“Yes. Crocodile.” The Egyptian grinned wickedly. “You maybe not go swimming right now, hey?”
“Water’s too foul for swimming anyhow.” Sostratos hoped he sounded calm enough. He did mean what he said. Rivers might bring fresh filth from upstream, but at least they carried downstream the filth that was right here. In the currentless canal, anything that got dumped stayed where it was and rotted.
That didn’t seem to trouble the crocodile. There was a thrashing and a startled squawk near the bank. One ibis disappeared, while many more flew away. A couple of the fishing children nearest the attack moved back from the water. The rest kept on with what they were doing.
Shouting to one another in their own language, the sailors swung the yard slantwise so the sail could keep pushing them forward. Pasos and another Egyptian plied steering oars near the stern; the barge was too beamy for one man to handle both port and starboard. They chattered back and forth, plainly used to working with each other.
Sostratos soon got bored. He wasn’t used to being a passenger; to him, passengers were as useless as cargo. But, since he and his men know not a word of Egyptian, they couldn’t be of much use.
The canal swung south, then entered the lake. Little fishing boats scooted here and there, moving much faster than the barge. Pasos steered past low-lying islands. “Do those ever get flooded?” Sostratos asked.
The skipper nodded. As Sostratos had in the Sacred Land, he found himself getting used to the gesture. “Can happen,” Pasos said. “High flood in Nile, plenty more water come down than most times. Lake fill full, islands go under.” He made a face. “Big mess.”
“I imagine it would be,” Sostratos said. Some of the islands had houses on them. “What’s it like farther up the river when the flood is high?”
“Bad,” Pasos answered. “Big bad. Villages wash away. People drown. Animals, too. Have to dig out canals again when water go down. Big bad.” The other steersman, who seemed to understand a bit of Greek but not speak it, said something in his own language. After nodding again, Pasos translated: “Flood bad, but drought worser. No water for fields, crops fail and people starve.”
Hellenes thought of Egypt as a land of plenty. Ptolemaios certainly ruled Egypt as if it were a land of plenty. To the Egyptians, though, the land showed both kind and harsh faces. With enough water, it comfortably fed its swarms of people. With too much or too little ….
One of the branches of the Nile flowed into Lake Mareotis. Before they reached it, the sun began to set. At Pasos’ order, the sailors dropped several anchors—heavy stones on ropes—into the shallow water. Egyptians and Hellenes ate together. Flat cakes of barley bread and a mush made from smashed beans were unexciting fare, but they filled the belly. Instead of wine, the Egyptians drank beer. Sostratos gamely downed a cup, but found it sour and unappetizing. “Wine is better,” he told Pasos.
“Oh, yes,” the skipper agreed. “Wine is better. Wine cost more, too. Can drink beer without—” He mimed an urgent squat.
“I understand.” Sostratos dipped his head. Drink plain water anywhere and you asked for a flux of the bowels.
As the light faded, mosquitoes came out in buzzing clouds. Sostratos slapped whenever he felt one land. So did the other men on the barge. “We’ll all look like raw meat tomorrow,” a rower named Thersandros said mournfully. “The dogs will chew us up.”
“They have cats here, too,” Sostratos said. He’d seen some wandering the streets of Alexandria. He didn’t know if they were wild or tame or somewhere in between. He wasn’t sure the cats knew, either.
“I couldn’t tell you what those furry things are good for,” Thersandros said.
Pasos overheard him and came up to the Hellenes. “You smart, you no say such things here,” he told the rowers. “Cats, they is gods in some parts Egypt. Someone understand you talk bad about them, you maybe get beat up, maybe get killed. Same with crocodiles. Same with lots other animals. You no want trouble, you watch mouth.”
Thersandros didn’t watch his mouth. He opened it, no doubt to tell the barge skipper he didn’t care a khalkos for what a bunch of barbarians thought. Before he could, Sostratos contrived to kick him in the ankle and quickly spoke up himself: “Thank you, O Pasos. We will try to respect your customs here, the way we would expect foreigners”—he carefully didn’t say barbarians—“to respect ours in Hellas.”
The Egyptian weighed that, then nodded. “You speak good, Hellene.” He went back to his own folk.
By the mutinous look on Thersandros’ face, he didn’t think Sostratos spoke well. In a low voice, he said, “Hellenes rule Egypt now. We tell these cat-worshiping savages what to do.”
“Ptolemaios collects taxes from Egypt. He collects grain and papyrus and anything else he needs. He does that because he’s got an army behind him,” Sostratos answered, as patiently as he could. “The Persians did it before him, and the Egyptians themselves before that. But if you go into a tavern and start laughing at cats or crocodiles or monkeys or whatever they worship, do you think the Egyptians won’t knock you over the head or stick a knife in your back?”
“And then the Hellenes will—” Thersandros began.
Sostratos cut him off with a sharp chopping motion. “The Hellenes will ask around. The Egyptians will say, ‘We don’t know what happened to him. He must have had an accident.’ And they’ll be happy, and you’ll be dead. It’s their country. There are a lot more of them than there are of us.”
Had they been of the same status, Thersandros would have kept arguing. Sostratos saw it on his face. As things were, he subsided, if with ill grace. Maybe he would remember, maybe not.
As the sky darkened, stars came out one by one. Like any seafarer, Sostratos looked on them as old familiar friends. The two brightest stars in the Little Bear described small circles around the north celestial pole. They both lay noticeably lower in the sky here than they did back home.
The Egyptians curled up and went to sleep—all but one, who kept an eye on the barge’s surroundings, and on the Hellenes. In a low voice, Sostratos said, “We’ll do what they do. One man will stay awake all the time. I’ll take first watch tonight. We’ll trade off later in the voyage. Go to sleep now, men, and I’ll rouse one of you when the time comes.”
As the rowers began to snore, he tried to remember everything Herodotos had written about Egypt and the Egyptians. Plainly, the Father of History had seen this land himself, and talked as best he could with men who knew its past. Alexandria hadn’t been here when he lived, of course, nor had the Macedonians. Egypt lay in Persian hands then. But most of what he’d set down still seemed pretty accurate.
After a while, the Egyptian watchman noticed Sostratos was also awake. He waved. He might have waved several times before Sostratos noticed him. Sostratos waved back when he did. Good manners satisfied, the two men who didn’t speak each other’s languages went back to being alone together.
When Sostratos judged the time right, he shook Thersandros by the shoulder. He moved back quickly—Thersandros awoke with a knife in his hand. “Oh. It’s you,” the rower said, and the knife disappeared. Better to have a ready-for-aught along than not. Sostratos hoped so, anyhow.
He lay down and closed his eyes. Next thing he knew, the sun was prying them open. When he had to sleep aboard the akatos, he didn’t usually do so well. Then again, Lake Mareotis was far calmer than the Inner Sea.
His men were awake, some of them breakfasting on more barley bread and beans. The Egyptians were eating, too. The Hellenes helped them haul up the anchor stones. Nothing complicated about that, as there was with the stays and rigging. Gestures sufficed to show what wanted doing.