Cleopatra's Heir

by Gillian Bradshaw

  Dionysos! How stupid—he hadn’t even died when he should. It was like some idiotic comedy, where the hero prolongs his death scene for so long that the rest of the cast pretend to club him over the head and set him on the pyre by force!

  Except that the Romans still hadn’t done so.

  The Romans must have posted sentries. Romans always posted sentries. Antonius was very emphatic about that, and whatever else he was, the emperor Octavian was competent: he’d proved that by beating Antonius. There was no reason to think the camp was unwatched. The officer in charge had been entrusted with a task both important and delicate: he couldn’t be a fool. He would undoubtedly have posted sentries even if he didn’t have thirty-five prisoners and a treasure to guard. There were chests containing fifty talents of gold in that camp, enough to fund a small army for a year! Even if the prisoners were tied up, the Roman officer would have to take steps to see that his own men didn’t pilfer it.

  The gold had been in Caesarion’s tent. Perhaps it was still there, and the Roman commander was sleeping beside it, as Caesarion himself had. Perhaps there were sentries there as well, but they were sitting inside the tent, out of the sun. It was really the most sensible place to sit, if you were a sentry.

  They must be tired after their forced march. It was a long way to Coptos, and farther still to Alexandria, or wherever the Romans had been when they received Rhodon’s message. They had traveled a long way fast, they had accomplished what they set out to do, and now it was very hot and they were resting. No normal sentry would be standing out in the sun, paying keen attention to the empty desert. He would be sitting quietly somewhere in the shade, and if he was watching anything, it wouldn’t be the funeral pyre. There was nothing to fear from the dead.

  Caesarion stood still, gazing stupidly at the camp. He hurt, and he was so tired. He had done everything he could, and he’d been defeated: surely now he could rest? If the stone weren’t so hot he’d simply lie down where he stood. Did he have to try to escape? He’d only fail. He was wounded, and he had no water. He didn’t even have a hat to keep off the sun. He wasn’t a healthy man to begin with, and he’d just woken from a major seizure. Even if the sentries didn’t spot him, he wouldn’t last long in the desert. He’d be lucky if he made it as far as the caravan track two miles away.

  There were waystations on that track, though, where he could find water. Kabalsi, the nearest, was barely five miles from where he stood. He could walk to the port of Berenike in only two days. There was a ship due in Berenike any day now; they’d been waiting for it for half the month. At first they’d planned to wait in the port itself, but Eumenes had been afraid that news of the treasure would leak out and attract robbers. So they’d camped instead in the secrecy of the desert, and Rhodon had betrayed them—but the ship might be in port. It would have friends, supplies, money. It had all been arranged.

  Caesarion felt his eyes start to run, and he struggled to swallow the tears down. The effort hurt his tongue. He wiped at the tears miserably; the moisture was strangely cool on his hot face. He did not want to go on—and yet he had to try. He could not simply give up when there was a possibility that he might escape. His mother the queen had commanded him to flee to safety while she herself stayed in Alexandria to lead the resistance to the Roman invasion. No one had any hope that that invasion could be turned back. She might be suffering the final terrors of the siege that very moment, her only comfort the thought that her eldest son was still free. She would never forgive him if he surrendered and died.

  The pyre had been built on an expanse of flat rock in the center of a wide dry riverbed; the path down to the caravan track ran along the foot of the near cliff, through the middle of the captured camp. Caesarion gazed hopelessly at the rough ground between him and the more distant cliff opposite—then began to stumble across it. Megasthenes lay half on, half off the pyre, arms akimbo, on a scatter of wood. Caesarion bent down—painfully and stiffly because of his wound—and straightened the limp arms, then hunted for the coins and set them back on the sightless eyes. The body was too heavy for him to lift back onto the pyre, but he tugged at the purple awning until it slid forward far enough to cover the dead man’s face. Megasthenes had died for him. He deserved his funeral.

