“You freed them. That was no justice.”
Canidius listened to the exchange feeling as if he had been hit by a poleaxe. All this was over, in the past! Ye gods, Antony was—was half demented! His memory had gone. And how was he, Canidius, going to discuss war plans with a forgetful old man? Broken! Shattered into a thousand pieces. Unfit for command.
“What did you want, Canidius?” Antony was asking.
“Octavianus is nearly here, Antonius, and I have seven legions at the hippodrome rearing for a fight. Are we to fight?”
Up leaped Antony, transformed in a moment from forgetful old man to general of troops, eager, alert, interested. “Yes! Yes, of course we fight,” he said, and commenced to roar. “Maps! I need maps! Where are Cinna, Turullius, Cassius?”
“Waiting, Antonius. Dying to fight.”
Cleopatra saw the visitor out.
“How long has this been going on?” Canidius asked.
“Since he returned from Phraaspa, what—four years ago?”
“Jupiter! Why didn’t I see it?”
“Because it happens in spasms, and usually when his guard is down, or he has a headache. Caesarion left today, so it’s a bad day. But don’t worry, Canidius. He’s already snapping out of it, and by tomorrow he’ll be everything he was at Philippi.”
Cleopatra didn’t speak lightly. Antony pounced as Octavian’s advance guard of cavalry arrived in the suburb of Canopus, where the hippodrome was located. This was the old Antony, full of dash and fire, incapable of putting a foot—or a man—wrong. The cavalry routed, Antony’s seven legions charged into battle singing their war paeans to Hercules Invictus, patron god of the Antonii as well as of war.
He returned to Alexandria at dusk still in his armor to be greeted by an ecstatic Cleopatra.
“Oh, Antonius, Antonius, nothing is too good for you!” she cried, covering his face with kisses. “Caesarion! How I wish Caesarion could see you now!”
She still hadn’t learned, poor lady. When Canidius, Cinna, Decimus Turullius, and the others arrived in much the same sweaty, bloody condition as Antony, she ran from one to another smiling so widely that Cinna for one found the performance revolting.
“It wasn’t a major engagement,” Antony tried to tell her when she spun past him on one of her gyrations. “Save your joy for the big battle that’s still to come.”
But no, no, she wouldn’t listen. The whole city was rejoicing as at a major engagement, and Cleopatra was utterly absorbed in planning a victory feast for the morrow in the gymnasium—the army would be there, she would decorate the bravest soldiers, the legates must be ensconced in a golden pavilion on sumptuously fat cushions, the centurions in something only slightly less plush….
“They’re both mad,” said Cinna to Canidius. “Mad!”
He tried to restrain her, but Antony the man, the beloved, had vanished before her conviction that, in winning this minor battle, the war was won and over, that her kingdom was safe, that Octavian was no threat anymore. Professional soldiers all, the legates watched an impotent Antony succumb to Cleopatra’s crazy joy and spend what was left of his energy in convincing her that seven legions would never fit inside the gymnasium.
The feast was held with only the men to be decorated there from the ranks, though four-hundred-plus centurions came, the military tribunes, the junior legates, and all of Alexandria that could squeeze in. There were also prisoners to accommodate, men Cleopatra insisted be put in chains and stood in a place from which the Alexandrians could jeer and throw rotten vegetables. If nothing else could have turned the legions away from her, that did. Un-Roman, barbaric. An insult to men as Roman as any.
Nor would she listen to advice about the decorations she insisted that she must bestow; instead of the plain oak leaf crown for valor, the man who had saved the lives of his fellows and held the ground on which it happened until the conflict was over found himself presented with a golden helmet and cuirass by a slightly pop-eyed, plain little woman who kissed him!
“Where’s me oak leaves? Gimme me oak leaves!” the soldier demanded, hugely offended.
“Oak leaves?” Her laugh tinkled. “Oh, my dear boy, a silly crown of oak leaves instead of a golden helmet? Be sensible!”
He dropped the golden gear at the edge of the crowd and went immediately to Octavian’s army, so angry that he knew he would kill her if he stayed. Antonius’s wasn’t a Roman army, it was a combination of dancing girls and eunuchs.
“Cleopatra, Cleopatra, when will you learn?” Antony demanded in real pain that night after the ridiculous affair was finished and the Alexandrians had gone home, sated.
