Hand of Isis (18 page)

He nodded briskly. “Just ask for Decurion Aurelianus. What’s your name?”

“Charmian,” I said. “Principal handmaiden to the Hands of Isis, Cleopatra of Egypt. I’m in charge of all her staff and personal arrangements.”

“Oh.” He looked a little taken aback. Then he smiled. “So you guard her back.”

“I took an assassin’s knife for her once,” I said, and gathered my robe at my side to show him, the scar jagged and ugly across my white skin. “We are not as soft as we look.”

“I would not make that mistake, Charmian,” he said, and his eyes were warm.

“Nor would I,” I said.

His smile grew. “Then I believe we understand one another.”

“I think we do,” I said. With an answering smile I stepped in and closed the door.

C
LEOPATRA RETURNED
within the hour, looking tired but not displeased. “Wait,” she said, as Aurelianus closed the door behind her. We followed her, Dion, Apollodorus, and I, out onto the small terrace, where the wind from the sea whipped in, forty feet over the breakwater below. No one could overhear us there.

“We can work with him,” she said. “He’s determined to enforce Auletes’ will, and for us to rule jointly.”

“The money,” I said.

Cleopatra nodded. “He says he put up seventy million sesterces of the money that Pompeius loaned to Auletes. And that he’ll forgive thirty million if we can pay the other forty immediately.” She put her hand up to forestall Dion’s question. “It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. The proof is in Rome, even if it is. It’s about twenty percent of what we owed Pompeius, and then the debt is completely cleared.”

“We can’t find forty million sesterces right away,” Apollodorus said. “And neither can Pothinus.”

Cleopatra paced to the brink and looked down at the waves. “He has to pay his troops. About half his men are from the Sixth Legion, which only came over to Caesar after Pharsalus. They haven’t been paid in months. And they used to be Pompeius’ men.”

“And Gnaeus is still out there,” I said.

“And the Senate may or may not accept his victory over Pompeius,” Apollodorus said. “Or may raise another army against him.”

“What about these Gaulish Lancers?” Dion asked. I was surprised he’d heard that much of my conversation with Aurelianus. I’d thought he was busy with Apollodorus.

“There are only six hundred of them,” Cleopatra said. “He’s dismounted them on guard duty in the city. I think he’s sure of their loyalty, but six hundred on forty-five hundred isn’t good odds if some of his troops mutiny. The rest of his are from the Twenty-eighth, and they’re very young and were badly mauled at Pharsalus. If I were Caesar, I’d be worried that the Sixth could carry them with them if it came to that.”

I thought that was true. If Aurelianus was representative of his men, they’d stick with Caesar, but they didn’t even wear steel.

“So what did you promise him?” Apollodorus asked.

Her mouth was hard. “I promised him forty million sesterces if he would make me sole ruler of Egypt. He said he’d consider it.”

I shook my head. “And if he takes it, then what?”

“We find forty million sesterces. There are temples in Upper Egypt. If Memnon and the others want the Romans gone, they’ll have to sell their treasures.” Cleopatra looked out to sea, where Pharos burned golden on the breakwater, symbol of our wealth and our world.

“Perhaps it won’t come to that,” I said.

T
HE NEXT DAY
in the palace there was a grave ceremony of recon-ciliation. I stood beside Apollodorus while Caesar, in his carven chair, prepared to read the terms of Auletes’ will, that his heirs should together rule Egypt in peace and harmony.

At first my attention was on Theo. He looked sulky, though behind him Theocritus and Pothinus were beaming. Crocodile smiles, I thought.

Then Caesar began to read.

His voice was light and cool, his Koine perfectly accented as he read the will. His balding head was inclined to the scroll, but even from that vantage I could see the firm lines of his face, the elegant hands.

“I know him,” I whispered. I had seen him in the dream in Abydos. He had been the last vision, the man in the tent. I had summoned him to Alexandria, summoned him by his bones. I stood on my toes to see a little better.

Yes, that was the man. I was quite certain of it. I had not mistaken the keen dark eyes that occasionally scanned the room. He knew the contents of the scroll quite well. He sat with his right foot forward, and he looked like a bird at rest, pausing for a moment only, like the golden eagles his men held at either side. Their cuirasses gleamed.

