Steven Saylor - Raiders of the Nile

“The room is very comfortable,” I said. “Still, I can hardly believe that the two of you gave up your splendid apartment in Alexandria.”

Kettel made a face that caused wrinkles to form on every side. “At our age, we’ve had quite enough of the aggravations of city life. This latest round of rioting was the straw that broke the camel’s back, as the Nabataeans say. While you were off traipsing about the Delta, the two of us packed up and left the city. Berynus had been plotting our move to this lovely village for quite some time, actually. We have so much more room here, and the beach is right outside our door. Here on the roof terrace, under this lovely striped awning, we can while away the hours, reading, writing our memoirs, and breathing in the fresh sea breeze. And Alexandria is only a day’s journey away, should we ever be foolish enough to crave a visit.”

I looked toward the city. The Pharos Lighthouse rose from the horizon no taller than my thumbnail. The plume of smoke rose twice as high.

Berynus wrinkled his craggy brow. “You don’t think they’ve set the Library on fire, do you? So much smoke…”

“More likely it’s coming from one of the warehouses on the southern harbor,” suggested Kettel. “Bolts of linen could produce a dark smoke like that, and burn for hours.”

I had spent only a few days in Alexandria before coming to the village, accepting an invitation that had been waiting for me at my apartment in the form of a letter left by the eunuchs with my landlord. To simply be alone with Bethesda in my old room, with no immediate danger hanging over us, lying for hours in our bed, venturing out only to find food when we needed it, was bliss-at first. Then I had begun to feel uneasy. The frequent smell of smoke and the sounds of violence from the street reminded me that the city was growing more and more dangerous. It also occurred to me that until King Ptolemy was well and truly gone, he might at any moment change his mind about my release and drag me back to his dungeons. The more I thought about the eunuchs’ invitation to retreat for a while to a sleepy fishing village, the more I liked the idea. So here we were, relatively safe but at loose ends, waiting, like the rest of Egypt, to see what would happen next.

“Master…”

I turned to Bethesda. In the presence of our hosts, we followed the decorum of master and slave, sitting apart from one another and with Bethesda showing deference. What we did in the privacy of my room was another matter.

“Yes, Bethesda?”

“Master, you said that we might take a walk along the beach before your midday meal.”

“Ah, yes, so I did. A nice walk will strengthen my appetite.” A walk had been Bethesda’s idea, but I was happy to indulge her.

“Don’t be too long. Kettel has made his special octopus and hearts of palm salad,” Berynus called after us, as we descended the stairway that led us directly to the beach.

As we walked along the shore, I took Bethesda’s hand. The waves lapped gently on the sand. Gulls wheeled and squawked above us. Low dunes hid the fishing village to one side and the distant city skyline to the other. In such a secluded spot, we might pretend that no one else existed.

“What will happen to Artemon?” said Bethesda.

I felt a slight prickle of jealousy, that another man should occupy her thoughts at such a moment. “I believe it was the king’s intention that he should be banished from Egypt. How the king will enforce such a decree, if the king himself goes into exile, I don’t know. Artemon is very, very lucky to be alive.”

“Do you think he’ll reconcile with his father, as Axiothea has done?”

I shrugged. “Who can say? Tafhapy paid a steep price for his son’s freedom, but I’m not sure that Artemon knows how to be grateful. He certainly has no sense of loyalty, or even common decency.” How flagrantly Artemon had broken the bandit oath, bringing destruction on all to whom he swore allegiance, while I, who cared nothing for the bandits, never brought them harm through word or deed.

I looked at her sidelong. “Did he ever…”

She smiled, very faintly. “You’ve asked me before, Master. No, he never touched me-except for that single kiss, to which you yourself were witness. I think that the pity he felt for his mother, and the love he feels for his sister, have made him a man who respects women, no matter that he seems to have no respect for other men.”

For a while, as we walked along the beach, I thought about the puzzle of Artemon, for I was still disentangling lies from truth. Despite my skepticism, at some point I had accepted the idea that Artemon was a great leader, able to control the destinies of others and to orchestrate events far away, and that the Cuckoo’s Gang was a veritable shadow state. How much of Artemon’s power had been real and how much illusory, no more genuine than the disguises conjured by Lykos? Artemon’s reach had never been as great as I had been led to think. Yes, the Cuckoo’s Gang had men in Alexandria and elsewhere; Lykos was one such agent. But the vast network of spies and confederates necessary to pull off the raid-without the king’s collusion-had never existed. Even the weapons and armor aboard the Medusa must have come from King Ptolemy.

“What will become of Axiothea?” I asked, to change the subject. “Now that she’s to be acknowledged by Tafhapy, will she ever return to the mime troupe? It seems unlikely that Tafhapy would allow his daughter to run though the streets naked, or to marry a man like Melmak.”

Bethesda smiled. “I think Axiothea will do whatever she wants to do, and it won’t matter what Tafhapy thinks.”

“You’re probably right. And Melmak and his troupe? What will become of them?”

Bethesda shrugged. “If King Ptolemy loses the throne to his brother, Melmak will no longer have to wear that cumbersome fat suit, for they say Soter is a slender man. The troupe will still have plenty of material. One king is as easy to ridicule as another. Are they not all ridiculous?”

I nodded. “Your brain is always working, isn’t it, Bethesda?”

“As is yours, Master.”

“You must have been terribly bored in your hut at the Cuckoo’s Nest, day after day, with all that time on your hands.”

“You have no idea! But not all my hours were idle. Ismene and I had our chores and routines. And I learned many things from her.”

I frowned. “What sort of things?”

Bethesda shrugged and made no reply, but I knew she must mean magic. I felt a bit uneasy at the idea that my slave had been schooled by a witch of Ismene’s caliber. A man likes to think that his decisions and actions spring from his own will, rather than being caused by some potion he’s drunk or by words scrawled on a lead tablet.

“Bethesda, these things that Ismene taught you … you would never use such knowledge to cause me, your master, to-”

“Ah, look! There she is. She said she would meet me here an hour before noon, and here she is!”

Bethesda pulled her hand from mine and ran to the far end of the nearest dune, where Ismene stood leaning on a cane as if she were a much older woman, dressed not in the elegant clothes she had worn as Metrodora but in the drab garments of a fishwife.

The two women embraced. I walked across the sand to join them.

“Ismene, what are you doing here?”

She gave me a long, appraising look. “I shall be leaving Egypt soon. Before I go, I wanted to say farewell to the two of you.”

“The last time I saw you was on the wharf in Alexandria. You were there one moment and gone the next. I realize you must have run back into the customs house, but by then it was swarming with the king’s soldiers. How did you get away?”

“By making myself invisible, of course.”