“You!” he exclaimed—and coughed blood. She saw, with amazement, that she’d knocked in his front teeth.
“The situation becomes clear,” Arion said drily.
“I think you should go back into the cabin,” Rhodon advised him urgently. “The situation may be clear to you, but to me it’s starting to look dangerous.” He glanced down the corridor—where, Melanthe saw, all but a few doors were now open and at least a dozen people were watching them.
Arion did not move. “I do not trust you to see this as I do,” he said evenly. “Rhodon, I will pay for this girl’s safety with my own, if need be.”
“That’s ludicrous!” exclaimed Rhodon, staring at him.
“What am I supposed to do in Cyprus anyway?” demanded Arion. “One can live quietly, or die, as well here as there.”
“The object is to live!” Rhodon told him.
“To what end?” Arion asked, unmoved. “If I die now, it will not be your doing. You have done everything you could. I acknowledge it freely.”
“And you’ll throw away everything I’ve done, because of some Egyptian girl?” cried Rhodon furiously.
“I owe her father a debt,” Arion replied. “I will not purchase my life at his expense, or hers.”
“This is a criminal fugitive from the Romans!” exclaimed Aristodemos, finally gathering the energy to speak.
Three of the men who’d been watching from the nearest doorways came out suddenly and silently. One of them caught Aristodemos’ shoulder. Melanthe had a sudden sense that things were becoming unbalanced, like too much crockery stacked on the edge of a table—and that the teetering stack was much taller and far, far heavier than she’d realized.
“A criminal fugitive,” Nikokrates repeated, staring at Arion. “Not our kind, though.” He glanced over at Aristodemos, who was glaring indignantly at the man who held him. “The Romans are after him, you say?”
“Take your hands off me!” Aristodemos ordered. “—Yes, he fled the king’s camp when …”
He stopped, gasping. The man who’d been holding his shoulder caught him as he slumped and lowered him gently to the floor. His eyes stared intently at nothing.
Nikokrates shivered. Suddenly he shoved Melanthe hard, sending her stumbling into the opposite side of the corridor. She caught herself on a shoulder, turned in time to see Nikokrates, a knife in his hand, crashing into Arion.
There were shouts of alarm, several of them, and a flurry of body against body. Then the robber was standing behind Arion and holding a knife to his throat. “Nobody move!” ordered Nikokrates. “Anybody moves, and he dies!”
Everything went very still. Two more of the men had come out of the doorways, but stood frozen. One of them had a knife in his hand. Aristodemos was lying on the floor, his eyes still staring madly. Melanthe realized that he wasn’t breathing.
“What is this supposed to achieve?” Arion asked calmly. He stood very straight, his head back, the knife gleaming golden against his pale skin.
“I think your life is worth a lot more than the girl’s,” said Nikokrates softly. “I think your friends here would pay a fortune for it. So would the Romans.”
Arion sighed. His right hand moved slightly. Then he spun about where he stood, his left hand came up fast to catch at the knife, and his right hand moved again, fisted, against Nikokrates’ side.
Nikokrates’ knife leapt wildly into the air, fell to the floor. Nikokrates grunted and folded over. His friend Zeuxis yelled, ran toward him, and one of the strangers leapt after him and brought him down with a crash. The stranger’s hand rose and came down: Zeuxis screamed horribly. The stranger’s hand rose and fell again, and the scream stopped.
Arion crouched over Nikokrates a moment, tugging at something buried in the robber’s side. He straightened slowly, holding a knife of his own, its blade red. “I didn’t think I was going to need it,” he remarked, looking at it.
Then he dropped it and fell to his knees. A look of horror came over his face, and his bloodied hand began to claw at the neck of his tunic—then stopped as his eyes fixed in the ghastly stare of a seizure. Blood was trickling slowly from a scratch at the angle of his throat, where Nikokrates’ knife had caught him as he turned, but it was clear he did not feel it.
