Читать книгу Antony and Cleopatra - Колин Маккалоу, Colleen McCullough - Страница 11

FOUR

For the fourth year in a row, Nilus did not inundate. The only cheering news was that those along the river who had survived the plague seemed immune to it, as was equally true in the Delta and Alexandria. These folk were hardier, healthier.

Sosigenes had been visited by an idea, and issued an edict in Pharaoh’s name; it ordered that the lowest sections of Nilus’s banks be broken down a further five feet. If any water came over the tops of these prepared gaps, it would flow into huge ponds excavated in advance. All around the rims of the ponds stood treadmill water wheels ready to feed water into shallow channels snaking off across the parched fields. And when mid-July brought the inundation that was no inundation, the river rose just high enough to fill the ponds. This was a far easier way of irrigating by hand than the traditional shaduf, a single bucket that had to be dipped into the river itself.

And people were people, even in the midst of death; babies had been born, the population was increasing. But Egypt would eat.

The threat from Rome was in temporary abeyance; her agents told Cleopatra that from Tarsus Antony had gone to Antioch, paid calls on Tyre and Sidon, then taken ship for Ephesus. And there a screaming Arsinoë was dragged from sanctuary to be run through by a sword. The high priest of Artemis looked likely to follow her, but Antony, who disliked these Eastern bloodbath vengeances, intervened at the ethnarch’s request and sent the man back to his precinct unharmed. The head would not be a part of Antony’s baggage if and when he visited Egypt; Arsinoë had been burned whole. She had been the last true Ptolemy, and with her death that particular threat to Cleopatra vanished.

‘Antonius will come in the winter,’ said Tach’a, smiling.

‘Antonius! Oh, my mother, he is no Caesar! How can I bear his hands upon me?’

‘Caesar was unique. You cannot forget him, that I understand, but you must cease to mourn him and look to Egypt. What matter the feel of his hands when Antonius possesses the blood to give Caesarion a sister to marry? Monarchs do not mate for gratification of the self, they mate to benefit their realms and safeguard the dynasty. You will get used to Antonius.’

In fact, Cleopatra’s greatest worry that summer and autumn was Caesarion, who hadn’t forgiven her for leaving him behind in Alexandria. He was irreproachably polite, he worked hard over his books, he read voluntarily in his own time, he kept up his riding lessons, his military exercises and his athletic pursuits, though he would not box or wrestle.

‘Tata told me that our thinking apparatus is located inside our heads and that we must never engage in sports that endanger it. So I will learn to use the gladius and the longsword, I will shoot arrows and throw rocks from slings, I will practice casting my pilum and my hasta, I will run, hurdle and swim. But I will not box or wrestle. Tata wouldn’t approve, no matter what my instructors say. I told them to desist, not to come running to you – does my command count for less than yours?’

She was too busy marveling at how much he remembered about Caesar to hear the message implicit in his last words. His father died before the child turned four.

But it was not the argument over contact sport or other small dissatisfactions that gnawed at her; what hurt was his aloofness. She couldn’t fault his attention when she spoke to him, especially to issue an order, but he had shut her out of his private world. Clearly he felt an ongoing resentment that she couldn’t dismiss as petty.

Oh, she cried to herself, why do I always make the wrong decisions? Had I only known what effect excluding him from Tarsus would have, I would have taken him with me. But that would have been to risk the succession on a sea voyage – impossible!

Then her agents reported that the situation in Italia had deteriorated into open war. The instigators were Antony’s termagant wife, Fulvia, and Antony’s brother, the consul Lucius Antonius. Fulvia snared that famous fence-sitter and side-switcher Lucius Munatius Plancus and bewitched him into donating the veteran soldiers he was settling around Beneventum – two full legions – for her army; after which she persuaded that aristocratic dolt, Tiberius Claudius Nero, whom Caesar had so detested, to raise a slave revolt in Campania – not an appropriate task for one who had never in his life conversed with a slave. Not that Nero didn’t try, just that he didn’t even know how to start his commission.

Having no official position save his status as Triumvir, Octavian slid in careful Fabian circles on Lucius Antonius’s perimeter as the two legions that Lucius himself had managed to recruit moved up the Italian peninsula toward Rome. The third Triumvir, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, took two legions to Rome to keep Lucius out. Then the moment Lepidus saw the glitter of armor on the Via Latina, he abandoned Rome and his troops to a jubilant Fulvia (and Lucius, whom people tended to forget).

The outcome actually depended upon the ring of great armies fencing Italia in – armies commanded by Antony’s best marshals, men who were his friends as well as his political adherents. Gnaeus Asinius Pollio held Italian Gaul with seven legions; in Further Gaul across the Alps sat Quintus Fufius Calenus with eleven legions; while Publius Ventidius and his seven legions sat in coastal Liguria.

