There was more of the father than the mother in the boy, which was how it ought to be with sons. Kleopatra had been correct; Little Caesar had a very long neck for a one-year-old child, and he carried his imperial head proudly upon it. His eyes were blue-like the first Ptolemy and almost like Alexander, or so Kleopatra thought, not realizing that both Caesar’s maternal grandmother and Venus herself carried that same shade of twilight sky in their eyes. It also appeared that he would have his father’s high brow and fairer skin, though Caesar had been so long in the sun that he no longer knew the true shade of his coloring. The look of intelligence and the already apparent pride, the boy could have inherited from either or both parents. But how thrilling it was to look upon a face so like one’s own, to recognize one’s character, one’s traits, in the early stages of a new life. In those first moments when he held the boy with the ever-disapproving Charmion looking on as if he, Caesar, had not the strength or the intelligence to hold twenty pounds of boy, the futility he had so recently been battling melted in the child’s keen stare into his father’s eyes.
He was a splendid boy, so serious and so beautiful, not at all like a child, but as if he was already acutely aware of his position. Kleopatra had selected his attendants on the basis of their intelligence and loyalty. All were under the merciless supervision of Charmion, who scoured them for the slightest hint of boredom or lack of patience or even poor use of grammar that might infect the child’s ear for language. Kleopatra was certain the boy would inherit her gift for languages, though Caesar believed that such an extraordinary facility was given directly by the gods and not passed through blood and semen like color of eye and curl of hair. He hoped that Kleopatra would not be disappointed in the ways in which the boy did not live up to her expectations, for he had seen many an ambitious mother damage her son. Sometimes, however, as with Servilia and Brutus, and with his own mother, high expectations yielded high results. No matter. He would exert his own influence over this little creature. He would show him the ways of war as only Caesar could, for the ways of the intellect Kleopatra would assign to the scholars at the Mouseion.
As requested, she had brought at least one of those studious men with her to Rome-Sosigenes-his long beard cutting a path before him as he greeted Caesar. Her retinue was as extraordinary as everything else about her. Charmion, who watched over the queen and the prince as if she were a feral cat mother and they her tender kittens, was in command of everyone. She dared to give Caesar threatening looks, as if to let him know that should he disappoint her mistress, she was not above castrating him in the middle of the night. She let it be said around the house that her life was nothing to her, that she lived entirely in the service of the queen, for whom she would happily commit any atrocity. Caesar wondered if he had ever met so imperious a personage as Kleopatra’s head lady-in-waiting, and he realized that he had not. Along with Charmion and a host of women, Kleopatra had brought her favorite astrologer; a rather boisterous philosopher fellow whom she said would entertain her guests with clever discourse; and a terribly overpainted eunuch, the Royal Hairdresser, without whose talents, she said, she would never again appear in public. Caesar shuddered to think what the Romans would make of such a creature. Better to keep him hidden. Kleopatra proudly introduced two Greek engineers with pinched faces and wrinkled brows whose ideas she thought Caesar would find enlightening. Among the servants were the queen’s scribes, her special messengers, the cosmeticians with whom she collaborated on the creation of her powders and perfumes, body servants who had undergone a special anointing ceremony to be able to touch the Royal Person, dressmakers, and a fat old man whose sole responsibility was purchasing interesting foreign stones and gems on the queens behalf. She had brought her own laundresses, for she did not want her clothing touched by the Roman fullers, who used decayed urine to remove stains. Two Greek doctors of medicine were also on board because, as Charmion said, it was impossible for Roman medicine to affect a Greek body. Oh yes, and there was a terribly arrogant Greek chef who had already insulted his kitchen help with “suggestions for the queen’s diet.” It seemed to Caesar that they were an officious bunch, jolly to parade their Greek superiority over their military betters. Following the human travelers were trunks and trunks of clothing and personal effects for both Kleopatra and the child, and even more containers of gifts she intended to present to “her new Roman friends.” Knowing she was to receive Cicero, she had brought rare and beautiful manuscripts from the Great Library, as well as a case full of books to donate to the library Caesar was building in the city.
