For an hour before I slept, I perused Hieronymus's scribblings about Cleopatra and her less fortunate sister. And so my thoughts that day began and ended with Hieronymus, no matter that Caesar dominated the hours between.
The visiting queen of Egypt had been installed in one of Caesar's villas outside the city, located on a slope of the Janiculum Hill above the Tiber. The morning was so hot that I hired a litter in the Forum Boarium to carry me across the bridge and down the river road; I did not want to appear before a living goddess red faced and covered with sweat. The bearers balked at carrying Rupa, and Rupa balked at the idea of being carried, so he walked alongside the litter, flexing his muscles, thrusting out his jaw, and peering this way and that, trying to look like a bodyguard, I imagine, but appearing (to me, at least) more like an inquisitive, overgrown boy.
Was there a possibility, as Calpurnia seemed to think, that Cleopatra was involved in Hieronymus's murder and therefore in some plot against Caesar? To me, it seemed more likely that Calpurnia was confusing her dislike of the queen with a genuine cause for suspicion. And yet, Cleopatra was among those whom Hieronymus had visited. Also, the normal scruples against killing another human being that restrain most people, most of the time, could not be presumed to apply to Cleopatra. What did death, or murder, mean to a woman who believed herself to be the future monarch of the afterlife? To Cleopatra, the killing of a mere mortal like Hieronymus would count for nothing. Even the murder of a demigod-such as Caesar, since he claimed to be descended from Venus-might be contemplated with equanimity, if his death served to advance the interests of Isis's incarnation on earth.
At any rate, I was far from certain that Cleopatra would grant me an audience. Despite the pretty words of her note of condolence, my relationship with the queen in Alexandria had not exactly been friendly.
But, as she had done on previous occasions, Cleopatra surprised me. After giving my name to the guard at the gate, within a very short time a slave arrived to escort me into the queen's presence. Rupa was instructed to stay behind.
The slave did not enter the house but instead conducted me through the terraced gardens. Roses were blooming, scenting the warm air. Exquisite pieces of statuary were placed amid the flowers and shrubs. We came upon the queen taking breakfast beneath the shade of a fig tree, seated on a stone bench facing a spectacular view of the sparkling river and the city skyline beyond.
Cleopatra wore a sleeveless gown of thin, pleated linen, suitable for the hot weather. The line of the gown was simple, but even the plainest garments of the very rich betray their exquisite workmanship to the observant eye. Her supple leather slippers were likewise unostentatious but very finely made. Her jewelry was a matching set of bracelets and a necklace and earrings all made of hammered silver with settings of smoky topaz and black chalcedony. Her dark hair was pulled back into a bun, so that my first glimpse was of the profile, as seen on her coins, of a young woman with a very prominent nose and chin.
Her two-year-old son was seated on the grass nearby, dressed in a purple tunic and attended by cooing nursemaids. The queen's longtime bodyguard, Apollodorus, was leaning against the trunk of the fig tree. It was Apollodorus who had delivered her to Caesar rolled up in a carpet. The handsome, long-limbed Sicilian perused me though narrowed eyes and gave me a nod of recognition.
The queen put aside a shallow dish piled with shelled almonds and dates. "Gordianus-called-Finder! I never thought to see you again."
I bowed deeply but did not prostrate myself. We were on Roman soil, after all. "I hope the surprise is a welcome one, Your Majesty."
For an answer, she gave me only a thin smile, then popped a date into her mouth.
To an old survivor like myself, the queen still seemed hardly more than a girl-twenty-three, I calculated-but since I had first seen her, emerging from that carpet to confront Caesar, she had matured considerably. She had been voluptuous before; motherhood had made her even more buxom. Her supreme self-confidence no longer seemed quite so precocious; the attribute seemed earned, not merely inborn. Cleopatra was a full-fledged queen now, the survivor of a bloody civil war, the ruler of the oldest kingdom on earth, and the living inheritor of Alexander the Great, since her distant ancestor Ptolemy had been Alexander's general and successor. She had also given birth to the son of a demigod, if the boy Caesarion was indeed Caesar's child.
