“See that little promontory over there beyond the Akro?”
“Yes, my love, of course I do. Soter Point.”
“Build me a one-room house on it, a room just big enough for me. No servants. I want no congress with men or women, including you.”
“Think you to emulate Timon of Athens?” she asked, horrified.
“Aye. The new Marcus Antonius is both misanthrope and misogynist, just like Timon of Athens. My one-room house will be my Timonium, and no one is to come near it. Do you hear me? No one! Not you, not Caesarion, not my children.”
“You’ll be dead of a chill before it’s finished,” she said, glad of the rain; it disguised her tears.
“All the more reason to hurry, then. Now go away, Cleopatra! Just go away and leave me alone!”
“Let me send you food and drink, please!”
“Don’t. I want nothing.”
Caesarion was waiting, so anxious for a report that he would not leave her room; she had to change out of her wet clothing behind a screen, talking to him as Charmian and Iras rubbed her icy body with rough linen towels to warm it.
“Tell me, Mama!” came his voice, over and over. The sound of his feet pacing. “What is the truth? Tell me, tell me!”
“That he has turned into Timon of Athens,” she said through the screen for the tenth time. “I am to build him a one-room house on the end of Soter Point—he intends to call it his Timonium.” She came out from behind the screen. “And no, he doesn’t want to see you or me, he doesn’t want food or wine, he won’t condone even the presence of a servant.” She was weeping again. “Oh, Caesarion, what am I to do? His soldiers know he’s back, but what will they think when he doesn’t visit them? Won’t lead them?”
He dried her eyes, put a comforting arm about her. “Hush, Mama, hush! There’s no point in crying. Was it this bad while you were away? I know he was suicidal after the retreat from Phraaspa, and I know he tried to drown himself in wine. But you haven’t told me what he was like while there was such turmoil in his command tent. Just what his friends and legates were like, which isn’t the same thing. Tell me about you and Antonius. As honestly as you can. I’m not a boy anymore in any way.”
Jerked out of her grief, she stared at him in astonishment. “Caesarion! You mean there have been women?”
He laughed. “Would you rather there had been men?”
“Men were good enough for Alexander the Great, but in that respect Romans are very strange. Your father would be glad if your lovers were women, certainly.”
“Then he has nothing to complain of. Here, sit down.” He put her into a chair and sat cross-legged at her feet. “Tell me.”
“He stuck to me through thick and thin, my son. No loyaler husband has ever lived than he. Oh, how they browbeat him! Day after day, on and on and on. Send me home to Egypt, they wouldn’t have a woman in the command tent, I was a foreigner—a thousand thousand reasons why I should not have been there with him. And I was stupid, Caesarion. Very stupid. I resisted, I refused to go home. And I browbeat him too. They would not be dominated by a woman. But Antonius championed me, he never once gave in. And at the end, when even Canidius turned against me, he still refused to send me away.”
“Was his refusal from loyalty—or love?”
“Both, I think.” Her hands went out, clasped his feverishly. “But that was not the worst of it for him, Caesarion. I—I—I didn’t love him, and he knew it. It was his greatest sorrow. I treated him like dirt! Ordered him around, humiliated him in front of legates who didn’t know him well and, being Romans, looked at him in contempt because he let me order him around—I, a woman! I made him kneel at my feet in front of them, I snapped my fingers to summon him, I snatched him out of conferences to take me on picnics. No wonder they hated me! But he never did.”
“When did you realize that you love him, Mama?”
“At Actium, in the midst of mass desertions among the client-kings and his legates, and after several minor defeats on land. The scales fell from my eyes, I can describe it no other way. I looked down at his head, and saw that he had gone grey almost overnight. Suddenly I was suffering for him and with him, as if he were I. And—the scales fell. In a moment, a breath. Yes, I realize now that my love had actually crept up more slowly, but at the time it came like a thunder-clap. Then things happened so quickly that I never did have sufficient time to show him the depth of my love.” She emitted a small, sad sound. “Now perhaps I never will have the time.”
Caesarion pulled her out of the chair and clasped her between his knees, rubbing her back as if she were a child. “He’ll come around, Mama. This will pass, you’ll have a chance to show him.”
