Antony and Cleopatra (78 page)

“Caesar Octavianus,” said the newcomer, bowing deeply.

“Just Caesar will do. Only my enemies add the Octavianus. You are?”

“Apollodorus, lord high chamberlain to the Queen.”

“Oh, good. Take me to her.”

“I fear that isn’t possible,
domine
.”

“Why? Has she fled?” he asked, clenching his fists. “Oh, plague take the woman! I want the business over!”

“No,
domine,
she is here, but in her tomb.”

“Dead? Dead? She can’t be dead, I don’t want her dead!”

“No,
domine
. She is in her tomb, but alive.”

“Take me there.”

Apollodorus turned and headed into the bewildering maze of buildings, Octavian and his friends following. After a short walk they encountered another of those high walls smothered in vivid two-dimensional pictures and the curious writing Memphis had told Octavian was hieroglyphic in nature. Each sticklike symbol was a word, but to his eyes, it was unintelligible.

“We are about to enter the Sema,” said Apollodorus, pausing. “Here the members of the House of Ptolemy are buried, together with Alexander the Great. The Queen’s tomb is against the sea wall, here.” He pointed to a blockish, red stone structure.

Octavian eyed the huge bronze doors, then the scaffolding and winch mechanism, the basket. “Well, at least it won’t be hard to get her out,” he said. “Proculeius, Thyrsus, go in through the opening at the top of that scaffolding.”

“If you do that,
domine
, she will hear your coming and die before your men can reach her,” Apollodorus said.

“
Cacat!
I need to speak to her, and I want her alive!”

“There is a tube—here, beside the doors. Blow down it, and it will alert Her Majesty that someone on the outside has things to say.”

Octavian blew.

Back came a voice, astonishingly distinct, though reedy. “Yes?” it asked.

“I am Caesar, and I wish to have speech with you. Open the doors and come out.”

“No, no!” came two screeched words. “I will not speak to Octavianus! To anyone but Octavianus! I will not come out, and if you try to enter, I will kill myself!”

Octavian gestured to Apollodorus, who looked exhausted. “Tell Her nuisance Majesty that Gaius Proculeius is here with me, and ask her if she’ll speak to him.”

“Proculeius?” came the thin clear voice. “Yes, I’ll speak to Proculeius. Antonius told me on his deathbed that I could trust Proculeius. Let him talk.”

“She won’t know one voice from another down that thing,” Octavian whispered to Proculeius.

But apparently she could tell the difference between voices, for when Octavian, having let her have speech with Proculeius, tried to take over the bizarre conversation, she recognized him and would not communicate. Nor would she talk to Thyrsus or Epaphroditus.

“Oh, I don’t believe this!” Octavian cried. He rounded on Apollodorus. “Bring wine, water, food, chairs, and a table. If I have to coax Her nuisance Majesty out of this fortress, then at least let us be comfortable.”

But for poor Proculeius comfort wasn’t possible; the tube was too high up on the wall for him to sit in a chair, though some hours into the business Apollodorus appeared with a tall stool that Octavian suspected he had had made for the purpose, hence the delay. Proculeius’s orders were to assure Cleopatra that she was safe, that Octavian had no intention of killing her, and that her children were safe. It was the children that gnawed at her, not only their safety but their fate. Until Octavian agreed to let one of them rule in Alexandria and another in Thebes, she would not come out. Proculeius argued, entreated, coaxed, beseeched, reasoned, argued over again, fawned, badgered, all to no effect.

“Why this farce?” Thyrsus asked Octavian as darkness fell and palace servants came with torches to light the area. “She must know you can’t promise her what she asks! And why won’t she speak directly to you? She knows you’re here!”

“Because she’s afraid that if she speaks directly to me, no one else will hear what we say. This is her way of putting her words on some kind of permanent record—she knows Proculeius is a scholar, a writer of events.”

“Surely we can enter from above during the darkness?”

“No, she’s not tired enough yet. I want her so worn down and weary that her guard drops. Only then can we enter.”

“At the moment, Caesar, your main trouble is I,” Proculeius said. “I’m flagging dreadfully, my mind is reeling. I am ready to do anything for you, but my body is giving up.”

At which moment Gaius Cornelius Gallus arrived, his handsome face fresh, his grey eyes alert. Octavian had an idea.

