Pharaoh (12 page)

She looked at him like a child might who has wearied of playing a game. “Why do you not annex Egypt to the Roman empire? Surely
it is not merely for the love of your mistress. Is it because of what Cato told my father? That there is not a Roman honest
enough to serve as its governor?”

How lovely it would be to tell her that he left her country independent for her sake. How magnanimous he would appear.

“Otherwise, General, I cannot figure it.”

But she would never believe it. “Anyone sent here would not only line their pockets with your treasury, but would also use
the location to gain control of all territories to the east. Such a man would have to be feared, and then subdued.”

She leaned forward so that she was perfectly in line with the eagle, her face almost as feral as that of the beast. Caesar
felt as if both of them were getting ready to lurch at him. “Then
be
that man. Do you not think it is a wise plan? Be my king, line your pockets with my treasury, and together we will subdue
the eastern territories. No one could touch us.”

He had thought of that, of course, dreamt of it, played with the idea of it over and over in his mind as he lay beside Kleopatra
at night. It was an excellent notion. Unconventional, of course, never having been done. And completely out of line with Rome’s
idea of government. That would not stop him, however. But how much easier it would be to execute if he first subdued the Parthians,
conquered those long-haired horsemen of the bow who had troubled Rome for so many generations. Rome would never accept a king,
and Caesar would never accept being a king in Rome. But Rome was not Egypt. In Parthia, Judaea, Egypt, Media, all the territories
he intended to have as his own, a monarchy would be necessary.

“And we will pass our kingdom to our son.”

“It’s not impossible.”

She smiled sweetly at him. “Of course it’s not impossible. Whatever is our combined wills cannot fail.”

He thought she would come to him and sit on his lap as he liked her to do. She was looking a little fatter these days, just
around the middle. Pregnancy softened the taut lines of her body, rounding her in very pleasing ways. Instead of approaching
him, she said, “So you will pay them?”

“Pay whom?”

“Your legions. Is that not the issue at hand?”

“Yes, yes, I shall pay them if you will feed them,” he replied, shaking off his dreamy affection. It was the first time a
human being had disarmed him in so many years. “Your granaries are full these days. It’s the least you can do.”

“Agreed.”

“And when Caesar returns in one year with his legions, the granaries will be open to us, I trust?”

“Agreed. But at a price. Only the gods know how many ravenous men it will take to defeat Parthia.”

“A very low price. Less than the exporters pay.”

“Yes. Egypt’s cost. I just don’t want to lose money. Also, I want Cyprus. Just because Arsinoe will not be here to govern
it does not mean it shouldn’t be returned to the empire of my ancestors. You and Clodius conspired to steal it from my uncle
just so that you might get Cato out of your hair. You caused my uncle’s death. I wish compensation for that, and for the lost
revenue the island used to bring us.”

“Now, Kleopatra, I won’t be paying any retroactive revenues.”

“But you will send the Roman governor home?”

“Yes, yes.” What did he care? When his plan was made manifest, it would all be his anyway. His, hers, the boy’s. The elements
were moving together in Caesar’s mind like pieces of a puzzle. A few were yet missing, but the picture had begun to take shape.

“Now the matter of the boy. The matter of the kingdom. The matter of our Fates. Yours, mine, his. What is your hesitancy?”

“You want everything too quickly, Kleopatra. It is a disease of youth. I spent ten years subduing the tribes of Gaul. Oh,
I would have preferred to have done the job in less time. But it took ten years.”

“I cannot wait ten years to know the Fate of my son. And at your age, you may not have ten years to decide it.”

“As long as we are being blunt, let me say that you will have the wrath of Rome against you if you push the issue. Calm yourself
and trust me. Surely you see that Egyptian sentiment toward Rome is not exactly high. You do not wish to turn your people
against your son.”

“No, I do not. But this brings me to my final request. I agree to put off the matter of our son’s legitimacy in Rome for one
year. But there is something you must do for me.”

