"Come inside, Finder," she said, keeping her voice low. She closed the door behind me.
The room was stuffy from the smoke of burning lamp oil. Against one wall, the coverlet on the bed that Pompey and his wife presumably shared was pulled down and rumpled on one side but untouched on the other.
"You slept well last night?" I said.
She raised an eyebrow. "Well enough, considering."
"But the Great One never went to bed at all."
She followed my gaze to the half-made bed. "My husband told me you're good at noticing such details."
"A bad habit I can't seem to break. I used to make my living by it. These days it only seems to get me into trouble."
"All virtues turn at last to vices, if one lives long enough. My husband is a prime example of that."
"Is he?"
"When I first married him, he was no longer young, but he was nonetheless still brash, fearless, supremely confident that the gods were on his side. Those virtues had earned him a lifetime of victories, and his victories earned him the right to call himself Great and to demand that others address him thusly. But brashness can turn to arrogance, fearlessness to foolhardiness, and confidence can become that vice the Greeks call hubris-an overweening pride that tempts the gods to strike a man down."
"All this is by way of explaining what happened at Pharsalus, I presume?"
She blanched, as Pompey had done the previous day when I said too much. "You're quite capable of hubris yourself, Finder."
"Is it hubris to speak the truth to a fellow mortal? Pompey's not a god. Neither are you. To stand up to either of you gives no insult to heaven."
She breathed in through dilated nostrils, fixing me with a catlike stare. At last she blinked and lowered her eyes. "Do you know what day this is?"
"The date? Three days before the kalends of October, unless I've lost track."
"It's my husband's birthday-and the anniversary of his great triumphal parade in Rome thirteen years ago. He had destroyed the pirates who infested the seas; he had crushed Sertorius in Spain and the Marian rebels in Africa; he had subjugated King Mithridates and a host of lesser potentates in Asia. With all those victories behind him, he returned to Rome as Pompey the Great, invincible on land and sea. He rode through the city in a gem-encrusted chariot, followed by an entourage of Asian princes and princesses and a gigantic portrait of himself made entirely of pearls. Caesar was nothing in those days. Pompey had no rivals. He might have made himself king of Rome. He chose instead to respect the institutions of his ancestors. It was the greatest day of his life. We always celebrate with a special dinner on this date, to commemorate the anniversary of that triumph. Perhaps tonight, if all goes well…"
She shook her head. "Somehow we strayed from your original observation, that my husband passed yet another night without sleep. He's hardly slept at all since Pharsalus. He sits there at his worktable, yelling for slaves to come refill the oil in the lamp, poring over that stack of documents, sorting bits of parchment, scratching out names, scribbling notes-and all for nothing! Do you know what's in that pile? Provision lists for troops that no longer exist, advancement recommendations for officers who were left to rot in the Greek sun, logistical notes for battles that will never be fought. To go without sleep unhinges a man; it throws the four humors inside him out of balance."
"Earth, air, fire, and water," I said.
Cornelia shook her head. "There's nothing but fire inside him now. He scorches everyone he touches. He shall burn himself out. There'll be no more Pompey the Great, only a charred husk of flesh that was once a man."
"But he lives in hope. This meeting with King Ptolemy-"
"As if Egypt could save us!"
"Could it not? All the wealth of the Nile; the armed might of the Egyptian army, along with the old Roman garrison that's posted here; a safe haven for the forces scattered at Pharsalus to regroup, along with Pompey's remaining allies in Africa."
"Yes, perhaps… perhaps the situation is not entirely hopeless-provided that King Ptolemy takes our side."
"Why should he not?"
She shrugged. "The king is hardly more than a boy; he's only fifteen. Who knows what those half-Egyptian, half-Greek eunuchs who advise him are thinking? Egypt has managed to maintain its independence this long only by playing Roman against Roman. Take sides with Pompey now, and the die is cast; once the fighting is over, Egypt will belong to Pompey… or else to Pompey's rival… and Egypt will no longer be Egypt but just another Roman province-so their thinking must go."
"But have they any choice? It's either Pompey now, or else…" Since she had not uttered the name Caesar, I did not either. "Surely it's a good sign that the king has arrived in all his splendor to greet the Great One."
Cornelia sighed. "I suppose. But I never imagined it would be like this-here in the middle of nowhere, attended by a fleet of leaky buckets, arriving with our heads bowed like beggars after a storm. And Gnaeus-" Dropping all formality, she spoke of her husband by his first name. "Gnaeus is in such a strait. You should have seen him yesterday after you left. He ranted for an hour, going on and on about the tortures he intends to inflict on you, hoisting you onto the ropes, publicly flaying you, commanding the troops on the other ships to stand at attention and watch. He's lost all sense of proportion. There's a kind of madness in him."
I grew light-headed and strove not to lose my balance. "Why in Hades are you telling me all this? What do want from me, Cornelia?"
She took something from a cabinet and pressed it into my hand. It was a small vial made of carved alabaster with a cork stopper, the sort of vessel that might ordinarily contain a scented oil.
"What's this?" I said.
"Something I've been saving for myself… should the occasion arise. One never knows when a quick, graceful exit might be required."
I held the vial to the light and saw that it contained a pale liquid. "This is your personal trapdoor to oblivion?"
"Yes. But I give it to you, Finder. The man from whom I acquired it calls it Nemesis-in-a-bottle. It acts very quickly, with a minimum of pain."
"How do you know that?"
"Because I tried a sample of the stuff on a slave, of course. She expired with hardly a whimper."
"And now you think-"
"I think that you will be able to maintain your dignity as a Roman much more easily this way, rather than my husband's way. Men think their wills are strong, that they won't cry out or weep, but they forget how weak their bodies are, and how very long those frail bodies can be made to suffer before they give up the lemur. Believe me, Finder, this way will be much better for all concerned."
"Including Pompey."
Her face hardened. "I don't want to see him make a spectacle of your death, especially not with King Ptolemy watching. He'll take out all his rage against Caesar on you. Can you imagine how pathetic that will look? He should know better, but he's lost all judgment."
I stared at the vial in my hand. "He'll be furious if he's deprived of the chance to punish me himself."
"Not if the gods decide to take you first. That's what it will look like. You'll swallow the contents-even the taste is not unpleasant, or so I'm told-and afterwards I'll throw the vial overboard. You'll die suddenly and quietly. You're not a young man, Finder. No one will be surprised that your heart gave out; they'll assume that you were frightened to death by the prospect of facing Pompey's wrath. My husband will be disappointed, but he'll get over it-especially if we do somehow manage to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Then there will be countless multitudes upon whom he can vent his rage."