He remembered running from room to room, window to window, shouting back the news of what he could see of the Roman forces who were forming up on the Museum grounds. He remembered how he looked out one of those windows, just when they thought all hope was lost, and had seen a dark-skinned man and a little girl approaching the doors alone. Didymus had been sitting down here by the pool—near to this very spot, in fact—when Thrasyllus had shouted it down to him. He never understood the look of shock and unreadable awareness on the chief librarian’s face when he heard that Juba of Numidia and the lady Cleopatra Selene were coming.
Back in the present moment, Thrasyllus blinked.
Lady Selene.
That was where he’d seen this Philip from Macedonia before: with the royal family. It wasn’t often that he’d gone to the palaces on Lochias, but on occasion Didymus had sent for a book to further his teachings to the royal children. And Thrasyllus was certain he’d seen the man there.
He couldn’t possibly be who he said he was.
Thrasyllus pulled the coin into his fist. Then, looking around him to ensure that Apion wasn’t watching, he stood and hurried up the stairs.
Didymus worked day and night, but he wasn’t truly indefatigable. Eventually exhaustion would overtake him and he would fall asleep, facedown amid the papers on his desk. As his assistant for so many years, Thrasyllus knew which boards in the hall would creak. So as soon as he left the stairs he knew exactly where to step so that his movements made no more sound than the steady hum of noise from the rest of the building. It took him little time at all to make it to the librarian’s office, and to silently place his ear to the door.
“I do not think he wants to ever kill again,” Didymus was saying. “But if he was freely offered the Ark, if he had the chance to use it, just once, to gain his revenge, his thirst for revenge against Caesar remains unquenched.”
Revenge against Caesar? The astrologer’s mind raced as he closed his eyes to focus in on their words. Who were they talking about? And what ark?
“So long as he’s no threat to us,” said the man who called himself Philip. Thrasyllus heard the sound of a chair settling under a man’s weight. “He can kill as many Caesars as he wants. He just can’t do it with the Ark.”
This wasn’t just any ark. This was the Ark. Thrasyllus racked his mind, certain that he’d heard of such a thing before.
“I do believe you are safe from Juba, my friend,” Didymus continued. “But he isn’t the only threat. You’re still a wanted man here, Lucius Vorenus. I’m glad you’re here, but it isn’t safe.”
In a flash, the astrologer’s contemplations about what the Ark might be disappeared, replaced with the clear memory of exactly who Philip of Macedonia really was: Lucius Vorenus, the former head of the palace guards, who’d been condemned to death by the conquering Caesar when the city fell, but who’d somehow survived his intended execution. His name had been on the lips of the city for weeks while an enraged Octavian sent his soldiers chasing every whisper of a rumor of the man’s whereabouts.
“I know it only too well. Caesar is not a man to forget,” Vorenus replied.
No, he is not, Thrasyllus thought to himself. And then, as if reading his mind, Didymus said, “Indeed so. He would pay a great deal for your head.”
Leaning against the door, Thrasyllus couldn’t help but smile at his good fortune. Here, here in the Great Library itself, was a man that Caesar would pay riches for. Here was an opportunity for Thrasyllus to prove his worth. An opportunity far greater than any he’d had before. He’d read the sign of the gnomon of Eratosthenes rightly, by the gods. After all he’d been through, he was meant to come back here and see this man. He was meant to be the one to find Lucius Vorenus and turn him over to Caesar in return for a reward that was beyond anything he could ever receive as a mere librarian.
All he needed to do was to find the nearest Roman soldiers. There would be some not far away, he was certain. There was always a company near the main square.
Thrasyllus pulled his ear away, looking to the ground to measure his retreat to the stairs, but then he froze, thinking.
What if he learned more? Surely more information would mean more appreciation, would it not? And the two men were still talking. And what if Didymus was equally a traitor to Rome? Would Caesar take him, too?
The thought frightened the astrologer, but then he remembered the way the older man had looked at him with such disappointment when he told him that he’d chosen Apion instead.
Besides, he reassured himself, Caesar would surely not kill the old scholar. He’d just remove him from his office and replace him with a new chief librarian. Not someone with questionable loyalty, like Apion, but someone who had proved his worth.
Thrasyllus, smiling, could think of only one suitable candidate. So he leaned his ear once more to the wood.
“You need something,” Didymus was saying. “Otherwise there’d be no reason to risk a journey so deep into the city. So. What is it, Lucius Vorenus? What brings you to Alexandria?”
“It’s about the Ark of the Covenant, Didymus. It’s about the Shards.”
The Ark of the Covenant? Yes, that was it. Didymus had once had him spend several months trying to determine a date when the Israelites fled Egypt—the Exodus, the Jews called it—and he’d had to read Greek translations of parts of their sacred book to do so. It spoke of a great Israelite leader named Moses, of the powers given to him by their god. And it spoke of how that god had given him a special object, a sacred vessel of extraordinary power: the Ark of the Covenant. Didymus had never said why he was interested in dating the event, but it was clear enough now that it was because of the Ark. It had been found.
“It is safe?” Didymus asked.
“For now. It’s on the Nile.”
There was the sound of moving cloth from inside the room. “No, do not tell me where, Vorenus. I do not need to know.”
“But where it is, Didymus, might be the problem.”
“How so?”
“Because it is not as powerful as it was here in Alexandria. So he says.”
“He’s tried to use it again?”
“He does not wish to do so. He does not think that a man should wield such power, he says.”
“Always was a good man,” Didymus said. “The best of what a man could be. He is well?”
“So he is.” Vorenus laughed. “And he’s in love, if you can believe that.”
Didymus laughed, too. “I can, indeed. That beautiful Jewish girl, is it? Hannah. Yes, even someone so inexperienced as I am could see the look in his eyes when he looked at her. And she at him. Strange how love can be.”
“So it is, I suppose,” Vorenus said. “I’ve only loved once. And that was lost a long time ago.”
“I know it only too well, my friend,” Didymus said. “We cannot choose the ways of the heart.”
There was a pause, and Thrasyllus imagined the two men smiling sadly at one another as they shared a memory he did not understand. Instead, he was reeling with thoughts. Lucius Vorenus was living somewhere on the Nile, and he had the Ark of the Covenant. The reward Thrasyllus would get from Caesar was going up by the minute.
“So he wants to know what more I’ve learned about it?” Didymus finally asked. “He wants to know why it isn’t as powerful now?”
“He instructed me to ask exactly that,” Lucius Vorenus said. “He doesn’t want it for the power, you understand. But if he needs to use it to keep it safe, he wants to know how.”
“I understand. And you’re right about what you said earlier, my friend.”
“What’s that?”
“Well, it does indeed have to do with where it is.”
* * *
Standing outside the Great Library, Thrasyllus made his decision. It was, he suspected, one of the most important he would make in his life.