by Jo Graham
Panic rose in me. I looked behind the screens, my scarred, calloused hands shaking. There was nothing there.
The bath was empty. Cool clean water lapped against the pretty painted tiles.
I tried a door, ran down a corridor. Somewhere was the smell of burning flowers.
“Babylon,” I whispered.
Doors opened onto empty rooms, onto other doors.
There was blood on the floor, blood spilled like wine or wine spilled like blood, red Bactrian wine poured out, the amphora broken.
“Babylon,” I whispered again, and charged around a corner. There must be some way out, some escape from the maze.
A light glimmered ahead through some untried doorway.
I ran through it.
“Lydias,” someone said, and I spun about.
She stood in the empty throne room, the Lady of Sorrows, Isis with a black veil over Her hair, Her gown all the shifting grays of a land lit by starlight. Her eyes held infinite compassion. “This is Lydias’ dream,” She said. “His memory.”
“Who?” I asked confusedly.
“A person you once were,” She said. “When you came to the Black Land with Ptolemy. You are dreaming the death of kings.”
“I must save him!” I said. “Gracious Lady, tell me how to save Caesar!”
Her eyes were sad, and when She moved the sound of Her robes was like the wind over the desert. “Osiris must go down into the West. By His death the land is renewed.”
“Caesar is not of our land or of our people,” I argued. “He is not part of this story and he does not serve You.”
“Does he not?” She smiled faintly. “Son of Venus he calls himself, son of the Lady of the Sea. Do you not know that whether Her name is Venus or Aphrodite Cythera or Isis Pelagia or Ashteret, the fate of Her son is the same? He is the Falcon of the Sun, and he must die.”
I bent my head, tears smarting in my eyes.
Her voice was more gentle. “Gaius Julius Caesar has known for a long time how his story will end.”
“In Babylon?” I said bitterly.
“You speak as though that were defeat,” She said. “Do you think Alexander’s death a tragedy then?”
“The cruelest imaginable,” I said, blinking back tears.
Isis shook Her head ruefully. “And yet through his death, look at all that came to pass! Had Alexander not died in Babylon, there should have been no Successor kingdoms, no white city by the sea. It was the striving of the Successors that opened trade from India to Italy, that gave millions of people writing and plays, chickens and rice to lift them from poverty, clean water drawn from wells instead of stagnant pools, and the concord of the gods. Alexander had made the Choice of Achilles, and in his death the world was remade. Mourn, if you like, for his is a great soul, but do not regret, Companion.”
I raised my head. “And Caesar? Has he, too, made the Choice of Achilles?”
“Caesar is fifty-five,” She said. “I hardly think his life has been short. It took him longer, to bring the west into this world of the Inner Sea, as Alexander brought the east.”
“And yet so many will be carried down into ruin in his wake,” I said, and my heart ached for Caesarion, who should scarcely remember his father.
And whom everyone would want to kill. For a moment my heart stopped beating. “And my Queen? Caesarion?”
“That I cannot say. It depends upon the acts of men.” Isis took a step away, looking around the empty throne room, frozen in some moment three hundred years ago in Babylon. “The gods cannot control the actions of men like so many pieces on a game board. Take this as a warning: There are many in Rome who should like to see your Queen dead, and many who should profit from Caesarion’s death.”
“That is not unknown to me, Lady,” I said. It hardly took the gods to tell me that. “I will guard my sister with my life, as always.”
She turned, and as Her eyes met mine they were sad. “There is always a price, Companion. It may be that you will save her, but there will be a price in blood.”
I nodded. I had made that choice long ago. “I understand that, Gracious Lady. If my life would buy hers or Caesarion’s, I should consider it well spent.”
Isis shook Her head. “It’s not always that simple. And the gods cannot see all ends.” She looked around the empty throne room again, one little inlaid table lying on its side, as though kicked over in the rush and forgotten. “It’s never that simple,” She said quietly.
I MUST TRY,” I said. “I must try.”
Iras shook my shoulder. “You must try what?”
