Cleopatra's Heir

by Gillian Bradshaw

  “Then go buy …”

  Ani’s scowl deepened. “Boy, I’m not buying you a cloak, not when I’ve got perfectly good ones in the warehouse. Besides, you don’t want anything dark, not to travel in, and you don’t want white, either. The dust ruins either in half a day. This,” he shook the cloak out, “this travels well, and won’t mark. This is a good cloak, boy! Even in Coptos. you’d pay fifty drachmae for a cloak like this—and fifty drachmae is a good salary for a month’s work!”

  It took him a moment to make the connection. A salary. Zeus, Ani reckoned that fifty drachmae a month was what his labor was worth—he, Ptolemy Caesar, who’d been worshiped as a god! Speechless with indignation, he could only glare.

  Ani, unimpressed, dropped the cloak on top of him. His stomach seemed to contract away from it, and there was a sudden whiff of carrion. The whole world began to seethe with an inexplicable horror.

  “O Apollo!” he muttered, dreading what came next. He fumbled hurriedly for the remedy, got it to his face. Ani was staring at him. He seized the disputed cloak with his free hand and pulled it over his head to shut out the staring eyes. The stink of carrion drowned the scent of the spices. One breath, two …

  There were fish in the pond. He stretched his hand into the water, trying to touch them, but his arm broke in a slanting line at the surface. The water smelled of decay.

  A man in black was half dragged, half carried past by a party of guards. He was moaning, clutching the bloody stump of his right arm. “They caught him fiddling the accounts,” Eumenes said disapprovingly.

  The coins lay on Eumenes’ eyes like beetles burrowing into the flesh.

  Philadelphus had fallen over and bumped his nose. It was bleeding. The blood poured down over his purple cloak and white-and-gold tunic, and his little face was screwed up and red with crying. Caesarion ran over and picked him up, and the blood ran onto him as well.

  Blood trickled steadily from the back of the man’s head and ran into the stone channels cut into the floor. “You see here the ventricles of the brain,” said a voice from nowhere, and the man’s hand twitched …

  It was hot, and his side hurt. A man was holding his shoulder and staring into his face … a dark, heavy-jawed man … Ani. He looked worried.

  Caesarion turned his face away, pushed the intrusive hand off, found the remedy again, and sat breathing deeply.

  “Sweet Lady Isis!” said Ani.

  There was a silence. Then the Egyptian asked, “What … happened to you?”

  “I had a seizure,” Caesarion replied flatly. “A small one.” He could smell the remedy properly now, a sweet, warm, piercing scent. He imagined the vapors going up into the ventricles of his brain …

  No. Don’t think about it.

  “You didn’t fall over. I thought …”

  “Sometimes I fall over,” he said coldly. “Sometimes I just … have a seizure like that one.”

  There was another silence. Then Ani’s hand came back onto his shoulder and pressed it. Caesarion looked up angrily—and was utterly taken aback by the compassion in the Egyptian’s eyes. “You looked as though you were having a vision of Hades,” Ani said quietly.

  Caesarion did not know how to reply. He stared at the caravan-owner in confusion.

  “Does that happen about once a month, as well?” The voice was still gentle.

  “No,” said Caesarion. He looked away, embarrassed, and wiped his face with the back of a hand. “More often. Every three or four days, when I was at home. But it’s not … not like the big seizures. It’s over in a few minutes, and then I can go on with what I was doing. It isn’t …” He realized sickly that he was going to have to tell Ani more: he would undoubtedly have seizures during the journey, and Ani would be in charge of him. “When I have a big seizure,” he said, nerving himself, “I fall down in convulsions. When I have a small one, I … They tell me that I mutter and stare …”

  “You looked like you could see something terrible,” said Ani. “I shook you and shouted at you, but you didn’t hear me or see me.”

  “I don’t hear or see anything around me—but I don’t fall down, not even if I’m standing or walking when it happens, so it isn’t dangerous. Usually I know when it’s about to happen, though, and I try to sit down, in case the seizure is a big one. I can’t tell from the warning how big it will be, you see, and the fall can be dangerous. So I sit. Apart from that, it probably looks worse than it is. I’m not aware of anything around me between the warning and waking up afterward.”

