Steven Saylor - Raiders of the Nile

Tafhapy laughed. “The boy’s enthusiasm alone must be worth something to you, Gordianus.”

I sighed. The idea of a feckless Roman and an even more feckless child heading to a hinterland full of cutthroats and crocodiles filled me with dread. But the alternative was to stay in Alexandria and watch the world fall apart-without Bethesda.

“Thank you, Tafhapy. I accept your offer. Well, then-where is this so-called Cuckoo’s Nest?”

After collecting every debt owed to me, and accepting a surprisingly generous loan from Berynus and Kettel, I set out the next day with Djet for the southern gate of Alexandria.

To the north, Alexandria faces the sea, but to the south it faces a large body of water called Lake Mareotis. A canal connects this lake with the distant Nile, allowing river barges to travel directly to the capital without venturing out to sea. Much of the grain grown along the floodplain of the Nile arrives on the southern wharves of Alexandria via the canal and Lake Mareotis.

Travelers also use the canal, which can be faster and cheaper than taking a camel or horse, especially since the roads in Egypt are notoriously bad. To be sure, the barges can be crowded-so crowded that sometimes they overturn. I found myself thinking about this as Djet and I were ushered, along with many others, from a pier on Lake Mareotis onto a long, narrow vessel manned not by rowers but by four men with long poles, two standing fore and two aft. The few places to sit were given to the oldest and most infirm among us, and the rest had to stand.

When the barge could hold no more passengers, the boatmen raised their poles and pushed against the mud on the lake bottom. The vessel left the dock, rocking from side to side so abruptly that Djet grabbed hold of my leg to steady himself, and more than a few of our fellow travelers uttered what I took to be prayers, some in Greek but most in the language of the native Egyptians.

I gazed back at the crowded shipyards and docks of the city, then I slowly turned, taking in the many-colored sails of the fishing vessels that dotted the lake. Towering palm trees ringed the shoreline. We headed steadily toward a break in the trees to the east; this was the mouth of the canal, marked by ornamental pylons on either side. The canal was wider than I expected. Even as I watched, two barges passed one another going in opposite directions, one entering the canal and the other leaving. As this second barge, heading for the pier, passed us, I saw that the deck was as crowded as ours, and the passengers looked even more miserable. Some of them had probably been standing all the way from Canopus.

Canopus! What stories I had heard about the place. As if opportunities for amusement were not great enough in Alexandria, the wealthy of the city (and those who could gather enough money to pretend they were wealthy, if only for a day) regularly flocked to the town of Canopus, only a day’s journey away, where their every whim could be indulged. Rich foods and fine wines, shops offering exquisite merchandise, venues for gambling, entertainments staged by exotic dancers and acrobats, and every imaginable pleasure of the flesh-all could be had in Canopus, for a price. The town had become a watchword not just for diversion and debauchery, but also for discretion. Thus the saying: things that happen in Canopus never leave Canopus.

In all my months in Alexandria, I had never ventured to Canopus, seeing no point; to enjoy Canopus, a man needed money, and for me that was always in short supply. Now I finally had a reason to take the trip, but I might as well have been venturing to some sleepy village in the middle of nowhere, for all that I would be able to enjoy the sights and sounds. True, my purse was not empty; in fact, it was fatter than it had been in quite some time, thanks to the loan from the two eunuchs. But I intended to hold fast to every coin in my possession, giving them up only under dire necessity. Who could say what expenses I might incur on my journey, or how much I might have to pay to buy back Bethesda from the kidnappers?

Once we entered the canal, mules on the road alongside were harnessed to the boat and were made to pull us forward. The boatmen continued to use their poles to avoid the banks and oncoming boats. For a while I took some interest in watching them work, and in looking at the barges passing by. But the work of the boatmen was repetitious, and so were the boats; over and over we passed a mirror image of our own craft, loaded with nondescript passengers or with nondescript cargoes-stacks of brown amphorae likely to be packed with dates or dried figs, or bundled sheaves of papyrus, or mats made of woven reeds.

Occasionally, an ornately decorated pleasure barge sailed by. Elegantly dressed passengers sat in chairs with awnings to shade them and slaves to provide an artificial breeze by wafting fans of peacock feathers. The men and women on these vessels looked either bored or sleepy, and paid no attention whatsoever to our barge as we passed them. In their wake, breathing the warm air stirred by those peacock-feather fans, I caught whiffs of various perfumes-jasmine and spikenard, myrrh and frankincense. These indolent, perfumed Egyptians were the jaded rich of Alexandria, returning to the city after spending a few days and nights sating themselves with the pleasures of Canopus.

Meanwhile, Djet and I stood exposed to the bright sunlight. I had forgotten to bring a hat, but at some point a vendor appeared on the canal bank, walking alongside the mules. To any passenger who tossed him a coin he would toss a broad-brimmed hat made of woven reeds. I took him up on the offer. When Djet complained that he had no hat, I advised him to stand in my shadow.

The hat shaded my eyes and provided some relief from the merciless sun, but the smell of mule dung from the shore was inescapable, as was the smell of my fellow passengers. After a couple of hours in the hot sun, we could all have used some of that perfume that wafted from the pleasure barges. Flies and gnats harassed my eyelids and tickled my lips; as soon as one was brushed away, another appeared to resume the torment.

I had thought the barge might make a stop to allow the passengers to eat, but this was not the case. Instead, food was offered by vendors on the bank, just as the hats had been offered; it paid to be a good catch, unless one had no objection to eating food that had landed on the deck. In this way I bought a bit of flatbread stuffed with goat cheese. After I gobbled it up, Djet complained that he was hungry, too. I bought another flatbread, and watched begrudgingly as he ate the whole thing. I was still not convinced that his services would compensate for the bother of taking him along.

Nor were there stops for the passengers to relieve themselves. This necessity could be tended to behind a small screen at the back of the barge, using a hole in the deck. When I grumbled about the awkwardness of this arrangement, a fellow passenger told me that it was a great improvement over the last barge he had taken, which had no such hole; men and women alike had to do their business over the side, holding fast to the railing while at the same time hitching up their garments and hoping not to fall off.

The journey seemed interminable, but at last, as the day began to wane, the canal opened into the small harbor of Canopus situated on the northern bank of the canal.

No sooner had we disembarked than a group of boys swarmed around us, each extolling the virtues of a particular tavern or gambling den and insisting that we follow. Though I told them I had no money to spend, the boys were as persistent as the gnats that had tormented me on the barge. It was Djet who at last got rid of them. He was only a little older and bigger than most of the boys, but he seemed to know just what pose to strike or what threat to utter to dissuade them. At last they dispersed and moved on to badger some other poor passenger. I decided Djet might be worth the cost of his passage after all.