by Talbot Mundy
“He will stop at nothing short of thinking me an ingrate, unless I remember to reward him,” remarked Caesar. “I am glad you mentioned it. He is an excellent physician.”
Suppressing irritation, swallowing regret that he had mentioned Olympus, Potheinos tried again:
“Nothing, I believe, but illness, undermining judgment, could make you expose yourself to such dangers as those that at this very moment surround you, Caesar. Possibly better than you, I appreciate how valuable you are to Rome; and, as I said just now, I wish to be your friend. What would happen to Rome if you should meet disaster here — now? What would happen to Egypt, if Rome should resume her civil war? I shudder to think of it! You are the hub of the Roman wheel. Believe me, Caesar, I am the hub of this wheel and I know what it would mean if Cleopatra were to gain another foothold. She is a broken spoke that would wreck the chariot. She is immoral — recklessly extravagant — indifferent to anything but personal success and her own gratification. Here I am in Egypt with my hands on all the intricacies of the situation. You should be in Rome, where every minute is an hour in which your enemies may prepare against you. Caesar, let us recognize ourselves as indispensable, each to the other. Trust me to put Egypt in your power, since Egypt is as necessary to the Romans as the Romans are to us. But let me trust you in return to act in the best interest of Egypt by assisting to establish Prince Ptolemy as king, with myself as his principal minister.”
“I notice that in your zeal to improve my circumstances you do not forget yourself,” Caesar answered, and it took Potheinos measurable moments to recover; but, magnanimous as ever, Caesar came to his assistance with this remark:
“Do you think Prince Ptolemy incapable of government without you?”
“I regret to say yes. He is very young. He has been educated by Theodotus, an unprincipled rogue whom you deservedly drove from your presence. Theodotus, for his own ends, taught him so much self-will and so little of the art of government, that it will need my ripe experience as well as Rome’s friendship if Egypt is to be saved from anarchy. I blame our present difficulties wholly on Theodotus.”
“And who appointed him?” asked Caesar.
Potheinos did not answer. Caesar asked another question:
“Were not you and he and General Achillas a triumvirate? Is there a council of ministers?”
“Yes — men of no importance. Power is in my hands — spies — influence — appointment of officials — I control all Egypt. Trust me and I will see to it that Rome receives repayment of the loans, and in addition there shall be a handsome tribute for yourself — a sum sufficient to enable you to grip Rome firmly. I am a statesman, Caesar, like yourself. I understand your difficulty. You need money, and Rome has none. But to enable me to get that for you, you must let me have the credit for persuading you to go away. That will increase my popularity beyond the point where imposition of new taxes could destroy it. Do you see my point?”
“I would prefer to see those other ministers,” said Caesar. “Do I understand you to admit that you had power to remove Theodotus at any time?”
Potheinos’ mental wriggle out from under that dilemma was as physically obvious as his exasperation.
“I am not God. I am not responsible for other men’s ill fate. I am a minister endeavoring to serve my prince—”
“And simultaneously me?” suggested Caesar. “Your influence might take a stronger grip on my imagination if my men were being better fed. They grumble that the corn delivered at your order is so full of weevils they can hardly stomach it; and the wine, they say, is worse. My men are not epicures; they and I have eaten many an unpalatable meal together.”
Caesar’s Olympian insolence was more than Egypt’s Minister of State could suffer without losing self-control. The manner rather than the words offended him. He bristled.
“Let them reckon themselves fortunate that they are fed,” he answered. “They invade us. They have driven out our palace guards—”
“Incapables, whom they have ably replaced,” Caesar interrupted. “Fie on you, Potheinos! Do you think that I appreciate this luxury while gallant men are ill-fed?”
Potheinos had enjoyed an almost absolute authority too long to take that scolding meekly.
“Shall I starve our Alexandrians in order to feed unwelcome intruders?” he retorted.
