Hand of Isis (20 page)

“Caesar isn’t here,” he said. “He’s out with the sortie at the Gate of the Moon.” The smoke was so thick that he began coughing as well.

“Surely he does not mean to kill the Royal Family from smoke inhalation,” I said.

Aurelianus opened his mouth, then shut it again. He turned to the guard. “Escort the Queen and her handmaiden out into the park. I will inform General Pollio that we are moving, and that the other members of the Royal Family should be moved because of the smoke.” He strode off smartly.

The guard stepped aside. “Come,” he said.

With my himation held to my nose and mouth, we followed him down, through the garden and out into the park. Perhaps it was that the trees broke up the smoke, or that we were a little farther, but the air was cleaner. We sat by the fountain made of the sarcophagus of Nectanebo and wet our himations in the clear running water. Breathing through the damp fabric was much easier. After a few minutes, some of the other guards joined us, escorting Ptolemy Theodorus with Pothinas. Since we hardly had anything to say to one another, we said nothing. Above, the sky roiled with clouds, their undersides glowing from the fire. In the city there must be shouting, desperate people running. Somewhere, in the chaos, Agrippa drew the first blood of his life in some courtyard, while at the Gate of the Moon Caesar watched to be sure the gate held.

Here, among the tombs, all was serene. This must be, I thought light-headedly, what it is like to be already dead.

Another decurion came hurrying up to Aurelianus. “Where is the Princess Arsinoe?” he asked.

Aurelianus spread his hands. “I don’t know. She’s never been in the care of my turma. Is she still in the villa?”

“She’s not in her rooms,” the other decurion said. “Perhaps she was moved somewhere else because of the smoke.” He started back to the villa again.

I looked at Cleopatra and she looked at me. Perhaps Arsinoe had taken advantage of the opening we had not. Whatever her flaws, cowardice was not one of them.

We waited in the gardens until dawn came, a flawed dawn with a pall of smoke hanging over the city. All in all, several hundred buildings had burned, mostly warehouses and shops near the harbor, as well as the massive drydocks that served the fleet. Those would have to be rebuilt at no small expense.

“Caesar will understand if I deduct the cost of my drydocks from the money I have promised him,” Cleopatra said grimly. “If he is to burn our docks, he will pay for us to replace them.”

One building that had burned was irreplaceable. The Library had not been, since the second Ptolemy’s time, housed under one roof. Four buildings clustered together, and then about them, among the halls and lecture theaters of the Museum, there were three more buildings, including the Ascalepium, the great medical library with its teaching facilities and dissection rooms. It was one of these satellite buildings that had burned, the one containing part of natural sciences and eastern literature and thought. Original manuscripts of Aristotle had been housed in that building. So had books from the Sind and other parts of India, including an incredibly beautiful scroll in Sanskrit about a hero named Arjuna.

I wept when I heard it, as much as I wept for the city and her people. These things were as precious as any human life, as impossible to duplicate.

Cleopatra was furious and white-lipped. When Caesar came to us in the morning to tell us that we might move back into our rooms in the palace rather than the villa, she told him in no uncertain terms that his carelessness was criminal.

“What am I now, a god, that I might command the winds?” he asked. “Sparks blew and the roof caught. I regret that it happened but I could hardly prevent it.”

“Surely Caesar can tell which way the wind is blowing,” Cleopatra said tartly. “If you burn our treasures, you will get little money. I expect that Caesar will pay for the dockyard, and for the reconstruction of the Library building, at least, since our men, priests, and scholars labored all night to put the fire out. I understand that one elderly master carried water with a bucket until dawn, at which time he sat down upon the stones, laid his hand upon his breast, and died in the ashes of his beloved library.”

“My men have died too, all night long,” Caesar said. “It is the price. You are old enough to know that.”

“I am old enough to know that my duty is to guard my people,” she said. “And to guard our precious treasures, our way of life, and our gods.”

“Surely your gods can guard themselves,” Caesar said.

“Our gods work through us, Imperator. Is that not the way of it in Rome?”

“It is indeed,” Caesar said, and laughed. “I will reduce the amount you owe me by the cost of the dockyard. It is certainly true that we will need it in the future.”

