Cleopatra's Heir

by Gillian Bradshaw

  “I don’t think that!”

  “Yes you do,” she replied, glaring at him, her eyes full of tears. “You know you do.”

  “A little,” he admitted. “Not as much as I used to. Melanthe, please, try to understand …”

  “I don’t!” she said flatly.

  “I have a brother,” he told her, surprising himself by the admission. “A half-brother, about the age of Serapion. I don’t know where he is, or even if he’s alive or dead.”

  The glare faded a little. “What do you mean?”

  “I have to find out what happened to him. That means I have to talk to my mother’s friends. That means I have to risk one of them going to my cousin—and that means I don’t dare stay with you, in case it draws trouble here.”

  “This is the first time you’ve mentioned a brother,” she pointed out suspiciously.

  “O Zeus! I don’t dare tell you about myself, Melanthe, I don’t dare; especially not here in Alexandria. I do have a brother, I swear it by Dionysos and all the immortals. His name’s Ptolemy. He’s six years old.”

  The rest of the glare died. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, and wiped her eyes. “I’m sorry. I always seem to say horrible things to you.” Her lip trembled. “It’s just that I don’t want you to go.”

  He took two steps forward, caught her elbows, kissed the face that raised itself to his own. He felt for a moment as though he were indeed a god, and that it was divine ichor, not blood, that ran within his veins. He kissed her again. Her arms lifted, locked round his shoulders, and her lips, clumsy and unpracticed, opened to his.

  A door opened, and they both looked round to find Ani staring at them accusingly.

  Caesarion let go of Melanthe and took a step back hastily. “I …” he began.

  “You were just saying farewell,” Ani told him firmly.

  “Yes,” agreed Caesarion, face hot.

  “I wish you much joy,” Melanthe told him, wiping her eyes. “And good luck, and be careful—please, be careful, and, and … let us know what happened, if you can.”

  “I’ll try,” he said, swallowing. “I wish you very much joy, Melanthion.”

  He reached down, fumbled up the basket that held his other tunic and the books, stumbled out onto the deck. It was early in the afternoon, and the lakeside harbor was quiet, boat crews and dockworkers alike resting during the heat of the day. The rest of the party on Soteria crowded around him, shook hands, wished him joy. Tiathres presented him with some bread and olives, wrapped in a linen handkerchief. Serapion ran out of the forecabin and hugged him. He rumpled the little boy’s hair and wished him joy and health.

  Ani cleared his throat. “I’ll walk you as far as the dockyard gate,” he announced.

  The two of them started along the empty quayside in the hot sun.

  “I’m sorry,” Caesarion found himself saying. “About Melanthe.”

  Ani shot him a sideways look and tugged on his lower lip. “So am I.”

  “I didn’t intend … I meant no disrespect, to her or to you.”

  “Was that true, what you were telling her?”

  “You were listening?” Caesarion demanded indignantly.

  “As I live, of course I was! You think I’m not going to keep an ear open when a young man is speaking privately to my daughter? Was that true—you have a little brother?”

  Caesarion trudged on for several steps, not looking at him. He had, he realized, told Melanthe about Philadelphus because he’d known that she would accept him as a valid reason for leaving her. But Philadelphus was only part of his true motives. Another part was, undoubtedly, the pride of which Melanthe had accused him. A third part, though, was the truth about himself. If he were caught, the whole party could be killed for having harbored him, and that possibility had become intolerable. Better if they never knew.

  “I do have a little brother,” he answered Ani. “I wasn’t lying. I want to help him, if I can.”

  “You’ve never trusted us at all,” Ani said flatly. “Not even with things that are to your credit.”

  Caesarion met his eyes. “That’s not true. I think I do trust you as much as I’ve ever trusted anyone in my life.”

  Ani stopped. “Lady Isis, boy, you must have had a miserable life! First you say that no one was ever kind to you without expecting something for it, and now you never trusted anyone!” He made an impatient gesture. “Sorry. You don’t like to be called ‘boy.’”

