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_Title:_ The Laughing Queen
_Date of first publication:_ 1927
_Author:_ Elizabeth Louisa Moresby (ps. E. Barrington) (1865-1931)
_Date first posted:_ November 8, 2026
_Date last updated:_ November 8, 2026
Faded Page eBook #20261113

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                          [Cover Illustration]




[Illustration: [Endpaper: Map of the Mediterranean Sea]]




                               _Books by_
                             E. BARRINGTON

                         THE CHASTE DIANA
                         THE DIVINE LADY
                         GLORIOUS APOLLO
                         THE EXQUISITE PERDITA
                         THE THUNDERER
                         THE EMPRESS OF HEARTS
                         THE LAUGHING QUEEN

                                ========

                               _Books by_
                             L. ADAMS BECK

                       THE KEY OF DREAMS
                       THE PERFUME OF THE RAINBOW
                       THE TREASURE OF HO
                       THE NINTH VIBRATION
                       THE WAY OF STARS
                       THE SPLENDOUR OF ASIA
                       DREAMS AND DELIGHTS











                           THE LAUGHING QUEEN

                            BY E. BARRINGTON

                   Author of _The Divine Lady_, Etc.


                             [Illustration]


                  NEW YORK: DODD, MEAD & COMPANY: 1929




                         Copyright, 1927, 1929,
                            By L. ADAMS BECK

                       PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. BY
                     =Quinn & Boden Company, Inc.=
                          _BOOK MANUFACTURERS_
                       _RAHWAY_     _NEW JERSEY_




                                PREFACE

In writing this romance of Cleopatra I have been indebted to many
historians, ancient and modern, and among moderns most to Mr. Weigall’s
delightful “Life of the Queen.” No one can ever write of her now without
gratitude to him and pleasure in his brilliant study. It takes much
courage to differ with him, but I cannot agree with his estimate of her
character in some important respects and of her relations with the two
great Romans who were her lovers. This romance will show the manner in
which I differ.

There are few stories more ironical than hers, few in which History more
definitely throws aside her almost invariable character of moralist and
indulges in pure cynicism. Who but History would have ventured to make
the existence of the Roman Empire the result of a girl’s likes and
dislikes? Or have given Nero as grandson to the chaste and unadventurous
Octavia, who so amply accounts for and excuses Antony’s passion for
Cleopatra? And these are only two of many examples. It is a story where
History enforces no judgment. She notes and smiles—but not with mirth.

                                                         E. Barrington.

_Canada._




                           THE LAUGHING QUEEN


                               CHAPTER I

“And if the most glorious city in the world is mine, I am going to be
proud of it!” cried the little Queen. “What do I care what Cæsar thinks?
What have the Romans to show like Alexandria? Their city of dark,
narrow, up-and-down streets, with fever and poverty prowling about it
like Roman wolves—I despise it! Look at my Alexandria sitting on the
sea, stately as a white swan! It is good Cæsar should see it and know
that Rome cannot rule the world while I hold the keys of the Orient!”

The young Cleopatra stood in the window of a marble chamber in the
palace of Pelusium, and for a moment forgot that she was in hiding and
an exile from her capital. Her small figure dilated with joy and pride.

“And what do I care for Cæsar himself?” she repeated. “Let him stick in
Alexandria until he gets tired of it and some one sticks a knife into
him as they did into Pompey, the other Roman; and serve him right! But
he shall never make a slave of me; no matter what he may do with my owl
of a sister and fool of a brother, now he has them under his thumb!”

Beside her knelt a beautiful girl of her own age, twenty, and a
middle-aged man, the dark intelligence of his face fixed on the young
beauty who flung her defiance in the teeth of the haughty Mistress of
the World, the omnipotent Roman Republic!

“Your Divine Majesty should consider,” he said anxiously, “nor speak in
haste. When our enemies quarrel we may profit. A few weeks since, who
could tell whether Pompey or Julius Cæsar would be Dictator of Rome?
Pompey was appointed your guardian and that of your brother, the little
King, by the Roman Republic; and it was Pompey we had to consider. Today
Pompey lies murdered in Alexandria, and Julius Cæsar, established in the
Palace there, pretends to mourn him. If his ear could be gained, might
not your Divine Royalty rule again as Queen of Egypt? Might not the Star
of Egypt blaze as an equal beside that of the Roman Republic, and not as
its satellite?”

She laughed aloud—the sweetest laugh in the world, low and merry as a
bird’s song at dawn.

“Much I can do—a fugitive here at Pelusium! If my father, the King of
Egypt, left a fool of a will, as he did, marrying me, the heiress of
Egypt, a girl of eighteen, to my brother, a little puling idiot of nine,
and bidding us rule together, can I be answerable for all the
absurdities that happen? Of _course_ the brat was in the hands of his
tutor and eunuchs, and a precious nest of villains they are! and of
_course_ they want to murder me and make room for the child and my
milk-faced sister Arsinoë—the most detestable little spy that ever
sneaked about pretending to worship the Gods and really making eyes at
all the officers of the Guards! And as I have no wish to become a mummy
sooner than I need—what can be duller than a stuffed mummy’s
existence!—I fled for my life, and you were the first to advise me to
do it. Charmion here, also!”

Cleopatra touched with a delicately sandalled foot the beautiful girl
kneeling at her side. Charmion looked up laughing. It was very clear
that in spite of royal forms the two were close friends.

“I told your Sacredness to bolt for it because if one runs away one can
always run back. Whereas if one is a mummy!—but surely what the wise
Apollodoros questions is whether this is the lucky moment for
reappearing in Alexandria.”

“That depends on many things I don’t know!” said the young Queen,
flinging herself into an ivory chair. “Tell me what you can, and then I
and Charmion and the highly gifted Apollodoros can hold a council of
State. There’s no one else to hold it with us. Rise, Apollodoros, stand
and be eloquent. Immortal Amen, how hot it is!”