Caesar’s smile became less pleasant, deepening sardonic furrows near his mouth. But the reply, if he intended one, died still-born. Suddenly he stood up. Instantly the eunuch could not help but know he was dismissed from mind as totally as when a sunrise banishes the images of night.
Gracefully, as if he did the honors of a whole world, Caesar strode toward her; and if Cleopatra ever in her life was wholly gratifying to the eye, she was that minute as she stepped under the awning. Sunlight or her own soul — something had dispersed the tragic shadow she inherited from Ptolemaic forebears — shadow sometimes making visible the strife between her higher and her lower nature — between vision and the need to temporize. She was as confident that morning, as radiant as if her battle for a throne was won.
And she was dressed as modestly and simply as if all Greek art had lent itself; her hair (that vanity too often cheated into tortuous design) as subtly pleasing as her ivory-white chiton, edged with old-rose — Doric strength of line and Oriental subtlety of contour blended for her by the genius of slaves from Hindustan. No jewelry — except one pearl that Tros had given her, that seemed to nestle in her hair; and smaller, black pearls on her sandals that displayed those feet, which, if Apollodorus said truth, should be set on nations’ necks and leave them satisfied.
And she was framed by dusky women — Ethiopians from far to southward of the Cataracts — tall, handsome, Amazonian, proud-seeming savages, whose two-thirds nakedness increased her modesty; their barbarism, magnified by peacock-feather fans, made Cleopatra seem so exquisitely civilized that even Caesar caught his breath. And he was not a tyro in the world of women.
Slaves set a couch for her under the awning, but she walked to the marble rail and stood there, shading her eyes with her hand a moment as she gazed at Tros’ ship smiting up the harbor water into egg-white foam. Her eyes then, holding in their depth no hint of doubt or trouble, answered Caesar’s smile, her own apparently as confident of friendship as if she and Caesar had been playmates since the sun first shone on Egypt and the comedy of human history began.
“They make you comfortable? Are you rested, Caesar? I suppose a soldier, such as you are, easily recovers from a midnight conference, but it was inconsiderate of me to keep you talking until nearly daylight. Do they bring you reasonable food? And is your health good? Should Olympus see you?”
Art — audacity — restraint — that was a trinity that Caesar gloried in — aware, as any able man must be, how often he had fallen short; how seldom, but how brilliantly then he measured up to it. Accustomed to the flattery of sycophants, to hatred, to the fear of the defeated, to the impudence of fortune-hunters, he appreciated novelty, and he had thought that there was nothing in the world that could renew his faded sense of fresh experience awaiting. He perceived intelligence that understood him — in itself a novelty; for not his closest intimates had come near doing that.
“I realize a soldier’s life is nothing unless compensated,” he said, smiling.
“By a victory?” she asked.
With a habitual gesture, using one forefinger to arrange the scant hair underneath his wreath, he answered:
“No, I have been surfeited with victory. Defeat is what I meant.”
“You? That is an almost godlike attitude. It is thus the gods themselves incarnate!”
With a eunuch’s tactfulness, relying on his lack of sex to privilege impertinence, Potheinos chose that ill-selected moment for a flank attack on Caesar’s will, experience of harems, where he had his early education, telling him that Cleopatra had already weakened it by her assault in front.
“Caesar,” he said, “behold your opportunity! What triumph! H
ow she will adorn your triumph! — What furor! — what ovation when you lead her through the streets of Rome! And afterward — what envy! What a resolution of all difficulties! We — I mean her brother — would rejoice with genuine affection, knowing her to be in Caesar’s lavish household!”
Cleopatra did not even turn her back on him She did not recognize him by ignoring him. She subtly flattered Caesar by her confidence that he would deal with that insult as promptly as palace servants would have dealt with an intruding scorpion.
And if Caesar ever dallied when a drastic stroke was needed, then the lightning also lingers on its way. His suave voice rose a half-note, and his words were crisp, although his manner was, if anything, more careless than it had been.
“I will settle the succession to the throne this morning,” he said curtly. “Go and assemble those assistant ministers of whom you spoke and ask Prince Ptolemy to bring them to confer with me an hour before noon. Go and do it.”
