to be exacted. We were taking the midday meal at our place in the kitchen. Everyone was present except Sabina, whose patients were especially numerous that morning; Nestor, confined to our room with the aid of a leather collar bolted to the wall by a sturdy chain; and Betto, on guard duty.

  Two days earlier Crassus had escorted Tertulla and the children to Lavinium. Sabina had been released from Tertulla’s service to allow her to tend to her practice. Ostensibly, the purpose of the trip was a visit to her parents, whom she had not seen for almost a year. A fortuitous lapse; the bolt that came closer to the mark was that the family was not immune from the pall shrouding the household. They were due back tonight, in time for the spectacle the following day.

  Livia was last to table, the exuberant frenzy of her thirteen years oblivious to our sour mood and thankfully ignorant of its cause. I put my hand on hers as she sat next to me to quell her delightfully irritating whistling. When she asked why everyone was so grumpy I answered by grabbing a few figs and passing her the bowl. She wrinkled her nose at them, shoved them to Ludovicus the handyman, and instead reached for the hard boiled eggs with one hand and the grapes with the other. Today her red hair was piled high and tied with multi-color ribbons. The back of her neck, long and pale, revealed a fine down of softest incarnadine gold. I realized I was staring and hastily reached for the bowl of figs, perhaps taking one or two more than was decorous. I do so love their gritty texture, their subtle, complex flavor.

  Pío moved a few grapes around his plate with his finger. His expression was unnerving: grim, determined, his lips pressed together, holding back whatever was bottled up inside. The only one who spoke was Livia, and we answered her with as few syllables as possible. Everyone ate hastily, happy to return to their chores. Malchus and I were the last to rise. As I stood, I became aware of a rushing in my ears. My heart knocked against my chest like a deranged woodpecker. Suddenly I felt as if I could drink the Middle Sea. I grabbed the pitcher of lora, sloshing it into my cup and consuming it with graceless haste. I went to pour another, but my fingers had gone numb. Malchus stared at me open-mouthed and said I’d better have a lie-down. I told him that was an excellent suggestion and stumbled off to my room, wondering how my voice had managed to emanate from some distant place outside my body, tinny and remote.

  Nestor lay on his back, his arms folded behind his head. “What are you doing here? You’ll get the lash,” he said hopefully. “I’ll tell, see if I won’t.” I ignored him and collapsed onto my own bed. Breathing was no longer an activity my body did without my participation: if I didn’t consciously inhale and exhale, I felt as if I’d stop altogether. The paralysis was moving up my arm. Nestor kept up a steady, nattering invective. I ignored him until it dawned on me that his babbling brook of complaints sounded like no language I had ever heard. I turned my head to look at him: he stared back at me with unmoving lips. Be afraid, I told myself, but I did not have the energy. Call for help, I chided, but weariness lay on my chest like a stone. It was so much easier to simply lie still and look at the ceiling. The ceiling. It had come alive: fawns and nymphs cavorted and contorted in a slippery, slithering dance of copulation that was repulsively riveting. I supposed I’d been poisoned, but unless someone found me, there was no way I could summon help on my own.

  Someone did find me. Pío was in the room, which was irritatingly vexing because, I am ashamed to admit, his bulk was blocking my view of the ceiling. He sat on my pallet, making room for himself by shoving me against the wall with a swing of his hips. I moved my head one way, then the other, seeking a better view of what lay beyond the mass of him. I beg not to be faulted, for my faculties were functioning well short of normal. That mortal danger had just made itself comfortable on my bed did not occur to me. Nestor, it became obvious, was also ignorant of Pío’s intent.

  “What are you doing?” he asked in a language I understood. I think it was Greek.

  “Hush, sweet man. We go soon. I make justice first.”

  Now here is where the tale becomes a trifle cloudy. I remember the feel of Pío’s calloused hands, one pressing down on my chest, the other covering my nose and mouth. Struggling against him was useless, quite literally, because I could not feel my appendages, much less use them. I realized now, and not without a little sadness that I was about to die. Twenty-five, and still a virgin. The imminent end of one’s brief stay on this earth will bring clarity to the mind even while poison still works on the body. What a miserable thread the Fates had sewn for me; was I so undeserving of a full and productive life? Or was I just a random accident of happenstance from beginning to end. One thing was certain: if these were indeed my last moments, Pío’s misshapen, straining countenance was the last image I wanted to take with me to Elysium. I closed my eyes, sending two tears down either cheek.

  I felt a slight release of pressure against my face. Nestor was cursing and straining against his fetters. Here I need to rely on Sabina’s recounting of what transpired next, together with my own feathery impressions. As had been her wont ever since Livia had been returned to her, she had arrived with a fresh bouquet for my room, hardly expecting to encounter this murderous spectacle. The fresh flowers fell from her hands; screaming Pío’s name she demanded to know what he was doing. Frankly, I should have thought that was obvious. Pío returned to his work, ignoring her next assault: pounding on his back and head with her fists. This he found as annoying as a gentle Aprilis mist, so she leapt upon his back, pulling at the arm attached to the hand affixed to my face.

