Cleopatra’s Daughter: A Novel (31 page)

“This is terrible,” I whispered.

“How did he find out the name of every slave?” Alexander wondered.

“Are we finished?” Juba demanded. “Or would we like to go on discussing this in the open Forum?”

Inside the ludus, Magister Verrius was waiting at his desk. He didn’t stand to greet us, and he looked as though he’d had very little sleep.

“Did you hear about the Red Eagle?” Julia asked eagerly.

“Yes,” Magister Verrius said curtly. “And I presume he is the reason we’re all late this morning?”

“But we had to read it!” Marcellus protested.

Magister Verrius held up his hand. “I don’t want to know. Just take your seats and begin your work.”

Tiberius hesitated in front of his desk. “There’s not going to be a contest today?”

Magister Verrius shook his head firmly. “No.”

That evening, Octavian’s mood was sour as well.

“What’s the matter with everyone?” Julia asked.

Although a harpist’s music filled the triclinium, Marcellus lowered his voice. “What do you think? Tomorrow, two hundred innocent slaves are to be executed.”

She broke open an oyster and dipped it in garum sauce. “So how does that affect my father?”

Octavian had invited his favorite poets to entertain him. Livy and Maecenas dined next to Horace and Vergil, but even their humor couldn’t make him laugh. I saw Terentilla reach for a glass bowl, and when her hand brushed Octavian’s, he still didn’t smile.

“He thought he had crucified the Red Eagle,” Marcellus guessed, “and now that the rebel has returned, he’s nervous about what might happen tomorrow.”

“I don’t see how he can free them,” my brother said practically. “They’re chained inside the Carcer.”

“And they’ll be taken by more than a hundred soldiers to the Esquiline Gate for crucifixion,” Julia added. “There isn’t any hope.”

But Marcellus wasn’t sure. “He’s managed it before.”

“Without his own soldiers, he’ll never manage this,” my brother said.

At the table next to us, Livia rose and addressed the diners. “Shall we hear the first poem of the night? Horace, give us something triumphant.”

A balding man stood up from his couch and took his place in the center of the chamber. “Triumphant,” he said musingly. “But which one of Caesar’s many triumphs?”

“The Battle of Actium,” Livia said. “Or Kleopatra’s death.”

Horace smiled. “An ode, then, to Queen Kleopatra.”

Marcellus looked from me to Alexander.

“We should leave,” I said immediately, but Julia put her hand on my arm.

“Livia wants my father to be upset with you. Don’t risk it,” she whispered.

“His mood is already dark,” Marcellus warned quietly. “Just stay, and try not to listen.”

But it was impossible to ignore the lies that Horace twisted into a poem.

When Horace was finished, my brother looked at me. Although the poem had begun by portraying our mother as a “drugged” queen, the last three stanzas praised her as a warrior who accepted her death unflinchingly. Horace bowed his head respectfully in our direction, and Octavian stood up from his couch to applaud.

“Magnificent.” He looked at his wife. “What did you think?”

Livia smiled weakly. “The beginning had a great deal of promise. Unfortunately, I found the end dispensable.”

Octavian looked down at Terentilla. “Inspired,” she told him.

I turned to my brother. “I’m leaving,” I whispered.

“You can’t go by yourself!”

“If you don’t want to come, Gallia’s in the atrium. She’ll take me back.”

Alexander hesitated.

“I won’t hear another poem about Egypt,” I told him.

“But Octavian will think it’s a slight.”

“Then
you
stay.” I stood without finishing my meal, and when I reached the atrium, I searched among the seated slaves for Gallia.

A boy rose from his stool. “Is there someone you’re looking for, Domina?”

“Gallia,” I told him.

“She isn’t here,” he said quietly.

“Where did she go?”

He hesitated. “With a man.”

“Magister Verrius?”

He looked down at his sandals.

“I’m a friend,” I promised.

The boy looked deeply uncomfortable. “Yes. He brings her back here before Domina Octavia is ready to go home.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“You won’t tell her I told you?”

“Of course not.”

I walked the short distance to Octavia’s villa alone. Inside my chamber, I took out my sketchbook and studied the drawings. The foundling house was my favorite. It was just a plain villa, with a tiled floor and simple mosaics, but it was more important to me than Octavian’s mausoleum or the Temple of Apollo. There weren’t enough denarii from Alexander’s gambling to purchase the tiles for a single floor, and there would never be enough for the rest of a building, but with my finger I traced the balconies where I imagined the children would look out on the city. Some of the slaves who would be crucified at dawn might once have been foundlings. Perhaps they had even been daughters of wealthy patricians who hadn’t wanted to provide any more dowries, or sons of merchants who didn’t want to feed any more children. I imagined how different life would be for Alexander and me if we had been brought to Rome as slaves, and when Gallia returned with Octavia and the others, I didn’t mention her disappearance with Magister Verrius.

“You missed the best part,” Alexander exclaimed, bursting into our chamber with Marcellus.

“What? Another poem about Egypt?”

Marcellus collapsed on the third couch. “No. Maecenas mentioned the Red Eagle, and my uncle became enraged.”

“Really?” I put down my book. “What did he do?”

“He wants to set a trap for the rebel,” my brother said.