“How did you become so wise, my son?”
“Wise? I? No, not wise. Just able to see. There are no scales over my eyes, there never were. Now go to bed, Mama—my dearest, sweetest Mama. I’ll build him his one-room house in a single day.”
Caesarion was as good as his promise; Mark Antony’s little Timonium was erected in a single day. A man whose face Antony didn’t know shouted to him, keeping his distance, that food and drink would be placed outside his door, then went away.
Hunger and thirst would come, of course, little though he felt the pangs of either when he pushed the door open and stood surveying this prison cell. For so it was. Not until he had faced his mental torments could he venture out, and when he entered, Antony had no idea how long that would take.
He could see as if illuminated by a brilliant light what was wrong, yet every step of it had to be detailed in his mind.
Poor, silly Cleopatra! Grasping at him as if at a savior, when every member of his world must surely have been able to see that Marcus Antonius could save no one. If he couldn’t save himself, what chance did he have of saving others?
Caesar—the true Caesar, not that posturing boy in Rome—had always known, of course. Why else had he passed over the one everybody assumed would be his heir? It all began there, with that rejection. His response had been predictable: he would go east to fight the Parthians, do what Caesar hadn’t lived to do. Earn immortality as Caesar’s equal.
But then the plan had foundered, mired in his own deficiencies. Somehow there had always seemed to be enough time for revels, so he had reveled. But there wasn’t time. Not with Octavian doing so well in Italia, against all odds. Octavian, always Octavian! Gazing around the unrendered walls of his Timonium, Antony saw at last why his plans had foundered. He should have ignored Octavian, continued with the Parthian campaign instead of persecuting Caesar’s heir. Oh, the wasted years! Wasted! Intrigues aimed at securing Octavian’s downfall, season upon season frittered away encouraging Sextus Pompey in his futile designs. He need not have remained in Greece to secure it; if Octavian were to win against Sextus Pompey, his own presence could not prevent that. Nor had it, in the end. Octavian had outmaneuvered him, won in spite of him. While the years went on and the Parthians grew stronger.
Mistakes, one after the other! Dellius had led him astray, Monaeses had led him astray. And Cleopatra. Yes, Cleopatra…
Why had he gone to Athens instead of staying in Syria that spring when the Parthians had invaded? Fearing Octavian more than he feared the true, the natural, enemy. Imperiling his own standing in Rome, commencing the erosion of his power base and his spirit. And now, eleven years after Philippi, he had nothing left save shame.
How could he look Canidius in the face? Caesarion? His Roman friends still living? So many dead, thanks to him! Ahenobarbus, Poplicola, Lurius…Men like Pollio and Ventidius, driven into retirement as a result of his mistakes…How could he look a man of Pollio’s stature in the face ever again?
And at that conclusion he remained for a long time, pacing up and down the packed-earth floor, remembering to eat and drink only when he reeled in exhaustion, or paused to wonder what clawed beast chewed in his belly. The shame, the shame! He, so admired and loved, had let all of them down, flogging himself on to conspire at the demise of Octavian when s
uch was neither his duty nor his best course. The shame, the shame!
Only when that unusually cold winter was finally blowing itself out did he reach a calm placid enough to think of Cleopatra.
Yet what was there to think about? Poor, foolish Cleopatra! Strutting around the command tent aping the conduct of hoary Roman marshals in the field, deeming herself their equal in military prowess just because she was footing the bill.
And all of it for Caesarion, King of Kings. Caesar in a new guise, blood of her blood. Yet how could he, Antony, oppose her, when all he wanted to do was please her? Why else had he embarked on this insane venture to conquer Rome, other than love of Cleopatra? In his mind she had replaced that Parthian campaign after his retreat from Phraaspa.
She was wrong, I was right. Crush the Parthians first, then move on Rome. That was our best alternative, but she could never see it. Oh, I love her! How mistaken we can be, when we put our objectives to the test! I gave in to her when I should not have. I let her queen it over my friends and colleagues when I should have confiscated her war chest and sent her packing to Alexandria. But I never had the strength, and that too is a shame, a humiliation. She has used me because I let her use me. Poor, silly Cleopatra! But how much the poorer and sillier does that make Marcus Antonius?