  My mind stretched thin, a taut, plucked string whose vibrations created a tone both pure and celestial. I was beginning to lose consciousness.

  Pío’s right arm swung backward, knocking Sabina onto the floor against Nestor’s pallet. He strained to reach for her hair, grabbed a handful and pulled with all his might, and thus awoke an infuriated, incandescent healer. The tigress now reached behind her and clawed at Nestor’s arm till it bled. He cried out, released his grip and before he could scramble backwards found her straddling his chest, a scalpel pressing against his throat.

  “Release him, Pío,” she screamed, “or I swear by the Seven Sisters I will cut so deep the arc of his blood will reach your thigh.”

  Pío laughed, but he also took his hand away. The string snapped; the music fled; and rather curiously I found myself longing for the sound. I gasped, my lungs pumping like bellows, and without any conscious effort on my part. The effect of the drug was already fading.

  “You not kill Nestor,” Pío said. He was right – Sabina would not kill an innocent man. I wanted to remind her that Nestor was not innocent. Perhaps another time.

  A look of terrible realization came over her: Pío was going to kill her if he could. Something inside him had been squeezed until it had rup
tured like a burst appendix; the only antidote for this poison was for the atriensis to free Nestor or die in the attempt. She dug into the bag slung over her shoulder and withdrew a second scalpel, moved a safe distance from Nestor and prepared to grapple with her own dubious fate. His plan might have hatched successfully, she knew, but its one fatal flaw, discovery, had just smashed its fragile shell, thanks to her. Now there was only one hope for Pío and Nestor – leave no witnesses.

  Pío had come to same conclusion and went for the most immediate threat. Sabina screamed for help, expecting none, for this time of day none but the four of us would be found in the servants’ wing. There was little room to maneuver. She could not wait for him to strike first; if he caught her she was doomed. She leapt across the short space between them - desperation, fear and finally, a vision of Livia flooding her muscles with godlike strength. It burst from her body in a warrior’s cry and continued even when she realized she was going to survive. Pío caught her shoulder in his left hand and inched his thumb toward her throat. Before he could crush her windpipe, she struck with both scalpels. With the right, she stabbed up into the tendons of the wrist that held her, sawing till she felt something give. At the same time her left hand swept across his neck, severing the vein that bulged just beneath the surface. There was irony in the choice of her attack, but there was much more blood.

  Pío stood up straight, as if listening to the sound of a more urgent call. Inside him, a clock began its inexorable count backward to zero, every diminishing moment market by a surge of escaping of blood. Suddenly it was as if Sabina and I were no longer in the room. He shoved her aside; with his good hand, he ripped the chain from the wall. He picked Nestor up in his arms and said, “Push hand here. Hard.” Not waiting for Nestor’s horrified muscles to awake from their paralysis, he took his lover’s hand and pressed it to his wound. Blood bubbled between the little Greek’s fingers and poured down Pío’s side. Nestor was crying.

  Sabina followed them, but it was impossible for me to rise. Pío carried Nestor through the house, out into the front gardens, gathering the rest of the astonished household as if he had walked through a spider web and everyone else was a captured fly attached by sticky ropes, unable to do ought but be dragged along. Betto and Malchus raced to him with swords drawn, but as they neared it became obvious their skills would not needed. With each step down the gentle slope between house and gate, Pío’s pace faltered. Blood trailed from his neck and wrist, painting erratic crimson lines on the white gravel. Nestor used both hands to staunch the flow but Pío’s neck was slippery and his jolting steps made the task impossible. Nestor begged for Pío to set him down, but the man from Hispania had his heart set on the iron gates. In the end that heart would betray him; with each ragged beat it pumped more of his life out onto the perfect landscape.

  At last Pío stepped onto the Sacra Via. Below him, the greatest city in the world sprawled like the octopus he used to spear as a child. Freedom, he had learned, could not be priceless, for its value was less than freedom and home combined. In this hard, unforgiving place, the salt spray tang never filled his nostrils, the smell of grilled mackerel and onions never made his mouth water, and the sight of fishing boats anchored in waters so clear that the red and yellow hulls seemed to float in mid-air, this was only a vivid but distant memory. The village of his youth had receded to a few faded images. He looked up and smiled; at least the same blue vault arced here and in his mind’s eye. It was enough. Gently, he set Nestor on the paving stones and sank slowly to his knees. He was very tired.

  “Pío!” Nestor keened, “don’t leave me here!” He reached up with bloodied fingers. “Don’t let them do this to me! Take me with you, I beg you!”

  Pío looked down and said, “Yes, amor, you come with me.” He lay down beside Nestor and put his once powerful hands about Nestor’s throat. “Momento,” he said. Their foreheads touched. “Can you see them?” Instead of tightening, Pío’s grip relaxed.

  In a little while, Malchus and Betto eased Nestor up off the stones and brought him back into the house. They came back with a cart for Pío and left him the guardhouse; Boaz’s men were there within an hour to dispose of the body.

  ***

  Of the nine of us present for that midday meal, four had not eaten figs: Pío, Livia and two of cook’s helpers, Mercurius and that woman who cried “how could you” on the day I first met Pío. Her name, I regret, escapes me.