  “Actually,” Caesarion told him, “I don’t mind it anymore.” He tried to smile. “You know your offer—the partnership? I wish I could accept it.” It was the shocking truth. He had a nasty suspicion that it was because he’d sunk to his natural level, but even that didn’t affect the itch to accept, and to go on being happy.

  Ani was looking at him with a curiously hurt expression. He reached out and touched Caesarion’s upper arm. “Why don’t you?”

  The scent of carrion, and a sudden vast irrational horror. Caesarion grabbed the remedy, sat down at the side of the road.

  “Isis!” exclaimed Ani, recognizing the signs. Caesarion was aware of him hurrying to get behind him, to catch him if he fell, and was comforted.

  A choir was singing a hymn to Isis: “Hail, Queen of rivers and winds and the sea. Hail, Queen of war …” Cleopatra sat on a gilded throne, shaded with purple awnings, dressed as the goddess and wearing the serpent crown. Caesarion, on his own golden throne a step below, shifted in his stiff, jeweled cloak to watch her. Little Ptolemy Philadelphus, farther down still, tried to take off his diadem and was stopped by his bodyguard. The crowds cooed at him.

  The river flooded, red-brown with mud. The priests led a white heifer to the altar for the thanksgiving sacrifice. The head priest waited with the knife shining in his hand.

  He was being violently sick. Everything stank, and it was fearfully hot. “That will get rid of the poison,” said the doctor, with satisfaction.

  The man lay on the table, facedown, his arms and legs bound to it with thick ropes. They’d peeled his scalp off the back of his head—it lay, inside out, above his ears—and cut off the back of his skull. “You see here the ventricles of the brain,” said the doctor, prodding with a scalpel. The victim’s hand twitched, and Caesarion cried in horror, “He’s still alive!”

  He was sitting in the sun at the side of the road. Ani was crouched behind him, supporting him, one hand holding the remedy steady before his face. He groaned, leaned back into the support, felt … safe.

  “Over?” asked Ani softly.

  Caesarion nodded. He leaned forward, found the remedy again, breathed it. The scent was growing faint: he would have to have a new one made up … if he survived the next few days.

  Ani let go of him and came and sat beside him. “I don’t think it’s anything to do with phlegmatic humors,” he declared. “Or moisture. You have seizures when your spirits are disturbed—when you’re distressed or in pain.”

  “So why doesn’t everyone?” Caesarion asked him sourly.

  Ani shrugged. “Well, then, you’re naturally inclined to have them, and you’d have some anyway, but you have more of them when you’re distressed, or hurt, or tired and hungry. If it was phlegmatic humors you would’ve been throwing fits all the time on the river, and would’ve had hardly any in the desert: instead it was the other way around. You can’t argue with it, boy. It’s obvious. I don’t think you need to avoid women at all. I certainly wouldn’t, if I were you.” He hesitated, then went on. “Who is still alive? Please tell me. You say that every other seizure, and I’ve started imagining things.”

  “Oh.” He had never told anyone that private nightmare—but there didn’t seem to be any harm in informing Ani, if it was bothering him. “I don’t know his name. He was a criminal—I think they said he’d murdered a woman. He had the sacred disease, like me. One of the doctors at the medical school of the Museum asked if they could cut him open, and my mother took me along to see it. She wanted me to see what was wrong with me.”

/>   “They cut him open while he was still alive?” Ani asked, staring. “Isis and Serapis!”

  “The doctors of the Museum do dissections of dead subjects regularly. Dissections of living people … not so often, and it needs royal permission, but it is done. They use criminals who are going to be executed anyway. They drugged this man, and tied him to a table, and cut off the back of his head. I thought he was dead.” Caesarion suddenly found himself shaking. “Then the doctor said, ‘Here you see the ventricles of the brain!’ and poked, and the poor man’s hand moved.” He shut his eyes. “I’ve seen it in seizures ever since.”

  “Merciful Lady Isis! Your mother took you to see that? How old were you?”

  “Thirteen. I was thirteen. She didn’t know it was going to upset me that much.”

