The Gods of War

  “Where is my brother, Ptolemy? Where is my king?” Cleopatra called to them.

  Julius saw her leap lightly down and stride long-legged through the gashed flesh and kneeling men. She walked proudly and as she passed Julius she beckoned to him.

  “Where is my brother?” she demanded again.

  Her voice struck at the courtiers like a blow and they seemed to wilt as she approached, as if her presence was more than they could bear. They parted as Cleopatra walked into their midst. Julius followed closely, his glare daring them to raise a hand against her.

  Ptolemy lay pale and bloodless on a cloak of dusty gold cloth. His limbs had been placed with dignity, his right hand high on his chest where it almost covered a gaping wound. His mask had been smashed and lay in the dirt at his feet. Julius looked at the childish features as Cleopatra reached down to touch her brother, and felt a pang of regret at the sight of the small gladius at his waist. As he watched, Cleopatra leaned forward to kiss her brother’s lips, before sitting back. Her eyes were wide with pain, but there were no tears.

  As Cleopatra sat in silence, Julius looked around for Panek, knowing he would not be far away. He narrowed his eyes as he saw dark robes he knew. Panek was sitting in the dust, his breathing slow and loud. Julius took two quick steps as his anger rekindled, but the eyes that turned at the sound were dull and the chest was torn and bloody. Panek was dying and Julius had no more words for him.

  At his back, Cleopatra rose to her feet. Not a sound came from the crowd and the breeze could be heard.

  “The king is dead,” she said, her voice echoing across them. “Carry my brother to his palace, my people. Know that you lay hands on a god when you do.”

  Her voice cracked then and she hesitated. Julius touched her lightly on the shoulder, but she did not seem to feel it.

  “I who am Isis, am returned to you. My own blood has been shed this day, a death caused not by the men of Rome, but by the betrayal of my court. Rise and mourn, my people. Tear your clothes and rub ash into your skin. Honor your god with grief and tears.”

  The small body of Ptolemy was lifted into the air, his cloak hanging beneath him.

  For a long time, Cleopatra could not drag her eyes from the body of her brother. Then she turned to face the courtiers.

  “Was it not your task to keep my brother alive?” she murmured, reaching up to the throat of the nearest. He struggled not to flinch from the touch of her painted nails, and it was somehow obscene as she caressed the length of his jaw.

  “Caesar, I would have you bind these men for punishment. They will serve my brother in his tomb.”

  The courtiers prostrated themselves at last, stunned with fear and misery. Julius signaled to Domitius to bring ropes. A tenuous drift of smoke reached them as the courtiers were trussed. Cleopatra’s head jerked up as she smelled the hot and heavy air. She rounded on Julius in sudden fury.

  “What have you done to my city?” she asked.

  It was Brutus who answered. “You know we fired ships in the port. The flames may have reached the dock buildings.”

  “And you let them burn?” she snapped, facing him.

  Brutus looked back calmly. “We were under attack,” he said with a shrug.

  Cleopatra was speechless for a moment. She turned cold eyes on Julius. “Your men must stop it before it spreads.”

  Julius frowned at her tone and she seemed to sense the irritation that was building in him.

  “Please, Julius,” she said, more gently.

  He nodded and signaled to his generals to attend him. “I will do what I can,” he said, troubled by her flashing changes of mood. She had lost a brother and regained her throne, he thought. Much could be forgiven on such a day.

  Cleopatra did not leave until royal guards had brought a shaded platform for her, lifting it onto their shoulders as she lay back. Their faces were proud, Julius saw, as they bore their queen to her palace.

  “Have trenches dug for the dead, Octavian,” Julius ordered, watching her departure. “Before they spoil in the heat. The Fourth had better make their way to the docks to see to this fire.”

  As he spoke a cold cinder floated above his head, riding the breeze. He watched as it settled, still dazed by events. The boy king who had clung to his arm was dead. The battle was won.

