Hand of Isis (40 page)

T
HE
P
ARTHIANS DID
, of course. They had feared Caesar. They did not fear Herod, or Antonius’ men left leaderless in Antioch.

The year had turned and the harvest was upon us when Cleopatra made her best galleys ready for Antonius for him to go to Syria with all speed. I thought that we would go with him, perhaps, as they seemed happy together, but that was not to be. At the beginning of Roman February she missed her courses.

“I will take no chances,” she said, as we worked out the provisioning of the ships that would go with Antonius. “Not this time.” Her voice caught just a little.

“I know,” I said. “It is better if you stay here. Not even a sea voyage to Antioch.”

Emrys, of course, must go. We had known he would, Dion and I, but we’d had a year.

“They will come back soon,” the Queen said.

“They will,” I said, putting my hand over hers on the table. “They will be back before the child comes in the fall, most likely. The Parthians will not fight through the heat of summer.”

The Queen raised an eyebrow at me, but did not dispute it. As once she would have, I thought. She wanted to believe me.

Antonius and Emrys sailed in March, with fair winds and the blessings of Isis Pelagia following after.

It was perhaps a month later that I sat beside the Queen while her doctor held his rolled paper to her slightly rounded belly, frowning. “You missed in February but not January?”

“Yes,” she said, lying as he had told her to, her arms raised behind her head. “I’m sure I conceived in late January. I was entirely regular before that. Is something the matter?”

“You are too large,” he said brusquely, and began poking and prodding again, moving the tube about with his ear to it, his brow furrowed.

I squeezed her hand, and felt her fingers shake in mine.

“What is the matter?” she asked.

He shushed her, listening.

Oh sweet Mother Isis, I prayed, please, nothing wrong. Please, nothing wrong.

At last he laid the paper down, looking grave. “There are two heartbeats,” he said.

I
t was the fifth physician who said what no one else would. “Carrying twins isn’t necessarily a death sentence.” He was a young doctor from Philae, handsome in a sharp way, with high Nubian cheekbones and long fingers, new to the faculty at the Temple of Asclepius, where he had been teaching on the charity ward. His name was Amonis.

A collective breath ran around the room. Five specialists had been called in since that morning, each with their separate examination of my sister. Six times we’d done it over and over, the prodding and the listening, the fingers examining her closed cervix. For the Queen of Egypt to be carrying twins was nothing less than a national crisis.

“It is true,” Amonis said, “that some women carrying twins die in the delivery. But the odds are not significantly worse than for a single delivery. However, the outlook for the children is graver. In my experience, twins are generally smaller and often have trouble breathing. The delivery itself is more complicated, with a higher incidence of breech births.” He did not seek to evade the Queen’s eyes.

I stood behind her chair. She had dressed again, and her face was calm if white. She must be Queen as well as mother.

“I will not deceive you, Gracious Queen. The prognosis for the children is not good. Often one twin is larger than the other, and that one lives while the other dies. But it is not uncommon that both babies are too small and weak, and we lose them both,” Amonis said.

Cleopatra nodded gravely, as though they spoke of someone else.

The senior physician cleared his throat. “The safest course, Gracious Queen, would be to induce labor now. This early, in the fourth month, there is no chance of the fetuses surviving, but your health would be safe. Both would be small enough to pass easily. And many of the drugs I would administer have been used under medical supervision for years.”

“Safely?” She raised an eyebrow.

One of the other doctors shifted in his chair, and his movement told her what she wanted to know. “Yes?” she said, turning to him.

He was the senior physician of gynecology at the Ascalepium, with thirty years’ service. “No drug is entirely safe,” he said sharply. “If you give a dose small enough to be safe, it may be ineffective. A larger dose of one of the stronger compounds will induce abortion, but is not recommended as late as the fourth month. There is no guarantee that we will be able to stop the hemorrhage if we begin it. I think that course is too dangerous, Gracious Queen.”

“And if I carry the pregnancy?” Cleopatra’s voice was level. I had never admired her more, nor envied that detachment more, that she could step back from something that so intimately concerned her.