It occurred to me that a triumphing general is traditionally accompanied by his sons on the joyous occasion; grown sons ride behind him, while sons in swaddling are carried in the chariot. Yet Caesarion had not accompanied Caesar during the Gallic Triumph. But was it still possible the Egyptian child would take part in Caesar's Egyptian Triumph?
"You found your wife, after all," said Cleopatra, referring to the end of my stay in Egypt.
"Yes, Your Majesty, I did. We're both back in Rome now."
"So she didn't drown in the Nile, as you feared?"
"Apparently not."
Cleopatra laughed. "Are you being ironic, Gordianus? Or do you perhaps have a trace of the mystic in you? Your answer leaves open the possibility that she did drown-yet still walks. And why not? The Nile is a god. It takes life, but it also gives life. Perhaps the Nile took both your wife and your life, Gordianus-called-Finder-and then gave them both back to you."
In truth, I had never been quite sure what happened that day I found Bethesda after our long separation. I had waded into the water seeking her, or seeking oblivion, if I could not find her. I entered the Nile, and the Nile entered me, through my open mouth. The water turned black. Then a woman emerged from the darkness and placed her mouth upon mine in a kiss. And then I was lying on the sandy riverbank beside Bethesda, beneath a purple sky shot with streaks of aquamarine and vermilion…
I shivered at the memory, then strove to shake it off. The Nile was far away. The river below us was the Tiber, and this was Rome.
A slight breeze stirred the fig tree. Dappled sunlight played across the queen. Her silver jewelry glittered. Flashes of light reflected off the baubles of topaz and chalcedony. "Did you receive my message of condolence, regarding your friend Hieronymus?"
"I did, Your Majesty."
"Is that why you've come?"
She was making my task easy. I merely needed to nod. There was no need to explain that I had come as the spy of the wife of the man who had fathered her child.
"I'm surprised that my friend Hieronymus was able to make Your Majesty's acquaintance, let alone merit your condolences in death."
"But why not? Your friend Hieronymus and I had more in common than you may realize. He was an outcast; so was I during those wretched months that my brother held the throne and forced me to flee into the desert and hide among camel drivers and nomads. Hieronymus also spoke lovely Greek and was very well-read-qualities not easy to find in this city, despite the Romans' claim to be the guardians of Greek culture. Honestly, when that pompous fool Cicero tried to quote a bit of Aeschylus to me, I had to laugh out loud. His accent is so uncouth!"
No wonder Cicero detests you, I thought.
"Your friend also had a wonderful sense of humor," she said. "Hieronymus made me laugh, the way Caesar used to do."
"Does Caesar no longer make you laugh?"
She frowned and ignored the question. "Yes, I was sorry to learn of Hieronymus's demise. He was murdered, was he not?"
"That is correct. But that detail was not entered into the death registry."
She snorted. "I don't rely on public records for my information, Gordianus-called-Finder. And neither do you. What have you learned about your friend's death?"
"The killer remains unknown."
"But not for long, I'm sure. You're such a clever fellow. Have you come to seek my help? Or do you perhaps think I'm responsible? By Horus, there seems to be no crime too great or too small, but some Roman will accuse me of it."
"Actually, there is a question you might help me to answer, Your Majesty."
"Ask."
The previous day, it had o
ccurred to me that Hieronymus's apparent interest in calendars might have been fostered by Calpurnia's uncle Gnaeus, in his capacity as a priest. But because Hieronymus had visited Cleopatra, and her scholars were assisting Caesar with his new calendar, it also occurred to me that someone in the queen's household might have instructed Hieronymus in astronomical matters.
I had brought his notes with me. I pulled them from my satchel and began to hand them to Cleopatra, but Apollodorus intervened. He stepped forward and snatched the scraps of parchment from me. He sniffed them and ran his hands over them systematically, front and back, as if testing them for poison. Toxins which can kill though contact with the skin have existed at least since the time of Medea. Satisfied that the notes were harmless, he passed them to the queen, who perused them with a curious expression.
