Octavian was punctual. Exactly on the hour the door opened to admit him and Agrippa. Iras and I stood behind the Queen’s chair, motionless.
I saw Agrippa’s eyes slide to me, and his face become expressionless. After that he did not look, only kept his glance on Octavian.
“Imperator,” Cleopatra said gracefully. “You have changed much since we last met. The years have given you distinction.”
Octavian smiled pleasantly. “Your charm is wasted on me. In fact, this conversation is a waste of time, except that it should not be said that I have not observed the courtesies. Marcus Antonius is being embalmed and will receive a proper burial, as a Roman deserves.”
Cleopatra stood, pushing off the arms of her chair like a swimmer off the side of a pool. “Then let me come straight to the point. Antonius is dead. You have Rome. You need Egypt. I will offer you the same thing I did your uncle. I can give you grain and gold, treasure and ships. Why struggle to govern Egypt when I can lay its riches at your feet? Leave me as an ally of Rome, and your task will be easy.”
“I don’t think so,” he said mildly. “You fail to understand your place in this. This is the end. There will be no more Hellenistic kings, no more chaotic successor states with their cities and councils and half-baked democracies, no more tribes with their illiterate barbarian leaders. From one end of the Middle Sea to the other, there will be nothing but Rome.” He put his hands behind his back like a schoolmaster, a trick of rhetoric. “Egypt will become a Roman province, like every other. There will be no more incestuous monarchs. Just orderly Roman rule.”
The Queen gathered herself up while I glanced at Agrippa. His face was impassive, his dark hair curling across his square forehead.
“You and your children will adorn my Triumph, and then, after a suitable interval, you will meet your end.” He stopped in front of Iras. “Your women will march as well. It is necessary to demonstrate the result of the unbridled rule of women, licentious and immoderate. A land ruled by a queen, with her coterie of eunuchs, hairdressers, and serving girls, comes to its inevitable end.” He looked into Iras’ face and chuckled. “Treasurer of Egypt. In the end, you’re nothing but a cunt.”
I saw something in the Queen’s face harden, though her expression didn’t change.
Octavian looked back to her. “Your time is over. This is the future.”
“I see,” she said. “And do you think the gods of all peoples besides your own so weak?”
Octavian smiled pleasantly, as though he addressed a very small child. “There are no gods. Do you think I should go on my knees to a statue of my great-uncle? It’s absurd. State religion is necessary to keep order among the lower classes, and to infuse government with the correct mystique. But only weak-minded fools believe those sorts of things.” He spread his hands reasonably. “Cults are for the silly, and the silly are welcome to them. But for the rest, no more weakening philosophies questioning the meaning of existence, or effete Eastern customs with their pernicious effect on Roman manhood. The rest of the world will learn where it belongs.” He stopped in front of me, his eyes traveling down my neck. “Under Rome.”
Cleopatra turned, and her eyes were dark, black as midnight skies, though her voice was even. “I know you. You are the enemy of life itself. You are at war with the gods.”
Octavian laughed. “Then the gods are losing.” He swept from the room.
Agrippa lagged behind Octavian, his scarlet cape swirling about him as he reached for my arm. “Charmian, I need to talk to you.”
“I have nothing to say to you,” I gasped.
He bent close, his grip urgent on my arm. “I swear to you upon my honor that I will not let the children be harmed.”
“May demons eat your bones,” I spat.
He took a breath, letting go, and followed after Octavian.
I sank, unheeded, to my knees. Apophis had won.
A
FTER THAT
we were no longer allowed to see the children. Cleopatra paced the length of her room, while Iras tried to read. Slaves brought us meals, and the guards had nothing to say.
It was several days before the door opened, and one of the guards looked in. “Domina? This man says he is one of your slaves.”
“Yes, of course he is,” the Queen said. I didn’t even look up from the scroll I was trying to concentrate on until the door closed. It was the sound of Iras’ indrawn breath that alerted me.
“Dion?”
His hair was unkempt and he wore a rough woolen chiton, his face clean shaven in the Greek fashion. I had never seen him without a beard before, not since he was a boy. It did make him look remarkably different.
I threw myself in his arms, but the Queen and Iras were already there. Dion staggered.
“How did you get here?”
“Where are the children?”
“What’s happening?”
Dion squeezed all three of us tightly, and I felt him shiver.
“I got in dressed as a slave,” he said. “And of course I have friends who were willing to vouch for me. Your servants are loyal, Gracious Queen.” He stepped back, looking at us, his face solemn.
“Emrys?” I asked. “What about Emrys?”
The look in his eyes told me everything I needed to know. “I’m so sorry,” he said, and held out his hand to me.
I closed my eyes, clinging to it, the tears seeping out the corners. “I know. I already knew.” I had known. I had known when I bid him good-bye that it would be the last time I saw him, only I had thought, had hoped, these past days that it was only my own death I foresaw.
“He died in the last skirmish. The one they’re calling the Battle of Alexandria. I carried him from the field myself.” His voice only caught a little, as though he had repeated this a dozen times already.
“Oh, Dion.”
“I carried him. I brought him home. He’s in one of the rock tombs outside the Canopic Gate, my family’s tomb. He’s with my grandparents and my kin.”
I heard the tears in his voice, but I could not open my eyes. I shook, and it was Iras’ arms that were around me, her shoulder I put my head on.
Dion’s voice steadied, as if speaking to Cleopatra gave him strength. “Gracious Queen, I have terrible news.” I heard her breath as Dion continued: “They caught Caesarion. They caught him on the canal. Agrippa’s troops cut his throat.”
Iras let go of me and I wavered blindly. Cleopatra staggered, half-catching herself on the chair arm, almost falling. The noise that came from her was not even a human cry.
