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

  So in the end Crassus had set out to find his gold mountains and jewel hills in Mesopotamia, and died at Carrhae. The King of the Parthians still possessed seven Roman Eagles captured from Crassus at Carrhae. One day, Caesar knew, he would have to march to Ecbatana and wrest them off the Parthian king. Which would constitute yet another huge change; if Rome absorbed the Kingdom of the Parthians, she would rule East as well as West.

  The distant view of a sparkling white tower brought him out of his reverie to stand watching raptly as it drew closer. The fabled lighthouse of Pharos, the island which lay across the seaward side of Alexandria’s two harbors. Made of three hexagonal sections, each smaller in girth than the one below, and covered in white marble, the lighthouse stood three hundred feet tall and was a wonder of the world. On its top there burned a perpetual fire reflected far out to sea in all directions by an ingenious arrangement of highly polished marble slabs, though during daylight the fire was almost invisible. Caesar had read all about it, knew that it was those selfsame marble slabs shielded the flames from the winds, but he burned to ascend the six hundred stairs and look.

  “It is a good day to enter the Great Harbor,” said his pilot, a Greek mariner who had been to Alexandria many times. “We will have no trouble seeing the channel markers—anchored pieces of cork painted red on the left and yellow on the right.”

  Caesar knew all that too, though he tilted his head to gaze at the pilot courteously and listened as if he knew nothing.

  “There are three channels—Steganos, Poseideos and Tauros, from left to right as you come in from the sea. Steganos is named after the Hog’s Back Rocks, which lie off the end of Cape Lochias where the palaces are—Poseideos is so named because it looks directly at Poseidon’s temple—and Tauros is named after the Bull’s Horn Rock which lies off Pharos Isle. In a storm—luckily they are rare hereabouts—it is impossible to enter either harbor. We foreign pilots avoid the Eunostus Harbor—drifting sandbanks and shoals everywhere. As you can see,” he chattered on, waving his hand about, “the reefs and rocks abound for miles outside. The lighthouse is a boon for foreign ships, and they say it cost eight hundred gold talents to build.”

  Caesar was using his legionaries to row: it was good exercise and kept the men from growing sour and quarrelsome. No Roman soldier liked being separated from terra firma, and most would spend an entire voyage managing not to look over the ship’s side into the water. Who knew what lurked thereunder?

  The pilot decided that all of Caesar’s ships would use the Poseideos passage, as today it was the calmest of the three. Standing at the prow alone, Caesar took in the sights. A blaze of colors, of golden statues and chariots atop building pediments, of brilliant whitewash, of trees and palms; but disappointingly flat save for a verdant cone two hundred feet tall and a rocky semi-circle on the shoreline just high enough to form the cavea of a large theater. In older days, he knew, the theater had been a fortress, the Akron, which meant “rock.”

  The city to the left of the theater looked enormously richer and grander—the Royal Enclosure, he decided; a vast complex of palaces set on high daises of shallow steps, interspersed with gardens and groves of trees or palms. Beyond the theater citadel the wharves and warehouses began, sweeping in a curve to the right until they met the beginning of the Heptastadion, an almost mile-long white marble causeway that linked Pharos Isle to the land. It was a solid structure except for two large archways under its middle regions, each big enough to permit the passage of a sizable ship between this harbor, the Great Harbor, and the western one, the Eunostus Harbor. Was the Eunostus where Pompey’s ships were moored? No sign of them on this side of the Heptastadion.

  Because of the flatness it was impossible to gauge Alexandria’s dimensions beyond its waterfront, but he knew that if the urban sprawl outside the old city walls were included, Alexandria held three million people and was the largest city in the world. Rome held a million within her Servian Walls, Antioch more, but neither could rival Alexandria, a city less than three hundred years old.

  Suddenly came a flurry of activity ashore, followed by the appearance of about forty warships, all manned with armed men. Oh, well done! thought Caesar. From peace to war in a quarter of an hour. Some of the warships were massive quinqueremes with great bronze beaks slicing the water at their bows, some were quadriremes and triremes, all beaked, but about half were much smaller, cut too low to the water to venture out to sea—the customs vessels that patrolled the seven mouths of river Nilus, he fancied. They had sighted none on their way south, but that was not to say that sharp eyes atop some lofty Delta tree hadn’t spied this Roman fleet. Which would account for such readiness.

