Cleopatra's Heir

by Gillian Bradshaw

  He would continue to conceal the truth, he realized, because he was ashamed. King Ptolemy Caesar ought to stand in that hall of statues, regal and serene, and he, bloody and tear-stained and diseased, could not.

  “And the queen?” the priest asked in a low voice. “Did you know her as well?”

  He caught his breath painfully. “Yes.”

  “Ah.” After a moment, the man went on. “I met her once, when she stopped here on her way to Thebes. I thought her the greatest and most godlike being I have ever encountered. Tell me, since you were in the party she trusted to accompany her son—did she ever say anything about … about what her supporters should do if … when the war was lost?”

  Caesarion looked into the worried face. “She said that they should do what was necessary to save themselves,” he declared without hesitation. Cleopatra had, in fact, discussed it very little, except to curse those supporters who fell away before the end. “Sir, your wife has mentioned that you have been wondering whether you should swear loyalty to Rome and allow them to confiscate the treasury of your temple. I can tell you that the queen would wish you to do nothing else. The lives of her supporters were dear to her, and I think she would have agreed with you that we honor our gods by living worship, and not by self-destruction. You were right to say that, and I was acting from passion, not reason. She has gone to join her ancestors, and for you to swear loyalty to the new Lord of Egypt is no treachery. Remember, also, that the Roman emperor is the adopted son of Caesar, whom the queen loved. Though she opposed Octavian, she did not consider him unworthy.”

  The priest’s face brightened and his shoulders sagged in relief. Behind him, his wife beamed at Caesarion gratefully. Caesarion blinked, startled by the strength of his own pleasure in that gratitude, in the knowledge, amid the bloody shambles of his life, that he had done one small thing right.

  CHAPTER VII

  It was dark when they left the priest’s house. Arion was not quite steady on his feet, and Melanthe watched him warily, wondering whether he was more likely to faint or to have a fit. She thought he’d had a fit while they were getting him to the priest’s house, but he might simply have fainted: they’d all been in such a state that it was impossible to say anything for certain. At least he seemed calmer now, though perhaps that was simply the drug he’d been given. She shut her eyes for a moment, trying to blot out the image of Arion’s wild-eyed stare as he hacked at his hand. Maybe he’d been in a fit then, and that was why he’d done it. Or did the sacred disease unbalance your mind even when you weren’t actually having a seizure?

  At least they looked respectable now, and attracted no attention from the few people still about. Their cloaks were still wet, but the night was hot, so that was no hardship, and the darkness hid the damp. Arion was wearing his hat again, which concealed the ragged mess he’d made of his hair—not that anyone would have noticed too much, in the dark. His face, in the light of the occasional torch affixed before a grand house, was white and haggard, but reserved.

  “They were good people,” remarked Tiathres, meaning the priest and his wife. “If there’s time, I’d like to go back there tomorrow and give them some linen to say thank you. And we could make our offering to the Savior Gods.”

  “I think they’re going to be busy tomorrow,” said Melanthe doubtfully. “They said that the Roman general is coming into the city to take oaths.” The thought of a whole Roman army encamped somewhere nearby was alarming, and she glanced anxiously at the shadows of the roadside, hoping that the soldiers had not been allowed into the city. There did not seem to be any of them on the streets.

  They walked on in silence for a few minutes. Then Tiathres said, “Ani will be worried.”

  Papa would be worried. They were going to be back very late, and he’d probably heard about the Roman army from the men at the docks. Maybe he was looking for them now. She hoped he didn’t run into any Romans. She cast an angry look at Arion, and wished she dared say something reproachful.

  She didn’t. It might unbalance him again. He might take the bandage off; he might seize a knife and cut open the other wrist. He might attack her—no, he wouldn’t do that. It was probably the disease that had made him try to destroy himself. It was a terrible affliction. It must be dreadful to have to live with it. And she supposed that the attitude of the others on the boat hadn’t helped.

