But after supper Arata and Philyra sat in the courtyard playing music in the cool dusk, and the sweet clear ripple of the strings soothed him. The desperation that had crushed him for the past three days lifted a little. There had been no repercussions from his visit to the quarry. The Roman army was still camped before the north gate, and his brother and his brother's friend were probably planning their escape, but life in the household went on much as it had always done. He was aware of the family quarrel, but aware too of its essential shallowness, the way it did not even touch the deep ties of affection that bound the family together. As he sat silent in the courtyard listening to the music, the house seemed a richer and more tranquil place to live than it ever had before.
But everything was changing. The family was growing wealthy and important; Philyra would marry and move away- and he would go, too. Somewhere.
When Arata had gone to bed, and Philyra was putting her lute away, Marcus came silently to her side and picked up the kithara, which she had already set in its case. "Thank you!" she said, without looking at him.
He shrugged. "Mistress," he began unhappily- then stopped, not knowing what it was he meant to say to her.
Something in his voice troubled her, and she lifted her head and looked at him, peering to make out his face in the gathering dark. "What?"
"You- don't still believe I took Archimedes' money in Alexandria, do you?" he asked.
She stared, surprised at his earnestness. She had almost forgotten her suspicions. There had been a lot of money coming in since her father died, and Marcus had been very careful with it. Messengers kept bringing bags of coin down from the king's house- a hundred and eighty drachmae for catapults, so far, plus all the funeral expenses. Archimedes barely even looked at it; it had been left to Marcus and herself to keep track of it all. She realized at the slave's question how many pains he had taken to account for every obol. "No," she said, slightly ashamed of herself. If anyone had cheated her brother in Alexandria, it had not been Marcus.
"I'm glad," he said in a low voice. "I don't want you to think ill of me. Whatever happens, please believe that I've never wanted any harm to this house."
"Whatever happens?" repeated Philyra in concern. "What do you mean?"
"I- just mean, with the war, mistress. I know that it's my own people out there. But they've come here because they've been told lies, and I don't- Philyra, if they got in, I would fight to defend you."
She was touched. She reached over and rested her hand for a moment on his. "Thank you, Marcus," she said. Then she straightened, picked up her lute, and declared fiercely, "But they won't get in! The gods will favor Syracuse!"
"I pray they do," he said.
He carried her kithara upstairs for her and watched her go into her room- a slim shadow, black-clad with mourning in the dark house. Then he went back down and sat in the courtyard. He pressed the hand she had touched against his stubbled cheek; his throat was swollen with what he felt. It was no good. He was only property. Still, he wished that he could indeed fight for her- rescue her from his countrymen, carry her to safety, reassure her while she clung to him and… It was no good. He wished her brother would come home and say what answer he'd given to Dionysios.
For hours he waited in the dark courtyard, watching the stars. At last the soft rap sounded on the door. Marcus pulled himself up and hurried to open it. "Sir…" he began.
"Marcus!" whispered his brother, and clasped him in a one-armed embrace. Beside him Quintus Fabius flowed smokelike through the door.
Marcus had almost forgotten that this was the first night he could have expected them. He stumbled backward, then hastily closed and bolted the door behind them. "Are you being followed?" he whisperedthen had to repeat himself in Latin.
It was Fabius who answered. "No," he said. "But we had to kill a sentry. They'll certainly miss the fellow before morning, and start searching for us. You said you could help us get out of the city. I hope you can do it tonight!"
"Yes," said Marcus, dismayed. Which of the sentries had they killed? The young man, the leader, one of the others who'd laughed and punched the air when they named his master's catapults? Killed with his knife, undoubtedly. He had known when he left the knife that it was a possibility, but he had hoped… "Keep your voices down," he ordered. "You don't want to wake anyone. Gaius, how are you?"
"Sore," replied Gaius. "But I can manage. That Greek doctor knew what he was doing." He reached out again to seize his brother's arm, and squeezed it. "How are you planning to get us out?"
"Do you still have the rope I gave you?"
Two heads, dimly seen, shook together. "We left it hanging from the wall," whispered Fabius.
"I'll get another, then," said Marcus.
