Ave, Caesarion

by Deborah Davitt

  “Centurions said greaves were by personal choice. I . . . figured . . . I’d be faster on my feet without the extra weight.” A grimace of pain. “I was wrong.”

  Caesarion glanced over his shoulder—the medicus treating the man appeared to be Hellene, which boded well. Even better, the physician had a cup of wine in his hand. “Sit him up,” the physician instructed, and administered a sip of the wine into the patient’s mouth, before pouring it over the bleeding wound, resulting in more furious cursing from the patient. “Lad, you’re acting like a green recruit who’s never taken a wound before, in front of your Imperator,” the medicus told the legionnaire without changing expression. “Get yourself together.”

  “Ah, Dis,” the man returned, in heartfelt tones of disgust as his eyes opened and he got a good look at Caesarion’s face for the first time.

  And then Caesarion held his leg down as the physician sewed the wound more or less closed with catgut. “You’re leaving gaps,” Caesarion noted with distant interest as the soldier struggled under his hands.

  “I’ve noticed that the wounds seem to heal more cleanly if I give the pus someplace to escape. Sew them all the way shut, and it just acts like yeast fermenting in a vat of wine.”

  “Thank you. I’ll never look at a cup of wine in my hand the same way,” the solider cut in, his voice muffled.

  “I’ll still smear the wound with honey and other ointments and wrap it lightly,” the physician went on, ignoring the words. “But this idiot is free to go, once I do that and give him a crutch. Excused heavy duty and all that.” A dark glance from the Hellene at the legionnaire. “I’d accuse him of catching the arrow just to avoid dirtying his hands digging in a fresh palisade, but not even he would be that stupid.” A glance at the Imperator now. “Have you taken any hurt, my lord? I would have asked sooner, but you treat the worst wounds first.”

  The line of very still bodies behind him, covered in their own cloaks, suggested that the worst cases had already been attended to with all the skill that human hands could provide.

  Caesarion shook his head. “No, I’m fine. But is there any man here who’s past your skill, but has yet to cross over the Styx? I might be able to help.” The healing of Isis was usually only good for one man out of every battle. But he might be able to save at least one life today.

  A curious stare from the Hellene, and then he conducted Caesarion to the beds of the dying, where he pointed out an unconscious centurion, whose head had been wrapped, but the bandages there were stained with blood. “Hit by a ballistae stone while they were pinned at the foot of the hill,” the medicus told him. “His heart beats. He breathes. But the skull’s been fractured, and I could smell brain fluids. He’ll probably never wake up, though I have read that there are some Egyptian physicians who have techniques that could save a man’s life in this condition.” A little too much chatter; the man was clearly curious and nervous. “There are several other gut wounds as well. Those are usually death sentences, and painful ones—”

  Caesarion turned and looked the medicus right in the eye. “Yet you spoke of the centurion first. Why him? His rank?”

  The physician blinked, then shook his head, looking uneasy. “He’s a friend, and it frustrates me to be able to do so little for him.” A flicker of hope in his eyes. “So, do you know some of the Egyptian methods of treatment, my lord?”

  “I haven’t been trained in such,” Caesarion muttered. “But I can do this.” And with the eyes of those suffering on the biers focused on him, with mingled hope and jealousy and despair in every gaze, he put a hand on the centurion’s limp shoulder, and let the power of Isis flow through him. Lady, no death for this man. Not today, anyway. Please.

  After a moment, the centurion’s eyes snapped open, and he tried to sit up with a groan. Caesarion staggered back, feeling dizzy, and as he turned to walk away, found hands reaching towards him from every bier. Begging. Pleading. For just one drop of the grace in him. For him to save their lives. And he touched each hand in turn. Met their eyes. “One man a day. Hold strong. I will be back tomorrow.”

  Most of them wouldn’t make it through the night, he knew. And knew, too, the guilt that filled him was irrational; he couldn’t save all of them. The gods had given him the gifts that they had, and no more. But still, it made him feel hollow and empty as he left the field hospital.

  Only to hear behind him the Hellene physician’s voice, “Imperator! Please, my lord!”

