The Divining

by Wood, Barbara

  "Make certain Primo comes back at once," Sebastianus said, and then he turned and strode into his tent, his mind already composing the letter he was going to write to Ulrika and leave in the care of the Caravan Master.

  ACROSS THE RIVER IN the Western City, in the shadow of the Temple of Shamash, Primo the retired legionary, Chief Steward of the Gallus villa in Rome but now second in command of his master's caravan to China, lay back as a whore massaged his thick penis. His thoughts were not upon the woman and her carnal ministrations but upon the long journey he and his specially trained men were about to take. And he mentally reviewed the things he was to see to that day: provisions, weapons, the duties roster.

  The prostitute straddled him without a word. Those were always his instructions: "Don't speak." Primo could only enjoy a woman if she was nameless—and even then it wasn't really enjoyment, more of a need.

  Letting the prostitute do all the work, the veteran of military campaigns and a hard life decided that his crack archer, a Bithynian named Zipoites, would be best for gathering intelligence along the journey—he was solidly built enough to look fat under merchant's robes, no one would suspect his strength or that he was a trained fighter. Yes, Zipoites would be the one to send ahead to settlements along the road, to visit taverns and talk with the local men. Zipoites could hold his wine where other men's tongues loosened. He was adept at getting information out of—

  "Ungh." Primo gave a cry as he climaxed, and then he lay motionless for a few moments while the whore wordlessly removed herself from the bed and slipped into a robe to cover her nakedness. Outside, the city of Babylon bustled beneath its usual din as citizens hurried to and fro in the narrow streets, their minds concentrated upon their own immediate worries, fears, hopes, and yearnings. They were preparing for the coming week of summer solstice celebrations, which also meant they were preparing for a season of heat and dust. Many were unemployed, and so their thoughts were on food and the gods.

  But Primo didn't care about this city or its people. His job was to see that his master, Sebastianus Gallus, reached China safely and that their diplomatic missions to the East were a success.

  And there was the secret job, commanded by Nero Caesar himself ...

  As he slipped back into his clothes—the old soldier's costume of white tunic, leather breastplate, military sandals laced to the knee—Primo spat on the floor. He wished he had not been recruited into Nero's spy-ring. He would obey, of course. His loyalty might be to his employer and the man who had saved him from a life of begging in the streets, but a greater duty compelled him, as a soldier, to uphold his allegiance to Emperor and Empire. Even if it meant betraying the man he loved.

  As he left, he reached into the leather pouch at his waist in which he carried money and his lucky talisman—a bronze arrowhead that had been dug out of his chest by a military surgeon who had declared Primo the luckiest man on earth, as the German arrow had missed his heart by a breath. Primo pulled out a coin and threw it down. It had a Caesar on it, so the whore knew it was good. Primo didn't look at her face. They never looked at his.

  As Primo walked along the Street of Harlots, he realized that, more and more of late, he was coming away from his paid women with diminished feelings of satisfaction. Physically, they satisfied him. Primo had no difficulty getting erect or coming to orgasm. But, increasingly, he was leaving whorehouses with little gratification.

  And he found himself thinking of a woman he had met long ago, the one woman in his life to whom he had given his heart.

  Primo and his regiment had been passing through yet another small, nameless village when his Centurion had sent him ahead to find the local blacksmith. It was spring, Primo recalled, with a blue sky dotted with white puff clouds, the scent of blossoms in the air, the breezes fresh and full of promise. His boots had stamped over cobblestones as he had entered a narrow alley and found himself suddenly surrounded by a group of angry men. They carried clubs and daggers, and seemed intent upon using them.

  Hatred of Roman soldiers was universal throughout the empire, especially in newly conquered regions, and so Primo knew the anger in these men was fresh and sharp. They would mindlessly attack and only ponder the foolishness of their actions later, as they were nailed to crosses. It had briefly entered his mind to try to warn them off—for surely they meant to kill him, and he was greatly outnumbered—when a young woman appeared. "Wait," she called, and the villagers stopped advancing upon the lone soldier.

