Bibulus took the grain, closed his eyes, and tossed it into the flame. Instantly, the incense flared up and was consumed, leaving a sweet aroma in the air. The priest smiled and nodded.
“There! You see, father! All is well.”
He turned to face her, all traces of worry now gone, as the rain streaked down the creases and lines on his face.
“I asked if I had a daughter that truly loved me.” He smiled, and then reached out for her.
She ran into her father’s arms and felt the warmness of his embrace. She felt the tenderness she had missed for so long, and suddenly she was that little girl again, the one in her dreams, who had no cares or worries, who laughed with her brothers and basked in the arms of her parents, listening to strangers and friends alike tell of what a great man her father was becoming and how he would someday be a consul.
They had stood like that for many long moments as the rain came down and the roaring flames fought for life. Eventually, without saying another word, they returned to their chariots and went home.
It was the last time she would ever hold him.
XII
A cold night quickly fell across the harbor once the sun sank behind the hills of Corcyra. With the frigid air came a driving wind that sought out every pinch of exposed skin and chilled the blood and bones beneath. The freezing conditions quickly cleared the decks of the anchored ships, driving most of the crews below, leaving only the night watch to face the elements, wrapped from head to foot in cloaks and blankets.
The Argonaut was no exception. Her decks were deserted, save for a handful of sailors, clustered around the crackling braziers and more concerned with staying warm than with their duties, and an unfortunate score of slaves who now scoured the deck with hand stones and icy water. These pitiable men, who had spurred the displeasure of Barca for one reason or another, were made to toil on their knees with hands frozen to the point of numbness. From time to time, Barca peeked his head above the hatchway to see that they still scrubbed, and quickly whipped any who had paused to bring life back into his hands.
Of course, Lucius was among those toiling on deck. Barca had taken every opportunity to mete out special punishment to him, completely disregarding the fact that Lucius pulled his own weight and that of any two of his comrades. Although Lucius showed no outward signs of misery, he was not made of stone. The sting of frozen fingertips grating against frayed hemp ached for him as it did the others. The lash bit just as deeply into his back, but he would never give the bastard of an overseer the satisfaction of seeing him in discomfort, so he toiled and endured, keeping the pain locked within him, as he had done many times in the harsh winters of Gaul and Germania.
Somewhere in Argonaut’s warm interior, on one of the lower decks, the soothing tones of an aulos escaped from an open window and danced upon Lucius’s ears. The unseen musician undoubtedly played for the entertainment of his shipmates, but Lucius was thankful to him, whoever he was, for the pipe’s soothing tones transported him from this dismal place. The somber, majestic sound penetrated to the core of his soul and carried his thoughts to golden fields in distant lands.
“Look.” One of the men working beside Lucius whispered to him. “They throw another one to the sharks.”
He gestured to the forward hatchway where four slaves methodically passed a loosely wrapped corpse up from below. The slaves then carried the rigid form to the rail and heaved it over the side. It had all been done without ceremony, and the detail was already heading back for the shelter of the hatchway by the time the body splashed into the dark water below.
“Poor devil,” the man beside Lucius said. “I heard they found him this morning.”
“Who was he?” Lucius asked.
“A slave, like us. He was sent down to the hold last night to fetch a sack of grain – and never came back. That makes six this week. Six men struck down by the phantom of the lower decks.”
“Come now.” Lucius glanced at him skeptically. “A phantom? The bugger probably slipped in the dark.”
“Then how do you explain how they found him, stuffed into a dark corner with his neck nearly wrung around like it was a chicken’s?”
Lucius chuckled at the absurdity of it all, and continued scouring the deck.
“Believe what you like, tall man,” the man added fervently. “But I’ll never go down there. I don’t care if Barca’s whip is laid across my back for a week straight. There’s evil lurking in the bowels of this ship, I tell you! Some say it’s the ghost of the dead admiral, that he’s come back seeking vengeance on them that killed him. Some say –“ The man paused suddenly, apparently distracted by something on the stern deck. “Hello, what’s this then?”
