Raiders of the Nile

XXXVIII

Axiothea ran to Artemon and fell to her knees amid the filthy straw. She threw her slender arms around him and burst into tears.

“My dear, sweet brother, how long it’s been! How I’ve missed you! I thought I would never see you again.”

“Better that you hadn’t,” muttered Artemon, his voice choked with emotion. He tried to return her embrace, but the chains prevented him. “Beloved Artemisia! Why are you here? And why are you with him?” He glared at Tafhapy, who kept his distance, averting his eyes and wringing his hands.

“This woman…” I whispered. “This woman is Artemisia, your twin sister? And Tafhapy is the father of you both?”

The chamberlain struck his staff against the stone floor, demanding attention. “Get back from the prisoner, young woman! For your own safety-”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Axiothea gave Zenon a withering glance. “My brother would never harm me.”

From the sour look on his face, I could see that the chamberlain was as confused as I was. He was not a man who liked surprises. “Whatever relationship you may have with the Cuckoo’s Child, young woman, it is not the king’s reason for coming here. We will deal first with the business at hand. Tafhapy, you came to the king this morning to urgently plead for the release of this other prisoner, the Roman who calls himself Gordianus. Is this in fact the man you were referring to?” He pointed with his staff. I jerked back to stop him from poking my nose.

Looking dazed, Tafhapy glanced at me and nodded.

“You say this Gordianus came to you some time ago seeking information about his stolen slave-the girl with whom he was retrieved from the harbor.” At this bit of information, I saw Artemon’s eyes light up. “You say you put him on the trail of the Cuckoo’s Gang, and for a traveling companion you sent this slave boy with him. Is that correct?”

Tafhapy nodded.

“So when Gordianus tells us that his sole purpose in approaching the Cuckoo’s Gang was the retrieval of his property, he speaks the truth?”

“As far as I know,” whispered Tafhapy.

“However, there is a complicating factor,” said Zenon. “I thought the name ‘Gordianus’ sounded familiar, and sure enough, among the documents in my office there is a warrant for this man’s arrest issued by the city fathers of Canopus, accusing him of murder and theft. A ruby is said to be involved-”

“That’s a lie!” said Djet. “The Roman never killed or robbed anyone.”

“You speak out of turn, slave!” Zenon glared at Djet, who calmly looked up at him. The distraught Tafhapy seemed incapable of interceding, and for a long moment everyone in the cell witnessed the peculiar spectacle of a slave boy and a chamberlain of the king of Egypt engaged in a staring contest.

It was Zenon who finally blinked. “You traveled alongside this Roman? Speak, boy!”

“Day and night,” said Djet. “He’s the bravest man I ever met. He saved us from the Hungry Crocodile, then from the Friendly Hippopotamus! He got the best of Mangobbler, and made a friend of Cheelba the lion-”

“We are not interested in whatever menagerie you may have encountered in your travels. Did this man kill a Nabataean merchant in Canopus? Did he join the Cuckoo’s Gang? Did he take part in criminal acts?”

I held my breath. A moment before, it had seemed that Djet was my savior, having brought Tafhapy to plead on my behalf. Now, with a careless word, Djet might bring about my execution.

Djet squared his shoulders, stiffened his jaw, and put his hands on his hips. He spoke not to the chamberlain, but directly to the king, looking him in the eye. “It was the owner of the inn at Canopus who murdered the Nabataean, not the Roman. Yes, he pretended to join the Cuckoo’s Gang-that much is true. But he did so only to save his life and mine. His only purpose was to get back the girl who had been taken from him. He’s no more an outlaw and a bandit than I am!”

Zenon grunted. “So you say. But a character reference from a child, and a slave at that, is hardly-”

“Oh, stop this nonsense!” The king stepped forward. His sheer bulk obliged the chamberlain to move aside. “It’s obvious that the Roman is exactly what he says he is. You saw him with that slave girl yesterday, after we plucked them from the waves. Did they look like dangerous criminals? I think not, unless love is a crime.”

The chamberlain rolled his eyes. “Has Your Majesty considered that this Gordianus may be a spy, sent here by Rome?”

“Oh, I hardly think so, Zenon. And what if he is? The Romans are our friends, are they not? They keep offering to help me keep my throne, with only one catch-I must bequeath Egypt to the Roman Senate in my will, as Apion did with Cyrene! They have nerve, I’ll grant them that. No, no, when I look at this fellow I do not see a murderer or a spy.”

“Even if the Roman is no more or less than he appears to be, Your Majesty, in such a delicate matter, there are other considerations-”

“You will rescind the warrant for the Roman’s arrest, then release him and his slave girl at once, Zenon. Do you understand?”