Everyone, even Caesar’s wife-especially Caesar’s wife-was dying to meet her. He knew that Calpurnia would suffer at the sight of Kleopatra’s youth and imperial demeanor, and particularly on beholding the boy, who had the qualities of the Julians all over his long baby face. Yet her curiosity was winning the battle against her pride. She was undoubtedly spurred on by Servilia, who was pushing with all the subtlety of a battering ram for a banquet at the Janiculum house. Everyone wanted to meet the queen and form their own opinion about her. Caesar wondered if some of the men did not want to see if they might steal her away, so great was the chatter about her presence and her charms. Luckily, he was still not receiving Antony, who would certainly elicit an uncomfortable level of interest from one so passionate as his queen. That would be unseemly and problematic. But it seemed a waste of her beauty, her intriguing intelligence, and her lovely and exotic gifts not to grant his friends and associates this opportunity. Besides, he intended for her and the boy to become permanent fixtures in his life, if not in the city of Rome. The Romans might as well get used to her. They were only human; surely they, too, would fall in love and see the wisdom of Caesar in incorporating this sumptuous and exquisite being into his world. She was, in blunt terms, an asset-to Caesar, to the nation he governed, and to the empire at large. He would have to take the risk that their judgment, their vision, and, if not those two things, then their greed, would supersede their fears.
Kleopatra had not stood under the sun’s heavenly warmth in a month. It shone in the distance, she could see, and yet heavy clouds shrouded Janiculum Hill, waiting to shower her alone while all the rest of Rome might be happy under the pure blue shelter. She stood on Caesar’s terrace overlooking the Tiber River and the jumbled mess of a city that spread like a rash on the opposite bank, the city that was so near and yet so distant. It was a cramped, horrible, and noisy place compared to the luxurious sprawl of Alexandria, and she did not mind that Caesar had housed her where she could see it without having to spend her days and nights a victim of its incessant noise. The river was the color of peas, of moss, a pale stream-dirty, she was told, by those who had swum its currents. It was a malarial pool into which small Roman boys were thrown to learn how to swim and to acquaint them at a tender age how to stoically survive both fear and filth.
The red tents that housed last night’s festivities fell to the ground like dying cardinals. Slaves rolled them quickly into long tubes, anxious to finish the cleaning before the inevitable afternoon rains fell upon the cloth. The Romans were so cruel to those who served them. How many lashes would be exacted for a few drops of water on cheap wet wool? There was no song among these tall, fair-skinned laborers who she assumed were Caesar’s captives from Gaul. They spoke a language that did not number among the ten that were in Kleopatra’s repertoire. But as she listened to them, her ear began to pick out the words for “yes” and “no,” for “hurry up,” and for “bring this to me.“Their dialogue was peppered with Caesar, Caesar, Caesar. She listened carefully, trying to discern their word for “queen” so that she would know if they were talking about her.
A tiny drop of water hit the bridge of her nose. Was the sky ever truly clear in Rome? Did the gods ever unequivocally give Helios his claim over this strange town? It seemed that even through the brightest sun the sky perpetually waited to open up and flood the city with its tears. Kleopatra looked up at the dark pearly clouds hanging over her head, know
ing she would not long be able to stay outdoors today. She did not like this anticipation, this marking of time in precious open air, waiting for a wet blanket of rain to send her running inside. She was forever waiting in this place. Waiting for Caesar, waiting for the right time to act on their plans, waiting for word from home, waiting for a visit from Hammonius, her eyes and ears in town. Ever since she had met Julius Caesar, she had spent less time in action and more in anticipation. She feared that alliance with him was transforming her into an ordinary woman, one who waited for the decisions of her male master to know her own Fate. The idea made her furious, and whenever it arose, she calmed herself with the knowledge that Caesar’s masculine allies also waited upon his judgment, but without the additional benefits of proximity that she was afforded as his companion, his lover, and mother of his only son.