I opened my eyes to see my sister looking down at me, her face a mask of worry.
“You were shouting and calling out in your sleep. What’s wrong?”
I struggled to sit up. The room was quiet and dark, only a little predawn light coming in through the closed shutters. Iras sat on the edge of my bed. There was no one else there. Of course.
“I don’t know,” I said. I had dreamed. Something about Caesar. Something bad.
“We had a serious thunderstorm just now,” Iras said. “The wind woke me up. Cleopatra’s up too, and going to take a bath. She couldn’t get back to sleep.”
“A bath?”
Iras nodded. “The storm. It’s disturbing. But the children seem to have slept through it. I just checked on them.”
“Oh good,” I said. I still felt disoriented and strange. “Yes, of course it was the storm.” I reached for my clothes and put on the first thing that came to hand. “I’ll go attend the Queen in the bath.”
I was putting on my shoes when I looked up at Iras, something occurring to me. “Is Caesar here?” I asked.
She shook her head. “He left early last night. He had a morning meeting at the Senate today.”
Memory flooded back. I leaped up and ran out of the room, ran straight into Cleopatra in the hall. “Caesar mustn’t go to the Senate today,” I said.
“What?” The Queen blinked at me. “Charmian . . .”
“She had a bad dream,” Iras said, coming up behind me. “The storm.”
I took my sister’s hands in mine. “Sister,” I said, “you told me that you would always believe me. Caesar must not go to the Senate today. You must believe me.”
For a moment we looked into each other’s eyes, our hands together.
Her eyes wavered a moment. “I believe you,” she said, then again more strongly. “I believe you.”
My fingers tightened on hers.
“Iras, send a message to Caesar now. Get one of the cavalrymen to carry it. Tell him that he must not go to the Senate today. He must come here. I have never asked anything unreasonable of him, ever. But today he must do this. He must do as I tell him now!”
“It will be done,” Iras said, and she ran for a messenger.
The Ides of March
The messenger galloped away toward the Sublician Bridge. We waited. Full morning came, a blustery morning with scudding gray clouds and sudden gusts of wind that sent the dead leaves of fall flying through the streets once more.
The children played and laughed, but my hands shook and I could not still them. The Queen paced.
“We are probably making something of nothing,” she said, going to the window that looked on the terrace for the fortieth time. Beyond the Tiber, shadows moved across the city, the flashing shapes of cloud.
“I hope so,” I said. I did hope so, though I did not believe it. I could feel whatever it was like lightning in the air, and my hands cramped.
In the third hour a messenger came, cantering up the steep road and stopped by the guardsmen at the gate. Completely careless of propriety, Cleopatra ran out and practically tore the paper from his hand. I was a step behind her.
Caesar regrets that he cannot come immediately as per her Gracious Majesty’s invitation, as he has business in the Senate that will not wait. He will be pleased, however, to attend upon Her Majesty in the dinner hour, later today.
It was his own hand, hastily scribble
d, and I could see how he had looked as he had done it, bemused, a little surprised that she had sent for him with such urgency. But there were only four more days to accomplish all of his business in Rome before he sailed, and he could not waste a day on idle fears.
“Perhaps it will be all right,” I said. “Perhaps it’s only stupidity or the weather or something.”
“Mother Isis, let it be so!” the Queen breathed. And she went back into the house, leaving the letter in my hand.
I smoothed it out and rerolled it neatly. She will want this, I thought, when he is gone. She will want this, the last words he wrote to her.
I stopped under the portico and leaned my throbbing head against the column. Take this gift from me, I thought. Oh Lady of Stars, take it from me! I do not want to know.
You do not choose what you see, She whispered. It is what you are, and you can be nothing else. And how could you not know this, when the wave is near to breaking and it tears away the stones beneath your feet?
What good is it, I thought, to know that such crashing sorrow will come and be able to do nothing to prevent it? To know that now, even now . . .
Now.
