Ave, Caesarion

by Deborah Davitt

  He touched her hair again, very lightly. “How can I possibly gainsay that?” Caesarion told her.

  And that was how Cleopatra, Alexander, and Selene found them, bustling in the front flap of the tent. Caesarion half out of his armor, and with Eurydice’s head balanced on his knee, with his hand lightly cupping her scalp. Both too tired and heartsick to move, and yet finding a strange comfort in this contact. And Cleopatra smiled as she took in the image, while Alexander made a chuffing noise and went to rescue his brother’s arms and armor from the floor, and Selene squeaked and scuttled for the family quarters, hastily taking herself out of sight. Eurydice lurched upright, but thought that if anything, her mother appeared to be quite satisfied about something, though she couldn’t have said what.

  Chapter IV: Dubious Alliances

  Iunius 15, 16 AC

  Manuals of military tactics, while they mentioned how long a siege might take, or what proportion of attackers should be used against a well-entrenched position, usually failed to convey the mix of stretched nerves and tedium with which they proceeded. On the first night after taking the siege weapons, for example, the defenders of Brundisium had counter-attacked, sending out triremes to attack the shore-line, including their own siege weapons, which had been captured by Caesarion’s forces. Arrows had sailed back and forth, and Caesarion had been buckling on his armor wearily when Eurydice called to him, fumbling her way blindly from the private area of the command tent, “Wait! One of the bigger ships, a quinquereme! They’ve let down the chain in the harbor, and it’s heading out to sea!”

  Her eyes had been huge and gold, those of an owl. Antony, at the command table, had flinched at the sight and made a gesture to turn away evil spirits. Repeal of the Lex Cornelius or not, Romans had a powerful fear of magic. Caesarion crossed to Eurydice, helped her to a stool near the maps, and had shouted for a messenger.

  It had taken luck, and had cost them the lives of several trained engineers, but they’d managed to sink the damned quinquereme, right in the mouth of Brundisium’s harbor. They’d had to wrap wads of oil-soaked cloth around the ballistae stones to do it, but to this day, the bulk of the massive quinquereme—named for its multiple rows of oars—still jutted up partially from the peaceful blue waters. Caesarion hadn’t been able to see a thing in the darkness, but Eurydice, at the command table, had slapped both hands over her owl-wide eyes, and had whispered, “Oh, the men, brother. They’re boiling up from below decks like an ant-mound poked with a stick.”

  “Hah!” Antony had exclaimed, recovering enough from his unease to exult.

  “They’re throwing off their armor and jumping into the water to . . . to escape the rising water inside, to escape the flames—they’re not all going to make it out—”

  “Good. Fewer of them to kill later,” Antony remarked as Caesarion had kept his hands on his sister’s slender shoulders. Trying to pass some of his strength into her, uselessly. “Can she get a count on how many got out? Usually three hundred rowers, two hundred marines on those tubs.”

  Eurydice, clearly hearing that, but overwhelmed, had shaken her head, and Caesarion had tossed Antony a dark glance, which the older general ignored. “Numbers help. That’s all siege is, really. A numbers game.” Antony quirked him a grin at that point. “And since we stopped them from sending word to their allies just now that they needed assistance? The numbers improve in our favor. And their own ship sunk right in the mouth of their harbor? That’s the start of blockading them properly. And we didn’t have to recall any of our own fleets to do it.” His tone eminently satisfied, Antony went about rustling the maps and chuckling to himself for the rest of the evening, at least until the sortie from Brundisium failed, and most of its survivors either swam back to the docks, or were picked off by lucky archers on the shore.

