The Gates of Hell Read online

  Yet the city he returned to this morning—that very city—showed no scars of its conquest. The only fire he could see was the one that was shining brightly in the sky, hanging above the rooftops like a beckoning star of morning or a signal upon a towering summit: the beacon of the Great Lighthouse that burned day and night above Alexandria’s harbor on the other side of the city. There were no riotous fires of tumult and death. The buildings, which were growing more dense along the canal, seemed to be untouched by war and conflict. The five years that had passed had been more than enough for the Romans to rebuild whatever they had destroyed.

  Except for the lives, of course.

  Those scars took far longer to heal.

  Monuments might outlast the memories of the dead, but among the living there were few things so real as the recollection of loss. Despite all his experience, Vorenus didn’t think he really understood that until he’d watched the rising columns of smoke that morning.

  The morning Titus Pullo had died.

  “Excuse me, sir,” said a voice behind him.

  Vorenus turned, saw Petosiris, the barge captain he’d hired to take himself and Khenti along the long canal between Schedia on the Nile to Alexandria. Rarely did Vorenus find himself in the company of men who made him feel tall—he was of average height and build for a Roman, quite unlike his friend Titus Pullo, who’d been a towering giant of a man who filled door frames—but the stocky captain made him feel just that: Petosiris was at least a full hand shorter than him. The Egyptian was stout, though, compact in a way that gave Vorenus no doubt that a life working on the decks and the docks had left him a good man in a fight. And that made him just the sort of company Vorenus liked to keep—especially when he was returning to Alexandria as a wanted man. “Yes, Captain?”

  “We will be in the city soon.” Petosiris didn’t frown. He didn’t smile. His demeanor was businesslike, which was another of the things Vorenus liked about him. Combined with his native Egyptian skin—darkened further from a life spent under the high, hot sun—the captain’s quiet professionalism meant that he could disappear in a crowd, and disappearing was precisely what Vorenus might need. Romans, after all, did not forget. “You weren’t specific about where the two of you would like to be let off the ship,” the captain said.

  “No, I was not,” Vorenus agreed. “You’ll be going to the granary docks?” Aside from himself, the Egyptian swordsman Khenti, and a wiry young lad who worked as the captain’s deckhand, the only thing the flat-topped barge carried on this route was grain: a load of barley making its way from the rich farmlands of the great river to the great city on the sea.

  The barge captain nodded. “The lake harbor docks,” he said. “South side of the city.”

  Vorenus nodded. Alexandria sat on a long strip of land perched between the Mediterranean Sea and the shallow shores of Lake Mareotis. The city was served by multiple docks, but those upon the lake would be the first they would reach. And he knew the area well. He’d lived in Alexandria for fourteen years, a legionnaire of Rome tasked with guarding the lives of the royal family: Cleopatra and Mark Antony and their children: the twins, Cleopatra Selene and Alexander Helios; the younger Ptolemy Philadelphus; and of course Cleopatra’s oldest son, named Caesarion after his father, Julius Caesar. The last time he’d been at the lake harbor, in fact, he’d been with Caesarion, inspecting the defenses of the southern walls of the city. “That will do quite nicely, then.”

  “Very well. Do you still plan to return with us back to Schedia?”

  Vorenus had paid for passage to Alexandria, but he’d offered the barge captain half again as much coin if he could get them back to the Nile without incident. “A very comfortable journey,” he’d said. A quiet one without questions, he’d wanted to add. Even the deckhand had known better than to make inquiries about the ship’s extra passengers. “Yes. I think we will. Just the two of us still.”

  “As you wish, sir,” Petosiris said. “We will leave the dock at sundown.” Then, not saying whether or not the decision to travel at night was in keeping with custom or in deference to Vorenus’ secrecy, he turned to walk back toward the tiller and the shadows of the barge’s single sail.