  Hmmm. Quite a reception committee. Caesar had the bugler blow a call to arms, then followed that with a series of flags that told his ship’s captains to stand and wait for further orders. He had his servant drape his toga praetexta about him, put his corona civica on his thinning pale gold hair, and donned his maroon senatorial shoes with the silver crescent buckles denoting a senior curule magistrate. Ready, he stood amidships at the break in the rail and watched the rapid approach of an undecked customs boat, a fierce fellow standing in its bows.

  “What gives you the right to enter Alexandria, Roman?” the fellow shouted, keeping his vessel at a hailing distance.

  “The right of any man who comes in peace to buy water and provisions!” Caesar called, mouth twitching.

  “There’s a spring seven miles west of the Eunostus Harbor—you can find water there! We have no provisions to sell, so be on your way, Roman!”

  “I’m afraid I can’t do that, my good man.”

  “Do you want a war? You’re outnumbered already, and these are but a tenth of what we can launch!”

  “I have had my fill of wars, but if you insist, then I’ll fight another one,” Caesar said. “You’ve put on a fine show, but there are at least fifty ways I could roll you up, even without any warships. I am Gaius Julius Caesar Dictator.”

  The aggressive fellow chewed his lip. “All right, you can go ashore yourself, whoever you are, but your ships stay right here in the harbor roads, understood?”

  “I need a pinnace able to hold twenty-five men,” Caesar called.

  “It had better be forthcoming at once, my man, or there will be big trouble.”

  A grin dawned; the aggressive fellow rapped an order at his oarsmen and the little ship skimmed away.

  Publius Rufrius appeared at Caesar’s shoulder, looking very anxious. “They seem to have plenty of marines,” he said, “but the farsighted among us haven’t been able to detect any soldiers ashore, apart from some pretty fellows behind the palace area wall—the Royal Guard, I imagine. What do you intend to do, Caesar?”

  “Go ashore with my lictors in the boat they provide.”

  “Let me lower our own boats and send some troops with you.”

  “Certainly not,” Caesar said calmly. “Your duty is to keep our ships together and out of harm’s way—and stop ineptes like Tiberius Nero from chopping off his foot with his own sword.”

  Shortly thereafter a large pinnace manned by sixteen oarsmen hove alongside. Caesar’s eyes roamed across the outfits of his lictors, still led by the faithful Fabius, as they tumbled down to fill up the board seats. Yes, every brass boss on their broad black leather belts was bright and shiny, every crimson tunic was clean and minus creases, every pair of crimson leather caligae properly laced. They cradled their fasces more gently and reverently than a cat carried her kittens; the crisscrossed red leather thongs were exactly as they should be, and the single-headed axes, one to a bundle, glittered wickedly between the thirty red-dyed rods that made up each bundle. Satisfied, Caesar leaped as lightly as a boy into the craft and disposed himself neatly in the stern.

  The pinnace headed for a jetty adjacent to the Akron theater but outside the wall of the Royal Enclosure. Here a crowd of what seemed ordinary citizens had collected, waving their fists and shouting threats of murder in Macedonian-accented Gree
k. When the boat tied up and the lictors climbed out the citizens backed away a little, obviously taken aback at such calmness, such alien but impressive splendor. Once his twenty-four lictors had lined up in a column of twelve pairs, Caesar made light work of getting out himself, then stood arranging the folds of his toga fussily. Brows raised, he stared haughtily at the crowd, still shouting murder.

  “Who’s in charge?” he asked it.

  No one, it seemed.

  “On, Fabius, on!”

  His lictors walked into the middle of the crowd, with Caesar strolling in their wake. Just verbal aggression, he thought, smiling aloofly to right and left. Interesting. Hearsay is true, the Alexandrians don’t like Romans. Where is Pompeius Magnus?

