The Judgment of Caesar (30 page)

The ship drew away. Their faces grew smaller and smaller until I could no longer read their expressions. I lifted my eyes to the great lighthouse that towered above the harbor, and thought of the first glimpse I had seen of its flame that night aboard the
Andromeda,
with Bethesda, before the storm struck and swept away all our expectations.

CHAPTER XXXI

I paid a call on Queen Cleopatra. To my surprise, I was admitted to her presence almost at once.

She reclined upon a purple couch strewn with gold cushions. Slaves fanned her with ostrich feathers. The gown she wore was loose and flowing, but did not conceal the fact that she was great with child.

“Gordianus-called-Finder! I thought you were leaving Alexandria for Rome today, along with that irksome son of yours.”

“I was supposed to go, Your Majesty. I changed my mind.”

She raised an eyebrow. “You’ve come to visit me instead?”

“Your Majesty once spoke to me of the special circumstances attendant upon a death in the Nile.”

She peered at me and nodded slowly. “Those who perish in the Nile are blessed by Osiris. He embraces the
ka
even as the currents and eddies of the river embrace the hollow reed of the body.”

I shook my head. “All this talk of the sacred Nile! I’ve seen the Nile. I wandered up to my neck in its muddy waters, searching for Bethesda’s body. I felt the ooze of the bottom suck at my feet. I smelled the stench of rotting plants along the steaming bank. There’s nothing beautiful about the Nile. It’s fetid, smelly, dark, and dank! The Nile brings death.”

“Yet it also brings life!” Cleopatra placed her hand upon her swollen belly. “Some men—squeamish, ignorant fools!—make the same complaints about the sacred delta between a woman’s legs. And yet, from that place comes new life. Silly men, turning up your noses at the slippery fluids and strong odors of fertility! You’d rather play with your hard, shiny swords and spears, and watch the blood spurt from each other’s wounds! Yes, the Nile is all you say it is—a vast, endless expanse of sluggish water and oozing mud. It spills across Egypt, bringing life and death wherever it goes. That’s what gods do. They give life. They give death—and life after death.”

“So you say; those who perish in the Nile are reborn. But are they ever resurrected?”

“What do you mean?”

“Do they ever walk again in this world?”

She looked at me darkly. “Are you thinking of my brother? It’s true, his body was never located, but—”

“There was another whose body was never found.”

She knitted her brow, then nodded. “Your wife?”

“Yes.”

“Why do you ask such a question, Gordianus?”

“Let me ask another. You told me you know the old priestess at the temple outside Naucratis.”

“I’ve visited the temple. I’ve met her.”

“Is it possible that I might have seen her here in Alexandria, in one of the markets?”

“She’s very old, but there’s no reason she shouldn’t travel to the city if she wishes. Even a priestess must gather provisions. But if you’d merely seen the priestess, you wouldn’t be asking me these questions, would you? You saw someone else.”

“I saw a woman with the priestess. So did Rupa. But we didn’t see the same woman. He saw his sister, Cassandra, whose ashes he scattered in the Nile. I saw . . . Bethesda. That makes me think . . .”

“That neither of you saw a woman you truly recognized.”

“Exactly. Unless . . .”

“Unless you both saw what you thought you saw. Cassandra and Bethesda, somehow joined by the river and risen from the dead.”

I shuddered. “Do such things happen in Egypt?”

“Perhaps. But I think you would prefer a more rational, less mystical explanation, wouldn’t you, Gordianus? Perhaps the two women shared a stronger resemblance than you realized. Perhaps the woman you and Rupa saw in the market was indeed your wife—who never died, after all.”

“But the woman I saw looked younger than Bethesda . . .”

“She was ill when you last saw her, was she not, and had been ill for quite some time? If she’s better now, refreshed by the mild Egyptian winter and tanned by the warm Egyptian sun, might she not look younger than before?”

“Bethesda—alive! But how is it possible? We searched and searched—”

“Perhaps she didn’t want to be found. Had you done something to offend her?”

I thought of Cassandra. Bethesda had given no indication of knowing what had passed between us, and yet . . .

“Or perhaps something happened to her in the river,” said the queen. “Perhaps she forgot herself and became lost.”

“But when she came to her senses, she would have looked for me, surely—”

“Looked where? You were carried away by Ptolemy’s army; how could she know where you had gone? Even if she did somehow follow you to Alexandria, for many months no one from outside could reach any of us inside the palace. Perhaps, all this time, your wife has been residing at the temple of Osiris beside the Nile, expiating whatever impurity caused her illness, rejuvenating herself and restoring her vitality by serving the priestess.”

I drew a ragged breath. “That’s what I would like to believe.”

“But you fear false hope?”

“Yes!”

“The only solution is to do what you’ve done all your life: Find the truth for yourself, Gordianus. Go to the temple outside Naucratis. See what you find.”

“What if Bethesda isn’t there?”

“You’ll find her. If not in the temple, then in the river. You must find her, and you must join her, one way or another. Is that not what you want? Is it not your heart’s desire?”

“It is!”

“Then overcome your fear. Go to the temple by the Nile. Do whatever you must to be reunited with your wife.”

I left the queen’s presence, shaken and trembling with doubt, but resolved to do as she counseled. She smiled as I left. Was it because she had shared the sacred wisdom of Isis with me? Or was it because, if I did as she told me, she would have seen the last of me forever?