Cleopatra raised one eyebrow. “Then you have agreed to my proposal?”

“In theory,” he said, and took a step closer. They did not touch, merely stood too closely together for casual conversation. “Though I will not fault you if you do not bear a son. I prefer to demand the possible.”

“Should we all get out of this alive,” she said.

“That’s the trick, isn’t it?”

“Always,” she said. She did not step back nor turn. She would not until he did.

I do not know who would have moved first, had Agrippa not come up behind. “Imperator,” he said, “Princess Arsinoe and her tutor, Ganymede, are gone. They escaped in the confusion.”

Caesar sighed. “I suppose that is not too much damage.”

Never underestimate a Ptolemaic princess, I thought. Arsinoe was as clever as the rest of us, and she would play her own hand.

She did, of course. Before the day had ended, she was with Achillas, who proclaimed that he served at the pleasure of Queen Arsinoe and Pharaoh Ptolemy Theodorus, a legitimate enough cause. It made Caesar’s position infinitely worse.

And ours as well. Queen Cleopatra, it seemed, was no longer necessary at all.

C
AESAR WAS ON HIS FEET
from morning until night, and there was no chance to speak with him in the next day. We were in a state of siege and for now the Palace Quarter held. That would not continue forever, though it seemed to.

“Do you have reinforcements?” Cleopatra asked, as they supped together in the evening cool the next day. I had finally been able to plan an actual meal, with Caesar present and sitting down, something I considered a personal triumph. It was an intimate meal, in the sense there were only the six of us—Caesar and Cleopatra, me, two German bodyguards, and Caesar’s taster. I stood behind the krater at Cleopatra’s elbow, the two bodyguards stood behind Caesar’s couch, and the taster knelt on the floor beside Caesar’s table. It was a very private meal, and quite informal.

“I hope I do,” he said.

I was beginning to learn that Caesar often put something humorously when it was deadly serious and not to his advantage, hoping that people should remember the tone of his words rather than their content.

“You will not tell me?” Cleopatra turned her cup round in her hand. It was painted Corinthian ware, a century old.

“I don’t know,” he said smiling, seeming undistressed by this turn of events. “I devoutly hope so.”

“I devoutly hope you do too,” she said.

“Regretting our bargain already?” he asked lightly, but there was something serious in his dark eyes as he looked over the cup rim.

“As I recall we have yet to seal our bargain,” she replied.

His eyebrows rose. “You intend to stand or fall with me? If you tie your cause too closely with mine, you are closing your options.”

“I have already closed the option of reigning with Theo,” she said, and I knew she spoke of Abydos, which she had not told him. “A son for whom we could both strive would hold us to a common cause. Today, tomorrow, and the next day are the days I am most likely to conceive. If it is to be done, let us do it.”

“And that is all? Something to be done?” Caesar rested his chin on his steepled fingers.

“I am Cleopatra, and you are Caesar,” she said, but there was a faint flush creeping up her face. I knew how intensely embarrassing it must be, to play as coolly as she had with Gnaeus. “It is a matter of state.”

“You have never had a lover?” They spoke as if they were alone, and why should they not? The taster, the Germans, and I were part of the furnishings, like the silver krater or the fine ebony tables that stood beside their couches.

The color rose higher in her face. “I do not have that luxury,” she said.

Caesar leaned back on his couch, and for a moment I could see in his grace the youth he must have been. “Gnaeus Pompeius was a matter of state too, I suppose.”

“Could you imagine that I should want that boor for anything else?” she asked.

Caesar laughed, leaning back on his cushions and laughing so hard that tears started in his eyes. “I beg your pardon, dear Queen,” he managed at last. “I know Gnaeus Pompeius, and I am deeply sorry for having insulted your taste!” He took a quick drink of the watered wine. “I suppose I am his step-grandfather in some sense, but I am in no way responsible for his upbringing!”

“I hardly thought you were, Imperator,” she said. Her voice was calm, but I saw her hand shake.

