When Arcadia reached the garden's far end, she saw several women cavorting nude in a pool of water that gave off a misty haze of steam in the cooling air. The heated basin was the second of two that Apelles had mentioned constructing. After the women noticed Arcadia, they stopped their game to stare at her. Lyre and tambourine players fell still. In a moment one girl evidently said something about the pale foriegn woman that set the others giggling. They resumed their play of throwing a leather ball. Arcadia thought the comment more sarcastic than friendly. Can those be wives who see me as a rival?

  A few paces beyond the garden, the eunuch gestured toward a second portal, to the right. At his knock the door opened slightly. When a dark female eye peered through the crack, he lowered his eyes and turned to walk back without a glance at Arcadia.

  Well-dressed in a loose-fitting silk tunic and veil that covered her black hair, a young Bedouin slave woman opened the door to a room blazing with lamps and candles. The air was warm, fragrant with a light haze of incense. Bedroom furnishings indicated its use: three-legged tables, graceful Greek chairs, chests, and a large wardrobe. Bright woven rugs covered the floor. Tapestry material that covered stone walls was used as the canopy over a wide bed. At the far end, where curtains to an alcove were tied aside, Arcadia saw two girls filling a bathing tub with water from a spigot in the wall. Half expecting to have been confronted by al-Shams, she felt relieved to be with women and even dared hope that the bath was for her.

  A movement near a wardrobe caught her eye. A middle-aged matron—even more opulently dressed than the slave who had answered the knock—came forward. Unsmiling, her stern glare scrutinized Arcadia. The sheikh's wife or one of his wives, as Apelles implied. The woman may be his eldest wife and undoubtedly resents me, but perhaps she understands Greek. Arcadia ventured, "Kyria. Milate elenika?"

  The woman ignored her question and turned to call the girls back from the alcove. Since they wore short tunics, Arcadia guessed them to be bathe attendants. After another brusque command from the elder, they approached the newcomer, speaking in Arabic.

  Both slaves gestured toward the tub and that they were going to remove her clothing.

  Arcadia smiled at the girls. "I am getting a bath?"

  After they giggled at the strange language, the matron sharply reprimanded them.

  Arcadia ignored her and decided to speak to the girls in a friendly voice, even if they did not understand. "I bought this tunic in Jerusalem a few days ago, but it's filthy now. Are you able to wash it?" As they tugged at the garment, Arcadia pointed toward the tub, recalled two Arabic words, and repeated them in Latin, "Maiya. Aqua. Kwayissa. Bona."

  Hearing their language, the girls glanced toward the matron. She waved a hand for them to continue. After one eased the tunic over Arcadia's head, the other shrieked. She stepped back, jabbering and pointing at the Latin woman's neck. The matron stepped forward: gleaming in the orange light, she saw the hamsa amulet that Abd al-Shira's wife had given to Arcadia. Her expression softened when she fingered a medallion that warded off the evil eye, and asked what Arcadia surmised to be a question about where she had gotten the charm.

  "Sahba…a friend." Arcadia recalled that the girl at the spring outside Jerusalem had used the word to describe herself.

  "Sahba," the woman repeated, then indicated herself with a graceful hand and continued in Arabic. Arcadia caught the words "Taym al-Lat" and "Al-Shams," but guessed that she had said her name and that she was the sheikh's eldest wife.

  "Taym," Arcadia said, pointing to the woman, then to herself. "Arcadia. Sahba. Aywa. Friend, yes?"

  Taym al-Lat did not respond. She was unreay ready to commit herself to friendship with a non-Bedouin outsider and possible rival. Taym stepped back and spoke to the slave who had answered the door, then clapped her hands at the bath slaves. They watched her leave, then finished undressing Arcadia, removed her scuffed sandals, and brought a silk robe to take her to the tub. She stepped into water that was pleasantly warm, scented with perfumed oil. One girl jabbered in Arabic as she held Arcadia's hand under the spigot and turned it on. Cold water flowed out. After she turned a handle farther, the water became warmer. Arcadia smiled at her. "Amazing. Apelles invented a way to moderate the temperature of this bath water by a single flow."

  The girls washed Arcadia's chestnut-colored hair and murmured to each other while sponging and stroking her white skin. They felt no inferiority at their own light-brown complexions, but touched her out of curiosity, as they might fondle a white kitten among a litter of darker ones.

