Wrath of the Furies (29 page)

The floor was still crowded with people sitting or lying down, but not as crowded as it had been during the night. In darkness, those lumps of flesh had seemed hardly human, but by the bright light from the open doors, I could see the faces in the sea of bodies around me. Their despair was jarring. Why did they not speak? By the yellow tunic I wore they must have known I was a suppliant seeking the favor of the goddess, and they were beyond hoping for help from a stranger. Instead, they cowered and cringed as we passed. I looked from face to face, and shivered.

A cordon of spear-bearers awaited us at the bottom of the temple steps. We walked up the Sacred Way at a steady pace, toward the city. As in the temple, the scene that had been disturbing by starlight was even more frightful by daylight. There were thousands of Romans all around me, people of all ages, all wretched, all slowly being starved—deprived not just of food but also of hope. By divine law, the temple and its grounds offered them sanctuary from the wrath of the Ephesians, but unlike the gods these mortals could not live on incense and smoke. It would almost be more merciful if Mithridates would put them out of their misery—

I shuddered, and tried to banish the thought. But if such an idea could occur to me, surely the king had thought of it already, and so had every Roman-hater in Ephesus. They looked on the Romans as pests, as vermin. First we had infested their city, taking all the best things for ourselves. Driven out of the city, now we were infesting and polluting their most sacred and beloved institution, their claim to fame, their very own Wonder of the World, the Temple of Artemis.

As we approached the boundary of the sacred temple precinct, a toga-clad figure suddenly rushed up to one of the spear-bearers in the rear, catching the man by surprise and taking the spear from him. The others in the troop reacted swiftly, turning about and lowering their spears toward the Roman, who assumed a defensive crouch and pointed his stolen spear back at them.

I drew a sharp breath, for I recognized the Roman. It was the man who had come into the city to beg the day before, the man the crowd had pelted with food. The image of his desperate face was burned into my memory. Now his desperation was verging into madness.

“You must give us food!” he shouted. “My child is almost dead with hunger.” He glanced at a nearby woman who held a frail-looking boy in her arms. The woman's red hair hung in tangles and she wore a tattered stola. “And someone must come and tell us what's to happen to us. We ask those yellow-robed fools at the temple and every one of them tells us a different story. What does the king intend to do? Does he mean to make slaves of us?”

“He wouldn't dare!” shouted a woman. A crowd had begun to grow behind the Roman wielding the spear.

“What would the monster
not
dare to do?” said another woman.

The captain of the spear-bearers strode through the troops, pushing aside the lowered spears to either side of him until he stood before the crouching Roman, apparently unafraid of the spear in the man's trembling hands.

“You will drop that weapon at once,” he said.

“Never!” said the Roman. “Not until … not until the king himself comes to speak to us.”

“Yes! Let the king come,” said a gray-bearded Roman behind him. “Let Mithridates come and explain his intentions. He owes us that much.”

“The king owes you nothing,” said the captain sternly. “Now I order you again to drop that weapon.”

“Or what? You'll starve me to death?” said the Roman, with a demented laugh.

So swiftly it seemed to come from nowhere, the butt-end of a spear swung through space and struck the Roman soundly against the side of his head. At a signal from the captain, one of the spear-bearers had sprung forth, swinging his spear before anyone could stop him.

The Roman went reeling. He fumbled with the spear at first, then dropped it and tripped over it, so that he hurtled headlong toward the spears lowered in his direction. He managed to catch himself just before colliding with a spearpoint, then scrambled back, at last coming to a halt by falling on his backside. The men surrounded him. Two of them took hold of his arms and pulled him to his feet. The Roman struggled weakly against them and began to weep.

The red-faced soldier who had lost his spear retrieved it.

“Hand that to me!” shouted his captain, grabbing the upright spear from the soldier. “You're not worthy to carry it. Now draw the knife from your scabbard and kill this Roman at once.”

There were gasps from the crowd. Even some of the spear-bearers were taken aback.

Zeuxidemus spoke up. “Captain, we're still within the sacred precinct. This man has been granted the protection of Artemis. You can't shed his blood here.”