Another soft rap sounded suddenly on the house door.
"May I perish!" exclaimed Marcus. He pulled Gaius hurriedly to the door of the dining room and shoved him in. "Hide!" he ordered, as Fabius slipped past him.
A second knock, louder. Marcus closed the door to the dining room behind the two fugitives and went to open the one to the street, just as Archimedes called, "Marcus!" from outside.
"Sorry, sir," he said, opening the door. "I was asleep."
Archimedes wavered through unsteadily and slumped down on the bench against the wall. He smelled of wine and cheap perfume. Marcus closed the door again. "You'd better get to bed," he told his master.
"Not yet," said Archimedes. "There was a tune I thought of, and I want to get it memorized before I forget it. Fetch my flutes." His speech was slurred, but voluble. Marcus recognized the mood with dread: lively-drunk like this, his master would usually try to explain geometry all night.
"Sir?"
"My flutes! The soprano and the tenor."
"But sir, it's after midnight! The neighbors…"
"Oh, Zeus! If they wake up, it's only music!"
Marcus stood where he was. He was aware of Gaius and Fabius crouching in the dining room as though all the night were one block of stone and he carved into it with them, solid with their fear. He realized with horror that he did not trust them. He knew Gaius would not break an oath, but Fabius? There was something hard and lethal about the man. He had wanted to kill the catapult maker the city had boasted of. Archimedes sat there, drunk and at home, suspecting nothing. It would be easy for Fabius to slip out while he was unattended and- what had happened to the knife?
"Marcus!" said Archimedes impatiently. "Do I have to fetch them myself?"
Gods and goddesses, thought Marcus, are the flutes in the dining room? "No, sir!" he said hastily. "I'll get them."
In the dining room, he could just make out Gaius and Fabius crouched exactly where he had imagined them, next to the window. He groped for the flutes on the sideboard and couldn't find them.
"Marcus, did you tell one of Dionysios' men that I wanted Philyra to marry Conon?" Archimedes called from the courtyard.
"I may have," replied Marcus. It was no use: he was going to have to light a lamp. Sweating with horror, he felt for and found the one that normally sat on the table.
"Why'd you say that?" asked Archimedes. "You know Conon's father wouldn't have agreed."
"But you always used to talk about it," said Marcus, abstractedly feeling for the flint lamplighter. "I thought maybe now that we're rich…"
"No," said Archimedes. "No, he has to marry that Samian girl next year. You should have remembered that. And anyway, you know Philyra doesn't want to leave Syracuse. You shouldn't have said anything. If she finds out I even thought of marrying her to someone in Alexandria, she'll be furious. And Dionysios was very worked up about it. You know what he's done? He's offered for Philyra himself!"
Marcus froze, then forced his shaking hands to strike a light. The lamp wick caught at once, casting a warm yellow glow about the room. It gleamed on the eyes of the two men crouched beneath the window; revealed the smear of blood on Fabius' cheek and the knife in his hand. Marcus shook his head and frantically gestured for the man to
put the knife away, then glanced about the room for the flutes: they were nowhere to be seen. "Sir, where are your flutes?" he asked distractedly.
"I don't know," replied Archimedes, yawning. "Hurry up and find them!"
Marcus went back into the courtyard, carrying the lamp. "What answer did you give Dionysios?" he asked.
His master sat sprawled over the bench, cloakless in mourning black, with another wreath of parsley pushed to the back of his cropped head. Parsley was supposed to prevent drunkenness; it hadn't worked. "I didn't," said Archimedes. "I'll let Philyra say what she thinks. Though it might be a good match."
"But Philyra's just a girl!" urged Marcus, somehow still finding time to worry that she might agree with her brother. "And you can't expect any sixteen-year-old to make a sensible decision about the future."
Archimedes laughed loudly. "Oh, by Apollo! Marcus, you know perfectly well you don't expect me to make a sensible decision about what to buy in the market! Why do you think I can pick a husband for Philyra when I can't even buy olives?" He pulled his knees up and looped his arms round them. "Philyra will make a much more sensible decision than I ever could. Sensible Philyra. Marcus, you think geometry is completely and utterly senseless, don't you?"