“Ask Her nuisance Majesty if she’ll talk to a different but equally prestigious writer,” he said. “Tell her you’re sick, or that I’ve called you away—something, anything!”

“Yes, I’ll talk to Gallus,” said the voice, not as strong now that twelve hours had elapsed.

The discussion went on until the sun came up and continued into the morning: twenty-four hours. Luckily the little precinct in front of the doors was well shaded from the summer sun.

Her voice had grown very weak; she sounded now as if she hadn’t much more energy to command, but with Octavia for a sister, Octavian knew how hard a woman would fight for her children.

Finally, well after noon, he nodded. “Proculeius, take over again. That will wake her up, focus her attention on the tube. Gallus, take my two freedmen and enter the tomb through the aperture. I want it done with absolute stealth—no jingling pulleys, no creaks, no stage whispers. If she succeeds in killing herself, you’re nose deep in the shit with my hand on your heads.”

Cornelius Gallus was a catlike man, very silent and supple; when all three men stood on the aperture wall he elected to shinny down a rope on his own. In the waning torchlight he saw Cleopatra and her two companions clustered around the speaking tube, the Queen gesturing passionately as she talked, all her attention focused on Proculeius. One servant woman held her right side in the armpit to prop her up, the other her left side. Gallus moved like lightning. Even so, she gave a great cry and lunged for the dagger on a table next to her; he wrenched it from her and held her easily, despite the two exhausted maids tearing and beating at him. Then Thyrsus and Epaphroditus joined him and the three women were restrained.

A thirty-eight-year-old man in the pink of health, Gallus left the women to the care of the freedmen and tilted the two mighty bronze bars up and away from the doors, then opened them. Light streamed in; he blinked, dazzled.

By the time the women were brought outside, literally held up, Octavian himself had disappeared. It was no part of his plans to confront the Queen of Beasts yet, or for many days to come.

Gallus carried the Queen in his arms to her private rooms, the two freedmen carrying Charmian and Iras. The
homo novus
senior legate had found himself shocked at Cleopatra’s appearance once the light of day fell on her; robes stiff and crusted with blood, breasts bared and covered with deep lacerations, hair a tangled mess between patches of oozing scalp.

“Has she a physician?” he asked Apollodorus, hovering.

“Yes,
domine
.”

“Then send for him at once. Caesar wants your queen whole and healthy, chamberlain.”

“Are we to be allowed to minister to her?”

“What did Caesar say?”

“I did not presume to ask.”

“Thyrsus, go and find out,” Gallus ordered.

The answer came at once: Queen Cleopatra was not to be let leave her private quarters, but anyone she needed could go to her there, and anything she asked for was to be supplied.

Cleopatra lay, golden eyes huge and hollowed, on a couch, no regal figure now.

Gallus went over to her. “Cleopatra, can you hear me?”

“Yes,” she croaked.

“Give her wine, someone!” he snapped, and waited until she had swallowed some. “Cleopatra, I have a message for you from Caesar. You are free to move about your apartments, eat whatever you like, have knives on hand for paring fruit or meat, see whomever you wish. But if you take your life, your children will be put to death immediately. Is that clear? Do you understand?”

“Yes, I understand. Tell Caesar that I won’t attempt to harm myself. I must live for my children.” She lifted herself on an elbow as a shaven-headed Egyptian priest entered, followed by two acolytes. “May I see my children?”

“No, that isn’t possible.”

She flopped back, covered her eyes with a graceful hand. “But they are still alive?”

“You have my word on that, and Proculeius’s.”

“If women want to rule as sovereigns,” said Octavian to his four companions over a late dinner, “they should never marry and produce offspring. It is a very rare female indeed who can overcome mother love. Even Cleopatra, who must have murdered hundreds of people—including a sister and a brother—can be controlled by a simple threat to her children. A king of kings is capable of murdering his children, but not the Queen of Kings.”

“What’s your purpose, Caesar? Why not let her put paid to her existence?” Gallus asked, part of his mind composing an ode. “Unless it’s all to have her walk in your triumph?”

“The last captive I want in my triumph is Cleopatra! Can’t you see our sentimental grannies and mamas all along the route of the parade beholding this poor, scrawny, pathetic little woman? She, a threat to Rome? She, a witch, a seductress, a whore? My dear Gallus, they’d weep for her, not hate her. Buckets of tears, rivers of tears, oceans of tears. No, she dies here in Alexandria.”

