Ave, Caesarion

by Deborah Davitt

  As such, he raised a hand for silence, and then pitched his voice to be heard. “Friends! Fellow Romans! When my father first stood before you to speak, it was at the funeral of his own aunt, Julia. He reminded you all that she descended from kings on one side, and the goddess Venus on the other.” His voice rang back from the marble all around him, and the murmur of the crowd died as they thirstily drank in his words. “Yet she was not a goddess, for all her descent from the gods. Nor was my father a god. Nor am I.” Yet, with that phrase, he also reminded everyone there of what he was—a god-born, if an untested one. “Rome has gods in plenty,” he went on as people around him frowned. The mob did not like having its will thwarted. “My father never desired worship—only your trust. Trust me now, as you trusted him, and know that the gods speak through me, their servant. And they say that no mortal should be worshipped as they are.” He turned and regarded Octavian for a moment.

  “For example, it has been the custom in Egypt to worship the pharaohs. There are priests in Thebes even now who lead the faithful in prayer to my mother . . . and to me. This is a custom that I intend to abolish. For I know that I, like my father, am but a man.” He caught what looked like an approving nod from Cicero, and exhaled. It couldn’t be for the quality of his oration, which was flat and unbalanced, but for the sentiments it expressed. “I am not here today to speak of my father’s death,” he went on now, “but to celebrate his life, and express my gratitude for the services he has rendered unto Rome.” Back safely into his prepared remarks, he could relax a little. And gradually, he felt the crowd accept the image of Caesar, not as a god, but as a man.

  That night at the funeral feast, eating the roast flesh of the sow sacrificed at his father’s grave, and drinking conditum paradoxum, the heavily sweetened and spiced wine served at such affairs, Caesarion tasted something bitter in his drink, and set the cup aside. Lepidus, seated to his right, and substantially tipsy himself, mistook Caesarion’s cup for his own, took it in hand, and quaffed it.

  Two minutes later, the venerable general doubled over on his dining couch. Saliva frothed at his mouth, as from a rabid dog’s, and sweat poured down his face in rivulets. Caesarion stood beside him, hands on his shoulders, letting the power of Isis flow into Lepidus’ frame. Don’t die. I need you. Rome needs you.

  The general’s eyes closed, and Caesarion leaned forward, checking for breath. “He’s unconscious, but alive,” he announced to the shocked onlookers. “Get him to a bed, and call for a medicus. Also, don’t let anyone leave the villa—not even a servant. I want to question them all.”

  Antony, who’d been seated at a different couch, picked up the cup, sniffing it. “Impossible to tell what poison was used,” he said. “Concealed in the spiced wine—a clever trick.” He frowned. “You drank from the same cup, lad. Do you eat poisons every day, like Mithridates, that it did not affect you?”

  Caesarion shook his head. “It may have been painted on the rim,” he answered, a well-rehearsed response. “My lips must not have touched where Lepidus’ did.” Never show your full strength, his father’s voice came back to him. Not until you need to show it. Conceal it, harbor it, and then use it, effectively and devastatingly.

  Hours later, one of the servants hired for the feast was found dead, dangling by the knotted cord of her own stola, from a tree branch in the garden. “The poison was aconite,” Cleopatra informed Caesarion, her eyes dark and angry. “The trail ends with her, unless we can conjure spirits who can tell us from whose hand came the coins in her purse.”

  Exhausted in body and soul, for it was now past midnight, and healing others deeply drained him of his vital energies, Caesarion shook his head. “I suspect Octavian, or perhaps one of Cato’s grandchildren. Poison isn’t Antony’s style. Father always considered him a good soldier. Honorable, after his fashion.” He paused. “But without proof, I cannot accuse.”

  Cleopatra put a hand on his shoulder. “Tomorrow,” she said softly, “you will be Rome. You must act decisively, and sometimes outside the laws that Romans so cherish. Be more Roman than they are, for so long as you stand on their soil. And when you go to Egypt, as you must, be more Egyptian than any there whom you rule.” Her eyes glittered.

  “Malleolus and the rest of the men are certain that a civil war is coming.” The words felt like a confession, wrenched from him.