Her own doctor’s voice was gruff. “It’s hard to carry twins to term. Usually a bit better than seven of the ten moons is the best that can be done. And often, most usually, the babies don’t survive. You need nine moons to have a good chance, and eight is risky. When the combined weight of the twins is equal to the weight of a single infant at term, labor usually results.”

“And if I carry eight moons or better?”

Amonis answered. “One child or two or none surviving. And a dangerous pregnancy for you, Gracious Queen. There are any number of possible complications that become more likely.”

Cleopatra spread her hands. “Those things may happen in any normal pregnancy, Doctor. What would you tell me then?”

“You are in all other ways healthy. You are twenty-eight years old, neither too young or too old, with one normal delivery behind you. I would tell you to eat and exercise in moderation,” he said. “To rest in the water in a pool to balance your humors. And to work far less than you do. I would order you to bed at the first sign of effacement.”

“Then that is what I will do,” she said. “We will simply take it as it comes, gentlemen. And with the assistance of Isis and Bastet, we will enrich the realm, not impoverish it.”

T
HAT NIGHT
I could not sleep. I paced outside on the terrace, half in worry, half in prayer.

I was not surprised to hear a voice behind me. “Charmian?”

It was the Queen. “Yes,” I said.

She came and stood by me, looking out to sea. The wind blew her robes tight against her body, her belly too swollen for four months. “You can’t sleep either?”

“No,” I said.

The great light on the lighthouse turned, beams sweeping over the sea as the massive mirrors moved on their gears, calling ships home.

“What will happen to Egypt without you?” I said.

Her mouth tightened. “Is that what you think will happen, Charmian? That I will die?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I care too much about this to be able to see anything besides my own fears. I simply don’t know.”

“Then we will take the chances, you and I,” she said.

“And Antonius?”

My sister took a deep breath. “I’ve written to him of my pregnancy. But I won’t tell him about the twins. There’s too much chance of the letter being intercepted and read. And you know as well as I that if it gets out, the grain markets will crash.”

“I know,” I said.

“Besides, there’s nothing he can do. And he will worry.” She smiled, a tiny tight smile. “He’d probably run straight back here. And that’s a thing he cannot afford to do.”

“I wonder what Fulvia will say,” I said.

Cleopatra laughed. “Probably congratulations! I think she and Marcus understand one another well.”

“I see that,” I said.

My sister put her arm around my waist. “We are all strange creatures, we Ptolemies. I think if Fulvia were here we might arrange everything as you have with Dion and Emrys. She asked me, you know. In Rome.”

I must have looked utterly shocked, because Cleopatra laughed. “She had come up to my room to help me dress one day, a good opportunity for gossip, and to make it clear that she was closer to me than the other women. She asked me if I’d ever had a woman use her mouth on me, and volunteered to show me.”

“Oh!” I said, and in my surprise blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “I suppose she taught Antonius then.”

“Very well, yes.” My sister laughed and embraced me. “She taught him very well.”

T
HE NEXT THING WE HEARD
of Antonius he had pushed the Parthians back over the Jordan River, and was marching through Asia toward the Hellespont, bound for Greece. Things had not gone smoothly in Judea, but he had little time to spare. His brother and Fulvia had gone to war with Octavian in Italy.

By summer Antonius was in Athens. And I knew with a certainty that his letters came less often than Emrys’. But then, Emrys and the cavalry had been left behind in Macedonia.

Hail Charmian,

I write to you from Pella, in Macedonia. You will be amused, I think, to imagine me here where Alexander grew to manhood, but this place holds no echoes of that kind for me. It is truly not much to look at, though one can see how it was once a much larger town. They say here that there was an earthquake five years ago that destroyed much, and that many of the town’s citizens moved to Thessalonika, which is not far away. There are still men here, and good grass, and we have built a good camp near the river.

I watch my horse eat where Bucephalos grazed, and wonder what it looked like then. This quiet seems more like it must have been before Alexander’s time, when the Persians came here asking for fire and earth and got it. Another summer, another time ago.