By now it was autumn. Antony was in Athens, not far away, enjoying the entertainments this most sophisticated of cities had to offer. Pollio wrote to him, Ventidius wrote to him, Calenus wrote to him, Plancus wrote to him, Fulvia wrote to him, Lucius wrote to him, Sextus Pompey wrote to him, and Octavian was writing to him every single day. Antony never answered any of these letters – he had better things to do. Thus – as Octavian for one realized – Antony missed his great chance to crush Caesar’s heir permanently. The veterans were mutinous, no one was paying taxes, and all Octavian could scrape up were eight legions. Every main road from Bononia in the north to Brundisium in the south reverberated to the rhythmic thud of hobnailed legionary caligae, most of them belonging to Octavian’s avowed enemies. Sextus Pompey’s fleets controlled both the Tuscan Sea to Italia’s west and the Adriatic Sea to Italia’s east, cutting off the grain supply from Sicilia and Africa. Had Antony hoisted his bulk off his plush Athenian couch and led all these elements in an outright war to squash Octavian, he would have won easily. But Antony chose not to answer his letters and not to move. Octavian breathed a sigh of relief, while Antony’s own people assumed that Antony was too busy having a good time to bother with anything beyond pleasure.

But in Alexandria, reading her reports, Cleopatra fretted and fumed, considered writing to Antony to urge him into an Italian war. That would really remove the threat from Egypt! In the end she didn’t write; had she, it would have been a wasted effort.

Lucius Antonius marched north on the Via Flaminia to Perusia, a magnificent town perched high on a flat-topped mountain in the middle of the Apennines. There he inserted himself and his six legions within Perusia’s walls and waited to see not only what Octavian would do, but also what Pollio, Ventidius and Plancus would do. It never occurred to him that the latter three wouldn’t march to his rescue – as Antony’s men, they had to!

Octavian had put his spiritual brother Agrippa in command – a shrewd decision; when the two very young men concluded that neither Pollio and Ventidius nor Plancus were going to rescue Lucius, they erected massive siege fortifications in a ring all the way around Perusia’s mountain. No food could reach the town and, with winter coming on, the water table was low, and lowering.

Fulvia sat in Plancus’s camp and railed at the perfidy of Pollio and Ventidius, clustered miles away; she also railed in person at Plancus, who put up with it because he was in love with her. Her state of mind was alarmingly unstable: one moment frenzied tantrums, the next bursts of energy recruiting more men. But what ate at her most was a new hatred of Octavian. The supercilious pup had sent his wife, Fulvia’s daughter Clodia, back to her mother still virgo intacta. What was she going to do with a skinny girl who did nothing but weep and refuse to eat? In a war camp? Worst of all, Clodia insisted that she was madly in love with Octavian, and blamed Octavian’s rejection on her mother.

By late October, Antony likened himself to Aetna just before an eruption. His colleagues felt the tremors and tried to avoid him, but that was not possible.

‘Dellius, I’m going to winter in Alexandria,’ he announced. ‘Marcus Saxa and Caninius can stay with the troops at Ephesus. Lucius Saxa, you can come with me as far as Antioch – I’m making you governor of Syria. There are two legions of Cassius’s troops in Antioch, they’ll be enough for your needs. You can start by making the cities of Syria understand that I want tribute. Now, not later! Whatever a place paid Cassius, it will pay to me. For the moment I’m not changing my dispositions elsewhere – Asia Province is quiet, Censorinus is coping in Macedonia, and I can’t see the need for a governor in Bithynia.’ He stretched his arms above his head exultantly. ‘A holiday! The New Dionysus is going to have a proper holiday! And what better place than at the court of Aphrodite in Egypt?’

He didn’t write Cleopatra a letter either. She knew that he was coming only through her agents, who managed to give her two nundinae of notice. In those sixteen days she sent ships out in search of fare that Egypt did not stock, from the succulent hams of the Pyreneae to huge wheels of cheese. Though it wasn’t usually on the menu, the palace kitchens could produce garum for flavoring sauces, and several breeders of suckling pigs for Roman residents of the city found their entire piggeries bought out. Chickens, geese, ducks, quails and pheasants were rounded up, though at this time of year there would be no lamb. More importantly, the wine had to be as good as plentiful; Cleopatra’s court hardly touched it, and Cleopatra herself preferred Egyptian barley beer. But for the Romans it must be wine, wine, wine.

Rumors floated around Pelusium and the Delta that Syria was restless, although no one seemed to have concrete evidence as to the nature of the problem. Admittedly the Jews were in a ferment; when Herod had returned from Bithynia a tetrarch, there were howls from both sides of the Sanhedrin, Pharisee and Sadducee; that his brother Phasael was also a tetrarch didn’t seem to matter as much. Herod was hated, Phasael tolerated. Some Jews were intriguing to spill Hyrcanus from the throne in favor of his nephew, a Hasmonaean prince named Antigonus; or, failing success, at least to strip Hyrcanus of the high priesthood and give that to Antigonus.

But with Mark Antony due to arrive any day, Syria didn’t get the attention from Cleopatra that it deserved. It was a matter of some urgency only because Syria was right next door.

What preoccupied Cleopatra most was a crisis that hinged on her son. Cha’em and Tach’a had been instructed to take Caesarion to Memphis and keep him there until Antony left.

‘I will not go,’ Caesarion said very calmly, chin up.

They were far from alone, which annoyed her. So she answered curtly. ‘Pharaoh orders it! Therefore you will go.’