Kinesias looked at him, at the three bodies littering the floor, at the grimly silent men who’d come out of their cabins—to protect Arion, Melanthe finally understood, not to guard the captain. He looked back at Arion. A look of sheer panic convulsed his face. “Get off!” he ordered shrilly. “I didn’t know what I was getting into. I’m not carrying you, not for any price!”
CHAPTER XI
Caesarion sat at the desk in the cabin, trying to compose a letter. It was just before dawn—the ship’s captain had grudgingly agreed that he ought to remove himself and his chattels from the ship in good order by daylight, rather than pack them off helter-skelter in the middle of the night and risk drawing the attention of the watch. Now the slaves were packing the last of the carpets, hangings, and furniture. There remained only this desk, and the lamp by which he must write the letter.
The goods and slaves really belonged to a Friend of his mother’s. Not a Kinsman or First Friend: Archibios had been outside that select circle. He had been merely an extremely wealthy private citizen who was occasionally received at court—yet when the queen died, he had offered the emperor the astonishing sum of two thousand talents of silver to leave her statues and monuments intact. This, Rhodon had told Caesarion, was in stark contrast to many more exalted figures, including several Caesarion might have approached. When the queen was a prisoner, her finance minister Seleukos had informed Octavian where she’d hidden the treasures she’d hoped to use as bribes, and even Olympos, her trusted personal physician, had warned her captors that she was planning to die rather than grace a Roman triumph. Others Caesarion might have turned to—the chamberlain Mardion and the royal secretary Diomedes—were dead. He would never have thought of going to Archibios. Rhodon had certainly proved his value there.
Rhodon had been a surprise generally. Caesarion had had only the vaguest notion that his tutor owned a house near the Museum, and had not known that he had a mistress and children at all. The house had proved to be a small but lovingly furnished mansion, and the mistress a stunning red-haired Gaulish woman whom Rhodon had bought as a slave ten years before and freed. It could not be a legal marriage, but the couple were obviously devoted to one another: a major concern was how to legitimatize their children so they could inherit from their father. Caesarion found that he could now easily imagine Rhodon’s anguish at being required to abandon his family and depart into exile while the Romans were marching on Alexandria. It plainly hadn’t helped that the Gaulish woman had been enslaved during one of the campaigns of Julius Caesar, and had little love for Caesar’s son.
Rhodon’s remorse for his treachery was clearly sincere. He had thrown himself with passionate enthusiasm into finding Caesarion a refuge, and turned at once to Archibios.
Archibios had at first refused to admit Rhodon to his house, but had eventually done so out of curiosity. Shortly afterwards, the old man had himself appeared at Rhodon’s house, and had wrung Caesarion’s hand and wept for joy. He had, he said, a large estate on the island of Cyprus: would Caesarion accept it? They could make out a fictitious bill of sale, and such a sale would arouse no suspicion: he was having to sell a lot of land as it was, to cover what he’d promised the emperor for the statues. It would give him such joy, he said, to know that he could use the property to secure the livelihood of the divine queen’s son.
Caesarion had asked again after Philadelphus. Archibios and Rhodon both had promised to see what they could discover, but nothing had come of it, except confirmation that at least the little boy had his own nurse to look after him. In the meantime, the voyage to Cyprus progressed from suggestion to plan without his ever having formally agreed to it. Archibios and Rhodon had, between them, located this dubiously reputed ship which could
slip out of the harbor without an inspection. Archibios had selected attendants—armed bodyguards, in case the ship’s captain was tempted to rob his passenger—and provided slaves and furnishings from his own house. He had been so eager to help that Caesarion hadn’t felt able to refuse—even though the thought of being trapped trying to run an estate on Cyprus filled him with a sense of panic.
Now he had to write Archibios and inform him that all his efforts had been for nothing. It was not easy to do: he found that he was, on the one hand, ashamed to have wasted so much effort, undertaken with such goodwill and at such risk—but on the other hand, he felt no regret whatsoever. He had saved Melanthe and would restore her to her family, and that was worth more than the miserable scraps of his life. He was, however, sorry for Archibios.
