The Salt Roads Read online

  She nodded at him. Behind the bar, Tausiris came over, pulled Antoniou’s mug up by the chain, and refilled it. It was going to be packed in the tavern tonight, with Rose Festival customers. Judah and Didyma would be busy.

  “As I was going over the side,” Antoniou said, “I groped about with my hands for something to hold me. Like this I groped.” He swept his hands about his body, his eyes clenched tight. “And I caught something! Well, it caught me.”

  “What was it?” I asked.

  Antoniou smiled at me. “Our net. Huge thing, our net was. Got my hands tangled tight in it. Nearly broke my wrist. Got my whole body tangled in the damned thing, in fact. It caught me like some great hairy fish and held me fast.”

  Helena giggled.

  “And the water rushing over me, and no air in my lungs. But I held on to that net for dear life, and prayed to Mother Mary to save me.”

  “Meri?” I asked. “Your mother’s name is Meri?”

  Antoniou chuckled at me and patted my knee. “Not my mother. The holy mother of our Lord Jesus.” He made the Christian sign; forehead, chest, and shoulders.

  “Then what happened?” Helena asked him. Her cat’s cradle string dangled from her fingers, unheeded. Judah was rapt, too, just waiting to hear the rest of the story.

  Antoniou squatted down before her. “Then, little flea, Mother Mary heard my prayers, and sent a crab the size of a man to save me.”

  Helena’s eyes grew large. Judah got a big smile on his face.

  “The crab swam through the rushing wave, and with its claws it snipped a hole in that net. Then it reached in and drew me out to freedom. By then, the wave was leaving the ship. The crab stood me upright on my feet, saluted me with one of its front claws, and said, ‘God bless you, Antoniou.’ Then it leapt back into its sea home and swam away. I got on my knees and thanked Jesu that I am a righteous man.”

  Didyma laughed. “Gods, Antoniou; what a tongue you have for telling tales with!” She slid Helena down off her lap. “Come, Helena. Bed for you. Tausiris, I’ll be back in a moment.”

  “Be quick, Cups,” he said. “Customers starting to come in.”

  Helena complained that she wanted to stay and hear more stories, but her mother took her by the hand and led her to bed. A man came to the bar and talked low to Tausiris, who nodded and signalled to Judah. They went off to Judah’s room. He was dressed nicely, that man.

  It wasn’t time yet for me and Little Doe to leave for the party. I wanted to hear more stories too. “Where are you going after this, Antoniou?” I asked.

  He settled back on his stool, took a swig of his beer. A rib-thin stray dog slunk into the bar and began licking the place on the floor where Antoniou’d spilled his beer. Antoniou waved some flies away from his face and said, “Next? Next, the captain says we’re taking a load of wheat to Joppa. In a few weeks. It’s going to the Roman garrison in Capitolina.”

  “Aelia Capitolina?” He gets to go everywhere. “Have you been there before?”

  He grinned at me. “I have. Ah, girl, it’s glorious there. There’s that new Christian temple, you know? The one that Constantine built? Magnificent. All covered in gold, floor to ceiling, with a thousand priests saying a thousand prayers to Jesu, sunup and sundown, and a huge statue to his mother, painted in every colour of the rainbow.”

  “A statue to the goddess Meritet?”

  “Mary, girl. Mary. Don’t say it in that heathen way.”

  I tried to imagine a statue to someone with the same name as me, but a goddess, a virgin goddess and her dead son. “What else is it like over there?”

  He came and sat beside me, put his arm around me. I cuddled up against him. He said, “The winds blow cool in the evenings, and you can sit outside your house and watch the hills gleaming gold against the blue dusk sky. I’d like to take you to see it. Some day, if you can pay the captain’s fare, let me know. I’ll take you travelling, chick.”

  “Oh . . .” I turned to ask him to tell me more, but Little Doe came in from her room. She was all got up in her dancing clothes, carrying a basket of rose petals. “Meri, aren’t you dressed yet? Go and put on your things, or we’ll be late!”

  “Shit.” I stood up, kissed Antoniou on the cheek. “Sorry, love. Gotta run!”