“I know him,” I said, a chill down my spine as though someone stood at my back.

T
HAT NIGHT
there was a banquet in honor of the reconciliation. Theoretically, Cleopatra and Ptolemy were honoring their guest, Caesar, but we all knew the banquet was on Caesar’s orders.

It was not a very splendid banquet. Pothinus had hidden all of the best plate the moment Caesar arrived, and we were using the everyday stuff, silver servers and kraters, with fine antique Corinthian pottery, elegant and plain. It spoke of good taste, and the appreciation of generations of Ptolemies for fine things, not of great wealth.

Half of the men present were Caesar’s officers. Most of the Egyptian clergy were absent. Memnon and his party hadn’t returned to Alexandria with Iras yet, and I wondered if they would. If they did, they should have to acknowledge Theo, and they had just gone to great lengths not to.

Indeed, a great many people were there who seemed not to want to be. Theo left as soon as it was possible without unforgivable rudeness. After all, some leeway is allowed in leaving banquets when they begin to turn into lingering over the wine when one is only fourteen.

Caesar stayed on and on. People kept coming up and talking with him. Cleopatra, whose couch was too far away from Caesar’s for conversation, courtesy of Pothinus, began to stop smiling. She was tired, I thought. Bred as she was and trained for the last seven years to these things, even her smile began to fade well after midnight. Yet for all that, Caesar hardly seemed drunk. In fact, either he held his wine exceedingly well or he had hardly drunk at all.

Without Iras to trade off with, I had not been able to sit down, but sometime after midnight, when there were only the sweets that go with the wine left, Apollodorus took my place behind the Queen so that I could eat something.

Some of the couches had been abandoned, but I could hardly go and sit down at a place covered in other people’s dishes or their abandoned flowers. I looked around in irritation for a couch that had not been full.

I saw one toward the end of the hall, a young man who seemed to be eating alone, leaning over the bolster and talking to a friend at another couch. One of the Romans. I should be my most charming and diplomatic, since that seemed to be how Cleopatra had decided to play it.

I came and stood beside him. “Is this place taken?” I asked.

He hurriedly shook his head, and I thought that he was younger than he seemed at first. I had thought him my age, but flushed with drink and the blood rising in his face, he might be several years younger. He was strongly built, with hair halfway between brown and blond, and long blond eyelashes and a cleft chin. He looked at me and blushed scarlet.

“I’m not a hetaira,” I said gently.

“I know.” He sat up, showing me the entirety of his legs in the process. They were very nice indeed. “I saw you standing behind the Queen.”

“I’m her handmaiden,” I said. “Charmian is my name. May I sit with you and eat for a few minutes?”

“Of course,” he said, leaning back again so that I could sit on the couch beside him, my back not touching his body at all.

“Thank you,” I said. One of the servants appeared swiftly with wine and sweets. It would have been nice if some of the meats or savories were left, but no. I filled my cup and made conversation. “So which legion are you with?”

I had caught him in the middle of a drink of his own wine, and he swallowed hurriedly. “Neither one. I’m a tribune seconded to Caesar.”

“Isn’t that unusual?” I asked.

He nodded, and I thought there was something like embarrassment in his face. “My mother’s a good friend of Atia Balba Caesonia,” he said. “Caesar’s niece. She got me the appointment and I joined Caesar right after Pharsalus.”

Green, I thought. And owes his rank to his mother pulling strings. No wonder he’s down at the last couch. It’s that or insert himself among veterans many years his better. Still, he had sense enough not to try it. “What’s your name?” I asked.

“Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa,” he said, and glanced up at me from beneath those long lashes. “And I’m not like that.”

“Like what?”

“Spoiled. Come out east for a little military experience so I can go home and run for office. My brother Lucius was with Pompeius Magnus.” He took a gulp from his cup. “I don’t know where he is now. But nobody found his body after Pharsalus.”

I refrained from asking if he’d joined Gnaeus Pompeius in flight. That wasn’t the sort of thing one could ask.

“All my life I’ve wanted to be a soldier,” he said. “And Caesar’s the best. When I first met him I could hardly speak. I knew I had to do this.”

