The Sign of The Blood Page 2

  A blood-red ant crawled onto the back of Constantine’s hand. His skin prickled. He watched as it navigated its way up his thickly haired arm. Then another appeared, on his middle finger.

  He scanned the line of horsemen. One of the Persians had drawn his sword and was examining it.

  The lead Persian scout shook his head as if irritated, said something which made those around him laugh, then backed his horse off the trail and waved those behind him to pass him by.

  Toward the rear of their line were four prisoners, boys, pickings from a local village most likely, all naked, bound at the wrists, and trotting to keep up with the horse each was roped to. Some of their faces were purple from bruising. One whimpered as he hobbled along trying to keep up.

  Anger rose through his chest. Even the most debauched Senators in Rome sickened at the practices of the Persian King. If the stories he’d heard were true, blinding would be the next thing in store for that boy. His terrified screams as they did it would put fear deep and far into the hearts of the others who’d been taken with him.

  When the last of the riders and prisoners had gone past, the Persian officer followed.

  Constantine waited, listening to the birds, until the sound of the horsemen died. Then he stood, turned to the Armenian guide rising to his feet beside him.

  “Let’s follow them,” he whispered.

  “Are you sure? This is why your previous scouts went missing. They got too close to the enemy.”

  Constantine jabbed a finger into the man's chest, hard. “We’re not going back empty handed. But we’re not following this track either.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “That way.” Constantine pointed at the ridge, visible through the trees, in the direction the Persian had taken.

  The Armenian sighed. “My friends tell me you Romans will lose this war. That I should change sides, before it’s too late. The Persians pay well, they tell me.”

  Constantine stepped back, as if measuring the distance between them. A bird took noisy flight through the trees.

  “Your emperor should give command of these scouting missions to men who know these lands, not to Romans.” The Armenian spat, then checked his sword hung properly from his belt.

  “You know, you are lucky,” Constantine replied.

  “Lucky?” The Armenian speedily brushed dirt and twigs from his stained leather tunic, then threw his hands in the air “I'm a scout attached to a Roman army being chased by a Persian force intent on its annihilation. Yes, Fortuna surely smiles on me.”

  “No, Lucius, you're lucky because I’m giving you another chance to prove how loyal you are.” Constantine raised his sword a little from its scabbard.

  Lucius’ eyes widened.

  “We will find the Persian camp, Lucius.” He let his sword drop back into its scabbard.

  “Isn’t Roman gratitude a wonderful thing?” Lucius turned on his heel, headed for where the horses were hobbled downwind.

  When Constantine reached the horses, Lucius had already mounted. He didn’t look at Constantine, just kicked his horse and headed away in the direction Constantine had pointed, sitting high in his saddle, scanning all around as he went.

  III

  Lower Armenia, 297 A.D.

  Through the flap of the tent they were waiting outside, Juliana saw the ash-stained face of one of the Magi, the Persian priests, observing her. He looked inhuman, like a ghost, or one of the incubi her village elders kept warning her about.

  The pain across her back, where the eunuch’s whip had cut into her flesh, still burned at her skin.

  The Magi had never been interested in the captives before. This was the first time she’d seen any of them even look at her since the early days of her capture.

  She sniffed. She could smell myrrh, the curing incense. Her mother often used it. Its smell lingered, unmistakable. She bit her lip. They must not see her crying.

  The sound of the Gathas, the Persian mysteries, being chanted, echoed over the camp from the Magi tents each sunset, but tonight the chanting from tents dotted around the camp sounded different, more insistent, as if building toward something. She glanced through the tent flap again, pulling at the rope behind her, linking her to the others. They both muttered curses at her, low enough that only she could hear.

  The priest at the back of the tent stared at her, unblinking. As the light faded around them, one of the eunuchs came through the opening. She knew him. It was the one who’d whipped her earlier. The one she hated.