  It was a good night at the party, a rich man’s Rose Festival feast. Doe and I sang and shook our sistra, and I danced. I did the goddess Nut move where I balance on my hands and feet, bent in a bow above the ground, then turn with my back arched so that my breasts stick up into the sky; they always like that. Then we tossed rose petals all over the floor. They liked that, too. It was a good month, that one. Men who come for the Rose Festival spend a lot of money. Between whoring and dancing, Doe and I did well in those weeks.

  “You’re not kicking your heels up high enough after the turn,” Little Doe said to me. It was late at night. We were walking home after a party, a rich lady’s birthday celebration. “And you should hold your hand like this.” She tried to demonstrate. I was busy counting my tips. “Meri, are you listening to me?”

  “Say ‘Thais.’ Yeah, I hear you.” I knotted the money into a corner of my pallia. My feet hurt. Some drunken woman, dripping jewellery, had stepped on my toe when she tried to imitate me. Romans couldn’t dance worth a damn.

  It was late. I drooped all the way back to the tavern. But when we got back, it was still jumping in there. Packed to the walls with drunken men. The place reeked of that camel sweat that Tausiris calls beer. He and Beshotep were pouring as fast as they could, and Cups and Judah were waiting tables, when they weren’t taking customers to their rooms to fuck. There were three men waiting for whores. Little Doe and I threw our stuff in our rooms and got to work. The sun was eating the moon in the blueing sky before Tausiris let us all stop. Cups was crying a little as she took herself to bed, and cradling her jaw where Tausiris had backhanded her for serving someone too slowly.

  Fuck, I thought my feet were going to fall right off, and my arms were shaking from lifting all those heavy mugs of beer.

  I went into Judah’s room to say good night; good morning, really. And we’d be back at it in a few hours. He was sitting on his bed in only his tunic, his head thrown back, rubbing his feet. He was nearly asleep, sitting up.

  “Here,” I told him. “Let me.” I started rubbing my thumbs along the bottoms of his feet.

  “Oh,” he breathed. “Thank you.”

  “I’m so tired, it feels like there’s sand in my eyes.”

  “I don’t want to think about it.” He lay back and closed his eyes. He clapped at a mosquito that was whining in front of his face, then threw one arm over his eyes to keep out the brightening day.

  “This is our life,” I told him.

  He lifted his arm a little, peered out at me from below it. “Cheerful as a peacock song, you are.”

  “We’ll work till Tausiris decides to release us . . .”

  “. . . if he decides to release us.”

  “Then we’ll find husbands who’ll work us some more.”

  Judah giggled. “Not me. I’ll be a husband. Have a pretty, rich wife, lots of slaves to fetch and carry for me.”

  “You want a wife?”

  “Well, yes; what else? That’s what you do, Thais; you marry and you get a family, and you look after them and they look after you.”

  “Yeah, I know.” I felt so sad and weary all of a sudden.

  Judah chuckled. “And you leave your lovely family at home when you go and wrestle with the boys in the gymnasium.”

  “Well, you will. I’ll be the one left at home with the brats. But before all that respectability?”

  “We do this,” he said. “Be slaves. Take tips, take bribes, make friends in high places if we can, save our money.” He shrugged and covered his eyes again. I started rubbing his other foot.

  “And we live in Alexandria until we die.”

  “What’s wrong with Alexandria?”

  “It’s boring!”

  “What’
s the matter with you, Thais?” he asked gently.

  Suddenly, I was close to tears. “I want to go places!” I told him. “I want to go and see my grandmother in Nubia. I only met her one time, when I was a baby. I want to see Aelia Capitolina,” I said, surprising myself. Till that moment, I hadn’t really known it.

  There is a whispering in the space between times. No, not just one whispering; many. There is an eddy in the aether, swirling around Aelia Capitolina. Some of the whispering is strongest there. I want to see what’s there, but in Thais’s head, I am rarely free to travel as I like. But she can take me in her body to Aelia Capitolina. Yes, child, let us go there.

  “And I bet you want to go to the heavens, too, and drink nectar with the gods.” He was nearly asleep before he finished the sentence.

  “Judah!” I said, shaking him. “We could do it!”

  “What? Wha . . . Min’s prick, Thais, let me alone.”