  “Power struggles are endemic, my son.” Her voice sounded like ashes. “I fought my war against my brother, and your father aided me. Now, it’s your turn.”

  “Civil war has gutted this land. It’s time for something else, Mother. A civil peace, perhaps.” He sighed. “I just don’t know how to achieve it.” And in those words, a world of defeat. “Mother, how do I reach for all of old Cicero’s republican ideals of truth and justice, which I know that my father prized . . . in a world in which no one else holds to those ideals?”

  “Ruthlessness,” she replied. “It’s the language your father spoke to them. For all their pretty words about law and order and beauty and truth? Romans only understand a fist wrapped in iron.”

  He gave her a long, considering glance. “I need to split Antony and Octavian, somehow. Get one of them firmly on my side.” His eyes burned, for all his god-born strength. “I can’t tie Alexander to either of their daughters. I may need him in Egypt.” A nod from her prompted him to continue. “I won’t tie myself to them, either,” he added. “Father was right. I need a Roman bride—” Be more Roman than the Romans themselves, he thought, “but not their kin.”

  “You need a blood-tie that promises one of them power and access—but choose the less dangerous of them. Antony.”

  Caesarion’s stomach turned. “One of my sisters could marry Antony.” A grimace. He’d been raised in the knowledge that if somehow, his father were deposed, and Caesarion escaped to Egypt and ruled there, that one of his younger sisters would have to become his wife. The idea didn’t disturb him; duty rarely did. But it also wasn’t his preference. However, giving twelve-year-old Eurydice or ten-year-old Selene to that . . . voluptuary old man sickened him.

  “No! Not that.” His mother’s face looked stricken. “Not them. They’re . . . far more sheltered than I was, at their age.” Ironic words, considering she had been brought up in a king’s palace.

  “You just told me to be ruthless.”

  Her eyes gleamed, ophidian, in the low light of the lamps streaming out onto the small portico in which they stood. “In this case, my son, I will be your bond. Antony may like his women younger than I am now, but he has lusted after me for decades. The reason he was dismissed from your father’s staff was his renewed attempt to seduce me ten years ago.” She bared her teeth momentarily. “Offer me in marriage, my son. It can’t be carried out till our year’s mourning is complete, of course, but the offer alone will gain you his attention.”

  Caesarion shook his head. “I can’t ask you to do that.” He searched wildly for reasons not to agree. “You were married to Caesar. Any other marriage would be a step down—”

  “You aren’t asking. I’m offering.” Her voice held tears, but also power. “And if I find that I cannot tolerate his advances? Once your position is secure, I have alternatives.” She lifted her hand, and a snake formed of blue light blazed around her wrist momentarily. The spirit’s bite left no mark on its victims, but brought a swifter and surer death than the aconite that had poisoned Caesarion’s cup this evening.

  Part of him shuddered at the cold certainty in his mother’s voice and mien. The rest of him accepted her for who and what she was: Cleopatra, daughter of the Nile. “I’ll speak to him in the morning,” he replied, his voice thick. Here is the true measure of ruthlessness. She’s willing to do anything to assure that her children survive and prosper. “Before I go before the Senate.” A pause as he struggled for the words. “Thank you, Mother.”

  ____________________

  Quintilis 10, 15 AC

  Caesarion met with Antony in the morning to discuss a tie of marriage between
them. A queen, a former empress, offered as bait to a man who’d been born a plebeian, and now held the mob of Rome in the palm of his hands. The look of surprised delight on Antony’s face couldn’t entirely hide the lust in his eyes, and Caesarion rigorously repressed any thoughts of his mother in this man’s arms.

  At noon, he had to make the long walk through Rome, unarmed and unarmored, to the Forum. Alexander insisted on walking with him, and Cleopatra saw them off, unable to attend the investiture, for foreign kings and queens were forbidden to step on the sacred soil of Rome. “Fifteen years ago, I watched your father leave just this way,” she murmured, her voice catching. “If Brutus hadn’t told him of the conspiracy—if Brutus hadn’t given his life to save him from the assassins . . . you and I would both be dead, my son.”

