The October Horse (4 page)

Caesar bounded up the steps of the dais and sat gingerly in the magnificent chair on top, its gold, jewel-encrusted detail quite extraordinary at close quarters. What looked like an eye, except that its outer margin was extended and swelled into an odd, triangular tear; a cobra head; a scarab beetle; leopard paws; human feet; a peculiar key; stick-like symbols.

“Is it comfortable, Caesar?”

“No chair having a back can be comfortable for a man in a toga, which is why we sit in curule chairs,” Caesar answered. He relaxed and closed his eyes. “Camp on the floor,” he said after a while; “it seems we're in for a long wait.”

Two of the younger lictors sighed in relief, but Fabius shook his head, scandalized. “Can't do that, Caesar. It would look sloppy if someone came in and caught us.”

As there was no water clock, it was difficult to measure time, but to the younger lictors it seemed like hours that they stood in a semicircle with their fasces grounded delicately between their feet, axed upper ends held between their hands. Caesar continued to sleep—one of his famous cat naps.

“Hey, get off the throne!” said a young female voice.

Caesar opened one eye, but didn't move.

“I said, get off the throne!”

“Who is it commands me?” Caesar asked.

“The royal Princess Arsinoë of the House of Ptolemy!”

That straightened Caesar, though he didn't get up, just looked with both eyes open at the speaker, now standing at the foot of the dais. Behind her stood a little boy and two men.

About fifteen years old, Caesar judged: a busty, strapping girl with masses of golden hair, blue eyes, and a face that ought to have been pretty—it was regular enough of feature—but was not. Thanks to its expression, Caesar decided—arrogant, angry, quaintly authoritarian. She was clad in Greek style, but her robe was genuine Tyrian purple, a color so dark it seemed black, yet with the slightest movement was shot with highlights of plum and crimson. In her hair she wore a gem-studded coronet, around her neck a fabulous jeweled collar, bracelets galore on her bare arms; her earlobes were unduly long, probably due to the weight of the pendants dangling from them.

The little boy looked to be about nine or ten and was very like Princess Arsinoë—same face, same coloring, same build. He too wore Tyrian purple, a tunic and Greek chlamys cloak.

Both the men were clearly attendants of some kind, but the one standing protectively beside the boy was a feeble creature, whereas the other, closer to Arsinoë, was a person to be reckoned with. Tall, of splendid physique, quite as fair as the royal children, he had intelligent, calculating eyes and a firm mouth.

“And where do we go from here?” Caesar asked calmly.

“Nowhere until you prostrate yourself before me! In the absence of the King, I am regnant in Alexandria, and I command you to come down from there and abase yourself!” said Arsinoë. She looked at the lictors balefully. “All of you, on the floor!”

“Neither Caesar nor his lictors obey the commands of petty princelings,” Caesar said gently. “In the absence of the King, I am regnant in Alexandria by virtue of the terms of the wills of Ptolemy Alexander and your father Auletes.” He leaned forward. “Now, Princess, let us get down to business—and don't look like a child in need of a spanking, or I might have one of my lictors pluck a rod from his bundle and administer it.” His gaze went to Arsinoë’s impassive attendant. “And you are?” he asked.

“Ganymedes, eunuch tutor and guardian of my Princess.”

“Well, Ganymedes, you look like a man of good sense, so I'll address my comments to you.”

“You will address me!” Arsinoë yelled, face mottling. “And get down off the throne! Abase yourself!”

“Hold your tongue!” Caesar snapped. “Ganymedes, I require suitable accommodation for myself and my senior staff inside the Royal Enclosure, and sufficient fresh bread, green vegetables, oil, wine, eggs and water for my troops, who will remain on board my ships until I've discovered what's going on here. It is a sad state of affairs when the Dictator of Rome arrives anywhere on the surface of this globe to unnecessary aggression and pointless inhospitality. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, great Caesar.”

“Good!” Caesar rose to his feet and walked down the steps. “The first thing you can do for me, however, is remove these two obnoxious children.”

“I cannot do that, Caesar, if you want me to remain here.”

“Why?”

“Dolichos is a whole man. He may remove Prince Ptolemy Philadelphus, but the Princess Arsinoë may not be in the company of a whole man unchaperoned.”

“Are there any more in your castrated state?” Caesar asked, mouth twitching; Alexandria was proving amusing.

“Of course.”

“Then go with the children, deposit Princess Arsinoë with some other eunuch, and return to me immediately.”