“How old were you then?” I asked.

He blushed again, his fair complexion showing every emotion. “Ten. I knew I was born to serve him. Does that make any sense to you?”

“I suppose it does,” I said. Perhaps I should have found him amusing, but I didn’t. The intensity in his eyes made that impossible.
Here is one
, She whispered,
here is one the gods have touched. Here is one like you.

“Good,” he said seriously. “He’s like no one else.”

“I know,” I said. The wine was unwatered, and it made my head spin. And the hour was incredibly late.

“You do, don’t you?” he said, looking at me again. “You really do know.”

“Yes,” I said. I might have said more, oddly enough, in the presence of this all too intense Roman, but at that moment Apollodorus caught my eye. The Queen was preparing to retire. She would not wait out Caesar.

“I need to go,” I said. “Good night.”

“Good night,” he said, leaning forward as I stood up. “Will I see you again?”

One of the men on the next couch called out to another, “Oh, look! Baby Marcus found a girl! She’s too much for you, little boy!”

I swept my skirts around me and turned, giving Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa a dazzling smile. “I’m looking forward to seeing you again, Tribune.” And I went to tend to my Queen.

F
or several days we had very little to do. Cleopatra kept sending word very politely to Caesar that she would like to see him, and he kept sending word very politely back that he was too busy, but that he would wait upon the gracious Queen at some other time. She paced and I planned intimate little meals that seemed like they were never going to happen. Dion went to the Library and brought back a case of assorted scrolls, supposedly for the Queen’s amusement.

Cleopatra took one look at them and burst out laughing. “?‘A Treatise upon the Physiology of Geese and Ducks’? ‘Some Copies of Documents from Memphis Requested by Ptolemy Eugertes’? ‘A New Method of Calculating the Angle of Navigational Stars’? Dion, what in the world?”

Dion hastily grabbed for the stack. “There are some other things in here. There’s a copy of the new poems by Catullus.” He shuffled through the end tags and then produced a slender scroll.

“Just what I need. More Romans,” she said, but still laughing she took it and went off to her bedchamber to read.

“It’s the waiting that’s killing me,” Dion said.

I handed him a scroll. “Why don’t you read about the insides of geese and ducks?”

“I think I’ll go talk to the guards,” Dion said, and sauntered off.

“Fine,” I said, and picked up one of the other ones at random. “Some Copies of Documents from Memphis Requested by Ptolemy Eugertes.” I was still reading when Dion came back in a few minutes.

“Decurion Aurelianus is off duty,” he said. “I suppose he sleeps sometimes.”

“Dion, listen to this,” I said, and began to read.

“?‘From the Library of the Temple of Thoth in Memphis, from the eighth year of Ramses Usermaatre, the third of that name. Hry, He Who Walks in the Sunlight of Amon, writes: I had occasion to converse with a traveler, one of those Denden from the lands between the Akhiawa and the Hittites, who had journeyed much in the islands, and from that traveler I heard of the Drowned Land, the island that is no more. Three generations before there was a mighty kingdom on an island, with sweet water springs and rich pastures, with vineyards and fields and all else that men might need. There too stood a great city, ruled by powerful princes with many ships. Somehow they angered the gods. It is not known what crime they might have committed, but in punishment the gods destroyed their land utterly. The land itself heaved up, and the mountain upon which the island was built exploded in a rain of fire and ash. The land heaved and crumbled and fell into the sea. All that was left was tree branches and ash, and bits of bone floating on the waters. The plume of smoke of its burning could be seen from far away, appearing a pillar of smoke by day and a pillar of fire by night.

“?‘This traveler had been there, and affirmed that nothing was left of the island except a narrow beach and springs, and that beneath the sea could still be seen the ruins of houses and temples. I have written this down, that it may be compared with an account from the reign of Ramses the Great, second of that name, because like broken shards of pottery do the stories fit together. In that day, there appeared on the northern horizon a vast pillar of smoke, and all of the water rushed out of the Sea of Reeds, leaving the sea floor barren, that men might walk upon it as upon dry land. Pharaoh ordered his chariot men to investigate, and they drove upon the bottom of the sea. Suddenly, with a great rush, the water came flowing back into the sea in a mighty wave, and all who had driven out were drowned. The sea returned to its normal place. However, for many days it could still be seen on the northern horizon, a pillar of smoke by day and a pillar of fire by night.’?”

