The trail grew rougher. The rolling hills of the north transformed into steep, cliffy canyons that plunged into narrow wadis flowing only with sand.
Atia kept her head down as she marched and took one step at a time. It is a powerful demon you face, he had told her, as if he already knew of the battle she waged.
It was impossible. She had told him nothing of her fondness for the poppy tears.
Surely he had been speaking of some other demon: her father, Plotius, the Legate of Rekem. Or perhaps he had been referring to the demon of grief, who had shown himself unexpectedly when she had spoken of her mother.
What was abundantly clear was that Rab no longer wished to speak with her, for he left her to eat alone each night, and did not join her again to watch the stars come out. Whatever desire he had once had for her had waned predictably. Nor had she helped matters by describing the gruesome death of her sister’s lover.
As if that were not enough, she had refused to answer his question about why she had gone to meet Plotius and when he had asked gently about her mother she had ordered him to go away.
It is a powerful demon you face, he had said and was clearly letting her face it alone.
And that was well. She wanted to be alone. There were only thirty days left until her foretold death, after all. Or was it twenty-nine?
She searched her mind, but it yielded only confusion. How on earth had she managed to lose track of the days? She paused on the goat path. They had arrived outside Pella on day thirty-five, had they not? Or maybe it was thirty-four. And how many days had it been since then? Four? Five?
It was what she had been wondering when a bulging hulk of a man crashed into her. ‘Apologies!’ he exclaimed, reaching out to steady her.
The man was breathing so hard beneath his chain mail shirt that Atia had the strong urge to lift it off him. ‘You saved me from a fall, soldier,’ she said. ‘I am grateful.’
‘But it was I who caused the stumble in the first place.’
‘Then we shall call ourselves even,’ she said.
‘Not in the least!’ exclaimed the man. ‘I vowed to deliver you safely to the Legate in Rekem. Until that blessed moment I shall never say that we are even.’ His expression was so earnest that she could do nothing but bow her thanks.
His name was Livius. He was the most talkative and also the stoutest of the soldiers, though he seemed better suited to kneading bread than tromping up hills. Each morning he would seek her out and attempt to engage her with small talk.
‘I do not wish to talk, Livius,’ she would say, though it made no difference.
He would always open their one-sided conversation with a remark about the sun, then remove his helmet and scratch his bald head ponderously, as if its light and heat were one of life’s great mysteries.
He would go on to describe some detail of his homeland—Gaul—his sisters—unmarried, fine weavers—his family’s vineyard—burned by Caesar, since replanted—or his physical state—chafing between his thighs, a toothache.
Then he would urge Atia to ride a donkey for a while and take a bit of rest. ‘You must be tired, domina. Why not relieve your weary bones?’
‘I prefer to walk, thank you,’ she always replied. She knew that Livius was secretly speaking of himself and that, if he were given the chance, he would mount the sturdiest of the donkeys and ride it all the way to Rekem.
‘If you wish to suffer, I cannot stop you,’ Livius always said.
Atia did wish to suffer. She wanted to walk and walk, to feel the burn of muscle and the ache of bone—anything to keep her from thinking of the poppy tears.
It is a powerful demon you face, she told herself over and over again. And you are defeating it.
She occupied her mind with games of distraction. How many steps to the next hill? Which was the tallest soldier? How many seconds for a hawk to make a single spiral in the air? She gathered up pretty stones and then threw them away one by one. One evening, she carved a message into a slab of soft sandstone: Atia was here.
She was getting better with each passing day, but it was still hard to distinguish herself from the yearning, which had transformed from a physical illness to an illness of the mind. She decided that she much preferred the physical malaise to the mental. One could escape the physical through sheer exhaustion, but there was no escaping the mind.
Atia was not here, she carved the next evening. It seemed much closer to the truth.
Rab kept a blistering pace. The soldiers’ limbs grew redder by the day, their search for shade more desperate. Rab began their march earlier and earlier each morning. In the evenings, he roused them for several more hours in the wake of the sun god’s retreat.