Ptolemy Caesar to his Friend Archibios, son of Diodoros, greetings, he wrote at last.
I hope you are in good health. It is with great regret that I must inform you that the voyage you arranged cannot now take place. When I went on board the vessel you hired, I recognized, among the slaves who form the principal cargo, the daughter of the merchant who saved my life after I was wounded near Berenike. She had been kidnapped through the malice of an enemy of her father, and Kinesias, the ship captain, refused to release her, although I offered to redeem her. I insisted upon her release—my debt to her family demanded nothing less—and in the course of the argument which followed, I was recognized. Although the men you lent me acted with commendable speed to prevent the matter from progressing any further, the captain has nonetheless realized who I am, and refuses to carry me.
I am fully aware that my position is too delicate to endure the delays and upheaval involved in a search for a different ship, and I am therefore resolved not to endanger my friends further by making the attempt. My regret is not for myself—indeed, I fear that if I had taken up the property you so kindly offered me, I would soon have come to grief. I am, however, very sorry, for the waste of your efforts, which have been loyal and generous, and have greatly comforted me after betrayal by so many others. I would be deeply grieved and ashamed if your kindness to me led to your ruin. I therefore return to you, with this letter and my thanks, all the people and property you were good enough to place at my disposal. I beg you not to concern yourself with me further, but to ensure your own safety. I will escape from Egypt by another road.
I thank you for your loyalty to myself and to my mother’s memory, which you have done so much to protect. I pray that the gods prosper you as you deserve, and I wish you very much joy.
He sat for a moment, watching the ink dry, feeling strangely at peace. He should, of course, have died at Kabalsi——and yet, the last month had been, for all the suffering, well worthwhile. He had met real kindness and real loyalty; he had discovered that even traitors could seek atonement; he had saved some people who were worth saving; he had fallen in love.
The cabin door opened, and he glanced round to see that Rhodon had come in. The philosopher had stayed on the ship all night, helping to arrange the orderly departure. He gestured at him to wait, then blew on the ink, scrolled the letter, and inserted it in one of the elegant little letter-cases provided, with the desk, by Archibios.
“May I see it?” asked Rhodon.
He hesitated—then handed him the unsealed letter.
Rhodon took it out of the case and began to read it in a rapid mutter, then stopped at the end of the second paragraph and looked up accusingly. “What other road?” he asked.
“You know the one I mean,” Caesarion replied, in a low voice. “Do not, I beg you, distress Archibios by naming it. Tell him I hope to find a ship at one of the Red Sea ports.”
“Because of a girl!” exclaimed Rhodon in dismay. “Because of a sixteen-year-old black-eyed Egyptian!”
“You betrayed me for your mistress and children,” Caesarion pointed out. “There are worse causes. But it isn’t just because of her. Rhodon, I never wanted to go to Cyprus anyway, and I owe Melanthe and her family a great debt. It made no sense to cling to a life I hate at the cost of betraying people whom I love.”
Rhodon lowered the letter and stared at him unhappily. “Love?”
Caesarion felt his cheeks heat, but did not look away. “They are good people who were kind to me without expecting anything in return. You’re a philosopher. Don’t all the schools hold that what we are by birth is an accident, and that in the essence of our souls we are all equal, all mortal? I honor and esteem Melanthe and her family, and I will not betray them.”
Rhodon made a noise of exasperation. “I never adhered to any of the schools, as you know very well. And your birth was no accident. Your mother decided that she wanted a son by Julius Caesar, and she got one.”
“That’s still an accident in the philosophical sense, isn’t it? Not intrinsic to my nature as a man.”
“Zeus, I don’t know anymore what’s intrinsic and what we become by choice. You were never really willing to leave without Philadelphus, were you?”
“I suppose not,” Caesarion admitted. “Rhodon, if I’d gone to Cyprus without Philadelphus to care for and worry about, what would I have done? Drunk to excess, and probably talked while I was drunk, and got you and Archibios into trouble. I was not brought up to live quietly. I was brought up to be a king, and I can no more change that than I can cure myself of the disease. I have no purpose anymore!”
