" 'Quickest done is best done,' " Meto said, quoting the proverb I had taught him as a child, suitable to pulling thorns or drinking foul medicine. He kept his eyes lowered, but his lips formed a faint, ingratiating smile. I tried to ignore it.
"The reason I came to Egypt…"
He lifted his eyes to meet mine. I looked away.
"Bethesda has been unwell for quite some time," I said. "Some malady the physicians could never put a name to. She conceived a notion, that if only she could bathe in the Nile…"
Meto frowned. "Is Bethesda here in Egypt with you?"
My tongue turned to lead. I tried to swallow but could not. "Bethesda came to Egypt. She bathed in the Nile, as she wished. But the river took her from me. She vanished."
"What are you saying, Papa? Did she drown?"
"The river took her. Perhaps it was best, if her sickness was incurable. Perhaps it was what she intended all along."
"Bethesda is dead?" His lips quivered. His brows drew together. The son who was no longer my son, the favorite of Caesar who had seen men die by the thousands, who had hacked his way through drifts of dead bodies and mountains of gore, began to weep.
"Meto!" I whispered his name, but kept my distance.
"I never thought…" He shook his head. Tears streamed down his cheeks. "When you're far from home, you can't help but imagine what might be happening there, but you teach yourself to think of only good things. In the field, getting ready for battle, fighting a battle, tending to the aftermath, there's so much terror all around, so much confusion and bloodshed and suffering, that when you think of home you think of everything that's the opposite, a place that's safe and happy, where the people you love are all together and nothing ever changes. But of course that's a dream, a fantasy. Every place is the same as every other place. No one is safe, anywhere. But I never thought… that Bethesda…" He shot me an angry look. "I didn't even know she was ill. You might have told me in a letter-if you hadn't stopped writing me letters."
I drew back my shoulders and stiffened my spine. "There, then. I've told you. Bethesda is gone. Her body was lost, or else I would have mummified her, as was always her wish."
Meto shook his head, as if dazed. "And Diana? How is she? And little Aulus? And-"
"Your sister-" I corrected myself. "My daughter and her son were well when I left them in Rome. She's expecting another child, or else she might have come herself."
"And Davus? And Eco? And-"
"All are well," I said, wanting to end the conversation.
He sighed. "Papa, I know what a tribulation this must have been for you. I can only-"
"Say no more!" I said. "You needed to be told, and I've told you. Go back to Caesar now."
"Go back?" He laughed without mirth, even as he wiped a tear from his cheek. "Didn't you see the look on his face? And the look on her face? She's trouble. It's one thing, dealing with that starstruck boy-king and his eunuch, but I'm afraid Queen Cleopatra may be another matter altogether. I'll give her credit for sheer nerve-"
"I see how long your tears for Bethesda lasted. Now it's back to Caesar and the queen and whatever game the lot of you are up to."
"Papa! That's unfair."
"Think what you wish, but don't address me as your father."
He drew a sharp breath. He winced, as if I had turned a knife in his chest. "Papa!" he whispered, shaking his head. I could have sworn he was a child again, no older than ten or twelve, an uncertain boy clad in the armor of a warrior.
It took the last measure of my resolve to resist embracing him at that moment. Instead, I turned and strode resolutely down the hallway and then down the many flights of steps, leaving Meto to await the pleasure of his imperator and the queen.
CHAPTER XV
"You knew," I said to Merianis as we walked side by side through courtyards and past bubbling fountains, heading back to my room. She had been waiting for me at the checkpoint marking the boundary of the Roman enclave.
"You knew," I repeated, turning to look at her. "Thus your coy smile earlier. Thus your arch comment about surprises."
"Whatever are you talking about, Gordianus-called-Finder?" "You knew that another visitor besides myself was going to call on Caesar tonight."
"Who's being coy now?" she said. "Are you saying that you were joined at dinner by an unexpected guest?" She could not suppress a broad smile. Her white teeth, in contrast to the black luster of her flesh, were dazzling.
"A gift for Caesar arrived from an unexpected quarter."
"A gift?"
