The October Horse: A Novel of Caesar and Cleopatra by Colleen McCullough
“Some of my shortness is inherited. My father’s mother was a Nabataean princess, but she wasn’t a full Arab. Her grandmother was the Parthian princess Rhodogune, another blood link to King Mithridates. They say the Parthians are short. However, my own mother blamed an illness I suffered as a babe. So I have always thought that Hippopotamus and Crocodile sucked my growth down their nostrils just as they do the river.”
Caesar’s mouth twitched. “Just as they do the river?”
“Yes, during the Cubits of Death. Nilus fails to rise when Taweret—Hippopotamus—and Sobek—Crocodile—suck the water down their nostrils. They do that when they’re angry at Pharaoh,” she said, absolutely seriously.
“Since you’re Pharaoh, why are they angry at you? Nilus has been in the Cubits of Death for two years, I understand.”
Her face became a study in indecision; she turned away, paced up and down, came back abruptly to standing directly in front of him, biting her lower lip. “The matter is extremely urgent,” she said, “so I can see no point in striving to seduce you with woman’s wiles. I had hoped you’d be an unattractive man—you’re old, after all—and therefore amenable toward unbeautiful women like me. But I see that the tales are true, that you can have any woman you fancy despite your great age.”
His head had gone to one side, and the aloof cold eyes were warm, though they didn’t contain any lust. They simply drank her in, while his mind reveled in her. She had distinguished herself in adverse situations—the murder of the sons of Bibulus, the uprising in Alexandria, no doubt other crises as well. Yet she spoke as a virginal child. Of course she was a virgin. Clearly her brother/husband hadn’t yet consummated their union, and she was a god on earth, she couldn’t mate with mortal men. Hedged around with eunuchs, forbidden to be alone with an uncastrated man. Her situation is, as she said, extremely urgent, otherwise she would not be alone here with me, an uncastrated mortal man.
“Go on,” he said.
“I have not fulfilled my duty as Pharaoh.”
“Which is?”
“To be fruitful. To bear children. The first Inundation after I came to the throne was just inside the Cubits of Plenty because Nilus gave me the grace of time to prove my fruitfulness. Now, two Inundations later, I am still barren. Egypt is in famine and five days from now the priests of Isis at Philae will read the Elephantine Nilometer. The Inundation is due, the Etesian winds are blowing. But unless I am quickened, the summer rains will not fall in Aithiopai and Nilus will not inundate.”
“Summer rains, not melting winter snows,” Caesar said. “Do you know the sources of Nilus?” Keep her talking, let me have time to absorb what she’s saying. My “great age” indeed!
“Librarians like Eratosthenes sent expeditions to discover Nilus’s sources, but all they found were tributaries and Nilus himself. What they did find were the summer rains in Aithiopai. It is all written down, Caesar.”
“Yes, I hope to have the leisure to read some of the books of the museum before I leave. Continue, Pharaoh.”
“That’s it,” said Cleopatra, shrugging. “I need to mate with a god, and my brother doesn’t want me. He wants Theodotus for his pleasure and Arsinoë for his wife.”
“Why should he want her?”
“Her blood is purer than mine, she’s his full sister. Their mother was a Ptolemy, mine was a Mithridatid.”
“I fail to see an answer to your dilemma, at least not before this coming inundation. I feel for you, my poor girl, but what I can do for you, I don’t know. I’m not a god.”
Her face lit up. “But you are a God!” she cried.
He blinked. “There’s a statue in Ephesus says it, but that’s just—er—flattery, as a friend of mine said. It’s true that I am descended from two gods, but all I have are one or two drops of divine ichor, not a whole body full of it.”
“You are the God out of the West.”
“The god out of the west?”
“You are Osiris returned from the Realm of the Dead to quicken Isis-Hathor-Mut and sire a son, Horus.”
“And you believe that?”
“I don’t believe it, Caesar, it is a fact!”
“Then I have it right, you want to mate with me?”
“Yes, yes! Why else would I be here? Be my husband, give me a son! Then Nilus will inundate.”
What a situation! But an amusing and interesting one. How far has Caesar gone, to arrive at a place where his seed can cause rains to fall, rivers to rise, whole countries to thrive?
