Pharaoh (30 page)

“Yes, Brutus. And many others. But they were scorned, not praised, when they ran through the streets shouting their news.
People threw rocks at them and chased them away. Apparently they had no plan of action. I suppose they thought they would
be thanked for their crime.” Antony smiled bitterly at the irony. He took Kleopatra’s face in his large hand, his fingers
very warm and gentle against her cold cheek. “No tears now. We will all cry later. I must go now, first to Calpurnia, and
then to the assassins.”

To console her? Kleopatra asked in a strange voice that she did not recognize as her own.

Antony smiled again. “She has control over Caesar’s private papers and a large fund that he used to pay his soldiers. Whoever
has those tools has Caesar’s power. Lepidus and I already have the loyalty of his troops.”

“What do I do? My son is at the Janiculum villa with his nurses.”

“You’ll go back to Egypt and wait to hear from us. Arrangements are already being made for your voyage home, or so I am told
by a Greek man who is at the door. He is detained by the guard until we verify his identity.”

“Hammonius?” she asked. “Is he old and fat?” Her old friend and
Kinsman come once again to help her. Was there no end to his goodness and loyalty?

“No, he is young and slim and handsome for a Greek.”

When she saw Archimedes, she saw not the lover of her womanhood, but the friend and protector of her youth. All that had passed
between them-her betrayal in the name of politics and his bitterness at the loss of her-vanished in the sight of his familiar
expression. “Cousin! Thank the gods it is you.” She moved to put her arms around him, but something in his manner stopped
her. He did not smile. She composed herself and stood still at Antony’s side.

“Cousin.” Archimedes bowed formally. The two soldiers who stood at his side fell back.

“He is your Kinsman, then?” Antony asked.

“Yes, he is my Kinsman,” she said, smiling at him. For all that I have done to break his heart and wound his pride, he is
still my faithful Kinsman. She felt tears well up again, and though she tried to check them, they ran freely down her face
for him to see.

“I do apologize,” Antony offered Archimedes. “I did seem to remember you in the king’s service, but it has been so many years
since I was in Alexandria.”

“I appreciate your precautions,” Archimedes said.

“I must go, Kleopatra,” Antony said. He embraced her, not as a man embraces a woman, but as she had seen him embrace Caesar
many times, in a kind of fraternal hug. “Our alliance is not broken by this tragedy. You will hear from me shortly.” He took
her elbows and looked at her one last time. Then he pulled her close and whispered in her ear, “The sons of Caesar shall have
their revenge.” He released her, signaled his men, and rushed away.

It was dusk in the Forum. The day’s black sky turned to the color of the sea at midnight, pink clouds hanging like rosy anvils
over the square.

Kleopatra stood with her cousin, dressed as one of his guard, wearing a short chiton, thick leather sandals, and a white cloak
bordered with a Greek pattern of gold. She had forced Lepidus’s maid to chop off her hair, and now it hung about her ears
and forehead in little
ringlets, making it exactly like Archimedes’ cut. She had lost weight during the last months of constant anxiety, and she
looked like a fifteen-year-old boy, going to honor the fallen dictator with a young uncle.

People poured into the square from all entrances, carrying gifts to lay at the body of Caesar. Soldiers came with the arms
they had used under his command. Women brought their family jewelry and the amulets that had protected their children. The
poor brought simple household items, well-worn pots and kettles that were undoubtedly the only goods they had to offer, while
servants of the wealthy carted bronze goblets and bowls, silver chalices and wine bowls, and statues of their household gods.

Hammonius had already left the city for Janiculum Hill, where he would secure Caesarion and the entourage and see them safely
to Ostia. There they would board a vessel for Alexandria that would leave in the morning. Archimedes had arranged with Antony
for a guard to wait at the port until the boat was safely at sea.

