Leon Garfield's Shakespeare Stories

by Leon Garfield

  “If Cleopatra heard you—” warned Octavius, mockingly; but Antony shook his head. “I am not married, Caesar,” he said quietly. “Let me hear Agrippa further speak.”

  Agrippa continued. If words could not heal the division between Caesar and Antony, let it then be healed by the ties of blood. Let Antony marry Octavia!

  Enobarbus watched his master. Antony’s face was grave and thoughtful. He was no longer the careless lover, but the shrewd politician. His Roman head had conquered his Egyptian heart. He looked at Caesar. Caesar nodded. Antony rose to his feet, and held out his hand. At once, Caesar responded. “A sister I bequeath you,” he loudly proclaimed, “whom no brother did ever love so dearly!”

  “Happily, amen!” cried Lepidus, as Caesar and Mark Antony clasped each other firmly by the hand. Then the new-made brothers, together with their host, went off to seek out the fair Octavia, and tell her of her good fortune.

  Three remained behind: Enobarbus, Agrippa, and Maecenas, another of Caesar’s men. Eagerly, the Roman pair plied their visitor with questions about Egypt, its fabled feasts, and its fabled queen. What was Cleopatra really like? Had she been, as men reported, so wonderful a sight when first she’d met Mark Antony on the River Cydnus?

  Enobarbus smiled. “I will tell you,” he said softly. “The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne, burned on the water; the poop was beaten gold, purple the sails . . .” and as he conjured up the marvellous scene, his two listeners drew close, as Rome dissolved and Cleopatra filled the air. “For her own person,” sighed Enobarbus, “it beggared all description.”

  “Royal wench!” breathed Agrippa.

  “Now Antony must leave her utterly,” murmured Maecenas.

  Enobarbus shook his head. “Never; he will not: age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety; other women cloy the appetites they feed, but she makes hungry where most she satisfies . . .”

  The three men were silent. Then Maecenas said quietly, “If beauty, wisdom, modesty can settle the heart of Antony, Octavia is a blessed lottery to him,” and all agreed.

  In Caesar’s house, where the world lay stretched across the marble floor, ‘the blessed lottery’, pale as milk, walked between her mighty brother and her mighty husband-to-be. Antony, bestriding the East, solemnly promised Octavia that he would be true to his marriage vows, and wished her goodnight.

  “Goodnight, sir,” said she, curtseying low; and Caesar led her away.

  Antony stared after the gentle lady. She was the price he’d paid for an empire. Suddenly he became aware he was not alone. An old man in a blue robe was watching him. It was the soothsayer. Antony had brought him to Rome as a rare wonder of the East. “Now, sirrah,” asked Antony, tracing the snaky Nile with his foot, “do you wish yourself in Egypt?”

  “Would I had never come from thence,” answered the old man, “nor you thither.”

  Antony shrugged his shoulders. On an impulse, he held out his palm. “Say to me, whose fortune shall rise higher, Caesar’s or mine?”

  Obediently the soothsayer studied the palm that held a third of the world in its grasp. He looked up. “Caesar’s,” he said. “Stay not by his side.”

  Antony frowned. “Speak no more of this,” he said. The old man nodded, and withdrew. The soothsayer had spoken the truth, and Antony knew it. Though he was ten times Caesar’s superior in soldiership, Caesar would always win. He had the luck. And no man could prevail against luck. He stared after the departed Octavia. He sighed heavily. “Though I make this marriage for my peace,” he whispered, “i’ the East my pleasure lies.”

  But Antony’s peace proved worse than war, and the news of it made Egypt tremble. In terror, her court looked on as Cleopatra stormed and raged and screamed horrible revenges on the luckless messenger who’d uttered the words, “He’s married to Octavia!” She beat him with her tight fists, she seized him by the hair, she dragged him up and down the room, scattering cushions and courtiers alike, she snatched up a dagger—and the man fled for his life!

  She stood swaying, as if she would fall. She stared at the dagger she still held in her hand. She shook her head and laid it aside. She picked up a golden mirror and gazed into it. Little by little, her spirits began to rise. Her weapon was not a dagger, but the strange magic of her person. “Go to the fellow, good Alexas,” she commanded her minister; “bid him report the feature of Octavia, her years, her inclination, let him not leave out the colour of her hair; bring me word quickly!”

