“I hit where I aimed,” Miriam called out.
The woman in front had one hand in a satchel at her side, but it seemed frozen there as she looked up at the girl on the path above. “I believe you,” the woman said.
A whisper of wind washed dust up the path. Miriam blinked, but she didn’t shift aim away from the two women. And she didn’t falter. Whatever failures she had today, losing sight of these women would not be one of them—whoever they were.
“The next one is aimed at your chest,” she said.
“I believe that, too,” the woman in front replied.
“And I’m at her back,” came a steady and familiar voice.
Miriam flashed her gaze farther down the wadi path, and she saw Pantera there, his bow drawn. Behind him, coming up the path with his familiar, determined gait, was Vorenus.
The woman who stood behind the other turned, saw the second bowman and the approaching man and seemed to grow more fearful. The other, with her hand still in her satchel, just smiled at Miriam—as if she knew something she did not.
Feeling more confident now that Vorenus and Pantera blocked any chance of escape down the canyon toward the city, Miriam began walking closer. Bow still ready, she kept her focus on the woman who was smiling. Whoever she was, Miriam decided, her confidence made her dangerous. “Who are you?” Miriam demanded.
Vorenus and Pantera were closing in behind the women, and the older man carefully pulled his old gladius from where it was hidden in his robes. The ring of sliding metal at last moved the smiling woman to turn her head back to look at the two men.
She didn’t react at all to the presence of Pantera, but when she saw the older Roman, her eyes froze and widened. The arm in the satchel went stiff and then limp. Her mouth opened and closed, as if she couldn’t believe what she was seeing.
“Vorenus?” she asked.
He stopped and stared, his sword hand strangely unsteady.
“Vorenus.” The woman’s voice was suddenly quiet, almost childlike. “Vorenus, I never thought—”
“Selene?”
He gasped at speaking the name, as if he feared to break some spell, and the sound broke something in the woman. She turned, her arm coming free from the satchel, and then she was running to him, and Miriam could see that Vorenus was starting to cry as the gladius fell from his hand and he opened his arms to embrace her.
Miriam lowered the bow, but she didn’t put it away. Pantera, she saw, did the same. She walked down to stand close to the second woman, who was watching the woman Vorenus had called Selene embrace him like a long-lost father.
“Vorenus?”
It was Pullo, lumbering up the path behind them. At his voice, Selene pulled away from Vorenus to look down at the big Roman. Vorenus began to laugh as she looked at the mighty man with something like confusion on her face. He reached down to pick up his gladius and used it to point down at his old friend before he returned it to its hidden sheath. “Oh, it’s him,” he reassured her. “A little worse for wear, but it’s him.”
“Selene?” Pullo croaked. “By the gods, is it true? Selene?”
Selene laughed, too, and she ran down to bury herself in his massive chest. He rumbled a sound of joy like nothing Miriam had ever heard from him, and he picked the woman up and happily lifted her in a gently crushing embrace.
Pantera walked around to stand beside Miriam. He was still eyeing the second stranger, but he seemed just as wary of the two Romans. Feeling a little guilty, Miriam wondered how hard it had been for him to summon her “uncles.”
After a moment Pullo set the strange woman down and they walked up to join Vorenus and the others.
The two old Romans gripped each other at the shoulder, beaming at the woman.
“This is a friend of mine,” Selene said, gesturing toward the second woman. “Her name is Lapis. She’s long been in my trust.”
The Romans made welcoming gestures, and Lapis appeared to let out a long-held breath. Now that she was closer, Miriam could see that the woman’s face was thin and her eyes troubled.
Vorenus at last looked up at Miriam. He smiled, though she could see the tears in his eyes. “It’s fine,” he said to her. “Everything is fine. Her name is Selene. Now queen of Mauretania, though you wouldn’t know it to look at her clothes just now. Cleopatra Selene, daughter of Cleopatra and Mark Antony.”
Pantera started as if he’d been slapped. Miriam stared as if she could not possibly have heard what he said correctly. “Cleopatra?”