‘I too am Pharaoh. The greatest Roman left alive after my father was murdered is to visit us, and we will receive him in state. That means Pharaoh must be present in both incarnations, male and female.’

‘Don’t argue, Caesarion. If necessary, I’ll have you taken to Memphis under guard.’

‘That will look good to our subjects!’

‘How dare you be insolent to me!’

‘I am Pharaoh, anointed and crowned. I am son of Amun-Ra and son of Isis. I am Horus. I am the Lord of the Two Ladies and the Lord of the Sedge and Bee. My cartouche is above yours. Without going to war against me, you cannot deny me my right to sit on my throne. As I will when we receive Marcus Antonius.’

The sitting room was so silent that every word mother and son uttered rang around the gilded rafters. Servants stood on duty in every inconspicuous corner; Charmian and Iras were in attendance on the Queen, Apollodorus stood in his place, and Sosigenes sat at a table poring over menus. Only Cha’em and Tach’a were absent, happily planning the treats they were going to give their beloved Caesarion when he arrived at the precinct of Ptah.

The child’s face was set mulishly, his blue-green eyes hard as polished stones. Never had his likeness to Caesar been so pronounced. Yet his pose was relaxed, no clenched fists or planted feet. He had said his piece; the next move was Cleopatra’s.

Who sat in her easy chair with mind spinning. How to explain to this obstinate stranger that she acted for his own good? If he remained in the Royal Enclosure he was bound to be exposed to all manner of things beyond his ken – oaths and profanities, crudeness and coarseness, vomiting gluttons, people too hot with lust to care that they coupled on a couch or against a wall; goings-on that carried the seeds of corruption, vivid illustrations of a world she had resolved her son would never see until he was old enough to cope with it. Well she remembered her own years as a child in this selfsame palace, her dissolute father pawing his catamites, exposing his genitals to be kissed and sucked, dancing about drunkenly playing his silly pipes at the head of a procession of naked boys and girls. While she cowered out of sight and prayed he would not find her and have her raped for his pleasure. Killed, even, like Berenice. He had a new family by his young half-sister; a girl by his Mithridatid wife was expendable. So the years she had spent in Memphis with Cha’em and Tach’a lived in her memory as the most wonderful time of her whole life: safe, secure, happy.

The feasts in Tarsus had been a fairly good example of Mark Antony’s way of life. Yes, he himself had remained continent, but only because he had to duel with a woman who was also a monarch. About the conduct of his friends he was indifferent, and some of them had disported themselves shamelessly.

But how to tell Caesarion that he wouldn’t – couldn’t – be here? Instinct said that Antony was going to forget continence, play the role of Neos Dionysus wholeheartedly. He was also her son’s cousin. If Caesarion were in Alexandria, they couldn’t be kept apart. And obviously Caesarion dreamed of meeting the great warrior, not understanding that the great warrior would present in the guise of the great reveler.

So the silence persisted until Sosigenes cleared his throat and pushed his chair back to stand.

‘Your Majesties, may I speak?’ he asked.

Caesarion answered. ‘Speak,’ he commanded.

‘Young Pharaoh is now six, yet he is still under the care of a palace full of women. Only in the gymnasium and the hippodrome does he enter a world of men, and they are his subjects. Before they can talk to him, they must prostrate themselves. He sees nothing odd in this: he is Pharaoh. But with the visit of Marcus Antonius, young Pharaoh will have a chance to associate with men who are not his subjects, and who will not prostrate themselves. Who will ruffle his hair, cuff him gently, joke with him. Man to man. Pharaoh Cleopatra, I know why you wish to send young Pharaoh to Memphis, I understand—’

Cleopatra cut him short. ‘Enough, Sosigenes! You forget yourself! We will finish this conversation after young Pharaoh has left the room – which he will do now!’

‘I will not leave,’ said Caesarion.

Sosigenes continued, visibly shaking in terror. His job – also his head – was in peril, but someone had to say it. ‘Your Majesty, you cannot send young Pharaoh away, either now to finish this, or later to shield him from the Romans. Your son is crowned and anointed Pharaoh and King. In years he may be a child, but in what he is, he is a man. It is time that he associated freely with men who do not prostrate themselves. His father was a Roman. It is time he learned more of Rome and Romans than he could as a babe during the time when you lived in Rome.’

Cleopatra felt her face afire, wondered how much of what she experienced was written on it. Oh, bother the wretched boy, to take his stand so publicly! He knew how servants gossiped – it would be all over the palace in an hour, all over the city tomorrow.

And she had lost. Everybody present knew it.

‘Thank you, Sosigenes,’ she said after a very long pause, ‘I appreciate your advice. It is the right advice. Young Pharaoh must stay in Alexandria to mingle with the Romans.’

The boy didn’t whoop with glee or caper about. He nodded regally and said, gazing at his mother with expressionless eyes, ‘Thank you, Mama, for deciding not to go to war.’

Apollodorus shooed everyone out of the room, including young Pharaoh; as soon as she was left alone with Charmian and Iras, Cleopatra burst into tears.

‘It had to happen,’ said Iras, the practical one.

