Hand of Isis (30 page)

“So did I,” he said. “I’ll take you back to Rome in the morning.” I heard the sound of his feet on the stones, moving swiftly away.

I bent my head against the pillar and closed my eyes.

I
ras was the first person I saw when I got back. I stopped wearily in the atrium and sat down on a bench.

She came and sat beside me. “It didn’t go well?”

“No,” I said. I shook my sandals off and cooled my feet against the stone. “Please don’t tell me you knew it wouldn’t.”

“I wasn’t going to say that,” she said. “I wished you well. I like Agrippa.”

“You do?”

Iras nodded. “A lot of the same reasons I like you. He’s stubborn and he follows his own code. But the two of you—Ares and Aphrodite, war and love together. He’s too much Ares for me. What should Ares have to do with Artemis?”

I smiled at my sister. “And what god should you have?”

Iras leaned back on the bench. “You know who goes with Isis Sophia. Serapis, Dionysos, or none at all. Without that touch of darkness or madness, what is there?”

“I’ve never seen you interested in someone like that,” I said.

Iras shrugged, one strand of hair escaping from her combs. “I have no desire to live in the Underworld, sister. There is too much here, and I have too many responsibilities. Besides”—she looked at me sideways—“if I joined the procession of maenads, where should it end? Those drunk women with haggard eyes, going from tavern to tavern in the middle of the night, begging men to come home with them who have long since sought other pastures? Clinging to artists who have no talent, explaining to their friends that genius will burn sometime, they’re sure of it?”

“But does it have to be that way?” I asked. “What about the poets who really are that talented, the scientists who actually are as smart as they think they are?”

“How do you tell the difference if you’re blinded by Eros?” she asked. “Doesn’t every man look a genius or a hero to the eyes of love?”

“Not to me,” I said. “I never mistook Lucan for any kind of genius or hero. And Agrippa . . .” How should I say that I was certain he was every bit as good as he thought he was, that he was better even than he knew?

“You weren’t in love with Lucan,” Iras said. “Nor with Agrippa.”

“No,” I said, “not enough. Not enough to go mad for them or to destroy everything.” I looked sideways at her. “Perhaps I never will be. Perhaps the passion just isn’t in me, to be willing to live and die for someone.”

“And why wouldn’t that be a good thing?” Iras asked in her best rhetorical tone. “If you are not sent mad by Eros to the detriment of your child and your own best interests, is that not something to thank Aphrodite for?”

“Agrippa wanted to marry me,” I said. “He had some convoluted scheme about getting an old man to pretend I was his Roman niece. It would all hold together nicely, as long as I never made any attempt to see you or Cleopatra or Caesarion ever again.”

“Did you tell him about Demetria?”

I shook my head. “I hadn’t gotten so far yet. And now I won’t. He could claim her completely under Roman law. He could take her away from me.”

“The Queen wouldn’t allow that,” Iras said.

“We are in Rome,” I said. “And I won’t take the gamble. Not with Demetria.”

E
MRYS CAME THAT AFTERNOON
, grim faced, without Caesar. “Charmian,” he said, “I would like to speak to the Queen.”

“Is it about Caesar?” I asked, my hand to my throat. He was not young. Illness could come on unexpectedly . . .

“No,” he said. “It’s nothing like that. It’s about Princess Arsinoe.”

It took me a moment to remember. Arsinoe had been brought to Rome for Caesar’s Triumph, nearly two years ago. I supposed she must be in prison somewhere, but actually I had not thought of her.

Emrys’ face was white and grim.

“What has happened?” I asked.

“Nothing,” he said. “Except that I am risking my career in doing this. Now will you take me to see the Queen or not?”

“I will,” I said. In the end, I trusted him.

I
HARDLY KNEW HER
. She might have been a stranger hunched in the corner of the reeking cell, an overturned slop bucket beside her. Her dark hair tangled around her face and her hands were covered with filth.

The Queen stopped in the doorway, her himation drawn about her.

Behind us and Iras, Emrys and the jailer stood in the hall. “She’s been here since the Triumph,” Emrys said. “When she was paraded in chains through Rome and her lover Ganymede was killed before her eyes.”

“Arsinoe?” Cleopatra said, waiting for some flash of recognition.

The woman said nothing, only huddled farther back in the corner, her ragged dress drawn up so far that her privates were visible, caked with dried menstrual blood.

“She had a baby last spring that the jailers took and exposed,” Emrys said in his grim, cold tone. “Anyone could pay them for the privilege. Anyone who wanted to say they’d had a Ptolemaic princess. Of course now nobody really wants to. Not with her like that.”

“Arsinoe?” The Queen knelt.

Through the matted veil of her hair I saw one eye I recognized, the proud profile of the Ptolemies. She did not spit or cry, just gave one animal keen.

I stepped back into the corridor, my stomach lurching. The jailer shuffled his feet, but Emrys stood between us.

“I thought you should know, Gracious Queen,” he said in Koine.

I closed my eyes. I was not here. This was not real. I stood in some other place. My stomach heaved again. Control. Pride. Iras did not do this. The Queen did not. Not in front of that jailer.

Cleopatra’s voice cut like a blade. “Iras, Praefectus, attend on me. I am going to speak with Caesar.” I heard the door scraping shut, and then her voice at my elbow. “Charmian, you may go home.”

“Thank you, Gracious Queen,” I gasped, escaping into the bright morning.

I
WENT HOME
and threw up my breakfast, and then took a long bath to wash the prison stench out of my hair, leaning back in the water and staring up at the ceiling, utterly ashamed of myself.

