In Olympia, on the night before Simmius the Cynic was murdered, I had overheard two men talking in the tent of our host. One had been Nikanor. The other had spoken in such a low voice that I could not discern what he said, much less recognize his voice. Now I knew that the other man had been Antipater—and both were agents of Mithridates.
Thinking back, I remembered all the times in all the cities when Antipater had supposedly kept to his room while I went out for the day … or said he was meeting with fellow scholars to talk about poetry (knowing that nothing was more certain to send me away) … or went to some temple without me, since I had already visited the place and did not care to see it again. How many of those times had his actual purpose been a meeting with confederates to plot the rise of Mithridates and the ruin of Rome?
What schemes had he hatched with Eutropius in Ephesus, and with Posidonius in Rhodes, and with all the others he must have met in all the stops we made at Athens, Delos, Lesbos, and elsewhere?
In Halicarnassus, during all those blissful hours I spent with Bitto, I had presumed that Antipater was immersing himself in the volumes of her library—when in fact he must have been carrying on a furious correspondence with his contacts all over the Greek world. I had been oblivious. How had Antipater just described me? “Young and easily distracted.”
He and Isidorus were old friends—their conversation made that clear—but for my benefit they had pretended to be strangers on the boat that brought us to Alexandria. How many times had such charades been carried out right in front of me? And now, every day, when the two of them went to the Library, presumably to engage in esoteric research amid the dusty scrolls, they were devising a code that could be used to send secret signals from the Pharos.
A sudden thought chilled me to the bone: what was my father’s role in all this? He had certainly abetted Antipater’s faked death and his disappearance from Rome. Had he done so knowing of Antipater’s mission? Was he, too, an agent of Mithridates, and therefore a traitor to Rome? Had he intentionally kept me in the dark, deceiving me just as Antipater had done?
Almost as disturbing was the only other possibility—that Antipater had duped him as well as me. What did that say about the wisdom of my father, the so-called Finder?
I felt an impulse to rouse Antipater and demand the truth. I rose from my bed, left my room, and went to his door. I stood there for a long time in the darkness, but I could not bring myself to knock. I was not yet ready to confront him. I returned to my bed. To bide my time was the wiser course, I told myself.
Would things have turned out differently, had I followed my first impulse?
I thought I would never sleep, but soon enough Somnus laid his hand on me, and Morpheus filled my head with terrible dreams. All was chaos, noise, and horror. My father and Antipater were in the midst of a bloody riot. Lurking on the outskirts, mad Nikanor suddenly lunged forward and sent a hissing serpent through the air. Then a massive finger of stone erupted from the earth and soared skyward, a white spire amid the fiery darkness. The beacon at the top was impossibly bright. The ray of light seared my eyes and burned into my brain, exposing my deepest fears and stripping me of every secret.
* * *
The next morning, at breakfast, I tried to look pleasantly surprised when Antipater made his announcement. I must have looked dazed, instead. I would never make a good spy.
“Gordianus, I do begin to think you’re unwell,” said Antipater. “Did you not hear me? Isidorus has arranged for both of us to visit the Pharos today. It’s quite a rare opportunity. The lighthouse isn’t open to just anyone, you know. We shall see it inside and out, and climb all the way to the top, if our legs hold up.”
“Wonderful,” I managed to say.
Antipater frowned and shook his head at my unaccountable lack of enthusiasm. “Don’t just sit there, gaping. Eat your breakfast and get ready to go out.”
We made our way to the wharf where the ferryboat carried workers to Pharos. A different, more attentive guard was on duty that morning; he demanded to see our pass, which Isidorus duly presented. We were escorted to the front of the queue and allowed to board the next boat.
Even in my glum, anxious mood, it was impossible not to be invigorated by the trip across the harbor. The air was cool and refreshing. The morning sun glittered on the water. The temples and obelisks of the royal islands to the east were in silhouette, scintillating with fiery outlines, but ahead of us the Pharos was lit from bottom to top with soft yellow light. From a distance it looked too delicate to be made of stone—it seemed to be built of butter or goat’s cheese. But as we drew closer, the illusion of softness faded, as if the warming sun itself baked and hardened the massive blocks into sharp-edged stone.
“The Pharos was built of a special kind of masonry,” said Isidorus, as if reading my thoughts, “something between a limestone and a marble. They say it actually grows harder as it’s exposed to the moist sea air. The Pharos has stood for nearly two hundred years, and the experts say there’s no reason it shouldn’t remain standing for another thousand.”
As we drew near the Pharos, I felt a sense of awe in spite of myself, and a thrill of excitement.
A guard met us as we disembarked. After examining our pass, he led us to a bench shaded by an awning of thatched reeds. Soldiers and green-clad workers were everywhere. The three of us looked rather conspicuous, wearing our ordinary tunics.
After a short wait, we were greeted by an imposing figure in green robes and a high headdress—Anubion, the man to whom I had seen Nikanor talking the previous day.
He looked askance at me, and his greeting to Antipater and Isidorus was stiff and formal; that was for my benefit, of course. I felt absurd, going along with the pretense that the three of them shared no special relationship, and that I knew nothing of their conspiracy.
As he led us up the long ramp to the entrance of the Pharos, Anubion recounted various facts and figures about the lighthouse, as if we were ordinary visitors receiving the privilege of a guided tour. The situation seemed increasingly unreal to me. The Pharos itself was almost too gigantic and magnificent to be comprehended, and the playacting of everyone, myself included, made me feel strangely detached, yet acutely aware of everything that was happening.
We passed through the grand entry of red granite, into a large room with a very high ceiling. I was struck at once by the strong smell of the place, a mingling of odors I had never experienced before. Soon I would be shown the source of these odors, but for the moment I was puzzled.
