"Not just a message, but a messenger, bearing a gift."
"Where is he?"
"Just outside this room. A big, strapping fellow named Apollodorus. He claims that the gift he bears comes from the queen herself."
"A gift?"
"A rug, rolled up and carried in his arms."
Caesar sat back and pressed his palms together. "Who is this Apollodorus? What do we know about him?"
"According to our intelligence, he's Sicilian by birth. How he came to Alexandria and entered the service of Queen Cleopatra we don't know, but he seems to have become her constant companion."
"A bodyguard?"
"The chatter among the palace coterie loyal to Ptolemy is that Apollodorus is more than a bodyguard to the queen. He is an impressive specimen."
"Even so, I think we must discount such innuendos as vicious gossip," suggested Caesar, who himself had been the target of whispering campaigns throughout his political career.
Meto nodded. "Nevertheless, Apollodorus seems never to leave the queen's side."
"He goes with her everywhere?"
Meto nodded.
"I see. How did this fellow get into the palace?"
"He claims he rowed a small boat up to a secluded landing on the waterfront, disembarked with his rug, and made his way through the palace. How he got past Ptolemy's guard, I don't know-he obviously knows his way around the palace, and the place is said to be full of secret passages. He appeared at the Roman checkpoint, handed over a nasty-looking dagger and allowed himself to be searched, then told the guards that the rug he carried was a gift from the queen, who had instructed him to present it to no one but yourself, in person."
"I see. It must be very fine rug, indeed. I wish to see it. Show him in." When Meto moved to obey, Caesar turned to me. "You'd don't mind the interruption, do you, Gordianus? Our dinner conversation wasn't going all that smoothly, anyway."
"Perhaps I should leave."
"It's up to you. But do you really want to miss the next few moments?"
"The presentation of a rug?"
"Not just any rug, Gordianus, but a gift from Queen Cleopatra herself! King Ptolemy-or more accurately, that eunuch, Pothinus-has done everything possible in recent days to seal the palace and to prevent anyone who might represent the queen from approaching me. Courtiers loyal to Cleopatra have been apprehended, the messages they carried confiscated and destroyed, and the courtiers themselves summarily executed. I've protested to the king-how dare he intercept messages addressed to the consul of the Roman people?-but to no avail. The king wants me to hear only one side of this argument between himself and his sister, but I should very much like to meet her. One hears such fascinating things about Cleopatra. Marc Antony met her some years ago, when he helped to restore her father to the throne, and he said the most curious thing…"
I nodded. "I think he must have said the same thing to me. Despite the fact that she was then only fourteen years old-about the age her brother is now-there was some quality about her that reminded Antony… of you."
Caesar smiled. "Can you imagine?"
I looked at Caesar, a man of fifty-two with wisps of hair combed over his bald spot, a strong, determined jaw, and a hard, calculating glint in his eyes, slightly softened by that veil of world-weariness that falls over men who have seen too much of life. "Not really," I confessed.
"Nor can I! But what man could resist meeting a younger incarnation of himself, especially an incarnation of the opposite gender?"
"It's my understanding that Cleopatra is an incarnation of Isis." Caesar looked at me archly. "Some philosophers postulate that Isis is actually the Egyptian manifestation of the Greek Aphrodite, who is also the Roman Venus-my ancestor. The world is a small place. If Cleopatra is Isis, and Isis is Venus, then there appears to be a family connection, indeed a divine connection, between Queen Cleopatra and myself."
I smiled uncertainly. Was he serious, or merely indulging in a bit of fancy wordplay? The look on his face was anything but whimsical.
"Imperator!" Meto appeared in the doorway. He studiously kept his eyes from meeting mine. "I present Apollodorus, a servant of Cleopatra, who bears a gift from Her Majesty."
Meto moved aside to permit a tall, imposing figure to step forward. Apollodorus was darkly handsome, with a great mane of black hair swept back from his forehead and a neatly trimmed black beard. He wore a very brief, sleeveless tunic that left bare his long, muscular legs and arms. His biceps were bisected by veins that protruded above the straining muscles as he held aloft a rolled-up rug. I remembered all the steps I had ascended to reach the room; the flesh of Apollodorus was sleek with sweat from the exertion of carrying his burden, but his breath was unlabored.
The rug was bound with slender rope in three places to keep it from unfurling. Apollodorus knelt and set it gently on the floor. "Queen Cleopatra welcomes Gaius Julius Caesar to the city of Alexandria," he said, speaking in Latin, with an ungainly accent that suggested he had memorized the phrase by rote. In Greek, to Meto, he said, "If I may have back my knife, so that I might cut the cords…"
"I'll do that myself," said Caesar. Meto pulled his sword from its scabbard and handed it to Caesar. Caesar poked the sharp point against a strand of rope.
Apollodorus gasped. "Please, Caesar, be careful!"
"Is the rug not mine?" said Caesar. He smiled at Meto. "Am I not a man who knows the value of things?"
"You are, Imperator," agreed Meto.
"And am I ever careless with the things that are mine?"
"Never, Imperator."
"Very well, then." Caesar deftly cut the three strands of rope, then stepped back to allow Apollodorus to unfurl the rug.
As the rug was unrolled, it became obvious that there was something inside it-not merely an object, but something alive and moving. I stepped back and let out a gasp, then saw that Caesar and Meto smiled; they were not entirely surprised at the sight of Queen Cleopatra as she rolled forth from the carpet and rose to her feet in a single, fluid motion.
The rolled rug had given no evidence of the prize it concealed; it seemed impossible that its folds could contain a personage who loomed as large in imagination as Cleopatra. But the immensity of the image conjured by her name was curiously out of scale with the actual, physical embodiment of the woman herself. Indeed, she seemed hardly a woman at all, but very much a girl, small and slender with petite hands and feet. Her hair was pulled back and tied in a bun at the nape of her neck-no doubt the most efficient way of styling it for travel inside a rug. It also allowed her to wear a simple diadem set far back on her head, a uraeus crown that featured not a rearing cobra but a sacred vulture's head. Her dark blue gown covered her from her neck to her ankles and was belted with golden sashes around her waist and below her bosom. Small she might be, but her figure was not girlish; the ampleness of her hips and breasts would have pleased the sculptor of the Venus that had so impressed me earlier. Her face might have captivated a master sculptor as well. She was not the most beautiful of young women-Bethesda in her prime had been more beautiful, and so had Cassandra-but there was something intriguing about her large, strong features. Queen Cleopatra had one of those faces that becomes more fascinating the longer one looks at it, for it seemed to change in some subtle way each time the light shifted or whenever she moved her head.
She stood erect, squared her shoulders, and gave a shudder, as if to shake loose the last vestige of her confinement in the rug. She reached behind her head and undid the knots in her hair, shaking it loose and letting it fall past her shoulders, but keeping the diadem in place. She raised her arms and ran her fingers through the tangles. I glanced at Caesar and Meto. They appeared as captivated by her as I was, especially Caesar. What manner of creature was this, who had risked capture and death to smuggle herself into Caesar's presence, and now stood before three strangers preening herself as unself-consciously as a cat?