The October Horse: A Novel of Caesar and Cleopatra Read online

  “Do you have his body?”

  “Yes.” Rufrius grinned, his seamed ex-centurion’s homely face lighting up like a boy’s. “We also have Princess Arsinoë. She was in the citadel and challenged Carfulenus to a duel, if you’d believe that! Waving her sword around and screaming like Mormolyce.”

  “What splendid news!” said Caesar genially.

  “Orders, Caesar?”

  “As soon as I can wriggle out of the formalities in there,” Caesar said, nodding toward the tent, “I’m for Alexandria. I’ll take the King’s body and Princess Arsinoë with me. You and the good Mithridates can clean up, then follow me with the army.”

  “Execute her,” said Pharaoh from the throne when Caesar presented her with a disheveled Arsinoë, still in her armor.

  Apollodorus bowed. “At once, Daughter of Amun-Ra.”

  “Um—I am afraid not,” said Caesar in apologetic tones.

  The slight figure on the dais stiffened dangerously. “What do you mean, you’re afraid not?” Cleopatra demanded.

  “Arsinoë is my captive, Pharaoh, not yours. Therefore, as is Roman custom, she will be sent to Rome to walk in my triumph.”

  “While ever my sister lives, my life is imperiled! I say that she dies today!”

  “I say she doesn’t.”

  “You’re a visitor to these shores, Caesar! You do not give commands to the throne of Egypt!”

  “Rubbish!” said Caesar, annoyed. “I put you on the throne, and I command whoever sits on that expensive piece of furniture while ever I am a visitor to these shores! Attend to your own affairs, Pharaoh—bury your brother in the Sema, start rebuilding your city, take a trip to Memphis or Cyrene, nourish the child in your womb. For that matter, marry your remaining brother. You can’t rule alone, it’s neither Egyptian nor Alexandrian custom for a sovereign to rule alone!”

  He walked out. She kicked off her towering sandals and ran after him, Pharaonic dignity forgotten, leaving a stunned audience to make what it would of that royal battle of wills. Arsinoë began to laugh wildly; Apollodorus looked at Charmian and Iras ruefully.

  “Just as well I didn’t summon the Interpreter, the Recorder, the Accountant, the Chief Judge and the Night Commander,” the Lord High Chamberlain said. “However, I think we have to let Pharaoh and Caesar sort things out for themselves. And don’t laugh, your highness. Your side lost the war—you will never be queen in Alexandria. Until Caesar puts you on a Roman ship, you’re going to the darkest, most airless dungeon beneath the Sema—on bread and water. It is not Roman tradition to execute most of those who walk in a Roman triumph, so no doubt Caesar will free you after his, but be warned, your highness. If you ever return to Egypt, you will die. Your sister will see to that.”

  “How dare you!” Cleopatra shrilled. “How dare you humiliate Pharaoh in front of the court?”

  “Then Pharaoh shouldn’t be so high-handed, my dear,” Caesar said, temper mended, patting his knee. “Before you announce any executions, ask me what I want first. Whether you like it or not, Rome has been a profound presence in Egypt for forty years. When I depart, Rome isn’t going to depart too. For one thing, I intend to garrison Alexandria with Roman troops. If you want to continue to reign in Egypt and Alexandria, be politic and crafty, starting with me. That I am your lover and the father of your unborn child are of no significance to me the moment your interests conflict with Rome’s.”

  “For Rome, infer Caesar,” she said bitterly.

  “Naturally. Come, sit down and cuddle me. It isn’t good for a baby to endure tantrums. He doesn’t mind it when we make love, but I’m sure he becomes extremely upset when we quarrel.”

  “You think he’s a boy too,” she said, unwilling yet to sit on his knee, but softening.

  “Cha’em and Tach’a convinced me.”

  No sooner had he uttered those words than his whole body jerked. Caesar looked down at himself in amazement, then toppled out of the chair to lie with back arched, arms and legs rigidly extended.

  Cleopatra screamed for help, tugging at the double crown as she ran to him, heedless of its fate when it flew off and crashed to the floor. By this, Caesar’s face had gone a dark purple-blue and his limbs were in convulsion; still screaming, Cleopatra was knocked sprawling when she tried to restrain him.

