Hand of Isis (46 page)

Again, the crowd screamed.

Antonius took another thing from the servant, not a wreath this time, but a white turban adorned with a jeweled peacock feather. “His brother Alexander Helios, King of Armenia and Media!” Thankfully, Helios stayed still while he put it on his head, and I saw Antonius whisper something encouraging to him under cover of the shouting.

“His brother Ptolemy Philadelphos, Overlord of Greece and of all the northern client kings!” He put on baby Philadelphos’ head a diadem in the Macedonian style. Philadelphos promptly reached up to take it off and look at it. Antonius laughed, and presented the last, a fillet of silver worked with seashells. “His sister, Cleopatra Selene, Queen of the island of Crete and of the province of Cyrenaica!” Selene inclined her head gracefully, her eyes shining. She straightened, and I saw in her something so familiar it made my heart clinch for a moment, those same eyes I had seen in my sisters’ faces all these years.

Antonius turned back to the crowd, stepping down as though to kneel again. “Cleopatra, Queen of Kings!”

I thought the noise of the crowd must be audible in Rome.

I
T WAS
. “He has given away half of the territory for which Rome has fought!” Senators shouted. “Given away our riches to his Egyptian whore!”

Octavian wrote moderately, saying that he could not control the course of events, should Antonius continue to do such stupid things. His liaison with Queen Cleopatra was much misunderstood, and thought to be of some importance. Octavian of course was clear on the matter, and he did not let the injury to his sister and her reputation influence him. Though it was much on the minds of all Romans, of course, to see so virtuous a woman deserted.

“Fight fire with fire,” Cleopatra urged. “Of course Octavian is provoked. Do not fall into his traps. You must cultivate the client kings of the East, as you once did.”

S
ITTING AT DINNER
with Dion and Emrys, I related all of this. Emrys looked grim.

“The thing everyone seems to be forgetting here is that in the field Marcus Agrippa could fight rings around Antonius. He’s just whipped a few more tribes into shape over the Rhenus, and he took out the holdout Republicans in Sicily. Octavian is no general, but he has a good one.”

Dion and I looked at each other. Neither of us said anything. If Antonius had been good when he served Caesar, that was gone now.

“Isn’t Agrippa awfully young?” Dion asked.

Emrys shook his head. “He’s twenty-nine. And he is a genius for war. May the gods help Antonius if he ever faces him in the field.”

“It may not come to that,” I said. “If we can win the war of words. But I fear that the war of words is already lost, drowned in Octavia’s divorce.”

Dion shrugged, and passed the bread. “Would Romans really go to war over that?”

Emrys’ face was solemn. “You have no idea how they hate the leopard who changes his spots.”

“There is no other way,” I said. “Antonius cannot take Rome and the West from Octavian. That’s a doomed military enterprise if ever there were one! The only solution is to become a Hellenic monarch, progenitor of Eastern kings.”

“It could still work,” Emrys said. “It could still work. If Antonius makes no more mistakes.”

I
WISHED
I were more sanguine about that. I thought he drank too much, since Parthia. There is nothing wrong with drunkenness between adults, the occasional giving of oneself over to Dionysos and leaving aside dignity. I never minded it myself, when in good company.

But Antonius drank in the morning, unwatered wine before he had even eaten. Since Parthia, he drank every night, deeply and wildly. Sometimes he laid it aside for a few days and drank only sparingly with meals, but always he began again. He was never crude or abusive, nor even nasty in the way people can be when they say things they would never say sober. When he drank he laughed and joked, played games and complimented everyone about him for something at which they excelled, more affable and good-hearted than ever. He made sexual jests to the Queen in front of people until she laughed, threw his arms over the shoulders of his friends and gave them gifts, told Iras she was beautiful and clever. She was, of course, but I was surprised to see her blushing and smiling.

“We are inimitable livers,” he said, his arm around the Queen’s waist as a small dinner party wound down. “No one, in all the history of the world, has loved so much or lived so well as we!” He raised his cup to the heavens. “Joy!”

“Joy,” I said, and raised mine as well. For once I did not work a supper, and shared a couch with Dion and Emrys instead.

The evening wore on in a warm haze, and I snuggled between the two of them, my head on Dion’s breast. “Joy,” I whispered. “Mother Isis, let me not forget.”

T
HE WAR OF WORDS
between Octavian and Antonius continued. Antonius, a letter from a supporter in Rome said, allegedly used a golden chamber pot. He was drunk night and day, and he played in vulgar pantomimes before the court where he wore a dress and danced with pretty boys. He was Cleopatra’s concubine, and he had public sexual relations with women of the court.

