6. The October Horse: A Novel of Caesar and Cleopatra

by Colleen McCullough

  Miming injured innocence to those who stared at him, Antony waited to get Caesar to himself. "What do you mean, Caesar, to come out with that assassination rot? Then you barged on about returning the Republic to its days of glory without even giving me a chance to defend myself!" He pushed his face aggressively close to Caesar's. "First you humiliate me in public, now you've accused me of attempted murder in the Senate! It isn't true ask any of the three men I was with all that night at Murcius's tavern!" Caesar's eyes wandered to Lucius Tillius Cimber, descending from the top left-hand tier with his stool slave following him. What an interesting man. Full of useful information. "Do go away, Antonius, he said wearily. "As I've already indicated, I have no intention of pursuing the matter. However, I felt that your playing the fool with murder was an excellent excuse to inform the House that I'm not so easily gotten rid of. In the financial soup worse than ever, eh?" "I'm marrying Fulvia and shortly I'll have my share of the Gallic booty," Antony countered. "Why do I need to murder you?" "One question, Antonius how do you know which night the attempt was made if you didn't make it? I neglected to mention the date. Of course you tried! In a temper, following the Varro apology. Now go away." "I despair for Antonius," said Lucius Caesar, approaching. Almost to the doorway, his lictors passed outside, Caesar turned to look back down the ostentatious hall with its splendid marbles and not-quite-right color scheme typical of its author! And there at the rear of the platform accommodating the curule magistrates stood the statue of Pompey the Great in his white marble toga with the purple marble border, his face, hands, right arm and calves painted to the perfect tones of his skin, even including the faint freckles. The bright gold hair was superbly done, the vivid blue eyes seeming to sparkle with life. "A very good likeness," Lucius said, following his cousin's gaze. "I hope you don't mean to emulate Magnus and put a statue of yourself behind the curule magistrates in your new Curia?" "It's not a bad idea, Lucius, when you think about it. If I were away for ten years, every time the Senate met in its Curia it would be reminded of the fact that I'll be back." They moved outside, passed through the colonnade and emerged on the road back to town. "One thing I meant to ask you, Lucius. How did young Gaius Octavius go when he served as city prefect?" "Didn't you ask him in person, Gaius?" "He didn't mention it, and I confess it slipped my mind." "You need have no fears, he did very well. Praefectus urbi notwithstanding, he occupied the urban praetor's booth with a lovely mixture of humility and quiet confidence. He handled the inevitable one or two contentious situations like a veteran very cool, asked all the right questions, delivered the proper verdict. Yes, he did very well." "Did you know that he suffers the wheezing sickness?" Lucius stopped. "Edepol! No, I didn't." "It represents a dilemma, doesn't it?" "Oh, yes." "Yet I think it has to be him, Lucius." "There's time enough." Lucius put an arm around Caesar's shoulders, squeezed them comfortingly. "Don't forget Caesar's luck, Gaius. Whatever you decide carries Caesar's luck with it."

  2

  Cleopatra arrived in Rome at the end of the first nundinum in September. She was conveyed from Ostia in a curtained litter, an enormous procession of attendants before her and behind her, including a detachment of the Royal Guard in their quaint hoplite gear, but mounted on snow-white horses with purple tack. Her son, a little unwell, traveled in another litter with his nursemaids, and a third one held King Ptolemy XIV, her thirteen-year-old husband. All three litters had cloth-of-gold curtains, the jewels in the gilded woodwork flashing in the bright sun of a beautiful early summer's day, ostrich-feather plumes caked in gold dust nodding at all four corners of the faience-tiled roofs. Each was borne by eight powerfully built men with plummy black skin, clad in cloth-of-gold kilts and wide gold collars, big feet bare. Apollodorus rode in a canopied sedan chair at the head of the column, a tall gold staff in his right hand, his nemes headdress cloth-of-gold, his fingers covered with rings, the chain of his office around his neck. The several hundred attendants wore costly robes, even the humblest among them; the Queen of Egypt was determined to make an impression. They had started out at dawn with a good percentage of Ostia escorting them, and as Ostia drew farther away, others took their place; anyone who had occasion to be on the Via Ostiensis that morning thought it more fun to join the royal parade than go about normal business. Cornelius the lictor, deputed to act as guide, picked them up a mile from the Servian Walls and viewed his charge with an awe bordering on profound oh, what a tale he'd have to tell when he got back to the College of Lictors! It was noon by this time, and Apollodorus stared at the looming ramparts in relief. But then Cornelius led them around the outskirts of the Aventine to the wharves of the Port of Rome, there to halt. The Lord High Chamberlain began to frown; why were they not entering the city, why was her majesty in this decrepit, seedy neighborhood? "We boat across the river here," Cornelius explained. "Boat? But the city is to our right!"