When March came in and the Alexandrian weather returned to halcyon, Antony opened the door of his Timonium.
Clean-shaven, his hair trimmed short—oh, it was so grey!—he appeared unannounced in the palace roaring for Cleopatra and her eldest son.
“Antonius, Antonius!” she cried, covering his face with kisses. “Oh, now I can live again!”
“I’m starved for you,” he whispered in her ear, then set her gently to one side to embrace an overjoyed Caesarion. “I won’t say what everyone must tell you, boy, but you make me feel young again, my arse smarting from the toe of Caesar’s boot. Now I’m grizzled and you’re grown up.”
“Not grown enough to serve as a senior legate—but then, nor are Curio and Antyllus. They’re both here in Alexandria, waiting for you to come out of your Timonian shell.”
“Curio’s son? My own eldest? Edepol, they’re men too!”
Caesarion beamed. “We’ll all meet for a splendid dinner tomorrow, not before. You and Mama need time together first.”
After the most wonderful hours of love she had ever known, Cleopatra lay along the sleeping Antony’s side, a stick insect trying to envelop a tree trunk, she thought wryly. Afire with love for him, she poured it out in words, then held nothing of herself back, drowned instead in fabulous sensations she had last felt when Caesar held her. But that was a traitorous thought, so she put it away and struggled to give Antony acts of love that would make him see how much she loved him, not Caesar.
He had told her all that he was prepared to, anxious mostly to assure her that he hadn’t binged, that his body was fit and his mind clear.
“I was waiting for the sky to fall in,” he ended, “alone, passive, utterly broken. And then at dawn this morning I awoke healed. I don’t know why, or how. I just woke up thinking that though we can’t win this war now, Cleopatra, we can give Octavianus a run for his money. You tell me that my legions here are still for me, and your own army is in camp on the Pelusiac arm of Nilus. So when Octavianus comes, we’ll be waiting.”
The perfection of the mood between them didn’t last very long; the outside world impinged and destroyed it.
Worst was the news that Canidius brought not far into March. He had traveled alone and overland from Epirus to the Hellespont, crossed into Bithynia, rode the length of Cappadocia and passed through the Amanus without being recognized. Even the last leg through Syria and Judaea had been uneventful. He too had aged—white of hair, blue eyes faded—but his loyalty to Antony hadn’t faltered, and he had come to terms with the presence of Cleopatra.
“Actium has been blown up into the most colossal sea battle ever fought,” he told a dinner table that held young Curio and Antyllus as well as Caesarion. “Many, many thousands of your Roman troops died, Antonius—did you know that? So many that a mere handful survived to be taken prisoner. You yourself, however, fought on even after the Antonia went up in flames. Then you saw the Queen deserting you for Egypt, leaped into a pinnace, and pursued her frantically, abandoning your men. You forced your way through hundreds of dying Roman soldiers, ignoring their pleas to stay, intent only on catching up to Cleopatra. When you did and she hauled you aboard her ship, you howled like an impaled dog, sat down on the deck, covered your head, and refused to move for three days. The Queen confiscated your sword and dagger, you were so out of your mind with guilt at deserting your men. Of course Rome and Italia are now absolutely convinced that you’re at best a slave to Cleopatra. Your most faithful adherents have abandoned you. Pollio, even, though he won’t fight against you.”
“Is Octavianus in Rome?” Caesarion asked, breaking the appalled silence.
“He was, but briefly. He’s setting out with more legions and fleets to join those he has waiting in Ephesus. I heard that he will have thirty legions, though no more cavalry than the seventeen thousand he has always had. It seems he’s to sail from Ephesus to Antioch, maybe even to Pelusium. The Etesian Winds won’t be blowing, but Auster has been very late of recent years.”
“When do you think he’ll arrive?” Antony asked, voice calm, demeanor unruffled.
“In Egypt, perhaps June. Word has it that he won’t cross the Nilus Delta by sea. He intends to march from Pelusium to Memphis overland, and approach Alexandria from the south.”
“Memphis? That’s peculiar,” said Caesarion.
