Pullo said nothing more, though, and Vorenus decided to leave it alone. The ferry was turning into Elephantine’s little harbor. They could see workers moving about the docks as they brought in the catches of the early morning and directed cargo from one place to another. “Well, I have a hard time believing it myself, after Actium and all,” Vorenus finally said, “but every report we’ve had seems to be that they’re happy.”
Pullo grunted.
“Anyway, they’re bound to be king and queen of Mauretania, from what I hear. And I’m just glad she’s well. She’s a good person in her soul. They all were.”
Pullo nodded, and then his eyes widened as he looked out over the water at Elephantine. “Well, speaking of the prick, there he is.”
There was a small square at the head of the docks, and standing there, more than twice as tall as a man, was a bronze statue of Augustus Caesar, shining in the early morning light, his eyes of glass and stone turned to look down upon the water with a look of calm, penetrating authority.
“Our emperor is rather fond of himself.” Vorenus sighed. “The idea, I think, is that anyone who even passes by the island knows they’ve entered the territory of Rome.”
Pullo chewed the inside of his lip. “Caesarion has to see this every day?”
“He doesn’t come down here much, I suppose. Our rooms are on the other side of the island, and he and Hannah don’t much leave the temple where the Ark is, anyway.”
Behind the massive statue of Augustus there was a low wall that had been put up for defense in a long-ago era, ringing what was clearly a motley assemblage of stone buildings. Among the many gray threads of morning fires weaving their way through the sky were a few thicker columns of smoke rising from the town: the fires, Vorenus knew, that were burning in the courtyards of the several temples on the island. One to Khnum, the ram-headed god of the river’s dangerous cataracts. Another was to Satis, the gazelle-horned goddess of the river’s life-giving floods. And amid still others, there was a dilapidated temple built to honor the one true God of the Jews—once real, but now as equally gone as his counterparts on the island. It was there that the Ark had found its temporary home.
“Someone ought to tear it down,” Pullo said.
“What?”
“The statue.” Pullo was staring at the bronze statue of Caesar as if he might strike it down himself. “These are Caesarion’s lands. It isn’t right.”
Vorenus patted the big man on the back. “I know. But Caesarion doesn’t care. Not really. He cares for the safety of the Ark, Pullo. And his love of Hannah. Nothing else matters, bless him.”
Pullo sighed, but he nodded. “You said allies.”
“What?”
“You said before that Hannah wanted the Ark here because it had allies. Are there more keepers here? More Jews?”
Vorenus smiled. “More keepers? No. More Jews? Well, that’s a trickier question.”
“You’re hiding something. You’ve always been a bit of a scholar like that, you know.”
“Being smarter than you hardly makes a man a scholar,” Vorenus said.
Pullo laughed again. “True enough. By that measure there’d be a dog or two in Didymus’ care.”
The ferry slid up against the dock, and the river water that rolled off its wake sloshed against the wooden pilings. Two crewmen jumped over to the dock boards, carrying lines that they pulled tight and hastily tied off to cleats. One or two of their fellow passengers stood to disembark at midship. Together, Pullo and Vorenus began to move in that direction.
“Don’t be too hard on yourself, my friend,” Vorenus said as they walked. “I’ve never met a dog who could out-think you. Though one or two of these holy cats that the Egyptians like might give you a run for your money. But anyway, I don’t mean to be tricky. Not really. It’s just that our allies here call themselves Jews, but I don’t think most Jews would agree that they are.”
The other passengers who were leaving had already reached the dock, and Pullo motioned for Vorenus to go first. “I don’t understand.”
“Neither did I,” Vorenus admitted. “They’re called the Therapeutae.”
Pullo just stared. “Thera—”
“Don’t worry. You’ll learn soon enough.” Vorenus stepped out onto the dock with his left foot, keeping his right on board the ferry as he offered his crippled friend a hand to help limp up and out of the boat. “Suffice it to say, my dear Titus Pullo, that you’re about to find out that the world is a far bigger and stranger place than you or I ever knew.”
14
THE OUTLAW KING
CANTABRIA, 26 BCE
Juba awoke with a headache that throbbed like a hammer inside his skull. Eyes still shut, he groaned.
“Thank the gods,” said a familiar voice.
Juba squeezed his eyes shut even harder against the pulsing behind them, but he couldn’t squeeze out the pain. He took a deep breath and found the air thick with humidity and the scents of human waste. He shook back a stomach-curdle of revulsion and released the breath in a long exhale that came out as an anguished sigh. Then he willed his eyes open.
Octavian was kneeling beside him, his features lit by a dim candle. There was a look of honest relief upon his face. “I thought you were dead.”
Juba closed his eyes again and raised a hand to his forehead. His fingers were rougher than he remembered, and his arm ached with a bone-deep exhaustion he’d never experienced before, but it still felt good to rub his forehead. “I’m alive,” he rasped. His throat was drier than it ought to have been, too.
His jaw had hurt when he flexed it, and when he brought his fingers down against it they found his face swollen and bruised, hot and painful to the touch. Trying to think back through the throbbing in his forehead, he remembered Corocotta punching him. Right when he was reaching for Selene—
“Selene!” He gasped, flinching from the pain of it.
He started to rise up, the need to see her overwhelming the pain of his body, but Octavian’s hands caught him at the shoulders and kept him from moving too far. “Go easy, brother. She’s not here. They didn’t take her.”
Juba panted for a few seconds in a horrible mix of pain and fear as his panic subsided. Then he nodded and allowed himself to fall back down again. He lay for a while, eyes closed, swallowing the angry pains, hoping the throbbing would abate. When it showed no signs of doing so, he tried to focus on questions. Why was he so tired? And what had happened? Octavian said Selene wasn’t taken. Which meant they had been?
He found himself instinctively starting to grit his teeth, so he forced himself to relax.
Start simple, he told himself. Where am I?
He opened his eyes again, and he looked around.
They were in a room. A very small one.
A windowless room, he saw as he slowly stretched his neck to peer into the half-light. Two simple cots, a clay pot for the voiding of bowels, a single tallow candle burning beside it, and a heavy wooden door.
Not a room, Juba realized. A cell.
“I need to get up,” he said.
It took his stepbrother a few moments to respond, and Juba could see him frowning in thought. But when he did reply, it was in a kind and agreeable tone. “Okay,” he said. “Just go slow.”
This time Octavian’s hands helped to lift him as Juba rolled into a sitting position. He grunted, groaned, and then swung his feet off the cot on which he’d been stretched out. The leather soles beneath his feet scuffled on a floor that might have been hardened clay. He flexed his legs against the resistance of the earth, and he was rewarded with fresh pains in his muscles to compete with the throbbing in his head.
Octavian let him go and shuffled backward to sit down on his own cot. The eyes of the emperor of Rome, the man who had been proclaimed Augustus Caesar, were dark with exhaustion, and he moved with the weariness of one who had been broken.