The Judgment of Caesar

by Steven Saylor

  “I see. It must be very fine rug, indeed. I wish to see it. Show him in.” When Meto moved to obey, Caesar turned to me. “You’d don’t mind the interruption, do you, Gordianus? Our dinner conversation wasn’t going all that smoothly, anyway.”

  “Perhaps I should leave.”

  “It’s up to you. But do you really want to miss the next few moments?”

  “The presentation of a rug?”

  “Not just any rug, Gordianus, but a gift from Queen Cleopatra herself! King Ptolemy—or more accurately, that eunuch, Pothinus—has done everything possible in recent days to seal the palace and to prevent anyone who might represent the queen from approaching me. Courtiers loyal to Cleopatra have been apprehended, the messages they carried confiscated and destroyed, and the courtiers themselves summarily executed. I’ve protested to the king—how dare he intercept messages addressed to the consul of the Roman people?—but to no avail. The king wants me to hear only one side of this argument between himself and his sister, but I should very much like to meet her. One hears such fascinating things about Cleopatra. Marc Antony met her some years ago, when he helped to restore her father to the throne, and he said the most curious thing. . . .”

  I nodded. “I think he must have said the same thing to me. Despite the fact that she was then only fourteen years old—about the age her brother is now—there was some quality about her that reminded Antony . . . of you.”

  Caesar smiled. “Can you imagine?”

  I looked at Caesar, a man of fifty-two with wisps of hair combed over his bald spot, a strong, determined jaw, and a hard, calculating glint in his eyes, slightly softened by that veil of world-weariness that falls over men who have seen too much of life. “Not really,” I confessed.

  “Nor can I! But what man could resist meeting a younger incarnation of himself, especially an incarnation of the opposite gender?”

  “It’s my understanding that Cleopatra is an incarnation of Isis.” Caesar looked at me archly. “Some philosophers postulate that Isis is actually the Egyptian manifestation of the Greek Aphrodite, who is also the Roman Venus—my ancestor. The world is a small place. If Cleopatra is Isis, and Isis is Venus, then there appears to be a family connection, indeed a divine connection, between Queen Cleopatra and myself.”

  I smiled uncertainly. Was he serious, or merely indulging in a bit of fancy wordplay? The look on his face was anything but whimsical.

  “Imperator!” Meto appeared in the doorway. He studiously kept his eyes from meeting mine. “I present Apollodorus, a servant of Cleopatra, who bears a gift from Her Majesty.”

  Meto moved aside to permit a tall, imposing figure to step forward. Apollodorus was darkly handsome, with a great mane of black hair swept back from his forehead and a neatly trimmed black beard. He wore a very brief, sleeveless tunic that left bare his long, muscular legs and arms. His biceps were bisected by veins that protruded above the straining muscles as he held aloft a rolled-up rug. I remembered all the steps I had ascended to reach the room; the flesh of Apollodorus was sleek with sweat from the exertion of carrying his burden, but his breath was unlabored.

  The rug was bound with slender rope in three places to keep it from unfurling. Apollodorus knelt and set it gently on the floor. “Queen Cleopatra welcomes Gaius Julius Caesar to the city of Alexandria,” he said, speaking in Latin, with an ungainly accent that suggested he had memorized the phrase by rote. In Greek, to Meto, he said, “If I may have back my knife, so that I might cut the cords . . .”

  “I’ll do that myself,” said Caesar. Meto pulled his sword from its scabbard and handed it to Caesar. Caesar poked the sharp point against a strand of rope.

  Apollodorus gasped. “Please, Caesar, be careful!”

  “Is the rug not mine?” said Caesar. He smiled at Meto. “Am I not a man who knows the value of things?”

  “You are, Imperator,” agreed Meto.

  “And am I ever careless with the things that are mine?”

  “Never, Imperator.”

  “Very well, then.” Caesar deftly cut the three strands of rope, then stepped back to allow Apollodorus to unfurl the rug.

  As the rug was unrolled, it became obvious that there was something inside it—not merely an object, but something alive and moving. I stepped back and let out a gasp, then saw that Caesar and Meto smiled; they were not entirely surprised at the sight of Queen Cleopatra as she rolled forth from the carpet and rose to her feet in a single, fluid motion.