Canidius shrugged. “All I can think, Caesarion, is that he wants Alexandria completely isolated, unable to draw upon any reinforcements. It’s sound strategy, if cautious.”
“It seems wrong to me,” Caesarion maintained. “Is Agrippa the author of this strategy?”
“I don’t think Agrippa is present. Statilius Taurus is to be Octavianus’s second-in-command, and Cornelius Gallus will advance from Cyrenaica.”
“A pincer movement,” said Curio, airing his knowledge.
Antony and Canidius concealed their smiles, Caesarion looked exasperated. Really! A pincer movement! How perceptive of Curio.
Now that Antony had regained his senses, a huge weight was lifted from Cleopatra’s shoulders, but she couldn’t summon up her old reserves of spirit and energy. The lump in her throat was still growing a little, her feet and lower legs kept puffing up, she was short of breath and had an occasional attack of confusion. All of which Hapd’efan’e blamed on the goiter, without knowing how to treat it. The best he could do was order her to lie on a bed or a couch with her feet elevated whenever the edema occurred, usually after she sat for too long at her desk.
Her vengefulness and arrogance had made intractable enemies out of the two men on her Syrian border, Herod and Malchus, and Cornelius Gallus had blocked Egypt’s west. Therefore she had to look further afield for allies. An embassage set out for the King of the Parthians, bearing many gifts and a promise of assistance when the Parthians next invaded Syria. But what could she do for Median Artavasdes? He was steadily growing in power as he inched into Parthian Media by exploiting the feuds in the Parthian court. Armenian Artavasdes, who had been brought to Alexandria to walk in Antony’s triumphal parade, was still held captive. Cleopatra executed him and sent his head to Media with ambassadors under instructions to assure the King that his little daughter, Iotape, would remain betrothed to Alexander Helios, and that Egypt relied on Media to keep the Romans at bay along the Armenian borders; to help defray the costs of this policy, she sent gold.
As time drew on and reports came in that Octavian was still coming, Cleopatra was spurred to invent wilder and wilder schemes. In April she portaged a small fleet of speedy warships across the sands from Pelusium to Heroönopolis at the head of the Sinus Arabicus. What consumed her most now was Caesarion’s safety, and she could see no possibility of that unless she sent him to the Ma
labar coast of India, or to the big pear-shaped island below it, Taprobane. Whatever happened, Caesarion must be sent somewhere to finish his growing; only as a fully mature man could he come back to conquer Octavian. But no sooner was the fleet anchored in Heroönopolis than Malchus of Nabataea descended and burned every galley to the waterline. Undeterred, she portaged another fleet to the Sinus Arabicus, but sent the ships to Berenice, far out of reach of Malchus. With them went fifty of her most trusted servants, under orders to wait in Berenice until Pharaoh Caesar arrived. Then they were to sail for India.
Since it was impossible to revive the Society of Inimitable Livers, Cleopatra hit upon the idea of founding the Society of Companions in Death. The object was much the same: to revel, drink, eat—but also to forget for a few hours at a time the fate that was rapidly descending. Though Companions in Death, reflecting its name, was never the riotous, feckless succession of celebrations Inimitable Livers had been. Hollow, forced, frenetic.
Antony was sober despite his intake of wine, moderate at most, for he preferred to spend his days with his legions, training them to peak performance. Caesarion, Curio, and Antyllus were always with him when he was in military mode, though not so keen to be Companions in Death. At their age, they refused to believe that death was possible; anybody else could die, they could not.
At the beginning of May came news from Syria that devastated Antony. On his way to Athens he had found a hundred genuine Roman gladiators stranded on Samos, and hired them to fight in the victory games he intended to celebrate after he defeated Octavian. He paid them and gave them the use of two ships, but Actium ruined his plans. On hearing of Antony’s defeat, the gladiators resolved to go to Egypt and fight for him there, soldiers of the sawdust no longer, but real soldiers. They got as far as Antioch, where Titus Didius, Octavian’s new governor, detained them. Then Messala Corvinus arrived with the first of Octavian’s legions, and ordered them crucified. A cruel and lingering death reserved for slaves and pirates, no others. It was Corvinus’s way of saying that any gladiators who fought for Mark Antony were slaves, not free men, though they were free men.