The Beacon at Alexandria

by Gillian Bradshaw

  “A modest young virgin’s name is no concern of his!” Maia exclaimed indignantly. “It’s enough for him to know her as His Excellency Theodoros’ daughter. Really! You didn’t talk to the governor at all when he was here, did you, Charis?”

  “Just what you heard,” I said. “What he remembered. I’m surprised that Festinus remembered; I think even Father’s forgotten.”

  “He remembered that you were pretty,” said Thorion. He pulled at his lip, a bad habit that Maia hated. “I could have hit him! Lying there on his couch, talking about how pretty you were and how Father had been under suspicion, and leering at us all! By God and his saints! And we’ve got to see him again next week!”

  Maia was frowning. She didn’t even say anything to Thorion about pulling his lip. “He invited you back?”

  “No. He made it clear to Father that he’d like an invitation here, so Father had to give it to him.”

  “Thorion,” said Maia, and I knew she was really worried: she only used Thorion’s nickname when she forgot herself. “Your most noble father must invite a lot of other people to this dinner party. Men. Distinguished bachelors — your law teacher, perhaps? At any rate, no women.”

  Thorion looked at her grimly. “So you think there’s something to the way he talked about Charis?”

  Maia pressed her lips together and rolled her spindle. “I know nothing about it,” she said after a minute. “But people will talk: it’s most improper, to ask a young girl’s name at a dinner party. And I think it would be better if Charis stayed out of that brute’s way. If there are no women at the party, there’ll be no reason for her to meet him.”

  Whereas if Festinus came alone, I’d be expected to be at my father’s table.

  “You can’t think that means anything,” I said. I felt very uncomfortable, knowing that Festinus had talked about me. “Isn’t he married?”

  “Widowed,” said Maia, who always knew such things. “And if he intends to settle in Ephesus, he’ll need a new wife — preferably a young Ephesian noblewoman. So I don’t want you to catch his eye.”

  I felt shaken. “But I’m too young, aren’t I? And Father wouldn’t —”

  Thorion looked at me glumly. “Pythion's daughter is only a few months older than you, and she’s going to be married this spring. And you know, Charition, you are rather pretty. I could kick that Festinus’ teeth in!” he added savagely.

  “But Father wouldn’t —”

  “Father wouldn’t want to displease Festinus. He’s afraid of him. Maia’s right: you must keep out of the brute’s way. I’ll ask Father to invite a lot of other men, and you can stay in your room. And if Festinus mentions you, we can all go on about how young and silly you are. That should put a stop to any ideas he might have.”

  But Father had already invited his friend Pythion with his wife, and he insisted that no other guests were needed. “He said that Festinus particularly asked for an informal occasion, when they could talk freely,” Thorion told me next day. “I said I was worried about the way Festinus had talked about you, and he said that that didn’t mean anything, it was just a way to show a fatherly interest in our household. He thinks Festinus is trying to make peace, and wants to be agreeable now that we’re neighbors. I said that as far as I was concerned, the best neighborliness I want from Festinus is a stone wall between him and us.”

  But Father was master of the house, not Thorion. And with a party of mixed company, I’d be expected to be there.

  I felt hot and uncomfortable on the day of this dinner party. I hadn’t seen Festinus, except from a distance, since the day he made his accusations. I was afraid of him, the more so because I could not understand him. I felt fairly sure that he had acted as he had, to us and to the rest, out of a desire to impress the emperor and out of a lust to display his power over men of rank. But the cruelty that had tortured Maia and Philoxenos and the rest, and that had killed so many others — that I did not understand. His motives seemed mysterious, irrational, scarcely human. I could not really believe he had any interest in me, not even as an eligible Ephesian noblewoman. But of course he knew nothing about me: he had seen the painted doll in the mirror.

  I had lessons that day, but it was only Euripides; we’d finished Hippocrates for the time being. Ischyras was not as fond of Euripides as he was of other writers: the style was insufficiently elevated. Neither of us paid proper attention to the tragedy, and in the end I was allowed to go early. I went down to the stables. Philoxenos was letting me look after a mare with an infected hoof; I was treating the injury with hot compresses and with regular washing with boiled water and a cleansing solution of vinegar and cedar oil, and it seemed to be working. I also had a sick rabbit, but I didn’t know what was wrong with her, except that she seemed to be getting worse.

