Cleopatra's Heir

by Gillian Bradshaw

  “You’ll still need someone to carry it, lord,” insisted the butler, shocked. “A gentleman can’t carry a basket, like a slave!”

  “I’ll carry it,” Melanthe declared suddenly.

  Caesarion looked at her soberly. “You are not a slave.”

  “But I’m used to carrying baskets,” she replied. She glanced defiantly around the slaves. “In Coptos, free people often do!”

  The slaves looked as though they found this hard to believe. “We will sort it out in due course,” said Caesarion, trying not to smile. “Just pack the spare clothes.”

  Muttering unhappily about the state of a world where gentlemen of the very noblest blood were obliged to set off across the city on foot with their luggage in a basket, the slaves found a suitable basket and packed it—then had to be told to pack it again, with less conspicuous garments. Then there was another delay while the strongbox was opened and a purse full of money taken out—“Lord, my master would be most distressed if he discovered that I had permitted you to depart like a beggar!” protested Sosias. At last, however, he was able to wish the slaves and attendants very much joy, and watch the carts rumble off along the harborfront.

  That left Rhodon and Melanthe. “Am I permitted to come with you?” Rhodon asked drily. “I must point out that this is not a good part of the city, and three would be safer than two—or, for that matter, one unfortunate philosopher all on his own.”

  “You can come with us as far as the Heptastadion,” Caesarion conceded. “After that I think I’d prefer it if you went to see Ar … to see our friend and tell him how things stand.” He picked up the basket.

  Melanthe at once came over and took it from him. “I said I’d carry it!”

  “It isn’t heavy,” Caesarion told her, halfheartedly trying to take it back.

  “Then let me carry it! They thought you shouldn’t. You think so, too, really.” She arranged the basket over one arm and faced him challengingly. “Have you decided what you’re going to do?”

  He gave her a lopsided smile. “I will explain the whole situation to your father. Then, if he agrees, I will go back to Coptos with you on Soteria, and my friends here in Alexandria will arrange the investments needed for a ship.”

  Her challenging look gave way slowly to a wide, white smile of delight. “Really?” she asked breathlessly. “Oh, I praise Isis!” She flung her arms about him, basket and all, and beamed into his face. “It will be all right, you’ll see!”

  He was not convinced, but that lovely face smiling into his own was impossible to resist. He kissed her. She pressed against him, and her hand came up and touched his hair, traced the line of one of the scars on the back of his head. When he lifted his head, she was still smiling, her eyes alight with love. He shivered, suddenly dreadfully afraid, and let her go.

  “If your father agrees,” Caesarion said grimly.

  He started away from the pier, along the harbor in the wake of the carts. Rhodon was quite right that this was not a good part of the city, and they’d be safer staying out of the backstreets until they were farther east.

  “He’ll agree!” Melanthe declared, hurrying after him happily. “You know he will. He wanted you as a partner even without any money. When he hears that not only are you going to join him, but your friends are buying you a ship so he’ll have to expand the business—he’ll think he’s arrived in the west, where the gods live and all things are perfect.”

  “The esteem, it would seem, is mutual?” Rhodon asked. Caesarion glanced back, and saw his tutor looking amused.

  Melanthe looked down in embarrassment. “My father does esteem Arion, sir, yes. He’s … Well, you see, we’re Egyptian, and my father never had much opportunity for education, but it’s something he values very much. Arion is so well educated and he knows so many things, and … my father has a great respect for him.”

  “So it seems I can take some credit for the mutuality of admiration,” said Rhodon, the amusement now open.

  “Rhodon was one of my teachers,” Caesarion explained.

  “Philosophy and mathematics,” confirmed Rhodon.

  “Really?” asked Melanthe, her eyes brightening. “You’re a philosopher? What sort? A Stoic?”

  “I thank Zeus, no,” said Rhodon. “Indifference to earthly goods and freedom from emotion are no goals of mine. I adhere to none of the schools. I find something to dislike in all of them. I could be a Cynic, I suppose, but I find the posturing tedious.”