  “You were sobbing …” Ani was confused, concerned.

  “Memories. I see things that happened before, usually things that frightened me, that I hated. But it’s not … not dangerous. Sometimes I’m a little confused afterward, but that passes quickly. If it happens when I’m in company, I try to get away, but it’s not anything to worry about. You can ignore it. It’s happened a couple of other times since we met, but you didn’t notice because we weren’t speaking together at the time.

  “The big seizures … as I said, they don’t usually happen more than once a month. I’ve had more recently, but that’s because of the heat and the pain and … and the grief. Usually I manage to sit down before it starts, and I’m not hurt. If you’re with me when I have one, don’t do anything about it unless I’m going to knock something over or fall under something. The fit will pass by itself, and nothing that’s done will help; it’s more likely to hurt. After a big seizure I’m in a stupor for a couple of hours—an unusually deep stupor, the doctors say, deeper than those of most other people who have the disease. I don’t feel anything, I don’t know anything that’s happening to me. If it’s possible, I prefer to be left as I am to sleep it off. I hate it when I wake up and find that people have been doing things to me and I have no way of knowing what they’ve done. Obviously, if I fall down on the road you’ll have to move me—but I hope that won’t happen. With luck I shouldn’t have another big seizure until we’ve parted.”

  Ani was still watching him with a sober, pitying expression that confused him, annoyed him, and made him ashamed. “I will pray to the gods that they spare you,” he at last promised solemnly.

  Caesarion looked away. “The gods have no more to do with this than with any other ailment.”

  Ani blew his cheeks out. “Well, but they call it the sacred disease, so it must be special to them. In Coptos some people say it’s caused by demons.”

  “It’s a disease of the brain.”

  “Really?” Ani sounded so intrigued that Caesarion looked back at him in surprise. “Is that what your Greek doctors say? Why do they think that?”

  “The brain is the seat of consciousness and of intelligence. In this disease …”

  “In Coptos they say that the heart is the seat of consciousness.

  “They’re wrong. You can see that plainly. If a man is struck hard above the heart, he may fall over and have trouble breathing, but he won’t lose consciousness. If he’s struck on the head, he will. Men who’ve been wounded in the head may suffer loss of their speech or sight or memory, even after they’ve recovered, and even though their tongues or eyes are unharmed.”

  “This is true!” exclaimed Ani. “I never thought of it. Is that how your Greek doctors reason? What do they say the heart is, then?”

  “A fire, or furnace, which heats the vital spirit and drives it with the blood about the body.”

  “I’ve seen blood vessels in the hearts of chickens and pigs. I hadn’t thought about it, but you’re right, all the blood goes from the heart to the body. So what do your doctors say happens in the sacred disease?”

  Why, he wondered suspiciously, was Ani so interested?—then, looking at the Egyptian’s intent expression, discovered that he knew the answer to that question. Ani was interested because he possessed a forceful and curious mind. If he’d been content with the ideas he was born to, he wouldn’t have come to Berenike. He had seen Caesarion tormented, and he wanted to understand why.

  It was
disconcerting, to find that he knew that about Ani— that, in some peculiar way, he admired it—that he wanted this insulting peasant to … what? Listen to him? Understand him? Like him? He found himself giving the full explanation, as it had been given to him. “Within the brain there are hollow passages for the vital spirit which the doctors call ventricles. In some people of a moist and phlegmatic humor, these can become clogged with phlegm. Then the brain is choked and obstructed, and the body convulses in at effort to clear it.”

  Ani thought about this. “Sort of like a sneeze?” he suggested.

  “Yes,” agreed Caesarion, obscurely comforted. The knifing attacks of memory, the horrors of waking ignorant and unclean after profound absence—no more than a sneeze.

  Ani considered him critically. “So the doctors think you’re of a moist and—what’s the word again?—phlegmatic humor? Isn’t that the one that’s supposed to be cold, sluggish, and unemotional? That’s not how I’d describe you.”

  Caesarion felt his cheeks heat. He had wondered about that himself. “Your bodily humor doesn’t necessarily determine your mental temperament,” he said loftily—though, from all he’d understood, it was supposed to do just that.