  Caesarion swung around, the hollowness transmuting to anger inside him. “I can do no more for them today—”

  “No, no!” A horrified expression crossed the man’s face, and then he ducked his head. As a non-Roman citizen serving with the legions, he had no rank, as the soldiers did, but had the respect of many for his skills. Still, he remained their social inferior, in a system that ranked the least Roman beggar above the wealthiest provincial. “Sir, I wished to thank you. And to ask, if it’s ever possible that you should grant a favor—not to me, but to all of Rome!—” the disconnected words tumbled to a halt as the man finally drew breath and managed to regain his composure. “The priest-mages of Thebes, the philosophers of Egypt. My mentors in Athens often praised their knowledge, but knowledge must be spread, my lord. What one man knows in Alexandria isn’t carried by the wind or the waves, but by books and training—”

  “You’re asking for me to import some of Egypt’s physicians.” Caesarion looked around him; it seemed an incongruous spot to have this discussion, as a watchtower went up to his right, and teams of oxen brought wagons filled with baggage and supplies into the new camp. “So that head injuries like that one might be treated.”

  A vehement nod. “So that soldiers who don’t . . . who don’t have the good fortune to have you at their side, Imperator . . . might live.”

  So many Hellenes discount Egyptian practices as magic. Sorcery. Not the product of good, clean rationalism. And yet, there are many Hellenes who practice witchcraft. Craft curses under the guidance of Hecate’s secret priestesses. Try alchemical processes to produce gold from lead. This one is perhaps a little more open-minded. “Just over twenty years ago,” Caesarion said, conversationally, “My father repealed the Lex Cornelia de sicariis et veneficis. And a good thing, too. Sulla, who imposed the law, outlawed magic. Decreed that mages should be burned alive. That people found in possession of books of magic should be exiled to prison islands, and the books themselves burned.” Father repealed that law so that Mother could live here in Rome with a solid reputation as a sorcerer-queen, though she has little actual power of that kind.

  “I am not looking for magical cures,” the physician said rapidly. “Though, I would imagine to a layman, they might look like magic.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Seleukos, my lord. I’m attached to the Fifth Legion.”

  “Seleukos. After one of Alexander’s generals?”

  “My parents had grand ambitions for me.” Wry humor in his voice now, and trepidation, too.

  Caesarion met his gaze for a long moment. And then let the man off the hook that he’d placed himself on by overstepping so far. “I’ll try to remember both the name and the request.”

  He eventually found his command tent, which of course wasn’t where he’d last left it—a position at least five miles north of here. Fortunately, it always occupied the same relative location—in the center of the Tenth Legion’s encampment, so his household guard surrounded it. Far from where their camp followers were now setting up their own wagons. He’d wanted them kept outside the palisade entirely, but Antony had strongly suggested otherwise. “The men need a place to release their frustrations. Any man who gets too drunk for duty tomorrow will be beaten by his centurions. And you don’t want the civilians and the baggage getting slaughtered if they’re outside the walls. Bad for morale.”

  By now, Caesarion had been in the saddle since three hours before dawn, fought hard, taken the siege positions, helped oversee the encampment along with Antony, healed
a fallen soldier, and had yet to pause to eat. His feet had blisters on them, unusually, from the heat of the smoldering ground he’d crossed with all the rest of his men, so he looked forward to taking off his boots with a mix of trepidation and relief. The blisters will probably pop when I pull them free of the leather. And I can’t be seen limping tomorrow. Does no good for the reputation of an untouchable god-born Emperor.

  His stamina went beyond that of a mortal man, but not infinitely far. I am no Antaeus, ever-strong so long as I’m in contact with Mother Earth, he thought dimly, pushing through the red tent-flap. As he did so, he stared at his own hand—dried blood and grime outlining each of his fingernails in black. Dried blood, rusty brown, peeling back from his forearm, flecked all over with gray-black ash that had settled there from the fires. He reached up to scrub at his hair for a moment. Cropped shorter even than legion norms, he could feel grime there, from where he’d taken his helmet off inside the safety of the walls. Ash flecks and dirt fell from his scratching fingers, and he could suddenly smell the reek of his own sweat underlying the rest of the stench on him. And none of my family, save Alexander, has ever seen me like this. My mother’s no stranger to battlefields, but my sisters . . . . shit.