But Kleopatra had heard that the citizens of Rome were outraged at the death of Caesar, and had already begun a fire in the
Field of Mars, where, years before, they had taken the body of his daughter Julia, stolen from the house of Pompey, and cremated
her for all of Rome to behold and to honor. Groups of mourners had gathered in the Forum, making public speeches and sacrifices,
grieving, and waiting for Caesar’s body to arrive so that they could make a spectacular funeral pyre to his glory. And she-lover,
partner, ally-would not leave the city until she witnessed the spectacle and said good-bye to him along with his people.

“I thought I had ended my days of arguing with you against your unreasonable demands,” Archimedes said without the slightest
trace of emotion or humility. “Is your lust for adventure and intrigue so strong that you’ll risk leaving a motherless son?”

“Caesar would not wish me to run off like a frightened child,” she said. “There is always a way, Cousin, to be safe in the
face of danger. I need not appear in the Forum as myself.”

He smiled for the first time. “You’re still the little girl who dreamed of running away with the slave Spartacus. You never
change.”

Now flocks of people-Romans and foreigners alike-poured into the Forum, each mourning Caesar according to their own custom.
Jews in long black robes and wearing skullcaps walked slowly to the tune of
their women, who took turns crying lamentations in their strange and guttural language. Blond-haired Gauls and Britons whose
legs were wrapped in a fashion called trousers held gold breastplates to the skies as they let out short shrieks.

Roman sentinels on horseback trotted up the Via Sacra, blowing trumpets and crying, “Make way for the body of Caesar! Make
way for our leader!” The throngs parted. Led by Antony and his soldiers, a procession of magistrates carried Caesar’s body
on an ivory funeral carriage. Trailing them were musicians playing a mournful tune, wearing the very clothes Caesar had donned
in his triumphal parades. Kleopatra knew this because they had been on display in his office and he had shown them to her.
The long procession walked slowly and solemnly toward the Rostra, where they laid him down. The body was cushioned by fabrics
of purple and gold, and at the head hung the torn and bloody clothes in which the dictator had been murdered, blowing now
in the breeze, billowing as if inhabited by Caesar’s ghost. Four men carried a tall statue of Mother Venus from the temple
to preside over the funeral, just as it was whispered throughout the crowd that the statue of Pompey had presided over the
murder.

Antony climbed onto the Rostra and called for silence. He was in his senatorial robes, looking more like the solemn statesman
than the fierce warrior. He raised his arms until the crowd was quiet.

“Many of you have asked me to speak tonight, to honor our fallen leader with a eulogy.” Antony’s voice was as powerful as
his body-deep, intense, resonating until it hushed the emotional crowd. “But perhaps the greatest way that I may honor Caesar,
and that you may know how deeply he loved the citizens of Rome, is to share with you the contents of his will, read to me
today by his grief-stricken widow.

“Citizens! Who is Caesar’s heir?”

Many shouted, “You are, Marcus Antonius! We will now follow you!”

Antony laughed, shaking his head. “No, my friends, I am not Caesar’s heir. But you are! All of you. For our benevolent and
all-knowing Caesar has left every Roman citizen, rich and poor alike, three pieces of gold from his personal fortune.”

A huge cheer went up, but a woman standing near Kleopatra clutched her small son to her and began to cry. Antony called for
silence once more.

“That is not all. He has also left us his lands by the Tiber to use as public parks for our pleasure and in his memory.”

Now the mob chanted,
Caesar, Caesar, Caesar! Death to the assassins!
And people were shouting at Antony, begging him to help them kill those who had killed their leader. Even the soldiers, who
until this moment had stood at absolute attention, began to yell.
Vengeance for Caesar! Vengeance for Caesar!

Antony shook his head as if to agree with their desires, but he did not move to join the cause.

“Remember, citizens and soldiers, that Caesar was not a man of vengeance. He was a man of mercy. He had already forgiven once
many of those who raised their daggers and drew their swords upon his undefended body after they had joined with Pompey against
him in the war. Those men he might have slain, but he did not. He forgave them and he prospered them, thinking that mercy
and forgiveness would breed the same.