  Caesarion touched his mother’s arm. “But we’re not. And I do not intend to die today.” He clapped Alexander on the shoulder, and the two set off, the sun warming the folds of their purple-trimmed togas. While he wasn’t supposed to have any guards, he could see Malleolus trailing after them, his eyes on the crowds lining the streets to cheer and throw flowers at the sons of Caesar.

  In sight of the Forum, the screams began. Caesarion swung around, and saw men with long knives erupting out of the crowd from both sides of the street. Seven of them, he realized distantly, grabbing Alexander by the arm and trying to get his younger brother behind him. And then they were on them.

  People screamed and ran, or surged in on all sides, trying to catch the assailants’ arms. But where Caesar had been fifty-five when he’d been attacked in this fashion, Caesarion was eighteen—and god-born.

  The first knife came down on his left forearm, raised to block the strike, and he felt the impact against the bone—but it was dull, as if he’d been hit with a stick. He caught the attacker’s forearm with his left hand, trapping the blade, and stepped in, punching his attacker in the throat as he stripped the blade away, taking it for his own. But the man tucked his chin, turning a lethal shot into a more glancing blow. In response, Caesarion spun, turning his back to the man. In these tight quarters, the move held an attack, as he brought the knife back, slicing deeply into his opponent’s thigh, near the groin. He’ll bleed out from that.

  The turn also let him see the two men who’d been behind him as they moved in to attack. He ducked as one knife bloodlessly clipped his brow, and a second knife thudded against his shoulder.

  Dizzying awareness that there were more assailants to his right; that Alexander was struggling with them, too, trying to wrestle the knives from the grasps of men who’d clearly fought in the legions, and who wore, damnably, the togas of citizens. You are my people! Caesarion wanted to shout. I’m one of you! I’ve fought beside you! We’re brothers, you and I!

  But it hadn’t mattered to the conspirators fifteen years ago, and it didn’t matter to these men, now. Caesarion spun, kicked one of his attackers in the groin, and managed to slash the throat of a third with the knife he’d taken from the first. A brief glimpse of Malleolus entering the fight, trying to get to Alexander, and then a sickening cry of pain from Alexander himself, as his brother went down under two more men. This pair now surged forward, trying to drive Caesarion to the ground, where they could hold him down and stab at will.

  Except Caesarion couldn’t be dragged down. A man landed on his shoulders, and his knees flexed slightly. He turned his face away from the blade scraping uselessly at his cheek. A second man charged into him, trying to tie up his arms. He kicked the man in front of him away, reached behind himself, and got a hold on the head of the man grappling him. Then he dropped himself forward, throwing the man over his own head and on top of the man he’d just kicked away. The two hit the hard pavement of the street in a tangle of limbs, and Caesarion dropped to a crouch, driving his knife home into two exposed throats.

  A quick glance to verify that Malleolus, bleeding freely, stood over Alexander’s crumpled form, fending off two more men to his right. With no threats behind him, Caesarion moved forward, inexorable as death, and the two men menacing Malleolus turned away from the centurion, towards him now. Which proved a mistake as Malleolus, with a knife taken from an attacker’s hands, stepped in behind one of them and drove the blade into his back, threading between ribs to find lung.

  The eyes of the last man appeared lost as he faced off against Caesarion. He knows he’s defeated, Caesarion thought, and shouted, “Surrender, and tell me who else is involved—”

  “Death to tyrants! Death to those who would sully Rome with foreign blood and foreign queens!” And the man attacked again, in the sure knowledge that death awaited him, no matter what his actions now were.

  Caesarion let him come. Let the knife impact on his chest. Saw it bounce away, and heard the hush of the crowd as he caught the man’s hand in his own, snapping the wrist with a twist. And then he drove the knife, still in the man’s hand, into the assailant’s belly. That’s a slow death, he thought distantly, turning back towards Malleolus and Alexander now.

  “Are you all right?” he started to ask, and then the words glued themselves to his tongue, for Malleolus had just turned Alexander over, revealing the knife buried deep in the boy’s chest.

  His brother opened his eyes as Caesarion gathered him up in his arms, blood spreading over the white toga he’d been so proud to wear. “Sorry,” Alexander apologized, and the word burned in Caesarion’s mind. “I . . . couldn’t stop them . . . .”