Apollodoros, a strongly built, middle-aged Sicilian, rose and stood
before the girl who, representing the Majesty of Egypt, was herself a
human divinity as successor of the Divine Pharaohs. She was, if you
please, the Egyptian Venus incarnate, she was also the Goddess Isis
veiled in flesh, and if her faithful subjects believed this, as they
honestly did, they had perhaps more excuse for the belief than in some
former cases. For the girl bolt upright in the ivory chair, with large
expectant eyes fixed on Apollodoros, was one who, wearing the girdle of
Venus as she undoubtedly did, must anywhere have caught the hearts of
men and aroused the ardent jealousy of women.

Greek of the Greeks, her quick blood spoke in every delicate swift
gesture, in light lures and laughters, and the exquisite grace of her
small body. The little hands and feet were a child’s; the swell of her
breasts, adolescent; the charms of the child still mingled with the
budding beauty of girlhood like the meeting of dawn and morning. She had
the Greek ardor and courage of her royal line and wore it with defiant
grace and humor, quick flashes of temper and lovely relentings; teasing,
sparkling, swift to love or hate, very woman of very woman. As to her
face, the first impression was that of highest Greek breeding and
distinction—prominent nose with delicate nostrils; clear-cut curling
lips, sweet for kisses; long golden-amber eyes, somewhat narrow but
beautifully lashed; and dark hair tipped on each ripple with bronze,
like a wave catching sunlight. But when all is said, it is little
without the play of light and shade in lovely eyes and lips, like
sunshine on a landscape. That was her girdle of Venus; that was where
other women must stand by, eclipsed, while she shot her bright harmless
arrows here and there, transfixing every heart she aimed at.

That was also why her secretary Apollodoros saw hope for the brilliant
little Queen, fugitive and exile as she was, in the advent of the Roman
Julius Cæsar to Alexandria, in spite of the existence of her foolish
child-brother, King Ptolemy, with his base, plotting eunuch, Potheinos,
and baser tutor, Theodotos.

He spoke in the measured fashion considered respectful in the presence
of divine royalty, and Charmion listened breathless, lips apart. She
would have died for her friend and mistress any day, and to see her
again Queen of Egypt, the living Isis seated on the throne of Rameses
the Great, she would have pawned her soul to all the hells. But
Apollodoros was speaking!

“The royal Greek dynasty of your Sacredness has the misfortune to be
foreign in Egypt. A Greek cannot have the backing that a Queen of the
ancient Egyptian stock could command, and outside Alexandria—up the
Nile—”

Cleopatra laughed with glee.

“Outside Alexandria! And who cares for the barbarians up the Nile, the
moles of the tombs and sands! No, no, Apollodoros, Alexandria is Egypt
and the Key of the gateway of the Orient, and what I decree in
Alexandria will go as far as the Libyan and Arabian deserts and much
beyond.”

Here she suddenly recollected herself and the smile died in a sigh.

“But it is Potheinos, the eunuch, who rules Alexandria now, and I—I may
soon be dancing on the stage in Rome to earn my bread. Well—I shall do
it pretty well, and that’s my consolation!”

“The immortal Gods forbid! Graciously attend to me! Potheinos and the
child, your brother, not to mention his misbegotten tutor, have not only
had the folly to murder your guardian Pompey when he fled here for
refuge, thus drawing down the Roman vengeance, but they have walked into
Cæsar’s snare, and he has got them with him in the Royal Palace and what
conditions he offers they must take. He wants the Roman Republic to set
its eagle’s claws in the flesh of Egypt. He wants the vast wealth of its
Kings. He wants—guess, my Queen, and then I shall know if the Greek wit
is as bright in your brain as in your eyes!”

She looked at him with her brilliant smile with a hint of melancholy
behind it.

“India—diamonds, gold, myrrh and spices, wealth unutterable—and he
wants to bring them back to Rome in a triumph that will smatter the dull
old Republic into flinders and make him King of Rome. Right, most wise
Apollodoros?”

“Right, omniscient Isis!” Apollodoros could venture a jest with the
young lady. She knew his true heart. “But there is more!” he added.
“Much more. There is Cæsar!”

“Well, there is Cæsar!” she said indifferently. “A dull old Roman. Just
such another as Pompey whom we never saw until he fled here from Cæsar.
Guardian indeed! I never laid an eye on him. But may the Gods send that
Cæsar poison Ptolemy and Arsinoë and Potheinos and Theodotos, and when
the thieves fall out an honest woman may come by her own.”

“An honest woman at Pelusium will never come by her own while kingdoms
are changing hands at Alexandria, great Lady. Out of sight out of mind,
and who will say a good word for you? The difficulty is that you can’t
get there. It will be a dagger between your ribs if you attempt it.
Potheinos will see to that—the cursed, sexless brute! But Cæsar—Julius
Cæsar—is no dull old Roman. He—”

“He is fifty-four. Serapis be good to us! Why a man of fifty-four should
be allowed to go on living is a mystery to me. But I own he _was_ a
great man.”

Apollodoros dropped on his knee and lifted supplicating hands.

“My Queen, you know nothing of the man Cæsar. You know only of the
fighter, the politician. Now listen, listen, for worlds may hang on what
I say. _This_ is Cæsar. He is mad for women—always has been—and they
are as mad for him. He is all brilliance and fire. If a man could dare
imagine yourself by the will of the Gods changed into manhood, such is
he. He has your very air of high breeding that makes us all earthenware
by porcelain. There is no sport in which he does not excel. He can ride
a galloping horse, his hands behind his back. He is God-descended, as
are you. His race sprang from the Roman Venus. He is adventure itself,
gay, full of splendor and extravagance. He gave a single pearl, costing
sixty thousand pounds, to a woman for her embrace; and she took the
embrace and gave him back the pearl, wild with love of him; and he was
fifty then. And he left her! No woman can hold him, and that is why they
adore him.”

