The Seven Wonders: A Novel of the Ancient World (Novels of Ancient Rome) (42 page)

Like a man made of flames, Isidorus rushed toward his assailant. Even Nikanor was appalled by what he had done. He stood transfixed. Before he could retreat, Isidorus embraced him. Was it a vengeful act? I think Isidorus acted purely by reflex, grasping whatever was closest to him.

Joined by the flames, the two of them performed a hideous dance, traipsing and whirling this way and that, until they collided with the parapet. Flailing in desperation, the madman scrambled to climb over it. Isidorus clung to him. Together they went tumbling over the stone wall.

I rushed to the parapet and watched them descend. Down they plummeted, trailing flames like Phaëton when he wrecked the chariot of the sun. They struck a Triton on the lower parapet with a glancing blow that broke them apart and sent them spinning separately into space, away from the Pharos and over the open sea. The dwindling comets ended in two tiny white splashes, followed an instant later by the sound of two minuscule concussions. Then the sparkling green waves closed over the foam, as if nothing had happened.

Behind me I heard a groan. Antipater had risen to his feet. He looked confused and unsteady. I was a bit shaky myself, as I discovered when I stepped toward him. My legs trembled liked reeds in the wind.

“They fell? You saw them?” he said. Had I not been holding his arm, I think he would have fallen. I almost went down with him. His clothing reeked of naphtha.

“Into the sea,” I said. “But you, Teacher—are you all right?”

“A bit bruised. Nothing broken. Where’s Anubion?”

“Nikanor threw him into the furnace. There’s nothing left of him.”

Antipater looked aghast, then gave a start. “How do you know that man’s name?”

I sighed. “I know a great deal more than that. I saw Nikanor in the street yesterday and recognized him. I followed him. I know what he was up to, in Olympia and here in Alexandria—spying for Mithridates. So was Anubion. So was Isidorus—and you!”

Antipater drew a sharp breath. His eyes darted this way and that.

“Teacher, why did you deceive me?”

He bit his lip. At last he looked me in the eye. “It was for your own good, Gordianus. Had you known, there were times you might have been in great danger.”

“Are you saying I wasn’t in danger, because I didn’t know? That’s no answer, Teacher!”

“Do you regret coming on our journey, Gordianus? Do you wish you’d never left Rome, never seen the Wonders?”

“That’s not an answer, either. You deceived me. I still don’t know what you were up to, in all the places we’ve been—I can only guess. It’s not a question of whether or not you put me in danger. I was tricked. Tricked into aiding and abetting a spy in the service of an enemy of Rome!”

“Rome is not at war with Mithridates—”

“Not yet!” I shook my head, hardly able to look at him. “At the Great Pyramid, do you remember what you called me? ‘A solver of riddles, like your father.’ You said I had a special ability, a gift from the gods—”

“And so you do, Gordianus.”

“Yet all the time, I didn’t see the riddle right in front of me! What a fool you must think me. Pouring praise in my ear, but secretly despising me.”

“No, Gordianus. That’s not true.”

“Tell me one thing: how much did my father know?”

“About my mission? Nothing.”

“Are you saying you fooled him, as well?”

“I convinced him that I wanted to disappear without a trace, for reasons of my own.”

“And he believed you?”

“It’s not such a far-fetched idea. Beyond a certain age, many men harbor such a fantasy—including your father, I imagine. You wouldn’t understand, Gordianus.”

“Because I’m too young?”

“Exactly. The world is not as simple as you think. Did I deceive you? Yes. As for your father, he had his own unspoken reasons for sending you away—he knew that Rome and her Italian allies were on the brink of war and he wanted you well out of it. So he took the opportunity I offered, and didn’t question me as closely as he might have. That doesn’t make him a fool, only a caring father. As for the choices I’ve made—I have no regrets. Friendship matters, Gordianus, but there are things in this world that matter more. Rome must be stopped. Mithridates offers the only hope. If you had to be kept in the dark, what of it? In the meantime, you went on a journey such as most men can only dream of. You followed your aspirations, Gordianus, and I followed mine.”

