Pharaoh (26 page)

Antony and Kleopatra did not look at Caesar but at each other. Something passed silently between them, something that could
not be given a name, but was solid and real. Something that had everything and yet nothing at all to do with Caesar. It took
place in less than a flash of a moment, but Kleopatra felt that whatever was planted in that fleeting instant was now an indelible
part of her world. Antony knew it, too, she believed, because he was, for once, at a loss for words, holding his face in a
stiff smile. Neither of them dared look at one another again, nor did they respond to Caesar’s question. They waited for the
dictator to elaborate, but he was lost in thought over his map.

“Potential, General?” Kleopatra finally said, breaking the silence in a halting tone.

Caesar took a piece of chalk and drew lines from Italy to northern Greece to Egypt and then back again to Rome. “And it doesn’t
have to stop there, does it?”

Antony dropped his smile and looked utterly serious. “No, it does not.”

With his left hand, Caesar took the hand of Kleopatra; with his right, that of Antony. “The two of you will look glorious
flanking me in my victory parade.”

Kleopatra sat in a box seat in the Forum reserved for foreign dignitaries, squinting against the sky’s white glare. She had
left her son at the villa because Caesar worried over his safety. But she was not going to miss the drama today, not one that
had been so carefully staged by the threesome they secretly and jokingly called the New Triumvirate-Caesar, Kleopatra, and
Antony, the threefold partnership that would someday form a mammoth triangle of invincible power, its ambitious and ever-reaching
angles searing across the vast portion of the earth’s soil.

She had feared that she would not make it into the Forum. Throngs of people covered every stone of Rome’s narrow Via Sacra
in crowds so thick that the guards flanking Kleopatra’s litter bearers had to barrel through them, shouting orders to let
them through, and pushing people aside to make way. From inside the litter, Kleopatra could see nothing, but listened to the
horrible drunken curses hurled at the men as they navigated her through the streets and into the Forum. Released finally from
the vehicle, which though lavishly padded seemed to her as an early tomb, she could see that even more people were cramped
into the Forum-men of every rank and class from senator to beggar, militia protecting the former while the latter groped the
unprotected for coins. Children perched atop their fathers’ shoulders to get a better view, and young women dressed in white
were pushed forward to the front of the crowd so that they might participate in the festival. A strange energy hovered over
the Forum, too restless and unruly for a religious celebration. She had felt that energy before in her own city, when she
was trapped outside the palace gates while a mob of disgruntled citizens pelted her father’s quarters with flaming arrows
and fiery threats. Though there was no sign of trouble, the feeling that hung in the ether was unmistakable.

The fourteenth of February by the new calendar marked the Feast of the Lupercalia. Kleopatra inquired about the origins of
the ritual, but no Roman seemed entirely certain. It was an ancient rite, said to have begun many hundreds of years ago to
honor the sacred She-wolf who suckled the city’s founders, Romulus and Remus, after their father had sent the twin infants
to the riverbank to be carried away by the floods and die. Others said the ceremony preceded even those days and was in honor
of Inuus, the name the ancient Romans gave to the god Pan, who made the land and the beasts and humans upon it fertile.

Julius Caesar presided over the crowd, sitting on his golden throne, draped in a resplendent purple toga, the color of victory.
He sat high on the new Rostra that he had recently built, looking over the assembly. Antony had overseen the construction
of the Rostra, and for that, Caesar had his name inscribed on the platform, crediting him for his work. Caesar leaned forward
to talk to those who approached him, one arm resting along his knee while he huddled close in intimate conversation with whomever
wished to get a word with him.

“Why does he make himself so vulnerable with rumors of plots against him swarming the city like flies?” Hammonius asked the
queen. “A powerful man must be ever cautious. A man feared as much as he must respect his opposition.”

“He is like a sixteen-year-old boy impressed with his new virility. He thinks himself invincible!” Kleopatra whispered into
the burly Greek’s ear.

“Old men return to the foolishness of youth,” Hammonius said. “I see the tendency in myself, wise as I am in these late years.”

“You are not old. I will not allow you to say it.”

He laughed. “I am older than I am wise, Your Majesty.”

Kleopatra laughed with her Kinsman, but it was a hollow laugh, one that she felt only in her mouth. Caesar, while promising
her the world, was daily giving her new causes for concern and doubt. She did not know if she doubted his loyalty to her or
his very sanity. She only knew that she must obey the warning chills that shot through her when she heard of his recent actions.
Someone-it was not known who-had placed monarch’s crowns on Caesar’s statues on the new Rostra, and the Tribunes of the People
had ordered them removed. The next day, those same tribunes arrested a group of ruffians who were protesting the removal of
the crowns by gathering in front of the statues and chanting the word “king.” Caesar was so annoyed by the citizens’ arrests
that he informed the tribunes that they were henceforth removed from both office and senate. But the very next day, an even
larger mob gathered in the Forum to protest their removal.

“They simply do not know what they want,” Caesar had sighed. “And so I must do what I want.”

“Yes, do as you wish, Caesar, but protect yourself against those who disagree!” she had said. “The history of Rome is drenched
in blood.”

Kleopatra had told him of Servilia’s warning, but Caesar said that
women were always worried over such things, and that is why, Amazons excepted, they would never be allowed to fight in wars.
Calpurnia, too, was always after him these days to watch his back, poor old dear. “I believe it is you three women who are
in conspiracy against me,” Caesar said, “and not those few ingrate senators who always need something about which to complain.”

An astrologer had taken the trouble to warn him that he was surrounded by those planning evil against him, but Caesar dismissed
him. “They shall have to march to Parthia to commit it,” he laughed, “and fight legions of my men before they might reach
me.”