Princess Arsinoë, temporarily squashed by Caesar's tone when he told her to hold her tongue, was getting ready to liberate it, but Ganymedes took her firmly by the shoulder and led her out, the boy Philadelphus and his tutor hurrying ahead.

“What a situation!” said Caesar to Fabius yet again.

“My hand itched to remove that rod, Caesar.”

“So did mine.” The Great Man sighed. “Still, from what one hears, the Ptolemaic brood is rather singular. At least Ganymedes is rational—but then, he's not royal.”

“I thought eunuchs were fat and effeminate.”

“I believe that those who are castrated as small boys are, but if the testicles are not enucleated until after puberty has set in, that may not be the case.”

Ganymedes returned quickly, a smile pasted to his face. “I am at your service, great Caesar.”

“Ordinary Caesar will do nicely, thank you. Now why is the court at Pelusium?”

The eunuch looked surprised. “To fight the war,” he said.

“What war?”

“The war between the King and Queen, Caesar. Earlier in the year, famine forced the price of food up, and Alexandria blamed the Queen—the King is but thirteen years old—and rebelled.” Ganymedes looked grim. “There is no peace here, you see. The King is controlled by his tutor, Theodotus, and the Lord High Chamberlain, Potheinus. They're ambitious men, you understand. Queen Cleopatra is their enemy.”

“I take it that she fled?”

“Yes, but south to Memphis and the Egyptian priests. The Queen is also Pharaoh.”

“Isn't every Ptolemy on the throne also Pharaoh?”

“No, Caesar, far from it. The children's father, Auletes, was never Pharaoh. He refused to placate the Egyptian priests, who have great influence over the native Egyptians of Nilus. Whereas Queen Cleopatra spent some of her childhood in Memphis with the priests. When she came to the throne they anointed her Pharaoh. King and Queen are Alexandrian titles, they have no weight at all in Egypt of the Nilus, which is proper Egypt.”

“So Queen Cleopatra, who is Pharaoh, fled to Memphis and the priests. Why not abroad from Alexandria, like her father when he was spilled from the throne?” Caesar asked, fascinated.

“When a Ptolemy flees abroad from Alexandria, he or she must depart penniless. There is no great treasure in Alexandria. The treasure vaults lie in Memphis, under the authority of the priests. So unless the Ptolemy is also Pharaoh—no money. Queen Cleopatra was given money in Memphis, and went to Syria to recruit an army. She has but recently returned with that army, and has gone to earth on the northern flank of Mount Casius outside Pelusium.”

Caesar frowned. “A mountain outside Pelusium? I didn't think there were any until Sinai.”

“A very big sandhill, Caesar.”

“Ahah. Continue, please.”

“General Achillas brought the King's army to the southern side of the mount, and is camped there. Not long ago, Potheinus and Theodotus accompanied the King and the war fleet to Pelusium. A battle was expected when I last heard,” said Ganymedes.

“So Egypt—or rather, Alexandria—is in the midst of a civil war,” said Caesar, beginning to pace. “Has there been no sign of Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus in the vicinity?”

“Not that I know of, Caesar. Certainly he is not in Alexandria. Is it true, then, that you defeated him in Thessaly?”

“Oh, yes. Decisively. He left Cyprus some days ago, I had believed bound for Egypt.” No, Caesar thought, watching Ganymedes, this man is genuinely ignorant of the whereabouts of my old friend and adversary. Where is Pompeius, then? Did he perhaps utilize that spring seven miles west of the Eunostus Harbor and sail on to Cyrenaica without stopping? He stopped pacing. “Very well, it seems I stand in loco parentis for these ridiculous children and their squabble. Therefore you will send two couriers to Pelusium, one to see King Ptolemy, the other to see Queen Cleopatra. I require both sovereigns to present themselves here to me in their own palace. Is that clear?”

Ganymedes looked uncomfortable. “I foresee no difficulties with the King, Caesar, but it may not be possible for the Queen to come to Alexandria. One sight of her, and the mob will lynch her.” He lifted his lip in contempt. “The favorite sport of the Alexandrian mob is tearing an unpopular ruler to pieces with their bare hands. In the agora, which is very spacious.” He coughed. “I must add, Caesar, that for your own protection you would be wise to confine yourself and your senior staff to the Royal Enclosure. At the moment the mob is ruling.”

“Do what you can, Ganymedes. Now, if you don't mind, I'd like to be conducted to my quarters. And you will make sure that my soldiers are properly victualed. Naturally I will pay for every drop and crumb. Even at inflated famine prices.”