  The rolled rug had given no evidence of the prize it concealed; it seemed impossible that its folds could contain a personage who loomed as large in imagination as Cleopatra. But the immensity of the image conjured by her name was curiously out of scale with the actual, physical embodiment of the woman herself. Indeed, she seemed hardly a woman at all, but very much a girl, small and slender with petite hands and feet. Her hair was pulled back and tied in a bun at the nape of her neck—no doubt the most efficient way of styling it for travel inside a rug. It also allowed her to wear a simple diadem set far back on her head, a uraeus crown that featured not a rearing cobra but a sacred vulture’s head. Her dark blue gown covered her from her neck to her ankles and was belted with golden sashes around her waist and below her bosom. Small she might be, but her figure was not girlish; the ampleness of her hips and breasts would have pleased the sculptor of the Venus that had so impressed me earlier. Her face might have captivated a master sculptor as well. She was not the most beautiful of young women—Bethesda in her prime had been more beautiful, and so had Cassandra—but there was something intriguing about her large, strong features. Queen Cleopatra had one of those faces that becomes more fascinating the longer one looks at it, for it seemed to change in some subtle way each time the light shifted or whenever she moved her head.

  She stood erect, squared her shoulders, and gave a shudder, as if to shake loose the last vestige of her confinement in the rug. She reached behind her head and undid the knots in her hair, shaking it loose and letting it fall past her shoulders, but keeping the diadem in place. She raised her arms and ran her fingers through the tangles. I glanced at Caesar and Meto. They appeared as captivated by her as I was, especially Caesar. What manner of creature was this, who had risked capture and death to smuggle herself into Caesar’s presence, and now stood before three strangers preening herself as unself-consciously as a cat?

  She looked at us one by one. The sight of Meto evidently pleased her, for she spent a long moment appraising him from head to foot. I was less interesting to her. Her gaze turned to Caesar and remained upon him. The look they exchanged was of such an intensity that all else in the room seemed to fade; I sensed that I had become a shadow to them.

  Caesar smiled. “Meto, what do you think of Queen Cleopatra’s present?”

  “ ‘Beware of Greeks bearing gifts,’ ” Meto quoted. I assumed he was making a joke, facetiously comparing the queen’s rug to the Trojan Horse, but when I glanced at his face, I saw that he did not smile.

  The queen ignored these comments. She assumed a formal stance, one foot before the other with her head tilted slightly back and her arms spread in a gracious gesture. Her Latin was flawless and without accent. “Welcome to Alexandria, Gaius Julius Caesar. Welcome to my palace.”

  “Her palace?” I heard Meto mutter.

  Caesar shot him a sharp look, then spoke to me. “My apologies, Gordianus. I had intended that you and I should dine at our leisure tonight, sharing our thoughts. But one never knows when a matter of state will arise, as it has, however unconventionally, this evening.”

  “No need to apologize,” I said. “I’ve been a poor guest. My conversation was as weak as my appetite. I’ll leave you now.”

  I strode from the terrace into the grandly appointed room, not looking back. I slowed my pace for a moment as I passed the statue of Venus. There was something about the queen that reminded me of the goddess, some intangible quality to which great artists attune their senses. Ordinary men call it divinity and know it when they
encounter it, even if their tongues cannot capture it with words or their hands give shape to it in sculpture. Queen Cleopatra possessed that quality—or was I simply dazzled for the moment, as any man can be dazzled by an object of desire? Surely Cleopatra was no more a goddess than Bethesda had been, and Caesar no more a god than I.

  I pushed open the bronze doors and stepped out of the room, and did not realize I was being followed until I heard a voice mutter behind me: “She’s trouble.”

  I stopped and turned around. Meto almost collided with me, then stepped back a respectful distance. “Papa,” he whispered, lowering his eyes.

  I made no answer. Despite his armor, despite his strong limbs and his battle scars and the thick stubble across his jaw, he looked to me at that moment like a boy, timorous and full of doubt. I bit my lip. I screwed up my courage. “I suppose it’s just as well we’ve met. There’s something I must tell you. This won’t be easy. . . .”

  “ ‘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 ente
r. 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.”