  While Cleopatra, in her fashion, was preparing for war, Antony, Caesar and Lepidus were celebrating a peace. They had concluded a treaty with Pompey and his ally, Menas the pirate, and were aboard his galley in the harbour at Misenum, roaring and singing and drinking each other’s healths. Swinging lanterns made a tipsy day of night, and clustering faces, like a windfall of red-cheeked apples, rolled and tumbled about the deck. But one of them was green. “I am not so well as I should be,” moaned Lepidus, clasping Antony fondly about the neck; “but I’ll ne’er out!” and he held out his cup to be filled as if, by drinking yet another health, he could restore his own.

  A single figure stood apart: Menas, the pirate. He leaned against the side of the vessel and watched the great ones of the world, all drunk; and in their midst, his captain, Pompey, pitifully trying to be the man his father had been. Quietly, he approached him. “Pompey,” he murmured, “a word.” But Pompey waved him aside, and filled up Lepidus’s cup.

  Lepidus had grown studious. “What manner o’ thing is your crocodile?” he inquired, suddenly displaying an interest in the natural world, of which he was part commander.

  Carefully, Antony explained. “It is shaped, sir, like itself, and it is as broad as it hath breadth; it is just so high as it is, and it moves with its own organs . . .”

  “What colour is it of?” pursued Lepidus, intelligently.

  “Of its own colour too,” Antony informed him.

  Lepidus nodded wisely. “ ’Tis a strange serpent,” he said; and Antony agreed. “ ’Tis so, and the tears of it are wet.” This extra weight of knowledge proved too much for Lepidus. He slid gently from his place and vanished below the table.

  While efforts were being made to restore Lepidus to the world, Menas again approached his captain. “Rise from thy stool!” he muttered; and Pompey, with a frown, followed his ally to the side of the vessel. He looked inquiringly at him. Menas put his face close. “Wilt thou be lord of all the world?” Pompey stared. “How should that be?” Menas pointed to the ship’s cable, then to the three rulers of the world. Cut the cable, then cut the throats of Antony, Caesar and Lepidus.

  Pompey caught his breath. A tempting prospect. But he shook his head. “Ah! this thou should’st have done, and not spoken on’t,” he murmured regretfully. “In me, ’tis villainy; in thee’t had been good service . . . desist and drink,” he advised, and returned to the feast.

  Menas stared after his captain with contempt. He no longer had the stomach to follow a man who lacked the courage to be a villain himself, but who would have been ready enough to profit by another’s crime. Grimly he watched Pompey the Fool, son of Pompey the Great, being danced off his feet by Antony and Caesar, while Lepidus, a heap of snoring flesh, was carried away.

  Next day, Pompey, full of false success, sailed away, and Antony, Caesar and Lepidus returned to Rome, like three thieves, to share out the spoils. Their business concluded, Antony and his new wife prepared to depart for Athens. “You take from me a great part of myself,” Caesar warned Antony, much moved by his sister’s tears. “Use me well in’t.”

  Stoutly, Antony protested his good faith, and, in parting, embraced Caesar as a brother. “Adieu; be happy!” Caesar wished him; and Lepidus, still green from Pompey’s feast, called down blessings upon the departing pair. Then ceremonial Roman trumpets sounded and Caesar, giving up his sister, raised his arm in Roman salute. Antony returned it, and, ever the gallant gentleman, comforted Octavia with gentle smiles and a courteous arm.

&nbs
p; “Is she as tall as me?” Cleopatra, like a shrewd general seeking to know the enemy’s strength, closely questioned the cowering messenger about Octavia’s charms.

  “She is not, madam,” came the satisfactory reply.

  “Is she shrill-tongued, or low?”

  “She is low-voiced.”

  “That’s not so good. He cannot like her long.”

  “Like her?” cried Charmian loyally. “O Isis! ’tis impossible!”

  “I think so, Charmian,” agreed the Queen: “dull of tongue and dwarfish. What majesty is in her gait?”

  “She creeps,” answered the messenger.

  “The fellow has good judgement,” said Cleopatra, and Charmian agreed. “Guess at her years, I prithee?”

  “Madam, she was a widow—” began the messenger cautiously; and when the Queen showed pleasure at the news, he went on, “I do think she’s thirty.”

