Cleopatra's Heir

by Gillian Bradshaw

  Ani knelt, clumsily. He knew you were supposed to prostrate yourself to a king, but he had no idea how you went about it.

  “Do not prostrate yourself,” Octavian said, gesturing for him to rise. “It is an oriental custom we Romans despise.” Ani struggled to get back to his feet without the use of his arms. “Do you know why I have had you brought here?”

  Melanthe took a deep breath. “It’s because of Arion,” she declared—boldly, though she stood close enough that Ani could see how she was trembling. “That man Areios has told you some lie about his cousin Arion.”

  “His cousin Arion?” repeated the emperor in surprise. “Who and what do you mean?”

  Ani wished that the emperor had allowed him to kneel: his knees were weak, and his bowels wanted to give way. The terrible fact he had grasped had at last revealed itself to him. “O Isis!” he whispered. Melanthe looked at him in confusion and alarm.

  “His name isn’t really Arion,” he told her, swallowing. He looked back into the emperor’s cold eyes. “It’s Caesarion, isn’t it?” he whispered.

  “But that’s the king,” Melanthe said—and then her face went still, and her eyes widened and darkened with horror. “The king’s dead!” she protested. “I saw the urn with his ashes in it!”

  Her voice betrayed her, its sharpening shrillness proclaiming that she knew what she said was untrue.

  “He told me, right at the start, that the Romans thought he was dead,” Ani told her, and his own voice was unsteady. “He said they anointed him for the pyre, and he woke up while they were asleep, and walked off. I thought he was just feverish and confused.”

  “So he did tell you about himself,” said the emperor grimly.

  “No,” Ani replied numbly. “No. He told us very little. I’ve been working it out … since your guards came for us.” He looked back at the implacable face of the new lord of Egypt. “When he said that his second cousin would kill him over a disputed inheritance—it wasn’t Areios he meant, was it? It was you.”

  “Yes,” agreed the emperor, satisfied.

  “Second cousin?” asked the dark man.

  “If one accepted Cleopatra’s account of his paternity,” replied Octavian, “I would indeed be his second cousin once removed.”

  Ani could not meet his eyes. A thousand small senseless things crashed together into a sense so inevitable and overpowering that he knew he should have seen it long, long before. He remembered Arion’s distress at hearing that the queen was a prisoner, his alarm when Caesarion was first mentioned, his surprise when the centurion in Berenike had addressed him by the name he had given Ani. He remembered the boy, wounded and wretched, saying that the Romans had thought he was dead; later, when he heard that the king had been in the camp, and was dead, he had not remembered it, had not considered, even for a moment, that a young man who’d been in that struggle and been presumed dead—a young man who was clearly aristocratic and exactly the right age—might actually be the king. All the things he had learned about Arion since then—the Roman father, the grief at the queen’s death, the increasingly open references to a powerful enemy whose attention Ani must at all costs avoid—all of them he had ignored, or misconstrued into some ludicrous fantasy of estates and legacies. Why had he been such a blind fool?

  Because he was an ordinary man, and ordinary men did not invite fugitive kings to write letters for them. Because the more he got to know Arion, the more he had seen him as fragile and human and likable, and the more impossible it became to associate him with the divine son of Queen Cleopatra and Julius Caesar.

  “He has the sacred disease,” he said stupidly. “I never heard that the king had the sacred disease.”

  “It is not something one would boast about,” replied Octavian. “I had heard, from those who were well informed about the court,” he glanced at Areios, “but on the whole the queen succeeded in suppressing any discussion of her son’s infirmity.”

  “He said his father had it. I never heard that …”

  “My adoptive father,” said the emperor, “did suffer from the disease. I do not accept, of course, that Ptolemy Caesar is his son. The queen saw many advantages in claiming that her child was Caesar’s.” He tapped the arm of the couch. “You understand now, I think, that your situation is very serious. You have given shelter and assistance to King Ptolemy Caesar, whom I sentenced to death. I had believed that my sentence was carried out. It was not pleasant to discover that a man whom I believed was safely reduced to ash has in fact been wandering freely about Egypt for the past month. If you wish to live, you will tell me everything you know—where he has been, what he has done, and, most particularly, who he has spoken to. It is clear that, whether you knew who he was or not, you have been rather closer to him than he wished to admit. You have a daughter”—the eyes glanced at her and lingered a moment—“and, so I have been informed, a wife, sons, slaves, and friends who are in my hands. They will die—believe it!—if you lie or prevaricate in any way.”