  As Vorenus watched the man make his way along the thin line of deck boards not covered by mounds of barley, he was reminded once more of his dead friend. Pullo, he was certain, would have liked the ship and the sweet smells of the grains very much. The big man had reveled in such things in life. “Good women, good food, and good drink is all a man needs,” he’d once told Vorenus. They had been arguing, as they often did, about the need to give honor to the gods: back then Vorenus had been a believer in the faith of Rome, the faith of his father; he didn’t know then that there had only ever been one God, and that He was dead. “And good friends,” Pullo had added with a smile. “So save your libations to the earth. Pour me another instead.”

  Vorenus smiled and looked up into the morning sky. He’d never met a more loyal friend than Pullo. For years they’d fought side by side wherever Rome had needed them—from Rome to Egypt, from Gaul to Greece—and Pullo had never failed him. Not once. Not even in the end.

  The thought brought his gaze down, and Vorenus watched for a time as the water relentlessly rolled under the prow of the ship. He’d been feeling a growing guilt ever since they’d left Schedia, and the closer they’d come to Alexandria the stronger it had become. Vorenus hadn’t been certain what it was before, but he felt sure of what it was now: the shame of survival. His friend had never failed him, but he couldn’t help but feel that he’d failed his friend.

  He knew there was nothing more that he could have done. The death of Mark Antony, and the subsequent speed of the Roman army’s advance into the city that morning, had spun matters out of their hands. Looking back, Vorenus knew that it was those terrible events that had made him cease thinking of himself as a legionnaire of Rome. For years he’d been maintaining a stubborn allegiance to that citizenship, even as politics tore the Republic asunder and forced him to take up arms alongside the forces of Egypt and against those who’d been his countrymen—to take up arms against a conqueror then known only as Octavian, not by the self-exalted name of Augustus Caesar, highest of emperors. But the smoke that day carried with it more than the ashes of the fires in the streets; it carried the ashes of his old life. That morning Vorenus was no longer a Roman. He was no longer even the head of the guard for the Egyptian royal family—even if, sailing away from Alexandria, he’d stood watch over Caesarion, the young man who was heir not only to that kingdom through his mother, Cleopatra, but also through his father, Julius Caesar, heir of Rome, too.

  Vorenus still cared for Caesarion. He still watched him like an eagle over its young—which made leaving his side for this trip a discomforting if necessary choice—but as important as Caesarion was to him, the young man hadn’t been his priority on that morning or on any of the mornings since.

  Instead, it was the Shard.

  That far-off morning, as they had spirited it away from Alexandria on that stolen Roman trireme, Vorenus had become a Shard-bearer. He swore to himself—for there was no one in the heavens to hear—that he would protect the Ark of the Covenant, as the Jews called it, at whatever cost. As the ship’s oars had drawn them ever farther from the chaos of the city, Vorenus knew that they carried a weapon beyond their understanding, and he could never allow it to fall into the wrong hands. To protect the Ark, to save the Shard, he and Pullo had been forced to go their separate ways. Vorenus had barely survived a Roman attempt to execute him as a traitor, only just managing to steal the Roman trireme that would carry the Shard to safety. And Pullo had died preventing the Numidian prince, Juba, from seizing the Ark before it could be saved. Despite the feelings of guilt that ached in his chest, Vorenus knew in the end that it was his friend, that man of mirth and frivolity, who made the choice between his own life and the safety of the Shard.

  Not a morning went by that Vorenus didn’t think, as he did now, upon that moment, upon
that choice. Not a morning went by that he didn’t hate and love Pullo for making the choice he made. And not a morning went by that Vorenus didn’t hope, when the time came, that he, too, would be strong enough to do whatever had to be done.

  Ahead, the southeast corner of Alexandria’s walls was coming into view above the jumble of buildings that had been built outside its protection. The massive, engineered solidity of the fortifications made the other structures at its base look all the more ramshackle, as if they were broken toys haphazardly strewn against it by the winds of the surrounding sands, lake, and sea.

  Vorenus took a long deep breath, inhaling the organic scents surrounding the reeds of papyrus growing upon the shallows beside the banks. The air was still natural here, the sights still gentle and calm. But soon enough it would be the sights and sounds and scents of the bustling city that was once his home.