  Maia came and fetched me in the middle of the afternoon. I was down on my knees in the straw, cleaning the mare’s hoof, with my cloak hung over the stable door. I finished swabbing the hoof out, using a length of linen tied round one of my cosmetic applicators, then sat back on my heels and examined the pus on the cloth. Pale and not too foul-smelling: good. I looked around and saw Maia standing there watching me. “Oh,” I said.

  Maia didn’t throw up her hands and exclaim in horror, as she ordinarily did. “It’s a pity you can’t appear like that tonight,” she said instead. “That would put Festinus off you: you look like a stableboy! But I can’t have my master’s daughter going to a party like that. Come along!”

  “Just let me finish bandaging this hoof first,” I pleaded, and Maia actually smiled and nodded. I bandaged the hoof up, patted the mare, and we went back into the house. Bath, hair-curling, perfuming, face-painting, dressing — what a waste of time a young lady’s life is! In the end I had another look at “the loveliest young lady in Ephesus,” and she seemed stupider and more unlike me than ever. For once Maia didn’t seem too pleased with her either.

  Because it was a small, informal party, the dinner was held not in the domed banquet hall but in the Charioteer Room. A rack of lamps burning sweet oil scented with myrrh was set up against each of the side walls, and the floor and citron-wood table were scattered with roses. The light bathed the rich hangings, the silver dinner service; it added depth to the pictures on the wall, and the chariot on the floor seemed almost to move. Everything in the room spoke of wealth and culture, and when the slaves showed Festinus in, he looked at it appreciatively. There were four couches round the table: one for Father, one for Pythion and his wife, one for Thorion and me, and one for Festinus. Father, as the host, had the highest place, with Festinus on his right and Pythion on his left; Thorion and I shared the bottom couch.

  Festinus had brought Father a present, a Corinthian-ware goblet painted with a chariot. Father expressed his delight with it, and we all reclined in our places. Festinus kept looking at me, but I kept my eyes modestly on the floor, and Thorion made sure that he took the place facing the governor, so Festinus couldn’t in fact see much but my hair. The slaves brought in the first courses: boiled eggs, leeks in wine and fish sauce, sweet-and-sour pea soup. And they filled the green glass drinking cups with honeyed white wine, chill from the underground cellars.

  “Excellent,” said Festinus, waving his hand at the lot. “That’s the thing I like about Asia: people here understand how to live. In Rome they either glut themselves on overcooked rarities and make themselves sick drinking, or they live like peasants on bread and water. No moderation, and no taste.” He went on in this vein right through the first courses, praising Ephesus and all its ways, and Father and Pythion began to lose their nervousness and resume their usual air of gracious complacency. Only Thorion retained his suspicious scowl. I kept my eyes down.

  During the second courses (grilled red mullet with asafetida, Parthian-style chicken, and sow’s wombs in dill sauce) the talk turned to literature. Festinus, as honored guest, called for the slaves to start serving the wine for the main course; Father had had an amphora of prime Chian opened. Festinu
s asked the slaves to mix it so it contained only a third water. This was stronger than we usually drank it, and soon Father was laughing loudly and expounding Homer.

  “You’re quite a scholar, most learned Theodoros,” Festinus told him. “What of your excellent children? I am sure a wise man would not let his children grow up ignorant, and I always admire education in the young. It is an adornment superior to gold, as the poets say.”

  “Oh, indeed,” said Father. “I have paid great attention to my children’s education. I hired a very clever tutor for them, Ischyras of Amida: he can write the purest Attic dialect, and is well read in all the classics. And I fancy that my children have not been slow learners. And my son Theodoros is now studying the laws and Latin, with a view to making a career at court.”