  Ani stood under the chill gaze, aware of Melanthe shivering beside him, of the pain of his chafed wrists and the ache in his shoulders. He thought of Tiathres sitting in the dust and sun of the barracks yard, comforting their children. For the first time the stifling horror eased enough to admit another emotion—a trickle of anger.

  “I found him on the road to Berenike,” he said. “Near the waystation of Kabalsi. It was the night of the fourteenth or fifteenth of August. He was lying in the road, wounded and unconscious. I picked him up and helped him for no other reason than that he would have died if I hadn’t, and I couldn’t let a young man die when it was within my power to save him. He told me his name was Arion, that he was from Alexandria, that he’d been in a camp belonging to the queen’s forces which your troops had just taken. Later, when I learned that the king had been in the camp, he added that he’d been a Friend of the king. He tried to meet a ship in Berenike and leave Egypt, but your people had already taken it. I was planning to go to Alexandria on business, so I offered to let him come with me if he would write my letters. I am an uneducated man, lord—an upstart peasant, if you like: I grow flax and make linen goods, and just this summer I’ve been trying to become a merchant. I’d gone to Berenike with a load of linen goods which I placed with a ship-owner captain named Kleon, who agreed to a partnership with me. Kleon entrusted me with a cargo of spices to take to Alexandria and sell on commission; I was to buy glass and tin with the proceeds. It is not easy for a man like me to get Alexandrian merchants to accept him, and I knew that to have an educated Greek to write letters for me and advise me would help. Arion agreed to write the letters, and they have helped. Your men took all the papers from my boat, and if you like you can see everything he’s done. He wasn’t happy about it, particularly at first; he thought it was degrading, and since he’s a king I suppose he was right. But that’s what he did, and there’s nothing he did which was political in any way. When we reached Alexandria, seven days ago, I pressed him to stay with me and offered him a partnership, but he told me that he had an enemy who would destroy me for helping him, and left us. I didn’t see him again until just now in the corridor outside this room. That, lord, is the truth, as I love life.”

  “Your daughter was seen with him this morning,” said the dark man.

  Ani met his eyes. “My daughter, lord, was dragged off my boat yesterday afternoon by robbers who killed one of my slaves. If you doubt me, you can ask the harbor authority and the city watch, whose doors I was battering down for news of her all night. She turned up back at my boat again only a few hours ago. She says Arion rescued her and was bringing her home when he suffered a seizure and fell into your hands.” He realized that he was still talking about “Arion.” Knowing the boy’s real name didn’t seem to have changed how he thought of him.

  The boy. Arion. King Ptolemy Caesar, the God Who Loves His Father and Mother, the son of a woman who had claimed to be the living incarnation of Isis … He could not fit the titles to the young man he knew.
Sweet Lady Isis, what had he gotten into?

  The emperor gave Melanthe another thoughtful look. Then he glanced at the gilded commander, who saluted.

  “I have seen the documents the merchant referred to,” he said. “Most of them are, indeed, concerned with customs dues, incense, and tin. There is also, however, a letter from Gaius Cornelius Gallus, saying that the merchant was arrested on a charge of fomenting sedition, which he investigated and found to originate in mistaken information obtained from a rival merchant.”

  The emperor looked back at Ani, suddenly all ice.

