Written in the Ashes (55 page)

As they came out into the
agora
from behind a large pillar, Hannah could see the steps of the Tabularium on the other side, and the row of people waiting their turn to register some birth or death with the scribe there. But then she heard a voice, and her feet turned to stone, a memory more powerful than death gripping her bones.

“Mama?”

“Shush,” Hannah closed her eyes and listened to the voice of the man calling out across the crowd, deep, powerful, and raspy with too much wine. There was that lilt, an intoxication of power, and beneath it an untrustworthy wavering of tone that shifted every breath, like sand in the desert. Yes, it had to be him.

She took a tiny step forward so she could peer between the branches of the bougainvillea bush overcome with a pink effusion of blossoms. And then she saw the man she would have known anywhere in the world, his two friends beside him, men who years before had come into her father’s field and kidnapped her while she slept. They stood with their faces turned away beside a wooden box where a young dark-haired girl had been positioned before a mildly interested crowd, wrists bound before her, head low. A slave auction.

Hannah crouched and then turned back, creeping through the bougainvillea to find a way through the crowd without being seen.

“Bad men,” said Alaya, repeating the term her mother used for the Parabolani.

“Yes,” whispered Hannah. “Bad men, Alaya. We must be very quiet.”

Alaya lifted a finger to her lips, “Shush.”

Hannah crept through the bushes, holding Alaya’s hand, looking back every two steps to see the slave traders. One counted coins into a box. One stood beside the girl. One moved among the crowd, raising the hand of the highest bidder while stealthily pick-pocketing the rest of the engrossed onlookers. Hannah had always thought of them as one man, oddly. In truth they were probably brothers, and so looked alike, but it was more than that for Hannah. In her mind, she had seen their faces and voices blend during the days on the road, and during the hours they pinned her down and forced themselves upon her. They were one man with black eyes like two empty holes in the ground. But here, suddenly, they were very real, and brought like demons out from the corners of her mind where she had pushed them away for so long.

The man at the front was not even dark-haired like she remembered, but nearly grey, where his brothers were both dark-skinned and dark-haired, beards slick with oil. He called out to someone in the crowd and pointed, raising the girl’s bound arms over her head like dead fish. Hannah cringed.

Had she been alone, she might have challenged them. Had it been years ago, before she came to understand the power of men, she might have called out and tried to save the girl. But now, all she thought of was her daughter’s safety, and of moving through the crowd unseen. Still, she felt the rage burn in her blood, searing white hot with longing for revenge. For here were the men who had killed her father. Here were the men who had stolen her life.

As she neared the edge of the crowd, she stopped and picked up Alaya, and swung her up to her back again. The highest bidder was before her, a tall thin man in a brown
tunica
with merry eyes. Here, three steps away, stood this young girl’s fate. Would he be kind to her? Would he give her clean clothes to wear and fill her belly with bread? Would he rape her every night as she cried before he slept at her side and snored like a beast? Would he work her in the kitchens beside other women he had purchased, stolen from a dead shepherd’s arms in the darkness of night?

She had thought often in that first year how lucky she had been to come into Alizar’s house of all houses. Tarek, fool though he was, had saved her life by allowing Alizar to fetch the doctor when he first brought her home. And Alizar was a kind master. She knew it could have been far, far worse.

One of the raiders came to the tall man standing before Hannah and raised his arm to indicate he was the highest bidder. As he did so, he met Hannah’s eyes, and she held it with a powerful stare like a tigress emerging from the trees.

For a long time, they stared at one another in recognition. Hate for hate. He saw the rage in Hannah’s eyes and the bronze collar at her neck, and his eyes challenged her.

Come on, young thing.

Nothing has changed since that day.

You were so easy to destroy.

So easy.

Hannah stealthily withdrew her knife from the hilt at her calf, her fingers tightening around the bone handle as Alaya buried her face in her mother’s hair and began to cry. But as Hannah stood poised before the raider, another power moved into her, overtaking her limbs.

Hannah raised her voice. For the first time in her life, she heard a power she did not know she possessed spill out of her throat. “Whatever he is bidding I will pay it twice,” she said.

The raider met her eyes.

She stood firm.

He ignored her until she reached into her pocket and withdrew Gideon’s bag of coins. Seeing it, the raider lowered the man’s arm and walked toward her.

“Go and stand in the bushes, Alaya,” whispered Hannah. “Run!” She lowered Alaya, who ran as fast as she could to the bougainvillea shrubs along the wall where she crouched down and watched, terrified.

Hannah trembled as the man came to stand beside her, so close she could smell the stench of his unwashed
tunica
. She rooted herself on her heels and breathed deeply, summoning her strength. He locked eyes with her, and slowly reached for her arm.

But Hannah met him with fierce eyes that spoke of death, and he did not dare take another step toward her. She shook the purse and held it higher. The entire crowd fell silent, and turned to watch her, the only woman in Alexandria in seven hundred years to ever bid upon a slave girl. “You will bring that girl to me,” she said in her loudest voice, “and then you will leave this city. You will return to where you came from and never, never take another girl from her father, do you understand me? Or so help me you will die in your sleep with your throat slit, every one of you.” A low rumble like an animal sound left her throat.

The raiders glared at her, and then nodded to each other. The fair-haired man beside the girl pushed her forward from the wooden platform, and the crowd parted to let her walk to where Hannah stood, her eyes fearful and timid as Hannah’s had once been, her head low.

The man before her reached for the bag of coins, and she saw in his other hand a concealed knife. She swept the coins back but he brought his knife up before her, waving it. “I remember you,” he snarled. “Stupid Jewish whore. I remember your tight little cunny.” He narrowed his eyes, taunting her. “And how you screamed for more.”