  “You'll all get food when you tell us which of you’ll be the volunteer for the morning, my little ones,” said the eunuch, ushering them forward. “The one who volunteers will help bring forth the Daeva, for our Queen of Queens. Her wrath must not be provoked, so decide quickly. We must tell the priests the volunteer’s name soon. They do not like waiting.” He beckoned them forward and into the tent, then left, closing the flap as he did, saying something to the guard stationed outside.

  A yellow beeswax candle on a brass tray near the center pole now provided the only illumination inside the tent. Its low roof reminded Juliana of a red-carpeted cave whose encircling walls seemed to breathe in and out as the candle fluttered, and whose arched roof bulged inwardly, as if supporting something unseen, though she knew only the drifting smoke from the cooking fires separated the tent from the earliest and brightest of the evening stars.

  The tent creaked, as if straining against something.

  The girl to Juliana's left broke the silence. “It cannot be me.” She had a pinched face, as if she’d never eaten well, or much at all, and her accent, from Al-Arabia, was difficult to understand.

  “We should sit,” Juliana replied. They sat in a semi-circle around the brass tray, almost touching each other’s knees. The carpet they were sitting on was thin, its red pattern faded almost to the weave. Beneath it she could feel the uneven ground.

  “Mine . . . both parents dead. You know this. The Magi magic not work if a girl has her blood line on the other side. You know this too,” said the girl from Al-Arabia. Juliana shook her head. She didn’t know this.

  “Picking threads will be fairest,” she said. “We will make one shorter than the others. We always did this in my village.” The girls looked at her blankly. She continued, her tone more certain now. “Each of us will have an equal chance for freedom.”

  The girl from Al-Arabia’s voice rose to a high pitch as she replied. “We cannot pick threads, Roman. The magic will not work if I’m chosen. I told you this. The Queen will be angry, very angry.” She stared at Juliana, a determined look on her face. Juliana looked at the other girl, the eldest of the three, the one who hadn’t spoken so far.

  She looked directly at Juliana, then wriggled forward to stroke Juliana's knee. Her hand brushed Juliana’s thigh, her expression enticing, knowing.

  “Which of us will it be,” she said in a sing-song tone. Then she lowered her voice, stroked Juliana’s thigh again. “Maybe we will all get lucky. Think about it Juliana, we could be sold in Ctesiphon together when this campaign is over. Men will pay their daughter’s dowry for a pair of birds like us. You're too young to be a dancer, but we’ll make a good pair of song birds. Do you think you’d have been happy as the third wife of some half-broken hill farmer? Partner with me, you'll enjoy it, I’m sure.” She stuck her tongue out, wiggled it up and down.

  “The eunuchs listen to me, Roman. I’ll tell them the magic will work better when the volunteer is an orphan, and reluctant.” She sounded confident, the way older girls always sounded in the village. The girl from Al-Arabia let out a whimper.

  The older girl gripped Juliana’s thigh. “Agree, Juliana. I’ll make you tremble with delight.” A bead of sweat on the girl’s forehead flashed in the candlelight as she leaned toward Juliana. A small bare breast brushed against Juliana’s knee.

  The sounds from outside the tent, the chanting, distant shouts, and the neighing of horses sounded different, as if something had changed, a veil had been
lifted. Laughter echoed. Her breath came fast. She wanted more than anything to go home.

  Like rumors of the sea, the thought of girls being with each other was something far off, that she would find out about later, much later. Her mother had deflected all questions about such things until the time her blood would come. Even what that meant she could only guess at, though some of the other girls in the village had warned her that the time would not be far off and that it would be painful. They also said many other things she didn’t believe.

  She blinked.

  The volunteer would be freed. The guard had said it.

  The girl from Al-Arabia stared at her, her eyelids tear rimmed, like a bowl about to overflow. Juliana looked at the older girl again. The girl she’d once thought could be her friend. Her eyebrows were raised. A prickling ran across Juliana’s thigh, under her thin cotton trousers.

  “I’ll be the stupid volunteer,” she said.

