‘My, you don’t have much in your wardrobe,’ Cleopatra said, unimpressed.
‘Dionysus didn’t need much. Here, have a grape,’ he said, extending the bunch he held in one hand.
‘Here, have an apple,’ she said, extending a hand.
‘I’m Dionysus, not Paris. “Paris, you pretty boy, you woman-struck seducer,”’ he quoted. ‘See? I know my Homer.’
‘I am consumed with admiration.’ She arranged herself on the couch; he had given her the locus consularis, not a gesture the sticklers in his entourage appreciated. Women were women.
Antony tried, but the stripped-for-action look didn’t affect Cleopatra at all. Whatever she lived for, it wasn’t the physical side of love, so much was certain. In fact, she spent most of the evening playing with her golden apple, which she put into a glass goblet of pink wine and marveled at how the blue of the glass turned the gold a subtle shade of purple, especially when she stirred it with one manicured finger.
Finally, desperate, Antony gambled all on one roll of the dice: Venus, they must come up Venus! ‘I’m falling in love with you,’ he said, hand caressing her arm.
She moved it as if to brush off the attentions of an insect. ‘Gerrae,’ she growled.
‘It is not rubbish!’ he said indignantly, sitting up straight. ‘You’ve bewitched me, Cleopatra.’
‘My wealth has bewitched you.’
‘No, no! I wouldn’t care if you were a beggar woman!’
‘Gerrae! You’d step over me as if I didn’t exist.’
‘I’ll prove that I love you! Set me a task!’
Her answer was immediate. ‘My sister Arsinoë has taken refuge in the precinct of Artemis at Ephesus. She is under a sentence of death legally pronounced in Alexandria. Execute her, Antonius. Once she’s dead, I’ll rest easier, like you more.’
‘I have a better way,’ he said, sweat beading his forehead. ‘Let me make love to you – here, now!’
Her head tilted, skewing the veil of blossoms. To Dellius, watching intently from his couch, she looked like a tipsy flower vendor determined on a sale. One yellow-gold eye closed, the other surveyed Antony speculatively. ‘Not in Tarsus,’ she said then, ‘and not while my sister lives. Come to Egypt bearing me Arsinoë’s head, and I’ll think about it.’
‘I can’t!’ he cried, gasping. ‘I’ve too much work to do! Why do you think I’m sober? A war brewing in Italia, that accursed boy faring better than anyone could have expected – I can’t! And how can you ask for the head of your own sister?’
‘With relish. She’s been after my head for years. If her plans succeed, she’ll marry my son, then lop mine from my shoulders in the flicker of an eye. Her blood is pure Ptolemaic and she’s young enough to have children when Caesarion is old enough. I am the granddaughter of Mithridates the Great – a hybrid. And my son, more hybrid yet. To many people in Alexandria, Arsinoë represents a return to the proper bloodlines. If I am to live, she must die.’
Cleopatra slid from the couch, discarding her veil, wrenching ropes of tuber roses and lilies from her neck and waist. ‘Thank you for an excellent party, and thank you for an illuminating trip abroad. Philopator has not been so entertained these last hundred years. Tomorrow we sail home to Egypt. Come and see me there. And do look in on my sister at Ephesus. She’s such an absolute chuckle. If you like harpies and gorgons, you’ll just love her.’
‘Maybe,’ said Dellius, made privy to some of this the next morning as Philopator dipped golden oars in the water and started home, ‘you frightened her, Antonius.’
‘Frightened her? That cold blooded viper? Impossible!’
‘She doesn’t weigh much more than a talent, whereas you must weigh in the region of four talents. Perhaps she thinks you’d crush her to death.’ He tittered. ‘Or ram her to death! It’s even possible that you would.’
‘Cacat! I never thought of that!’
‘Woo her with letters, Antonius, and get on with your duties as Triumvir east of Italia.’
‘Are you trying to push me, Dellius?’ Antony asked.
‘No, no, of course not!’ Dellius answered quickly. ‘Just remind you that the Queen of Egypt is no longer on your horizon, whereas other people and events are.’
Antony swept the paperwork off his desk with a savage swipe that had Lucilius down on his hands and knees immediately, picking them up. ‘I’m fed up with this life, Dellius! The East can rot – it’s time for wine and women.’
Dellius looked down, Lucilius looked up, exchanged a speaking glance. ‘I have a better idea, Antonius,’ Dellius said. ‘Why not get through a mountain of work this summer, then spend the winter in Alexandria at the court of Queen Cleopatra?’
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