I stopped reading and looked at Dion. “Isn’t that amazing?”

He sat down next to me, leaning over the scroll. “Everybody knows that story, Charmian.”

“I don’t,” I said. “You mean you’ve heard it before?”

“You’re not a Jew,” Dion said. “We all know that story. It’s the story of the Exodus.” He put his head back, as though thinking. “I only know it in Hebrew, of course. So it’s not exact. But I can tell you the story.”

“Please,” I said.

“Once, we were slaves in Egypt, and God raised a man called Moses, and told him to go to Pharaoh and tell him that the Lord required that we should go free. Pharaoh refused, and God visited ten plagues on the Egyptians before Pharaoh agreed that we could leave.” His voice changed to the slow cadence of translating in his head. “But the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh King of Egypt, and he chased after the Hebrews, who were going away defiantly. The Egyptians chased after them, and all of the horses and chariots of Pharaoh overtook them camping beside the sea, beside the place where the reeds grow. When Pharaoh got closer, the Hebrews looked up, and saw the Egyptians chasing after them and were terrified. They cried out to the Lord, and they said to Moses, ‘Are there no graves in Egypt that you have taken us out to die in the desert?’ And Moses said, ‘Fear not! Stand firm, for the Egyptians you see today you will never see again!’ The Lord said to Moses, ‘Tell the people to move on. As for you, lift up your staff and extend your hand toward the sea and divide it, so that the Hebrews may go through the middle of the sea on dry ground.’ The angel of God who was going with the people moved and went behind them, and a pillar of cloud stood behind them. Moses stretched out his hand toward the sea, and the Lord drove the sea apart, and made it dry land, the water forming a wall on their right and on their left. The Egyptians chased after them and followed them into the middle of the sea, their horses and their chariots. The Lord looked down from a pillar of smoke and said to Moses, ‘Extend your hand that the waters may flow back together.’ So Moses stretched forth his hand, and the sea returned to its normal state. The water returned and covered the chariots and the horsemen. Not one who had driven on the bottom of the sea survived. And they journeyed up by Sukkoth and camped in Ethan, and the Lord went before them, a pillar of smoke by day and a pillar of fire by night, to give them light.”

“It’s the same story,” I said, “only with the part that’s embarrassing to Pharaoh taken out of the Egyptian version.”

“All of those people,” Dion said wonderingly. “An entire island full of people, with cities and houses and ships. And to us, it’s all about the Hebrews.”

“I don’t believe that any god would destroy an entire island to provide a pillar of smoke,” I said. I put my hands on the scroll. “No god is so cruel.”

“We can understand it all,” Dion said. “Given time. Give us world enough, and time. We will understand it all.”

“Except for one thing,” I said. “How did Moses know?”

T
HREE NIGHTS LATER
Caesar made his move.

I awoke when the doors to Cleopatra’s outer chambers opened with a crash. Still half asleep, I ran out into the sitting room in nothing but a tunic. It was full of armed men, in steel and full harness, methodically forcing all of the doors. One whirled about, his sword flashing up toward my belly.

“I’ve got her,” a voice behind me said in Latin, its owner sweeping me back against his chest. “She’s one of the handmaidens.” It was Aurelianus, his usual leathers augmented by a helmet.

I twisted in his arms, kicking. I would not go down without a fight. I clawed at his face, hitting the chin guard of his helmet hard enough that it must have hurt.

“Charmian!” he shouted, trying to pin my arms.

I heard screams, but could not tell whose they were. I kicked, but connected with nothing but unyielding leather.

“Charmian!” He had my wrist now, my other arm pinned painfully against his side. “Stop! I’m not trying to kill you.”

“Need some help?” another voice asked him, a legionary in full breastplate and greaves.

“I’ve got her, thanks,” Aurelianus panted. It was good that I was at least winding him.

“What is the meaning of this?” Cleopatra’s voice rang out across the hall.