Potheinos sought to bolster up his dignity by turning away laughing to himself and muttering. His shrug suggested unsuspected weapons in reserve. There was a Roman sentry posted near the steps that led down to a garden and to a marble pathway between one wing of the enormous palace and another; he went by the sentry sneering and ignoring his salute, then beckoned to his secretaries to approach him up the steps and, whispering, walked down between them with the best air he could muster of having had the better of an argument.
“That is an individual,” said Caesar, “who may force me to recall that there are short ways out of disagreements.”
Cleopatra let the subject drop as if it held no interest. Tros’ ship already near the royal wharf and dwarfing Caesar’s biggest — with its purple sails and splendor making all of Caesar’s fleet look shabby — served to remove the conversation into safer channels.
“You sent your messenger to Tros of Samothrace?”
“Yes, in a pilot boat at dawn. I sent another to Tiberius Claudius Nero, who commands my fleet. There might have been an incident.”
“He fears Tros?”
“Sailors are a superstitious breed. Tros was extremely lucky in his raids against me; lucky and resourceful.”
“Tros says you are the most brilliant general on earth.”
“He believes that if he said it,” Caesar answered. “Tros is a brave man — masterful — but lacking humor. He will fail inevitably, not because he lacks enthusiasm or resourcefulness, but from expecting other men to share his own ridiculous ideals.”
“Fail in what?” asked Cleopatra.
Caesar hesitated. He had never in his whole life let another mortal see what underlay that handsome mask that he presented to the world. An impulse now to do it tempted him. But habit dies hard. Curiosity had ever been his guiding passion. Stripping women naked was a violence that grew uninteresting after long use. He desired a far more intimate indecency. But he suspected, if he would uncover her soul, he must first expose his own.
“Last night,” he said, “you spoke of sacrilege — of not submitting your divine rights to a man’s authority.”
She nodded.
“But are you a lone divinity? A solitary star? Do gods and goddesses not love each other?”
“They must recognize each other first,” she answered. “But I asked you wherein Tros must fail?”
Again he hesitated. They were side by side, she leaning on the marble railing. Slowly, with a sort of languid interest, she looked up and he recognized in her violet eyes intelligence and fearless will that suddenly inflamed him.
“Tros will fail,” he said, “because Tros lacks the immortality that you and I have. When he is dead, none will remember him. He will die. He will cease. He will leave no record written in the very laws of men and graven so irrevocably in the substance of their lives that when they eat and drink and make war, when they pray and when they change their governments, they shall remember him They shall forget not Caesar!”
“They may blame you,” she retorted.
“Blame and praise are equal — both one, when they are the echoes of success,” he answered.
“And who judges the success?”
“The man! The woman! I, Caesar, am the judge of Caesar. If you let another judge you, Cleopatra, you are less than he is — howsoever small he is.”
“I am a Ptolemy,” she said, apparently not lit yet by the fire that he had let blaze. “I inherit what the Ptolemies have taken from the gods, and I have added to it more than all they took, though even I know not yet what that is. I am a woman. When I go, and if I will, I leave a son behind me. So if they forget me, they shall know him. Who is your son, Caesar? Is he like you?”
“I have many sons,” he said, “by many women.”
“Were they women who bear Caesars? Or were they poor fools craving pleasure, and their children accidents? Have you a son who bears your name?”
“No, none — not even Brutus,” he said, smiling whimsically. “Brutus attempts to judge me — loves a lost cause — loves nobility of word and stoops to ignobility of deed to win fools’ praise. Brutus was with Pompey at Pharsalia. He never owns me as the author of his being unless magnanimity is what he craves. He is himself less merciful than Cato, whom he claims as relative — with but a thousandth of old Cato’s iron in him.”
“Brutus’ mother — was she worthy of you?”
Caesar smiled again.