“But let us talk more about Caesar the man. Citizens, he fed you, did he not, with his own money that he might have used to
make his pockets all the heavier? Instead, he shared each and every victory and treasure with you. He gave you corn, oil,
wine, and money. Not just his favorites, but every man, so that every man might take a small part of Rome’s glory home with
him and feed his family.”

The Romans around Kleopatra were crying now, and she wanted to cry, too. Archimedes stood beside her, not touching her, watching
in perfect stillness the eulogy of his rival, the man who had caused him so much pain. And yet Archimedes was there, always
there, when she needed him. Before her father, he had taken the oath to protect the Royal Family, and despite what she had
done to him, he had not reneged. Kleopatra could not reach out to him, so she wrapped her arms around herself for comfort.

Antony continued: “Friends, Gaius Julius Caesar was born fifty-six years ago into a Rome that was for the most part a league
of Italian states. The Rome that he leaves us is an empire beyond the dreams and expectations of mortal men. Now Rome is everywhere,
and that is because Caesar marched across the world and gave these countries Rome’s name. And in his mercy and his wisdom,
he did not trample upon those whom he had conquered, but raised them up and made them citizens and sena
tors and statesmen. He did this in opposition to his enemies in the senate, those men who today poured their hatred into his
body. Why? Because they feared his ambition.

“Friends, Julius Caesar made the common man a king, though on this very spot, he turned down the honor himself for all of
Rome to see. And yet they did this to him. Citizens! Who are the assassins of Caesar?”

The mob chanted the names of the killers-
Brutus, Cassius, Casca, Cimber.

“Yes, we know them by name, but who are they, I ask? They are those who most benefited from Caesar’s victories, from Caesar’s
labor, from the many times Caesar put his person in jeopardy in yet another foreign land. Those are his slayers. They slew
the body that in so many ways guaranteed them life.

“Citizens, our father is dead. The man who ended our civil wars, who imposed peace upon a nation at war with itself, a man
who conquered the world in our name and for us, is dead. Caesar was our solution, and now our solution has been murdered.
Citizens! Let each of us mourn him as we would our own father, because that is what he was. Not merely the Father of His Country,
but a father to every Roman citizen.

“Young men, shed your tears, for you will not have such a father to bring you to manhood. Women of Rome, beat your breasts
in grief, for you no longer have the father to protect you. Old men! You among all are the most melancholy, because you have
seen Rome’s greatness rise through the relentless efforts of Julius Caesar. Your lives have seen so much war, the wars that
Caesar brought to conclusion. What will happen now?

“Citizens, I have met with Caesar’s assassins.”

Now the mob began to jeer and boo Antony, calling him a traitor, charging that he should have killed them and done so in the
name of Julius Caesar and all of Rome. Antony responded to the shouting with the same slow, knowing shake of his head, offering
empathy for their feelings but not agreement.

“Citizens, Caesar’s assassins, our
liberators,
are foremost among those who mourn his passing.” A rumble began at this unexpected news, and Antony once again demanded quiet.

“Why do they so mourn the man whose life they ended by their own
swords?” Antony smiled broadly, as if about to deliver the punch line of a long joke. “They mourn, citizens, because every
one of them was appointed to his post by Caesar. In killing Caesar and in calling for the repeal of his government, they have-according
to the constitution- invalidated each and every one of their own positions. If Caesar’s measures are repealed, so are the
posts he appointed.”

Antony let the irony sink into the minds of those who listened. Kleopatra could see men explaining the situation to their
sons and wives, with either sad smiles or outrage breaking out across their faces.

“Citizens, we have come to this,” Antony continued. “In order to keep their posts, Caesar’s assassins, our
liberators
-now argue to allow Caesar’s legislation to stand.” He shook his head sadly. “Strange that they did not understand the wisdom
in Caesar’s appointments
before they
murdered him.