Lucius followed his gaze aft to see that a woman had emerged from the cabin. A tiger-striped cloak was wrapped around her from shoulder to foot with the exception of the hood which was pushed back to reveal her smooth features in the pale moonlight. Her hair was tied back in a conservative fashion such that it hardly moved in the stiff wind. She appeared somewhat forlorn as she strode to the rail and gazed out at the sea, seemingly ignorant of the work party on the main deck and the sailors of the watch who briefly turned their attention toward her and then back to the warmth of their fires.
“Who is she?” Lucius asked.
“That is Calpurnia, the daughter of the late admiral,” answered the slave. “Bibulus may have been mad as Xerxes, but he produced a savory morsel when he sired that one. What think you?”
“Quiet! Barca approaches!”
Every man in the detail turned his attention back to the deck and added vigor to his stroke of the stone, just as the round form of the overseer ambled up from the hatchway.
“Good. Good!” Barca said after examining their work. His hands and face slippery with grease as he gnawed on a chicken bone. “You are making excellent progress, my asslings. At this rate, you should be finished by sunrise.”
Barca was in a good humor this evening, and the reason was plain. His speech was slurred and the aroma of spirits was carried on the wind wherever he moved. Lucius fully expected the paunchy man to to strike him or insult him as he walked by, but he did not, for Barca was distracted by the sight of the noble woman strolling the deck and his imbibed brazenness had apparently impelled him to approach her.
“A pleasant night for a stroll, my lady?” Barca said, stumbling and then bowing elaborately before her. When she did not acknowledge him, he added awkwardly, “A woman as lovely and attractive as yourself should not be –”
“Be silent!” the lady suddenly snapped. She cast a superior look at the overseer that could have made any army legate doubt the validity of his rank. “I did not invite your advances, you unpleasant scoundrel, nor I did ask for your company. Now, leave my presence, this instant!”
The lady evidently considered herself above the social level of the repugnant little man, and indeed she was, but where Lucius had often seen the more refined gentry handle such matters with inventive congeniality, the daughter of Bibulus employed no such duplicities.
Barca appeared tongue-tied. Either that, or his wine-degraded brain could not process the tongue-lashing he had just received. He turned on his heel and returned to the main deck, his face a mixture of confusion and anger. Before long, the whip was in his hand again, cracking across the frozen backs of Lucius and the others, the instrument to vent his aggravation. When the overseer finally disappeared down the hatch again, the slaves were cursing him under their breaths, fresh pains now added to their cold misery.
Lucius glanced aft as the stroke of his sanding stone allowed, sneaking glances at the noble woman who still stood by the rail, peering out into the darkness. She looked as she had before, but as he studied the scene in the scant lighting, he realized that something had changed. When she had upbraided the overseer, Lucius remembered seeing a line of hemp coiled on the deck by her feet. He could swear to that. Now, the rope was gone. It took him only a few moments to spy the missing line. Its bitter end had b
een fastened securely to the railing not two steps from the spot in which the woman stood, and the rest of the rope trailed through a scupper and over the side, the other end dangling out of sight in the water far below. As Lucius watched, the woman suddenly leaned over the bulwark, as if she had caught sight of something in the water and was following it with her eyes as it came closer to the hull. Then, she turned away from the rail and casually made her way over to the nearest brazier around which several of the night watch huddled. Quite different from her manner with Barca, the noble woman came to life, smiling and vibrantly engaging the sailors in friendly small talk. The sailors received her well, grinning and laughing at her pleasantries. They were quite taken with her, as were many of the slaves with Lucius who snuck pining glances at the sociable woman.
“If it’s warmth you seek, woman,” the man working near Lucius commented under his breath, loud enough only for the other slaves to hear. “Then bring your hidden fruits over here, that I may embrace them.”
The other slaves chuckled quietly at the jest, but not Lucius. He had stood too many midnight watches atop palisade walls deep within barbarian lands not to know a diversion when he saw one. While the others dumbly watched the distant young woman exhibit her wit and charm, he turned his attention back to the rope. It had not escaped his notice that the chatty woman had conveniently positioned herself such that her captivated audience were facing away from it.
