It was what was inside, Vorenus knew, that was so important.
Pullo knocked at the door of the shrine, and they had to wait nearly a minute before latches were unhooked and the door swung open on its bronze hinges.
Hannah was there, smiling with a bright-eyed kindness that contrasted with the dark circles under her eyes. One arm was casually draped across her round belly as if she was resting it there. With her other arm she gestured inward. “Please, do come inside.”
Vorenus gave a slight bow of acknowledgment, and then he and Pullo stepped inside, and the door shut behind them.
The building had once been split into two parts: the initial room that they had just entered, and then an inner sanctum farther on. The dividing wall between the two spaces had been broken away over the centuries, however, so that in the middle of the room it remained only as a kind of low bench between the two spaces. The side in which they all stood had been taken up by Hannah and Caesarion’s shared bed and the rudimentary makings of a home, including a long table stacked with scrolls and books, among which Caesarion sat, on the bench, with his face hidden in a leather-bound codex. On the other side of the low dividing wall stood the Ark.
It didn’t matter how many times he’d seen it, Vorenus still felt a sense of awe and wonder to be near the ancient artifact. Though he’d never seen it used—he’d only heard stories of what it had done in the past—he was nevertheless certain he could sense the raw power of it, like a low thrum filling the room that he could sense in his bones even when his ears could not hear it.
It also never ceased to amaze him how new it looked. It was, quite obviously, a kind of box, wrought of rich acacia wood that was so highly polished that it shimmered in the reflected light of the four lamps in the first room. The bottom was slightly larger than the top, so the sides angled inward, drawing the eye up the thin lines of metal that formed intricate designs of vines and leaves over the wood. On the broad side of the Ark that faced them, those metallic lines twisted into a symbol like an inverted pyramid set within a circle, a horizontal line cutting across its bottom third. Hannah had worn just such a symbol on a pendant on the night Vorenus had first met her. Caesarion wore one now.
The top was trimmed with gold, and two small statues crowned it, one gold, one silver. They were, Hannah had once explained, meant to be angels, kneeling toward each other, heads bowed, their wings swept forward as if they were reaching for one another. And between them, flat against the surface of the Ark’s top, was a pitch-black disk, perhaps the breadth of Vorenus’ forearm.
“Thank you for coming, despite the foggy night,” Hannah said. Her voice was quiet, almost a whisper.
The Ark seemed to have that effect on them alclass="underline" though for years Vorenus had been coming to this place, he’d found that their mutual sense of reverence never wavered. “Of course,” he replied.
Hannah smiled, her face beaming with the unmistakable vibrant beauty of pregnancy, and then she turned toward her husband at the table. The young man still didn’t seem to have noticed their arrival. “He gets like this.”
“I’ve not been that focused in a long time,” Pullo replied.
“Perhaps never,” Vorenus whispered.
Hannah grinned and quietly walked over to stand behind Caesarion. She bent over and kissed the top of his head. “My love, they’re here.”
Caesarion startled, and at last blinked away from his book to look up at her and then Pullo and Vorenus. His face softened with genuine relief, though his eyes gleamed with excitement. “My friends, please, come and sit.”
There was another bench on the opposite side of the table, and the two legionnaires found places that were clear enough to sit down upon it. Hannah carefully lowered herself beside her husband, who smiled at her and reached over to place his hand upon her stomach.
Hannah’s smile was deeply warm. “She’s been active today. I think she’s excited.”
“It could be a boy,” Vorenus said.
“I still think it’s a girl,” Pullo said.
Caesarion looked adoringly at his wife. “The mother always knows best.”
“And my mother said that girls are carried low,” Pullo said. “And look, she’s carrying the baby low.”
“Actually, the saying is that girls are carried high,” Vorenus pointed out.
“So it is.” Hannah rested her hand over Caesarion’s, and they both smiled as the child within her moved once more. “But I don’t think that’s true, anyway. I just have a feeling it’s a girl.”
“Boy or girl,” Caesarion said, “he or she will be more beautiful than we can possibly imagine.”
“With two such parents,” Vorenus agreed, “it will be so. I can’t wait to meet him.”
“Or her,” said Pullo.
“Beautiful,” Caesarion whispered, patting his wife’s belly once more.
Hannah squeezed his hand against her, but then nodded toward the piles of writings before her. “That’s not why we’re here, my love.”
Casearion let out a long breath and finally pulled his hand away. He turned to Pullo and Vorenus. “We think we figured it out.”
“Figured what out?” Pullo asked.
Caesarion nodded his head in the direction of the artifact over his shoulder. “The Ark. Why it’s weaker here, like it has lost some of its strength. When I used it I could sense that.”
Vorenus knew that Caesarion and Hannah felt that it had lost some of its powers, but he’d never really asked how they had known it—though he’d always suspected it must be because they’d tried to use it. “I thought you didn’t want it used,” he said to Hannah.
“It’s true. I didn’t. I still don’t. But you’ve said it yourself, Vorenus: the Ark isn’t safe here in Elephantine.”
Vorenus started to open his mouth to ask why they hadn’t followed his advice to move it, but Caesarion held up his hand. “It’s still safer here than out in the open. All the choices before us have ill outcomes. It has been that way from the moment we left Alexandria. We all know this.”
“It’s only a matter of choosing the least evil,” Pullo said.
Hannah nodded. “Here we have a place of relative security. The Roman garrison is over the water in Syene and only rarely do they come here. Whatever disputes between the priests of Khnum and the Jews who built this place—the ones who were here when my family once kept the Ark in this very place—they are forgotten. And the Therapeutae have welcomed us as the long-lost cousins that we very much are. No one would think to search here for us, for the Ark.”
“But if they do,” Caesarion said, acquiescing to the arguments of the elder man, “then this place is little capable of protecting the Ark. You are good men, my friends, but all of us together could not stop even a cohort.”
“Though a century, perhaps,” Pullo said, seeming to puff up at the thought of taking on a hundred men.
Vorenus patted the bigger man on the back. “Not even in our younger days. And we are anything but young now.”
“Speak for yourself,” the big man muttered. He pointed at his hideously scarred face. “This alone will turn back half of them.”
“I think it’s charming in its way,” Hannah said, causing the furrows on Pullo’s face to flush dark.
“Point is,” Caesarion said with a smile, “staying here has been the best of our bad options. But we felt we needed the power of the Ark to help even the odds if it came to it.”
Vorenus nodded. “So you tried it.”
“I did. Just a little at a time, learning to control it, learning how to control myself. The power … it’s beyond description. But it’s less than what I felt in Alexandria, like it was disconnected from something.”