The Judgment of Caesar (14 page)

I followed him onto the flagstone terrace, which was lit by braziers set upon bronze tripods with lion’s feet. He took one couch, and I took the other. The moonlight upon the lighthouse skewed my sense of perspective and created the illusion that the tower was a miniature replica, and that if I were to reach out beyond the balustrade, I might lay my hand upon it.

I looked to the west, where a massive structure rose even higher than the room in which Caesar was installed. “What’s over there?”

“That’s the theater, which presents a steep wall toward the town and opens to the harbor, to which it has access. It’s directly adjacent to this building; the space between is quite narrow and could easily be fortified.”

“Fortified?”

“Yes, with stones, piled-up rubble, that sort of thing. I’ve been thinking that the theater could serve very nicely as a citadel, easily defended from attack on the landward side, open for reinforcements from the sea.”

“Do you anticipate the need for such a stronghold?”

“Officially? No. But assessing the lay of the land has become second nature to me. Wherever I go, I look for strongholds, points of weakness, hiding places, overlooks.” He smiled. “I arrived here in Egypt with a relatively small force, Gordianus, hardly more than an honor guard; but a small number of well-trained men can hold their own against far greater numbers, if their position is carefully chosen.”

“Will there be warfare in the city, then?”

“Not if warfare can possibly be avoided. But one must be prepared for all eventualities, especially in a place as volatile as Alexandria.”

“I see. There appear to be only two couches here on the terrace. Is it only the two of us for dinner?”

“Why not? Since my arrival in Alexandria, this will be the first night I’ve dined with anyone who’s not a military man, a diplomat, a eunuch, or a spy.”

I stiffened at the last word.

Caesar fixed me with a sardonic gaze. “I am right, am I not, Gordianus? You’re not . . . a eunuch, are you?”

He laughed. I did my best to laugh with him. He clapped his hands. A moment later the first course arrived, a platter of tilapia fish in a saffron brine. The server was apparently Caesar’s taster, as well. As he was displaying the dish for his master’s approval, he whispered, “Absolutely delicious!”

Caesar smiled. “This meal is an indulgence for me, Gordianus. Pothinus has been quite stingy with apportioning rations to my men, claiming shortages in the city, though it seems to me that the king’s courtiers are quite well fed. But as long as the eunuch starves my men, I eat what they eat—except on a special occasion such as this.”

Caesar ate with relish. I had little appetite.

“I still don’t understand why you wished to see me,” I said.

“Gordianus! You act as if I summoned you here with the intention of interrogating you. I merely asked Pothinus to convey an invitation to dinner, so that we could talk.”

“About what?”

“You gave me a bit of a start that day on the landing, when I saw you among the king’s retinue. Before I could point you out to Meto, you vanished. Later, I asked Pothinus, and he confirmed that it was indeed Gordianus the Finder I had seen, wearing a toga and standing by that extraordinary female. I’m curious to know how you came to be in Alexandria.”

“Did you not ask Pothinus?”

“I did, but I have no reason to believe anything that eunuch tells me. I should prefer to hear the truth from you.”

I dropped any pretense of interest in the tilapia and gazed at the lighthouse. “I came to Egypt with my wife, Bethesda. She was ill. She desired to bathe in the Nile, believing its waters would cure her. Instead . . . she was lost in the river.”

Caesar gestured for the slave to remove the fish. “Then it’s true. Pothinus told me as much. You have my sympathy, Gordianus. I know, from Meto, how dearly you loved your wife.” He was silent for a moment. “You must understand that this puts me in a delicate position. Meto doesn’t yet realize that you’re here in Alexandria.”

“No? But that day, on the landing, I saw you speak to him, just after you recognized me. He turned to look in my direction. . . .”

“And saw no one, except of course that extraordinary female, who was suddenly standing all alone, because you had disappeared. I never mentioned your name. I merely asked Meto to take a look at the man in the toga and tell me if my eyes deceived me. When he looked and saw no man in a toga, I let the matter drop—you may recall that I was rather busy with another small matter, exchanging greetings with the king of Egypt. Later, meeting privately with Pothinus—without Meto—I inquired about you, and Pothinus gave me an account of your arrival in Egypt. I saw no point in passing the tale on, third-hand, to Meto, at least not until I could speak to you in person. As a result, Meto remains unaware that you’re in Alexandria, and he knows nothing of the tragic news about your wife—and it hardly seems fitting that I should tell him, when you’re here. Surely the sad news should come from his father.”

My heart jumped in my chest. “You didn’t invite him to come here tonight, did you?”