  He did not know if they would have achieved victory without the queen’s intervention. The veteran legions were growing old and could not have fought on for long against the rising sun. Perhaps Cleopatra’s slave would have brought reinforcements, or perhaps Julius would have bled his life out on Egyptian sand.

  In her absence, he felt an ache start in him. He could smell her scent over the bitter taste of burnt air. He had known her as a woman. To see her as a queen had disturbed and enthralled him, from the moment the crowd and soldiers had knelt in the dirt at her word. He looked after the procession heading for the palace and wondered how the citizens of Rome would react if he brought her home.

  “We are free to leave,” Octavian said. “To Rome, Julius.”

  Julius looked at him and he smiled. He could not imagine leaving Cleopatra behind. “I have fought for more years than I can remember,” he said. “Rome will wait a little longer, for me.”

  CHAPTER 29

  The great library of Alexandria burned as the sun rose, thousands of scrolls making a furnace so hot that the soldiers of Rome could not come close to it. Marble columns raised by Alexander split and shattered in the furnace of a million thoughts and words. The men of the Fourth legion formed bucket chains to the docks, struggling against the sun and exhaustion until they were numb and their blistered skin was red and black with cinders. The closest buildings had been stripped and their walls and roofs saturated, but the library could not be saved.

  Julius stood with Brutus, watching as the vast skeleton of roof timbers sagged and then collapsed over the work of generations. Both men were exhausted, their faces smeared with soot. They could hear the shouted orders as fire teams ran to stamp out new flames again and again, accompanied by chanting lines of bucket carriers.

  “This is an evil thing to see,” Julius murmured.

  He seemed stunned by the destruction and Brutus glanced at him, wondering if blame would fall on his shoulders. The ships carrying catapults from Canopus had been denied entry to the port, but it was galling to know the battle had been won before they could have added their strength to the siege. The blockade had not been needed.

  “Some of the scrolls were brought here by Alexander himself,” Julius said, wiping a hand across his forehead. “Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, hundreds of others. Scholars came thousands of miles to read the works. It was said to be the greatest collection in the world.”

  And we burned it, Brutus thought wryly to himself, not quite daring to say the words aloud. “Their work must survive in other places,” he managed.

  Julius shook his head. “Nothing like this. Nothing complete.”

  Brutus looked at him, unable to understand his mood. For his own part, he was quietly in awe of the sheer scale of the destruction. He was fascinated by it and had spent part of the morning simply watching as the fire raged. He cared nothing for the stunned faces of the crowds.

  “There’s nothing more you can do here,” he said.

  With a grimace, Julius nodded and walked away through the silent throng that had come to see the devastation. They were eerily silent and it was strange for the men responsible to pass through them, unrecognized.

  The tomb of Alexander was a temple of white stone pillars in the center of the city, dedicated to the founding god. The sight of stern Roman legionaries kept the curious public away as Julius stood on the threshold. He found his heart racing as he looked up at the coffin of glass and gold. It was raised above head height, with white steps on all sides for worshippers to ascend. Even from the edges, Julius could see the figure resting within it. Julius swallowed spit, uncomfortably. As a boy he had drawn the tomb from a Greek tutor’s description. He had kissed
Servilia at the foot of Alexander’s statue in Spain. He had read accounts of every battle and idolized the man.

  He climbed the steps to the stone plinth, breathing shallowly of the incense that hung in the air. It seemed appropriate there, in surroundings of cool death without decay. Julius placed his hands on the glass, marveling at the artisan’s skill that had produced the panes and the bronze web to hold them. When he was ready, he looked down and held his breath.

  Alexander’s skin and armor had been layered in gold leaf. As Julius watched, clouds moved above and sunlight poured in from an opening. Only Julius’s shadow remained dark and he wondered in awe at the glory of it.

  “My image is on you, Alexander,” he whispered, committing every aspect of the moment to memory. The eyes were sunken and the nose little more than a hole, but Julius could see the bones and gold flesh like stone, and guess at how the Greek must have looked in life. It was not an old face.

