by Talbot Mundy
Then to the roof and that little summer-house, with starlit sky for setting — murmur of the waves on Pharos — challenging of sentries on the wall to break the silence into intervals — and Charmian at last, to play her lute and sing those destiny-adoring colorful Osirian hymns, whose melody was Nile-bank whispering of reeds, the lap of water and the cry of wildfowl.
Then a mystery of dancing. Cleopatra knew the rhythm, and the meaning of the rhythm of the Isis ritual. She knew its dignity, and knew the soundless real music of the spirit that can only be reflected in motion, as when corn is swaying or a bird flies spirally on confident exulting wings beneath the azure infinite of sky; or when a shadow leaps along a mountainside; or when the waves come plunging. And because so absolute is law that even anarchy is subject to it, law was signified by exquisite restraint. The starlight, and a lute, and Charmian’s low-voice singing —
And then sleep, together, in each other’s arms, like two tired children, until dawn awoke them to another chapter of companionship.
CHAPTER XXII. “And this I learned from the Lord Achillas’ barber.”
There are two forces, each having seven streams, and they again seven times seven, and so on downward unto an infinity of numbers. They are right- and left-handed — positive and negative — light and darkness — good and evil. Each has many names and many attributes, and in the ultimate the two are one; though not yet, nor for many eons, is their oneness manifested, and until then they are opposites. Their oneness is an occult secret, difficult to understand, and it is madness for the choosers of the left-hand force to meditate their treacheries when the star of the right-hand force is in the ascendent.
— Fragment from The Diary Of Olympus.
CAESAR took nothing seriously in those days except the intellectual excitement of exploring Cleopatra’s mind. For the time being it amused him to subject himself, if only for the sake of the yet keener pleasure, that he foresaw, of subjecting her when he had plumbed the depths of her mental resources. He confused the mental with the spiritual, imagining they were the same thing.
She was dazzled and delighted by the brilliance of the only man she had met who could hold his own in conversation with her. But unlike him, she never for a moment lost sight of her purpose, to preserve her own throne and to save the Land of Khem from coming under Roman rule — while revealing herself and her mental processes to Caesar with a candor and charm that thrilled even his cynical and experienced nature. He almost forgot in those days that Rome existed. Cleopatra forgot nothing. Rome, and the need to checkmate Rome, was foremost in her thought.
Sending for Arsinoe and Ganymedes, she tried to remove one obstacle to peace, in order to leave herself more free for the constructive purposes she had in mind, by convincing them, as actual eye-witnesses, that Caesar was her lover and strong ally, making the exact truth clear: that she was willing to forget past quarrels and befriend Arsinoe, provided friendship should be mutual and should include the recognition of her own rule.
But Caesar preferred to pave the way for violence. He read one of his fatherly lectures to the girl and insulted Ganymedes by rebuking him in Cleopatra’s presence. It was part of his peculiar genius to understand how mortifying such a homily might be to a man like Ganymedes who knew many of the incidents of Caesar’s own past.
He rebuked the girl’s guardian with calculated, patronizing insolence. Ganymedes foresaw ruin unless he and his charge should escape with as little delay as possible, to carry on their warfare in the open; and Caesar, who regarded all disturbances as opportunities, gave secret orders that should make that indiscretion easy for them.
The next night following that interview, Arsinoe and Ganymedes, with a number of slaves and great quantities of jewelry and palace treasure, escaped through the Lochias lines into the city. The news was brought by Calvinus at dawn. He tried to awaken Caesar to a recognition of the danger.
“Caesar, I have seen you have your will of many a woman. Is a woman at last to have her will of you, to the destruction of us all?”
But Caesar smiled, and went to breakfast with Cleopatra on a balcony that overlooked a garden riotous with roses. He appeared pleased when Calvinus told him, later in the day, that Ganymedes had contrived to borrow large sums of money, using Arsinoe’s jewels as security, and was busily bribing influential Alexandrians to support Arsinoe and her brother against Cleopatra and the Roman influence.
