Steven Saylor: Wrath of the Furies

“Please do.”

“But you must promise not to tell Prince Ptolemy.”

“I promise.”

He paused for a long moment. “This cloak that I’m wearing, the one that came from the treasury of the Alexandrian Jews at Cos…”

“Yes, what about that smelly old thing?” I asked, though to be fair, the fresh sea air had done much to clear away the musty odor.

“This is the cloak of Alexander the Great.”

Samson looked at me, expecting a response, but I only stared back at him, speechless.

“It was for this that I traveled to Ephesus,” he went on, “so that the cloak would not be claimed by Mithridates, or lost, or thrown away.”

I frowned. “But … Mithridates was wearing the cloak of Alexander when we saw him in the Grove of the Furies. He found it in the treasury of the Ptolemies at Cos.”

Samson shook his head. “No, that cloak is a fake. A decoy. This is the true cloak.”

I shook my head. “That can’t be right. After he died, the cloak of Alexander was claimed by his general Ptolemy, who became king of Egypt and handed it down to his descendants.”

“True enough, but a few generations back, one of the Ptolemies became so short of money that he sold the cloak to the Jews of Alexandria. The sale was kept secret. The king had a replica made, and put it in the Egyptian royal treasury at Cos, even as the real cloak was stored in the Jewish treasury there. When Mithridates laid his hands on both treasuries, we thought the cloak was surely lost. Then we realized he was making a show of wearing the false cloak, which meant the real cloak might still be among the other items from the Jewish treasury. To anyone who didn’t know what it was, the cloak might appear worthless. It might even be tossed out with the rubbish. We had to save the cloak of Alexander the Great. And I did!”

Samson slipped it from his shoulders and held it aloft, so that it fluttered in the gentle sea breeze.

I looked at the thing in wonder. Presumably it had once been purple, but had faded to a dull, reddish brown. It looked old and ugly, whereas the cloak Mithridates had worn, though old, had a certain austere beauty. Why was one cloak any more valuable or sacred than the other, simply because it had touched the person of a certain long-dead mortal?

And what did it mean, that my travels with Antipater had taken me to the Seven Wonders spread across Alexander’s empire, and that I had been living in the city named for him, and that the sarcophagus of Alexander the Great had played such a large role in my adventure with the raiders of the Nile-and now, without my knowing it, the cloak of Alexander had played a role in this episode? For without Samson, whose true mission was to reclaim the cloak, my trip to Ephesus would surely have turned out very differently. I seemed to be living somehow in the shadow of Alexander the Great.

Bethesda and Freny saw the cloak held aloft. Wondering what Samson was up to, they came to join us.

Suddenly, the gentle sea breeze became a gust. The cloak went flying from Samson’s grasp and fluttered out to sea.

Samson stared at the cloak, his eyes wide and his mouth open. He cried out something in Hebrew-Jehovah was mentioned-and then dove overboard. He disappeared under the waves for a moment, then resurfaced, sputtering and flailing his arms. The cloak had landed in the water a few feet away from him. Samson paddled desperately toward it. Several times it eluded his grasp, but finally he grabbed it.

“Man overboard!” I cried. The captain heard me and began to circle back.

“I have it! I have the cloak!” Samson shouted to us. “But … I can’t swim!”

“Neither can I!” I shouted. I looked about frantically. The sailors were all busy. Prince Ptolemy and his servants were belowdecks. Chaeremon was too frail to go in the water. Freny was too small, and Bethesda was no better at swimming than I was.

I gazed at Samson as he struggled to stay afloat, fearing he might disappear at any moment.

Then something seemed to bump him from beneath the waves, buoying him up. I watched in amazement as two chattering dolphins took turns keeping him afloat. I had heard stories of dolphins rescuing drowning men. I never thought I would see such a thing.

“Master!” cried Bethesda. “Those are the same two dolphins we saw on the way to Ephesus!”

I shook my head and laughed. What peculiar notions Bethesda sometimes had. Who could tell one dolphin from another?

And yet …

Kysanias would probably see the hand of Artemis at work in Samson’s rescue. Samson himself had cried out to Jehovah, which I presumed to be the name of his jealous god. Bethesda seemed to think the two dolphins were benevolent guardians, following our journey.

What did I think?

The life I had hoped to save in Ephesus had been lost, but another life had been saved.

The woman with whom I first knew bliss had not been pining for me ever since, but had found true love with another woman.

I had learned that my voice was precious to me. I would never be mute again, even if to speak was to put myself in danger.

Had the Fates steered me to Ephesus, as Kysanias believed, or was the world ruled by chance-and mischief? I touched my lucky lion’s tooth and gazed at the sparkling waves at the far horizon, and wondered where my life would take me next.