To make matters worse, he had recently dismissed the elite Spanish guard recruited in his last war and who attended to him
personally, because he did not like to hear their footsteps trailing him. “It interferes with the thinking process,” he had
said.

“You are pushing Fortune too far,” Kleopatra had told him.

“That is an earned privilege,” he had answered.

Now he wore a slack smile that seldom left his face as he talked to those Romans who approached the throne. Throne! The Roman
people despised the very word and its connotations, and yet the senators had given this privilege to Caesar for all the city
to see. Whenever he was before a large assembly nowadays, he was seated like a king upon the gilded chair, raised above all.
The same image that inspired awe in Kleopatra’s own subjects-that of an illustrious being given power and position above all
other earthly creatures by Divine Sanction-inspired a palpable unease in Caesar’s countrymen. The dictator and his throne
were a busy topic of conversation around the city. It struck Kleopatra that this was part of his enemies’ plan; they baited
Caesar with the trappings of monarchy and made it appear that he was usurping the powers of his own volition. Hopefully, the
drama that was about to unfold would help delineate the wishes of the majority of the people. She wished that she had thought
to station spies throughout the crowd today to hear what whispers slid in and out of Roman mouths.

The bright, sharp sound of a trumpet interrupted her worries, and Caesar raised his right hand to begin the ceremony. Three
dozen priests of the Brotherhood of the Wolf marched into the Forum, two of them carrying a big white goat whose legs were
bound to a stick. The men wore only goatskin loincloths, and had oiled and shaved their bodies so
that their skin gleamed. Kleopatra recognized a few senators among them, the highest-ranking men in Rome, who had recently
been inducted into the priesthood to pay honor to Caesar. Two of them untied the goat, whose deep throaty cries only got louder,
and the crowd began to imitate the beast, drowning out its bleating.

“Baah, baah, baah,” they yelled as if mocking the animal.

The high priest-or so Kleopatra assumed because he wore a goat’s head as a headdress-held his arms up to the crowd in a request
for quiet. As they settled, he called out in prayer: “Inuus, who makes fertile the men and women of Mighty Rome, accept our
offering and hear our prayers. Receive the honors we bestow upon you this day as you have for every year since time out of
mind. Grant us this day that every Roman man finds his gods-given masculinity, and that every Roman wife shall receive the
seed to become a mother. For the glory of the god and for the glory of Rome!”

The throng began to chant the name of the god again, its syllables making a drumbeat that reverberated through the Forum.
One priest held the goat by its rear legs and the other slit its throat, letting the animal’s blood drain into a silver bowl
at Caesar’s feet. Though he was several feet above them, Caesar had to draw his long legs back so that his toga was not splattered.
The chanting broke into screams so loud that Kleopatra wondered if a riot was breaking out. Her heart quickened. Caesar was
alone on his throne, virtually unprotected as always. Her first thought was to jump from the bleachers and throw her body
upon his. But Caesar was smiling and did not seem threatened at all. She grabbed Hammonius’s arm, and he patted her hand and
pointed to the north end of the Forum.

Two lines of men in loincloths came charging up the Via Sacra, running into the Forum shouting the name of the god and carrying
goat-hide whips that they flailed above their heads. They must have searched out the most virile among them for the ceremony,
for they were mostly as young and taut as Olympians, but without the dignity of those athletes. They seemed to Kleopatra to
be drunk, hooting and screaming at any women they could reach and striking them with the whips. The women did not shrink back,
but held out their palms, fighting one another to get flogged. Some of the men struck the women on the body, aiming for more
sensuous places than their outstretched hands, but the
women did not seem to mind. In fact, they offered themselves wholeheartedly to the whip-not just common women but the most
dignified in all of Rome. Kleopatra recognized Porcia and her sister Junia Terentia in the front of the crowd, their white
palms outstretched, their chests raised high, laughing as they received their blows.

“What does this mean?” Kleopatra asked.

“They believe the whipping makes them fertile,” Hammonius said. “Every year after the festival, there are wondrous stories
of women long past the years when conception is seemly, who find themselves with great swollen bellies. For the women already
with child, it is said that the whipping makes their deliveries go quickly and with ease.”

“It is a miracle that Calpurnia is not among them, chasing the whip,” she said. But Calpurnia remained in her seat to the
far right of Caesar’s throne, surrounded by women her age who did not participate.

One by one, after the men had performed the ritual, they passed before Caesar and hailed him, and he raised his increasingly
regal hand and hailed them back.

The only runner who did not carry a whip was the eldest, Antony. He was heavier than the others, fuller in chest and thigh,
meaty even. The young ones had the finer musculature of boys turning into men, whereas Antony had already accomplished that
feat and was a keen specimen of the sex, or so Kleopatra thought as her eyes followed him. In his hands was a white crown
covered in laurel leaves, the diadem of a monarch. He held it high above his head for all to see, showing it to the crowd
as if he were trying to sell it. Then he knelt before Caesar, bowed his head dramatically, and offered him the crown.

Suddenly, there was immense silence, as quiet in its magnitude as the noise that had come before it. Kleopatra held her breath.
This was the test that they had so carefully planned. Caesar, before every important personage in Rome and many who were not
so crucial, would reject the crown. If the majority protested and encouraged him, he would accept it-publicly for all to see,
not quietly and as a result of some conspiracy that his opponents could criticize and challenge.

Kleopatra had supported this plan. “If Rome is a Republic, and if the overwhelming majority of the Republic wishes you to
be king, then you must accept their wishes.”