The Sand-Reckoner

by Gillian Bradshaw

  "Marcus," said Gaius urgently, "Marcus, you must come with us. Those guards will remember you came to see us, and they'll guess that it was you who helped us. If you stay here, they'll crucify you!"

  "You really don't know anything about Syracuse," Marcus told him in disgust. "It's the Carthaginians who crucify: Greeks behead or poison. But I don't think they'll do that, either. Nobody knows I saw you. As far as the guards are concerned, I was looking at the quarry. My master's well-known and trusted, and his reputation will protect me. And even if I'm caught- listen to me, Gaius! — even if I'm caught, I'm willing to pay the penalty. I deserted my post once, and I've had to live with it. I destroyed my own place in life, and crawled into slavery for a refuge. Now my place is here. I'm not deserting my post again."

  "Oh, gods and goddesses!" exclaimed Gaius wildly. "Marcus, you can't do this! I thought you meant to come with us! If I'd known you planned to stay, I would never have tried to escape myself!"

  "So?" replied Marcus. "I told you not to. I told you you'd be better off staying where you were. You didn't want to. But nobody forced me to help you: that was my own free choice. If I can live with the consequences, why can't you?"

  "I've already had to live with having caused your death once! Don't force that on me again! You must come with us!"

  "No."

  "Jupiter!" exclaimed Fabius, after a silence. "All this for Syracuse. What was it your master's son said about the Alexandrians?" He repeated in heavily accented Greek, " 'So much to be spent upon air!' "

  Marcus stopped walking and frowned at him. "My master's son?" he asked.

  "Nephew, then," said Fabius. "Or lover, if that's what he is- I know these Greeks incline that way. The flute player."

  "You didn't realize who he was!" exclaimed Marcus. He was instantly certain that his instinctive suspicion had not been wrong, after all: that if Fabius had known who was sitting there, Archimedes would have died.

  "Well, who was he, then?" asked Fabius impatiently.

  "My master," said Marcus with satisfaction, and began walking again.

  "That boy?" said Gaius in astonishment.

  "He's twenty-two," replied Marcus. "I was originally sold to his father."

  "But you said- and they said at the fort- and I thought…" Gaius stopped, then suddenly burst out laughing. "Oh, Jupiter! I'd pictured him as a stern old man with terrible eyes and a white beard! A fearful magician, I thought. I was wondering what that talkative young flute player could be doing in the same house!"

  Marcus was suddenly swamped by another wave of love for his brother, and he joined in the laugh. "Fearful magician?"

  Gaius flipped his good hand dismissively. "You said he could number the sands and make water flow uphill. That sounds like magic to me."

  Marcus laughed again. "It practically is," he said, longing suddenly to tell his brother everything he had seen and done and thought since he was enslaved. "The water-snail still seems magical to me, and I've helped build them. That's the machine that makes water run uphill, Gaius, it's a sort of- no, you have to see it, really, to appreciate it. It's-"

  Gauis's laugh suddenly stopped. "Marcus, come with us!" he repeated. "Please!"

  "Gaius, if I come with you, I'll die," Marcus replied wretchedly. "You know I will."

  "You won't! Not if you come back as a loyal Roman who helped us escape."

  "I'd have to prove it by betraying Syracuse! And I won't. I owe her too much."

  "What can you possibly owe to a city where you were a slave?"

  Marcus shrugged. He thought of music: the family concerts, the public concerts he'd heard while he attended the family; the plays. And there were people- neighbors, the other household slaves, Arata, Archimedes. Philyra. More than that, there was the vastness of the world he had touched, the constant stream of ideas that had flowed past him, uncomprehended and bewildering, but, now that he looked back on it, enlarging. He had hated his slavery and he hated it still- but he could not regret the rest.

  "More than I can explain," he said softly. "Trying to talk about it is like trying to weigh things with a pint measure: I can't do it. But believe me, Gaius, if I betrayed Syracuse, I'd destroy whatever honor and loyalty are left in me. Don't ask me to do that."

  Gaius touched his shoulder gently. "I pray to all the gods, then," he whispered, "that you're right, and that they don't suspect you. If they kill you for helping me, Marcus, I… don't know what I'll do."

