I would have followed her, but some power stopped me. Instead, I found myself staring at the little pool formed by the seeping spring. Patches of sunlight glinted on the surface. Tiny, translucent creatures wriggled under the water.
I heard a loud sigh and looked back at the priestess. She was stooping down, laboriously lowering herself to sit on the temple steps. I hurried back to assist her, then sat down beside her.
The black cat, purring loudly, insinuated itself between us and lifted its chin, inviting the woman to stroke its throat with her gnarled fore-finger. Cats were a rarity in Rome and little liked, but in Egypt the creatures were considered divine; once in Alexandria I had witnessed a furious mob tear a man limb from limb for the crime of killing one. The cat looked up at me and mewed loudly, as if commanding me to give it pleasure. I obliged by stroking its back.
The woman nodded toward the far side of the glade. "Those two must give you no end of trouble," she said.
I followed her gaze and saw that Mopsus and Androcles had disappeared. I smiled and shrugged. "They're no worse than other boys their age. Why, I remember when I first adopted Meto-" I caught myself, and fell silent.
"Your son's name causes you pain?" She shivered and pulled her cloak about her.
"I've sworn never to speak it again. Sometimes I forget." I looked at the sun-dappled vines and listened to the chirping of birds. The magic of the place began to fade. The priestess was merely a frail, thin-blooded old woman, after all; the cat was nothing more than an animal; the temple was merely a stone hut constructed by mortals who had died and been forgotten long ago. The spring was hardly more than a seep, and even as I watched, a tiny cloud obscured the sun, and the dappled leaves faded from gold to tarnished brass.
"Your wife loves you very much," the old woman said.
I smiled. Was this what women talked about in secret when one came to the other as suppliant to priestess-domestic affairs? I stroked the cat gently, feeling the vibration of its purring against my palm. "I love her very much in return."
She nodded. "You must be at peace, then. Those who drown in the Nile are especially blessed by Osiris."
Cold fingers clutched my heart. "Surely you mean to say, 'Those who bathe in the Nile.' "
The old woman made no reply.
I could not speak. I stood up, feeling dizzy. My head was as light as smoke.
Hearing nothing but the rush of blood in my ears, seeing only lights and shadows, I rushed to the spring. I stamped awkwardly across the little pool and followed the path that Bethesda had taken.
After only a few steps, the path forked. I took the branch to the right.
The path led steadily downhill. Through the tangle of leaves I saw the gleam of the river. But before I reached the water's edge, the foliage became more tangled, and I knew Bethesda could not have come this way. Even so, I pushed through the vines and rushes until I reached the water. I felt sun on my face and sucked in a breath of air. I gazed at the Nile and saw it flowing steadily from right to left.
Suddenly, the water before me became strangely clouded. I gazed at the apparition, confounded, until I realized what it must be. Rupa, somewhere upriver, had only moments before cast his sister's ashes into the water. Instead of vanishing at once in the flood, the ashes somehow held together, changing shape and only slowly dispersing, as clouds change shape and gradually disperse in a hot sky. The ashes of Cassandra passed before me on the water, and in the river's gleam the image of her face stared back at me.
For a long moment I was bemused by the strange illusion; then I was jarred to my senses by the sound of a boyish scream.
The cry came from nearby, a little downriver. It was Androcles, screaming for help: "Master! Oh, Master, come quickly!" Mopsus began to scream, as well: "Anyone! Help us! Come help us, anyone, please!" Along with the screaming, I heard the sound of splashing water.
Hackles rose on the back of my neck.
I bolted upright and doubled back, forcing my way through the foliage until I came again to the fork in the path. I took the left branch and ran toward the water's edge. I collided with something and heard a high-pitched yelp as I tumbled head over heels. It was Mopsus I had run into; on my hands and knees I looked over my shoulder and saw him lying flat on his back, convulsed with weeping. I heard more weeping and turned to see Androcles on the path ahead of me. He was soaking wet.
"What's happened?" I said in a hoarse whisper.
"Gone!" Androcles cried. "She's gone!"