  She drew near, and Primo saw that she carried an infant close to her breast. Her head was veiled, but an exquisite face was exposed to the spring sunshine.

  One man growled, "This is none of your concern, daughter of Zebediah. This is men's business."

  "And is it men's business to make widows of their wives and orphans of their children? Shame on you."

  "Rome is evil!" shouted another. And they began to press forward again.

  But she placed herself in front of Primo, so that he caught a sweet fragrance from her veiled hair, and she said, "This soldier is not Rome. He is but a man. Return to your homes before it is too late for all of us."

  They shifted on their feet. They fingered their clubs. They looked at one another and then at the infant sleeping in her arms until finally they turned and drifted away.

  The young woman faced Primo and said, "The fault is not yours, Roman. You are only doing your job. Go in peace."

  And Primo, the soldier whose heart was the size and hardness of a pebble, fell in love.

  He watched her walk away, a slim figure draped in a long blue veil, as if she had descended from the sky, and he stood frozen in that moment of time, as if the world had come to a standstill and he and the young mother were all who inhabited it. She had not smiled at him, but she had not looked upon him with revulsion either, though he was indeed ugly. She had simply looked at him—he had seen lovely features, heard a gentle voice—

  Even now, simply from the memory of it, Primo was rocked with intense emotion. She had intervened on his behalf. Although she had done it to spare her neighbors from Rome's wrath and the punishment of those who did not obey their new masters, she had looked at him with clear brown eyes and told him it was not his fault. And in that moment he had fallen in love, irrevocably and without condition. He had also known in that moment that he would love her for as long as he lived, and that he would never, for the rest of his life, love another woman as he loved that young mother.

  A powerful stink suddenly washed over him, bringing him out of his nostalgic reverie. He wrinkled his nose and turned in the direction the stench was coming from. Rotting corpses hanging on the city walls. Most had their hands cut off, or their genitals, indicators of their crimes: thieves and rapists. Justice in Babylon was swift. A thief suffered having his hand cut off, and then he was strung up by his ankles and left to die. Sometimes it took days. To Primo, it seemed an extreme punishment. Most likely the thief had stolen from a rich man, because who cared if someone stole from a poor man?

  Such was justice in the world in general. It was a rich man's world, no doubt of that.

  And an emperor's.

  "You are to watch Gallus's movements," young Nero had said that night in the room at the back of the imperial audience chamber. "You are to commit to memory his words, observe how he presents himself and Rome to foreign potentates. We cannot have an ambassador who puts his own interests first. You will report to me any actions or words that might be considered seditious or treasonous."

  Thinking of it made Primo scowl on this smoke-filled morning, making his face appear even uglier than it normally was. He would do the job, but he wouldn't like it.

  "Sir!" came a shout from the end of the lane. Primo recognized a slave from the caravan. The man was breathless from running. "I was sent to fetch you at once. The caravan departs today."

  Primo looked at him in surprise. And then, thinking it was about time, broke into a sprint and headed toward the Enlil Gate.

  WHILE SEBASTIANUS WENT UP a
nd down the line, checking camels and horses, giving last-minute instructions, patting men on the back and telling them a great adventure lay ahead of them, Timonides paid a secret, hasty visit to the Caravan Master, whom Sebastianus had visited moments earlier. Timonides knew Sebastianus had given the man a letter for Ulrika. Timonides could not help that. But he also knew that Sebastianus had given the Caravan Master a verbal message to give to a fair-haired girl should she come inquiring about the Gallus caravan. "Tell her we departed on the day before the Summer Solstice. Tell her we will wait at Basra until the next full moon. From there, we take the old northern route to Samarkand." He had given the man a silver coin for his trouble.

  Now Timonides gave the man a new message, and slipped him a gold coin to help his memory. The astrologer returned to the caravan in time to mount his donkey and wave readiness to Sebastianus who sat high atop his horse.

