Memoirs of Cleopatra (1997)

by Margaret George

  I looked at a cloud formation that had been moving across the sky. It had not gone very far. Antony was right; he did not keep the envoys waiting very long. He had not exceeded the bounds of politeness.

  Like an earth tremor, Antony's forthcoming campaign made the ground tingle all over the east, sending out alarm signals. It had been almost twenty years since the catastrophic Roman defeat at Carrhae, and yet the Romans were known always to avenge defeats. Ten years later Caesar was departing to do so when he was felled; now once again an army was being readied for the mission. Vengeance had been delayed but it would be certain.

  Rumors about the size and scope of the army went before it like trumpeters, magnifying what was already an enormous host. There were a half a million men, an Armenian merchant reported hearing; no, a million, a trader from the Black Sea had been told by reliable sources. The equipment was secret, made by Egyptian black arts combined with Roman engineering: siege towers that were fireproof, arrows that had a range of a mile and could be accurately aimed at night, catapult stones that exploded, and food supplies that were imperishable and lightweight, so soldiers could live in the field for months at a time.

  Antony told me about these marvels as he lay back one night after dinner, almost lost in the forest of pillows he had arranged for himself. I remembered, fleetingly, the time I had amused Caesar with the eastern den of pillows, but that had been downright austere compared to this.

  "Yes," he said dreamily, his hands behind his head, "it seems that I command a supernatural force. Rations that never grow stale!" His voice rose in wonder. "An army that can carry all its own supplies, and not have to live off the land. Now that would be a miracle. Ah, well, such rumors may help turn my enemies to jelly before I ever arrive, may do half my work for me."

  I looked down at him, where he lay in pure contentment. It was time he went back into the field; it had been five years since Philippi. Five years was a long time for a soldier to sit feasting and dreaming and relaxing. Had Caesar ever taken five years off?

  Stop comparing him with Caesar, I told myself.

  But the whole world is comparing him with Caesar. This campaign is meant to compare him with Caesar, to carry out Caesar s design, to show who is Caesar's true military heir and successor. That was the truth of it.

  Yes, five years was a long time for anything to lie fallow. He must bestir himself.

  "Unfortunately, you and I know it is just a myth. This war will have to be fought and won the old-fashioned way," I said. "What is your tally for the troops so far?"

  "When Canidius brings his legions back from Armenia, where he has been wintering, our strength will stand at sixteen legions--sixteen somewhat under-strength legions. But they're good soldiers, good seasoned Roman legionaries, of the sort--the sort that will be in short supply for me from now on."

  The last thought caused him pain.

  "Because Octavian prevents you from recruiting any more in Italy, in spite of his agreements!" I snapped. "And where are the twenty thousand he promised you, in exchange for the ships he borrowed from you last year? You need not answer, we know well enough!" It had been this, finally, that had opened Antony's eyes to his devious colleague.

  "Under his command, never to be released," Antony said grimly. "But after Parthia, I--"

  "After Parthia is won," I corrected him.

  "After Parthia is won, I will have no need of favors from him," said Antony. "As I was saying, I take sixty thousand Roman legionaries into the field, aided by thirty thousand auxiliaries. Half of those auxiliaries are under the kings of Armenia and Pontus."

  "Can you trust them?" I asked.

  "If I were to trust no foreign allies, how could I trust you?" He smiled.

  "You are not married to King Artavasdes of Armenia, nor to Polemo of Pontus."

  Now he laughed. "By Hercules, no!"

  "Armenia is Parthian by culture and sympathy," I said. "How can you trust them to support Rome? It seems very risky to march into Parthia and leave them unguarded at your back."

  He sighed. "You are a wise general. We should have garrisoned Armenia after Canidius's victories there, but we cannot spare the troops. The King seems honest in his support, and he is contributing a small army to our cause, commanding it in person."

  "I like it not," I said.

  "You have trained yourself to be suspicious of everyone and everybody," he said.

  "If I had not, I would not be alive now to be sitting beside you." All my siblings were dead, and none--except little Ptolemy--by natural causes.

  He reached out and touched my hair. "For which I am profoundly grateful," he said. "But stop sitting, and lie here beside me. You look down upon me too sternly from those heights."

  "I cannot think clearly when I am lying down amidst a field of pillows, especially with you beside me. Tell me--where are the papers of Caesar's from which you have planned this campaign? I would like to see them."

  "Do you not believe me?"

  "Yes, of course I do." But I also knew he had altered and outright forged many papers that he claimed to have "found" in Caesar's house--papers relating to appointments and legacies. He had confessed it to me himself. That was forgivable, since it wielded him a counterpower to the assassins, and even brought them to him, hats in hand. But this was different. I was deeply worried because Antony had never planned a campaign of this scope; his successes as a general had been achieved in much smaller arenas. This venture required not only a vision of the entire campaign, but a genius for long-range planning and details that even Caesar would have been taxed to provide.

  "I will show them to you later this evening," he said. "They are in another part of the palace. For now, I want to lie here and enjoy digesting my food. I want to feel the heat from this well-placed brazier"--he indicated the ornate, footed brass brazier emitting welcome warmth--"and be thankful I am not outside."