  “No, really! I just remembered what day this is! We could go to Aelia Capitolina! Today! With Antoniou!”

  Judah was awake now. “He’d take us?”

  “He told me he’d take me, if I could pay the fare.” He’d been speaking honey to please me, but no matter. “I earned enough money these past few weeks for the both of us! Come with me, Judah? Aelia Capitolina is so grand!”

  Judah sat up. “I have an uncle who owns a farm just outside Capitolina.”

  “So it’s set, then! Let’s go!”

  It’s not like we had much to pack. I wore my best sandals and my favourite dress, so that was fine. Threw my pallia on over the top. Put my dancing dress and my sistrum into my bag, ’cause you never know.

  “I don’t know how I let you talk me into this,” said Judah, slouching into my room. He was knuckling at his eyes.

  “Shh!” I said. “Beshotep will be up any minute to start the fire. We have to be gone before they find out.”

  Judah lay on my bed, put his head on his bag, and closed his eyes.

  “Just don’t fall asleep,” I told him.

  “Okay,” he said, through another yawn.

  I packed my doll, the rag one that Papa had made for me so many years ago. I’d brought it with me when I came to work at Tausiris’s. Ages now since I would fall asleep cuddling it, but I didn’t want to leave it behind. I used to imagine that it smelt a little like Papa; of goats and honey.

  That was it. I straightened up and looked around my little room. Wouldn’t look any different without me in it. I shook Judah’s shoulder and put my hand to his mouth to remind him to be quiet. He sat up with a sigh and glared at me like I’d trod on shit and was making a bad smell, but he got up and stumbled out of the tavern behind me. As we snuck out the front door, I could hear Beshotep just stirring in his room. He was sleeping in late, that one; the sun was almost up. I hurried along quickly, and reached my hand behind me so that Judah would take it. He didn’t. I looked behind; he wasn’t there. Oh, you gods! Had he abandoned me, then?

  But no, there he was, sly as a cat, coming back out of Tausiris’s at a run. He was grinning all over his face and he had a stoppered clay jar under each arm. He caught up with me and pushed one at me. “Here! Now, let’s move it!”

  I scampered. Didn’t say a word to him until we were around a corner or two. Then I slowed a little. “What’s in them?”

  He chuckled and pulled the stopper out of his. “Food, you fool!” He pulled out a handful of olives, stuffed some into my mouth and the rest into his.

  The olives were wonderful; briny and chewy. I’d forgotten how long it had been since my last meal. I ate them, pushing the pits into one cheek with my tongue as I did. “What’s in the other one?” I opened the jar I was carrying and stuck my nose into it. The honey smell of dried dates filled my nostrils. “Oh, Judah; you’re a genius!” I fed him some of them, took some myself, and re-sealed the jar. We would be in so much trouble when we got back. Tausiris had a heavy whip hand with his slaves when we angered him.

  Antoniou had said that his captain’s ship would be leaving just after sunrise. We didn’t have much time. We hurried along the sea road, spitting pits at each other.

  I could hear the docks before we came upon them. Men shouting, seabirds cawing, the braying of donkeys. I could smell what it was like down there, too; the reek of still sea water and rotting seaweed. Cups liked to come and watch the ships being loaded and unloaded and flirt with the brawny men. Me, I preferred to go and hang about the market. Lots of boys my age there, and pretty things to buy, when I had money.

  Judah and I turned down the last stretch of the sea road. We could see the fat, gaudy trading ships now, bobbing in the water.

  Bright as a star come down to earth, the huge lighthouse on Pharos island towered over the whole scene. Cups said it was mirrors they used to catch the light of the sun. I didn’t like it. Hurt my eyes to look at it.

  Lines of donkeys waited on the shore, laden with jars and sacks and led by their masters. There were men taking goods onto and off the ships. They wore only cloths tied around their loins so that they were unencumbered in their labours. Half the time the cloths came unknotted anyway. They covered nothing. Judah grinned. “I love watching strong men work,” he said.

  There was a book-keeper at each pile of goods being brought onshore, keeping a tally on papyrus. I even saw one woman book-keeper. She must work for some fine lady who had no husband. Maybe little Helena would get work like that when she grew up.