  My brother is dying, and he’s apologizing for not being able to stop assassins sent to kill me. Numbness spread through him, and Caesarion took an experimental stride towards the Forum. The blood of his attackers had soaked his toga, and now his brother’s blood, hot and wet, trickled down his arms. “Hold on,” he told Alexander, his throat constricting. I can’t lose both him and Father in the same ten days. “I can heal you. But the Senate has to see you. They have to see us. Or they’ll never understand. So hold on.”

  He sped to a trot, and the citizens of Rome, always keen for a spectacle, trailed along behind him.

  Alexander’s breathing was labored as they entered the Forum, and the senators gathered there spooled forward from their seats like threads from a loom, gathering on all sides. Staring like the mob outside. Everyone in Rome loves a show, Caesarion reflected distantly. The bloodier the spectacle, the better.

  He settled Alexander on the only chair here with a back—their father’s throne, and how bitterly the senators had begrudged Caesar a chair different from the traditional curule—the knife still protruding from his thin chest. Then he pulled the blade out, tossing it away before planting his hands on his brother’s body. “Heal me,” Alexander begged, his voice barely audible.

  “I’m trying,” Caesarion whispered, crouching down to speak in his brother’s ear. The power of Isis built in him, but he could feel death rising in his brother’s body. Please, my lady, he begged silently. Take whatever you wish of me. But do not let my brother die. Not for me. “I should have done this in the street.” I wasted time. I wasted my brother’s life so that these men, with their Roman rationalism, could see both the extent of his wounds, and my ability to heal them. “Forgive me.”

  He stroked Alexander’s short hair, and swallowed a spasm of grief as his brother’s breathing hitched. And then stopped. My sacrifice was not accepted. For all the powers of the god-born . . . I too, must accept when the answer of the gods is no. For I am but a man. Bitter tears burned his throat, but he could not let them fall.

  Voices swept through his mind then, overwhelming the chatter of the senators around him. Voices that he’d lived with all his life, but which usually spoke to him in dreams. My gift is more than just healing, Isis whispered in his mind. I also bring rebirth. But at a price. Nothing from nothing, as you mortals say. A life for a life. But choose wisely.

  Her voice seemed distant compared to the thunder that was Mars in his ears. You know what you must do. My people have bled themselves dry, throwing themselves upon one another for gener
ations. Find your strongest enemy, and defeat him decisively. The rest will hesitate to attack, and may even surrender.

  It was strange, how much the voice of Mars sounded like the voice of his own father.

  Staring at his brother’s face, Caesarion came back to himself, realizing that Cicero and Octavian had pushed through the crowd to stand close now. Cicero shook his gray head sadly. “I wish that I had not lived to see this once, let alone a second time,” he said, his voice stilling the crowd. “Our sacred Forum, profaned with blood.”

  Coldness filled Caesarion. No rage yet, no fury. Just emptiness. He stood, touched a ring on his finger, and whispered a Name under his breath. “Release the illusions you hold over me,” he murmured to the attendant spirit his mother had bound to him at birth.

  Are you certain? These illusions were intended to protect you—

  They need to see who I am.

  As you wish.

  Caesarion looked down. He hadn’t seen his own skin, uncovered by illusion, since the age of twelve, when the strength of Mars had first manifested itself. Thus, even for him, seeing the additional muscle that had developed over the past years came as a surprise. His frame didn’t seem bulky, but definitely appeared that of an adult man in the prime of life, not that of a callow youth.

  The senators around him recoiled, seeing evidence of magic used first-hand. Rome paid heed to its gods, practiced auguries, and gave daily sacrifices to house-spirits, the lares and penates. But magic, true magic, as practiced in Hellas, Egypt, and Persia, was little known here, and was viewed with suspicion.

  Into the pool of silence that had gathered at Cicero’s words, Caesarion now spoke, raggedly, and with only his native eloquence. “My lords, I allow you to see me now, for who and what I am. My parents both believed that my true strength should remain hidden. They feared that while I am god-born of Mars—a god of Rome!—that Romans would not permit me to live to adulthood if they truly understood what I am.” He gestured to his brother’s corpse, and now the rage began to build, almost choking him. “I see now how wise they were to practice this deception.”