“No? How about over there, beyond that marker alongside the Sacred Way, where those men are digging that trench? That's not sacred ground, is it?”

“No, but—”

“Carry the Roman over there,” said the captain to his men.

“Captain, you don't intend—but the Roman harmed no one,” said Zeuxidemus, following behind the captain.

“Ha! Tell that to the fool who lost his spear, after he's received his lashes for incompetence.” He turned to the soldier, whose face was now pale. “But I'll make a deal with you, soldier. If you can manage to kill this Roman cleanly, with a single cut, I'll see that your lashes are reduced by half.”

“Captain!” said Zeuxidemus. “Surely for now it would suffice to arrest the Roman, and let some higher authority decide his fate.”

“I have all the authority I need, vested in me by the king's decree.”

“What decree?”

“The one that forbids any Roman to bear arms, upon immediate penalty of death.”

“But the Roman was within the sacred precinct—”

“Where he seized and then brandished a weapon at my men.”

“But he was very quickly disarmed—”

“The Roman armed himself in blatant defiance of the king's decree. The punishment must be carried out at once. Should I fail to do so, I would be defying the will of the king. As would anyone who made any effort to thwart this execution.”

These last words were clearly meant to silence Zeuxidemus, but he would not be stifled. “The Great Megabyzus himself showed mercy to this man, only yesterday. You were there. Do you not remember?”

“I do. Had that angry crowd been left to deal with this piece of Roman filth then and there—instead of seeing him rewarded by the Great Megabyzus with all the food he could carry—we wouldn't have had to face this unpleasantness today. Now, then—you men, hold the Roman fast, so that your dishonored comrade can dispatch him at once.”

Zeuxidemus stood by helplessly, as did I. The Roman crowd, including the man's wife and child, stayed behind the marker by the road. Not one of them dared to step outside the sacred precinct, but many began to weep and cry out as the captive was forced to his knees. The man's wife would have run to him, but others restrained her. One of the soldiers pulled the Roman's head back by a fistful of hair, baring his throat. From the Roman's lips I heard a frantic babble—a curse on Mithridates, a desperate plea to Artemis.

The soldier with the knife strode forward and drew back his arm. With a single motion he cut the Roman's throat. A ghastly sound came from the man's open mouth, then a torrent of blood gushed from the gaping wound, cascading onto his filthy toga. He jerked horribly as the men held him in place, then became still. The man holding him by the hair released his grip, and the Roman's head slumped forward. His eyes were still open, staring lifelessly at nothing.

The man's wife began to wail. She fell to her knees, dropped the child, and began to tear at her tangled red hair.

Zeuxidemus made a noise of dismay. The captain looked at him sidelong and grunted. “How can one of you lot be so squeamish, priest? For the glory of the goddess you can kill one bleating beast after another, until blood clogs the gutters of the altar, yet you blanch to see a man put to death—and a filthy Roman, at that!”

“The man should at least be given the proper rites,” said Zeuxidemus in a hollow voice.

“Funeral rites? For this scum?” The captain laughed. “You men, drag his carcass to that trench over there and dump it inside. If any of his countrymen should wish to retrieve the corpse, they can step outside the sacred precinct to do so. Otherwise, he can rot in that ditch and be eaten by maggots.”

After this was done, the spear-bearers reformed the cordon around Zeuxidemus and me. As we strode past the ditch, I glanced at the body of the Roman, lying twisted and crumpled amid the muddy soil. I thought of all the trenches being dug just beyond the perimeter of the sacred grounds, and suddenly imagined them full with corpses—not merely filled but overflowing, heaped with dead bodies. The vision was so startling, so real, I seemed for a moment to glimpse the future.

It was then that I knew without a doubt what Mithridates intended to do with the Romans who had been driven from Ephesus, though how he meant to accomplish such a vast slaughter I could not imagine.

What of all the other Romans still trapped in the cities and villages conquered by Mithridates? They numbered in the tens of thousands. Surely the king did not intend to kill them all, I thought, as we hurried past the trench and on to the city gate.

