“Just be careful,” she whispered, but already her eyes were closing.
Caesarion pulled the covers tight around her. He kissed her forehead, eliciting a happy sigh from her, and then he stood and put a few coins into his pouch for the day. Just enough to get to Syene and back, plus a little extra advance for whichever captain he hired to come to Elephantine, load up the crate that would hold the Ark, and then ferry it and its four companions down the Nile to Gebtu, where they could join one of the many caravans that trekked across the Nile to the Red Sea port of Myos Hormos. From there, they would need only to arrange passage across the waters that Moses had once used to drown a pharaoh, sailing up the gulf to Aila, where further caravan travel up the King’s Highway would take them to the fabled city of Petra.
Simple enough, Caesarion thought, shaking his head and smiling to himself. If not for Hannah’s sleeping he might even have laughed at the absurdity of the plan—though he was nevertheless certain it was the best chance they had. Elephantine had been a sanctuary, and a welcome one. What he had learned from the Therapeutae had given him a peace he could not have imagined. But it couldn’t last forever. In Petra, that secluded mountain stronghold of the Nabataeans, there was a chance they could quietly hide the Ark in a place where it might never be found. And, if it ever was, it was the sort of sacred space where the fullness of its power could be used.
Caesarion took one last look at the artifact in the other room, wondering at the strange workings of history. Yes, he thought, it would find a home there. After all, unless he was wrong, Petra was where it was born.
* * *
Outside, Pullo and Vorenus were standing beside the altar in the courtyard, talking. Caesarion never tired of seeing the two of them together once more. Were it not for the ruins in which they stood, the Egyptian robes that covered their familiar Roman swords, and the scars of mind and body they all carried now, he might have thought he was back in Alexandria again.
Aside from the fog, that is. He couldn’t ever remember seeing a fog so thick upon the city.
“So,” Vorenus said, looking up at his approach, “we will expect you by nightfall?”
“If not sooner. Hannah’s asleep.”
Vorenus smiled, but it was Pullo who answered. “We’ll see that she gets her rest.”
“Thanks.”
Caesarion grasped each of their forearms in turn, then was starting to walk away when Pullo called out to him. “I still think it’s a girl,” the big man said. “We’re placing bets.”
“And I’m down for a boy,” Vorenus said.
Caesarion frowned in mock concentration. “Put me down for a boy, then,” he said. “Keeps the sides even.”
The two old legionnaires nodded, smiling, and Caesarion bowed to them in Therapeutan fashion before he turned and made his way out into the fog.
Leaving the temple by the side door, Caesarion entered into the narrower stretch of the King’s Road as it ran between the temple of the Jews and that dedicated to Khnum. After a moment of thought about which way to go, he decided to make his way through the larger temple: the path was better lighted that way.
The walls of the Khnum temple were higher than those of the Jewish temple, its broad doors perpetually open. Caesarion stepped through and began walking along a long, stone-crowned colonnade that stretched across the side of the complex. Oil lamps set upon the square-shaped columns marked the path, drawing pools of clouded light against the darkness, and he followed them with quiet steps. A handful of souls moved in the shadows, but the world was at peace for the moment, and he was glad for it. Around him the smooth walls of the inner shrines moved in and out of view, the figures and hieroglyphs painted upon them seeming at times alive in the shifting mix of lamplight and clouded air.
A new infusion of Roman coin had spurred building projects across the empire, and Elephantine was no exception. There was the mighty bronze statue of Augustus at the harbor, of course, but even temples like this one were gaining new markers of success as Caesar tried to quell resentment of the removal of the pharaohs by supporting local priests where they were useful to the administration of the conquered territories. The priests of Khnum and of Satis—the goddess celebrated in an adjacent, smaller temple—were very much among those. At the far end of the complex, Caesarion had to step around the tower of scaffolding that surrounded a pair of new obelisks that were being raised where they could be seen from the river below, dominating the skyline of the island as viewed by anyone who passed on the Nile. When it was finished, the sight would be impressive, he was sure.
Exiting the Khnum temple, he turned northward, following the wide, paved walkway that extended above the shoreline toward the harbor, separated from the rocky drop by a low defensive wall. The temple of Satis immediately arose to his left, and he passed the entrance to the all-important Nilometer on his right, which was little more than a wall around the stepped gash that had been driven down like a channel into the waters below.
The sky was less dark now, the fog slowly starting to thin as dawn approached. Men would be beginning to stir at the harbor. His timing could hardly be more perfect.
A few minutes later Caesarion came down the last set of steps to the inner market area of the harbor. The oversized statue of Augustus was there, looming over the docks that extended out before him and disappeared into the fog that still hung heavy upon the Nile. The docks were otherwise abandoned, and Caesarion was surprised that he didn’t even see any movement from the harbor’s little lighthouse: the light at its top was lit, as it always was, but there was no sign of movement inside or around it. The night harbormaster ought to have been there, keeping watch over the docks when he wasn’t walking them, but Caesarion could see even in the dim light that the lighthouse’s door was open to the night and not even a candle was burning inside. Perhaps, he thought, the harbormaster had gone off to the far end of one of the docks, invisible for now in the fog. Rather than call out, Caesarion just stood for a time staring up at the big bronze man with his piercing eyes.
For all that they had been at war with each other, Caesarion had never actually met the man who’d conquered Egypt. This wasn’t really surprising, he supposed. When it came to warring states, it was their men, not the men who led them, who met face-to-face, shed blood to shed blood. History would surely be written differently if it were otherwise.
Still, a part of Caesarion would have liked to have met Octavian. He had to be an impressive man to command armies as he had. He’d drawn great men to his side, and he’d achieved great things. That one of those things was the conquest of Egypt and the stripping away of everything Caesarion had known was a point of personal issue, but in truth he couldn’t fault the Roman emperor for many of his decisions. Meeting him, he thought, would indeed be interesting.
Looking around the docks again, Caesarion suddenly saw a man sitting upon some crates a little ways down one of the closer docks. Chiding himself for not seeing him before—whether from the shadows or the fog—he began walking in his direction.
The man didn’t move, though Caesarion’s footsteps were certainly loud enough on the wooden dock. Nor did he move when he was hailed in greeting.
Noise came over the water then. Muted by fog and distance, the sounds were indistinct, moving in and out like waves. But they sounded, he thought, like screams. Like battle.
Still walking, he turned his eyes in their direction, looking south and east across the great river in the direction of Syene, the little town on the eastern bank of the Nile. There was light there in the darkness, and it wasn’t the light of the dawn.