Antonius threw the letter down, laughing. “So I piss in a golden pot? And they can’t decide if I have a case of satyriasis or if I’m playing the catamite? Can anyone believe this trash?”

Emrys, who had accompanied me to the palace on that day, picked it up and rerolled it carefully. “Most people will not believe it. But they will listen to it. People like to hear of the excesses of their betters, and to imagine that the pleasures of Asia are so free.”

“Octavian has half a dozen mistresses,” Antonius said. “And what about that business of making Tiberius Nero divorce his wife while she was pregnant, so Octavian could marry her three days after the baby was born? Livia’s a piece of work. They say she acts as his pimp too.”

“That doesn’t matter,” I said. “What matters is that he maintains an attitude of respectability. Piety and gravity.”

Antonius took the rolled letter from Emrys and laid it on the Queen’s desk, while watchful she sat beside it. He shrugged. “Roman virtue is a joke. It’s a sham. Powerful hypocrites like Octavian strutting around talking about how Greek plays are corrupting the minds of youth and how we all have to return to the Age of Saturn by exalting the farmer, when they don’t mean it for a moment. They don’t live that way. They eat off Attic ware and buy Greek tutors for their sons and bugger little boys if they like. A few times a year they march out in white togas to burn a goat’s liver on Capitoline Hill and then go make speeches about how pure Roman blood and pure Roman culture will triumph. Marcus Antonius is at least no hypocrite.”

He took Cleopatra’s hand where it rested beside him on the desk. “What we build will be founded on truth, not pretense.”

She looked up at him, and I saw the pride in her eyes, and the understanding between them. And in his voice I heard that same echo I had heard in Dion’s “The truth will make us free, Charmian. The best we can do is carry the banner proudly in our own time.”

I blinked.

“I’ll stand with that,” Emrys said. He looked at me. “Seven years Antonius knew about me and Dion, and seven years he looked the other way. I could have been demoted. I could have been executed, if he’d wanted to stick to it.”

Antonius shrugged. “Why should I care who you bugger, Aurelianus?” he said, grinning. “As long as it’s not a man in the legion. I had better things to do than worry about your chastity!”

“That’s so,” Emrys said, “and yet remembered all the same. I’ll stand with you whatever comes.”

I
n summer we sailed to Philae for the Inundation, so that Cleopatra might dedicate a new part of the Temple of Isis there. Of course there were stops all up the Nile, festivals and meetings. It had become the custom for her to journey the length of the Black Land every year or two, hearing appeals, meeting local lords and clergy, and holding court again and again. No Ptolemy had done such so often since the second one, Philadelphos. Now the people were used to it again, and they crowded to see us, sometimes running along the bank as we sailed, waving. They liked knowing us. Old women in the markets of Upper Egypt commented to one another how Caesarion had grown, and how he would be a young man soon, as if he were some grandchild of theirs.

At year’s end, Demetria was fourteen. I stood beside Emrys in the Serapeum while she sang her first solo in the great temple, and it brought tears to my eyes.

Emrys squeezed my elbow. “She’s a wonderful young woman,” he said. “You should be proud.”

“I am,” I said. Of all my children, she was the one I had birthed, and yet of us all she was most like Iras.

I blinked and held to his arm. I wished Dion were there too, but he did draw the line at attending offices in the Serapeum.

The Queen and Antonius were not there. They had gone to Ephesos for the winter with Iras, leaving the children with me in Alexandria. Antonius’ troops needed to be seen to, and it was a countermove against Octavian in the war of words. So far, the war was nothing but that. Antonius had offered to lay down his powers as a Triumvir of Rome if Octavian should do the same. Octavian countered, saying he would when Antonius did. Both accused the other of subverting the Republic.

In my office in Alexandria, I read the dispatches aloud to Dion, who had come to give Caesarion his lessons in Aramaic.

Dion settled back on my couch under the window. “It’s not about democracy, is it? The Roman Republic is as dead as a very dead thing. It’s about which model of state they will have, Antonius’ or Octavian’s. Will Rome join the rest of the civilized world as a pluralistic state based upon a tolerant model of Hellenistic culture, or stand apart?”

