Pharaoh (42 page)

Caesarion went away from the encounter full of confidence. Just like any one of Antony’s men, Kleopatra thought. No one was
exempt from Antony’s charm, no one left his presence less than he was when he entered it. It was a gift. Just as Caesar’s
gift was to inspire awe for himself, Antony’s was to inspire confidence in others. Kleopatra admired both talents, but remained
uncertain as to which was of greater use to her cause.

When Kleopatra arrived with supplies in the village of Leuce Come, Antony put his head in her lap and sobbed like a baby.
She was disturbed at his despondency. Here was the man in whom she had placed her life and her future, weeping over the thousands
of men lost, either from the menacing Parthian arrows or from the treacherous snow that plagued them in Armenia. Most of the
men were from warmer climates, he said, and had never faced such conditions. Not only that, they had been betrayed by Monaeses,
who changed his allegiance and turned on the baggage train full of siege equipment when Antony and the majority of his legions
took a swifter road to Phraaspa. When they arrived, the city had been fortified, and the siege
equipment needed to take it was destroyed. They tried to build their own fortifications with the timber and rocks in the area,
but it wasn’t enough. They failed to take Phraaspa, so they turned back, finding themselves confronted by snowstorms in the
mountains, Parthian archers, and a scarcity of food.

Antony wept now at his own bad judgment. “Their deaths are on my head. If only I had made the decision to set out earlier,
when victory might have been taken before winter set in.”

“But you did not know that this year the storms would be worse than in decades,” Kleopatra offered. “There is no way to predict
such a thing. And you had to wait for Canidius to negotiate with Media and to secure the regions for the march. You were correct
in your strategy, Imperator. One does not just go sprinting off to war!”

Antony was not appeased. If only he had not made the decision to leave the heavy baggage behind, so sparsely guarded.

“But you had no choice, Imperator,” she said. “You couldn’t very well slow down the entire army with the baggage, especially
when you were trying to beat the weather.”

“Perhaps,” he said. “But I made the treaty with Monaeses. I was convinced of his loyalty, if only because it served his interests.”

To this she had little consolation to give. It was true that no one could be counted on for unswerving loyalty. Betrayal had
orchestrated its wickedness through her own family’s schemes for control of Egypt. Why would a barbarian king behave differently?

“Caesar made such mistakes,” she told him. “How many alliances had he made with the chiefs in Gaul, only to have them turn
against him as soon as his back was to their village?”

Still Antony blamed himself.

“As I blame myself when the river doesn’t rise and the crops don’t grow and there is hunger and suffering among my people,”
she said. “But this is nothing from which you won’t recover.”

She tried to cheer him with a report of Philip his son, who was born in his own image, but Antony only replied that he was
glad the baby was just an infant and could not comprehend the disgrace his father had brought upon him.

“I have had a lengthy conversation with Canidius Crassus, who claims that your leadership was an inspiration at every turn;
that you
made the most of impossible conditions and turns of fortune, and that had you been less a leader, every man would have fallen
either to the enemy, to starvation, or turned loyalties to avoid those things.”

“Then I should have Canidius flogged for his lies.”

But after he had cried enough and chastised himself enough and paced and moaned enough and hit the wall enough times with
his fist, he changed moods and began to talk of future victories. He was so unlike Caesar, so unlike any of the Romans Kleopatra
had known. His emotions ran high, as high as a Greek’s, but as he let his temper loose, he also seemed to dispense with his
grief. A few hours later they were sipping wine with Canidius and planning the next step.

“Are the men comfortable in their Syrian winter quarters?” Kleopatra asked.

“They will be when they have been presented with your generous supplies,” Canidius replied.

“Good. Then the next step shall be decided in Alexandria.”

“I cannot face your people,” Antony said. “I promised victory, and I have delivered humiliation.”

“Then we shall declare it a victory, Imperator. You are alive and well. That is victory enough for me.”

“Kleopatra, thank the gods that you answered my call for help.”

“What was I to do? You are my husband,” she said. “Whatever I have is at your disposal.”

