The Judgment of Caesar (20 page)

At last Merianis came running up the steps. I could see she had been weeping, no doubt shaken by the turn of events. Apollodorus followed behind her, looking grim.

Cleopatra stood. The body of Zoë slipped from her embrace and crumpled, like a cast-off garment, on the paving stones. Presumably the restless
ka
had been dispatched, for the queen paid no more attention to the corpse.

She raised her arm and pointed at Meto. “I want his person searched.”

Meto’s face grew long. Caesar stiffened his jaw and nodded. “Of course, Your Majesty. It shall be done. I shall call my lictors and see to it at once.”

“No! I summoned Apollodorus for the purpose. Apollodorus shall search him.”

Caesar worked his jaw back and forth. “I think, Your Majesty, that in these circumstances, it would be best—”

“This is
my
home,” said Cleopatra. “It’s my slave who lies dead. It was my cup that was poisoned—”

“A cup intended for
my
lips,” said Caesar.

“Filled with wine poured by your man—the same glum-looking Roman who carried the wine here. No, Caesar, I must insist that one of my men perform the task of searching Meto’s person.”

Caesar considered this for a long moment. He turned toward Meto but did not quite look him in the eye, then turned back to Cleopatra. “Very well, Your Majesty. Let Apollodorus search him. Step forward, Meto. Raise your arms and let the fellow do what he must.”

Meto looked indignant, but obeyed. His jaw twitched; I knew he wanted badly to cast a scathing look at the queen, but his discipline held firm, and instead he kept his gaze straight ahead.

Apollodorus ran his hands over Meto’s shoulders, limbs, and torso, poking his fingers among the leather straps and buckles. Meto grunted and ground his jaw. Cleopatra stepped closer and watched intently. Caesar’s gaze shifted apprehensively from Meto to Cleopatra and back again. Merianis, who had withdrawn to another part of the terrace, hid her face and began to weep.

Apollodorus stiffened. “Your Majesty . . .”

“What is it, Apollodorus? What have you found?”

From between two straps of leather attached to Meto’s breastplate, Apollodorus produced a small white object, cylindrical in shape. Caesar leaned forward, as did Cleopatra. I rose from the couch, still light-headed, and moved toward Meto, feeling a sudden premonition of catastrophe.

Apollodorus held the object aloft between his thumb and forefinger. It was a tiny vial made of alabaster.

I could not stop myself; I gasped.

As one, all four turned their gazes on me—Caesar, Cleopatra, Apollodorus, and Meto, whose eyes finally made contact with mine for the first time that day. The look on his face froze my blood.

“Papa!” he whispered hoarsely.

Caesar snatched the vial from Apollodorus. He thrust it under my nose. “What is this, Gordianus?”

I stared at it. The stopper was gone. Though the vial was empty, I caught a faint whiff of the not unpleasant odor I had smelled when I sniffed its contents aboard Pompey’s ship. There could be no doubt; this was the vial Cornelia had given me.

Caesar’s nose was almost touching mine. “Speak, Finder! I command you! What do you know about this?”

From behind him, I heard the calm, but demanding, voice of Cleopatra. “Yes, Gordianus. Tell us what you know about this alabaster vial that Apollodorus found upon the person of your son.”

CHAPTER XXI

An hour later, in a kind of stupor, I was back in my room, sifting through the contents of my traveling chest. Roman soldiers dispatched by Caesar stood by, watching my every movement. Rupa stood across the room, and the boys sat on the windowsill. I had not yet told them the details of what had transpired, but they knew that something terrible must have occurred. The boys were calming themselves by stroking Alexander the cat, who sat purring between them, oblivious to the tension in the room.

“It’s not here,” I muttered. Carefully, methodically, I had removed every item from the trunk and spread them across my bed. Now, just as methodically, I replaced each object into the trunk, shaking tunics to make sure nothing was hidden in the folds, opening Bethesda’s little trinket boxes to be certain that no alabaster vial was hidden inside.

The search was fruitless. The vial Cornelia had given me was no longer in my possession; Apollodorus had discovered it upon Meto’s person. Nonetheless, I had been praying for some miracle whereby I would find the vial in my chest after all, with its stopper and contents intact. Now there could be no doubt. The poison Cornelia had given me—quick to act, relatively painless—must have been the same poison that killed Cleopatra’s taster.

My reaction when I first saw the vial in Apollodorus’s hand had been so spontaneous, so damning, that dissembling was futile. No lie fabricated on the spot would have satisfied Caesar. Nor was silence an option; refusing to speak would have pitted my will against his, and against the will of Cleopatra as well. Both of them had long experience in obtaining information from unwilling subjects. I might have withstood a degree of suffering, but there were Rupa and the boys to consider. I would not allow harm to be done to them, even for the sake of protecting Meto.