  He picked his way slowly over to the farther cliff, then began the hot trek along it, past the camp and on toward the caravan track two baking miles and two hundred feet below. This cliff faced west, and, with the sun now just past noon, there was no shade even at its foot. The ground was uneven, strewn with rocks, and gave off a shimmer of heat. Caesarion walked very slowly, holding his side. Each step still jarred his wound horribly, and he felt sick and light-headed. He expected a sentry’s challenge with each breath, and he began to count his footsteps for the grim satisfaction of seeing how far he actually got. One, two … He supposed that he was sweating, but his skin was hot and dry as the stone around him: the air sucked up moisture before it could even form a bead. Thirty-five, thirty-six … Herakles, the air was so dry it hurt to breathe. If only this were all over!

  One hundred five, one hundred six … Perhaps he should have walked into the camp and had a drink of water before setting out? No. He had nothing with which to draw it from the cistern, and somebody would be certain to notice him … One hundred eighty-three, one hundred eighty-four … He wondered how badly he was wounded. The bleeding had stopped again, the trickle drying into a cake on his shin and foot, so probably it wasn’t as bad as it seemed. He supposed he could stop and look at the wound, but what was the point? Taking off the tunic would tear the fresh scab and start the wound bleeding again, and there was nothing he could do about it anyway … Two hundred and fifty, two hundred fifty-one … Somebody had probably poured myrrh into the wound, anyway. All the bodies on the pyre had been anointed, and the sweet aroma clung to him as he walked. Myrrh, according to all the doctors, was the finest of all antiseptics. The wound had already been treated, so there was no point looking at it. Three hundred twenty-eight, three hundred twenty-nine … Of course, he was a fool to worry about infection anyway: he was unlikely to live long enough for it to set in.

  Three hundred ninety-four, three hundred ninety-five … If he managed to get past the camp and the sentries, he was probably safe until nightfall. No one was likely to worry about him until they went to look at the pyre and found that he wasn’t there. Four hundred. Then they’d chase after him, of course. Killing him was the whole point of their mission; getting the treasure, just an incidental benefit. He would have to find a hiding place among the rocks by the first waystation. No, he would have to keep walking for as long as he could; otherwise the Romans could post men at the next waystation in either direction and cut him off. Five hundred, five hundred and one … Of course, they’d do that anyway. If he went to the waystations for water, they’d catch him; if he didn’t, he’d die of thirst. Five hundred thirty-two. Apollo and Asklepios, his tongue hurt! If only he had some water, just a little water, to moisten it … Five hundred sixty-nine, five hundred seventy. Oh, it was hopeless, useless! He wasn’t going to get away. What was the point of struggling on, suffering the heat and the pain, when he was going to die anyway? Six hundred.

  He stopped, breathing hard, and looked across to the opposite cliff, expecting to see the camp. It wasn’t there. He blinked, then turned slowly about and looked behind him. Distance and the heat-haze had already reduced it to a pale blur under the red cliff.

  His heart gave a jolt, and all at once he believed that the possibility was real: he might escape. For the first time, he became afraid. He turned away from the camp, and stumbled on.

  The wadi widened as he descended, and eventually he picked his way across to the path, afraid that if he followed the left-hand cliff he might miss the caravan track. He tripped on the rough ground, jarring the wound open again. Another trickle of blood was oozing down his calf when he reached the path, and he paused to wipe it away, so that the Romans couldn’t track him by the spoor—though, as to that, they’
d know at once which way he was headed. There was no escape for anyone without water, and no water apart from that in the buried cisterns in the waystations.

  The east-facing cliff provided some shade, but the heat was still abominable; it made his head ache until he barely noticed the pain in his tongue. He thought of stopping to rest, but decided that he couldn’t risk it. The Romans would come after him as soon as it got dark, and the shadows were lengthening steadily. He plodded on, following the path now, telling himself that he’d already done the worst part.

  By the time he reached the caravan track, he knew that the worst part was still to come. The pain in his head had grown so as to eclipse that in his side, and he felt desperately sick and faint. Kabalsi waystation was still three miles away.

