by Talbot Mundy
She was too weak to argue, and she caught sight of Charmian signaling to Tros to back away and take his leave without ceremony.
“Tros,” she insisted, “is a promise kept in one life not a fair wind for the next? I have heard you say so.”
“Aye,” he answered, “women can always remember a man’s words to use against him. They do us the first injustice when they bring us forth into the world and bid us thank them for it; the next when they snare us in marriage and steal our manhood while they bid us fight their quarrels; and the last when they throw in our teeth our falseness to our own ideals that we laid aside for them.”
“Nevertheless,” she said, “I will depend on you. I trust you more than any man—”
“Woman,” he answered, “what is it to me that you should trust me? I will answer. It means a rope around my neck, to haul me back from purposes I cherish!”
“Cherish my child Caesarion,” she answered. “Is that not a noble purpose — to raise a king who shall govern the whole world wisely?”
“Nay,” he answered. “Governing a world is Caesar’s or some other upstart’s business! I hold with Plato: we do better by thousands than by hundred thousands. Each man has enough to do to govern himself.”
“But somebody must rule. Who ruled your ship, Tros? Will you teach Caesarion to govern himself so that he may rule a world as you ruled that ship of yours?”
“Ruled, you say? I have the ship yet!”
“No,” she answered, “it is my ship — part of the fleet of Egypt. Tros, I will never let you go! You hear me? Never! Which will you then? Will you pledge your word to me anew? Or will you stay ashore, and live at ease, and grow fat, and watch another only half do what you might have done so splendidly? I will give you a day to think it over.”
“I have thought,” he answered. “I was born to be ensnared by women. How shall a man escape his destiny? But you shall find in me a man of blunt speech, and on the day that you fail Egypt I will fail you!”
“I accept your word,” she answered, nodding, and dismissed him, he backing away before Charmian, who was impatient to clear the room and neither afraid nor even courteous when duty urged her.
CHAPTER XXXIV. “Eastward! Turn eastward!”
Blame is easy to lay and no man or no woman is perfect. Commonly the greatest fools and hypocrites are readiest to cast aspersion; and the wisest and most honorable are the slowest, ever qualifying accusation and withholding judgment, knowing that themselves in like predicament might blunder worse than the accused and might achieve less.
— Fragment from The Diary Of Olympus.
WEEKS followed weeks without any direct word from Caesar — no letters, that is, although Cleopatra wrote once and enclosed the parchment in a golden tube, which she sealed with emeralds embedded deep in wax. Receiving no reply, she wasted no time bewailing Caesar’s fickleness. “Caesar,” she said, “is busy with a world’s affairs. He pays me the subtle compliment of leaving me to manage Egypt without his guidance.” And whether she believed that or was aware that Caesar, pursuing his usual opportunist tactics, was leaving her to sink or swim and intended to be governed, as to his future course in Egypt and toward her, wholly by results, she made the most of the freedom of action thus conferred. And there were no demands for money, which, although inexplicable, helped her more than any other circumstance to crystallize the good-will of the Alexandrians. Their resources rapidly increasing, instead of being drained by Caesar’s squanderous appetite, they yielded readily to Cleopatra’s constantly strengthening grip on the reins of state, and her own wealth becoming enormous, now that the corn monopoly was functioning, she had ample funds with which to begin to bribe such Roman senators as she thought might be of use to her later on. She did not exactly flood Rome with her secret agents, but it was only a very short time before Cicero, for instance, began to complain in the Roman Senate that her spies were everywhere. She had digested and applied that part of Caesar’s system thoroughly.
Lonely again, but with her genius stirred and awakened by Caesar’s; cynical in self-defense because of Caesar’s cynical desertion of her; and by nature alert to the treachery of human motives, she worked day and night to secure her political position, so that Caesar would have to turn to her again as an ally rather than turn against her, as she fully understood him to be capable of doing.