“Spies keep them in touch with Potheinos. They are spreading the tale that you ordered the library burned. Alexandria will rise and overwhelm us!”
Caesar thought not. He preferred to wait until the enemy’s plan revealed itself. He felt reasonably sure of reenforcements on the way from Syria and Asia Minor. So he spent hours of every day with Cleopatra and amused himself and her by studying the palace records that pertained to India and almost legendary lands beyond where Alexander stayed his eastward course. Cleopatra encouraged his dream of surpassing Alexander’s exploits, since he could have no time to conquer Egypt if he hoped to break through Parthia and rape the riches of the East.
But while Caesar thoroughly enjoyed himself his officers and men grew increasingly nervous and anxious. Information became daily harder to obtain, and the supplies of corn that Caesar had contracted for diminished, although luxuries (for which the Roman troops cared nothing) came in constantly by boat from Syria and Cyprus, so that the palace was well enough fed.
Calvinus spied clumsily; he paid for information at the gate, employing any Alexandrian who cared to run the risk of being caught, and learning, consequently, far more of rumor than actual fact, as well as gathering misinformation sent to him on purpose by Achillas. Now and then he caught an Alexandrian and tortured him in secret; but men under torture say invariably what they think the torturer desires to know, so Calvinus continued to be displeased by the levity with which Caesar received his urgent and constant advice.
Caesar had much better sources of information. Cleopatra’s friends, including many of his priesthood, were in communication with her secretly, sending their slaves with messages by night. There was Apollodorus, popular, and fertile with expedients for learning true news. But, above all, the palace barber, Paulos, who had nothing now to do but shave and massage Caesar for an hour a day, spent all his spare time ferreting for facts; and in the one hour of a morning that he spent with Caesar, Caesar learned more than from all other sources together.
Paulos was a timid little man, obsessed with an unholy purpose to become the master-midwife-barber-politician of the world. He was hypnotized by Caesar’s greatness. He was afraid for Caesar’s life and for his own career; he was afraid, too, that Olympus might inflict some magic curse on him unless he kept in mind the spirit and the letter of his orders. Had Olympus not commanded: “Serve him as you would me”?
Where was Olympus? None knew. Paulos actually wondered whether he himself was not Olympus’ substitute, responsible to unseen powers for the safety of the man whom Cleopatra looked to for protection.
So from Paulos Caesar learned how Ganymedes had approached Achillas, where he was encamped with a part of his troops in the stadium, proposing to him to proclaim Ptolemy and Arsinoe king and queen; how Achillas had preferred allegiance to Ptolemy alone, mistrusting Ganymedes and refusing to share with anyone the power that he saw within his grasp; how Ganymedes had immediately knifed Achillas in the back and had assumed command of all Achillas’ army; but how the city did not know that yet, although the truth was rumored.
“And this I learned,” said Paulos, “from the Lord Achillas’ barber who now shaves Lord Ganymedes, who is careless. That barber is a man named Aristotles, a member of the freedman-barbers’ mystery, subordinate to me, as such, in my capacity of High-Grand-Phoenix of the Order. We are a very secret mystery and discipline is rigorous, each barber being bound to tell all except some of his secrets to the craft, so that the craft may prosper; and Aristotles very much wants to learn the secret of my magic remedy for growing hair. Therefore, what I wish to know,
he tells me; and he tells the truth, for fear lest I should catch him in a lie — the razor suit you, sir? — should catch him in a lie and have him cast forth from the mystery in ignorance of that great secret that it took me years to discover. And he sent me this information by a slave whose task it is to carry broken meats to lepers, and who therefore comes and goes unquestioned.
“Head a little more to one side, please, sir. That is a slave much given to consideration of the spiritual problems, since the lepers touch him, when he will permit it, thinking that perhaps he may have touched a royal garment and have received some faint reflection of the royal gift of healing leprosy. Having observed more than one leper to be benefited by the touch, he feels himself in a sense divinely authorized and so is very careful of his speech, not lying — even to defend himself when under accusation.
