by Tracy Higley
“Samuel gave me the necklace just before he died.” She turned away, started straightening sleeping mats into orderly rows. “He said it belonged to my mother.”
“Your mother! I thought you had no idea who your parents were.”
She kicked some loose straw that had spilled from a gashed-open mat to the pool of blood. “I don’t. And he told me nothing more. Only that my mother gave him the necklace for me, before she gave me up.”
“Lydia, do you know what this means?”
She picked up a bundle of another servant girl’s clothing and replaced it on the girl’s mat.
David grabbed her hands and squeezed, waiting for her to meet his look. The silence of the room closed in around them.
“Lydia, you belong to the House of Israel.”
Her mouth went dry and her hands trembled in his.
“Yes, Lydia. If this pendant was your mother’s, then it could only mean she was a Jewess. And therefore, so are you.”
You belong . . .
A people. A place.
“But why—why would Samuel not tell me of my parentage?”
“Perhaps because he understood what it means to be Jewish.” David’s sad smile made him look wise beyond his age. “The conquest by Rome is only the most recent for our people. When Julius Caesar’s ally Pompey began his siege against Jerusalem, my father was only a boy, but he remembers it well. Twelve thousand Jews killed, and our king and High Priest stripped of his throne to become a client kingdom of Rome. But we are accustomed to such.”
Lydia nodded. “Samuel taught me of your people’s exile in the lands of Persia.”
“Yes, Babylon and Assyria, Ptolemies and Seleucids—there has been very little time of peace for our people. We are hated in our own lands and hated wherever we travel. This is why Samuel would not tell Cleopatra of your parents. You are a Jew. That is enough.”
“But someday that will change?” Because of her scrolls, burning in their hidden place in the corner?
“Oh yes.” David’s face glowed. “Yes, one day our Messiah-king will come and rescue us. And I believe it will be soon.”
“Samuel seemed to think so as well.”
David sat straighter. “It must be soon. With Gentile dogs on the throne, surely HaShem will not tarry. Perhaps we have mishandled our affairs as a people in the past, but at least it was Jews who were our kings.”
“And yet you serve Herod.”
He grinned. “To be close, Lydia. To be close to the action when it happens. When our people rise up against Rome and throw off the yoke forever. Surely this is the fullness of time!”
The fullness of time. Samuel had used such a phrase when he spoke of the scrolls and their importance to his people. A flutter of something tickled her belly—apprehension, excitement.
Destiny?
She had given too little thought of late to the task given by Samuel. Was it as important as he had said that she deliver his scrolls to the Chakkiym who watched for this Messiah?
Was this why Samuel had been so intent on training her in the ways of his One God? If so, could He also be her God? Could she belong to Him?
She had no time to think on the significance. One of Herod’s advisers poked his head through the door. “Herod is about to leave for the Senate meeting. All staff in the courtyard.”
David released her hands and they headed for the door. It pained her to leave the room in such a state, but there would be time after Herod’s grand departure to return and repair.
To return and to think.
The combined staff of Herod and Marc Antony were arranged in two parallel lines running through the courtyard into the front hall and out the door to the graveled garden beyond. The lines buzzed with the murmurs of dozens of people, the words jumbled and confused.
Lydia assumed a place at the end of the line, tried to calm her features and shaking limbs into serenity. The faces of the stiff-backed staff in the line across from her blurred in her vision.
Antony and Herod emerged, talking and laughing between them, and paraded through the channel, without a real glance at anyone. A chill breeze blew through behind them, as if it would sweep them into the tumult of Rome.
“Not to worry, my friend.” Antony slapped Herod’s shoulder. “No one has forgotten your father’s favors toward Caesar years ago. Nor who is more capable of rule.”
“Yes, well.” Herod looked worried despite Antony’s instruction. “Antigonus has that cursed Hasmonean blood, which makes him favored by the Jews regardless of ability.”
And then they were gone, passing out of earshot and then out of the house.
