The search was fruitless. The vial Cornelia had given me was no longer in my possession; Apollodorus had discovered it upon Meto's person. Nonetheless, I had been praying for some miracle whereby I would find the vial in my chest after all, with its stopper and contents intact. Now there could be no doubt. The poison Cornelia had given me-quick to act, relatively painless-must have been the same poison that killed Cleopatra's taster.
My reaction when I first saw the vial in Apollodorus's hand had been so spontaneous, so damning, that dissembling was futile. No lie fabricated on the spot would have satisfied Caesar. Nor was silence an option; refusing to speak would have pitted my will against his, and against the will of Cleopatra as well. Both of them had long experience in obtaining information from unwilling subjects. I might have withstood a degree of suffering, but there were Rupa and the boys to consider. I would not allow harm to be done to them, even for the sake of protecting Meto.
And there lay the bitter irony: After all my protestations that Meto was no longer my son, that our relationship was over, and that he meant nothing to me, my first instinct had been to protect him. Caesar had seen through me at once. "If Meto truly means nothing to you, Finder, then why do you not speak?" he had demanded. "A woman lies dead. But for the queen's action, it would have been me! What do you know about this alabaster vial? Speak! If I have to force you to talk, I will. Neither of us wishes for that to happen, do we, Finder?"
So I told him where the vial had come from and how it had come to be in my possession. When had I last seen it? I couldn't say for certain. (In fact, my last memory of seeing it was the day that Meto had noticed it, when I gave him a keepsake from Bethesda.) How had it come to be in the possession of Meto? I attempted to dissemble, saying I had no idea; but hearing the threat in Caesar's tone, Meto himself spoke up.
"I saw it among Papa's things, on the night I went to visit him in his room. He kept it in his trunk. I told him to get rid of it. I was thinking he might be tempted… to use it himself. But from that moment to this, I never saw it again-not until this Sicilian produced it out of thin air, like a magic trick!"
"Are you saying Apollodorus himself was carrying the vial?" said Caesar.
"We know already how talented he is at making things appear from nowhere." Meto glowered at the queen.
"Enough!" said Caesar. "The one thing we know for certain is that father and son both knew of this poison, and here you both are, together with the vial that contained it and the slave who died from drinking it. Meto, Meto! I never imagined…"
"Consul, wait!" I shook my head. "Perhaps there's been a mistake."
"What sort of mistake?"
"Let me return to my room and look through my things. An alabaster vial is a common-enough object. Perhaps the one in my room is still there, after all." I tried to speak with conviction, but the chance seemed far-fetched even to me.
Caesar, to his credit, allowed me to pursue the possibility. While his men took Meto into custody, another group of soldiers accompanied me back to the mainland, escorted me to my room, and watched as I conducted a futile search of the things in my trunk. The only result had been to give further evidence that Meto must have purloined the poison at some point after he first saw it in my trunk.
But how had the poison come to be in the wine? And for what purpose? I sat on the bed, numbed by the enormity of what had happened. Was it really possible that my son had attempted to take the life of Julius Caesar?
My son: The words came to my mind unbidden and remained there, unchallenged. As I had wept for Bethesda, now I wept for Meto, knowing he must surely be lost to me forever. I realized in that moment why I had so steadfastly resisted a reconciliation with Meto since seeing him again in Alexandria. It was not stubborn pride, or an irreconcilable disgust for Meto himself; it was my fear of a moment just such as this. Having lost Bethesda, how could I open myself a second time to the chance of losing the person I loved most in the world? Meto, who lived such a perilous existence, who exposed himself again and again to the dangers of war and espionage, who had bound his fate to the fiery comet of Caesar's career-since I had at last shut him out from my life, surely it was better to keep him out for good, or else I might face the intolerable prospect sooner or later of losing him altogether. So it had come to pass, despite all I had done to harden my heart against him. What an ill-starred voyage had brought me to Alexandria!
The soldiers allowed me time to collect myself, but did not withdraw; Caesar had ordered them not to leave my side. Rupa stood before the window, his arms crossed, fretting and frowning. The boys fidgeted, biting their lips and exchanging glances, until at last Mopsus spoke.
"Master, what's going on? What's happened? It's something to do with Meto, isn't it?"
I shook my head. "Boys, boys, it's of no concern to you-"
"No, Master, this isn't right!" Little Androcles stepped forward. "Mopsus and I may be only slaves, and Rupa is-well, he's just Rupa-but we're not children any longer. Something terrible has happened. We want to know what it is. We're clever, Master-"
"And fearless!" piped up Mopsus.
And strong! Rupa tacitly added, massing his bull-like shoulders.
The only occupant of the room who failed to step forward was Alexander the cat, who resettled himself on the windowsill with his back to the room and gazed out at the harbor.
"Perhaps we can help, Master."
I looked at Androcles, manifestly still a child notwithstanding his protestation to the contrary, and I remembered Meto when he was the same age. Between that time and this, Meto had become a man. He had traveled across the world and back, killed other men and very nearly been killed himself, stood beside Caesar and dipped his hands into the tides of history; yet a part of me clung to the absurd notion that Meto was as tender and vulnerable as Androcles, that he was still a boy who needed my protection-and my chiding. In that moment I at last became reconciled to Meto and the man he had chosen to become. I relinquished the false assumption that I had some responsibility for his actions; I acquiesced to his inevitable autonomy; I admitted to myself that I loved him nonetheless. If now he found himself in a dire strait, I would not judge him, and I would do all I could to help him.
"Meto stands accused of trying to kill his imperator, with a poison he obtained from this trunk," I said.
"Oh, no!" said Mopsus.
"It isn't true, is it, Master?"
"The truth, Androcles? I don't know."
"But if Meto did such a thing, Master-"
"Then I shall throw myself upon Caesar's mercy. I shall tear my tunic, pull out my hair, beg him shamelessly; surely all my years around advocates like Cicero have taught me some tools of persuasion. I shall use them now on Meto's behalf."
"But surely Meto is innocent, Master!"
"If he is, Mopsus, then I intend to do everything in my power to absolve him. This is a strange land. Here, justice exists at the whim of those who possess a certain bloodline, and laws are decrees handed down by squabbling rulers. Laws have nothing to do with truth, or justice with proof. Soon it will be the same in Rome, I think; Caesar is taking lessons from these Nile crocodiles and intends to reproduce their habitat along the Tiber. Still, even in Egypt, truth is truth, and proof is proof, and it may be that I can yet do something to save my son."
"And we will help you," insisted Androcles.
"If the gods allow it," I said.
"Did you find it?"
Caesar stood at the eastern window in his high room, gazing over the rooftops of the Jewish Quarter in the direction of the distant Nile.