Tact and personality were her weapons. She discovered in herself the gift of dazzling men, whether they were old or young, and of making women not so jealous as despairing of ever imitating her attractions. Her air of gaiety and courage blinded everyone to the secret dread that haunted her of Rome’s insatiable hunger for new territories to exploit; and those of her ministers who shared that secret very soon perceived that she, and she alone, was likely to be able to resist Rome, not by force of arms but by devotion to her purpose and with an intelligence that no subtlety of statesmanship escaped. As alert as light, she detected treason before it materialized; as generous as summer weather, she rewarded friends as richly as she punished enemies. Caesar had not been gone a month before her ministers all realized that, though she drove them mercilessly, she was reckless of her own youth, health and comfort, valuing them only as a means of saving Egypt and her dynasty. As so often happens, energy enhanced her charm. It gave her confidence. She ripened.
And though Caesar did not write, there was incessant news of him. She was confident that while he kept on winning victories there was not much danger of the Roman Senate daring to try to challenge his authority and interfere with her activities. So she wheedled and bribed and outwitted Rufinus and the Roman officers, whom Caesar had left to take care of his own interests as much as to protect her, little by little so winning their admiration that they almost forgot Caesar in their recognition of her statesmanship. She loaded them with honors, and she scrupulously asked for Rufinus’ opinion in advance of every move she made, but it always ended in Rufinus withdrawing opposition and commending what she wanted. Meanwhile, Tros labored like Heracles at building ships, which Rufinus supposed were intended for Caesar’s use, and Apollodorus as high chamberlain devised such palace entertainments as no city in the world had ever seen.
That was another trick that she had learned from Caesar. She kept men too excited and amused to guess what her real intentions were; and the occasional Romans who came spying on their own account for business opportunities or to pick up political crumbs returned to Rome with stories about her magnificence and wit, that spread and spread and were exaggerated until Rome wondered whether to fear her or to look to her for inspiration. The exaggerated rumors of her wealth and reckless use of it set half of the Roman senators shamelessly angling for bribes — a scandal that solidified the small minority that resented corruption but who had no leader now that Cato was in exile fulminating the old-fashioned virtues near the ruins of ancient Carthage.
It was from Balbus, Caesar’s intimate in Rome and one of his most notorious agents of political corruption that she received the news of Caesar’s victory’ at Zela, whence he sent to his friend Amantius for publication the announcement “Veni, vidi, vici” that endeared him more than ever to the mob and more than ever made his critics loathe him. That message was a symptom that she recognized.
Presently came news of Caesar’s swiftly spent visit in Rome and his immediate descent on northern Africa where Cato, Scipio, Lucius Julius Caesar and other fugitive friends of Pompey had been busy preparing an army, with the assistance of Júba, the King of Numidia, to resist to the last breath the man whom they regarded as the bane of Rome — liar and traitor and arch-enemy of public decency. News of the battle of Thapsús was brought by fugitives, who told how Caesar, landing at Hadrumentum, had begun hostilities at once and, falling on Cato’s army, had utterly routed it and butchered fifty thousand men; how Lucius Julius Caesar, Lucius Africanus and Faustus Sulla had been beheaded, and how Cato, Scipio and others had committed suicide to save themselves from the indignity of public execution. Then, swiftly on the heels of new
s of that tremendous victory, came word that Caesar had made Eunoe, wife of the King of Mauretania, his mistress. There were many who took care that Cleopatra should receive that information, among them Apollodorus, who had not forgiven her for her neglect, as he considered it, to avenge the death of Lollianè. But though she was watched, and even offered diffident condolences by those whose cautious malice stalked under a guise of scandalized concern, there was none except Charmian who was allowed to see beneath the veil of her indifference, and Charmian only dimly.
“Do you realize now, Charmian,” she said, “why I was wise to leave Caesar free, not married to me? Would a form of words have kept him from Eunoe’s arms? I have assumed no privilege of finding fault with infidelity that he can no more help than the wind can keep from blowing. Caesar has nothing left to offer any woman except infidelity. He had one moment, in my arms, when he glimpsed what love means. And I have his son Caesarion.”