“What do you mean?”
“You shamed me in front of my men!”
“Shamed you?” She drew herself up and prepared for her own battle. “What do you mean, shamed you?”
“It’s not your place to conduct a military celebration, nor to tamper with Rome’s mos maiorum and give a soldier gold instead of oak leaves. Nor to clap Roman soldiers in manacles. Do you know what those prisoners said when I invited them to join my legions? They said they’d prefer to die. Die!”
“Oh, well, if that’s how they feel, I’ll oblige them!”
“You’ll do nothing of the kind. For the last time, madam, keep your nose out of men’s affairs!” Antony roared, trembling. “You’ve turned me into a ponce, a—a saltatrix tonsa trolling for custom outside Venus Erucina’s!”
Her rage died in the time it took lightning to strike; jaw dropped, eyes drowning, she stared at him in genuine dismay. “I—I thought you’d want it,” she whispered. “I thought it would enhance your standing if your ranker soldiers, your centurions and tribunes, saw how great the rewards were going to be once our war is won. And haven’t we won it? Surely it was a victory?”
“Yes, but a little victory, not a big one. And for Jupiter’s sake, woman, save your golden helmets and cuirasses for Egyptian soldiers! Roman ones would rather have a grass crown.”
And so they parted, each to weep, but for very different reasons.
On the morrow they kissed and made up; this was no time to remain at odds with each other.
“If I swear on my father Amun-Ra that I won’t interfere in whatever military things you do, Marcus, will you consent to fight that major battle?” she asked, hollow-eyed from lack of sleep.
From somewhere he conjured up a smile, pulled her close, and inhaled the exquisite fragrance of her skin, that light, flowery fragrance she distilled from Jericho balsam. “Yes, my love, I’m going to fight my last battle.”
She stiffened, drew back to look at him. “Last battle?”
“Yes, last battle. Tomorrow, at dawn.” He drew a breath, looked stern. “I won’t be coming back, Cleopatra. No matter what happens, I won’t be coming back. We may win, but it’s only one battle. Octavianus has won the war. I intend to die on the field with as much valor as I can. That way, the Roman element is gone and you can treat with Octavianus without needing to consider me. I’m his embarrassment, not you—you’re a foreign enemy with whom he can deal plainly, as a Roman does. He may require you to walk in his triumphal parade, but he’ll not execute you or your children by me. I doubt he’ll let you rule Egypt, which means that after his triumph is over he’ll put you and the children to live in an Italian fortress town like Norba or Praeneste. Very comfortably. And there you can wait for Caesarion to return.”
Her face had drained of color, concentrated now in those huge gold eyes. “Antonius, no!” she whispered.
“Antonius, yes. It’s what I want, Cleopatra. You can ask for my body and he’ll give it to you. He’s not a vengeful man—what he does is expedient, rational, carefully thought out. Don’t deny me the chance of a good death, my love, please!”
The tears felt hot, burning her cheeks as they ran down to the corners of her mouth. “I won’t deny you your good death, my most beloved. One last night in your living arms, I ask for that and nothing more.”
He kissed her once and left for t
he hippodrome, there to make his battle dispositions.
Aimless, killed inside, she walked through the palace to the door that led across palmy gardens to the Sema, Charmian and Iras in her wake as always. They hadn’t asked any questions; there was no need after seeing Pharaoh’s face. Antony was going to die in the battle, Caesarion was gone to India, and Pharaoh was rapidly approaching that dim horizon that separated living Nilus from the Realm of the Dead.
At her tomb she commanded the attention of those who still worked on Antony’s side, issuing orders to have everything ready for his body at dusk tomorrow. That done, she stood in the little anteroom just inside the great bronze doors and stared at them, then turned to look at the outermost of her own chambers, where a beautiful bed had been situated, and a bath, a corner for her private bodily functions, a table and two chairs, a desk stacked with finest papyrus paper, reed pens, and cakes of ink, a chair. Everything Pharaoh would require in the afterlife. But, she thought, it was also properly appointed for Pharaoh in this life.