“But the Red Eagle’s unpredictable,” Marcellus added, “and never posts in the same place twice. So my uncle is going to have soldiers in plebeian clothes stationed across Rome.”

“And do you think it will work?” I asked.

“If the rebel tries to interfere tomorrow, it may.” Marcellus closed his eyes. “It’s terrible, isn’t it?”

“Terrible because you know who the Red Eagle is?” my brother asked.

Marcellus opened his eyes. “Why would you say such a thing?”

“Because we’ve heard you leave your room at night,” I said, and Marcellus grew suddenly pale. “And I saw a shadow move across the garden once. It looked very much like you.”

We both stared at him.

“I’m not the Red Eagle,” Marcellus said firmly. “How could I ever write such long acta? I can barely finish my work in the ludus.”

“But perhaps you know him.”

“Or her,” I suggested.

Marcellus looked from me to my brother.
“Her?
What are the two of you thinking?”

We were silent for a moment, then Alexander said, “Perhaps it’s Gallia, and you’re aiding her fight.”

“Against slavery?” Marcellus’s voice was incredulous. “Do you really think I’d be helping a rebel?”

“Where else could you have been going?” Alexander asked quietly, and Marcellus regained some of his color.

“To meet someone.”

“A woman?” I gasped.

He didn’t answer my question. “Sometimes I pay the guards. But surely you don’t think they’d cover for me if they suspected I was a traitor?”

Alexander and I were both silent. I crossed my arms over my chest, wondering which woman he could be meeting. A
lupa?
Julia? Some other pretty girl on the Palatine?

Marcellus leaned forward. “But do you really think it might be Gallia?”

“By herself?” my brother said. “It’s unlikely. But perhaps she knows someone with access to a great deal of ink and papyrus?”

Marcellus’s eyes widened, and I knew he was recalling the night his uncle had nearly been assassinated and Antonia had seen Gallia at the bottom of the hill. “Not Magister Verrius?”

My brother put his finger to his lips. “Who else has such resources?”

“Or access to the Palatine,” Marcellus realized. He looked at me. “Do you think it’s him?”

“You say you aren’t the Red Eagle. You haven’t told us where you’ve been going, but if we’re to believe you, who else could it be?”

Marcellus sat back against the couch, but didn’t rise to my bait. “It would make sense. But it could also be a hundred other people.”

“Which is why we can’t say anything,” Alexander said swiftly.

“You wouldn’t turn him in even if you knew, would you?” I asked.

Marcellus was thoughtful. “If I knew for certain who it was, and my uncle came to know….”

I looked to Alexander. We had been wrong to tell him about Gallia and Verrius.

“I won’t say anything,” Marcellus promised. “But it isn’t me.”

When he left, I studied Alexander in the lamplight. “Do you believe him?”

“I don’t know.”

I lay down on my couch and looked at the ceiling. “So do you think the Red Eagle will save them tomorrow?”

“No. He has every legionary in Rome looking for him. If I were the Red Eagle, I’d disappear for several months.”

I dressed in the darkness, then crept through the atrium to the dimly lit library before dawn broke across the sky. I could see Vitruvius silhouetted against the lamplight, and with his sharp profile he reminded me of a bird. He looked up from his desk.

“Have they been killed?” I asked him.

Vitruvius furrowed his bald brow. “Who?”

“The slaves being held in the Carcer!”

His face became suddenly tender. “Executions don’t begin until dawn, Selene, but you can be certain that they will die. Those were the orders.”

“From whom? A group of fifty judices, not one of whom has ever known slavery? How is that fair?”

Vitruvius nodded slowly. “Many things aren’t fair.”

“But isn’t that what Caesar is for? To make things right?”

“No. Caesar is here to keep the peace. And if two hundred slaves have to die in order to keep the peace in Rome, then he is willing to sacrifice them.”

I stared at him.

“I don’t mean to say that’s my belief,” he added, “but that is what Caesar is thinking.”

I took a seat on the opposite side of his desk, but I didn’t take out my book of sketches. “Do you think the Red Eagle will save them?”

“No. And I wouldn’t mention his name in this villa. What began as an annoyance has become a real threat. The boy who was crucified
made his attempt in the name of the rebel. You may think this man is brave, Selene, you may even sympathize with those slaves, but do not speak his name around Caesar or his sister.”

I was disappointed that Vitruvius didn’t understand, and when I returned to my chamber an hour later so that Gallia could arrange my hair, I told her what he’d said.

“He’s right.”

I looked up at her in surprise.

“No one knows whether that boy was working for the Red Eagle.”

You do
, I wanted to say, but kept my silence until I could know for certain. Besides, if she had wanted to confide in me, she would have. “And the two hundred slaves?”

She lowered her head. “They were crucified this morning.”

I gasped. “All of them?”

“The smallest children were poisoned.” She saw my look in the mirror and stepped in front of me. “There is no use in letting this consume you,” she warned. “You are free, and if you keep away from trouble, perhaps Caesar will return you to Egypt. Then think of the things you could change.”

I closed my eyes and willed myself not to cry. Instead, I vowed that I would be the most talented apprentice Vitruvius could ever want, and that by my twelfth birthday even Octavian would see that I was useful.

December, 29 BC

“
HIS WHEELS
are smoking!” Alexander exclaimed, rising from our couch. “Did you see that, Selene?”