  A striking gate stood in the Royal Enclosure wall, its pylon sides joined by a square-cut lintel; it was heavily gilded and bright with many colors, strange, flat, two-dimensional scenes and symbols. Here further progress was rendered impossible by a detachment of the Royal Guard. Rufrius was right, they were very pretty in their Greek hoplite armor of linen corselets oversewn with silver metal scales, gaudy purple tunics, high brown boots, silver nose-pieced helmets bearing purple horsehair plumes. They also looked, thought an intrigued Caesar, as if they knew how to conduct themselves in a scrap rather than a battle. Considering the history of the royal House of Ptolemy, probably true. There was always an Alexandrian mob out to change one Ptolemy for another Ptolemy, sex not an issue.

  “Halt!” said the captain, a hand on his sword hilt.

  Caesar approached through an aisle of lictors and came to an obedient halt. “I would like to see the King and Queen,” he said.

  “Well, you can’t see the King and Queen, Roman, and that is that. Now get back on board your ship and sail away.”

  “Tell their royal majesties that I am Gaius Julius Caesar.”

  The captain made a rude noise. “Ha ha ha! If you’re Caesar, then I’m Taweret, the hippopotamus goddess!” he sneered.

  “You ought not to take the names of your gods in vain.”

  A blink. “I’m not a filthy Egyptian, I’m an Alexandrian! My god is Serapis. Now go on, be off with you!”

  “I am Caesar.”

  “Caesar’s in Asia Minor or Anatolia or whatever.”

  “Caesar is in Alexandria, and asking very politely to see the King and Queen.”

  “Um—I don’t believe you.”

  “Um—you had better, Captain, or else the full wrath of Rome will fall upon Alexandria and you won’t have a job. Nor will the King and Queen. Look at my lictors, you fool! If you can count, then count them, you fool! Twenty-four, isn’t that right? And which Roman curule magistrate is preceded by twenty-four lictors? One only—the dictator. Now let me through and escort me to the royal audience chamber,” Caesar said pleasantly.

  Beneath his bluster the captain was afraid. What a situation to be in! No one knew better than he that there was no one in the palace who ought to be in the palace—no King, no Queen, no Lord High Chamberlain. Not a soul with the authority to see and deal with this up-himself Roman who did indeed have twenty-four lictors. Could he be Caesar? Surely not! Why would Caesar be in Alexandria, of all places? Yet here definitely stood a Roman with twenty-four lictors, clad in a ludicrous purple-bordered white blanket, with some leaves on his head and a plain cylinder of ivory resting on his bare right forearm between his cupped hand and the crook of his elbow. No sword, no armor, not a soldier in sight.

  Macedonian ancestry and a wealthy father had bought the captain his position, but mental acuity was not a part of the package. Yet, yet—he licked his lips. “All right, Roman, to the audience room it is,” he said with a sigh. “Only I don’t know what you’re going to do when you get there, because there’s nobody home.”

  “Indeed?” asked Caesar, beginning to walk behind his lictors again, which forced the captain to send a man running on ahead to guide the party. “Where is everybody?”

  “At Pelusium.”

  “I see.”

  Though it was summer, the day was perfect; low humidity, a cool breeze to fan the brow, a caressing balminess that carried a hint of perfume from gloriously flowering trees, nodding bell blooms of some strange plant below them. The paving was brown-streaked fawn marble and polished to a mirror finish—slippery as ice when it rains. Or does it rain in Alexandria? Perhaps it doesn’t.

  “A delightful climate,” he remarked.

  “The best in the world,” said the captain, sure of it.

  “Am I the first Roman you’ve seen here lately?”

  “The first announcing he’s higher than a governor, at any rate. The last Romans we had here were when Gnaeus Pompeius came last year to pinch warships and wheat off the Queen.” He chuckled reminiscently. “Rude sort of young chap, wouldn’t take no for an answer, though her majesty told him the country’s in famine. Oh, she diddled him! Filled up sixty cargo ships with dates.”

  “Dates?”

  “Dates. He sailed off thinking the holds were full of wheat.”

  “Dear me, poor young Gnaeus Pompeius. I imagine his father was not at all pleased, though Lentulus Crus might have been—Epicures love a new taste thrill.”

