Antony and Cleopatra (74 page)

The three
nundinae
passed, but no word came from Octavian. What worried Antony was that Antyllus didn’t return, but he decided that Octavian would detain the boy until his victory was complete, then—what did one do with the sons of the proscribed? Banishment was the usual practice, but Antyllus had lived with Octavia for years. Her brother wouldn’t banish one of her brood. Nor deny him an income big enough to live as an Antonian must.

“Did you really think Octavianus would accept whatever terms you laid out in your letter?” Cleopatra asked. She hadn’t seen it, nor had she demanded to see it; the new Cleopatra understood that men’s business belonged to men.

“I suppose not,” said Antony, shrugging. “I wish Antyllus would contact me.”

How to tell him the boy is dead? she asked herself. Octavian couldn’t make terms, he needed the Treasure of the Ptolemies. Did he know where to find it? No, of course not. Which wouldn’t deter him from digging more holes in the sands of Egypt than there were stars in the sky. And Antyllus? A nuisance, alive. Sixteen-year-old lads moved like quicksilver and had a certain guile; Octavian wouldn’t run the risk of keeping him alive to escape and report the enemy dispositions to his father. Yes, Antyllus was dead. Did it matter whether she broached the subject to his father or held her counsel? No, it did not. Therefore why drop another burden of grief on his shoulders, so bowed over, so—
frail
? Not an adjective she had ever thought to apply to Mark Antony.

Instead she broached the subject of a different young man—Caesarion. “Antonius, we have perhaps three
nundinae
left before Octavianus reaches Alexandria. At some point close to the city I presume you’ll fight a battle, is that right?”

He shrugged. “The soldiers want it, so yes.”

“Caesarion can’t be let fight.”

“In case he dies?”

“Yes. I can see no possibility that Octavianus will allow me to rule Egypt, but nor will he let Caesarion rule. I have to get Caesarion away to India or Taprobane before Octavianus starts to hunt him down. I have fifty good men and a small, swift fleet at Berenice. Cha’em gave my servants sufficient gold to permit Caesarion a good life at the end of his voyage. When he’s a fully grown man, he can come back.”

He studied her intently, a frown bringing his brows together. Caesarion, always Caesarion! Still, she was right. If he stayed, Octavian would hunt him down and kill him. Had to. No rival as like Caesar as this Egyptian son could be let live.

“What do you want of me?” he asked.

“Your support when I tell him. He won’t want to go.”

“He won’t, but he must. Yes, I’ll support you.”

Both of them were astonished when Caesarion agreed at once.

“I see your point, Mama, Antonius,” he said, blue eyes wide. “One of us must live, yet none of us will be let live. If I skulk in India for ten years, Octavianus will have let Egypt go on its way. As a province, not a client-kingdom. But if the people of Nilus know that Pharaoh is alive, they’ll welcome me when I return.” The eyes filled with tears; his face twisted. “Oh, Mama, Mama, not to see you ever again! I must, yet I can’t. You will walk in Octavianus’s triumphal parade and then die at the hands of the strangler. I must, yet I can’t!”

“You can, Caesarion,” said Antony strongly, clasping him by the forearm. “I don’t doubt your love for your mother, but nor do I doubt your love for your people. Go to India and stay there until the time’s right to come back. Please!”

“Oh, I’ll go. It’s the sensible thing to do.” He gave each of them Caesar’s smile, and walked out.

“I can hardly believe it,” said Cleopatra, stroking her lump. “He did say he’ll go, didn’t he?”

“Yes, he did.”

“It must be tomorrow.”

Tomorrow it was; robed like a banker or a bureaucrat of the middle order, Caesarion set off with the appropriate two servants, all three mounted on good camels.

Cleopatra stood on the Royal Enclosure battlements watching while ever she could see her son on the Memphis road, waving a red scarf, smiling brilliantly. Pleading a headache, Antony remained in the palace.

There Canidius found him, pausing in the doorway to take in the sight of Marcus Antonius stretched full length on a couch, an arm across his eyes. “Antonius?”

Antony swung his legs to the floor and sat up, blinking.

“Are you unwell?” Canidius asked.

“A headache, but not from wine. My life burdens me.”

“Octavianus won’t cooperate.”

“Well, we’ve known that since the Queen sent him her scepter and diadem to Pelusium. I wish the town had been as sluggish as the army! A lot of good Egyptians died—how did they ever think to resist a Roman siege?”