  It was nasty that night, with a driving, cold rain that seemed to penetrate the walls.

  "If the gods look upon me with favor, this time next year I will be wintering near Babylon. It will be warm enough there to sleep out under the stars."

  "Unlike Armenia, with its snows and mountains. Or even Media. Yes, you must be in Babylon by winter," I agreed.

  It would take at least two years to carry out such a campaign, I knew. Caesar had allowed for three, assuming--on the basis of his experiences in Gaul--that everything always took longer than expected. But it would be hard to part with Antony again, so soon, and for such a long time. That it might be forever--I refused to let myself dwell on that. Isis would not be so cruel.

  "The very name of Babylon has a magic," he said. "In truth, I never thought I might be the one to conquer it--the first westerner since Alexander himself. Fate is capricious, is she not? Why should she grant to me what she denied to Caesar?"

  "You have answered your own question--because she is capricious. And deaf to entreaties and questions. And I sometimes think she enjoys offering her prizes to those who seem reluctant to seek them. Perhaps Caesar sought too hard." I had given much thought to this. Did that mean one should never seek? It was confusing.

  He propped himself up on one elbow. "When my father died in my eleventh year, he left me a tarnished name, an empty purse, and an unstable family. It was not a promising start. And now, thirty-five years later, I call a queen my wife and will lead the largest and finest Roman army of the age-- perhaps of any age--into the east. Fate has been a strange partner to me all these years."

  "I have heard snatches of your scandalous youth, cavorting with Curio and his gang in Rome--again, not a promising start."

  "True. But I wearied of it--just about the time the debt collectors were breathing uncomfortably close to me. I managed to get far away--betook myself to Greece to study oratory. Speechmaking ran in my family, and it made a reasonable excuse for escaping Rome. On his way to Syria, the new governor, Gabinius, spotted me during some military exercises and persuaded me to come with him as commander of his cava
lry."

  "The first of your good fortune," I said. What if Gabinius had come to the exercise grounds on a different day?

  "Yes," Antony acknowledged. "And of course the second stroke of good fortune was leading the cavalry to Egypt when Gabinius agreed to restore your father to the throne. That led me to Alexandria, where I first saw you."

  It had seemed so unremarkable at the time--a pleasant young Roman who had been kindly tolerant of my father's weakness. I had been grateful to him for that, and surprised that a Roman could be so likable, but it did not seem a fateful event. "Which did not seem anything out of the ordinary at the time, I am sure," I said.

  "Oh no, you are wrong!" he protested, sitting bolt upright. "I was very taken with you!"

  I could not help laughing. It was a conventional thing for lovers to plead, but his memory was playing tricks on him. "You said that once before, but I cannot imagine why," I said. At the time I had been barely fourteen years old, badly shaken by the dethronement of my father and the fine line I had had to walk to mollify my sisters and stay alive. I could recall the fear very vividly, even now. Too vividly.

  "Because of the way you stood," he said. "Anyone could see you were a princess." When he saw my questioning look, he hurried on to explain himself. "That you could hold yourself like that after all you had endured, all the uncertainty, the loss of your father--it was very affecting. I knew you were no ordinary person."

  "So it was my posture that struck you!"

  "It was what the posture meant."

  I had not even been aware of my posture, in my youthful focus on other things--my hair, my height, my skin. "You saw things in me that I did not," I said. "I must thank you for those eyes." I paused. "But Gabinius paid dearly for helping my father--he was sent back to Rome in disgrace. How did you escape that?"

  "Luckily--that word again--I was so clearly just a subordinate, taking orders, that I could not be blamed for Gabinius's defiance of the Senate. Still, I thought it best to give Rome a wide berth, and so I went to Gaul to serve as a legate to Caesar. And that was my third stroke of fortune, for all else followed from that. Caesar noticed me, gave me responsibilities, trusted me . . . and in the reckoning with Pompey, when I burst through Pompey's sea blockade in the dead of night, risking all on that venture, I won Caesar's heart as a gambler like himself. In the final battle I commanded the left wing of his army, fighting outnumbered. Caesar won the battle and I shared the victory."

  He had a mighty legacy. Truly, Fate had been leading him, step by step, toward something very large.

  I, too, had been led past many dangers and reversals, to find myself here. Now, on the eve of the greatest leap of all, let not our guardian fates desert us.

  "If I think on it too much, I tremble," I had to admit.

  "Then do not think on it, do not look down as you skirt the narrow ledge, lest you lose heart, lose balance, and fall," he said.

  "Yet if you lead an army, you must prepare," I said. "I think--I think I would like to see those papers now, hear your plans." Now, before I lost stomach for the details.

  He groaned. "So you will force me to spread them out?" He rose to his feet, then held out his hands for mine. "I warn you, they are numbing in their sheer numbers!"

  Yet from those numbers and charts our chances would be revealed. "It is early yet, and I am not tired," I assured him.