But Charmian was virgin chaste and bitter-minded in the matter of men’s faithlessness:
“He has probably by this time told Eunoe,” she said, “all the sweet nothings he murmured to you; and he will have added to them all the somethings that you told him — Caesar’s version of them! He will have told her, for instance, how divine she is and what he thinks divinity may mean!”
But Caesar had taught Cleopatra cynicism, and before she ever met him she had learned the value of men’s protests of devotion. Personally utterly incapable of swerving from a loyalty once pledged, she recognized all the more readily the rarity of that trait of character, and she was beginning to find it simple to outwit the men who would have liked to stand in Caesar’s vacant place beside her. There were many Alexandrians who thought themselves in that race, and who became her none too scrupulous supporters because vanity interpreted her smiles and the gaze of her violet eyes as indications of her interest in themselves. That gaze was psychic; she could see through mask to motive. But she understood its surface value also and deliberately used it, letting her lightning dazzle as many fools as chose to try to match ambition against her genius.
Five kings and Herod of Galilee all sought her hand in marriage, recognizing (as Caesar himself had failed to do) one reason why she had refused to marry Caesar. She was free to dispose of herself anew whenever Caesar’s shifting, opportunist tactics should compel her to seek strength elsewhere. She could be true to Caesar without tying herself hand and foot and at the mercy of his untruth — she intuitively recognizing her own freedom as perhaps the surest means of keeping Caesar faithful to her in degree. So she received ambassadors who tempted her with gifts. Already married, Herod offered to divorce his wife and to negotiate alliances that should give Rome pause for many a year to come — an offer that she played with until Herod stood committed wheel-deep in the mire of his own intrigue and she had him at her mercy.
She had not forgiven Herod. She was farther still from forgetting Lollianè. But she did not consider Apollodorus’ private vengeance a fair exchange for the life of a faithful friend and she intended to exact a price that should wound Herod without ever giving the wound a chance to heal — that should punish him and keep him hoping for relief and therefore be useful to herself. So she abode her time and let Herod think she considered his bid for her hand a compliment. She thanked him for the information he sent her about Caesar’s present lapse into infidelity and suitably embellished stories of his lurid past. She kept the letters as a whip with which to coerce Herod in the time to come.
Tros, as he had promised that he would do, bluntly spoke his mind to her:
“You are wasting time,” he said, “and wasting wisdom on a crowd of fools, who will infect you with their folly.”
“What would you have me do?” she asked him.
“Eastward! Turn eastward!” he answered. “Send ambassadors to India. Warn India of Caesar’s plans to conquer all the world. Then make alliances with Parthia, India, Arabia. Send me! I will stir them until they unite with you in one wall of self-defense across the world!”
She sent an embassy to India, but not Tros. She invited Buddhist emissaries from Ceylon, and intimated that the port of Berenice on the Red Sea would afford convenience, supplies and full protection for eastern traders. Also she sent agents to Socotra, where for upward of two hundred years the Greeks had maintained a trading station, and she arranged for pilots and interpreters to accompany Egyptian merchantmen.
Because she was young and forever apparently gay, most gloriously dressed and bent on having the most splendid court the world had ever known, it escaped men’s observation that behind that mask of gaiety and scented luxury she was a thinker, with a lightning intuition that could read most hidden motives, and with a smile that concealed her knowledge.
Charmian knew more than anyone. There were times when Charmian saw glimpses of the depths, of gloom and passion, to which the lees of the blood of the Ptolemies dragged her, in the moments, rare in those days, when she lost her self-possession. Charmian and Olympus were the only ones who guessed how secretly, in those hours, she was consumed by jealousy and could have killed herself for having failed to keep Caesar in Alexandria.