‘He was cruel,’ said Charmian, the sentimental one.

‘Yes,’ said Cleopatra through her tears, ‘he was cruel. All men are, it is their nature.’ She mopped her face. ‘I have lost a tiny fraction of my power – he has wrested it from me. By the time he is twenty, he will have all the power.’

‘Let us hope,’ said Iras, ‘that Marcus Antonius is kind.’

‘You saw him in Tarsus. Did you think him kind then?’

‘Yes, when you let him. He was uncertain, so he blustered.’

‘Isis must take him as her husband,’ said Charmian, sighing, eyes misty. ‘What man could be unkind to Isis?’

‘To take him as husband is not to yield power. Isis will gather it,’ said Cleopatra. ‘But what will my son say when he realizes that his mother is giving him a stepfather?’

‘He will take it in his stride,’ said Iras.

Antony’s flagship, an overlarge quinquereme high in the poop and bristling with catapults, was bidden tie up in the Royal Harbor. And there, waiting on the wharf under a golden canopy of state stood both incarnations of Pharaoh, though not clad in pharaonic regalia. Cleopatra wore a simple robe of pink wool and Caesarion a Greek tunic, oatmeal trimmed with purple. He had wanted to wear a toga, but Cleopatra had told him that no one in Alexandria could show the palace seamstresses how to make one. She thought that the best way to avoid giving Caesarion the news that he wasn’t allowed to wear a toga because he wasn’t a Roman citizen.

If it had been Caesarion’s ambition to steal his mother’s thunder, he succeeded; when Antony strode down the gangplank onto the wharf, his eyes were fixed on Caesarion.

‘Ye gods!’ he exclaimed as he reached them, ‘Caesar all over again! Boy, you’re his living image!’

Knowing himself tall for his age, Caesarion felt suddenly dwarfed; Antonius was huge! None of which mattered when Antony bent down and lifted him up effortlessly, settled him on a left arm bulging with muscles beneath many folds of toga. Behind him Dellius was beaming; it was left to him to greet Cleopatra, walk at her side up the path from the jetty, looking at the pair well in front, the boy’s golden head thrown back as he laughed at some Antonian jest.

‘They have taken to each other,’ Dellius said.

‘Yes, haven’t they?’ It was spoken tonelessly. Then she squared her shoulders. ‘Marcus Antonius hasn’t brought as many friends with him as I expected.’

‘There were jobs to do, Your Majesty. I know Antonius hopes to meet some Alexandrians.’

‘The Interpreter, the Recorder, the Chief Judge, the Accountant and the Night Commander are eager to attend on him.’

‘The Accountant?’

‘They are just names, Quintus Dellius. To be one of those five men is to be of pure Macedonian stock going back to the barons of Ptolemy Soter. They are the Alexandrian aristocrats,’ Cleopatra said, sounding amused. What, after all, was Atticus if not an accountant, and would any Roman of patrician family scorn Atticus? ‘We have not planned a reception for this evening,’ Cleopatra went on. ‘Just a quiet supper for Marcus Antonius alone.’

‘I’m sure he’ll like that,’ said Dellius smoothly.

When Caesarion couldn’t keep his eyes open, his mother firmly packed him off to bed, then dismissed the servants to leave her alone with Antony.

Alexandria didn’t have a proper winter, just a slight chill in the air after sunset that meant the breeze walls were closed. After Athens, more extreme, Antony found it delightful; could feel himself relaxing as he hadn’t in months. And the lady had been an interesting dinner companion – when she managed to get a word in edgeways; Caesarion had bombarded Antony with a staggering variety of questions. What was Gaul like? What was Philippi really like? How did it feel to command an army? And on, and on, and on.

‘He wore you out,’ she said now, smiling.

‘More curiosity than a fortune-teller before she tells your fortune. But he’s clever, Cleopatra.’ A grimace of distaste twisted his face. ‘As precocious as the other Caesar heir.’

‘Whom you detest.’

‘That’s too mild a verb. Loathe, more like.’

‘I hope you can find it in you to like my son.’

‘Much better than I expected to.’ His eyes traveled over the lamps set around the room, squinting. ‘It’s too bright,’ he said.

In answer she slid from the couch, picked up a snuffer and quenched all save those flames that didn’t shine in Antony’s face. ‘Have you a headache?’ she asked, returning to the couch.

‘Yes, as a matter of fact.’

‘Would you like to retire?’

‘Not if I can lie here quietly and talk to you.’

‘Of course you can.’

‘You didn’t believe me when I said I was falling in love with you, but I spoke the truth.’

‘I have silver mirrors, Antonius, and they tell me that I am not the kind of woman you fall in love with. Fulvia, for example.’

He grinned, his small white teeth flashing. ‘And Glaphyra, though you never saw her. A delectable piece of work.’

‘Whom clearly you did not love, to say that about her. But Fulvia you do love.’

‘Used to, more like. At the moment she’s a nuisance, with her war against Octavianus. A futile business, badly conducted.’

‘A very beautiful woman.’

‘Past her prime, at forty-three. We’re much of an age.’

‘She’s given you sons.’