As he watched, the rope jerked suddenly, stretching taut, as if it were a giant fishing line that had just snagged a creature of the sea. Straining his eyes to pierce the darkness, he saw a glistening figure climb up over the rail and noiselessly drop onto the deck in a crouched position. The figure moved nimbly, as one skilled in the arts of stealth and infiltration. As the moonlight danced along the dripping, naked form, Lucius realized that he was looking at the lean, smooth curves of a woman. She was of a slighter built than the noble woman, but more muscular, her carved biceps and trim shoulders clearly outlined in the pale light. A long trail of dripping hair swayed behind her neck as she scanned the deck immediately around her, either not noticing or not caring that Lucius observed her. She had the full lips, high forehead, and smooth features of a woman of the east, and it suddenly dawned on him that this was the handmaid he had seen by the side of the noble woman earlier that day. As if to confirm his suspicions, the woman quickly padded away aft, her slick, naked form soon swallowed up by the darkness near the stern cabin. As expected, not long after, the noble woman made her apologies to the sailors by the fire and excused herself, also disappearing aft.
As Lucius continued pushing the cold stone across the rough deck planks, he pondered why the daughter of the late admiral would go to such lengths to get her handmaid on and off the ship unnoticed. Where in Neptune’s trident had that agile nymph of the sea come from? The Argonaut sat near the center of the harbor. The nearest land was at least a mile in any direction – a daunting swim for anyone, especially through frigid water. Obviously, the noble woman was up to something and did not want any of the crew to know about.
But it was not the secretive boarding, nor the noble woman’s intentions, whatever they were, that now wracked Lucius’s brain as he pushed the stone back and forth across the deck. He had noticed an odd familiarity when he had seen the handmaid on deck earlier that day, but now, after seeing her again, he was certain that he had seen her before, in another place, far from this ship. He spent the rest of the watch rummaging through his memories, both recent and in the distant past, but no matter how much he strained his tired mind, he could not seem to put the time and the place with the woman.
But he knew her face, and he felt confident that, in time, it would come to him.
XIII
In the stern cabin, Calpurnia waited patiently as Marjanita toweled off her lithe body and carefully donned her clothes. The neatly folded clothes lay on the cot exactly as Marjanita had left them nearly four hours ago, when she had dropped into the sea and had begun a spirited swim to one of the other anchored vessels. Calpurnia now watched the rippling muscles along Marjanita’s lean arms as she brushed away the seawater, and how her small breasts shook ever so slightly as she wrung out her long hair into a vessel on the floor. Calpurnia did not gaze at Marjanita out of attraction, but out of admiration for strength and physical skills she herself would never possess. Though she had seen the Syrian woman swim many times before, she was always mesmerized by her ability to become one with the water. Marjanita’s slim form darted amongst the white-caps in the harbor as easily as might a newly freed dolphin. And her abilities in the water were only outmatched by those on land. She could scale practically any cliff or wall with ease, could run seemingly for days, and could fight as well as a man – in many ways, better than a man.
Calpurnia belonged to the privileged of Rome. Marjanita was her servant, her handmaid, her protector and bodyguard, but in many ways Calpurnia envied her. She could only dream of having such individual power, such freedom of spirit. The eastern woman certainly possessed the skills to leave her life of servitude anytime she wished, but she was sworn by a blood-oath never to do that. Marjanita had been at Calpurnia’s side for many years, long enough to know Calpurnia’s intimate secrets, and to know Calpurnia herself better than any other living soul. In contrast, Calpurnia was not precisely sure of the Syrian woman’s origins. Marjanita seldom spoke of her past. It was rumored she had been trained in the assassin schools of Mithridates, the Parthian king of Media, and was a favored weapon of the patricide king. When Mithridates was deposed by his brother Orodes and fled to Roman-controlled Syria, Marjanita came with him and served as his agent, venturing back into Parthian territory to complete some one hundred missions against the vassals of Orodes. After Mithridates attempted to regain his throne and was ultimately defeated and executed by Orodes, she returned to Antioch in the procession of Parthian exiles who had the misfortune of throwing their allegiance behind Mithridates.