"No."
"Don't you? You always used to. You used to watch the scholars going into the Museum with a look on your face like a… like a banker watching an heir squander his estate. So much intelligence to be spent on air! Deep down, Dionysios agrees with you. When we first met, he praised Alexandria and called it the house of Aphrodite, but tonight he did nothing but tell me what I owe Syracuse.- I think my flutes may be in my room."
"I'll fetch them," croaked Marcus helplessly. He set the lamp down beside his master, hoping that its light would be some protection, then ran up the stairs three at a time and burst into the bedroom. The clothes chest was a black oblong under the gray rectangle of the window. He felt along it and found first the notched rim of the abacus and then, like fresh air in a dust storm, a set of smooth wooden boxes heaped one on top of another: the flute cases. He grabbed all of them and ran downstairs again, heart pounding.
Archimedes was still sitting quietly on the bench, turning one hand back and forth in the light of the lamp, watching the shadows shift in his palm. Marcus closed his eyes a moment, weak with relief.
The auloi were seized upon at once, and Archimedes sorted eagerly through them for the soprano and the tenor. He slid the reeds in, adjusted the slides, and without another word launched into a complicated melody.
It was a dance at first: a rapid joyful trill on the soprano, with a quick steady beat supplied by the tenor. A ring dance, a line dance, a tune to dance to in the street. But it changed under his quick fingers. The rhythm shifted to the soprano, and the tenor took up the tune with sudden disquieting shifts of tempo, speeding up and slowing down again, almost out of synchrony, then suddenly resolving into it again. The mode shifted without warning, and the tone became plaintive, with an underlying coloration of darkness. The disquiet grew. What had been fast became faster still, a headlong rush of sound over a chaos of dissonance; the tenor and soprano fought each other, irresolvable notes clipping each other's heels, almost but not quite out of tune. And then, all at once, the notes did overlap, and they were in harmony: the true harmony that was rare in Greek music, two notes singing a chord that brought a shiver up the backbone, and the melody they sang was sad and slow. The dance theme returned, but it was a march now, a slow march of farewell. Harmony became unison, sang quietly to the night, then faded softly into stillness.
There was a long silence. Marcus realized that he had no idea how long the music had lasted, and that while it had lasted he had been aware of nothing else. Archimedes blinked at the flutes in his hands as though he'd forgotten what they were.
"My darling," came Arata's voice from an upstairs window, "that came from a god. But the neighbors may not appreciate it, and you ought to be in bed."
"Yes, Mama," Archimedes called back at once. He slid the reeds out of the auloi and set the instruments back in their cases, then stood up and ran his hands through his stiff hair.
"What was that?" asked Marcus, in a shaken voice.
Archimedes hesitated. "I think it was a farewell to Alexandria," he said bemusedly. "But there's no hurry to decide." He wavered across the courtyard, and Marcus heard the stairs creak as he went up to bed.
Marcus sat down on the bench and stayed there for a little while, trembling. Then he noticed that the lamp was guttering, and blew it out.
The door to the dining room opened soundlessly, and the two fugitives slipped through it. "Jupiter!" whispered Fabius. "I thought that young fool would never stop playing!"
"You be quiet!" Gaius whispered vehemently back. "Gods and goddesses, that boy can play the flute!"
"We don't have time for concerts!" replied Fabius. "If we're going to get out of the city, we need to go!"
"Sshhh!" said Marcus. "Let the household settle."
Gaius sat down on the bench; Marcus could feel the taut linen of the sling that supported his brother's splinted arm. They sat together in silence, feeling the heat of each other's body through the warm, soft dark. Marcus remembered a time when he was eight years old and his father had beaten him, and Gaius had sat beside him, like thisnot touching because he was bruised raw and a touch was painful; merely giving him the comfort of his presence. The love he had always felt for his brother, which had lurked baffled under his own shame and confusion, now flooded him, and with it a blind, bewildered grief that they should meet again only like this.
