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not a part of the Egyptian character. While this was surely no more than wishful thinking—bandits exist everywhere, as do victims and heroes—it was true that we had arrived in a part of the world that was much older and arguably more civilized than Italy. Brutally beheading a potential conqueror before he could set foot in Egypt was one thing; common banditry was another, and about that I was not to worry.
    The next morning, very early, we set out for Alexandria. The weather was hot, the atmosphere muggy, and the sky dotted with puffy clouds. With occasional potholes and crumbling edges, the stone-paved road was definitely not up to Roman standards. Bethesda was jostled about more than I would have liked, but the mules made steady progress.
    We reached the easternmost branch of the Nile Delta at the bustling fortress town of Pelusium. The idlers at the shop where we purchased provisions were abuzz with speculation about the war between King Ptolemy and his sister Cleopatra; this I gathered from Bethesda, who was able to understand the locals far better than I. She had grown up in Alexandria, speaking Egyptian, and though she claimed that the dialect spoken by the locals in Pelusium was rough and uncouth, she seemed to have little trouble understanding them. Once we reached Alexandria, everyone would speak at least a little Greek. Greek was the language of the Ptolemies and the official language of the state bureaucracy, and the upper classes spoke nothing else. But outside the capital, the native Egyptians, even after two and a half centuries of Ptolemaic rule, clung stubbornly to their native tongue.
    According to Bethesda, word of Pompey’s fatal landing had already reached Pelusium, but only as a rumor. Some of the locals believed the story; some did not. Just as we were about to show our purchases to the shopkeeper, a self-important little woman with her nose in the air cut in front of us to purchase a basket of dates, and proceeded to address anyone within earshot.
    “Who’s this hen?” I whispered to Bethesda.
    “The wife of a local magistrate, I imagine.”
    “What’s she saying?”
    Bethesda listened for a while, then snorted. “Some nonsense about how Pompey met his end. She claims there was a battle between the Romans and Egyptians, and the boy-king himself wrestled Pompey to the ground and then chopped off his head. Silly hen!”
    Catching Bethesda’s tone if not understanding her Latin, the woman turned around and flared her nostrils at us. I braced for a scrap, but Bethesda bit her tongue and lowered her eyes, and the woman went on with her story. The moment left me feeling uneasy; it seemed to me yet another symptom of her malady that Bethesda should submit so readily to the babblings of a pompous busybody.
    Indeed, it seemed to me that Bethesda became more subdued with each passing mile, so that I regretted putting any extra strain upon her by making her deal with the locals. As our journey continued, an unnatural stillness settled upon her. She stared vacantly at the marshes and the muddy fields. I tried to draw her out with reminiscences, as I had on the sea journey, but she seemed disinterested and distant.
    Even about her intentions, she had little to say. We had reached the Nile, the object of our journey, and I asked her where she intended to bathe and what was needed for the ritual of purification she had in mind.
    “Not here,” she told me. “Not yet. I’ll know the place when we come to it. Osiris will show me where to step into the river. The river will show me what to do.”
    The farther we traveled, the more uneasy I found the villagers. Word of Pompey’s death invariably preceded us and formed the chief topic of conversation. It seemed that the Nile had failed to rise as high as in previous years. A year of low inundation meant fewer crops, with hunger and hardship to follow. To cause such a poor inundation, something must have displeased the god (for in Egypt, the Nile itself is a