"What do you mean?" I staggered to my feet and grabbed his shoulders.
"We heard you say that we should go with her, so we followed her, even though she wanted to go alone. It was Mopsus's idea. I think he just wanted to watch her bathing-"
"What happened? What did you see? Androcles, speak to me!"
He shivered and clutched himself and blubbered, suddenly weeping so hard he couldn't speak.
I ran past him, down to the water's edge. The place was quiet and secluded, with a leafy canopy overhead and rushes all around. Bethesda was nowhere to be seen. I called her name. The shout rousted a covey of birds, who flapped and cawed and streamed skyward from the under-growth. I looked at the water and saw the same cloudiness I had seen before, upstream. The ashes of Cassandra were passing by, more diluted and dispersed now, but still discernible. Sunlight glinted on the surface, and I was certain I saw a face in the water. Bethesda? Cassandra? I couldn't tell which. I dropped to my knees and reached into the water, but my hands found only pebbles and moss.
"We watched her from the rushes." It was Mopsus speaking. He must have recovered from the collision and followed me. There was a tremor in his voice, but he was not as hysterical as his little brother. "You said we should come with her, so we did. And not to see her bathing, like Androcles says! She didn't take off her clothes, anyway. She knelt by the water for a moment, then stood and walked into the river."
"And then?" "She just kept walking, until the river…" He searched for words. "The river swallowed her up. She just… disappeared under the water, and didn't come back! We went in after her, but the water's too deep…"
I strode into the river. The solid, sandy bottom quickly gave way to an oozing muck that pulled at my feet. The water rose to my chest, and with another step, to my chin. "Oh, Bethesda!" I whispered, looking downriver. Rushes swayed in the warm breeze. Sunlight glinted on the water. The placid surface of the Nile gave no indication of her passing. For as long as the daylight lasted, we searched for her.
Mopsus ran to fetch Rupa. He was a strong swimmer. While the boys ran up and down the riverbank, Rupa stripped off his tunic and dove beneath the surface again and again, but he found nothing.
With no spring to feed it, the opposite bank was sandy and relatively barren, but the rushes along the river's edge might nonetheless conceal a body. I swam across and searched that side as well. All day we searched, and found no trace of Bethesda.
At some point, half-mad with grief, I ran back to the temple. I meant to confront the priestess, but she had vanished, along with the cat. Inside the chamber, a single lamp burned very low, its oil almost depleted. By its flickering light I gazed at the images on the walls-gods with the bodies of men and the heads of beasts, hieroglyphs of scarabs and birds and staring eyes that meant nothing to me, and dominating them all, the image of Osiris, the mummified god. What words had passed between the wisewoman and my wife? Had Bethesda intended merely to immerse herself, and met with some mishap? Or had it been her intention all along to sink into the Nile and never emerge?
I stepped out of the temple, into the glade. Again I felt an uncanny shiver of recognition. Had I visited this place before, in dreams afterwards forgotten? If I ever saw the place again in my sleep, it could only be in a nightmare.
Throughout that long, wretched day, from time to time my restless fingers chanced upon the vial Cornelia had given me, still tucked away in my tunic. The thought that I still possessed it was the only comfort left to me. At last, darkness fell, and f
urther searching became impossible. We retreated to the wagon and made a camp for the night. No one was hungry, but I built a little fire beside the road nonetheless, simply to have something to stare at.
The boys huddled close together and wept. Rupa wept as well, remembering his sister, to whom he had said a final farewell that day; despite his muteness, his quiet sobbing sounded like any other man's. Stunned and exhausted, I did not weep. I merely stared at the fire until, by some miracle of Somnus, sleep came, bringing the gift of oblivion.
CHAPTER VII
I was awakened by a spear point poking into my ribs.
A voice spoke in that reedy accent peculiar to the Greek-speakers of Egypt: "I'm telling you, Commander, this is the fellow I saw. He helped the freedman build the funeral pyre."
"Then what's he doing here, all the way across the Delta?" The voice was deep and heavy with authority.
"Good question, sir."
"Let's see how he answers it. You! Wake up! Unless you want this spear poked through your ribs."
