The wagon was wheeled into place alongside the dais. The top of the crate was lifted off. The inside was padded with blankets and straw.
A hoisting mechanism was deployed to remove the lid of the sarcophagus.
“Should we be opening the sarcophagus?” I said, feeling a prickle of superstitious dread.
“The lid and the sarcophagus are both very heavy,” said Artemon. “They’ll be easier to manipulate if we separate them and lift them one at a time.”
As the lid began to rise above the sarcophagus, a thought occurred to me.
“What will become of the body?” I asked.
Artemon looked at me sidelong but did not speak.
“You’re not going to hold it for ransom, are you?”
He laughed at the look on my face. “Of course not. The remains of Alexander will be handled with utmost respect, and will be left here where they belong, in his tomb.”
Robbing a mummified corpse of its sarcophagus hardly constituted respect, I thought. Artemon seemed to be amused by my misgivings.
“Here, Pecunius, let’s have a look at the mummy before we remove it from the sarcophagus. They say the state of preservation is quite remarkable.”
He took my arm and together we stepped onto the dais. As the lid was hoisted onto the wagon, the two of us peered over the edge of the sarcophagus.
So it came to pass that I, Gordianus of Rome, at the age of twenty-two, in the city of Alexandria and in the company of cutthroats and bandits, found myself face to face with the most famous mortal who ever lived.
For a man who had been dead over two hundred years, the conqueror’s features were remarkably well preserved. His eyes were closed, as if he slept, but his eyelashes were perfectly intact. I could almost imagine that he might suddenly blink and gaze back at me.
“Look out!” someone shouted.
I turned around to see that we had company-not royal soldiers, but a handful of regular citizens, no doubt outraged at the desecration of their city’s most sacred monument. A few had daggers. The rest were armed only with clubs and stones.
As Artemon’s men fell on the newcomers, cutting them down and driving them back, one of the angry citizens raised his arm and took aim at me. I saw the jagged rock hurtle toward me.
Artemon grabbed my arm and pulled me sharply to one side, but too late. I felt a sharp blow against my head. The world turned upside down as I fell from the dais onto the wagon, striking my head against one corner of the crate. Groggily, I drew back and saw blood-my blood-on the wood. Then everything went black.
How had I come to such a sorry pass?
Let me tell you the story.
II
It all started the day I turned twenty-two.
That was on the twenty-third day of the month we Romans call Martius; in Egypt it was the month of Phamenoth. Back in Rome, the weather was probably bitter and damp, or at best chilly and brisk, but in Alexandria my birthday dawned without a cloud in the sky. The warm breath of the desert filled the city, relieved by an occasional breeze from the sea.
I lived on the topmost floor of a five-story tenement in the Rhakotis district. My little room had a window that faced north, toward the sea, but any view I might have had of the harbor and the water beyond was blocked by the fronds of a tall palm tree outside the window. The breeze caused the foliage to perform a listless dance; the motions of the fronds as they slowly slid against one another produced a languorous, repetitious music. The shiny foliage reflected the rays of the rising sun, causing points of light to dance across my closed eyelids.
I woke, as I had fallen asleep, with Bethesda in my arms.
You may wonder why my slave was in bed with me. I might point out that the shabby little apartment in which I was living was so small there was hardly room for one person to turn around, let alone two. The bed, narrow as it was, took up most of the space. Yes, I could have made Bethesda sleep on the floor, but what if I rose in the night? I would likely have tripped over her, fallen, and cracked my skull.
Of course, it was not for considerations such as these that I had invited Bethesda to share my bed. Bethesda was more than merely my slave.
When I was a boy, and my father taught me the facts of life, he made clear what he thought about masters sharing their beds with slaves. “A bad idea, all around,” I could remember him saying. My mother had died when I was small, and the only slave in our household was an old fellow called Damon, so I was not sure if he spoke from experience.
“Why is that, father? Is it against the law for a master to sleep with a slave?”
I can remember my father smiling at such a naive question. “If a man were to sleep with another man’s slave, without permission-that would be against the law. But with his own property, a Roman citizen may do whatever he wishes. He may even kill a slave, just as he may kill a dog or a goat or any other animal he owns.”
“Is it adultery, then, if a married man has relations with a slave?”
“No, because for adultery to occur there must be the chance of freeborn offspring-such a birth might threaten the wife’s status and the status of her children, you see. But since a slave has no legal existence, and any child born to a slave is also a slave, no union with a slave can pose a threat to the marriage or to the heirs. That is why many wives make no objection if their husband cavorts as much as he wishes with his slaves, male or female. Better he should do so in the home, at no expense, and not with a freeborn woman or someone else’s wife.”
I frowned. “Then why do you say it’s a bad idea?”
My father sighed. “Because, in my experience, the act of sexual union invariably produces not just a physical reaction, but an emotional one as well-whether good or bad-and in both master and slave. And that leads to trouble.”
“What sort of trouble?”
“Oh, a Pandora’s box full of woe! Jealousy, blackmail, betrayal, trickery, deceit-even murder.” My father’s experience of the world was wider than that of most men. He called himself Finder, and he made his living by uncovering other people’s secrets, often of a scandalous or criminal nature. “Digging up the dirt,” he called it. He had seen the full range of human behavior, from the best to the worst-but mostly the worst. If his experience had led him to believe that carnal knowledge between a master and a slave was a bad thing, he probably knew what he was talking about.
“I can see that it might be unwise, but is it wrong for a master to sleep with a slave?” I asked.
“Certainly the law does not object. Nor does religion; such an act does not offend the gods. Nor do philosophers have much to say about how a man uses his slaves.”
“But what do you think, father?”
He gave me a penetrating look and lowered his voice, so that I knew he spoke from the heart. “I think that when any two people have carnal relations, the greater the difference in their status, the more likely it is that one of them is being forced to act against his or her will. When that occurs, the act is demeaning to both parties. Or the tables can be turned. I’ve seen so-called philosophers behave like fools, wealthy men bankrupted, powerful men humiliated-and all for the love of a slave. To be sure, not every union can be of equals. Not every pairing can be like the one that existed between me … and your mother.”