How Marjanita had ended up a common criminal only a few years later, was somewhat vague. Calpurnia knew that she had been arrested for murdering one of the exiled Parthian generals in his sleep, the circumstances around which were a mystery. Some stories said that she had been in love with one of the exiled Parthian princes who had also found refuge in Antioch, that the prince had been spirited away in the night by Orodes’s agents, and that he had been betrayed by the same general who had awoken with Marjanita’s dagger buried in his throat. Marjanita had been set for execution, and had been brought before Calpurnia’s father seeking clemency. Perhaps Bibulus had been in a merciful mood that day, because he conceded, agreeing to spare her life if she swore an oath to be the protector of his daughter Calpurnia to her dying day. In the years since, Marjanita had honored her oath with a vigor unmatched by any other. She had rejected her former life, and lived for Calpurnia alone. She guarded Calpurnia as if she were her own body, always eager to perform whatever task her mistress might desire. She had also been helpful in warding off the dozens of elderly Roman aristocrats looking to join with the house of Bibulus by entering into a marriage with Bibulus’s young daughter. It had taken only one glimpse of Marjanita’s pin-like dagger to dissuade most of them.
Of late, however, Marjanita’s loyalties seemed to be more procedural than full-spirited. Ever since they had arrived in Greece, Calpurnia had noticed that something weighed heavily on Marjanita’s mind. She was more irritable than usual, and Calpurnia suspected she worried, or brooded, over someone in her distant homeland. Calpurnia had never known Marjanita to be affectionate in any way, but she had on two occasions seen her gazing off to the east from the balcony of the villa. Those had been the only two times Calpurnia had ever seen Marjanita’s face not set in something bordering on perturbation. It had afforded her a brief glimpse of the woman beneath the assassin, and had left her wondering if Marjanita was beginning to tire of the oath she made to a man who was now dead.
“Tricostas sends you greeting, my lady.” Marjanita said through quivering,
blue lips, after she had donned her dress and had wrapped her wet hair in a blanket. “He is pleased that you are well.”
Tricostas was captain of the Faun, a trireme moored half a mile away. He was one of Calpurnia’s most trusted friends. They had been friends since childhood, and he was still loyal to her. She had often relied on Tricostas to give her dependable updates on her father’s health and state of mind, and he had always kept their communications confidential. She had faith in the word of Tricostas, not Naevius, or any of the other captains of the heavy ships. They were all political appointees with their own agendas.
“Yes, yes,” Calpurnia said impatiently. “But tell me, Marjanita, does he know anything about my father’s death?”
“Nothing more than he has already shared with you in the messages sent by carrier bird, my lady. He knows nothing of the circumstances surrounding the admiral’s death, but he did confirm that a small vessel bearing the flag of the Senate went alongside the Argonaut earlier on the same day the admiral was murdered.”
“Does he know who was aboard that craft, or which Senators met with my father?”
“No, my lady. The Faun was on the opposite edge of the fleet at the time. He only knows that the Senate vessel had already departed by the time your father was found and pronounced dead.”
Calpurnia slapped her hands together in frustration. “Postumus had something to do with it. I know it, Marjanita. The way he acted at dinner tonight, complacent and amiable, heaping compliments on the Argonaut’s officers, entertaining them with humorous stories, as if he were running for Praetor again. I would bet my life he was the one who visited my father that day.”
“It is very likely, my lady.”
“I know he is guilty, Marjanita. If not of personally murdering my father, then of arranging it. I forced myself to wear a pleasant face tonight. His stories were sordid and crass, but I listened to them all while he had every man at the table roaring with laughter. He wanted it to bother me. I could see it in his eyes. He wanted me to leave, Marjanita, and I wanted to. He expects me to run home crying like a little girl. He wants me out of his way. But I will remain here, and I will defy him.”
Rome: Tempest of the Legion (Sword of the Legion Series) Page 13