That preyed on her, her caged impotence between Antony’s death and Octavian’s decision about her and her children. She had to hide! Hide until she discovered what Octavian’s decision was. If he found her where she could be captured, she would be incarcerated and her children probably murdered immediately. Antony kept insisting that Octavian was a merciful man, but to Cleopatra he was Basiliskos, the lethal reptile. Certainly he wanted her alive for his triumphal parade: ergo, a dead Queen of Beasts was the last kind he wanted. But if she took her own life now, her children would undoubtedly suffer. No, she could not take her own life until she had made her children safe. For one thing, Caesarion would not yet have reached harbor on the Sinus Arabicus; it would be nundinae before he sailed away. As for Antony’s children—she was their mother, caught by the intangible bond that fused a woman and her children together forever.
The idea had come when her eyes chanced upon the bed. Why not hide inside her tomb? Admittedly it could still be entered through the aperture, but before Octavian could order men to enter, she would be screaming down the speaking tube that if any minions tried to enter that way, they would find her dead of poison. The last type of death Octavian could condone in her; all his many enemies would be clamoring that he had poisoned her. Somehow she had to stay alive and a free agent with choices for long enough to get his oath that her children would live and prosper independently of Rome. In the event that the Master of Rome refused to agree, she would poison herself so publicly and so shockingly that the odium of the deed would destroy his political image ever after.
“I shall stay here,” she said to Charmian and Iras. “Put a dagger on that table, another dagger near the speaking tube, and go to Hapd’efan’e immediately. Tell him I want a phial of pure aconitas. Octavianus will never lay hands on a living Cleopatra.”
An order that Charmian and Iras mistook, thinking that their mistress meant to die—oh, the agony of it!—almost at once. So a shocked Apollodorus in turn mistook Cleopatra’s intentions when the two weeping women entered the palace. “Where is the Queen?”
“In her tomb,” sobbed Iras, hurrying off to find Hapd’efan’e.
“She’s going to die before Octavianus reaches Alexandria!” Charmian managed through spasms of tears.
“But—Antonius!” Apollodorus said, devastated.
“Antonius intends to die in tomorrow’s battle.”
“Will the Daughter of Ra be dead by then?”
“I don’t know! Perhaps, probably—I don’t know!” Charmian hurried off to find fresh food for her mistress in the tomb.
Within an hour everyone in the palace knew that Pharaoh was about to die; her appearance in the dining room astonished Cha’em, Apollodorus, and Sosigenes.
“Majesty, we have heard,” said Sosigenes.
“I don’t intend to die today,” said Cleopatra, amused.
“Please, Majesty, think again!” Cha’em beseeched.
“What, no visions about my death, son of Ptah? Rest easy! Death is nothing to fear. No one knows that better than you.”
“And the lord Antonius? Will you tell him?”
“No, I will not, gentlemen. He’s still a Roman, he won’t understand. I want our last night together to be perfect.”
In the middle of that last night Antony and Cleopatra spent in each other’s arms, serene, awash with love, senses unbearably heightened, the gods quit Alexandria. They heralded their going with a faint shudder, a sigh, an immense groan that dwindled away like dying thunder in the far distance.
“Serapis and the Alexandrian gods are like us, my dearest Antonius,” she whispered against his throat.
“It’s just a tremor,” he said indistinctly, half asleep.
“No, the gods refuse to stay in a Roman Alexandria.”
After that he slept, but Cleopatra couldn’t. The room was faintly lit with lamps so that she could lift herself on one elbow to gaze down at him, drink in the sight of his beloved face, the almost silvery curls a wonderful contrast against his ruddy skin, the planes of his bones sharpened because he had lost weight. Oh, Antonius, what I have done to you, and none of it good, or kind, or understanding! Tonight has been so peaceful that I am wrapped in your forgiveness—you never did hold my conduct against me. I used to wonder why that was, but now I realize that your love for me was great enough to forgive anything, everything. All I can do in return is make the eternity of death something beyond all human sensation, a golden idyll in the realm of Amun-Ra.
But then she must have dozed, because he was rising, a dim black outline against the pallid pearl of dawn. She watched his manservant help him into his armor: the padded scarlet tunic over the scarlet loincloth, the scarlet leather underdress, the plain contoured steel of the cuirass, skirt and sleeves of red leather straps, the shortish boots laced tightly, their tongues tooled with steel lions folded down over the crisscrossed laces. Giving her a wide grin, he tucked his steel helmet under his arm and flung the scarlet paludamentum back to fall free of his shoulders.