•      •      •

“So,” said Caesar to Rufrius over a late dinner in his new quarters, “I am no closer to learning the fate of poor Magnus, but I fear for him. Ganymedes was in ignorance, though I don't trust the fellow. If another eunuch, Potheinus, can aspire to rule through a juvenile Ptolemy, why not Ganymedes with Arsinoë?”

“They've certainly treated us shabbily,” Rufrius said as he looked about. “In palace terms, they've put us in a shack.” He grinned. “I keep him away from you, Caesar, but Tiberius Nero is most put out at having to share with another military tribune—not to mention that he expected to dine with you.”

“Why on earth would he want to dine with one of the least Epicurean noblemen in Rome? Oh, the gods preserve me from these insufferable aristocrats!”

Just as if, thought Rufrius, inwardly smiling, he were not himself insufferable or aristocratic. But the insufferable part of him isn't connected to his antique origins. What he can't say to me without insulting my birth is that he loathes having to employ an incompetent like Nero for no other reason than that he is a patrician Claudius. The obligations of nobility irk him.

•      •      •

For two more days the Roman fleet remained at anchor with the infantry still on board; pressured, the Interpreter had allowed the German cavalry to be ferried ashore with their horses and put into a good grazing camp outside the crumbling city walls on Lake Mareotis. The locals gave these extraordinary-looking barbarians a wide berth; they went almost naked, were tattooed, and wore their never-cut hair in a tortuous system of knots and rolls on top of their heads. Besides, they spoke not a word of Greek.

Ignoring Ganymedes's warning to remain within the Royal Enclosure, Caesar poked and pried everywhere during those two days, escorted only by his lictors, indifferent to danger. In Alexandria, he discovered, lay marvels worthy of his personal attention—the lighthouse, the Heptastadion, the water and drainage systems, the naval dispositions, the buildings, the people.

The city itself occupied a narrow spit of limestone between the sea and a vast freshwater lake; less than two miles separated the sea from this boundless source of sweet water, eminently drinkable even at this summer season. Asking questions revealed that Lake Mareotis was fed from canals that linked it to the big westernmost mouth of Nilus, the Canopic Nilus; because Nilus rose in high summer rather than in early spring, Mareotis avoided the usual concomitants of river-fed lakes—stagnation, mosquitoes. One canal, twenty miles long, was wide enough to provide two lanes for barges and customs ships, and was always jammed with traffic.

A different, single canal came off Lake Mareotis at the Moon Gate end of the city; it terminated at the western harbor, though its waters did not intermingle with the sea, so any current in it was diffusive, not propulsive. A series of big bronze sluice gates were inserted in its walls, raised and lowered by a system of pulleys from ox-driven capstans. The city's water supply was drawn out of the canal through gently sloping pipes, each district's inlet equipped with a sluice gate. Other sluice gates spanned the canal from side to side and could be closed off to permit the dredging of silt from its bottom.

One of the first things Caesar did was to climb the verdant cone called the Paneium, an artificial hill built of stones tamped down with earth and planted with lush gardens, shrubs, low palms. A paved spiral road wound up to its apex, and man-made streamlets with occasional waterfalls tumbled to a drain at its base. From the apex it was possible to see for miles, everything was so flat.

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The city was laid out on a rectangular grid and had no back lanes or alleys. Every street was wide, but two were far wider than any roads Caesar had ever seen—over a hundred feet from gutter to gutter. Canopic Avenue ran from the Sun Gate at the eastern end of the city to the Moon Gate at the western end; Royal Avenue ran from the gate in the Royal Enclosure wall south to the old walls. The world-famous museum library lay inside the Royal Enclosure, but the other major public buildings were situated at the intersection of the two avenues—the agora, the gymnasium, the courts of justice, the Paneium or Hill of Pan.

Rome's districts were logical, in that they were named after the hills upon which they sprawled, or the valleys between; in flat Alexandria the persnickety Macedonian founders had divided the place up into five arbitrary districts—Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta and Epsilon. The Royal Enclosure lay within Beta District; east of it was not Gamma, but Delta District, the home of hundreds of thousands of Jews who spilled south into Epsilon, which they shared with many thousands of Metics—foreigners with rights of residence rather than citizenship. Alpha was the commercial area of the two harbors, and Gamma, in the southwest, was also known as Rhakotis, the name of the village pre-dating Alexandria's genesis.