Queen of Kings (2 page)

Now he was the only one left who knew the truth. The only one, save her. Though it was sacrilege, though it was foolhardy to set down the words, he had to give warning to the world to come. To leave this life without doing so would be an irredeemable act, and his soul was already weighted with sins. They'd know more in the future. They'd learn. Perhaps they would learn enough to save themselves from the monster that Nicolaus, in his idiotic youth, had helped release into the world.

He looked into the sky above Avernus for a moment. The sun hung at the horizon, a fiery orb, and above it, the gathering clouds glowed copper and violet. Lightning slashed through one of them. The moon rose, yellow and ominous, even as the sun fell, struggling against the night and thunder.

Everything was at stake.

The people of the future would not know what was coming for them, not unless Nicolaus told this story. They'd have no defense. He thought for a moment of that world, the world he'd never see. It was a future so distant that almost nothing would remain of the things he had loved. Augustus had told him of his visions: buildings crumbling, cities disappearing beneath the waves, wars and bloodshed. Strange and shining machines, and untongued masses, all speaking the languages of barbarians.

The emperor had seen the future, and she was in it.

Fatale monstrum
, Nicolaus repeated silently. Her name and her destiny. He would be gone by the time it came to pass, and yet he had a part still to play.

The scholar lit his lamp and picked up the stylus and tablet. He drew in a deep breath. This would be his last work. He must get it right.

—Plutarch, translation by Sir Thomas North
Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans

T
he boy sprinted down the cobbled streets, leaping and dodging, trying to make up for the delay the chaos in the city had caused him. Alexandria was filled with the bruised and bloodied soldiers of Mark Antony's infantry, and the boy flung himself between their bodies, here slipping alongside the flat of a sword, here ducking to avoid a flailing fist. This was his own city, and he knew the secret pathways to his destination. He flung open a street-side door and bolted through the household within, hoisting himself out a window in the back and shouting his apologies to the old mother he'd disturbed. He somersaulted over the sill, landing on his feet and bouncing as he resumed his run, imagining himself at the head of a rushing army, a raider storming the gates of some exotic city.

No one pursued the boy, but he was employed today, a salaried messenger, and the man who hired him had emphasized that speed was necessary.

His heart swelled with pride as he felt the small purse clenched in his fist. He'd receive the other half of his fee when the message he carried was delivered. The assignment had been pure luck. They'd grabbed him by the shoulder as he was returning from the countryside, where he'd been visiting a friend without his mother's knowledge.

Outside the city walls near the hippodrome, the Romans waited in their tents, and inside the city, the soldiers who still served Antony milled about, drunk with defeat, crowding themselves against all of the other civilians.

It was all the boy could do to keep from being trampled as he made his rushing way through the Jewish quarter near Cleopatra's Palaces and into the Greek portion of Alexandria. He flew past the Museion, where the scholars could be seen bending over scrolls, still at their work despite the fall of the city. There was the scholar who tutored the queen's children, standing in the middle of the courtyard, arguing with one of his cohorts, both of them red-faced and waving their hands in the air. The boy wondered if the physicians were still working in the Museion's buildings. He'd heard glorious stories of dissections, corpses smuggled in through hidden doorways, blood pooling in the stones of the streets. It was a thrilling thought.

The boy made his way through the center of Alexandria, where the markets were transacting business, as though this were not a city under siege. There was money to be made on warfare, and soldiers, even in defeat, thirsted. The boy dashed past the tempting stalls, the soothsayers and the makers of toys, the sellers of toasted nuts and the dancers stamping their feet and flinging colored scarves in the air.

He gazed longingly into a brothel, pushing his chin into the doorway and inhaling the scent of perfume.

“You're bad for business, boy,” said a scowling courtesan, and smacked him smartly on the ear, escorting him back out into the street.

The lighthouse still shone on Pharos island just offshore, and the boy grinned up at the glowing white limestone facade of Alexandria's marvel. It was said that the light harnessed the power of the sun, that it could be directed to shine onto enemy vessels far out on the water, causing them to burst spontaneously into flame. The boy wondered why the lighthouse had not been directed to destroy the Roman ships that way. Perhaps there had been too many of them.

At last, the boy arrived at the alley in the Old City that would lead him to his destination. It was easily recognized, guarded as it was by armed legionaries, the only soldiers in the city who were not drunk, and the only people in the area who were not Egyptian.

A legionary appeared in front of the boy, his arms crossed over his chest. The boy looked up to meet the man's eyes.

“I have an urgent message,” he said.

“What message?” the soldier asked.

“I cannot speak with anyone but the general, Mark Antony,” the boy said.

“Who sent you?” another soldier asked.

“I come on behalf of the queen,” the boy replied, reciting the words exactly as he'd been instructed. “I serve Cleopatra.”

T
welve hours earlier, Mark Antony poured wine for all his servants and soldiers, toasting their bravery and bidding them good fortune if they chose to leave him, and a good fight if they chose to stay for the final battle.

As the whores arrived to comfort those who had wartime wages, Antony walked the streets of Alexandria, making his way back to the palace, past the guards and slaves, past the sad-faced statues of former rulers, kings and queens, princes and conquerors. Past the bedchambers where his children slept, innocent of the coming fall. Antony looked in at their faces, those of the twins and of his youngest son. The two eldest children, one his and one his wife's, had already been sent from the city. What would become of them? He dared not think of it. It was not the Roman way, to kill royal children, or at least it had not been thus far. He did not wish to think that things had changed since his departure from Rome's service. Still, this was war. He'd been the conqueror in the past. It was strange to suddenly be the conquered.

