up against the rough wood. Two things, however, are now as clear as the tear that hangs on my eyelash, refusing to fall: the first is that I can no longer feel the glass vials in my mouth; the second is that I will never last to see the sunrise.
•••
There are some predicaments from which the mind, once it has been exercised in misuse, even though it bring all its powers of reason and logic to bear on the thorny snare that entangled it in the first place, simply cannot escape. Cause will have its effect.
Epilog
19 BCE - Winter, Siphnos, Greece
Year of the consulship of
Quintus Lucretius Vespillo and Gaius Sentius Saturninus
You will not be surprised to learn that I did not perish upon that cruel wood, and may have some interest in the circumstances leading up to my rescue and consequent escape. I have but a hazy memory of the former, and none at all of the latter—I must combine my own memory’s etchings with the version accorded me by my savior.
I suffered greatly that night, but to my unending shame, I made Livia suffer more. Looking back to that wretched time with the perspective of another thirty-seven years, I see a fool blinded by his own pompous, self-justifying rhetoric, a sagacious and perceptive shade by the name of Spartacus, and a lord of Rome who paused in the making of the means of his own destruction to help a man he would, but could not call “friend.”
I shall tell you what I can, but first I require a brief nap, for in this heat, my thoughts, rather than marching in orderly fashion like the line of ants that now stream in single file along the terrace wall with blind determination, are like a rabble of copper butterflies startled from a field of campanula, flying this way and that, with no…
•••
The thwack of the ladder against the back of the crossbeam brings me out of my semi-conscious stupor with a thrill of agony. Instinct and pools of strength kept secret even from myself push and pull me up to work at the air with my crumpled bellows, my cheeks inflating each time I send a befouled breath out into the darkness. It is the last deep of the night, that hour when dawn’s nearness may be smelled and heard, but not seen. Behind me, a legionary takes each complaining step with caution, either to minimize the jarring of his movements, or to guard against spilling his precious charge. I peel my tongue from the roof of my mouth in preparation to receive the balm of water which he carries. This time there will be no brave declination. I shall take what is offered. I have no wish to extend my misery, though that will surely be the result. I am beyond caring. It is the sensation I crave—the slippery invasion of liquid, its coolness, the oppositeness of the hardening concrete which has become the interior of my mouth. I anticipate the wetness on my lips, the drops that will fall to run down my broken chest, the clean taste of life that my body must have, that it demands, overriding any argument my shriveled mind might make to refuse it. In my delirium, I believe that I can smell it.
“Thannuh,” I rasp as the soldier reaches the top of the beam, but the sounds I emit are unintelligible.
He laughs. “You sound like me now. Worse.”
I want to say that I do not understand, but what comes out instead is, “Wahr.”
“Water? Is that what you want?” The dim face that leers down at me over the top of the beam is a nightmare of exposed teeth and gums; I remember that the rest is a scarred ruin left by the pox. It is a face made for the night. Palaemon reaches down and holds a camp cup in front of my own exhausted features. He moves the rim just below my lips. Then he stops.
“Ah’ff phulled guard duty for you. Phretty funny, don’t you think? ”
While he’s talking, my stomach muscles cramp involuntarily and I buckle. My forehead knocks the cup and water spills to the ground. As if he’s talking to a child Palaemon says, “Aleckthander! See what youff done!” He looks at what little is left in the brass cup, then drinks it. He makes an exaggerated sound of satisfaction, then sets the cup on top of the beam behind my head.
“You din’t really think you were getting any,