  As suddenly as it had come, it was over.

  Thinking that the lovers were venting their spleen in physical violence, Charmian and Iras had not dared to enter until a certain note in their mistress’s cries convinced them that something serious was happening. Then when the two girls added their shrieks to Cleopatra’s, Apollodorus, Hapd’efan’e and three priests rushed in to find Caesar lying limply on the floor, breathing slowly and stertorously, his face the grey of extreme illness.

  “What is it?” Cleopatra asked Hapd’efan’e, down on his knees beside Caesar sniffing at his breath, feeling for a heartbeat.

  “Did he convulse, Pharaoh?”

  “Yes, yes!”

  “Very sweet wine!” the priest-physician barked. “Very sweet wine, and a supple reed that is well hollowed out. Quickly!”

  While the other priests flew to obey, Charmian and Iras took hold of the howling, terrified Cleopatra, persuaded her to shed some of her pharaonic layers, the plethora of jewels. Apollodorus was roaring that heads were going to fall unless the hollow reed was found, and Caesar, comatose, knew nothing of the horror and terror in every breast—what if the ruler of the world should die in Egypt?

  A priest came running from the mummification annex with the reed, normally used to perfuse the cranial cavity with natron. A snapped question reassured Hapd’efan’e that this reed had never been used. He took it, blew through it to see if it was patent, opened Caesar’s mouth, slid the reed inside, stroked his throat, and gently pushed until a foot of it had vanished. Then he carefully trickled the very sweet wine into its lumen too slowly and thinly to cause an air block; not a lot of wine by volume, but the process seemed to last forever. Finally Hapd’efan’e sat back on his heels and waited. When his patient began to stir, the priest plucked the reed out and took Caesar into his arms.

  “Here,” he said when the eyes opened cloudily, “drink this.”

  Within a very few moments Caesar had recovered enough to stand unassisted, walk about and look at all these shocked people. Cleopatra, face smeared and wet with tears, sat staring at him as if he had risen from the dead, Charmian and Iras were bawling, Apollodorus was slumped in a chair with his head between his knees, several priests fluttered and twittered in the background, and all of this consternation apparently was due to him.

  “What happened?” he asked, going to sit beside Cleopatra, and aware that he did feel rather peculiar.

  “You had an epileptic fit,” Hapd’efan’e said baldly, “but you do not have epilepsy, Caesar. The fact that sweet wine brought you around so quickly tells me that you have suffered a bodily change following that month of rigors. How long is it since you’ve eaten anything?”

  “Many hours.” His arm curled comfortingly around Cleopatra’s shoulders, he gazed up at the thin, dark Egyptian and gave him a dazzling smile, then looked contrite. “The trouble is that when I’m busy I forget to eat.”

  “In future you must keep someone with you to remind you to eat,” Hapd’efan’e said severely. “Regular meals will keep this infirmity at bay, but if you do forget to eat, drink sweet wine.”

  “No,” said Caesar, grimacing. “Not wine.”

  “Then honey-and-water, or the juice of fruits—sweet syrup of some kind. Have your servant keep it on hand, even in the midst of battle. And pay attention to the warning signs—nausea, dizziness, faulty vision, faintness, headache, even tiredness. If you feel any of these, have a sweet drink immediately, Caesar.”

  “How did you get an unconscious man to drink, Hapd’efan’e?”

  Hapd’efan’e held out the reed; Caesar took it and turned it between his fingers. “Through this,” he said. “How did you know that you bypassed the airway t
o my lungs? The two passages are one in front of the other, and the oesophagus is normally closed to permit breathing.”

  “I didn’t know for certain,” Hapd’efan’e said simply. “I prayed to Sekhmet that your coma wasn’t too deep, and stroked the outside of your throat to make you swallow when your gullet felt the pressure of the reed against it. It worked.”

  “You know all that, yet you don’t know what’s wrong with me?”

  “Wrongnesses are mysterious, Caesar, beyond us in most cases. All medicine is based upon observation. Luckily I learned much about you when I treated your rigors”—he looked sly—“that, for instance, you regard having to eat as a waste of time.”

  Cleopatra was improving; her tears had turned to hiccoughs. “How do you know so much about the body?” she asked Caesar.

