Ancient World 02 - Raiders of the Nile

by Steven Saylor

  Puzzlement was added to the hatred on his face. “How did you know the Jackal was involved in that?”

  “Answer my questions first, Artemon, and then I’ll answer yours. Why did you kidnap that girl?”

  “For money, of course. Her lover is very rich. And … for revenge.”

  “Revenge against whom?”

  “Her rich lover, of course! His name is Tafhapy. I didn’t just want his money. I wanted to make him as miserable as I could, by taking the person dearest to him.”

  “But why? What grudge do you have against this Tafhapy?”

  “That’s none of your business, Roman!”

  “But the kidnapping was a failure. Tafhapy never replied to your demands.”

  Artemon frowned. “That was a disappointment. The Jackal assured me that Axiothea was precious to him. Why did he never respond?”

  Because the henchmen of the Jackal took the wrong girl, I could have told him. But I saw no point in saying more about Bethesda than I had to. “Why did you change your mind at the very end?” I asked. “Why did you put the girl on the Medusa, and try to board the ship yourself, when you knew the king’s warships would sink her?”

  “Because you exposed the fake sarcophagus! What was I to do after that, with all the men watching me and hanging on my every word? If they realized I’d tricked them, even those fools would have turned on me. I decided to do what King Ptolemy had done—take a wild chance. I decided to steal the sarcophagus, after all. Then I’d set out across the sea and do what the men were expecting me to do—make myself king of Crete, with Axiothea as my queen!”

  His eyes glimmered at the sweetness of that impossible dream. In my last moments aboard the Medusa, I, too, if only for an instant, had glimpsed such a dream.

  “What about the warships? You knew they were out there, beyond the harbor, waiting to ram the Medusa.”

  “We’d have outrun them! They came at Mavrogenis with the advantage of surprise, but I’d have known they were there, and we’d have slipped past them. It wouldn’t have been easy, but we could have done it—I’m sure of it! And if that had happened, I’d be thanking you now instead of cursing you, Roman, for guiding me to the destiny that should have been mine all along. Instead … I’ll end with nothing, not even my own head.”

  I felt a stab of pity for him. I suppressed it. Because of him, Menkhep and Ujeb and Captain Mavrogenis and scores of others had died horrible deaths. He had been willing to sacrifice all of them for a few bags of gold and a fresh start.

  “Why Crete?” I said. “Why not Cyrene? Why not go there and claim your birthright as the son of Apion?”

  Artemon stared at me for a moment, speechless, then threw back his head and laughed. “Oh, Pecunius, when will you cease to surprise me? I thought you’d seen through all my deceptions, yet you still believe me to be the king’s cousin!”

  “Then you’re not the bastard son of Apion?”

  “Of course not!”

  “But Menkhep told me … and all the men seemed to think…”

  “They believed what Metrodora and I wanted them to believe. And so did you, it seems.”

  “Who are you, then, Artemon? Where did you come from?”

  “I’m exactly what I told you and the others in that little speech I gave before the raid. ‘The bastard son of a whore’ I called myself, and so I am.”

  “But not the son of Apion?”

  “Give it up, Pecunius!” He shook his head. “I was born in Alexandria, the son of a whore and a freeborn Egyptian who never cared to claim me. I grew up poor but free alongside my twin sister.”

  “So it’s true that you had a twin?”

  His face softened. “Artemisia was her name. She was beautiful and clever—far cleverer than I—and always kind to me. Then our mother died. Artemisia went her way, and I went mine. A visiting merchant from Syria took a fancy to me, and took me back to Damascus with him. I’d taught myself to read and write, and he thought to train me as a scribe. How I loved all those books in his library! But while he fiddled with me, I fiddled with his accounts. When he discovered how many shekels I’d stolen from him, he was furious. He would have tortured and killed me, I have no doubt. Instead, I killed him. The Syrian was the first man I ever killed, but not the last. By the time I arrived in the Delta, I was quite experienced in the ways of crime. I fell in with that gang of fools, who desperately needed a leader, and it all worked out beautifully. The rest, you know.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “Now it’s your turn to talk, Pecunius. Who are you, and why did you come to the Cuckoo’s Nest? How is it that you know the Jackal? Why did you attack me after I boarded the Medusa, and how did you manage to get off? And Axiothea—was she still aboard … when the Medusa sank?”

