“You’re chust like all the rest. You think because of this,” he said, pointing to his torn face, “because Ah’m ugly, I’m stuphid.”
“No, Palaemon. I do not think you are stupid because you’re physically scarred. I think you are stupid because science has yet to discover a tool able to measure the imperceptible level of your intelligence.”
The felon’s pale eyes registered anger. While he worked out how he had been insulted, he rested his hand on the hilt of his pugio. “Ah’m here,” he sneered, “there’s nothing you can do about it, and you’ll be seeing more uff me, espheshelly you,” he said, tilting his pockmarked chin at Livia. That was all I could bear; I prepared to pluck a knife free from its sheath, but as in most things, while I made preparations, my wife acted.
Livia turned and stood with her face so uncomfortably close to Palaemon’s he took a step backward. I wondered if anyone had ever voluntarily come as close to that wreck of a face without being paid. “Why don’t I just visit you in your tent?” she said sweetly. Rummaging in her shoulder bag, she added conversationally, “Did you know my mother was also a healer? I’m like her; I always carry my tools wherever I go. Alexandros will tell you; one time she sliced a man’s throat with one scalpel and slit his wrist with another. She did it in less than five heartbeats, and he was three times the size of you. It runs in the family: we’re just as good with either hand,” and now her voice lowered, “and we don’t like being threatened.”
“We’ff that in common,” Palaemon said, but his voice was uncertain.
Livia extracted a long, thin, bronze tool from its pouch; it had a fine hook at one end. “I’ve got several of these; some have blunt ends for probing. Not this one; this I use for retracting tissue.” She twirled it in front of his cratered face. “Do you know what else it will do?” Palaemon shook his head, making the cheek protectors on his helmet flap on their hinges. “Once, in Alexandria, an African prince had an inflammation in his groin. As it happened, one of his testicles had gotten infected. I picked up his swollen sac and spread the skin tight.” She made the motion with her thumb and forefinger just in front of his nose. “With a scalpel, I made an incision, only an inch or so.” Palaemon, fascinated, tried not to look horrified. “Then I took this hook,” she said, reenacting the gesture, “reached inside and felt for the cord that held the diseased ball to the rest of him. One little tug and out it plopped, right into my hand, neat as you please. A snip with a scissors and he was half the man he used to be.”
“You don’t scare me,” Palaemon said.
“Really?” she said, leaning in and holding him with the green of her eyes. “That’s surprising, because, you see, I liked him.”
“There’s a centurion up ahead. Octavius will send both you and Velus Herclides packing as soon as he hears there are criminals in the ranks. Centurion!” I shouted.
“Ffeelus said you’d say that. When you did, he told me to tell you and all your friends this: congratulations on your little son. Felickth, is it?” We froze. “You’re a long way from Rome. And Ffeelus left many frenss behind. So lesss us be frenss, too, and effryone gess what they want. We get our share of the treasure, your boy stays healthy, effreybody’s haffy.”
“What is it?” The officer was short, squat and ugly, the opposite of his plumed helmet and five phalerae strapped across his chest. He must have spent hours polishing those medals which he wore with casual pride as they glowed in the afternoon sun. I imagined he was equally proud of the scars on his arms and legs. In three, maybe four heartbeats I weighed the probability that Velus was bluffing (Palaemon was nothing more than his mouthpiece), and even if he wasn’t, no one could ever get close enough to Felix to harm him. I could not even confirm that Herclides was here. “Well?” the centurion pressed.
I was about to have him lay hold of Palaemon when Livia said, “I’ve got something for that arm. Looks like it hurts.” We were walking again. The left gate was only a few hundred feet away.
“This?” he scoffed. “I did that to myself this morning. Tripped on a guy rope. Don’t deserve any salve. And if my men saw it on me, they’d laugh and then I be forced to beat ‘em with my vine stick.” He waved the gnarled and glossy emblem of his rank in her face. “You don’t want to be responsible for that, do you, miss?”
“Look-” I started.
“Of course not,” Livia said. “I hear the general has something special planned for tonight.”
“That he does. Got some musicians to entertain us. Brought ‘em in from Cyrrhus. Dancing girls, too. Though I guess there’s no pleasure in that for you.”
“Oh, you’d be surprised where I take my pleasure,” my wife said, staring pointedly at Palaemon. He felt her eyes on him, I am sure, but kept his gaze rooted to the dirt at his feet.
Chapter XXV
55 — 54 BCE — Winter, On the March
Year of the consulship of
Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus and Marcus Licinius Crassus Dives
The higher up the chain of authority it traveled, the less the news of Palaemon’s and Herclides’ presence in the army was of interest. Malchus was furious, demonstrating his ire with personal threats and vows of bloody retribution should anything unfortunate befall any person anywhere, not only my family, as a result of contact with those two criminals. Once he’d caught his breath, Malchus then complained to his centurion, who spit, cursed and railed bitterly to Vel Corto, primus pilus, that his two sons had been turned away when they might have had a place in the ranks but for this breach in army regulations. Corto, the highest ranking centurion in the army, annoyed that he had been interrupted during a winning round of latrunculi with legate Petronius, had the soldiers brought before him. Both men were in the 9th cohort of Legion VII, not a particularly senior posting. But the lead identity tags in the pouches around their necks were in order. Malchus said he would bear witness against their treachery, so Petronius said there was nothing Vel Corto could do but refer the matter to Gaius Octavius, legate of Legion I. Velus Herclides, his beard regrown so full it almost hid the sly grin he’d been saving for this moment, handed Octavius the letters of recommendation signed by P. Crassus himself, and that was the end of that.
•••
“Read me that last one again.”
We were encamped near Pella. No, that’s not true. Our camp was close by the few shoddy structures crouched disrespectfully among the cracked and fallen columns that were once known as that great meeting place of nations, but this ruin did not deserve to claim the name of Pella. Here there had been art, intellect, grace and science, for this had been the capital city of Philippos of Macedon, father of the great Alexandros. But neither man nor Nature had smiled upon this once-great megalopolis. More than a hundred years ago, Pella had suffered the same fate as a thousand other city-states: everything of value had been spirited away by the Romans, and what they left was not worth keeping. The soul of the city had been torn away, and the tatters that remained were enough to mourn, but not to give hope. Any stout-hearted citizens who endured to begin rebuilding were thoroughly discouraged not long thereafter, when an earthquake that would have knocked the teeth from a Titan razed what little the Romans had left standing.
Now, Pella is a monument to the Ephemeral. Alexandros conquered the known world, and this is what has become of his palace in a mere three hundred years. How will it look in a thousand? Crassus wanted to march his army all the way to India and the Outer Sea. When I think about these things, even now they still make me chuckle.