He looked very bitter. “Would that my other partners had the same sense of honor.”

“Enough grief over Monaeses’ betrayal, Imperator!” she said. “A man like that has no sense of loyalty but does the bidding
of whoever’s pockets he can reach into. You were simply out of his range at the time.”

“I mean my wife.”

Kleopatra’s heart thumped loudly in her chest. Had someone started rumors about her meant to sabotage Antony’s trust? “What
on earth do you mean? Am I not here with everything you requested, even though our baby is barely out of my womb?”

“My darling, I apologize. I was speaking of Octavia.”

“Octavia has betrayed you?”

“Or her brother. Or the two of them. When I returned to the Syrian headquarters, I received a letter from Octavia. She was
in
Athens, on her way to meet me in Syria with two thousand troops for my war effort.”

“I see,” Kleopatra said, feeling more ill by the moment. Was she expected to receive Octavia?

“No you don’t. Octavian pledged
twenty
thousand troops. He is sending one-tenth that amount. He means to undermine me.”

“What did you do?”

“I wrote her back and told her to take her troops and go home. I’m not a fool. I see exactly what he is doing.”

“And what is that?”

“He is breaking our alliance, but he is not man enough to do it directly.”

“We knew it was coming,” Kleopatra said.

“That is not all. He has dismissed Lepidus from our coalition without consulting me. Can you imagine the audacity? He’s taken
the entire domain of North Africa away from Lepidus and claimed it for himself. I sent word immediately to Rome demanding
an apology from him and my share of the confiscated lands. Do you know how he dared to answer me? He said that he would be
delighted to share North Africa when he receives his portion of Armenia.”

“After you’ve spent a grueling year and lost so many men in the service of Rome? He is depraved.”

“Yes, a man can be dishonest to the point of depravity. He’s not even twenty-five years old, that little sniveling, pale catamite
of a creature. He feigns illness in every battle, did you know that? As soon as the fighting starts, he takes to his tent
with a sudden high fever!” Antony’s whole body shook as if he were trying to slough off his disdain. “If he didn’t have Marcus
Agrippa to lead his armies, he would be nothing.”

“Then that is the key,” Kleopatra said. “We must send an assassin after Agrippa. I wonder if Ascinius is still alive.” She
remembered the man with the grim countenance who had easily dispatched twenty of her father’s enemies one chilly morning in
Puteoli. Even at twelve years old, she had recognized that his efficiency was extraordinary.

Antony turned his anger on her. “Do you really think I would be party to the murder of a Roman general who has not declared
himself my enemy? What kind of man do you take me for? That is an action worthy of Octavian, not me.”

“It may take adapting his tactics to best him. It is not always the honorable man who triumphs. What about negotiating with
Agrippa?”

“It’s worth a try, but I don’t think we’ll be successful. Caesar himself bound Agrippa to Octavian. He gave his family money
and position in exchange for the loyalty. I believe the two are in solidarity for life.”

“Why did Caesar yoke us with this menace?” Kleopatra said quietly. “I have prayed for an answer to that question, but I have
none.”

“I thought I knew the man, Kleopatra.”

“I thought I did, too. But I was not privy to that portion of his mind.”

Antony’s face tensed, his eyes narrowing into cold slits. Kleopatra thought that he might be trying to contain the hurt he
carried at Caesar’s slight to him of naming the frail underage nephew his heir, and not the man who had fought with his very
soul at Caesar’s side, whose courage and bravery and daring had been responsible for some of his most celebrated victories.
It was something they shared that bound them together in a way that no vow of marriage could-they had both been loved by Caesar
and betrayed by him in death.

Antony broke the silence. “I have made my peace with Caesar’s memory by choosing to believe that he did not for a moment think
that Octavian would pose a threat to either of us or to your son. I cannot believe that he knew what dark possibilities lay
inside the mind of that boy.”

Either that, Kleopatra thought, or else he identified them, and decided in the end that he admired them and wanted to give
them free reign.