  12

  At dawn the following morning, Agathon woke the king with the news that Dionysios son of Chairephon had arrived at the house and was asking to see him.

  "Dining room," commanded Hieron succinctly. "Tell him I'll join him in a minute."

  A minute later the king appeared in the dining room, barefoot, belting his tunic, and found the captain of the Ortygia garrison standing to attention by the door. Dionysios had the crumpled, excessively awake look of a man who's spent most of the night on his feet and the expression of one who brings bad news.

  "Sit down," said Hieron, taking his own place on the central couch and gesturing toward the place on his right. "What's the matter?"

  Dionysios ignored the invitation to sit. "Two of the Roman prisoners escaped last night," he said bluntly. "My troops were guarding them. I accept full responsibility."

  Hieron looked at him curiously, then sighed. "Was anyone hurt?"

  Dionysios grimaced. "One of the guards was killed. Straton son of Metrodoros- a fine man, one of my best. I had my eye on him for promotion. I have informed his family."

  Hieron was silent for a moment. "May the earth be light upon him!" he said at last. "Tell me exactly what happened, as far as you know it, and- Captain? I will decide who is responsible. Not you. Also, do sit down, or I'll get a crick in my neck."

  Dionysios sat, stiffly. "About an hour after midnight," he said, "the guard on the middle section of the quarry wall noticed that Straton, the guard on the western section, wasn't in his place. He went to look for him, and found him lying on top of the wall with his throat cut. There was a rope hanging down the front of the wall beside him. The sentry raised the alarm at once, and the file leader in charge at the quarry- Hermokrates son of Dion- instantly doubled the watch on the walls and sent a messenger running to find me. He himself went to check on the prisoners. Most were sound asleep, and the guards on the sheds were awake and in their places, but two men from the middle shed were missing: Gaius Valerius and Quintus Fabius, both heavy infantrymen from the same maniple. Fabius was an officer of some kind- tessararius, I think the title was."

  "Watch commander," translated Hieron. "A junior rank within a century."

  "The two missing men had been next to each other," Dionysios went on. "Valerius was wounded- broken arm and ribs- and had not been shackled, but Fabius had been in leg irons. He'd got them off somehow, probably just by working his feet out through them- they'd been left in his place, weren't obviously damaged, and guards on the shed say they were old and he was built like a snake. Behind where the two had been, two planks in the shed wall had been sawn through, then propped back into place. Hermokrates had the shed searched, and found the saw tucked under a mattress." Dionysios removed it from a fold of his cloak and set it down on the king's dining table: an unremarkable strip of toothed iron, with a strip of cloth wound about one end in place of a handle. Hieron picked it up and examined it, then set it down again. The captain continued, "I arrived while Hermokrates was questioning the other prisoners- they claim not to have noticed the escape, though it's plain at least some of them must have. I'd brought two files of men with me. I sent my men out to search for the fugitives at once, but by then they'd had some time to make good their escape, and we found no trace of them. I wish to make it plain, however, that I entirely support Hermokrates' decision not to search the streets at once. He did not initially know the scale of the escape, and he did not have enough men to secure the quarry and search the streets as well."

  "I agree," said Hieron. "Have you informed the
captains of the forts on the wall?"

  "I did that as soon as I arrived at the quarry. They should be on the watch for any attempt to leave the city."

  "Good. It seems likely, then, that the two men are still in the city, presumably hiding with whoever it was that brought them the saw, the rope, and the weapon they used on that poor guardsman. Who has had contact with the prisoners?"

  Dionysios shrugged his shoulders wearily. "You, me, their guards. Your doctor. Beyond that, I don't know. You know that they were originally in the charge of the garrison of the Hexapylon, and I and my men only took over yesterday. I doubt, though, that Captain Lysias has been lax. However, there is one thing…" He took a piece of knotted cloth out of his purse, set it down on the table, and unknotted it to reveal a silver coin. "One of the guards says that the prisoner Valerius gave him this yesterday and asked him to buy oil. The guard used some change to buy the oil, kept this, and last night passed it on to me."