“Then why not now?” Proculeius asked.

“Because first, Gaius, I have to break her. She has to be subject to a new form of war—the war of nerves. I must play on her sensibilities, harrow her with worry for her children, keep her on a knife blade.”

“I still don’t understand,” said Proculeius, brow knitted.

“It’s all to do with the manner of her death. However she accomplishes it, it must be seen by the entire world as her own choice, and not a murder done at my instigation. I must emerge from this pristine, the noble Roman who treated her well, gave her all kinds of latitude once she was back in her palace, never once threatened her with death. If she takes poison, I will be blamed. If she stabs herself, I will be blamed. If she hangs herself, I will be blamed. Her death must be so Egyptian that no one suspects my hand in it.”

“You haven’t seen her,” said Gallus, reaching for a squab crusted with strange, tasty spices.

“No, nor do I intend to. Yet. First, I must break her.”

“I like this country,” Gallus said, tongue titillated by the perverse mixture of flavors in the squab’s crunchy skin.

“That’s excellent news, Gallus, because I’m leaving you here to govern it in my name.”

“Caesar! Can you do that?” the gratified poet asked. “Won’t it be a province at the command of the Senate and People?”

“No, that cannot be allowed to happen. I want no peculating proconsul or propraetor sent here with the Senate’s blessing,” Octavian said, chewing what he thought was the Egyptian equivalent of celery. “Egypt will belong to me personally, just as Agrippa virtually owns Sicilia nowadays. A trifling reward for my victory over the East.”

“Will the Senate oblige you?”

“It had better.”

The four men were gazing at him, it seemed in a new light; this was not the man who had struggled futilely against Sextus Pompey for years, nor gambled all on his homeland’s willingness to take an oath to serve him. This was Caesar Divi Filius, sure to be a god one day, and undeniable master of the world. Hard, cool, detached, farsighted, not in love with power for power’s sake, Rome’s indefatigable champion.

“So what do we do for the present?” Epaphroditus asked.

“You take up station in the big corridor outside the Queen’s apartments, and keep a register of all who enter to see her. No one is to bring her children. Let her stew for a few
nundinae
.”

“Shouldn’t you be leaving for Rome in a hurry?” Gallus asked, anxious to be left to his own devices in this wonderful land.

“I don’t move until I have achieved my purpose.” Octavian rose. “It’s still light outside. I want to see the tomb.”

“Very nice,” Proculeius commented as they passed through the chambers that led to Cleopatra’s sarcophagus room, “but there are more valuable things in the palace. Do you think she did that deliberately, so that we’d let her keep her trappings for the afterlife they believe in?”

“Probably.” Octavian surveyed the sarcophagus room and the sarcophagus itself, a single piece of alabaster with a likeness of the Queen on its upper half, painted exquisitely.

A noisome smell issued from a door at the back of the room; Octavian passed into Antony’s sarcophagus room and stopped dead, eyes dilated on horror. Something resembling Antony lay on a long table, its body buried in natron salts, the face still visible because, had they known it, Antony’s brain had to be removed in small gobbets through his nostrils and the cranial cavity filled with myrrh, cassia, and crumbled sticks of incense.

Octavian gagged; the embalmer priests looked up briefly, then returned to their work. “Antonius, mummified!” he said. I believe it takes three months to finish the job. Only then will they remove the natron and wrap him in bandages. Disgustingly un-Roman! It offended the Senate far more than Alexandria did.”

“Will Cleopatra want the same?”

“Oh, yes.”

“And will you let this revolting process continue?”

“Why not?” Octavian asked indifferently, turning to leave.

“So that’s why the aperture in the wall. To let the embalmers come and go. Once it’s finished—for both of them—they’ll bar the doors and wall up the opening,” said Gallus, leading the way.

“Yes. I want both of them reduced to this. That way, they belong to old Egypt and will not become
lemures
to haunt Rome.”

As the days dragged on and Cleopatra refused to cooperate, Cornelius Gallus had an inspiration as to why Octavian would not see the Queen: he was afraid of her. His relentless propaganda campaign against the Queen of Beasts had conquered even him; if he came face-to-face with her, he wasn’t sure the power of her sorcery wouldn’t overcome him.