W
as the queen, some kind of magical Egyptian cow? How could she produce sons at will? Surely she must be a student of the dark
magic known to be a common practice in those wicked lands that lie far to the east, those places where fat potentates ensorcelled
their populations and lived lives of decadent luxury off the backs of their poor, bewitched subjects. First, she had used
her magic to give Julius Caesar a son-proof of her collaboration with dark powers. Caesar had bedded hundreds and hundreds
of women in countries all over the known world, and never had anyone claimed to have given him a son. He had produced only
one child, a girl, and then his semen had turned bad.

Octavian wondered if Caesar’s homosexual affairs had diminished the potency of his semen, and if so, would the same thing
happen to him? Octavian had only done what he had had to do, and who would have made a different choice in his position? It
was a small price to pay for what came after, and, truth be known, not unpleasant at all, especially for one’s first sexual
encounter. Caesar was an old greekling, no doubt about that, loving every art form, every mode of philosophy, every piece
of drama and comedy, and every tradition that had come out of that small country. No doubt he was thinking of Plato and the
Symposium when he took Octavian into his tent in Spain and explained the proper way for a man of stature to pass his power
along to the boy
of his choice, to groom him for his duties in society. Octavian was amazed at the proposal, but he also had been told by his
mother that he must appease Caesar
no matter what
-that disobedience or making himself unpleasant or unliked in any way was not to be. “Julius is your future,” she had said
plainly. “His patronage will raise you above all men. If he chooses to place his generosity elsewhere, you shall be on your
own, with only your talents and your abilities to take you into the future.” And then she gave him the look that made him
understand that this latter notion was not a very good idea, considering the gifts he had demonstrated thus far in his young
life. Ah well, he laughed to himself, so many have given so much more for so much less.

But Kleopatra, not content producing one bastard to challenge Octavian’s claims to power, had now given Antony not one son
but two. Antony already had two other sons, Antyllus and the younger Antonius, the big handsome motherless boys who lived
in Antony’s Roman mansion with Octavia. Why should the gods gift him with two more? Unless it was not the work of the gods
at all but of
her,
the bold queen who claimed to be Isis on earth. It was no accident that the senate had to squash the worship of Isis every
so often. The goddess made women crazy. They prayed to her to fulfill their every desire; to fulfill wishes that their husbands,
sons, and lords of government would not give them. Things that decent honest women did not need and should not want. Things
to which the sterner Roman gods would turn a deaf ear.

I am Isis. I control Fate. Destiny bows to me.
That is what those women chanted in her temples. Any right-thinking person could see how that would not do.

Octavian turned his attention to the animal games. The sun was high, beating a relentless heat into the canopy under which
he sat with Livia. At his signal, the leopards were released into the Circus. What trouble it was to procure wild animals
for these spectacles. It cost a fortune to have the beasts hunted and captured in Africa, caged, fed, and shipped all the
way to Rome. Those who could handle the creatures were rare, and often did not last. A lost hand, a mangled foot, and alas,
their careers were over. Octavian sighed. No wonder Caesar had grown weary of the details of administration. How tedious it
must have been for a man of war. Yet Caesar had stressed the importance of celebration; in fact, it was Caesar who got the
idea to take the gladiatorial games out
of the realm of ceremony for the dead and make them events of celebration and triumph. Himself, he did not care for the spectacle.
Caesar preferred spending his time with intellectuals and artists, but he assured Octavian that the games were a necessary
vice. He had been right; the people were wild for it. In some quarters, women were demanding to attend along with their husbands.
Octavian would discourage that. He did not think it proper. Women had no control over their passions if given the least opportunity
for error. If chanting to a goddess incited wildness in females, what would the spilling of so much blood make those creatures
do?

Octavian turned his thoughts from the passions of women to the passions of the one whom he considered the worst example of
her sex. Oh, she paraded herself through Antony’s territories as if she were already empress. Little did she know how effectively
Octavian had begun to interfere with her plans. After Antony’s disaster at Phraaspa, Octavian made a mournful little speech
to the senate. Poor Antony! he cried. How can we rescue our great man from this wicked woman? He is so bewitched by her that
he put off his campaign for months and months so that he might lie in her arms! He preferred to face the white death of an
Armenian winter rather than lose a moment in his lover’s bed. Then, after his setback at Phraaspa, instead of waiting through
the winter and attacking in the spring, he called for her, so anxious to once again be near her that he summoned her to Leuce
Come! He could not even wait to travel all the way back to Alexandria to see her once more. Pray for him, senators! Pray for
the expedient return of his senses!

