Antony and Cleopatra (52 page)

“Yes, it will,” Fonteius managed around the huge lump in his throat. “Poor Antonius! Cleopatra will mold him to her liking.”

“What is her liking?” Octavia asked, looking hunted.

“I wish I knew, but I don’t.”

“Why didn’t he divorce me?”

Fonteius looked astonished, then chagrined. “
Edepol!
Why didn’t it occur to me to wonder that? Yes, why didn’t he divorce you? His letter almost demands that he should.”

“Come, Fonteius, think! You must know. Whatever it is has to be political.”

“This second letter hasn’t come as a surprise, has it? You expected it to say what it does.”

“Yes, yes! But why no divorce?” she persisted.

“I think it means he hasn’t quite burned his boats,” Fonteius said slowly. “There’s still a need in him to feel a Roman with a Roman wife.

You’re protection, Octavia. It may be too that in not divorcing you, he’s making a bid for independence. The woman fixed her claws in him at a moment of deepest despair, when he would have turned for comfort to whoever was at hand—her.”

“She made sure of that.”

“Yes, obviously.”

“But why, Fonteius? What does she want of him?”

“Territory. Power. She’s an eastern monarch, granddaughter of Mithridates the Great. It’s not the Ptolemy in her, they’ve been torpid and narrowly ambitious for generations, more concerned with filching the throne of Egypt off each other than in looking farther afield. Cleopatra is hungry for expansion—Mithridatic and Seleucid appetites.”

“How do you know so much about her?” Octavia asked curiously.

“I talked to people when I was in Alexandria and Antioch.”

“And what did you think of her when you met her?”

“Two things, more than any others. One, that she was utterly obsessed with her son by Divus Julius. The second, that she was a little like Thetis—able to change herself into whatever she felt necessary to achieve her ends.”

“Shark, cuttlefish—I forget the rest, only that Peleus hung on no matter what Thetis became.” She shivered. “Indeed, poor Antonius! He’s determined to hang on to her.”

He decided to change the subject, though he could think of nothing that would cheer her. “And are you going home?” he asked.

“Oh, yes. I hate to impose, but could you find me a ship?”

“Better than that,” he said easily. “Your brother charged me with your welfare, which means I’ll be going with you.”

A relief, if not a joy; Fonteius watched her face relax a little, wishing with might and main that he, Gaius Fonteius Capito, could persuade her to love him. Quite a number of women had said they could love him, and two wives certainly had, but they were nothings. Long after he had ever expected to, he had found the woman of his heart, his dreams. But she loved another, and would go on doing so. Just as he would go on loving her.

“What a strange world we live in,” he said, and managed a wry laugh. “Could you bear to see
The Trojan Women
this afternoon? I admit the subject is close to our present bone—women who have lost their men—but Euripides is a true master, and the cast is splendid. Demetrius of Corinth is playing Hekabe, Doriscus is playing Andromache, and—they say he is amazing in the part—Aristogenes is Helen. Will you come?”

“Yes, please,” she said, smiling at him, even with her eyes. “What are my woes, compared to theirs? At least I have my home, my children, and my freedom. It will do me good to witness the plight of the Trojan women, especially as I’ve never seen the play. I’ve heard it tears at the heart, so I’ll be able to weep for someone else’s troubles.”

Octavian wept for his sister’s troubles when she arrived in Rome a month later. It was September, and he was about to embark on his first campaign against the tribes of Illyricum. Dashing his tears away, he threw the two letters Fonteius had given him onto his desk and fought for composure. The battle won, he ground his teeth in anger, but not anger at Fonteius.

“Thank you for coming to see me before I could see Octavia,” he said to Fonteius, and held out his hand. “You have acquitted yourself with honor and kindness to my sister, and I don’t need her to tell me that. Is she—is she very downcast?”

“No, Caesar, that’s not her way. Antonius’s behavior has crushed her, but not defeated her.”

A verdict Octavian agreed with, once he saw her.

“You must come and live here with me,” he said, his arm around her shoulders. “Bring the children, of course. Livia Drusilla is anxious that you have company, and the Carinae is too far away.”