  Ani considered that, too. “Your Greek doctors know all this. But they can’t cure you.”

  “No,” he admitted. “I suppose the fault runs too deep. Some of the remedies help, though.”

  “Those herbs?”

  “I think they help. Breathing them is supposed to clear phlegm from the head.”

  “That makes sense. But—avoiding women?”

  His cheeks went hot again. “Anything that adds moisture to the body, or anything that chills it, will aggravate the condition. The body is moistened by congress with women.”

  “You said the heat made it worse.”

  He shrugged. “It feels like that. I suppose it’s simply that all extremes are bad, because they disturb the natural balance of the body.”

  Ani wasn’t satisfied. “It still seems to me that if your doctors had it right, the disease ought to be unknown in the desert and common as fever in swamps. I don’t think they’ve grasped the whole of it. Whatever the cause, I will pray to the gods that you have no trouble on the journey. In the meantime …” he got to his feet and picked up a crumpled heap of orange linen which had been lying neglected by the bedroll, “I’ll see if I can find you a cloak more to your liking.”

  Caesarion found himself unexpectedly embarrassed. In some corner of his mind, he was aware that it was a good cloak—good quality cloth and expensive dyestuffs, at least—and that Ani had been generous in offering it. “You don’t have to do that,” he said impulsively. “I … It’s just that that one is … different … from what I’m used to. I can … get used to it, I suppose. I suppose I have to get used to it.”

  There was a moment of silence. Ani looked at him uncertainly.

  “It will be all right,” said Caesarion. “If you say it will do well for the journey, I’ll trust your judgement. I’m … sorry if I was ungracious.”

  He was ashamed as soon as he’d said it—but he was not certain whether the shame was because he was apologizing to a camel-driver, or because he had, indeed, been ungracious to a man who had been kind to him.

  CHAPTER V

  Melanthe was worried about her father.

  He had left Coptos in the evening, twenty-nine days before. The Nile had been in flood then, a shallow brown lake across the whole countryside, and the town and the villages had been muddy islands. Now the river had gone down again, all the way back to its own channel, and he wasn’t home.

  Tiathres said that yesterday was the very earliest they could have expected him, and probably he wouldn’t be home for another few days. Tiathres, however, was nearly as worried as Melanthe. Barbarians had set off on the road to the coast a few days after Papa’s caravan passed that way—a whole troop of Romans, armed, armored, and grim, with a Greek to guide them and some camels for the luggage. Melanthe’s first, panicked thought when she heard of it was that they’d find her father on the road and kill him. Then she’d reasoned with herself: there was no reason for them to kill him; he wasn’t their enemy. They’d simply rob him. He’d be home early, without the linen and without the cargo of spices he’d gone to Berenike to buy—but he’d be home.

  Only he hadn’t come home early, and three days ago the Roman troop had marched back into the city. They had a lot of Greek prisoners, and their commander announced in the marketplace that they’d taken the camp of the young king Ptolemy Caesarion, and that the king was dead. They had an urn with his ashes in it, wrapped with the royal diadem, and they’d paraded it about the city on a litter draped with the king’s purple cloak. Melanthe’s little brother Serapion, who’d managed to get close enough to see, said that there was blood on the cloak.

  Melanthe was sick at the thought that Papa might have been caught up in this desperate last stand. She wanted to go to the Romans and ask if they’d seen him, but Tiathres forebade it. “He’ll be home,” she told Melanthe, very firmly. “There’s no reason for him to have been anywhere near the king, and if the Romans were chasing the king, they won’t have been interested in caravans. We can’t go questioning the Roman army—who knows what the barbarians might do to us? No: we will keep Ani’s house safe for him to come home to.”

  She had, however, gone that evening to the temple of Isis, and given the goddess a basket of cakes and a necklace as an offering for her husband’s safe return.

  Now the Romans were gone again, in a flotilla of boats down the river, with their prisoners and their luggage and their purple-draped urn, and still Papa wasn’t home. Melanthe got up that morning feeling as though the whole universe were pregnant with catastrophe, and she could find nothing for herself to do except to sit staring wretchedly out at the beaten earth of the courtyard.