  I had intended to answer his questions, as he had answered mine, but now, I hesitated. Though Artemon was in chains, I still feared him. He had revealed himself to be a vengeful and remorseless killer. He already hated me for having ruined his plans. How would he react if he knew I had deceived him from the start and had come to the Delta to take back the girl he knew as Axiothea?

  “Go ahead, Pecunius. Speak! What do you have to lose? In a short while, we’ll both be dead.”

  His words sent a chill through me. Artemon had betrayed the king and was responsible for the loss of the sarcophagus, but what was my crime? Repeatedly I had told Zenon that Bethesda and I were prisoners of the bandits, but why should he believe me? Artemon was right. My fate was to be questioned under torture, and then disposed of. What had Artemon said? There were to be no survivors, no witnesses. Like everyone else who had taken part in the raid, willingly or not, I was to die.

  And what of Bethesda? Surely her fate would be the same as mine. In trying to rescue her, I had brought about her destruction.

  “Speak, Pecunius!” shouted Artemon.

  I clenched my teeth. I shut my eyes. I wanted no more to do with him.

  From somewhere nearby, distorted by echoes amid the stone passageways, I heard the sound of boyish laughter. Did I imagine it, or was there a child in the king’s dungeon? I heard the sound again, closer than before. Unless I had gone completely mad, I recognized that laughter. It was Djet!

  I heard the laughter again, just outside the door to the cell. A moment later, I heard clanking sounds as the door was unlocked and unbarred. The door swung open on creaking hinges.

  Djet appeared in the doorway. Smiling and laughing, he ran to me and threw his arms around me.

  “Djet, what happened to you?”

  He spoke so quickly I could hardly make out the words. “I got off the ship as soon as I could, just as you told me to do, and then I hid in the rafters of the customs house, then I climbed on the roof and watched the Medusa sail off, and then I saw the king’s boat—and you were on it! I ran to the master and I told him you must still be alive. And I was right!”

  “But Djet, what are you doing here?”

  “She insisted that the master come look for you, and plead for your release.”

  “She?”

  “You know! Who else can make the master do whatever she says?”

  Djet looked over his shoulder and pointed at Axiothea—the real Axiothea—who stood in the doorway. In such sordid surroundings, her beauty was all the more exquisite. Looking a bit wary, she stepped into the dimly lit cell, followed a moment later by Tafhapy.

  Their gazes were drawn first to Djet, and then to me. Both nodded to acknowledge that Djet had been right: here I was, back from my journey but under royal arrest. Then, as they took in the rest of the cell, their eyes settled on Artemon, who stared back at them with a look of utter astonishment.

  Axiothea gasped. Tafhapy stiffened and staggered back.

  “Brother!” cried Axiothea.

  “Son!” whispered Tafhapy.

  Bewildered, I looked from face to face. Djet appeared to be as puzzled as I was.

  A moment later, Zenon entered the cell, followed by King Ptolemy, who could barely fit through the doo
rway. My consternation was complete.

  XXXVIII

  Axiothea ran to Artemon and fell to her knees amid the filthy straw. She threw her slender arms around him and burst into tears.

  “My dear, sweet brother, how long it’s been! How I’ve missed you! I thought I would never see you again.”

  “Better that you hadn’t,” muttered Artemon, his voice choked with emotion. He tried to return her embrace, but the chains prevented him. “Beloved Artemisia! Why are you here? And why are you with him?” He glared at Tafhapy, who kept his distance, averting his eyes and wringing his hands.

  “This woman…” I whispered. “This woman is Artemisia, your twin sister? And Tafhapy is the father of you both?”

  The chamberlain struck his staff against the stone floor, demanding attention. “Get back from the prisoner, young woman! For your own safety—”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” Axiothea gave Zenon a withering glance. “My brother would never harm me.”

  From the sour look on his face, I could see that the chamberlain was as confused as I was. He was not a man who liked surprises. “Whatever relationship you may have with the Cuckoo’s Child, young woman, it is not the king’s reason for coming here. We will deal first with the business at hand. Tafhapy, you came to the king this morning to urgently plead for the release of this other prisoner, the Roman who calls himself Gordianus. Is this in fact the man you were referring to?” He pointed with his staff. I jerked back to stop him from poking my nose.

