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‘You speak like a damned politician,’ he said. Though she did not look like one. She looked like one of those lavish Roman goddesses sculpted from the sandstone.
‘I am a politician’s daughter.’
‘As if that is all there is to you.’
She cocked her head. ‘What do you mean by that?’
What did he mean by that? ‘I mean that you do not seem quite as heartless as a politician.’
She laughed bitterly. ‘I assure you that I am very heartless.’
‘You sneaked my nephew a corner of bread.’
She frowned, as if unsure of what to make of the comment, and seemed to decide to dismiss it entirely. ‘As soon as you agree to apologise to my father, your nephew and the camel will be released.’
Zaidu’s freedom in exchange for an apology? It sounded too good to be true. ‘How can I trust you?’ he asked.
‘You have no choice but to trust me,’ she said. ‘If you can perform your apology with enough conviction, my father may decide to release you as well.’
‘What do you mean, perform?’
‘You must take the knee before him and speak your apology with great humility,’ she said.
‘So your father wishes to humiliate me before his guests?’
‘He wishes to demonstrate his clemency as Governor.’
‘He wishes to flatter himself.’
‘What does it matter, as long as your nephew is released?’
Rab felt vaguely ill. The last thing he had ever imagined doing was asking forgiveness of a Roman governor. But Zaidu’s safety—nay, his very life—was at risk.
‘Fine. I will do it,’ he said.
‘You will?’
Was he mistaken, or was that a smile ghosting her lips?
She motioned to the three guards standing nearby. They took positions behind her as she produced a key from the belt of her tunic. She unlocked the barred door and stepped into Rab’s cell.
Her perfume swirled around him—some wicked mixture of honey and myrrh. He breathed it in, despite himself, and stole another glance at her neck. It was pulsing faster than ever. It seemed to be keeping time with his own beating heart.
‘Drink this,’ she said. She motioned to one of the guards, who held out a water bag.
Rab nearly exploded with laughter. ‘Do you think me that much of a fool?’
The woman’s expression was all innocence. ‘I vow that the water inside this bag is clean and unaltered.’
‘And I am the King of Babylon.’
Her eyes flashed and there it was again—that ghost of a smile. Why did it please him so much to see it?
‘I understand your hesitation,’ she said, recovering her stony façade.
‘My hesitation?’ He gazed at the poison-filled leather serpent dangling before him. ‘Have you always had such a gift for understatement?’
‘I am not proud that I drugged you,’ she said. ‘But I promise that I shall not drug you again. I would never compromise the moment this evening when you kiss my father’s signet ring.’
‘Kiss his ring?’ Rab echoed, feeling the room begin to spin. He pressed his arm against the wall.
‘Dizziness is a common side effect of poppy tears,’ she observed. She gazed wistfully at the floor. ‘And, of course, a craving for more poppy tears.’
‘I am afraid I feel no such craving,’ he shot back.
‘That is well, for this water contains no such medicine.’ She took the bag from the guard and thrust it beneath his nose. ‘Drink,’ she demanded and then, more gently, ‘and afterwards we shall witness your nephew freed.’
And thus the battle was over almost before it began. Witness Zaidu freed? Rab tipped the bag into his mouth and drank down every last drop.
Moments later, they were standing on the rampart of the fort, watching Zaidu’s small figure lead the white camel back to Bostra. Rab felt a weight slowly lifting from his chest.
He knew that in less than an hour, Zaidu would walk through the big cedar doors of their family’s home and be greeted by his three sisters, who would shower him with love and care. Zaidu would explain that Rab had been captured and the news would spread to those who needed to know. Rab was certain that a rescue party would come for him. But even if one did not, the work would go on. That was all that mattered.
‘Come, let us prepare you for the banquet,’ the woman said. She was standing beside him—not an arm’s length away—and he stole another glance at her neck. Pulse, pulse, pulse.
* * *
She walked ahead of Rab and the guards across the fort’s central courtyard. Soon they stood before an elegant, columned building gleaming pink in the late afternoon light. As he stepped inside the towering structure, Rab found himself surrounded by brightly painted frescoes and unnatural heat.