“O that we could see him,” breathed the lovely Charmion, with a heavenly
sigh as she knelt.

“Fifty-four,” repeated the remorseless little Queen—but with faltering
conviction. Apollodoros gauged his audience and hurried on.

“He is the terror of lovers and husbands. When he returned from Gaul to
Rome his marching legions chanted to the furious Romans:

“‘Citizens, look after your wives. We are bringing the adulterer with
us.’”

A pause. He added skilfully.

“He is a poet, an artist, a great romantic. Of course he isn’t a _good_
man. Far from it.”

Another pause. The blue Mediterranean lapsed rhythmically in a dying
swell against the marble of the Palace seawall; a butterfly breeze
fluttered the bronze tendrils of the Queen’s hair as she stared at the
small hands locked in her lap, splendid with great thumb rings of royal
emerald.

“But the Roman has no heart?” ventured the dark-eyed Charmion. “Why
should a woman give all and get nothing?”

“She gets the honor of a conquest the like of which is not in the known
world. And the Gods know if that is not dear to a woman.”

“Scarcely an honor if she shares it with a regiment like herself!”
retorted Charmion.

“Girl, you know nothing. You are green in such matters and trip at the
alphabet. Wiser than yourself know that such a man has a heart, if the
right woman come his way. He is dissolute because he seeks her in every
fair face. Shall we blame him? Jupiter-Amen forbid! He is right, a
thousand times right to conserve his heart for the One, the Alone. And
if such a woman breathes—O happy, most happy she!”

Silence and the breath of the breeze; after a while Cleopatra sighed as
softly:

“I wish I were in Alexandria!”

Apollodoros hid a smile with skill.

“That is unhappily impossible. It would be death. It was to escape death
that your Sacredness fled to Syria and down the coast to Pelusium.”

Another pause. The Queen continued slowly:

“After all—poor man—how can he settle the affairs of Egypt without my
presence? The child Ptolemy is only king because he is my husband, and
Arsinoë is a pasty-faced nonentity! Nothing is anything without me!”

“Nothing,” assented Apollodoros. “But if your Majesty joins the
conference as a corpse—”

“A corpse! I shall never die. I feel eternal life in my veins—and what
about Isis and Venus-Hathor? Apollodoros—”

Another long pause. She sat meditating and now the gravity behind the
gaiety was strong in her enchanting face. It gave one to suspect the
gaiety a mask; the gravity, the woman. Yet the man who, thinking this,
built on it would be very gravely mistaken, and might find himself
landed in the Gods know what ditch while the hunt swept on without him!
For the girl was all things to all men, of the swiftest pliability, the
perfect comedian; yet with this honesty—that she sincerely felt all she
acted and could imagine no other mood at the moment. Thus she wept and
smiled with equal perfection, trembled to the mystery in the temple of
her divine double, Isis, and laughed until bright tears ran down her
cheeks at the last wickedness. . . . “The Divagations of Decadent
Deities” which the scandalous young Alexandrians were singing at their
rose-garlanded symposia in company with the lightest ladies of the
eastern end of the Mediterranean. Be sure she knew it all to the last
line, and could nose out a jest like a pointer.

“Apollodoros,” she said slowly, with a frown on bright brows, “if I say
I wish I were in Alexandria, you shall not mistake me. I may want to
chain Cæsar or any other man to my girdle—for reasons—and if I do it I
shall do it well. But never, never will it be for the reasons that leap
to men’s minds when they look at a girl like me. I am more brain than
body. I am seeing through them all the time and longing, _praying_ to be
deceived, to be made a fool of and overwhelmed in what they call love;
and not a thrill of it has ever reached me, nor ever will!”

She paused on a sigh.

“Wait, omniscient Isis,” said he with a male smile, “let Cæsar teach
you!”

“Cæsar! The old man! He will teach me to act magnificently well—if it
comes off!—to deceive him to the top of his bent. That is why women
with brains like mine appear far more passionate lovers than the coarse,
sensuous sort—like Rhodopis! It is because we always try to persuade
ourselves, as well as the man, that we do care in that way. We strain to
feel it as if for Paradise. We act our part sublimely, but we are always
on the outside of the queer world where passion really matters—and
though we do love them in our own way they never know how. A dog’s life!
All that side of love we have to put up with for the sake of what we
really want and never get—a love that doesn’t exist this side of the
stars! No—I am cold! cold! I shiver in my own air sometimes. Charmion,
I am virgin, and you are not a maid. Do I speak as a fool?”

Charmion, stooping, kissed the bare instep of the little sandalled foot.

“You speak true, my Queen, though how you know I cannot tell. And I fear
men, for you will never forget yourself for one—no, not for a moment.
Therefore they will bring you pain and little joy.”

“And you, Apollodoros?”

He slightly shrugged his shoulders. “Life is life and fate is fate and a
Queen is not as other women. Again I say, let Cæsar teach you! He is a
tutor skilled from long practice.”

She was silent, a smile playing about the edges of her lips, thinking
thoughts intangible as moonbeams on the depths of the sea. Neither of
the two who loved her disturbed her thoughts.

After a while she lifted her head, braided smoothly with bright-touched
bronze in the manner of a Greek bust of the Clytie.

“Apollodoros, could you lift me?”

She rose, and, stretching her arms above her head, stood on tiptoe as if
to feel her own lightness. He stared in amazement; Charmion also.

“Yes, but could you?” she asked with impatience.

He measured her dainty smallness from braids to lovely feet in little
gilded sandals. Her robe of almost transparent silk gave the very glow
of the warm body beneath it, the curve of limbs light as a dryad’s
swaying on her tree-bough in moonlight.

