“Shh! Be still,” he whispered. Crouching low, Melyaket crawled to his horse and without a sound removed a wide, leather case, then slid back to me. It held two compartments, one filled with arrows; from the other, he quietly withdrew a bow unlike any I had ever seen. It had far too many curves. As he strung it, he said, “Keep watch across the river, just north of us. Think you can reach the far bank with a stone?”
“Unless you know Palaemon or Herclides by sight, I trust we are not going to kill anyone.”
“I’m ready,” Melyaket said, nocking an arrow. “Aim for that clump of reeds just beyond the bend. Stand up very slowly.” I did as I was told. The stone sailed across the river but fell just short of the other side, making a modest splash just shy of my intended target.
“Ta’us! They’re running! Quick, up there.” We scrambled up the small incline and scanned the far side of the river, lined with waving grass and reeds, a mirror likeness of our own bank. But for Melyaket’s agitation, the bucolic spot seemed as tranquil and lovely as a garden.
Of a sudden, the Parthian raised his bow and loosed an arrow in a high arc across the river, at what I had no idea. Before the missile had reached its zenith, he stood ready to fire again. An instant later there was a great commotion on the other side. Half a dozen abnormally large birds flew into view just above the grass. “You’ll never hit one,” I said. “They’re flying away from us.” But Melyaket had already loosed his arrow.
Without waiting to see where it landed, he gathered his things and urged me to do the same. We rode across the river; surprisingly deep for the summer, it rose to our horses’ bellies.
Melyaket had wasted neither arrow. “We call them mescejn, flying feast,” he said as we dismounted on the opposite bank. The birds were of mammoth proportions; a marriage between goose and vulture, but twice as large, and with their white, tan and brown markings, twice as beautiful.
“I should say so! They must weigh forty pounds apiece. What marksmanship!”
“The gods allowed us some luck today, seeing that we part company.” Melyaket tied them together and slung them over Apollo. “A gift for your general.”
“I have nothing for you,” I said.
“I am giving you nothing.”
“Oh, I believe I’ll manage at least one supper of table scraps from your generosity.”
“Eat well, then. If it makes you happy to give something in return, convince your general to do as I have told you: hug the mountains, follow the river, avoid the open plain.” (In the weeks and months that followed, in every meeting of the commanders where heads were bent, not in prayer, but in concentration over the map of Mesopotamia, I repeated the advice of Melyaket puhr Karach. The greatest irony of these discussions of the invasion of King Orodes’ empire was that the legate who voiced the loudest support of the young Parthian’s strategies was Cassius Longinus himself.)
Melyaket promised he would return when he could. He told me he would not forsake his charge. I asked him to explain, but his reply was a grin and a scratch for Apollo behind his ear. We shook hands and parted as friends.
Chapter XXXIII
54 BCE — Fall, Antioch
Year of the consulship of
Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus and Appius Claudius Pulcher
Crassus garrisoned half a dozen towns in Parthian territory with seven thousand legionaries and a thousand cavalry. In September, we headed west and crossed back over the Euphrates to return to Antioch. In the Regia, two welcome sights awaited us: a packet of letters from Rome, and Publius, arrived early from Gaul. The celebration that night was raucous, overstuffed with meats, wines, braggarts and Celts. Hanno was so upset with Publius for not bringing any chariots with him, he stayed in our room and wouldn’t come out all night. Livia managed to get him to drink some poppy juice with honey and water to settle him down. He slept well into the next morning, just before his unwitting participation in my destruction.
For the occasion, Livia had piled up her red hair, held high with threads of gold, and she wore a pale green tunic cut of some sheer fabric to whose maker I would always be indebted. At the first opportunity, she and I slipped away to seek out the locked correspondence box on the moonlit gallery table where the heady scent of citron still lingered. We both hoped to hear news of Felix, but more than that, I prayed there might be some plea from lady Tertulla begging her husband to relent from his present course.
“Are you sure this is all right?” she whispered.
“I’ve missed you,” I said, searching for the hem at the back of her tunic with my left hand while I fumbled for the key with my right. “Of course it’s all right. It’s my key.” The noise from the banquet hall was a distant echo.
“Then I guess it’s all right,” she said, and her legs parted ever so slightly. I dropped the key.
Over the next few moments, from a distance, one would have thought that we were simply two people standing still very close to each other. One would have been mistaken. Out of breath, eyeing the cool expanse of inlaid stone, I said, “A cluttered table is the emblem of a busy mind.”
“Or a cluttered mind,” Livia said.
“Either way, there’s plenty of room for us.” Livia had hopped up on the polished surface before I could assist her; in one smooth motion she lay back, bent her elbows, rested her head on her hands, and wrapped her legs about my thighs. There was nowhere else for me to go, and nowhere else I preferred to be. I took hold of her hips and found her. In my haste, she gasped, but nodded fiercely thereafter. Our eyes stayed locked upon one another, even as the slow frenzy of our bodies pulled at us to lose ourselves. We held on, each seeing the other, not letting go, until finally at the end, as rhythm became spasm, I fell into her arms.
“I still miss you,” I murmured into the damp, disheveled hair that had fallen about her ear.
She turned and kissed my neck. “I still want you.”
“Again?”
“No, there’s no time. But let me say it here, while we are still one, while the moonlight carries the scent of the garden to our senses. I love you, Andros, with all my strength.”
I lifted my head to see her face transformed by the night: green eyes-black pearls, pale cheeks-living marble. “I live for you, little fox.”
“Don’t. Don’t cry, Alexandros. What will Publius say when we return to the party?”
“He will say,” I said, collecting myself, “‘Praise Jupiter, for Venus, abducted from our midst, is returned. Here, too, comes Momus, god of mockery and satire. The light and dark that had fled our celebration are now restored to us that we may see.’”
“You know,” Livia said, sliding us off the table and rearranging her clothes, “he probably would say something like that. But be careful, Andros. Momus’ sharp tongue got him banned from Olympus.”
“As long as we leave together, I am ready for exile.”
Hunting for the key, I asked, “How goes it with Musclena?”
“Still an ass. Still limping. It hasn’t helped that when the army camps in Antioch, I sleep with you here in the Regia.”
“Does the man expect you to stay in the slums of the fort town?”
“Of course he does. And I wouldn’t mind, either, except that you’re here. Nebta and Khety send their love, by the way. Don’t worry, I take my satisfaction where I can find it. Somehow, my treatments for headache and toothache have made it into the general log book. Here it is!”
We put everything aside save the letters from our lady, of which there were many. I braved Livia’s temper to scan each of them myself for word of Felix, for I and I alone was privileged to read dominus’ personal mail. And then there was always the possibility that my death warrant was among the sealed pieces of parchment. What would I do if I found it? But then I realized if Tertulla had read my letters to her (I had written more than once) and called me ‘traitor,’ she would have sent word secretly and separately to dominus, instructing the courier that her note be hand delivered to her husband and her husband alone. I would not know that I was doomed until they came for me.