  “How’re we going to know which ship is Antoniou’s?” Judah asked.

  I hadn’t thought of that. “I don’t know,” I said. They were all so big, the ships, and each had lots of men scurrying all over them. I’d only imagined Antoniou standing there alone on the dock, welcoming me with a hug and maybe some of those sesame sweetmeats he always carried. I was worried now. Perhaps he’d already gone?

  I led Judah right down to the docks, dodging donkeys, men staggering with heavy burdens, and the stray dogs that always sniffed about the docks, hoping to snatch a meal. I looked around, clutching at the money knotted into a corner of my pallia. It was all just confusion to me. Please, I thought to no one in particular, don’t let the ship be gone already.

  Judah walked up to a massive man who had just let a heavy sack fall to the ground beside a pile of goods. “Hey,” Judah said, “do you know a sailor named Antoniou? A Greek?”

  The man straightened up, sighing, his hands at the small of his back. He stretched, then in a deep, raspy voice, he said, “Whose ship’s he work on?”

  “We don’t know,” I told him. “He’s Greek, and he’s a Christian, and he’s got an accent, and he’s got black curly hair all over him.”

  The man gave a rumbling chuckle. “Look around you, girl. Could be any Greek on any ship, and there’s plenty of them, Greeks and ships both.”

  It was true. The harbour was full of ships. And my description fit a score of the sailors I could see all around me.

  “And I swear, half of them are called Antoniou,” he said. “Look, I gotta get back to work. See that ship over there?” He pointed.

  “The green one with all the jars loaded up on it?” Judah asked.

  “Yeah. That’s Daidalos’s. He hires plenty Greeks, ’cause they’re his countrymen and they speak the same language. Go and ask there. Hurry, though. They’re about to put out to sea.”

  We rushed over to the ship, with people shouting at us the whole time because we were getting in their way. We looked up, up, up at it. So big! I bet even the old pyramids weren’t so big. There was a man down on the ground, unravelling the rope that would set the ship free. “Hey!” Judah shouted. The man ignored him. Judah ran up to him and touched his shoulder. “Wait.”

  The man looked up. He had one weepy, sore eye. “We’re off. What d’you want?”

  “Does Antoniou work on this ship?” I asked.

  “Yeah. Antoniou from Syria, and Antoniou with the lame leg, and Antoniou the foreigner, and little Antoniou. Which one you want?”

  De
sperately, I said, “He’s a Christian, and he’s about so tall, and he has a wife back home.”

  The man shrugged. “Who doesn’t?” He turned to his job again.

  “He likes to tell stories,” Judah told him. “Great whoppers of stories.”

  The man stopped and squinted up at us in the sunlight. “Does he wave his arms about when he talks?”

  “Yes,” Judah and I said together.

  “Does he like boys and women?”

  “Yes!”

  “Does he have a scar on the back of his neck? About so long?” The man held his thumb and finger apart. I didn’t know if Antoniou had a scar.

  “Yes, he does!” said Judah. “I’ve seen the back of his neck plenty times.”

  “That’s little Antoniou, then. Yeah, he’s here. You going aboard? You got money?”

  I grabbed Judah’s hand and pulled him to the gangplank. “Yes! Yes!” I said. “We can pay! We’re going to Aelia Capitolina!”

  “Sure,” the man muttered, and kept on about his job. I didn’t pay him any more attention. We ran up the gangplank. He came up behind us, and they began to pull it up. The sailors on the deck, a ragtag bunch, stared at us curiously. I didn’t care. We were going to Aelia Capitolina.

  “Anybody seen little Antoniou?” I asked.

  Rock

  Judah held my stomach while I was sick over the side of the ship. I spat and spat to get the sour taste out of my mouth. “Gods, Judah. I just want the world to keep still again, just for a little!”

  “I know,” he murmured.

  “Antoniou said we’d stop feeling sick soon!”

  “I did,” Judah replied.

  “Yeah, well, that’s no help to me. Oh, shit . . .” Another gout of upchuck heaved up from my belly. If I never tasted salted dried fish again, I would get down on my knees and thank every god I knew. And my head hurt, and my breasts. I hated sailing.

  “I have to go, Thais,” Judah told me. “It’s my watch.”