  Hieron picked the coin up and examined it. It bore a crown and thunderbolt on the reverse, and, on the obverse, the smiling, diademed profile of Ptolemy II. "Surprising," commented Hieron in a neutral voice, then, raising mild eyes to Dionysios, "And I take it your guard was surprised, since he passed it on to you?"

  Dionysios nodded. "He says he made some comment when he was offered it, and the prisoner told him that it was the same weight as Sicilian ones."

  "And so, of course, it is," said Hieron. "But unexpected in the hands of a Roman." He set the coin down. "It may be irrelevant," he added after a moment. "If a Roman did get such a coin, its rarity might induce him to keep it for good luck. Perhaps he kept it around his neck as a sort of talisman, and only spent it since his other money was taken when he was captured and he was desperate to buy some oil to help his friend slip off the shackles."

  "Oh, Zeus!" exclaimed Dionysios, startled. He had seen nothing odd in the request for oil: it was used like soap, and it had seemed natural for even a prisoner to want to wash.

  Hieron gave him a tight smile. "On the other hand, this could come from the same source as the rope. I take it you've checked whether any of your men have been to Egypt recently? Are any of them Italian mercenaries? Greeks from one of the cities of Italy?"

  "A couple are Tarentines," admitted Dionysios. "But I wouldn't think- that is, I know that one of them at least is fanatically anti-Roman; it's always causing trouble."

  "Check their backgrounds anyway," ordered the king. "See if they could have been blackmailed. And another thing: check if anyone has visited the quarry, but not the prisoners."

  "What?" asked the captain, surprised.

  "There's no handle on the saw," Hieron pointed out. "Would a man who was smuggling in a saw deliberately choose one with no handle? I'd say it's much more likely that the handle was taken off in order to fit the tool through a crack in the wall."

  "Zeus!" exclaimed Dionysios again, staring. "I know already of one man who visited the quarry and not the prisoners, and though he's unlikely to be relevant, there may have been others claiming the same errand."

  "What errand is that?"

  "Stone for very large catapults," said the captain. "Lysias told me that Archimedes had his man around checking which quarry would be best for ammunition for the three-talenter."

  Hieron's head jerked up, and he stared at Dionysios, wide-eyed in alarm. "Oh, gods!" he exclaimed.

  "What's the matter?" asked Dionysios, surprised. "It was Archimedes' slave. Your doctor was there at the time and recognized the man, Lysias said."

  Hieron shook his head. He clapped his hands, and Agathon appeared sour-faced in the doorway. "Take half a file of men from the guards' barracks," commanded the king, "and hurry to Archimedes' house in the Achradina- I believe you know where it is. There are two escaped prisoners of war who may be hiding there. Get the household to safety, and then search the house for the prisoners. The citizens are to be treated with every courtesy. Ask Archimedes to come up here. If that Italian slave of his is about, send him as well, under guard. Hurry! Run!"

  Agathon, astonished, bobbed his head and ran. Hieron got to his feet and stood biting the side of his thumb with anxiety. Dionysios stared at him in consternation.

  "Lord!" he exclaimed. "You can't think that Archimedes…"

  "That slave of his is a Latin," said Hieron. "What's more, he was in Egypt. And if Archimedes wanted special stone for his three-talenter- and I haven't heard any report that he did! — he would have used someone from the workshop to look for it. He's been quite careful to keep that particular slave away from anything strategic."

  "How do you…" began Dionysios weakly.

  "Because I had it checked!" snapped Hieron. "The slave claims to be a Samnite, but is obviously lying, and he's been in Syracuse for thirteen years- in other words, since the Pyrrhic War, when there were quite a number of Latins enslaved. Probably he saw some men he knew among the prisoners, and agreed to help them escape if they would help him back to home and freedom. Herakles, I hope I'm wrong! I hope we don't find Archimedes with his throat cut, like that poor guardsman!"

  "He was with me last night," said Dionysios faintly. "I'd invited him to dinner at the Arethusa. I… wanted to ask if I could marry his sister. When I left he was playing the flute with a girl. That was an hour or so before midnight."