  She winced at a stab of guilt. She was keenly aware how she would feel if the others behaved toward her as they did toward Arion, and Papa had explained to her that Arion was from a grand family and probably felt it even more than she would. She’d been wrong, Papa explained, to suggest that Arion should help out with the work of running the boat. “You wouldn’t expect Aristodemos to do anything like that,” he’d pointed out, “and this boy sneers at Aristodemos. He feels he’s degrading himself by agreeing to write letters: you can’t expect him to wash pots.”

  It was true, she could see it, and she was sick at the thought that perhaps she’d helped push Arion into that desperate gesture at the temple—but she still resented his arrogance and his contempt for Papa and Tiathres. The horrible bloody assault on his own life had shaken her to the core.

  His mind was diseased. To come all this way after the king died, and then try to kill himself because the queen was dead—she just couldn’t understand that at all. After all, he was supposed to have been the king’s Friend, not the queen’s. There was something very wrong with him. She wished he would go away, and leave Soteria and her family alone.

  As they descended the hill toward the docks, Melanthe saw torches burning beside one of the boats, their light reflected redly in the dark Nile. As they drew nearer, she recognized the blunt shape of Soteria. She wondered if Papa were assembling a search party, and quickened her pace. On the quay she broke into a run, cradling her basket of vegetables and leaving the other two to follow at their own pace.

  The torches were tied to poles beside Soteria’s mooring posts, three of them, and as she ran Melanthe realized that there were men sitting on the quayside between the torches—and that they wore armor.

  She stopped abruptly. One of the men, who had heard her running and glanced around, got to his feet. He wore a long mail-shirt and a helmet with a crest of red horsehair, and there was a sword slung at his side. She saw, with a thunder of the heart, that the poles to which the torches had been fastened were, in fact, spears.

  She stared at the soldier; stared at Soteria. The boat’s deck held a litter of scattered ashes from the cooking fire, a dropped cloak, a broken bottle. There were no people there, no light from within the cabin, no sound or sign of life at all. She looked back at the soldier. He grinned and started walking toward her. She stood frozen, torn between the instinct to flee and the agonized necessity of discovering what had happened.

  “What you want?” the soldier asked her. He spoke Greek with a strange heavy accent.

  “That’s our boat!” she exclaimed, stunned. “What’s happened? Where’s my father?”

  “Your boat,” repeated the soldier, and nodded. He looked beyond her to the approaching forms of Tiathres and Arion and jerked a hand upward. At once the two other soldiers behind him got to their feet, picking up javelins which had lain on the ground beside them.

  “No run,” the soldier ordered them all, with a significant gesture toward the javelins.

  The other two had stopped. Tiathres was aghast; Arion … had an expression she did not recognize. It might almost be relief.

  “You Arion, of Alexandria?” the soldier asked him directly.

  At that the young Greek looked surprised and puzzled. “Quem quaerite?”

  There was a sharp silence, and then the first soldier demanded in astonishment, “Loquerisne Latine?”

  “Sane loquor.” Arion surveyed the man a moment. “Arionem quaerite?”

  “Nonne Arion es, Alexandrinus quis, hostis populi Romani?”

  Arion blinked. “Sum Arion,” he declared, “sed haud hostis Romanorum. Pater mi ipsi Ro
manus est!” He rattled off a question, to which the soldier, surprised but pleased, responded.

  “What’s happening?” Tiathres asked in anguish. “What are they saying? Where’s Ani—where are the children?”

  “I don’t know!” Melanthe hissed back. “Tiathres, they aren’t speaking Greek—you must be able to hear that! I think it’s Latin. They’re Romans.”

  Tiathres stared at Arion and the Roman, who continued to jabber at each other. Then her face set in an expression of bitter hatred that Melanthe had never seen on it before. “Aristodemos!” she spat.

  Arion and the Roman in charge glanced round at that. Arion began speaking again. Melanthe caught the names “Aristodemos” and “Coptos” and “Alexandria.” Arion gestured at Soteria. The Roman shook his head. Arion appeared to insist. He gestured emphatically, at himself, the boat, the two women. He spread his hands in surrender. The Romans looked doubtful, but one of them set down his javelin and walked rapidly away down the docks. Arion sighed, said something else, then sat down on the quay and leaned wearily against a mooring post, crossing his arms upon his knees. The fresh bandage shone in the torchlight, and the wide hat shadowed his face.