“Imperator? Perhaps under the circumstances we could move on to Caesar,” he said. “Just as a matter of informality, while we are getting a son together. I find ‘Imperator’ a bit off-putting in the bedroom. I would not dream of suggesting you dispense with decorum altogether and move on to Gaius, or perhaps even to ‘my honey,’ but sticking at Imperator feels as though you intend to report very seriously how things are going on your end.”

“If you wish it, Caesar,” she said sweetly. “I cannot pretend to have your vast age or tremendous and varied experience, so I do not know how these things are done.”

Once again he roared, and kissed his fingers to her in his laughter. “You scored that time,” he said. “Vast age is something of an understatement. Still, I will try not to disappoint.” He rose to his feet and held out his hand to her. “Shall we be about it, then?”

She took his hand and let him help her to her feet, turning toward the bedchamber beyond. “Charmian, you will not be needed,” she said quietly.

I bowed silently.

“And that goes for you too,” Caesar said to the Germans and the taster. “I do manage some things on my own.”

They closed the door behind them, leaving the tables, couches, wine, and us. The taster shrugged, got up with a belch, and wandered off into the hall. With a sigh, one of the Germans picked an olive off Caesar’s abandoned plate and, chewing, walked over to stand on guard at the bedroom door.

The other caught my eye. “It is better to laugh together, yes?” he asked in his broken Latin.

O
utside the city, the harvest began to come in, the first fruits. The coolest days of the year were upon us, pleasant and cloudless. In Rome, ice storms might blow down from the mountains, but in Alexandria we needed no more than a cloak at night.

Caesar held. So, unfortunately, did Achillas.

I had rather expected that, their bargain kept, we would see little of Caesar, and that there should be small love lost between them. To my surprise, they took to dining together almost every night, sometimes with his officers and sometimes not. Often, after the meal, Caesar would return to his work, conferring with his maps and his men far into the night. Sometimes, perhaps one night in three or four, they would retire together into the Queen’s rooms. It surprised me, as either his seed had taken or it hadn’t, and I should altogether be the first (or second) to know when the Queen’s blood came.

Perhaps Caesar wanted his money’s worth, though unlike Gnaeus he was never crude. They dined on separate couches, with no unseemly pinching or squeezing. Often, several of Caesar’s officers joined them, talking of science or literature, with no jests that should not belong in decent company.

I particularly liked the young general, Ansinius Pollio, who, though not but twenty-eight, commanded Caesar’s Gaulish cavalry. He wore his hair a little longer than the fashion, though he did not entirely adopt the long ponytails of his men, and was always high spirited, with a toast or some matter of friendly conversation. His men were dismounted, because light cavalry was of no use while besieged, and their fodder was obtained only by slipping out into the marshes by night and cutting reeds that could be dried on the rooftops in a poor substitute for hay. They were far from home, and their prospects were not bright, but Pollio never seemed to flag at all.

Tiberius Nero, Caesar’s Chief-of-Staff, brooded. Often his conversation lagged, and he stared moodily into his wine cup. I could hardly blame him. If I had charge of the logistics for this great crowd, I should brood too.

Sometimes Agrippa was there, but he hardly said anything. Everyone ranked him; he knew better than to put himself forward. He would try to catch my eye from time to time, and I confess that I found it flattering to be seen by someone as something other than an appendage of Cleopatra.

We were still guarded by Pollio’s men, as they were the troops Caesar could spare, and I saw a good deal more of Aurelianus than I had expected. He was learning Koine quickly, and he often sat his watch with Dion, trading words back and forth in Koine and Keltic.

A
FEW DAYS LATER
, Aurelianus came on the watch and greeted us. “This lady says she is to see the Queen,” he said.

“Iras!” I had barely seen her before I threw myself into my sister’s arms. “Thank all the gods that you’re safe!”

She bent her head against my neck, and I felt her smile.

Dion came up, and wrapped his arms around us both. “Welcome back,” he said.

“I slipped in through the marsh,” she said.

“One of my men nearly shot her,” Aurelianus said. “But she said that she was here with a message for the Queen. I take it you know her.”

“She’s my sister,” I said, my voice choking with tears. I had not let myself realize how halved I had felt without Iras.