The chamberlain sighed and bowed his head. “It shall be as Your Majesty decrees. Guard! Bring the key and remove the manacles from this prisoner. Then free the girl in the adjacent cell.”

He could only mean Bethesda. All night, she had been only a few feet away from me!

In a matter of moments, I was freed from my chains and able to stand, if a bit unsteadily. I rubbed my wrists where the manacles had chafed them. A moment later, Bethesda appeared at the doorway, then ran to my side.

“Bethesda, did they harm you?”

“No, Master. And you? Your wrists are all red and raw.”

“It doesn’t matter, now that you’re back-”

“Oh, do be quiet, the two of you, before I change my mind,” said the king. “Now, Tafhapy-if only for my amusement, you will explain your relationship to these other lovely young people. The girl there, clinging to the Cuckoo’s Child. Is her name Axiothea or is it Artemisia?”

Tafhapy’s jaw quivered. “Both. Her mother named her Artemisia, but years ago, when she first began to act, she took the stage name Axiothea. That’s how everyone knows her now.”

“And this young man, the notorious Cuckoo’s Child-is he her brother?”

“Her twin,” whispered Tafhapy.

“I see. Artemon and Artemisia, twin siblings. Yes, they do look a great deal alike. And you are their father?”

“I am.”

“By blood, perhaps,” growled Artemon, “but in no other way is that man my kin. I never had a father!”

The king pursed his lips. “What does he mean, Tafhapy? How did you come to father these children, and what is your relationship with them now? I command you to explain!”

Tafhapy drew his bristling eyebrows together. At first he spoke with difficulty, but then the words came out in a rush. “My son speaks the truth. How did I father these children, you ask? When I was young, my father grew anxious at my lack of interest in the opposite sex. He took me to the most expensive brothel in Alexandria, and so that I should not be put off by the jaded nature or the overripe allure of the woman I was paired with, he insisted that I be given a virgin-a girl even younger than myself, as it turned out. Somehow or other I managed to consummate the act, which pleased my father greatly but only confirmed to me that such a thing would never happen again.

“But that was not the end of the matter. A few months later, the girl came to see me. She told me that I had made her pregnant. You may wonder how a girl in her position could be so certain that I was the father. In fact, she was no mere slave, and not strictly speaking a whore. She was the daughter of a freed man who was in terrible straits, and her one and only experience at the brothel had occurred on the night of my visit. By various means I ascertained that her story was not only credible, but almost certainly true. Her manner was so humble and sincere that I had no cause to doubt her.

“I told my father what had happened and I suggested that I should marry the girl. To me it seemed a readymade solution to my father’s insistence that I must marry and beget grandchildren for him. But my father told me not to be absurd, that to marry a girl in such sordid circumstances was out of the question.

“A few months later, unmarried and destitute, the girl gave birth not to one child, but two. She contrived to visit me and brought the twins with her. When I saw them, any doubts about my paternity vanished. Look at my eyes, and then look at theirs. You’ll see the resemblance.

“I approached my father again, and again he made his feelings clear. I was to have nothing to do with the girl or with her children. Yet, over the years, I felt obliged to give her a bit of money now and then. From time to time I saw the children as they grew up on the streets of Alexandria, wild and untamed-”

“We did the best we could,” snapped Artemon, gritting his teeth, “and so did our mother.” Axiothea tightened her embrace and hid her face against her brother’s chest.

“Be that as it may,” said Tafhapy, “with every year that passed, it became less and less possible that I could ever proclaim my paternity of such children. I lived in one world, they in another. Yet I knew who they were, and I think they knew who I was, for I had seen their mother pointing me out to them when my litter passed in the street.”

“Oh, yes, we knew who you were,” said Artemon. “The father who begot and then abandoned us. Tafhapy the Terrible, your business rivals call you. The words had a different meaning when our mother spoke them. How we hated and despised you, and everything you stood for.”

“Alas, and who could blame you?” said Tafhapy, unable to look Artemon in the eye. “At some point, I no longer saw your mother on the corner where she used to beg-”

“Because she died!” snapped Artemon. “Sick and miserable, her life destroyed by you!”

“So I presumed. In fact, I thought that all three of you must have died, for I no longer saw you or your sister. All three of you seemed to vanish. I put away my memories of you. In time, I thought no more about you. Until…”

Tafhapy sobbed and caught his breath. “Until that day a year ago when I chanced to see a mime troupe performing in the street, and called my litter bearers to a halt so that I might watch. Among the players I noticed a beautiful young girl. There was something terribly familiar about her. Then I realized who she was. My daughter! ‘Flee! Get away from her!’ cried a voice in my head, and I almost called on the bearers to take me away. Then I realized that the voice I heard was that of my father-my father, who is now dead and no longer controls my life. ‘You fool!’ I said to myself. ‘You’ll never have another child. Forget what your own father wanted, and lay claim to your children!’”