“No, Caesar, that I cannot do,” Octavia said strongly. “I am Antonius’s wife, and will live in his house until he bids me go. Please don’t nag or bully me about it! I won’t change my mind.”

Sighing, he put her in a chair and drew another up close to hers, taking her hands. “Octavia, he won’t come home to you.”

“I know that, Little Gaius, but it makes no difference. I am still his wife, which means he expects me to care for his children and his house as a wife must when her husband is abroad.”

“What about money? He can’t be providing for you.”

“I have my own money.”

That annoyed him, though his anger was reserved for Antony’s emotional callousness. “Your money is yours, Octavia! I’ll have the Senate grant you sufficient funds from Antonius’s stipend to care for his property here in Rome. His villas as well.”

“No, I beg you, don’t do that! I’ll keep a faithful account of what I spend, and he can pay me back when he comes home.”

“Octavia, he isn’t coming home!”

“You can’t say that for sure, Caesar. I don’t claim to understand men’s passions, but I do know Antonius. This Egyptian woman might be another Glaphyra, another Fulvia, even. He tires of women when they become importunate.”

“He has tired of you, my dear.”

“No, he hasn’t,” she said valiantly. “I am still his wife, he didn’t divorce me.”

“That was to keep his tame senators and knights in his camp. No one can say he’s permanently in the clutches of the Queen of Egypt when he hasn’t divorced you, his true wife.”

“No one can say? Oh, come, Caesar!
You
can’t say, is what you mean! I am not blind! You want Antonius to seem a traitor—for your own ends, not mine.”

“Believe that if you must, but it isn’t true.”

“Here I stay” was all she said.

Octavian left her, feeling neither surprise nor more than a minor irritation; he knew her as only a little brother could, following someone four years older as if tethered to a leash, privy to thoughts expressed aloud, girlish conversations with her friends, adolescent swoons and crushes. Antony had inspired those swoons long before she was old enough to love him as a woman did. When Marcellus applied to marry her, she had gone to her fate without a murmur of protest because she knew her duty and never dreamed of marriage to Antony. He was so much in Fulvia’s toils at the time that an eighteen-year-old as sensible as Octavia abandoned what hope she had ever cherished—probably none.

“She wouldn’t move here?” asked Livia Drusilla when he returned.

“No.”

Livia Drusilla clicked her tongue. “Tch! What a pity!”

He laughed, brushed his hand down her cheek affectionately. “What nonsense! You’re profoundly glad. A child lover you are not, wife, and you are well aware that those overindulged, underdisciplined children would swarm everywhere if they lived here, no matter how we tried to contain them.”

She giggled. “Alas, too true! Though, Caesar, it isn’t I who is out of the ordinary, it is Octavia. Children are greatly to be desired, and I would rejoice were I to fall pregnant. But Octavia makes a female cat look negligent. I’m surprised she consented to go to Athens without them.”

“She went without them because—keeping up the feline metaphor—she knows Antonius is a tomcat and feels the way you do about children. Poor Octavia!”

“Be sorry for her, Caesar, by all means, but don’t lose sight of the fact that it’s better her pain comes now than later.”

While Publius Canidius and his seven legions had penetrated Armenia and done good work, Antony had remained in Syria, ostensibly to oversee the war against Sextus Pompey in Asia Province and get a grand army together for his next campaign into Median Parthia. No more than an excuse; it had taken him that year to emerge, slowly and painfully, from his wine-caused illness. While Uncle Plancus governed Syria, Nephew Titius had deputed for Antony and taken an army to Ephesus to help Furnius, Ahenobarbus, and Amyntas of Galatia subdue Sextus Pompey. It was Titius who cornered him in Phrygian Midaeum, and Titius who escorted him to the Asian coast at Miletus. There he was put to death at Titius’s orders, an act Antony loudly deplored. He accused Uncle Plancus of putting Titius up to it, but Uncle Plancus stoutly insisted that the order, a secret one, had come from Antony, who should wear the blame. Not so! roared Antony.

