Susan Fletcher - Alphabet of Dreams

by Susan Fletcher

  “It is enough,” I said.

  *

  But the last farewell was yet to come. When we returned to our room, Shirak was gone. We had not seen him since that first night, when he had greeted Babak and later slipped away. Now we searched for him everywhere; Babak began to cry again. Then, just as the sun burst over the courtyard walls, I was standing alone on the gallery and chanced to look down near the stables. There, tail held high, was Shirak, prancing across the cobbles with a small gray cat behind.

  So. He didn’t need us anymore, though Babak still needed him. Well, caravan life was fine for a kitten, but it wouldn’t suit a cat.

  “Farewell, Shirak,” I whispered.

  CHAPTER 38

  THE WAY to BABYLON

  We left the next morning, followed the old trade route west through the mountains, stopping after a time at a temple of Anahita of the Waters, and then, over the next days and nights, up into the high passes, where the mountains loomed jagged and steep to either side. Wild goats stared down at us from the fells; from time to time there was goat meat in the pot at night. We passed some bas-relief carvings—cut, it seemed, by giants, high up into a sheer cliff face—a centuries-old tableau showing Darius, victorious over a group of rebel princes and protected by the winged symbol of divine grace. And, a sight that made me stiffen my spine with pride, a depiction of King Mithradates—our honored ancestor, my namesake—standing before four supplicants. Down near the road, so close I could nearly touch it, reclined a lifelike stone statue of the yazata Herakles.

  We were a sober company, unleavened by music or jugglers’ antics or the laughter of women. From time to time the Magi would peel off from the moving caravan to pore over charts—sky charts, Pacorus said. By night they would climb some nearby promontory and train their star-takers upon the mysteries of the heavens.

  Though our numbers had been greatly reduced, the contingent of guides had increased, from seven or so to twelve. Nor were they the ones who had been with Melchior before; these were different guides altogether, men from nearby tribes who knew how to find water and knew which wells belonged to which peoples.

  I looked about constantly for the distant puffs of dust that signaled riders. Now that I knew the king’s Eyes and Ears had followed us beyond Rhagae, I was ever catching sight of their shadows out of the corners of my eyes, ever feeling their breath prickling at the back of my neck. Giv, too, seemed to be mindful of the “merchants,” though he never spoke of such to me. But whenever we passed another caravan, he found some reason to surround Babak and me with high-packed camels, shielding us from view of the strangers.

  Pacorus grew more and more consumed with the study of the stars. He insinuated himself into the presence of the Magi—Gaspar especially—fetching and carrying for them, finding pretexts for other work nearby, even slipping away from the caravan to eavesdrop on them as they gazed. Giv grew annoyed with him because he could never find him when he wanted him. “Pacorus!” he would cry, and then, when Pacorus did not reply, would fall to muttering about boys with heads stuffed with stars. Me, he loaded down with work—mountains of girths, cruppers, leather pads, hobble leathers, saddle frames, drapes, and chest bands to repair when we halted in the evenings. “Melchior desires you to earn your keep,” he growled.

  But sometimes, Pacorus pointed out to me what he had learned. The Magi bent their attentions upon one particular star in the sky—the brightest one. It was not a single star, Pacorus explained to me, but two of the wanderers drawn close together, so you could not see the space between them. A conjunction, he said. I remembered Babak’s dream: Two stars. Near, apart. Pacorus explained that one of the stars signified the protector of the Jews. And the other, he said, was a sign of the birth of a king or some other great personage.

  So: Two stars, coming near. A birth. A king.

  The selfsame events that had appeared in Babak’s dreams … were written in the stars.

  The nights grew chill. The camels breathed great plumes of white mist, and each morning we wiped frost off our saddlebags. Soon the mountains would be impassable, covered with snow.

  Babak slept soundly, without calling out or thrashing or rising to walk in sleep. When awake, he could recall no dreams. The circles beneath his eyes began to fade. Although he did from time to time go blank and humming, it seemed to me that this happened less often now and for shorter intervals. Perhaps we were not too late!