I opened my eyes to see two men standing over me. One was resplendent in the uniform of an Egyptian officer, wearing a green tunic beneath a bronze cuirass and a helmet that came to a point; the early-morning sunlight glinting off his armor made me blink and shield my eyes. The other man wore a peasant's tunic but had a haughty bearing and a foxlike glint in his eyes; I instantly took him for a spy. More soldiers stood beyond them.
The officer poked me with the spear again.
Suddenly, there was a blur of motion, so startling that I covered my face. I heard a horse cry, and then, through laced fingers, I saw two hands seize the spear and yank it from the Egyptian officer's grip. There was a scuffle, and I scrambled to my feet to see a band of soldiers swarming over Rupa, knocking the spear from his grasp and bending his arms behind his back.
"Don't hurt him!" I cried. "He's my bodyguard. He was only protecting me."
"He attacked an officer of King Ptolemy's guard," sniffed the man who had been poking me, ostentatiously dusting off his forearms. One of his underlings, bowing his head obsequiously, offered him back his spear. The officer snatched it without even a nod of acknowledgment and thrust it against my belly, backing me against the wagon. The point tore through my tunic and scraped naked flesh. I looked down to see a trickle of blood on the bright metal.
"We're peaceful travelers," I protested.
"From Rome, I presume, to judge by that accent. I think you're spies," said the officer.
"Like this fellow?" I eyed the man in the tunic.
"Takes one to know one," said the officer. He turned to the spy. "And you should have noticed that the bodyguard was unaccounted for. Probably down at the river relieving himself when we showed up. Sneaking up on us like that, he could have killed me! How many others did you observe in this Roman's party?"
"Just the two slave boys, the ones over there."
Androcles and Mopsus, both heavy sleepers, had been rousted by soldiers and were getting to their feet, rubbing their eyes and looking about in confusion.
"And a woman," added the spy. "A bit younger than this fellow, but presumably his spouse." He trained an angry gaze at me, passing on the hostility the officer had vented on him. "Where is your wife, Roman, the one who joined you the day after you burned Pompey? Did you lose her somewhere in the Delta?"
I felt a stab of pain, sharper than the spear point pressing against my belly. As fearful as the last few moments had been, at least, however briefly, thoughts of Bethesda had been driven from my mind.
"My wife… went down to bathe in the river yesterday. She didn't come back."
The officer snorted. "A likely story! You arouse my suspicions even more, Roman." He addressed a subordinate. "Take a party of men and search for the woman. She can't have gone far."
"I'm telling you, she disappeared yesterday in the river." "Perhaps. Or perhaps she's a spy as well, gone off on a mission of her own."
"This is absurd," I said.
"Is it?" The officer poked the spear harder against my flesh. "We have some idea of who you are, Roman."
"Do you? I find that quite unlikely."
The spy spoke up. "Philip told me. Ah, that takes you by surprise, doesn't it?" His snide tone was particularly grating.
"Philip? Pompey's freedman? What are you talking about?" "You thought the beach was deserted, that afternoon you spent building Pompey's funeral pyre. But when Ptolemy's army withdrew, I stayed behind, to observe. I watched the freedman, wailing over the headless body of his old master. And then you were washed ashore; you could only have come from one of Pompey's ships. I wasn't close enough to hear what you said, but I watched the two of you gather driftwood and build the funeral pyres. And the next day, that merchant ship brought the rest of your party-the woman and the mute and the two boys. Oh yes, there was a woman; of that I'm quite sure! And the next day you parted company with Philip, at the fishing village. I had to choose which of you to follow, and Philip seemed the obvious choice. I joined up with some soldiers, and we apprehended him on the road heading east."
"What did you do to him?"
"We'll ask the questions, Roman," said the officer, poking me with the spear.
The spy laughed. "Philip wasn't harmed. He's quite comfortable, traveling under guard in Ptolemy's retinue. Who knows what important bits of information he may have to give us, in the coming days. But he already told us about you."
"What could he possibly have told you? I never met Philip before that day."
