There was a small squad of legionnaires marching across the grounds of the Museum. In seconds he could run to them, tell them that Lucius Vorenus, at this very moment, sat with Didymus in the Great Library. There would surely be a struggle, but they would take him. Didymus would be removed. Apion would be discredited. And whatever reward there was, it would be his.
Perhaps the Great Library would be his, too, if his luck held.
But he didn’t run to them. Instead, he walked in the opposite direction, back toward the empty room that had once been his quarters here in the city, back toward the gnomon of Eratosthenes that had, on this very morning, been the sign that sent him back to the Library.
He wouldn’t hand Vorenus over to Rome. Not yet, anyway. He and Didymus could talk on about their old memories and lost friends, unsuspecting that they’d been discovered. They’d been doing so for at least ten minutes when Thrasyllus had finally decided that he’d learned all he could and slipped away before he might be caught.
And how much he had learned! Didymus hadn’t wanted to be told where the Ark was, but Vorenus, that old fool, had told him anyway: Elephantine Island, on the Nile.
Elephantine! Leaving the Museum grounds and crossing the Sema Avenue, headed east toward the Old Quarter, Thrasyllus felt like laughing. After they’d beaten him this morning, the pimp and his brute had dumped him in the square, at the base of the sundial that Eratosthenes had used to measure the circumference of the Earth. Thrasyllus had seen in it a sign that he should return to the Great Library. Returning to the Great Library, he’d discovered Vorenus. And now, having discovered Vorenus, he knew that the greatest artifact of the Jews was on Elephantine—the very island that had the well that Eratosthenes had used to complete his calculations.
The plans of the gods were unexpected at times, but he was confident that they had one. To know it, you just had to read the signs. He’d told that truth to Didymus more times than he could remember over the years, but the old scholar would hear nothing of it. Didymus didn’t believe in signs. Thrasyllus wasn’t sure if he believed in the gods. Even in announcing Apion as his second librarian, Didymus had made sure to belittle the astrology over which Thrasyllus often labored.
But the gods had their plans. Thrasyllus had no doubt.
And he had a plan, too.
Lucius Vorenus had told Didymus that he’d come to Alexandria by barge. He would no doubt return the same way. And somewhere on that quiet canal, out of sight of anyone else, Thrasyllus would capture him. Then they’d go to Elephantine, and with the information from Vorenus he would capture the Ark. It was, from what Vorenus had said, guarded by little more than some boy and the Jewish girl he loved.
When he had the Ark, he would turn Vorenus over to the Romans. He’d take his reward. And then he’d bring the Ark—his Ark—back to Alexandria and learn to use it. Because that was the other thing he’d learned today: Didymus told Vorenus how he’d discovered that the Ark, and the other objects like it—Didymus mentioned that Juba of Numidia had one—were more powerful in certain places. They could draw more power, he said, from sacred spaces. The heart of Alexandria had been one. Another, he said, was Carthage. So Thrasyllus would bring it to Alexandria. He would study it. He would learn to wield its power. And then he’d have something far greater to give to the most powerful man in the world.
What wealth would Caesar give him for that?
His practiced steps brought him into the Old Quarter now. Rounding a corner, he saw ahead the little square with the sundial at its heart. The metal gnomon in its center struck upward toward the sky, toward the gods whose power might soon be within his reach.
Thrasyllus had his sign. And he had his plan.
He just needed to find Lapis, her pimp, and his brute.
7
TIBERIUS
CANTABRIA, 26 BCE
Selene and Juba had made love as dawn was breaking over Hispania. Then, with her husband snoring in peaceful serenity, Selene had gone to what passed for baths in this wretched encampment. It was hardly the comfort that she had known in Rome, living within Caesar’s household, and it was nothing at all like the finery of the baths she’d enjoyed in Alexandria, but bathing was like holding on to a memory. It helped her remember who she was.
The praetorian who’d been assigned by Caesar to see to her safety among the men—a duty that the man clearly disdained, viewing it as akin to watching over a child in the middle of a war he’d much rather be fighting—had told her upon exiting the bath that her husband had left the encampment with the other Roman leaders and was not expected back for an hour or more. She’d thanked him, receiving a rough grunt of acknowledgment, and then decided to take an indirect route back to her tent.
Roman encampments, she had learned, were always roughly rectangular in shape: first a ditch was dug, the removed earth being piled just inside of it so that any attacker would have to first climb down and up out of the ditch, then up the mound of earth that had been in the ditch. Atop this inner earthen rampart, the legionnaires then would build a wooden palisade wall, further increasing its defenses. Four towered gates, one in the middle of each side of the great rectangle, were constructed to give the force inside the maximum amount of maneuverability, but the main gate was always faced to the main road or main danger: here it was the road coming up from Segisama, though the Cantabrian hillfort of Vellica was only across the valley.
Everything inside the encampment had its designated place. Roads running between the gates intersected at the staff headquarters, and around this the tents of the many officers and their legions—and all the other additional staff of what amounted to a temporary and astoundingly mobile town—were placed in well-ordered and precisely regulated rows within further quadrants. Even the latrines had their place, set beyond a wide, open space between the walls and the tents, cut down against the base of the mounded earth and carefully constructed so that the human waste ran away from the encampment.
For all that order, for all that precision, a Roman camp was also a place of both sweltering heat and dirt that—no matter that they’d not seen rain for weeks this summer—was perpetual mud. It was also, to her continued despair, a place of harsh smells: smoke from the cooking fires, the reek of oil on leather and bronze, and urine from men and horses.
Shortly after they’d first arrived, Juba had assured her, with loving laughter, that one never really could grow used to it all—at least he never could—but that in time she would grow better at hiding her disgust. Walking between tents, her head held high and face impassive but for the slightest smile of authority, Selene was certain that she’d mastered the art of masking things well. It seemed she’d been doing it her whole life.
Her mother had taught her so much before she took the asp and died. How to pretend. How to manipulate. How to seduce.
And how to love.
Selene was sure her mother wouldn’t approve of the status of the man who had become her husband—Cleopatra was a woman who had seduced two of the most powerful men in the world—but she had no doubt that her mother would approve of the way that she loved Juba. The Romans accused her mother of so much in attaining the affections of first Julius Caesar and then Mark Antony—spells, love potions, and far worse—but Selene knew the truth of it. She’d seen it in her mother’s eyes when she looked at Selene’s father, and the way she spoke of Julius Caesar it seemed there was no doubt that she’d looked at him the same way before his assassination. It was love. Simple and real. She’d loved them, and they’d loved her back.
It was a lesson Selene had learned well. She had Juba’s love.