  At this point the caravan trail ran almost due south, and he lost the cliff and the shade it had provided. Now he was in the open, stumbling over a wilderness of beaten soil and dark rock. The sun beat against his scalp like a blacksmith’s hammer, and the scorched earth flung its heat back into his face. He remembered one of the doctors his mother had consulted during the first horrible year of his illness, when he was thirteen and she’d still expected that he could be cured. The man had recommended a course of purgation coupled with exercise, “to sweat the evil out of him.” Caesarion had endured one foul-tasting laxative that made his guts cramp, and another vile potion to make him vomit, and afterwards had been required to run laps of the Garden Court in the sun. He had felt just like this then. On his fifth lap he’d had a seizure, which had at least ensured that that particular doctor was never consulted again …

  He stopped: his stomach was contracting upwards, and he smelled carrion. He sat down quickly, shaking with a profound sense of horror, a fear of something unimaginably worse than the quick death that pursued him, and felt for his feeble little amulet of herbs.

  There was the sound of a flute. His mother, wearing the red serpent crown of Lower Egypt and a robe of gold and crimson, smiled at him from beside an altar. There was blood on her hands. A black lamb lay on the altar, kicking feebly, and a priest was examining its entrails. His head was shaven, and the white linen of his robe was spattered with blood. He looked up, directly into Caesarion’s eyes. His own eyes were very black, like caves in his head. He opened his mouth to speak, but the sound that came out was the high whistling rattle of the sistrum. Suddenly the lamb was a man, and it wasn’t its belly cut open, but his head. “You see here the ventricles of the brain,” said a voice out of nowhere, and Caesarion looked at the oozing cavities in the pulpy gray mass before him. The victim’s hand twitched. “He’s still alive,” Caesarion said in horror—and his tongue hurt.

  He was sitting on burning stone. It was unbearably hot, and he was in pain. He groaned and bent over.

  After a minute, he found that his fingers were looped in the gold chain around his neck, and he hauled the little bag of medicaments up and pressed it against his face. He sat quietly for a long time, breathing in the scent. The events of the past hours gradually reassembled themselves in his mind.

  I tried to hurry, he explained silently. I tried to hurry, but it gave me a seizure. I had to rest. Mother, it was so hot, it hurt to touch the stones, and I was wounded …

  You could still walk? he imagined his mother asking. How bad was the wound, then?

  I don’t know, I didn’t look. I tried to hurry, and I had a seizure …

  A bad one? Did you fall down?

  No, it was one of the little ones. I just remembered things and didn’t know what I was really doing. But it was so hot, and I feel so horrible, please, you must understand, I had to rest …

  If you don’t hurry, the Romans will catch you and kill you. The ship is waiting for you in Berenike, Caesarion. It’s only thirty miles or so, and there’s water just a few miles farther on. You have another four or five hours before they realize you’re missing. Four or five precious hours, and when those hours are gone, they cannot be called back. You must use those hours, Caesarion. I would use them. Your father would have used them. Do not fail me, my son. Do not fail me now.

  Caesarion groaned and rose unsteadily to his feet. The caravan track swam before his eyes. O gods and goddesses, if he could only have some water!

  Clutching his side, wavering like a drunkard, he continued on down the rough trail.

  HE DIDN’T MAKE it to the waystation. The afternoon dissolved again into horror and stink and shards of memory, and when he came back to the present, the shadows were longer. He got up and staggered drunkenly on. Later he woke and found himself lying upon the hot ground. There were blue shadows all around, and the sun was going down. He tried halfheartedly to get up, and at once everything dissolved again.

  He woke again in darkness. It was cold, and his hands and feet were numb. There was a thudding behind him of camel hooves and the creak of harness. He knew where he was—lying in the middle of a caravan track, some distance from the nearest waystation—and he knew that his attempt to escape was almost over. It didn’t seem to matter much, though. If he lay perfectly still, the pain was small and unimportant, and soon it would be gone. He’d always known that he would fail. Probably, he decided, it was for the best. Rhodon was right. He wasn’t worth any more lives.

  The thud-creak-thud of camels drew closer, closer still. Then, sharp and cutting and oddly unexpected, a man’s voice exclaimed in horror, “There’s a dead man in the road!”

