I was suddenly uncertain. Perhaps the woman did look a bit like Cassandra. And yet . . .
Where was she? I had lost sight of the woman, and of the old crone as well. Both of them had vanished into the crowd.
“She was too old to be Cassandra, wasn’t she?” I said, my voice hollow. “And Cassandra was blond. We couldn’t see her hair, because of the headdress, but this woman had darker features, didn’t she?”
Rupa shook his head, looking troubled and confused. I saw tears in his eyes.
No, I thought, it wasn’t Cassandra we had seen. That was impossible. Cassandra was ashes now; not even ashes any longer, but ashes dissolved in the Nile—her ephemeral remains merged with the everlasting river, so that Osiris might give her everlasting life.
Had Cassandra believed in such things? I wasn’t sure. But Bethesda had. Most certainly, Bethesda had believed in a world beyond this world and in the supernatural power of the great river Nile.
For an hour or more we lingered in the vicinity of that market. I pretended to shop, looking for trinkets and toys to take home as souvenirs to Diana and Aulus and my new granddaughter, but in reality I was hoping for another glimpse of the crone and the woman who accompanied her. But I did not see them again that day.
That night, I asked Meto to cancel my passage on the ship bound for Rome.
“Why, Papa? I thought you couldn’t wait to leave.”
I shrugged.
“You went sightseeing with Rupa today, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
Meto smiled. “Perhaps you enjoyed yourself, after all?”
“Perhaps.”
“Good! Alexandria is an amazing city. Take a few more days to relax and see the sights. Shall I arrange passage for you on the next available ship, or the one after that?”
“I’m not sure when I’ll be ready to leave. I have a sense of . . . unfinished business . . . here in Alexandria.”
“Just let me know when the time is right. But don’t wait too long. Once Caesar returns from his cruise up the Nile, it will be time to press on with the war elsewhere, and I’ll almost certainly be leaving Alexandria myself.”
Day after day I returned to that market, sometimes with Rupa, sometimes with the boys, sometimes alone. I gave every possible reason for doing so, except the real reason.
The vendors at the market soon came to recognize me, for I questioned every one of them about the two women I had seen that day. A few seemed to have some vague notion of whom I was taking about, but none could offer any insight into the identity of the women, their whereabouts, or whether they might return.
Over and over, Meto arranged for me to board ships sailing for Rome, and over and over, at the last moment, I told him to cancel those plans. One more day at the marketplace, I told myself; if I can visit the place just one more day . . .
Even with all the wonders of Alexandria open to them, Androcles and Mopsus began to grow restless. Caesar and Cleopatra returned from their journey up the Nile. Caesar’s inner circle, including Meto, made ready to depart from Alexandria. Meto began to press me about my own arrangements.
“Surely the time has come, Papa. Once I leave, it won’t be as easy for you to arrange passage. Shall we set the date?”
“I suppose we should,” I said reluctantly.
“Unless you have some compelling reason to stay longer?” He frowned. I was keeping something from him, and he knew it.
“No. Let’s set a date and stick to it.”
“Good. There’s a ship leaving for Rome the day after tomorrow.”
I bit my lip and felt a dull pain in my chest. “Very well. I’ll be on it.”
The next day, which was to be my last full day in Alexandria, I went to the market alone. I arrived very early and stayed there all day. The vendors shook their heads; they were beginning to think I was mad. The old priestess and the other woman never appeared.
The next morning, Rupa and the boys were up early, ready to board the ship for Rome. My trunk was packed. All was ready.
Meto had promised to escort us to the pier. He arrived beaming with excitement. “Can you believe it, Papa? I’m going with you! Caesar’s sending me back to Rome. He needs someone to deliver a dossier to Marc Antony, and he says there’s no one better for the job. But the fact is, I think he’s rewarding me with a trip home in return for . . . well, for a certain amount of unpleasantness that you and I had to endure. It’s a good thing you postponed your trip so long, after all, because now I can go with you!”
“Yes, wonderful news,” I said, trying to muster some enthusiasm. I could see that Meto was disappointed by my reaction. We proceeded to the harbor.