  Although Babak put on little flesh, it was not so with me. My new curves and rounded places seemed to grow curvier and rounder. I felt an unaccustomed heaviness in my breasts as I walked. Once, when I was stooping to hobble Ziba, I caught one of the guards staring at my chest. Hastily I turned away, feeling my face grow hot. After that I bound my chest with wide strips of linen.

  Even so, I found my gaze drifting more and more to Pacorus, to the gold flecks in his eyes; to the high, chiseled planes of his cheeks. Sometimes, to my shame, I craved for him to look at me as Koosha had. To see me as a woman.

  But no. He mustn’t! No one must know.

  Pacorus’s eyes, when they chanced to catch mine, held only friendship, as before.

  At last we came out of the mountains and down onto the great Mesopotamian plain. I grew more and more worried about Ctesiphon, where Phraates held his winter court. But I soon discovered, by listening to the talk that swirled about us, that we would not stop there. It wasn’t just Melchior who wished to avoid Phraates, but the other Magi also. We would bypass Ctesiphon, and Seleucia as well, but stop in Babylon so that the Magi might consult about the stars with some Chaldeans.

  “What did Melchior do to be expelled?” I asked Pacorus.

  He shrugged. “Perhaps Phraates didn’t like the way he dressed or spoke or held himself. It’s not necessary to do anything to be expelled by Phraates,” he said.

  And to those who sought to overthrow him …

  Blood spilling on the cobblestones, a din of metal-clash and bellow. Mother calling …

  And Suren. By means of pain …

  I tried to push the thoughts from me. But they never strayed far.

  The days grew hot again. Unseasonably hot, even for the lowland territory. Giv provided Babak and me with headcloths to protect against the blazing desert sun, and many of the men donned them as well. Now I yearned for the crispness of mountain air, for the bracing bite of morning frost. More and more we traveled at night, both to escape the heat and swarms of stinging flies and to avoid notice by any brigands, who famously infested this road. The Magi, even Melchior, put aside their priestly dress and garbed themselves as ordinary merchants. The coals of the holy fire they kept in a nondescript iron brazier, kindling them only during the times of prayer.

  At times I longed to pray along with them, but something held me back. The Wise God abhorred a lie, and I lied every day. About my sex. About my parentage. My whole life was a lie!

  But Palmyra …

  I could feel it drawing near!

  I craved to know just where in Roman territory it was. I asked Pacorus to draw me a map, as he had offered to do, hoping that he would include Palmyra and I wouldn’t have to ask. He did not want to waste precious ink, so he took a sharpened stick and drew in a patch of sand.

  “Here,” he said, “is the river Tigris. The king’s residence in Ctesiphon is on the east side of the river, the side we are on now. Seleucia lies just across, on the west side. We will pass as far as we might from Ctesiphon. But it will not be as far as the Magi would like, because we must cross the bridge only a little way south of the city. Babylon is here”—he put a mark farther south—“near the banks of the Euphrates. We’ll cross into Roman territory and follow the Euphrates, then cut off on the desert road to Palmyra. From there …”

  But I heard no more, only gazed at the mark he had made to signify Palmyra. We would pass right through Palmyra! So Babak and I would not have to journey there on our own. All we would have to do was escape.

  But first, we must safely pass Ctesiphon—and Phraates and
his spies.

  CHAPTER 39

  THE GARRISON

  When the time came, I could make out the ancient walls of Seleucia, dark in the distance across the Tigris. Nearer, on our side of the river, watch fires illumined the newer walls of Ctesiphon. I wanted to tell Babak to turn his face away, as if Phraates—or his Eyes and Ears—might see him from there. Fear pressed down on me, as if they might sniff out our presence in the air or feel it in the trembling of the earth as we passed.

  But then, a new thought: Might they have taken Suren to Ctesiphon? I turned to stare at the city walls. Would I feel his presence if he was here?

  But all I felt was dread.

  Soon I could make out the bridge, a string of wooden rafts lashed together, stretched out across the swift current in a thin, wavery line. As our party approached, Giv went to confer with the three Magi. Then he rode toward us, detached Ziba from the string, and led us toward the pack camels at the rear of the caravan. “There’s a garrison by the bridge, and guards stationed at either end,” he said, speaking so none but us could hear. “We don’t know what’s become of our friend Pirouz. But he may have guessed our caravan was coming this way. It’s possible they’ll be watching for us. Best for you and Babak not to be seen.”

