Ancient World 02 - Raiders of the Nile (43 page)

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.”

“Seriously, Ismene—”

“If you don’t want the answer, don’t pose the question!” she snapped.

In fact, there were a great many other questions I wanted to ask her, but Ismene turned her attention to Bethesda. The two of them fell to chatting as they walked down the beach with their arms around each other. I followed behind.

Suddenly Ismene gave a stifled cry and pointed toward the surf. “There! Did you see that?”

“What?” I saw only foam and bits of seaweed.

“There, that glint of red!” She disengaged herself from Bethesda and strode a few steps into the water, then bent down and appeared to pick up something.

“What is it?” said Bethesda.

“See for yourself.” Ismene extended her arm toward us. Resting on her open palm was a dazzling ruby.

I looked from the stone to Ismene and back again. “This can’t be the same ruby that—”

“It’s come back to me!” she declared. “I cast it into the sea, gave it up to Poseidon—but now it comes back to me, washed clean of all its curses.”

For a moment I was astounded at such a coincidence. Then it occurred to me that Ismene might have only pretended to throw the ruby from the
Medusa,
and had now pretended to find it.

She saw the doubt on my face and tucked the jewel away. “Do you know the Hebrew proverb about rubies, Gordianus? You must know it, Bethesda. No?” Ismene affectionately touched Bethesda’s face, then looked straight at me as she quoted the verse. “‘Who can find a virtuous wife? For her worth is above rubies.’ Wise words for
you,
Gordianus.”

I cleared my throat. “As I think you know, Ismene, I have no wife.”

The witch smiled. “Not yet, Gordianus. Not yet.”

CHRONOLOGY

B.C. 331

The city of Alexandria is founded in Egypt by Alexander the Great.

c. 280

The Pharos Lighthouse is built.

143/42

Ptolemy IX (Soter) is born.

c. 140/39

Ptolemy X (King Ptolemy) is born.

110

23 March (Martius): Gordianus is born at Rome.

c. 106

Bethesda is born at Alexandria.

101

After the banishment of his brother, Soter, King Ptolemy X orders the murder of his mother, Cleopatra III, and makes himself sole ruler of Egypt.

96

Ptolemy Apion dies and bequeaths Cyrenaica to Rome.

93

23 March (Martius): Gordianus turns seventeen and puts on his manly toga; he and his tutor, Antipater of Sidon, depart on a journey to see the Seven Wonders of the World (as recounted in the novel
The Seven Wonders
). On their travels, Gordianus encounters the witch Ismene in the ruins of Corinth.

91

Outbreak of the Social War, as the Italians revolt against Rome.

June: Gordianus and Antipater reach Egypt and journey up the Nile to visit Memphis and the Great Pyramid; they then travel to Alexandria.

Much of Upper Egypt, including Thebes, revolts against King Ptolemy.

90

Gordianus acquires Bethesda; the events of “The Alexandrian Cat” (included in the collection
The House of the Vestals
) take place.

89

War begins between Rome and King Mithridates of Pontus (First Mithridatic War, 89–85). In 89 and 88, Mithridates has massive successes all over Asia Minor and in the Aegean.

88

Mithridates takes the island of Cos, seizing the Egyptian treasury there and taking the son of King Ptolemy hostage.

23 March (Martius): Gordianus turns twenty-two. The events of
Raiders of the Nile
commence.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

(This note reveals elements of the plot.)

In a Q&A session during the book tour for my previous novel,
The Seven Wonders,
a reader noted a change in tone from previous volumes of the
Roma Sub Rosa
series. He asked if this might be attributed to the influence of the ancient Greek authors I’d been reading for my research (as opposed to the Roman sources I usually consult).

As sometimes happens when I talk to readers, this unexpected question, coming out of the blue, gave me a flash of insight. As much as I love the Romans, one can grow weary of all those murder trials, gruesome histories, and self-aggrandizing memoirs. For
The Seven Wonders,
I found myself immersed in the work of Greek authors whose books were all about travel and exploration, love and sensual pleasure, religious exaltation and athletic glory. It made a nice vacation from the endless litigation of Cicero and the relentless warfare of Caesar.

So, looking to follow
The Seven Wonders
with the further adventures of young Gordianus in Egypt, for inspiration I turned directly to the ancient Greek novels. Yes, the ancients had novels, too. Only a handful of these works have survived since they were written some two thousand years ago, but their delightful, romantic, melodramatic motifs—separated lovers, mistaken and concealed identity, far-flung travel, capture by pirates, love tested and redeemed—inspired many later writers. Shakespeare used such motifs in his comedies, and in at least one play,
Pericles, Prince of Tyre,
he drew directly from one of the ancient novels. The easiest way to read these works in English is to open the massive one-volume
Collected Ancient Greek Novels
edited by B. P. Reardon.