  And then Sebastianus, looking back toward the west one last time, to picture fair hair that framed blue eyes and to whisper a prayer for Ulrika's safekeeping, turned in his saddle and faced ahead, toward the east, where mountains and rivers and deserts awaited him.

  And a fabled city called Luoyang.

  THE MARDUK PROCESSION SEEMED to go on for miles, and Ulrika grew so impatient that she was tempted to abandon the dray and hurry to the caravan area on foot. But no one dared move while the supreme god of Babylon was making an appearance in public, and so she had to wait.

  Finally, the last of the drummers and priests and mounted soldiers had passed by, and the flax merchant whipped his donkeys into forward progress. At the caravan staging area, which was vast and crowded with men and beasts, tents and enormous piles of merchandise, Ulrika went straight to the tent of the Caravan Master, who could point her in the right direction.

  He wrinkled his bulbous nose. "Eh? The Gallus caravan? They left over a month ago. Long gone, by now." Gallus had given him a silver coin to tell the girl the truth. But the Greek had given him a gold coin to say they had departed a month ago. For this amount of money, the man would have happily made it a year! "And this is for you," he added, handing Ulrika a small scroll.

  She quickly opened it and saw that it was a letter from Sebastianus, written in Latin. "My dearest Ulrika, the stars have decreed that we must depart early. It is with a heavy heart that I leave, for I had hoped to have you at my side on this journey into the fabulous unknown. But I go also with joy, knowing that I will soon fulfill my life's dream to visit distant China. I carry you in my heart, Ulrika. You will be in my thoughts and in my dreams. And when I stand before the throne of the emperor of China, you will be at my side. I pray, my dearest, that you receive this letter, and that you will wait for me in Babylon. I love you."

  "Do you know which route the caravan took?" she asked, her eyes filling with tears.

  The man frowned. Gallus had left explicit instructions, but surely the gold coin warranted a false rendering of that information as well. So he said, "They were to board ships at the Gulf. They'll be far away at sea by now."

  Crushed with disappointment, Ulrika thanked the man and turned away, toward the towering gates of Babylon, turning her back on the eastern horizon where still could be seen, in the dying light of day, dust rising up from the hooves and wheels and feet of the great caravan that had just departed for China.

  20

  U

  LRIKA HAD DISCOVERED THAT Babylon, being at the crossroads between east and west, was a cosmopolitan city, tolerant of all faiths. Here, any foreigner to the city would find the god or goddess of his choice. Greek visitors found shrines to Aphrodite, Zeus, and Diana. Romans, when not at war with Persia, were welcome in temples devoted to Jupiter and Venus. Phoenicians could offer sacrifice to Baal, Egyptians to Isis and Osiris, Persians to Mithras. And of course, Babylon's own gods, Marduk and Ishtar, resided here in the most magnificent temples.

  Ulrika had visited them all, speaking with priests and oracles and wise-women, seeking to further her inner self-discipline. She engaged in focused meditation every evening, and while she had enjoyed some success in conjuring up visions at will, they did not last long. She grew sleepy, or her mind wandered, and she lost concentration. While the various temples and priests offered different forms of prayer, none could set her on the path toward deeper meditation.

  She had also searched for clues as to where she could find the Crystal Pools of Shalamandar, with no success.

  But the whole while she had been in this great city on the Euphrates, Ulrika's heart had been with Sebastianus, who she prayed was making steady progress toward China.

  She read his letter every night, and had developed the ritual of speaking to him before falling asleep, picturing his handsome face, his smile, sensing his strength and power, recalling the feel of his hands on her arms that last night in Antioch as he had declared his love for her. Ulrika would lie on her pallet as the city of Babylon stirred in restless slumber and whisper to Sebastianus in the darkness, telling him of her day, what she had achieved, assuring him that he was in her thoughts and heart from morning until night, hoping that Mercury, messenger of the gods and patron god of merchants and traders, would carry her words to her beloved.