  “He was a good teacher,” Caesarion told her. “He taught me what all the schools say, and helped me pick holes in it. He taught me to think critically.”

  “You needed little help with that,” Rhodon said, smiling. “It was your natural instinct.” He turned back to Melanthe. “He was a good student. Very sharp, very fast. More interested in natural philosophy and practical mathematics than in abstract speculation, but that is something of a tradition in his family.”

  “My father would love to meet you, sir,” said Melanthe, her eyes still very bright. “He is interested in philosophy, but the only sort of philosophers we’ve ever had in Coptos are Stoics, and they just preach.”

  “I want to meet your father,” Rhodon replied. “If an uneducated Egyptian can make such an impression on … Arion, he must be a truly remarkable man.”

  “Not yet,” Caesarion said firmly. “If Ani agrees to this plan, we can make arrangements. Until then, I think it is better if there is no evident link between him and my friends here in Alexandria. There is still far too much that can go wrong.” He shivered again. Writing the first letter, he had felt calm and unafraid: now all possibilities filled him with terror. Melanthe had touched the place in his heart which he had never been able to guard completely, and the bitter thirst for love which resided there had never given him anything at all but pain.

  They arrived at the Heptastadion, the causeway that led to Pharos island, with Rhodon answering Melanthe’s eager questions about philosophy. Beyond it the Great Harbor curved in a dazzling vista of blue water against white marble. The Temple of Caesar was just along the road, an imposing building in the Ionian style, where the statue of the deified Julius stood in gilded bronze—where Antyllus had fled for sanctuary, and from which he had been dragged to his death. A mile away, on the other side of the harbor, the Lochias promontory shimmered in red, gold, and green—the palace quarter, where Caesarion had been born. Caesar Octavian was there now—having breakfast in the Nile Room, perhaps, or a morning bath under the mural of Dionysus and the Pirates, while his guards changed shift and marched to the spacious barracks.

  Somewhere over there Philadelphus would be getting up—sitting, perhaps, at a window while his nurse combed his hair, and wondering what would happen to him; perhaps mourning a brother he believed dead.

  Caesarion turned away. He could not help Philadelphus, and would never see him again. He remembered the little boy’s soft arms around him, and a wet kiss on his cheek, one aching afternoon when he’d had a seizure; remembered Philadelphus in his little purple cloak standing in the stableyard biting his fist as he rode away. The pain was a physical thing, a knot in his heart.

  He was feeling dizzy. He dug out the remedy and held it to his face.

  “What is the matter?” Melanthe asked in alarm. “Are you …”

  He shook his head. “I was just thinking of my little brother.” He gathered himself up and turned to Rhodon. “We part here,” he decreed.

  Rhodon hesitated, then held out his hand. “Only for a few days, I hope. Send me a letter confirming the arrangement as soon as you can, and I will come and discuss the details.”

  Caesarion shook the hand. “If Ani agrees.”

  “Papa is certain to agree,” Melanthe declared confidently. “We will see you aboard Soteria, sir, soon.”

  “If he does not agree,” said Rhodon, clasping Caesarion’s hand in both his own, “come back to my house, I beg you. We can arrange something else. I am deeply in your debt, lord, and I would welcome any chance
to repay you.”

  Caesarion gave him a sickly smile, not trusting himself to speak. He pulled his hand away, and started along the cross-street that led from the Heptastadion to the Temple of Serapis. He was aware of Rhodon gazing after him, a worried look on his face.

  They were back in the respectable part of the city now. It was still early in the morning, but late enough that shops were open, and as they approached the Canopic Way the street became crowded. Carts and handcarts rolled along the paving-flags, and hawkers cried their wares at every corner. Caesarion pulled the brim of his hat down and the edge of his cloak up and walked swiftly, in silence. Melanthe hurried after him, bumping passersby with the basket, and eventually caught up and took his hand. “Are you all right?” she asked him anxiously.

  “I am afraid,” he admitted. “If your father says no, I don’t know what I’ll do. And he may say no, Melanthion. I’ve never told him the truth, and when he learns it he may simply decide that the risk is too great.”