Kleopatra had discovered that Julius Caesar had many plans that did not include her, though she could see that she had inspired them. His stay in Alexandria and tour of Egypt left him determined to rebuild his capital in grander proportions, befitting an empire. His building projects spanned the city, with crews working into the darkness to tear down old, cramped houses, decayed temples, and filthy shops to make way for sleeker and more modern buildings. He appointed his supporter Varro to begin building a public library modeled after the Great Library of Alexandria. When his discharged soldiers flooded the city’s already overburdened housing, he got the idea to form new colonies all over Italy, giving the veterans land grants if they knew how to farm, or setting them up with shops if they were of the merchant class. Thus far, he had settled eighty thousand soldiers, and often sat awake at night wondering what he would do with the remaining thirty-five legions still armed and under his command when-gods willing!-he would no longer require their services. He ordered that one-third of the slave labor on all public works projects be replaced by free workers, and then he took those workers off the state dole, which put him in such good stead again with his conservative colleagues that Cicero ran around telling people that Caesar was “practically a Republican again.” And while he was busy overseeing all of these things, Kleopatra, who had administered the enormous bureaucracy of the Two Lands of Egypt with vigor and determination since her eighteenth birthday, waited for him to come to her and tell her of his progress.
Rome itself was a city of waiting, and this past year it had waited even longer than usual for the year to end. For Caesar, under the advice of Sosigenes, had extended the year to four hundred forty-five days, so that the new year would begin according to the correct solar timing. Caesar’s new calendar was named after himself, the Julian Calendar, and the seventh month would henceforth also bear his name. The year would now be three hundred sixty-five and one-quarter days. The compromise Sosigenes and Caesar had reached about how to accommodate that awkwardness was to add one additional day every four years.
“Is that the best you can do?” Kleopatra had asked them.
“It is far better than having the months fall every year in a different season,” Sosigenes answered defensively.
“Or having the priests dictate which day of the week it is,” Caesar snapped.
And so they officially instituted the new calendar, making Rome’s already anxious population spend an additional ninety days in a year that had been one of their most unhappy But the people of Rome were accustomed to waiting for their annual disasters-civil war, bloodshed in the streets, proscriptions from the winners, heads of the latest accused of treason hanging in the Forum, and finally, the floods. “At least in the new year, the floods will arrive in the proper season,” Caesar remarked.
Every year the Tiber rose over its banks and into the streets, forcing the city’s denizens to move their furnishings one story up, were they lucky enough to occupy two floors of a house. If not, they were ankle deep in infested waters, wading in their soggy housing until the deluge drained away. The wealthy, of course, owned homes on higher ground and were not affected. How different from the munificent, life-giving annual inundation of the Nile, welcomed, prayed for, washing the crops and blessing the people with food and prosperity. How apt, Kleopatra thought. In Rome, even the river brings dread.
The Romans made statues of beautiful gods to represent the river- mighty male and female figures in repose-and it was a miracle that the gods did not rebel against them for it. What god consented to represent such pollution? Why was the Tiber so unclear? Was it the sewage that was briskly swept from under the Roman houses and into its waters? Or perhaps it was all the bodies of criminals and unsavory characters who had been flung into its torrents in the four hundred years of the city’s existence.
Cicero had stated as much last night. “The only proper treatment for one who has broken the law is to tie him up, put him into a sack with a wild and hungry beast, and throw the screaming and remorseless bundle into the Tiber,” he had said in his sonorous voice that invited no disputation. He had attended the banquet with his seventeen-year-old bride, Publilia, having divorced his lifelong mate, Terentia, and married the teenager, who came with an enormous dowry that helped diminish his debts. Now, it was explained to Kleopatra, his beloved daughter, Tullia, had just died, leaving him bereft. The bereavement irked Publilia, who thought Cicero gloomy enough before Tullia’s death. Cicero was working frantically to raise money from other sources so that he could send the girl back to her family.
“Is that really done?” Kleopatra asked about Cicero’s preferred method of execution, not bothering to hide her horror. In Alexandria, quick-acting poison or beheading were the only means of execution; not painless, perhaps, but expeditious.
“Of course,” he said condescendingly, as if talking to a naive child. “The law is sacrosanct. No one may break it without repercussion. How are criminals punished in Egypt?”