  “How could she not know? Any normal person would be upset, and to show a child who suffers from the same disease …”

  “She didn’t know,” Caesarion said wearily. “I suppose we aren’t normal people. Are you normal, Ani? You’re not like anyone I ever met before.”

  “I’m more normal than that!” Ani declared disgustedly.

  Caesarion smiled. “I’m very glad I met you.” With an effort, he got to his feet. “I must go. Don’t walk me to the gates: we’ll say farewell here. Ani, I am grateful, very grateful, for all your kindness. Thank Tiathres for me again, and tell Melanthe I … I hope she is happy. I wish you much joy.”

  Ani jumped up, stood facing him a moment, his face moving as though he were about to speak—then embraced him. Caesarion stood very still. Like his mother’s death, this seemed to catch him in some place he could not guard with a pang of bitter loss. When Ani let go he touched the other man’s arm, hesitantly, not daring to look at him—then bent, picked up his basket, and walked away.

  He walked blindly as far as the Mareotic Gate, trying to tell himself that this sense of bereavement was ridiculous. He had known Ani for a month, the rest of the family rather less than that, and they were all common Egyptians. They were not important to him, and he should not feel as though they were … Certainly he shouldn’t feel the way he did—the way he’d felt when he rode out from the palace stableyard and left Philadelphus.

  There were Romans guarding the Mareotic Gate in the Alexandrian city wall. The gate itself was open, though, and the Romans merely sat in the shade of the archway, watching the passersby. Caesarion walked through, onto the Soma Street, the wide throughfare which crossed the city from north to south. Here he paused, wondering where to go. Some of his mother’s supporters had stayed loyal to the end; a few might even be pleased to find him alive. Some of these, however, would very probably be under Roman surveillance, if they were alive and free at all—Seleukos, who’d been finance minister; the chamberlain Mardion; Diomedes, the royal secretary—none of them would be safe to approach. Nikolaos of Damascus, who’d tutored Caesarion in history? No. That was an ambitious man, bitter at having backed a loser: he’d turn traitor in an instant. Olympos, who’d been Cleopatra’s personal doctor, was probably trustworthy, but didn’t have the resources to do much.

  He should have thought this through before arriving in the city. That he hadn’t wanted to think about it was no excuse. He walked slowly on up Soma Street. The shops were closed for the afternoon, and the great thoroughfare was quiet. A few beggars rested in the shade of a portico, together with some flea-ridden cats; at the public fountains women gossiped over the water, but apart from that, the street was abandoned to the sun. That was just as well. His face was familiar to far too many people in this city, and his incipient moustache wasn’t going to be much of a disguise. He had examined it in the mirror again that morning, and had found it no thicker than it had been in Coptos.

  Just before the center of the city where Soma Street met the east-west Canopic Way lay the precinct of the royal tombs. This was an enclosed park where the mausoleums of eight generations of Lagids stood amid date-palms and bushes of flowering cistus. Caesarion paused at the wrought-iron gate—then opened it and went in. He needed to sit down and think about how to proceed.

  He had often visited the tombs before. The grand domed mausoleum which loomed above him as he came in was that of the fifth Ptolemy, Epiphanes, “the god manifest,” and of his queen, who had been the first queen of Egypt to bear the name Cleopatra. The greatest names of the dynasty—Ptolemy the Savior and his wife Berenike; Ptolemy and Arsinoe, the Loving Siblings—had smaller tombs on the north side of the enclosure. His mother’s tomb was not in the precinct, which was some comfort. She had had a splendid mausoleum built not long before, next to the temple of Isis. He supposed that she was buried in it—beside Marcus Antonius, if the report was to be believed. He had never liked Antonius—a loud, swaggering man, vigorous, crude, and inclined to drunkenness. He did not like to think of his mother lying beside that lout for all eternity—but he supposed that she might have been planning just that when she chose the site for her tomb. Antonius was not a Lagid, and could not lie in the royal precinct. Cleopatra had, for reasons never clear to Caesarion, genuinely loved the lout, and wanted to be with him in death.