  An unlucky number. He should have doubled it. The Queen was biting her lip with vexation. He dreaded another tempest. Desperately he sought to undo the harm that ‘thirty’ had done; and it was only by representing Octavia as being so deficient in womanly grace and beauty as to be an object of pity, that he was able to restore himself to the Queen’s favour.

  “A proper man,” pronounced Charmian when the messenger had gone. Cleopatra nodded. Such a woman as Octavia could never hold her Antony.

  In Athens, Octavia trembled, not for herself, but for the world. The division between her brother and her husband, that her marriage should have healed, had gaped open like a wound. She begged Antony’s leave to travel to Rome as a supplicant for peace.

  “As you requested, yourself shall go between us,” said Antony, his fists clenched and his brow thunderous; “the meantime, lady, I’ll raise the preparation of a war!”

  He was enraged. While he’d been safely in Athens, Caesar had swept all opposition aside. Pompey had been murdered; Lepidus was in prison, awaiting death; and Antony himself had been publicly derided and spoken of with contempt.

  “Provide your going,” he said, subduing his anger and speaking kindly to his wife; “chose your own company, and command what cost your heart has mind to.”

  She thanked him; but though she had an empire for her purse, she was no Cleopatra: she travelled simply, and at small expense.

  “You are come a market-maid to Rome!” cried Caesar, his dignity offended when his sister presented herself before him, humbly attended and stained and weary from her many days of travel. “The wife of Antony should have an army for an usher!”

  Gently she protested that both the time and manner of her coming had been of her own choosing. It was to halt the headlong rush to war that she had begged her husband’s leave to come—

  “Which soon he granted,” said Caesar grimly, “being an obstruct ’tween his lust and him!”

  “Do not say so, my lord!” cried Octavia, quick to defend her husband’s honour. But Caesar knew better. “I have eyes upon him, and his affairs come to me on the wind. Where is he now?”

  “My lord, in Athens.”

  Caesar shook his head. “No, my most wronged sister; Cleopatra hath nodded him to her. He hath given up his empire to a whore!” She did not answer. “You are abused beyond the mark of thought,” went on Caesar, and told her that, no sooner had she left Athens, than Antony had rushed to Egypt, and into the arms of its lustful Queen. There, in Alexandria, in the public market-place, the adulterous pair, seated on golden thrones, had summoned all the kings of the East to join with them in war against Rome.

  Octavia bowed her head to hide her tears. Her love, for she did indeed love Antony, had failed. The war that she so dreaded had begun; and it would not end until either her husband or her brother lay dead, together with the many thousands who would fall in their cause.

  The world was prepared for war. High up, on the promontory of Actium, the kings of the East had assembled their armies in a shining host; and far below, the sea was dancing with galleys of war. Cleopatra, glittering with excitement, gazed down proudly on her ships; but Enobarbus, who stood by her side, frowned and shook his head. Though she was attired in warlike fashion, with golden breastplate and helmet with gorgeous plumes, she was more like the goddess of love than the goddess of war. Plainly he told her that her presence was ill-timed and would distract Antony from the stern business of battle.

  “ ’Tis said in Rome—”

  “Sink Rome, and their tongues rot that speak against us!” she cried angrily. “I will not stay behind!”

  Enobarbus shrugged his shoulders. “Nay, I have done,” he said. “Here comes the emperor.”

  Antony, with Canidius, his chief commander, approached. Antony was wearing his old armour, and the shrewd eye of Enobarbus observed that the straps were strained: Antony had put on flesh.

  The news was not good. Caesar’s advance had been far swifter than had been expected. Already he had crossed the Ionian Sea and captured a town to the north. “You have heard on’t, sweet?” Antony asked, turning to Cleopatra. “Celerity,” said she sharply, feeling Enobarbus’s critical eye upon her, “is never more admired than by the negligent.”

  “A good rebuke,” admitted Antony. “Canidius, we will fight with him by sea.”

  “By sea! What else?” cried Cleopatra, in high delight. “I have sixty sails, Caesar none better!” But Enobarbus thought otherwise. Antony’s ships were poorly manned; he should fight by land. And Canidius agreed.

  “O noble emperor! do not fight by sea, trust not to rotten planks. Let the Egyptians and the Phoenicians go a-ducking; we have used to conquer standing on the earth, and fighting foot to foot!”

