Khenti nodded, but he crinkled his nose. “Smelled better as farms.”
The canal made a turn, and abruptly the walls of Alexandria were passing to their right. And looming directly ahead of them, where none was supposed to be, was a chain gate across the canal, manned by Roman soldiers.
Vorenus and Khenti exchanged only the briefest of looks before gathering their things and walking, as quickly as they could manage without seeming suspicious, back toward the rear of the barge.
Petosiris was there, one hand on the tiller, the other upon the line holding wind in the sail. The little deckhand was near his feet, where he appeared to be checking a heavy coil of docking rope, unraveling it from one part of the barge floor to another. “I see it,” said the barge captain.
“You said there were no gates on the canal,” Vorenus said.
Khenti had taken a position that nearly triangulated the barge captain between them and one of the larger mounds of barley. But if Petosiris noted the threat he made no notice of it. “I said there were no Roman checks on the canal,” he corrected. “Haven’t been for months.”
“This is a problem,” Vorenus said.
“I am aware,” the barge captain replied. He wasn’t looking at them, just staring up ahead at the gate. The chain across the canal had been pulled tight, rising up out of the water, which fell away from its links in drops that sparkled in the morning light.
Vorenus looked at Khenti, who had pulled back his traveling robes to expose the hilt of his sword. Then he looked to the stinking water, wondering if it was too late to jump and try to make their way through the slums and into the city another way.
“Get down,” Petosiris said.
“What?” Vorenus asked, looking back to the man. “Why are we—”
The barge captain made a sharp pull at the tiller, and the barge rocked sideways and bumped into a small raft along the shoreline. In the same moment, Petosiris released the line holding the wind in the sail and lunged to the deck. “Get down!”
As the barge rocked back and forth, its wake crashing back against itself in sloshing froth and its cloth sail suddenly flapping free, Vorenus and Khenti both complied. The deckhand had stayed busy, and as he pulled the last coil loop from one pile to another, Vorenus saw what he had exposed: a small hatch in the deck. Petosiris, on his hands and knees, pushed his fingers into the cracks along its edges and hefted it free. The reek of stale, damp straw washed out behind it. “Go. Hurry,” the barge captain said. “Our little accident here can only buy so much time.”
Vorenus nodded and started worming his way down into the hidden hold. It was shallow, hardly more than two feet high, but it extended beneath the biggest stacks of barley above. He rolled aside as best he could so that Khenti could join him.
The floor of the little space was entirely covered with the old straw, which had grown musty in the heat. Vorenus sneezed.
Framed by the little square of sky above them, Petosiris frowned. “It would be in our mutual best interests if you didn’t do that while you’re down there.”
Then the hatch closed over their heads, and heavy coils of rope began to be laid round and round above them. The boat once more began to move, inching its way toward the Romans at the gate and the great city of Alexandria beyond.
Doing his best to remain still in the choking, stifling darkness, Vorenus instinctively thanked the gods that he’d chosen well in hiring Petosiris, and that—in a few hours, if his luck held—the stench of stale straw would be replaced by the scents of the scrolls in the Great Library, and the sight of an old friend.
And he prayed—not really sure who he was praying to—that he wouldn’t sneeze.
2
SIGNS OF LIFE
ALEXANDRIA, 26 BCE
Before the new day cast its rays upon the great city of Alexandria, the astrologer Thrasyllus of Mendes awoke to the exotic scents of passion. Sleeping with a prostitute didn’t take away the pain, he decided, but it did push it away. If only for a time, it made him feel better.
Thrasyllus opened his eyes, smiling to know that the night had not been a dream. The black-haired girl was still with him in the bare little room, cradled close beside his body in the cool, pre-dawn air. For long minutes he watched her breathing—marveling at her smooth skin, the sensuous curves of her tanned back and shoulder, her chest just hidden from view—until he realized he must be grinning like a fool.
Democritus, he imagined, the scholarly thought coming to him unbidden, would not be pleased with such astonished fascination. It was too caught up in the senses. Too subjective. The girl’s body was just an accumulation of atoms, as was his. The old philosopher had, after all, said that a brave man was the one who could overcome both his enemies and his pleasures: “There are some men who are masters of cities,” he’d written, “but slaves to women.”
Thrasyllus had edited the work a year earlier, but it was only now, with the fresh memory of the girl’s movements still rippling over his sweat-chilled flesh, that he truly understood what Democritus had meant, and how easy it would be to enslave oneself to such sensuality. It was frightening, but it was thrilling, too. And Thrasyllus was quite certain—watching as she rolled over, the strands of her long raven hair spilling across and around the plump but firm roundness of her now exposed right breast—that the risks of enslavement were more than worth it. Democritus had clearly never had the pleasures of such a creature.
Thrasyllus had already planned a sacrifice at the Poseidium this morning, to pray that the sea-god would give him a safe voyage to Rome. Or, better still, that the gods would see fit to have changed old Didymus’ mind about passing the keys to the Great Library to Apion. Looking at this girl, he thought he might also make a sacrifice at one of the many shrines to Eros this morning. Another offering would be little trouble, after all. And it was fitting to thank the gods for what they gave, not just to beg them for what they might give.
Not that he had much hope that the gods could do anything to make the old librarian change his mind. Didymus was a stubborn and resolute man, and he’d left no doubt that his decision was a certainty: Apion was a Homeric scholar, like Didymus himself. And loyal, long-suffering Thrasyllus, who had served in the Library far longer?
Why, he was a mere astrologer.
Even editing the works of Democritus hadn’t been able to shake that fundamental identification, which had stuck with Thrasyllus from the moment he entered the Great Library as a boy: Thrasyllus of Mendes was, in the mind of the chief librarian, a simple astrologer.
Thrasyllus felt yesterday’s anger rising up again—the same anger that had made him storm out of the Great Library, relinquishing his position and declaring that he would seek better employment in Rome—so he took a deep breath and looked back at the beautiful girl beside him. The sight of her calmed him.
And calm brought clarity. Democritus was right about that, at least.
What was clear now, Thrasyllus thought, was that it was true. He was an astrologer. Had he not looked at the signs after angrily leaving the Great Library yesterday and seen in them a sign of the favor that this girl—the very one he’d adored for so long—would bestow upon him?
And had she not done so?
That it took money to get her to his room … well, that was just to get her attention, was it not? Once they were alone, after all, she’d smiled and cooed. She’d traced a line along his square jawline and told him he was young and handsome. She called him her little stargazer. She hadn’t needed to do that, but she had done it anyway. And she’d fallen asleep with her head on his shoulder, her delicate fingers tracing lazy, slowing circles through the hairs on his chest.