Tafhapy gazed fondly at Axiothea. “I made myself known to her. She rebuffed me at first, but I persisted. Little by little I’ve sought to gain her trust. I seek to do so still.”

“People thought she must be your lover,” I said.

“Let them think what they will. Artemisia prizes her freedom and independence and the life she’s made for herself, but as soon as she agrees, I intend to legally claim her as my daughter and make her my heir. I longed to do the same for Artemon, but when I asked her where her brother might be, she told me he’d vanished from Alexandria years ago. She had no idea what had become of him or where he’d gone.” Tafhapy shook his head. “I had no idea … I never imagined … that the man they call the Cuckoo’s Child, the king of the Delta bandits … is my son!”

I looked from father to son, from brother to sister, from daughter to father. I shook my head. “So it came to pass that Artemon, without knowing it, attempted to kidnap his own sister and demand ransom from his own father!”

All eyes turned to Artemon, who stared back at us defiantly. “The idea for the kidnapping began with the Jackal-”

“The man your sister knows as Lykos,” I said.

Axiothea raised her eyebrows. “Lykos the artificer?”

The king frowned and looked at Zenon, who explained in a whisper, “The man with a white stripe in his hair.”

The king nodded. “Ah yes, that fellow.”

“Very well, I’ll call him Lykos, if you prefer,” said Artemon. “On a visit to the Cuckoo’s Nest, he told me there was a beautiful girl in his Alexandrian mime troupe, called Axiothea-a name that meant nothing to me. Lykos said this girl had made herself the lover of a famously wealthy merchant called Tafhapy-a name I knew all too well, and despised. When Lykos suggested that we kidnap this actress and demand a ransom from her rich lover-never guessing that Tafhapy was secretly my father-I readily agreed. The money meant nothing to me, but the chance to subject the man I hated most in the world to a bit of misery-that was irresistible. Lykos arranged the kidnapping and hired the henchmen-who obviously took the wrong girl!” Artemon stared at Bethesda, who pressed herself close to me. “Now I understand why Tafhapy never responded to the ransom notes, and why you, Roman, came secretly looking for the girl.” He sighed and shut his eyes. “If only the kidnappers had taken the girl they were supposed to take-if only they had brought Artemisia to the Cuckoo’s Nest-I would have been reunited with my long-lost sister, and who knows what might have happened then?”

Tafhapy abruptly dropped to his knees. Humbly he approached King Ptolemy, shuffling forward across the stone floor. He clasped his hands beseechingly and gazed up at the king.

“Your Majesty! I came here today to save the life of a man who means nothing to me-this Roman called Gordianus. In your great wisdom and mercy, Your Majesty has seen fit to free him, and for that I thank you. But now I beg for the life of another, who until this hour I did not even know to be alive-my only son! I know he’s a notorious criminal, but whatever he may have done, I beg you, for my sake, spare his life!”

The king peered over his enormous belly at Tafhapy, who proceeded to fall onto all fours and abase himself amid the filthy straw. “Really, Tafhapy, you have no idea of the magnitude of your son’s betrayal, or the enormity of his crimes. He’s not just a thief and a murderer, but a traitor of the worst sort. His treachery has brought untold disaster upon me. There is no possibility of a pardon for his crimes, no possibility whatsoever!”

Zenon loudly cleared his throat.

The king wrinkled his brow. “What is it, Zenon?”

The chamberlain shrugged and made a succession of gestures, each more fawning than the last. “Your Majesty always knows best, and as you say, there can be no possible pardon for such a scoundrel-unless, of course…”

“Unless what?”

“Unless the party seeking such a pardon could offer a substantial amount of gold-not an amount equal to that which has been irretrievably lost as a result of Artemon’s treachery, for that would be impossible-but enough to pay for the king’s … shall we say … upcoming travel expenses.”

“You mean the cost of all the bribes, bodyguards, and baggage-carriers to get me out of Alexandria before Brother Soter arrives?”

“To put it bluntly, Your Majesty, yes, that is precisely what I mean.”

The king sighed. “And what would you estimate that amount to be?”

“Roughly speaking…” The chamberlain named a sum so staggering that every person in the room drew a sharp breath.

The king gazed at the groveling figure at his feet. “Well, Tafhapy, what do you say? Can you cough up that much money in the next couple of days? And is the life of your long-lost bastard worth such a sum?”