  Caesarion lay still, waiting. After a vague period, somebody touched his face, and a voice said, “I think he’s alive.” He closed his eyes.

  He was aware next of water. It ran wonderful and wet into his dry mouth. He swallowed, and his tongue hurt so much it made him gasp, and the water went down his throat the wrong way. He coughed, hurting his side, and tried to drink while he was coughing, and got water up his nose, and sneezed. The water stopped flowing, and he made a noise of protest and reached for it with his hand, and it began again. Nothing, he thought, nothing in all the world is so sweet as water, not gold nor health nor love; nothing. He whimpered with pleasure. The water spilled down the front of his tunic, cold in the night chill, and it was deliriously wonderful.

  “That’s enough for now,” said a voice, and the water stopped. Caesarion lowered his head, found that he was resting it on somebody’s shoulder, but didn’t move. He wanted to thank whoever it was for letting him drink before they killed him, but it seemed too much effort.

  “You’re just a boy!” said the voice, sounding surprised. I was eighteen in June, Caesarion thought indignantly, but his tongue hurt too much to let him say it. “What sort of people would abandon you in a cursed place like this, eh?”

  Caesarion didn’t answer. Some small part of his mind, however, was beginning to stir in puzzlement. The voice wasn’t Roman. It had the wrong accent. It was saying the wrong things. Gods and goddesses, it wasn’t even speaking Greek, it was speaking Demotic Egyptian!

  “Let’s get you up,” said the voice. The speaker tugged at him, and he tired to oblige and stand up. His legs refused to obey him, and his teeth began to chatter. The speaker swore, and somebody else came over and took Caesarion’s arm. An elbow caught him in the ribs, just above the wound, and he caught his breath in pain.

  “What’s the matter?” asked the voice. Then it repeated itself in Greek. “Can you understand me, boy? What’s the matter with you?” It had the singsong accent of Upper Egypt.

  “’M hurt,” mumbled Caesarion.

  “Where?” the voice demanded.

  “Siidge,” Caesarion slurred. “M’ sidge hurt.”

  A hand touched his side, drew back when he whimpered. “All right,” said the voice gently, speaking Demotic again. “All right, all right. Menches, he’s injured on the right side. Bring the donkey: we’ll sit him on that.”

  The next thing he knew he was sitting astride a donkey. There was an arm around his waist, steadying him, and his own left arm was looped around someone’s neck, his head resting on their shoulder. The per
son smelt of old sweat, dirty linen, and fish oil, but his flesh was warm. The night was very cold, so Caesarion did not try to pull away. The man started humming to himself, a soft, rhythmic tune which Caesarion didn’t know. The moon was rising, and the desert was stark black and pale gray. Everything was wonderfully peaceful.

  After a while, the donkey stopped. The smelly man pulled Caesarion off and lowered him gently to the ground. The dust was soft, but it was cold, and he curled up on his left side, shivering. After a while, somebody put a covering over him and he fell asleep.

  When he woke it was hot again, and light. His mind was clearer, but he was thirsty, and very weary. It seemed to require a lot of effort even to shift position. He lay quietly for a time, his eyes open, staring blankly at a camel saddle directly in front of him. After a while he moved his head to look around.

  He was lying under an awning which was anchored at two corners with camel saddles and supported at the other two by thin posts. Outside the makeshift shelter was sunlight, bare earth, and the motionless shapes of camels.

  This wasn’t anyplace he’d ever been before, any situation he’d expected. He thought of the man who’d supported him on the donkey during the night—the smell, the soft humming of a walking song. You’re just a boy! he’d said, in Demotic and a tone of shocked surprise.

  He had no idea who I am, Caesarion thought, bemused by the strangeness of it. I was lying in the middle of the caravan trail, and an ordinary caravan came along, and helped me because …

  … because I was lying there hurt and needed help. How strange.

  It even seemed odd that at a time like this, with Alexandria under siege and Egypt on the brink of subjugation to Rome, there were still caravans on the trade routes—but the war had been going on for a couple of years now, and he supposed that merchants had to trade or starve.