  Looking dazed, Tafhapy glanced at me and nodded.

  “You say this Gordianus came to you some time ago seeking information about his stolen slave—the girl with whom he was retrieved from the harbor.” At this bit of information, I saw Artemon’s eyes light up. “You say you put him on the trail of the Cuckoo’s Gang, and for a traveling companion you sent this slave boy with him. Is that correct?”

  Tafhapy nodded.

  “So when Gordianus tells us that his sole purpose in approaching the Cuckoo’s Gang was the retrieval of his property, he speaks the truth?”

  “As far as I know,” whispered Tafhapy.

  “However, there is a complicating factor,” said Zenon. “I thought the name ‘Gordianus’ sounded familiar, and sure enough, among the documents in my office there is a warrant for this man’s arrest issued by the city fathers of Canopus, accusing him of murder and theft. A ruby is said to be involved—”

  “That’s a lie!” said Djet. “The Roman never killed or robbed anyone.”

  “You speak out of turn, slave!” Zenon glared at Djet, who calmly looked up at him. The distraught Tafhapy seemed incapable of interceding, and for a long moment everyone in the cell witnessed the peculiar spectacle of a slave boy and a chamberlain of the king of Egypt engaged in a staring contest.

  It was Zenon who finally blinked. “You traveled alongside this Roman? Speak, boy!”

  “Day and night,” said Djet. “He’s the bravest man I ever met. He saved us from the Hungry Crocodile, then from the Friendly Hippopotamus! He got the best of Mangobbler, and made a friend of Cheelba the lion—”

  “We are not interested in whatever menagerie you may have encountered in your travels. Did this man kill a Nabataean merchant in Canopus? Did he join the Cuckoo’s Gang? Did he take part in criminal acts?”

  I held my breath. A moment before, it had seemed that Djet was my savior, having brought Tafhapy to plead on my behalf. Now, with a careless word, Djet might bring about my execution.

  Djet squared his shoulders, stiffened his jaw, and put his hands on his hips. He spoke not to the chamberlain, but directly to the king, looking him in the eye. “It was the owner of the inn at Canopus who murdered the Nabataean, not the Roman. Yes, he pretended to join the Cuckoo’s Gang—that much is true. But he did so only to save his life and mine. His only purpose was to get back the girl who had been taken from him. He’s no more an outlaw and a bandit than I am!”

  Zenon grunted. “So you say. But a character reference from a child, and a slave at that, is hardly—”

  “Oh, stop this nonsense!” The king stepped forward. His sheer bulk obliged the chamberlain to move aside. “It’s obvious that the Roman is exactly what he says he is. You saw him with that slave girl yesterday, after we plucked them from the waves. Did they look like dangerous criminals? I think not, unless love is a crime.”

  The chamberlain rolled his eyes. “Has Your Majesty considered that this Gordianus may be a spy, sent here by Rome?”

  “Oh, I hardly think so, Zenon. And what if he is? The Romans are our friends, are they not? They keep offering to help me keep my throne, with only one catch—I must bequeath Egypt to the Roman Senate in my will, as Apion did with Cyrene! They have nerve, I’ll grant them that. No, no, when I look at this fellow I do not see a murderer or a spy.”

  “Even if the Roman is no more or less than he appears to be, Your Majesty, in such a delicate matter, there are other considerations—”

  “You will rescind the warrant for the Roman’s arrest, then release him and his slave girl at once, Zenon. Do you understand?”

  The chamberlain sighed and bowed his head. “It shall be as Your Majesty decrees. Guard! Bring the key and remove the manacles from this prisoner. Then free the girl in the adjacent cell.”

  He could only mean Bethesda. All night, she had been only a few feet away from me!

  In a matter of moments, I was freed from my chains and able to stand, if a bit unsteadily. I rubbed my wrists where the manacles had chafed them. A moment later, Bethesda appeared at the doorway, then ran to my side.

  “Bethesda, did they harm you?”

  “No, Master. And you? Your wrists are all red and raw.”