He knew that she knew what he was thinking-that there was precious little that Caesar must do for anyone. But he wished to
indulge her as he would a spoiled child, as he would have done Julia and her son if only they had survived. Why should he
not take this opportunity to pamper her and the unborn son? He had worked hard. There were those who said he only did as he
wished for his own gratification and reward. That may have been true. And yet he asked so little of others outside the loyalty
and labor of his soldiers. Why should he not grant the request of this delightful creature, particularly if it may help along
the status of his heir? He knew that whatever Kleopatra asked of him henceforth was not for herself but for the seed of the
man that grew inside her, for that was what happened to extraordinary women once they were with child. Never again did they
think as the singular creatures they once were. Inevitably a large portion of their own ambitions were poured into their sons.
Kleopatra would be no exception.

She interrupted him with the melody of her voice. “Oh just say yes to me, my darling. I wish to give you an experience you
shall never forget.”

Caesar tossed a chunk of meat into the crocodile’s gaping snout and the animal snapped down on it with such fervor that the
dictator laughed. Kleopatra watched the years seem to melt from his face as he smiled. The afternoon sun fell over the temple,
turning its sandstone pillars a soft gold and changing Caesar’s craggy skin into a youth’s complexion. The High Priest himself
had blessed the meat from the sacrifice to Sobek, the crocodile-god, and watched, too, as Caesar fed the six leathery beasts
in the sacred pond.

“I do believe they are divine,” Caesar said to Kleopatra. “Look at that fellow in the middle, the one who fights his mates
for the food. He must be fourteen feet long. I should appoint him my captain.”

Kleopatra translated this to the priest, who replied that the animal was indeed regarded as special. “Just as Great Caesar
inspires fear in the hearts of his fellow men, so does his favorite crocodile subjugate the others of his species.”

Kleopatra saw the dictator try to suppress his ironic smile as he accepted the solicitous offering.

He seemed younger, lighter than he had been in the city. He was no longer at war, of course, but Kleopatra thought the change
was greater than a relaxation from that anxiety. He was neither so cynical nor so all-knowing. He seemed genuinely delighted
with the Egyptian countryside, with the exotic beauty of the terrain, with what must seem to him their arcane customs, and
especially with the evidence of corruption. He had laughed out loud when Kleopatra explained to him the purpose of the hidden
tunnels in the temple. In earlier times, the priests would speak through the walls to the worshippers, pretending to be the
voice of the god. They would order specific and lavish offerings of food, which they would consume that evening for dinner.

“I’m pleased that my country entrances one who has seen so much of the world,” Kleopatra told him.

“That is true,” he answered. “But I have never seen anything like Egypt.”

The way Kleopatra saw it-the reason she had undertaken the trip-was that the message had to be sent, and sent directly, not
by third parties. The people of Egypt must be shown the alliance with the great
man, and they must be given an inkling of what that alliance might mean to them and to their country. She would not send proclamations
or pamphlets or make new coins. She would go to them as she had done in the past and present herself and her intentions. Twice
before this method had proved successful. She would not start in Alexandria, where animosity toward both her and Caesar was
high. She would begin with the rest of the country and then use the vast amount of goodwill she collected to influence the
proud Graeco-Egyptians in the city. Soon, she was certain, she would have their support as well. Like the current of the Nile
that flowed from south to north, so the goodwill she amassed in southern Egypt would float upward. She was sure she would
not fail.

The barge was three hundred feet long and was followed by a flotilla of ships carrying Caesar’s legions. Though they had won
the war, and though Kleopatra had the widespread support of the native people in the lands beyond the Greek city of Alexandria,
they had no idea whether to anticipate trouble. Besides, Kleopatra did not think it a bad idea to demonstrate the might of
Rome united with the sumptuous wealth and charisma of the queen. She insisted that half the ships fly the Roman flag and the
other half the Egyptian, solidifying the alliance. When they came to a settlement or a city, Caesar and Kleopatra would stand
on the front deck, surrounded by statues of Aphrodite and Apollo, in full view of the spectators. Sometimes they displayed
themselves from the upper deck, which housed an arbored garden and a huge alabaster statue of Aphrodite with the infant Eros
and another of Isis suckling Horus. And in the event that the populace still did not understand Kleopatra’s condition, they
were left with the image of baby Horus sitting on a lotus blossom right above the vessel’s rudder as the barge floated away.