  At first he had thought it wrong to have Alexander treated as one of the gods of Egypt. There, however, in that temple, it seemed an appropriate honor. Julius glanced around him, but the entrances were blocked by the solid backs of his soldiers. He was alone.

  “I wonder what you would say to me,” he murmured in Greek. “I wonder whether you would approve of a brash Roman standing in your city.”

  He thought of Alexander’s children and the fact that none of them had survived to adulthood. The Greek king’s firstborn son had been strangled at fourteen. Julius shook his head, looking into the distances of mortality. It was impossible not to contemplate his own death in such a place. Would another man stand over him three hundred years after he was dead? Better to be ashes. Without sons, everything he had achieved would slip away. His daughter could not command the respect of the Senate and, like Alexander’s, her son might never be allowed to survive. Julius frowned in irritation. He had named Octavian as his heir, but he could not be certain the younger man had the skill to navigate the treacheries of Rome. In truth, he could not believe anyone else had the gift to build on his achievement. He had come so far, but unless he lived to begin a male line, it would not be enough.

  In the distance, he could hear the din of the city. In the silence of the temple, his age bore down heavily on him.

  Ptolemy’s body lay in state in a room lined with gold. Images of Horus and Osiris were everywhere as he began the death path. His cold flesh had been washed and purified and then his left side had been split open and his organs removed. There was no judgment waiting for royalty. When the rituals ended, Ptolemy would take his place with the gods, as an equal.

  When Julius was brought to see the boy king, he found the air heavy and hot. Curls of sweet smoke lifted lazily from the red hearts of enormous braziers. Ptolemy’s body had been packed with salt natron to dry the flesh, and the bitter tang mingled with the fumes made Julius dizzy. Alexander’s tomb had been cold in comparison, but better suited to the realities of death.

  Cleopatra knelt before the body of her brother and prayed. Julius stood watching, knowing he could not bring himself to honor an enemy who had caused the death of some of his most loyal men. The boy’s eyes were sewn shut and his skin gleamed with sticky oils. Julius wanted to gag at the sight of the four jars around him, knowing what they contained. He could not understand the process, or the reverence that Cleopatra displayed. She too had been threatened by her brother’s army, but she honored him in death with rituals that would last almost two months before he was finally interred in his tomb.

  In a rhythmic chant, Cleopatra prayed aloud in the language of her people, and Julius saw her eyes were clear and calm. He had not seen her weep since the day Ptolemy died and he knew he still could not understand her. Her army had returned from Syria to take their places around the royal palace, and there had already been incidents between the Romans and the desert-hardened warriors. Julius had been forced to have three of his men whipped for starting a drunken fracas in the city, leaving two men dead in their wake. Two more awaited punishment for using loaded dice with Cleopatra’s soldiers, relieving them of their weapons as well as all the silver in their pouches.

  The waiting chafed on him, as the death rites wound through to their conclusion. Julius had thought the boy would be quickly in the ground, knowing what the summer’s heat could do, even to royal flesh. Instead, the days crept by with narcotic slowness and he was growing as restless as his men.

  Octavian had made his feelings clear. He wanted to return to Rome and to the rewards they had all earned. Julius too could feel the city beckoning him over sea and land. He wanted to ride under the gates and into the forum once more. He had achieved every dream he had ever had as a boy. His enemies were dust and ashes, but still he waited.

  He watched as Cleopatra began a new ritual, lighting clay pots of incense from a taper. Death was too close to life, in Alexandria. The people seemed to prepare for it all their lives and lived with the certainty of another existence. It made them fatalistic, but with a confidence that was as alien in its way as anything he had seen. Julius could not share it.

  Cleopatra rose and bowed her head to the shrunken figure of Ptolemy. She took two steps backwards and knelt once more before rising.

  “You are a patient man, Julius. I understand your people move faster than we over such things.”

