The October Horse: A Novel of Caesar and Cleopatra by Colleen McCullough
They had started out at dawn with a good percentage of Ostia escorting them, and as Ostia drew farther away, others took their place; anyone who had occasion to be on the Via Ostiensis that morning thought it more fun to join the royal parade than go about normal business. Cornelius the lictor, deputed to act as guide, picked them up a mile from the Servian Walls and viewed his charge with an awe bordering on profound—oh, what a tale he’d have to tell when he got back to the College of Lictors! It was noon by this time, and Apollodorus stared at the looming ramparts in relief. But then Cornelius led them around the outskirts of the Aventine to the wharves of the Port of Rome, there to halt. The Lord High Chamberlain began to frown; why were they not entering the city, why was her majesty in this decrepit, seedy neighborhood?
“We boat across the river here,” Cornelius explained.
“Boat? But the city is to our right!”
“Oh, we’re not entering the city,” Cornelius said in affable innocence. “The Queen’s palace is across the Tiber at the foot of the Janiculan Hill, which makes this the easiest place to cross—wharves on both sides.”
“Why isn’t the Queen’s palace inside the city?”
“Tch, tch, that would never do,” said Cornelius. “The city is forbidden to any anointed sovereign because to enter it means crossing the sacred pomerium and laying down all imperial power.”
“Pomerium?” asked Apollodorus.
“The invisible boundary of the city. Within it, no one has imperium except the dictator.”
By this time half the Port of Rome had gathered to gawk, as had grooms, stablehands, slaughtermen and shepherds from the Campus Lanatarius. Cornelius was wishing that he had brought other lictors to keep the crowds at bay—what a circus! And so Rome’s lowly regarded it, a wonderful, unexpected circus on an ordinary working day. Luckily for the Egyptians a succession of barges drew into the wharf; the litters and sedan chair were quickly conveyed on board the first of them, and the horde of attendants pushed on to the others with the Royal Guard bringing up the rear, dismounted and soothing their fractious horses.
Apollodorus’s frown gathered mightily when they were off-loaded into the mean alleys of Transtiberim, where he was forced to order the Royal Guards into tight formation around the litters to prevent the dirty, ragged inhabitants from gouging jewels out of the litter posts with their knives—even the women seemed to carry knives. Nor was he amused when, after yet another long plod, he found that the Queen’s palace had no walls to keep the Transtiberini out!
“They’ll give up and go home,” said the unconcerned Cornelius, leading the way through an arch into a courtyard. Apollodorus’s answer was to swing the Royal Guard across this entrance and tell it to stay there until the Transtiberini went home. What kind of place was this, that there were no walls to exclude the dross of humanity from the residences of their betters? And what kind of place was this, that her majesty’s only deputed escort was one lictor minus his fasces? Where was Caesar?
The Queen’s belongings had preceded her by sufficient time to ensure that when she emerged from her litter and walked into the vast atrium, her eyes could rest on a properly outfitted interior, from paintings and tapestries on the walls to rugs, chairs, tables, couches, statues, her huge collection of pedestals containing busts of all the Ptolemies and their wives—an air of inhabited comfort.
She was not in a good mood. Naturally she had peeked between the curtains at this alien landscape of rearing hills, seen the massive Servian Walls, the terra-cotta roofs dotting the hills inside them, the tall thin pines, the leafy trees, the pines shaped like parasols. A shock for her as well as Apollodorus when they bypassed the city and entered a dockland dominated by a tall mount of broken pots and festering rubbish. Where was the guard of honor Caesar should have sent? Why had she been ferried across that—that creek to a worse slum, then hustled to nowhere? For that matter, why hadn’t Caesar answered any of the barrage of notes she had sent him since arriving in Ostia, save for the first? And that terse communication simply told her to move into her palace as soon as she wished!
Cornelius bowed. He knew her from Alexandria, though he was inured enough to eastern rulers to understand that she would not recognize him. Nor did she; her majesty was in a huff. “I am to give you Caesar’s compliments, your majesty,” he said. “As soon as he finds the time, he’ll visit you.”