"I was wondering if Your Majesty might recognize these."
"No. I've never seen them before. But clearly these computations have something to do with the movements of the moon and stars and the reckoning of days. Did these come from Hieronymus?"
"They were among his personal papers, Your Majesty."
She handed the documents back to me. "What a clever fellow he was!"
"I was wondering, Your Majesty, if Hieronymus might have consulted with your scholars about the new calendar Caesar plans to introduce."
"Absolutely not!"
"You seem very certain."
"At Caesar's request, I have instructed all those involved in devising the new calendar to speak to no one. Caesar is very insistent that there should be no public knowledge of the details before he makes his official announcement."
"Then Hieronymus must have made these calculations with instruction from someone else."
"Yes. He certainly had no precise knowledge about my new calendar."
"Your calendar? I thought the revised calendar was Caesar's brainchild."
She raised an eyebrow and nodded. "So it is. To be sure, it's my scholars who've performed the necessary computations, but if it pleases him, let Caesar take credit for the calendar. Caesar should take credit for all his creations." She looked at the little boy on the grass.
I followed her gaze. "Such a handsome lad!" I said, though to me the child looked no different from any other.
"He looks like his father," said Cleopatra. "Everyone says so."
The child had a fuller head of hair than Caesar, but perhaps I could see a resemblance around the cheekbones and the chin. "He has his mother's eyes," I said. And then, feeling daring, I asked, "Will he be taking part in the triumph tomorrow?"
She looked at me for a long moment before she answered. "That's a delicate question. The whole matter of the Egyptian Triumph is… delicate. The role that should be played by myself, and by our son, has been discussed at some length." Discussed by herself and Caesar, she surely meant, despite her careful passive construction. Those discussions had not been pleasant, to judge by the way Apollodorus rolled his eyes, not realizing I was watching him.
"In the end-so it has been explained to me-a Roman triumph is a purely indigenous celebration," she said. "A Roman triumph has everything to do with military conquest and nothing to do with diplomacy… or dynasty. The Egyptian Triumph will celebrate Caesar's victory over my renegade brother, Ptolemy, who refused to make peace with me and who died in the Nile for his treachery. The Egyptian Triumph is about Roman arms, not about Caesar's… personal connection… to Egypt."
"But you were his ally in the war. He fought on your behalf."
She smiled without mirth. "He fought to make peace in Egypt, because our civil strife was disrupting the supply of Egyptian grain to Rome."
"So Your Majesty will not be appearing in the triumph?"
"According to Caesar, a triumph is performed by Romans, for Romans. Even the most distinguished persons of foreign birth can have no place in the procession… except as captives."
I nodded. "They say your sister Arsinoe will be paraded in chains. I don't think any female of royal blood has ever been marched as a captive in a triumph before."
"So some innovation is possible in a triumph, after all," Cleopatra said drily. "Arsinoe dared to raise troops against me. She deserves her fate."
"But she's can't be more than nineteen. She was even younger, then."
"Nonetheless, she and her confederate, Ganymedes, will both be paraded as captives and put to death."
"Ganymedes?"
"Her tutor."
"A eunuch?" Most household attendants of the Ptolemies were castrated.
"Of course. After Arsinoe put to death her general Achillas, Ganymedes took over command of her troops, such as they were."
I shook my head. "Caesar's grand captives will be a teenaged girl and a eunuch? I'm not sure what the Roman people will make of that. I suspect they would have been far more impressed by the sight of you, Your Majesty, perhaps riding in state atop a giant sphinx."
She smiled, pleased by the suggestion. "What an imagination you have, Gordianus-called-Finder! Alas, Caesar did not possess such a vision. The triumph will celebrate his victories in Egypt. Although I was his collaborator and the beneficiary of those victories, I shall not take part."
"And neither shall Caesar's son?"
Apollodorus shuddered and shook his head reflexively. I had broached a topic that must have caused much heated debate between Caesar and the queen, perhaps in this very spot in the garden.
