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CHAPTER SIX

THE ETERNAL NILE

I had been in Alexandria two years by this time and it was only then that I remembered I should really have tried to find some of the people whom my father had known and with whom he had been trading, if only to let them know he had passed away. Obviously by now I knew the layout of Alexandria very well and so one spare afternoon I walked all the way down Canopic Street and, turning into a narrow alley near the Moon Gate where I had long since discovered all the incense merchants operated, I saw a sign with a name that I thought I recognised, ‘Apollodorus Incense and Spices’ it read, so I went in. Inside was piled high with sacks full of aromatics of various kinds and heavily perfumed with all the fragrances of the orient. At the back of the shop I found an elderly man with a withered arm whom I supposed to be the eponymous Apollodorus.

“Apollodorus, sir, I am Nicholas, son of Aquila, from Patara. I think you did business with my father, did you not?”

“Aquila, you say?” He looked at me quizzically and after a moment’s thought he recalled, “Ah yes, but that was some years ago. I used to buy some of his terebinth resin, as I remember. It was a cheaper product than I normally sell

THE JOURNEY