Seduced By Her Rebel Warrior. Greta Gilbert

will never be beautiful.’

      Atia heard her mother draw a breath. She will never be beautiful. The words were like burning coals dropped into Atia’s lap. She closed her eyes and pretended they were not there. She did not like this game any more.

      ‘What do you mean, she will never be beautiful?’ asked Atia’s mother. ‘Just look at her. She is well on her way.’

      ‘The girl is indeed lovely,’ said the round woman, nodding approvingly at Atia. ‘She has nice large eyes and such fine auburn hair. And her lips are shapely and abundant, are they not?’

      The thin woman shook her head. ‘Yes, but look at that nose. It is not lovely, and nothing can be done to change it.’

      ‘The nose is a small flaw,’ said the round woman. ‘It means nothing.’

      ‘It is a distasteful shape. And it occupies far too much of her face.’

      Atia placed her hand over her nose. The thin woman was right. It was not lovely. Her two older sisters had jested about it all her life. It was overly large and bony, with a terrible, hooking angle that made it resemble nothing so much as an eagle’s beak.

      ‘But she has beauty pronounced in her chart!’ protested Atia’s mother. ‘Just look at her fourth house!’

      ‘That house does not describe the daughter’s beauty, but the mother’s,’ said the thin woman. ‘The mother’s beauty is a part of the daughter’s life.’

      The thin woman might have said more, but Atia had ceased to listen. All she could hear were those five terrible words: she will never be beautiful.

      What could a woman become if she were not beautiful? Beauty was necessary for women, for it meant they married great men, and what other ambition was there for a woman but to marry a great man? Beggar, barmaid or brothel dweller—those were the alternatives, at least according to Atia’s mother.

      ‘I do not agree with you about my daughter,’ her mother was saying, but the thin woman was already pointing to another part of the wheel. ‘It is this relationship here that is of most concern. It bodes very ill for the mother.’

      Atia’s mother shook her head. ‘This is my daughter’s chart. How could it bode ill for me?’

      The thin woman glanced at her mother’s stomach and Atia saw her mother’s lip quiver slightly. ‘You cannot know that.’

      ‘The threads of the Fates bind the members of a family as surely as they bind the world,’ said the thin woman. ‘When one thread comes unravelled it affects all the rest.’

      ‘Will I lose it?’ whispered Atia’s mother, gently touching her stomach. The thin woman remained silent. ‘Tell me!’ her mother shouted. ‘I command you!’

      ‘I am afraid you will lose more than just the child, domina.’

      Atia’s mother began to weep. Fearful tears sent drops of green malachite down her lovely cheeks.

      ‘Why do you tell me this?’ sobbed Atia’s mother.

      ‘Because you asked for it, my dear,’ said the round woman. ‘Do you not remember? The good and the ill. You said that you could endure the knowing.’

      Atia rose from her chair. She did not wish to hear any more of what the sisters had to say—good or ill.

      ‘I will wait for you outside, Mother,’ she said, though her mother was no longer listening to anything but her own sobs.

      Atia was hurrying towards the exit when she heard a third voice. ‘Do not go,’ it crooned. ‘You should not leave in such a state.’

      ‘I am not in a state,’ snapped Atia, pausing before the dark corridor.

      ‘Come closer, dear.’

      Atia peered into the shadows and saw a tiny, ancient woman surrounded by shelves full of scrolls. ‘Do not be shy,’ said the woman.

      ‘The thin woman says that I am shy,’ Atia said, hovering beneath the corridor’s low arch. ‘But the round woman says that I am bold.’

      ‘Can you not be both?’

      Atia cocked her head.

      ‘Sometimes I am shy,’ continued the woman. ‘Other times I am bold. Sometimes I am even ruthless.’ She flashed Atia a toothless grin.

      ‘Ruthless? What is that?’ asked Atia. There was something menacing about this tiny woman, yet Atia could not bring herself to leave.

      ‘You will learn,’ said the woman.

      ‘Who are you?’ asked Atia.

      ‘Who I am matters little. Step closer.’ Atia took one step through the archway, though it felt more as though she was being pulled.

      ‘Now tell me what has upset you.’ The woman’s eyes were on Atia, but her hands were busy knitting. A fine-threaded white shawl stretched up from a basket on the floor beside her. Inside the basket, Atia caught the glint of a pair of shears.

      ‘The women speak in circles,’ said Atia, gesturing towards the others. ‘They make me confused.’

      ‘I understand. If I were twelve years old, I would be confused, too.’

      ‘How do you know my age?’ asked Atia.

      ‘I know many things.’

      ‘Do you know if I will ever be beautiful?’

      ‘You will and you will not,’ said the woman. ‘What else do you wish to know?’

      Atia shook her head. ‘You are just like the other two. You speak in circles.’

      ‘I assure you that I am nothing like my sisters,’ creaked the woman.

      ‘Then tell me one true thing about myself,’ said Atia. ‘No more circles.’

      ‘Ah, one true thing...’ The old woman lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘For that you must come closer, lest the goddess overhear us.’

      Before she even knew that she had moved, Atia found herself bending her ear to the old woman’s wrinkled lips.

      ‘I can tell you the time and the day of your own death,’ she whispered.

      A chill tickled Atia’s skin. ‘That is impossible. How could you know something like that?’

      ‘It is written in the stars, my dear,’ she said. ‘It is the one true thing in your life.’

      In a single motion, the old woman lifted the shears from the basket and sliced through a strand of yarn. She offered the shawl to Atia. ‘Well? Do you wish to know it or not?’

      City of Bostra (modern Bosra in southern Syria), Roman Province of Arabia Petraea—119 CE

      The trouble started with dates—sweet, cloying dates from the plantations of Palmyra. The camels were wild for them and Rab fed the beasts handfuls before they raced.

      It was the sweetness of dates that had spurred his white camel to victory that day, or so Rab believed, and what had made her so skittish in the winners’ circle. The agitated giant danced about the enclosure like a harem girl, her large hooves calling up clouds of dust.

      ‘Calm her, Zaidu!’ Rab urged his nephew, who was perched high in the saddle.

      ‘I am trying!’ the boy shouted. His arms flailed uselessly as the white beast lurched towards a group of admirers. Rab seized the camel’s bridle and attempted to tug her backwards, but she resisted, apparently wishing to be admired.

      ‘Shush her to her knees,’ Rab told his nephew. ‘Now!’

      Zaidu nodded, filling his small