“Servilia was generous when I was hounded like a criminal. Her husband—”
But the conversation had descended to a less exciting plane than that on which he launched it.
“We were talking about sons unborn yet,” he resumed. There was the gleam of battle in his eye. He meant to strip away that mask he could not penetrate. “You had in mind — ?”
Her eyes, as baffling as his were piercing and as deeply wise as his were brilliantly wilful, met his, understood his and inflamed him further without yielding anything.
“I was thinking of Apollodorus,” she said. “Caesar, Herod stole my Lollianè. If Apollodorus had her she would keep the artist from becoming warrior. I need Apollodorus, but I need him anchored to a woman who, in turn, is bound by gratitude to me.”
“Herod?” he asked. “Who is Herod?”
“The Governor of Galilee, under Hyrcanus, high priest of Jerusalem.”
“Yes, yes. Now I remember Herod: a discreet young person. He attached himself to Pompey’s cause until the cause was lost, and then sent emissaries to me at Pharsalia. Yes, Herod shall let Apollodorus have his Lollianè!”
“Caesar,” she said again; and suddenly he saw another phase of her. Now she was definite in turn and in her own way stripping naked what she saw that he must see if mutual advantage were to come of meeting. Calculating, cool audacity — he loved it! She could dare to be a hostage in his hands; and she defied him to defeat her even so. “Caesar, send for Esias the Jew, first, before you try to settle the succession; because Potheinos will use your demand for money as a very powerful leverage against you. But if you promise the Jews full rights as citizens, the Jews will work against Potheinos. And Esias trusts Tros, so let Tros come with him. Unless you win over Esias the Jews will work for my brother, who is in debt to them and easy to manipulate.”
“And you?” he asked her, thoroughly enjoying being told by a twenty-year-old girl how he should use his almost superhuman skill of statesmanship.
“If you wish to win two-thirds of Alexandria,” she said, “and mind you, I speak now of Alexandria, not Egypt — win the women of the Gardens. Show them consideration. Don’t let Potheinos tax them to pay Rome’s indemnity, because he will, unless you prevent it. That would make them talk against you — at a time when men are influenced because their minds are made stupid — like moths at a lamp.”
He smiled. He understood that perfectly. “So much for Alexandria. And Egypt — ?”
“I am Egypt.”
The confidence of that assertion puzzled him. He eyed her with another kind of curiosity — a deeper interest.
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“Don’t let Potheinos loot the temples to pay Rome its money, or to pay you,” she went on. “Alexandria is foam — scud — moonlight on a surface — ever-changing. Egypt is the deep sea and never changes. Alexandria is tears — laughter — appetite — gaiety. Egypt is religion. Win the ancient priesthood — your ally is Egypt. Lose the priesthood — and though you drive a spear in Egypt’s heart she will continue and destroy you with all your works.”
“And you are Egypt?” he said, looking straight into her eyes. He took her hands in his.
“If you win Egypt, you can win the world,” she answered. “But if you forget that I am Egypt, you will lose me and the world too.”
“You oblige me to wonder who taught you to speak like a goddess!”
“You. You have stirred the wisdom in me.”
He looked from her toward the sentry by the stairhead who was gazing at them both. It was the sentry who suggested action.
“Let Apollodorus bring the Jew,” said Caesar. “I will summon Tros. And as for Egypt—”
“I will answer for Egypt,” said Cleopatra. She could look weak in the moments of her greatest strength — unconquerably strong when she was so weak she had nothing but men’s promises to lean on.
CHAPTER XIX. “Royal Egypt — Pharaoh of the Upper and the Lower Nile!”
There are times when silence is an overwhelming conqueror, though they are few who understand it and its uses.
— Fragment from The Diary Of Olympus.
CAESAR had insisted on a meeting in the forenoon to allow Potheinos scant time to gather friends around him and no opportunity at all to stage a demonstration. Nevertheless, Potheinos had worked a miracle by using scores of messengers. Every available square foot of the throne-room was occupied by someone on whom he thought he could depend.