Peering between the orange robes of the priests I saw the corpse of the cat sprawled on the paving stones. It had been a beautiful creature, with sleek limbs and a coat of midnight black. That it had been deliberately killed could not be doubted, for its throat had been cut.
The priests knelt down and lifted the dead cat onto a small funeral bier, which they hoisted onto their shoulders. Chanting and lamenting, they began a slow procession toward the Temple of Bast.
I looked around, not quite sure how to proceed. A movement at a window above caught my eye, but when I looked up there was nothing to see. I kept looking until a tiny face appeared, then quickly disappeared again.
"Little girl," I called softly. "Little girl!"
After a moment she reappeared. Her black hair was pulled back from her face, which was perfectly round. Her eyes were shaped like almonds and her lips formed a pout. "You talk funny," she said.
"Do I?"
"Like that other man."
"What other man?"
She appeared to ponder this for a moment, but did not answer. "Would you like to hear me scream?" she said. Not waiting for a reply, she did so.
The high-pitched wail stabbed at my ears and echoed weirdly in the empty street. I gritted my teeth until she stopped. "That," I said, "is quite a scream. Tell me, are you the little girl who screamed earlier today?"
"Maybe."
"When the cat was killed, I mean."
She wrinkled her brow thoughtfully. "Not exactly."
"Are you not the little girl who screamed when the cat was killed?"
She considered this. "Did the man with the funny beard send you?" she finally said.
I thought for a moment and recalled the man with the Babylonian beard, whose shout had saved me from the mob in the street-"The man in blue is the one we want!"-and whom I had seen at the head of the battering ram. "A Babylonian beard, you mean, curled with an iron?"
"Yes," she said, "all curly, like sun rays shooting out from his chin."
"He saved my life," I said. It was the truth.
"Oh, then I suppose it's all right to talk to you," she said. "Do you have a present for me, too?"
"A present?"
"Like the one he gave me." She held up a doll made of papyrus reeds and bits of rag.
"Very pretty," I said, beginning to understand. "Did he give you the doll for screaming?"
She laughed. "Isn't it silly? Would you like to hear me scream again?"
I shuddered. "Later, perhaps. You didn't really see who killed the cat, did you?"
"Silly! Nobody killed the cat, not really. The cat was just play-acting, like I was. Ask the man with the funny beard." She shook her head at my credulity.
"Of course," I said. "I knew that; I just forgot. So you think I talk funny?"
"Yes… I… do," she said, mocking my Roman accent. Alexandrian children acquire a penchant for sarcasm very early in life. "You do talk funny."
"Like the other man, you said."
"Yes."
"You mean the man in the blue tunic, the one they ran after for killing the cat?"
Her round face lengthened a bit. "No, I never heard him talk, except when the baker and his friends came after him, and then he screamed. But I can scream louder."
She seemed ready to demonstrate, so I nodded quickly. "Who then? Who talks like I do? Ah, yes, the man with the funny beard," I said, but I knew I must be wrong even as I spoke, for the man had looked quite Egyptian to me, and certainly not Roman.
"No, not him, silly. The other man."
"What other man?"
"The man who was here yesterday, the one with the runny nose. I heard them talking together, over there on the corner, the funny beard and the one who sounds like you. They were talking and pointing and looking serious, the one with the beard pulling on his beard and the one with the runny nose blowing his nose, but finally they thought of something funny and they both laughed. 'And to think, your cousin is such a lover of cats!' said the funny beard. I could tell that they were planning a joke on somebody. I forgot all about it until this morning, when I saw the funny beard again and he asked me to scream when I saw the cat."
"I see. He gave you the doll, then he showed you the cat-"
"Yes, looking so dead it fooled everybody. Even the priests, just now!"
"The man with the funny beard showed you the cat, you screamed, people came running-then what happened?"
"The funny beard pointed at a man who was walking up the street and he shouted, 'The Roman did it! The man in blue! He killed the cat!'" She recited the lines with great conviction, holding up her doll as if it were an actor.
"The man with the runny nose, who talked like me," I said. "You're sure there was mention of his cousin?"
"Oh yes. I have a cousin, too. I play tricks on him all the time."
"What did this man with a runny nose and a Roman accent look like?"
She shrugged. "A man."
"Yes, but tall or short, young or old?"
She thought for a moment, then shrugged again. "Just a man, like you. Like the man in the blue tunic. All Romans look the same to me."
She grinned. Then she screamed again, just to show me how well she could do it.
By the time I got back to the square, a troop of King Ptolemy's soldiers had arrived from the palace and were attempting, with limited success, to push back the mob. The soldiers were vastly outnumbered, and the mob would be pushed back only so far. Rocks and bricks were hurled against the building from time to time, some of them striking the already cracked shutters. It appeared that a serious attempt had been made to batter down the door, but the door had stood firm.
A factotum from the royal palace, a eunuch to judge by his high voice, appeared at the highest place in the square. This was a rooftop next to the besieged house. He tried to quiet the mob below, assuring them that justice would be done. It was in King Ptolemy's interest, of course, to quell what might become an international incident; the murder of a wealthy Roman merchant by the people of Alexandria could cause him great political damage.
The eunuch warbled on, but the mob was unimpressed. To them, the issue was simple and clear: a Roman had ruthlessly murdered a cat, and they would not be satisfied until the Roman was dead. They took up their chant again, drowning out the eunuch: "Come out! Come out! Killer of the cat!"
The eunuch withdrew from the rooftop.
I had decided to get inside the house of Marcus Lepidus. Caution told me that such a course was mad-for how could I ever get out alive once I was in?-and at any rate, apparently impossible, for if there was a simple way to get into the house the mob would already have found it. Then it occurred to me that someone standing on the same rooftop where Ptolemy's eunuch had stood could conceivably jump or be lowered onto the roof of the besieged house.
It all seemed like a great deal of effort, until I heard the plaintive echo of the stranger's voice inside my head: "Help me! Save me!"
And of course: "I'll reward you!"
The building from which the eunuch spoke had been commandeered by soldiers, as had the other buildings adjacent to the besieged house, as a precaution to keep the mob from gaining entry through an adjoining wall or setting fire to the whole block. It took some doing to convince the guards to let me in, but the feet that I was a Roman and claimed to know Marcus Lepidus eventually gained me an audience with the king's eunuch.
Royal servants come and go in Alexandria; those who fail to satisfy their master become food for crocodiles and are quickly replaced. This royal servant was clearly feeling the pressure of serving a monarch who might snuff out his life with the mere arching of an eyebrow. He had been sent to quell an angry mob and to save the life of a Roman citizen, and at the moment his chances of succeeding looked distinctly uncertain. He could call for more troops, and slaughter the mob, but such a bloodbath might escalate into an even graver situation. Complicating matters even more was the presence of a high priest of Bast, who dogged (if I may use that expression) the eunuch's every step, yowling and waving his orange robes and demanding that justice be done at once in the name of the murdered cat.