Cleopatra's Moon (16 page)

“Ptolly! Alexandros!” I cried, but my voice was swallowed up by the blanket and the noise around us. People roared and clapped as someone shuttled us out of the procession.

“Klee-Klee!” Ptolly shouted. Blindly, I reached for him and he grasped my hand. In my moment of panic, I had forgotten the chains that bound us together. I breathed out with relief. We would not be — could not be — separated.

“What’s happening?” Alexandros cried.

The sounds of hobnailed boots and jangling metal-link armor meant we’d been taken by soldiers. Were they escorting us back to the compound? But why under a blanket? Then I realized it was probably for our protection in case the mobs worked themselves into a frenzy of hatred and attacked us.

The roughly woven blanket smelled of sweat and old hay. People cursed as we bumped into them. The soldiers pushing us barked orders. An exchange of words. We were brought inside a building and dragged down rough stairs. The smell of wet stone. I shivered as the sweat on my body cooled. The roaring of the crowd above us sounded like rocks tumbling down a hill.

The blanket disappeared, and I blinked into the darkness as someone pushed my head forward to unlock the shackle around my neck.

“Where are we?” Ptolly asked. “I’m thirsty. Can I have some water?”

Our liberator, a sweat-soaked centurion, did not respond. “We will get some water soon,” I promised Ptolly, my lips cracking like over-baked clay.

After unchaining us, the soldier ushered us down a hallway and into another dark room. As my eyes adjusted, I saw a filthy man on his
knees, naked, bleeding, shivering. He looked up, his eyes huge in dread. In one swift movement, someone threw a garrote around the man’s neck and began choking him.

My heart pounded. We were in the
Tullianum
? The pit where they strangled Enemies of Rome? Ptolly hid his face, breathing hard in terror. But … but we were supposed to go back to the Palatine! A part of me stepped outside my body.
This is not happening. I am not watching a man get strangled to death in front of me
.

The man’s eyes bugged, the cords in his neck strained, and his face turned purple as he thrashed, fighting for air. “Look away!” Alexandros hissed. I jumped and closed my eyes. But the horrible sounds remained — the man’s desperate gasps and splutters, the impatient breathing of the soldier behind us. Ptolly crying. The heavy thump of the body as it hit the ground, and then the smell of loosed bowels as his body released.

“Take him up to the Forum and throw him down the steps,” the executioner ordered the two men standing beside him when the body stopped twitching. Each man grabbed an ankle and walked toward the wet stone steps. Muffled roars and cheers from the crowds above us echoed at the signal of another successful execution. I could not tell how deeply underground we were, but it seemed as if the sound of the dead man’s head thumping on the steps as he was dragged out went on forever. Too soon I realized it was only us, the executioner, and the Roman soldier.

Oh, gods, were we next? Our captor pushed us forward. Ptolly howled. “What are they doing here?” the executioner cried. “I did not get orders that we were to execute the children!”

“But I did,” came the rough reply from the soldier who pushed us forward.

“There’s been some kind of mistake,” I said. “We were told we would be brought back to Octavi —
Caesar’s
house on the Palatine after the Triumph.”

The soldier ignored me. “Move!” he yelled. “This has to happen quickly!”

“No!” Ptolly wailed.

“Wait!” Alexandros cried. “We are Roman citizens! You cannot execute a Roman citizen without a trial.”

I remembered Father, dying, instructing us to use those words. A surge of relief filled my chest at my twin’s quick thinking.

“Don’t matter,” said the man pushing us. “I got orders.”

“From who?”

“Caesar’s lady. The fancy one.”

Livia? This was Livia’s doing? The executioner looked dubious. “You will do it!” the soldier yelled, shoving me forward. “I have my orders. Do it now!”

The executioner shook his head. “I don’t strangle children!”

“You gonna disobey Caesar, then?” growled my captor.

The man paled. Isis, he was considering it! I looked around wildly. Where had we come in? Could we make a break for it now that the chains were off?

The executioner crossed his arms and raised his chin in my direction. “Either way, I do not kill the girl. It is against Roman law to execute a female virgin,” he said.

“
Cacat
, man!” the soldier roared, lunging for me. “I can fix
that
quickly enough.”