  The next night, Caesarion had ordered his engineers to loft bitumen and flasks of oil—anything flammable, really—towards the city’s docks. The angle had been a challenge, but by dawn, the sun’s light had competition from the flames blazing up along the docks. He’d watched from the walls, grimly, seeing the Brundisium defenders try to put as many of their ships into the water as they could. Tried to save the livelihoods of fishers and merchantmen, as well as their main military force. But with the quinquereme in the mouth of the harbor, at least two other ships ran afoul of the wreck, which made the rest of the ships hesitate. “Next,” Antony recommended at his elbow, “while the engineers keep after the walls of the city proper? I say take out their towers on the shore. They’re cut off from reinforcements at the moment. They prevent us from spreading out and really dominating the harbor. And taking them, we can make damned sure that no provisions come by sea. The island tower’s a loss for now, but they’re even more cut off than all the others right now. No boats coming out of that mess for a while.” He gestured at the blazing docks.

  Caesarion had nodded, his throat raw from the smoke. “Need to coordinate with Lepidus,” he’d returned. “Get both towers at the same time.”

  “Have your sister whistle up one of her birds and send a message over. Saves men and horses.”

  Caesarion had stared at Antony in unconcealed surprise. “That’s a very . . . pragmatic solution.” Two days ago, you were terrified of her as a witch. And I guarantee that if luck doesn’t favor us, if there are any bad omens, that the men will start grumbling about her. And my mother. And anything else that can be safely assigned blame.

  Antony shrugged. “I’m a soldier, my lord.” Slight, ironic emphasis on the title. “If I have an asset, I use it. As should you. Get her past all the missish weeping and histrionics at the sight of a little blood, is my advice. Then she’ll be useful.”

  While Caesarion detested the man on a personal level, and instinctively wanted to protect Eurydice, he had to admit, silently, that Antony was right. “The night after your first battle, you didn’t shake?” he asked the general mildly.

  “The night after my first battle, I got drunk,” Antony corrected, scanning their troop formations and pointing to where they could set up their assault on the closest tower. “And anyone who went trembling to their cots got a good whipping with the vine-canes, extra duty the next day, and the spittle of the rest of their company. Oh, I know, it’s different for women. But she is what she is. No sense coddling her.”

  Caesarion rather thought that there were differences beyond the physical. After his first battle, he’d been wrapped up in the bonds of brotherhood, the spirits of all the men around him, joined with his. A celebration of being alive, while mourning those who’d fallen. He’d been inside the shield wall, safe among them. Those who wept were cheered or derided back into better spirits. Relief made available, in the person of drink or a woman’s arms. Eurydice doesn’t have the excitement, the thrill that comes in combat. The exhilaration of being better, of passing through the danger, of surviving it. Or the feel of the shield wall around her. That indefinable, intangible, but utterly present feeling of acceptance. I’ve been trying to keep her abilities from the men, but even Malleolus—Mal, who’s known her since she was a child!—gave her a glance askance this morning. Caesarion had tucked it away at the back of his mind as he’d returned to his tent to see if she could tame one of her birds enough to carry a message to Lepidus on its wings. But there had been only one conclusion he could come to. If she doesn’t have a cohort, a legion of brothers, she does have me.

  So he’d started treating her like one of his shield-brothers. Consciously chivvying her when she showed too much concern for the fate of the enemy. Encouraging her to distance herself, at least mentally, from the pain of the dying on both sides. He trained her, nightly, on the emblems carried by each Legion, so that she could recognize each group of soldiers down to the cohort, and, if they lost their standard-bearer, she could soon recognize each type of legionnaire by weapons and armor. Gruff when needed, gentle when required. And she responded, particularly to his approbation, he noticed.

  And, because her expressive eyes had alre
ady begun to hold dread at the thought of taking the bird’s eyes to see more death and pain, he ensured that she had chances to use her sight for other reasons. For entertainment, for courier duty.

  Thus, three months into the siege, when Antony murmured in satisfaction that the farmers of Brundisium couldn’t reach their burned fields to plant crops and the fishermen couldn’t reach the sea to drop their nets, and that a city already winter-thin must be very hungry indeed as they watched their walls slowly giving way before the ballistae, Caesarion took a small detachment of Praetorians out for a ride well behind his own lines, with Eurydice perched in the saddle ahead of him. Both of her feet swung decorously over on the right side of his mount, which meant that he had to ensure her safety with the strength of his arms, should his horse happen to spook or startle.