One of the legionaries, a man ten years my senior, replied. “Lady, you are all under arrest by order of Caesar. You and your servants are to come with us.”

“Very well.” Her chin was high. “If you will be so kind as to unhand my handmaiden, we will accompany you. We have nothing to fear from Caesar.”

Aurelianus let go of me with an apologetic shrug and I shook off his hand. My wrist was numb where he had held it. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

“It is my duty to die for her,” I hissed.

“I respect that,” he said.

W
E LEFT THE PALACE
through the main doors, crossing the street and the park toward the guest villa where Caesar had been staying. Arsinoe and Theo were already there, and it seemed as though there was a substantial crowd, what with the Romans and their servants.

Arsinoe rounded on Cleopatra the minute she entered. “You! This is all your fault!” Arsinoe was sixteen, and her long dark hair fell on her shoulders in pleasing disarray. “You with your bedding Romans! You’re as bad as Father!”

“I’m not aware that anyone is bedding Romans here,” Caesar said mildly. Of course he understood Koine perfectly.

“What do you want with us?” Theo asked. He stood straight and pale, his lips set in a thin line. I thought that he had never looked more like a Pharaoh.

“I believe the issue is General Achillas’ army,” Caesar said. “The Royal Army.” He replied to Theo, which followed, as we had never had control of the Royal Army at all. Achillas was Theo’s man. “The Royal Army has marched from Pelousion with twenty thousand infantry and two thousand cavalry, I understand. It has marched on Alexandria. I should like to know by whose orders, and to what purpose.”

None of the royal children replied, Arsinoe because she had more sense, and Cleopatra because she didn’t know. Theo said nothing.

Caesar nodded shortly. “You will send envoys to Achillas telling him to disarm and return with the Royal Army to Pelousion. If Achillas disobeys, he is in rebellion against Pharaoh.”

“And if I do not?” Theo asked.

“Then you will no longer be Pharaoh.” Caesar crossed behind his writing table. “I expect you to choose sensibly.”

“And what shall I do, Caesar?” Cleopatra asked evenly. “What shall I do while you and Ptolemy Theodorus tear up my country between you?”

“Nothing,” Caesar said. “You and the Princess Arsinoe will remain my guests.” She might have said more, but he forestalled her. “Agrippa, you will give the Queen your room.”

The young man from the banquet, wearing a scarlet tunic and leggings beneath a leather breastplate chased with gold, stood up. “It will be my pleasure, Gracious Queen,” he said in accented Koine. “I will escort you.”

He fell in beside us as we were escorted out. Various other officers were to give up their rooms for Theo and Arsinoe. I followed Cleopatra, her head held high.

Agrippa’s room was small, with a third-story window and balcony that looked out on the park. Over the tops of acacia trees we could see a sliver of the Royal Harbor, and beyond it Pharos gleaming on its island.

“I’m sorry it’s a mess. I didn’t expect to have a queen in it,” Agrippa said, hurriedly throwing what appeared to be his laundry into a trunk before he departed.

Cleopatra looked at me over his bent back. “Where is Dion?” she mouthed.

I shook my head. Dion hadn’t been at the palace, which meant he was somewhere in the city. Dion was more than capable of looking after himself. Cleopatra and I might be prisoners, but Dion and Iras were both free. We knew they would not desert us.

Cleopatra sat down heavily on the couch, Agrippa’s blankets still thrown across it helter-skelter.

After a moment I sat beside her and put my arm around her. “I could seduce Agrippa,” I said.

She put her hands to her mouth and laughed, then hugged me tight. “Charmian, what should I do without you?”

“I don’t know,” I said. I put my forehead against her shoulder.

She turned my hand over, looking at the purpling bruises in the light. “Aurelianus?”

I nodded. “He does his duty and I do mine. I could go after Agrippa. He’s young, and I think he’s attracted to me. That might be worth something.”

“We need Caesar,” she said.

“I don’t think I can seduce Caesar,” I said.

She laughed again, her cheek against mine. “I think that will have to be me,” she said.

“He’s no Gnaeus Pompeius,” I said. “He won’t be easily diverted.”