"A surprise with another surprise hidden inside. It was compared to the Trojan Horse."
Merianis laughed. "Did Caesar say that?"
I frowned. "No, it was one of his men."
"And was this Trojan Horse successfully delivered?"
"It was."
"Did the contents emerge safe and sound?"
"Yes, and just as ready to wreak havoc as those Greek invaders who jumped out of the real Trojan Horse. When I last saw him, Caesar looked poised to surrender to an overwhelming force."
Merianis clapped her hands with delight. "Forgive me for laughing, but the metaphor is so novel. It's always a woman who's described as a city under siege, with gates flung open and walls tumbling down. It makes me laugh to think of mighty Caesar that way."
"He's only human, Merianis."
"For the time being," Merianis said, then muttered something in Egyptian that I took to be a brief, ecstatic prayer of thanksgiving to Isis. A group of palace guards was waiting outside my room. Before I could step inside, the officer in charge politely, but firmly, ushered me to a place in the midst of his men, and I found myself heading off once again, leaving Merianis behind.
"I'll look in on Rupa and the boys," she called after me.
I was taken to a part of the palace I had not visited before. The corridors grew wider, the gardens more lush, the draperies and other appointments increasingly more magnificent.
The guards escorted me into a large chamber where scores of courtiers were clustered here and there in small groups. The room echoed with the low buzz of many conversations. Curious eyes peered in our direction. The officer in charge disappeared, leaving me to stand idly in the middle of the room with an armed escort surrounding me.
"It's that Roman," I overheard someone say. "The one the king allowed onto his barge. Isn't he a soothsayer?"
"No, some sort of spy, or maybe a famous assassin, I think."
"Looks a bit old for that."
"You never know with Romans. Treacherous, devious types. The older, the wilier."
The officer reappeared and gestured for me to follow. We wended our way through the crowd until we came to a pair of gilded doors. The doors opened. The officer stayed behind but gestured that I should enter. I stepped into a room in which every surface appeared to be covered with gold-golden urns atop golden tables, golden chairs with cushions of gold thread, walls of hammered gold, and a gold-painted ceiling from which hung golden lamps. Even the floor of dazzling white marble had veins of some glittering golden stuff running through it. Sculptures in low relief adorned the walls, depicting the exploits of the first Ptolemy, Alexander's general; these entablatures, though surely carved of stone, were heavily gilded, either painted with gold or covered with gold foil, so that the images shimmered with the reflected light of the golden lamps. Among them I saw the very scene I had read aloud to the boys earlier that day, in which Ptolemy witnessed the first encounter of Alexander and the horse Bucephalus.
It was a room without shadows, for every surface reflected the light. The air itself seemed golden, suffused with a mellow glow of no apparent origin. Carried upon the golden air was the music of a piper playing a familiar tune.
At the far end of the room, upon a gilded throne, sat Ptolemy, dressed in a pleated gown of white linen with a golden mantle over his shoulders. He must have previously attended some religious function in his role as the god Osiris, for he was wearing the atef crown, his young face
looking very stern beneath the tall white cone with its plumes of ostrich feathers. Bodyguards stood behind the throne. Scribes sat cross-legged on the floor nearby. Before the throne stood Pothinus, with his arms crossed and his head tilted back, regarding my wonderment with amusement. I had stepped into a room designed to overawe the likes of me, and the room had done its job.
"Your dinner with Caesar was brief," he said.
"The evening was interrupted."
"Ah," said Pothinus. "An unexpected visitor?"
I looked at him sharply. Had everyone but me been expecting the queen's arrival? Then I realized he was referring to Meto, whom he knew I had wished to avoid.
"The man whom I once called my son did in fact make an appearance-"
Ptolemy spoke up. "I think it's sad, this estrangement between yourself and your son. I should give much to have my father back among the living. To look into his eyes again; to hear him laugh; to listen to him play the flute."
