Antony and Cleopatra (40 page)

As November started its downhill slide the Queen knew all of Antony’s dispositions in Antioch. They seemed logical, sensible, even farsighted. Except, that is, for his last decision: to make Monaeses the Parthian the new King of the Skenite Arabs. Antonius, Antonius, you fool! You idiot! No matter if the man is a genuine refugee from his uncle’s beheading axe, you don’t make an Aryan Arsacid king of any kind of Arab! It is beneath him. It is an insult. A mortal insult. And if he is an agent for Uncle Phraates, it will steel him in his enmity. You may rule the East, but you are of the West. You don’t begin to understand eastern peoples, how they feel, how they think.

War with the Parthians could not be allowed to happen, she resolved. Only how could she persuade Antony of that? For no other reason was she going to Antioch. Rome was a menace to her throne, but if the Parthians conquered, she would lose it, and Caesarion would meet the same fate as all promising young men: execution. Antony was stirring up an ant’s nest.

At this time of year she would have to journey overland, a complicated progress because Egypt had to stun the people of every land she and Caesarion traveled through. Lumbering wagons of supplies and royal paraphernalia, a thousand-strong segment of the Royal Guard, mule carts, prancing horses, and for the Queen, her litter with its black bearers. A month on the road; she would set out on the Nones of December, not a day before.

And in all of this, Mark Antony the man, the lover, never rose to the surface of Cleopatra’s mind, too busy plotting and scheming about what she wanted and how she was going to get it. Somewhere deep down she had vague recollections that he had been a pleasant diversion, but wearying in the end; she had never grown close to loving him. She dismissed him as a means; she had quickened, Nilus had inundated, Caesarion had a sister to marry and a brother to support him. At this stage, all Antony could give her was power—which necessitated that she strip him of some of his. A tall order, Cleopatra.

On the Nones of January and in the teeth of an unusually bitter wind, Cleopatra and Caesarion entered Antioch. Wearing the Double Crown and riding in her litter, the Queen sat like Fonteius’s doll, face painted, body clad in finely pleated white linen, neck, arms, shoulders, waist, and feet blazing with gold and jewels. Wearing the military version of the Double Crown, Caesarion rode a mettlesome red horse, red being the color of Montu, God of War, his face painted red, his body clad in Egyptian pharaonic armor of linen and golden scales. Between the purple tunics and silver armor of the thousand Royal Guards, the glitter of trapped horses carrying officers and bureaucrats, and the royal litter with Caesarion riding alongside it, Antioch hadn’t seen a parade like this since Tigranes had been King of Syria.

Antony had been busy to some purpose. Acknowledging the truth of Fonteius’s contention that the governor’s palace was a caravanserai, he had razed several blocks of adjacent dwellings to the ground and built an annex he thought fit to house Egypt’s queen.

“It isn’t an Alexandrian palace,” he said, escorting Cleopatra and her son around it, “but it’s a great deal more comfortable than the old residence.”

Caesarion was alight with joy, grieving only that he had grown far too much to ride Antony’s hip anymore. Disciplining himself not to skip, he walked solemnly and tried to look regal. Not difficult, in all that loathed paint. “I hope there’s a bath,” he said.

“Ready and waiting, young Caesar,” Antony said with a grin.

The three didn’t meet again until midafternoon, when Antony served dinner in a
triclinium
so new that it still smelled of plaster and the various pigments used to enhance its bleak walls with frescoes of Alexander the Great and his closest marshals, all mounted on high-stepping horses. Since it was too cold to open the shutters, incense burned to cut the reek. Cleopatra was too polite and aloof to comment, but Caesarion felt no such compunction.

“The place stinks,” he said, clambering onto a couch.

“If it’s unbearable, we can repair to the old palace.”

“No, I’ll stop noticing it in a few moments, and the fumes have lost their power to poison.” Caesarion chuckled. “Catulus Caesar committed suicide by shutting himself in a freshly plastered room with a dozen braziers and all the apertures stuffed to prevent the entrance of outside air. He was my great-grandfather’s first cousin.”

“You’ve been studying your Roman history.”

“Of course.”

“What about Egyptian history?”

“Right back to verbal records, before the hieroglyphs.”

“Cha’em tutors him,” Cleopatra said, speaking for the first time. “Caesarion will be the best-educated king ever.”

This exchange set the tenor for the dinner; Caesarion talked incessantly, his mother interpolated an occasional remark to verify one of his statements, and Antony lay on a couch pretending to listen when he wasn’t answering one of Caesarion’s questions.

Though he was fond of the boy, he saw the truth of Fonteius’s observation; Cleopatra had given Caesarion no real sense of his limitations, and he felt confident enough to participate as an adult in all conversation. That might have been permissible, did he not have the habit of butting in. His father would have put a stop to such conduct—well did Antony remember him when Antony had been Caesarion’s age! Whereas Cleopatra was a doting mother saddled with an imperious, extremely strong-willed son. No good.

Finally, the sweeties having come and gone, Antony acted. “Off you go, young Caesarion,” he said curtly. “I want to talk to your mother in private.”

