Ave, Caesarion

by Deborah Davitt

  Caesarion shot his mother a concerned look. “Not Father’s falling sickness?” he asked quietly.

  Cleopatra shook her head sharply, but Eurydice reached out and touched his wrist, giving him a slight shock of surprise. “No. I’ve . . . always seen the colors, on and off. Usually around you. They were like a cloud, when the spirits masked you.” She closed her eyes, her voice drowsy. “Like a black patina over silver. Couldn’t hide what you were. Could always see the shape under it.”

  Caesarion stared down at her, not knowing what to make of her words. Eurydice opened her eyes again, and this time, he went rigid with shock, because the dark color had vanished, replaced instead with the golden gleam of a hawk’s, her pupils unnaturally small and focused. “I’m flying,” she whispered, an expression of peace crossing her face. “Oh, it’s so beautiful here, over the land. Everything is so small. I can see the sea from here—dark in the last light of the sun. And there’s a city on the shore. Red tile roofs. Whitewashed walls on the buildings. Its arms reach out to encircle the harbor, but there’s a chain between two towers on either side of the harbor itself. I can see the seaweed wrapped around the links. Glistening in the sun.” Her voice remained drowsy. “Another tower on an island further from the chain, and two more on the headlands.”

  This entirely described the city of Brundisium as Caesarion had been studying it in his maps. She could have seen it in his dispatches, but the colors, the details? The red roofs and white walls tallied with his own early memories of riding there, cradled in his father’s arms. But she’d never been to the city in her life.

  She rocked a little in the bed, letting her hands fall from her head, opening as if to embrace someone, or to catch the wind like . . . wings. “There are men in the fields outside the town. Digging deep, but not to plant seeds. They’re planting stakes. Covering the ditches with cloth tacked into the ground. Setting fresh dirt and dead grass atop that. Like traps for game, but it’s men they hunt.” Her expression tightened, and her hands slid back to her temples. “Why does it have to hurt so much?” Eurydice wailed softly, tears filling her eyes. “I just want to fly like this, fly away from the pain and not come back—”

  Caesarion’s fingers caught his sister’s, and he was suddenly painfully aware of his own heartbeat. Oh, gods. Mother Venus, Father Mars, let her be god-born. Let her be god-born, like me. I’ve been the only one of my kind since I was born. Since revealing my full powers, I’ve watched people pull away from me—even my own kin. Is it so much to ask that there . . . could be someone else like me, in all the world? He leaned down and whispered to Eurydice now, softly, “Come back, dear one. You’re showing me what I need to know about the city we’re here to take. But if you leave, I won’t have your help. Men will die, whose lives you could have saved.” He cast about for something else he could say to her, but felt stymied. Duty seemed a hollow thing in the face of so much pain as she ground her fingers into her temples once more. “Sister, I need you. You’re . . . you might be like me.” He swallowed, painfully aware of the presence of his mother and other siblings in what might be a moment of weakness. “Don’t leave me alone.” It’s a selfish thing to ask, perhaps. But don’t fly away in the first moment that I realize that you might be what I am.

  Eurydice lurched upwards, her other hand reaching blindly for something. “Parchment,” she whispered. “Charcoal, something—”

  A mad scramble ensued, and Cleopatra found her own dispatch case, giving Eurydice the back of a piece of papyrus sent from Egypt and a charcoal stick. And Caesarion watched in fascination as his sister drew a map of Brundisium, correct in every detail, and began sketching in where she thought she saw defensive ditches that would chew up his legions like teeth, and force the survivors to circle around to the sides of the city. Limiting their mobility and ensuring that they’d be fighting uphill against an entrenched force that could fire down at them from the towers and walls. And then she eased. Her eyes turned dark once more, and she fell into a light, restless sleep, leaving Caesarion to stare at his mother in shock.

  “If this is true, it’s a damned clever plan,” he said after a moment, staring at the papyrus in his hands. “I need to send scouts to confirm it—I can’t risk men’s lives on a vision.”

  “Roman generals have risked men’s lives on the flight of eagles before,” Cleopatra reminded her son dryly. “Divining the whim of the fates from how birds of prey dip and play in the air.”