Her method in the main was diametrically opposite to Caesar’s. Whereas he drew all his power from the mob, adroitly stirring its enthusiasm and employing it to check the schemes of rivals, she manipulated courtiers and let them manage details of administration, confidently counting on their own self-interest to make them keep the crowd in hand. She offset one against another, whereas Caesar rather gloried in defying all the brains of Rome. And she had this advantage over Caesar: that she never feared to trust a good administrator, whereas Caesar chose second-rate men to surround him, being unable to tolerate the near neighborhood of men possessed of character and brains enough to become his rivals.
There was an enormous difference between those points of view. And Cleopatra well understood that if Caesar should make himself king of the world, there was only one queen whom he could set beside him. There were no Roman women eligible. There was no dynasty in the known world that could compare with hers. She could afford to wait.
But she could not afford to let Caesar treat her in the meanwhile as one of his discarded mistresses. So long before the news came of his having left Africa for Rome she had begun negotiations with the Roman Senate leading to an invitation to herself to visit Rome. She had one overmastering reason. Caesar, she knew, would celebrate a triumph as the conqueror of Egypt, and if she herself were not there as a witness of the triumph all the world would say, and Rome would take for granted, that Egypt was now no longer independent; whereas if she herself were present as a royal guest she would be able to make it clear to everyone, Caesar himself included, that Roman arms had defeated Egypt’s enemies, not Egypt, and that Egypt, represented by herself, was a friend and ally, not a conquered enemy.
She knew very well that Cicero and many others would resent her presence and would do their utmost to prevent it. And she also knew that Caesar was entirely capable of overlooking her in order to avoid recriminations at a moment when he needed surface harmony. But there were not many men in the Senate whose votes were not purchaseable and her agents in Rome by that time had discovered which senators to approach with bribes and which to leave alone. Enormous sums of money changed hands. Caesar received a request from the Senate, couched in almost urgent terms, suggesting that the presence of the Queen of Egypt might be an event of great political importance.
Smiling, as he recognized how ably Cleopatra had adopted his own method of controlling Roman politics, Caesar wrote the invitation and dispatched it by the hand of a distinguished legate, ordering his villa on the Tiber bank to be refurnished and made ready to receive her.
CHAPTER XXXV. “Whoever sticks a head into Caesar’s net is Caesar’s victim.”
We are prone to go forth and meet trouble, being proud of what we call our courage, which is more often rashness. And it needs a greater courage, of a higher sort, to stay still to receive and cherish wisdom, which
is after all the only conqueror of difficulties.
— Fragment from The Diary Of Olympus.
IT WAS now, on the receipt of Caesar’s invitation, that the wisdom of Cleopatra’s method revealed itself. She could accept and leave no dangerous enemies behind her. Roman officers would watch her Alexandrian officials, who would administer the country in her interest if only to prevent the Romans from obtaining too much foothold. Practically she had jockeyed Rufinus into the condition of an auditor, and his subordinates into that of a police over the bureaucracy, everyone looking for commendation from her, satisfied with their pay and with the luxury of Alexandria, and depending on her to make a good report of them to Caesar.
The result was that even a low Nile caused less than ordinary hardship, because the administration was efficient and the Argus-eyed Rufinus anticipated and prevented misappropriation of the revenues. Actually, and in spite of the low Nile, there was more land under irrigation than there had been for a century and there was plenty of corn in the granaries for export.
The fleet, that had always been a danger hitherto, with a reputation for placing itself at the service of any intriguing malcontent, was wholly in Tros’ hands, better manned, paid and fed than ever in its history, and much too busy freighting merchandise and corn to be interested in brewing mischief.
Diplomatically, Cleopatra held in her own hands the destiny of every principality and kingdom, from Syria to the utmost limits of Arabia. She had only to reveal to Caesar their proposals for alliances against him to cause Caesar to dragoon them drastically. She was the one to whom they would have to look to speak that friendly word for them in Rome that should cause Caesar to leave them a measure of independence.