I shook my head. I searched for words to rebut him. Suddenly he pushed me away.

“Step back, Gordianus,” he whispered. “Get away from me!”

I wondered at this abrupt change, until I heard the sounds of footsteps coming from the tower. At the same time, the Tritons on the lower parapet began to blare discordant notes.

“I’ll think of some way to explain my presence here, and some explanation for what happened,” he whispered. “But for you, it may not be so easy. Go now! Make your way down the tower and back to the mainland.”

“But how can I—”

“They’ll think you’re a worker. Hurry!”

A group of soldiers poured onto the landing, drawing their swords as they did so. They hardly noticed me. Wearing the green tunic, I appeared to be just another worker, and quite a young one at that. Their attention was drawn to Antipater. Our eyes met a final time, and then he was hidden from sight, encircled by the guards.

One of them began loudly to question him. “What happened here? Who fell? Where is Anubion?”

“It was a terrible thing to witness,” cried Antipater, “the ghastly act of some madman!”

I quietly stepped toward the doorway and into the stairwell leading down. As I descended, trying to keep my face a blank, more armed men passed me coming up the stairs. Still more were ascending by means of the mechanical platform in the central shaft. No one challenged me.

I made my way out of the Pharos and down the long ramp. Above me, the Tritons continued to blare. Some of the workers had gathered in groups and were conferring in agitated whispers, but others went about their business, as yet unaware of what had happened. The crowded ferry was just leaving as I arrived. I was the last person to board—just one more figure in a green tunic among so many others.

As we cast off, I suddenly realized that I had no reason to flee the Pharos. I had done nothing wrong. It was Antipater who had insisted that I go. Was it because he wished to spare me the ordeal of an interrogation—or because he feared that I might blurt out the truth to the guards and expose him as the spy of a foreign king? Once again, I had unwittingly allowed him to manipulate me.

I turned and gazed up at the Pharos. At the uppermost parapet, amid the glitter of soldiers’ helmets, I saw a shock of white hair. That was my last fleeting glimpse of Antipater.

*   *   *

After landing at the wharf, I discreetly discarded the green tunic and went directly to the dwelling of Isidorus. Soldiers had reached the house ahead of me and were swarming in the street outside. There could have been no better demonstration of the swiftness and efficacy of the Pharos signaling system.

I walked away as quickly as I could without drawing attention to myself. In my mind I enumerated the few possessions I had kept in my room. I would have to do without them.

I slept that night in the open, not a terrible hardship in such a warm, dry climate. The next day, I tried to think through my position. As long as Antipater made no mention of me to the authorities, no one had any reason to connect me to the deaths at the Pharos. Isidorus’s slave might have overheard my name, but the woman knew nothing else about me. No one else in Alexandria even knew of my existence, except the professional receiver of letters and the banker who was holding the funds from my father in trust for me. As I saw it, I had no cause to fear the authorities.

Later that day, I decided to pay a visit to the banker—or more precisely, to one of the clerks who met with clients on his behalf. I half-feared that some of King Ptolemy’s soldiers would appear from nowhere and seize me, but the man was happy to give me the minuscule disbursement I requested.

“Also, a message was left for you this morning,” he said, producing a small scroll of papyrus tied with a ribbon.

I went to a public garden nearby and found a patch of grass next to a palm tree. A mule was tied to the trunk—his young owner was nearby, talking to some other boys—so I chose a spot on the opposite side of the tree, sat with my back against it, and opened the letter.

There was no salutation and no signature—nothing to compromise either of us, should the letter fall into the wrong hands.

I hope you will remember all that was good in our travels. Forget all that was bad. If that means forgetting me, so be it.

I will not ask you to forgive me, for that would imply remorse, and I do not regret the choices I made. I promised to show you the Seven Wonders; I did. I promised your father that I would see you safely to our final destination; I did. You will say I hid things from you, but every man has secrets, even you.

I am leaving Egypt. You will not see me again, at least not here.

You should stay in Alexandria, if you wish. I had intended to leave a few drachmas for you with the banker, adding them to the funds from your father; but the record of such a deposit might someday be misconstrued as a payment—evidence of an affiliation between you and me that does not exist. I would not want that to happen; nor would you, I think. Eventually you may need to find work, but for a young man as clever as you, that should be no problem.