“Oh,” Aurelianus said. “She could have said that.”

“I need to see the Queen,” Iras said, stepping back. “I need to tell her what’s happening.”

“Of course,” I said.

It seemed that Arsinoe and Achillas’ friendship was short-lived. Already, there were rifts between them, and it seemed that it might come to an open breach. If so, the mercenaries who had formed the bulk of the army would stay with Achillas, the professional soldier whose reputation they respected. However, the Egyptian peasants who had rallied would remain firmly with Arsinoe, championing the House of Ptolemy.

“And what do they say of me?” Cleopatra asked her as we stood in her rooms. “What do they say, Memnon and the Adoratrice and the rest?”

Iras shook her head. “They believe you are the Roman’s hostage. That you are powerless to do anything, as is Pharaoh. That they must go on with what they have, since you are unable to act, and probably will be killed when you become inconvenient to Caesar.”

Cleopatra nodded slowly. “That will not happen.”

Iras met her eyes. They widened with understanding. “Oh no. Not again.”

“He is no Gnaeus,” I said swiftly. “Caesar is nothing like that.”

“He is a Roman,” she said. “And he holds our city hostage. That is all I need to know.”

“It’s more complicated.” Cleopatra shook her head. “Much more complicated. Iras . . .”

“Must you do this? Must you?” Iras’ hands were clenched. “Surely there must be some other way to deal with Rome than you prostituting yourself to every general who walks into Alexandria!”

“We have a bargain,” Cleopatra said, though spots of color were showing in her cheeks. “I shall keep my end of it, and he will keep his.”

“Do you really believe that any Roman will keep his word to you, a woman and an Egyptian?” Iras’ eyes were snapping. “Do you not know you will be the butt of every bawdy joke from one end of the Inner Sea to the other? That men will laugh at how Caesar conquered Egypt with a big prick?”

For a moment I thought Cleopatra would slap her, as I had so long ago. But she did not. Instead her voice was ice. “You may go. I will send for you when I require you.”

Iras paled. I thought in many ways a slap would have been easier. “Yes, Gracious Queen,” she said, and, bowing, left us.

Cleopatra sat down in one of the chairs, her back to me. I wavered, unsure what to say.

“Do you think that as well?” she asked. Her voice was even, and I could not see her face.

“No,” I said. “But then, I have seen Caesar and Iras has not. It is easy to think he is like other men, until you see him.”

“Do you still believe then, that he is Alexander returned?”

I wet my lips. “Yes,” I said. “And perhaps I am a fool for thinking so. But I feel it in my bones.”

“I pray that may be true,” she whispered, and I knew in that moment she had her own reasons for wishing so.

S
HE TOLD CAESAR
before she told me. She didn’t need to tell me anything. I had charge of her clothes and her linens. Each day that passed without blood told me everything I needed to know. Three days late, a week. Two weeks. Three weeks.

A Horus for Egypt, a child who would be my nephew, my king, my charge, my god. Or else something that would slow us, would doom us if it all went wrong and we needed to flee.

Four weeks passed before Iras said anything to me. She dealt less with the Queen’s clothes than with her papers, and she had been away so long that she didn’t know to the day when it should have been. “Is she pregnant?”

I nodded. The court did not know. I had said nothing to anyone, not even Dion, and apparently Caesar had told no one either. It was early days yet, and perhaps he was superstitious that too many wishes of good fortune would be harmful. Or perhaps he was wary of the more practical harm that might come from increasing the Queen’s value as a target. Either way, I approved of his silence.

“Well then.” Iras took a deep breath. “Whatever you need me to do.” She met my eyes. “You know I’m with you.”

“I know,” I said, and embraced her.

“Not that I think it’s a good idea,” she said. “Women are judged differently than men. The Romans will smile and joke about it, another exploit of Caesar’s. They will call her harlot and whore, and hate her.”

“It should not be that way,” I said.

Iras took my wrists in her hands. “Charmian, it is. Whether we like it or not, whether or not it’s fair, that’s how it is. This isn’t an exercise in rhetoric, or something you can dismiss by saying ‘Who cares about Plato!’?”