“Have you ever lifted a woman?” she asked, smiling through narrowed
lashes. “No, not just to clasp her, but right off her feet, and walked
off with her?”

“Majesty, yes! I am a strong man!” he answered, with discreetly lowered
eyes, not knowing what she would be at.

“Then give Charmion a hoist first and let me see. She is a good lump of
a girl. Honey and ortolans and capons stewed in butter—Charmion loves
good things and shows it, the lazy beauty! Up with you, Charmion, and
into his arms!”

In great astonishment the languid-limbed young woman rose and stood
dubious. Apollodoros had no masculine interest for her any more than for
her mistress, and she objected to ruffling her very light tunic of rose
byssus silk. But when the Queen commands! Cleopatra rested a fair chin
on her hand and watched the process.

He got his arms about the girl’s legs below the knees and lifted her
well; but to carry a well-fed young woman is less easy and romantic than
it may read in print, and as he walked across the marble floor she
slipped on his shoulder and he staggered, recovering himself quickly,
however, and bidding her put her arms about his neck for convenience.

This Cleopatra disallowed.

“No, carry her as if she were a log. She isn’t much better—the heavy
thing! She mustn’t use her arms.”

He did it; carried her to the window and back to the room’s end—a good
distance—but returned panting a little.

“Now me!” said the Queen. “And mind you—no respect! Forget the daughter
of the Gods and the divine Isis and the uræus crown and all that stuff,
and just toss me over your shoulder like a sack of corn. If you can,
that is!”

He took a minute’s breather and advanced to the step where she stood
poised as if for flight, her arms out like a bird’s wings.

“Arms down, your Majesty, please.”

In a second he had her over his shoulder—light as a foam bell on the
waves, and, starting at a steady trot, did twice to the wall and back—a
mere slip of a girl and no goddess, all said and done!

“Why, I could sit on your shoulder!” she cried, and as he knelt to
disembark her, did so, he rising to his feet easily. She slipped off
then, however, and returned to her chair and swept him with long
eyelashes.

“Good man! That settles it!” said the Queen of Egypt. “Sit down at my
feet, Charmion—your tunic is all right and you only showed your thigh
twice. Now listen, Apollodoros, for I shall speak to some purpose.”

Charmion drew a cushion to the little Queen’s feet, and looked up
earnestly. Apollodoros stood in his best attitude of submission. She
addressed them with a bland and brazen air of superiority, her little
nose in the air.

“My children, while you have been playing I have been thinking! All is
now settled. I shall return to Alexandria tonight!”

They stared at her perplexed. Whatever Apollodoros might have wished,
the responsibility was a heavy one enough for him.

“And how, most royal Lady?”

She beckoned him closer, and as he knelt put one arm about his neck and
the other round Charmion to pull their heads close, and so whispered in
the midst. Drawing back, both stared at her, pale and alarmed.

She clapped her hands, laughing with all her starry youthfulness and
singing in a voice passably tuneful for a Queen, but by no means so
lovely as her spoken music:

                “When the Gods will have their way,
                  Stand from under!
                Run to cover while you may,
                  ’Ware the thunder!”

“Come, Apollodoros, make your will; and, Charmion, order the spices and
linen for my mummying!”

And still they stared at her with dropped jaws.

The Queen of Egypt, or rather, the laughing Queen, for that was what her
faithful Alexandrians much preferred to call her! They said she came at
you like a ship on a wind, all grace and swaying swiftness and gaiety,
and that, passing, she left behind her, in the minds of all who saw, a
dancing wake of tossing, sparkling foam. She was wine to them. The whole
city glittered at her, like its blue waters; and not a man there but
tasted her spirit and the headlong pleasures she delighted in.

But unfortunately the prank she was up to now was so serious that
Alexandria would have halted business (of which they had plenty) and
pleasure too (of which they had more) to watch and wonder breathless.


                               CHAPTER II

In the royal apartments of the palace on the Lochias promontory in
Alexandria sat Julius Cæsar with a problem on his hands that not even
his brain of ice and fire could solve at the moment.

Down the Mediterranean he had sped on the creaking oars of his great
galleys in hot pursuit of his rival Pompey, the man who alone disputed
with him the future rulership of the known world; and when he reached
Alexandria, hoping to slay his enemy in fair fight, the grinning servile
tutor of the boy-king Ptolemy had presented him with the head and signet
ring of Pompey, foully done to death by wretches unworthy to lick his
feet.

It was then that the supple Greek had the most terrible surprise of his
base life. What could he expect but the gratitude of Cæsar, rewards,
promotion, power, and a profitable sale of himself and Egypt to the
Roman power?

But, incredibly to Theodotos, seeing the pitiable head of his noblest
enemy, Cæsar wept. Iron tears rolled down the iron cheek of the great
soldier. Yes, an enemy, but Pompey had been also a Roman, a most
splendid Roman, a lion done to death by jackals. Sickening regret that
the cur before him could never understand overwhelmed him, and for a
moment Cæsar looked Theodotos in the eyes, and from his sternly delicate
lips came one brief sentence:

“Slave and coward! While I can yet command myself—Go!” And Theodotos
fled from his presence and from Egypt, to meet an awful doom in Syria.

Cæsar knew that in Pompey an obstacle had been removed from his path.
What man can sentimentalise in politics? But still that moment had been
a flower in a crevice of the rock, beautiful to himself and others.
Rock, he told himself, he must be in the astonishing circumstance which
had brought him to Egypt and put him in power there. It seemed to him
that blind chance had thrust upon him the greatest opportunity of his
wonderful life. But what was he to do with the little king and with his
eunuch-minister Potheinos? And what with the Princess Arsinoë? And what
had become of the Queen—Cleopatra they called her? Of course what he
wished was to make himself uncrowned King of Egypt. Since he meant to
shatter the Roman Republic and give Rome an Emperor in himself, it was
easy to see how the wealth, importance, and magnificence of Egypt, the
Gateway of the Orient, would smooth his way to the Roman throne. A gift
of the Gods!