  He pulled back the tent-flap after that moment of consternation, and called, “Salatis?” into the tent, looking for the Egyptian man who’d served as his body servant since he’d turned fourteen. “I need a change of clothes and a pitcher of water.” With a groan, he made his way to his camp stool and collapsed there, relishing the privacy that allowed him, just for a moment, to not put on the act. To be weak, just for an instant or two, out of the sight of others’ eyes.

  And when he closed his own, now it all came back to him. The funeral effigies behind the shields resolved into the faces of men. Men who’d had little chance of killing him, but whom he’d killed easily, and, in that moment, without conscience. I’ve read Homer. Achilles and all the other heroes, born of the lineage of the gods, never seemed to feel guilt at all the perfectly normal men that they slaughtered. The mortal men who never had a chance to kill Achilles, with his armor-like skin. Or Ajax, with the strength and size of a colossus. Yet somehow, I find it shameful. Uneven. Unfair. He covered his face in his filthy hands for a moment, breathing deeply. In through the nose, out through the mouth. And Father would tell me that war is inherently unfair, and that we can and must seek every advantage to defeat the foe and keep our own men alive. My own men would shout at me and Malleolus would probably go so far as to cuff me in the ear, if he dared, for thinking this way. But gods, to meet a foe in even combat—

  His mind skittered to a halt, giving him an image out of memory. Black scales. Eyes, burning with white fire. Wings, tearing at the twilight sky. And a blast of white that wasn’t fire at all, scoring the ground and the trees and the men of the Seventh Legion, while Caesarion stood half a mile away—No. I’m not reliving that. Not right now.

  Wrenching his mind from the forest of Germania just let in different images. His own men, bleeding on the ground, left behind so that the rest of the cohort could accomplish its goal. Men who’d fought and died—sometimes in agony, as in the field hospital—for him. Caesarion realized that he was panting through his fingers now, and struggled to control his own breath. “Salatis!” A sharp call. Anything that could distract him from his own thoughts would be welcome now. Even the dour old Egyptian man who perennially smelled of astringent herbs.

  Eurydice pulled back the curtains that divided the tent, feeling her eyes widen at the sight of him, slumped on a stool, his scabbarded sword braced over his knees. He looked painted, head to toe, in black and red. Even his lorica squamata, the armor of heavy, overlapping scales favored by legionnaires who didn’t affect a flashy muscle cuirass, no longer shone.

  In her hands she held a pitcher of water and several lengths of cloth, and she could feel the water in the pitcher slopping back and forth as she moved forward. “Brother,” she managed, swallowing as his eyes snapped open. “Mother sent Salatis to get food, and took Selene and Alexander with her to Antony’s tent. She—she told me to tend to you when you returned.” Eurydice dropped to her knees beside him on one of the rugs. She couldn’t explain her mother’s instructions, but she was an obedient daughter. And so she dipped the first bit of cloth into the pitcher, and then rather helplessly stared at her brother. She had no idea where to start. So she reached for one of his hands, so much bigger than her own, and wrapped it in the cloth, trying to scrub away the blood and dirt with gentle fingers.

  “Mother said—this isn’t a task for you!” Caesarion recoiled, not wanting to cover his sister’s soft skin with the blood and the filth of combat.

  “She told me that in ancient times, in Hellas, the women of the household would greet guests by washing the dirt of the road from their feet and legs,” Eurydice reminded him, her voice soft. “And helped the men of their house clean themselves after battle. I . . . wanted to go help the wounded,” she added, dully. “But I don’t know how. She told me that this was . . . a way to make myself useful.”

  He let her take his hand, loosened from the scabbard, and watched distantly as she made him clean again. Working her way up his arm, and then stopping, uncertainly, at the pauldron. Wearily, he picked at the laces, letting the armor fall away, too tired now to lift them from the floor, and allowed her to . . . tend to him. Her hands felt good, and he let his head fall forward, closing his eyes.

  Eurydice worked in silence. Don’t talk. Don’t chatter. Let any words he needs to speak come out on their own, her mother had enjoined before leaving her alone in the tent, without so much as a servant to hand. But as she worked her way up her brother’s other arm, he finally muttered, “I wish I knew how Lepidus’ assault fared. Can’t see his forces with the city in the way. Sending messengers all the way around and back takes time. Miles and miles to cover, even on horseback—”

  “He took both hills after noon,” Eurydice told him, wanting to take the lost note out of his voice. “His camp barely has a wall up—”

  Caesarion let his sword slide to the ground, his hand shooting out to catch her face. “You were watching?”