Vorenus nodded, and Miriam saw him look up toward the statue of her dead father. “And so the half-sister of Caesarion.” A new emotion trembled his voice. Miriam just stared in disbelief as his gaze then fell back to the woman he’d just embraced. “Selene,” he said, “this is Miriam. The only child of Caesarion.”
Selene took in her breath sharply. “Caesarion … survived?”
“A long story,” Pullo said. His big hand fell on her shoulder as if he feared her collapsing. “That’s him,” he said, pointing with his other hand toward the statue over the wall. “The other statue is of Hannah, his wife. Miriam’s mother. She was beautiful.”
“We lost them when Miriam was born,” Vorenus said.
Selene stared up at the statues there, and Miriam saw the pain of loss hollowing her eyes that had only moments ago been filled with joy. Her hand rose up to touch Pullo’s hand on her shoulder. Her fingers looked small compared to his, yet they didn’t seem weak. No matter her pains, nothing about her seemed weak to Miriam. At last Selene swallowed hard, as if she was pushing something down. And when she turned away from the statue of her half-brother it was to look at his daughter. “I guess that makes you my niece.”
Miriam’s back stiffened at the stranger’s voice. It was all too much, and she felt like she needed to run back up the mountain or back to their house. She needed time to think.
Selene took two steps toward her, then faltered and stopped as if she was reading something in her face. “You’re very good with that bow,” she finally said. Her gaze turned to Pantera. “Did you help teach her?”
Pantera blushed, and only then did Miriam realize how strikingly beautiful Selene was. People said that Cleopatra had been one of the most beautiful women in the world, and Miriam could believe it looking at her daughter.
“I have tried, my lady,” he stuttered. “She’s naturally skilled, to be honest … um, my lady.”
“I’m grateful,” Selene said, smiling. Miriam felt a heat rising in her chest, and a strange sensation like the hairs rising on the back of her neck, but then Selene was turning back to her, and the smile she had was warm and kind. It was the smile of familial love that was forever frozen in the stones looking down on her from above. “Your father, I know, would be proud,” she said. “He was the best man I’ve ever known. Could I talk to you about him sometime?”
Miriam choked on something—her rage, her need, her confusion—and in the end she just nodded.
Selene smiled and thankfully shifted her attention back to the Romans. “I think we have a lot to talk about,” she said to them.
“So we do,” Pullo said happily.
“Like how you’re here,” Vorenus said. “And why.”
“Another long story.” Selene seemed to be thinking as she glanced back at Miriam and Pantera. “You have something,” she finally said to Vorenus, her tone cautious. “Someone is looking for it. I came to be sure it is safe.”
Vorenus took in a deep and tired breath, and Miriam saw his eyes flash quickly to the door of the courtyard. She knew what he was looking for there: the locks and the carefully laid tripwire that would reveal if anyone had passed through the entrance. “It’s safe,” he said at last.
Selene and Lapis both shared what seemed a sigh of relief. “We need to be sure it remains that way,” Selene replied.
“We can talk about it soon,” Pullo said.
Pantera, as if he sensed that he was in the middle of something uninvited, touched Miriam lightly on the
arm—a kind of goodbye, she thought—before he started to move away.
Vorenus turned at the movement, and his attention froze the younger Roman, whose face genuinely blushed as he looked uncertainly between Miriam and the man he thought was her uncle. “I won’t ask what happened,” Vorenus said. His voice seemed even deeper than it usually was. “But I’ll tell you this: even after all these months, Pullo here still wasn’t sure about trusting you. But then that look in your eyes when you came to get us says everything we could ask to hear. You did well, legionnaire. Thank you.”
“Thank you, sir,” Pantera managed, blushing hard.
Pullo stepped over, as if he intended to block the archer’s escape. Miriam saw Pantera’s eyes widen at the imposing enormity of the older man. “There’s more, though,” Pullo said. “Herod is dead. We just found out. And with that news came orders from Varus. Your legion is leaving, bound for Jerusalem.”