“Come, wife,” he said. “Wave me good-bye.”
She tucked her finest handkerchief, sprinkled with her own perfume, into the armhole of his cuirass and walked with him out into the clear, cool air, alive with birdsong.
Canidius, Cinna, Decimus Turullius, and Cassius Parmensis were waiting; Antony stepped upon a stool to reach saddle height, kicked his dappled grey Public Horse in the ribs, and galloped off for the five-mile ride to the hippodrome. It was the last day of Julius.
As soon as he had disappeared from sight she moved into her tomb, Charmian and Iras with her. The three of them working in unison, they lowered the bars over the inside of the double doors until only Antony’s famous eighty-foot ram could have burst them. Of fresh food there was plenty, Cleopatra discovered, as well as baskets of figs, olives, dates, and small bread rolls baked to a special formula that kept them at much the same consistency for many days. Not that she expected to be inside for many days.
The worst was going to be tonight, when Antony’s body was returned to her; he would go straight to his own sarcophagus room, there to submit voicelessly to the horrific talents of the embalming priests. But first she would have to look on his dead face—O Amun-Ra and all your gods, let it look peaceful, in no pain! Let his life have ceased quickly!
“I am glad,” said Charmian, shivering, “that the aperture lets in plenty of air. Oh, it’s so gloomy!”
“Light more lamps, silly” was the practical Iras’s answer.
Antony and his generals rode in the direction of Canopus, smiling with satisfaction at the prospect of battle. The area had been populated for many years, traditionally by wealthy foreign merchants, though their houses were not interspersed between tombs, like the houses to the west of the city, where the necropolis was. Here were gardens, plantations, stone mansions with pools and fountains, groves of black oak and palms. Beyond the hippodrome, spanning the low dunes near the sea—less desirable for a rich man’s house—lay the Roman c
amp, two miles on each ramrod straight side, entrenched, ditched, walled.
Good! thought Antony as they neared, seeing that the soldiers were already outside and in formation. Between their front ranks and Octavian’s front ranks lay half a mile of space. Eagles flashed, cohort flags fluttered in many colors, the scarlet vexillum proponere stood hard by Octavian’s Public Horse as he sat, surrounded by his marshals, waiting. Oh, I love this moment! Antony’s mind went on as he threaded his way among his troops, cavalry making their usual fuss and clatter on the flanks. I love the eerie feel of the air, the faces of my men, the potential of so much power.
Then, in a tiny moment, it was over. His own vexillarius, encrusted flag aloft, dipped it and walked toward Octavian’s army. Every aquilifer with his Eagle did the same, every vexillarius of every cohort, while his soldiers, crying quarter, followed, swords reversed, white kerchiefs tied around their pila.
How long Antony sat his jigging, prancing horse he didn’t know, but when his mind cleared enough to look sideways at his marshals, they had gone. Vanished, where he had no idea. With the stiff, jerky gestures of a marionette he turned the grey’s head and galloped for Alexandria, the tears coursing down his face and flying away like raindrops in a gale.
“Cleopatra, Cleopatra!” he shouted the moment he entered the palace, his helmet clanging and bouncing down a flight of stairs when he dropped it. “Cleopatra!”
Apollodorus came, then Sosigenes, and finally Cha’em. But Cleopatra did not.
“Where is she? Where’s my wife?” he demanded.
“What happened?” Apollodorus asked, shrinking.
“My army deserted, which no doubt means my fleet has too,” he said curtly. “Where is the Queen?”
“In her tomb,” said Apollodorus. There! It was spoken.
His face went grey, he staggered. “Dead?”
“Yes. She didn’t seem to think she’d see you alive again.”
“Nor would she, had my army fought.” He shrugged, untied the strings of his paludamentum, which fell to the floor in a puddle of bright red. “Well, it makes no difference.” He undid the straps of his cuirass; another clang as it hit the marble. The sword came out of its scabbard, a nobleman’s sword with an ivory eagle handle. “Help me get the leather off,” he commanded Apollodorus. “Come on, man, I’ll not ask you to push the sword in! Just get me down to my tunic.”