by Jo Graham
At last the barges moved again, and by day and night they made their way down the canal from Lake Mareotis to the sea, grain by the measure and the barge load. The harvest in Upper Egypt had been good this year.
We ate new cucumbers pickled in rough vinegar from the south, because Cleopatra craved it, and those cucumbers were like the breath of life, tart and fresh, the gift of the Nile from Philae and Elephantine and Thebes. Mornings dawned cool and clear, and Pharos glimmered against the dawn before the great lamp was doused for the day.
We went among the people. We went to the great Temple of Serapis and Isis. The markets opened, and a Tyrian ship loaded with cloth came into the kind of exotic profits that a merchant might dream of once in a lifetime. Whether or not they had loved us before, they did so now. The beautiful young Queen walked in procession beneath an ivory shade, her saffron gown pleated like Isis on a temple wall, her swollen belly an ornament of her beauty, the land giving forth fruit. The braids of her wig swung back, and could not hide her smile.
What is there not to love, among people such as us, when youth and beauty and charm combine to make her all at once everyone’s daughter, everyone’s granddaughter and wife, everyone’s honeyed dream of remotest childhood? Crowds screamed her name as though they had never loved anyone else.
“Isis! Isis!” And at last it was not her name they called at all, but Isis. She was a goddess on earth.
I would have thought there was no art in it, were I not the one responsible for the saffron gown, for the wig with its malachite and gold beads, for the cloak she wore of cloth of gold, pleated and with sticks in the seams so that it moved like the wings of Isis when she knelt, not crumpling, but folding like a bird. I would have thought there was no art in it, except that I had seen Auletes school her. I would have thought there was no art in it, except that the flutists who suddenly burst into joyful music had been hired by Iras.
And yet it actually was magic. When I saw her turn, pushing past the careful cordon of guards, to lay her hand in blessing and healing on the brow of a pretty girl child who lay in her mother’s arms, her eyes smiling into the mother’s with sudden understanding—then, oh then it was really magic.
IT WAS A MONTH before the news came, and by then we had expected it. Caesar had met Theo and the Royal Army on the banks of the Nile. Caesar and his men had routed the king completely, and in their retreat the galley carrying Ptolemy Theodorus had capsized. Pharaoh had drowned.
Caesar and his column approached the city by the main Canopic Gate, which was thrown wide before him, flowers raining down upon the bemused heads of the German bodyguards. Cleopatra met him on the steps of the Soma, six months filled and smiling. He went down before her on one knee, his head bent before Queen and goddess.
For a moment I thought the Romans would protest, but the Germans followed Caesar, dropping to their knees behind him, and in the next breath Pollio knelt, his scarlet cloak swirling around him, one hand tugging at Tiberius Nero. The Gauls went down like a wave of grain, and for a moment I could at last pick out Emrys, standing beside his horse with his hand on the bridle, and then he knelt, one of the first, with the quick glitter of tears on his face.
And then the Romans knelt, though they cried “Ave Caesar!” not “Ave Isis!”
Toward the back some one of them shouted loudly enough to be heard over the general din: “Ave Caesarion! Hail, Little Caesar!”
Caesar turned sharply, as though to see who said it, but then the whole crowd of Romans took it up. “Hail, Little Caesar!”
“Sweet Isis,” I whispered, “please do not let the baby be a girl.” But I knew it was not even as I prayed it.
Cleopatra bent over Caesar and said something too low for me to hear, taking him by the hand and raising him so that he stood beside her, one step lower on the steps of the Soma. She raised their joined hands in the air. I doubt anyone other than he could have heard what she shouted above the noise of the crowd, but the gesture was enough. Straight off a temple wall, Isis crowned the victor with Her love.
TWO HOURS LATER, flushed and hot, trying to make sure there was cool watered wine for everyone in the largest hall of the palace, I found myself beside Dion.
He put his head to the side. “The art of magic,” he said.
“Yes,” I said.