And there lay the bitter irony: After all my protestations that Meto was no longer my son, that our relationship was over, and that he meant nothing to me, my first instinct had been to protect him. Caesar had seen through me at once. “If Meto truly means nothing to you, Finder, then why do you not speak?” he had demanded. “A woman lies dead. But for the queen’s action, it would have been me! What do you know about this alabaster vial? Speak! If I have to force you to talk, I will. Neither of us wishes for that to happen, do we, Finder?”

So I told him where the vial had come from and how it had come to be in my possession. When had I last seen it? I couldn’t say for certain. (In fact, my last memory of seeing it was the day that Meto had noticed it, when I gave him a keepsake from Bethesda.) How had it come to be in the possession of Meto? I attempted to dissemble, saying I had no idea; but hearing the threat in Caesar’s tone, Meto himself spoke up.

“I saw it among Papa’s things, on the night I went to visit him in his room. He kept it in his trunk. I told him to get rid of it. I was thinking he might be tempted . . . to use it himself. But from that moment to this, I never saw it again—not until this Sicilian produced it out of thin air, like a magic trick!”

“Are you saying Apollodorus himself was carrying the vial?” said Caesar.

“We know already how talented he is at making things appear from nowhere.” Meto glowered at the queen.

“Enough!” said Caesar. “The one thing we know for certain is that father and son both knew of this poison, and here you both are, together with the vial that contained it and the slave who died from drinking it. Meto, Meto! I never imagined . . .”

“Consul, wait!” I shook my head. “Perhaps there’s been a mistake.”

“What sort of mistake?”

“Let me return to my room and look through my things. An alabaster vial is a common-enough object. Perhaps the one in my room is still there, after all.” I tried to speak with conviction, but the chance seemed far-fetched even to me.

Caesar, to his credit, allowed me to pursue the possibility. While his men took Meto into custody, another group of soldiers accompanied me back to the mainland, escorted me to my room, and watched as I conducted a futile search of the things in my trunk. The only result had been to give further evidence that Meto must have purloined the poison at some point after he first saw it in my trunk.

But how had the poison come to be in the wine? And for what purpose? I sat on the bed, numbed by the enormity of what had happened. Was it really possible that my son had attempted to take the life of Julius Caesar?

My son:
The words came to my mind unbidden and remained there, unchallenged. As I had wept for Bethesda, now I wept for Meto, knowing he must surely be lost to me forever. I realized in that moment why I had so steadfastly resisted a reconciliation with Meto since seeing him again in Alexandria. It was not stubborn pride, or an irreconcilable disgust for Meto himself; it was my fear of a moment just such as this. Having lost Bethesda, how could I open myself a second time to the chance of losing the person I loved most in the world? Meto, who lived such a perilous existence, who exposed himself again and again to the dangers of war and espionage, who had bound his fate to the fiery comet of Caesar’s career—since I had at last shut him out from my life, surely it was better to keep him out for good, or else I might face the intolerable prospect sooner or later of losing him altogether. So it had come to pass, despite all I had done to harden my heart against him. What an ill-starred voyage had brought me to Alexandria!

The soldiers allowed me time to collect myself, but did not withdraw; Caesar had ordered them not to leave my side. Rupa stood before the window, his arms crossed, fretting and frowning. The boys fidgeted, biting their lips and exchanging glances, until at last Mopsus spoke.

“Master, what’s going on? What’s happened? It’s something to do with Meto, isn’t it?”

I shook my head. “Boys, boys, it’s of no concern to you—”

“No, Master, this isn’t right!” Little Androcles stepped forward. “Mopsus and I may be only slaves, and Rupa is—well, he’s just Rupa—but we’re not children any longer. Something terrible has happened. We want to know what it is. We’re clever, Master—”

“And fearless!” piped up Mopsus.

And strong!
Rupa tacitly added, massing his bull-like shoulders.

The only occupant of the room who failed to step forward was Alexander the cat, who resettled himself on the windowsill with his back to the room and gazed out at the harbor.

“Perhaps we can help, Master.”

I looked at Androcles, manifestly still a child notwithstanding his protestation to the contrary, and I remembered Meto when he was the same age. Between that time and this, Meto had become a man. He had traveled across the world and back, killed other men and very nearly been killed himself, stood beside Caesar and dipped his hands into the tides of history; yet a part of me clung to the absurd notion that Meto was as tender and vulnerable as Androcles, that he was still a boy who needed my protection—and my chiding. In that moment I at last became reconciled to Meto and the man he had chosen to become. I relinquished the false assumption that I had some responsibility for his actions; I acquiesced to his inevitable autonomy; I admitted to myself that I loved him nonetheless. If now he found himself in a dire strait, I would not judge him, and I would do all I could to help him.