“No. Meto doesn’t know with whom I’m dining tonight, only that I asked to be given complete privacy.” He laughed. “Perhaps he thinks I’m having a liaison with that extraordinary female.”

“Her name is Merianis,” I said.

Caesar smiled. “As a rule, I prefer to keep Meto close to me at all times. He maintains the official diary of all my comings and goings—without his notes I’d find it impossible to write my memoirs—but I do occasionally draw a breath or eat a meal without him. Your son won’t be joining us tonight.”

I felt a pain in my chest. “Please don’t refer him as my son.”

Caesar shook his head. “Gordianus! The war has been very hard on you, hasn’t it? You’re rather like Cicero, in that way; you thrived during the old days, when everyone was dragging everyone else into the courts, bending laws to punish their political enemies, flinging reckless accusations, and casting dust in the jurors’ eyes. Now all that has changed. Things shall never be the same. I fear that the times we live in no longer suit you. You’ve become discontented, disgruntled—bitter, even—but you shouldn’t take it out on poor Meto. Ah, the second course has arrived: hearts of palm in spiced olive oil. Perhaps you’ll like this dish more than you did the tilapia.”

Caesar ate. I stared at the food. He had touched on a point that had been troubling my sleep ever since I had seen Meto on the landing. Bethesda had not been kin to Meto by blood, any more than I was; but in every way that mattered she had been a mother to him. Meto would have to be told of her loss. He would want to know exactly what happened; he might have questions that only I could answer, doubts that only I could assuage. Did he not deserve to be told the facts by me, face-to-face?

Caesar took a sip of wine. “Perhaps we should talk of something else. I understand that you witnessed the end of Pompey, and that you even helped to build his funeral pyre.”

“Did Philip tell you that?”

“Yes.”

“I suppose you had him thoroughly interrogated after Pothinus delivered him to you as a gift.”

“That was an unfortunate moment. As a member of Pompey’s house-hold—as a renegade and an enemy of the Roman people—Philip should have been delivered to me in a more discreet fashion, along with any other prisoners of war. But I’ve treated him with great respect. He was never interrogated, in the sense that you suggest; I myself talked to him at length, in private, as you and I are talking now.”

“Surely he told you everything you might wish to know about Pompey’s final days.”

“Philip was revealing about some things, reticent about others. Since you were there, I should very much like to hear the tale from your lips.”

“Why? So that you can gloat? Or to help you avoid the same fate at the hands of your Egyptian hosts?”

His expression darkened. “When I looked upon Pompey’s head, I wept. He should never have met such an ignominious end.”

“He should have been slaughtered by Roman arms, you mean, rather than Egyptian?”

“I would have preferred that he die in battle, yes, rather than by trickery.”

“So that you might claim the glory of killing him?”

“I’m sure that death in battle would have been his preference, as well.”

“But Pompey had his chance to die fighting, at Pharsalus. Instead, he fled. The end he met was gruesome, but quick. How many of the men you send into battle die as cleanly and as quickly, Consul, and for how many of those men do you weep? You can’t possibly weep for them all, or else you’d never be done weeping.”

He looked at me coolly, betraying neither anger nor offense. I think he was unused to being spoken to in such a way, and was not sure what to make of it. Perhaps he thought I was a little mad.

“There are other matters we might discuss, Gordianus. For example, during my absence from Rome, my wife has kept me abreast of events in the city. Calpurnia wrote me a particularly interesting letter about the scrape you got into when Milo and Caelius tried to rouse the people against me. She also told me the details of your involvement with that remarkable young woman called Cassandra. I gathered from Pothinus that another of your purposes in coming to Egypt was to allow Cassandra’s brother to scatter her ashes in the Nile.”

“Yes. That was done on the same day that Bethesda was lost.”

“What a dreadful day that must have been for you! I can only imagine the grief you must have felt, given the special bond that developed between you and Cassandra. But I’m glad that my wife was able to facilitate the disposal of Cassandra’s belongings after her death. I understand that Calpurnia took special care to see that you accepted Rupa into your household, and that you received the full amount of the bequest Cassandra intended for you.”

This was the Caesar I knew: the consummate politician with an un-erring ability to find an adversary’s weakness, with the aim to either disarm or destroy him. Caesar had no need to destroy me, but if he could disarm my animosity by appealing to my emotions and win me over to his side, he would. His behavior toward me that evening had been above reproach, yet he had managed to prick at the guilt I felt for avoiding Meto, and now, in a single stroke, he was reminding me of the link that Cassandra formed between us and also of the special favor his wife, Calpurnia, had shown me following Cassandra’s death. Performing these subtle verbal manipulations came as second nature to him; perhaps he was hardly aware of what he was doing. Yet I felt his words acutely.

