She clutched the air with her plump little fingers. The illusion of the crocodile vanished. She was a furious, very frightened child. She bolted toward me. I grabbed her wrists.
'Unhand me, you filthy Roman!' she shouted.
Ganymedes started toward us, but Rupa blocked his way.
'By the ka of my own father, I swear that I am not your sister's spy,' I said. The oath seemed to calm her, but I kept a firm grip on her wrists.
'Then what business did you have with her?'
'We talked about Hieronymus.'
'Hieronymus visited Cleopatra as well?'
'Yes. But he was not your enemy, and neither am I.'
Arsinoe tore herself from my grip and turned her face away. She trembled and heaved, then steadied herself. 'Tell Caesar, or my sister, or whatever person sent you, that the rightful queen of Egypt is ready to confront her fate. She shall do so with her head held high and her shoulders back. She will not weep, she will not tremble, she will not tear her hair and beg for mercy from the Roman mob. Nor will she throw herself from this balcony-though I suspect that was Caesar's hope when he placed us in these quarters, that I would kill myself and save him the shame of executing a woman.'
She turned to face me, sufficiently composed to stare into my eyes again. 'My fate is in the hands of the gods. But so is Caesar's, whether he knows it or not. His crimes against me are an offense to the gods, who never forget and seldom forgive. Caesar will not escape their judgment. When the time comes, his punishment will be terrible. Mark my words!'
The door flew open. One of the guards stepped into the room. 'What's the shouting about?'
'My visitors will leave now.' Arsinoe turned her back on me and returned to the balcony. Ganymedes, with his nose in the air, strode past me to join her.
As we made our way down the many flights of steps, I pondered the threat posed to Caesar, and to Cleopatra, by Arsinoe. She would certainly kill them both, if she could. The death of Cleopatra would clear the way for Arsinoe to seize control in Alexandria, presuming she could return there alive. The death of Caesar could lead to chaos in Rome and to full independence for Egypt. Yet what means did Arsinoe possess to bring about anyone's death or to engineer her own escape? Did she have confederates in the city, ready to act on her behalf? Might there be individuals in the entourage of Cleopatra who were secretly loyal to Arsinoe?
These were idle speculations. I had no reason to think that Arsinoe could possibly devise a double assassination and a last-minute escape. And yet, Hieronymus had asserted that the threat to Caesar came from an unforeseen quarter…
Skipping ahead of me down the steps, Rupa kept turning back, attempting to tell me something by using his personal system of gestures and facial expressions. I frowned, unable to understand him.
'What are you trying to say, Rupa? Here, stop for a moment, so that I can see you clearly.'
He was fairly bursting with emotion. He made a shapely gesture to indicate Arsinoe; that was clear enough. But the feeling he was trying to express was so grand it defeated his vocabulary.
I smiled sadly. 'Yes, Rupa, I agree. In her own way, Arsinoe is magnificent.'
He nodded vigorously. I saw a bemused look on his face and tears in his eyes.
Oh, Rupa! I thought. It's no good for a fellow like you to have such feelings for a princess-especially a princess who'll be dead tomorrow.
XII
'So, you managed to endure them both in one day,' said Calpurnia. 'Which sister struck you as the more wicked?'
The last rays of sunlight from the windows illuminated the room with a soft glow; it was not quite the hour of lighting lamps. Caesar's wife and her haruspex sat side by side while Rupa and I remained standing. Porsenna's yellow costume was the brightest thing in the room; it seemed to absorb all the ambient light and cast it back again.
''Wicked' is not necessarily a word I would use to describe either of them,' I said. 'They're not as simple as that.'
'Nonsense! Don't tell me you've been taken in by the so-called Ptolemaic mystique, Finder-this absurd notion they put about regarding their supposed divinity.'
I raised an eyebrow. 'The new statue of Caesar on the Capitoline declares him to be a demigod, I believe.'
'Descending from a goddess and incarnating a goddess are two different things,' she said.
'I'll have to take your word for that.'
Calpurnia ignored my sardonic tone. 'All this fuss they make about the many generations of their royal line, going back to the first Ptolemy. When did he reign? Two hundred and fifty years ago? My own family descends from King Numa, and he lived more than six hundred years ago. The Ptolemies are mere upstarts compared to the Calpurnii. Isn't that right, Uncle Gnaeus?'
She nodded to the white-haired priest, who had just stepped into the room.
Gnaeus Calpurnius gave his niece a kiss on the forehead. He snapped his fingers. A slave brought a chair.
Uncle Gnaeus sat down with a grunt. 'That is correct, my dear; our line is far more ancient than that of the Ptolemies. And what did any Ptolemy ever achieve, compared to the accomplishments of our ancestor Numa? Numa established the order of the Vestal virgins. He set the dates for the holy festivals and sacrifices, prescribed the rituals for venerating the gods, and established the priesthoods for performing these sacred duties. Through the mediation of his beloved, the nymph Egeria, he communed with great Jupiter himself. What did any Ptolemy ever do, except build a lighthouse?'
Which you obviously have never seen, you pompous fool! I thought. The Pharos lighthouse was the tallest building on earth, with a beacon visible across a vast expanse of land and sea, a true wonder of the world. It was likely to still be standing long after Numa's decrepit reckoning of days was long forgotten, supplanted by Caesar's new calendar-which had been devised by scholars from the library established by the Ptolemies.
I refrained from saying any of this. Uncle Gnaeus's boasting was merely a distraction. Calpurnia wanted to know whether Cleopatra or Arsinoe posed any threat to her husband. Hieronymus's notes on his visits were worthless in this regard. I had to rely on my own observations and instincts.
'It's my belief that the Queen of Egypt came to Rome with one goal in mind: to persuade Caesar to acknowledge her son as his offspring.'
'Something he will never do!' said Calpurnia. 'For one thing, the child isn't Caesar's. Porsenna has studied the matter.'
'Is that right?' I said.
The haruspex smiled. 'I managed to obtain a few strands of the boy's hair, never mind how. I performed a sacrifice. When the hair and the entrails of the sacrificial beast were burned, the pattern of the smoke clearly indicated that the child has no Roman blood whatsoever. The science of haruspicy is never wrong in such matters.'
'It's probably the whelp of that lackey of hers, the one who toted her about inside a carpet,' said Uncle Gnaeus. 'Any woman who would resort to such an indignity would probably allow even a servant to have his way with her.'
I doubted this. If there was anything Cleopatra took seriously, it was the dignity of her person. For a woman who considered herself a goddess, copulation was a serious and sacred matter. 'Is Caesar aware of the results of this divination?'
Calpurnia made a face. 'Caesar does not always accord sufficient importance to the ancient ways of knowing.'
'He observes the rituals, but he lacks true understanding.' Uncle Gnaeus shook his head.
'Enough, Uncle!' said Calpurnia sharply. 'Now is not the time to discuss Caesar's deficiencies in matters of