“It was so in Abydos,” he said. “It was art, rehearsed and planned. And yet . . .”
I looked to see why he trailed off. Emrys was coming through the crowd toward him, excusing himself to people who stood in the way.
“I’m back,” he said, and his eyes lingered on Dion’s face.
“I see that,” Dion said. He had forgotten all else with his forgotten thought.
“I hope you’ve been well,” Emrys said.
“Yes. Fine. And you?”
But that was not what their eyes said.
I went to check on the platters of olives and almonds that were going around, with neither actually noticing me. How good it would be, I thought, for someone to come home to me. For someone to have missed me. To be greeted by someone who had yearned for me, who would murmur my name with his hot breath, say that he had dreamed of me on some awful field somewhere. I was meant for such.
Instead, the party went late, though Cleopatra and Caesar did not wait it out, but went to her rooms with the Germans at the door and Iras to sleep in the antechamber. The dawn star was rising when the last guests were chivvied out the doors, drunk and sleepy. I went back and forth, entrusting a valuable krater to a trustworthy man to wash, getting the slaves about sweeping up the crumbs and scrubbing the tiles, taking the linens to wash later in the day, scouring the corners for stray cups.
The rooms were baking hot from the press of bodies, and I threw open the terrace doors to let the night breeze in. I walked outside, breathing in the cool air.
The stars were beginning to pale on the far horizon.
“What is that star?” he asked, and I turned to see Agrippa standing beside one of the tall painted pillars.
“We call it the Daystar,” I said. “But it’s not really a star. It’s a planet.”
“Venus,” he said. The dawn breeze stirred his fair hair. “I suppose Aphrodite to you.”
“Yes,” I said, and stepped closer. His face had the kind of pure, austere beauty that the Greeks loved to carve in ancient days, not pretty but strong. He was young still, and not quite entirely grown into his bones. In a few years he would be a handsome man, with the rugged looks that would last until he was older than Caesar.
“I dreamed about you,” he blurted out, and the color rose in his face. “I dreamed that you told me you had loved me since the beginning of the world.”
It wasn’t polished, but I did not smile. “Perhaps I did,” I said. “Who can remember the beginning of the world?”
“A poet,” he said. “There’s a poet I met in Neapolis when I was there with my mother who said that he could remember the first men in the world, in Arcadia. He said that he had met me beside the River of Memory, and knew that I had been a wanderer and an exile and a king. He wasn’t any older than you, and he said that he remembered me.”
“I think perhaps he was coming on to you,” I said gently.
“Not Publius Vergilius Maro,” Agrippa said. “It wasn’t like that. He was very serious.”
“I see,” I said, and smiled.
“Are you laughing at me?” He put his head to the side, and I thought he might blush.
“Never,” I said. “There is nothing in you to laugh at. Even Achilles was young once.”
“More Patroclus than Achilles,” he said. “I’ve never wanted to be Achilles.”
“Or Alexander,” I said.
“I don’t want to be a king,” he said. “I mean, it’s not easy, is it?”
“No,” I said. “It’s not easy at all.”
Agrippa took a breath. “Better to be a loyal man, and to be true as best one can. As you do.”
“I try to,” I said. No one had ever said as
much to me, named me for what I was, that way.
“I mean, you’re a Companion, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” I said, and knew exactly what he meant, as though he had seen my heart and put a name to what was there, surely as though he had known me most of my life.
Agrippa leaned back against the column, the wind lifting the hair from his forehead like a mother’s touch. “So am I,” he said. “I live to serve.”
I believed him. And whatever dreams he might conjure, right now he was no dream of starlight, but a flesh-and-blood young man.
“Do you think there can be happiness in that?” he asked. “Do you think if one is true, one will be happy?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe.” I took a step closer, my himation almost brushing his arm. He was taller than I, and he still had a lot of growing to do. “If you steal your fire where you find it.”
“Oh,” he said, and bent his head to me, too shy to quite kiss me.