"Exactly-and that's precisely what I find so intriguing, because Philip says that he saw you on Pompey's galley just before the so-called Great One came ashore, and you appeared to be on quite close terms with Pompey's wife. Philip says you must be one of Pompey's veterans from the old days-and yet Philip didn't know you, and Philip knew everyone with whom his master associated. How could that be, unless you were one of Pompey's-how shall I say it? — secret associates. An agent, traveling incognito. A spy!"
"Ridiculous!" I said, even though the presumption was perfectly logical. I was treading a dagger's edge, trying to decide how much of the truth to tell them. Pompey's spy I certainly was not, but in fact I had worked for Pompey more than once in the past, digging up secrets. How good was the spy's intelligence? Would he recognize the name of Gordianus? Even if he didn't, someone else in King Ptolemy's cadre of spies very likely might have heard of me. If I lied and told the man I didn't know Pompey, he might discover the truth and presume I was hiding some more damaging fact. If I told too much of the truth, he might make his own false assumptions. I shook my head at the irony: Pompey had wanted me dead, and in death he might yet achieve that purpose, condemning me by association.
"My name is Gordianus," I said. The spy showed no reaction to the name. "I'm a Roman, yes. But my wife was born here in Egypt; we met in Alexandria, many years ago. In recent months she fell ill. She came to believe that only a voyage back to Egypt, to bathe in the Nile, could save her. That's why we came here, traveling on a Greek merchant ship. The lighthouse at Pharos was in sight when a storm blew us to the east. That's how I fell in with Pompey. Yes, I knew him, from years gone by, but I certainly wasn't his spy. When he was killed and his fleet set sail, in the confusion I fell overboard. I was lucky to reach the shore alive. Philip asked me to help him build Pompey's funeral pyre. I could hardly refuse."
"And your party? How did they happen to come ashore?" "The Greek captain was determined to be rid of them, for bringing him bad luck. As soon as we parted with Philip, we headed here, to find this spot by the Nile. There's a temple in that glade, with a priestess who serves Osiris. My wife consulted her yesterday. She went to bathe in the river, alone. She didn't come back." I stared steadily at the spy, my vision blurred by tears.
The man was having none of it. "So, you admit to having been in Egypt before! No doubt that's why you were selected for this mission, because you already know the lay of the land."
"What mission? This is absurd! I haven't set foot in
Egypt in over thirty years-"
"So you say. Perhaps your wife, when we find her, will tell a different tale. The temple you speak of has been abandoned for years. The old woman who haunts the place is no priestess; she's some sort of half-mad witch."
The officer interrupted. "This is getting us nowhere. The main body of the army isn't far behind us. I need to push forward with the advance guard. I'll leave behind enough men to secure these prisoners, and you can hand them over to Captain Achillas when he comes through."
"And the woman? What if we fail to find her?"
The officer looked at me for a long moment. The pressure of his spear against me eased. "If you ask me," he said, "I think the Roman is telling the truth, about the woman anyway. But what would I know? I'm just a soldier. I don't have the devious mind of a spy."
He stepped back and lowered his spear, poking the tip against the earth to remove the streaks of my blood. At his signal, soldiers came forward to bind my hands behind my back, as Rupa and the boys had already been bound.
"What about our wagon and mules?" I said. "Those will be confiscated," said the spy, "along with that trunk you've been carting with you. I'm curious to see what's inside." He ordered soldiers to remove the trunk from the wagon.
"If you insist on sorting through our soiled clothing and my wife's toiletries, may it bring you pleasure," I said.
We were shackled together by our ankles and made to sit in the cart, the boys next to each other at the front, and Rupa and I on either side, opposite one another. The spy emptied the trunk onto the roadside and rummaged through the contents. He turned out to be no better than a common thief, pocketing the coins and the few items of value, such as a silver-and-ebony comb that Bethesda had insisted on bringing with her. He reached into the pouch of my tunic as well, and pulled out the alabaster vial.
"Ah, what's this?" he said.
"A gift from a lady."
"Perfume? Are Roman men scenting themselves like catamites these days?"
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