  Shocked, Eurydice blinked rapidly. “Yes,” she whispered. “I—I can’t be of any use here. I can’t fight. I can’t even help the wounded. But I wanted . . . I wanted to be with you. With all of them.” Her throat tightened. “I want to do my part. Even if it’s . . . it’s just being there. Witnessing.”

  Caesarion’s hand tightened incrementally as all the images of the past day flooded his brain. Intolerable, to think that Eurydice had seen it all. All the blood. All the pain. “You saw men dying.” Flat, harsh tone. The most private and sacred, yet public and horrifying moment. Usually only shared by men of the cohort, and maybe some poor sod of a physician. And you witnessed it . . . . His hand loosened, falling away, appalled at what she’d likely seen, without any preparation, any experience.

  She nodded, tears filling her dark eyes. “From a distance, at first.” Her throat closed. “Then the hawks went away, and all I could reach was a crow. And he . . . he came in near Lepidus’ forces, and landed on some poor man’s body, and the last thing I saw before I threw myself out of his head was him digging into the body for—for the innards.” She covered her face, heedless of the bloody rag in her hands, and Caesarion wrapped his arms around her, for once not paying heed to propriety. “I didn’t want to see anything else after that,” she added, her voice now muffled by his shoulder.

  “Neither would have I,” he returned, rocking her a little and smoothing a hand over her hair lightly. “Eurydice . . . I thought as we were moving into position that it would be a gift to have you see for me. To tell me what each cohort was doing, how the enemy was moving in response. But I never would have asked you to do it. To see all the pain. To see the men dying—”

  “Maybe more people should see it,” she whispered. “The legions come back, covered in glory. Men lost. Men having lost limbs, or bearing scars. But everyone�
��s proud, and they keep all the pain inside.”

  Inside the shield wall. Where no one outside those confines will ever see it. We protect our own.

  “Is every battle like this one was?” A small-voiced question, that.

  “This one wasn’t all that bad. We only lost about a hundred men on this side of the city.” Caesarion loosened his arms, wiped some of the grime off her face that the rag had left there, and planted a light kiss on her hair. “But it’s worse in a different way than all the combat I saw in Germania.”

  She picked up a fresh cloth, and rather shyly started cleaning above his boots. He didn’t flinch, didn’t let her see how every time he moved his feet to accommodate her, the burn-blisters set up a fresh howl of pain. “What made it worse?”

  “The fact that we’re fighting our own people.” He grimaced, and then added, in low-voiced admission, “And . . . before, the men fought for Father’s causes. And I did, too. We all carried out his orders, his plans.” The emptiness inside of him, which had dissipated for an instant, returned. “Now they’re dying on my orders, for my plans, for my causes. Dear merciful gods, I don’t even know if I’m leading them well, or doing the right thing. If I should have engaged Cassius in talks before attacking. I’m just . . . doing what seems right at the time. And praying not too many men die for my mistakes.”

  Eurydice had worked her way up to his knees, and put a hand on one now, lightly. “That’s all anyone can do, though, isn’t it?” she asked, uncertainly. “What seems right at the time, sometimes isn’t the right thing when viewed with hindsight. But if we can’t see the road ahead as we do the road behind, then there’s nothing else to do but . . . our best, is there?” Her soft voice was hesitant and uncertain, and she lowered her eyes self-consciously as she spoke. I have the audacity to offer advice to him? To my older, terrifying, god-born brother, who nonetheless just offered me comfort even when he’s sick to his heart? She put her head down on his knee, looking up at him, and trying to offer a smile, though her heart ached for him. “I have faith in you. You always do your best. Everyone who knows you, knows that about you.” She swallowed. “How can I do any less? I didn’t know what I was seeing when I watched the battle. I don’t even know what each type of soldier is called. But I want to help. And if in helping, I save lives? So much the better.” Then that’s one more burden lifted from you. And be damned if my head happens to hurt a little, or if I stagger out to vomit when I see what a crow considers a tasty dinner.