Pharaoh (16 page)

T
hey arrived quietly according to Caesar’s wishes, as quietly as a queen, a young prince, and a retinue of forty might slip
into gossip-dominated Rome. He housed them at the tranquil villa in the southeastern portion of Janiculum Hill, where the
ever-curious Kleopatra might look out upon the city without causing the tongues of its inhabitants to wag with her regal presence.
Not only did he not wish to incur needless gossip about his mistress. He did not trust his fellow Romans to welcome a son
of Caesar born into a monarchy-a son who would be king of a rich and powerful nation-with anything else but the sharp point
of a dagger. He hoped Kleopatra would content herself with the lovely view of the olive groves, spiked here and there with
cypress trees, and the rolling hills of lavish wildflowers blooming past their usual time. It was the autumn season after
all, the most beautiful time to be in Rome, when the light was so lovely it seemed to come to the city filtered through the
eyes of a gentle goddess. Even she-the queen of the queen of all cities-who presided over the magnificent Alexandria could
hardly complain.

After all, they were together. That was what she wished, for all her letters insinuated that she would like to bring her son
to the city of his father. He knew that he would encounter problems; wicked rumors would spread about the nature of her visit,
about the age difference
between them, about the plans he was making that included a foreign queen in his grandiose design. But it was all worth it
to see her face again, to hear the music of her voice even when she discussed serious matters, and to see that the paternity
of his son was not in question, for he carried many of Caesar’s features upon his little face and body.

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, knowing 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.