  When he looked back in the direction of the Nile, he saw that Khenti was making his way forward, his pace strangely unaffected by the narrowness of the tracks between the piles of grain or the gentle rocking of the vessel on the water. The swordsman had been the head of the Egyptian royal guards under Vorenus, but his loyalty to Caesarion had led him, too, away from the city that had been his home. With Pullo gone, there was no one Vorenus trusted more to have with him on this journey.

  The Egyptian set down the light pack he was carrying, their only supplies for this trip. “Everything is ready,” he said.

  Vorenus nodded, smiled, and then turned back toward the city. For a few minutes they stood and stared, lost in their own thoughts.

  “This was all farms when I was younger,” Khenti said.

  The Egyptian’s voice brought Vorenus back once more from his memories, and he looked around to realize they had crossed some kind of threshold: though the walls still lay ahead, they were undeniably in the city now. The buildings were close about them, and the streets between were filled with the busy noise of life. The edges of the canal were no longer the domain of papyrus reeds. Instead, tired washing basins and broken drying frames littered the muddy banks, and colorful sheens of oil and filmy bubbles pooled in the shallows. After so long living away from the city, the air seemed thick with the scents of excrement and filth. “The city grows,” Vorenus agreed. “There’s always work in the city.”

  Khenti nodded, but he crinkled his nose. “Smelled better as farms.”

  The canal made a turn, and abruptly the walls of Alexandria were passing to their right. And looming directly ahead of them, where none was supposed to be, was a chain gate across the canal, manned by Roman soldiers.

  Vorenus and Khenti exchanged only the briefest of looks before gathering their things and walking, as quickly as they could manage without seeming suspicious, back toward the rear of the barge.

  Petosiris was there, one hand on the tiller, the other upon the line holding wind in the sail. The little deckhand was near his feet, where he appeared to be checking a heavy coil of docking rope, unraveling it from one part of the barge floor to another. “I see it,” said the barge captain.

  “You said there were no gates on the canal,” Vorenus said.

  Khenti had taken a position that nearly triangulated the barge captain between them and one of the larger mounds of barley. But if Petosiris noted the threat he made no notice of it. “I said there were no Roman checks on the canal,” he corrected. “Haven’t been for months.”

  “This is a problem,” Vorenus said.

  “I am aware,” the barge captain replied. He wasn’t looking at them, just staring up ahead at the gate. The chain across the canal had been pulled tight, rising up out of the water, which fell away from its links in drops that sparkled in the morning light.

  Vorenus looked at Khenti, who had pulled back his traveling robes to expose the hilt of his sword. Then he looked to the stinking water, wondering if it was too late to jump and try to make their way through the slums and into the city another way.

  “Get down,” Petosiris said.

  “What?” Vorenus asked, looking back to the man. “Why are we—”

  The barge captain made a sharp pull at the tiller, and the barge rocked sideways and bumped into a small raft along the shoreline. In the same moment, Petosiris released the line holding the wind in the sail and lunged to the deck. “Get down!”

  As the barge rocked back and forth, its wake crashing back against itself in sloshing froth and its cloth sail suddenly flapping free, Vorenus and Khenti both complied. The deckhand had stayed busy, and as he pulled the last coil loop from one pile to another, Vorenus saw what he had exposed: a small hatch in the deck. Petosiris, on his hands and knees, pushed his fingers into the cracks along its edges and hefted it free. The reek of stale, damp straw washed out behind it. “Go. Hurry,” the barge captain said. “Our little accident here can only buy so much time.”

  Vorenus nodded and started worming his way down into the hidden hold. It was shallow, hardly more than two feet high, but it extended beneath the biggest stacks of barley above. He rolled aside as best he could so that Khenti could join him.

  The floor of the little space was entirely covered with the old straw, which had grown musty in the heat. Vorenus sneezed.

  Framed by the little square of sky above them, Petosiris frowned. “It would be in our mutual best interests if you didn’t do that while you’re down there.”