“No!” I screamed. The soldier grasped my upper arm, but I twisted free. “Run!” I bellowed at Ptolly and Alexandros, but they stood frozen, wide-eyed in shock. The soldier cursed and swiped at me again, grabbing my wig and ripping it off my head. He growled in surprise and disgust. I scrambled for the stairs behind us.

“Run!” I yelled again at my brothers. We took off. The soldier tackled my ankles and I fell down hard on the stone floor, my upper arm and shoulder absorbing most of the impact. I cried out in pain. Ptolly ran back to attack my captor. “No, Ptolly! Run!” I cried. Ptolly kicked out wildly at the man’s head, but Alexandros rushed at the downed
soldier and booted him in the eye socket. The man howled and released me, covering his eye with both hands.

“Come on,” Alexandros commanded, pulling me up by my arm. Pain shot through my shoulder, stealing my breath. I stumbled after my brothers.

“Stop them!” shouted the soldier.

“Let ‘em go,” the executioner said. “I ain’t killing children.”

“You idiot!” the soldier snarled. To my horror, I heard his hobnailed boots thundering up the stone steps behind us.

“Leave them be!” shouted the executioner. “The crowds will rip ‘em apart anyway.”

We burst out into the open and staggered, blinded by the harsh light and a heat so intense it took my breath away. My heart raced as I ran, holding my right shoulder. “Take off your headdresses!” I cried. My brothers ripped them off, their curly hair plastered to their heads with sweat as the gold-striped material floated behind us.

“Blend into the crowd!” Alexandros directed. Holding hands, we pushed our way into the sweating masses. Romans cursed at us and pushed back, but thankfully, they never looked at us, preoccupied as they were with trying to get a glimpse of the tail end of the Triumph — the senators and soldiers who marched behind Octavianus.

An angry-looking soldier, one palm over his left eye, tore past us, retracing the parade route. I breathed out as he disappeared around a tenement building. I tugged at my brothers’ hands, moving us away from the throngs looking up the hill to the Temple where the bulls were being sacrificed.

We leaned against the side of a brick building, gasping for breath. I grabbed Ptolly. “You are my hero!” I said, holding him tight to kiss his sweaty head. He broke away, grinning crookedly and acting out the kick with great energy. “Thank you,” I mouthed silently at Alexandros, for I knew it was his kick that had disabled my attacker.

“Stupid man!” Ptolly cried.

“Quiet, Ptolly!” Alexandros hissed. “He may still come after us.”

That sobered us up.

“What do we do now?” Alexandros asked, looking around. “If the crowds catch sight of us …”

“We need to blend in,” I said. “And we need to get away from here.”

We moved farther away from the parade route, weaving through refuse-strewn winding streets and alleys.

Ptolly spied a public fountain. “Water!” he cried, and raced headlong toward it.

Alexandros cursed under his breath as we both followed. Ptolly fairly threw himself into the fountain’s wide basin, taking huge gulps, not even bothering to cup his hands but nearly immersing his face in the pooled water, like a dog. When he raised his dripping head, I smiled.

“Ptolly, you are a genius!” I cried after taking big gulps of the warm, metallic-tasting water myself.

He looked confused. I dunked my hand into the fountain and washed the remaining traces of kohl off his scrunched-up face. Alexandros and I scrubbed our faces too. I unwound my hair, grateful for once for the heavy ceremonial wig that may have saved my life. Both boys ripped off their jeweled broad collars, and Alexandros hid them under some trash in the street.

“We need to look more Roman,” he said.

Ptolly pointed to his kilt. “Well, I’m not walking around naked, you know!”

Alexandros smiled. “Trust me, none of us want to see that either. We have to somehow get tunics,” he said, looking at my pleated dress. It was covered in sludge and had been ripped in the back, but at least in its sweat and filth, it did not look so Egyptian anymore. I kicked off my gilded sandals. The boys’ leather sandals could still pass.

“Wait!” I cried. “Grab the broad collars. We can sell the jewels.”

“Good thinking,” Alexandros said. He pulled them out from beneath the trash and rolled them up, trying to hide the glimmer of the jewels. We wound our way through the garbage-strewn alleys, avoiding
the mangy, bone-thin dogs that stared at us as we passed. Thanks to the broiling heat and the celebrations at the Forum Romanum, we saw few other people.