“Meto stands accused of trying to kill his imperator, with a poison he obtained from this trunk,” I said.

“Oh, no!” said Mopsus.

“It isn’t true, is it, Master?”

“The truth, Androcles? I don’t know.”

“But if Meto did such a thing, Master—”

“Then I shall throw myself upon Caesar’s mercy. I shall tear my tunic, pull out my hair, beg him shamelessly; surely all my years around advocates like Cicero have taught me some tools of persuasion. I shall use them now on Meto’s behalf.”

“But surely Meto is innocent, Master!”

“If he is, Mopsus, then I intend to do everything in my power to absolve him. This is a strange land. Here, justice exists at the whim of those who possess a certain bloodline, and laws are decrees handed down by squabbling rulers. Laws have nothing to do with truth, or justice with proof. Soon it will be the same in Rome, I think; Caesar is taking lessons from these Nile crocodiles and intends to reproduce their habitat along the Tiber. Still, even in Egypt, truth is truth, and proof is proof, and it may be that I can yet do something to save my son.”

“And we will help you,” insisted Androcles.

“If the gods allow it,” I said.

“Did you find it?”

Caesar stood at the eastern window in his high room, gazing over the rooftops of the Jewish Quarter in the direction of the distant Nile.

“No, Consul.”

He nodded. Even with his back turned, I could tell that he took no pleasure in the gesture. He stood with his hands clasped behind his back, nervously turning the alabaster vial between two fingers. He turned to face me.

“I’ve just received disturbing news. How are your eyes, Gordianus?”

“I beg your pardon, Consul?” “Stand here and look toward the east, beyond the city, at that blur of desert between here and the Nile. What do you see, Gordianus?”

“Not much, Consul. A blur, as you say, further obscured by a great cloud of dust.”

“Exactly. That’s the dust raised by a marching army. According to my intelligence, the whole of Ptolemy’s army has decamped from their fortress in the desert and is now marching this way under the command of a certain Achillas. You’ve met this fellow, I understand?”

“Not exactly, Consul.”

“But you’ve observed him at close quarters?”

“From a considerable distance, I saw him murder Pompey. Later, practically under my nose, I watched him strangle an Egyptian spy with his bare hands.”

“A murderous brute!”

“I believe that both acts were committed at the behest of the king, which would make the killing of Pompey an assassination and the killing of the spy an execution—if one believes that some killings are murder and other killings are not.”

Caesar looked at me askance. “I’ve killed men in battle. Men under my command have caused the death of many others. Would you call
me
a murderer, Gordianus?”

“I would never presume to offer such a judgment, Consul.”

He snorted. “Wriggled out of answering that one, didn’t you? You remind me more and more of Cicero. The word-twisting, the hand-wringing, the endless equivocations—his ways have rubbed off on you over the years, whether you like it or not.”

I kept my voice steady. “The times we live in have led us all down paths not of our choosing.”

“Speak for yourself, Gordianus. You spend too much time looking backward. The future lies ahead.”

“A future that will soon bring Ptolemy’s army to the gates of Alexandria?”

“So it seems. I never intended for Alexandria to become a battleground. I meant to come here, settle affairs between the king and queen, and be on my way. Instead, I now face the prospect of a full-scale war, and I don’t like the odds. I’ve sent for reinforcements, but who knows when those will arrive? As it stands, their numbers are great, and ours are small. Granted, the forces under Achillas’s command are highly irregular by Roman standards. The core is made up of the legionnaires who arrived here under Gabinius to restore the late king to his throne and to keep the peace. It seems they’ve since forgotten their origins and become Egyptianized, marrying local women and adopting native customs. That one of their number would consent to murder Pompey in cold blood tells us just how far they’ve descended from their honorable beginnings. Added to their ranks are mercenaries, runaway slaves, and foreign criminals. They’ve no discipline to speak of, and little loyalty; once, when they wanted higher pay, they blockaded the palace to demand it. But they haven’t forgotten how to fight. Under a commander as murderous as they are, they may constitute a formidable foe.”

He began to pace, turning the alabaster vial in his fingers. It seemed that Meto was far from his thoughts. He spoke again.

“A moment ago, you said that the killing of Pompey was done at the behest of the king. Do you believe that, Gordianus? Did King Ptolemy himself order the assassination? Is he capable of issuing such a command without Pothinus guiding him?”