The legate bowed his head and said, “Yes, general.”
Down on the floor of the Great Hall, Lucius Curio had recovered and was now on his knees blubbering up at Publius Crassus. “Dominus, I beg of you. I acted for the good of the house. Will you not intercede on my behalf?”
The youngest son of Marcus Crassus was standing in a shaft of the day’s late golden sunlight. It illuminated his gilt, muscled breastplate and made his arms and face glow with reflected light. The hero of Aquitania looked down at the red-faced, sniffling, puffy-eyed servant and said, “No, Curio, I don’t believe I shall.”
Chapter XXXVI
54 BCE — Fall, Antioch
Year of the consulship of
Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus and Appius Claudius Pulcher
“That’s it. We’re not waiting any longer,” the optio said, the stiff arc of horsehair on his helmet brushing the air as he shook his head. “Bind his hands.”
“Due respect, sir,” Malchus said, “in these foreign parts, how can we be sure if it’s two hours till sunset? Maybe there’s three left. Who can say?”
“I can say,” said the optio. “And I’m saying it now. Malchus, don’t make this any harder than it already is. Just do your job.”
“Sir.” Malchus left the road and walked back up to where I lay. He shook his head and bent to his task.
Betto was already crying. “Furina’s feces, Alexander.”
“I’m glad it’s you, Flavius,” I told him. “I’d rather it be you than a stranger. I am sorry for the distress this is causing you.”
“No. It has to be us. We’ll see you off right.”
“Don’t stretch his arm out too far,” Malchus called from the other side. He smeared his nose across his forearm. “Bind it wide, but not too tight. ”
“Stop telling me how to do this,” Betto yelled across my prone, almost naked body. “Cerberus’ four balls,” he muttered, “you’d think I’d never done this before.”
“Cerberus only has two balls,” Malchus said.
“So you keep telling me.” Betto paused to wipe his eyes with the back of his hand. “Why don’t you go down there, bring ‘em back and prove it to me?”
“Because,” I interrupted, “even if Malchus could somehow demonstrate that the testicles were taken from the beast, it would still only prove the dog has two.”
“Oh,” Betto sniffed, “we’ve done this one before, have we?”
“Once or twice,” I said. “You’d accuse him of deliberately leaving the other two behind.”
I was on the cross, on the ground, my head aligned up the gentle slope of the hill, my feet pointing down toward the base of the fifteen-foot post that rested at the edge of the road into Antioch. Betto was tying my right wrist to the beam already notched and tied to the vertical post. If I let my bare legs fall on either side of the rough-hewn wood, I could feel grass and earth on my calves and the heels of my feet. Above me, the arbutus swayed, a shifting canopy of shade. The trees’ smooth orange bark was peeling back like parchment, exposing next year’s pale green arms. Behind my head, further up the hill, the Etruscan from my friends’ contubernium was digging the four-foot hole for the post. Their remaining tent-mates were on the road, joined by another dozen soldiers holding back the crowd. Cavalrymen were stationed at either end to make sure no one flanked the human barrier.
“Can you push off from the foot rest easy enough?” Malchus asked. “On your toes, your legs should be able to take most of the weight off your arms.”
“That arrow wound in his right thigh’s going to make itself known.”
“Shut up, Flavius,” Malchus said.
“It hardly ever gives me any trouble,” I said helpfully.
“It will, lad. Sooner or later.”
Malchus glared at his friend, an exchange I had looked upon with fondness countless times over the course of our friendship.
“Oh. Sorry,” Betto said. “Let’s not tie his legs; he’ll just get rope burn when he pushes himself up to get a breath.”
“Must you, Flavius? I am barely managing my terror as it is.”
“Merda! Curse me for an ignorant ass!”
“Done,” I said, trying and failing to make him smile.
Malchus said, “No curse required.”
“Where is Livia?” I asked. “She is coming, isn’t she?”
“She’ll be here,” Malchus said, casting a worried look at Betto. “Don’t worry. We won’t hoist you up till she has a chance to, you know, say goodbye.” He glanced behind him down the hill. I craned my neck and saw the officer pacing on the empty road between his men and the Antiochenes who had gathered to witness the execution.
“Could I have some water, please?”
Betto tilted my head up and put his flask to my lips. When he did, I could see the city, a bit of the river, even the Regia. I wondered what Crassus was doing at this moment. Was he standing on a balcony, looking this way? Or now that I was free of him, had he already put me out of his mind? As Betto was about to let my head back down, I saw a flash of red hair in the crowd. “Wait! I think I see her!”
“Sir!” Malchus shouted to the optio. “There she is! The medicus.”
The officer walked briskly up to his men. “Make a path for that woman! Let her through!”
Betto found a large, smooth stone and placed it gently under my head. Then he and the rest of the legionaries moved off down the hill. Betto and Malchus touched Livia’s shoulders lightly as they passed. She was wearing her belted healer’s tunic, stained from work. I wondered if she had been the one to treat Curio’s wounds. Cradled in her arms was a small child. In two days, Felix would be a year old.
She knelt in the space made where the two pieces of wood were joined. “Here is your son,” she said. She put Felix down in the tight triangle of ground between us. He giggled and picked at the bark on the unplaned side of the beam. I spoke to him softly and finally got his attention. He put both hands on my face, squeezed my cheeks and laughed. I smiled, my mouth and chest tight. Something I would not be able to control began to well up inside me. Thankfully, at that moment he turned, held his arms in the air and Livia picked him up.
“He has your looks,” I said.
“He’ll most likely have my temper as well.”
“One of your finest features. That and your whistling. How is Hanno?”
“Oblivious. Soon he’ll be destroyed, like the rest of us.”
“You’ll see to him, though.”
“He was surviving before he met you. I expect he’ll do as well when you’ve gone.” She inhaled deeply and blew the air out slowly. “I came out here with half a hundred questions to which I already knew the answers. There’s no point to any of it, is there?” Her voice constricted with her breathing. “You’ve killed yourself, Andros. And murdered me.”
“I’m hoping you’ll forgive me.”
“No. I never shall.”
“I know. I understand.”
“I understand, too, I do. I know why you did what you did. But you had no right.”
“Little fox, I had no choice.”
“You always have a choice, you stupid man! Who gave you the right to act as one? You were not one. We were the three of us. You had no right.” Her voice trailed off, but she refused to allow any tears to fall.
“What if you were given the chance, Livia, to do something you knew was just and good? Something that would make right at least a little of the wrong.”
“I would never leave you; I would never leave our son.”
“Even if it meant your freedom?”
“Death is not freedom, Alexandros. It’s just death.”
Livia put Felix down on the ground beyond the beam above my right arm. He sat, crossing his chubby legs, happily bubbling to himself as the patch of ground before him became a new unexplored universe. She wasn’t tired of holding him. She wanted her hands free.