Roman Holiday (3 page)

All around us, voices died in mid sentence. Beside me, Peterson groped for my hand and squeezed. He was the calmest man I knew – not difficult at St Mary’s where the word volatile doesn’t even begin to describe most of us – and for him, this was the equivalent of screaming hysterics.

Cleopatra was coming!

Glancing at our hostess, I could see she was less than entranced at the imminent arrival of supposedly the most beautiful woman in the world, and this was where it all started to go wrong.

In my defence, I can only say that I’m an historian. And human. Probably in that order. I could have kept my attention on my hostess for just a little longer. I could have exchanged a few words with her, perhaps. It would have been the polite and respectful thing to do, but I didn’t.

I craned my neck to see Cleopatra’s entrance. Just as everyone else was doing. I even took a few steps to one side of a better view. Then, too late, I remembered Calpurnia Pisonis and looked around. She was gone. I forgot her immediately.

I’ve always been in two minds about Cleopatra VII Thea Philopator. My first thought was – bloody hell, she’s ugly!

Because she was. Her nose was out of all proportion to the rest of her face. I spared a thought for her son, Caesarion. By all accounts, Caesar had an enormous conk as well. The poor little kid probably had more nose than the rest of Egypt and Rome put together. I had a sudden vision of him being towed around the ancient world behind this immense nasal feature.

For God’s sake, Maxwell. Focus!

My second thought was that you didn’t notice how ugly she was. Cleopatra had ‘it’. Whatever ‘it’ was, she had it in spades. She had more ‘it’ than the undoubtedly much prettier Calpurnia had or ever would have in her entire life.

After the shock of the nose, I was able to focus on her other features. She wore an elaborate wig, as did all Egyptian women, but I suspected her original hair was dark anyway. Neither did she did possess milk-white skin for which she was famed – and at this point I should probably mention that Professor Rapson had done considerable research on how many asses needed to be milked for just one bath and had sent me a report claiming it would have taken a herd of between five hundred and seven hundred lady donkeys to provide enough milk for a daily bath. What he expected me to do with this information was never entirely clear, but his attempt to requisition said donkeys for further research was firmly rejected by Dr Bairstow. But whether she wallowed in whey or not, Cleopatra’s skin remained obstinately olive.

To remedy this, her face was covered in white makeup, emphasising the beautifully shaped but thick eyebrows that gave her face even more character. I suspected she kept the eyebrows to counter-balance the nose. Her eyes, so heavy-lidded as to be almost reptilian, were thickly outlined in kohl. Green eye shadow matched her eye colour and her lips, in contrast to Calpurnia’s, were full and a deep, dark crimson.

This was not a face to be forgotten. I’d never seen one like it before and I’ve not seen one like it since either. This was a face marked by Destiny. For good or ill, this was the face of a woman who would always be in control – who would take that Destiny and twist it to suit her own requirements. Maybe twist it until it snapped …

I pulled myself together and tried to concentrate. I wasn’t the only one. Everyone present stared, their mouths hanging open.

Accompanied by some half-dozen handmaidens – what do handmaidens do? I asked Peterson once and he just laughed and said the clue was in the word ‘hand’ – she paraded slowly around the atrium.

She was not wearing the white linen with which we always associate Egyptians. Perhaps it still wasn’t warm enough. She wore a long, golden gown of some kind of shimmering silk that trailed along the ground behind her. A blue and gold torque hung around her neck. Gold bracelets climbed her forearms, and on her head she wore the golden uraeus of Egypt. Just in case we’d forgotten she was a queen.

She reached her throne, turned, and faced the room. You could have heard a pin drop. For what was she waiting?

And then it happened. First one, and then another, and then a small group, and then everyone, because no one wanted to be the last … In a room full of Romans, republicans to a man, they bowed their heads.

I would never have believed it if I hadn’t been there. They bowed their heads. Caesar had chosen his queen well.

She allowed a small, triumphant smile to cross her face, and then, abruptly, she sat. Her dress settled in golden pools around her bare feet.

A sigh ran around the room.

I caught Van Owen’s eye and she gestured at our menfolk, every single one of whom was staring, transfixed. She rolled her eyes.