Considering that the king's father had killed his oldest sister, and that he himself was at war with his sister-wife, I was not in a mood to have young Ptolemy pass judgment on my familial relationships. But I kept my mouth shut and found myself studying Ptolemy's face, framed by the golden mantle and the atef crown. Having just met his sister, I was struck by the strong resemblance between them. Neither of them was strikingly beautiful in a way that would turn heads, yet both possessed a certain undeniable presence. I felt it more strongly from Cleopatra, but was that only because of my erotic inclinations? The image of her standing erect and shaking loose her hair to let it fall past her shoulders flashed in my mind…
Pothinus loudly cleared his throat. Apparently he had said something that I missed. "If Gordianus-called-Finder can return to the present moment…" he said, giving me a condescending look that put me squarely in my place: a befuddled Roman mortal agog in the king's golden room. I bristled.
"Pardon me. I was lost in thought, considering how the king does and does not resemble his sister Cleopatra."
For a moment this comment went over their heads, then simultaneously Pothinus gave a start, and the king lurched forward in his throne.
"What are you saying?" cried Ptolemy.
"The family resemblance is obvious-the nose, the eyes-yet there's a difference, and I can't quite put my finger on it."
"You've seen her? Cleopatra?" Pothinus's voice broke, as the voice of even a mature eunuch sometimes does. "Where? When?"
"Tonight, in Caesar's chambers."
Ptolemy slumped back in his throne and bit the end of one finger. One knee jerked up and down in agitation. "I told you she'd find a way in, Pothinus."
"Impossible, Your Majesty! Every entrance is guarded; every package is examined; every-"
"Obviously not! We left a way open, and she found it. She's like a snake, nosing its way along a wall until it finds the merest breach to slip through."
"Actually, she came by sea," I said. Was I acting rashly, putting the queen and perhaps even Caesar in danger by this revelation? Was I not doing exactly as Pothinus had intended, conveying intelligence back to the king? Perhaps, but the aggravation I was causing them gave me a great deal of pleasure, and I couldn't stop. "A fellow named Apollodorus rowed her across the harbor. The two of them found an unguarded landing somewhere along the waterfront and made their way to the Roman sector of the palace."
"As brazenly as that?" Ptolemy slapped the crown on his head, a gesture most unworthy of a god. "She and that stud-horse Sicilian went traipsing through the palace, right up to Caesar's door?"
Pothinus lowered his voice. "There are ways, as Your Majesty knows, of traversing the palace and its grounds without being seen. Some of those secret passages are very old; there may be some unknown even to me. Once your father, remodeling his private chambers, tore out a wall and came upon a network of tunnels that even he had never suspected-"
"Even so, Pothinus, you assured me that this would not happen!"
"Actually," I said, unable to resist, "the two of them didn't traipse anywhere. Apollodorus carried her."
"What?" Pothinus looked at me, confounded. "Carried her? In his arms?"
"Over his shoulder, mostly."
The king and his lord chamberlain looked at me as if I must be mad. One of the bodyguards snickered. The man next to him covered the noise by coughing.
"She was rolled up in a rug," I explained. "Apollodorus carried the rug over his shoulder. He told the Romans he had a gift for Caesar from the queen. I was there when Apollodorus was shown into Caesar's quarters. The rug was unrolled for Caesar's inspection. The queen appeared. Shortly thereafter, I took my leave."
"Who else was in the room?" Pothinus demanded.
I shrugged. "Meto. He left when I did. I'm not sure where Apollodorus went; maybe into one of those secret passages you were talking about."
The king curled his upper lip. "She's alone with him?"
"Even as we speak," I said.
Pothinus sighed. "She's like a wine stain on white linen. We'll never get rid of her."
"Best to burn the linen, then, if the stain won't come out." Ptolemy glowered darkly, then drew a shuddering breath and let out a bleating sound. He sniffled, holding back tears. He seemed very much like a boy at that moment, and like a boy who was not simply furious, but also heartbroken. Learning that his sister was alone with Caesar, Ptolemy wept bitter tears. I gazed at him, confounded.
"Cleopatra!" muttered Pothinus. "Relentless. Ruthless. She's trouble."
Meto had said the same thing.