  “Melanthe,” Tiathres said, after breakfast, “will you run down to the market for me and see what the news is?”

  Melanthe jumped up and hugged her gratefully. Her stepmother was only ten years older than she was, and had never been like a mother—but she’d always been a wonderful big sister, and kind, to give up this errand to her stepdaughter when she must ache to run it herself. Melanthe ran to fetch her cloak, and called Thermuthion, the household’s eleven-year-old slave girl, to accompany her. They set off into the quiet sunny morning, glad to escape the dreadful silence of the house.

  It was hot, and the air was heavy with the smell of the retreating floods. The house lay about a mile from the town of Coptos, and though the two girls picked their way carefully through the maze of puddles, their clothes were still mud-spattered by the time they reached the marketplace, and their feet were filthy. Ordinarily Melanthe would have tried to wash the mud off before going on into the marketplace—there was always a chance of meeting one of the boys who admired her—but today it didn’t even occur to her.

  The marketplace was half deserted, but there was a knot of people outside the customs house, where the public notices were displayed and where the barbers and water-sellers gathered to collect gossip. Melanthe crossed the square to join them.

  She saw, even before she reached the crowd, that there was a new notice up, a wide sheet of papyrus marked with bold black lettering. She also saw, however, that one of the men who’d clustered about to read it was Aristodemos, formerly her father’s most important customer. She was certain that he must know by now that Papa had gone to Berenike in his place, and she stopped, deciding not to come any closer until he’d gone. He was the richest and most important man in the district, and she was sure that he wasn’t pleased about what Papa had done.

  It was no use. Aristodemos said something about the new notice, glanced round to see how his audience had taken it—and noticed Melanthe, hovering at the edge of the crowd.

  “Ah,” drawled Aristodemos. “You’re Ani’s daughter, aren’t you?”

  He was a tall, loose-limbed, sneering man who always looked as though he were half as
leep, and he managed to look elegant even though his long blue-and-white cloak was as muddy about the hem and his feet as dirty as her own. Melanthe had never liked him. She ducked her head politely and held a corner of her cloak over her face—a piece of modesty that was appropriate in a girl of marriageable age, but also a convenient way to hide her expression. “Yes, Lord Aristodemos,” she said humbly. She found herself wishing that Tiathres had run this errand after all: Aristodemos wouldn’t have questioned Tiathres. She didn’t speak Greek and he refused to speak Demotic. Everyone knew, however, that Ani regularly spoke Greek to all his children, and had paid to have them educated.

  “Your father’s not come back, has he?”

  “No, sir,” Melanthe admitted. It hurt to say it.

  Aristodemos smiled. “He was on the road at the same time as the Romans, wasn’t he? I thought it was much too risky to travel during the war. Your father, of course, thought he knew better … How long has he been away now?”

  Melanthe looked at the ground. She decided that she would have to answer. “Twenty-nine days, sir.”

  “Late.” Aristodemos nodded in satisfaction.

  One of the other men in the crowd stirred. “Berenike and back easily takes that long, if you have business and want to rest the camels,” he objected.

  It was what Melanthe had heard, but Aristodemos plainly wasn’t happy with it. “He’s late,” he declared authoritatively. “It was not a safe time to travel, and he was a fool to go. Tell me, girl: was he intending to talk to Kleon, of the Prosperity?”

  “He didn’t discuss his business with me, sir,” Melanthe said stolidly. That was a lie: Papa talked to her about anything and everything—including the need to make sure that Aristodemos couldn’t interfere with his great venture.

  “He took the linens, though.”

  “Yes, sir.” She couldn’t easily lie about that.

  “A pity. I might have wanted them after all.” Aristodemos turned back toward the new notice and regarded it thoughtfully. Melanthe edged close enough to pick out the heading—she could read, thanks to Papa’s insistence on education. The Senate and People of Rome … she read: and, further down, the words clemency and province and governor. It’s announcing a new administration, she realized, with a thrill of horror. The war’s over, and everything’s going to be orderly and peaceful, so Aristodemos thinks it’s safe to trade after all. He’s going to be furious if Papa succeeded in Berenike!