It was too much to hope we would be presented. In fact, we should leave. The presence of royalty meant the presence of soldiers and our superficial disguise would never stand up to close investigation. The sensible thing to do would be to depart. Immediately.

Therefore, we stayed. Actually, I don’t think wild horses could have dragged us out of that room. We’re historians. When it comes to sensible thinking, someone else has to do the heavy lifting.

In our defence, we would have stayed quietly at the back, preferably somewhere near the side entrance in case we had to make a quick getaway. We were just beginning to ooze our way unobtrusively in that direction, when Calpurnia Pisonis reappeared.

She made a signal and immediately the house slaves began to scoop up the used beakers and dishes and to lay out new refreshments. This time, the platters were of gold and silver. She stood unobtrusively in the corner, quietly directing operations. As yet, the Egyptian queen had beckoned no one forward, talking instead only to members of her own household.

Calpurnia Pisonis approached the throne, inclined her head briefly – respectful but not obsequious – and spoke. An elderly Egyptian secretary translated, although I suspected Cleopatra spoke Latin as well as Calpurnia herself.

Having received a brief nod of assent, Calpurnia Pisonis beckoned to us. Oh my God, we were about to be presented to Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt.

It was Peterson who pulled himself together first. I knew I’d brought him along for a good reason.

He extended his arm to provide me with some much-needed support. We slowly skirted the pretty pool – I remember how loud the splashing water sounded in the sudden silence – and we presented ourselves to the glittering figure seated on the glittering throne.

Everyone regarded everyone else in complete silence. The Nubians stared over our heads. The handmaidens fiddled with their bracelets, bored. Cleopatra swept us with one brief look, which told her everything she needed to know about us, and turned her attention to her hostess.

Calpurnia’s voice sounded clearly. I notice she did not address Cleopatra directly, thus obviating the need for any formal address.

‘I beg leave to present Decimus Aelius Sura,’ and she melted away.

Peterson stepped forward, placed his hand on his heart, and nodded. A nice blend of formal and informal. Nice one, Tim. No Roman would kneel to a non-Roman, queen or not.

He half turned and opened his mouth to introduce Van Owen and me, but never got that far. There was a sudden commotion at the door and the room was suddenly full of soldiers.

I just had time to think, ‘Shit! Busted!, when Caesar himself marched into the room. I could hardly believe our luck. What a great day this was turning out to be.

Or not.

The effect on everyone was dramatic. The Egyptian queen immediately lost all interest in us, gazing expectantly over our shoulders as Caesar strode through the crowd, pausing to exchange greetings and forearm clasps with carefully selected people of influence, working the room like a modern politician. Ignoring his wife completely, he made a formal greeting to Cleopatra, who responded in kind.

And yes, he too had the most enormous nose, jutting from his face like a beak.

‘Bloody hell,’ whispered Markham, behind me. ‘Imagine if they both sneezed simultaneously. It would be like a twenty-one gun nasal salute.’

Caesar wasn’t a tall man and I don’t think he was as old as he looked. He had a sickly, yellow look that aged him prematurely. His hair was thin and greying and deep lines ran from his nose to the corner of his mouth. But he was a powerhouse. Energy radiated off him in waves. His presence in the room changed everything within it.

A chair was brought for him. Not a throne, just a simple wooden affair, but several inches higher than Cleopatra’s. I imagined their respective households sitting together, thrashing out these compromises.

He seated himself, pulling the folds of his purple toga around him as if he was cold. His short-sleeved tunic was of soft wool – understated, but of the finest quality.

His wife nodded her head and two slaves rushed forward with a marble-topped, claw-legged table. Another two began to lay out wine and snacks. The centrepiece was a great golden bowl of figs, drizzled with honey for extra sweetness. A true delicacy at this time of year.

We had been completely forgotten. Not unthankfully, we began to ease ourselves backwards, and we would have made it, too. We would have slipped away, climbed into our wooden edifice, been carried back to our pod, jumped away, and a large part of History might have been disastrously different.

But it wasn’t; for which we have Markham to thank, and that’s not a phrase that is often bandied around.

Caesar served the queen with wine and offered her the bowl of figs.