  “He isn’t going to say no,” Melanthe said, leaning forward to peer into his face. “Arion, he helped you when he didn’t even know who you were, and last night you saved me, at the cost of losing … what your friends had arranged for you. He can’t say no, you must see that!”

  He stopped walking, caught both her hands in his, gazed at her for a moment. People on the street were looking at them. He ducked into the shadow of a portico of shops and towed her into the shelter of a column. “I’m afraid,” he told her again.

  “If your cousin thinks you’re dead, surely there isn’t much danger?”

  “I don’t trust this! Something will go wrong. Melanthe, at Berenike, I was afraid that if I came back here as your father’s secretary I’d turn into somebody else, and I was right, I have. On the ship …” He caught his breath, not sure what he was trying to tell her, or why. He only knew that his heart was pounding with dread at some imminent catastrophe, and the prospect of meeting Ani seemed to lie beyond some fearful barrier which he did not believe he would ever surmount.

  She looked up at him seriously, her eyes enormous. The world seemed to revolve around those eyes. “Are you ashamed of what you’ve become?”

  “No,” he said, and it was true. “I feel I ought to be, but I’m not. Before—before and on the ship, which is the same thing—they didn’t really know who I am, but they knew who I’m supposed to be. I always knew that, too, but I also knew that I couldn’t live up to it, because of the disease, and because … because I’m not enough, not good enough or wise enough or strong enough. They reverence what I’m supposed to be, but me … the me that is here, now, talking to you—they don’t even see. If I do something that makes them notice me—like have a seizure, or fail—then they’re embarrassed, and they try to pretend it never happened. Only you and your family, you know what I am, because the other is a thing I never told you. So I’m afraid, you see?—of everything you might think and feel when you know the truth. I can face dying, but losing myself just when I’m becoming myself for the first time … I can’t face that. But I’m not making any sense.

  She laid a finger against his lips. “I love you,” she told him seriously. “I know I’m young, and I know I haven’t known you very long, and I can see there’s lots you’ve never told us—but I love you, and it’s not going to change.”

  He leaned his forehead against hers, breathing in the scent of her hair. She stroked his head, her fingers tracing the narrow indentations of the scars. The overpowering sense of dread gave way suddenly to joy, a joy so intense that it seemed to explode out of his heart and fill the entire universe with light.

  “Melanthe,” he said, and the world shattered.

  CHAPTER XII

  Melanthe told herself afterwards that she should have recognized the signs for what they were. Arion had gone very pale, stared with a desperate intensity, and seemed terrified of nothing. But she did not recognize the signs, and the seizure caught her totally unprepared.

  It was not a small seizure, either. She had not seen a major one before, had had only a vague idea what one was like. One moment he was saying her name, about to kiss her—the next he was uttering a fearful shriek and falling on top of her, every muscle rigid.

  She caught him, sank to her knees. He slid out of her arms and rolled onto the dirty paving of the portico, rigid, his back arched and his lips pulled back in a horrible grimace. His eyes had turned upward in his head so that only the white showed. All around them, people were staring in alarm.

  “Arion!” she cried, and hung over him in helpless horror.

  “A man’s having a fit!” exclaimed one of the shoppers to her neighbour.

  Several people spat at them, to deflect the contagion, and backed off. All of a sudden Melanthe found herself surrounded by a ring of people, all of them watching Arion with fascinated disgust. She finally realized that yes, he was having a fit. He was not dying, had not been struck suddenly by a demon or possessed by a god: he was suffering a paroxysm of the brain of a sort he’d had many times before. Trembling, she knelt down by his head and tried to cushion it. Arion’s lips were turning blue. His hat had fallen sideways, and the cord was biting into his neck; hurriedly she pulled it loose and set it down on top of the basket, but he did not start breathing again. She did not know what to do, and fought not to cry: it wouldn’t help anyone if she had hysterics.

  Arion suddenly drew in a deep breath. His body jerked from head to foot in a convulsion, then went limp. Another convulsion, and froth leaked from his mouth … but he was breathing again. Melanthe caught his hand and held it. More people spat at them.

