Ides of March (Time Patrol) (9 page)

“Yes,” Moms lied.

“Ah!” the old woman hissed. “I told Caesar to beware the Ides. But this? This is different.”

“Different how, Spurinna?” Moms asked.

The old woman continued to poke and prod the liver. “Marc Antony. He must do his duty and save mighty Caesar today, since I fear my warning will not be heeded. It is Marc Antony’s destiny. He must be told.” And then she looked up, gazed into Moms’ eyes. “And you are not an Amata.”

Spurinna snatched the sacrificial knife and held it to Moms’ throat.

That didn’t take long
, Moms thought, noting that the old woman’s hand was shaking and there wasn’t any strength behind the blade. She could disarm the old woman quite easily, as knife to throat counter-move was one of the first things taught in close quarters combat, but Moms wasn’t sure what Spurinna’s angle was and she needed to find out. If she were a Shadow agent, why didn’t she try to cut? If she was a Time Patrol agent, she was being cautious. And if she were what she appeared to be, then what was going on?

“I am who I am,” Moms said, opting for vague.

“I told them to send me someone,” Spurinna said. “Someone pure. You are not pure.”

She had a point there
, Moms allowed. “I am supposed to be here. Now.” More vague on top of vague, with a sprinkling of an opening if Spurinna were her contact. And the knife
was
bothering her, so she moved fast, snatching it out of Spurinna’s hands before the old woman could react.

Moms twirled the blade. “Good balance.” Then she tossed it on the sacrificial altar. “I am not a threat to you.”

Spurinna frowned. “Why are you here?”

“To help.”

“You did not flinch at the blade,” Spurinna said. “I have never seen that in a woman. Soldiers, yes. The best are trained so. Gladiators live by the blade and they do not flinch.”

“I am a soldier,” Moms said.

“You could have used the blade on me once you took it.”

“Why would I do that?”

Spurinna sighed. “Come.” She led Moms out of the chamber, into a tunnel. Servants awaited in an antechamber. Spurinna pulled off her robe. She gingerly stepped down into a shallow pool. Water was poured over her wrinkled body, the blood scrubbed away by servants. Moms followed suit, stripping, extremely uncomfortable with others touching her skin, forcing herself not to flinch at this, but impressed that the water was warm.

Once cleansed, Spurinna led the way up the pair of stairs on the far side where more servants slipped clean robes over their heads, cinching them. Sandals awaited.

Spurinna had not said another word and began shuffling down a corridor lit by flickering candles. Moms followed. They arrived in a chamber with walls made of large blocks of stone. No windows. Just one door in and out.

“Close it,” Spurinna ordered.

Moms swung the heavy door shut.

A small blaze crackled in the fireplace, the smoke drawn out a narrow opening. A few candles gave insufficient light in addition to the fire.

Spurinna settled down with an irritated sigh of arthritis on a couch. She arranged the pillows until she was as comfortable as she could get. Moms remained standing. Mainly because there was no place to sit other than the couch.

“How can you help?” Spurinna asked. “You who are not what you pretend to be?”

“How do you know that?” Moms asked.

“Ah, woman. I am the great Seer of Rome. I know all.”

“Then why don’t you know who I am?”

“Because you are not of Rome,” Spurinna said. “Are you from the Egyptian whore? I even asked her for assistance in this matter.”

Moms puzzled over that. “Cleopatra?”

“Apparently not from her,” Spurinna said, reading the question mark in Moms’ tone. “She resides outside the city, in one of Caesar’s villas. She is a large cause of the problem we now face. The scandal is all over the city. Caesar belittles Calpurnia with his antics.”

Moms had not known that, but the download did. Cleopatra had arrived in Rome two years ago.

“How are you a soldier?” Spurinna asked.

“In my past,” Moms said. “Why you sensed I am not pure.”

Spurinna shifted positions, vainly trying to get more comfortable. “My bones ache. Very deep. The fire doesn’t help much any more. Nor the potions the healers ply me with. There is no cure for being old, is there?” It was on the verge of being a real question, but Spurinna didn’t wait for an answer. “Someone tried to kill me this morning. Poisoned my breakfast. That was not good for my taster. If it were you, perhaps just finish the job here and now?” She indicated a dagger on the table next to her couch.