  She pushed the older girl’s hand away. The rope, still binding them together, tangled as she did so. She shook it free.

  The girl from Al-Arabia sighed.

  The older girl called for the guard. She spoke to him, pointed at Juliana.

  He laughed. A long, curved knife bulged from his belt. It looked odd, too big. The eunuchs usually went about with smaller weapons.

  She remembered a story she’d heard in her village years before. A boy from Persepolis, the son of a passing trader, had frightened all the children with tales of secret Persian ceremonies during times of war, ceremonies where special knives were used, where human entrails were read to foretell the future. A cold sweat broke out across her chest.

  It couldn’t be true, could it?

  Practices like that had stopped long ago. Hadn’t they?

  IV

  The City of Alexandria, 297 A.D.

  Helena reached for the letter in her scribe’s hand, pulled the scroll of papyrus from him, and took it to the marble table.

  “Light that candle.” She pointed at the large yellow beeswax candle in the center of the table.

  The scribe hurried away.

  As she waited for him she read the letter one more time, to commit it to memory.

  Helena,

  It is the wish of our Emperor Diocletian, the most glorious and esteemed, that our son, Constantine, be protected, as he has always been, and come to no harm serving at the emperor’s will.

  I am unable to request he come to Alexandria to attend you. You are provided for, as would be expected of an ex-wife of a Caesar. Your request to travel to Rome is also denied. Do not test the bounds of our agreement.

  Constantine Chlorus

  Caesar of the Western Provinces, Treveris, Gaul.

  She pressed her balled fist hard into her breastbone. In front of her lay the shortest letter she’d received from Constantine’s father since they’d parted six years before. It had none of the flowery language his earlier letters had been filled with. The war against the Alemanni had clearly taken its toll. Or were there other reasons for him distancing himself from her?

  The scribe returned with a taper. A small flame glowed inside his cupped hand. He lit the beeswax candle.

  Helena put the edge of the papyrus to the flame and watched as fire engulfed it. She let the ash drop into a silver bowl, then took a silver pestle from the table and crushed the ashes into a fine dust.

  “Find me that priest who has been seeking another audience with me,” she said. She pressed her lips tight and closed her eyes.

  “The one who speaks of eternal life?”

  “Yes, him.”

  The scribe bowed. He was the last of the slaves she had with her from her time with her ex-husband. “You mean the one you complained of who looked at you too plainly, when he first came here?” He kept his eyes on the ground. “I hear he sleeps with all his converts, the men and the women and the children too.”

  “I don’t care if he rides daemons. He claims he can grant miracles. Let’s see if it’s true.”

  With a trembling hand, she smeared the first finger of her right hand in the ashes of her ex-husband’s letter, then rubbed the ash on her cheeks. He would find her in mourning when he arrived. It would be better that way.

  V

  Lower Armenia, 297 A.D.

  They were riding slower now, ducking to avoid the lower limbs of the trees, their horses jumping over the occasional fallen tree trunk and tangles of branches, while dirt flew into the air behind them.

  Constantine was filled with hope. This could be the way to win the respect of his father. Lurid tales about the last two Roman emperors who’d led armies into Persia had been told and retold in the Roman camp. Anyone who brought Roman vengeance to the armies of Persia would be worthy of command.

  “It’s almost forty years,” a centurion had told Constantine, his face contorted in anger, “since that Persian King of Kings, Shapur, put to death our great emperor, Valerian. First the Magi cut his skin off, then they stuffed it with straw. They had him in one of their fire temples for years. Perhaps they still do.”

  Defeating Persia had never been easy. The Emperor Galerius, who led them, would need good fortune. He would need Constantine’s good fortune. This was the moment he’d been waiting for.

  “Prosper through the ranks,” had been Constantine’s father’s last piece of advice, when they’d parted four years before. Ever since, he'd devoted himself to that goal without reaping much success, or the promotions that had been expected of him. The fates had treated him with contempt, denying him things that fell easily at other officers' feet.