  “What’s happening?” Tiathres demanded desperately into the silence. “Where’s Ani? Where are my children?”

  “Quietly!” commanded Arion. “They don’t speak Demotic, and they may object to us speaking it. Let me ask permission.” He asked the soldier a question, received a nod, and turned back. “Ani and the others have been arrested and taken to the Roman camp. The tessararius doesn’t know why. His orders were simply to arrest me if I came back here, and he was told that I’m an anti-Roman agitator. I’m …”

  “Tessarius?” asked Melanthe, with an anxious glance at the Roman.

  “Tessararius—watch—commander, a non-commissioned rank, subordinate to a centurion. This honest fellow here. I’m sure you’re right, and that this is the result of a false accusation by Aristodemos. I’ve said that to the tessararius, and he’s inclined to agree, at least as far as I’m concerned. I’ll ask him about the children.”

  He turned back to the Roman and asked a question. The Roman replied at once, gesturing at one of the neighboring boats. He smiled at Tiathres and nodded encouragingly.

  “He says that when they took the others away, they told your neighbors there to look after the children and the nurse,” Arion supplied. “He says you and Melanthe can go join them if you want. He has no orders to arrest any women. But he says you mustn’t try to go on board your own boat. It’s been confiscated and will be kept under guard, at least for the time being.”

  Tiathres leapt toward the boat that contained her children—then halted again. “What about Ani?” she wailed. “Where is he? What are they doing to him?”

  “He’s in the Roman camp,” Arion replied patiently, “and the tessararius here doesn’t know more than that.” He hesitated, then added, “They’re going to take me into the camp presently, but I persuaded the tessararius to ask if they should collect the documents from Soteria first.”

  “Documents?” asked Tiathres blankly.

  “The customs documents and the goods manifests—which, taken together, prove conclusively that Ani is a merchant and not whatever Aristodemos may have said he is. If the documents are secure in Roman hands, it also means that the guards won’t feel free to pilfer the cargo. I’ll be able to find out what the charge actually is when I get to the camp, and I hope that I’ll be able to disprove it. Do you still have those figs you bought?”

  “Figs!” exclaimed Tiathres, with a sob. “Yes. What should I do with them?”

  “Offer some to the soldiers here, to show that you’re grateful to them for letting you go—and give me some, as well. At the moment they’re listening to me. If I have a fit, they may not, and I’m more likely to have a fit if I’m hungry.”

  Tiathres, beginning to weep, offered the Romans figs from her basket. They took some, with smiles and polite “Tank you”s. Arion also picked up a handful, and set them down on an edge of his cloak. He began to nibble one delicately.

  “What about Ani?” Tiathres asked again, piteously. “He hasn’t eaten, and … and he doesn’t know what’s happened to us. Can I bring him food?”

  Arion relayed the question and received a lengthy reply. “He says, not tonight. The gates of the camp are shut. He says you should come in the morning. He says you can ask for him—Gaius Simplicius, of the First Century of the Second Legion—and he’ll try to find out where they’re keeping your husband and get you permission to see him. He says, don’t worry, if your husband’s innocent he has nothing to fear.”

  Tiathres stammered, “G-Gaius Sima …”

  “Gaius Simplicius,” Arion repeated, “of the First Century of the Second Legion.”

  Melanthe repeated it carefully. Simplicius smiled at her and nodded. He said something more and gestured again toward the neighboring boat, which contained two undoubtedly very frightened children who would surely be overjoyed to see their mother. Tiathres bowed to him, touched Melanthe’s arm, and started toward it.

  Melanthe didn’t come. “Ask the Roman to let me go with you,” she told Arion. “I want to help.”

  Arion shook his head. “There’s nothing you could do. You’ll be much safer here.”