“It would be churlish,” he said gravely, “to refuse, but haven’t you left your run a little late? With only five days until the Nilometer is read, I can’t guarantee to quicken you. Even if I do, it will be five or six nundinae before you know.”
“Amun-Ra will know, just as I, his daughter, will know. I am Nilus, Caesar! I am the living personification of the river. I am God on earth, and I have but one purpose—to ensure that my people prosper, that Egypt remains great. If Nilus stays in the Cubits of Death another year, the famine will be joined by plague and locusts. Egypt will be no more.”
“I require a favor in return.”
“Quicken me, and it is yours.”
“Spoken like a banker! I want your complete co-operation in whatever I am called upon to do to Alexandria.”
Her brow wrinkled, she looked suspicious. “Do to Alexandria? A strange way to phrase it, Caesar.”
“Oh, a mind!” he said appreciatively. “I begin to hope for an intelligent son.”
“They say you have no son at all.”
Yes, I have a son, he thought. A beautiful little boy somewhere in Gaul whom Litaviccus stole from me when he murdered his mother. But I don’t know what happened to him, and I never will know.
“True,” he said coolly. “But having no son of one’s body is of no importance to a Roman. We are at legal liberty to adopt a son, someone who shares our blood—a nephew or a cousin. During our lifetimes, or by testament after our deaths. Any son that you and I might have, Pharaoh, will not be a Roman because you are not a Roman. Therefore he cannot inherit either my name or my worldly goods.” Caesar looked stern. “Don’t hope for Roman sons—our laws don’t work that way. I can go through a form of marriage with you if you wish, but the marriage won’t be binding in Roman law. I already have a Roman wife.”
“Who has no child at all, though you’ve been married long.”
“I’m never home.” He grinned, relaxed and looked at her with a brow raised. “I think it’s time I moved to contain your older brother, my dear. By nightfall we’ll be living in the big palace, and then we’ll do something about quickening you.” He got up and went to the door.
“Faberius! Trebatius!” he called.
His secretary and his personal legate entered to stand with jaws dropped.
“This is Queen Cleopatra. Now that she’s arrived, things begin to happen. Summon Rufrius at once, and start packing.”
And off he went, his staff in his wake, leaving Cleopatra to stand alone in the room. She had fallen in love at once, for that was her nature; reconciled to espousing an old man even uglier than she was herself, to find instead someone who did indeed look the God he was filled her with joy, with feeling, with true love. Tach’a had cast the lotus petals upon the water in Hathor’s bowl and told her that tonight or tomorrow night were the fertile ones in her cycle, that she would conceive if she looked on Caesar and found him worthy of love. Well, she had looked and found a dream, the God out of the West. As tall and splendid and beautiful as Osiris; even the lines graven upon his face were fitting, for they said that he had suffered much, just as Osiris had suffered.
Her lip quivered, she blinked at sudden tears. She loved, but Caesar did not, and she doubted that he ever would. Not for reasons grounded in lack of beauty or feminine charms; more that there was a gulf between them of age, experience, culture.
By nightfall they were in the big palace, a vast edifice that ramified down halls and up corridors, sprouted galleries an
All afternoon the city and the Royal Enclosure buzzed; five hundred of Caesar’s legionaries had rounded up the Royal Guard and sent them to Achillas’s mushrooming camp west of the Moon Gate with Caesar’s compliments. That done, the five hundred men proceeded to fortify the Royal Enclosure wall with a fighting platform, proper breastworks and many watchtowers.
Other things were happening too. Rufrius evacuated the camp in Rhakotis and evicted every tenant in the grand houses on either side of Royal Avenue, then stuffed the mansions with troops. While those affluent, suddenly homeless people ran about the city weeping and wailing, howling vengeance on Romans, hundreds of soldiers barged into the big temples, the gymnasium and the courts of justice, while a few left in Rhakotis went to the Serapeum. Under horrified Alexandrian eyes, they promptly tore out every beam from every ceiling and hustled them back to Royal Avenue. That done, they commenced work on the dockside structures—quays, jetties, the emporium—and carried off every useful piece of wood as well as all the beams.
By nightfall most of public Alexandria lay in ruins, anything useful or sizably wooden safely delivered to Royal Avenue.