Dion took her hand and helped her onto the couch, the tears rolling down his face. “Gracious Queen, I thought you should know. I just thought you should know. . . .”
“My baby . . .”
“Octavian said there was one Caesar too many,” Dion said.
Iras clutched at his arm. “The other children?”
“They’re alive. I can’t get to them. I already tried. They’ve been taken to Agrippa’s flagship. They say you sail for Rome in three days.”
“On the flagship . . .” In the palace at least there was a chance of doing something, when they were only minutes away, but on a Roman flagship out in the harbor they might as well have been on the moon. “Philadelphos will be so frightened,” I whispered. “Oh Isis, he’ll be so scared!”
Cleopatra keened, and Dion held her to his breast.
“Selene will watch over her brothers,” Iras said. “She’ll look out for them. She’s always been the strongest one.” Her face twisted in pain, and her knuckles were white where she held her hands to her face. “I promised Helios I wouldn’t let anything bad happen to him. I promised him . . .”
I put my arms around her, raised my eyes to Dion. “And Demetria?”
“She’s safe at the temple,” Dion said. “I saw her this morning. She’s fine. She’s worried and of course she’s upset, but she’s fine.”
Cleopatra raised her head. “Agrippa doesn’t know?”
I shook my head.
My sister took a breath. “Then you at least might still get out of this. Surely he will not let the mother of his child be displayed in the Triumph this way.”
I shook my head again. “I will not trade Demetria’s safety for my life. No.” I looked at Dion. “As far as everyone is concerned, she’s the daughter of the scholar Dion.”
“Always and forever,” Dion promised. “I’ll take care of her.”
“Three days,” Iras said.
“Three days,” Dion said. His eyes met hers, and for a moment in his shaven face I saw again the boy who had pledged himself to a princess’ service. “Gracious Queen, if there were anything I could do for you, I would give my life for it.”
Cleopatra sat up, and I saw it cross her like the shiver of breeze across water. “Yes, Dion. There is something you can do. One more thing.”
H
E CAME BACK
the next morning, and though I sat stiffly while the guard decided if he should let him in, he did when Dion raised the lid of the basket. “Just figs,” he said cheerfully.
With a shrug, the guard closed the door behind him.
Dion carefully put the basket on the little table beside the couch.
Cleopatra and Iras had come from the bedroom together, and now we stood like points of a triangle, staring at the basket, while the warm summer wind blew through white linen curtains.
“It’s a cobra,” Dion said. “The man I got it from said it ought to be good for three strikes. You die from respiratory failure in about half an hour.”
Cleopatra looked at the basket, unblinking.
“Is it painful?” I asked.
“Not as these things go,” Dion said. “A cobra bite is not a hard way to die.”
“Thank you, Dion,” Cleopatra said, and smiled at him. “I knew you would choose the best thing.”
I saw his eyes fill and he ducked his chin. “Must you?”
She shook her head. “You know I must. And this you swore long ago in my coronation in Abydos, remember? When you played Set’s serpent, out of the desert.”
“I did,” he whispered. “But I never thought . . .”
Cleopatra put her hand on his arm. “Even Set is not evil, and sometimes His gifts are a mercy. You have no guilt in this. I absolve you of any wrongdoing. You are my loyal man, as you have always been.”
“I will never think of anything else again,” Dion whispered.
I took his hand in mine. “Yes, you will,” I said. “You will love Demetria and she will love you. And someday she will give you grandchildren to raise. And there will be new students, and there is still the universe in all its glory, waiting for you to understand.”
“There is nothing left in it now,” he said.
“If you believe that, then Apophis has won,” I said. “You must build all the harder for the things that are torn down. This is a defeat, nothing more, and we must face it like soldiers. But Isis is unconquerable. Love is unconquerable.”
Iras came and put her arms about him. “The world is still full, Dion,” she whispered. “Live, and love, and by your love bear witness to all you have seen.”
In the end, my sister and I were alike.
I laid my head against Dion’s neck, as I had lain with him and Emrys. “Tell Demetria I love her very much, and I am so proud of her and the woman she has become. Tell her I love her.”
I held Dion until he stopped crying, and then he went away for the last time.
Evening was coming. In an hour or so the slaves would come with our dinner.
“If it is to be done, then let’s do it,” Iras said.
The Queen nodded. “I’ll go first.”
“And we will stay to lay you out and dress you,” Iras said. “So that there is nothing unseemly.”
“I’ll go last,” I said, lifting my chin.
Cleopatra embraced me. “The one requiring the most courage, to watch your sisters die.”
“I’m not afraid,” I said.
T
HE SNAKE STRUCK ONCE
, catching her in the right forearm. Iras got the lid back on the basket so it wouldn’t escape, and we sat together on the couch, one on either side of her.
“Do you remember,” I said, “how we climbed on the roof with Dion, and how he saved us?”
“And how we put that salted fish on Antonius’ line?” She smiled at me, though her eyelids were beginning to drop. She swallowed as though it were difficult. “That was so funny.”
“It really was,” Iras said. “And how Auletes let us dress up in the entire treasury of Egypt?”
“I’ve had the best sisters in the world,” she said.
“So have I,” I said.
“And the best lovers. Caesar and Antonius.”
“I have too,” I said. “Poor Dion, left behind.”
“Someone must live,” Iras said, “and tell the story.”
“And of course that’s Dion,” I said.
Cleopatra tried to swallow again, and she clutched at my hand.
“Does it hurt?” I asked.
“Dizzy,” she croaked. “Just dizzy.”
I could hear her breath laboring.
She grabbed at me again, her eyes half closed. “Caesarion . . .”
Iras drew a breath more like a sob.
“Antonius . . . ,” she whispered, almost unintelligibly. She lay on my shoulder, her chest heaving with each breath, slower and slower, until at last her eyes fixed and she was silent.