Whose was the blame might never be known, but certainly Antony benefited from this short little war. He inherited the three good legions of bored veterans Sextus had recruited, and two splendid sea-faring Romans in Decimus Turullius and Cassius Parmensis, the last of Divus Julius’s assassins left alive. After they offered Antony their services and Antony accepted, Octavian wrote an almost hysterical letter to Antony.

“If nothing more was necessary to prove to me that you were a party to the plot to murder my divine father, Antonius, this is it,” said Octavian in his own small, meticulous hand. “Of all the infamous, treacherous, disgusting acts of your hideous career, this is the worst.
Knowing
these two men are assassins, you have taken them into your service instead of publicly executing them. You do not deserve to hold a Roman magistracy, even of the lowest kind. You are not my colleague, you are my enemy, just as you are the enemy of all decent, honorable Roman men. You will pay for this, Antonius, so I swear by Divus Julius. You will pay.”

“Were you a party to the plot?” Cleopatra demanded.

Antony looked injured. “No, of course I wasn’t! Jupiter, it’s ten years since Caesar was murdered, and ask me which I would prefer—two dead suspected assassins, or two live Roman admirals? There is no contest.”

“Yes, I see your logic. Still…”

“Still
what
?”

“I’m not sure I believe your denials about Caesar’s murder.”

“Well, I don’t happen to care whether you believe or you don’t believe! Why don’t you go home to Alexandria and rule in person for a change? Then I can deal with my war plans in peace.”

Cleopatra did as Antony suggested; within one
nundinum
the
Philopator
sailed for Alexandria with Pharaoh on board. Her willingness to leave him was evidence of her confidence that he had finally repaired the ravages wine had wreaked upon his body and, more important, his mind. He really was extraordinary! Any other man of his age would have emerged showing physical scars of dissipation, but not Mark Antony. As fit as ever, certainly fit enough to conduct his ridiculous campaign. But this time he would not be marching for Phraaspa, of that she could be sure. Without the absent Canidius to back her up it had been hard going, but she had kept grinding away at Antony’s ambitions over the months, shaping them into a different form. Of course she hadn’t implied by word or look that he should turn his eyes westward to Rome; instead, she had harped upon the fact that Octavian was bound to come east now that he had conquered Sextus Pompey, whose execution had been her idea. A fat bribe to Lucius Munatius Plancus, another to his sister’s boy, Titius, and the deed was done.

With Lepidus forced into retirement and Sextus Pompey gone for good, she had argued, there was no one to prevent Octavian’s ruling the world except Mark Antony. It hadn’t been difficult to convince Antony that Octavian
wanted
to rule the world, especially after she found an unexpected ally to reinforce her contentions. As if his nose had the ability to scent a vacant space around Antony, Quintus Dellius had appeared in Antioch to take the place Gaius Fonteius had relinquished, full of mischief about Fonteius, who he swore was now Octavia’s slave, a lovesick laughingstock. As Dellius utterly lacked Fonteius’s integrity and suavity, he was no real substitute. However, he could be bought, and once a Roman noble had sold his services, he stayed bought. It was, apparently, a matter of honor, even were the honor tawdry. Cleopatra bought him.

She put Dellius to work in the slot Fonteius had vacated; once more he functioned as Antony’s ambassador. The business of Ventidius and Samosata had faded from the forefront of Antony’s mind, didn’t seem such a crime anymore. Antony was, besides, missing Fonteius’s manly company, so he seized upon Dellius as a substitute, albeit a pitifully inadequate one. Had Ahenobarbus been in Syria things would have fallen out differently, but Ahenobarbus was busy in Bithynia. Nothing stood in Dellius’s way. Or in Cleopatra’s.