The boy bridled, mouth open to protest; then he caught the red spark in Antony’s eyes. His resistance collapsed like a pricked bladder. A shrug of resignation, and he was gone.

“How did you do that?” she asked, relieved.

“Spoke and looked like a father. You give the boy too much latitude, Cleopatra, and he won’t thank you for it later.”

She didn’t answer, too busy trying to plumb this particular Mark Antony. He never seemed to age as other men did, nor show any outward signs of dissipation. His belly was flat, the muscles of his arms above the elbows betrayed no hint of the flaccid sag of middle age, and his hair was as auburn as ever, free of grey. What changes there were lay in his eyes—the eyes of a man who was troubled. But why was he troubled? It was going to take time to find out.

Is Octavianus responsible? Ever since Philippi he’s had to contend with Octavianus in a war that isn’t a war. A duel of wits and will, fought without one sword drawn or one blow landed. He could see that Sextus Pompey was his best weapon, but when the perfect opportunity arrived to unite with Sextus and bring in his own marshals Pollio and Ventidius, he didn’t take it. At that moment he could have crushed Octavianus. Now he never will, and he’s beginning to understand that. While ever he thought there was a chance to crush Octavianus, he lingered in the West. That he is here in Antioch says he has given up the struggle. Fonteius saw it in him, but how? Did Antonius confide in him?

“I’ve missed you,” he said abruptly.

“Have you?” she asked casually, as if not very interested.

“Yes, more and more. Funny, that. I always thought missing a person wore off as time went on, but my longing for you grows worse. I couldn’t have waited much longer to see you.”

A feminine tactic: “How is your wife?”

“Octavia? Sweet as ever. The loveliest person.”

“You shouldn’t say that of a woman to another woman.”

“Why not? Since when has Marcus Antonius been in love with virtue, or goodness, or kindness in a woman? I—pity her.”

“That means you think she loves you.”

“I have no doubt of it. Not a day goes by that she doesn’t tell me she loves me, in a letter if we’re not together. I have a pigeonhole full of them already, here in Antioch.” He pulled a grotesque face. “She tells me how the children are, what brother Octavianus is up to—at least as she knows it—and whatever else she thinks I might find amusing. Though she never mentions Livia Drusilla. She doesn’t approve of Octavianus’s wife’s attitude to his daughter by Scribonia.”

“Has Livia Drusilla borne a child herself? I’ve not heard of it.”

“No. Barren as the Libyan desert.”

“Then perhaps it is Octavianus’s fault.”

“I don’t care whose fault it is!” he snapped.

“You should, Antonius.”

In answer, he moved to her couch, drew her close. “I want to make love to you.”

Ah, she had forgotten his smell, how it stirred her! Clean, sun-kissed, devoid of the faintest eastern tinge. Well, he ate the foods of his own people, he hadn’t succumbed to the cardamoms and cinnamons so favored in the East. Therefore his skin didn’t give off their residual oils.

A glance around told her that the servants had gone, and that no one, even Caesarion, would be permitted through the doors. Her hand covered the back of his, she moved it to one breast, fuller since the birth of the twins. “I’ve missed you too,” she lied, feeling the stir bloom and spread through her. Yes, he had pleased her as a lover, and Caesarion would benefit from a second brother. Amun-Ra, Isis, Hathor, give me a son! I am but thirty-three, not old enough to make childbirth a hazard for a Ptolemy.

“I’ve missed you too,” she whispered. “Oh, this is
lovely
!”

Vulnerable, consumed with doubts, unsure what his future held in Rome, Antony was ripe for Cleopatra’s picking, and fell of his own accord into the palm of her hand. He had come to an age that saw him in desperate need of more than mere sex from a woman; he yearned for a true partner, and none could he find among his female friends, or his mistresses, or, most of all, his Roman wife. This queen among women—indeed, this king among men—was his equal in every way: power, strength, ambition permeated her to the marrow.

And she, aware of all this, took her time about exacting her wants, which were not of the flesh nor of the spirit. Gaius Fonteius, Poplicola, Sosius, Titius and young Marcus Aemilius Scaurus were all in Antioch, but this new Mark Anthony hardly noticed them any more than he did Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus when he turned up, his governorship of Bithynia just too out of things for such a busybody of a man. He had always disliked Cleopatra, and what he saw in Antioch only reinforced that dislike. Antony was her slave.

“Not like a son with his mother,” Ahenobarbus said to Fonteius, in whom he sensed an ally, “but a dog with its master.”

“He’ll get over it,” Fonteius said, sure Antony would. “He’s closer to fifty now than forty, he’s been consul, imperator, triumvir—everything except the undisputed First Man in Rome. And since his ill-spent youth with Curio and Clodius, he’s been a famous womanizer without ever yielding his essence to a woman. That’s now overdue, hence Cleopatra. Face it, Ahenobarbus! She is the most powerful
woman
in the world, and fabulously rich. He has to have her, and he has to keep her against all comers.”

“
Cacat!
” snapped the intolerant one. “It’s she leading him, not he, her! He’s turned as soft as a mushy pudding!”

“Once he’s away from Antioch and in the field, the old Marcus Antonius will return,” Fonteius comforted, positive he was right.