  “I’m a soldier. Walk enough battlefields to rescue the wounded and count the dead, and you see everything. Like this excellent physician, I learn from observation.”

  Apollodorus lurched to his feet, wiped away the sweat. “I will see to dinner,” he croaked. “Oh, thank every god everywhere in the world that you’re all right, Caesar!”

  That night, lying sleepless in Cleopatra’s enormous goose-down bed, her warmth tucked against him in the mild chill of Alexandria’s so-called winter, Caesar thought about the day, the month, the year.

  From the moment he had set foot on Egyptian soil, everything had drastically altered. Magnus’s head—that evil palace cabal—a kind of corruption and degeneracy that only the East could produce—an unwanted campaign fought up and down the streets of a beautiful city—the willingness of a people to destroy what had taken three centuries to build—his own participation in that destruction…And a business proposition from a queen determined to save her people in the only way she believed they could be saved, by conceiving the son of a god. Believing that he, Caesar, was that god. Bizarre. Alien.

  Today Caesar had had a fright. Today Caesar, who is never ill, faced the inevitable consequences of his fifty-two years. Not merely his years, but how profligately he has used and abused them, pushed himself when other men would stop to rest. No, not Caesar! To rest has never been Caesar’s way. Never will be either. But now Caesar, who is never ill, must admit to himself that he has been ill for months. That whatever ague or miasma racked his body with tremors and retches has left a malignancy behind. Some part of Caesar’s machine has—what did the priest-physician say?—suffered a change. Caesar will have to remember to eat, otherwise he will fall in an epilepse, and they will say that Caesar is slipping at last, that Caesar is weakening, that Caesar is no longer unbeatable. So Caesar must keep his secret, must never let Senate and People know that anything is wrong with him. For who else is there to pull Rome out of her mire if Caesar fails?

  Cleopatra sighed, murmured, gave one faint hiccough—so many tears, and all for Caesar! This pathetic little scrap loves me—loves me! To her, I have become husband, father, uncle, brother. All the twisted ramifications of a Ptolemy. I didn’t understand. I thought I did. But I didn’t. Fortuna has thrown the cares and woes of millions of people on her frail shoulders, offered her no choice in her destiny any more than I offered Julia a choice. She is an anointed sovereign in rites older and more sacred than any others, she is the richest woman in the world, she rules human lives absolutely. Yet she’s a scrap, a babe. Impossible for a Roman to gauge what the first twenty-one years of her life have done to her—murder and incest as a matter of course. Cato and Cicero prate that Caesar hankers to be King of Rome, but neither of them has any concept of what true kingship is. True kingship is as far from me as this little scrap beside me, swollen with my child.

  Oh, he thought suddenly, I must get up! I must drink some of that syrup Apollodorus so kindly brought—juice of melons and grapes grown in linen houses! How degenerate. My mind wanders, I am Caesar and I together, I cannot separate the two.

  But instead of going to drink his juice of melons and grapes grown in linen houses, his head fell back upon the pillow and turned to look at Cleopatra. It wasn’t very dark, for all that it was the middle of the night; the great panels in the outside wall were flexed sideways and light poured in from a full moon, turned her skin not to silver but to pale bronze. Lovely skin. He reached out to touch it, stroke it, feather the palm of his hand down across her six-months belly, not distended enough yet to be luminous, as he remembered Cinnilla’s belly when she was close to term with Julia, with Gaius who was stillborn in the midst of her eclampsia. We burned Cinnilla and baby Gaius together, my mother, Aunt Julia, and I. Not Caesar. I.

  She had budded delicious small breasts, round and firm as globes, and her nipples had darkened to the same plummy black as the skin of her Aethiopian fan bearers; perhaps she has some of that blood, for there’s more in her than mere Mithridates and Ptolemy. Beautiful to feel, living tissue that has greater purpose than simply gratifying me. But I am part of it and her, she is carrying my child. Oh, we parent babes too young! Now is the time to relish them, adore their mothers. It takes many years and many heartaches to understand the miracle of life.

  Her hair was loose and strayed in tendrils across the pillow, not dense and black like Servilia’s, nor a river of fire he could wrap himself in like Rhiannon’s. This was Cleopatra’s hair, just as this was Cleopatra’s body. And Cleopatra loves me differently from all the others. She returns me to my youth.