Mother Isis, I thought, I did not like her. She was not my friend, and in Egypt she would have killed us all if she could. But I would not wish this upon my worst enemy. Mother Isis, she is my sister too. Mother Isis, preserve us. Sweet Mother, save us.

I got up from the bath and dressed. Iras and the Queen were still not back. I joined Caesarion and Demetria in some childish game, fetching the balls they had thrown away and clutching them too tightly when they ran to me, their little limbs clean and strong and their arms confidently around my neck. Nothing would ever hurt them. Nothing, while I had breath in my body.

Mother Isis, I prayed, let me die before I come to that. Let me die.

Caesarion put his face against mine. “Why you sad?”

“I’m not, precious,” I said, pulling Demetria in against my other side. “I just had some difficult business this morning. That’s all. Let’s go into the garden, and I’ll tell you a story.”

“Dog!” shouted Demetria, who was six months younger and had fewer words.

“Dog,” agreed Caesarion. “And prince.”

“All right,” I said, and we went out and I settled both on my lap, a trick that wouldn’t last much longer. “Once there was a prince named Horus, and His uncle Set wanted to kill Him. So Set sent Death to Him in the form of a snake, a cobra that would sneak into the little prince’s bedroom and bite Him. But the prince had a loyal dog who slept every night in His room . . .”

We stayed there until Iras came. I heard her steps on the path and looked up at her in shame.

“Princess Arsinoe will go to sanctuary at the Temple of Artemis at Ephesos,” Iras said, and her voice was almost even.

“I see,” I said quietly, so as not to upset the children. “Did Caesar know?”

“Caesar professed surprise, and said he had not thought of the Princess Arsinoe since the Triumph. He said that the Queen might do as she liked in the matter.”

“I see,” I said. An answer that might mean anything. Or might mean just as he said, that once she was no longer important he had forgotten about her entirely. “And Emrys?”

“Decurion Aurelianus will not be punished, if that’s what you mean. At least not directly.”

“His career,” I said. Caesarion was wiggling, and I let him go. Demetria toddled after him like his shadow. I leaned back into the shade of a palm. “Why did he do it, Iras?”

“Because he is a good man,” Iras said, and went back in the house.

I
T WAS A MONTH
before Emrys came to the villa again. Autumn had turned into winter, and the Roman Saturnalia was fast approaching. Even with the hypocaust working, we still found it cold at night, and the endless rain that came down day in and day out was depressing. Iras wandered around bundled in shawls, and the rest of the servants we’d brought from Egypt complained constantly. I did not take it as badly as most, and for once blessed my thick northern blood, although I suppose it was really not so very cold.

Emrys laughed at me when I complained of the cold, though he brought me a heavy cloak of the thread-dyed wool I had liked earlier in the fall, and I wore it everywhere. It was blue-and-cream-checked, with squares of cream alternating with lighter and darker blue, exotic and very pretty. Also warm.

I was coming to appreciate his company more and more, his ironic sense of humor and his good heart. After the disaster that had been Marcus Agrippa, Emrys’ company was balm to me. More than once I wished that something might come of it, but I knew too well from Dion that there was no point in wishing for that.

At least the impending holiday seemed to put the Roman Senate in an expansive mood. Treaties were signed with Egypt, guaranteeing a good price on grain and renewing “the bonds of friendship with a faithful ally of Rome.” Egypt agreed to supply auxiliary troops for Caesar’s next campaign in the east, which should probably begin in the spring when the sailing season opened, and the troops that Caesar had left behind in Egypt would form the core of a new army that should protect Rome and Egypt alike against the Parthians.

“Do they think the Parthians are such a threat?” I asked, when the Queen told me all of this.

Cleopatra put down her pen and smiled. “I’m less concerned about the Parthians than Parthian territory. As long as we have Judea as a buffer between us, it’s moot. But Egypt has ancient claims as far north as Damascus, and I mean to see them carried out. Antipater and I can work out Judea between us. The Jews have more interest in the Egyptian sphere than the Roman, and more than anything they want a prince of their own rather than being swallowed up as a Roman province. Antipater’s even sent that son of his, Herod, to Rome so that he can make friends. I think they’d rather deal with the House of Ptolemy so that they know where they stand than with the Roman Senate. They haven’t forgotten Pompeius.”

“Are we going home now that we’ve got the treaty?” I asked.

The Queen sighed. “Not yet. We’ll leave in the spring, when the sailing season opens. When Caesar leaves for his next campaign. There are some things that must be done first.”

“Such as?”

“Caesar will be appointed Dictator for life,” she said. “That should not take much longer. And he must make a new will.”

“I thought Caesarion could not inherit under Roman law,” I said.

“Cannot inherit his citizenship or his titles,” Cleopatra said. The color stood high in her face. “He may inherit personal property, just as any man may leave remembrances upon his death to freedmen, or to business contacts who are not Roman. That which Caesar wins in the east will be his personal property, and he will take the lands for himself, rather than ceding them to the Senate.”

I nodded slowly. “Which gives him a power base the Senate can’t control, and Egypt’s ancient properties left to Caesarion. That’s clever.”

“Thank you,” Cleopatra said.

I laughed. “Your idea, not Caesar’s?”

“Let’s say it was a joint idea.”

T
HE DAYS GREW LONGER
, the Lupercalia approached. All through the winter we had entertained regularly, usually Caesar and a party of his friends, notably Senators with votes on the important trade treaties who wanted to meet the Queen of Egypt in person, or businessmen who did enormous volumes of trade with Egypt. Sometimes there were women at the parties as well. Unlike Greek women, Roman women did not live sequestered, and while they took no role in public life, there were many who wielded a great deal of power through men.