“Cassandra was many things,” he said, his voice wistful. “Beautiful, gifted, amazingly intelligent. I can well understand how you came to desire her, admire her, perhaps even love her—”

“I had rather not talk about her. Not here. Not with you.”

He studied me for a long moment. “Why not? With whom else could you ever talk about Cassandra, except with me? You and I have seen much of the world, Gordianus. We two are survivors. There are so many things we could talk about. We should be friends, not enemies! I still don’t know what I ever did to offend you. I took your son into my confidence. I elevated him to a status far above that to which most freedmen could ever dream to aspire. Your son’s course in life has thus far been one glorious ascent, thanks to my largesse and his own strong spirit. You should be thankful to me, and proud of him! I don’t know what to make of you. Meto is equally baffled. Every Roman desires to please his father, and Meto is no different. Your estrangement causes him great pain—”

“Enough of this, Caesar! Must you win every argument? Must every man in the world give you his love and devotion? I won’t do it. I can’t. I see the mess the likes of you and Pompey have made of the world, and I feel not love but a deep loathing. My son loves you, Caesar, with all his heart and soul, and with his body as well, or so the gossips insist. Is that not enough for you?”

I stared at Caesar, who stared back me, speechless. Then both of us, in the same instant, felt the presence of another. We turned our heads in unison.

Meto stood in the doorway.

CHAPTER XIV

“Father?” whispered Meto. He was dressed for duty, in gleaming armor with a short cape and a sword in a scabbard at his waist. The rigors of war agreed with him; he looked very lean and fit. He was a man of thirty-one now, but he still looked boyish to me and perhaps always would. His broad, handsome face was dark from the sun. His deep tan highlighted the battle scars scattered here and there on his bare arms and legs. Whenever I met him after a long separation, I counted those scars, fearful of finding new ones. I saw none. He had emerged from the Greek campaign and the battle of Pharsalus without a scratch.

I made no reply.

Caesar frowned. “Meto, What are you doing here? I told you I was not to be disturbed.”

Meto’s eyes traveled back and forth between us. I looked away, unable to bear the confusion on his face. At last Caesar’s question seemed to penetrate his consciousness. “You said you were not to be disturbed, Imperator . . . except under one condition.”

Caesar’s face lit up. His eyes glittered as if reflecting the beacon of the Pharos. “A message from the queen, at last?”

“Not just a message, but a messenger, bearing a gift.”

“Where is he?”

“Just outside this room. A big, strapping fellow named Apollodorus. He claims that the gift he bears comes from the queen herself.”

“A gift?”

“A rug, rolled up and carried in his arms.”

Caesar sat back and pressed his palms together. “Who is this Apollodorus? What do we know about him?”

“According to our intelligence, he’s Sicilian by birth. How he came to Alexandria and entered the service of Queen Cleopatra we don’t know, but he seems to have become her constant companion.”

“A bodyguard?”

“The chatter among the palace coterie loyal to Ptolemy is that Apollodorus is more than a bodyguard to the queen. He
is
an impressive specimen.”

“Even so, I think we must discount such innuendos as vicious gossip,” suggested Caesar, who himself had been the target of whispering campaigns throughout his political career.

Meto nodded. “Nevertheless, Apollodorus seems never to leave the queen’s side.”

“He goes with her everywhere?”

Meto nodded.

“I see. How did this fellow get into the palace?”

“He claims he rowed a small boat up to a secluded landing on the waterfront, disembarked with his rug, and made his way through the palace. How he got past Ptolemy’s guard, I don’t know—he obviously knows his way around the palace, and the place is said to be full of secret passages. He appeared at the Roman checkpoint, handed over a nasty-looking dagger and allowed himself to be searched, then told the guards that the rug he carried was a gift from the queen, who had instructed him to present it to no one but yourself, in person.”

“I see. It must be very fine rug, indeed. I wish to see it. Show him in.” When Meto moved to obey, Caesar turned to me. “You’d don’t mind the interruption, do you, Gordianus? Our dinner conversation wasn’t going all that smoothly, anyway.”

“Perhaps I should leave.”

“It’s up to you. But do you really want to miss the next few moments?”

“The presentation of a rug?”

“Not just any rug, Gordianus, but a gift from Queen Cleopatra herself! King Ptolemy—or more accurately, that eunuch, Pothinus—has done everything possible in recent days to seal the palace and to prevent anyone who might represent the queen from approaching me. Courtiers loyal to Cleopatra have been apprehended, the messages they carried confiscated and destroyed, and the courtiers themselves summarily executed. I’ve protested to the king—how dare he intercept messages addressed to the consul of the Roman people?—but to no avail. The king wants me to hear only one side of this argument between himself and his sister, but I should very much like to meet her. One hears such fascinating things about Cleopatra. Marc Antony met her some years ago, when he helped to restore her father to the throne, and he said the most curious thing. . . .”

