Pharaoh

by Karen Essex

  One of Caesar’s personal guards stood outside the door to the child’s chamber, his face scarred to disfigurement on the left side. The sword at his side made a sharp crescent shadow on the wall like a new moon. He waited for Caesar to address him, and then a smile broke across the right side of his face. “I let the prince hold my sword, General. I’m getting him ready for your training, sir.”

  “Be careful, Trebonius, that my son may soon be as skillful as a Gaulish marksman.”

  Trebonius stepped aside to allow them entry, and Kleopatra asked Caesar if he might not be allowed to at least sit down on his evening watch. “They are accustomed to marching thirty miles a day, my dear,” Caesar whispered. “Standing the night long is a luxury.”

  Two Egyptian attendants slept on thick mats in the boy’s room, breathing a synchronous tune. They did not awaken; the child must have worn them out. The prince lay in a small crib with slatted sides that Kleopatra did not like-it reminded her of a sarcophagus. But he was sleeping soundly, the moonlight on his gleaming baby skin, his breathing soft and hushed.

  “Look how serious he is even in sleep,” Caesar said.

  It was true; the boy looked as though he carried on a philosophical dialogue with himself or some unseen dream partner. His delicate little eyebrows were tensed together, and his pupils rolled about beneath the lids.

  “He is making a rebuttal to Cicero,” Kleopatra whispered.

  Caesar did not reply, but gently wiped his long index finger on his son’s forehead to smooth his wrinkled brow. “There, there, my prince. You have no such worries. Your father will take care of you.”

  “First his father must take care of himself,” Kleopatra hissed. She kissed her baby’s moist, warm cheek, breathed in his scent, and motioned to Caesar to leave the room with her.

  She walked ahead of him to their bedroom, waving away her body servants. “Good night, ladies,” she heard him say, as he paused at the door to give his cloak to the valet, and entered the room after her. His bodyguards’ swords clanked with finality as the men settled into their posts. The guard, he said, was for her. Caesar used no guard despite the pleadings of herself and of his supporters. “The love of the Roman people is my guard,” he always said.

  “You are tense, Kleopatra. Would you like to have a bath?”

  “I am not tense, General. I am concerned.”

  “Did you not enjoy yourself?”

  “I did not enjoy sitting idly while the enemies of my partner and ally attacked him in his own home while he did nothing more than feed them more food and wine.”

  “Do you mean Cicero’s reading?” He brushed her concerns aside with his hand. “He means to admonish me for my popularity with those he deems unsavory. He is like one’s tired old father, darling. To be respected and ignored.”

  “You often talk of his influence. Does he suddenly have none?” she asked. She took the last pin from the hair Charmion had loosely rewound, letting her mane fall around her shoulders. She would have liked to stop this conversation and soothe the tension in her head with long strokes of the hairbrush, but she continued. “And what of Brutus? He is thick with Cicero. He took up arms against you along with that Cassius. What a snarling, arrogant fellow he is. Why do you entertain your enemies, General? Why do you allow them such proximity?”

  “Brutus is an intellectual, and, like Cicero, his animosity is born out of devotion to a system of government, the beloved and dying Republic, not out of malice toward myself. Cassius I tolerate because Brutus and Servilia have begged me to do so, and they are not technically family but have been close to me for many years.”

  Kleopatra removed the emerald brooch that held the folds of her chiton, releasing her cleavage and letting the fabric flow. She stopped undressing and turned to Caesar. “Is Brutus your son?”

  “No, no, he’s the essence of his father and his grandfather and all the virtue-loving, solemn Republican Brutuses since time immemorial. Can’t you see that there is nothing of me in him while our son wears my imprint on his face?”

  “Please, my darling, this is no time to be angry or impatient with me. I am not your enemy I am the one who loves you. But I do believe that I was singular in that emotion at today’s banquet.”

  “You do not think my wife loves me?” She could not tell if he was taunting her with mention of his wife or if he expected an answer.

  “Your wife is an enigmatic woman. I do not presume to know her feelings. But the rest, I believe, I can assure you. They do not love you. Why is it that you delivered death to my enemies, yet treat your own as if they were your precious pets or errant children?”

  “Because you are young and vulnerable and you require protection. I am old. I have lived long enough for life and for nature. I require nothing because already I have all.”

  You do not yet have the things we have planned together, she wanted to scream, but screaming at Julius Caesar did not seem an appropriate measure. Was he trying to tell her that those things were her dreams and not his? Was she just another person to be placated by him?

  “And Servilia? Do you have her down as another traitor?”

  “She is Brutus’s mother. A mother chooses a son over a lover.” She was aware that Caesar would quickly apply this formula to herself, but she was not going to take it back.

  “Is that a universal law? Is that what I might expect from you?”

  “Is it what you would expect from your own mother?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Of course.”

  “Then I will not apologize for what is simply a woman’s instinct. If we were not so, then men may not survive.”

  “Why are you so grumpy, darling?” he asked. “Was Cicero nasty to you? He can be so. I have seen it. His health is not good and it causes him to criticize people.”