  The result, however, was entirely worth it as they rode. Her face lit up, and one of the greater hawks swooped down as she lifted her arm up for it, landing lightly on her bare skin with its terrible claws. Caesarion swallowed as the great beak and savage, uncaring eyes swung towards his sister’s face. And feeling him stiffen, she turned a little towards him and said, “She’s not hungry right now. Just curious what I look like.” Eurydice laughed, a little rueful ripple of sound. “Seeing myself through her eyes is a lowering experience.”

  Malleolus, like the other Praetorians, had reined in, out of a mix of respect and mild terror. None of them had ever seen such a thing before Eurydice learned to call the birds to her. Egyptians revered hawks as the aspect of Horus, and mummified them as tomb offerings, but no one in the world, as far as Romans knew, had ever tamed a hawk or an eagle before. This was magic, pure and simple. “How so, my lady?” the centurion called up, his voice somewhat tentative.

  She twisted towards the sound of his voice, her own eyes blind while she looked through those of the hawk. “If you look in a mirror, you only see yourself straight on,” Eurydice told him, smiling. “Or if you look at yourself in a polished blade, you only see part of yourself, yes? When she looks at me, I can see myself from the side. Or straight on. And often, all of me at once.” She frowned a little. “I think I inherited Father’s nose. And it looked better on his face than on mine.”

  After a moment, the ripple of nervous laughter from the men became outright guffaws, and they all indefinably relaxed. The barriers between commoners and patricians remained, but Caesarion could feel a sort of reluctant, wary acceptance building.

  She bounced the hawk up again, and several moments later, the bird dove for a kill, returning to Eurydice’s hand to deposit a small rabbit there, in exchange for a strip of raw beef, before swinging back up into the sky again. And then she stiffened. “Caesarion?”

  “Yes?” he asked, his eyes on the terrain to ensure that they weren’t about to be ambushed, whether by broken ground or enemy soldiers. But the light feel of her in his arms, and more or less spread over his legs for balance, was a sensation that tended to linger for a while after these rides.

  “There’s an army to the north.” Her voice tightened. “They’re carrying Eagles.”

  He reined in, his heart hammering. “I haven’t had any dispatches, and Dis knows I haven’t sent for reinforcements.” Did one of the rebels’ messages get through? Has some new faction decided to throw in with Cassius and the others? “Do you see their standards?”

  All the others had formed a tight circle around them now, their faces and bodies taut as Eurydice frowned. “Second Legion. The Sabines,” she identified them tentatively, after a moment.

  “They were in Cisalpine Gaul, last I heard,” Caesarion said harshly. “Everyone, back to camp. We might be about to get caught between a large hammer and a somewhat cracked anvil.”

  ____________________

  The advancing ranks of men did not dress themselves for an attack, and instead, blew their horns, announcing their presence as the officers in charge rode forward, with a carruca rattling along behind the envoy party. Caesarion eyed them from one of the watch platforms, shook his head, and called down to the men manning the camp’s gates, “Let them in.” He thought he recognized the man at the front, the legion’s legate, though with a helmet in the way, it was difficult to be certain. Certainly, he seemed young and vital, though not a stripling, as he trotted his horse confidently into the defended enclosure. Behind him, several senior officers kept a close honor guard around two younger boys on horseback, and around the carruca itself.

  Forgoing the ladder, Caesarion leaped down from the watch platform, landing in a light crouch before striding forward to greet the newcomers. Malleolus, having been at the foot of the tower, scrambled momentarily to catch up, and Caesarion slowed his pace to allow his body-guard to look a bit more protective. I’m going to catch an earful from Mal later. Broody as a hen, sometimes. “Agrippa?” Caesarion called, managing to dredge up the name of the legate of the Second Legion from the depths of memory. “Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa?”