“I could have done that in the sacrificial chamber.”

“I know.”

“I didn’t poison your food. Is your taster all right?”

“She’s dead,” Spurinna said. “That’s what poison does.”

“Why would someone try to poison you?”

Spurinna replied with her own question. “Why are you here?”

When Moms didn’t reply, Spurinna continued. “I believe the answer to both questions is the same. That the future lies in the balance today. So tell me, since you aren’t going to kill me, and you say you are here to help, how do we save mighty Caesar today?”

“Why do you believe Caesar must be saved?” Moms asked.

Spurinna snorted. “Because it will be Civil War again if he is assassinated.”

“Didn’t you see his death in a vision? Don’t you have the Sight?”

Spurinna rolled her eyes. “My dear girl. My visions? Do you believe in visions? Do you have them?”

That
, Moms thought,
was a very good question
. She knew Scout did. And Spurinna had just confirmed she knew who Moms was; at least what Moms was: a time traveler.

“If you don’t have the sight, how do you know there is a plot against Caesar?” Moms asked.

Spurinna spread her hands. “One does not need to have visions to see the future. You think a conspiracy against Caesar by so many could be kept a secret? Rome is the easiest place in all of the Empire to gather information. One only has to pay the slaves. The nobles? They act as if the slaves don’t exist. They could murder someone in front of fifty slaves, and believe there were no witnesses at all.

“Of course, a slave who speaks out of house, would face torture and death. It’s why I have to transform what I learn from my network into prophecies. This protects my sources and it protects me. And makes it easier for the nobles to believe.”

Spurinna shook her head. “It’s not just the slaves. My best network is among the gladiators. Husbands tell their wives things. The wives? They have to talk to someone. Unlike you. Many noblewomen welcome gladiators into their chambers. They share pillow talk with the gladiators. The gladiators then share it with me for coin. Unfortunately, there’s quite a bit of turnover in the gladiator ranks. But that also makes it easier for the wives to confide, knowing odds are the man won’t be around for very long.

“So it all comes here, to Spurinna, the all-knowing Seer. In this instance, not only were the slaves in many noble households abuzz about the conspiracy, some of my gladiators didn’t even have to bed a woman to learn a key piece of information. Decimus has hired ten swordsmen from the arena, ostensibly for games inside Pompey’s Theater near the Senate later today, but they have already received instructions that their real task, and why they are being paid so handsomely, is in case their services are needed if the attempt on Caesar goes awry.”

Decimus. Gladiators in Pompey Theater. The download confirmed all that.

“It is your task to gather information,” Moms said. “And you have done an excellent job at it. But why do you think the future is that Caesar is to be saved?”

“I told you. Another Civil War looms if he dies. Even if that doesn’t occur, do you know who rules alone if Caesar is gone? That buffoon Antony.”

“But the future is not yours to shape,” Moms said.

Spurinna sat up straight. “What do you mean?”

Moms asked a question in response. “What have you done, besides the prophecy, to save Caesar?” The prophecy, at least, was in the history books.

“I went to Calpurnia and told her she must inform Caesar she had a dream last night. She should have given it to him already.”

That too was, while not confirmed by history, was a legend surrounding the event.

“You’ve done more than just those things, haven’t you?”

Spurinna tilted her head. “We
are
to save Caesar, are we not?”

“Not.”

Spurinna put her hand to her mouth. “Oh. That is not good. Then I might have made some mistakes.”

Petrograd, Russia, 1917.

DOC WASN’T THERE AND THEN HE
was there, but he’d sort of always been there. It was the best way to explain how he arrived, becoming part of his current time and place without fanfare or excitement among those around him. He was in the bubble of this day, not before, and hopefully he wouldn’t be here afterward.

“Please don’t!” Doc pleaded.

The Tsarina was startled by Doc’s shout. “How dare you enter my chambers!”

Her four girls were kneeling, their heads bowed and their lips moving in silent prayer to the orthodoxy which had consumed their mother. The Tsarina held the frail boy in her arms. One hand clenched a knife, the point pressed against her son’s wrist. The boy’s eyes were closed and not reacting to the pressure, she was exerting. He was tall for his age, pale, with his skinny legs dangling to the floor.