In an instant, Hannah swung her own knife into view and faced off with him. “Shut your mouth.”

He laughed. “Give us the coins, slave, and you can keep your curses,” he said. Around them the crowd formed a circle, shifting uneasily.

Hannah held her knife firm. “Give me the girl,” she said.

“The coins first.” The man grasped the girl by the scruff, firm, then threw her to the ground.

Alaya watched from the bushes, too terrified to move. “Mama!”

Hannah and the raider circled the girl, knives raised.

“How did you get the money, slave?” said the man. “Did you steal it? Do you know the penalty for stealing?”

“It is my husband’s money,” said Hannah. “Lower your weapon.”

“Everyone knows slaves cannot have husbands,” said the man. “Thief.” And in one quick movement he lunged for her, grabbing her by the arm and turning her around. He held his knife to her throat, leaving her unable to use hers on him. “You dare to threaten me,” he growled. “Let me tell you what I will do,” he whispered to her through clenched teeth as she squirmed. “I will kill you as the thief you are, and I will take your coins and the girl. And then I will take that pretty little daughter of yours hiding in the trees, and find her a new home. What do you say?”

“I say you rot in Hades,” said Gideon, his own knife drawn against the man’s neck with a firm hold. “Now let her go.”

The man growled and shoved Hannah to the ground, but he was no untrained knife fighter. He wrested free of Gideon’s grip and spun around, his own knife flung out to meet Gideon’s throat, but then, suddenly he crumbled instead, and behind him, Hannah pulled her knife from his back.

Alaya screamed as the man fell to the ground. The crowd became uneasy, but stayed right where they were, eager to observe the unfolding drama. “You will never touch another woman again,” she said through clenched teeth, and then spat on him. On the ground the man’s body twitched and then fell still.

Immediately, the grey-haired man that stood at the auction block lifted his sword and lunged into the crowd with a scream of fury. He came straight for Hannah who took halting steps backward. But Gideon was quicker. He shoved her out of the way saying, “Get up to the steps. Go!” as his sword met the slaver’s gut and the man dropped to his knees. As Gideon wrenched his blade out, an old woman with a dark red shawl the color of dried blood began to scream out, “Murderer! Murderer!”

Hannah swiftly bent down and took the hands of the girl on the ground. Then they fled toward the bougainvillea bush, the weeping girl hanging from Hannah’s hand, kissing her fingers.

Hannah called out for Alaya, but her daughter was not in the bushes. She called again, and still her child did not come.

Then before her appeared the third slaver, holding Alaya’s head, a knife at her small smooth throat. Hannah screamed as suddenly he toppled backwards, a knife having flown through the air and plunged straight through his left eye, spraying blood across his face and hair. He dropped Alaya’s hand and fell backward into the dust. Then Gideon strode forward, kicked the man on his back, and retrieved his knife with one yank. He wiped it on his black
tunica
, and then went to Hannah and held her.

Hannah was trembling in Gideon’s arms, clutching Alaya to her, the slave girl beside her. “They will imprison us now,” Hannah whispered. “We have killed three men.”

Gideon kissed her forehead. “Stealing children from their fathers and selling them as slaves is illegal in this city. Those men will meet their fates in Hades. It is done.” Then he called out to the crowd, “No funerals for these bastards! Toss their bodies out the city gates to the desert dogs.” The crowd closed in around the slavers, eager to relieve them of any wealth they concealed before discarding them like rubbish over the wall.

Pigeons cooed and scattered as Gideon led Hannah, Alaya and the girl up the steps to the Tabularium. Gideon cleaned the blood from his sword, the fury of the fight still burning in his eyes. Hannah clutched Alaya tightly. The slave girl cowered beside her, weeping.

“Give me the coins,” demanded Gideon, his hand outstretched.

Hannah pulled the heavy leather pouch out from under her belt and handed it to him, her fingers trembling.

He took it. “And this girl? Who is she?”

Hannah cleared her throat. “The same as me.”

Gideon nodded and turned away, leaving Hannah standing with Alaya beside the slave girl. Then he cut to the front of the queue where the scribe was receiving the people, and he threw the heavy bag of coins on the table before the small, bald Roman man wearing a formal red
palla
. “This is for the freedom of my wife and her friend,” he said. “Pay half these coins to the house of Alizar.” And then he called the women forward. “Tell the man your names, and it is done.”

The women spoke one at a time, first Hannah, and then the girl, whose name was Ioni. The scribe eyed them suspiciously and then wrote several brisk, jagged letters on his scroll. Then he set down his stylus and spilled Gideon’s gold
solidi
into his hand to count them. After the Roman was satisfied, he nodded to the gruff soldier behind him. The soldier raised a hand and called the women forward to a blacksmith’s stall. The same blacksmith appeared whom Hannah had encountered her first day in Alexandria. He turned her around, lifted her hair, and with the snap of metal in his clamp in one quick instant, it was done.

Both women were free.

By that evening Alaya had calmed down and the girl called Ioni had run back to the wharf to find her family, who she thought might still be on one of the ships there. Hannah walked with Gideon to the library, each saying nothing. When they reached the steps, Hannah looked at him, her eyes searching his face.

Gideon kissed her. “They will never trouble anyone again.”

Hannah smiled and nodded, stroking her bare throat. “I thought I was strong enough to confront them. I was wrong. Alaya could have been killed. I have no idea what possessed me. I, I—”

Gideon pressed his finger to her lips to shush her. “Hannah, if I wanted a wife as strong as a centurion, I would marry a man,” he said. Then he kissed her, and she melted into him. His bones became her fortress, his breath her house of God.

“Thank you for protecting us,” she whispered, tears springing free of her eyes. “And for my freedom.”