‘Aye, but too young yet to know what they’re made of. Her grandfather was Gaius Gracchus, a great man, so I hope for good boys. Antyllus is five, Iullus still a baby. A good mare, Fulvia. Four by Clodius – two girls, two boys – a boy by Curio, and mine.’

‘The Ptolemies breed well too.’

‘With only one chick in your nest, you can say that?’

‘I am Pharaoh, Marcus Antonius, which means that I cannot mate with mortal men. Caesar was a god, therefore a fit mate for me. We had Caesarion quickly, but then –’ she sighed – ‘no more. Not for want of trying, I can assure you.’

Antony laughed. ‘No, I can see why he wouldn’t tell you.’

Stiffening, she lifted her head to look at him, her big, golden eyes reflecting the light of a lamp behind Antony’s close-cropped curls. ‘Tell me what?’ she asked.

‘That he’d sire no more children on you.’

‘You lie!’

Surprised, he too lifted his head. ‘Lie? Why should I?’

‘How would I know your reasons? I simply know that you lie!’

‘I speak the truth. Search your mind, Cleopatra, and you’ll know that. Caesar, to sire a girl for his son to marry? He was a Roman through and through, and Romans do not approve of incest. Not even between nieces and uncles or nephews and aunts, let alone brothers and sisters. First cousins are considered a risk.’

The disillusionment crashed upon her like a massive wave: Caesar, of whose love she was so sure, had led her a dance of pure deception! All those months in Rome, hoping and praying for a pregnancy that never happened – and he knew, he knew! The God out of the West had deceived her, all for the sake of some stupid Roman shibboleth! She ground her teeth, growled in the back of her throat. ‘He deceived me,’ she said then, dully.

‘Only because he didn’t think you’d understand. I see that he was right,’ said Antony.

‘Were you Caesar, would you have done that to me?’

‘Oh, well,’ said Antony, rolling over to come a little closer to her, ‘my feelings are not so fine.’

‘I am destroyed! He cheated me, and I loved him so much!’

‘Whatever happened is in the past. Caesar’s dead.’

‘And I have to have the same conversation with you that once I had with him,’ Cleopatra said, furtively wiping her eyes.

‘What conversation is that?’ he asked, trailing a finger down her arm.

This time she didn’t remove it. ‘Nilus has not inundated in four years, Marcus Antonius, because Pharaoh is barren. To heal her people, Pharaoh must conceive a child with the blood of gods in its veins. Your blood is Caesar’s blood – on your mother’s side you are a Julian. I have prayed to Amun-Ra and Isis, and they have told me that a child of your loins would please them.’

Not exactly a declaration of love! How did a man answer such a dispassionate explanation? And did he, Marcus Antonius, want to commence an affair with such a cold-blooded little woman? A woman who genuinely believed what she said. Still, he thought, to sire gods on earth would be a new experience – one in the eye for old Caesar, the family martinet!

He took her hand, lifted it to his lips, and kissed it. ‘I would be honored, my Queen. And while I can’t speak for Caesar, I do love you.’

Liar, liar! she cried in her heart. You are a Roman, in love with nothing beyond Rome. But I will use you, as Caesar used me. ‘Will you share my bed while you are in Alexandria?’

‘Gladly,’ he said, and kissed her.

It was pleasant, not the ordeal she had imagined; his lips were cool and smooth, and he didn’t shove his tongue inside her mouth at this first, tentative exploration. Just lips against lips, gentle and sensuous.

‘Come,’ she said, picking up a lamp.

Her bedroom was not far away; these were Pharaoh’s private quarters, on the small side. He pulled his tunic off – no loincloth underneath – and untied the bows that held her dress up at the shoulders. It fell in a puddle around her as she sat on the edge of the bed.

‘Skin is good,’ he murmured, stretching out beside her. ‘I won’t hurt you, my Queen. Antonius is a good lover; he knows what kind of love to give a frail little creature like you.’

As indeed he did. Their coupling was slow and amazingly pleasant, for he stroked her body with smooth hands and paid her breasts delightful attention. Despite his assurances that he would not, he would have hurt her had she not given birth to Caesarion, though he teased her into torment before he entered her, and knew how to use that enormous member in many ways. He let her come to climax before he did, and her climax astonished her. It seemed a betrayal of Caesar, yet Caesar had betrayed her, so what did it matter? And, greatest gift of all, he didn’t remind her of Caesar in any respect. What she had with Antony belonged to Antony. Different, too, to find that within moments of each climax he was ready for her again, and almost embarrassing to count the number of her own climaxes. Was she so starved? The answer, obviously, was yes. Cleopatra the monarch was once again a woman.

Caesarion was thrilled that she had taken the great Marcus Antonius as her lover. In that respect he was not naive. ‘Will you marry him?’ he asked, dancing about in glee.

‘In time, perhaps,’ she said, profoundly relieved.

‘Why not now? He is the mightiest man in the world.’

‘Because it is too soon, my son. Let Antonius and I learn first if our love will bear the responsibilities of marriage.’