CHAPTER XVI
The bodyguards who had shown me to the royal chamber escorted me back to my room. The hour was growing late. The passageways were empty; the palace was quiet. Long before the open doorway of my room came into view, I heard the high-pitched voices of Androcles and Mopsus, breathlessly assailing a visitor with questions.
"Did you kill anyone at Pharsalus?" said Androcles.
"Of course he did! But how many?" said Mopsus. "And did you kill anyone famous?"
"What I want to know," said Androcles, "is this: Were you there with Caesar when he went crashing into Pompey's tent and caught a glimpse of the Great One's backside disappearing out the rear flap? Is it true they were all set up for a banquet, with Greek slave boys strumming lyres and Pompey's best silver laid out?"
I drew closer, and at last heard their visitor's voice, even above the sudden pounding of my heart in my chest. "Boys, boys, how I've missed you! Though I don't know how Papa puts up with all your pestering."
I stopped in the hallway, several steps from the door. "Go!" I whispered to the officer escorting me. "You've delivered me to my room, as you were ordered to do. Don't say a word. Take your men and leave!"
The officer raised an eyebrow, but did as I asked.
I stepped through the open doorway.
Meto leaned against one wall. The boys were gamboling about and gazing up at him until I entered the room, whereupon they collided and almost knocked each other down. Rupa, who had not met Meto before, stood off to himself, near the window; his shy, but good-natured, smile vanished when I looked at him. Merianis stood nearby, holding Alexander the cat in her arms. She saw my expression, put down the cat, and stepped toward the boys, grabbing each by a shoulder to stop their constant motion. The cat disappeared beneath my bed.
"What are you doing here?" I demanded.
Meto gazed at me for a long moment, his expression at first beseeching and then, when I showed no response, exasperated. "Papa, this is madness! I'd beg for your forgiveness-if I even knew what I'd done to offend you."
Had he forgotten the things I said to him at Massilia? I hadn't. Far from it! How many nights had I lain awake while Bethesda tossed and turned beside me, remembering the words that had come tumbling out of me on that occasion? "Words once spoken can never be recalled," as the poet warns, but in the heat of the moment, I had lost all inhibition and the words had rushed forth, delivering me to a decision I had not foreseen.
Met
o! First you became a soldier, and you thrived on it, killing Gauls for the glory of Caesar. Burning villages, enslaving children, leaving widows to starve-it always sickened me, though I never spoke against it. Now you've found a new calling, spying for Caesar, destroying others by deceit. It sickens me even more…
What matters most to me? Uncovering the truth! I do it even when there's no point to it, even when it brings only pain. I do it because I must. But you, Meto? What does truth mean to you? You can't abide it, any more than I can abide deceit! We're complete opposites. No wonder you've found your place at the side of a man like Caesar…
This is our last conversation, Meto. From this moment, you are not my son. I disown you. I renounce all concern for you. I take back from you my name. If you need a father, let Caesar adopt you!
Until that day, in Alexandria, those had been the very last words I had spoken to him.
"There's nothing to discuss and no question of forgiveness. It's quite simple: This is my room, at least for the moment, and you don't belong here. You shouldn't have come. I suppose you followed me, or had me followed, since that's your way of doing things-"
"No!" Merianis spoke up. "I brought him here."
"You? But how-?"
"Earlier, when I delivered you for your dinner with Caesar, I waited at the checkpoint. A little later, Apollodorus appeared, bearing the gift for Caesar. Meto came. He recognized me from the other day, when the king officially received Caesar on the landing. We spoke, very briefly-"
"But not so briefly that Meto didn't learn all he needed to know about you. He's become quite expert at extracting valuable information. It's one of his duties." And one of yours as well? I thought, but did not say aloud; for it was clear to me now that Merianis was not merely a priest-ess of Isis, but a spy for the incarnation of Isis, Queen Cleopatra.
Merianis persisted. "Later-after I'd brought you back to this room and the king's men whisked you away-Meto sent a courier requesting me to return to the checkpoint. I met him there. He asked me to show him here, to your room. Was it wrong to do so? Meto is your son, is he not?"
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