"I'm so glad you're back," she said when he could not go on. "I've missed you, Drosos."
"I've missed you. But it isn't wise for you to see me. I shouldn't come here, but I couldn't stay away." He stared down into her eyes. "I tried to stay away."
"Why?" She took his hands in hers. "I would have been more hurt than you can imagine if you had."
"I am not safe to know," he admitted, trying without success to pull his hands away.
"Half of Konstantinoupolis isn't safe to know," she countered. "I've never let that select my friends for me."
He shook his head, refusing to be convinced. "You're already suspect because you're Roman. Letting me come here only serves to make it worse for you."
"If you stayed away, it would not be better. This way, Drosos, my troubled love, neither of us is alone. Being alone and suspect is worse than having friends with you, even if all of you are suspect." She kissed him on the cheek. "I am pleased you are concerned for me, but not if it keeps you away from me."
His eyes flickered, shifting away from hers and moving restlessly. "You ought to tell me to go."
"Why would I do that?" she asked, her face calm though she was growing more concerned as they talked.
He broke away from her. "I did a… a foolish thing. If I'd thought about it, I would have realized that it was stupid to do it, but I assumed that… I had to do something. You see how it was."
"No, I don't. Tell me, Drosos." She went to him, standing behind him and putting her arms around his waist. "Tell me. What is the terrible thing you did? And why is it so terrible."
He bit his lip, shaking his head. "It would only make things worse."
"Drosos, please. You trusted me when you wrote to me. Trust me now." She used nothing to persuade him, no wiles or tricks that he could later blame for what he did. "I want to know because it is hurting you."
Again he resisted. "If I tell you, you might have to tell others, and that would be bad for both of us."
"Drosos, I am a Roman, and as a Roman I swear to you that I will not tell anyone what you reveal to me, no matter what they require of me. You might not believe it, but there was a time when such a vow was binding and any Roman would rest his life on his honor. My family has held to the old ways and you can depend on me to treat your confidences that way. If you still would rather not speak, very well. But believe me when I say that nothing you tell me will pass beyond these walls." She rested her head against his shoulder. "Drosos?"
He broke away from her and dropped into one of the chairs. "When I was about to leave Alexandria, there had been a storm that swept in from the sea. One of my last duties was to survey the damage and make a report about it."
"Is this the thing you—"
He went on as if she had not spoken. "Alexandria is on one of the branches of the Nile. There are many little fingers of the river, and when there is a storm—and the one we had was worse than usual—some of those little fingers get even more divided, and cut up into spits and sandbars. I was out in a good-sized boat, looking over some of these sandbars. Most of them were nothing more than isolated bits of sand." His face was nearly blank, his eyes distant as if he were standing on the deck of the boat at the mouth of the Nile. "But there was one. It had been cut off from the shore. It wasn't large—no more than twice the length of the boat at most, and very narrow, and it was being reclaimed by the water more and more every hour. The water was salty there, taking as much from the sea as from the river. Nothing grew there except a few stands of marsh grass. But on that sandbar there was a cow. Don't ask me how the poor beast had got out there; the storm must have driven it, not that it matters. It was alone on the sandbar. It had been there for at least three days. It was a black-and-white cow with dark horns; I remember it so clearly. She was bawling, but there was almost no voice left, for she was dying of thirst and starvation. She was on her knees, but she kept trying to rise and to get her head out of the water. I have never seen such despair, not in battle, not in plague, not in a slave market. There was nothing for that poor, dumb creature but her suffering. I asked for a bow, so that I could kill her, but no one had anything other than a spear, and the distance was too great to be certain…"
"Oh, Drosos," Olivia said. She had taken the chair nearest his and was watching him, grief in her tearless eyes.
"I don't know what it was about that cow. I'm a soldier," he said, sitting straighter. "I have killed men, I have been wounded, I have fought in war. I know what it is to have a horse lanced out from under me; I have watched men with their guts in their hands try to reach just one more enemy warrior. I have seen widows and children after the fight. Nothing—nothing—moved me in the way that black-and-white cow…"He looked away. After the silence had stretched between them, he said in another, more remote tone, "I wrote to the Emperor, after we burned the library. I said that I was convinced that we had made a great error in burning the books and that he had been given poor advice by those close to him, who did not know the Library and the things it contained. I thought, you see, that he had been persuaded by those around him to do this, not that he wanted it done himself. I told him if he understood what was stored there, he would have realized that destroying so much knowledge was against every virtue and aim of Christianity. Well, I might as well have ordered my Guard to drag me through the streets of Alexandria behind four maddened horses. It would have spared everyone trouble."
"Don't say that, Drosos," Olivia admonished him in a low voice.
In the light from the brazier only half his face could be seen, and it was more like a mask than a face. "You have to understand that it was Justinian who wanted the books burned. It was the Emperor who had decided that the Library was dangerous and that the things in it were a hazard no Christian dared endure. He was the one who gave the orders, he was the one who decided. It was not some clique around him; it was Justinian himself." He stood up abruptly. "So they ordered me back here, where they can keep an eye on me, and watch what I do, for now the Emperor numbers me among his enemies." He came and stood beside Olivia. "Which is why I must go."
She did not rise. "No."
He dropped to his knee beside her chair and looked up into her face. "Don't you understand, Olivia? Don't you realize that if I visit you, Justinian will consider you to be as dangerous as I am, and you will be subjected to—"
"I have already been counted among those the Emperor dislikes because I am still Belisarius' friend and I have kept him as my sponsor ever since he returned from Italy. If I see you as well, it will mean little to the Emperor. It will be yet another example of Roman corruption. He is almost as disapproving of Romans as he is of books these days." She rested her hands on his shoulder. "How can I endure your being here, in this city, and not see you? How can I be cut off from everything and lose you as well?"
Drosos regarded her with concern. "You are already at risk. If you continue to see me, the risk increases, and there is nothing I can offer you as protection."
"I do not ask you to protect me, Drosos. I want you to love me."
His arms went around her and he rested his head in her lap. "I should not stay."
"But you will?" She ruffled his hair, wishing there was less white in it.
"Since you seem determined to have me, I suppose I must."
"You make it sound an unpleasant duty." She was teasing him now, for the strength of his arms told her more than his spoken denials.
"No; leaving you would be the unpleasant duty." He lifted his head and reached to pull her mouth down to his. "I dreamed of you every night I was away from you. I thought of you each day. I would sit in my reception room, staring out at the ruins of the Library, the way you stare at a soldier's empty sleeve, and I would see your face instead of the ruins. It was the only thing that kept me from going mad."