At the moment Dellius was engaged in a task of Cleopatra’s devising. Between the two of them, he and Cleopatra had experienced little trouble in convincing Antony that it was a task of great moment; he was to journey as Antony’s ambassador to the court of Artavasdes of Media, and there propose an alliance between Rome and Media that ran counter to Parthian interests. Media proper, of which Phraaspa was the capital, belonged to the King of the Parthians; Artavasdes ruled Media Atropatene, smaller and less clement. Since all his borders save the one with Armenia were Parthian, Artavasdes was in conflict; self-preservation dictated that he should do nothing to offend the King of the Parthians, whereas ambition prompted him to cast hungry eyes on Media proper. When Antony’s disastrous campaign had commenced, he and his Armenian namesake had been positive that no one could beat Rome, but by the time that Antony had set out from Artaxata on that terrible march, both Artavasdeses had thought differently.

In sending Dellius to Median Artavasdes, Cleopatra was trying to patch up an alliance that would keep this king quiet while his Armenian namesake was conquered for Rome. That it could be done was thanks to trouble at the court of King Phraates, where princes of a minor Arsacid house were intriguing against him. No matter how many of your relatives you manage to kill, reflected Cleopatra, there are always some who lie so low you don’t see them until it is too late.

Making Antony see that he didn’t dare seize upon this Parthian turmoil by trying a second time to take Phraaspa was much harder, but she had eventually succeeded by dwelling constantly upon money. Those forty-four thousand talents Octavian had sent him had been swallowed up by the cost of war—paying out some legions, arming new legions, buying the staples legionaries liked to eat from bread to pease porridge, as well as horses, mules, tents—a thousand and one necessities. And somehow whenever a general of any nationality equipped a new army, it was a seller’s market; the general paid inflated prices for every commodity. As Cleopatra continued to refuse to pay for Parthian campaigns and Antony had no more territory he could cede her in return for her gold, he was caught in her carefully laid trap.

“Content yourself with the complete conquest of all Armenia,” she said. “If Dellius can draft a treaty with Median Artavasdes, your campaign will be a huge success, something you can trumpet to the Senate in tones that make its rafters ring. You can’t afford to lose another baggage train, nor the digits of your soldiers, which means no marches into unknown country too far from Rome’s own provinces to get help quickly. This campaign is simply to exercise your experienced men and toughen your recruits. You’ll need them to face Octavianus, never forget that.”

He took it to heart, of that she had no doubt, therefore she could leave him to invade Armenia without needing to remain in Syria herself.

One other thing prompted her to go home: a letter from her lord high chamberlain, Apollodorus. Though it was not specific, it indicated that Caesarion was becoming troublesome.

Oh, Alexandria, Alexandria! How beautiful the city was after the filthy alleyways and slums of Antioch! Admittedly it held as many poor in slums as Antioch did—more, actually, as it was a bigger city—but every street was wide enough to let the air in, and the air was sweet, fresh, dry, neither too hot in summer nor too cold in winter. The slums were new, as well; Julius Caesar and his Macedonian enemies had virtually leveled the city fourteen years ago, obliging her to rebuild it. Caesar had wanted her to increase the number of public fountains and give the people free baths, but that she hadn’t done—why should she? If she sailed into the Great Harbor, she came ashore inside the Royal Enclosure, and if she came in by road, she used Canopic Avenue. Neither route saw her needing to traverse the stews of Rhakotis, and what her eyes didn’t see, her heart didn’t grieve about. Plague had reduced the population from three million to one million, but that had been six years ago; from somewhere a million people had appeared, most by the birth of babies, a smaller number by immigration. No native Egyptians were allowed to live in Alexandria, but there were plenty of hybrids from interbreeding with poor Greeks; they formed a large servant class of free citizens who were not citizens, even after Caesar’s urging her to bestow the Alexandrian citizenship on all its residents.

Apollodorus was waiting on the jetty in the Royal Harbor, but not, her eager eyes discovered, her eldest son. The light in them died, but she gave her hand to Apollodorus to kiss when he rose from his obeisance, and didn’t object when he led her to one side, his face betraying his need to give her vital information right at this moment of her arrival.

“What is it, Apollodorus?”

“Caesarion,” he said.

“What has he done?”

“Nothing—as yet. It’s what he plans to do.”

“Can’t you and Sosigenes control him?”

