Cleopatra wore a sleeveless gown of thin, pleated linen, suitable for the hot weather. The line of the gown was simple, but even the plainest garments of the very rich betray their exquisite workmanship to the observant eye. Her supple leather slippers were likewise unostentatious but very finely made. Her jewelry was a matching set of bracelets and a necklace and earrings all made of hammered silver with settings of smoky topaz and black chalcedony. Her dark hair was pulled back into a bun, so that my first glimpse was of the profile, as seen on her coins, of a young woman with a very prominent nose and chin.
Her two-year-old son was seated on the grass nearby, dressed in a purple tunic and attended by cooing nursemaids. The queen's longtime bodyguard, Apollodorus, was leaning against the trunk of the fig tree. It was Apollodorus who had delivered her to Caesar rolled up in a carpet. The handsome, long-limbed Sicilian perused me though narrowed eyes and gave me a nod of recognition.
The queen put aside a shallow dish piled with shelled almonds and dates. "Gordianus-called-Finder! I never thought to see you again."
I bowed deeply but did not prostrate myself. We were on Roman soil, after all. "I hope the surprise is a welcome one, Your Majesty."
For an answer, she gave me only a thin smile, then popped a date into her mouth.
To an old survivor like myself, the queen still seemed hardly more than a girl-twenty-three, I calculated-but since I had first seen her, emerging from that carpet to confront Caesar, she had matured considerably. She had been voluptuous before; motherhood had made her even more buxom. Her supreme self-confidence no longer seemed quite so precocious; the attribute seemed earned, not merely inborn. Cleopatra was a full-fledged queen now, the survivor of a bloody civil war, the ruler of the oldest kingdom on earth, and the living inheritor of Alexander the Great, since her distant ancestor Ptolemy had been Alexander's general and successor. She had also given birth to the son of a demigod, if the boy Caesarion was indeed Caesar's child.
It occurred to me that a triumphing general is traditionally accompanied by his sons on the joyous occasion; grown sons ride behind him, while sons in swaddling are carried in the chariot. Yet Caesarion had not accompanied Caesar during the Gallic Triumph. But was it still possible the Egyptian child would take part in Caesar's Egyptian Triumph?
"You found your wife, after all," said Cleopatra, referring to the end of my stay in Egypt.
"Yes, Your Majesty, I did. We're both back in Rome now."
"So she didn't drown in the Nile, as you feared?"
"Apparently not."
Cleopatra laughed. "Are you being ironic, Gordianus? Or do you perhaps have a trace of the mystic in you? Your answer leaves open the possibility that she did drown-yet still walks. And why not? The Nile is a god. It takes life, but it also gives life. Perhaps the Nile took both your wife and your life, Gordianus-called-Finder-and then gave them both back to you."
In truth, I had never been quite sure what happened that day I found Bethesda after our long separation. I had waded into the water seeking her, or seeking oblivion, if I could not find her. I entered the Nile, and the Nile entered me, through my open mouth. The water turned black. Then a woman emerged from the darkness and placed her mouth upon mine in a kiss. And then I was lying on the sandy riverbank beside Bethesda, beneath a purple sky shot with streaks of aquamarine and vermilion…
I shivered at the memory, then strove to shake it off. The Nile was far away. The river below us was the Tiber, and this was Rome.
A slight breeze stirred the fig tree. Dappled sunlight played across the queen. Her silver jewelry glittered. Flashes of light reflected off the baubles of topaz and chalcedony. "Did you receive my message of condolence, regarding your friend Hieronymus?"
"I did, Your Majesty."
"Is that why you've come?"
She was making my task easy. I merely needed to nod. There was no need to explain that I had come as the spy of the wife of the man who had fathered her child.
"I'm surprised that my friend Hieronymus was able to make Your Majesty's acquaintance, let alone merit your condolences in death."
"But why not? Your friend Hieronymus and I had more in common than you may realize. He was an outcast; so was I during those wretched months that my brother held the throne and forced me to flee into the desert and hide among camel drivers and nomads. Hieronymus also spoke lovely Greek and was very well-read-qualities not easy to find in this city, despite the Romans' claim to be the guardians of Greek culture. Honestly, when that pompous fool Cicero tried to quote a bit of Aeschylus to me, I had to laugh out loud. His accent is so uncouth!"
No wonder Cicero detests you, I thought.
"Your friend also had a wonderful sense of humor," she said. "Hieronymus made me laugh, the way Caesar used to do."
"Does Caesar no longer make you laugh?"
She frowned and ignored the question. "Yes, I was sorry to learn of Hieronymus's demise. He was murdered, was he not?"
"That is correct. But that detail was not entered into the death registry."
She snorted. "I don't rely on public records for my information, Gordianus-called-Finder. And neither do you. What have you learned about your friend's death?"
"The killer remains unknown."
"But not for long, I'm sure. You're such a clever fellow. Have you come to seek my help? Or do you perhaps think I'm responsible? By Horus, there seems to be no crime too great or too small, but some Roman will accuse me of it."
"Actually, there is a question you might help me to answer, Your Majesty."
"Ask."
The previous day, it had occurred to me that Hieronymus's apparent interest in calendars might have been fostered by Calpurnia's uncle Gnaeus, in his capacity as a priest. But because Hieronymus had visited Cleopatra, and her scholars were assisting Caesar with his new calendar, it also occurred to me that someone in the queen's household might have instructed Hieronymus in astronomical matters.
I had brought his notes with me. I pulled them from my satchel and began to hand them to Cleopatra, but Apollodorus intervened. He stepped forward and snatched the scraps of parchment from me. He sniffed them and ran his hands over them systematically, front and back, as if testing them for poison. Toxins which can kill though contact with the skin have existed at least since the time of Medea. Satisfied that the notes were harmless, he passed them to the queen, who perused them with a curious expression.
"I was wondering if Your Majesty might recognize these."
"No. I've never seen them before. But clearly these computations have something to do with the movements of the moon and stars and the reckoning of days. Did these come from Hieronymus?"
"They were among his personal papers, Your Majesty."
She handed the documents back to me. "What a clever fellow he was!"
"I was wondering, Your Majesty, if Hieronymus might have consulted with your scholars about the new calendar Caesar plans to introduce."
"Absolutely not!"
"You seem very certain."
"At Caesar's request, I have instructed all those involved in devising the new calendar to speak to no one. Caesar is very insistent that there should be no public knowledge of the details before he makes his official announcement."
"Then Hieronymus must have made these calculations with instruction from someone else."
"Yes. He certainly had no precise knowledge about my new calendar."
"Your calendar? I thought the revised calendar was Caesar's brainchild."