But, meanwhile, the Alexandrians—and Alexandria represented Egypt—were
in an ugly temper enough. They did not want a Roman Dictator. They would
not be Roman slaves. They wanted their own long-established Greek
dynasty and kept muttering and growling about their Queen—this
Cleopatra! And where in the name of the Gods was the woman? She seemed
to have disappeared altogether. It annoyed Cæsar more than a little. All
round the palace of the Lochias the mob was snarling. They had even
attempted to poison the drinking water of his soldiers. He wanted to get
back to Rome, but certainly Egypt came first. Egypt might be the very
yea and nay of his plans in the near future. With what solidity could he
get in touch?

His first move was to send to the young King Ptolemy, his sister,
Arsinoë, and the eunuch, Potheinos, commanding them to return and take
up their residence in the palace with him; and they dared not refuse,
though they knew well that their _rôle_ was to be that of hostages. It
had been a strange scene when they arrived.

First, leading the boy-king by the hand, walked the Princess Arsinoë, a
pale girl of sixteen, with fine delicate features, not unhandsome,
marred by an air of peevish assertion that took its stand on her royalty
and flung it in the face of all she addressed. Ptolemy was pretty and
pettish, a spoiled boy, weak and foolish. Behind them slouched
Potheinos, with the slant wary eyes of a fox set in a fat face, a big
loose man with hanging jowl and gross body, the flesh swaying under his
purple robe clasped with jewels. Cæsar’s keen glance noted the royal
color on the slave-minister, but he said nothing. That could wait.

When salutations were made, and Cæsar had led the Princess to her Greek
chair, ivory-inlaid, resting on gold claws, he left Potheinos standing,
noting very well the dull spark of fury in the eunuch’s eye; but he
addressed him, for the King was too young for anything but the form of
consultation:

“You are aware that by the will of the dead King of Egypt the Roman
Republic is left guardian to his children and that it is also the
executor of his will?”

“Great Cæsar, I am aware.”

“Then may I ask why the young King Ptolemy has quarrelled with his
sister, the Queen Cleopatra, whose consort he is, in accordance with
Egyptian custom, and why, nothing said to the Republic, he has actually
raised an army against her and compelled her to take to flight? You, as
his adviser, should know that the matter in dispute should have been
referred to the Roman Republic for judgment.”

The boy leaped to his feel, pale-faced, and furious, the band of gold
about his head fronted with the uræus snake which seemed to dart at the
intruder.

“For judgment? I am King of Egypt and Egypt is no province of the Roman
Empire. Why should we refer a family dispute to Rome?”

Cæsar turned a quelling glance on him, cold and stern as death.

“Sit down, young sir. This is no matter for children. Queen Cleopatra is
also in fault. She should have put herself in the hands of the Republic
that justice might be done between you. Where is she?”

It was beginning to be clear to him that in this cleavage in the
Egyptian royal family might be the chance of Rome. The honest broker
often comes by the spoils.

“Where is she?” echoed the boy impudently. “Do I know? Do I care? She is
a spitfire, a torment, a beastly scratch-cat, and the farther off she is
the better. I wish to all the Gods some one would murder her as they did
Pompey, and then if I _must_ marry a sister let it be Arsinoë. But I
hate sisters. I want one of the Palace ladies.”

Arsinoë shot a shaft of pale hatred at him from pale lashes. That there
was no love lost in the Royal Family of Egypt was very evident.
Potheinos had said nothing. Cæsar looked haughtily at him.

“Do you know where the Queen is hidden?”

“If I knew—” began Potheinos, and the look in his eye finished the
sentence with a bloody period. He changed his tone and went on. “All I
know is she has raised an army and intends to fight His Majesty for the
kingdom,—but of course that is all rubbish. If we can get her—”

“What was the quarrel about?” But even as he asked the question Cæsar
knew the answer from the hate in the eunuch’s face. The Queen had
affronted his pride.

“She wanted to rule her brother-king.” (“You mean yourself!” thought
Cæsar.) “She wanted to turn the kingdom upside down, and would hear no
word of advice, so—”

“Good. I understand!” said Cæsar briefly. “Princess, there must be some
sort of sympathy between you and your sister. Has she confided nothing
to you?”

“To _me_?” said Arsinoë—and the question was fully answered. Cæsar
surveyed the party with distaste. He supposed the other would be like
her sister, and a little of that family would go a long way.
Still—business was business. He turned his searching look full on
Potheinos.

“I must ask you to understand that no business can be transacted without
the Queen. Her absence holds everything up. What I recommend—or rather
what the Republic recommends is this. The King must disband his army.
The Queen must be invited to return. See to it!”

“The King refuses!” broke in the boy in a weak quaver of defiance. “I
won’t disband my army—why should I? I want to catch her. If you _knew_
the beast she is— If you knew!”

Cæsar, taking no heed, fixed cold eyes on Potheinos.

“See that it is done!” he said. The eunuch-minister raised protesting
hands.

“Noble Cæsar, your greatness asks too much. That is impossible. And we
know nothing of where Cleopatra is hidden. I wish to all the Gods we
did! But—we can bring the King’s army to Alexandria, and we will!”

Impossible to misunderstand the covert threat, equally impossible to
resent it. Cæsar had too few soldiers behind him to take as high a stand
as befitted the Roman Dictator, and though his own ships were moored
under the walls of the Palace the Egyptian galleys were not to be
despised.