‘The guards will stay with you while you bathe,’ the woman explained. ‘I will leave your undertunic and toga in the dressing room and await you here in the entry hall. Go now.’
She was gone before Rab could protest and soon he was sitting naked inside a hot, luxurious, marble bath, sweating layers of dirt and blood from his skin.
All around him were signs of opulence. Fine glass pitchers. Thick, embroidered towels. Water ladles inlaid with precious stones. Rab scraped the fine bronze strigil along his oiled limbs and gazed up at the high, stained-glass windows. Their light poured down in pools of colour on to the new marble floor.
He might have been impressed. The Romans were excellent builders and baths like this one were among the most lavish in the world—true palaces of leisure. But Rab could not bring himself to relax, for he knew the source of all this gaudy wealth.
Taxes. Nabataean taxes, to be precise, stolen from every Nabataean trader and merchant from Bostra to Rekem.
Rab gazed at the gilded rail leading into the hot pool and envisioned the camel-loads of frankincense that had surely purchased it. Twenty per cent. That is what the Roman tax collectors took from every load, thus robbing the Nabataean incense traders of virtually all their profit. In the thirteen years since the Romans had come, the richest Nabataean traders had become paupers. Many were now so desperate that they had gone on to the Roman bread dole.
Twenty per cent. The Romans made it sound trifling—the price of acquisition, they called it. As if it had little impact on Nabataean lives. As if it had not slowly, systematically, fleeced the Nabataeans of their wealth and greatness. He scraped a bronze strigil along his bruised limbs a little too roughly. ‘Twenty per cent,’ he muttered. Reason enough for a fight.
The lamp flickered. It was too damned hot. He needed to get out of this cursed bath. He dropped his strigil and pushed past the guards. ‘Stop!’ called one, though Rab could hardly hear him as he strode down the hall to the dressing room, where he thrust aside a chair and crashed into something soft.
Or someone, rather.
‘Titans of Olympus!’ she gasped, stumbling backwards. He saw a blush creep up her neck and his stomach leapt with an unwelcome lust. Against his will, he stepped towards her.
‘You might have announced yourself,’ she protested, stepping backwardss.
‘In the men’s changing room?’ he asked.
She was sweating. Her lovely robe was clinging to her breasts, emphasising their shape. He felt his desire begin to rise.
‘I told you I would leave your clothing here,’ she said. Her voice was unusually thick. ‘You might have remembered that.’
‘I apologise for my poor memory,’ he said, sounding in no way apologetic. He saw her eyes range across his naked chest and then turn away. She took another step backwards.
‘Why did you leave the bath so soon?’ she asked.
‘The gleam of gold began to sting my eyes,’ he said, stepping forward.
‘Where are the guards?’
‘On their way, I’m sure.’
He was now only a few steps away from her, yet it was not close enough. He could feel the fullness of his desire and puzzled over how quickly he had lost command of himself. Here he was, standing before the enemy—captured, powerless, naked—yet all he wanted was to get closer to her.
‘Please, robe yourself!’ she commanded, keeping her eyes carefully locked with his. ‘Your toga is just there.’
‘Where?’ he asked and, when she turned to indicate the toga, he saw her eyes slide down the length of him and behold his naked form once again.
The entirety of it.
And for one unexpectedly satisfying moment he saw her heavy lids disappear and her eyes open wide.
Chapter Four (#u85ab3ff7-4d66-5940-be0d-c34aa7fb2cbd)
The guards burst into the dressing room and seized the camel man by his arms. ‘Robe him!’ Atia shouted as she pushed back through the doorway and out into the main hall.
She felt as if she had just escaped a burning building. She fanned herself with her hand and began to pace. Did the man have no shame? But the question was unfair. Once inside the baths, men were not required to remain clothed. Still, he had appeared almost triumphant as he watched her take in the vision of him.
And what a vision it was, in truth. So much glowing bronze flesh. So much taut, sinewy muscle. He had seemed taller without the trappings of cloth and there was a solidity to him that she had not perceived before. His arms bulged, his chest sprawled, his thighs were as thick as logs and between them...
