her. From that day forward she had called me Husband, and not once had I known her to slip and address me as her master. It was the return to Egypt, I told myself, calling her back to her past, confusing her about the present.
'Your time on this earth is far from over, Wife.'
'And your time, Husband?' She gave no sign of noticing her earlier error. 'When you came back today, I gave thanks to Isis, for it seemed a miracle. But the centurion forbade the captain to sail on. That means the Great One isn't done with you.'
'The Great One has far greater concerns than me. He's come to seek King Ptolemy's assistance. All Pompey's other allies-the Eastern potentates and moneylenders and mercenaries who gave him their allegiance before Pharsalus-have deserted him. But his ties to Egypt are strong. If he can persuade King Ptolemy to take his side, then he yet has a hope to defeat Caesar. Egypt has grain and gold. Egypt even has a Roman army, garrisoned here for the last seven years to keep the peace.'
'Something they've singularly failed to do, if Ptolemy is engaged in a civil war with his sister Cleopatra,' said Bethesda.
'So it's ever been in Egypt, at least in our lifetimes. To gain power, the Ptolemaic siblings intermarry, conspire among themselves, even murder one another. Sister marrying brother, brother murdering sister-what a family! As savage and peculiar as those animal-headed gods the locals worship.'
'Don't scoff! You're in the realm of those gods now, Master.' She had done it again. I made no remark, but sighed and held her closer.
'So you see, Pompey has far too much to think about to be bothered with me.' I said the words with all the conviction I could muster. When sleep is distant, the night is long. Bethesda and I lay together on our little cot in the cramped passenger cabin, separated from Rupa and the boys by a flimsy screen woven from rushes. Rupa snored softly; the boys breathed steadily, submerged in the deep sleep of children. The ship rocked very slightly on the calm sea. I was weary, my mind numb, but sleep would not come.
Had it not been for the storm, we would have been in Alexandria that night, safe and snug in some inn in the Rhakotis district, with a steady floor beneath our feet and a proper roof above our heads, our bellies full of delicacies from the market, our heads awhirl with the sights and sounds of a teeming city I had not seen since I was young. Come the dawn, I would have hired a boat to take us up the long canal to the banks of the Nile. Bethesda would do what she had come to do, and I would do what I had come to do-for I, too, had a reason for visiting the Nile, a purpose about which Bethesda knew nothing…
At the foot of our sleeping cot, where it served each morning as a dressing table for Bethesda and each evening as a dining table for all five of us, was a traveling trunk. Inside the trunk, nestled amid clothing, shoes, coins, and cosmetics, was a sealed bronze urn. Its contents were the ashes of a woman called Cassandra. She had been Rupa's sister, and more than that, his protector, for Rupa was simple as well as mute, and could not make his own way in the world. Cassandra had been very special to me, as well, though our relationship had very nearly proven fatal to us both. I had managed to keep the affair secret from Bethesda only because of her illness, which had dulled her intuition along with her other senses. Cassandra and Rupa had come to Rome from Alexandria; Rupa wanted to return his sister to the land of their youth and to scatter her ashes in the Nile, restoring her remains to the great cycle of earth, air, fire, and water. The urn that contained her ashes loomed in my mind like a fifth passenger among us, unseen and unheard but often in my thoughts.
If all had gone well, tomorrow Bethesda would have bathed in the Nile, and Cassandra's ashes would have been mingled with the river's sacred waters: duties discharged, health restored, the closing of a dark chapter, and, I had hoped, the opening of a brighter one. But that was not how things had turned out.
Was I to blame for my own fate? I had killed a man; disowned my beloved Meto; fallen in love with Cassandra, whose ashes were only a few feet away. Was it any wonder the gods had abandoned me? For sixty-two years they had watched over me and rescued me from one scrape after another, either because they were fond of me, or merely because they were amused by the peculiar twists and turns of my life's story. Had they now grown disinterested, distracted by the grander drama of the war that had swept over the world? Or had they watched my actions, judged me harshly, and found me no longer worthy of life? Surely some god, somewhere, had been laughing that afternoon when Pompey and I met, two broken men brought to the edge of ruin.