“I think we’re headed toward the Subura,” I said a little worriedly. Tata had mentioned this place — a busy, vicious, crowded, filthy area of town that was much like our Rhakotis district in Alexandria. I looked up as we walked in the shade of a crumbling tenement. Roman
insulae
, apartment buildings famous for their height and shoddy workmanship, regularly crashed to the ground. Almost every week, it seemed, we heard of yet another
insulae
tragedy in the Subura. I breathed easier when we were no longer near them.

“I’m hungry,” Ptolly announced, grabbing his belly.

“Me too,” Alexandros and I said at the same time. We had not eaten since before dawn.

I smelled frying sausages and my mouth watered. “That way.” I pointed in the direction of the smell.

Alexandros shook his head. “We do not have any money. We cannot risk drawing attention to ourselves.”

“But I’m
hungry!”
whined Ptolly. He turned in the direction of the food stalls anyway.

“Stop!” Alexandros ordered.

“You can’t make me!” Ptolly cried, and took off at a run.

We followed Ptolly as he ran, dodging past the occasional staggering drunk. He stopped in front of a vendor squatting over a cooking fire in front of his stall, shaking a pan full of sizzling, popping sausages.

“That smells good!” Ptolly said to the cook, whose face was blackened from the cooking fires of his trade.

The man ignored him.

“Can I have some?”

“You got
denarii?”

Ptolly shook his head.

“Then be gone,” said the man.

Alexandros grabbed Ptolly’s arm. “Come on, let’s go.”

“No!” Ptolly cried. “I am hungry!”

“You don’t look starved,” the man said.

Alexandros sighed. He pulled out one of the broad collars, snapped off a lapis lazuli jewel in the form of a scarab, and held it out to the man. “We don’t have money, but we can trade for this jewel.”

The man looked at the twinkling, brilliant blue in Alexandros’s hand for a long moment, then up to his face. “Where’d you get that?” he asked.

“Found it.”

The man narrowed his eyes.

“Somebody ripped it off the neck of an Egyptian prisoner during the Triumph, and I grabbed it before anyone else could,” Alexandros lied.

The man seemed to be considering it.

“Everybody loves Egyptian jewelry now,” I added. “You should be able to sell that for a good amount. Way more than what those cost you,” I said, pointing to the sausages.

“Fine,” the man said. “One for each of you.”

Ptolly clapped his hands. But Alexandros acted outraged. “Three sausages? Forget it. We’ll go across the road.”

“Five,” the man said, straightening up. “Six. And bread for each of us from that basket.”

“Fine,” the vendor said. “Just give it to me.”

The exchange was made. We walked away, devouring the sausages, licking the grease from our fingers and tearing off huge chunks of stale, coarse barley bread with our teeth.

“I’m impressed,” I said to Alexandros. “I did not know you knew how to bargain.”

“Sometimes I follow Tiberius to the markets. I’ve learned from the master, as he abuses everyone he comes across.”

“This is the best sausage I’ve ever had in my whole entire life!” Ptolly said with his sideways grin. I could not argue, though I felt a pang of
worry. Ptolly’s eyes seemed overbright, his pupils dilated. We needed to find safety and shelter, but where? Soon it would grow dark, and I knew that I did not want to be anywhere near the Subura then.

A mild panic overcame me. As royal children we’d always had a cadre of servants taking care of our every need. I had not the slightest inkling of how to do anything for my brothers or myself.

“Cleopatra Selene,” Alexandros said under his breath. “We forgot about your armband. Take it off.”

I looked at the golden snake coiled around my upper right arm. The light glinted off its emerald eyes, the same eyes that had watched Mother die. Hiding it seemed prudent. But when the soldier tackled me, I had fallen on that arm and shoulder. The skin under the band was already purple and swollen. With a hissing breath, I pulled it off.

“I’ll take that,” came a voice from behind us, and we jumped. The threat came from a skinny, scruffy man in a dirty brown tunic.

“No you won’t,” Alexandros told him. “It’s ours!”

“I heard what you told the sausage-seller,” the man said, casually pointing behind him with a knife. “I want all the jewels.”

“Well, you can’t have them!” Ptolly cried. “We are tired of you Romans taking everything we have.”

“Hand it over,” the man said, ignoring Ptolly and showing us the knife again.

I stared at him, trying to decide whether he really would attack us if we refused. I clutched the armband hard between my fingers, but to my surprise, somebody else ripped it from me.