I remember it all very clearly – a frozen moment in time. Caesar holding the heavy bowl in both hands. Cleopatra, bracelets chinking, smiling up at him, and reaching gracefully to take a fig. And just as her hand hovered, just as she was making her choice, I heard a shout of warning; something thrust me violently to one side and Peterson to another. Markham lunged forwards and struck the bowl from Caesar’s hands.

Figs flew through the air, flicking honey over everyone nearby.

And then everything speeded up again.

People shouted in anger. And fear. And confusion.

Two Nubians sprang forwards in one smoothly co-ordinated movement and formed an impenetrable barrier between the queen and us.

Not to be outdone, half a dozen Roman soldiers seized Guthrie and Peterson, but, thank God, hesitated before doing the same to Van Owen and me. Markham, however, being neither female nor highborn, was hurled to the floor with a sword at his throat.

No one had any idea what was happening and I was terrified they would kill us first and ask questions later. I was particularly anxious that Markham should be kept alive so I could kill him myself later.

And then, amongst the spilled figs, something moved.

Without stopping to think – again – I brought my sandal down on a small but very indignant snake.

An asp.

Markham very wisely didn’t try to speak – just signalling with his eyes. Two more snakes lay curled in the bottom of the bowl. Another was wriggling across the floor as fast as he could go, looking for cover, but not anything like fast enough because Guthrie pulled an arm free, seized my stick from me, and brought it down hard on the snake, instantly breaking its backbone. A substantial amount of snake blood and guts splattered across my pretty tunic. Mrs Enderby would be wanting a word with me. Again.

Another one was heading for the garden and freedom, but a quick-thinking slave brought a flagon down on its head, picked it up with a stick, and tossed it into the pool. I never saw what became of it afterwards.

A third Nubian had upended the bowl, trapping the two sleepier snakes beneath it. Their future looked nearly as bleak as ours did.

That we were suspects was very apparent.

Chaos cut in. Someone had attempted to assassinate either Caesar or Cleopatra or both of them. That it was deliberate, there could be no doubt. Six snakes do not accidentally find themselves in a bowl of honeyed figs. It seemed a safe bet that everyone here knew everyone else. In fact, there was only one set of strangers in the room and they were the idiots from St Mary’s who had chosen this one day of all others to observe Caesar and Cleopatra, and dropped themselves right in it.

I let everyone else mill about, exclaiming and speculating. I stared at the sad little pile of squashed snake under my sandal and then I lifted my eyes and found myself staring straight at Caesar’s wife. Who stood quietly in the corner, as she always did. Unimportant. Unregarded. Unobserved. Unmoved.

As if she felt my gaze, she turned her head slightly. We exchanged looks and I knew.

Shouting men were stamping on already-dead snakes. Seeking to disassociate themselves from this shocking event, many more were stampeding towards the front doors. Scylla and Charybdis had disappeared and their place taken by a quartet of tough-looking soldiers. Another two guarded the side entrance. Calpurnia and I still stared at each other as if we were the only two people in the room. Which, at that moment, to all intents and purposes – we were.

She had attempted murder. But of whom? The hated foreign woman? Or the husband who had made her live in his first wife’s house? Who had ordered her to give up her rooms to foreign guests? Who compelled her to serve his mistress? And when he became ruler of all the known world, he wouldn’t want her any longer. He would want the woman who was already a queen. Who already had a son by him.

So which of them was the intended victim and did she even care?

I knew what she’d done and she knew I knew. We were in a very great deal of trouble here. I’m not sure whether she had deliberately sought to implicate us. That had not been her original plan, I was sure of it, but the sudden appearance of a bunch of strangers who might not be what they appeared to be … she had given instructions we were to be admitted. She had presented us to the queen to put us in the front line. Never mind that we’d had no opportunity. No one would care about that. As long as the blame didn’t fall on them. Any minute now, Caesar’s men would start taking names. Everyone present would be minutely examined. And not in a pleasant way. We’d given false names and an address that wouldn’t stand up to any sort of close examination, let alone the stringent enquiries about to be made. The chances of us being allowed to depart were non-existent. We were in some very serious trouble. We would be arrested and taken away and once they split us up, there would be no hope of rescue. We’d be tortured and if we survived that, we’d be executed. Or crucified. Or sent to the arena. We had to get out of here.