  “A wise choice, young man,” said Festinus approvingly. Thorion muttered indistinctly and stared into his wine cup. “And your daughter?” Festinus went on. “Some say it is not worthwhile, educating women, but I have always found a literate woman to be an ornament to her house.”

  “Oh, Ischyras has given the same attention to Charis as to Theodoros,” said Father. “That is the way we do things in the East. I would never bring up a daughter ignorant of Homer.”

  “Splendid! Perhaps she would favor us by reciting something? Many of the great Roman noblemen always have poetry recited during their banquets, and I think the custom a fine one.”

  “We have that custom here too,” said Father, the wine glowing in his cheeks. “Charis! Stand up, my dear, and recite something!”

  I stood up, reluctantly. I hadn’t drunk much wine, and the slaves hadn’t kept refilling my glass as they had the men’s. Everyone stared at me; Pythion’s wife gave me an encouraging smile. Festinus bared his teeth, and for a moment all my lessons went out of my head. I had passages memorized, of course: everyone has to memorize bits of - Homer and the tragedies. All I could think of now was “Sing Goddess of the Wrath,” which a four-year-old knows by heart — that, and a bit from Hippocrates about the treatment of wounds. Then the Euripides I’d read that morning jumped into my head, and I quoted that. It was from The Trojan Women, the final chorus, when the women lament their dead and the destruction of their city before the Greek men drag them off into slavery: “A wing of smoke fades into the air, is gone: there is no more Troy. Leave, then, with heavy feet; below in the harbor, the Greek ships wait.”

  About halfway through it I realized that it was not a very tactful thing to quote. Everyone was looking at me very strangely, and Father was worried again. Pillaging cities, though no one would admit it, was something everyone associated with Festinus; and it was at least suggested that Festinus meant to carry me off. Well, it was too late to stop now.

  I finished and sat down. “That was lovely, dear,” said Pythion’s wife. She was a nice woman.

  “We were reading it this morning,” I said, to allay the strange looks. I stared at the floor.

  Thorion nudged me; I looked up to find that he was grinning. “You’ve left him no doubt what you think of him,” he whisperedhappily. “God and his saints, look at him trying to change the subject!”

  Festinus did in fact change the subject to the theater, and there was talk about that through the rest of the fish and meat courses. Then Father suggested that we rise and walk about the gardens before the sweets and apples, and everyone agreed. After all that wine, they wanted to use the latrines.

  I went to latrines in the women’s side of the house, then went and sat in the First Court, waiting for Thorion. I was sitting there beside the fountain when Festinus came in, alone. He saw me at once, so there was no use trying to hide. I folded my hands in my lap and sat still.

  “Lady Charis,” said Festinus, and he came over. He stood looking down at me for a moment; I looked at the ground. He gave a grunt and sat down beside me, close enough for me to feel the heat of his body and smell the wine on his breath. “What did you mean by quoting that bit of Euripides?” he asked.

  I tried to ease away from him. “Nothing, Your Excellency,” I said. It was, I thought (thinking like Maia), most improper for a man to speak privately to his host’s unmarried daughter. “I read it with my tutor Ischyras this morning, and it was all I could think of on the spur of the moment.”

  He laughed, moving closer to me; he put one heavy hand on my shoulder. “Is that all?” he asked. “You don’t like me, do you?”

  I didn’t look at him. It was on the tip of my tongue to shout, “You had my nursemaid and some of my friends tortured!” but he was still governor; he could have them tortured again, if he was ruthless enough. “Your Excellency, I am a young girl, too young to have opinions, and I do not know Your Illustriousness.”

  He laughed and put his arm around my shoulders. I sat still, pressing my hands together, as Father had, to stop them shaking. “I’m not an illustriousness,” he said. “Not yet, anyway.” He put his other hand against my chin and pulled my head around so that I had to look at him. The light from the lamps in the Charioteer Room spilled out into the court and lit his face; the crickets were singing, and the fountain made a quiet gurgling noise. His face, I thought detachedly, showed the burst veins that are caused by too much drinking, a coarsening that would no doubt grow worse through the years. He ought to take a drier diet, and eat more bread.