“We try, Isis Reincarnated, but it becomes more and more difficult.” He cleared his throat and looked embarrassed. “His balls have dropped, Majesty, and he regards himself as a man.”

She stopped in her tracks to turn wide gold eyes upon her most trusted servant. “But—but he isn’t yet thirteen!”

“Thirteen in three more months, Majesty, and growing like a weed. He is already four and a half cubits tall. His voice is breaking, his physique more a man’s than a child’s.”

“Ye gods, Apollodorus! No, don’t tell me any more, I beg you! Armed with this information, I think it’s better that I form my own opinions.” She resumed walking. “Where is he? Why didn’t he meet me?”

“He’s in the middle of drafting legislation he wanted to have finished before you arrived.”

“
Drafting legislation?
”

“Yes. He’ll tell you all about it, Daughter of Ra, probably before you can so much as open your mouth to try to speak.”

Even forewarned, Cleopatra’s first sight of her son took the breath from her body. In the year of her absence he had gone from child to youth, but without the awkwardness males usually suffered. His skin was clear and tanned, his thick mop of gold hair trimmed short rather than kept long as was the wont of adolescents, and, as Apollodorus had said, his body was a man’s.
Already!
My son, my beautiful little boy, what happened to you? I have lost you forever, and my heart is broken. Even your eyes are changed—so stern and certain, so—inflexible.

All of which was as nothing compared to his likeness to his father. Here was Caesar the young man, Caesar as he must have been when he wore the
laena
and the
apex
of the Flamen Dialis, Rome’s special priest of Jupiter Optimus Maximus. It had taken Sulla and his nineteenth birthday to free Caesar of that abominated priesthood, but here stood Caesar as he might have been did Gaius Marius not attempt to ban him from a military career. The long face, the bumpy nose, the sensuous mouth with the creases of humor in its corners—Caesarion, Caesarion, not yet! I am not ready.

He came across the wide expanse of floor between his desk and the spot where Cleopatra stood, transfixed, one hand holding a fat scroll, the other extended to her.

“Mama, how good to see you,” he said in a deep voice.

“I left a boy, I behold a man,” she managed.

He handed her the scroll. “I’ve just completed it,” he said, “but of course you must read it before I put it into force.”

The roll of paper felt heavy; she looked down at it, then at him.

“Don’t I get a kiss?” she asked.

“If you want one.” He pecked her on the cheek, then, it seemed deciding this was not enough, he pecked her on the other cheek. “There! Now read it, Mama, please!”

Time to assert her ascendancy. “Later, Caesarion, when I have a moment. First, I’m going to see your brothers and sister. Then I intend to have dinner on dry land. And after that, a meeting with you, Apollodorus and Sosigenes, at which you may tell me all about whatever it is you’ve written in here.”

The old Caesarion would have argued; the new one didn’t. He shrugged, took the scroll back. “Actually, that’s good. I’ll work on it a little more while you’re otherwise engaged.”

“I hope you intend to be at dinner!”

“A meal I never eat—why put the cooks to the trouble of making a fancy meal I won’t do justice to? I take fresh bread and oil, a salad, some fish or lamb, and eat while I work.”

“Even today, when I’ve just come home?”

The brilliant blue eyes twinkled; he grinned. “I am to feel guilty, is that it? Very well, I’ll come to dinner.” Off he went to sit behind his desk, the paper already unfurled, and bent his head to it the moment he groped for his chair and found it.

Her feet carried her to the nursery as if they belonged to a woman outside of herself, but here at least was sanity, normality. Iras and Charmian came running to hug her, kiss her, then stand off to watch their beloved mistress take in the sight of her three younger children. Ptolemy Alexander Helios and Cleopatra Selene were putting a jigsaw puzzle together, a scene of flowers, grass, and butterflies painted on thin wood that some master craftsman with a fretsaw had cut into small, irregular pieces. The Sun twin was whanging away with a toy mallet at a piece that didn’t fit while his sister the Moon glared in outrage. Then she wrenched the mallet away from her brother and hit him on the head with it. Sun howled, Moon shrieked with joy; a moment later they were back working on the puzzle.