“Oh, but that must have been an hour ago,” said the rug-seller. “They took a quick look at my wares, said something rude about my mustache-silly girls! — and then moved on. I haven’t seen them since.”
Nor had any of the other vendors, it seemed. Bethesda and Axiothea had certainly visited the market, and had been noticed by several of the vendors, but this had happened an hour ago, when I first began to doze under the palm tree. No one knew when they left or in what direction they headed.
Bethesda and Axiothea seemed to have spent the most time in the garment stall, comparing their own dresses to the inferior version on sale there, to the displeasure of the old woman in charge of the stall, who thus had reason to remember them. She gave curt answers to all my questions, but then, as I was leaving, she lowered her voice. “But now that you’ve reminded me, I did notice something a bit odd.…”
“Yes?”
“I’m trying to think. Yes, it was at the same time that those girls came in to look at my garments. I noticed a couple of fellows hanging about, peering this way and that. I didn’t like the look of them.”
“What did these men look like? How were they dressed?”
She shrugged. “Common tunics, nothing special. It wasn’t their clothes I noticed. It was the expression on their faces. They were up to no good.”
“What does that mean?”
“When you work in a market like this, you learn to tell who’s a customer and who’s not. You also learn to spot the ones who are here to steal something. These fellows weren’t here to shop. They weren’t locals from the neighborhood. Nor were they tourists, passing through. And they didn’t have the look of petty thieves or pickpockets, if I’m any judge. So why were they here, hanging about, and what were they up to? Nothing good, that’s for sure.”
“Were they following the girls?” I heard my voice break.
“That’s what I’m asking myself. I was just about to shoo the girls from the stall when I noticed those two men. Then the girls left, giggling-richly amused by the dirty looks I was giving them, I suppose.”
“And the two men?”
She shook her head. “I don’t remember seeing them again, after that. They must have moved on, but I don’t know which way they went. Perhaps they followed the girls. Or perhaps they didn’t.” She shrugged.
At last I returned to the waterfront, feeling completely stumped.
Should I return to my room in Rhakotis? The chance that Bethesda would have gone there, without me, seemed remote. Nevertheless, if she had gone back, she would have been able to let herself in, for the door had no lock and key. (The only lock was a simple block of wood that swiveled to bar the door from the inside, to insure our privacy when we slept or were otherwise engaged; security was provided by the landlord and his wife, who lived on the ground floor and kept an eye on people coming and going.)
There was another possibility: that Melmak had forcibly taken her. He had mentioned wanting to use her in his troupe and had offered to pay me. I had refused, and that seemed to end the discussion. Melmak had seemed like a nice enough fellow, but what did I really know about him, or about Axiothea?
What if Melmak had put some sort of drug in my beer, causing me to fall asleep even as Axiothea lured Bethesda from my side? That would have allowed the whole troupe to scurry off, absconding with my slave and leaving me to wake up an hour later, alone.
Then I recalled that we had all drunk the beer from the same cup; it seemed unlikely that Melmak could have drugged my share. Nonetheless, he had encouraged me to drink more than the others, and beer alone could be counted on to put a man to sleep on a warm day.
I was suddenly certain of it: Melmak had taken Bethesda from me. The scoundrel! Well, I thought, soon enough he would realize his mistake. I had been able to afford Bethesda only because she had been a highly problematic slave, causing nothing but trouble for all her previous masters. Many had owned her for less than a day before returning her to the market. She was the exact opposite of the compliant, obedient slave most men desired. Bethesda could be counted on to put up quite a fight-
Or could she? If Melmak and the troupe had forcibly taken her, against her will, why had the abduction gone unnoticed by the vendors in the marketplace?
Because they had befuddled her with beer, I thought, for she too had drunk a small portion. And because they had lied to her, saying that I had gone somewhere and they were taking her to meet me, or spinning some other tale to lure her away quietly. Or because …
Had she gone with them willingly?
This thought disturbed me more than any other. Had Bethesda left me to go with the mime troupe of her own volition? If so, why? Was the lure of the acting life so appealing to her? Or … had she grown weary of me? Or-most chilling thought of all-had she never cared for me in the first place? Had all her sighing and moaning during all the hours of our lovemaking been a pretense, a show to please a master whom she secretly despised as much as she had despised all her previous masters? Was that the emotion that lurked behind her unreadable, catlike facade-derision for the feckless young master she had played for a fool?
No, that was not possible.
Or was it?
The fears and doubts that assailed me were most unseemly for a Roman to experience in regard to his slave, no matter how beautiful and alluring and special that slave might be. I experienced many conflicting, confusing emotions at once, but most of all I felt anxious.
Where was Bethesda?
I decided that my next course of action would be to seek out the mime troupe. Actors were notorious for keeping no fixed abode, moving from place to place to stay ahead of the disapproving authorities, but surely someone would be able to put me on to their scent. I had spent the last two years in Alexandria practicing my father’s livelihood, making contacts and digging up dirt for others. Now I would put those skills to use for myself.
So I spent the rest of my birthday crisscrossing Alexandria and inquiring after the mime troupe of Melmak. People knew at once whom I was talking about. “Ah, the troupe with the trained monkey,” some would say, or “the one with those two adorable pipe players,” or (most frequently) “the one with that ravishing young actress who runs through the streets naked!” Many people would also nod if I described a man with a white stripe bisecting his hair and beard, though few knew the artificer Lykos by name.
Everyone knew Melmak’s troupe, but no one knew where they lived or how to contact them. It was a curious thing, in such a teeming city, that seven males, one female, and a monkey, all so conspicuous when they wished to be, could be so invisible offstage.
While asking questions about the mime troupe, I also made sure to mention, as if by chance, the waterfront market, just to see if anyone had been there that day. As it turned out, a few of my contacts had indeed gone shopping or at least passed through the market. Unfortunately, I encountered no one who had seen two girls fitting my description of Bethesda and Axiothea-until, toward the end of the day, I dropped in on a pair of elderly eunuchs who were retired from royal service and lived together in a beautifully furnished apartment not far from the palace.
Their names were Kettel and Berynus. They had never asked me to pay for information, but instead always seemed glad to see me, steering me to a comfortable couch, lighting a bit of incense, and doting over me like aunts with a favorite nephew. The two eunuchs were a font of information about the private lives of just about anyone connected with the palace, but experience had taught me that they were not entirely reliable; they tended to let their imaginations run away with them. Since palace gossip was their specialty, I had no reason to think they would know anything about Melmak, and indeed they did not. But when I mentioned the waterfront market, their eyebrows shot up.