But Potheinos quickly altered his tone. Cæsar’s soldiers were toughened
in war all over the known world. His own were a mongrel horde, and in
the background lay Rome, armed, watchful, ill to defy. No, it would be
well to temporise until he could get that dagger between Cleopatra’s
ribs which he had so often thirsted to use on the impudent minx; and
then all would be plain sailing. Rome _must_ support the little King,
and he himself was master of the young Ptolemy and the narrow-eyed
Arsinoë. He lavished himself in compliments to Cæsar. He gave hints of
fabulous treasure deposited in places where a friendly hand could reach
it. Nothing like gold for building a causeway to the steps of a throne.
And Cæsar smiled and listened, and loathed the ready knave in his soul,
believing exactly as much as he wished, and that was nothing. It began
to be unpleasantly apparent that all his dealings would have to be with
this treacherous, fawning slave; and what could he do with an Egypt in
such hands? It was like attempting to build a bridge with rotten wood. A
step—and the gulf beneath.

A week went by, and, loaded with flattery and costly gifts which he did
not refuse, he still saw his way no clearer. And, if he could do nothing
with Egypt, he should be in Rome. Rome clamored for him from all her
brazen throats. He must return. Egypt must take its chance. After all,
one could always have Potheinos crucified later on if he gave trouble!
And still the days slipped by.

He worked one night in the small marble room looking out over the great
harbor and the mighty Pharos Lighthouse, the wonder of the world. His
secretary sat at a table scribbling for dear life a despatch to Rome
which Cæsar dictated as he paced up and down, passing and re-passing the
window, lost in thought. The situation was most delicate in Rome, where
Pompey’s son Sextus was gathering a powerful party against him, and he
felt Egypt slipping daily from his grasp. The eunuch fawned and lied;
the young King, carefully tutored, was dully polite but evidently hated
and feared him; Arsinoë was silent as a statue with dropped eyelids.
Through whom was he to govern Egypt? He could get into touch with
nothing tangible. He knew very well that the day his galleys’ oars
dipped, Egypt would have slid from his grasp.

“Write that in ten days I return, reluctant, but seeing that nothing is
to be done here; for the government is a child and a scoundrel. But
write also to the Senate that if anything should happen to me on the way
back my last word was this: Let them distrust Potheinos. Let them
remember that, with Theodotos, he was the murderer of the noble Pompey.
It is my advice in that case that some Roman to be trusted be sent to
Alexandria, possibly Mark Antony—”

As the words left his lips the heavy curtain hanging across the
door-opening was lifted aside and a man presented himself, the curtain
falling across him, half hiding his figure.

Cæsar’s hand went to his dagger. A man in his position at any moment
expects the assassin and the end. The secretary sprang to his feet and
to his master’s side.

“Call the guard!”

The man let the curtain fall behind him and advanced, a long bundle, on
his shoulder, burdening him heavily.

“Halt there!” said Cæsar, scarcely raising his voice. “What’s your
business? What are you doing here with your bedding, my good fellow? You
must explain yourself further before you make another step.”

The man halted, smiling, and began to shift the burden.

Cæsar! No danger or alarm could ruffle his tranquillity, and certainly
he looked a most noble Roman as he stood there, in lamplight, surveying
the man with careless curiosity edged with a smile. The man stooped and
set the bundle carefully on the ground. It rolled over, and he knelt
above it with his knife, answering:

“A gift for your greatness, noble Cæsar. A very great gift!” with a
laugh in his voice like that of a plain man used to simple ways. It was
disarming, and both the secretary and his master relaxed, and watched
with some interest.

He cut the knotted rope, and stood back as the bundle fell apart, and
disclosed—what?

A girl who sprang light as air to her feet, and put her hands to her
hair to be sure it did her justice. What could Cæsar think but that the
man had brought him some impudent beauty who wanted to make her way in
the world by the road of an easy passion? Possibly a woman of birth,
since it was clear the guard must not see her—another chapter in the
history of his light loves, an adventure after his own heart! He
advanced upon her laughing, tossing a few gold pieces to the man, who
did not pick them up as they spun on the marble. He had drawn aside and
stood waiting.

“Pretty one, you deserve a kiss for your courage and shall have many,”
he said. “But permit me first to finish a letter that must not delay.
The galley waits it now. Have you any commands for Rome?”

She came forward into the arc of light the lamp threw about it, and he
beheld the sweetest slip of a girl his eyes had seen for many a long
day. She was in a tumbled tunic of thin silk, and one sandal had slipped
off and was gone, and a white foot was bare on the marble floor. Small
she was and exquisitely shaped, with budding breasts and slender flanks
and arms. Her face was flushed like a rose-petal, from bundling in the
bedding. But her eyes danced with demure delight and she had the walk
and spring of a goddess, and whoever thought her a common thing picked
up in the street might read the lie in the very arch of her foot and the
haughty little mouth and delicate distinctive carriage of her head. He
halted as he would have turned to the writing table and stared, but
never guessed. How could he? And the man stood behind her dumb.

She extended her hands. On one shone an emerald scarab worth a city’s
ransom, on the other a diamond that flashed rainbows in his eyes.
Between her young breasts was the Buckle of Isis, an amulet in royal
diamonds.

But her eyes outsparkled them. They brimmed with glee.

“It is perfectly absurd,” she said in a voice choking with laughter,
“but I am Cleopatra the Queen. I don’t expect you to believe it. I
scarcely believe it myself.”

Breathless, he believed it before the words were out of her mouth. Fool
that he had been not to anticipate her! The beautiful daring creature,
slender and tense as a steel sword, all grace and nerve! Who else in the
world could it have been?

Beautiful? But was she? His experienced eyes flashed over her. He had
known many women exceedingly beautiful—the blondes of Germania, all
gold and ivory, flushed with rose; women of Hispania, dark and sumptuous
as damask roses, heavy and perfumed; the bright brunettes of Gallia; the
blue-eyed beauties of Britannia, white as a whale’s tooth and as
cold—but, though more beautiful, they lacked something this girl had.
Yes, every one of them! She was indeed a sword unsheathed, an emblem of
honor, glittering, dangerous, true to herself. And what more?—all that
a sword is in the hand of the man who adores it! For a moment even his
experience could not tell how to take her or dissociate the Lady of the
Two Lands from the bundle. Ceremony or distrust? And suddenly he saw it
was only a young girl after all, laughing, nervously enough, to seem
unafraid, but ready in a twinkling to stiffen into terrified pride if he
should despise her.