  “There is a dignity to death here,” he replied, searching for the right words.

  She raised an eyebrow, suddenly amused. “And a tactful man,” she said. “Will you walk through the gardens with me? The smoke is like a drug after so long and I want to breathe.”

  Relieved, Julius took her arm and they made their way out into the sun. She did not seem to notice as slaves prostrated themselves as she passed, not daring to look on the queen who mourned her brother.

  The warm air outside helped to clear Julius’s thoughts and he took deep breaths of it, feeling his spirits rise. Seeing the body of the boy king had been disquieting. He felt as if a weight had lifted as he breathed the scent of living gardens. Even that pleasure was tainted as he remembered running through the same paths and arbors to capture Ptolemy in his bed. It had seemed an adventure then, without consequence. The results of it lay in the king’s tomb, and in ashes on the docks.

  “Your men have told me a great deal about you,” Cleopatra said.

  Julius shot a sharp glance at her.

  “You have been blessed to survive the battles they described,” she continued.

  Julius did not reply, instead pausing on a path of glassy stone to touch a red bloom leaning out from green leaves.

  “They say you are a god of war, did you know that?” she said.

  “I’ve heard it said,” Julius replied uncomfortably. “They boast on my behalf.”

  “Then you did not defeat a million men in Gaul?”

  Julius looked at her as she reached out to the same flower and caressed its petals. “I did, though it took ten years of my life,” he replied.

  She used her nails to nip through the stalk, grazing the flower over her lips as she breathed its scent. Again, he wondered how Rome would react if he brought her there. The citizens would probably adore Cleopatra, but the Senate would reject her claims to divinity. Rome had enough gods. They would not dare to object to a foreign mistress, but taking her as a wife would raise hackles right across the great houses. In addition, he was not sure if she would even want to come back with him.

  “You pardoned your general, Brutus, when he had betrayed you,” she said, walking on. “That is a strange act for a ruler of men. Yet they still respect you. More, they revere you, did you know it? They would follow you anywhere and not because of your birth, but because of who you are.”

  Julius tapped the fingers of one hand on the wrist of the other behind his back, unsure how to respond. “Whoever you have been speaking to has let his mouth run away with him,” he said after a pause.

  She laughed, tossing the flower onto the path behind them. “You are a strange man, Julius. I have seen you with
them, remember? You can be as arrogant as a king, as arrogant as I am myself. We are well suited to one another, though I think you would not like the slow pace of existence here. My country has seen five thousand years of life and death. We have grown old and tired under this sun and your men are young in comparison. They have the energy of youth and think nothing of running through lands like a summer storm. It is a frightening thing to see, in comparison to my sleepy Alexandria, yet I love it.”

  She turned to face him, her nearness intoxicating. Without thinking, he reached out and held her by her slim waist.

  “My advisers warn me daily that you are too dangerous to remain in Egypt,” she said. “They see the lust and the strength and nothing else in your men. They remind me that you burned my beautiful library and your soldiers laughed and played dice in the ashes.”

  “They are fighting men,” Julius replied. “You cannot expect—”

  Her laughter silenced him and a slow blush appeared on his cheeks and neck.

  “You are so quick to defend them!” she said. She reached up and kissed the underside of his jaw and laid her head against his chest.

  “My advisers do not rule here,” she said, “and they have no answer when I tell them you returned Cyprus to us. That was not the act of a destroyer. It gained you great good will amongst my people. They saw it as a sign that the old glories are on the rise again. They watch us and wait to see what we will accomplish together.”

  Julius did not want to spoil the mood, but he had to speak. “There will come a time when I have to return to my city,” he said. “I will wait until the funeral is finished for your brother, but I must go back.”

  She lifted her head and looked into his eyes with a troubled gaze. He could feel her distance herself from him. “This is what you want?” she said, her voice revealing nothing of her thoughts.

  Julius shook his head. “No. I want to stay here and forget the years of battle. I want you at my side.”