“And he said this: ‘Before the Lord Achillas’ death the Lord Potheinos was in communication with the Lord Achillas by correspondence, all of which the Lord Ganymedes discovered after he had slain the Lord Achillas. And the purport of the correspondence was: that the Lord Potheinos should poison the food to be eaten at a banquet that should be arranged to celebrate the resumption of friendly relations between Queen Cleopatra and her brother King Ptolemy. And because no slave could be trusted to conduct such a delicate operation, without perhaps endangering the lives of King Ptolemy and the Lord Potheinos, it was agreed that the Lord Potheinos himself should attend to it. But no doubt Caesar is omniscient and knew all this already.”
So when Potheinos, unctuously humble, called on Caesar personally, to arrange the banquet, “not only,” as he said, “to celebrate the restoration of a brotherly and sisterly regard, but also to afford me opportunity of making public my submission to your wise solution of our problems,” Caesar blandly walked into the trap. His only stipulation was that Calvinus should also be invited:
“For I wish,” said he, “to prove to Calvinus that I was serious in certain statements that I made to him about you.”
Calvinus was argumentative, indignant, furious and pleading in turns when Caesar notified him of the coming banquet. He prophesied that Caesar would wind up by making Potheinos co-dictator of Rome:
“When you will learn at last,” said he, “what agony of mind is. And the sooner the better, Caesar, because I would like to share mine with you!”
However, Caesar changed the subject, asking him which cohort he proposed should supply the guard of honor for the banquet hall, appearing more than usually curious about that detail, finally suggesting names of individual men whom he preferred.
CHAPTER XXIII. “There is only one offense that men find unforgivable.”
Magic is the universally accepted name for those phenomena whose noumena are unknown to the ordinary herd. But magic is of two kinds, which, however, have this quality in common: they receive their impulse from the will of the magician, somewhat in the way that ripples on the sea receive their impulse from an oar; and if his will lack strength, or if his understanding fail him, he must receive the effect of his magic hurled back on himself with force redoubled by the impulse of his adversary. He who is known as a white magician — he, that is, who takes the right-hand way and whose knowledge is exerted solely with a beneficial and unselfish purpose — need not dread that repercussion more than fish need dread the sea, because he is employing Life itself — the very Life in which he lives. But the black magician — he who takes the left-hand way, whose purpose and whose power are malevolent — is not so fortunately situated. Death is his employer and employee, so that the greater his immediate success, the more certain is his ultimate annihilation.
— Fragment from The Diary Of Olympus.
A PARADOX is usually entertaining, and it excited the Alexandrian nobility to attend a banquet in the palace, almost as much as it amused Apollodorus to issue the written invitations. Caesar’s burning of the Egyptian fleet was an act of war; the destruction of one wing of the famous library on the Bruchium had been an accident which, far more bitterly resented, had wiped out the last vestige of even superficially friendly relations.
But the Lochias was besieged and beset by troops that theoretically were the hirelings of the invited guests. It was supplied with luxuries from oversea by aliens and disloyal Alexandrians who had to run the blockade kept up in a desultory fashion by the remnant of a fleet supposedly the guests’ too, but of whose loyalty to anybody nobody was certain. And it was ostensibly to celebrate a reconciliation between brother and sister, whom everybody knew to be at enmity.
So the invited guests accepted with feelings of mingled dread and curiosity, not many of them doubting that Potheinos, though a virtual prisoner in the palace, still held the key to the situation; those who hoped not, nevertheless did not dare to show their enmity to the powerful eunuch. Some hated Caesar as an impudent intruder and despised Cleopatra for her now notorious complaisance — or pretended to despise her; many, on the contrary, admired Caesar’s daring, envied Cleopatra, but doubted that a mere four thousand men could hold the Lochias long enough to enable Caesar to secure his position by bringing troops from elsewhere. There were plenty of rumors to the effect that Caesar’s real reason for remaining was that he did not dare to return to Rome, where he was supposed to fear indictment or assassination. And there were stories that the summoned reenforcements had refused to come.