Miriam saw Lapis start at the name of the city, but then Pantera was speaking. “Leaving?” His voice was pained, and when he looked over to her and their eyes met she saw the same agony in his face that she felt in her own. They’d only just been with each other, just professed their love—and now he had to leave?
“Legion leaves before the dawn,” Pullo said. “Already the tents are coming down.”
Pantera was looking at the ground, as if he didn’t dare meet anyone’s eyes. “I don’t want…,” he started to say. “It’s not…”
“You need to go,” Vorenus said. His voice was somber. “You’ll already be missed, and I know the legion, son. Don’t let it come to the lash.”
Pantera nodded at that, his shoulders trembling with a wave of awareness and fear. At last he looked up to Miriam. His eyes were damp. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t want to go, but I have to. I’m just sorry.”
Miriam, too, felt tears forming on her face. “I understand. It’s your duty.” She looked at Vorenus, feeling at once resentful of him and conscious of the emblem at her neck and the connection to her parents that it represented. “We all have our duties.”
Pantera started to say something more, then seemed to think better of it. He blushed again, then his back stiffened. “Well, I should go. I’d be pleased if I saw you again. On the way out.” He looked to Vorenus. “With your permission, sir.”
Vorenus nodded, and Pullo stood aside for the young archer to pass. Pantera looked around at them all, trying to smile and lingering on Miriam, before he moved away.
As he left, Miriam wanted to be sick, wanted to scream, wanted something, anything to make it better.
Selene came to her side, and the queen’s hand fell upon her elbow. “I’m sorry,” Selene said.
Pullo was watching as Pantera disappeared into the city below. “You sure we can trust him? One word to the legion—”
“Don’t worry,” Vorenus said. “He’ll be fine. And I’ll be there.”
Miriam felt close to breaking. Too much was happening. “What? Where?”
The two older men turned back to them. “Some Nabataeans are going with the legion,” Vorenus said quietly. “To see that peace is kept.”
“He volunteered to go with them,” Pullo said.
Vorenus looked up at Selene, his face creased with thought. “I didn’t know about you yet.”
“It’s a good thing,” Selene said. Her grip tightened on Miriam’s elbow.
“It won’t be long,” Vorenus said. “And Pullo knows everything as well as I do.”
The big man smiled. “Well enough. You were ever the brains, my friend.”
“And you the strength,” Vorenus replied, his voice hardly more than a whisper.
“You’re going because you don’t really trust him?” Miriam blurted out, an accusation in her voice that she wasn’t sure she intended.
“No,” Vorenus said. “I was going to go when all we knew was that Pantera was going.”
At last the truth of what was happening made its way through Miriam’s emotions. “You … volunteered to go for me?”
Vorenus started to reply, then he looked up at the statues of Caesarion and Hannah. “I have seen love,” he said. After a moment his gaze fell back down to Pullo. “I’ve known love. And I’ll do what it takes to bring him back safe, Miriam.”
“Go back to the house for now,” Pullo said to her. “It’s a good time to be alone for a bit. We’ll take the watch here for now.”
Miriam’s tumult of emotions had rolled into a numbness. She looked from the faces around her to the path where the archer had gone. She wasn’t sure what to think or feel or say.
“We’ll all come along in a while,” Vorenus said. “I just want to check things here again. But then we all need to talk, and I need to get my things. The legion leaves before the dawn. I’ll see to it that the young man comes with me.”
Miriam nodded, and step by step she managed to start down the path back toward the city. The sun was nearly down now, and lights were on in the windows of the houses that she was soon passing.
Her legs ached deeply from her run over the mountain. Her chest ached from a deep well of pain. Her eyes hurt from the tears that quietly rose and fell.
She didn’t go straight home. Instead, she walked down to the colonnaded street and into the heart of the city. She had no destination, no certain direction, but she didn’t feel like stopping and she didn’t want to be alone. She stopped now and again to watch other people as they walked from one point to another.
“Child!” came a voice from behind her.
