“There’s no retreat by sea, my lord,” Delius said to Antony, ignoring Cleopatra. His finger traced the coastline extending west away from the base of the Actium Peninsula, on which their main camp was situated, resting finally on Leucas, an island separated from the mainland of Greece by a sliver of water shallow enough to be forded on foot during low tide. Vorenus had looked out to the island often these months, wishing Didymus had been around to see it: his old friend had a profound interest in Homer, and it was rumored that Leucas had been the Ithaca to which Odysseus so long sought to return. “The wind is running north to south this time of year. So any flight by sea means rowing west, right through Octavian and Agrippa’s navy, right through the teeth of it, all the way out west of the island. Only then could we raise sail and escape. Better to go south by land.”
“Go south,” Antony said. “To where?”
“To fight another day,” Insteius said.
“No.” Antony shook his head firmly. “To die another day, someplace else. Without Cleopatra’s ships our only hope would be to run our way out of Greece. And even if we manage it, where do we run? Through Thrace? Across the Bosporus and Bithynia, Cappadocia and Syria? And what will remain of Alexandria when we return, panting and sweating after our rather long run?”
Cleopatra’s face was tight, but Vorenus didn’t think anyone but him was looking at her.
“You still have friends in the east,” Delius said. “Forget Alexandria. Forget Egypt.”
“Forget Egypt?” Antony shook with fresh rage and raised a fist as if to strike the man. He brought it down, instead, on the map table. Vorenus felt the blow reverberate through the wooden planks beneath his feet. “My children are in Alexandria, you worthless sack of shit,” he spat.
Delius’ jaw clenched, but he lowered his eyes. “I beg your pardon, my lord. I spoke unthinkingly.”
Antony’s arm trembled as he pulled his fist back off the table. Vorenus half-expected to see a dent where it had landed. “There is no option,” the general said firmly. “There is no choice. That coward Octavian, these coward defectors, this godsforsaken land … there’s no choice.”
Antony turned on his heel, chest heaving for control of his emotions as he walked back to his chair and sat down. Cleopatra remained beside the table. “The plan is simple,” she said, ignoring Delius’ refusal to watch as her elegant hands traced lines on the maps, the fates of thousands. “We attack tomorrow.”
13
THE TOMB OF ALEXANDER
ALEXANDRIA, 31 BCE
Getting out of the palace hadn’t been difficult. She was, after all, a queen and the daughter of a god. If she wanted to go for a walk outside along the water, if she wanted to look out over the harbor at the busy world around them, who would stop her? Kemse had tried to keep her inside anyway, but Selene knew the old woman couldn’t force her to stay. So despite the anxious looks from Helios and Philadelphus—which were mostly looks of envy, Selene was sure—she’d left the palace for the second time that morning. It hadn’t been difficult at all.
No, the hard part had been finding a way to the city. It wasn’t far to go, of course, especially off the southern tip of Antirhodos, but she wasn’t about to swim. The currents there were said to be far too strong to be easily crossed. And, even if she could somehow do so, it wouldn’t be … proper, she was sure.
Unlike Caesarion, she couldn’t order up a boat, despite the handful of gold coins she’d nabbed before leaving the palace. She might be a queen, but Caesarion was a king, and he’d told them to stay on the island. The guards, Selene knew, would faithfully obey his command and prevent her from leaving if they knew she was trying to do so.
She’d been thinking about the difficulty of the problem, chewing her lip in both concentration and frustration, when she’d seen the little shipping barge pull into the island’s harbor. It came a few times each week, bringing in full crates of fresh supplies for the royal family and taking out empty ones. The attention of the workmen had been on their labors. The attention of the guards had been on ensuring that no one set foot on the royal island. Between them, no one took notice of the nine-year-old girl—wearing a slave’s shawl for a cloak—who’d ducked from pillar to pillar, then crate to crate before she slipped aboard the barge, tucked behind some already-placed empty boxes. And no one noticed when she slipped back off again, half an hour later, when the boat tied off along the buzzing docks near the temple to Poseidon.
Standing now at the edge of the docks, the noisy city stretching out before her, Selene took a moment to glance back across the water toward Antirhodos. She couldn’t see it at first, there were too many men in the way: slaves and dockmen laboring under loads, tradesmen and merchants shouting, sailors laughing. She started moving a little to the side, to find a sightline back to the island, but she didn’t look where she was going. A barebacked laborer, sweating despite the early hour of the morning, strode hard through the crowd and clipped her shoulder, sending her sprawling down onto the wood. She gasped, feeling pain in her hand and shocked that someone would treat her thus. “Out of the way, girl,” the man grumbled, never looking back.
Selene stood quickly, spinning to glare at the man and instinctively wanting to order his arrest, but he was already receding into the seething crowds. Suddenly remembering her intention to hide, though, Selene lowered her head and looked from side to side this time as she moved out to the edge of the dock, away from the thick of the pressing flow of men. There was a sliver of wood in her palm, and she gritted her teeth as she worked it out with the fingernails of her other hand. A little bubble of blood welled up and trembled, bright red against her smooth and clean skin, before she wiped it away on Kemse’s shawl. Then she looked back to the island at last.
Antirhodos was quiet. The red-roofed and white-walled royal palace gleamed peacefully amid the greens and browns of trees and gardens, and the few guards she could make out among the pink granite columns of the long east-west colonnade were standing at ease. Selene felt a pang of sadness—at first for the anxiety that Kemse would feel, but after that for the fact that they’d not yet noticed her absence—but she smiled nonetheless. If they hadn’t noticed her missing yet, then she had all the more time to cut through the tumbling Emporium, which stretched along the water’s edge from the Poseidium to the Navalia docks. She’d find a street south and make her way to the intersection of the Sema and Canopic avenues, the city’s two great streets, where Alexander’s mausoleum and the Museum and Library stood.
Selene turned back to the city, to the sprawling maze of stores and carts and banners and people that was the long Emporium of Alexandria. She took a deep breath, reminding herself that the hard part was getting off the island. Then she started walking.
* * *
The assault on her senses was immediate and filled her with wonder. To her eyes came the bolts of bright fabrics held forth by a dyer, the headless little animals held up for sale by a butcher, the strangely clad foreigners from every land. To her ears came a thousand voices from as many cities—talking, cursing, chanting, singing, or roaring with laughter—a rumbling of carts, an elephant’s trumpet, and a ringing of hammers that echoed up from smoky shadows. To her nose came the scents of meat and men, of sweets and filth, and, everywhere, spices upon spices.
Selene tried to keep her head down and her shoulders up as she walked against the tide of sights and sounds and smells. She tried to walk straight away from the docks and the water, into the heart of the city itself. But unlike the easy grid laid about by Alexander for the boulevards of his namesake city, the little alleys and pathways in the Emporium were a confusing maze with no sensible organization, as if it had all been jumbled out against the shore. Twice Selene had noticed the crowds thinning and thought she’d made it out—only to realize that she’d somehow circled back to another spot on the shoreline and had to start over again.