As for Antony, he was bursting with pride. Cleopatra was not the first sovereign he had bedded, but she was by far the most important. And, he had discovered, her sexual attentions lay halfway between those of a professional whore and a dutiful Roman wife. Which suited him. When a man embarked upon a relationship destined to last for more than a night, he needed neither one nor the other, so Cleopatra was perfect.

All of which may have accounted for his mood on the first evening when his mistress entertained him lavishly; the wine was superb and the water rather bitter, so why add water and spoil a great vintage? Antony let go of his good intentions without even realizing that he had, and got happily, hopelessly drunk.

The Alexandrian guests, all Macedonians of the highest stratum, looked on bewildered at first, then suddenly seemed to decide that there was much to be said for dissipation. The Recorder, an awesome man of huge conceit, whooped and giggled his way through the first flagon, then seized a passing female servant of beauty and began to make love to her. Within moments he was joined by the other Alexandrians, who proved that they were any Roman’s equal when it came to participating in an orgy.

To Cleopatra, watching fascinated (and sober), it was a lesson of a kind she had never expected to need to learn. Luckily Antony didn’t seem to notice that she didn’t join in the hilarities; he was too busy drinking. Perhaps because he also ate hugely, the wine didn’t reduce him to a helpless fool. In a discreet corner Sosigenes, somewhat more experienced in these matters than his queen, had placed chamber pots and bowls behind a screen where the guests could relieve themselves through any orifice, and also put out beakers of potions that rendered the next morning less painful.

‘Oh, I enjoyed myself!’ roared Antony the next morning, his rude health unimpaired. ‘Let’s do it again this afternoon!’

And so began for Cleopatra two months and more of constant, remorseless revels. And the wilder the goings-on became, the more Antony enjoyed them and the better he thrived. Sosigenes had inherited the task of dreaming up novelties to vary the tenor of these sybaritic festivities, with the result that the ships docking in Alexandria disgorged musicians, dancers, acrobats, mimes, dwarfs, freaks and magicians from all over the eastern end of Our Sea.

Antony adored practical jokes that sometimes verged on the cruel; he adored to fish; he adored to swim among naked girls; he adored to drive chariots, an activity forbidden to a nobleman in Rome; he adored hunting crocodile and hippopotamus; he adored pranks; he adored rude poetry; he adored pageants. His appetites were so enormous that he would roar that he was hungry a dozen times each day; Sosigenes hit on the bright idea of always having a full dinner ready to be served, together with vast quantities of the best wines. It was an instant success, and Antony, kissing him soundly, apostrophized the little philosopher as a prince of good fellows.

There wasn’t much Alexandria could do to protest against fifty-odd drunken people running up and down the streets in torchlit dances, banging loudly on doors and skipping away with bellows of delighted laughter; some of these annoying people were the chief officials of the city, whose wives sat at home weeping and wondering why the Queen permitted it.

The Queen permitted it because she had no choice, though her own participation in the capers was half-hearted. Once Antony dared her to drop Servilia’s six-million-sesterces pearl into a goblet of vinegar and drink it; he was of that school that believed pearls dissolved in vinegar. Knowing better, Cleopatra did as dared, though drinking the vinegar was beyond her. The pearl, quite unharmed, was around her neck the next day. And the fish pranks never stopped. Having no luck as a fisherman, Antony paid divers to go down and attach live fish to his line; he would pull up these flapping creatures and boast of his fishing skills until one day Cleopatra, tired of his bombast, had a diver attach a putrid fish to his line. But he took the joke in good part, for that was his nature.

Caesarion watched the antics with amusement, though he never asked to go to the parties. When Antony was in the mood the pair of them would vanish on horseback to hunt crocodile or hippopotamus, leaving Cleopatra in anguish at the vision of her son mangled by massive trotters or long yellow teeth. But, give Antony his due, he protected the boy from danger, just gave him a wonderful time.

‘You like Antonius,’ she said to her son toward the end of January.

‘Yes, Mama, very much. He calls himself Neos Dionysus, but he is really Herakles. He can balance me on one hand, can you imagine that? And throw the discus half a furlong!’

‘I am not surprised,’ she said dryly.

‘Tomorrow we’re going to the hippodrome. I’m going to ride with him in his chariot – four horses abreast, the hardest!’

‘Chariot racing is not a seemly pastime.’

‘I know, but it’s such fun!’

And what did one say to that?

Her son had grown in leaps and bounds during the past two months; Sosigenes had been right. The company of men had freed him from that touch of preciousness she hadn’t noticed until he lost it. Now he swaggered about the palace trying to roar like Antony, gave very funny imitations of the Accountant in his cups, and looked forward to every day with a sparkle and a zest he had never before displayed. And he was strong, lithe, naturally good at warlike sports – cast a spear with deadly accuracy, shot arrows straight into the center of the target, used his gladius with the verve of a veteran legionary. Like his father, he could ride a horse bareback at full gallop with his hands behind his back.

For herself, Cleopatra wondered how much longer she could tolerate Antony in revel mode; she was tired all the time, had bouts of nausea, and couldn’t be far from a chamber pot. All signs of pregnancy, albeit too early to be wearisome or noticeable. If Antony didn’t cease his gyrations soon, she would have to tell him that he must gyrate on his own. Strong she might be for a small woman, but pregnancy took a toll.