“As soon as he finds the time, he’ll visit me,” she echoed to Cornelius’s receding back. “He’ll visit! Well, when he does, he’ll wish he hadn’t!”
“Calm down and behave yourself, Cleopatra,” said Charmian firmly; brought up from infancy with their queen, she and Iras stood in no fear of her, divined her every mood.
“It’s very nice,” Iras contributed, gazing about. “I love the huge pool in the middle of the room, and how cunning to put dolphins and tritons in it.” She looked up at the sky with less approval. “You’d think they’d put a roof over it, wouldn’t you?”
Cleopatra sat on her temper. “Caesarion?” she asked.
“He’s been taken straight to the nursery, but don’t worry, he’s improving.”
For a moment the Queen stood uncertainly, chewing her lip; then she shrugged. “We are in a strange land of high mountains and peculiar trees, so I suppose we must expect the customs to be equally strange and peculiar. Since apparently Caesar isn’t going to come at a run to welcome me, there’s no point in keeping my regalia on. Where are the nursery and my private rooms?”
Changed into a plain Greek gown and reassured that Caesarion was indeed improving, she toured the palace with Charmian and Iras. On the small side, but adequate, was their verdict. Caesar had given her one of his own freedmen, Gaius Julius Gnipho, as her Roman steward, who would be in charge of things like purchasing food and household items.
“Why are there no gauze curtains to shield the windows, and none around the beds?” Cleopatra asked.
Gnipho looked bewildered. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”
“Are there no mosquitoes here? No night moths or bugs?”
“We have them aplenty, your majesty.”
“Then they must be kept outside. Charmian, did we bring any linen gauze with us?”
“Yes, more than enough.”
“Then see it’s put up. Around Caesarion’s cot at once.”
Religion had not been neglected; Cleopatra had carried a select pantheon with her, of painted wood rather than solid gold, dressed in their proper raiment—Amun-Ra, Ptah, Sekhmet, Horus, Nefertem, Osiris, Isis, Anubis, Bastet, Taweret, Sobek and Hathor. To care for them and her own needs she had brought a high priest, Pu’em-re, and six mete-en-sa to assist him.
The agent, Ammonius, had been to Ostia to see his queen on several occasions, and had made sure that the builders provided one room with plastered walls; this would be the temple, once the mete-en-sa had painted the walls with the prayers, the spells and the cartouches of Cleopatra, Caesarion and Philadelphus.
Her mood dropping inexorably toward depression, Cleopatra fell to abase herself before Amun-Ra. The formal prayer, in old Egyptian, she spoke aloud, but after it was finished she remained on her knees, hands and brow pressed to the cold marble floor, and prayed silently.
God of the Sun, bringer of light and of life, preserve us in this daunting place to which we have taken your worship. We are far from home and the waters of Nilus, and we have come only to keep faith with thee, with all our gods great and small, of the sky and the river. We have journeyed into the West, into the Realm of the Dead, to be quickened again, for Osiris Reincarnated cannot come to us in Egypt. Nilus inundates perfectly, but if we are to maintain the Inundation, it is time that we bear another child. Help us, we pray, endure our exile among these unbelievers, keep our Godhead intact, our sinews taut, our heart strong, our womb fruitful. Let our Son, Ptolemy Caesar Horus, know his divine Father, and grant us a sister for him so that he may marry and keep our blood pure. Nilus must inundate. Pharaoh must conceive again, many times.
But by the time they put into Paraetonium for water, her excitement had evaporated—who could have imagined the boredom of looking at nothing but sea? At Paraetonium the fleet’s speed increased, for Apeliotes the East Wind began to blow and pushed them west to Utica, very quiet and subdued after Caesar’s war. Then Auster, the South Wind, came along to blow them straight up the west coast of Italy. When the fleet made harbor in Ostia, it had been at sea from Alexandria for only twenty-five days.
