Spiral: Book One of the Spiral in Time (53 page)

Naked, bronze-skinned children joined with the men of Gadir in their saffron, dun, and ginger tunics of rough linen, and the procession, colored like water of a muddy stream, flowed through the narrow streets. Some lusting seamen chose to worship in the most ancient way, and slipped away to convenient alleys where women waited to mimic love. The goddess
Astarte
would not frown at that.

They were safe from death here, under Astarte’s ancient eyes. Only a few were ordered to stay with the ship: the Macae warriors, a few rowers to stand guard and, of course, the Gaesatae prisoner, firmly tied to a bench on the rower’s deck. Women were not allowed in temples, unless they were temple prostitutes, which left Sabrann to rest in Akmu’s small room. A reluctant Hero was ordered to stay and guard Sabrann and the Admiral’s cabin.

The Macae held their own celebration on deck. From woven straw bags, they chewed coca leaves and afterwards needed neither drink nor sleep nor food. Vicious games were played: a knife dance set to tribal rhythms pounded by sticks on the deck, and full body wrestling on a board set precariously over the main bow—pray to your gods you knew how to swim. Warriors, cooped up for over four months, they challenged each other and the remaining crew. There was nothing else to do. An arm was broken. Ribs cracked. An ankle slashed to the bone. Akmu would be busy when he returned. Fueled by the coca leaves, they fought and danced and none kept watch of the ship.

Eventually, as the orange sun began its descent in the west and the low hills of Iberia turned purple, the Astarte worshippers returned. They stumbled onto the deck, hands slick with the fat of oxen and lamb sacrifices, stomachs full of meat, and heads dizzy and drunk with too much wine. Astarte was truly a benevolent goddess.

Himilco and Adonibaal—not drunk—returned to the ship last, and found disaster. And it was not the wounded and drugged Macae, or the seamen, drunk and splayed across the deck.

A roar came from the Admiral’s cabin. His voice shouted in a timbre no one had ever heard before, the words almost indistinguishable. Adonibaal rushed into the cabin.

“It’s gone! My
periplus
is gone!” Himilco yelled, eyes wild. Shouts and screams pierced the dusk and the air was filled with his repeated cry.
Where is it
?

Something crashed into the wall. Pottery shattered as it was flung out the door and small objects careened through the air, striking unlucky onlookers.

The wail of his voice carried to the furthest small corners of the
Astarte
. To the bottom of the hold and the top of the mainmast, the decks shook with the question.

Sabrann and Akmu-en-Swnw looked up from stitching a Macae’s knifed ankle, as feet stomped on the deck above their heads. They ran up the ladder in time to see Himilco throw a drunken seaman overboard—one of the ship’s unfortunate guards. A white-eyed Macae cowered on the deck, his hands protecting his head.

And then, his face livid, the Admiral yelled: “Where is Hero?”

A frightened seaman pointed a shaking finger down, and led the way below the deck. Sabrann and Akmu followed.

Deep in the hold of the ship, half asleep and sated with desire, lay the beautiful Hero, arms entwined around an equally beautiful temple prostitute. A young boy, whose long black hair, pleated and wound with threads and tassels of gold, lay on soft white shoulders. A thin gauze tunic with stripes of precious silver lay discarded in a corner. The doe-eyed temple prostitute sat up. His kohl-outlined eyes seriously smudged, he looked up at Himilco, and gently left his lover’s arms.

Hero sat up, blinking, leaning on one arm.

Sabrann stood behind the Admiral. Hero met her astonished eyes and gave an eloquent shrug of his shoulders. An enraged Admiral Himilco drew his fist back and struck Hero across the jaw. A shower of blood sprayed out of his mouth.

“Where is it, you Greek whore! Where is my
periplus
?”

Hero, unwisely, said, “In your cabin?”

The Admiral pulled back his arm and hit him again. The temple boy crawled away. There was no containing Himilco’s anger. He kicked Hero until Adonibaal came and forcefully held him back, then led the Admiral away to his cabin.

Adonibaal slapped his face and shook him until he stopped pounding his fists into the walls. Only then, his hands bleeding, did the stunned man sit down on his box bed, and hear Adonibaal’s report. For other things had disappeared, too.

The ship’s boat was nowhere to be found.

Isis reported all the bread and one of his small, wine amphorae was missing—and he counted everything in his galley daily.

And the seaman called Midacritus was gone.

Adonibaal whispered as he touched his amulet:

Praise the Gods each day, for life without them is full of wrath.

Akmu-en-Swnw came and bandaged the Admiral’s hands and gave him calming herbs, poppy juice, and cannabis seeped in wine—a potent drink that caused him to pass out.