Her dilemma solved itself early in February when the King of the Parthians invaded Syria.

Orodes was an old man, long past war in person, and the intrigues natural to a succession of such magnitude taxed him. One of his ways of dealing with ambitious sons and factions was to find a war for the most aggressive among them, and what better war than against the Romans in Syria? The strongest of his sons was Pacorus, therefore to Pacorus must this war be given. And for once King Orodes had a loaded set of dice to throw; with Pacorus came Quintus Labienus who gave himself the nickname of Parthicus. He was the son of Caesar’s greatest marshal, Titus Labienus, and had chosen to flee to the court of Orodes rather than yield to his father’s conqueror. Internal strife at Seleuceia-on-Tigris had also brought forth a difference of opinion as to how the Romans could be defeated. In previous clashes, including the one that had resulted in the annihilation of Marcus Crassus’s army at Carrhae, the Parthians had relied heavily upon the horse archer, an unarmored peasant trained to retreat at the gallop and let fly a murderous rain of arrows over his horse’s rump as he twisted backward – the famous ‘Parthian shot’. When Crassus fell at Carrhae, the General in command of the Parthian army had been an effeminate, painted prince named the Surenas, who devised a way to ensure that his horse archers did not run out of arrows: he loaded trains of camels with spare arrows and got them to his men. Unfortunately his success was so marked that King Orodes suspected the Surenas would aim next for the throne, and had him executed.

Since that day over ten years in the past, a controversy had raged as to whether it had been the horse archers who won Carrhae, or the cataphracts. Men clad in chain mail from head to foot, the cataphracts bestrode big horses also clad in chain mail. The source of the argument was social; horse archers were peasants, whereas cataphracts were noblemen.

So when Pacorus and Labienus led their army into Syria at the beginning of February in the year of the consulship of Gnaeus Domitius Calvinus and Gnaeus Asinius Pollio, its Parthian content consisted solely of cataphracts. The nobles had won the struggle.

Pacorus and Labienus crossed the Euphrates River at Zeugma and there separated. While Labienus and his mercenaries drove west across the Amanus into Cilicia Pedia, Pacorus and the cataphracts turned south for Syria. They swept all before them on both fronts, though Cleopatra’s agents in the north of Syria concentrated on Pacorus, not Labienus. Word flew to Alexandria.

The moment Antony heard, he was gone. No fond farewells, no protestations of love.

‘Does he know?’ asked Tach’a of Cleopatra.

No need for clarification; Cleopatra knew what she meant. ‘No. I didn’t have a chance – all he did was bellow for his armor and apply the goad to men like Dellius.’ She sighed. ‘His ships are to sail to Berytus, but he wasn’t sure enough of the winds to risk a sea voyage. He hopes to reach Antioch ahead of his fleet.’

‘What doesn’t Antonius know?’ Caesarion demanded, most put out at the sudden departure of his hero.

‘That in Sextilis you’ll have a baby brother or sister.’

The child’s face lit up, he leaped about joyfully. ‘A brother or a sister! Mama, Mama, that’s terrific!’

‘Well, at least that’s taken his mind off Antonius,’ said Iras to Charmian.

‘It won’t take her mind off Antonius,’ Charmian answered.

Antony rode for Antioch at a grueling pace, sending for this or that local potentate in southern Syria as he passed through, at times issuing his orders to them from horseback.

Alarming to find out from Herod that among the Jews opinion was divided; a large group of Judaic dissenters actually seemed avid to be ruled by the Parthians. The leader of the pro-Parthian party was the Hasmonaean Prince Antigonus, Hyrcanus’s nephew but no lover of Hyrcanus or the Romans. Herod neglected to inform Mark Antony that Antigonus was already dickering with Parthian envoys for the things he coveted – the Jewish throne and the high priesthood. As Herod was not very interested in these furtive dealings or the Sanhedrin mood, Antony continued northward ignorant of how serious the Jewish situation was. For once Herod had been caught napping, too busy trying to cut his brother Phasael out for the hand of the Princess Mariamne to notice anything else.

Tyre was impossible to take except from within. Its stinking isthmus, fouled by hills of rotting shellfish carcasses, gave the center of the purple-dye industry the protection due an island, and no one would betray it from within; no Tyrian wanted to have to send purple dye to the King of the Parthians for a price fixed by the King of the Parthians.

In Antioch, Antony found Lucius Decidius Saxa striding up and down nervously, the watchtowers atop the massive city walls lined with men straining to see into the north; Pacorus would follow the Orontes River, and he wasn’t far away. Saxa’s brother had come from Ephesus to join him, and refugees were streaming in. Ejected from the Amanus, the brigand king Tarcondimotus told Antony that Labienus was doing brilliantly. By now he was supposed to have reached Tarsus and Cappadocia. Antiochus of Commagene, ruler of a client-kingdom that bordered the Amanus ranges on the north, was wavering in his Roman allegiance, said Tarcondimotus. Liking the man, Antony listened; a brigand, maybe, but clever and capable.

After inspecting Saxa’s two legions, Antony relaxed a little. Once Gaius Cassius’s men, these legionaries were fit and very experienced in combat.