You ask me what Antonius is doing, and more than that what he feels. I can’t know. He is in Athens and I in Pella, even if I had his confidence, in ways I do not. They say he is furious at his brother for rising against Octavian inopportunely and getting soundly defeated. Now there must be war between them.

But at least you will have no cause to worry about me. I am doing nothing more strenuous than cavalry exercise in beautiful summer weather.

Sigismund shakes his head at me and says, “Crazy Gauls!” He bids me to tell you that if you tire of sharing me that he is looking for a good wife when his enlistment is up!

Farewell,

Emrys Aurelianus, Praefectus

The Queen made eight moons, all of the way to the week before the autumn equinox. The first part of the labor went quickly, too quickly for Amonis, who was in attendance. He kept feeling the upper part of her belly, though his face was calm. When he went out to call for more clean water to cool her face and limbs, I followed him.

“What is it?” I asked. “You can tell me, you know. I have one of my own, and I was with her through Caesarion and the miscarriage both.”

He hesitated, then dropped his voice. “The first baby is fine. Its head is down and well engaged. I can feel it right behind the cervix. It’s the second one that’s the problem.”

“What’s the matter?”

Amonis took a breath. “It’s transverse. Its head is right under her ribs on the left side, and its feet low down on the right. It has no room to turn with the other baby in position.”

“Transverse.” Transverse was worse than footling breech. Delivery feetfirst might be more dangerous for the child, but it could be done. There was simply no way a child could fit through sideways.

“I will have to try to turn it once the first one is out of the way,” Amonis said. “So send a servant for purified olive oil. I’ll need the slip on my hands.”

I nodded and started off, movement an antidote for terror.

He caught my arm. “And say nothing to the Queen,” he said. “There is nothing she can do differently, and we must deliver the first one now.”

I sent for the oil, and then stood a moment in the passage before I went back in. I must compose myself before I saw her. Caesarion was sleeping. He had kissed her good night in the earliest stages, gaily told that before morning he would have a new brother or sister to keep him company. He was seven. So very young to rule Egypt alone.

I must not think that way, I thought angrily. I must not. This was not the awesome premonition of Caesar’s death, but more mundane worry for my sister and her children.

I schooled my face and went in to sit with Iras at her side.

The child was born in the eleventh hour of the night, the cold hour before dawn, slithering into the hands of Amonis’ assistant, who cleared its breath with his own. She choked and began to cry, a thin distressed wail.

Cleopatra was trying to push herself up on her elbows to see.

“A fine daughter, Gracious Queen,” I said, holding the clean linen that her thin little body might be received in, to wrap her warm against any chill.

“The weight of a good measure of grain,” the assistant said, making light of it as he checked her once more, seeing whether there was any bluish cast to her hands or feet, and that her breath came strongly. Her arms and legs flailed.

The larger twin, I thought. The strong one.

She kicked, even swaddled in the fine cloth, and the assistant handed her to me.

Amonis met Cleopatra’s eyes. “Gracious Queen,” he said. “The other child is transverse. I need to try to turn it. It cannot be born the way it lies.”

I saw the fear cross her face, followed almost immediately by the next wave of pain. The labor did not relent, her body trying to find a way.

I held the girl to my shoulder, her soft little head cupped in my hand. “Shhh, sweet girl,” I whispered. “Your aunt has you, precious. You’re safe, little love.”

“Just hang on tight,” Iras said, taking the Queen’s hand again. “Just hang on.” Their eyes locked together, and I remembered how she had held me up when Demetria was born, all through that long dream of pain. “Hang on,” she said.

When the contraction eased Amonis slid his entire hand inside, slickened with oil and blood, full to the wrist.

The Queen bit down on her lip, then screamed.

I saw the next contraction coming, the ripples spreading across her strained belly, clamping down on his arm.

He stilled. “Waiting,” he said. “I have its head. Now I have to turn it very carefully and keep the cord out of the way. Fraternal twins. I can feel its sac intact.”

My sister’s voice shook. “Charmian . . .”

“Yes, darling,” I said. I couldn’t get any closer, with Iras and Amonis and the assistants.