I leaned up into his mouth, warm and soft with the faint stale taste of wine on his tongue, a slow, sensual kiss, showing him all it could be.
Our lips parted, and his brow furrowed as he gazed into my face. “What did that mean?” he asked.
“Come with me,” I said.
I DREW HIM DOWN beside me in my room, and he kissed me with raw passion I had not expected. There was no art in this, only desire and need, fire leaping to kindle fire. His touch was rough and reverent all at once.
“I’ve never done this before,” he whispered.
“I know,” I said, straddling him, my skirts lifted. “Don’t think so much,” I said, my belly pressed against him, feeling his hard body against mine. “Just remember.” I took the pins out of my hair, watching his face while I did so, watching his lips part as the cascade of my hair fell around my shoulders. I unpinned the clasps at my shoulders, baring breasts pale as shells in the moonlight, my nipples dark with my arousal.
“Oh,” he breathed, and I slid my wetness against him.
“Remember,” I said, and drew my nails across his chest lightly.
His body knew if he did not, knew what he needed, and he cried out when he spent, his arms tight around me and the need was almost unbearable. I showed him what I wanted, working myself against him to find release in the waves of sensation that washed over me.
Afterward, he lay against my shoulder, his face against my arm, and I felt the tears on his face.
“What’s the matter?” I asked, stroking his hair with one hand. That was better than it had been with Lucan, so much better.
“I am broken,” he said, “and I’ll never be whole again.”
“Aren’t maidens the ones who are supposed to say that?” I teased.
“Do you think women are the only ones who feel?”
“Not hardly,” I said, and gathered him close. “Come here, dear.” I stroked his back gently. “Was it so bad, then?”
“It wasn’t bad at all,” he said. “But now I will want it always, and never be whole without it.”
“You are a very handsome young man,” I said. “I can’t see that you’ll ever lack lovers if you want them.”
The first rays of the sun picked out each golden hair on his chest with a distinct shadow, and he closed his eyes. “I love you forever,” he said, and fell asleep against my breast.
WE SAILED for Memphis in glorious weather on the largest of the royal ships. Egypt, Cleopatra said, was more than Alexandria and they must know that she knew it.
Caesar came with us. The skies were blue overhead as we sailed south. At each town along the banks groups of dignitaries came out to meet us, strewing flowers on the riverbanks and making speeches, choirs of children singing as though this were one of the annual processions of a god.
At each stop Cleopatra had a great deal to do, talking with all of the village elders in their own tongues to their vast surprise, since they had never met a ruler before who spoke Egyptian as well as Koine. Bubastis, I thought, and remembered our long apprenticeship there, at the feet of the Lady of Cats who had taught us what the Black Land was. At each stop there were offerings and meals, and then we were off again, the Nile winding behind us in a ribbon of light, shrunken with the dry season.
I stood behind Cleopatra on the high deck, arranging the awning over her so that it would not get too hot, rose pink and white stripes making patterns on the deck. She lounged on a couch, gravid and sleepy now, while Caesar sat next to her, for once quiet and unmoving.
She gave him half a smile out of the side of her mouth. “You see? Is this not better than going to Siwah?”
“I don’t need to go to Siwah,” he said, and closed his eyes against the sun. The reflection off the water played over his face, casting him for a moment in strange light, as though he rested underwater, already remote and beneath glass.
I took a sudden sharp breath.
Cleopatra twisted about to look at me. “Something wrong, Charmian?”
“My foot has gone to sleep,” I lied.
Osiris must pass into the west. It is the story.
Cleopatra smiled at me. “Then go and sit down for a while,” she said. “You don’t have to fuss over me. I’m fine.”
I went and sat with Agrippa in the bow, where he dangled his legs over the side. He put his arm around me, and I leaned into him. “Hello, darling,” I said.
Marcus Agrippa looked back toward the stern, his expression as unreadable as Caesar’s. “Have you been to the Soma?” he asked.