Whatever their private opinions, most of the Alexandrian nobility would have preferred to remain neutral until destiny should show its hand, but, knowing that destiny is never neutral, they felt obliged to gamble on the outcome. Necromancers, casters of horoscopes and charlatans of every description did a thriving business, and the reputable fortune-tellers (far more difficult to find and much more reticent) were besieged by applicants for inside information of the workings of the law of probability. But whatever the soothsayers said, the ultimate decision was the same; and nobody who had received an invitation stayed away, not even though the personal indignity of being searched at the gate for weapons was expressly stipulated.
Nobody was willing to bet very heavily that Caesar would not retain them all as hostages. He had foregone that opportunity already once; he might not show such calculating magnanimity a second time. So there was a great deal of hasty consultation with the army headquarters in the stadium, with a view to ascertaining what the army’s answer would be to any such move on Caesar’s part. But Ganymedes made the mistake that Caesar had counted on.
Having stolen command of the army, Ganymedes saw himself triumphant in any event. He was aware of Potheinos’ plan, through having read his correspondence with the late Achillas. He pretended for the present to be deputizing for Achillas, whom he reported to be seriously ill, although there were many who knew the truth about the murder. In reply to all inquiries he let it be known that he looked with favor on anyone attending the banquet, and he hinted that there might be an agreeable surprise in store; so that there were some who thought he might be intending to seize the Lochias while the banquet was in progress.
Yet another rumor exercised a potent influence. In order to prepare the mind of Alexandria for murder in high places, Ganymedes and Arsinoe spoke reminiscently of the disgraceful scenes at the court of the late Queen Berenice, oldest daughter of King Ptolemy and half-sister to Cleopatra and Arsinoe; and of the fate of Berenice; and they diligently circulated hints that Cleopatra was encouraging Caesar in debauch compared to which Queen Berenice’s had been child’s play. They asserted that the burning of the library had been a bonfire lit for her amusement; and though half Alexandria had seen Caesar’s men fighting the flames, the lie gained currency. So there was fascination in the thought of seeing Cleopatra at a banquet, drunken with success and, possibly too, with strong wine, blithely ignorant of the fate that was awaiting her.
But Cleopatra understood that part of the situation perfectly.
“They expect and they hope to be scandalized,” she remarked to Caesar. “Indecency would stir their vanity, in the same way that a public e
xecution does. I have noticed that criminals and public both prefer a public execution — . I suppose because it makes the criminal a hero in his own imagination, and the mob feels for the moment like a swarm of sanctimonious gods enjoying justice. They are hoping to witness someone’s shame; and they hope — they trust — they are almost confident it will be followed by something even more disgusting in the guise of murder.”
“Egypt,” Caesar answered, “there is only one offense that mean men find unforgivable. Actual superiority arouses in their minds such persistent and resentful hatred that there are only two possible protections against it, and it is well to use both means constantly. Amuse the vermin with the cruelty and scandals that they love; and keep so far aloof from them that they cannot anticipate your next move.”
He practiced what he preached. Not Cleopatra, and not even Calvinus knew what Paulos the barber had revealed to him The unfortunate barber, along with the slave who carried broken meat to lepers, had been locked away in a palace dungeon, where tongues could wag in the dark to deaf walls. Cleopatra thought that Caesar honestly intended to make a public show of reconciliation. She was willing to attempt it, but she would have preferred a thorough diplomatic victory first as the safer course.
“Caesar, you will find it is like flattering apes,” she prophesied. “They will accept the flattery and then, pattern ing their grimaces after you, they will imagine they are Caesars. Soon after that they will try to smash the pattern, lest their own eyes recognize the truth and their own hearts mock them.”