I smiled. “Let’s call upon the lady, then.”
4
Since the first citizen took absolute power by defeating Cleopatra and Antonius at Actium, it has been fashionable for his flatterers to blacken her reputation. It is always safe to portray Cleopatra as a heartless Oriental temptress who seduced Antonius into rebellion against Rome. But I have no interest in flattering the First Citizen, and now I am too old to care what he thinks.
In truth, Cleopatra was no worse than other rulers of the time and a good deal better than most of them. If she was ruthless, all rulers have to be. It is an inescapable fact of history that the worst rulers are not the cruel ones but the weak ones. The former may oppress some of their subjects, but the latter bring disaster to all. Cleopatra was firm, but I never knew her to be needlessly cruel. In her liaisons, first with Caesar and later with Antonius, she always tried to make the best possible deal she could arrange for Egypt, not just for herself and her family. She was a realist and she knew that Rome was the future. Egypt’s only hope lay in a favorable treaty with Rome.
Her house in the Trans-Tiber district was a sprawling mansion of no particular floor plan that had once housed the Egyptian embassy. Years before it had been home to a wonderful old degenerate named Lisas, who had thrown the finest parties Rome had ever seen. Alas, Lisas had made the classic error of getting involved in local politics, including a few ill-advised murders, and he had been forced to commit suicide. The fat old pervert had been a good friend for all that and I missed him.
Cleopatra kept considerable estate in her Roman residence, since she made it her policy to entertain the highest society. Invitations to her affairs were sought-after, especially among the equites, but she was too alien ever to become truly popular. She had expanded the already lavish pile of architecture and had imported statues from Egypt. She had widened and deepened the crocodile pool and stocked it with hippos, the first ever seen in Rome. In this she miscalculated. She should have played up her Greek ancestry and culture instead of Egyptian exoticism, but she truly believed that in this way she could make Egyptian customs seem less foreign to Rome.
A guard of black spearmen and Libyans armed with enormous swords stood before her door and bowed as we went inside. In the courtyard a chorus of beautiful boys and girls sang us a welcome apparently composed for visiting senators. Slave girls armed with sprigs of hyssop dipped them in bowls of perfumed water and sprinkled us with fragrant drops. More slaves washed our hands and feet and as we went into the house yet more servants flocked to us with trays of delicacies and cups of astoundingly fine wine. I decided I would have to come here more often.
Cleopatra received us in what can best be described as a throne room, although no such facility would have been tolerated in Rome. Nonetheless, it was a very large room with a very large chair elevated on a lavish dais. Cleopatra sat in the sumptuous chair in a suspiciously pharaonic pose, lacking only the crown, crook, and flail. When she saw us she smiled brightly and skipped down from the dais. She seemed genuinely delighted.
“Senator Metellus!” she cried. “Why haven’t you been to see me sooner?” I had known Cleopatra at various stages of her career as a little girl, a headstrong young woman, a desperate fugitive, and a fearsome queen. In all of them she outshone her contemporaries the way Caesar outshone his peers.
“Caesar keeps me too busy to get away from the City very often,” I told her.
“My husband is a demanding man, I fear.” She always referred to Caesar as her husband, despite the fact that he had a wife in Rome. In Egypt, Caesar did not disdain the title, but she was something of an embarrassment at home.
“I wish this were a social call,” I told her, “but something very serious has happened and I need to speak to you about it.”
“Is Caesar safe?” she said, concerned.
“Healthy as a Thracian,” I told her. “No, there have been murders on the Tiber Island. Two of your astronomers have been killed.”
“Not Sosigenes?” she said. The old man was one of her favorites.
“No, Demades and Polasser.”
“Oh.” She sounded relieved. “I knew them, but not very well.” She made no false pretence of sorrow. She had seen so many killed, including her own siblings, that it took the death of someone truly close to move her to mourning. “Please come with me. We can talk more comfortably by the pool.”
“Not the one with the hippos in it?” I asked. The huge, boisterous beasts sprayed water and less savory fluids everywhere.
“Oh, no. I have far more tranquil pools. This one is perfect for intimate conversation.”
She led us to a pool that could have floated a trireme, surrounded by a veritable forest of palms, myrrh shrubs and other exotic vegetation. Among the bushes, tiny black people of a type unfamiliar to me rushed about, shooting miniature arrows at hares. In the water beautiful naked nymphs swam about, singing hymns to obscure river gods while on the island a handsome youth attired as Orpheus played upon the lyre.
“The very soul of intimacy, indeed,” I commended. She reclined on the cushions of a sort of half couch, a type I had seen in Alexandria, similar to a dining couch but made for only one person. Hermes and I sat in more conventional chairs. Slaves armed with fly whisks kept us free of vermin.
Cleopatra was about twenty-five years old at this time, and at the height of her beauty, which was not all that great. She could not compare with the great beauties of Rome, such as Fausta and Fulvia, but what she lacked in symmetry of feature she made up for in the sort of radiance that seems to come naturally to people who have a special relationship with the gods. In Egypt she was a god, but that is just a sort of political formality in some barbarian countries. Kings and queens in those places get old and die just like other mortals.
“Your majesty,” I began formally, “in recent days Demades and Polasser were found with their necks broken in a singular fashion-”
“What was singular about it?” she asked.
“It is an injury so odd that even the distinguished Asklepiodes cannot figure out how it was done, and I thought he knew every possible way to kill somebody.”
“How interesting,” she said. “Far be it from me to be morbid, but it is pleasing to know that somebody has brought a little originality to something as commonplace as murder.”
“Ah, yes, I daresay. Anyway, Caesar is understandably upset. These men were in Rome at his invitation, working on a project very dear to him. He is taking this matter personally.”
“Well that’s bad news for somebody. Look at what happens to people who cross my husband.”
“Precisely. So I am trying to settle this matter as expeditiously as possible. Now, we have two victims. Both were astronomers but aside from that they were opposites. One was a Greek rationalist, the other a pseudo-oriental mystic. For whatever reason, Polasser chose a Babylonian persona, probably because gullible persons consider the Babylonians to be masters of the astrological arts.”
“They are,” she said.
“How would you rate Polasser as an astrologer?” I asked her. It had not been a question much on my mind, but it struck me now. There had seemed to me to be something distinctly off about the man. It was not just that I considered starry forecasts to be fraudulent anyway, or that his foreign pose was absurd. I had known many perfectly agreeable frauds in my life, some of them delightful persons.
She considered it for a while. “Let me put it this way: He was a competent astronomer, or he would not have been in the company of Sosigenes and the others, employed upon a project as important as the new calendar. He could perform observations and calculations as well as anyone. But astrology is different. Calculations are only a part of it. A truly great astrologer must have inspiration. His art partakes of prophecy.”