All eyes turned to Tafhapy. He remained on all fours but raised his head. He chewed his lower lip. His bristling eyebrows moved this way and that, expressing a succession of conflicting emotions.

“Well, father?” said Axiothea. She stared at Tafhapy and crossed her arms. “What do you say?”

Artemon also moved to cross his arms, but the chains prevented him. He had to be content with duplicating his sister’s cold stare. “Yes … father. Am I worth such a ransom?”

Tafhapy swallowed hard. “Give me until sundown tomorrow, Your Majesty. I think I can raise it by then.”

Axiothea burst into tears. Artemon shivered like a man with a fever; his hard features softened and he looked at his father with an expression I could not hope to fathom. Tafhapy, too, began to weep, and so did Djet. Caught up in the flood of emotions, Bethesda and I held each other tightly. Even the dour chamberlain looked pleased with himself.

The king clapped his hands and called to an unseen attendant in the hallway. “Bring me something to eat, at once! Happy outcomes make me hungry.”

A short while later, the king and his chamberlain left the cell and rejoined the royal retinue in the hallway outside. The rest of us followed. Only Artemon was left behind, pending delivery of the ransom.

On the way out, we passed through the royal zoological gardens. Whoever laid out this part of the palace had decided that caged men and caged animals belonged in close proximity, though the animals had better living arrangements, with cleaner quarters and blue sky above them.

As we passed the various cages, pits, aviaries, and open-air enclosures, I gawked at a dazzling array of animals, birds, and reptiles such as I had never seen before. My nostrils were filled with unfamiliar smells and my ears with strange cries, squawks, and hissing noises.

Then I heard a familiar roar. From the far side of a large cage, the lion Cheelba came bounding toward me.

I cried out his name. I thrust my arm between the bars. Cheelba opened his mouth in a yawn, rubbed his face against my hand, and licked my fingers.

The king watched in wonder. “So it’s true, what I was told, that this lion is tame.”

“Mostly true, and mostly tame,” I said, thinking of Cheelba’s attack on Artemon. Through my tunic, I pressed my fingers to the tooth that hung from a chain around my neck. “Cheelba will defend a friend, if necessary.”

“What a splendid addition to the menagerie!” said the king. “Nothing adds zest to a royal procession like an exotic animal or a savage beast. In the next such parade, this lion can lead the way. He shall amaze the populace and bring credit to the House of Ptolemy! When might we use this lion next, Zenon? Perhaps for…”

The king caught himself and fell silent. Very likely, I thought, the next royal procession in Alexandria would be the one celebrating his brother’s accession to the throne.

The king swallowed hard. “Whoever may benefit from this beast, let it be recorded that it was I who added it to the royal menagerie. Write it down!”

One of the scribes in the retinue busily scraped a stylus against a wax tablet.

As we proceeded through the gardens, Djet fell back to walk beside Bethesda and me. He saw me frown, and asked what I was thinking.

“Just a small detail that nags at me. Something I meant to ask Artemon.”

“Tell me.”

I spoke more to myself than to Djet, since I had no reason to think he would know what I was talking about. “How was the wagon with the false sarcophagus substituted for the other? Artemon duped everyone into leaving the wagon unattended for a moment-I understand that part-but where did the other wagon come from? It can’t have been in that narrow passageway already, it can’t have come in from the side, and it was too big and heavy to come from above or below.…”

Djet laughed. “I can tell you!”

“You can?”

“Of course. I saw everything.”

“How?”

“I was hiding up in the rafters.”

“Ah, yes, I see. Go on, then.”

“It’s the oldest conjuring trick there is. As soon as you and Artemon and the others were out of sight, soldiers came out of a room that you had passed on your way in, pulling the second wagon. Very quickly they pulled the first wagon backward, out of the narrow passageway, and brought up the other wagon to take its place. Then they took the first wagon back to the room where they had been hiding. That seemed to be the end of it. But a while later, Artemon and his men came running back, and Artemon knew exactly where to look for the first wagon. Then there was a terrible fight, and all those soldiers were killed, and off Artemon and his men went with the first wagon. That’s when I climbed up on the roof. I saw the fight you had with Artemon, and then Cheelba saved you, and then more soldiers appeared, and then the Medusa sailed off, and then the king’s boat sailed up to the wharf-and you were on it! When I made my way home, I told the master you must be the king’s prisoner, and Axiothea said we must come look for you.”

I nodded. “By coming here today, you saved my life, Djet. In fact, you saved all of us in one way or another, even the king.”

“Yes, I know,” he said, as if it were quite a small thing. Then he ran ahead to walk beside Axiothea and his master.