Lydia exhaled, her shoulders dropping with the weight of Riva’s attack and David’s revelation.
Riva was at her side a moment later, breathing on her neck. The girl’s dress was torn and her hair still tousled, but the perfume she wore bespoke elegance. Like the scent Lydia had purchased for Octavia in the Forum market.
“This was your doing, little Egyptian.”
Lydia leaned away, studied Riva’s pinched expression. “My doing?”
“Do not think I am a fool. That brute was looking for you. He thought I was you. Said you had taken something from Alexandria and he wanted it back. I should have known you were a thief.”
David crowded in between them. “Lydia is no thief!”
Riva scowled. “No? Do not be so sure, boy. And you”—she pinched Lydia’s arm—“do not be so certain you will serve Herod’s new wife. That is a position best left to someone more qualified.”
Bitter words burned in Lydia’s throat, but Riva’s revelation distracted her. Was this the intruder who had killed Samuel? The second man in Alexandria? She scowled at the thought. His death at the hand of the slave had been too quick, then. He should have suffered as Samuel had.
Herod and Antony returned in high spirits, talking of the speeches given by the professional orators Antony had hired to endorse Herod and degrade Antigonus, that conspirator with the Parthians, archenemies of Rome.
The vote had been unanimous, apparently. Not only troops to take on Antigonus, but the unexpected conferring of a new title for Herod: “King of the Jews.” Though from the good-natured teasing Lydia overheard, she doubted the title was much of a surprise to either man.
But as evening approached, there would be no avoiding Riva in the shared room. Lydia lingered in the darkness of the courtyard before bedding down, delaying the confrontation.
“There she is again, pretty as the spirit of a goddess in moonlight.”
Lydia smiled and sighed.
Varius was beside her at the central fountain in a moment. He rested a light hand on her shoulder. “So glad I found you before it was too late.”
“Too late?”
“To see the reflection of the moon in your eyes.”
His words should have brought her pleasure. Perhaps they did. But the events and discoveries of the day had been too much. She wanted only to be alone with her thoughts.
She smiled at him. “Perhaps tomorrow night. I need to attend Octavia.”
A flicker of annoyance crossed his face, but then his pleasant look returned. “Tomorrow, then. I shall look forward to it.”
She should go to Octavia but lingered instead in the courtyard, her thoughts tumbling like water over rocks. Such conflicting emotions she had experienced in the past few days. The warm connection to Octavia, however formal. The fluttery attraction to Varius, with his eloquent words and cool touch. All reasons to stay here in Rome. And yet, the strange and wonderful feeling of David’s assurance that her pendant meant she had a place to call home.
But even more than this newfound personal connection to Judea, Lydia had something precious to her people—her people—secreted in the corner. Though they had not claimed her, they needed her. What was she doing, making herself needed here in Rome?
Perhaps this time she would not try so hard to keep herself apart, to make herself important to someone without letting herself need them in
return. The desperation to belong and to be important was a selfish and petty thing she had seen in Riva’s eyes. Lydia would not be that person any longer.
She had undertaken Samuel’s mission out of loyalty to her mentor. But something was changing. The charge he had given her was becoming her mission.
Could she let go of her vow to return to Egypt? She would go to Jerusalem, no matter the cost. Learn more of the Jews’ One God. Find the Chakkiym and deliver the prized scrolls. Samuel had devoted his life to protecting them. She would do nothing less.
And with the decision, she felt a solidity, a peace, and a strange sort of tethering—as though a rope had been tied round her waist, anchored far away on the steps of the Temple of Jerusalem. Pulling her gently, but irrevocably, toward home.
“Have you tired of me as well, Lydia?” Octavia’s flat voice emerged from the shadows. “Your thoughts are only for the poet, I suppose. But why should I be surprised?”
Chapter 12
The stricken look of guilt and regret in the girl’s eyes pricked Octavia with a bit of compassion. She huffed and waved a hand.
“Don’t go to tears over it, girl. Simply come to my chamber. It grows late.”