  “No, no, he courts me. He wants the rare manuscripts I have brought from the Library. He also talks about us behind our backs. Hammonius has heard this from many sources.”

  “Ah, but that is just how he is. He is very critical of all women, except his daughter, Tullia, who never uttered a word that would offend him her entire life. That is what he thinks makes a great woman. He is not naturally predisposed to one of your status or temper.”

  “He has limited experience with queens,” she said.

  “And I believe he means to keep it that way.”

  “I despise him. He rants about living the pure and simple life, renouncing riches, and refusing public honor, and yet he owns houses all over Italy and is making a fortune off his commission to build your new Forum.”

  “Is he?”

  “You know he is.”

  “And how do you know he is? Did he tell you so?”

  “I have told you, General, that I pay good money to have eyes and ears throughout the city even though you will not allow me on its streets.”

  “I am protecting you and the boy from both physical danger and rumor, which can be even more deleterious. And I must insist you stop worrying so over Cicero.”

  “What about the rest? Do you not fear that they will rise up against you once more? All they require is a leader.”

  “What can they do to me, Kleopatra? I have survived three hundred battles. Did you know that? Can your young imagination even fathom three hundred battles? Why should I fear anything at all?”

  Not even losing me, she wanted to say. “Not even death?”

  “I have said one hundred times in your presence that it is far better to simply die than to waste one’s time fearing death. Do you think I am merely being glib?”

  She sensed that he was losing patience with her. “Can you not manifest just a little fear? If not for yourself, then for me and for your son? What will happen to us if you are not alive to protect us?”

  “That is why we must concentrate on our futures, darling, our plans. Not on petty disloyalty and grim death. I have no doubt that you are entirely correct in thinking that our guests tonight who once fought with Pompey against me would not be very sorry to s
ee me fall. But they will come around. They have to, you see. I am going to give them no choice.”

  “I see.” She tried to take comfort from his resounding confidence. “I am glad to hear you say it. Because the only way that Rome will ever have peace, and the only way that you and I will be able to see our ambitions come to fruition, is to use the means by which Alexander united the Greeks-and it was not by inviting them to dinner.”

  “I don’t need you to give me a history lesson, Kleopatra. The sena tors are a thousand times worse in their bickering and their hostility than the warring tribes of Gaul, and they will be dealt with similarly if necessary.”

  “Do they not wish for peace?”

  Caesar had removed his tunic and was now reclined, his eyes closed, his deep breaths melting the lines on his face. She wondered if there would be lovemaking tonight. “Kleopatra, would you please finish the removal of that great mass of white linen and come to bed?”

  “Shall I put on a nightgown?”

  He opened his eyes and looked at her with a strong glint of desire. Perhaps he did not have everything after all. “I said I have lived long enough. I did not say I was dead.”

  She was weary of the bitter stew of fascination, suspicion, and disdain with which she was treated by the Romans. They did not approve of her, of course. Their rigid laws-the obsolete laws Caesar had vowed to change-practically forbade it. Her union with Caesar was thus far illegal. A Roman citizen could take no foreign wife, recognize no foreign issue born to him, or leave property of any kind to a child who was foreign born. But if you were Julius Caesar, there might be ways around all of these things, and the Romans knew it. Caesar had been able to enact a sheaf of legislation in his political career, either by legitimately winning his detractors to his opinion, or, when that was not possible, by various means of coercion. The Romans knew that he had a good chance of making his union with Kleopatra every bit as legal as his three marriages to Roman women. They fearfully anticipated that day, so they could not, on the surface, treat her with anything short of respect. And yet that courtesy was less than skin deep as far as she was concerned. Even Caesar’s unqualified admirers seemed to her to be hedging their bets on him, which she detected in the slight irony with which they addressed her as “Your Majesty” or him as “Great Caesar.” Only Caesar’s two secretaries, Oppius and Balbus, who carried out his will, seemed purely loyal. But they were not strong men like Antony, for example, whom Caesar had banished from his favor. Kleopatra felt that both she and Caesar were admired and feared, but not liked. She was so tired of dissembling. She felt as if her garments were holding her together the day long, and when she removed them at night, her flesh seemed to spread around her as if she had just escaped, body and spirit, from prison.

  When at last she saw the bear-round face of Hammonius, a face from her childhood, belonging to a loyal man who had loved and served her father as he loved and served her, she leapt into his arms and covered his cheeks with kisses, astounding the staff that attended her. Oh, it was good to feel like a child again, a child with a father who would protect her from all harm. Not that Hammonius had that power, but her arms around his affable Greek bulk brought that lovely feeling back to her for the first time in many years.

  “Hammonius, you have been so long in Rome that you now dress like a Roman!”

  He was draped in a fine white wool cloak with bright red trimming. Threads of gold ran through the fabric, adding shimmer to his solid girth. It was reminiscent of the toga, a garment that could only be worn by Roman citizens.

  “And why not? I find the umbro so very convenient for walking in their miserable and unpredictable weather!” He raised the folds of the garment over his head, demonstrating the instant cover from rain. “Besides, in Rome, one never knows when the shit and filth of politics is going to be dumped on one’s head!”