  Ulrika turned toward Enlil Street, where she rented a small room from a widow named Nanna who supported herself and her five children by painting Ishtar-eggs. Nanna had great skill and a delicate touch, whether carving designs into clay eggs, or painting birds' eggs from which yolks and whites had been removed. Such eggs were popular as gifts to family and friends, and also a favorite temple offering in Babylon. In exchange for room and board, Ulrika helped Nanna take care of her five little ones. She also shared her healing knowledge with the neighbors in that quarter—prescribing elixirs and tonics, lancing boils, delivering babies—all the things her mother had taught her back in Rome.

  But Ulrika always took time to visit the caravan terminus at the south of the city, to inquire among traders returning from the East for any news on Sebastianus. The last report on the imperial diplomatic caravan to China had been six months ago, when a merchant of Bactrian camels had told Ulrika that he had heard of the Gallus expedition making a safe and successful passage through the treacherous passes of Samarkand. Ulrika had heard no word of Sebastianus since.

  She stood now in the sunlight of the marketplace as people bustled around her, ignoring the young woman in plain homespun with a veil covering her hair. The only feature to distinguish Ulrika from other young women in Babylon was a wooden box hanging from her shoulder on a leather strap, symbols in Egyptian hieroglyphs and Babylonian cuneiform identifying it as a medicine kit.

  Thinking of the money she had just been paid for draining an abscess, and what she might purchase with it, Ulrika stopped suddenly and stared. In front of a vendor selling onions, leeks, and lentils, on the dusty ground before the display tables, a big brown hound sat on shaggy haunches.

  Ulrika did not know why she had stopped, or why the creature had caught her interest. He was an unremarkable dog, and the market square was crowded with animals—pens of geese and chickens for sale, crates of ducks and doves, roosts where exotic parrots and hawks sat tethered. Pigs and goats oinked and bleated in straw-packed pens, cats and dogs—for food and temple sacrifice—paced in small cages. There were even snakes dancing as charmers played their flutes, and scorpions hanging from the faces of mystics, to the amazement of onlookers.

  Yet Ulrika could not take her eyes off an ordinary dog.

  And then she realized that it was, of course, not a dog but a wolf.

  She had not experienced the wolf vision again since the night in the Judean wilderness when it had led her to a secret grave. She stared at it now in wonder and curiosity. And then something occurred to her. Keeping her eyes on the vision, she slowed her breathing, removed all thoughts from her mind except for the wolf, and focused on him with renewed intensity. "Lead me to where I must go," she whispered. "Show me the way."

  The handsome creature turned and loped away, through a crowd th
at was unaware of a spirit-wolf passing in their midst. It led Ulrika under a stone archway, and she found herself in a small square bordered on all sides by residences with wooden doorways and shuttered windows. In the center of the square, a small knot of people watched a man in their midst. Such sights were common in Babylon, as street entertainers were common—magicians, storytellers, even seers and necromancers.

  But the man in the midst of this quiet crowd was different from the usual street hawkers, who always wore colorful costumes to catch people's eye. This man's attire was subdued, modest. Ulrika recognized the long curls framing his face, the white, fringed shawl with blue stripes, and the leather straps around his arms and across his forehead as the trappings of a devout Jew. And the people gathered around him were unusually subdued. Instead of being rowdy and pushy, this gathering was small and quiet and consisted of, Ulrika saw, mostly women and slaves. A few men stood on the edge, arms folded, skeptical expressions on their faces.

  When she saw that many in the audience suffered from injuries and disease, it occurred to her that this man worked healing miracles. Babylon was full of such healers.

  She focused her attention on the Jewish wonder-worker, who stood with a woman and held up his hands as he softly chanted. To Ulrika's surprise, the woman was chanting as well. And then she realized: they were praying together.

  As everyone watched in silence, listening to the soft murmur of two voices, Ulrika studied those around her, saw the looks of hope and anticipation on their faces, and wondered what they expected to see happen here today. "Pardon me," she whispered to a woman standing next to her. "Who is that man?" Ulrika asked.