  “It doesn’t matter, now that you’re back—”

  “Oh, do be quiet, the two of you, before I change my mind,” said the king. “Now, Tafhapy—if only for my amusement, you will explain your relationship to these other lovely young people. The girl there, clinging to the Cuckoo’s Child. Is her name Axiothea or is it Artemisia?”

  Tafhapy’s jaw quivered. “Both. Her mother named her Artemisia, but years ago, when she first began to act, she took the stage name Axiothea. That’s how everyone knows her now.”

  “And this young man, the notorious Cuckoo’s Child—is he her brother?”

  “Her twin,” whispered Tafhapy.

  “I see. Artemon and Artemisia, twin siblings. Yes, they do look a great deal alike. And you are their father?”

  “I am.”

  “By blood, perhaps,” growled Artemon, “but in no other way is that man my kin. I never had a father!”

  The king pursed his lips. “What does he mean, Tafhapy? How did you come to father these children, and what is your relationship with them now? I command you to explain!”

  Tafhapy drew his bristling eyebrows together. At first he spoke with difficulty, but then the words came out in a rush. “My son speaks the truth. How did I father these children, you ask? When I was young, my father grew anxious at my lack of interest in the opposite sex. He took me to the most expensive brothel in Alexandria, and so that I should not be put off by the jaded nature or the overripe allure of the woman I was paired with, he insisted that I be given a virgin—a girl even younger than myself, as it turned out. Somehow or other I managed to consummate the act, which pleased my father greatly but only confirmed to me that such a thing would never happen again.

  “But that was not the end of the matter. A few months later, the girl came to see me. She told me that I had made her pregnant. You may wonder how a girl in her position could be so certain that I was the father. In fact, she was no mere slave, and not strictly speaking a whore. She was the daughter of a freed man who was in terrible straits, and her one and only experience at the brothel had occurred on the night of my visit. By various means I ascertained that her story was not only credible, but almost certainly true. Her manner was so humble and sincere that I had no cause to doubt her.

  “I told my father what had
happened and I suggested that I should marry the girl. To me it seemed a readymade solution to my father’s insistence that I must marry and beget grandchildren for him. But my father told me not to be absurd, that to marry a girl in such sordid circumstances was out of the question.

  “A few months later, unmarried and destitute, the girl gave birth not to one child, but two. She contrived to visit me and brought the twins with her. When I saw them, any doubts about my paternity vanished. Look at my eyes, and then look at theirs. You’ll see the resemblance.

  “I approached my father again, and again he made his feelings clear. I was to have nothing to do with the girl or with her children. Yet, over the years, I felt obliged to give her a bit of money now and then. From time to time I saw the children as they grew up on the streets of Alexandria, wild and untamed—”

  “We did the best we could,” snapped Artemon, gritting his teeth, “and so did our mother.” Axiothea tightened her embrace and hid her face against her brother’s chest.

  “Be that as it may,” said Tafhapy, “with every year that passed, it became less and less possible that I could ever proclaim my paternity of such children. I lived in one world, they in another. Yet I knew who they were, and I think they knew who I was, for I had seen their mother pointing me out to them when my litter passed in the street.”

  “Oh, yes, we knew who you were,” said Artemon. “The father who begot and then abandoned us. Tafhapy the Terrible, your business rivals call you. The words had a different meaning when our mother spoke them. How we hated and despised you, and everything you stood for.”

  “Alas, and who could blame you?” said Tafhapy, unable to look Artemon in the eye. “At some point, I no longer saw your mother on the corner where she used to beg—”

  “Because she died!” snapped Artemon. “Sick and miserable, her life destroyed by you!”

  “So I presumed. In fact, I thought that all three of you must have died, for I no longer saw you or your sister. All three of you seemed to vanish. I put away my memories of you. In time, I thought no more about you. Until…”

  Tafhapy sobbed and caught his breath. “Until that day a year ago when I chanced to see a mime troupe performing in the street, and called my litter bearers to a halt so that I might watch. Among the players I noticed a beautiful young girl. There was something terribly familiar about her. Then I realized who she was. My daughter! ‘Flee! Get away from her!’ cried a voice in my head, and I almost called on the bearers to take me away. Then I realized that the voice I heard was that of my father—my father, who is now dead and no longer controls my life. ‘You fool!’ I said to myself. ‘You’ll never have another child. Forget what your own father wanted, and lay claim to your children!’”