The two men were neither young nor old, neither handsome nor ugly. Neither had the figure of a dancer or an acrobat. I doubted that either could juggle, and the blind man with the flute was certainly not a musician. Who were they, then, and what were they doing here? I remembered what Monime had said, quoting the Grand Magus: the ritual-whatever that was-must be heard by one who cannot see, seen by one who cannot hear, witnessed by one who cannot speak.
Apparently I was to be the witness who could not speak. The man looking at us so keenly had to be the one who could not hear-how else could he put up with that terrible music?-and the flute player was the one who could not see.
I turned to the chamberlain. I gestured to the room, then looked at Bethesda.
“My master is to sleep here?” she asked.
“Is that a girl I hear?” said the flute player, with a smile that looked at once innocent and lecherous, situated as it was beneath those vacant eyes.
The deaf man had leaned forward on his narrow bed and was staring intently at his blind companion across the room. Apparently he was able to read lips, for he knocked on the wall behind him twice, which, from the blind man’s nod, I took to be a code meaning yes.
“Is she pretty?” asked the blind man.
The deaf man again knocked twice on the wall, with a bit more enthusiasm than I would have liked, though I saw Bethesda smile.
The chamberlain ignored them. “For the time being, this will be your master’s room,” he answered.
“For how long?” said Bethesda.
“Your master is to be the guest of His Majesty until his presence is no longer required.”
“Days? Months?”
“A few days only, from what I’ve heard.”
“And what have you heard?”
I pursed my lips and gave Bethesda a sidelong glance. She was asking exactly the questions on my mind.
“What I have heard…” The chamberlain lowered his voice, smiled, and gestured for Bethesda to lean closer. “What I have heard … is that I should keep my mouth shut! That advice applies to your master, as well-and to you, slave.”
“Ha! You’ll get nothing useful out of that fellow,” said the blind man. “But who exactly is joining us, and why is the girl speaking for him? No, let me guess! The fellow is mute, and the slave girl serves as his voice.”
The deaf man slapped the wall two times.
“Oh, dear, how are we going to communicate?” said the blind man. “I can’t see, you can’t hear, this one can’t speak. And where is his slave to sleep? There are only three beds, and none is wide enough for two.” Again he flashed that lecherous, or perhaps innocent, smile.
“There is a rug on the floor,” said the chamberlain.
I put a finger to Bethesda’s lips before she could say something rash, and gave the chamberlain a plaintive look.
“I suppose I can have an extra blanket delivered to the room,” he said.
I smiled to show my gratitude, then caught a glimpse of a figure passing in the hallway outside-a man of many years, his long white hair and beard illuminated by lamplight.
Could it be-?
At the very instant I moved toward the door, the blind man decided to spring from his bed. I might have avoided colliding with him, but the chamberlain also got in the way. Somehow Bethesda became entangled as well.
The deaf man stayed clear of the jumble, sitting on his bed. He made a strange braying sound, slapped his thigh, and pointed at us. An Alexandrian mime troupe could not have staged a more farcical collision.
When I at last broke free and hurried to the door, there was no one in the hall outside. The passage was lit by lamps set in niches along each wall. I walked to the end of the hall and stuck my head around the corner. No one was in sight, except the bevy of dancing girls, heading back the way they had come, now accompanied by a dwarf who seemed to be on very familiar terms, to judge from the way he kept raising their sheer skirts and peeking under them. The girls giggled and shrieked with laughter.
Had I seen Antipater? I’d had only the briefest glimpse of the man’s profile, but I was certain … almost certain … that it was him.
But how could that be? Surely the world’s greatest poet should be upstairs, in the company of other poets, and philosophers and playwrights and sages. What would Antipater be doing below stairs with the dancing girls and acrobats and other riffraff?
The chamberlain came huffing and puffing after me. “You mustn’t run off like that,” he said. “Not without permission, or someone to look after you. Have you any idea what would happen to me if one of you three went missing before…” His voice trailed off. “Come back and let me properly introduce you to the others.”
I shrugged and followed him back to the dingy little room.
* * *
“And the food is rather good, and there’s plenty of it,” said the blind man, whose name was Gnossipus. He came from a nearby village and had been able to see until a few years ago, when an illness made him blind. His livelihood as a wagon driver ruined, he had come to Ephesus to beg outside the Temple of Artemis, where he made a better living than before. It was outside the temple that the Great Megabyzus had approached him a few days ago and then brought him to the royal palace.
My stomach growled. Darkness had fallen and we had not yet been fed. I was beginning to wonder if I was expected to fall asleep on an empty stomach. Why did Gnossipus insist on talking about food?
“And at this time of year,” he went on, “there are plenty of fruits and vegetables. Oh! The other day, we actually had cherries. Have you ever eaten cherries, Agathon?”
I shook my head, then realized I would need to use the code. I shifted a bit on my narrow bed and knocked once on the wall behind me.
“No? I suppose they’re even rarer in Alexandria than they are here. Cherries come from somewhere up north, on the shores of the Euxine Sea. King Mithridates grew up eating them-‘Summer isn’t summer without cherries,’ he says-and a few days ago a wagonload arrived here in Ephesus. All for the royal court, of course, but there were so many that even we nobodies got some. Oh, how delightful! Small and sweet and juicy, and I am told they have the most beautiful red color, the color of blood. I remember red.…” He sighed. “Do I exaggerate, Damianus? About the cherries?”
Damianus was the deaf man. He banged the wall once, very hard, to communicate the vehemence of his agreement: No, Gnossipus, you do not exaggerate!
But Gnossipus certainly liked to talk. He had been talking nonstop ever since the chamberlain left me in the room. His constant chatter was grating, but marginally more bearable than his flute playing. Had I a voice, I would have yelled at him to shut up. The only voice I had-Bethesda-lay curled on the rug at my feet. She had somehow managed to fall asleep, and began to snore very softly.
Gnossipus paused. “What is that sound? Is there a cat in the room? Cats make me break out in hives!”
Damianus brayed, which was his way of laughing. He drew a breath, then managed to make a passable cat noise, though it sounded as if the cat might be drowning in a well.
“Oh, that’s you, Damianus!” said Gnossipus. “Is there a cat in the room or not? Let the slave girl speak. Oh, wait-that’s her, isn’t it?”
Damianus brayed again and banged the wall twice. I should not have wished to be lodged in the room behind him, with all that banging, though it would have been preferable to the room in which I found myself.
The banging woke Bethesda. She sat up and rubbed her eyes. How delicate she looked in the soft lamplight, leaning back against the bed with her legs tucked beneath her. From where I sat above her on the narrow bed, I had a lovely view of the tops of her breasts and the cleavage between. Oh, if only the two of us had been alone in that room!