At that he was himself instantly, and in command of the situation, the
greatest gentleman of Rome, and the statesman. The magnificence of his
bow! He seemed to touch the ground with one knee, but did not, because
the Republic comes first and must kneel to none in her representative.

Next he led her to a chair.

“It was a terrible transit for your Majesty!” he said gravely, “and
words fail me to express my undying gratitude. Your presence has rescued
me from a most serious dilemma. May I reward the gallant fellow who has
borne a burden more precious than the world itself upon his shoulders?”

She assumed fatigue for a moment, since it was expected, but had never
felt more full of zest and energy in her life. Instantly she caught his
note and responded like a struck harp, for she began to taste security.
He might have handed her over to Potheinos—who could tell? He had not.
Then all was probably well, and she topped the occasion. She also
assumed her best manners and they could be excellently good.

“Noble Cæsar, that is my secretary Apollodoros. He would die for me.
What reward could you offer that he would take? None! I came because I
knew very well that without me nothing could be done. Could it?”

She spoke the loveliest Latin. Her voice slipped along the vowels like
cream. And he knew, for reports of queens travel, that she had many
other languages at her tongue’s tip, and could hail every man in his own
until he sighed for home. The royal girl! That was the queen in her! She
delighted him instantly, as a brave horse or dog delights a man. No
more—as yet.

“Nothing could be done without the Queen,” he answered. “But I see now
much that can be done with her aid.”

Turning towards his secretary he flung an order at him:

“Tear up that letter and tell the galley she sails tomorrow with
another. I have no more need of you tonight. Does your Majesty need the
noble Apollodoros? There is much for us to discuss.”

“I need Apollodoros,” she faltered, looking up at him through deep
lashes and for a moment most terribly afraid of making a slip. “Later,
perhaps . . .”

“Then, before Apollodoros, I will say this! You have risked much for
your country, and you have won. If you had not come, there is no doubt
that Egypt would have sunk into a Roman province. Now—”

His look said the rest.

“But how did you do it, how—_how?_” he added.

She rose and stood by the window, leaning lightly against it, her face
pale in the flooding glory of moonlight, the galaxy of lights of the
harbor behind her.

“I knew I must come. What hindered me was an invitation from Potheinos
to do so, for I knew he would have me stabbed or poisoned before I
reached you. But still I must come. That was clear, most noble Cæsar.
How could you deal with the foolish children Arsinoë and Ptolemy and the
black scoundrel Potheinos? But how could I do it? If Potheinos knew, my
life—well, you know! So I told Apollodoros we must take ship from
Pelusium, and a long way from shore we left the ship in an open boat, he
and I alone. And when we got under the palace walls I made him roll me
in the bedding and tie me with a rope. The Alexandrians always toss
everything over their shoulders, you know. So we came, and he said he
was carrying the bedding to one of your guard. And you can imagine we
knew our way about the palace pretty well! So here I am!”

But while she spoke, and while he answered, her eyes were searching the
man to see what like he was and whether she could use him, could break
him, could in any way get through the shell and at him. She was virgin
still, not only in body but in heart. Not in knowledge—far from it! A
girl could not live in that vast plotting palace of the Lochias, humming
with all the secrets and intrigues of an Oriental court—for Oriental it
was in all its ways, despite its Greek sovereigns—and keep her
innocence. She knew the ways of men and women like a book, yet held
herself aloof because of a certain disgust at the men about her. As she
had said herself, she was cold of heart; and warmer manifestations moved
her to curiosity lightly tinged with distaste. Their amorous looks—the
touch of hot hands—affronted the coolness in her that could not melt
until some unknown sun found her ice. Besides, she owned a kind of
royalty that knew it must have the best—and what best was there in
Alexandria? Fops and dandies!—while Rome was bestriding the world and
thundering her great names down the Mediterranean. Pompey, Julius Cæsar,
Mark Antony—indeed, a sonorous roll, and more to add to it.

Now, looking at the greatest of them all, she summed him up and was
analytic.

And first—in his company she felt herself charming. She had believed
she could be, and it was easy enough with the man-stuff she saw daily.
Any woman, almost, would serve their turn! But this, be it remembered,
was a very great man—the greatest in the world at that moment, rumor
said the greatest since Alexander the Great (who had given his name to
her capital) had been laid to dream vaster dreams, no longer bounded by
the brain, in his golden coffin in the Mausoleum at hand. She knew her
daring had struck him into admiration as a boy’s might. But his eyes
said more. They said: “But you little sweet white wonder! If a man had
dared it had been much—but for you—marvel of marvels!” He did not find
her a fool either, she could see that! He treated her as a girl most
adorable, but also a great queen who must be consulted, considered,
obeyed! Oh, he was charming, she said in her heart. What was raw youth
compared with that incapturable self-possession? The all-accomplished!
And at his age he could not care for the follies of love that she
despised. He would have lived through all that stuff and look out at the
other side. She could see him flashing at the head of his legions,
riding gallantly to war, looser of the thunder of Rome. If she could win
him to her side, why, then she could dare Potheinos, and extinguish
Ptolemy and Arsinoë, and reign, a free Queen, in Egypt, as the mighty
Pharaohs had done long, long ago. She loved his clean-cut distinction,
the cool, pale pride of his face. She thought he meant to be good to
her—how otherwise? A splendid soldier, a great nobleman, knows how to
talk to women. No, not love, but attraction, friendship—a touch of the
paternal,—befitted the gulf between their ages. She might permit
herself a manner gently caressive—if—if Apollodoros were not there!