  He loosened the tarp on one of the pack camels and began to pull out provisions—cushions and blankets and bedrolls.

  “But how would Pirouz know we were back with Melchior again?” I asked.

  “He’d know I’d fetch you back,” Giv said grimly. “Duck your heads now; I’m going to cover you.” He flung a blanket over us, then another. Now something different—sacks of grain, or wool? The weight of them bent me forward against Babak; I pushed back against Ziba’s hindmost hump so as not to squash him. “Can you breathe?” I asked. I could, but it wasn’t pleasant; dust clogged my nostrils, and one of the blankets reeked overpoweringly of sweat. I couldn’t make out Babak’s muffled answer, but I felt him nod.

  The squeak of a rope; Giv must be securing the bundles. We moved slowly forward, then stopped. I heard a hum of men’s voices, the deep croak of a bullfrog, a camel’s groan. Behind that, the steady rush and gurgle of the river.

  Now the voices seemed to grow louder. And now, the sound of a hoof striking stone. A horse.

  Someone was talking to Giv. I could not hear much, just snatches. A stranger’s words, rising at the end as in a question, and then Giv’s voice: “… rebalance the load … overladen … while we wait.” Then the stranger again, and then an odd pok! noise I could not place, accompanied by a little jerking motion. It was a piercing sound, short and somehow brutal, as if … as if someone was sticking a dagger through a membrane of cloth and into whatever the cloth contained.

  I held my breath. Pok! Pok! To my left. Pok! Pok! Somewhere in front of me—too high, I hoped, to hit Babak. Pok! Something scraped against my right shoulder. If there was blood on his knife, he would know.

  I held myself still, willed myself not to cry out, not to flinch, not to draw up my legs and contract myself into a tight little ball. The heavy sacks weighed down on me, made me itch to fling them off.

  Pok! Pok!

  Such a vicious little sound. Had men like these captured Suren? If so, what had they done to him?

  No. I didn’t want to know.

  Voices again, Giv and the other man. The clop of a hoof; the whickering of a horse, now behind us.

  I let out my breath in a tremulous sigh.

  “Babak,” I said softly.

  “Yes.”

  “Did the knife … Are you hurt?”

  “No.”

  I reached for Babak’s hand and squeezed it; he squeezed back.

  “Ramin.” It was Giv’s voice, very soft. “How do you fare? How is Babak?”

  “Well enough,” I said. There was no purpose in telling about my shoulder. Not yet. “Was Pirouz there?”

  “Not that I could see.”

  Soon we began to move again. Up ahead I could hear men shouting and camels groaning. The river sounds grew louder—a steady roar, sloshing, the creakings of many ropes. I felt Ziba’s body tense. She began to pace uneasily, and then the ground dipped and slued sickeningly beneath us. Ziba trumpeted and balked. I murmured comforts to her; she groaned out a shuddering complaint but stepped haltingly forward. New smells penetrated the stench of the blanket: the bite of pitch; a green, reedy fragrance; and the silvery tang of fresh, running water. At long last, with a little stumble, Ziba stepped out upon dry, firm ground.

  In a little while Giv led us aside from the caravan and removed the cargo that weighed on us. Babak did seem unharmed, though frightened.

  I stretched to relieve my aching back, then checked my shoulder. Only a shallow scratch. No blood came off on my hand. “You’ve got heart, I’ll give you that,” Giv said, scowling. “Especially for a g—” He cleared his throat, flung a heavy sack atop a pack camel. “Well. You come from spirited stock.”

  I looked up sharply.

  “So, what do you think the guards were looking for, then?” he asked. “You couldn’t tell from a knife blade what lay within the bundles—unless it cried out and bled. I wonder,” he went on as he tightened another knot, “would Phraates’ men search so thoroughly on the word of a lowly juggler? Unlikely, seems to me. But the Eyes and Ears of the king, I’ve heard, have been seeking the children of the rebel Vardan. If they gave word to search the caravan, that would explain much.”