Thus ran my thoughts that night, and they kept sleep far away.
Bethesda slept and must have dreamed, to judge by her low murmurs and the occasional twitching of her fingers. Her dreams appeared to be uneasy, but I did not rouse her; wake a sleeper in middream, and the dark phantoms linger; but let a dream run its course, and the sleeper wakes with no memory of it. Soon enough Bethesda might have to face a nightmare from which there would be no waking. How would I die? Would Bethesda be forced to witness the act? Afterwards, how would she remember me? Above all else, a Roman must strive to face his end with dignity. I would have to remember that and think of Bethesda and the last memory of me she would carry, the next time the Great One summoned me.
At some point in the middle of that very long, very dark night, Bethesda stirred and sought my hand with hers. She twined her fingers with mine and squeezed them so tightly that I feared she must be in pain.
'What's wrong?' I whispered.
She rolled toward me and pressed a finger to my lips to silence me. In the darkness I could see the glimmer of her eyes, but I could not make out her expression. I murmured against the finger pressed to my lips. 'Bethesda, beloved-'
'Hush!' she whispered.
'But-'
She removed her finger and replaced it with her lips, pressing her mouth to mine in a deep, breathless kiss.
We had not kissed that way in a very long time, not since the onset of her illness. Her kiss reminded me of Cassandra, and for a brief moment I experienced the illusion that it was Cassandra beside me in the bed, her ashes made flesh again. But as the kiss continued, my memory of Cassandra faded, and I was reminded of Bethesda herself, when she and I both had been very young and our passion was so fresh it seemed that such a thing had never before been known in the world-a portal to an undiscovered country.
She pressed herself against me and slid her arms around me. The smell of her hair was intoxicating; neither illness nor travel had stopped her from the ritual of washing, combing, and scenting the great mane of black shot with silver that cascaded almost to her waist. She rolled atop me, and her tresses enclosed me, sweeping across my bare shoulders and over my cheeks, mingling with the tears that abruptly flowed from my eyes.
As the boat swayed gently on the waves, with Rupa and the boys and the urn that contained Cassandra very close, we made love, quietly, slowly, with a depth of feeling we had not shared in a very long time. I feared at first that she might be expending herself beyond her limits, but it was she who set the pace, bringing me quickly to the point of ecstasy and then holding me there at her leisure, stretching each moment to exquisite infinity.
The paroxysm wracked her body, and then again, and on the third occasion I joined her, peaking and melting into oblivion. We separated but remained side by side, breathing as one, and I sensed that her body had relaxed completely-so completely that I gripped her hand, fearing there might be no response. But she squeezed my fingers in return, even as the rest of her remained utterly limp, as if her joints had loosened and her limbs turned as soft as wax. It was only in that moment that I realized just how stiffly, for month after month, she had been holding her body, even when she slept. She released a long sigh of contentment.
'Bethesda,' I said quietly.
'Sleep,' she whispered.
The word seemed to act as a magical spell. Almost at once I felt consciousness desert me as I sank into the warm, boundless ocean of Somnus. The last things I heard were a high-pitched whisper followed by a stifled giggle. At some point Androcles and Mopsus must have awakened and been richly amused by the noises in the room. In other circumstances I might have been angry, but I must have fallen asleep with a smile on my face, for that was how I awoke. The smile faded quickly as I remembered exactly where I was. I blinked my eyes at the dim light that leaked around the cabin door. I sensed movement. From outside the cabin I heard the sailors calling to one another. The sail snapped. The oars creaked. The captain had set sail-but to where?
I felt a thrill of hope. Had we somehow, under cover of darkness, escaped from Pompey's fleet? Was Alexandria in sight? I scrambled from the cot, slipping into my tunic as I opened the door and stepped out.
My hopes evaporated in an instant. We were in the midst of Pompey's fleet, surrounded by ships on all sides.