  Then the hatch closed over their heads, and heavy coils of rope began to be laid round and round above them. The boat once more began to move, inching its way toward the Romans at the gate and the great city of Alexandria beyond.

  Doing his best to remain still in the choking, stifling darkness, Vorenus instinctively thanked the gods that he’d chosen well in hiring Petosiris, and that—in a few hours, if his luck held—the stench of stale straw would be replaced by the scents of the scrolls in the Great Library, and the sight of an old friend.

  And he prayed—not really sure who he was praying to—that he wouldn’t sneeze.

  2

  SIGNS OF LIFE

  ALEXANDRIA, 26 BCE

  Before the new day cast its rays upon the great city of Alexandria, the astrologer Thrasyllus of Mendes awoke to the exotic scents of passion. Sleeping with a prostitute didn’t take away the pain, he decided, but it did push it away. If only for a time, it made him feel better.

  Thrasyllus opened his eyes, smiling to know that the night had not been a dream. The black-haired girl was still with him in the bare little room, cradled close beside his body in the cool, pre-dawn air. For long minutes he watched her breathing—marveling at her smooth skin, the sensuous curves of her tanned back and shoulder, her chest just hidden from view—until he realized he must be grinning like a fool.

  Democritus, he imagined, the scholarly thought coming to him unbidden, would not be pleased with such astonished fascination. It was too caught up in the senses. Too subjective. The girl’s body was just an accumulation of atoms, as was his. The old philosopher had, after all, said that a brave man was the one who could overcome both his enemies and his pleasures: “There are some men who are masters of cities,” he’d written, “but slaves to women.”

  Thrasyllus had edited the work a year earlier, but it was only now, with the fresh memory of the girl’s movements still rippling over his sweat-chilled flesh, that he truly understood what Democritus had meant, and how easy it would be to enslave oneself to such sensuality. It was frightening, but it was thrilling, too. And Thrasyllus was quite certain—watching as she rolled over, the strands of her long raven hair spilling across and around the plump but firm roundness of her now exposed right breast—that the risks of enslavement were more than worth it. Democritus had clearly never had the pleasures of such a creature.

  Thrasyllus had already planned a sacrifice at the Poseidium this morning, to pray that the sea-god would give him a safe voyage to Rome. Or, better still, that the gods would see fit to have changed old Didymus’ mind about passing the keys to the Great Library to Apion. Looking at this gi
rl, he thought he might also make a sacrifice at one of the many shrines to Eros this morning. Another offering would be little trouble, after all. And it was fitting to thank the gods for what they gave, not just to beg them for what they might give.

  Not that he had much hope that the gods could do anything to make the old librarian change his mind. Didymus was a stubborn and resolute man, and he’d left no doubt that his decision was a certainty: Apion was a Homeric scholar, like Didymus himself. And loyal, long-suffering Thrasyllus, who had served in the Library far longer?

  Why, he was a mere astrologer.

  Even editing the works of Democritus hadn’t been able to shake that fundamental identification, which had stuck with Thrasyllus from the moment he entered the Great Library as a boy: Thrasyllus of Mendes was, in the mind of the chief librarian, a simple astrologer.

  Thrasyllus felt yesterday’s anger rising up again—the same anger that had made him storm out of the Great Library, relinquishing his position and declaring that he would seek better employment in Rome—so he took a deep breath and looked back at the beautiful girl beside him. The sight of her calmed him.

  And calm brought clarity. Democritus was right about that, at least.

  What was clear now, Thrasyllus thought, was that it was true. He was an astrologer. Had he not looked at the signs after angrily leaving the Great Library yesterday and seen in them a sign of the favor that this girl—the very one he’d adored for so long—would bestow upon him?

  And had she not done so?

  That it took money to get her to his room … well, that was just to get her attention, was it not? Once they were alone, after all, she’d smiled and cooed. She’d traced a line along his square jawline and told him he was young and handsome. She called him her little stargazer. She hadn’t needed to do that, but she had done it anyway. And she’d fallen asleep with her head on his shoulder, her delicate fingers tracing lazy, slowing circles through the hairs on his chest.