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."
She raised an eyebrow and nodded. "So it is. To be sure, it's my scholars who've performed the necessary computations, but if it pleases him, let Caesar take credit for the calendar. Caesar should take credit for all his creations." She looked at the little boy on the grass.
I followed her gaze. "Such a handsome lad!" I said, though to me the child looked no different from any other.
"He looks like his father," said Cleopatra. "Everyone says so."
The child had a fuller head of hair than Caesar, but perhaps I could see a resemblance around the cheekbones and the chin. "He has his mother's eyes," I said. And then, feeling daring, I asked, "Will he be taking part in the triumph tomorrow?"
She looked at me for a long moment before she answered. "That's a delicate question. The whole matter of the Egyptian Triumph is… delicate. The role that should be played by myself, and by our son, has been discussed at some length." Discussed by herself and Caesar, she surely meant, despite her careful passive construction. Those discussions had not been pleasant, to judge by the way Apollodorus rolled his eyes, not realizing I was watching him.
"In the end-so it has been explained to me-a Roman triumph is a purely indigenous celebration," she said. "A Roman triumph has everything to do with military conquest and nothing to do with diplomacy… or dynasty. The Egyptian Triumph will celebrate Caesar's victory over my renegade brother, Ptolemy, who refused to make peace with me and who died in the Nile for his treachery. The Egyptian Triumph is about Roman arms, not about Caesar's… personal connection… to Egypt."
"But you were his ally in the war. He fought on your behalf."
She smiled without mirth. "He fought to make peace in Egypt, because our civil strife was disrupting the supply of Egyptian grain to Rome."
"So Your Majesty will not be appearing in the triumph?"
"According to Caesar, a triumph is performed by Romans, for Romans. Even the most distinguished persons of foreign birth can have no place in the procession… except as captives."
I nodded. "They say your sister Arsinoe will be paraded in chains. I don't think any female of royal blood has ever been marched as a captive in a triumph before."
"So some innovation is possible in a triumph, after all," Cleopatra said drily. "Arsinoe dared to raise troops against me. She deserves her fate."
"But she's can't be more than nineteen. She was even younger, then."
"Nonetheless, she and her confederate, Ganymedes, will both be paraded as captives and put to death."
"Ganymedes?"
"Her tutor."
"A eunuch?" Most household attendants of the Ptolemies were castrated.
"Of course. After Arsinoe put to death her general Achillas, Ganymedes took over command of her troops, such as they were."
I shook my head. "Caesar's grand captives will be a teenaged girl and a eunuch? I'm not sure what the Roman people will make of that. I suspect they would have been far more impressed by the sight of you, Your Majesty, perhaps riding in state atop a giant sphinx."
She smiled, pleased by the suggestion. "What an imagination you have, Gordianus-called-Finder! Alas, Caesar did not possess such a vision. The triumph will celebrate his victories in Egypt. Although I was his collaborator and the beneficiary of those victories, I shall not take part."
"And neither shall Caesar's son?"
Apollodorus shuddered and shook his head reflexively. I had broached a topic that must have caused much heated debate between Caesar and the queen, perhaps in this very spot in the garden.
Cleopatra scrutinized me for a long moment. She was displeased that I had brought up the subject, yet she was pleased that I had called the boy Caesar's son, without equivocation. "It has been decided that Caesarion will not ride in the chariot with his father tomorrow," she finally said.
Cleopatra was doing her best to hide her disappointment, but it seemed clear that one of the purposes of her diplomatic visit to Rome-perhaps the main purpose-had been to persuade Caesar to acknowledge her son. She had hoped to make the Egyptian Triumph a celebration of herself and Caesarion. It was easy enough to follow her reasoning. Why shouldn't the Romans be pleased that the heir to the Egyptian throne was a boy of Roman blood, the son of their own ruler? Should they not be impressed that Caesar had coupled with a woman who was the living heir of Alexander the Great, the latest representative of the world's most venerable dynasty, and the incarnation of a goddess?
I could also imagine why Caesar had balked at the idea. An open declaration of dynastic intentions was still too radical for the Roman people to accept, and an Egyptian queen of Greek blood, however regal, was still a foreigner, and an unsuitable mother for the children of a Roman noble. It might also be that Caesar had other plans for the future, and intended for someone other than Caesarion to be his heir.
For whatever reason, Caesar had refused to acknowledge Caesarion. Despite the opportunity presented by his Egyptian Triumph, Cleopatra had been thwarted. What now were her feelings toward Caesar?
It occurred to me that Caesar dead might now be more valuable to her than Caesar alive. The assassination of Caesar would plunge Rome into confusion, perhaps even another civil war. Amid the wreckage and the chaos, might Egypt drive out the Roman garrisons and cast off the Roman yoke?
Weighed against demands of state and her own ambition, any personal feelings she still harbored for Caesar might count for nothing. Cleopatra came from a long line of cold-blooded crocodiles who were notorious for devouring their own. Her older sister, Berenice, had usurped their father; when he regained the upper hand, their father put Berenice to death. Cleopatra had not shed a tear when her brother perished in their civil war. She now seemed to be looking forward to the impending humiliation and execution of her younger sister with grim satisfaction.
Was Cleopatra capable of plotting Caesar's death? Did she have sufficient motive to do so? I looked into her eyes and shivered, despite the stifling heat of the day.