  Led by habit, he retraced the familiar route to the left of Epiphanes’ tomb, down a ramp, past the round monument of the seventh Ptolemy, “the Benefactor,” to the tomb of his grandfather, the twelfth Ptolemy, called Auletes, “the Flute-Player.” There was a sunken garden next to it, with a fountain under a colonnade that ran into a fish pond overgrown with feathery papyrus. He had often sat there as a child while his mother conducted an annual remembrance at her father’s tomb, and he remembered it as a haven of quiet.

  It was quiet now, but not undisturbed: as he walked down the steps into the garden, he saw that someone had removed the fountain and replaced it with a marble altar on which rested a tall urn of polished porphyry. He glared at it, more hurt than he’d expect by such a trivial alteration. What would happen to the fish, without the fountain?

  There was a wooden placard with a painted notice leaning against the base of the altar and he walked over to it to see what excuse it could offer for the desecration.

  PTOLEMY CAESAR

  read the notice,

  THEOS PHILOMETOR PHILOPATOR

  Heir to two kingdoms and inheritor of none

  Death, not kingship, came to Cleopatra’s son.

  Farewell

  He stared at it, stunned, then raised his eyes to the urn. Someone had draped it with a wreath of bay leaves and roses, and two oil lamps stood on the altar beside it: both had gone out. A bronze incense burner was full of gray ash.

  It made sense, he supposed. The Romans could not have tipped his supposed ashes into the public sewer: that would have been impossibly provocative. They would not, however, want to build him a monument, either. Putting the remains in the royal precinct but somewhere unobtrusive was the best solution, and someone must have remembered that he liked to sit here. Someone had put up the notice in place of an inscription. Someone had tended the tomb. He wondered who. He could not think of anyone, among the hordes of noble companions, tutors, and slaves who had once accompanied him, who would be likely to risk offending the Romans by the gesture. Maybe the Romans had appointed someone themselves, so as to preserve the proprieties. They were like that.

  He sat down on the bench under the colonnade and watched a bird singing from a perch on a tall papyrus frond. They hadn’t killed the fish after all, he saw: there was a bit of lead piping sneaking from behind the altar and into the pond, and the carp swam shadowlike in the dark water, just as they always had. Not a bad place to be buried, really. He could wish that his ashes were indeed in that urn, that he could rest here forever, and never face the struggles and very probable betrayals of the next few days.

  He knew, bleakly, that he would in the end fix on someone to approach—and in all likelihood either his helper would betray him, or someone in their confidence would betray him and his helper both. There would be an arrest, an arraignment, an execution or two, and he would end up back here
in this garden, this time inside the urn. His heart ached with weariness. He was not sure anymore even what he hoped to achieve. It was very unlikely that he could be any help to Philadelphus. If the emperor had decided to kill the little boy, he would already be dead; if the emperor had decided to spare him, a bungled rescue attempt would only make his situation worse. Even if by some miracle the rescue succeeded, where could they go and what could they do? He had still in the back of his mind a vague fantasy that they might buy some land somewhere and live together quietly—but he could not believe they would succeed in doing so. There was no place for them in a world which belonged to Rome.

  He’d seen in Ptolemais that there was no point in going on. He’d given up on suicide for a time, first because he was needed, and then because he was happy. Perhaps the best thing he could do now would be to buy a knife and finish what he’d started … only he did want at least to know what had happened to his little brother.

  There was a sound of feet coming down the steps. He leapt to his feet—and saw Rhodon, former tutor and undoubted betrayer, on the pavement at the other end of the sunken garden. He wore a plain dark cloak, and his dark hair and philosophic beard were neatly trimmed. Two attendants were still on the steps behind him, one carrying an oil flask, the other a basket.

  Rhodon noticed him and paused. For the first instant he simply looked annoyed. Then he realized who was facing him, and his face went white. His mouth opened, but no sound came out. Caesarion stepped back, glancing frantically about the enclosure. The stone walls were too high to vault. He cursed himself for having walked so casually into a place he couldn’t get out of.