Much to Cleopatra’s surprise, when Antony told Caesarion it was time to go to Alexandria, there to rule as King and Pharaoh, the boy went without a murmur of protest. He hadn’t spent as much time with Antony as he had hoped, but they had managed to ride out of Antioch several times and spend a day hunting wolves and lions, which wintered in Syria before returning to the Scythian steppes. Nor was he to be fooled.

“I’m not an idiot, you know,” he said to Antony after their first kill, a male lion.

“What do you mean?” Antony asked, startled.

“This is settled country, too populous for lions. You brought him in from the wilderness so we’d have some sport.”

“You’re a monster, Caesarion.”

“Gorgon, or cyclops?”

“A new breed entirely.”

Antony’s last words to him as he set out for Egypt were more serious. “When your mother returns,” he said, “make sure that you mind her better. At the moment you ride roughshod over her opinions and her wishes. That’s your father in you. But what you lack is his perception of reality, which he understood was something quite outside his own self. Cultivate that quality, young Caesar, and when you grow up, nothing will stop you.”

And I, thought Antony, will be too old to care what you make of your life. Though I think I’ve been more of a father to you than I have to my own sons. But then, your mother matters terribly to me, and you are the center of her world.

She waited five
nundinae
to strike. By then almost all the newly appointed kings and potentates had visited Antioch to pay their respects to Antony. Not to her. Who was she, except another client monarch? Amyntas, Polemon, Pythodorus, Tarcondimotus, Archelaus Sisenes, and, of course, Herod. Very full of himself!

She started with Herod. “He hasn’t repaid the money he owes me, nor my share of the balsam revenues,” she said to Antony.

“I wasn’t aware he owed you money or balsam revenues.”

“Indeed he does! I lent him a hundred talents to take his case to Rome. The balsam was part of the repayment.”

“I’ll remind him by couriered letter tomorrow.”

“Remind, nothing! He hasn’t forgotten, he just doesn’t intend to honor his debts. Though there is a way to enforce payment.”

“Really? What?” asked Antony warily.

“Cede me the balsam gardens of Jericho and the bitumen fisheries of the Palus Asphaltites. Free and clear, all mine.”

“Jupiter! That’s tantamount to half the revenues of Herod’s entire kingdom! Leave him and his balsam alone, my love.”

“No, I will not! I don’t need the money and he does, that’s true, but he doesn’t deserve to be left alone. He’s a fat slug!”

A moment’s thought provoked amusement; Antony’s eyes began to twinkle. “Is there anything else you demand, my sparrow?”

“Full sovereignty over Cyprus, which had always belonged to Egypt until Cato annexed it to Rome. Cyrenaica, another Egyptian possession pilfered by Rome. Cilicia Tracheia. The Syrian coast as far as the river Eleutherus—it has been Egyptian more often than not. Chalcis. In fact, an entirely Egyptian southern Syria would suit me beautifully, so you’d better cede me all of Judaea. Crete would be good. Rhodes too.”

He sat with jaw dropped and little eyes wide, hardly knowing whether to roar with laughter or outrage. Finally, “You joke.”

“Joke?
Joke?
Just who are your new allies, Antonius?
Your
allies, not Rome’s! You’ve given away most of Anatolia and a good part of Syria to a parcel of ruffians, traitors, and brigands! In fact, Tarcondimotus
is
a brigand! To whom you’ve handed the Syrian Gates and the entire Amanus! You dowered the son of your mistress with Cappadocia, and gave Galatia to a common clerk! You married your daughter with a double dose of Julian blood to a grubby Asian Greek usurer! You set a
freedman
to rule Cyprus! Oh, what glory you’ve spread far and wide to such a wonderful bunch of allies!” She was working up her temper with masterly precision, eyes gone to the feral glow of a cat, lips peeled back, face a mask of pure venom. “And where is Egypt in all these brilliant dispositions?” she hissed. “Passed over! Not even mentioned! How Tarcondimotus for one must be laughing! As for Herod—that slimy toad, that rapacious son of a pair of grasping nonentities!”

Where was his rage? Where was his trustiest tool, the hammer with which he had crushed the pretensions of mightier opponents than Cleopatra? Not a flash of the old familiar fire warmed his veins, chilled to ice under her Medusan glare. Confused and bewildered though he was, he yet preserved a measure of craftiness.

“You cut me to the quick!” he gasped, hands clawing at the unforgiving air. “I meant no insult!”

Her apparent rage was permitted to die, but not mercifully. “Oh, I know what I have to do to get the territories I ask for,” she said conversationally. “Your bum-boys got their lands gratis, but Egypt has to
pay
. How many gold talents is Cilicia Tracheia worth? The balsam and the bitumen are debts, I refuse to pay for them. But Chalcis? Phoenicia? Philistia? Cyprus? Cyrenaica? Crete? Rhodes? Judaea? My treasure vaults are overflowing, dear Antonius, as well you know. That was your intention all along, was it not? Make Egypt pay thousands upon thousands of gold talents for every
plethron
of land! What other, less deserving minions get for nothing, Egypt will have to buy! You hypocrite! You mean, miserable twister!”