I made the journey by canal boat, and thence on horseback down the river road. Traveling alone, without the comfort or distraction of companions, I realized that I had not done so in many years. I was reminded of my younger days, when I had set out on journeys without knowing how long they would take or where they would lead, following the road as a man follows his fate, sometimes anxious, sometimes exhausted by the rigors of travel, but more often buoyed by a sense of freedom and the possibility that something surprising and wonderful might lie around the next bend. It was good to be alone with my thoughts, watching the sights along the canal pass by, and then the sights along the road. As I approached the vicinity of the temple, I felt at once calm and filled with anticipation.

The weather was mild. Palm trees swayed in a gentle breeze from the south. Farmers were at work in the fields, tending to irrigation ditches and repairing waterwheels to prepare for the annual inundation. Alexandria seemed far away; Rome, even farther.

This was the Egypt I remembered from my youth, the Egypt I had longed to revisit. I felt the sun on my face, breathed in the smells of the life-giving Nile, and felt transported back in time, as if all the intervening years had never happened. I was the youth I had been when I first arrived in Egypt, owning little, obliged to no one, but confident of the future, as only the young can be confident.

I came to a place where the foliage grew thick and tall between the road and the river. Though I could not see it, I knew the temple must lie somewhere within that dense greenery. I tethered my horse and stretched the stiff, sore legs of an old man not used to riding on horseback. Even that reminder of my body’s frailty did not shake the illusion of having stepped back in time.

I passed through a curtain of hanging vines and found a pathway into the foliage. The play of sunlight and shadow confounded my sense of distance. The seclusion of the place cast a spell upon me. The pathway turned this way and that, and I began to think I was hopelessly lost. Then I stepped into a sunlit glade and saw the temple before me. Drag-onflies flitted across shafts of sunlight. Water splashed and gurgled in the spring-fed pool beside the temple.

I walked to the steps. I ascended to the porch and entered the sanctum of Osiris.

The smell of burning myrrh enveloped me. The chamber was dimly lit. A figure appeared in the gloom and moved closer until I saw the sere, weathered face of the priestess. I heard the sound of mewing, and looked down to see the black cat stroking itself against her bony ankles.

Was it the same woman I had seen in the market in Alexandria, or had memory played a trick on me?

“Priestess,” I said. “I came here many months ago—last summer—with my wife. She was unwell. She sought your counsel. You told her to bathe in the Nile. Do you remember?”

The wisewoman hunched her shoulder against her ear and peered up at my face. “Oh, yes. I remember.”

“And then—not long ago, I thought I saw you in a marketplace in Alexandria. Was it you I saw? Were you in the city?”

She looked at me for a long moment, then shook her head. “That’s not the question you really want to ask. That’s not what you came here to find out.”

“No. You’re right. I came for Bethesda. Is she here?”

“Your wife was very ill when you came here; more ill than you could know. Her body was weak, but it was her spirit that had grown sick. She was very close to death. There was little I could do, except commend her to the care of the river.”

“And did the river heal her?”

“Go to the river. Find the place where you last saw her. Discover the truth for yourself.”

Her words echoed those of Cleopatra. I shuddered, as I had shuddered in the queen’s presence. I stepped onto the porch of the temple, needing to catch my breath. When I stepped back inside, the priestess had disappeared, and so had the cat. The little room was empty, except for a sputtering lamp and a censer of myrrh that released a final wisp of smoke.

I descended the steps, hopped over the spring-fed pool, and took the path that led to the river. I came to a fork in the path and hesitated, trying to remember which way to go. One way had led me to a tangled dead end, I recalled, where I had glimpsed the ashes of Cassandra clouding the flowing water; the other way had led me to the place where Bethesda disappeared. But which was which? Memory failed me, and I stood for a long moment, puzzled. The problem was simple, but my mind was so befuddled that I had to work it out like a child, step-by-step. Bethesda had entered the river downstream from Cassandra’s ashes; with the river before me, running from right to left, the path to the left must lead downstream; so that was the way I must take.

The path led steadily downhill. Through the leaves I began to catch glimpses of sparkling sunlight on green water. At last I came to the river’s edge. The place was secluded and silent, with a leafy canopy overhead and rushes all around. Bethesda was nowhere to be seen. I called her name. The shout rousted a covey of birds, who flapped and cawed and streamed skyward from the undergrowth.

I stripped off my tunic and loincloth. The angle of the sun was such that the whole of the river seemed to sparkle with dancing light. So many points of light were reflected from the river onto my nakedness that I felt as if I were clothed in a spangled gown of sunlight. The sparkles dazzled my eyes and warmed my flesh.

I strode into the river. The solid, sandy bottom quickly gave way to an oozing muck that sucked at my feet. The water rose to my chest, and with another step, to my chin. “Oh, Bethesda!” I whispered. Rushes swayed in the warm breeze. Sunlight glinted on the water. The placid face of the Nile gave no indication of concern for my fate, or the fate of any mortal; yet at the same time the river seemed to welcome me. Its warm darkness offered solace; its vastness offered an end to mortal vanity; its agelessness offered a doorway to eternity.

Another step, and the water rose above my head. I opened my eyes. The water was murky and green, but the surface above me was like a vast sheet of hammered silver. I opened my mouth to draw the Nile deep into my lungs. A burning fullness flowed into my chest. The silver canopy above me was extinguished. The murky water turned black.

I felt hands upon me. Out of the black murk a face appeared. Cassandra’s face! No—the face of Bethesda, her features as soft and smooth as when I first met her in Alexandria. She put her mouth upon mine. Her kiss drew the Nile from my lungs and took my breath away. . . .