  It was a common soldier who’d spoken up, a fellow whose scarred limbs bore witness to many a battle he’d fought for Antony in the past. But Antony, laying a kindly hand on the fellow’s shoulder, shook his head. He would fight by sea. He went down to the ships with Cleopatra by his side.

  Enobarbus, no lover of sailing, remained on the promontory, and gazed down on the tiny vessels far below. Suddenly, he saw that they were thrown into a commotion. They began to bustle among the busy waves like a flock of warring gulls. The cause of the commotion was approaching from round the headland to the north. It was Caesar’s fleet! It was approaching at immense speed! Ten thousand oars were driving his galleys across the water, like a host of venomous insects, churning up a chain of silver drops with their rapid insect legs.

  In moments, it seemed, the smaller, swifter Roman vessels were darting among the white and golden ships of Egypt. Glints and flashes pricked the air like furious stitchwork, as arrows flew from decks and rigging, piercing necks and eyes and hearts and faintly screaming lungs. For a while, the advantage lay neither way; if anything, it was with the larger, more heavily armed Egyptians.

  Then came an action that even the worldly Enobarbus could not bear to watch. Old Scarus, a general of Antony’s, an honest soldier brought up in the countryside and steadfast as an oak, wept openly. “Gods and goddesses!” he cried. “We have kissed away kingdoms and provinces!” The accursed Egyptian whore had fled from the battle, taking her sixty sails with her! “I’ the midst of the fight,” groaned Scarus, “the breeze upon her, like a cow in June, hoists sails and flies!” And Antony had followed after. “I never saw an action of such shame!”

  The day was lost. Antony had thrown away the world for his Egyptian dish. His ships, suddenly leaderless, took fright and scattered. Some escaped; but many, pursued by the swift Roman galleys, were hit by balls of blazing pitch and burned on the water till, like a crowd of setting suns, they sank, hissing, into the sea.

  There was a heavy quiet in the palace at Alexandria, and a slow shuffling along the passages as the fearful Cleopatra was led unwillingly to face the giant whose ruin she had brought about.

  Antony was not alone. Some soldiers were seated about him, a forlorn encampment amid the idle cushions on the floor. They rose, wearily, as the Queen approached; but Antony did not move. “Go to him, madam, speak to him!”
urged Iras, supporting her trembling mistress by the arm; and Antony’s servant, Eros, knelt beside his master and begged, “Most noble sir, arise; the Queen approaches . . .”

  Antony shook his head. “O whither hast thou led me, Egypt!” he sighed.

  “O my lord, my lord!” cried Cleopatra, as she was gently pushed forward by Charmian. “Forgive my fearful sails: I little thought you would have followed.”

  “Egypt, thou knewst too well my heart was to thy rudder tied by the strings, and thou should’st tow me after—”

  “O! my pardon!”

  “Now must I to the young man send humble treaties,” said Antony bitterly, “dodge and palter in shifts of lowness—”

  “Pardon, pardon!”

  She knelt beside him. Her marvellous eyes were filled with tears. Helplessly, Antony stretched out his hand and touched her cheek. “Fall not a tear, I say, one of them rates all that is won and lost. Give me a kiss . . .”

  Antony sent an envoy to Caesar, who was encamped outside Alexandria, with proposals for peace. They were as humble as was the envoy himself. Antony had sent his children’s schoolmaster.

  Coldly, Caesar listened as the schoolmaster recited the message he had learned by heart. For himself, Antony requested only that he should be allowed to live, a private man, in Athens; and for Cleopatra, that she should be permitted to keep the crown of Egypt for herself and for her heirs.

  Caesar smiled. He had somewhat different terms in mind. Antony’s request was refused utterly; nor would anything be granted to Cleopatra unless she drove “her all-disgraced friend,” as he described the fallen Antony, from Egypt, or had him killed. He had nothing more to say.

  When the schoolmaster had departed, Caesar turned to his officers. Now was the time to strike at Antony where he was most vulnerable. He beckoned to Thidias, a smooth young man with a ready tongue. He bade him go to Cleopatra and try to win her away from her lover. He was to offer anything that he judged would tempt her to abandon Antony. It should not prove difficult . . .