Page 22 of Cleopatra

22

SERVILIA

I woke early and refreshed. The villa was still, the only noise that of the slaves busy about their morning chores and the pealing notes of spring. From a tree near my open window, a lark called. I smiled to hear it, gladdened, and decided that I would walk amongst my roses. I grew a profusion of them in every hue of white and pink and red and had mounds of manure carted in from my country estates for the gardeners to shovel into the beds. I am not vain of my own person, but I am vain of my roses – they are more exquisite than any in Rome. I meandered over to the window and glanced down at the beds beneath. Soon, the first buds would burst, and the air would be sweetened. I closed my eyes, happy in anticipation of a small pleasure. I’d heard Cleopatra had planted some that were new to me in the garden of her borrowed villa. If we shared a lover, we could share rose clippings.

Even as I was pondering this, I heard voices raised in the house below, but my thoughts were still scented with future roses, and I barely noticed. The shouts grew louder, and I felt a tickle of annoyance. I did not want visitors. Not yet. It was too early and they were unkind in their intrusion upon me on this bright spring morning. I would remain here in my own bedroom, secreted with my thoughts, and they would leave their message and depart, and the house would regain its stillness. Then to my dismay I heard the scuffle of footsteps on the stair. I sighed. I did not want them here. Let me stay in my room, alone and content and in peace considering my roses.

The door opened.

Brutus stood in the doorway, dipped in blood. His cheeks and hands were caked in crimson, sticky and wet, so thickly spread that it had not yet begun to dry. His white toga was torn and sprayed with gore. I stared at him for a moment, unable to understand the horror of the apparition before me, the living ghost of my brutalised son.

‘Who has mauled you? Who has done this? What crime?’ I cried, rushing to him.

Yet, he held me off, edged away from me. Something about his expression made me pause. I did not touch him. He smelled of meat.

‘It is not my blood, Mother,’ he said.

‘Then whose?’ I asked. The stillness around me swelled, it stretched and grew until I felt I must drown in it. I didn’t want him to speak the next word. Do not say it.

‘Caesar’s.’