“This is an outrage! An Outrage!” cried Potheinus when the unwelcome guest marched in accompanied by a century of soldiers, his staff, and a very smug-looking Queen Cleopatra.
“You!” shrilled Arsinoë. “What are you doing here? I am queen, Ptolemy has divorced you!”
Cleopatra walked up to her and kicked her viciously on the shins, then raked her nails down Arsinoë’s face. “I am queen! Shut up or I’ll have you killed!”
“Bitch! Sow! Crocodile! Jackal! Hippopotamus! Spider! Scorpion! Rat! Snake! Louse!” little Ptolemy Philadelphus was yelling. “Ape! Ape, ape, ape!”
“And you shut up too, you filthy little toad!” Cleopatra said fiercely, whacking him around the head until he blubbered.
Entranced by all this evidence of familial piety, Caesar stood and watched with arms folded. Twenty-one Pharaoh might be, but confronted by her littlest brother and her sister, she reverted to the nursery. Interesting that neither Philadelphus nor Arsinoë fought back physically: big sister cowed them. Then he grew tired of the unseemliness and deftly separated the three brawlers.
“You, madam, stay with your tutor,” he ordered Arsinoë. “It is high time young princesses retired. You too, Philadelphus.”
Potheinus was still ranting, but Ganymedes ushered Arsinoë away with an expressionless face. That one, Caesar thought, is far more dangerous than the Lord High Chamberlain. And Arsinoë is in love with him, eunuch or no.
“Where is King Ptolemy?” he asked. “And Theodotus?”
King Ptolemy and Theodotus were in the agora, as yet untouchedby Caesar’s soldiers. They had been dallying in the King’s own quarters when a slave came running to tell them that Caesar was taking over the Royal Enclosure and that Queen Cleopatra was with him. Moments later Theodotus had himself and the boy dressed for an audience, Ptolemy in his purple hat complete with diadem; then the two entered the secret tunnel constructed by Ptolemy Auletes to permit escape whenever the mob materialized. It ran below ground and under the wall to emerge on the flank of the Akron theater, where it offered the opportunity to head for the docks or go deeper into the city. The little king and Theodotus elected to go into the city, to the agora.
This meeting place held a hundred thousand, and had been filling up since mid-afternoon, when Caesar’s soldiers had started plundering beams. By instinct the Alexandrians went to it whenever tumult broke out, so when the pair from the palace appeared, the agora was already choked. Even so, Theodotus made the King wait in a corner; he needed time to coach the boy until he had a short speech off pat. After dark, by which time the mob spilled out on to the intersection and covered the arcade roofs, Theodotus led King Ptolemy to a statue of Callimachus the librarian and helped him climb up to its plinth.
“Alexandrians, we are under attack!” the King screamed, face ruddied by the flames of a thousand torches. “Rome has invaded, the whole of the Royal Enclosure is in Caesar’s hands! But more than that!” He paused to make sure he was saying what Theodotus had drummed into him, then went on. “Yes, more than that! My sister Cleopatra the traitor has returned and is in league with the Romans! It is she who has brought Caesar here! All your food has gone to fill Roman bellies, and Caesar’s prick is filling Cleopatra’s cunt! They have emptied the treasury and murdered everyone in the palace! They have murdered everyone who lives on Royal Avenue! Some of your wheat is being tipped into the Great Harbor out of sheer spite, and Roman soldiers are tearing your public buildings apart! Alexandria is being wrecked, her temples profaned, her women and children raped!”
Dark in the night, the boy’s eyes blazed a reflection of the crowd’s mounting fury; a fury it had arrived with, a fury that the little king’s words spurred to action. This was Alexandria, the one place in the world wherein a mob had become permanently conscious of the power a mob wielded, and wielded that power as a political instrument rather than in pure destructive rage. The mob had spilled many a Ptolemy; it could spill a mere Roman, tear him and his whore into pieces.
“I, your king, have been wrested from my throne by a Roman cur and a traitorous harlot named Cleopatra!”
The crowd moved, scooped King Ptolemy into its midst and put him upon a pair of broad shoulders, where he sat, his purple person on full display, urging his steed on with his ivory scepter.