Rhodon looked away. He gazed down at the letter, then rolled it up silently and put it back in the case. “I suppose,” he said—and his voice was thick, “that I wanted you to go to Cyprus to ease my own conscience. If you were safely alive there, then it didn’t matter that I’d betrayed you.”
“It didn’t matter anyway,” Caesarion told him. “You were quite right. The war was over. To go on fighting would have done nothing but cause death and suffering for no benefit whatsoever.”
Rhodon shook his head. “I was wrong. I was quite wrong.” Caesarion saw with surprise that he was in tears. “I thought you were like your mother—that you had no capacity to feel the suffering of others. I was wrong. You would have been a great king.”
He was moved and bewildered by the unexpected tribute. “No one can say what sort of king I would have been,” he replied at last. “I was never going to reign. Egypt was living on Roman sufferance before either of us was born. My mother believed that she could forge a partnership with Rome, but my death became inevitable the moment that failed. I don’t even understand why she bothered to send me out of the city at the end. She can’t possibly have expected me to do anything except prolong the war.”
Rhodon stared at him in astonishment. “She wanted you to live. The gold was for you, not to pay soldiers. Didn’t you realize that?”
It had never occurred to him. She hadn’t said why she was sending him away. She had simply summoned him suddenly one night, early this same summer, and ordered him to go. He had expected to stay in the city until it fell—as they had all known it would. “You must escape,” she had told him, taking his hand and looking into his face. “He may spare others, but he will not spare you. I have arranged a ship and money. You must go quickly, while we still control the Nile. I will join you if I can.” Then she had embraced him. She had done that regularly, but usually it was perfunctory, intended as a gesture to satisfy the court that he was hers and still in favor. That time had been different: she had clung to him, pressing her face against his hair, then leaned back and looked at him for a long, long moment.
For the first time he realized that she had known that she would never see him again. Rhodon was right. The ship and the gold had not been an injunction upon him to continue the struggle, but, very simply, an attempt to preserve his life. He had always known that she’d borne him as a tool, to unite in his person the rulers of Rome and the heirs of Alexander. The idea that she would wish to preserve his life when she knew he would never fulfill the purpose for which she’d created him—that was new, shocking, and profoundly moving. He sat still, his heart pound
ing in his ears. Then, hurriedly, he dug out the remedy and inhaled it, afraid the revelation would provoke a seizure.
“Thank you,” he said to Rhodon at last.
“You never realized that?” asked Rhodon.
He shook his head.
“She was not a kind or loving mother,” Rhodon commented quietly. “I suppose you simply didn’t credit it.”
“She was bitterly disappointed when I was struck by the disease,” replied Caesarion. “She tried very hard to find a way to cure me. It … damaged things between us.”
“She did want you to live,” said Rhodon softly. “You could. Still. What about really trying one of the Red Sea ports? Archibios would provide you with money.”
“No.” Caesarion wiped his eyes and lowered the remedy again. “I endanger everyone who helps me. Rhodon, I was questioned by the Romans twice on my way to Alexandria, and I had to pass through three customs posts. I survived because I was traveling with Melanthe’s father, a genuine merchant with a legitimate, well-documented cargo. To travel as a fugitive, with a large sum of money—I would be caught.”
“You could go back with your merchant,” urged Rhodon. “He seems to be your friend anyway. We could …”
“No,” Caesarion insisted. “I will not put him at risk. How can I ask good people to risk death and ruin to keep me alive, when even I see no point to it? You said it yourself. I am not worth any more lives.” He wiped his eyes again. “I’m tired of it, anyway. The lies and the bad choices, the treachery and the disease. It will be a relief to have it over.”
There was a long silence, which was interrupted by a hesitant knock on the door. “Yes?” called Caesarion.
The eldest of the three female slaves Archibios had given him stuck her head into the cabin. “Master,” she began nervously—and then Melanthe pushed past her.
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