Cleopatra scrutinized me for a long moment. She was displeased that I had brought up the subject, yet she was pleased that I had called the boy Caesar's son, without equivocation. "It has been decided that Caesarion will not ride in the chariot with his father tomorrow," she finally said.
Cleopatra was doing her best to hide her disappointment, but it seemed clear that one of the purposes of her diplomatic visit to Rome-perhaps the main purpose-had been to persuade Caesar to acknowledge her son. She had hoped to make the Egyptian Triumph a celebration of herself and Caesarion. It was easy enough to follow her reasoning. Why shouldn't the Romans be pleased that the heir to the Egyptian throne was a boy of Roman blood, the son of their own ruler? Should they not be impressed that Caesar had coupled with a woman who was the living heir of Alexander the Great, the latest representative of the world's most venerable dynasty, and the incarnation of a goddess?
I could also imagine why Caesar had balked at the idea. An open declaration of dynastic intentions was still too radical for the Roman people to accept, and an Egyptian queen of Greek blood, however regal, was still a foreigner, and an unsuitable mother for the children of a Roman noble. It might also be that Caesar had other plans for the future, and intended for someone other than Caesarion to be his heir.
For whatever reason, Caesar had refused to acknowledge Caesarion. Despite the opportunity presented by his Egyptian Triumph, Cleopatra had been thwarted. What now were her feelings toward Caesar?
It occurred to me that Caesar dead might now be more valuable to her than Caesar alive. The assassination of Caesar would plunge Rome into confusion, perhaps even another civil war. Amid the wreckage and the chaos, might Egypt drive out the Roman garrisons and cast off the Roman yoke?
Weighed against demands of state and her own ambition, any personal feelings she still harbored for Caesar might count for nothing. Cleopatra came from a long line of cold-blooded crocodiles who were notorious for devouring their own. Her older sister, Berenice, had usurped their father; when he regained the upper hand, their father put Berenice to death. Cleopatra had not shed a tear when her brother perished in their civil war. She now seemed to be looking forward to the impending humiliation and execution of her younger sister with grim satisfaction.
Was Cleopatra capable of plotting Caesar's death? Did she have sufficient motive to do so? I looked into her eyes and shivered, despite the stifling heat of the day.
XI
Unlike Vercingetorix, Arsinoe and Ganymedes were not being held in the Tullianum, but if all went according to plan, they would both end up there tomorrow, to
be dispatched by the executioner.
Their quarters were located in the vast new complex housing Pompey's Theater on the Field of Mars. Calpurnia's messenger had given me instructions on how to find the place, but, wending our way among the shops and arcades and meeting halls, Rupa and I became completely turned around and found ourselves in the theater itself, with its countless semicircular tiers of seats surmounted by a temple to Venus. On the stage, a play was being rehearsed, no doubt one of the many scheduled to be performed as part of the ongoing festival that would follow Caesar's fourth and final triumph. Dramas, comedies, athletic competitions, chariot races in the newly expanded Circus Maximus, and mock battles on the training grounds of the Field of Mars-all this and much more had been announced. After so many months of deprivation and dread, Caesar intended to give the people of Rome a prolonged series of holidays full of feasting and every kind of public entertainment.
I regained my bearings and found the dedicated stairwell that led up, up, up to the topmost floor of the theater. Rupa and I came to a heavily guarded door, where I showed my pass. I expected Rupa to be kept behind, but, perhaps carelessly, the guards allowed us both to enter.
I never knew such a place existed-a private suite located behind the highest tier of seats and just beneath the Temple of Venus. Perhaps Pompey had built this aerie to be his personal hideaway, but its seclusion and limited access made it an ideal place to lock someone away. Its proximity to the Field of Mars, where Caesar's troops would muster for the triumph, would allow quick and secure delivery of the prisoners to their place in the procession.
The spacious room was sparsely but tastefully appointed, lit by windows along one wall. There was even a balcony with an expansive view of rooftops below and the winding Tiber and rolling hills beyond. The balcony was much too high to offer any means of escape.
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