A few years ago (thanks to an invitation from Professor Marília P. Futre Pinheiro), I was privileged to speak at a gathering of scholars who specialize in the ancient novel; this was in Lisbon in 2008 at the International Conference on the Ancient Novel (ICAN). The paper I delivered can be read at my Web site (look for the link at the home page). The gist of my talk: as a modern novelist, I feel a greater kinship with the ancient historians, who used novelistic techniques, than with the ancient novelists, whose devices now seem hopelessly antique. My own reading of the ancient novels was essentially for research, not inspiration, as I gleaned curious details and pondered the mind-set of the original audience for those novels.

And yet, as I’ve continued to read and reread the ancient novels, they’ve seeped into my imagination, seducing me with their sheer delight in storytelling. Perhaps the best is
An Ethiopian Story
by Heliodorus, which begins with a tale of bandits in the Nile Delta. Among the exotic details, Heliodorus tells of the flamingos and the phoenix to be found in that region, and the fabulous emerald mines farther south.

With
Raiders of the Nile,
I decided to pay homage to those ancient Greek novels and to the exuberant, episodic storytelling those first novelists invented. Even as I was pondering how I might do so, into my hands dropped a book called
Invisible Romans
by Robert Knapp. As Chair of the Classics Department at the University of California at Berkeley, it was Professor Knapp who invited me to deliver the commencement address to the Class of 2002. (That speech, too, can be read at my Web site.) Knapp’s book exceeded my high expectations, as my much-highlighted and dog-eared copy can attest. Using sources often overlooked by historians (such as epitaphs on gravestones, magical spells, books of dream interpretation, and, not least, the ancient novels), Knapp gives us a better understanding of the ordinary people of the ancient world. Of particular interest to me was his chapter titled “Beyond the Law: Bandits and Pirates.” With great insight, Knapp quotes the speech of Samippus in Lucian’s story “The Ship,” an echo of which can be heard in the pre-raid speech of Artemon in this novel.

Was King Ptolemy as grotesquely fat as described here? This detail comes from a passage by Posidonius of Rhodes (fragment 77, quoted by Athenaeus, 12.550A–B). Gordianus previously met Posidonius in
The Seven Wonders,
and may meet the great scholar again. In fact, I am thinking it may have been Gordianus who told Posidonius about the king’s obesity.

What do we know about the ancient mime shows? We can still read a few of these ribald skits by an author known as Herodas or Herondas. The Loeb translation of his mimes is by I. C. Cunningham; another translation is by Guy Davenport.

As the rest of the Mediterranean world was swept up in the war between Rome and Mithridates, what was going on in Egypt? Our sources are sketchy at best, but an intriguing picture emerges from Samuel Sharpe’s
The History of Egypt Under the Ptolemies
(see pages 167–76 in the 1838 edition), and from Chapter XI of E. R. Bevan’s
The House of Ptolemy
. The latter can be read at
http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Gazetteer/Places/Africa/Egypt/_Texts/BEVHOP/11*.html
. (This link goes to Bill Thayer’s LacusCurtius site, one of the Web’s most essential resources for lovers of the Ancient World.)

Was the original sarcophagus of Alexander the Great really made of gold, and was it later melted down? If so, who did this, and when, and why? Our only source for this remarkable event is Strabo’s
Geography,
17.1.8. Strabo informed readers of the first century A.D. that the preserved body of Alexander might still be seen in Alexandria, but “not, however, in the same sarcophagus as before, for the present one is made of glass [or alabaster], whereas the one wherein Ptolemy I laid the body was made of gold. The latter was plundered by the Ptolemy nicknamed
Kokkes
and
Pareisaktos,
who came over from Syria but was immediately expelled, so that his plunder proved unprofitable to him.” (This passage is adapted from the translation of Horace Leonard Jones, now in public domain.)

Strabo’s account is murky at best; the geographer gives no dates, and the details may have reached him in a hopelessly garbled state. To begin, which Ptolemy is he talking about? The nickname
Pareisaktos
may have meant “usurper” or “pretender to the throne.” But what about the more obscure
Kokkes
?

An insightful consideration of the evidence can be found at the Web site by Christopher Bennett charting the genealogy of the Ptolemaic Dynasty. At his page for Ptolemy IX (called Soter in this novel), which can be found at
http://www.tyndalehouse.com/egypt/ptolemies/ptolemy_x_fr.htm
, Bennett examines the epithet
Kokkes
. Scholars disagree as to its meaning. Bennett notes one possible interpretation: “J. E. G. Whitehorne,
Aegyptus
75 (1995) 55, thinks that the phrase was modeled on a phrase ‘Kyke’s child’ which occurs in a poem by Anacreon attacking an enemy of his who unexpectedly enjoyed a sudden and undeserved change of fortune, and proposes that possibly both these phrases may be translated as the ‘cuckoo’s child’.…” (My own free translation of Anacreon’s poem serves as the epigraph for this novel.)