Cleopatra awaited him in the doorway of their bedchamber.

“It is not over,” she said, breaking his trance. He shook off his thoughts and took her in his arms, relishing, even in these dark times, her shape against him.

“It is,” he told her. “It will be.”

He ran his hands down her back and over the roundness of her hips, pulling her tightly to his chest. Grief nearly overtook him then. If he did not win the next morning, the Romans—his own Romans—would tear her from him, and there would be nothing he could do to stop them.

Antony had been married three times before and had even thought he loved before, but he had been wrong. This woman was all he wanted. She was his general, his queen. The gods had willed it.

Antony put out a hand to run his fingers along Cleopatra's throat and over her collarbone, and she tilted her head, watching him as he touched her. Her body had borne three children for him, another for Julius Caesar, and still, at thirty-eight, she looked like a young girl, with her smooth, bronze skin, her humorous mouth, her dark, long-lashed eyes. He could see the beginnings of lines around those eyes. The passage of time became her. Her curves had gotten softer, though she was still slender. She'd never looked more beautiful, even in her simple nightdress, her face without its customary paints, her fingers and arms stripped of their jewels. He untied the knots at her shoulders and let the gown fall.

She walked to the window and drew back the curtains to let the full moon shine in on them.

“A good omen,” Cleopatra whispered, smiling at him. “We will win this war.”

He looked at her as she stood naked in the moonlight. Her straight spine, her golden skin, her black hair still twisted up with glittering pins.

“We
will
win this war,” she repeated, her tone suddenly fierce.

“I fear we've already lost it,” he said.

“Perhaps I know something you do not,” Cleopatra replied.

“Is there a legion hidden in the palace cellars?” he asked, and laughed bitterly. He didn't have enough men. He had known it from the beginning, and he'd fought anyway.

“The gods are on our side. I can feel it,” she said, her jaw tensing with determination. She suddenly leaned out the window, looking at something passing on the street below, her brow furrowed.

Antony rose to see what she was looking at, but she whirled, guiding him away from the window and pushing him back onto the bed.

“Don't look out there,” she said. “Nothing is wrong. The city sleeps. Look at me.”

Antony wondered for a moment what it was she kept him from seeing, but she stroked him, kissed him, swore to him that together they would prevail.

As ever, he was unable to resist her. In truth, he did not wish to. If this was the end, then let it be spent with his beloved, his hands memorizing the smooth hollow at the top of her thigh, his lips singing the silken folds of her. Antony marveled at the miracle of it, feeling her take a breath in even as he cried out, her fingers clenching his shoulders and her muscles tightening around him.

“Again,” she whispered, and he saw that her eyes were full of tears. He kissed her face until they were gone.

They made love for hours, even as the sounds outside the window grew louder and louder, music and laughing, screaming and shouting.

“I am yours,” she swore again and again, and he believed her, took strength from her.

“As I am yours,” he told her. “Until we both are dead.”

“And thereafter?” she asked.

“And thereafter,” he answered, holding her tightly, feeling his heart beating, and feeling hers as well.

At dawn, he kissed Cleopatra good-bye and marched his remaining troops through the Canopic Gate and toward the hippodrome, resolved to meet his death with honor.

He watched from a hillside as his fleet, rowing in galleys from the harbor, threw themselves courageously against Octavian's force. Maybe Cleopatra was right. They might win yet.

He drove his fist into the air, preparing a battle cry, when, out on the water, his men suddenly raised their oars to salute the enemy. A moment later, his Egyptian legion hoisted the Roman flag and joined with Caesar's fleet. The two armies rowed back toward Alexandria, attacking the city together.

Antony spun to consult with the head of his Egyptian cavalry, and the man finished the war with a single sentence.

“Cleopatra belongs to Rome now,” the man said. “Egypt's armies go where Cleopatra goes.”

“What do you mean?” Antony asked. The words did not make sense. Egypt's armies served Antony, and Cleopatra's only goal was to defend her city.

The man looked at Antony with a pitying expression for a moment. “Your queen has betrayed you, sir. We no longer serve you.”

“Liar!” Antony shouted, tearing his sword from its scabbard to strike the man for his impudence, but he was already galloping away with his company, leaving Antony and his last loyal soldiers hopelessly outnumbered by enemy Romans and by his own former men. Still, they did not take him prisoner. They did not kill him. Why not? Whose orders did they follow?

Surely not hers. She would never do such a thing. Never.

With the remainder of his infantry, Antony attacked Octavian's forces near the hippodrome, but he was forced back into the city in retreat, even as the ghastly understanding sank into him. Antony staggered as he made his way into Alexandria, scarcely noticing the enemy forces pushing their way through the gates behind him.

Betrayed. The knowledge boiled inside him.

“I am yours,”
she'd sworn, but she had lied.

There was no other explanation for what had happened.

Cleopatra had directed the Egyptian legions to leave him, commanded his own men to abandon him. She'd sold him to save herself.

What would she receive in return?

Had she done with Octavian as she had done with Julius Caesar when he'd marched into Alexandria? Smuggled herself into his camp and wooed him? Caesar had given her the throne. Octavian might let her keep it, given the right bribe. This was a personal war more than a political one. Octavian wanted Antony's shame, and what better way than to take his wife and all of his loyal soldiers? To laugh as Antony stood alone and beaten?