  She grabbed him again, letting her cheek linger against his soft beard, which had now gone entirely gray, along with the thick mass on his head that was combed away from his forehead in rows of waves like a new crop of corn. But his skin was still fine and smooth, and despite his excessive weight, age had not diminished him. The light glowed as strongly as ever in his dark brown eyes. He was a testimony to good health by way of fully enjoying life. Hammonius loved food, wine, women, money, and all in excess-everything that the sickly Cicero said one must abhor in order to be wise and happy. But who was truly wise and happy? The scrawny insomniac who criticized everyone but his stoic Brutus, or this beaming mountain of a man who held her in his arms?

  Hammonius released Kleopatra and picked up the prince, letting him rest on the horizon of his belly. “I believe I see a shadow of the late king in his face.”

  “How is that, Hammonius, when my father was fat, jovial, and dark, and the child is fair, slim, and serious?”

  Hammonius sighed. “I suppose I would just be so happy to see the king’s face again. It’s a sad thing to grow old, Kleopatra, and watch those who have witnessed your life be taken by the god of death, who is omnipotent and remorseless. Someday soon I’ll join Auletes, and he’ll play his flute for me once more.” A little tear escaped the old man’s eye and he wiped it away with his big, woolly hand.

  “You do not look like you are ready for the tomb. And you had better not die on me, because you are the closest thing to a father I will ever have again.”

  “Your father would be so proud of you. The poor man tried all his life to make alliances with important Romans, and they bled him dry. Now here you are in the home of Caesar. You shall exceed all your ancestors, Kleopatra.”

  Kleopatra sat close to Hammonius on the couch, absentmindedly smoothing her son’s hair over his pointy head as she whispered in the Greek man’s ear. “That is my aim, my friend. Because there is no compromise in this game. One must either rule side by side or be subdued entirely. That is the lesson I learned from so many years of watching them extort the money and the spirit of my father until he was drained of both gold and life. He might have lived many more years had he received better treatment from Rome.”

  Hammonius shook his head. “His troubles turned him into an old man at fifty! And look at me, sixty-two and still feeling like a boy of nineteen. And I mean that in every sense, my dear!” He kissed the prince’s head with a great smack of his broad lips. “But what is wrong, Kleopatra? You look upset. Surely you are not offended by an old man’s pride in his virility?”

  “No, no, my friend. I am thinking that next year, Caesar will be the age of my father when he died. He won’t listen to my warnings because he is so much older than I, and so believes that he has learned the lessons of power. But Hammonius, he believes he can win over his enemies by kindness and clemency.”

  “The merciful man is rarely victorious,” Hammonius said. “One’s enemies are like snakes; though one may learn to handle them, they are always poisonous.”

  “But he thinks himself invincible!”

  “He is also wise, Kleopatra. You must have some faith in a man who has conquered half the world and has lived to enjoy it.”

  “Of course that is what he says, too. But I remain skeptical. And unfortunately, the future of my son and of our kingdom depends on his judgment.”

  Hammonius’s carriage was spacious, with plush, cushioned linen seats, and heavy brocade curtains that could be opened for ventilation. Unlike so many vehicles, its canopy was pale so that the sun’s heat did not settle in its weave. The carriage would be driven to the gates of Rome, where they would transfer themselves to litters that would carry them to see the new Julian Forum.

  Julius Caesar, disgusted with the traffic that congested his city day and night, had made a law that forbade wheeled vehicles in Rome’s narrow and swarming streets except for the purposes of trash collection and delivery of goods to the shops and markets. His new Forum, named after himself, was also built to relieve the overcrowding that suffocated Rome’s streets and byways. He had sent word to her at the villa asking her to meet him there today at an appoin
ted hour. He said he would send a party to fetch her, but she preferred to trust herself to her loyal Kinsman and friend. Hammonius usually kept himself busy in the city nosing into the public and private affairs of Rome so that he could send written reports to his queen. While he mingled with the city’s wealthiest inhabitants, he made lucrative contracts for the goods that Kleopatra and her father before her allowed him to export from Egypt tax-free.

  The carriage was so luxurious that its passengers could indulge in conversation without danger of chipping their teeth, even as they wound their way down Janiculum Hill, jostling along on the rural road paved with big stones like an elephant’s toenails. Though the loud trotting of the bodyguards’ horses invaded the carriage, the pair could still converse without yelling. Normally, if one was in a mood to socialize with one’s fellow passengers, even a short carriage ride left one throaty.

  Kleopatra had been avoiding the subject of Archimedes, Hammonius’s protégé, business partner, confidant, and nephew, and she felt the tension of it in the air between them. She was certain that the particulars of her affair with him had been disclosed in detail to Hammonius, though it had occurred on the other side of the world while she had been in exile. Archimedes had indicated that he was going to seek refuge from her betrayal in Rome, and also in Hammonius, whose buoyant spirits would be a soothing emollient to his wounded pride and broken heart.