“Of course,” I said. “Many times. Did you go, when we were in Alexandria?”
“No.” Marcus looked out over the water. The reflection of our ship wavered, the waves of our passage disturbing the water too much for it to reflect like a mirror, even in the bright sunlight of midday. “Is it very bad?”
“It’s beautiful,” I said. “The most beautiful tomb Ptolemy could build, marble and gold, with painted walls so real you would swear they were windows into other lands.”
He shook his head. “I can’t imagine it. But I’m glad I didn’t go.”
“Why?” I asked.
“I don’t want to think of Alexander as dead.” Marcus leaned his head back. “If I saw him lying there, he would be dead to me.”
“It’s not like that,” I said. “There’s nothing gruesome about it. You can’t really see anything.”
“You are Egyptian,” he said.
“Yes.”
“That’s easy to forget,” he said. “You don’t look Egyptian. But there’s something macabre about it, isn’t there? Worshipping the dead and preserving their bodies forever, looking at their embalmed faces. All of those tombs in the Palace Quarter where you can just go in as though it were a dead man’s bedroom.”
“We don’t worship the dead,” I said irritably. “And it’s not as though we unwrap their bodies and look at them all of the time. The dead stay buried in a seemly manner. But they are the people who brought us where we are. There’s nothing frightening or cursed about them. When I walk among the tombs of my ancestors, and among the people who built the city, why should I be afraid of them? Why would their spirits do me any harm, loving the thing they built?”
“When you put it that way I suppose I can see it,” he said. “Like the Lares and Manes.”
“The Lares and Manes?”
Marcus nodded. “Household gods, I suppose you would say. The gods of a family. Our ancestors, kind of. We don’t embalm our ancestors; they’re cremated. But we keep a wax mask of their faces, and there’s a shrine where they go. I mean, the masks are for the Manes. The Lares are sort of more general household gods.” He looked vaguely confused, and it seemed strange to me that one could be confused about one’s own religion.
“Don’t you worship the Olympians?” I asked.
“Well, yes.” Marcus drew me closer with one arm. “But it’s not as though They take a particular interest in me. I’m not like some who don’t even think They exist. But it’s not as though Capitoline Jupiter is going t
o notice what I’m doing or care.”
“Why not?”
“They’re the gods of the Roman state. They may pay attention to Caesar, but They don’t bother with everybody, with people who are nothing special. If you take an offering to Venus or Mars or something you may be able to get Their attention about something specific, but other than making sure all of the rites are done correctly, They just aren’t that interested in people. Unless people are either Their sons or have offended Them in some way, the stories of the gods don’t usually have people in them at all. Except sometimes Jupiter notices beautiful women.” He blushed, and I wondered what all of those stories might be, though I could lay a fairly good guess, if it resulted in sons.
“You mean your gods don’t love you?” It was hard to imagine. Of course some gods took a greater interest in some people than in others, but . . .
“Why would the Olympians love me?” Marcus looked blank.
“They don’t even know who you are?”
He shrugged. “Well, maybe. I do all of the rites as I’m supposed to and I made the offering when I came of age. But why would They love me?”
“Isis loves you,” I said.
“Why would Isis love me?” he asked, perplexed. “I’m not even Egyptian.”
“She’s the Mother of the World. She loves you and She loves me and She loves the humblest bricklayer in Elephantine and the richest man in Rome. She loves everybody.”
“But they aren’t Her people,” Marcus said.
“That doesn’t make any difference,” I said. “We’re all Her people. A mother may have a lot of children, and they’re all different from each other, but she loves them all alike and they’re all hers. Her compassion is for everybody.”
“Why would you want a god to be compassionate?”
He looked so honestly bewildered that I leaned against his shoulder and ruffled his hair. “Because we aren’t all best and greatest. Because there are a lot of people who are sad or who’ve had terrible things happen. Who do you think slaves worship and what do you think they pray for?”