“We do not throw them into the river that gives the land its life,” she replied. “Execution is a duty in Egypt, but never a joy.” What would the dignified, religious Egyptians think of this bestial practice? They resented their Greek monarchs as it was, the very people who had rescued them from the bitter tyranny of the Persians and brought order and prosperity to the country. They resisted Kleopatra’s relations with Rome, not apprehending that only by alliance could she save them from domination by these cruel men. What was the spiritual state of a country in which the man most revered for his political and philosophical views advocated such expressions of cruelty? Would that every embittered Egyptian ear could have been at last night’s dinner.
Caesar’s banquet to introduce Kleopatra into Roman society had come off as a success, or so the queen believed. She hoped that she had been able to observe this odd cast of characters who inhabited Caesar’s life without allowing them any indication of her opinion of them. It was a strange assembly of family, allies, lovers, and enemies. Caesar’s confidence was so great that he invited those who had taken up arms against him to his dinner table and treated them with deference. Perhaps fifty guests attended, and Kleopatra wondered if any other than herself and those in her retinue who counted themselves Caesar’s admirers could be called Caesar’s unqualified friends. Many of the guests had fought with Pompey against the dictator and had been the recipients of his famous clemency-notably Brutus and Cassius. Cicero had not fought at all, but had gone over to Pompey just the same. Not content to merely forgive, Caesar rewarded with extravagant posts those who had warred against him. Brutus had been appointed governor of Cisalpine Gaul. Cassius was given a prestigious post in the provinces, which did not satisfy him, and so he was in Rome pursuing yet more favor. And Cicero was given the commission to head the building of Caesar’s new Forum.
It would have been difficult for Caesar to distance himself from these men entirely, since they were wrapped like snakes around his pol itics, his life, and his history, the ties so twisted that the lines between friend, brother, and enemy were ineluctably blurred. Brutus, rumored to be Caesar’s son by Servilia, had recently married Porcia, daughter of Cato, Caesar’s mortal enemy, who
had spent the last decade of his life chiming away like a bell in a windstorm against Caesar’s tyranny. Cassius was married to Servilia’s daughter Junia Tertia, Brutus’s half sister. Servilia, though present with her husband, Silanus, showed no sign of resigning her post as primary female confidante in Caesar’s life, which irked Kleopatra. Servilia also lorded over Caesar’s wife, Calpurnia, a somber, ugly woman who wore plain clothing and no jewelry while Servilia was draped in golden plunder from Gaul that she proudly told everyone was a gift from Caesar. It was no surprise to Kleopatra that Calpurnia had borne Caesar no children. She had a face and demeanor that would frighten semen away, while Servilia, at fifty, had a sensuality that slipped past the lines in her face and the excess flesh that had settled around the curves of an undoubtedly once comely body.
Kleopatra wore a frozen half-smile on her face like the moon at mid-month. She was determined to be gracious, and yet it was difficult with Servilia prattling on and on about the history of her gold necklace in front of herself and Caesar’s wife. “It was the prize possession of Vercingetorix’s wife,” she said, stroking the glimmering square that hung just above her breasts. Its big red garnets stared out like a demon’s eyes. You look older when you gloat, Kleopatra wanted to say, for Servilia’s smile made crinkles around her eyes and fat mountains out of her already heavy lids. Calpurnia said nothing, but smiled with crooked weakness. Her face lacked symmetry, and Kleopatra wondered if it was because she had not the vigor to raise both sides of her mouth. She seemed sluggish, passive, a woman worn down by gossip, loneliness, and duty, the last comprising the two most prominent syllables in a Roman woman’s vocabulary. It had been explained to Kleopatra that Calpurnia was the daughter of Piso, one of Caesar’s wealthier supporters. She had been given to Caesar in marriage to solidify the friendship and so that Caesar might have full use of her dowry for his military ambitions. While Caesar traipsed about the world, Calpurnia skulked about their small townhouse in Rome, reading books, spinning cloth like a good Roman matron, and waiting for him to return. When he returned, he spent so little time with her that he might as well have been away. Thus did Hammonius gather this gossip by spending as much time as possible in the beds of rich Roman women. Kleopatra felt some sympathy for Calpurnia, imagining what her life must be, how lonely, and without the comforts of children. But Hammonius assured her that a Roman woman’s first love was duty to family, and if Calpurnia obliged her father by being a patient and silent wife to the great Julius Caesar, then she was gratified.