I laughed, as she had meant me to. After all, that was how I had dismissed Plato’s certainty that Iras was not the intellectual equal of a man or a Greek, woman and Egyptian as she was. But it was not all that funny.

“Whether or not that’s how it is,” I said, “we must live according to what we believe, not the beliefs of others.”

“The beliefs of others are not irrelevant, not when they shape the world we live in!”

“I didn’t say they were irrelevant. But they will never dictate my judgment or my decisions,” I snapped back. “Because others believe something does not make it true. You are not stupid because Plato says you must be, nor is Cleopatra a whore because some Roman wit will say it. I will never trust any learned opinion more than what I see in front of my face.”

“Not even to the nature of the gods?” Iras asked. There was comfort in the familiarity of philosophical debate. It was less personal.

“Not even to the nature of the gods,” I said. “No priest can stand between my soul and the divine.”

“That’s what priests do,” she said.

“No,” I said. “That’s what some priests say they can do. But whether we stand in the Halls of Amenti before Ma’at and Serapis, or in Hades before the throne of Persephone, we stand there alone and are judged by our own hearts.”

“Then you will never be part of anything,” she said a little sadly. “You will never truly belong anywhere, standing apart from society as you do.”

“Yes,” I said. “I am a cat, and I belong to no one, even those I stay with for love.”

Iras put her arm around my waist. “And does that bring you peace?”

“Yes,” I said slowly, “I rather think it does.”

T
HE SIEGE CONTINUED
. Arsinoe had Achillas killed, but that broke nothing, save perhaps that the Royal Army was less well commanded than it had been. We thought that Caesar would move against them, but he did not.

“He does not have the troops,” Dion said to me quietly at night, as we walked in the park among the tombs, a place it was unlikely we’d be overheard. “He’s still outnumbered at least three to one, and in the city there’s no way his cavalry will be any use at all, so Emrys says.”

“You and Emrys seem to be doing a lot of talking,” I observed.

“A lot of talking and nothing else. He’s a friend, Charmian,” Dion said.

“I see that,” I said. I had never before seen Dion as the pursuer rather than the pursued, and he seemed to be finding it harder than he thought. Perhaps the role of erastes did not come as easily to Dion as the role of eromenos.

“He’s traveled half the world in Caesar’s service,” Dion said. “And I’ve never been further than Abydos. Oh, I know the theory of things! I’ve seen the maps and I’ve studied the books, but I’ve never even been on the ocean, not even so far as Pelousion, as you have. I’ve never seen snow, or mountains, or anywhere different from Egypt. Emrys’ been in Hispania and Greece. He’s been in Athens, Charmian! He’s crossed the Alps, and voyaged the seas four times. He took a shoulder wound after Caesar crossed the Rubicon, and was laid up two months with a fever in Massalia. He’s never been to Parthia or India or among the Scythians or Britons, but says that if he did he’s sure he would find men like him.”

“It sounds like you’re in love,” I said.

“I am,” he said, and his dark eyes were very serious. “Even if nothing ever comes of it. They’re not supposed to, in the Roman army. The penalty can be death. Under the circumstances, Caesar would probably give him a slap on the wrist instead, but he’d never rise higher than decurion.”

I was a bit bemused. “He can’t read, Dion.”

“Not more than his own name, no. They don’t have a written language where he comes from, except for the priests. They name their months by the trees, and they follow Druids who make no temples besides groves beneath the stars. Where he comes from, there are huge boulders along the seashore that were raised by giants before men came into the world. They stand looking out to sea, half-covered with flowers in the summertime, and the sheep graze among them.”

“Why in the world did he follow Caesar then?” I asked.

“Because it seemed more interesting than raising sheep.” Dion laughed. “I suppose it is.”

T
HE SIEGE DRAGGED ON
.

One night, while Dion was called upon to translate for the Queen and Caesar as they spoke with some Jewish dignitaries, I walked back and forth on the terrace, looking out at Pharos. It was so near and so far, the great lighthouse that guarded our shores, a wonder of the world with its towers stacked on towers, and its magnificent lamp that was visible for miles out to sea.