  After helping Arcadia out of the tub and toweling her body dry, one girl put the silk robe around her and sat her in a chair to finish drying her feet. Afterward, she lifted Arcadia's foot onto a stool and began drawing intricate geometrical designs on the instep with a brush and dark-brown paste. The other girl reached for the back of her hand and began painting similar designs.

  After finishing, she held up the paste jar. "Henna," she said simply, realizing the shahba sitt—pale woman—would not understand further explanations.

  Arcadia nodded recognition. "We know henna in the West. It's mostly used to dye hair, but I didn't realize it could create designs on skin." She recalled the sheikh's sun decoration and pointed to her own forehead. "Amir al-Shams. Aywa?"

  "Ayw." The girl laughed at having understood in that simple a manner.

  Arcadia studied her. About fourteen, perhaps a bit older, but not by much. Beautiful clear skin the color of light mahogany. Dark luminous eyes…a golden nose ring. Her hair is beautifully done in tight braids, probably a harim pastime. She may be too young to be one of the sheikh's wives, yet could be more than just a slave attendant. Perhaps one of the women that Apelles said al-Shams bought from Bedouin traders and kept for his harim, instead of reselling her.

  A shrill voice sounding in the corridor interrupted Arcadia's speculation. The words were angry, hoarse, somewhat garbled, but unmistakably vulgar Greek. The voice sounded familiar. "Blessed Cosmas! It…it can't be!"

  When the door was kicked open with such force that the stir of wind blew out the nearest lamp, Arcadia—having been forewarned by the voice—was not completely shocked by the flame-colored hair and over-rouged complexion of a stocky woman who stormed in. Aphrodisia! What…how did you get here?"

  The Cypriot actress was equally surprised. "It's the surgeon's wife! What in the name of Priapus are you doing here?"

  Taym al-Lat, who came with her, never imagined that the Latin woman could know a woman called al-Desia. This prostitute, whom she had been unable to prevent her husband from allowing into the fort, had appeared a few days earlier.

  Recovered, Aphrodisia again demanded, "How did you end up here?"

  "I was abducted. The sheik has an insane idea that he'll marry me. Why are you in this place?"

  "I got tired of screwing fishy-smelling mariners. At Azotus, one of the prefect's messengers was coming to Gerasa and talked about this fort. Less than an hour with me convinced him that I should go along." Her lewd grin turned into a wince as she rubbed her backside. "My rump is still sore from that horse ride."

  "Why is it you came to this room?"

  Aphrodisia glared at Taym al-Lat. "That shriveled bitch ordered me here. Now I understand. She wants someone who could talk to you."

  "How did you speak to the sheikh? I thought he only knew Arabic."

  The furc he did! Shams lived in Gerasa and picked up more Greek and Latin than he wants you to believe."

  "But Apelles said—"

  "That broken-down Greek fart? Take away his wine and that furnace-boy lover of his and he'd dry up like a dead cockroach..

  Arcadia realized that the woman looked ill and had powdered and rouged her face to mask a sallow complexion. The garish henna dye had failed to color gray strands of hair at her temples. Aphrodisia suffers from gonhorroia. If my theory is correct about transmitting the disease through intercourse, she's passed it on to every man she's been with between here and the coast.

  Aphrodisia spit into a soiled cloth, wiped her mouth, and showed the back of her hands. Both had been painted with the dark henna designs, which now had a faint orange color. "They're decorating your hands and feet pretty, like mine. These pictures are supposed to be magic or something, but, shit, I can snare a client just by sticking out my foot" She winked. "He'll work his way up from there—"

  "Aphrodisia, you'll die if you continue this way. I said at Ascalon that you're very ill."

  "And what did it get you?" she snapped, her face twisted in sudden anger. "Rat piss! Leave me alone!"

  When Taym spoke sharply to Aphrodisia in Greek, Arcadia asked what she told her.

  "The bitch wanted me here to warn you about becoming one of her husband's wives."

  "I've certainly no intention of doing that."

  "What makes you think you won't?"

  "I'm married, for one thing."

  "Married?" Aphrodisia laughed at Arcadia's lack of guile. "What did they teach you at…at Ravenna? You think all these girls are house slaves? They're…what's Latin…Concubinae? Shams keeps a stable-full, even regulars for his men. He buys girls from Bedouin families." She bragged, "I'm teaching Shams's girls Egyptian brothel tricks."

