Blinking back tears, I read the final entry of his diary. My mind was slow, so that I had to read some sentences more than once to make sense of them. But no matter how many times I read it, his idea that Monime had sent the stolen page to me-to lure me to Ephesus as part of some plot to bring down Antipater-made no sense. Surely the queen could have done away with Antipater more easily than that, given the power she wielded in the royal household.
As I pondered the mystery-who sent the page to me, and why?-another solution occurred to me. The more I thought about it, the more sense it made. Of course, I would never be able to prove it.…
And then, out of the mist-literally-came the embodiment of my conjecture. I thought I must be hallucinating, until Samson, standing nearby on the pier, gave a start.
“Who are those three?” he asked in a low voice. “And what in Hades are they doing here?”
“I know who they are,” I said, quickly rolling the pages and slipping them back into the capsa as I stood up. “The one in the middle, at least … because I was just thinking about him.”
Even without his cobra crown, I recognized young Prince Ptolemy. He was dressed in a common tunic, as were his two servants, but his shoes were exquisite. Each of the servants carried a heavy-looking sack slung over his shoulder. The prince smiled a bit uncertainly as he stepped onto the pier. Looking behind me, I saw that Bethesda and the others had drawn closer together, and that Samson stood before them, holding a knife in one hand.
“You may put aside that weapon,” said the prince quietly. When Samson didn’t respond, his voice became stern. “I have asked you nicely. Now, as a prince of Egypt, I order you to do so. Are you not an Alexandrian, subject to the House of Ptolemy?”
Samson hesitated for a moment, then put away his knife. “What are you doing here, Your Majesty?”
“I’ve come to sail away with you.”
Samson cocked his head. “But how…?”
“I think I know how the prince followed us here,” I said. “These two servants are the same two who were assigned by Monime to look after Antipater. Am I right?”
“They are!” said Freny. “I recognize them both.”
“You are indeed correct … Gordianus of Rome,” said Prince Ptolemy.
“But their true loyalty is to you.”
The prince nodded.
“And despite Antipater’s attempts to elude them,” I said, “one or the other of them never let Antipater out of his sight. Thus you knew where Antipater went, when he fled the house of Eutropius. And you knew that last night he was in the Temple of Artemis. And this morning, by some feat of stealth, you managed to follow Antipater and the rest of us through the mist.”
He nodded again. “And at a distance I witnessed his death. Alas! The world has lost a great poet. I had hoped your old tutor would be with us on this journey, so that he might amuse us with his verses.”
“But how is it that you’re free to go where you wish?” asked Samson. “The king never allows you to leave the palace.”
“The whole city, including the palace, has been in an uproar, day and night, ever since the massacre commenced. I took advantage of all the confusion to slip quietly away. I had help to do so; these two are not the only servants in Mithridates’s household who are secretly loyal to the House of Ptolemy. Still, even with my loyal minions covering for me, sooner or later the queen will realize that I’ve gone, so I suggest we cast off at once.”
“Taking you with us was not in my plans,” said Samson.
“If it’s payment you require, that can be arranged.” The prince gestured to the sacks carried by his two servants. “I managed to bring along a few personal items-rings and bracelets and other such trinkets.”
“I wouldn’t consider taking payment from you,” said Samson.
“You show wisdom. One day, I shall sit on the throne of Egypt, and when that happens, I shall not forget those who helped me in my time of tribulation.”
Without his fancy robes and ruby-eyed cobra crown, Ptolemy looked no different from any other plump-cheeked teenager. It was hard to imagine him ruling Egypt, but stranger things had happened.
“There’s something I want to know,” I said. “Was it you who sent me that page from Antipater’s diary?”
He nodded. “After my servants showed me the page, I told them to send it to you.”
“Why?”
“I thought it might lure you here, Gordianus of Rome. And so it did.”
“For what purpose?”
The prince sighed. “Luring you here was only one of many, many small schemes I’ve hatched in the days since I was captured. All the other schemes came to nothing, but this one…” He smiled. “It so happened that these two servants, assigned by Monime to spy on Antipater, were actually loyal to me-my spies, if you will. They secretly read his diary and reported back to me. It was clear that Antipater had lost enthusiasm for the cause of Mithridates, and that he especially disliked Monime. How might his discontent be turned to my advantage? When I discovered that Antipater had a young protege in Egypt-a Roman no less-my interest was further piqued. What mischief might occur if I could lure that young Roman to Ephesus, and reunite him with the disgruntled poet?”
“You merely wanted to make mischief?”
“Mischief creates opportunity! When a prince finds himself without power, making mischief and sowing discord may be the best he can do, along with biding his time. Many a Ptolemy has learned that lesson over the centuries. So-how to bring Gordianus of Rome to Ephesus? I couldn’t write to you myself-any such letter might be intercepted-but it occurred to me that that particular page from the diary might do the trick. And so it did. And the mischief created has borne fruit beyond my wildest expectations-for here am I, and there is the ship to take me away from this infernal place.”
I thought about this, and looked at the capsa in my hand. “Other pages from the diary seem to be missing. Antipater himself noticed.”
“Yes, there were certain comments he made about Egyptian politics-about my father and uncle, and even about myself-that I prefer no one should read. So I had those pages destroyed-as I suggest you do with the pages that remain. One never knows what further mischief they might spawn.”
I looked at the others on the pier, including Freny. “How did Monime learn of the king’s attraction to Freny-from the two servants watching Antipater?”
“Yes. They had to report something back to the queen, to make a pretense of being her spies in the household. A tidbit like that seemed harmless enough.”
“Yet it almost got poor Freny killed!”
He nodded. “But you managed to prevent that. What a show you all put on the other night! Mithridates almost wet himself, and his vile bitch of a queen nearly fainted from terror.”
“I thought you liked Monime.”
“Like her?” He made an ugly face. “I loathe her! Oh, yes, I made a pretense of being her crony, her comrade, her cozy confidant-all the while trembling inside with disgust. She and her father are the worst sort of upstarts, crude commoners pretending to be royal. They’re nobodies, with no manners and no breeding. Cousin Mithridates is bad enough, but Monime…” He made a retching sound.
The captain called to Samson that the boat was ready to sail.
Samson looked at the prince for a long moment, then stepped aside and indicated that the rest of us should do likewise, so that Ptolemy could board first. As he walked up the pier, from somewhere in his tunic the prince produced his cobra crown and fitted it on his head. A shaft of sunlight pierced the mist and fell upon the sparkling ruby eyes.
Samson boarded the vessel. He helped Chaeremon step aboard. I boarded next, then helped Bethesda onto the ship.
On the pier, with much weeping, Anthea and Amestris said their last farewells to Freny. At last she came aboard, and the ship cast off. The two women stood on the pier, waving. I gazed at the face of Amestris for as long as I could. Then the fog thickened, and I saw only two spots of yellow that gradually disappeared in the mist.