The Bow of Heaven - Book I: The Other Al - By Andrew Levkoff Page 0,65
tracks. I could not wipe them away, for Sabina held my hands to tend to them.
I stared at the blurry ceiling. “I don’t know if I can do this.”
Sabina bent over the table, looking directly down at me and said softly, “She must come to her husband a virgin.”
“Of course,” I said, sniffling loudly, arguing on behalf of the stranger who would take her away from me. “What of her time with Boaz. Wasn’t she ...”
“She is intact. I told you he was a better man than most of his kind.”
“This is very hard, Sabina.”
The healer’s tone turned contemplative. “Perhaps it would be better to have her taken away from this place.”
“You must never do that! I will not allow it!” I shouted, rising to my elbows, then quickly deflating back into flaccid decorum. “Apologies. Please, Sabina, let me go to the master. Let me ask him for a peculium. At least grant me this.”
“That is the first thing I did when I learned of your fondness for each other.”
“You did not just discover it from Ludovicus?”
“Subtlety, Alexander, is one of your lesser strengths. You’d have to be blind not to have noticed the way you come apart around my daughter. But Livia, she’s got more craft than a market fair. If they weren’t all whores and poor as Arabs, she’d have made a great actress. She hid her feelings for you from me, and my ears were perked, I can tell you.”
“Why didn’t you come to me when you saw I was falling for her?”
“There was no harm in it as long as it wasn’t serious, and honestly, I had no idea anything would come of it. I should have done, I see that now. I am deeply sorry.”
“I may be ill.” Sabina brought me a bucket; I turned on my side and held it, mouth open, breathing in short gasps.
“Look at how far you’ve come in such a short time,” she said, her hand on my shoulder. “Crassus will grant you many favors; you will be a rich man some day.”
“I could join you.”
She shook her head. “My dear sweet Alexander, you will never leave this place.”
I stared into the dark emptiness of the bucket. “I am undone.”
“Then maybe this is the best advice I can give you: the less you see of her, Alexander, the less pain you will endure. I am finished.” It took me a moment to comprehend her meaning. “Wear these slippers. The soles of your feet sustained little damage. Return to me tomorrow and I will replace the dressings.”
“Have you said all these words to Livia?”
“I have. She is rebellious, but there is reluctant understanding in her eyes.”
I put down the bucket, swung off the table and got my feet into the slippers. If there was anything more to say that would move her, I could not think of it. I shuffled toward the doorway and without looking at her said, “Know that I will speak with Livia again. You had better see to dominus.”
***
Crassus never said a word about returning the unused silver to the treasury, but then, he didn’t have to, did he? He was also silent about our mad dash into the burning insula. He never spoke of it again. Crawling off to my own bed, I gave instructions to my secretary to disturb me only if dominus or domina called. I slept the dreamless sleep of the dead for five hours.
I awoke to a gift. Gleaming on the edge of my washstand lay the golden fibula from the night before. Its rubies had been cleaned, the entire piece polished. But this was not the gift that shook my heart. Inside the clasp, freshly inscribed in Greek was a single word:
Hero.
Chapter XX
76 BCE - Summer, Rome
Year of the consulship of
Gnaeus Octavius and Gaius Scribonius Curio
We met by Apollo in the lull between midday meal and supper. Dark clouds churned overhead; distant thunder grew nearer. Surrounding us in partial privacy, the poplars danced a tune called by the wind, but they thrashed out of time. We sat at right angles to each other, holding hands, our backs against adjacent corners of the plinth. Apollo would cry soon, tears streaking his marble face.
“We could run away together,” Livia said.
“We will not.”
“I know.”
“How can something sound so logical to the ears, yet make no sense at all to the heart?”
“Oh, shut up.”
“What have I said?”
“Don’t make this into one of your philosophical puzzles.”
“Apologies.”
We sat quietly for a moment listening to the rising wind.