Page 26 of Cleopatra

26

SERVILIA

I ordered Brutus to stay downstairs and posted guards on each of the doors. The city hummed with men hunting for him, eager to kill him for what he had done. He would be safe here in my house, for no one was closer to Caesar than me. And there was no one who felt his loss more keenly. Not the death of the statesman or dictator or general, but the loss of the man. Caesar the man with brown eyes slightly bloodshot with tiredness, who still always smiled when he saw me. He spoke to me in a voice that he used with no one else. No one would speak to me like that again, nor look at me with such tenderness.

I sat in my room, still in my night gown and shawl. The world was smashed and ended and yet I was cursed to see it still. I found that I spoke aloud as if to Caesar himself, and as I spoke, I saw a vision of him, hands clasped over his wounds, bleeding, beside my bed, the bed where we had talked and laughed and argued and fucked for thirty years. Without pausing to consider the unlikeliness of this apparition conjured from my unquiet mind, I talked to his ghost.

‘I heard no portents. Nothing warned me of this, my love. I slept. Was I thinking about my roses as you lay dying?’

He gazed back at me in silence.

‘I shall plant only bloody roses now. All the white and pink and yellow shall be torn up, and only Caesar’s red dug into those beds. They will have the sharpest thorns that will make the finger of anyone who picks them bleed.’

The ghost did not answer, simply sat, watching me with sad eyes.

My grief became rage, and restless in my fury I spun around the room, hands clawing at my hair and scratching at my face. Brutus was bathed in guilt. It dripped from him. But where was Antony as Caesar lay dying? Where were those others who could have saved him? Where were the men who loved him? I swallowed the question. What did it matter? Brutus loved him and he butchered him anyway.

The slaves dressed me in a fine linen dress, combed my hair and bathed my hands and face, assembling me in an echo of Servilia. Then I was lifted into my litter. The streets were emptier now, and the danger less acute, but I almost longed for accident or danger, for then I would not have to do this. This most horrible of tasks.

For the next hours, I knocked on the doors of senators, those friends of Caesar who were not party to the plot and were now filled with outrage and sorrow at the murder. I wanted to join them in their anger and their demands for vengeance. I wanted blood to assuage Caesar’s, but instead, I went on my knees and pleaded for my son the killer. As I begged, my eyes bleary with grief, I placed the box containing Caesar’s pearl at their feet. The symbol of his loyalty and love for me.

They listened to me with pity. None accused me of complicity. They knew my love for Caesar.

As I was carried home, I lay in the litter, feeling its rhythm, and I thrummed with humiliation and resentment and relief, for Brutus was safe. They would not demand his death.

My grief was doubled, Caesar was dead and my son had done it. I tried to put my heart back into my chest but it was too fat with sorrow. I protected my son, my enemy. His betrayal was absolute and yet I loved him still, even as Caesar’s corpse burned.

When I returned home, I walked out into the garden, my head aching. I stood in the air for a long time, feeling the wind on my skin and wondering how it was possible to feel so much pain, so much betrayal and grief, and yet still live.

I found myself thinking of that other boy. Caesar’s son. I hoped he would never have to pay for his father’s sins. But this is the way of things. Children grow up to be men and kill or are killed for the acts of their fathers. Mothers try and protect them from their own misdeeds, and yet mostly their actions are not remembered. I would in all likelihood disappear from history, my own self erased. Perhaps I was only ever the people I tried to save and only the men I saved or failed to save will be recalled. They will not know that I was the pebble, they will just see the ripples as I slid away beneath the surface. They will not know how I grieved for my lover, or how I tried to save my son; the senate meetings to plead for him, the wranglings and hurt. They will leave me out of the story. Perhaps it is best. There is peace in silence.

I took a breath of cool fresh air and then I returned to the house. I wanted to retreat upstairs and crawl into bed and wait for the sleep that I knew would not come. I waved away the slaves and all offers of refreshment or comfort. But then, to my dismay, I saw there was a visitor waiting for me.

‘I’m sorry, madam, she would not go,’ said one of my slaves, full of apology. ‘Charmian is come, Cleopatra’s freedwoman.’

With a sigh, I turned to face the intruder. A young woman. Charmian. Cleopatra’s servant. Fury hummed again in my veins. How dare she come here to plead for her mistress? Cleopatra did not kill Caesar but she handed the knife to those who did. But as I looked at her, I saw that it was not Charmian at all, but Cleopatra herself in her servant girl’s clothes. In my exhaustion, anger clarified into hate.

‘I am your sister in sorrow,’ she said softly,

‘How dare you claim kinship with me in my grief? Your love is for yourself and your own interests.’

She did not answer nor condemn me for my outspoken rudeness, only stared at me, her expression heavy with pity. I sat on the bench and put my head in my hands. And yet, before my eyes I saw our sons. Mine, foolish, covered in blood, and hers, the small boy with Caesar’s curls and stubborn mouth. The child was the last piece of Caesar. I knew Caesar would want his son to live. I’d saved my own son, the murderer. Cleopatra’s son was only a baby, an innocent. I detested Cleopatra the queen, but Cleopatra the mother, I understood. I turned to her.

‘I hate you. I blame you for this.’ I took a breath. ‘And I will save you and your son.’