More upsetting by far was the news from Italia. His brother Lucius was immured inside Perusia and under siege, while Pollio had retreated to the swamps at the mouth of the Padus River! It made no sense … Pollio and Ventidius vastly outnumbered Octavian! Why weren’t they helping Lucius? Antony asked himself, entirely forgetting that he hadn’t answered their pleas for guidance – was Lucius’s war a part of Antony’s policy, or was it not?

Well, no matter how grave the situation in the East was, Italia was more important. Antony sailed for Ephesus, intending to go on to Athens as soon as possible. He had to find out more.

* * *

The monotony of the first stage of the voyage gave him time to think about Cleopatra and that fantastic winter in Egypt. Ye gods, how he had needed to break out! And how well the Queen had catered for his every whim. He truly did love her, as he loved all the women with whom he associated for longer than a day, and he would continue to love her until she did something to sour him. Though Fulvia had done more than merely sour, if the fragments of news he had from Italia were anything to go by. The only woman for whom his love had persisted in the teeth of a thousand thousand transgressions was his mother, surely the silliest woman in the history of the world.

As was true of most boys of noble family, Antony’s father had not been in Rome overmuch, so Julia Antonia was – or was supposed to be – the one who held the family together. Three boys and two girls had not endowed her with a scrap of maturity; she was terrifyingly stupid. Money was something that fell off vines and servants people far cleverer than she. Nor was she lucky in love. Her first husband, father of her children, had committed suicide rather than return to Rome to face treason charges for his bungling conduct of a war against the Cretan pirates, and her second husband had been executed in the Forum Romanum for his part in the rebellion led by Catilina. All of which had happened by the time that Marcus, the eldest of the children, had turned twenty. The two girls were so physically huge and Antonian-ugly that they were married off to rich social climbers in order to bring some money into the family to fund the public careers of the boys, who had run wild. Then Marcus ran up massive debts and had to marry a rich provincial named Fadia, whose father paid a two-hundred-talent dowry. The goddess Fortuna seemed to smile on Antony; Fadia and the children she had borne him died in a summer pestilence, leaving him free to marry another heiress, his first cousin Antonia Hybrida. That union had produced one child, a girl who was neither bright nor pretty. When Curio was killed and Fulvia became available, Antony divorced his cousin to marry her. Yet another profitable alliance; Fulvia was the richest woman in Rome.

Not precisely an unhappy childhood and young manhood; more that Antony had never been disciplined. The only person who could control Julia Antonia and her boys had been Caesar; he wasn’t the actual head of the Julian family, just its most forceful member. Over the years Caesar had made it plain that he was fond of them, but he was never an easy man, nor one whom the boys understood. That fatal lack of discipline combined with an outrageous love of debauchery had finally, in the grown man Mark Antony, turned Caesar away from him. Twice had Antony proven himself not to be trusted; to Caesar, one time too many. Caesar had cracked his whip – hard.

To this day, leaning on the rail watching the sunlight play on the wet oars as they came out of the sea, Antony wasn’t sure whether he had meant to participate in the plot to murder Caesar. Looking back on it, he was inclined to think that he hadn’t truly believed that the likes of Gaius Trebonius and Decimus Junius Brutus had the gumption or the degree of hatred necessary to go through with it. Marcus Brutus and Cassius hadn’t mattered so much; they were the figureheads, not the perpetrators. Yes, the plot definitely belonged to Trebonius and Decimus Brutus. Both dead. Dolabella had tortured Trebonius to death, while a Gallic chieftain separated Decimus Brutus from his head for a bag of gold supplied by Antony himself. Surely, reflected Antony, that proved that he hadn’t really plotted to kill Caesar! Mind you, he had long ago decided that a Rome without Caesar would be an easier one for him to live in. And the greatest tragedy was that it probably would have been, were it not for the emergence of Gaius Octavius, Caesar’s heir. Who, aged eighteen, promptly set out to claim his inheritance, a precarious enterprise that saw him march twice upon Rome before his twentieth birthday. His second march had seen him elected Senior Consul, whereupon he had had the temerity to force his rivals, Antony and Lepidus, to meet in conference with him. What had resulted was the Second Triumvirate – Three Men to Reconstitute the Republic. Instead of one dictator, three dictators with (theoretically) equal power. Marooned on an island in a river in Italian Gaul, it was gradually borne upon Antony and Lepidus that this youth half their age could run rings around them for guile and ruthlessness.

What Antony couldn’t bear to admit to himself, even in his gloomiest moments, was that thus far Octavian had demonstrated how uncanny Caesar’s preference for him had been. Sickly, underage, too pretty, a real mama’s boy, still Octavian had managed to keep his head above water that ought to have drowned him. Perhaps a part of it was having Caesar’s name – he exploited it to the full – and another part of it was the blind loyalty of young men like Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa; but there could be no denying that most of Octavian’s successful survival had to be laid at Octavian’s door, and Octavian’s door alone. Antony used to joke with his brothers that Caesar was an enigma, but compared to Octavian, Caesar was as transparent as the water in the Aqua Marcia.