  "Oh, we're not entering the city," Cornelius said in affable innocence. "The Queen's palace is across the Tiber at the foot of the Janiculan Hill, which makes this the easiest place to cross wharves on both sides." "Why isn't the Queen's palace inside the city?" "Tch, tch, that would never do," said Cornelius. "The city is forbidden to any anointed sovereign because to enter it means crossing the sacred pomerium and laying down all imperial power." "Pomerium?" asked Apollodorus. "The invisible boundary of the city. Within it, no one has imperium except the dictator." By this time half the Port of Rome had gathered to gawk, as had grooms, stablehands, slaughtermen and shepherds from the Campus Lanatarius. Cornelius was wishing that he had brought other lictors to keep the crowds at bay what a circus! And so Rome's lowly regarded it, a wonderful, unexpected circus on an ordinary working day. Luckily for the Egyptians a succession of barges drew into the wharf; the litters and sedan chair were quickly conveyed on board the first of them, and the horde of attendants pushed on to the others with the Royal Guard bringing up the rear, dismounted and soothing their fractious horses. Apollodorus's frown gathered mightily when they were offloaded into the mean alleys of Transtiberim, where he was forced to order the Royal Guards into tight formation around the litters to prevent the dirty, ragged inhabitants from gouging jewels out of the litter posts with their knives even the women seemed to carry knives. Nor was he amused when, after yet another long plod, he found that the Queen's palace had no walls to keep the Transtiberini out! "They'll give up and go home," said the unconcerned Cornelius, leading the way through an arch into a courtyard. Apollodorus's answer was to swing the Royal Guard across this entrance and tell it to stay there until the Transtiberini went home. What kind of place was this, that there were no walls to exclude the dross of humanity from the residences of their betters? And what kind of place was this, that her majesty's only deputed escort was one lictor minus his fasces? Where was Caesar? The Queen's belongings had preceded her by sufficient time to ensure that when she emerged from her litter and walked into the vast atrium, her eyes could rest on a properly outfitted interior, from paintings and tapestries on the walls to rugs, chairs, tables, couches, statues, her huge collection of pedestals containing busts of all the Ptolemies and their wives an air of inhabited comfort. She was not in a good mood. Naturally she had peeked between the curtains at this alien landscape of rearing hills, seen the massive Servian Walls, the terra-cotta roofs dotting the hills inside them, the tall thin pines, the leafy trees, the pines shaped like parasols. A shock for her as well as Apollodorus when they bypassed the city and entered a dockland dominated by a tall mount of broken pots and festering rubbish. Where was the guard of honor Caesar should have sent? Why had she been ferried across that that creek to a worse slum, then hustled to nowhere? For that matter, why hadn't Caesar answered any of the barrage of notes she had sent him since arriving in Ostia, save for the first? And that terse communication simply told her to move into her palace as soon as she wished! Cornelius bowed. He knew her from Alexandria, though he was inured enough to eastern rulers to understand that she would not recognize him. Nor did she; her majesty was in a huff. "I a
m to give you Caesar's compliments, your majesty," he said. "As soon as he finds the time, he'll visit you." "As soon as he finds the time, he'll visit me," she echoed to Cornelius's receding back. "He'll visit! Well, when he does, he'll wish he hadn't!" "Calm down and behave yourself, Cleopatra," said Charmian firmly; brought up from infancy with their queen, she and Iras stood in no fear of her, divined her every mood. "It's very nice," Iras contributed, gazing about. "I love the huge pool in the middle of the room, and how cunning to put dolphins and tritons in it." She looked up at the sky with less approval. "You'd think they'd put a roof over it, wouldn't you?" Cleopatra sat on her temper. "Caesarion?" she asked. "He's been taken straight to the nursery, but don't worry, he's improving." For a moment the Queen stood uncertainly, chewing her lip; then she shrugged. "We are in a strange land of high mountains and peculiar trees, so I suppose we must expect the customs to be equally strange and peculiar. Since apparently Caesar isn't going to come at a run to welcome me, there's no point in keeping my regalia on. Where are the nursery and my private rooms?" Changed into a plain Greek gown and reassured that Caesarion was indeed improving, she toured the palace with Charmian and Iras. On the small side, but adequate, was their verdict. Caesar had given her one of his own freedmen, Gaius Julius Gnipho, as her Roman steward, who would be in charge of things like purchasing food and household items. "Why are there no gauze curtains to shield the windows, and none around the beds?" Cleopatra asked. Gnipho looked bewildered. "I'm sorry, I don't understand." "Are there no mosquitoes here? No night moths or bugs?" "We have them aplenty, your majesty." "Then they must be kept outside. Charmian, did we bring any linen gauze with us?" "Yes, more than enough." "Then see it's put up. Around Caesarion's cot at once." Religion had not been neglected; Cleopatra had carried a select pantheon with her, of painted wood rather than solid gold, dressed in their proper raiment Amun-Ra, Ptah, Sekhmet, Horus, Nefertem, Osiris, Isis, Anubis, Bastet, Taweret, Sobek and Hathor. To care for them and her own needs she had brought a high priest, Pu'em-re, and six mete-en-sa to assist him. The agent, Ammonius, had been to Ostia to see his queen on several occasions, and had made sure that the builders provided one room with plastered walls; this would be the temple, once the mete-en-sa had painted the walls with the prayers, the spells and the cartouches of Cleopatra, Caesarion and Philadelphus. Her mood dropping inexorably toward depression, Cleopatra fell to abase herself before Amun-Ra. The formal prayer, in old Egyptian, she spoke aloud, but after it was finished she remained on her knees, hands and brow pressed to the cold marble floor, and prayed silently. God of the Sun, bringer of light and of life, preserve us in this daunting place to which we have taken your worship. We are far from home and the waters of Nilus, and we have come only to keep faith with thee, with all our gods great and small, of the sky and the river. We have journeyed into the West, into the Realm of the Dead, to be quickened again, for Osiris Reincarnated cannot come to us in Egypt. Nilus inundates perfectly, but if we are to maintain the Inundation, it is time that we bear another child. Help us, we pray, endure our exile among these unbelievers, keep our Godhead intact, our sinews taut, our heart strong, our womb fruitful. Let our Son, Ptolemy Caesar Horus, know his divine Father, and grant us a sister for him so that he may marry and keep our blood pure. Nilus must inundate. Pharaoh must conceive again, many times.