  He had to find a way to change things.

  Eventually Lucius slowed to a halt near the lip of a gorge.

  When Constantine stopped beside him a wolf howled, far away. He tightened his grip on his mount’s reins and patted her neck to reassure her as he listened for answering calls from the rest of the pack. None came. Below them lay a dried-up stream bed.

  They slid their horses slowly down the steep embankment. The gorge was as deep as a city temple was high, with only enough room along the bottom for their two horses to move forward side by side. A sheen of sweat prickled over Constantine’s body. He held the reins tight, resisting the urge to scratch at the flea bites on his calves. There was no breeze in the river bed as they moved along it with the sun lowering fast.

  Whitened granite boulders were strewn around, as if they'd been discarded from some giant’s building works. As they made their way down the channel its decaying walls steepened, widened, and the trees above each edge disappeared, leaving only the deep blue of the late afternoon sky above. They were well beyond the forest now, back on the plain across which the Persian army had been pursuing them. Clumps of grass and pale blue and yellow flowers grew along the lip of the gully. The only sound the crunching under their horses’ feet.

  Lucius led the way until they came to a rocky corner where the gully walls closed in. He gestured to Constantine to be quiet, then dismounted. They tied the horses’ reins to a rock. Lucius pointed forward.

  They stopped at the corner, peered up and along the gully. A line of heads on wooden spikes stood out like a stark warning along the right-hand lip of the gully. Flies, like a black funeral gauze, swarmed about them. Even from where they were, he could smell the sickly whiff of rotting flesh.

  “This is an opportunity. The Persians don’t place guards near their dead. Let’s get closer.”

  Constantine was used to the sight of death and the smell of it. Flesh rotted fast in this part of the empire.

  They climbed the wall of the gully in silence, hand over hand. At the lip, loose earth crumbled as he felt about for a handhold.

  Lucius gasped. Constantine reached out, steadied him before he slipped and stones clattering beneath them alerted anyone nearby to their existence. He held Lucius tight.

  Lucius grinned like an idiot. Constantine reached for the lip of the gulley, pulled himself up. The sight that greeted him was not what he’d expected.

  VI


  Lower Armenia, 297 A.D.

  The four eunuchs who held her spread-eagled adjusted their holds, triumphantly. She looked down, saw her nakedness glistening in the honeyed light from the oil lamps.

  She stared again at the shadows dancing languidly on the roof of the tent and thought about going home, walking the track back to her village, seeing it again from the river as it nestled in its fold among forested hills. Her mother would be waiting at their door, her grandmother too. They'd hug, all questions forgotten.

  Someone lit a lamp. The shadows on the roof of the tent fled. A smug older face loomed over her. Something cold touched her inner thigh, moved upwards, patted at her, rubbing between her legs, feeling but not penetrating. She went rigid, then shuddered like a snake casting off its skin. The eunuchs held her tight.

  Shame throbbed through her. Her eyes opened wide.

  Embroidered on the roof of the tent were stars. They sparkled in the lamplight. Perhaps they were diamonds.

  It had all started so well the day the Persians came. She had raced excitedly into the narrow street to see what all the noises meant. She’d wanted to be the first to see what the traders were selling and take the news to her mother. Then she’d heard screaming. “Persians, raiders, Juliana, come back, come back.”

  Halfway down the street armored horsemen with red cloaks and fearsome gray swords appeared, as if they’d been magicked up. Smoke drifted behind them. The sky itself wore a shroud.

  She’d tried to run back to her house, but she’d been hoisted roughly by the neck of her tunic. She’d struggled, gasping, felt a thud to her head. Then she’d heard her mother screaming.

  His sword sang, slicing through the air. He held her clamped tight under his other arm, her blows, scratches, no more than a source of amusement to him. It was the first time she’d felt true terror, true powerlessness. Now she felt the same.

  If only she’d listened to her mother. She shook again. A long, deep convulsion. Then her body arched, as her thighs were pulled further apart.