  “What if you have a seizure?” she demanded. “What if you faint, or go mad and kill yourself? You’re unbalanced, and you despise my father anyway. I don’t trust you with his life!”

  Arion looked up at her, his head far enough back that the torchlight fell on his face: his eyes had all their old ferocity, and his pale cheeks were stained with their quick color. “I’m epileptic, not insane! And I will not kill myself while your father is in danger. I do not despise him: on the contrary, I respect him enormously and I am well aware of the debt I owe him. I don’t think that the best way to repay it is to take his beautiful virgin daughter into a camp full of armed men who might, if things went wrong, abuse her. I will be a prisoner, and have no power to protect you. Go help your mother, and ask for your father in the morning. I hope you’ll have better news then.”

  “Why do you speak Latin?” she demanded.

  His face went proud and calm, giving nothing away. “My father was Roman.”

  She remembered something she’d once heard—that, just as Greek citizens could not legally marry Egyptians, so Roman citizens could not legally marry foreigners of any nation. Arion, who made Aristodemos look humble, was a bastard.

  He was also a Friend of the king. She wondered if he had obtained that status through royal intercession, and if that was why he’d been so acutely distressed when he heard that the queen was dead. After all, the queen herself had borne children to Romans, and might have chosen Arion as a friend for her son when most monarchs would have had no time for him at all.

  She’d misjudged him, she realized slowly. He was not unbalanced. He was a young man who’d lost his family, seen the cause he’d believed in go bloodily down, and who had no hope of ever regaining the status and position he had held before. His situation on the boat must have galled his very heart. It wasn’t surprising that he wanted to die. He was injured, weary, distraught, weak from loss of blood—and he was preparing to do battle with the Romans for her father’s liberty. The Romans had marched Papa off without pausing to collect the documents that proved his innocence. If Arion hadn’t spoken Latin, they would have done the same to him. Ani, Melanthe knew with absolutely certainty, belonged to a class where to be accused by a superior is to be convicted. Arion did not—she had to admit that he did not—and he could speak the Roman language. He was Papa’s only hope of deliverance.

  “I … I’m sorry,” she stammered. “I didn’t mean … I shouldn’t have …”

  “Your mother’s waiting,” he told her implacably. He lowered his head again, and his face disappeared once more into the shadows.

  She bobbed her head and hurried over to Tiathres. She felt his eyes watching her, though, all the way t
o the next boat.

  THE LEGIONARY WHO’D been sent off to the camp came back with a clerk, to Caesarion’s great relief: he hadn’t been certain that the centurion would agree to the request. After a brief discussion, the Romans allowed their prisoner onto Soteria long enough to point out the location of the official documents. The clerk collected the papers and, after some grumbling, issued him with a receipt for them. They posted one man as a sentry and set out for the Roman camp, walking upriver away from the docks.

  “Muddiest damned country I’ve ever seen,” grumbled the tessararius, looking for somewhere to scrape the mud off his hobnailed sandal. “I thought Egypt was supposed to be dry and sandy!”

  “Walk a few miles uphill,” Caesarion told him tolerantly. He felt he knew these men. They had the same accents and habits and complaints as Antonius’ legionaries.

  “The river floods every year?” asked Simplicius, in the tone of one who’d often heard that it did but wanted it confirmed one more time.

  He discussed the flooding of the Nile and the chances of seeing hippopotami most of the way to the camp. He was vaguely astonished at his own calm. Perhaps it was because he’d suffered such an emotional storm earlier in the day; perhaps it was something to do with the dose of hellebore he’d had at the priest’s house. Whatever the cause, he felt peculiarly confident that he’d succeed—that no one would recognize him, and that he would manage to convince the authorities that whatever charge had been brought against Ani had no more grounds than the malice of a disappointed rival.

  The legionaries were all entirely convinced of his own innocence, which was a start. They had never before encountered a Greek who spoke fluent Latin: Greeks in general expected people to master their own tongue, and considered it demeaning to learn anyone else’s. No young man who had departed so far from the usual Hellenic arrogance could possibly be an anti-Roman agitator.