Now Crassus, now! Here in the instant of recognition, in the one moment when all the gods call out for decisiveness, for retribution, this is the moment for action! I feel the knife in my hand, but I cannot move a muscle. She has pinned me like an insect; though the light is still very dim, I know she sees me standing here. Is that a look of terror that passes over her face at the sight of me. Too soon, whatever was there is replaced by an expression of unbearable sorrow.
The meeting of our eyes is far more terrible than the sight of her rutting. Move, Crassus, move! The longer I stand here, the more my shame grows. The longer I delay, the more shards of me fall away and shatter. Quiet! or they will hear. Look away, Tertulla, set me free to act, but she holds me fast with the saddest gaze in all the world.
Cold sweat pools around the hilt of my dagger till I feel it will slip from my fingers. Something new in this recurring nightmare! With immense effort, I can raise the blade till the iron comes between my lady’s eyes and mine. The spell is broken. Now to act! Quickly, choose one of three fates and end these night terrors. Slip it beneath my own breastbone or, if Tertulla be untrue, then this long knife should pass full through her slender throat. No, no blood shall stain her fair neck with crimson, not by my hand. It must be Caesar then, whose pulsing artery cries out for severing. The man I’d thought my friend is turned the other way; he cannot see me, his mind fixed as it always is, on conquest.
Tertulla makes a small, frantic gesture. She shakes her head in a clear imprecation for me to do nothing. Her eyes widen and only because of thirty years’ intimacy with that face, could I see she wants me to slip away, to depart-to continue to do what I have done since the moment I had come upon them-nothing.
So, there is to be no peace. Nothing changes. Does she save me, or spurn me? Knowing that my mind will now crack like an egg only makes the coming agony worse. In my chest, there lies a thick knot of rope where my heart had but a moment ago beat; now it tightens, tightens. I know I will obey her. Even in betrayal, it is a reflex of love I cannot abandon. And the core of me, already broken in two, finds it can shatter into even smaller pieces. I take one step back and let the curtain come between my eyes and hers, between a joyous past and an empty future.
When I am all alone again in the dark, I scream.
Prolog
19 BCE — Spring, Siphnos, Greece
Year of the consulship of
Quintus Lucretius Vespillo and Gaius Sentius Saturninus
I forgave him.
Perhaps that is my failing.
My head jerks off the table and once more I take up my pen. Why must the old succumb to so many naps? We begin as babies and end the same; but the dreams of the very young are free from torment. I have lived too long and seen too much to be at peace. Sleep is not the refuge it once was.
I see a man on a skittish horse, but memories of dreams do not hold up well in the light-the fragment is frail and fleeting. I think of Crassus, and how I used to calm him from his recurring night terrors.
Melyaket pads quietly onto the patio, sits on the balustrade, one foot on the floor, the other dangling. His strange attire no longer startles: today he wears a pale green, belted shirt with a wide band of embroidery along the edges and the wrists of its odd, long sleeves; a plain leather vest and the sherwal of his land, baggy trousers tied at the ankles. I ignore him until a cloying, acrid smell wrinkles my nostrils. “Must you do that here? ” I ask him. He is waxing his bow with what smells like rancid goat fat. I glance up and notice for the first time that grey has begun to cajole a place in amongst the thick tangle of his short, black curls. He tells me he must leave, an announcement I have anticipated yet quietly disregarded. I think how sad his absence will make me. He laughs and I realize I have spoken my thought aloud. “I thought you'd be happy to be rid of me,” he says.
“Let us say your departure will give slightly more pain than your arrival. When will you go?”
“At sunrise.”
“Then waste no more time with an old man. Go, prepare yourself,” I say. Melyaket reminds me that there is real work yet to do; he cannot sit like me, day in and day out, doing nothing but admiring the sea.
A man of astonishingly fleet reflexes, which in my case are hilariously nonessential, Melyaket has taken a step backward before the thought to strike him has reached the muscles in my arm. Intention finally pairs with action, and my walking stick swings ineffectually past him. "You think this is nothing?!” I cry hoarsely, pointing a shaky finger toward the stacked tins stuffed with completed parchments. Melyaket smiles, lays his bow against the railing and wipes his hands on a rag. He pads behind me, grips me with strong fingers and kneads the stiffness from my shoulders.
“You're a good boy,” I say, mollified. I reach up to pat his hand.
“And you are an alarmingly old man,” he says. After awhile he circles round and drops to his knees before my chair, his necklace of polished blue stones clinking. Sitting on his heels, he says, “Try not to die while I'm gone.” His eyes speak in silence what words would cheapen.
“Try not to get killed before you return,” I reply.
Melyaket smiles the smile of faith. “By the grace of Melek Ta'us, we will see each other again.”
“Hmmph. You and your Peacock Angel.”
“Do you think we have come all this way by accident?”
“What I think about it is as irrelevant as your faith. Then, we were there; now, we are here. Go, live your life, what's left of it.”
“Wait and see. With Her blessing, I shall bring company when I return.”
I glance up at him, my eyes two stones. “He is dead.”
“You do not know that for certain.”
“Then I am dead, to him. Don’t waste your time.”
As he so often does, Melyaket ignores my words. “How about one more foot massage before the midday meal?” He reaches into one of the bottomless pockets of his trousers and wags a small vial of oil before my eyes.
“If your hands are dry, just say so,” I answer, bending to remove my sandals.
“You are a gnarled old walnut tree, aren’t you.” He warms a few drops of oil in his hands. Then he looks at me with that way he has. I hate that look. “Camel,” he says.
I stare him down, but it’s no use. Before his hands touch my grateful heels, I start to smile. And then we laugh.
The scrolls of the first part of my tale are on their way to Alexandria, and Melyaket has left to find whatever destiny awaits him. Both are dear to me and I pray that each may find their way. Neither is a certainty. Was it chance, prowess, or the goddess Melek Ta'us who had protected him through all his years? If this Peacock Angel be everything Melyaket claims, may she watch over him and return him safely. And while I am asking for miracles, may she and any other gods who are eavesdropping on an old man’s thoughts watch over me as well, so that if and when Melyaket returns at last, he does not find me feeding the vegetables in the garden, and I do not mean from a bag of manure.
My writings are as safe as I could make them: a friend at the Serapeum will see to their copying and distribution. To publish the work in Rome would be to invite the ire and censorship of mighty Augustus, who not only styles himself Caesar, but divi filius, son of the divine one, Julius Caesar himself.