It was as if he were trying to sneak around the heat, as if he believed that if they marched quietly and stealthily enough, it might not notice them at all.
Inspired, Atia tried to sneak around the yearning. She steered her thoughts to other things she wished for: shade, a good meal, a plunge into a deep pool.
The wish to be desired by a pair of eyes flecked with gold.
It was not an unreasonable wish, for no one had ever desired her before. ‘It is your nose more than anything, dear,’ her third husband had told her once. They had been strolling together at a banquet, admiring a lovely garden. ‘Everything else about you is quite adequate.’ He had said it as if he were paying her a compliment, then had motioned to a woman standing nearby to join them.
‘Atia, I would like to introduce you to my mistress.’
‘Hello,’ the woman had said with a shy grin. Her nose had seemed so small as to be almost invisible.
Atia had nodded at the beautiful woman, but had been unable to say a word.
‘Come now, Atia,’ her husband had said. ‘I thought you would be pleased. You no longer have to perform those duties that I know are so odious to you.’
Though Atia had no love for her wifely duties, she knew in that moment that her third husband had been speaking of his own odium—of Atia.
Though the manner of the rejection varied with each husband, the reason was always the same. And thus her path was laid. With each step she was drawing closer to a fate as familiar as it was dreadful. Another husband. Another series of disappointments. More long years of smiling with feigned contentment through what amounted to a prolonged rejection inside a marble prison.
It was no wonder she craved the tears.
I am tired of being used. The thought came to her on the twenty-sixth day of the march. Or was it the twenty-fifth? She was sitting in the shade of a boulder, noticing the contours of new muscle in her legs. She realised that she was tired of sitting in a haze while her life slowly passed her by.
She was tired, she realised, of doing nothing.
They marched and marched and Atia’s legs grew stronger still. She was not alone. About half of the soldiers appeared to be growing stronger as well. They seemed to view the heat like Rab did, as a puzzle to be solved.
The others, however, were not faring so well. They spent much of their energy in active rebellion against the heat, not realising that half of the battle lay inside their own minds. Plotius might have been the worst of them. He spent his days kicking rocks from his path and scowling at the sun.
Meanwhile, the New Trajan Way stretched to the east, its wide, smooth surface mocking them as they threaded their way along steep, rocky goat paths.
Another temptation lay to the west: a giant lake into which the River Jordan flowed. The Romans called it the Bitumen Lake after the tarry black substance that floated up from its depths. The Nabataeans had many names for the expanse, including the Sea of Zo’ar, the Sea of Forgetting, and even the Dead Sea, for its waters were salty and void of life. At a distance, however, the water seemed fresh and fecund, like the pool of some divine oasis.
Atia had to remind herself of what Rab had warned—that both routes were traps: to follow either would be to invite attack.
Supplies ran low. The donkeys’ loads diminished, only to be replaced by the soldiers’ helmets and chainmail, which most men could no longer bear to wear. The more enterprising among them had ripped their bed sheets into strips and wrapped the small pieces of cloth around their roasting limbs.
‘You look like an overstuffed mummy, Livius,’ Atia said one morning as they broke camp. The portly soldier paused in exaggerated surprise.
‘You made a jest! Good for you, Atia,’ said Livius. ‘I had begun to worry that you resided in the Land of the Dead yourself.’
‘Nay, Livius,’ Atia said, feeling an actual smile creeping across her lips, ‘just the land of dusty spirits.’
‘Another jest!’ Livius burst out. ‘We will need that good humour over the next few days.’ He pointed down at the canyon plunging before them—the largest they had yet traversed.
Moments later, Rab stood before the entourage to describe that day’s journey. ‘They call this the land of the three wadis,’ he announced. ‘The canyon you see to the south is the first—Wadi Ma’in. There will be two others after this one, Wadi Hidan and Wadi Mujib, each larger than the last.’
Atia lent her voice to the chorus of groans.