The sky was cloudless. A favorable wind blew from the south, carrying the dry, sandy smell of the desert. The boys ran onto the deck, despite Meto’s caution that they would have to behave themselves aboard a military vessel. Rupa, assisted by one of the sailors, carried my trunk aboard. I lingered on the pier.
“It’s time, Papa,” said Meto. “The captain’s called for everyone to step aboard.”
I shook my head. “I’m not going.”
“What? Papa, there’s no reason for you to stay. I don’t understand. Think of Diana! You must be eager to see the baby—”
“Rupa!”
Rupa sat on the trunk he had just carried aboard, catching his breath. He sprang up and came to me.
“Rupa, you have the key to the trunk, don’t you?”
He nodded and reached into his tunic to show me the key, which hung from a chain around his neck.
“Good. Open the trunk. On the very top you’ll see a leather bag with coins in it. Bring it to me; I’ll need some money.”
Meto shook his head. “You’re actually going to stay, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“But why, Papa? If there’s something you must do, let me stay and help you. Or at least keep one of the boys with you, or Rupa—”
“No! The thing I do, I must do alone.”
Rupa opened the lid of the trunk. Mopsus and Androcles, with a look of alarm, came running, and a moment later I saw the reason: Peering over the edge of the trunk, his green eyes open wide and his silver collar gleaming in the sunlight, was Alexander the cat.
I raised an eyebrow. “Kidnapping a sacred feline from the royal palace! If Queen Cleopatra finds out, she’s liable to throw a couple of slave boys into the harbor.”
“Then I suppose the queen must never know,” said Meto, smiling crookedly. “I’m sure the captain won’t mind; a cat will kill any rats on the ship.”
Rupa returned with the bag of coins and handed it to me. Mopsus and Androcles carefully shut the lid of the trunk and looked around the deck to make sure no one else had seen the stowaway.
I embraced Meto, then stepped back. “Look after the others on the journey home, Meto. And when you see Diana, and Eco . . .”
“Yes, Papa, what shall I tell them? They don’t yet know about Bethesda. What shall I say about her? What shall I say about you?”
“Tell them the truth, as far as you can. Sometimes, Meto, the truth must suffice.”
“Diana will be distraught when she finds out about her mother. And am I simply to say that you refused to leave Egypt?”
“Tell them I love them; they know that already. Tell them I shall come home as soon as I can . . . if the gods wish it to be so.”
The captain of the ship gave a final call for all to board. Sailors hurried about the deck, preparing to cast off. Never taking his eyes from me, Meto stepped aboard. Rupa and the boys stood beside him. As the ship moved away from the dock, they stared at me in puzzlement.
The ship drew away. Their faces grew smaller and smaller until I could no longer read their expressions. I lifted my eyes to the great lighthouse that towered above the harbor, and thought of the first glimpse I had seen of its flame that night aboard the Andromeda, with Bethesda, before the storm struck and swept away all our expectations.
CHAPTER XXXI
I p
aid a call on Queen Cleopatra. To my surprise, I was admitted to her presence almost at once.
She reclined upon a purple couch strewn with gold cushions. Slaves fanned her with ostrich feathers. The gown she wore was loose and flowing, but did not conceal the fact that she was great with child.
“Gordianus-called-Finder! I thought you were leaving Alexandria for Rome today, along with that irksome son of yours.”
“I was supposed to go, Your Majesty. I changed my mind.”
She raised an eyebrow. “You’ve come to visit me instead?”
“Your Majesty once spoke to me of the special circumstances attendant upon a death in the Nile.”
She peered at me and nodded slowly. “Those who perish in the Nile are blessed by Osiris. He embraces the ka even as the currents and eddies of the river embrace the hollow reed of the body.”
I shook my head. “All this talk of the sacred Nile! I’ve seen the Nile. I wandered up to my neck in its muddy waters, searching for Bethesda’s body. I felt the ooze of the bottom suck at my feet. I smelled the stench of rotting plants along the steaming bank. There’s nothing beautiful about the Nile. It’s fetid, smelly, dark, and dank! The Nile brings death.”