  “I have an enemy called Aristodemos,” said Ani. He found that he was able to speak quite firmly and clearly: nothing that happened now could make his situation any worse. “He used to be the partner of Kleon, the Red Sea trader who is now working with me, and he was very angry that I had, as he saw it, stolen his place. He met Arion briefly in Coptos marketplace when we went to pay the dues on the cargo, and heard that he was a Friend of the king. On the strength of this he went to Ptolemais Hermiou and told General Gallus that Arion was a rebel trying to stir up trouble, and that I was helping him, funding him with the cargo we were carrying. But it was all lies, and the only reason he said it was to make trouble—for me; he didn’t know or care a thing about Arion. He didn’t even know that Arion spoke Latin. He probably would have chosen a different lie if he had, because it was Arion’s Latin that got us out of that mess, since he was able to persuade the Ro—General Gallus’ men, to listen to our side of the story. My daughter says that Aristodemos is the one who set the robbers on to our ship as well, and I’ve discussed that with the city watch, too. You can prove even with the documents you have that we weren’t fermenting any sedition. I paid my customs dues in Coptos on the third of September. General Gallus had us arrested in Ptolemais Hermiou on the sixth, and released us on the seventh, as his letter should tell you. We passed the customs post at Babylon on the twentieth and registered with the harbor authority in Alexandria on the twenty-third. It’s a long way to Coptos, lord, and my boat’s heavy and was running with eight oars: there wasn’t time for us to ferment sedition. And I didn’t fund anything with the cargo: I brought it straight here to Alexandria, sold it, and spent the proceeds on glass and tin, apart from Kleon’s profit and my commission, which are deposited in a bank. I’m an honest man, and it’s all accounted for.” He met the cold eyes steadily. “I didn’t fight for the queen, either. I don’t even think she was a good ruler. All up and down the Nile there’s good land going to desert because the money and the men that should have repaired the dikes and ditches went to support her foreign wars. Now that you are ruler of Egypt, lord, I hope you will do a better job, and spare something to improve your land.”

  There was a silence. “Egyptian,” said the emperor, “you are insolent.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Ani at once, sincerely. “I didn’t mean to be. As I said, I’m a plain man and I don’t know the right manners to use to a king. I’d prostrate myself, but you say you don’t like that.”

  Octavian’s mouth twitched. He leaned back. “Very well. Say I accept your account of yourself and your dealings. In that case, we know that Ptolemy Caesar was innocently engaged in trade between his supposed death on the—the fourteenth of August, wasn’t it, Marcus?—the fourteenth of August, and your arrival in Alexandria on—when was it again?”

  “The twenty-third of September,” said Ani, in a low voice. Did the emperor accept his account? Did he dare hope for anything?

  “The twenty-third of September,” repeated Octavian. “My birthday, as it happens. Apollo, what a birthday present! Today is the twenty-ninth. By your account, you parted from the king seven days ago, and know nothing he’s done since—apart from the alleged rescue of your daughter.” He surveyed Ani and Melanthe, his eyes cold again. “He has, I know, approached certain of his friends for help. I need to know who they are. If you can tell me, I will conclude that you are not rebels, and I will be able to be merciful, to you and to the rest of your people who are in my hands. If you refuse to reveal them, I will know that you are part of a plot, and treat you accordingly.”

  Ani still wasn’t sure whether he dared hope, but his sense of calm was gone. His heart beat wildly, and he wished again that the emperor would allow him to kneel. “I don’t know who he went to see,” he croaked. “Melanthe, if you know anything—tell him.”

  Melanthe looked at the emperor, her eyes enormous.

  “All our lives depend on it!” Ani urged her.

  “I …” she began. She bit her lip. “Sir—please. What will happen to Arion’s … t-to the king’s friends? They were only trying to help him. They weren’t trying to rebel against you.”

  “If that is the truth, then they have nothing to fear,” said Octavian, without hesitation. “You know who they are, do you?”

  “I … I think so. Sir, there was one man who was with Arion, his friend, and there was another man who’d lent him money and attendants and slaves and things. If there was anyone else, I don’t know anything about them.”

  “With him where?” the dark man, Marcus, asked sharply. “Where was this?”