  "And when you run out of tricks?"

  The woman shrugged lack of concern. "There's always been Tyche around for me."

  Arcadia warned, "Your luck will vanish, and you're deathly ill. Soranus writes that the disease's flux will consume your body."

  "Screw Soranus!"

  A knock interrupted her angry retort. After the slave girl opened the door, the eunuch who brought Arcadia to the harim hand-signed a phrase. She repeated the command in Greek to Aphrodisia.

  With a knowing chuckle, she told Arcadia, "Shams want to see you in his quarters." Just make sure that Tyche goes along with you."

  "Did she say what he wanted?"

  "What does any man want?" she jeered, then flounced out the open door.

  With fresh apprehension, Arcadia waited for the two concubines to finish their henna designs. Taym al-Lat had remained silent. Now she searched the wardrobe for a plain tunic the Latin woman might wear; one that would not arouse Shams's erotic interest.

  * * *

  Amir al-Shams's private quarters occupied the main house of the former monastery. An entrance atrium led to a reception area for visitors, and then across a hallway to what had been the abbot's cell, a room more spacious than those of his monks. Those cells were occupied by garrison men and the eunuchs.

  At the atrium roof opening, Apelles had installed slanted baffles as shields from the sun and to channel northern breezes into the apartment. A fish pool shimmered beneath the opening. Because of sparse desert rainfall, its water was supplied by the conduit pipes of an underground aqueduct that led from springs into a storage cistern. The controlled flow of water also flushed latrines into a sewer channel that emptied into surrounding orchards.

  Adjacent to the gate and guardhouse, a guest house stood against the surrounding wall. It could be entered from al-Shams's room or an outside door. One of the fort's two observation towers was accessed through the sheikh's sleeping room, or a ladder in the courtyard. A second tower rose above the stables. Both commanded a view of a road leading to the fortress. No caravan bringing trade goods and girls—or an enemy force—could approach the compound without being spotted at least a half mile off.

  A second bedroom used by the sheikh was in the harim proper, where he slept with the wife or concubine he had chosen for that night.

  Arcadia, wearing felt slippers and dressed in a belted woolen tunic, whose long sleeves were decorated with simple geometric patterns, waited by the hall door while Taym's slave announced her arrival. She looked at her painted hands. The henna paste would be washed off in a few hours, leaving an orange-brown design.

  Without a cloak, her plaited hair still damp, Arcadia shivered as she moved a few steps away to glance through the atrium opening. The rectangle of sky above now was black as caulking pitch, brightened by a scattering of brilliant October stars in the ascending sign of Scorpio. "A time to keep and a time to throw away" has passed. I don't recall the next verse in Ecclesiastes.

  An acrid odor of wood and camel-dung smoke drifted through the opening from outside. Arcadia recalled that Apelles had said a camel would be sacrificed for a feast in her honor. She wondered about Getorius: certainly he had alerted authorities about her disappearance, even Bishop Juvenal if the prelate was back from Caesarea. This sense of uncertainty was part of her ordeal.

  When the slave girl beckoned Arcadia to the sheikh's room, she was relieved to see Apelles at the open door. His head was down, the jaundiced eyes averting her look. Feet apart, Amir Al-Shams stood in the center of the room. Another man lurked behind him, partly in shadow. A bodyguard? As if I could harm the sheikh.

  Al-Sham's quarters reflected his success at pillaging caravan masters who were unaware of his control over this lawless northern stretch of the Incense Road. Other furnishings had been bought more "benignly" by exacting gold from traders who had entered into a "commercial partnership" with the warlord.

  The flickering light of multiple lamps revealed a room with furnishings that were a display of the sheikh's possessions. The air was not scented with incense, yet had a pungent odor of spices shipped to the Persian Gulf port of Gerrha. Baskets of fragrant cinnamon bark, ginger root, and peppercorns lay on tables, next to open jars of nard ointment and trays of costus root that would be resold and pressed for their perfume oil.

  The sheikh's collection of ivory carvings, religious icons, silk and panther-skin wall hangings, pillows, underfoot woven carpets, and mahogany tables reminded Arcadia of shops that she brifly had seen at Constantinopoise.