“Yet it also brings life!” Cleopatra placed her hand upon her swollen belly. “Some men—squeamish, ignorant fools!—make the same complaints about the sacred delta between a woman’s legs. And yet, from that place comes new life. Silly men, turning up your noses at the slippery fluids and strong odors of fertility! You’d rather play with your hard, shiny swords and spears, and watch the blood spurt from each other’s wounds! Yes, the Nile is all you say it is—a vast, endless expanse of sluggish water and oozing mud. It spills across Egypt, bringing life and death wherever it goes. That’s what gods do. They give life. They give death—and life after death.”
“So you say; those who perish in the Nile are reborn. But are they ever resurrected?”
“What do you mean?”
“Do they ever walk again in this world?”
She looked at me darkly. “Are you thinking of my brother? It’s true, his body was never located, but—”
“There was another whose body was never found.”
She knitted her brow, then nodded. “Your wife?”
“Yes.”
“Why do you ask such a question, Gordianus?”
“Let me ask another. You told me you know the old priestess at the temple outside Naucratis.”
“I’ve visited the temple. I’ve met her.”
“Is it possible that I might have seen her here in Alexandria, in one of the markets?”
“She’s very old, but there’s no reason she shouldn’t travel to the city if she wishes. Even a priestess must gather provisions. But if you’d merely seen the priestess, you wouldn’t be asking me these questions, would you? You saw someone else.”
“I saw a woman with the priestess. So did Rupa. But we didn’t see the same woman. He saw his sister, Cassandra, whose ashes he scattered in the Nile. I saw . . . Bethesda. That makes me think . . .”
“That neither of you saw a woman you truly recognized.”
“Exactly. Unless . . .”
“Unless you both saw what you thought you saw. Cassandra and Bethesda, somehow joined by the river and risen from the dead.”
I shuddered. “Do such things happen in Egypt?”
“Perhaps. But I think you would prefer a more rational, less mystical explanation, wouldn’t you, Gordianus? Perhaps the two women shared a stronger resemblance than you realized. Perhaps the woman you and Rupa saw in the market was indeed your wife—who never died, after all.”
“But the woman I saw looked younger than Bethesda . . .”
“She was ill when you last saw her, was she not, and had been ill for quite some time? If she’s better now, refreshed by the mild Egyptian winter and tanned by the warm Egyptian sun, might she not look younger than before?”
“Bethesda—alive! But how is it possible? We searched and searched—”
“Perhaps she didn’t want to be found. Had you done something to offend her?”
I thought of Cassandra. Bethesda had given no indication of knowing what had passed between us, and yet . . .
“Or perhaps something happened to her in the river,” said the queen. “Perhaps she forgot herself and became lost.”
“But when she came to her senses, she would have looked for me, surely—”
“Looked where? You were carried away by Ptolemy’s army; how could she know where you had gone? Even if she did somehow follow you to Alexandria, for many months no one from outside could reach any of us inside the palace. Perhaps, all this time, your wife has been residing at the temple of Osiris beside the Nile, expiating whatever impurity caused her illness, rejuvenating herself and restoring her vitality by serving the priestess.”
I drew a ragged breath. “That’s what I would like to believe.”
“But you fear false hope?”
“Yes!”
“The only solution is to do what you’ve done all your life: Find the truth for yourself, Gordianus. Go to the temple outside Naucratis. See what you find.”
“What if Bethesda isn’t there?”
“You’ll find her. If not in the temple, then in the river. You must find her, and you must join her, one way or another. Is that not what you want? Is it not your heart’s desire?”
“It is!”
“Then overcome your fear. Go to the temple by the Nile. Do whatever you must to be reunited with your wife.”
I left the queen’s presence, shaken and trembling with doubt, but resolved to do as she counseled. She smiled as I left. Was it because she had shared the sacred wisdom of Isis with me? Or was it because, if I did as she told me, she would have seen the last of me forever?