  “This information does seem somehow more . . . complete,” he acknowledged tightly. “But if she’s wrong, and men die, then what? I’ll have sent men to their deaths on the word of a girl. The Legions would rebel. And rightly so.” He gave his mother a direct look. “Confirmation. Then action.” He stared at Alexander and Selene—his youngest sibling squeaked and couldn’t meet his eyes. “Not a word of this outside this tent, understood?”

  He leaned down and brushed a kiss on Eurydice’s dark hair, tasting the unexpected salt of her sweat. “What can be done for her? A medicus doesn’t seem the best option.” His hands didn’t tingle as he held his sister’s. There was nothing wrong with her that he could heal—but then, he’d never been able to heal disease, either.

  Cleopatra shook her head, her expression tight. “She’s been having vivid, extraordinary dreams, as well as the headaches. This is the first waking vision. These are usually signs that someone should undergo training with the mage-priests of Thebes. Though there has not been one such in my family line since the time of Ptolemy himself.” She looked at her daughter, her lips thinning. “If she’s not trained, she might start to use the powers inadvertently. Harming herself, or those around her.”

  He frowned. “She’s not god-born, then?” Disappointment, though quickly masked, smote him. “Her eyes—”

  “I honestly do not know what she is,” his mother admitted, her tone disturbed, and for the first time, distraught. “I don’t wish her to go to Thebes and disappear into a temple there. I had intended to train her as my replacement in Egypt.”

  Caesarion opened his mouth, then closed it again, his mind whirling. There were at least a dozen ramifications to that statement, and Egypt was, as his mother had repeatedly reminded him, a land of nuance—and outsiders who did not grasp the nuances of the region inevitably failed to hold Egypt. Rather than objecting blindly, Caesarion replied, carefully, “It would be better to have an active ruler there, than an absentee one. The Roman prefects there are capable, I’m sure, but the people would be grateful to have their own ruler returned to them.” He paused, and then added, not liking the notion, “You and Antony could go there, once we’ve wrapped up this little insurrection. But for the moment, I need you both here.” Where I’m still learning which reports are the important ones, and where I really need one of my better generals at hand.

  Cleopatra waved. “A subject for another time. For the moment, I will send to Thebes and have one or two of the priest-mages sent here to evaluate Eurydice.” She frowned. “They may insist that she return with them to be trained.” A grimace. “I detest this notion.”

  “They can train her here on Roman soil just as well as at Thebes,” Caesarion returned tightly. “Just like any other pedagogue. The family stays together, until there is no choice about parting.” He released his sister’s hand, and touched the charcoal lines on the sketch. “Aside from which? Her skills, if she can use them without pain . . . might make this war quite a bit shorter.”

  A disquieting thought struck him as he pushed back out into the public area of the tent. Would I ask her to use her gifts, even given the pain I saw today? If it meant saving the lives of my men, would I risk hers? I know that I must be ruthless. But can I be so much so?

  He didn’t have an answer for that question, so he put it from his mind.

  ____________________

  Martius 19, 15 AC

  The dream came, as it had at least once a month for over a year now. Sometimes the details differed slightly, but it was always the same dream.

&
nbsp; She saw a savage eagle on the wing, and coursed through the clouds alongside him. His eyes were not golden, as were so many birds of prey, but the red of drying blood. Lesser birds scattered from the sky as his shadow fell across them, yet an entire flock of ravens rose to harass and peck at him, forcing the eagle to land in a tree, the tallest in a great forest. And then thousands of birds emerged from the forest’s leaves to chirp and sing their homage. Thrushes and larks and even the timid nightingale all gave the eagle the bounty of their song. But the ravens, ever quarrelsome, cawed and cackled at him that he must take a mate, and secure the succession of the kingdom of the birds.

  The eagle nodded regally, and gave a great cry. A hawk appeared, soaring in the sky overhead—a hawk with all the colors of the rainbow in her wings, like the images of Isis on temple walls—and the bird landed beside the eagle. Smaller and less mighty, but two of a kind.

