'If any man would be foolish enough to marry such an ill-starred wife!'
I pulled myself upright and stiffened my jaw. Engaging in banter was not my reason for calling Meto back. Among the objects strewn across the bed, I spotted a small jar made of carved malachite, with a lid of the same stone secured by a brass clamp. I picked it up, gazed it at for a long moment, then handed it to Meto.
'Perhaps you'd like this, to remember her by. The beeswax inside is suffused with the scent Bethesda wore on special occasions. I told her to leave it in Rome, but she insisted on packing it. 'What if we attend a dinner with Queen Cleopatra?' she said. She was being facetious, of course.'
He unclamped the lid and held the jar to his nose. The perfume was subtle but unmistakable, its ingredients a secret even to me. I caught a faint whiff. Tears came to my eyes.
Meto clamped the lid. His voice was choked with emotion. 'If you're sure you want to give it to me…'
'Take it.'
'Thank you, Papa.'
He turned to go, then turned back. 'That vial of poison, Papa-you should get rid of it.'
And you should mind your own business, I started to say, but the lump in my throat was too thick. The best I could manage was a curt gesture of dismissal.
Meto stepped through the doorway and disappeared.
Why did I not do as Meto advised? From my window, I could have cast the alabaster vial into the harbor, where it would have sunk like a stone. Instead, I gathered it up with the other things on the bed and stuffed them back into the trunk, then closed the lid and threw myself onto my bed.
Rupa hovered over me. I told him to go to his room. Mopsus approached, clearing his throat to speak. I told him to take Androcles and follow Rupa. They left me alone.
I covered my face with my forearm and wept. As faint as a whisper, Bethesda's perfume lingered on the air.
CHAPTER XVII
The boys stayed very quiet the next morning, allowing me to sleep late. I was still groggy, my head full of uneasy dreams, when Merianis arrived bearing a scrap of papyrus that had been folded several times and sealed with wax. The impression in the wax was that of Caesar's ring, which bore an image of Venus circled by the letters of his name.
'What's this?' I said.
'I've no idea,' said Merianis. 'A missive from Little Rome. I'm merely the bearer. Shall I stay, in case you wish to send a reply?'
'Stay, so that I can look upon your beaming face. At least someone in this palace is happy. I don't suppose the return of your mistress has anything to do with your mood this morning?'
She grinned. 'While Queen Cleopatra was gone, the temple of Isis was a place without magic.'
'And now the magic has returned.' I broke the seal and unfolded the papyrus. The letter was in Caesar's own hand.
Gordianus
Apologies for our interrupted dinner. Much was left unsaid. But unexpected encounters bring happy results. There will be a royal reception today that I should very much like you to attend. Call it a lesson in the fine art of reconciliation. Wear your toga and come to the grand reception hall at the eighth hour of the day.
I put down the letter. Merianis looked at me expectantly. 'A reception of some sort, later this afternoon,' I said.
She nodded to indicate she already knew about it.
'Will you be there?' I said.
'No power in heaven or earth could keep me from attending.'
'Then I shall go, as well. Mopsus! Androcles! Stop playing with that cat and lay out my toga for me.' The reception hall was truly grand, the result of hundreds of years of refinements, additions, and adornments by generations of Ptolemies. Here the kings and queens of Egypt received tributes from subjects, announced treaties and trade agreements, celebrated royal weddings, and put on their most magnificent displays of wealth and power. Every surface shone with reflected light, whether from the polished marble of floors and pedestals inlaid with semiprecious stone, or from the burnished silver of brackets and lamps, or from the gold of gilded alcoves filled with gilded statues. The lofty ceiling was supported by a forest of slender columns decorated with lotus motifs and painted in vivid hues.
The room was already buzzing with excitement when Merianis and I arrived. The crowd was made up mostly of Egyptians in ceremonial dress, but there was a large contingent of Romans as well. 'A lesson in the fine art of reconciliation,' Caesar had remarked in his note to me, and the Roman officers seemed to be following that theme, taking pains to mingle with the locals and engage them in conversation. Among the Egyptians, however, there seemed to be two unequal factions in the room, standing apart from one another. The greater faction I took to be adherents of the king; the lesser group, adherents of his sister. While the Romans moved among both, the two groups of courtiers did not mix, but instead exchanged suspicious, furtive glances.
Merianis took my hand and drew me toward the far end of the room, where four thrones were set upon a low dais. The gilded thrones were upholstered with crocodile flesh, and the arms of the thrones were carved to resemble crocodiles whose open jaws revealed rows of ivory teeth. On the wall behind the thrones, a vast painting depicted the city of Alexandria as it might appear to a bird soaring at a great height, with the Pharos lighthouse looming above all else. Beyond the cityscape and its teeming harbor, an expansive blue sea was scattered with tiny, but meticulously rendered, ships, and the great islands of Rhodes and Crete (identified by their names in Greek letters beneath them) loomed in the far distance.
A wave of excitement as palpable as a warm breeze passed through the room, with a loud hubbub following in its wake. I saw that an entourage was making its way through the crowd toward the dais. Pothinus was in the forefront, followed by the king, who wore the uraeus crown with a rearing cobra. Caesar came next, dressed as consul of the Roman people in his toga with a purple border. After him, resplendent in a gown of purple, adorned with jewelry, and wearing a uraeus crown with a vulture's head, came Cleopatra.
Following the older siblings came the two members of the royal family I had not seen before, Arsinoe, who was slightly older than the young king, and the youngest of all, a boy who also bore the name Ptolemy, who could not have been more than ten or eleven. These two did not wear diadems, but were dressed in dazzling raiment.
As the royal procession passed by, I tried to read their expressions. Pothinus looked pinched and uneasy, like a man who had swallowed something that disagreed with him. King Ptolemy kept his lips tightly compressed and his gaze straight ahead, as if deliberately putting on an inscrutable face. Caesar looked eminently pleased with himself. And Cleopatra…
The previous night I had seen her with her hair in a bun, wearing a practical garment suitable for traveling in rough circumstances, and little other adornment. Even so, she had seemed unmistakably a queen. Now, wearing royal raiment, with a necklace made of golden scarabs adorning her bosom and rings of gold and silver upon her fingers, she seemed to fill the chamber with her presence. I looked about and saw that some of the Egyptians in the room gazed at her with loathing, others with adoration, and that the Roman officers regarded her with expressions that ranged from wonderment to simple curiosity; but every pair of eyes, without exception, looked on Cleopatra as she passed by.
Her expression was as inscrutable as her brother's, but radiated a quality quite different. Ptolemy exuded the tension of a ratcheted catapult; Cleopatra seemed to flow effortlessly across the room, as a cloud proceeds across the sky.
The king and queen mounted the dais and sat upon the two thrones in the center. To either side of them sat Arsinoe and the younger Ptolemy in thrones only slightly lower and less magnificent. Seeing all the siblings side-by- side, I was struck by how closely the four of them resembled each other. I seemed to be looking at four manifestations of the same being incarnated in bodies of different age and gender, which were nonetheless more alike than different. Had their striking similarity served merely to make the siblings all the more hostile to one