“He couldn’t afford a siege, Antonius, which is why he stormed the place.” Canidius peered at Antony, puzzled. “Don’t you remember? You are unwell!”

“Yes, yes, I remember!” Antony laughed, a grating sound. “I have too much on my mind, that’s all. He’s in Memphis, isn’t he?”

“He was in Memphis. Now? Coming up the Canopic Nilus.”

“What has my son to say about him?”

“Your son?”

“Antyllus!”

“Antonius, we haven’t heard from Antyllus in a month.”

“We haven’t? How odd! Octavianus must have detained him.”

“Yes, I daresay that’s what happened,” Canidius said gently.

“Octavianus sent a servant with letters, didn’t he?”

“Yes,” said Cleopatra from the doorway. She walked in and sat opposite Antony, her eyes signaling Canidius frantically.

“What was the fellow’s name?”

“Thyrsus, dear.”

“Refresh my memory, Cleopatra,” Antony said, obviously very confused. “What was in the letters Octavianus sent you?”

Canidius had slumped into a chair, staring amazed.

“The public one ordered me to disarm and surrender, the one for my eyes only said that Octavianus will work out a solution satisfactory to all parties,” Cleopatra said levelly.

“Oh, yes! Yes, of course that was it…. Ah—didn’t I have to do something for you? Something about the commander of the garrison at Pelusium?”

“He sent his family to Alexandria for safekeeping and I had them arrested. Why should
his
family avoid the suffering visited on Pelusium? But then Caesarion”—she stopped, wrung her hands—“said I was too angry to dispense justice, and handed them to you.”

“Oh! Oh. And did I dispense justice to the family?”

“You freed them. That was no justice.”

Canidius listened to the exchange feeling as if he had been hit by a poleaxe. All this was over, in the past! Ye gods, Antony was—was half demented! His memory had gone. And how was he, Canidius, going to discuss war plans with a forgetful old man? Broken! Shattered into a thousand pieces. Unfit for command.

“What did you want, Canidius?” Antony was asking.

“Octavianus is nearly here, Antonius, and I have seven legions at the hippodrome rearing for a fight. Are we to fight?”

Up leaped Antony, transformed in a moment from forgetful old man to general of troops, eager, alert, interested. “Yes! Yes, of course we fight,” he said, and commenced to roar. “Maps! I need maps! Where are Cinna, Turullius, Cassius?”

“Waiting, Antonius. Dying to fight.”

Cleopatra saw the visitor out.

“How long has this been going on?” Canidius asked.

“Since he returned from Phraaspa, what—four years ago?”

“Jupiter! Why didn’t I see it?”

“Because it happens in spasms, and usually when his guard is down, or he has a headache. Caesarion left today, so it’s a bad day. But don’t worry, Canidius. He’s already snapping out of it, and by tomorrow he’ll be everything he was at Philippi.”

Cleopatra didn’t speak lightly. Antony pounced as Octavian’s advance guard of cavalry arrived in the suburb of Canopus, where the hippodrome was located. This was the old Antony, full of dash and fire, incapable of putting a foot—or a man—wrong. The cavalry routed, Antony’s seven legions charged into battle singing their war paeans to Hercules Invictus, patron god of the Antonii as well as of war.

He returned to Alexandria at dusk still in his armor to be greeted by an ecstatic Cleopatra.

“Oh, Antonius, Antonius, nothing is too good for you!” she cried, covering his face with kisses. “Caesarion! How I wish Caesarion could see you now!”

She still hadn’t learned, poor lady. When Canidius, Cinna, Decimus Turullius, and the others arrived in much the same sweaty, bloody condition as Antony, she ran from one to another smiling so widely that Cinna for one found the performance revolting.

“It wasn’t a major engagement,” Antony tried to tell her when she spun past him on one of her gyrations. “Save your joy for the big battle that’s still to come.”

But no, no, she wouldn’t listen. The whole city was rejoicing as at a major engagement, and Cleopatra was utterly absorbed in planning a victory feast for the morrow in the gymnasium—the army would be there, she would decorate the bravest soldiers, the legates must be ensconced in a golden pavilion on sumptuously fat cushions, the centurions in something only slightly less plush….

“They’re both mad,” said Cinna to Canidius. “Mad!”