  The ravens cawed and called and heckled, trying to tear the feathers from the wings of the hawk, and pushed forward a female corbie, one of their own daughters. And with a look of sorrow at the hawk, and infinite patience, the eagle accepted the corbie as his queen.

  But the corbie’s nest was empty of eggs the next year, and the next, and the next, too. For when she lay her eggs, she pecked them open and devoured her own young before they could hatch. While on a tree far distant—a palm in the middle of the desert—the hawk had laid a single perfect egg in the first year, which hatched into a pure white eagle chick, with the same red eyes. And in the fifth year of her exile, she and the chick flew to the great conclave of the birds, and presented the eagle with his heir.

  Oh, how the ravens heckled and jeered then! They plucked at the feathers of the hawk mother and the eagle’s son, but the corbie wife was sent back to her kin in disgrace. But still, the ravens would not allow the eagle to acknowledge his mate as his queen. They offered him instead a vulture. “Surely she is close enough to being a bird of prey!” they cried.

  And with a look of repugnance, the eagle suffered himself to crown a second scavenger as his queen, and bade the hawk farewell; their son, the white eagle, would stay with him. And mourning, the hawk made her way back to her palm tree in the desert, and prepared her nest. And there she laid two more eggs, just as perfect as the first, but when they hatched, they were hawks like herself, one male and one female. While in the great forest, the vulture queen laid no eggs at all, for the eagle would not touch her. And when she died, choking on a bone, the eagle came to the desert on his great wings, searching for his love once more, and the hawk showed him his children, and they preened each other’s feathers gladly.

  But still the ravens cawed and protested, and a third time, the eagle sent the hawk away. This time, the ravens offered him a tiny wren as his queen. And he suffered himself to mate with her—but the egg the wren carried rent the poor creature from the inside, and she died, unable to pass the egg into the nest. While once again, in her desert nest, the hawk raised a final chick, another hawk like herself, but healthy and perfect in every aspect.

  And after that, the hawk grew ill, and died. But her four children and the eagle mourned her death, and the white eagle would rule the kingdom of the birds after his father’s death. And there was nothing that the crows and corbies could do to prevent that.

  Eurydice snapped awake, sweating and breathing in harsh, rapid pants. The dream always felt so real. And every time she experienced it, her heart and throat ached when she awoke, moved close to tears in sympathy for the plight of the hawk, the eagle—even the wren, poor creature, who surely never chose a union so unequal, and so apt to cause her death.

  A glance around the stifling confines of the tent told her that only Selene remained here, asleep; her mother and brothers must have already awoken and breakfasted. Oh, no. They let me sleep because they think that I’m weak. A child. When I’m not. She’d bled for the first time a year ago—which was, now that she thought about it, the first time she’d dreamed this way, too.

  Chest still aching, Eurydice hastily rolled out of the stiff camp bed and blinked as one of their servants entered, unbidden. “Nesa?” The servant had been with their family since before Eurydice had been born, and had wet-nursed both Alexander and herself.

  Silently, the Egyptian woman poured fresh water in a basin, and helped her bathe—a proper oil and strigil regimen would have to wait till they were once more inside the confines of a town with access to baths. And then the servant helped her pull a clean, long tunic over her head, and settled a shorter stola over that, before moving to tie a ribbon under the girl’s burgeoning breasts. Eurydice stopped the woman. “My mother says that I should not dress as a woman yet,” she whispered in Egyptian. “My childhood clothes and toys haven’t been burned, along with my lunula.”

  The lunula, like a boy’s bulla, was a charm meant to protect a child until adulthood. Then a girl’s amulet, which tied her to the lares of her father’s house, was burned. A boy’s was set aside, unless he needed special protections against jealousy in adulthood, by having attained too much glory, too quickly. Her father had worn his bulla until the day of his death.

  “The queen changed her directions this morning,” the woman replied expressionlessly. “She did not offer her reasons to one such as I.” Nesa was, in fact, Egyptian nobility, given by her family to serve the goddess-queen Cleopatra years ago. But while she had a bond of deep affection to the children she’d nursed . . . she also knew her place.