She stopped pacing. Shook her head. It was not as if she had not seen a man’s desire before. After three marriages, she had long since learned to dread the sight, for it meant only one thing: submission to her wifely duties.
And yet now her mind wanted nothing but to consider that large, fascinating blur of flesh that she knew many men would call a blessing. Many women, too, she thought wryly.
By holy Minerva, why was she even thinking of such a thing? She was the Governor’s daughter. She was supposed to be a model of modesty and decorum. She gazed up at the hall’s high ceiling where an image of the goddess Juno floated in diaphanous robes. The goddess held two pomegranates in her hands, as if weighing them. Her cool expression seemed full of judgement.
‘It was not my doing,’ Atia explained to the placid goddess. What was not her doing? The toga? The bath? The unreasonable attraction she felt towards a man whom her father suspected to be a rebel? ‘It is not my fault,’ she muttered weakly to the goddess. ‘He trespassed the boundaries of propriety.’
Though to be fair, it was Atia who had trespassed on him.
She returned to pacing. It was not just his nudity that had unnerved her. In addition to his highly improper display of flesh, there had been that look in his eye—the same one he had flashed when they had first met and then again when he had called her beautiful.
Strange things had happened to her body all three times he had looked at her that way. Heat had pulsed through her, followed by a kind of melting feeling and a weakness in her legs. It was as if his very gaze had the power to cook her—to turn her limbs into noodles and her insides into bubbling polentum.
They bubbled even now, just remembering that look. And then there was that barely detectable smile that she saw traverse his lips just afterwards. It was as if he knew she admired him.
As if he believed that, in some small way, he had conquered her.
Ha! He had done no such thing. He was her father’s prisoner! How could he have any power over her at all? His life was not even his own. Nay, if she felt anything for him at all, it was pity.
In that instant, she heard the door to the men’s changing room swing open. She turned to discover him striding towards her, the flowing white toga virilis draped elegantly around his body. Her stomach turned over on itself. If she had believed that the trappings of clothing would erase his appeal, she had been woefully mistaken.
By the gods, he was well made. Even the draping toga could not conceal his finely sculpted strength. The flowing fabric hung from his broad left shoulder and swept beneath his right arm, revealing the contours of his chest through his snug-fitting undertunic. As he walked, the heavy woollen garments seemed to whisper across the floor.
Pity. Deep, abiding pity, she reminded herself as he planted himself before her and nearly slew her with his gaze.
‘You wish to make me into a Roman,’ he growled.
He did look rather Roman—with all his pursing lips and broad-shouldered arrogance. Closely trimmed beards such as his had become popular among the equestrian class recently and even his long black hair was of the latest Roman fashion. It brushed the tops of his shoulders, giving him a carelessly regal appearance—like a scholar fresh from the baths.
‘The toga suits you,’ Atia observed. She studied the creases of the garment’s folds, careful not to meet his gaze.
‘Is that supposed to be a compliment?’
‘It is merely an observation.’
‘The toga is a mockery,’ he said, swatting the air.
‘It is not my doing,’ she said, though she had no idea why it seemed important to clarify. ‘My father wanted you to be presentable at the banquet. He has also asked me to learn your name.’
‘Ha!’ the man scoffed. ‘What else did he ask for? My domicile? My sandal size? The breed and lineage of my finest camel?’
The humour of the statement struck them both at once and they chuckled together.
What was this strange thing between them, this laughter? And when had his dark eyes acquired that glint of gold?
‘Rab,’ he said at length.
‘What?’
‘Your father wished for you to learn my name. It is Rab.’
‘As in Rabbel? The last Nabataean King?’
‘Half the men in Arabia are named Rabbel,’ he said absently.
‘Are they indeed?’ Atia said, though she was barely listening. She had become distracted by Sol, the Roman sun god. His long arms were stretching through the bathhouse doorway, staining Rab’s face with golden light.
‘Rabbel was a popular king,’ Rab added, ‘though not any more.’
‘And who is your father, Rab?’ she asked, for her own father had commanded her to find this out as well. ‘And what is your father’s profession?’
Say he is a farmer, or a herder. Let him be of no political interest. A nobody.