“Yes, mistress.”
Octavia walked slowly to her chamber, feeling the hem of her dress trail across the mosaic of the courtyard and the scrape of her sandals across the stone pavers of the shadowy peristyle. It was a trick she had practiced of late—this deliberate movement and heightened sensitivity. At times it seemed the only thing between her and the numbing darkness. Since Claudia Minor’s birth three months ago, Octavia had been unable to lift the curtain of sadness that seemed to weight every new day.
She went through the motions of preparing for bed, allowing Lydia to remove her dress and sandals, to slip the gold bands from her arms and remove her beaded earrings. She sighed as Lydia unfastened her hair and let the unruly curls fall about her shoulders. The girl had a gentle touch. Already Lydia had found time to arrange Octavia’s scattered jewelry into a pleasing arrangement, and there was a vase of fresh white roses on the entry table that had not been there earlier.
“You will come in the morning, first thing, Lydia.” Octavia slipped into her bed, and Lydia smoothed the bedcovering over her.
“Yes, mistress.”
But morning came too early, the sky still dark in the east, and Octavia kicked at the coverings that had tangled about her feet as she struggled through the night. What kept her from sleep? Was it the same cold deadness she had felt in her spirit these last months?
No, there was a fear there, a whisper of fear that must be rooted out.
It had begun when that Arab-turned-Jew had arrived, his charming smile and winning manner making him an instant favorite in the house.
What had she to fear from Herod of Judea?
Not him, perhaps, but the damage he could wreak on the uneasy alliance between her brother and her husband.
The alliance supposedly sealed and ensured with the gift of Octavia herself.
She had no illusions that a mere marriage was enough to keep Marc Antony and Octavian from tearing each other apart, and if this Herod, with whatever demands and requests he had brought, became a source of contention between them, she would pay the price. She was aligned with both of them now, and the victory of one over the other made her a loser either way. She and her children by another man—a man who had opposed Julius Caesar, the single uniting loyalty between her brother and husband.
She waited at the window for dawn to arrive, watching the sky through the wooden grid of diamonds as the sun lifted over the seven hills of Rome.
“You have been waiting for me, my lady.” Lydia’s voice at the door held apology and perhaps a bit of fear.
Octavia shrugged and pulled away from the window. “I could not sleep. But now that you are here, I need you to dress me well.” She straightened her back. “I have a meeting to attend.”
Lydia’s deft skill with her hair resulted in a prettier style than the banished handmaid Caelia had ever accomplished, and the girl found new ways to drape fabric around her body in a manner adequately modest yet alluringly feminine.
Octavia examined herself in the blurry bronze. “Yes, that is good. I must remind them all that I am more than a shipment of grain or a camel load of gold and spices.”
“My lady?”
Octavia laughed, quick and humorless. “You would not understand, I am afraid. Servant girls are the most necessary part of a Roman household. Wives, on the other hand, have only one purpose—as a bribe to keep powerful men from destroying each other.”
Lydia blinked at the harsh statement and lifted her eyebrows.
“Do not look so surprised, my girl. You have spent too much time in the palace of a woman who stands in defiance of her place in the world. Here in Rome, it is the men who wield the power.”
“I think perhaps you are wrong, my lady. For a woman to be used thus—as the glue that will hold two mighty men together—she must command great influence indeed.”
Octavia flexed her shoulders and tugged a final adjustment to her dress. “I pray to Cybele that you are right, Lydia. For today there will be three of them, and it may fall to me to be that very glue.”
Neither Antony nor his charismatic young friend Herod were to be found when Octavia emerged from her chamber, and she arranged her own transportation to the house of her brother.
When the slaves lowered the litter for her to step to Octavian’s graveled garden, her brother emerged, a slight scowl on his youthful face. At only twenty-four, he had already grown accustomed to the mantle of his adopted father Julius Caesar’s money and power, and the legions of loyal soldiers at his disposal made it impossible for any rival to dismiss him because of his age.
