The Shards of Heaven (48 page)

Juba let out a sigh that seemed mixed with both relief and sadness. “I thought it was.”

The two of them stared down at the dead man in silence, each lost in his own thoughts. A minute passed, perhaps two. More rocks fell, splashing into the water not far away.

“We should move him,” Juba said at last. “Octavian will want to see—”

“No,” Didymus interrupted. “Leave him. Let the world remember him for what he was. Not this. Don't let him be paraded in front of his family.”

“But he'll want to know … to confirm it.”

“We'll both tell him,” the librarian said. “There was a fire, in a building. The body burned.”

Juba opened his mouth to object, his eyes still downcast at the body, but no words came. After a few seconds he agreed tiredly. “We could do that,” he said. “We could lie.”

“I'll keep the secret until the day I die,” Didymus said, meaning every word.

“Yes,” Juba finally said. “Died in a fire.”

More rocks fell, only a few feet from where they stood. Didymus reached out and pulled on what was left of the Numidian's sleeve. “Come on,” he said. “Let's go.”

Juba lingered for a moment longer, then allowed the scholar to help him up and lead him from the wall and the body. Together the two men limped away slowly, each leaning on the other for support, up the pathway beside the canal, looking for a way up out of the darkness to the world of light above.

 

EPILOGUE

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ALEXANDRIA, 30 BCE

Cleopatra Selene, the ten-year-old daughter of the queen of Egypt and Mark Antony, stood on the steps of the royal palace on Antirhodos, holding a fruit basket and watching the lingering smoke rising up from the smoldering ashes of a funeral pyre on the pavement below. Servants and slaves were sweeping chalky dust off the stones, back toward the charred pile of burned wood. Here and there amid the gray and the black she caught glimpses of white, and she had to look away, over the waters of the harbor toward Alexandria.

Less than two weeks since Antony's suicide, a few days since Octavian had formally declared his sovereignty over the city with a grand parade of his troops down the Canopic Way, and plumes of smoke still dotted Alexandria's storied skyline. From more burning buildings, she supposed. Octavian had issued reprimands against his army's looting, but he deemed most of the damage they caused unimportant. Dozens of civilians continued to be raped or beaten or murdered each day, but these as well were not considered great outrages. The official reports being sent back to Rome, she knew, spoke only of success and glory, nothing of the chaos and the death that spread in the Imperator's wake.

Imperator. Already there was talk that he'd refuse to give up the title should the Senate ask it of him. There was talk that the self-proclaimed son of the god Caesar would follow in his adopted father's footsteps and hold all the power of Rome—unified now, after so many years of war—in his hands. In private, the rumors said, he already called himself by a new name: Augustus Caesar, the greatest Caesar. And this month in which he conquered Egypt, they said, he would order renamed August, in his own honor.

From everything she'd come to know of Octavian, Selene expected that the whispers were all true.

Octavian. Imperator. Son of god. Augustus Caesar. Selene wasn't going to rest until he was dead. It didn't matter what his name was.

She looked down to the basket in her hands once again, taking a deep breath and trying not to think about the taste of the ashes in the air.

Then she began to climb the steps to the palace and her waiting mother.

*   *   *

The men guarding the door of Cleopatra's chamber were adamant that they couldn't allow Selene inside. “You can't go in,” one of them kept repeating. Before Octavian had reached the royal island, her mother had sent Antony's body to the priests with orders that it be embalmed like those of the pharaohs of old. She'd then moved the family's finest treasures into her room in the palace, intending to barricade herself inside as she prepared for the end. Only the speed of Octavian's arrival had prevented her from carrying out her plans to follow Antony into the embrace of death. Since then the queen had been kept under arrest in her own chamber, surrounded by now-useless gold.

“But I need to see her,” she insisted.

“Orders of the Imperator of Rome.”

Rather than spit, Selene looked sheepish and childlike. “I'm a girl with a fruit basket,” she said. “What harm could I be?”

“I'm sorry. You can't go in.”

Selene pouted, pushed her weight to one hip. “I want to see my mother,” she said.

Before the guard could repeat his denial, another voice came from down the hall. “What's this, legionnaire?”

The Roman guards came to attention and saluted, and Selene turned to see that Juba was walking toward them slowly, still limping from the wounds he'd sustained in the battle that had killed Caesarion. Her brother's death had been an accident, Didymus told her, and the Numidian himself had never taken credit for his killing, despite the honors he might have received from Octavian for it. She still blamed him, though, and she hated him for it. She'd trusted him to get the Ark, to help her brother. Not lose them both.

“The lady Selene wishes admittance to deliver fruit to her mother,” one of the guards reported.

“I can see that,” the Numidian said. Selene noticed now that Juba was carrying a book. From the Great Library, she supposed. He'd been spending most of his time there since the fall of the city, his readings guided by Didymus himself. She'd often wondered if they were still looking for the Ark, which Didymus told her had been taken by the Jews. If such things were on his mind, he showed no indication of it now. “And why won't you let her in?”

“Orders of Octavian, sir.”

Juba at last stood beside them. He looked down at her with a warm smile, and she remembered the feel of him when he'd held her back at the tomb of Alexander the Great. “She doesn't look like a threat to me,” he said.

Selene did her best to appear even more innocent. The guard frowned. “The fruit, sir. It could be … poisoned.”

“Ah,” Juba said. “I suppose so. May I?”