I nodded. “I think he must have said the same thing to me. Despite the fact that she was then only fourteen years old—about the age her brother is now—there was some quality about her that reminded Antony . . . of
you.”

Caesar smiled. “Can you imagine?”

I looked at Caesar, a man of fifty-two with wisps of hair combed over his bald spot, a strong, determined jaw, and a hard, calculating glint in his eyes, slightly softened by that veil of world-weariness that falls over men who have seen too much of life. “Not really,” I confessed.

“Nor can I! But what man could resist meeting a younger incarnation of himself, especially an incarnation of the opposite gender?”

“It’s my understanding that Cleopatra is an incarnation of Isis.” Caesar looked at me archly. “Some philosophers postulate that Isis is actually the Egyptian manifestation of the Greek Aphrodite, who is also the Roman Venus—my ancestor. The world is a small place. If Cleopatra is Isis, and Isis is Venus, then there appears to be a family connection, indeed a divine connection, between Queen Cleopatra and myself.”

I smiled uncertainly. Was he serious, or merely indulging in a bit of fancy wordplay? The look on his face was anything but whimsical.

“Imperator!” Meto appeared in the doorway. He studiously kept his eyes from meeting mine. “I present Apollodorus, a servant of Cleopatra, who bears a gift from Her Majesty.”

Meto moved aside to permit a tall, imposing figure to step forward. Apollodorus was darkly handsome, with a great mane of black hair swept back from his forehead and a neatly trimmed black beard. He wore a very brief, sleeveless tunic that left bare his long, muscular legs and arms. His biceps were bisected by veins that protruded above the straining muscles as he held aloft a rolled-up rug. I remembered all the steps I had ascended to reach the room; the flesh of Apollodorus was sleek with sweat from the exertion of carrying his burden, but his breath was unlabored.

The rug was bound with slender rope in three places to keep it from unfurling. Apollodorus knelt and set it gently on the floor. “Queen Cleopatra welcomes Gaius Julius Caesar to the city of Alexandria,” he said, speaking in Latin, with an ungainly accent that suggested he had memorized the phrase by rote. In Greek, to Meto, he said, “If I may have back my knife, so that I might cut the cords . . .”

“I’ll do that myself,” said Caesar. Meto pulled his sword from its scabbard and handed it to Caesar. Caesar poked the sharp point against a strand of rope.

Apollodorus gasped. “Please, Caesar, be careful!”

“Is the rug not mine?” said Caesar. He smiled at Meto. “Am I not a man who knows the value of things?”

“You are, Imperator,” agreed Meto.

“And am I ever careless with the things that are mine?”

“Never, Imperator.”

“Very well, then.” Caesar deftly cut the three strands of rope, then stepped back to allow Apollodorus to unfurl the rug.

As the rug was unrolled, it became obvious that there was something inside it—not merely an object, but something alive and moving. I stepped back and let out a gasp, then saw that Caesar and Meto smiled; they were not entirely surprised at the sight of Queen Cleopatra as she rolled forth from the carpet and rose to her feet in a single, fluid motion.

The rolled rug had given no evidence of the prize it concealed; it seemed impossible that its folds could contain a personage who loomed as large in imagination as Cleopatra. But the immensity of the image conjured by her name was curiously out of scale with the actual, physical embodiment of the woman herself. Indeed, she seemed hardly a woman at all, but very much a girl, small and slender with petite hands and feet. Her hair was pulled back and tied in a bun at the nape of her neck—no doubt the most efficient way of styling it for travel inside a rug. It also allowed her to wear a simple diadem set far back on her head, a uraeus crown that featured not a rearing cobra but a sacred vulture’s head. Her dark blue gown covered her from her neck to her ankles and was belted with golden sashes around her waist and below her bosom. Small she might be, but her figure was not girlish; the ampleness of her hips and breasts would have pleased the sculptor of the Venus that had so impressed me earlier. Her face might have captivated a master sculptor as well. She was not the most beautiful of young women—Bethesda in her prime had been more beautiful, and so had Cassandra—but there was something intriguing about her large, strong features. Queen Cleopatra had one of those faces that becomes more fascinating the longer one looks at it, for it seemed to change in some subtle way each time the light shifted or whenever she moved her head.