I made the journey by canal boat, and thence on horseback down the river road. Traveling alone, without the comfort or distraction of companions, I realized that I had not done so in many years. I was reminded of my younger days, when I had set out on journeys without knowing how long they would take or where they would lead, following the road as a man follows his fate, sometimes anxious, sometimes exhausted by the rigors of travel, but more often buoyed by a sense of freedom and the possibility that something surprising and wonderful might lie around the next bend. It was good to be alone with my thoughts, watching the sights along the canal pass by, and then the sights along the road. As I approached the vicinity of the temple, I felt at once calm and filled with anticipation.
The weather was mild. Palm trees swayed in a gentle breeze from the south. Farmers were at work in the fields, tending to irrigation ditches and repairing waterwheels to prepare for the annual inundation. Alexandria seemed far away; Rome, even farther.
This was the Egypt I remembered from my youth, the Egypt I had longed to revisit. I felt the sun on my face, breathed in the smells of the life-giving Nile, and felt transported back in time, as if all the intervening years had never happened. I was the youth I had been when I first arrived in Egypt, owning little, obliged to no one, but confident of the future, as only the young can be confident.
I came to a place where the foliage grew thick and tall between the road and the river. Though I could not see it, I knew the temple must lie somewhere within that dense greenery. I tethered my horse and stretched the stiff, sore legs of an old man not used to riding on horseback. Even that reminder of my body’s frailty did not shake the illusion of having stepped back in time.
I passed through a curtain of hanging vines and found a pathway into the foliage. The play of sunlight and shadow confounded my sense of distance. The seclusion of the place cast a spell upon me. The pathway turned this way and that, and I began to think I was hopelessly lost. Then I stepped into a sunlit glade and saw the temple before me. Drag-onflies flitted across shafts of sunlight. Water splashed and gurgled in the spring-fed pool beside the temple.
I walked to the steps. I ascended to the porch and entered the sanctum of Osiris.
The smell of burning myrrh enveloped me. The chamber was dimly lit. A figure appeared in the gloom and moved closer until I saw the sere, weathered face of the priestess. I heard the sound of mewing, and looked down to see the black cat stroking itself against her bony ankles.
Was it the same woman I had seen in the market in Alexandria, or had memory played a trick on me?
“Priestess,” I said. “I came here many months ago—last summer—with my wife. She was unwell. She sought your counsel. You told her to bathe in the Nile. Do you remember?”
The wisewoman hunched her shoulder against her ear and peered up at my face. “Oh, yes. I remember.”
“And then—not long ago, I thought I saw you in a marketplace in Alexandria. Was it you I saw? Were you in the city?”
She looked at me for a long moment, then shook her head. “That’s not the question you really want to ask. That’s not what you came here to find out.”
“No. You’re right. I came for Bethesda. Is she here?”
“Your wife was very ill when you came here; more ill than you could know. Her body was weak, but it was her spirit that had grown sick. She was very close to death. There was little I could do, except commend her to the care of the river.”
“And did the river heal her?”
“Go to the river. Find the place where you last saw her. Discover the truth for yourself.”
Her words echoed those of Cleopatra. I shuddered, as I had shuddered in the queen’s presence. I stepped onto the porch of the temple, needing to catch my breath. When I stepped back inside, the priestess had disappeared, and so had the cat. The little room was empty, except for a sputtering lamp and a censer of myrrh that released a final wisp of smoke.
I descended the steps, hopped over the spring-fed pool, and took the path that led to the river. I came to a fork in the path and hesitated, trying to remember which way to go. One way had led me to a tangled dead end, I recalled, where I had glimpsed the ashes of Cassandra clouding the flowing water; the other way had led me to the place where Bethesda disappeared. But which was which? Memory failed me, and I stood for a long moment, puzzled. The problem was simple, but my mind was so befuddled that I had to work it out like a child, step-by-step. Bethesda had entered the river downstream from Cassandra’s ashes; with the river before me, running from right to left, the path to the left must lead downstream; so that was the way I must take.
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