Page 25 of Cleopatra

25

CLEOPATRA

G uards are stationed on every entrance, but beyond the gates Rome burns. A mob has taken to the streets, ransacking houses as they hunt for the assassins. The crowd is split between those who would tear the murderers limb from limb, and those who want to slaughter all those close to Caesar. I need to find a way to get my son home. We came here to further his position and clarify my power but now unless we can get back to Alexandria, it will melt away. At the far end of the hall, I hear my brother-husband, little Tol, talking anxiously to his nurse. He is old enough to be frightened, but not old enough to help me come up with a way to escape.

For the present we are safe behind the villa walls. But whose villa is this now that Caesar is dead? I don’t know. His death was vicious and full of pain. He did not deserve such a death; it was not worthy of him. I do not miss him yet, for his departure is too recent, too raw, and I still half expect to see him striding along the path to find me.

Yet nothing is the same. The very air is altered. I am restless and can neither sit nor sleep nor eat. My hands shake as though I suffer from palsy. Above the city hovers a haze of smoke from fires burning in the streets. I pace through the villa gardens, for I cannot bear to be inside. Here, birds sing, unstilled. A bee investigates a clump of sunny narcissi beside a pool. For all the portents, now Caesar is dead nature does not care. The nursery slaves play with Caesarion beside a fountain of Venus, for I order him to be always in sight. Anxiety has taken lodging in my chest, and I feel the hurried beat of my heart. When I think of the danger to my boy I can’t breathe, and my vision blanches bright, as though I’m looking directly at the sun.

There’s a noise downstairs and for a moment I think that the house has been breached, the mob is here. There are foot-steps on the stairs. I wait for the shout of the guards outside my chamber, but they are silent. The door opens, and I see her. Charmian stands in the doorway, dirty and travel-worn. Her feet are blistered and bleeding, her sandal flaps broken.

‘You came back. You came back to me,’ I say, doubting my eyes.

‘You needed me. I had to come,’ she says.

I run to her and she hugs me, holding me tight, and suddenly all the tears that I have not shed fall at once as she holds me and rubs my back and whispers that she has missed me, that she loves me. ‘I’ll never leave you again,’ she says. I find that I cannot speak at all.

*

I know that the world is burning, and we must run, and Caesar is dead, and yet my sadness is leavened with joy. I stare at her in bewilderment. She is a freedwoman, able to make her own choices, and she chose me.

‘What about Apollodorus?’ I ask.

She is quiet for a moment, as though unable to speak. Her face is stricken, and when she speaks, it is in a whisper. ‘I love him. But I love you more.’

I twist and ache for him. He was my friend and I tried to give him freedom and happiness, but it seems that we can’t both be happy. There isn’t room in the world for both of us to have what we want. The thought of him on the farm, lonely without Charmian, even as he’s surrounded by his family, tugs at me. Guilt and sadness flare inside me. ‘I am sorry, Apollodorus,’ I murmur. I don’t ask Charmian what she said to him when she left. I don’t want to imagine his grief or pain at their parting, I already know what it is like. I pity him but I would not trade places.

She has come back to me and with her beside me, I know that we will escape, survive this, as we have all other dangers before. She might not have come with Apollodorus, but she has not come alone. She’s carrying his child. I do not ask her if he knew that she was pregnant, it seems cruel. I will take care of her and the baby as if they were my own flesh. I keep her beside me, only letting her out of my sight to wash and find clean clothes. I insist she eats at my side. I watch her tear into bread and fruit.

‘The slaves are readying the essentials for our journey. The rest will follow,’ she says.

‘How do we make our escape? We’re hemmed in on every side. The mob will not let us leave,’ I say.

Her face tight with worry, Charmian chews her nails, an old habit that used to get her beaten as a child. We need a plan, but I haven’t found it yet. My fate is too closely tied to Caesar, even after his death. It is like being back in the palace at Alexandria with enemies on every side, only now we lack his power. I realise with a nudge of sadness that there is loneliness in his death. I did not expect that. I want his protection but also his company. Despite Charmian’s return, there is a void and an echo. There isn’t time to dwell, we must only think how to escape, survive.

‘There are rioters on every street. Still, we must travel through them, fight our way out, before they try to reach us here,’ I say.

‘That is too dangerous,’ says Charmian.

I think of the soothsayer in Alexandria on the evening Caesar and I met. They killed the tree and now they will come for the fruit.

‘We are friendless here now Caesar is gone,’ she says.

And then I wonder. A strange thought strikes me. I recall Servilia. We are sisters in sorrow. For a moment I consider her loss. If my love for Ceaser is a river, then hers was the ocean, wide and deep.