Octavian was quite pleased with the effects of his speech. Soon all Rome was bemoaning Antony’s Fate, contrasting his adulterous
days in Kleopatra’s luxurious bed to the restraint and fidelity practiced by Octavian with his sedate but beloved Livia.

Despite Octavian’s efforts, Antony and Kleopatra quickly rebounded. Kleopatra had taken Antony back to Alexandria, nursed
his wounded ego, and rebuilt his forces. In the spring, she escorted him-rode with him as if she were his co-commander! another
Fulvia!-into Syria, and then left him to invade Armenia. Then she spent the summer strutting about the globe with an entourage,
he was told, of hundreds of Greeks and Egyptians, whom she feted lavishly along the way, giving money and jewels and granting
all sort of promises and favors to all whom she visited.
She went to all the cities established by Seleucus, reminding everyone that her ancestor, Ptolemy, was a commander and a successor
of Alexander. Apamaea, Emesa, Damascus. She left no city untouched by her presence and decadent largesse. Finally, she went
to Judaea, where she tried to bully Herod. She had stolen his most productive farmlands, and practically landlocked him. Then
she demanded-demanded!- that he appoint his brother-in-law High Priest. It seemed that Herod’s mother-in-law, Alexandra, was
a dictator in the style of Kleopatra, and the two were friends. So when one dictator proposed to the other that her son be
made high priest, it was done. Herod had secretly written to Octavian for advice in the matter, and Octavian had given a curt
response: If you have no recourse, appoint the boy to the post, and then have him killed. Fear nothing, not even the wrath
of Kleopatra. Plans are being made for her demise. And young Herod had swiftly taken Octavian’s wise advice and had the High
Priest-a boy of seventeen- mysteriously drowned shortly thereafter.

Still, Antony prevailed. Even though Octavian had been secretly negotiating with the king of Armenia to prevent Antony’s successful
invasion of that country, Antony took both Armenia and Media, imprisoned the royal Armenian family, and dragged them back
to Alexandria, where they remained his captives. From his new headquarters, Antony sent triumphant messages back to Rome.
He had claimed Media and Armenia for the empire, and Octavian was forced to hold these very games in his honor. But Antony
had made one enormous mistake. Instead of returning to Rome-and how could he, really, when he still had the vast expanse of
Parthia yet to subdue?-he staged his triumphal parade in Alexandria. When Octavian realized the gift Antony had given him,
he was elated. Oh, he would host all the games Antony wished in his honor. There would be no limit to how many wild beasts
would lose their lives today in Antony’s name. But he would also point out to Antony’s supporters in Rome that the Imperator
had celebrated his triumph not on Roman soil for the Roman people, but in Alexandria-for Kleopatra. Was that not a direct
signal of their sinister ambitions? He had mentioned this idea already to a select few, and he saw the slow outrage break
out over their faces. Kleopatra had succeeded in making Antony a traitor. Praise the gods! Antony was still a hero in the
Roman mind, a great man who could not be attacked directly. But Kleopatra was another story.

They were on some kind of deluded high, the two of them, but slowly, surely, he would bring them down. He had almost succeeded
when Antony sent Octavia marching back to Rome in disgrace. Antony had rejected her meager offer of assistance-which Octavian
had so prayed for him to do-and he had petitioned to divorce her. Octavian seized the moment, and despite his sister’s protests,
insisted that she play the part he wrote for her, the bereaved and humiliated matron.

Octavian made a great public show of demanding that Octavia leave Antony’s house, but he quickly realized that he had made
a tactical error, that he could make much more use of dragging out her humiliation. So he convinced her to publicly repudiate
his orders and insist before as many senators as he could gather that she would remain true to Antony, her lawful husband.
After all, he was the father of her two baby girls, and he had charged her with the care of his two sons. It had been a marvelous
scene.