  Down the seemingly endless hallways--oh, how the Seleucids had liked vastness!--unheated, unlighted, he took me to the apartments where he kept all the war records and documents. A sleepy guard--scarcely more than a boy--jumped to attention and scurried to light a fire and additional lamps to banish the bone-chilling damp and dreariness.

  Antony flung open a trunk and gathered up an armful of scrolls, then dumped them down on a large table. "The best maps we have," he said. Two of them rolled off the table and lay at his feet. He spread out the biggest one on the table, securing it with a heavy oil lamp.

  "There^that's the entire region, from Syria to Parthia and beyond," he said.

  I was impressed with its detail. "Where did you get this?" I asked.

  . "I drew it myself," he said. "I put together all the intelligence about the area. Look--"

  He pointed out various features. "It just stretches east, and east," he said. "We are used to the Tigris River marking the easternmost part of the world. To a Parthian, that is far west."

  "A world beyond the edge of ours," I said. "I know the Parthians came from even farther east--some other desert region. They still fight like desert peoples, using horses and bows. If the Greeks are of the sea, and the Romans of the earth, then the Parthians come closest to being of the air."

  Antony grunted, leaning on his elbows and staring at the map. "Yes, their arrows whistle through the air, with their front and back archers using two different trajectories, so that our shields cannot guard against all of them. But in this war I will force them to fight using Roman methods. And I have trained slingers with lead pellets that carry farther than Parthian arrows and can pierce armor, to show them they do not control the air."

  Still, they were expert riders and had given the term "Parthian shot" to the world: When they appeared to be retreating, they would turn and shoot over their shoulders with deadly accuracy. And they had invented special bows shortened below the grip for use in the saddle, and a camel corps that carried unlimited replacement arrows. They fought exclusively with long-range weapons, never face-to-face.

  "I plan to meet Canidius here"--he stabbed a finger down in Armenia-- "and join our armies. Then we will march south, traversing the mountains and making for Phraaspa, where the national treasure is kept. We will attack the city and force them to fight for it in Roman fashion--after all, the city is not mobile and cannot ride away." He laughed. "They will have to stand like men and defend themselves, not flee." He seemed optimistic. "Since the countryside has little useful timber, I will be bringing my own battering rams and siege equipment."

  "You will transport them all that way? How arduous and time-consuming!"

  "True, but without them I cannot force the cities to yield."

  "What were Caesar's exact plans for the campaign?" I asked quietly.

  "He also planned to attack from the north, avoiding the west, where Crassus met his doom. He also had sixteen legions, and wished to gain experience in Parthian methods of fighting before actually engaging in full battle with them; his men would get their practice in skirmishes along the way."

  "May I see the papers?"

  He frowned, reluctant to bring them out. Why? Had Caesar different plans, ones that Antony had abandoned? Was he just using the magic name of Caesar to color his own strategy? "Very well," he finally said, making his way over to a small locked casket on another table. He opened it and pulled out a sheaf of papers, not the neatly folded papers of a man who had had the opportunity to store them, but the papers of a man caught by death unawares and in mid-action--messy and jumbled.

  "This is exactly as I found them," he said, handing them to me. "I swear."

  I was half afraid to spread them out. I did not want my suspicions confirmed. I did not want to let the force of Caesar loose in the room.

  But I did, smoothing them out and holding down their corners with more oil lamps. The familiar writing--but with new, unknown thoughts--rose up and hit me.

  How cherished was the writing itself to me--the ink, the very letters. How miraculous that they would tell me something novel, contain a message from him that was brand new.

  There were sketches, hasty maps, labels. From the paths traced out in the fading ink, I could see that it was as Antony had said: This was the route he had meant to take. Relief flooded me, as if that guaranteed success. I felt ashamed to have doubted Antony, so to have mistrusted his judgment should it have differed from Caesar's.

  I looked up to see Antony studying me intently. He had watched my expression as I read the notes, trying to penetrate my thoughts. I hoped they had not been transparent.

  "
You see?" he said defensively. "It is as I said."

  "Of course it is," I said. "But I gather he planned to garrison Armenia, whereas you--"

  "I told you I cannot spare the manpower! The Armenian king is our ally, and contributing--"

  "Yes, yes, you did. I only meant--"

  "Crassus took only eight legions. I must have adequate troops."

  "And it looks as though Caesar meant to take Ecbatana and thereby cut Babylon off from Parthia proper."

  "So shall I. But first Ecbatana must be reached, and before that Phraaspa must be taken."

  "Of course." Carefully I folded up the papers. I hated to close them so soon, but they had told me what I wished to know, whispering of old memories and future conquests. "Here." I handed them back.

  He returned them to their place, like a priest before a shrine. Perhaps that was what he was. In Rome he served as a priest to the cult of Julius Caesar, but here on the borders of the Roman world he was serving in an infinitely more demanding capacity, as the heir of Caesar and the executor of his last wishes--and what could be a higher act of respect and worship than that?

  Snapping the lid shut on the box, he said fiercely, "The Parthians knew of his plans, and rejoiced in his murder. They sent a small contingent to help the assassins in their last stand at Philippi. In doing so they have marked themselves for retribution. We cannot let that pass unpunished."