It is 1917. The U.S. Ambassador is shown intercepted messages in which Germany promises to return the American Southwest to Mexico, if Mexico declares war on the United States; nearly half the French Army mutinies, refusing to attack any more after the disastrous Second Battle of Aisne and over one million killed so far in the war; the United States pays Denmark 25 million for the Danish West Indies which were renamed the U.S. Virgin Islands; the Russian Civil War begins and would end up holding the Guinness World Record for highest death toll at a million and a half combatants and almost nine million civilians; but even that pales in comparison to the Spanish Flu which is percolating among the hundred thousand members of the Chinese Labour Corps, used by the French and British for manual labor on the Western Front and would eventually claim anywhere from fifty to one hundred million lives in the next two years; Mata Hari refused a blindfold and is executed by firing squad; nine members of the Milwaukee police department are killed by a bomb, the largest loss of police in one event in the United States until Nine-Eleven.

This was Doc’s first Time Patrol mission and it wasn’t looking good.

Some things change; some don’t.

“Don’t do it, Tsarina.” Doc attempted a calmer tone.

“I must,” Alexandra said. “For all of Russia. Only then, will Nicholas listen to me and the people will understand. It is what Rasputin prophesied.” And she nicked her son’s skin and blood flowed.

More blood than Doc had ever seen from such a simple cut, but this was the curse of the Royal Disease. Queen Victoria’s legacy passed via two of her five daughters to the royal families of not just Russia, but Spain and Germany as well. One of the drawbacks of monarchies; among others.

“What have you done?” Doc whispered, because even in this circumstance it seemed wrong to make loud noises in this beautiful, small room, which was filling with the smell of copper. It had changed in an instant from a sanctuary for a proud and noble family to a place of pending death.

The cut was small, a Band-Aid matter for anyone else. But not for this hemophiliac boy, whose disease was a contributing factor to this revolution that would eventually cause the deaths of tens of millions. Numbers which Stalin, writing his own history, would simply label a statistic.

Doc stepped forward, but the Tsarina placed the edge of the small dagger across the boy’s throat. Alexei was awake now, whimpering, and his eyes wide with fear. Terrified not just of the wound, knowing what it meant for him, but shock at the betrayal of the mother who’d spent her entire life worshipping at his feet, the future Tsar, after birthing those four girls to no acclaim or acknowledgement.

“Let me help,” Doc said.

The Tsarina shook her head. “This is all that is left.” Strangely, she smiled and looked at her four daughters, the Duchesses. “We will carry his body to the very step of the Duma and show the people what they have done. Have them rip up the abdication!”

Doc knew who she meant by
they
. The Bolsheviks who were willing to destroy a family to get their way and eventually destroy a country.

For a moment, as he watched the blood pool, Doc thought of the possibilities. He was standing on a page of history that he could simply allow to turn. If she accomplished what she had started, the people who had been brainwashed into hating her would forgive at the sight of her dead son. It would all change. The people would need their Tsar more than ever.

Doc had the choice; he could keep Russia from the infidels and murderers; from falling to the communists and wouldn’t
that
change the next century!

She had a very valid point and a shocking, but brilliant plan.

Despite his Hippocratic instincts, and his Time Patrol mission, Doc remained still, the pool of blood widening. None of the Duchesses had opened their eyes, their lips still mouthing prayers to a God who had abandoned this family; if ever He’d had them in the palm of his hand.

But Doc held their fate in his hand. Now.

The fate of millions upon millions.

The boy’s eyes had closed; his breathing shallower.

Doc estimated the pool of blood to be just under a liter. At this point passing through a Class II hemorrhage, roughly twenty percent of the boy’s blood. If it got to forty percent, there was no stopping it.

It finally sunk into Doc how Godlike the Time Patrol was by protecting their present at the cost of the past. He knew if he did nothing, let the boy die, let her carry the body to the Duma, the family would survive and it would all be so different and Stalin would not graduate from small-time hoodlum.

But he remembered the choice they’d all been given in the Space Between. And how he’d chosen not to go back and redo his own past. He could not be certain the Tsarina’s choice would turn out any better than the history that was already written. Maybe not Stalin, but someone else, would replace Nicholas II. And maybe not the Soviet Union would arise, but a weak Russia, easily defeated in the future past by Hitler and the Nazis, who could then turn their entire wrath on the West.