It moved as far as the gate into the Royal Enclosure, where Caesar stood barring its passage, clad in his purple-bordered toga, his oak-leaf crown upon his head, the rod of his imperium on his right forearm, and twelve lictors to either side of him. With him was Queen Cleopatra, still in her drab fawn robe.
Unused to the sight of an adversary who faced it down, the crowd stopped moving.
“What are you doing here?” Caesar asked.
“We’ve come to drive you out and kill you!” Ptolemy cried.
“King Ptolemy, King Ptolemy, you can’t do both,” Caesar answered reasonably. “Either drive us out, or kill us. But I assure you that there’s no need to do either.” Having located the leaders in the front ranks, Caesar now directly addressed them. “If you’ve been told that my soldiers occupy your granaries, I ask that you visit the granaries and see for yourselves that there are none of my soldiers present, and that they are full to the brim. It is not my business to levy the price of grain or other foodstuffs within Alexandria—that is the business of your king, as your queen has been absent. So if you’re paying too much, blame King Ptolemy, not Caesar. Caesar brought his own grain and supplies with him to Alexandria, he hasn’t touched yours,” he lied shamelessly. One hand went out to push Cleopatra forward, then it was extended to the little king. “Come down from your perch, Your Majesty, and stand here where a sovereign should stand—facing his subjects, not among them at their mercy. I hear that the citizens of Alexandria can tear a king to shreds, and it’s you to blame for their plight, not Rome. Come to me, do!”
The eddies natural in such a host had separated the King from Theodotus, who couldn’t make himself heard. Ptolemy sat on his steed’s shoulders, his fair brows knitted in a frown, and a very real fear growing in his eyes. Bright he was not, but he was bright enough to understand that somehow Caesar was putting him in a wrong light; that Caesar’s clear, carrying voice, its Greek now distinctly Macedonian, was turning the front ranks of the mob against him.
“Set me down!” the King commanded.
On his feet, he walked to Caesar and turned to face his irate subjects.
“That’s the way,” said Caesar genially. “Behold your king and queen!” he shouted. “I have the testament of the late king, father of these children, and I am here to execute his wishes—that Egypt and Alexandria be ruled by his eldest living daughter, the seventh Cleopatra, and his eldest son, the thirteenth Ptolemy! His directive is unmistakable! Cleopatra and Ptolemy Euergetes are his legal heirs and must rul
“Kill her!” Theodotus screamed: “Arsinoë is queen!”
Even this Caesar spun to his own advantage. “The Princess Arsinoë has a different duty!” he cried. “As the Dictator of Rome, I am empowered to return Cyprus to Egypt, and I hereby do so!” His tones oozed sympathy. “I know how hard it has been for Alexandria since Marcus Cato annexed Cyprus—you lost your good cedar timber, your copper mines, a great deal of cheap food. The Senate which decreed that annexation no longer exists. My Senate does not condone this injustice! Princess Arsinoë and Prince Ptolemy Philadelphus will be going to rule as satraps in Cyprus. Cleopatra and Ptolemy Euergetes will rule in Alexandria, Arsinoë and Ptolemy Philadelphus in Cyprus!”
The mob was won, but Caesar wasn’t finished.
“I must add, people of Alexandria, that it is due to Queen Cleopatra that Cyprus is returned to you! Why do you think she has been absent? Because she traveled to me to negotiate the return of Cyprus! And she has succeeded.” He walked foward a little, smiling. “How about a rousing cheer for your queen?”
What Caesar said was relayed swiftly through the crowd from front to back; like all good speakers, he kept his message short and simple when he addressed masses of people. So, satisfied, they cheered deafeningly.
“All very well, Caesar, but you can’t deny that your troops are wrecking our temples and public buildings!” one of the mob’s leaders called out.
“Yes, a very serious business,” said Caesar, spreading his hands. “However, even Romans must protect themselves, and outside the Moon Gate sits a huge army under General Achillas, who has declared war on me. I am preparing myself to be attacked. If you want the demolition stopped, then I suggest you go to General Achillas and tell him to disband his army.”
The mob reversed like soldiers drilling; the next moment it was gone, presumably to see Achillas.
Stranded, a shivering Theodotus looked at the boy king with tears in his eyes, then slunk to take his hand, kiss it.