There in Ostia the Queen had waited aboard her flagship until all her goods had been brought ashore and word came that her palace was ready for occupation. Bombarding Caesar with letters, standing at the rail every day hoping to see Caesar being borne out to see her. His terse note had said only that he was in the midst of drafting a lex agraria, whatever that might be, and could not spare the time to see her. Oh, why were his communications always so unemotional, so unloving? He spoke as if she were some ordinary suppliant ruler, a nuisance for whom he would find time when he could. But she wasn’t ordinary, or a suppliant! She was Pharaoh, his wife, the mother of his son, Daughter of Amun-Ra!
Caesarion had chosen to come down with a fever while they were moored in that ghastly, muddy harbor. Did Caesar care? No, Caesar didn’t care. Hadn’t even replied to that letter.
Now here she was, as close to Rome as she was going to get, if Cornelius the lictor was right, and still no Caesar.
At dusk she consented to eat what Charmian and Iras brought her—but not until it had been tasted. A member of the House of Ptolemy did not simply give a little of the food and drink to a slave; a member of the House of Ptolemy gave the food and drink to the child of a slave known to love his children dearly. An excellent precaution. After all, her sister Arsinoë was here in Rome, though, not being an anointed sovereign, no doubt she lived within its walls. Housed by a noblewoman named Caecilia, Ammonius had reported. Living on the fat of the land.
The air was different, and she didn’t like it. After dark it held a chill she had never experienced, though it was supposed to be early summer. This cold stone mausoleum contributed to the miasma that curled off the so-called river, which she could see from the high loggia. So damp. So foreign. And no Caesar.
Not until the middle hour of the night by the water clock did she go to bed, where she tossed and turned until finally she fell asleep after cock crow. A whole day on land, and no Caesar. Would he ever come?
What woke her was an instinct; no sound, no ray of light, no change in the atmosphere had the power Cha’em had inculcated in her as a child in Memphis. When you are not alone, you will wake, he had said, and breathed into her. Since then, the silent presence of another person in the room would wake her. As it did now, and in the way Cha’em had taught her. Open your eyes a tiny slit, and do not move. Watch until you identify the intruder, only then react in the appropriate way.
Caesar, sitting in a chair to one side of the bed at its foot, looking not at her but into that distance he could summon at will. The room was light but not bright, every part of him was manifest. Her heart knocked at her ribs, her love for him poured out in a huge spate of feeling, and with it a terrible grief. He is not the same. Immeasurably older, so very tired. His bones are such that his beauty will persist beyond death, but something is gone. His eyes have always been pale, but now they are washed out, making that black ring around the irises starker still. All her own resentments and irritations seemed suddenly too petty to bear; she curved her lips into a smile, pretended to wake and see him, lifted her arms in welcome. It is not I who needs succor.
His eyes came back from wherever they had been and saw her; he smiled that wonderful smile, twisted out of the enveloping toga as he rose in a way she could never fathom. Then his arms were around her, clutching her like a drowning man a spar. They kissed, first an exploration of the softness of lips, then deeply. No, Calpurnia, he is not like this with you. If he were, he would not need me, and he needs me desperately. I sense it all through me, and I answer it all through me.
“You’re rounder, little scrag,” he said, mouth in the side of her neck, smooth hands on her breasts.
“You’re thinner, old man,” she said, arching her back.
Her thoughts turned inward to her womb as she opened herself to him, held him strongly but tenderly. “I love you,” she said.
“And I you,” he said, meaning it.
There was divine magic in mating with an anointed sovereign, he had never felt that so intensely before, but Caesar was still Caesar; his mind never entirely let go, so though he made ardent love to her for a long time, he deprived her of his climax. No sister for Caesarion, never a sister for Caesarion. To give her a girl was a crime against all that Jupiter Optimus Maximus was, that Rome was, that he was.
She wasn’t aware of his omission, too satisfied herself, too swept out of conscious thought, too devastated at being with him again after almost seventeen months.
“You’re sopping with juice, time for a bath,” he said to reinforce her delusion; Caesar’s luck that she produces so much moisture herself. Better that she doesn’t know.