  Eurydice patted the woman’s shoulder lightly. “Peace. I will ask her when she has less on her mind.” Still, she wondered at the change as Nesa settled the second ribbon, this one set just above her hips. “I thought that I needed to remain unmarriageably young in the eyes of the other great houses. Especially with my mother’s upcoming wedding to Antony—”

  A whisper of movement behind the curtains cut off her words, and then, to her relief, her mother stepped past the folds of fabric. “Do not even speak his name in the privacy of this language,” Cleopatra warned Eurydice softly. “There are too many ears in this camp.”

  Chastened, Eurydice lowered her eyes. “Yes, Mother.”

  “Leave us.” A gesture sent Nesa scurrying away, and Cleopatra came and took her daughter’s arm, glancing at the still-slumbering Selene. “My father was deposed when I was eleven,” she reminded Eurydice quietly. “He fled to Rome with me for three years. When a delegation from Egypt came to Rome to plead with the Senate not to allow my father to return and rule, my father had their leader poisoned.” A grim curl of her mother’s lips. “And when we returned, he had my older sister, Berenice, who had assumed the crown, executed. I had stand there, expressionless, and watch her die. Along with another sister. The other Cleopatra of my generation.”

  “I know,” her daughter replied, her own lips tightening. She knew all these details. Hearing them repeated so baldly, so coldly, in her mother’s soft voice, still gave her chills.

  “Then my father, that weak, drunk old man, made me his co-ruler.” A flicker of expression, unreadable to Eurydice. “I was eighteen when he finally died. I continued his policy of working with Rome—and after I’d been ruling the country in everything but name for three years—since I was fifteen—he ensured that in his will, that my younger brother should be my co-ruler.” Cleopatra’s face had hardened into stone. No marble visage could have looked colder or more remote. “And so I was married to my dimwitted ten-year-old brother. He stumbled into my bedchamber when he was thirteen to consummate the relationship, shortly before his supporter, the eunuch Pothinus, managed to wrest control of the government from my hands.”

  Eurydice swallowed. “Mother, why are you telling me these things?” she whispered.

  A smile crossed Cleopatra’s face then, and she reached out to touch her daughter’s face. “Because one of my greatest wishes for you, my darling, was that you would be given time to be a child. That the world would not land upon your shoulders as early as it did mine, and that the burden of terrible choices would not fall
so quickly to you.” A quick, humorous smile. “Presenting myself to your father, smuggled into his presence inside of a rug was one of my better choices. But so many others that I made when I was young were . . . not the choices that I would make today. I often felt I needed to be more decisive, more firm, than any man. That inclined me towards snap judgments.”

  Eurydice’s throat tightened further. “You hoped this for me.” It didn’t take much genius to understand the implications. “Such is no longer your hope?”

  “The world has come for you. I can hold it back no longer. Nor should I, if you are ready to meet it.” A slightly critical glance at her clothing. “If we were in Egypt, I would have had Nesa prepare you a kalasiris, one with thin straps, so that your breasts would be bare today. Your first day as a woman, and not as a girl. But our Roman friends would consider this ‘immodest.’” A sigh and a roll of her eyes. “This, from savages who wear impure cloth made from animal fibers.”

  Eurydice ducked her head, smiling a little at the joke, and with the pleasure of being included as an adult in this conversation. “But you find them useful, in spite of their savagery?”

  “Some of them. Your father, certainly. He helped me in many ways.” Cleopatra held up a finger, as if just recalling something important. “Oh, and remind me to have a long discussion with you tonight about sexual pleasure. If you’re ever married to a Roman man, the chances of you finding any pleasure in his bed are marginal at best—your father was, ah, rather more widely educated than most patricians in such matters—”

  “Mother!” The word came out as a squeak of strangled embarrassment.

  “I speak nothing more than the truth. If you’re unfortunate enough to be married to a Roman, you will need to know precisely what gives you pleasure. If you’re fortunate, you might find him amenable to being instructed. If you’re unfortunate, at least you’ll be able to pleasure yourself when he’s done and snoring.” A snort. “Of course, if my plans for you come to fruition, then this won’t be an issue at all.”