Much later, Himilco awakened and felt the nausea of remembering. The ship was deathly quiet. In the middle of the night, the only sounds were the ever-present creaking of the ships timbers, the rope lines rubbing against the mooring posts.

He opened his eyes and wished he had died.

What folly of the gods had caused this? And how could he face the Council of 100 or the merchants who formed the cartel? All their silver spent on this voyage—for nothing.

Himilco felt the skin on his forehead pucker and then remembered. He touched the place where the sacrificial blood mark had long since disappeared. His vow ... that must be it!

Why had the gods called that debt due now? He had made great sacrifices at the temple today and ordered the priests to pray, leaving them a pile of silver.

He considered death. For Carthaginians, that was the honorable way. His own father had thrown himself into a fire after losing a battle so that now, at least, Carthage remembered him as a Magonid hero. He wasn’t, but his sacrificial death made it so.

Himilco sat up in the bed and reached for his skin of wine hanging nearby. He wasn’t ready to die. A movement caught his eye. In the corner, close to the door, someone lay under a blanket. That barbarian girl.

He stared at the mound of covers and made a low sound—a whine, like a whipped dog—a desperate sound. She was all he had now and she was so valuable she might have been made of solid gold. Or precious tin.

Everything—his life, his ship—would now depend on this angry barbarian girl.

And it might be enough to save him.

Praise the gods each day ...

CHAPTER 35

The next day, in the dark of earliest morning, two seamen brought up the anchors, covered with weed, stinking of the slick bottom of Iberian waters that held the battered, godforsaken
Astarte
in Gadir harbor.

One of the seamen saw a dark shadow slip over to the ship’s altar. He recognized who it was: one of the stupid seamen who had been left to guard the Astarte. Short and clumsy, with the shape of the rower from Gadir—a man of the land, not the sea—he took a greedy drink from the gods’ holy place, the portion always left for death. The seaman drew a sharp angry breath and silently cursed the godless thief who had caused Carloi’s death.

He quickly went below to tell the others; the thief would pay for his greed.

Carloi must be avenged. A sentence would be passed from this sighting.

The ship slid away from Gadir at the first glimmer of light. Freed now from Iberia with its storms, deaths, and ill luck, the
Astarte
hurried to reach the narrow strait that separated the violent ocean from the more placid waters of the Great Sea. It hurried to catch the ingoing current from the ocean that would swiftly carry them into their home waters.

They did not stop for the Oracle of Gadir’s blessing.

Captain Adonibaal was now the navigator, confidently holding the steering oars. He had been through this passage many times. It was narrow and steep sided, funneling the wind that tossed the ship across the waters. This rock-lined passage protected the Great Sea from the unknown ocean as carefully as a virgin’s precious maidenhead.

He knew it well. The strait where Atlas’s Ocean meets the Great Sea is narrow and rough. North Africa lies nudged up as close to Iberia as she can get—just a few stades separate them. Two great rocky promontories guard this entrance:
Calpe
and
Abyla
, the Pillars of Hercules. Wise men said Hercules split asunder the Atlas Mountains to create this gateway and, long ago, had left a sign that gave a dire warning to the ships of the Great Sea:
Nothing lies beyond.
None obeyed the warning.

Full of cross-currents and capricious winds, the passage ran with two conflicting currents: one deep and always heading west, and another closer to the surface, leading eastward from the ocean. The shoreline, a dangerous, ragged edge of rocks and swirling eddies, concealed shoals at high tide. One thing all Carthaginian captains returning from Gadir knew: stay in the middle. It held the constant east-going stream. It would carry them home.

With the first light of day, a strong wind kicked up a heavy and broken sea against the east-seeking current. Adonibaal gripped the oars tighter. The strait frothed white, and he barely noticed a small group of seamen just out of his sight. A short figure struggled in the middle of the group. Adonibaal looked over once, then away, busy with the oars. The glance told him what he had just learned: the thief had been found. It was the rower from Gadir.

His mouth stuffed with bread and head drenched in wine; his fat land hands were tied with a hemp rope in an impenetrable seaman’s knot. Carloi’s killer, the thief of the ship’s altar, was about to receive his punishment.

Adonibaal turned his gaze back to the rough passage ahead. The sea needed his full attention. They were almost through the straits. When he looked over again, there was no one there. A rope tied to the stern was pulling something behind the ship. And following that rope was a white shark, its mouth red with fresh blood, grinning with carnivorous teeth.

Adonibaal nodded to himself, approvingly. Now there was nothing to stop them from making their way to Carthage, and everyone on the
Astarte
was safe again.

ENGLAND

2006