"And was this Trojan Horse successfully delivered?"
"It was."
"Did the contents emerge safe and sound?"
"Yes, and just as ready to wreak havoc as those Greek invaders who jumped out of the real Trojan Horse. When I last saw him, Caesar looked poised to surrender to an overwhelming force."
Merianis clapped her hands with delight. "Forgive me for laughing, but the metaphor is so novel. It's always a woman who's described as a city under siege, with gates flung open and walls tumbling down. It makes me laugh to think of mighty Caesar that way."
"He's only human, Merianis."
"For the time being," Merianis said, then muttered something in Egyptian that I took to be a brief, ecstatic prayer of thanksgiving to Isis. A group of palace guards was waiting outside my room. Before I could step inside, the officer in charge politely, but firmly, ushered me to a place in the midst of his men, and I found myself heading off once again, leaving Merianis behind.
"I'll look in on Rupa and the boys," she called after me.
I was taken to a part of the palace I had not visited before. The corridors grew wider, the gardens more lush, the draperies and other appointments increasingly more magnificent.
The guards escorted me into a large chamber where scores of courtiers were clustered here and there in small groups. The room echoed with the low buzz of many conversations. Curious eyes peered in our direction. The officer in charge disappeared, leaving me to stand idly in the middle of the room with an armed escort surrounding me.
"It's that Roman," I overheard someone say. "The one the king allowed onto his barge. Isn't he a soothsayer?"
"No, some sort of spy, or maybe a famous assassin, I think."
"Looks a bit old for that."
"You never know with Romans. Treacherous, devious types. The older, the wilier."
The officer reappeared and gestured for me to follow. We wended our way through the crowd until we came to a pair of gilded doors. The doors opened. The officer stayed behind but gestured that I should enter. I stepped into a room in which every surface appeared to be covered with gold-golden urns atop golden tables, golden chairs with cushions of gold thread, walls of hammered gold, and a gold-painted ceiling from which hung golden lamps. Even the floor of dazzling white marble had veins of some glittering golden stuff running through it. Sculptures in low relief adorned the walls, depicting the exploits of the first Ptolemy, Alexander's general; these entablatures, though surely carved of stone, were heavily gilded, either painted with gold or covered with gold foil, so that the images shimmered with the reflected light of the golden lamps. Among them I saw the very scene I had read aloud to the boys earlier that day, in which Ptolemy witnessed the first encounter of Alexander and the horse Bucephalus.
It was a room without shadows, for every surface reflected the light. The air itself seemed golden, suffused with a mellow glow of no apparent origin. Carried upon the golden air was the music of a piper playing a familiar tune.
At the far end of the room, upon a gilded throne, sat Ptolemy, dressed in a pleated gown of white linen with a golden mantle over his shoulders. He must have previously attended some religious function in his role as the god Osiris, for he was wearing the atef crown, his young face looking very stern beneath the tall white cone with its plumes of ostrich feathers. Bodyguards stood behind the throne. Scribes sat cross-legged on the floor nearby. Before the throne stood Pothinus, with his arms crossed and his head tilted back, regarding my wonderment with amusement. I had stepped into a room designed to overawe the likes of me, and the room had done its job.
"Your dinner with Caesar was brief," he said.
"The evening was interrupted."
"Ah," said Pothinus. "An unexpected visitor?"
I looked at him sharply. Had everyone but me been expecting the queen's arrival? Then I realized he was referring to Meto, whom he knew I had wished to avoid.
"The man whom I once called my son did in fact make an appearance-"
Ptolemy spoke up. "I think it's sad, this estrangement between yourself and your son. I should give much to have my father back among the living. To look into his eyes again; to hear him laugh; to listen to him play the flute."
Considering that the king's father had killed his oldest sister, and that he himself was at war with his sister-wife, I was not in a mood to have young Ptolemy pass judgment on my familial relationships. But I kept my mouth shut and found myself studying Ptolemy's face, framed by the golden mantle and the atef crown. Having just met his sister, I was struck by the strong resemblance between them. Neither of them was strikingly beautiful in a way that would turn heads, yet both possessed a certain undeniable presence. I felt it more strongly from Cleopatra, but was that only because of my erotic inclinations? The image of her standing erect and shaking loose her hair to let it fall past her shoulders flashed in my mind…
Pothinus loudly cleared his throat. Apparently he had said something that I missed. "If Gordianus-called-Finder can return to the present moment…" he said, giving me a condescending look that put me squarely in my place: a befuddled Roman mortal agog in the king's golden room. I bristled.
"Pardon me. I was lost in thought, considering how the king does and does not resemble his sister Cleopatra."
For a moment this comment went over their heads, then simultaneously Pothinus gave a start, and the king lurched forward in his throne.
"What are you saying?" cried Ptolemy.
"The family resemblance is obvious-the nose, the eyes-yet there's a difference, and I can't quite put my finger on it."
"You've seen her? Cleopatra?" Pothinus's voice broke, as the voice of even a mature eunuch sometimes does. "Where? When?"
"Tonight, in Caesar's chambers."
Ptolemy slumped back in his throne and bit the end of one finger. One knee jerked up and down in agitation. "I told you she'd find a way in, Pothinus."
"Impossible, Your Majesty! Every entrance is guarded; every package is examined; every-"
"Obviously not! We left a way open, and she found it. She's like a snake, nosing its way along a wall until it finds the merest breach to slip through."
"Actually, she came by sea," I said. Was I acting rashly, putting the queen and perhaps even Caesar in danger by this revelation? Was I not doing exactly as Pothinus had intended, conveying intelligence back to the king? Perhaps, but the aggravation I was causing them gave me a great deal of pleasure, and I couldn't stop. "A fellow named Apollodorus rowed her across the harbor. The two of them found an unguarded landing somewhere along the waterfront and made their way to the Roman sector of the palace."
"As brazenly as that?" Ptolemy slapped the crown on his head, a gesture most unworthy of a god. "She and that stud-horse Sicilian went traipsing through the palace, right up to Caesar's door?"
Pothinus lowered his voice. "There are ways, as Your Majesty knows, of traversing the palace and its grounds without being seen. Some of those secret passages are very old; there may be some unknown even to me. Once your father, remodeling his private chambers, tore out a wall and came upon a network of tunnels that even he had never suspected-"
"Even so, Pothinus, you assured me that this would not happen!"
"Actually," I said, unable to resist, "the two of them didn't traipse anywhere. Apollodorus carried her."
"What?" Pothinus looked at me, confounded. "Carried her? In his arms?"
"Over his shoulder, mostly."
The king and his lord chamberlain looked at me as if I must be mad. One of the bodyguards snickered. The man next to him covered the noise by coughing.