  The audience chamber stood in a building of its own, if size was anything to go by; perhaps an anteroom or two for the visiting ambassadors to rest in, but certainly not live in. It was the same place to which Gnaeus Pompey had been conducted: a huge bare hall with a polished marble floor in complicated patterns of different colors; walls either filled with those bright paintings of two-dimensional people and plants, or covered in gold leaf; a purple marble dais with two thrones upon it, one on the top tier in figured ebony and gilt, and a similar but smaller one on the next tier down; otherwise, not a stick of furniture to be seen.

  Leaving Caesar and his lictors alone in the room, the captain hurried off, presumably to see who he could find to receive them.

  Eyes meeting Fabius’s, Caesar grinned. “What a situation!”

  “We’ve been in worse situations than this, Caesar.”

  “Don’t tempt Fortuna, Fabius. I wonder what it feels like to sit upon a throne?”

  Caesar bounded up the steps of the dais and sat gingerly in the magnificent chair on top, its gold, jewel-encrusted detail quite extraordinary at close quarters. What looked like an eye, except that its outer margin was extended and swelled into an odd, triangular tear; a cobra head; a scarab beetle; leopard paws; human feet; a peculiar key; stick-like symbols.

  “Is it comfortable, Caesar?”

  “No chair having a back can be comfortable for a man in a toga, which is why we sit in curule chairs,” Caesar answered. He relaxed and closed his eyes. “Camp on the floor,” he said after a while; “it seems we’re in for a long wait.”

  Two of the younger lictors sighed in relief, but Fabius shook his head, scandalized. “Can’t do that, Caesar. It would look sloppy if someone came in and caught us.”

  As there was no water clock, it was difficult to measure time, but to the younger lictors it seemed like hours that they stood in a semi-circle with their fasces grounded delicately between their feet, axed upper ends held between their hands. Caesar continued to sleep—one of his famous cat naps.

  “Hey, get off the throne!” said a young female voice.

  Caesar opened one eye, but didn’t move.

  “I said, get off the throne!”

  “Who is it commands me?” Caesar asked.

  “The royal Princess Arsinoë of the House of Ptolemy!”

  That straightened Caesar, though he didn’t get up, just looked with both eyes open at the speaker, now standing at the foot of the dais. Behind her stood a little boy and two men.

  About fifteen years old, Caesar judged: a busty, strapping girl with masses of golden hair, blue eyes, and a face that ought to have been pretty—it was regular enough of feature—but was not. Thanks to its expression, Caesar decided—arrogant, angry, quaintly authoritarian. She was clad in Greek style, but her robe was genuine Tyrian
purple, a color so dark it seemed black, yet with the slightest movement was shot with highlights of plum and crimson. In her hair she wore a gem-studded coronet, around her neck a fabulous jeweled collar, bracelets galore on her bare arms; her earlobes were unduly long, probably due to the weight of the pendants dangling from them.

  The little boy looked to be about nine or ten and was very like Princess Arsinoë—same face, same coloring, same build. He too wore Tyrian purple, a tunic and Greek chlamys cloak.

  Both the men were clearly attendants of some kind, but the one standing protectively beside the boy was a feeble creature, whereas the other, closer to Arsinoë, was a person to be reckoned with. Tall, of splendid physique, quite as fair as the royal children, he had intelligent, calculating eyes and a firm mouth.

  “And where do we go from here?” Caesar asked calmly.

  “Nowhere until you prostrate yourself before me! In the absence of the King, I am regnant in Alexandria, and I command you to come down from there and abase yourself!” said Arsinoë. She looked at the lictors balefully. “All of you, on the floor!”

  “Neither Caesar nor his lictors obey the commands of petty princelings,” Caesar said gently. “In the absence of the King, I am regnant in Alexandria by virtue of the terms of the wills of Ptolemy Alexander and your father Auletes.” He leaned forward. “Now, Princess, let us get down to business—and don’t look like a child in need of a spanking, or I might have one of my lictors pluck a rod from his bundle and administer it.” His gaze went to Arsinoë’s impassive attendant. “And you are?” he asked.

  “Ganymedes, eunuch tutor and guardian of my Princess.”

  “Well, Ganymedes, you look like a man of good sense, so I’ll address my comments to you.”

  “You will address me!” Arsinoë yelled, face mottling. “And get down off the throne! Abase yourself!”