 

XXVI

The chamberlain met me as soon as I arrived at the palace. He took me to the dining hall, where I was given a meal of bread and dates, which I consumed like a starving man. Then he escorted me back to my quarters. I was surprised, and happily so, to see no one in the room but Bethesda.

As soon as the chamberlain closed the door, I took her in my arms.

“But where are the other two?” I whispered in her ear.

“Gnossipus and Damianus were given their own room,” she said.

“Do you mean we're alone?”

“Yes.”

What followed involved no words. My longing for her was as sharp as a nettle, as sweet as honey. The room seemed too small to contain it. There was no piece of furniture or bit of floor or wall against which we did not make love in one position or another. How long this went on, I couldn't say, as time seemed to have fled from that room.

There was a bowl of fruit and a pitcher of water on a small table, and from time to time we paused to eat and drink. Even during these moments of rest, we said little, and I never spoke above a whisper, fearful of being overheard by some listener at the door. We seemed to be alone, but occasionally I wondered if someone might be spying on us through a hidden peephole. What a show we gave them, if that were so! But there was never any indication, afterward, that anyone saw or heard anything that transpired in that room. I think we truly were alone all through that languid morning and lazy afternoon.

From time to time, in the heat of passion, I imagined it was Amestris with whom I was making love; the music of her voice and the beauty of her face were vivid in my memory. But thoughts of Amestris led to thoughts of doomed Freny, and to memories of my dream of Artemis the night before, and I would shake myself and open my eyes and gaze at the woman I was with—no phantom or goddess or memory, but Bethesda, who to my eyes was more beautiful than any other. What a lucky man I was to hold in my arms the treasure I valued above all others!

As the day waned and the dinner hour approached, I told Bethesda, in bits and pieces, and always in a whisper, what had happened to me after she and the others departed from the temple grounds and I was left in the care of Zeuxidemus. When I mentioned the appearance of Samson, her eyes widened ever so slightly. If I sometimes imagined Amestris when I was with Bethesda, did she sometimes imagine Samson, or some other man? As soon as that thought occurred to me, I strove to banish it. Such thoughts never lead to anything good.

When I told her about our visit to the house of Eutropius, I left out Amestris entirely. The doom laid on the young virgin slave of Anthea's—so I described Freny—was poignant enough without including the anguish of her older sister.

“Why always a slave?” was Bethesda's comment. “If her mistress also is still a virgin, would she not be more suitable? Surely the life of the daughter of a powerful citizen is of more value than the life of a mere slave, and so would be more pleasing to those who receive the sacrifice?” I noticed that she avoided mentioning the Furies by name.

“I don't think that's the way it works,” I whispered. “If you could have seen the queen's face…”

“Describe to me again what she was wearing.”

Thus did Bethesda lead me into digressions of more interest to her than to me, interrupting the thought I was about to express: that Monime somehow (through spies?) must have learned of the king's attraction to Freny, and had used her influence to convince the Great Megabyzus and the Grand Magus to choose Freny for the sacrifice. Thus the queen would get rid of the poor girl, presumably with the king himself being forced to watch while the object of his desire was slaughtered. What sort of mortals were this king and queen, to play such games with the lives of others?

Instead of sorting out these tangled thoughts, I was doing my best to recall the details of the queen's clothing when Bethesda interrupted me. “The fortune-teller back in Alexandria!” she said. “She spoke of a virgin, did she not? A beautiful young virgin, in danger. That must be Freny. The fortune-teller also mentioned a sacrifice—yes, I'm sure of it. She even spoke of the wrath of…”

“The Furies,” I dared to whisper, at which Bethesda made some sort of sign, as if to protect herself from the Evil Eye. What did I recall of the fortune-teller's rant? I had not taken her seriously at the time. Her advice had been to stay away from Ephesus, and I had ignored that advice. What else had she said? Suddenly I heard her voice in my head, almost as if she were in the room with us:

“Blood! Fountains of blood, lakes of blood, a sea of blood! The streets will be filled with rejoicing. The temples will be filled with corpses!”