She stood erect, squared her shoulders, and gave a shudder, as if to shake loose the last vestige of her confinement in the rug. She reached behind her head and undid the knots in her hair, shaking it loose and letting it fall past her shoulders, but keeping the diadem in place. She raised her arms and ran her fingers through the tangles. I glanced at Caesar and Meto. They appeared as captivated by her as I was, especially Caesar. What manner of creature was this, who had risked capture and death to smuggle herself into Caesar’s presence, and now stood before three strangers preening herself as unself-consciously as a cat?

She looked at us one by one. The sight of Meto evidently pleased her, for she spent a long moment appraising him from head to foot. I was less interesting to her. Her gaze turned to Caesar and remained upon him. The look they exchanged was of such an intensity that all else in the room seemed to fade; I sensed that I had become a shadow to them.

Caesar smiled. “Meto, what do you think of Queen Cleopatra’s present?”

“ ‘Beware of Greeks bearing gifts,’ ” Meto quoted. I assumed he was making a joke, facetiously comparing the queen’s rug to the Trojan Horse, but when I glanced at his face, I saw that he did not smile.

The queen ignored these comments. She assumed a formal stance, one foot before the other with her head tilted slightly back and her arms spread in a gracious gesture. Her Latin was flawless and without accent. “Welcome to Alexandria, Gaius Julius Caesar. Welcome to my palace.”

“
Her
palace?” I heard Meto mutter.

Caesar shot him a sharp look, then spoke to me. “My apologies, Gordianus. I had intended that you and I should dine at our leisure tonight, sharing our thoughts. But one never knows when a matter of state will arise, as it has, however unconventionally, this evening.”

“No need to apologize,” I said. “I’ve been a poor guest. My conversation was as weak as my appetite. I’ll leave you now.”

I strode from the terrace into the grandly appointed room, not looking back. I slowed my pace for a moment as I passed the statue of Venus. There was something about the queen that reminded me of the goddess, some intangible quality to which great artists attune their senses. Ordinary men call it divinity and know it when they encounter it, even if their tongues cannot capture it with words or their hands give shape to it in sculpture. Queen Cleopatra possessed that quality—or was I simply dazzled for the moment, as any man can be dazzled by an object of desire? Surely Cleopatra was no more a goddess than Bethesda had been, and Caesar no more a god than I.

I pushed open the bronze doors and stepped out of the room, and did not realize I was being followed until I heard a voice mutter behind me: “She’s trouble.”

I stopped and turned around. Meto almost collided with me, then stepped back a respectful distance. “Papa,” he whispered, lowering his eyes.

I made no answer. Despite his armor, despite his strong limbs and his battle scars and the thick stubble across his jaw, he looked to me at that moment like a boy, timorous and full of doubt. I bit my lip. I screwed up my courage. “I suppose it’s just as well we’ve met. There’s something I must tell you. This won’t be easy. . . .”

“ ‘Quickest done is best done,’ ” Meto said, quoting the proverb I had taught him as a child, suitable to pulling thorns or drinking foul medicine. He kept his eyes lowered, but his lips formed a faint, ingratiating smile. I tried to ignore it.

“The reason I came to Egypt . . .”

He lifted his eyes to meet mine. I looked away.

“Bethesda has been unwell for quite some time,” I said. “Some malady the physicians could never put a name to. She conceived a notion, that if only she could bathe in the Nile . . .”

Meto frowned. “Is Bethesda here in Egypt with you?”

My tongue turned to lead. I tried to swallow but could not. “Bethesda came to Egypt. She bathed in the Nile, as she wished. But the river took her from me. She vanished.”

“What are you saying, Papa? Did she drown?”

“The river took her. Perhaps it was best, if her sickness was incurable. Perhaps it was what she intended all along.”

“Bethesda is dead?” His lips quivered. His brows drew together. The son who was no longer my son, the favorite of Caesar who had seen men die by the thousands, who had hacked his way through drifts of dead bodies and mountains of gore, began to weep.

“Meto!” I whispered his name, but kept my distance.

“I never thought . . .” He shook his head. Tears streamed down his cheeks. “When you’re far from home, you can’t help but imagine what might be happening there, but you teach yourself to think of only good things. In the field, getting ready for battle, fighting a battle, tending to the aftermath, there’s so much terror all around, so much confusion and bloodshed and suffering, that when you think of home you think of everything that’s the opposite, a place that’s safe and happy, where the people you love are all together and nothing ever changes. But of course that’s a dream, a fantasy. Every place is the same as every other place. No one is safe, anywhere. But I never thought . . . that Bethesda . . .” He shot me an angry look. “I didn’t even know she was ill. You might have told me in a letter—if you hadn’t stopped writing me letters.”