I rubbed my aching temples. “Is that really the question, Dion? Is it possible to stand apart? I don’t think so. Whatever patricians decide in the Senate, whatever the much-touted virtuous farmers want, when you walk around Rome it’s full of men like Emrys and Sigismund. It has a Jewish quarter, and if the Jews are persecuted more there than here, they don’t go away. It has a Temple of Isis. If it’s torn down, that does not tear Her from people’s hearts.”

Dion frowned. “Persecution’s not a pretty thing, no matter how you phrase it. But no, it will take more than Rome to destroy the Jews. We just go underground like stray cats and pop up again somewhere else.”

“And so will all of the rest of it,” I said, putting my stylus on the table. “Compassion and freedom can’t be constrained by walls of gravitas and virtus. Isis is unconquerable.”

“I certainly hope so,” Dion said.

A
NTONIUS AND THE
Q
UEEN
were back in Alexandria in the late summer, after trips to Samos and Athens as well. To my intense relief she wasn’t pregnant again. Perhaps with the twins now seven and Philadelphos three they felt they had quite enough children. Or perhaps at thirty-seven the queen wasn’t quite as fertile as she’d been. In any event, I breathed a sigh of relief.

The war of words with Octavian continued, and in its cadences I felt a certain comfort. As long as this was all, we could keep it up infinitely.

In the fall there were parties at a villa along Lake Mareotis, because Antonius, of all things, liked to fish. This irritated the Queen in a mild way when it seemed that he spent all day on the lake with his friends, leaving her to her own devices.

“You never catch anything,” she said. “I don’t see why it’s fun to just sit in a boat and do nothing.”

“I do catch things,” Antonius said, his fair skin sunburned. “Come and see.”

The next morning the Queen and I were rowed out on a pleasure barge with an awning to where Antonius sat, pole in hand, bareheaded. He grinned and waved.

Cleopatra leaned back on the striped cushions under the awning, a skeptical expression on her face. “All right. Let’s see you catch something.”

It was barely five minutes before Antonius made a huge production of having a bite on his line. He heaved and hauled, apparently fighting an enormous fish. When at last he drew it in, it was longer than his forearm, a beautiful and perfect giant. “You see?” he said, holding the fish over his head. “Antonius triumphs!”

I looked at the Queen and she looked at me. I nodded toward one of Antonius’ friends who was swimming nearby, an innocent expression on his face.

Cleopatra smiled sweetly at Antonius. “I see that you have indeed caught the biggest fish in all of Lake Mareotis. Clearly I should come fishing with you more often.”

The next morning we were out again, well prepared. Under the pretext of arranging the cushions, I handed the Queen’s slave boy all he needed as he treaded water, holding on to the side of the boat, while Cleopatra called across the water to Antonius. “Have you caught anything yet?”

“Not yet!” he called back cheerfully. “But the day is young!”

It was only a few moments before he seemed to feel a tug on his line. “Ha!” Antonius yelled, and began to bring it in. The line twitched improbably. “It’s a big one!” Antonius yelled. He pulled, and the fish flew up into the air.

Bemused, he caught it. The length of his hand, it was a nice salt fish from the Black Sea.

He looked at it stupidly while Cleopatra burst out laughing. Beside our boat, the slave boy surfaced, grinning.

After a moment Antonius started laughing too. “Maybe I do fish too much,” he said, scratching his head. “They’re coming already salted for me.”

“Maybe you do,” she said, still laughing.

A
ND THE WAR OF WORDS
went on, Antonius’ supporters in the Senate of Rome proposing the censure of Octavian, and vice versa. Every day or so we had a diplomatic packet by way of Ostia, carried by Egyptian ship. Looking out over the great harbor, I thought that Caesar would have approved. Certainly Ptolemy Soter would have. We had three hundred warships now, the greatest fleet in the Mediterranean. Antonius could command another two hundred from various allies.

I stood there at the window, thinking this, the golden sun glancing off the bright mirrors that crowned Pharos, when Iras dashed in, setting the beaded window curtain jangling. “That stupid ass!”

“What?” I spun about, wondering who she meant.

“Marcus Antonius,” Iras said. She waved a scroll at me, its seals dangling. “I’ve just had the diplomatic packet. Octavian’s read his will.”

“How would Octavian get his will?”

“Because that stupid ass sent it to Rome, to the keeping of the Vestal Virgins. Apparently they’re supposed to keep wills for Roman patricians.”

“Why would he do that?” I asked.

“Because he’s a Roman.” Iras paced over to the window. “Because that’s what Romans do, so he did it.”

“What did it say?”