  In contrast, a canopy over the sheikh's bed was woven of black goat hair, a reminder of the desert home of his childhood—and a warning from his sun-goddess to not take his good fortune for granted. Three of the black tents, similar to those at the Jericho oasis, occupied the north end of the fort's yard.

  Amir al-Shams, his reddish beard newly trimmed and shaven clean beneath his mouth, wore a turban, but had put on a short-sleeved Roman tunic, strap kilt, and blue leather naval cuirass. Arcadia surmised that it was his attempt to appear more familiar to a Latin woman who had been brought to him. Rather than boots, he wore felt slippers. An Arab man's usual curved dagger hung from his belt.

  Despite her danger, Arcadia felt inclined to laugh at the Bedouin's ostentation: his vulgarity was worthy of the verbal barbs of Roman satirists that her tutor had insisted she read when an adolescent.

  One of Apelles's water clocks clicked loudly in a corner. For several uncomfortable moments no one spoke. Arcadia studied the sheikh's features, which did not much resemble those of Bedouin men. His eyebrows, squinting hazel eyes, and broad mouth all were horizontal lines above and below a vertical nose. He resembles a wooden puppet.

  Without looking away from Arcadia, Al-Shams spoke in Arabic to the engineer.

  "What did he say?" she asked Apelles.

  "Domina, he…he wishes to know the day of your birth."

  "Why? I'll not lie that I'm twenty-seven."

  "You misunderstand. An actual day of the month and date."

  "The fifteenth of Januarius. If I was ever told the week day, I don't recall it. Why does he want to know?"

  Apelles shifted weight from his painful leg. "The sheikh orders…wishes…me to cast your mutual horoscopes."

  "Horoscopes? I don't believe in arcane nonsense. At Ravenna, presbyters preach against such superstitions."

  "You are not in Italia now." The engineer half-cringed at another curt command from Shams. "He wishes for us to enter his astrology alcove."

  The small area was richly paneled on three sides in mahogany. Half of one wall was painted with astrological symbols and charts. Next to a bust of Claudius Ptolemy, a mural of the geographer's world map stretched across the wall's other half. A mosaic floor depicted a zodiac of crudely drawn figures with captions in unfamiliar writing. A ladder led up to a trap-door that opened onto the flat roof.

  "I can observe stars from up there," Apelles explained, then indicated the floor mosaic, almost chuckling. "That zodiac is one thing the sheikh could not steal. Al-Shams bought this from the ruins of a Hebrew synagogue that had been torched by a mob." He swept his hand over a scorched section. "You can see fire damage here."

  Arcadia recalled, "At Paphos there was a triclinium zodiac with verses taken from the book of Ecclesiastes, one for each month, each sign."

  "Cyprus? Interesting. A similar one exists in a basilica atrium at Gerasa."

  "I know that we're entering the sign of Scorpio, but can't recall the line above that sign."

  Apelles quoted, " 'A time to kill and a time to heal'."

  "It's amazing that you remembered so quickly."

  "I had a mind, once, young woman. I wasn't always a…a…" His voice trailed into silence.

  "Sir, I mean no offense, but that verse is not exactly an encouraging prediction."

  Al-Shams, chafing at a conversation he did not understand, chided his engineer in Arabic. After a reply, the sheikh managed a leerish grin.

  Arcadia was puzzled. "He understands more Greek and Latin than he'll admit, but why is he suddenly happy?"

  "I told him your date of birth in Januarius…the ides. His is a week later, on the twenty-second."

  "But a different sign than Capricorn."

  "Aquarius. He believes the success of my aqueduct work is due to his water sign."

  "You've done horoscopes for his wife or wives?"

  "And for countless young concubines." Apelles frowned and admitted quietly, "Domina, a joining of Capricorn with an Aquarian is not fortunate."

  She exhaled and exclaimed, "That's a relief! Just tell him, and that I'm married."

  "The latter is of no consequence."

  Al-Shams pulled Apelles by the sleeve toward a chart on the wall that displayed the placement of zodiacl signs on diagrams of a nude female and male body. He pointed to the drawing of a prancing Capricorn that covered the male knees, then moved his finger up to a scorpion over the genitals. He grinned again, and turned to smirk at Arcadia. Any awkwardness he felt on meeting the Latin woman was dissolved in the sexual implication between them.

 

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