“Expecting someone else, brother?” She smiled sweetly, though he was certain to catch the acid beneath her honeyed tone.
Octavian looked over her shoulder, through his front gardens and beyond. “This Herod I have heard so much about—I would have thought you would still be at home, hanging on every delightful word that fell from his lips.”
She kissed both of her brother’s cheeks, an obligatory peck that he did not return. “You know you are the only one whose company I find anything but tedious, Octavian.”
“Caesar. It is four years now I have been telling you that my name is Caesar.”
She exhaled and tilted her head. “Little brother, I am not one of your generals.” She waved a hand and pushed past him into the house. “Besides, how can I keep up with your name? It changes as often as the seasons. What is it now, Gaius Julius Caesar Divi Filius? Ridiculous.”
He followed at her heels. “Ridiculous that after my adopted father’s deification, I should also be called Son of the Divine?”
The anger that sparked in his voice did not suit her purposes. She stroked his arm and smiled. “Show me the new frescoes in the triclinium while we wait for the others.”
Octavian’s wife, Scribonia, lay across a couch in the dining chamber, morose and petulant as always.
“Scribonia is feeling ill these days.” Octavian seemed to feel the need to excuse her natural state of unpleasantness. “The pregnancy, no doubt.”
She gave her sister-in-law a smile, called from a false place within her. Scribonia was five years older than Octavian—Caesar—and it was no secret that she had been forced to divorce her husband and marry Octavian for political alliance. In the outrageously tangled web that was Roman politics, Scribonia’s sister’s husband, Sextus, was the son of Pompey and a man both Octavian and Marc Antony were working hard to court, since Sextus had taken control of the straits of Sicily and begun blocking grain ships sailing for Rome.
And as if the intrigue weren’t complicated enough, Scribonia had no love for Marc Antony, since it was his late wife Fulvia’s daughter, Clodia, whom Octavian divorced to marry her.
Disgusting, all of it, and barely worth keeping track of. When the histories were written of this great Rom
an Republic, would they tell of all the women whose lives were upended and twisted like trees in a hurricane, traded and bartered like coin in the marketplace?
And yet, perhaps what the servant girl Lydia had said was true. Power was yet in her hands.
She dutifully admired the freshly frescoed walls, then followed her brother to the receiving room. Thankfully, Scribonia did not join them. She would be no help in keeping peace.
They did not have long to wait. Marc Antony and Herod breezed into the receiving room ahead of the servant who tried to announce them. Antony was all smiles and warm embraces for Octavian, a show for Herod.
“What an honor”—the dark-skinned Herod bowed to both men—“to be received so well by the two greatest men of the Republic.”
Octavian laughed, pleased at the flattery. “Let us not forget Lepidus.”
Herod shrugged a narrow shoulder and smiled, a sly smile of conspiracy over the missing third of the Triumvirate. “Africa is a long way off.”
The three sat, and Octavian spread his hands. “But you have recently come from the coast of that great continent, Herod. Tell me of Cleopatra. Is she as beguiling as ever?” He gave a slant-eyed look at Marc Antony. “Were you able to resist her charms, as both my father, the Divine Julius, and our own Antony here were never able to do?”
Octavia exhaled heavily, her annoyance loud enough that the three men were forced to acknowledge her presence. Must they talk about her husband’s lover with her in the room? Cleopatra’s twins were born to Marc Antony before Octavia had a chance to bear him any children of her own.
Herod laughed, but it was a nervous laugh of discomfort, and his look darted warily between the two men. “She is well, Caesar, and sends her great affection.”
Antony crossed one leg over the other and folded his arms. “Let us leave off talk of Egypt. It is Judea that concerns us today. Judea and that young upstart Antigonus, who has only added to our Parthian problem by aligning with them.”
Octavian leaned forward, his gaze taking Herod’s measure. “Yes, the Judean problem. The little region continues to plague. But Antony tells me that you, dear Herod, are the solution.”