  “I may be an illustriousness one of these days,” he told me, licking his fleshy lips. “I have the emperor’s favor; he knows that I’m zealous in his service. Fifteen years ago I was nobody in particular, now I’m spectabilis, governor of Asia with proconsular rank, friend of His Sacred Majesty. You hate me because my father was an auctioneer, don’t you?”

  “No,” I said. “I didn’t even know that.”

  The hand that had been around my shoulders thrust itself down the front of my tunic. I gasped, and he pushed his mouth over mine. I couldn’t breathe. He fumbled with my breasts, pinched hard. I couldn’t cry out, his tongue was in my mouth. I tried to lock my teeth together, and he thrust his fingers into the side of my jaw, holding my mouth open. I shoved my elbow into his ribs and kicked him, and he pulled his head away and laughed. There was sweat on his face. His hands stayed where they were. “That’s to teach you not to lie,” he told me. “You do hate me; I can tell that. You really are very beautiful, with those big dark eyes. “Vitas inuleo me similis,” Charis —you are like a deer.” He laughed again. “Yes, I think I will speak to your father about you. How your little heart is pounding!”

  All I could think of to say was “You’re hurting me. Let me go!”

  He took his hand out of my tunic. I jumped up, trying not to cry; I was badly shaken. No one had ever touched me before, and I’d never wanted anyone to do so, even in a dream. All that belonged to the other Charis, the lovely young lady in the mirror. “I want nothing to do with you,” I told Festinus. My voice sounded surprisingly even: it was not the young lady’s voice, it was mine. But his hands had not been on the mirror; they had hurt me. “It’s nothing to do with who your father was. I hate cruelty, and you love it. You had better speak to someone else’s father.”

  He bared his teeth and laughed again, so I walked out and went back to my room. Maia was there, sewing; she looked up in surprise when I came in. “The dinner’s not finished yet?” she said.

  “No,” I told her, and burst into tears.

  When Thorion came in about half an hour later, Maia and I were sitting on her bed, with Maia still rocking and crooning to me as though I were a little child. I’d stopped crying but I had the hiccups.

  Thorion stood in the doorway for a minute, looking angry. Maia nodded at him to come in, and he did so, slamming the door. “By Artemis the Great!” he said. “Why did you run off? Why didn’t you go straight to Father and tell him you won’t have the brute?”

  “Thorion!” said Maia. “You let her be! And if you must swear, don’t swear by those pagan devils!”

  I wiped my nose. “I had to get away from him,” I told Thorion.

  “The
re was no one else around, and he . . .” I couldn’t finish the sentence: the little scene was too painful, too shameful, and my emotions were still in turmoil.

  Thorion seemed suddenly to take in the tears, and looked shocked. “What did he do? If he’s . . . I’ll kill him!”

  “Oh, it wasn’t that,” I said, getting better control of myself. “He put his hand down my tunic and he kissed me, that’s all.”

  Thorion looked thunderous. “You have a bruise on your face.”

  “He had to stop me from biting him.”

  For some reason he looked relieved at this. “May he perish most miserably and go to Hell,” he prayed, and came over and sat down beside me. He put his arm around my shoulders and hugged. “But I wish you’d gone straight in and said that he assaulted you. He told Father that he’d ‘expressed his admiration for your beauty’ — those are his exact words — and you were overcome with shyness and maidenly modesty and ran off. And so he expressed the same admiration to Father, and repeated that he meant to settle in Ephesus, and said that since he’d seen you for himself and knew that you were modest and well educated and nobly born as well as beautiful, he wished to marry you, if this was agreeable to Father.”

  I said nothing. It was what I had thought he might do.

  “What did your father say?” asked Maia in a low voice.

  “That this was too important a matter to discuss at a dinner party, and that they should meet soon to talk it over properly. Then I said that Charis was too young to marry anyone, and that she was half-promised to someone else — well, I had to say something. But the brute just laughed at me. Father told me that I was being insolent to my elders — he was afraid of what I might say next — and told me to go. But if you’d come in, Charition, and said that the governor had assaulted you in your own house, he’d have had to take no for an answer.”