  “On a ship, sir. The … the robbers took me to this ship. I don’t know what it was called, but the captain was named Kinesias, and it was going to sail to Cyprus. The captain bought free people and sold them as slaves overseas. Arion was there, as a passenger—I suppose because Kinesias had bribed the port authorities so he could leave without anyone seeing what he had on board. Arion had a lot of people with him. He was going to go to Cyprus to manage a friend’s estate there, but when he saw me he tried to make them let me go, and there was a fight and … I can see now that the captain realized who he was, and refused to carry him because of it. I didn’t understand it at the time. So we got off the ship, and Arion sent all the people and things back to their master, and he said he would find another way out of the city. The friend who was with him told me that Arion meant to kill himself, and we tried to persuade him to be my father’s partner instead. But sir, please believe me, nobody at all was saying anything about fighting you!”

  “The names!” said Marcus impatiently. “Two of them, you said! Two names!”

  “The man who had the estate, who owned the slaves—he was called Archi-something. I never met him, and I didn’t hear his name more than once or twice: Arion tried not to use it. But the slaves mentioned him. Archi … Archib—”

  “Archibios?” asked Marcus.

  “Yes,” said Melanthe. “That was it.”

  Marcus smiled in relief. He looked at Octavian.

  “It makes sense,” said the emperor. “And we can easily confirm, too, whether he owns an estate in Cyprus. Very good, girl. And the other friend, the one you did meet?”

  “Rhodon,” Melanthe said at once. “He said he was a philosopher, and he’d been Arion’s teacher.”

  Ani abruptly remembered why he’d heard that name. Rhodon was the young king’s tutor who’d betrayed him, on whose spear he’d been reported to have died. He remembered suddenly the first time he’d questioned Arion: “Why weren’t you wearing armor?” “I was asleep. Rhodon came, and …” and another of those maddening halts, which had led him—hot, thirsty, itching, and irritable as he was—to goad the boy: “Rhodon your lover?”

  No, Rhodon was the one who’d made the hole in his side. So what was Rhodon doing on a ship with Arion, happily accepted as Arion’s friend? It didn’t make sense—unless you postulated that there had been some kind of plot all along, that King Ptolemy Caesar’s death had been staged, that there were real and serious plans for rebellion, and Rhodon had always been a part of them.

  There had been no plan. Ani could know that: he had seen the wound, the muddle and confusion. But the emperor could not know, and the doubt and alarm were growing on his face.

  Melanthe was still staring at the emperor, puzzled now, aware that something had gone wrong but not knowing what.

  “Rhodon,” said Octavian sharply. “You’re
sure of this?”

  The little man Areios pushed himself off from the wall and, for the first time, tried to make himself noticed. Here in this room “the most powerful man in Alexandria” seemed so insignificant that Ani had almost forgotten him. “Caesar,” he said.

  Octavian looked at him.

  “I, uh … well, Rhodon and I studied together, and … well, I have spoken to him a couple of times since … He has been very remorseful. He hadn’t meant to kill the boy, he said; he only meant to take him prisoner and bring him back here to the city. He thought you could be persuaded to spare him. I … I don’t think there was any plot. I think he believed the young man was dead, and when he found that he was still alive, he seized the opportunity to make amends.”

  Octavian kept looking at him. Areios ducked his head. He did not give up, though, and Ani realized that this was actually a decent and merciful man, eager to protect his friends—that Melanthe had misjudged him. “Lord, I know Rhodon,” he persisted. “He is direct to the point of being simple. I can’t imagine that he would be capable of pretending remorse and shame while he knew that in fact the young man he was believed to have killed was still alive. He’s not a good actor, Caesar. He wouldn’t convince anyone. And—lord—your own men reported that Ptolemy Caesar was stabbed by his tutor and died. If the man who was stabbed wasn’t Ptolemy Caesar, then who did the merchant find wounded on the road? And if the merchant and his daughter are part of the plot, and found no one on the road, why would they name Rhodon now? And if they weren’t part of the plot, and found no one, how do they know the young man at all? Caesar, the proposition is alarming at first glance, but the more it’s examined, the more contradictions it reveals, and the weaker it becomes.”

  Another slow relaxation. The emperor nodded. He turned to the silent guard commander. “Tell the men in the corridor to bring the young man in,” he ordered. “Tell them to take the irons off his legs first. No need to make him shuffle.”

  The commander bowed and went out.