  I groped for Babak’s hand, squeezed it, swallowed.

  Giv threw a tarp over the pack camel’s load, then turned to face me. “I’ve spoken only to the Magi about what I’ve long suspected. Your secret is safe with us.”

  “Which secret?” I choked out.

  “Both of them, my lady.”

  CHAPTER 40

  THE KING’S MEN

  We rode across the lowland fields between the rivers, fording a maze of small streams and canals as we wended our way south and west. At last, in a morning drenched with copper light, there rose before us on the flat horizon the great black walls of Babylon. The walls grew higher as we passed through yellowing fields of wheat, until they loomed above us—still mostly intact but decaying, the tops of them in places jagged as mountain crags.

  It was half in ruins, was Babylon. The great road that led between the fabled Ishtar Gate lay pitted and buckled, with hollowed-out shells of palaces and temples to either side. I had heard that our Parthian kings had looted the stones and bricks of Babylon to build their winter capital in Ctesiphon, and I could well believe it. Sheep and goats grazed amid a stony rubble of tumbled-down pillars and walls, and a stork clattered its beak atop a half-fallen colonnade.

  We made camp alongside the collapsed remnants of an old ziggurat. While Babak rested and I cared for Ziba, the Magi set off, word had it, in search of an old Babylonian astronomer who dwelt in the section of the city that had been restored.

  I had not spoken to the Magi since Giv told me they knew who I was. Melchior and Gaspar gave no sign of this knowledge, other than, perhaps, to avoid me. But Gaspar had never paid me any mind, and Melchior seemed to notice me only when he needed me. Balthazaar, though, rode up beside us once or twice, and asked how Babak fared, and spoke of matters of no consequence. His manner was kind, and gave me to know that neither my sex, nor our father’s treachery, nor my concealment of both, would cause him to hold himself aloof.

  Now Giv dispatched some camel riders to patrol the road we had come from, and others to procure raftsmen to ferry us across the Euphrates. He stationed two men outside Babak’s and my tent.

  “Where is Pacorus?” I asked. I had not seen him for a long while—not, so far as I could recall, since crossing the Tigris.

  “You leave Pacorus to me,” Giv grunted, then left us.

  One might think that he, knowing of my royal heritage, would treat me with greater respect!

  After repairing a bent saddle frame and a few frayed cruppers, I settled in to sleep beside Babak, in the shade of the ziggurat.

/>   I woke without knowing why and felt him sitting erect beside me. “Babak, what is it?” I asked. He did not answer. In the light that filtered dimly through the small openings in the tent cloth, I studied his face. He was staring fixedly into a corner where nothing could be seen but shadows. I passed my hand before his face; he neither flinched, nor blinked, nor turned.

  Asleep.

  Gently I patted down his tunic, looking for some piece of cloth or token that might have been thrust beneath it.

  “Shaggy beasts,” he said.

  I froze.

  “Salt,” he said. “Stars, circling and circling. Many nights, many weeks, many years, many thousands of years.” He began to rock and hum.

  I rummaged through his blankets, searching. Melchior must have done this to him. Maybe he had given something to the guards outside our tent….

  But there was nothing. Only the blankets. Only his tunic and trousers and cloak.

  Something was crumbling inside of me, collapsing to shards and dust.

  Babak hummed and rocked, hummed and rocked.

  “Hush,” I said. I put my arms around him; he slumped against me. I leaned my head against his, breathing in the smell of him, dust and sweat and something purely Babak, something baby sweet.

  “Babak, hush.”

  I awoke to a thundering in the earth, and shouts, many voices back and forth. I thrust my head out the tent flap and saw Giv and a cadre of camel riders amid a gathering crowd. By the light of dusk I made out Pacorus—talking, twisting round to point behind him and then turning back, with many animated gestures, to Giv. “Pirouz,” I heard, and “the king’s men—coming this way.”

  Pirouz? But we had passed unnoticed through the garrison at the Tigris. Hadn’t we?

  Then someone said “children of Vardan,” and that one word—Vardan—stirred up spreading rings of echoes that rippled through the crowd, making the hair stand up on the back of my neck: Vardan, the leader of the rebellion? Vardan’s children here?