  Clearly startled, Agrippa removed his helmet and gave Caesarion the required salute. In his mid-thirties, no gray yet touched his wavy, close-cropped hair, but his heavy brows had lowered over his eyes into a perpetual squint or frown, and creases marked his forehead and bracketed his mouth. A pleasant face; that of a gardener perhaps, or a farmer, hardly what one thought of when hearing the word ‘patrician.’ And on seeing that face, memory tossed its dice, and came up sixes. In a flash, Caesarion remembered, vividly, several more salient details about the man. Caesar had placed Agrippa in charge of renovating Rome. He’d won the seat of aedile several times, and had enlarged the sewers, built parks, and clad brick buildings in marble, letting the city shine as never before. But most importantly, the lower-born man had been brought up alongside Octavian, and that the pair had become close friends, practically inseparable. Oh, gods. This is where Octavian’s best friend, practically his brother, tells me pleasantly and cordially that he’s arrived to join forces with Cassius, and that I should just stand down now and save the lives of my men.

  Caesarion’s smile of greeting, already wary, now faded entirely. Behind him, Marcus Antonius huffed up, red-faced and out of breath from his hasty race from the command tent. “My lord,” Agrippa said now, his eyes flicking from Caesarion to Antony and back again. “You may recall that your late father placed me in command of the Second Legion some two years ago. My term as their legate is almost at an end, and I wished to return to Rome to set down my command. However, the Senate recommended that I bring my men directly to you, to help speed the progress of the siege here, before setting aside my office.”

  “How good of them,” Antony put in, sounding grim. “The city will fall within a week, in my opinion.” The continuous thud of the ballistae, background noise for three months, suddenly seemed loud in Caesarion’s ears. Antony turned now to Caesarion. “My lord,” he said now, with at least three times more formality than Caesarion had yet received from the man, “your pavilion is ready to receive your esteemed guests.”

  And suddenly, Antony casts himself as the loyal adjutant, practically my butler. This day’s going to be an interesting one. “Thank you,” Caesarion replied, with all the dignity he could muster. “You, your officers, and the rest of your party will join us?” He glanced at the young men on horseback, as well as the carruca.

  “I’m sure they’ll all be pleased at the respite. We have a few ladies with us.” Agrippa’s face and eyes didn’t warm, but his tone sounded weary. “As well as an Egyptian—a courier or something—who insisted that he had missives for Queen Cleopatra of Egypt.” Very carefully delineating with his words Cleopatra’s exact current status—no longer Empress of Rome. Not even the dignity of the title dowager Empress, which would have been accurate as well.

  Caesarion didn’t miss it. He also didn’t correct it. He’d caught sight of the Egyptian behind the carruca now, riding a pony. A stocky, square-built man with a hint of a paunch and an entirely shaved head. “We’ll see to each concern in turn, I’m sure,” he replied mildly. “Introducti
ons can wait until all of you have had a chance to wash the dirt of the road from you.”

  Outside the walls, the fresh troops began to make camp, while Caesarion led the newcomers to the command tent, the skin between his shoulder blades itching as he did so. “Malleolus,” he muttered, when he was sure he was out of earshot of his sudden guests, “double the watch around the command tent. I want you and three other men you trust implicitly in the tent with us.”

  “Caution, dominus?” Malleolus muttered in a tone just short of insubordination. “You should have let Antony be the one to meet them at the gate, my lord.”

  “A good host lets his guests into the garden with his own hands.”

  “You’re the Imperator of Rome, my lord.”

  “So you daily remind me. Three other men, Mal. And yes, I’m cautious when the lives of my family are at stake.” That, with a sidelong glance at the veteran soldier. “Keep whoever the Egyptian courier is, outside for now. I’ll inform my mother that she doubtless has letters to read, but I’ll not have too many extra ears at this meeting.” Agrippa doesn’t seem to have rebellion in mind. He has yet to spit in my face or offer any other insult. But the day is young.

  Inside the tent, Caesarion took a seat, while Alexander emerged from the rear to sit at his left; his mother looked at the chair to Caesarion’s right, but he waved her one further positon down. “Antony at my right, Mother, and you at his.” He glanced at the tent’s cloth roof. “Decorum.”