Steven Saylor - The judgement of Caesar

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 further 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.

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.