The house was still, still. If the neighbors had been disturbed by the concert, they had chosen to say nothing about it and gone back to sleep. Marcus at last rose and went to the storeroom next to the kitchen. Archimedes had built machines at home when he was still a child, and the storeroom still contained all his equipment. There was plenty of rope- there had been a phase when every machine was a kind of crane. Marcus took all of it, setting it in a large wicker basket, which he slung over his shoulder, then added a windlass and little wooden anchor that had been part of a hoist. Fully equipped, he went back to the courtyard. "All right," he whispered. "We can go."
As he unbolted the door, he caught a faint gleam out of the corner of his eye, and he glanced around quickly to see Quintus Fabius checking the knife. He shivered, reminded himself that the man had, after all, kept his oath, and set out.
The back streets of the Achradina lay dark and deserted under the stars. A watchdog barked as they went past, then fell silent. Marcus led the others quickly through the maze, then up along a narrow path which zigzagged up the side of the Epipolae and emerged on the plateau opposite the temple of Fortune. He kissed his fingers to the goddess and trotted past her temple to the right. They quickly passed the last of the hovels of the Tyche quarter and struck off across the bare scrubland of the heights.
"Where are we going?" asked Fabius, moving up beside him and taking advantage of the open country around them to talk.
"I'm going to let you down the sea wall just where the plateau turns inland," Marcus replied. "Since you don't have a fleet, there aren't many guards posted on it. The wall runs along the top of the cliff and the cliff's steep, but we've got plenty of rope. At the bottom there's a bit of broken rock to scramble along, and once you're over that you've only got to walk north and inland a bit to reach your camp."
"You keep saying 'you,' " observed Fabius. "It should be 'us,' shouldn't it?"
"No," replied Marcus evenly. "Not while you're besieging Syracuse."
"Marcus!" exclaimed Gaius, also moving forward to join him. "You're coming with us!"
"No."
"You are a Roman!" Fabius protested angrily. "You don't belong here!"
"I'm a slave," Marcus said harshly. "A Roman would have died at Asculum."
"Stop it!" cried Gaius. "Asculum was a long time ago. You panicked, but you were sixteen, and you'd had about three weeks' training. You should never h
ave been in the legion to begin with. I was the one who brought you along- what happened was more my fault than yours."
"Liar," said Marcus wearily. "You know I'm the one who insisted on coming. I didn't want to stay home with Father. I'm the one who ran away, and I'm the one who chose to stay alive afterward."
"You were telling that flute player that a sixteen-year-old can't be expected to make a sensible decision about the future," said Fabius. "Why are you making an exception for yourself?"
"You speak Greek?" asked Marcus in surprise.
"A little."
"Asculum's over with," said Gaius, returning to the point. "You can come back now."
"To accept my punishment?" demanded Marcus.
"No!" said Gaius, catching his shoulder. "To come home. I'm sure you'll be pardoned. It was a long time ago, and you've redeemed yourself by helping us escape. You can go to the consul and tell him what you know about the defenses of Syracuse, and he'll give you a free pardon. I'm sure he will."
"Oh?" asked Marcus bitterly: he had thought of this. "But what if I don't tell him what I know about the defenses of Syracuse? What would happen then?"
"Why wouldn't you tell him?"
"Because I'm not going to help anyone take Syracuse," said Marcus firmly. "May the gods destroy me if I do!"
"B-but, Marcus!" stammered Gaius disbelievingly.
"You're the ones who have no business being here!" Marcus exclaimed, turning on him furiously. "Don't you see that? Rome and Carthage have both been expanding their power, neither trusts the other, they've been building up to war for a long time. Fine! All that makes sense. But now Rome makes an alliance with Messana and attacks Syracuse! Where's the sense in that?"
"It's what the Senate and People decided was best," said Fabius reprovingly. "You think you know better than they do?"
"Yes!" declared Marcus. "I know Syracuse, and you've proved to me yourselves that the Roman people don't. Some bandit spews out a brazen-throated lie about Syracuse, and the great Roman people lap it up like dogs! When Rome started this war I don't think she had any more idea what she was doing than your general did when he sent your maniple out against the catapults. Gaius, I'm sorry, but it's true."
The Sand-Reckoner Page 26