  The leonine eyes were open, fixed on his face. Another time he would have closed his face immediately, excluded her from his mind with the automatic thoroughness of a reflex—never hand women the sword of knowledge, for they will use it to emasculate. But she is used to eunuchs, doesn’t prize that kind of man. What she wants from me is a husband, a father, an uncle, a brother. I am her equal in power yet hold the additional power of maleness. I have conquered her. Now I must show her that it is no part of my intentions or compulsions to crush her into submission. None of my women has been a boot scraper.

  “I love you,” he said, gathering her into his arms, “as my wife, my daughter, my mother, my aunt.”

  She couldn’t know that he was likening her to real women, not speaking in Ptolemaic comparatives, but she blazed inside with love, relief, utter joy.

  Caesar had admitted her into his life.

  Caesar had said he loved her.

  The following day he put her atop a donkey and took her to see what six months of war had done to Alexandria. Whole tracts of it lay in ruins, no houses left standing, makeshift hills and walls sporting abandoned artillery, women and children scratching and grubbing for anything edible or useful, homeless and hopeless, clothing reduced to rags. Of the waterfront, almost nothing was left; the fires Caesar had set among the Alexandrian ships had spread to burn every warehouse, what his soldiers had left of the great emporium, the ship sheds, the docks, the quays.

  “Oh, the book repository has gone!” she cried, wringing her hands, very distressed. “There is no catalogue, we’ll never know what burned!”

  If Caesar eyed her ironically, he said nothing to indicate his wonder at her priorities; she hadn’t been moved by the heart-wrenching spectacle of all those starving women and children, now she was on the verge of tears over books. “But the library is in the museum,” he said, “and the museum is perfectly safe.”

  “Yes, but the librarians are so slow that the books come in far faster than they can be catalogued, so for the last hundred years they’ve been piling up in a special warehouse. It’s gone!”

  “How many books are there in the museum?” he asked.

  “Almost a million.”

  “Then there’s very little to worry about,” Caesar said. “Do cheer up, my dear! The sum total of all the books ever written is far less than a million, which means whatever was stored in the warehouse were duplicates or recent works. Many of the books in the museum itself must be duplicates too. Recent works are easy to get hold of, and if you need a catalogue, Mithridates of Pergamum has a library of a quarter-million books, most of fairly re
cent date. All you have to do is commission copies of works the museum doesn’t have from Sosius or Atticus in Rome. They don’t have the books in ownership, but they borrow from Varro, Lucius Piso, me, others who have extensive private libraries. Which reminds me that Rome has no public library, and I must remedy that.”

  Onward. The agora had suffered the least damage among the public buildings, some of its pillars dismantled to stop up the archways in the Heptastadion, but its walls were intact, as well as most of the arcade roofing. The gymnasium, however, was little more than a few foundations, and the courts of justice had entirely vanished. The beautiful Hill of Pan was denuded of vegetation, its streams and waterfalls dried up, their beds encrusted with salt, Roman artillery perched anywhere the ground was level. No temple had survived intact, but Caesar was pleased to see that none had lost its sculptures and paintings, even if they were stained and smirched.

  The Serapeum in Rhakotis had suffered least, thanks to its distance from Royal Avenue. However, three massive beams were gone from the main temple, and the roof had caved in.

  “Yet Serapis is perfect,” Caesar said, scrambling over the mounds of masonry. For there he sat upon his jeweled golden throne, a Zeus-like figure, full-bearded and long-haired, with the three-headed dog Cerberus crouched at his feet, and his head weighed down by a gigantic crown in the form of a basket.

  “It’s very good,” he said, studying Serapis. “Not up to Phidias or Praxiteles or Myron, but very good. Who did it?”

  “Bryaxis,” said Cleopatra, lips tight. She looked around at the wreckage, remembering the vast, beautifully proportioned building on its high podium of many steps, the Ionic columns all bravely painted and gilded, the metopes and pediment veritable masterpieces. Only Serapis himself had survived.

  Is it that Caesar has seen so many sacked cities, so many charred ruins, so much havoc? This destruction seems to leave him quite composed, though he and his men have done most of it. My people confined themselves to ordinary houses, hovels and slums, things that are not important.