I raised my head, my hand against the cool stone. A stray sunbeam lit the walk, glancing off a white place in the stone. In the shelter of the portico, the dark green spikes of some plant pushed upward through the soil. From the house I heard Demetria laugh, her clear voice pealing out, heard the voice of some maidservant on the way to the kitchen calling to another in the atrium. Far above, among the scudding clouds, a bird hovered on the wing.
Now.
And for a moment the wind stopped, as though time itself ground to a halt.
Now he was falling, now his mouth opened as though he would say one more thing in that rich voice. He would say nothing more, blood on his lips, those wonderful eyes suddenly empty, one hand reaching still.
Above, the bird turned on the wind. Caesarion shouted back to Demetria, and I heard the clatter of the servant’s feet in the atrium. The sunlight shifted, golden light splashing across the bulbs that sprouted toward the sun. A breeze lifted my hair. The tree branches waved in the wind of a world without Caesar in it.
I closed my eyes and took one long, deep breath. The pain lifted from my brows. Now I knew what I must do.
I opened my eyes. Nothing had changed. I had stood here only a minute.
I went into the house and stopped the maidservant before she reached the stairs. “Eurydice,” I said softly. “Go and pack Prince Caesarion and Demetria’s clothes. When you are done with that, begin packing the Queen’s things, starting with her state robes. I am going to pack her correspondence. And do it quietly, please. The Queen has a headache and has gone to lie down.”
The girl blinked at me. “But I was to clean the baths just now.”
“Don’t worry about the baths,” I said, and was surprised to hear my own voice brisk and businesslike. “That’s not important. Do the packing right now. And pack the children’s toys first.”
“But we don’t leave for Ostia for five days.”
“It never hurts to start early,” I said. “So do it as quickly as you can. I will be in the library.”
I turned and hurried across the atrium, into the ground-floor room that served as office and library. How had we gotten so many books? Cleopatra could never resist books, I thought, and we must have acquired a hundred while in Rome, some for her pleasure but more for the Library. After all, it must hold everything of importance to man. And there was all of her correspondence, all of the letters from Apollodorus and others in Alexandria about the business of Egypt. That which was not important must be burned, and the rest taken away.
I went back in the hall and sent a slave to bring me a brazier. He looked at me strangely, as the library was heated very well by the hypocaust. Then I went back inside and started sorting documents.
_______
I WAS DEEP in the task, the afternoon wearing away, a pile of unnecessary papers burning merrily on the brazier, when I heard the scream. I put the papers in my lap aside and hurried out into the atrium. Iras had her arm about Cleopatra, who shook it off, her face white. Before her stood a man in a plain tunic and sandals, who I thought I recognized vaguely. His blond hair gave him away. He was one of Caesar’s litter bearers.
“Are you certain?” she demanded.
“I’m certain,” he said, his Latin a little halting. “I saw his body myself when they brought it out. He must have been stabbed fifteen times or more. He was bled white. His hands . . . he’d tried to defend himself, but it was no use. One man against twenty?” He bent his head, his mouth working, and then went on: “They had us put his body in his litter, and they told us to take it to his house, as is seemly. But then people started fighting in the forum, wanting to get to him, wanting to see. So the bodyguards pushed them back, and then one of the Senators, I think it was Brutus, came out and made a speech about a modern-day Aristogeiton, whatever that means.”
“I know what that means,” Cleopatra said, her voice choked. “Go on.”
“And then the crowd rushed him, and the lictors got in front and we had to put the litter down or it was going to be knocked over and his poor body dumped in the street, so we put it down and one of the bodyguards was killed just like that, by a thrown rock. It hit him in the head, one of those big pavers.”
I clenched my hands together.