I am an old man. I may have a few years left, or a few days. But I can die happy now. My lifelong desire was to see the Wonders—that was no deception!—and that wish has been fulfilled, thanks in no small part to you. I could not have asked for a better traveling companion. We may have begun as teacher and pupil, but on this journey I learned as much from you as you ever learned from me. I am proud of you, and I thank you.

Our ways must part now, but if the gods allow, we will meet again.

Burn this letter after you read it, or toss it into the sea.

How could I bear to destroy the letter? For better or worse, it was my last link to Antipater. In a daze, I laid it on the grass beside me. I closed my eyes and tilted my head back, letting the dappled sunlight warm my face. A moment later, I heard a chomping sound, and turned my head just in time to see the last bit of papyrus vanish into the mule’s mouth.

X

Epilogue in Alexandria:

THE EIGHTH WONDER

For many days, the fiery deaths at the Pharos were the talk of Alexandria. Various stories were put forth to account for the terrible events, but the one that came to hold sway was this: one of the workers, in a fit of insanity, attacked the master of the lighthouse and cast him into the flames, and this same worker then attacked a visitor whom Anubion had been escorting on a tour, an unfortunate scholar from the Library who had expressed an interest in the history of the Pharos. The killings were put down to the act of a madman; politics and intrigue played no part. A certain Zoticus of Zeugma was occasionally mentioned, but only as a witness. No one seemed to know anything about him—which was hardly surprising, I thought, since no such person existed.

*   *   *

At the age of seventeen, the world had declared me to be a man, old enough to wear a toga. But it was in Alexandria that I truly left my boyhood behind. The transformation happened not in an instant, but over a period of time. It began the moment I realized that Antipater had deceived me.

Before, despite all my travels and riddle solving and amorous adventures, I was still a boy, trusting the world around me—or more precisely, trusting that the world, enormous though it might be, was nonetheless a comprehensible place, susceptible to reason, as were the people in it. People, especially strangers, could be mysterious, but that was not a bad thing; it was a cause for excitement, for mysteries existed to be solved, and solving them gave pleasure. Every mystery had a solution; and by their very proximity, the people closest to us were the least mysterious. Or so I had believed.

“The world is not as simple as you think,” Antipater had said to me. It would never be simple again.

My first days and months alone in Alexandria were often languorous, but never boring. I had just enough money to get by, which is all a young man needs. Also, as Antipater had predicted, I began to find work, following in my father’s footsteps. The Finder, he called himself—though as often as not, I found myself playing ferret or weasel, digging through other people’s garbage. To a young Roman in a vibrant, foreign city, the mysteries I was hired to solve all seemed exotic and alluring—the more sordid and bizarre, the better.

I continued to struggle to come to terms with Antipater’s deceit. Thanks to our travels together, I had seen with my own eyes the glories of Greek civilization. Antipater loved that world and desperately wanted to preserve it, at any price. He was a poet who decided to become a man of action, dedicating his final years to the cause of saving the Greek-speaking world from the domination of Rome, which could only be accomplished by Mithridates. Toward that end, Antipater had been willing to sacrifice everything else—including my trust in him. My feelings about this changed from day to day, sometimes from hour to hour.

One evening, as the stars began to come out, I was sitting on the steps of the Temple of Serapis, gazing over the city toward the distant Pharos, when a doubt suddenly occurred to me. It must have been worming its way through my consciousness for months, planted there by Nikanor. He had been certain that Antipater was a traitor to their cause—and had said as much to Anubion before he killed him, railing against “the old Sidonian.” Of course, Nikanor had been mad. But madmen are not always mistaken.

What if Nikanor had been right about Antipater?

Was it possible that Antipater was a double agent? Could it be that he only pretended to side with Mithridates, while in fact he was loyal to Rome? If such was the case, might it be that my father knew of the deception and actively took part in it? Indeed, could it be that my father was the author of the scheme? What did I really know about my father’s activities and affiliations?