“At once. In the first instant. Every minute that passes once you are captured makes it more difficult to escape. The foe will bind you, incapacitate you, break your arm or leg, blind you. Escape in the first moment. Do anything—anything—to get away.”
He passed a Roman cavalry saber to Michael, checked that David had his dolabra ready, and returned to the witch her pair of throwing knives. He made sure that Ruth had her X dagger.
The mercenary addressed the sorceress directly. “These roots and herbs you gather. What medicines can you make from them?”
“I can remedy anything short of your black heart.”
The man-at-arms considered this.
“Can you make soap?”
The party reached the aqueduct an hour before sunset. Setting himself and David as sentries, Telamon pointed the others to a stone-founded pool at the base of an archway, the produce of the Romans’ love of baths and bathing. “Five minutes, no more. Scour the grime off. It will keep us awake for an all-night march.”
The witch performed a quick collection.
The plant she gathered for soap was called Adam’s needle. The sorceress cut palm-sized cubes from its spines and pounded these until the pulpy insides, which she identified as saponica, produced a thin lather that released a scent like lavender, only stronger and more bitter. The witch bound these with stalks of the same plant into bundles the size of a man’s hand. “Keep these away from the eyes. The oil will sting. Otherwise they are as good as anything you will find in the finest perfumer’s shop.”
It was then that the mercenary caught up the child Ruth and, with a laugh, flung her bodily into the pool.
“Let’s see what’s under all those layers of dirt!”
The child rebelled at once and sought to scamper clear. Telamon snatched her up by both wrists. He had a bundle of the soap and made to scrub her. Michael too was laughing now, as was David. The sorceress intervened in outrage, declaring it unseemly for a grown man to bathe a female child.
The witch took over.
Into the pool she went after Ruth, with the girl kicking and punching to squirt free. By now the child’s tangled mane was soaked and her robe and tunic plastered to her body.
The witch tugged at the child’s garments. “Get these filthy rags off! How else can I scrub you?”
A brawl ensued, with much splashing and thrashing, to the amusement of the others. In the end the sorceress simply overpowered the child. She hauled her clothes off.
Naked now, the girl punched the witch furiously, full in the face. The child snatched at her shorn robe and tunic. The witch would not let the garments go.
Ruth scrambled from the pool, scarlet with shame. She dashed straight to Michael and flung herself into his arms. The onlookers recommenced their laughter, believing the girl’s frenzy to be provoked by feelings only of modesty.
All merriment ceased at the sight of the child’s back.
Lurid welts and stripes plaited the girl’s flesh from her waist to her shoulders. Even the witch gasped to behold these. But this was not the whole of it. Interspersed among these marks could be seen the spatula-shaped scars made by a branding iron. David covered his eyes and turned away. What species of monster, he thought, inflicts such horrors on an innocent child?
The girl wept now. Michael wrapped his robe about her.
“Who did this to you?” David blurted. “What kind of—”
“Shut up!” commanded the sorceress. The woman moved swiftly to the child’s side, covering her with her own garments.
The girl clung to Michael, burying her face in the folds of his robe.
All eyes turned to Telamon for his reaction.
For long moments the man-at-arms remained silent.
He waited, motionless, until he saw the child Ruth turn and peek from the wrapper of Michael’s robe.
Then, setting his weapons aside, he stepped out of his caligas and crossed, barefoot, to stand before the girl.
“Hold these for me, will you?”
The man-at-arms stripped his own garments and handed them to the child. He turned and stepped, naked now, into the pool.
The girl’s eyes tracked every step.
Across the mercenary’s back and shoulders could be seen the same species of welts and scars as those upon the flesh of the child.
The others reacted as they had to the original exposure.
Telamon scrubbed quickly and climbed from the pool.
He crossed back to Ruth.
Such a look passed between the girl and the man-at-arms as David, recalling the moment later, had never seen.
The child handed the mercenary his robe and tunic.
Telamon tugged these on.
He turned toward the setting sun.
“Get your heads down, all of you. We’ll rest till an hour before dawn, then set forth. I’ll take first watch and last.”
− 28 −
THE AQUEDUCT
DAVID AWOKE TO A TRACE chain around his neck and the point of a sword at his throat. It was still night. Horses and men raced across the camp. The youth felt himself hauled violently upright by warriors in armor. He glimpsed a burning-down bonfire on a rise to the west. He tried to move but his limbs felt like lead.
The boy reckoned at once what had happened.
He had fallen asleep on watch. The witch had drugged him. Somehow she had switched out the brew she regularly left him to augment his alertness for his hours on guard.
She had set the bonfire to lead the Romans in.
The youth glimpsed his master. Two legionaries held him, pinning his arms behind him, while a third smashed him full in the face with an iron helmet. Another, wielding a quarterstaff, took the mercenary’s legs from under him. Two thunderous blows seemed to shatter the man-at-arms’ shins. He dropped deadweight within the grasp of his former comrades.
David heard himself screaming. He twisted in the grip of the soldiers who held him, seeking sight of the girl, of Ruth.
The boy was calling, “Run! Run!”
He saw the sorceress. The witch dashed across the camp in a state of frenzy, this way and that, bawling something David could not comprehend. Torches and firebrands split the darkness.
A blow from a club drilled David senseless. Hands dumped him to the earth. He fell upon Michael. The Nazarene was bound with heavy rope. Both arms were bent at unnatural angles.
He saw the lieutenant.
He saw Severus.
He saw the girl dash past in the torch flare. She was barefoot, clutching the X dagger.
“Her! Her!” the witch was shouting.
The child stumbled and spilled. A corporal in a cloak and heavy hobnails leapt upon her. She plunged the blade into his thigh. He swung a fist. The girl ducked. Others sought in vain to collar her.
Somehow Telamon, bound in chains, had gotten to his knees. “Run!” he cried.
Ruth did.
“Seize her, you idiots!” the witch was bawling in Aramaic and pidgin-Latin as she scampered furiously across the camp. “She’s the one! The one you want!”
The girl darted like a hare, speedy and low to the ground, jinking in odd directions as she flew.
“Don’t kill her!”
This from Severus.
David saw the commander now, in armor, striding across the melee, swatting at men with his riding crop as they sought to overtake the girl. As she sprinted past the two troopers who had pinioned David, one of them grabbed at her. David’s right arm came free. He heard in his head Telamon’s injunction: