Bertrice Small - Beloved

"And who are the other boys?" asked the merchant.

"They are Linos and Vernus. Their mama-her name is Deliciae-was married yesterday and we were given sugared almonds." Vaba smiled up at the merchant. "I like sugared almonds, don't you?"

"Yes," the merchant replied. "I like sugared almonds, too. I will give you some to eat while I take you and your bromer back to the palace."

No one in the palace had ever seen Zenobia angry, but that day her rage consumed everything in her path. She had to be physically restrained from attacking Linos and Vermis. "Get them out of my sight!" she shrieked. "If I ever see them again I will strangle them with my bare hands!" She ordered her sons' nurses beheaded, an order countermanded by Odenathus.

"You cannot blame them," he attempted to reason with her. "The children have always played together. How could the nurses know what Linos and Vermis planned?"

Weeping, she heaped rewards upon the merchant, invoking the gods' blessings upon him. Odenathus absolved the stunned merchant of all future taxes for himself and his heirs unto the tenth generation.

Zenobia's rage would not abate. "This is all your mother's doing!" she accused. "You would not listen to me when I warned you that she was filling their heads"-she could not bear even to say their names-"with ideas above their station! My sons, my beautiful babies, could have been lost to us forever, and it would have been your fault!" The shock and fear had made her unreasonable. "You would not have cared, though, would you?! If my sons had been lost to you then you could have simply done what that bitch from Hades, your mother, has always wanted! You could have made Deliciae's brats your heirs! I will never forgive you! Never!" There was no reasoning with her for several days, although she did forgive the nurses for the sake of her children.

Linos and Vernus were confined to their apartment in deep disgrace. They were not malicious children, but the sudden change in their lives had made them unsure of their own future. They very much needed to know who they were and where they belonged in this frightening world. Their father told them in no uncertain terms that although they were his sons, he had not been married to their mother. This meant that in the eyes of the law they could inherit nothing of his. That privilege belonged to his wife's sons, their half-brothers. Whatever ideas their grandmother had given them, they must forget, for she was nothing but a foolish old woman.

Al-Zena, however, was a changed woman as she desperately tried to explain to Zenobia. "I did not mean them to harm Vaba and Demi," she wept, her proud face crumbled and suddenly old.

"If they had I would have torn your throat out with my bare teeth," Zenobia snarled.

"I love Vaba and Demi too, Zenobia," Al-Zena sobbed. "/ do!"

"You have never loved anyone or anything in your life!" was the cruel reply.

Al-Zena mastered herself. "You have the intolerance of the very young, Zenobia," she said. "I have loved. Oh yes, I have loved!" Sighing, she began to pace, and as she did she spoke. "When I was ten I fell in love, and my whole life I have loved this man, although he. is dead almost twenty years now. His name was Ardashir, and he was the King of Persia. His son, Shapur, now reigns. Ah, how I loved him. And from the first he loved me, though I was but a child. It was he who sent me here to Palmyra to be wife to Odenathus's father. I fought against leaving. I begged him to let me be his concubine, to be his slave, anything but to leave him. I might have swayed him, but my older sister was Ardashir's wife. She did not object to Ardashir having concubines as long as I was not one of them. So despite my protests, I was sent to Palmyra, and all might have been well if only Odenathus's father had been understanding of my girlish heartbreak; but all he wanted was an heir.

"You have undoubtedly heard the story of how he raped me on our wedding night. Well, it is true, for he did, and every night after that until he was sure I was pregnant. When my son was bom he was taken immediately from me. I was not even allowed to nurse him. I remember begging my husband to let me have my baby back, but he only laughed and said that he knew of Ardashir's plan to make my son sympathetic to the Persians, and that I would never be allowed to taint him.

"Each day after that the child was brought to me for one hour, but I was never left alone with him. I begged my husband for another child that might be mine, but he refused. Then too, he said, I was not to his taste. I was too skinny, and he preferred plump women.

"I grew bitter, Zenobia, and is it any wonder? My son was growing up without knowing me. I had a husband in name only, and I was separated from the only man I had ever loved. When Odenathus's father died I tried to regain my son's love so I might have some small comfort in my old age; but you came, and Oden-athus had no time for me again.

"Do you blame me that I have hated you, that I have tried to make your life the hell that mine has been? Why should you have been loved and I not? Believe me, though, I would never intentionally hurt my grandsons!"

" Which ones?" Zenobia asked harshly.

"None of them. Neither Linos nor Vermis; nor Vaballathus nor Demetrius. I love them, Zenobia! They are all I have, and they love me!"

"I do not know if I can ever forgive you," Zenobia said.

"I do not know if I can forgive myself," was the sad reply. "In my bitterness and jealousy I may have done Deliciae's sons great harm. If you will let me I will try and undo it. Whatever I have said in the past, I know that Palmyra can have only one heir and it must be my son's legitimate heir, your son, Vaballathus."

Zenobia looked closely at her husband's mother. What she saw convinced her that Al-Zena was being honest. "I do not know if we will ever be friends, Al-Zena, but whatever you can do to convince those two of the error of their ways, I will appreciate."

"And you will not take Vaba and Demi from me?"

"No."

"And you will forgive my Odenathus? You cannot fault him for loving all his sons."

"His love is not the cause of my anger. I am angry with him because he refused to see the danger until it was almost too late."

"You must forgive him, Zenobia! You are his joy! You have been surrounded your entire life by love, and cannot know how terrible it is to be without it."

Afterward, as she sat alone, Zenobia began to question if she had ever really loved her husband. She enjoyed his lovemaking, and she certainly enjoyed his company. He was her friend and companion, and she respected him, but was that love? Was that all that had bound her parents together? She thought not, yet she did not know for certain, and wondered if she ever would.

For the first time her life was not simple and clear-cut. When she was a child, her father and Akbar had been her gods. When she had married, she had turned to Odenathus. It had never occurred to her that things would someday be different. She could not erase all the good years with him simply because he had disappointed her, but neither could she ever completely trust in him again. She knew that she was being unreasonable, yet the feeling was there and could not be denied. Men, it seemed, were fallible. Why had that thought never occurred to her before? If Odenathus had put her on a pedestal to be worshiped, then so too had she put him on a pedestal.

"Majesty."

Zenobia turned to see a slave girl. "Yes?"

"Marcus Alexander is here for your lesson, Majesty."

Zenobia nodded at the slave girl, and hurried out into the garden of her little palace where lessons were held on pleasant days. When he turned to greet her something within her quivered, and for a moment she looked searchingly at him.