“What you might expect. He left his house in Rome to Antyllus. He left some money to his son Iullus, his younger son by Fulvia, and a dowry to his daughters. And then he left all of his properties in the East and the bulk of his money to his dear children, Alexander Helios, Cleopatra Selene, and Ptolemy Philadelphos. He also said that when he dies he wishes to be buried in his beloved Alexandria, at the side of his adored wife Queen Cleopatra.”

I sat down. “Oh sweet Mother!”

“There was practically a riot in the Senate when Octavian read it aloud,” Iras said. “There was a stampede to the Temple of Bellona. Octavian walked in solemn procession carrying a spear dripping blood. Rome has declared war.”

B
EFORE THE END
of the year Antonius and the Queen sailed for Greece. It was the best place for their fleets to gather to face Octavian, and for the troops Antonius had left in garrison to merge.

In Alexandria it was almost possible to believe that nothing was happening. Caesarion had his lessons, and increasingly he took on public duties, meeting with the Patriarch, whom he addressed solemnly in Aramaic. He had asked to be taken to war, but Cleopatra had refused. He was only fifteen, she said, and should wait another year or two.

The harvest came in, the dry season began. Winter turned into spring.

Emrys fretted and followed the news feverishly. Octavian had a fleet as well, and had given it to Agrippa to command.

“Surely he’s untried at sea,” Dion said.

Emrys raised an eyebrow. “You don’t know him,” he said. “It’s more than in his blood. It’s in his soul.”

I thought of how we had stood at Medinet Habu the last time we had gone up the Nile, while Selene and Helios played in the shadows of the great columns, looking at the carved ships, tales of a long-ago victory by Ramses over the Sea People, and felt a chill run down my spine. Yes, it would be a mistake to underestimate Agrippa at sea.

And yet nothing changed. The Inundation came with no decisive engagement reached.

The dispatches came more irregularly now. It seemed that Agrippa’s fleet had bottled up Antonius’ land forces in Greece, and that our fleet stood in the harbor protecting them, while Agrippa and Octavian stood out to sea, unwilling to engage on land. Our dispatches had to be carried overland and then sail from other ports, a longer and more dangerous process.

Deciphering the Queen’s code, we read the dispatches aloud to the council, Iras working letter by letter.

Octavian cannot be drawn into a battle on land, which is greatly to our disadvantage, as on land we have both numerical superiority, and more veteran troops. Many of those men Octavian has raised recently have never seen battle. And yet Antonius cannot come to grips with them.

We cannot stay here forever. We must at some point break out by Cape Actium. Malaria has begun in our camp from the pestilential ground, and it is not possible to just simply sit here months on end, facing Octavian but unable to bring him to battle. Many of their ships are smaller and lighter than our quinqueremes, and I do not see how they can do us much damage. . . .

When I told Emrys this, he threw back his head and closed his eyes. “Bigger isn’t always better,” he said. “You remember Agrippa’s first appointment was light cavalry? Do you think he doesn’t know that smaller and lighter has certain tactical advantages?”

“Why don’t you say something hopeful for a change?” I snapped, my nerves as worn by worry as his. “We could just surrender and crown Agrippa now.”

“Better Agrippa than Octavian,” he replied.

______

T
HE NEXT DISPATCH
came two weeks later.

From Taenarum, in Greece

We have fought our way free of Actium, but at some cost. We lost thirty-five ships to the enemy, from our total of two hundred and thirty, with the loss of some five thousand men. Antonius’ strategy was thus, that he should engage Octavian’s forces on both wings, opening the center through which our ships should pass, including the flagship and the transports, as well as the pay chests and treasury carried by several of our vessels. This strategy was successful, and in that column myself, we passed through to open sea.

However, Antonius then found himself unable to disengage from the smaller ships which pressed around him. In the close quarters he was unable to use the greater strength of our quinqueremes to ram, and the fire arrows of their smaller ships were used to great effect.

On our landward flank, a number of our ships were cut off from the main body and pressed against the coast, where they were forced to surrender. This was a significant number, perhaps a hundred of our vessels other than the ones that were destroyed in the battle.

Antonius did eventually succeed in breaking off the engagement and reaching our rendezvous at Taenarum, but our losses have been significant.

Additionally, the news has come to us that those troops left in camp in Greece have gone over to Octavian piecemeal, offered money and bonuses. Canidius went over to Octavian with five legions from Macedon, shaking hands with Agrippa on the terms that the surrendering legions would keep all of their money and goods, and be paid more besides.