He tried to restrain her, but Antony the man, the beloved, had vanished before her conviction that, in winning this minor battle, the war was won and over, that her kingdom was safe, that Octavian was no threat anymore. Professional soldiers all, the legates watched an impotent Antony succumb to Cleopatra’s crazy joy and spend what was left of his energy in convincing her that seven legions would never fit inside the gymnasium.

The feast was held with only the men to be decorated there from the ranks, though four-hundred-plus centurions came, the military tribunes, the junior legates, and all of Alexandria that could squeeze in. There were also prisoners to accommodate, men Cleopatra insisted be put in chains and stood in a place from which the Alexandrians could jeer and throw rotten vegetables. If nothing else could have turned the legions away from her, that did. Un-Roman, barbaric. An insult to men as Roman as any.

Nor would she listen to advice about the decorations she insisted that she must bestow; instead of the plain oak leaf crown for valor, the man who had saved the lives of his fellows and held the ground on which it happened until the conflict was over found himself presented with a golden helmet and cuirass by a slightly pop-eyed, plain little woman who
kissed
him!

“Where’s me oak leaves? Gimme me oak leaves!” the soldier demanded, hugely offended.

“
Oak leaves?
” Her laugh tinkled. “Oh, my dear boy, a silly crown of oak leaves instead of a golden helmet? Be sensible!”

He dropped the golden gear at the edge of the crowd and went immediately to Octavian’s army, so angry that he knew he would kill her if he stayed. Antonius’s wasn’t a Roman army, it was a combination of dancing girls and eunuchs.

“Cleopatra, Cleopatra, when will you learn?” Antony demanded in real pain that night after the ridiculous affair was finished and the Alexandrians had gone home, sated.

“What do you mean?”

“You shamed me in front of my men!”

“Shamed you?”
She drew herself up and prepared for her own battle. “What do you mean, shamed you?”

“It’s not your place to conduct a military celebration, nor to tamper with Rome’s
mos maiorum
and give a soldier gold instead of oak leaves. Nor to clap Roman soldiers in manacles. Do you know what those prisoners said when I invited them to join my legions? They said they’d prefer to die. Die!”

“Oh, well, if that’s how they feel, I’ll oblige them!”

“You’ll do nothing of the kind. For the last time, madam, keep your nose out of men’s affairs!” Antony roared, trembling. “You’ve turned me into a ponce, a—a
saltatrix tonsa
trolling for custom outside Venus Erucina’s!”

Her rage died in the time it took lightning to strike; jaw dropped, eyes drowning, she stared at him in genuine dismay. “I—I thought you’d want it,” she whispered. “I thought it would enhance your standing if your ranker soldiers, your centurions and tribunes, saw how great the rewards were going to be once our war is won. And haven’t we won it? Surely it was a victory?”

“Yes, but a little victory, not a big one. And for Jupiter’s sake, woman, save your golden helmets and cuirasses for Egyptian soldiers! Roman ones would rather have a grass crown.”

And so they parted, each to weep, but for very different reasons.

On the morrow they kissed and made up; this was no time to remain at odds with each other.

“If I swear on my father Amun-Ra that I won’t interfere in whatever military things you do, Marcus, will you consent to fight that major battle?” she asked, hollow-eyed from lack of sleep.

From somewhere he conjured up a smile, pulled her close, and inhaled the exquisite fragrance of her skin, that light, flowery fragrance she distilled from Jericho balsam. “Yes, my love, I’m going to fight my last battle.”

She stiffened, drew back to look at him. “
Last
battle?”

“Yes,
last
battle. Tomorrow, at dawn.” He drew a breath, looked stern. “I won’t be coming back, Cleopatra. No matter what happens, I won’t be coming back. We may win, but it’s only one battle. Octavianus has won the war. I intend to die on the field with as much valor as I can. That way, the Roman element is gone and you can treat with Octavianus without needing to consider me. I’m his embarrassment, not you—you’re a foreign enemy with whom he can deal plainly, as a Roman does. He may require you to walk in his triumphal parade, but he’ll not execute you or your children by me. I doubt he’ll let you rule Egypt, which means that after his triumph is over he’ll put you and the children to live in an Italian fortress town like Norba or Praeneste. Very comfortably. And there you can wait for Caesarion to return.”

Her face had drained of color, concentrated now in those huge gold eyes. “Antonius, no!” she whispered.