“Of course,” Selene said, realizing that these were the first words she'd spoken to him since he and Didymus had left her at the Great Library, since she'd stood defiant before Octavian and been promised to the Numidian in marriage in exchange for the life of Vorenus. She'd heard that he'd been surprised by the news when he'd been told, but that he hadn't objected to it. She was pretty sure she hated him for that, too.

Juba reached down, his darker-skinned hand brushing hers on its way to grabbing an apple off the top of the basket. He held it up, and their eyes met. He paused, as if waiting for something, then raised the apple to his mouth and bit off a chunk and began to chew. He closed his eyes, savoring it for a moment, but a second later his eyes shot open and he seemed to gag and convulse.

The guards gasped, and even Selene was taken aback in shock, but then the Numidian began to laugh. “Just let her in,” he said, tossing the apple to one of them. “And don't bother her again.”

“Yes, sir,” one of the guards said as they parted and unbolted the door to her mother's chamber.

Selene bowed her head to them, then turned to Juba. He was smiling still, but there was something other than amusement in his eyes. She thought it might be hope. “Selene,” he said. “I … I would hope we might speak before the voyage to Rome. I … well, I would like it if we could know one another better. We have much in common, I know.”

His voice had grown more assured as he spoke, and she recognized in his final words the same deadly seriousness she'd heard from him as he sat in the Great Library on the day of the fall of Alexandria and told Didymus that he wanted Octavian dead. Yes, she thought. They did have that in common. “I think I would like that,” she said, not yet certain if she meant it, but certain it was the right thing to say, the sort of thing her mother had taught her to say.

Juba's face, which had seemed so tired, brightened. “I'll look forward to it,” he said, and he bowed to her, a hitch in his side revealing a pain his happy face denied.

She returned his bow with a nod of her own, and he turned and walked away down the hallway, humming quietly to himself.

When he was gone, the guards opened the door and Selene entered the chambers that had become Cleopatra's prison. The door shut behind her and she passed through the drapes of the antechamber in the bedroom.

Her mother, she saw, sat on a gilded chair that had been placed at the foot of her bed, the very spot where Selene had seen her holding Antony's body. Since that fateful morning, the whole of the room had been rearranged, the linens drawn up and cleaned, the furnishings pushed away from the bed to the corners in order to keep the focus on that single, solitary chair at its foot. Everything was covered with the most wondrous decorations at the imprisoned queen of Egypt's disposal, all fine metals and polished acacia wood. The most glorious chests from her royal treasury sat around the room, opened to reveal their glittering holdings. Cleopatra had, her daughter saw, spared no effort to make her bedroom into a throne room.

Nor had the queen failed to adorn herself with all the wonder and riches befitting a woman who had ruled, for almost the entirety of her life, as the goddess Isis incarnate. She wore a resplendent dress, her most expensive gems and pearls wrapped around the oiled skin of her graceful neck. The bracelets on her wrists, draped languidly over the arms of her chair, were thick gold, and the woven hairs of her finest wig framed a face painted in accordance with formal Egyptian rite. Her mother was, Selene thought, as beautiful as she'd ever seen her. Even the two chambermaids standing by her side were incredible to behold.

Cleopatra's face was impassive, and her eyes did not move to acknowledge her daughter. “Selene,” she said, voice smooth and formal.

Selene knelt and bowed low, as was custom before the queen. “Mother,” she said, pushing the basket before her. “I have what you requested.”

“I am pleased,” Cleopatra said.

The chambermaids came forward slowly, their linen skirts making swooshing sounds in the tomb-like silence of the room. Selene saw the feet of the two girls move into view before her face. She saw them shift as they bowed to her offering, before picking it up between them and slowly retreating the way they'd come.

Selene at last lifted herself from the floor to stand in front of her mother. The chambermaids had brought the basket to Cleopatra and set it in her lap. The queen's eyes remained fixed forward on the same distant, unknown point far beyond the walls of the room. Selene knew the look well. She'd practiced it herself.

Cleopatra's hands remained unmoving on the arms of her gleaming chair as the chambermaids carefully, deliberately, removed each piece of fruit and set it aside. It only took them a minute or so of work to uncover the venomous little black snake that had curled up so peacefully beneath it all. Selene couldn't see it, but she heard it hiss at being disturbed, and she saw the eyes of the chambermaids widen with fright despite their best efforts to appear calm and otherworldly. The two bowed once to the basket, once to the queen, and then backed away to stand once more beside her. Selene could see the glimmer of sweat on their foreheads.

After another minute of silence, Cleopatra's head tilted ever so slightly downward, her gaze finally falling to the asp in the basket upon her lap. They widened only slightly, but Selene could see that her chest rose and fell in deeper breaths.

“You don't have to do this,” Selene said.

Her mother's eyes at last looked up at her. “You should know enough not to say that.”

“You know I won't follow you,” Selene said.

“Then you will be led in the Triumph of Rome, while I join your father in reigning eternal among the stars.”

Cleopatra's voice was disapproving, but there was something recognizably maternal in it, too. Selene held on to that. “I won't rest until we are avenged,” she said. “I swear it.”

The queen of Egypt smiled. “I'm glad to hear of it, my daughter. You've much to learn of love and life, but hatred and vengeance is a lesson best learned early. I hope it will serve you well.”

“I remember all your lessons, Mother. I … I love you.”

“And I you.” Cleopatra smiled once more, gently, lovingly, and then her eyes moved again to the contents of the basket. The asp, as if it knew it was being watched, hissed loudly, and Selene heard it moving around the woven reeds. “You should go, Selene. My time grows short.”