Miriam took a deep breath and quickly wiped at her cheeks and eyes to be sure they were devoid of tears before she turned around. There was no reason to give Dorothea anything more to gossip about. The old woman, she saw, was walking out from the market, hobbling on her walking stick. “It’s good to see you again,” she said, though in truth she was thinking how it had been Dorothea who had broken the dreamlike happiness that she’d shared with Pantera.
“I was looking for you,” Dorothea said when they’d closed the distance between each other.
“Oh?”
“Wanted to apologize, child.”
Miriam blinked. She wasn’t sure she’d ever heard the flower-seller apologize for anything. “What for?”
“That woman who I thought was looking for you—”
“Oh, don’t worry,” Miriam interrupted. “We found them.”
Dorothea looked confused. “Them?”
“There were two of them. You were right. They were family.”
The old woman shook her head. “No. There was only one.”
“Only one? Are you sure?”
Dorothea nodded. “Just one. And I’m sorry, but she must not have been looking for you. You seemed anxious about it all, and it seems there just wasn’t a reason to be.”
“What do you mean?”
“That’s what I came to tell you, child. I just saw her again.” Dorothea lifted her walking stick to point down toward the main gate of the city. “She bought a horse at the market and left not long ago, riding hard.”
“Oh,” Miriam said. She looked back up toward the tomb of the Ark for a moment, then scanned back to look down toward the gate. Beyond it, she knew, was the road north to Judaea. It was the road that Abdes Pantera and Lucius Vorenus would soon take.
Miriam felt a frown creasing her face. She didn’t know what it all meant. She didn’t know if it was even something that she needed to tell Pullo and Vorenus about. They had so much on their minds already. And the doors to the tomb hadn’t been opened.
“Whatever she was looking for, she must have found it,” Dorothea said.
“She must have,” Miriam agreed. “Whatever it was.”
13
THE HOLY TEMPLE
JERUSALEM, 4 BCE
It had been only a matter of hours since the third demon had arrived in Jerusalem. Acme, as they called her, had swept into the room with a near-perfect grace. Her coming had surprised Didymus—just as it had seemed to surprise Tiberius and
even the other demons—yet it was the fact that she seemed to possess some flaw that had immediately drawn his attention and focus. While he couldn’t be certain what slight imperfection marred her movements, the scholar had spent as much time as he could in trying to determine what had changed about her. Whatever it was, it was the smallest of flaws, and yet it felt vital somehow. Something had changed. His awareness of it flitted like a moth at the edge of firelight: he sensed it, he could see it in flashes and hints, though he still knew not what it was.
She had come in a rush. That much was certain. Before the doors to their quarters had shut, he’d heard the guards she left in her wake talking about a horse nearly ridden to death. They’d looked at her with their own kind of shock, rubbing their arms as they wondered why the air in the hallways had grown so cold.
Despite her haste, however, she’d not seemed tired. For all that he’d seen of the demons, he’d never seen them tire. He’d never even seen them sleep.
She was with the other two demons now, floating ahead of the three mortal men: Thrasyllus walked beside the librarian, and Tiberius was striding behind them. The demons seemed to form a kind of advanced guard as they made their way through the unruly streets of Jerusalem. Not that they anticipated much resistance: around their party, in turn, marched a fully armed company of Roman soldiers.
Tiberius had said nothing of their destination. He hadn’t needed to do so. After talking with Acme he’d simply laughed and told the two scholars that it was time. Then he’d summoned the Roman commander to make final arrangements.
The scholars had known what for. It was the only thing the son of Caesar had let them think about or read about in the many months of their captivity in Jerusalem.
They were at last going to the Temple.
As far as he had told the scholars, and as far as they’d been able to ascertain themselves, Tiberius had no hand in Herod’s death. Though he’d conspired to kill the king with Antipater—who’d been executed a mere five days before his father’s death—Tiberius had been just as surprised as anyone else when Herod had become ill and died.
He was not at all surprised, however, with what followed.
The Realms of God--A Novel of the Roman Empire (The Shards of Heaven, Book 3) Page 14