  A man came out of the nearest shop—a cheesemaker’s—and threw up his hands in dismay. “What’s this?” he demanded, glaring at Melanthe. “Get that lunatic out of here!”

  “Gladly!” she said tearfully. “Lend us a cart!”

  “Cart? I’m not lending anything to a lunatic and his whore. Get him away from my shop!”

  “I’m not!” she cried indignantly, “and he’s not! And how am I suppose to take him away without a cart?”

  “Just get him away!” shouted the shopkeeper. “Filthy disease! They shouldn’t let them out!” He kicked Arion, who was lost in another convulsion and felt nothing.

  “Leave him alone!” Melanthe screamed furiously. “You can’t do that! He’s a gentleman!”

  “Gentleman!” replied the cheesemaker derisively, and spat directly into Arion’s oblivious face. “Filthy lunatic! Ought to be locked up!”

  She suddenly remembered the money the slaves had handed Arion that morning. She had been shocked to see that Arion had neither asked nor checked how much it was, but the purse had looked quite heavy. She pulled a fold of his cloak loose, found the purse, still securely attached to Arion’s belt. “We have money!” she shouted, indicating it triumphantly. “We can hire a cart. Who’ll rent us a cart?”

  The cheesemaker stared in astonishment at the heavy purse, and at the gold-worked edges of the tunic Melanthe had revealed beneath the plain cloak. For a moment something like recognition flickered on his face. Then Arion convulsed once more, and the recognition was replaced by revulsion. Arion went utterly limp. The whites of his eyes showed under the half-closed lids, and froth trailed from his slack lips onto Melanthe’s cushioning knees.

  “I’m not renting my cart to a lunatic, even if he does have money,” the cheesemaker decided. “Don’t want the filthy disease anywhere near my goods, no. I want him away from my shop: people expect my cheeses to be wholesome!” He kicked Arion again, then tried to shove him toward the gutter with the flat of his foot.

  “You leave him alone!” Melanthe screamed shrilly. She moved Arion’s head carefully off her lap, then leapt up. The shopkeeper at once gave Arion another shove toward the street, and she flew at the man, hitting him in the chest and forcing herself between him and his victim. “I’ll take him away!” she screamed into the startled and indignant face. “I’ll take him away as fast as I can, but I can’t carry him!”<
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  “My master wants to know what the matter is,” said a new voice. Melanthe looked around to see a bored-looking man studying Arion’s body with distaste. The crowd, she realized, had grown, and was spread out into the road. In the sunlit street beyond it stood an ornate four-wheeled carriage, drawn by white mules and surrounded by attendants dressed in red tunics, enticed by the crowd to a stop.

  “My friend has had a seizure,” she said, sensing an authority which could impose order. “I want to take him home, but I need a cart—or a hand-cart, a mule, anything! I need to take him to my father’s boat, which is moored in the Mareotic Harbor. Sir, we are respectable people. My father is a merchant from Coptos. Arion is his partner. We have money, we can pay.”

  The man’s lip curled, but he went back to the carriage to report. The cheesemaker glared at Melanthe, but he did not hit her or try to push Arion into the street again. Authority had arrived, and he would await its verdict.

  The door of the carriage opened, and a small bad-tempered man in an elaborate crimson cloak got out and stalked over. “Can’t anyone in this city sort anything out for themselves?” he complained angrily—and then he saw Arion.

  For a moment Melanthe thought he was about to have a seizure as well: his face went white, and he stared at the unconscious young man with an expression of amazement. “O Father Zeus!” he whispered. “Immortal gods, it’s not possible!”

  “He’s had a seizure, they said,” the senior attendant told his master, puzzled. “The girl there wants a cart to move him.”

  The man from the carriage edged closer to Arion, still staring. Melanthe saw his eyes fix for a moment on the scars. Amazement was joined on his face by horror. “O Zeus, Zeus!” he muttered. “It is. It’s impossible, but it is.” Then, snapping into a fervent activity, “Get him into the carriage at once!”

  “Lord?” asked the attendant, as though he’d misheard. “You want him in your carriage?”