“You must eat, Caesar,” she said after the bath, “but first, a visit to the nursery?”
Caesarion was fully recovered, had woken his usual cheerful, noisy self. He flew with arms outstretched to his mother, who picked him up and showed him proudly to his father.
I suppose, thought Caesar, that once I looked much like this. Even I can see that he’s inarguably mine, though I recognize it mostly in the way he echoes my mother, my sisters. His regard is the same steady assessment Aurelia gave her world, his expression isn’t mine. A beautiful child, sturdy and well nourished, but not fleshy. Yes, that’s genuine Caesar. He won’t run to fat the way the Ptolemies do. All he has of his mother are the eyes, though not in color. Less sunk in their orbits than mine, and a darker blue than mine.
He smiled, said in Latin, “Say ave to your tata, Caesarion.”
The eyes widened in delight, the child turned his head from this stranger to his mother’s face. “That’s my tata?” he asked in quaintly accented Latin.
“Yes, your tata’s here at last.”
The next moment two little arms were reaching for him; Caesar took him, hugged him, kissed him, stroked the fine, thick gold hair, while Caesarion cuddled in as if he had always known this strange man. When she went to take him from Caesar, he refused to go back to his mother. In his world he has missed a man, thought Caesar, and he needs a man.
Dinner forgotten, he sat with his son on his lap and found out that Caesarion’s Greek was far better than his Latin, that he did not indulge in baby talk, and uttered his sentences properly parsed and analyzed. Fifteen months old, yet already an old man.
“What do you want to be when you grow up?” Caesar asked.
“A great general like you, tata.”
“Not Pharaoh?”
“Oh, pooh, Pharaoh! I have to be Pharaoh, and I’ll be that before I grow up,” said the child apparently not enamored of his regnant destiny. “What I want to be is a general.”
“Whom would you war against?”
“Rome’s and Egypt’s enemies.”
“All his toys are war toys,” Cleopatra said with a sigh. “He threw away his dolls at eleven months and demanded a sword.”
“He was talking then?”
“Oh yes, whole sentences.”
Then the nursemaids bore down and took him off to feed him; expecting tears and protests, Caesar saw in some amazement that his son accepted the inevitable quite happily.
“He doesn’t have my pride or temper,” he said as they walked through to the dining room, having promised Caesarion that tata would be back. “Sweeter natured.”
“He’s God on earth,” she said simply. “Now tell me,” she said, settling into Caesar’s side on the same couch, “what is making you so tired.”
“Just people,” he said vaguely. “Rome doesn’t appreciate the rule of a dictator, so I’m continually opposed.”
“But you always said you wanted opposition. Here, drink your fruit juice.”
“There are two kinds of opposition,” he said. “I wanted an atmosphere of intelligent debate in the Senate and comitia, not endless demands to ‘bring back the Republic’—as if the Republic were some vanished entity akin to Plato’s Utopia. Utopia!” He made a disgusted sound. “The word means ‘Nowhere’! When I ask what’s wrong with my laws, they complain that they’re too long and complicated to read, so they won’t read them. When I ask for good suggestions, they complain that I’ve left them nothing to suggest. When I ask for co-operation, they complain that I force them to co-operate whether they want to or not. They admit that many of my changes are highly beneficial, then turn around and complain that I change things, that change is wrong. So the opposition I get is as devoid of reason as Cato’s used to be.”
“Then come and talk to me,” she said quickly. “Bring me your laws and I’ll read them. Tell me your plans and I’ll offer you constructive criticism. Try out your ideas on me and I’ll give you a considered opinion. If another mind is what you need, my dearest love, mine is the mind of a dictator in a diadem. Let me help you, please.”
He reached out to take her hand, held it to his lips and kissed it, the shadow of a smile filling his eyes with some of the old vigor and sparkle. “I will, Cleopatra, I will.” The smile grew, his gaze became more sensuous. “You’ve budded into a very special beauty, my love. Not a Praxiteles Aphrodite, no, but motherhood and maturity have turned you into a deliciously desirable woman. I missed your lion’s eyes.”