  “I’m certain,” Sabina told Crassus that night. “It was tincture of henbane.” Tertulla stood uncomfortably by her husband, but was determined to participate in the running of their home. She had even insisted on helping with the cleanup, discarding her palla for an old tunic and scrubbing the tiles of the atrium on her hands and knees with the others.

  “Diluted, henbane opens and calms the breathing passages,” Sabina said. “The bottle I keep in my stores is gone. My records show that it was three-eighths full, so unless someone ate every fig in the bowl, the dose would not be fatal.”

  “And a non-fatal dose?” asked Crassus.

  “Depending on how much was ingested, delirium, paralysis. Brief unconsciousness.”

  “You must put a lock on the cabinet,” Tertulla commanded.

  “There was, domina. It was broken.”

  “Find a stronger one.”

  “Yes, domina. As soon as the shops open tomorrow.”

  Crassus asked about the staff that had been poisoned.

  “All are resting comfortably, dominus. I sacrificed a goat, roasted its bones and gave everyone a dose of bone black. Because Alexander ate half the bowl all by himself, I forced him to drink the bone black, plus a reduction of mulberry leaves boiled in vinegar. Everyone should be fine by morning.”

  “This makes no sense,” he said. “Why sicken, but not kill? Why hurt others, if it was Alexander Pío was after?”

  “I think,” Sabina answered, “he thought he could get away with the murder. Alexander’s love of figs is no secret. Pío wanted to make it appear like bad fruit had killed him. That’s why he couldn’t break his neck or stab him. He could leave no mark. If others ate the figs and became ill, so much the better: it would help mask the truth. Except that I chanced upon him in the act.”

  “And for that we thank you,” Crassus said without emotion. “Do you always carry your scalpels with you?”

  “Always. I never know where I’ll be when I ...”

  “Have to slit someone’s throat?”

  “Dominus, it was a miracle you did not return to find two corpses instead of one.”

  “A miracle, yes. How do you come by such fighting skills?”

  “No skill, only luck.” Crassus looked skeptical. “Why did you not flee?”

  “I could not leave knowing Pío would finish what he had set out to do. I would never have been able to get help in time.”

  “So you killed him.”

  “I am deeply sorry, dominus. I meant to cripple, to incapacitate, not kill. I know how much Pío ...”

  “And why,” Crassus said, squeezing his eyes shut and pinching the bridge of his nose, “why have you been bringing flowers to Alexander’s room? Do you wish a contubernium with him?”

  “What? No! It was ... for Livia.”

  “Ah. I see.” Crassus did not press her. “It is late, and we all need rest. Go to your beds.”

  ***

  Crassus looked in on me before he retired. I was groggy and my limbs still tingled, but the ceiling had lost its animation. He rested his lamp on the nightstand and sat on my pallet just where Pío had of late been visiting. Putting his hand on my shoulder he asked if I recognized him.

  “Of course, dominus. I am sorry.”

  “For what? It is I who must apologize to you. I am glad you are still with us.”

  “I am tougher than I look.”

  “I doubt that. Until I think of a more permanent solution, I want you to become my new atriensis. I’ll go over what is required, but I need to know if you think you can handle the re
sponsibility.”

  I was struck, not dumb, but witless. In times of stress and shock, when mouth outpaced mind and completely overran good manners, I fell back on my old standby, pedagogery. “Is not the original meaning of atriensis,” I stammered, “one responsible for the care of the atrium? Later, as well-to-do Latin homes grew, it came to mean chief steward, but the modern meaning is hardly more significant than hall monitor?”

  “Calm yourself, Alexander. We are not in your classroom. If you must know, and I see that you must, I prefer the role as defined by my father and his father before him: as my atriensis you shall be master of my household, responsible for everything and everyone that in any way touches my home or my family. Or would you prefer being elevated to hall monitor?”

  If only he were serious. “What of the school?” I asked.

  “You will hire a new grammaticus.”

  “I am certain I would make a better teacher.”

  “As I say, it is a temporary post.”

  I expelled a deep breath. “Then I am honored to accept.”

  “Of course, there is the matter of Nestor’s chastisement. Nothing today has changed my will on that score.” He saw the appalled look on my face. “You’re right. Not a fit assignment for your first day on the job. Never mind. I’ll do it myself.”

  And he did.

  Chapter XIV

  80 - 76 BCE - Rome

  Year of the consulship of

  Gnaeus Octavius and Gaius Scribonius Curio

  I was very quick to make myself indispensable. My accounts balanced to the as, the larders were always full and my promotion was begrudged little, mostly because there was none but myself remotely suited to the post. Like the mark upon Nestor’s brow, the shock of our tragedy receded to a dull throbbing, but never healed: it felt as if his collar were worn by each of us, and the sight of him skulking about his chores was a constant reminder of the shame brought down upon our house. Nestor was reduced to performing the lowest of household tasks, not by me but by Crassus himself: cleaning the toilets and collecting urine for the fullers. I could not bear the sight of him. True, I was the intended victim of his crime, but to see his sentence carried out firsthand, every day, grated against my nature, a pumice stone applied too long to the same callous.