In a small ceremony at the ancient city of Thebes, Caesar removed the laurel wreath he wore at all ceremonies and replaced
it with a garland of flowers in the tradition of the Ptolemaic kings. To the Egyptians, it signaled precisely what Kleopatra
said it would-that Caesar demonstrated respect for the customs of their country and would be delighted to be the male consort
of their queen, resplendent in the seventh month of her pregnancy.

In the mornings, the rulers took their meals privately in their chamber, sheltered from the heat. Languorously they ate dates,
mangoes,
bananas, and drank chilled goat’s milk, reciting poetry to one another, and, when the mood took hold, lazily rolled together
and made love. In the evenings they supped in the dining room with their guests-Caesar’s highest-ranking men, Greek and Egyptian
dignitaries from the cities they visited, and clever Alexandrians Kleopatra had invited along for Caesar’s amusement. Of these,
he preferred the conversation of Sosigenes the astronomer. Long after the queen took to bed, Caesar would stay up with the
bearded scientist staring into the night sky. In the mornings, he would awaken full of their conversation about the placement
of the stars, the length of days, weeks, months, and the calendar year. Sosigenes was working on a more precise yearly calendar,
one that did not have to be adjusted to accommodate the days left over at the year’s end, and Caesar had decided to put more
funding to the cause.

“Imagine the convenience of a calendar that actually matched the days of the year,” he said, his left elbow propped on the
cool white sheets of their bed as Kleopatra fed him a slice of papaya with her fingers. She thought of his own daughter, Julia,
and how she used to feed Pompey this way, and how odious it had seemed to the adolescent Kleopatra before womanly passions
had taken hold of her. She regretted her harsh judgment of Caesar’s daughter, who had probably been as much in love with the
much older Pompey as Kleopatra was with Caesar.

Caesar took in the terrain along the Nile, never tiring of its diversity. Rows of new crops freshly planted revealed the rich
black soil on one side of the river; on the other side, so much sand. Flat huts of sunbaked clay and straw interrupted the
monotony of green. Sugarcane crops and other willowy foliage covered the banks, along with tall bamboo shoots and communities
of palm trees short and tall. On the fertile land, a small flock grazed lazily, ignoring the late afternoon sun. Midday, a
strong arid wind whipped up the heat, slapping it against the skin like punishment, but Caesar didn’t mind. “So preferable
to the cold,” he said. “Once you’ve spent a winter buried in the Alpine snow foraging for food, it’s hard to complain over
heat.”

From Luxor they had sailed to Edfu, known as the killing place, where Horus-falcon-god, hawk-god, son of Osiris the god of
gods- slew Seth to avenge the murder of his father. There, he cut his wicked uncle into sixteen small pieces. “Merciless,”
was Caesar’s comment.

They had stopped at the temple of Horus at Edfu, where Kleopatra was particularly friendly with the priests, and where she
insisted on purchasing a huge vat of the famous and delicate jasmine perfume made by the temple workers as a gift for Caesar’s
wife. Caesar liked the black granite statue of Horus, with one eye the sun and the other the moon. “God always sleeps with
one eye open,” said a priest, and Caesar replied that he understood why; that he, too, had developed the same habit out of
necessity. At the end of their visit, the High Priest stood on the temple platform where he traditionally made his predictions.
Silver robes shimmering in the setting sun, he announced that the child born to the Roman general and the queen of Egypt would
be a great man, a man who united the old and the sacred-Egypt-with the new and the mighty-Rome. And then he reminded his audience
that sacred might was greater than military might-“In the event that I am ignorant of that fact,” Caesar whispered to the
queen. The priest ended with a prayer to the god for peace among nations “so that the boots of foreign soldiers do not mar
the crops gifted to the people of Egypt by the Divinity,” and Caesar almost laughed out loud.