No, Octavia had said, I will not leave those motherless boys! Octavian had to encourage her to go on; her lip quaked and her
eyes fluttered and he did not know if she was capable of finishing the performance. Then she pulled herself up to her full
height and said, My husband has a weakness for women. But I pray to the gods that he will regain his composure, leave the
bed of the queen, and return to his true Roman wife. Little tears fell from her eyes, and all the men lowered their heads
in deference to her pain. Then they began to rouse themselves against Antony, and against the wicked woman who had tempted
him away from this noble Roman girl.

Was there any more precious treasure than a sister’s love?

Many of the senators sent strong letters to Antony demanding that he break his alliance with Kleopatra, but Octavian knew
that he would not. Why should he, when she had so much of the world’s gold in her treasury; when most of the earth’s grain
came from her shores? When she was constructing a navy for Antony that could defy the fleet of Jason? Instead, Antony sent
long replies to his supporters explaining his position: The queen was one of Rome’s fiercest and most important allies, and
crucial to the eastern campaigns. He invited all of them to come to Alexandria where they might see for themselves how useful
the queen was to his enterprises. Octavian did not successfully intercept all of those letters, but enough of them so that
many of Antony’s
staunchest defenders were left without any reply from him whatsoever. Soon their
puzzlement
turned to anger. It was not a complete victory, not yet, but it was enough for the moment.

Octavian sent a tiny prayer up to Apollo, thanking him that he was made of a chillier flesh than Antony. In the early days
of their alliance, Antony had rushed to claim the territories of the east, and Octavian had allowed it. He didn’t mind if
Antony wanted to be heir to all Rome’s failed campaigns in Parthia. He knew that any victory in that savage place would also
be fraught with horror. Caesar had told him that. Sometimes Octavian wondered if Caesar hadn’t walked into his own assassination
just to avoid being killed in disgrace with Parthian arrows and having his head passed around like poor old dead Marcus Crassus.
So Octavian was pleased when Antony insisted that he resume the cause in Parthia. Octavian would wait and watch from home,
where he could control the flow of information in and out of the city, as well as the number of troops recruited on Italian
soil and sent to Antony.

Octavian realized that all eyes at the games were waiting upon him. It was time for him to signal the commencement of his
favorite part of these events, the pitting of different animals against each other. Animals that would never encounter one
another in their own environments were thrown into confusion at the strange sight of a foreign beast, and then their survival
instincts would manifest themselves with a vengeance. What went on in their animal brains? he wondered. What wondrous intuition
must they draw upon to defend themselves against the strange pursuer? It was never boring.

A crocodile was released into the Circus. The animal seemed slightly stunned at his freedom. His great claws were perfectly
still, almost as if he were already dead. The crowd was eerily silent. Lulled by the quiet, the animal began to creep across
the grassy surface into a patch of sunlight. Slowly, as if in a dream, the sun lit up his body inch by inch, turning his craggy
brown skin a shimmering gold. Finally he stood fully illuminated, looking about as if he were all set to enjoy an afternoon
in the sun. But the poor ignorant fellow had no idea of what was coming. Two trainers on horseback rode into the Circus holding
by metal chains a great lion, pale brown like a fawn but with a head larger than a bear. The beast pulled fiercely against
his leashes, his angry roar filling the arena. The crocodile did not react. The trainers gave the signal, releasing the
lion into the
center
of the Circus, and quickly rode out of the arena. For a long time, neither animal moved, and Octavian wondered if the lion
was going to lie in the sun with the crocodile and go to sleep. Then gladiators would have to come into the ring and taunt
them into action. If they wouldn’t fight each other, the men would have to incite them by throwing raw meat into the ring
for them to duel over. If that did not do the trick, the gladiators would have to come in and slay them with their tridents,
or hack them to death with axes. But a gladiator with a weapon inevitably was the victor over a beast. It was just not as
entertaining.