“I didn’t see what we could do for him, Caesar, I mean, dead as he was, but I thought we were all going to get killed right there, because the crowd went mad when the awning got torn and they could see him covered in blood. But they went for the Senators instead, all of the ones who had blood down the front of their togas, and two of the lictors were just about torn to pieces. I’d be dead right now if Antonius hadn’t gotten in with a bunch of gladiators. I don’t know where he got them, but there they were, and he jumped up on top of the steps next to us and yelled ‘To Caesar!’ and they made a shield wall around us. And Antonius said to take his body back in the Senate house and to send for his wife and his slaves, because there was no way we were getting through the streets to his house. And Brutus and the rest of the Senators got out of there somehow. So we carried him back inside, and then Gallus ran back to Caesar’s house like Antonius told us to, and I thought you’d want to know, Domina.”
“Thank you,” the Queen said. “Iras, will you reward this man?”
“Of course,” Iras said, but when she unfastened her money pouch her fingers fumbled on the strings and she dropped it, silver and gold and copper spilling and rolling across the floor.
I picked up a gold drachma and handed it to him. “Here. And thank you.”
The man nodded swiftly. “I thought you’d want to know, Domina.”
“Yes,” the Queen said. “Yes.”
“You may go around to the kitchen and get some food and drink if you like,” I said, and my voice was perfectly calm. The tears that had rolled onto the burning papers were gone now, leaving ice behind them.
“There’s chaos in the city, Domina,” he said to me, as Cleopatra turned away. “Chaos. I don’t know who’ll kill who before the day is out. I heard that Cassius wants to kill Antonius, and that Octavian is hiding because somebody said they’d only killed the head of the snake. And you know Antonius, Domina. He’s not going to sit still and be killed.”
“I know he’s not,” I said. “I’m glad we’re away over the Tiber.”
“Yes, Domina,” he said. “There’s a mob roving through the city. If you look that way you can see the smoke rising.”
“Oh no!” I ran to the back terrace, looking across the Tiber to the city. It was true. Here and there columns of smoke rose, dark against the slanting sun that bathed the city. The sun had come out of the clouds as it moved toward its setting.
Some of the slaves had come to see, and I grabbed the nearest one. “Go get the trunks that are upstairs and bring them down now. And get the two in the library.”
There we
re horsemen on the road. I could see them below in the bright western light, riding unhindered and hell-for-leather up the road.
The guards were gone.
“Oh fuck,” I whispered. A king, and a foreign prince to put over us, son of an incestuous whore. That was what they had said. They had only killed the head of the snake.
I flew back in the house, snatching up a long knife in the library, the kind used to cut paper. It was very sharp. Caesarion wasn’t allowed to play with it.
Iras and the Queen were still in the atrium.
“What are you doing?” Iras snapped, the Queen’s head on her shoulder.
“Horsemen,” I said. “Coming hard. And the guards are gone. Their charge died with Caesar.”
They sprang apart. “I don’t have a knife,” Iras said.
“I do.” I pulled one of the heavy doors shut, and reached for the other. “Help me bar the doors.”
It was Cleopatra at my elbow, not Iras. “Tend to the children, Iras,” she said. We hauled the door closed and dropped the bar into place as the hooves clattered across the drive outside. Less than ten horses, I thought. More like six or so. I heard footsteps, and the door shook.
“Charmian? Iras?” The door shuddered under his knock. It was Emrys’ voice. “Open the door!”
Cleopatra and I looked at each other, then drew the bar back.
He opened one side. “You’ve heard then?” His eyes fell on Cleopatra’s face, and he bent his head, switching to Koine. “Gracious Queen, please accept my most sincere condolences.”
“I appreciate your words, Praefectus,” she replied.
His eyes roved from her face to mine. “You have to get out of here,” he said. “There’s no one in charge in the city. The assassins hold some parts of town, but nobody’s sure exactly who was in on it and what happened. Cassius and Brutus, certainly. And probably not Antonius or Octavian.”
Cleopatra drew a deep ragged breath, but didn’t speak.
Emrys’ face was solemn. “Gracious Queen, it isn’t safe for you here. I have sent four men to the dock by the Grove of Furrina to commandeer a riverboat. You need to get to your own ship at Ostia.” He saw her hesitate, and pressed on. “For the sake of your son. A mob is cover for many things.”