‘You favour him,’ whispered Livius. ‘I can hear it in your voice.’
Ignoring Livius, Atia focused her attention on Rab, who was pointing at the large peak in the distance. ‘Our goal is to reach the third wadi by nightfall, for at its bottom we will encounter a perennial stream. It will be our reward.’ His eyes found Atia’s.
She quickly looked away.
‘And he favours you,’ whispered Livius. ‘That is abundantly clear.’
‘You are wrong, Livius.’
‘I am always right about such matters. My sisters used to say I have a nose for love.’
‘And I have nose for scaring love away,’ jested Atia, motioning to her terrible nose.
Livius only shook his head. ‘I would not be so sure about that, domina.’
Atia wanted to ask Livius what he meant, but Plotius pushed past them. ‘Why do we not travel along the Bitumen Lake?’ he barked. ‘There are many large settlements on its shores and many opportunities to obtain supplies. It is but a day’s journey away. All downhill.’
‘As I have said, Nabataean rebels patrol the eastern shores. It is not safe,’ stated Rab. ‘Come, we must keep moving.’
But Plotius held his ground. ‘How could you possibly know that?’ he demanded. They had gone nowhere, yet Plotius’s corpulent face was already covered in a curtain of cloudy sweat.
‘I know it from the bitumen traders,’ blurted Rab. ‘They come to Bostra on the ides of each month to trade their black tar. They talk.’
‘I find that hard to believe,’ said Plotius.
‘I am as concerned as you are about securing supplies,’ explained Rab. ‘We will pass an encampment of herders just before the Wadi Mujib stream. They will sell us enough wheat to see us through to the next encampment.’
Plotius scowled, but he commanded his men to move out. It was not long before he was groaning once again beneath the sun.
It was their most difficult day yet. Marching out of the second wadi, several of the men collapsed and had to be placed atop donkeys. The heat only increased as they descended in the great chasm of Wadi Mujib, but just as Rab had promised, they soon stumbled into an encampment of herders. Atia and the soldiers stood beside a corral of braying sheep while Rab and Plotius bartered with a young shepherd for several sacks of wheat.
‘Ask him how much for a sheep,’ Plotius said, his eyes shot with blood.
‘The sheep are not for sale,’ explained Rab. ‘They are meant to see this man’s family through the summer.’
‘Everything is for sale,’ Plotius said. ‘Ask him how much.’
Atia could hear the apology in Rab’s voice as he switched to Nabataean and asked the man if he would be willing to sell one of his sheep. The man shook his head apologetically. ‘He is very sorry,’ said Rab. ‘His family is large. He cannot part with a single one.’
Rab and the shepherd agreed on a price for the wheat and Plotius paid the shepherd from a store of coins. Their food secured, the soldiers fell into line behind Rab as they followed a single narrow path that led over a hill and out of the encampment.
The only one who did not follow was Plotius. Atia noticed him lingering beside the corral, so she stepped behind the tent and lingered, too. The soldiers were almost halfway up the hill when Atia watched Plotius lift the large ewe from her stall.
‘Put the sheep down, Plotius,’ Atia cried, stepping out from behind the tent. She hardly recognised her own voice. ‘Now!’
She planted herself at the start of the narrow path. He could go nowhere without pushing past her.
‘Get out of my way, Atia!’ he shouted. ‘We need her more than they do.’
Atia’s heart was pounding. It is a powerful demon you face, she told herself. And you are defeating it.
‘Leave the sheep,’ she said, then added, ‘You are acting against provincial law.’
He released a laugh—a long, cold, terrifying laugh that was meant to defeat her. But she held her ground as he attempted to push past her and when he stepped off the path she adjusted her own position so as to remain standing before him, not allowing him to pass.
‘Are you mad, woman? Move out of the way, or I will make you regret it!’ He was lifting his leg to kick her when Atia saw a large wooden pole rise up behind his head. The shepherd gave a terrifying howl and the staff came crashing down on to Plotius’s skull. Goliath went tumbling to the ground.