  "I hope she kept him distracted until dawn!" said the king. He sat down again.

  "Why would Archimedes have kept a slave he knew was disloyal?" asked Dionysios.

  "Don't be stupid!" said Hieron impatiently. "The man had served his family for thirteen years and accompanied him to Alexandriaobviously he didn't think the fellow disloyal! But he just as obviously had some reason to suspect the slave's nationality, and so he confined him to domestic duties to avoid any patriotic crisis of conscience. What else was he supposed to do? You don't send a person who's been a member of your household ever since you were a child to the quarries without good cause!" The king rubbed his face wearily, then looked back at Dionysios. "I hope I'm wrong," he repeated grimly.

  Marcus had been back at the house for about half an hour when the guardsmen knocked on the door.

  He had arrived back at the house at dawn, slipped in through the door he had carefully left unbolted, put away his basket of equipment, and moved directly to his usual first duty of the day: cleaning the latrine. He was in the middle of this when he heard the knock, and then Sosibia's voice, shrill with alarm, answering a man. He froze in his place for a moment, listening, then got up, washed his hands carefully, and came out into the courtyard, where the rest of the household was assembling.

  Archimedes was waked out of a deep sleep into a hangover. He stumbled down the stairs pale with headache, his black tunic crumpled from having been slept in, and regarded Agathon and the half-file leader from the Ortygia with queasy bewilderment. They explained that two Roman prisoners had escaped during the night and might be hiding somewhere in the house.

  "Where?" he asked disgustedly. "It's not a very big house. I think we might notice two Romans."

  "The king gave orders for us to search it, sir," said the half-file leader. "He was concerned for your safety."

  "That's ridiculous! You can see there's nobody here but my own household!"

  The half-file leader scanned the small group in the courtyard, who had been crowded into the doorways by his own men, then looked back to the disheveled master of the house. "I am still obliged to search," he said. "One of your slaves can remain to explain the arrangement of the house to us, but the rest of the household should go to a neighbor's, out of harm's way. Believe me, sir, we have strict orders not to disturb anything."

  "Zeus!" exclaimed Archimedes in disgust.

  "I'm sure Euphanes would be happy to have us," said Arata pacifically. She was standing in the workroom door, veiled with a hastily seized cloak, Philyra beside her.

  Archimedes opened his mouth to make some reply, and Agathon said to him sharply, "The king wants you to come and speak with him at once."
>
  Archimedes turned back and glared. "No," he declared flatly. "Delian Apollo, the arrogance of it! To turn my family out of our own house and expect me to come running the moment he claps his hands! If Hieron thinks he owns me, he'll soon learn otherwise!"

  Arata gasped and dropped her veil. The king's doorkeeper went crimson with indignation and drew himself up to his- unimpressivefull height.

  Before he could speak, Archimedes struck again angrily: "This is my house, and I didn't ask you in! Get out!"

  The half-file leader looked to Agathon for guidance, but Agathon could only splutter. The half-file leader looked back at Archimedes, remembered the great respect showed to him by the king, and decided that conciliation was called for. "Sir," he said, "this is being done out of concern for your safety, not because-"

  "The king also ordered your man Marcus brought to him under guard," declared Agathon, finding his voice again.

  "That's…" began Archimedes- then looked at Marcus and stopped. The slave's face was impassive, inert as clay, but told him instantly that the implied accusation was true. Perhaps it was only that it contained neither confusion nor surprise. He stared for a long moment, appalled. The half-file leader went on about the king's concern for his safety.

  Archimedes raised his hand for silence, and the half-file leader stopped. There was a sudden silence, which deepened like a stone plummeting as he and Marcus looked at each other. "Are they here?" he asked at last, the words dropping into that stillness.

  "No," replied Marcus in a grating voice. "Let them search."

  Archimedes looked at him for another moment. Marcus, meeting his eyes, felt that for the first time he had his master's full attention; that always before that gaze had been fixed on something beyond or to the side of him, and only now was the full power of the mind behind it bent on him where he stood in the silent courtyard. The aperture of a three-talenter, he thought, would have seemed less absolute.