“Noble Cæsar,” she said in her exquisite Latin, patrician as dropped
diamonds in the gold of a perfect voice. He leaned eagerly towards her
as she faltered.

“Noble Cæsar, I think that I can now do without Apollodoros.” The dark,
intelligent Apollodoros, inwardly smiling, bowed and retired gravely,
taking the roll of bedding with him. Outside the door-curtain he
chuckled softly to think of what Potheinos would say if he could guess
the conference proceeding in that little sea-chamber, white as sea-foam
veined with coral. A very pretty setting for a political discussion! The
laughing Queen!—and he had left her laughing with Cæsar. It appeared
very probable that Potheinos would soon be laughing too, but on the
wrong side of his mouth. He could see Charmion’s glee when she was told
of the climax.

The laughing Queen! What a girl she was! There was none like her. None.


                              CHAPTER III

“Let me look out at the moonlight while we speak,” said the young Queen.
“Is not my Harbor of The Happy Return beautiful, most noble Cæsar, and
the town? The great wide ways—have you seen the Street of Canopus by
the Serapeum and the glorious Museum and Lecture Halls? Surely it is a
city of palaces worthy of Alexander who named it. The Gods are honored
here—the immortal Serapis,—Pan also in his temple where you may stand
and see all my majesty and power spread below.”

She was playing for time and to marshal her child’s wits against his. He
knew that well, and delighted to watch the panting and turning of his
royal quarry. But he assented, as if admiration of the city were his
only thought, praising the noble expanses, the majestic buildings and
throb of life and commerce which made her Alexandria the mart of the
world.

She sat, leaning her head against the marble wall, her light feet on a
footstool of ivory, and he was as near as he dared, the corner of a
singular tortoise-shell table, inlaid with gold, between them. She
rested a white arm on it. Suddenly she straightened herself.

“We play and we should work, great Cæsar. Tell me with frankness what
Potheinos has told you, and your own desires. I am frank as the
sea-wind, and if you trust me you shall not regret it.”

He was unscrupulous, even for his age, and ambition was a consuming fire
in him—a sacred fire to which he sacrificed all. She appealed to that
consummately. He knew her vast wealth, her queendom, all that she must
bring to the Roman Empire of his dream. She held the gorgeous East in
fee, her ships commanded the Eastern Mediterranean. There was the
wretched little Ptolemy—yes, but it did not take the eyes of a Cæsar to
see that this girl would rule. She was what he had hitherto sought in
vain in Egypt—the tangible something, the foundation on which he could
build. Was she to be captured through heart or brain? Already capture
was the word in his mind as he looked at her, weighing, wondering!

“Royal Lady, I trust you. I know by the manner of your coming that you
have courage bright as steel, a brain to match my own. Here was I not
knowing where to find a human being with whom I could deal, and you have
alighted, a goddess from a cloud. Why should I not be frank? Interest
and pleasure both constrain me to it. Here then is the position. Mark
and weigh, for the future of the world hangs on your will.”

He leaned his own elbow on the table and concentrated his face on her.

“Young you are, a girl in her first youth, but in you I see the future
mistress of the world, if you will be guided by wise counsel and not by
the foolish clamor of the Alexandrians. You stand at the gate of the
Orient. Your country is one of unexampled riches. Here in the Delta of
the Nile I see such grain fields, such mighty production as Rome cries
out for in her markets. What of the Valley of the Nile and the cities of
the ancient Pharaohs?”

She took his tone instantly, her white brows knitted in thought:

“As to the Valley of the Nile—I have never voyaged there—I have been
little outside Alexandria. But I know, for all that. The Egyptians are a
peaceful people, and our laws run even if we were descendants of the
godlike Pharaohs. On the upper reaches they raise three crops a year in
the rich Nile mud. The taxes they pay in kind—the country is a huge
granary. So it has been forever, since the days of the Gods on earth.”

She paused and added eagerly.

“And the temples and palaces! Oh, it is a glorious land, that ancient
Egypt! I must go there before long, for I—even I—am a reigning deity!
Did you know that?” She laughed aloud and added quaintly: “I don’t look
like it at the present moment!”

She eyed, with disparagement, her tumbled tunic and the bare foot beside
the sandalled one. He enjoyed her enormously, though that did not blunt
the keenness with which he drank in her political value and information.

“I had heard it. Inform me more certainly.”

“Well, I am Hathor—the Venus of Egypt. I have my temple and rites of
worship. Often in Alexandria they salute me as Hathor-Venus and, if even
I fall short of what I should look like, think if it had been Arsinoë!
Also I am an incarnate part of the divine Isis.”

He saw the tail of her eyes seek his to assure herself whether ridicule
lurked in it. There was none. It was a commonplace of the age that
divinity not only hedged a king but took up its residence in his august
person, and a belief with such obvious advantages was by no means to be
discouraged. Besides—could one be certain that it was not true? The
Gods had walked with men and left tangible traces in gifted and
beautiful offspring. There were moments when in Cæsar’s own inmost soul
he believed he felt inspirations from the deity within him, and it was
surely the same with the Egyptian girl.

And there were really no personal drawbacks. To be divine bound no yoke
of the morality of the modern God upon the shoulders of its living
temple. Naturally one would excel the mere mortal in courage, beauty,
brilliance and the splendor of one’s destiny; but this was all that was
expected. There was scarcely even doubt in his eyes, and, feeling
herself encouraged, she went on triumphantly:

“I am Daughter of the Sun, and Sister of the Moon. I am a Heavenly
Being. I am worshipped as an Immortal in the temples of the Nile. And I
must own it is rather bewildering to think I arrived here in a bundle of
bedding and that Potheinos very likely will finish me off tomorrow. If
that comes off, I really don’t advise the Goddesses to incarnate in that
wretched little Arsinoë. She is a born old maid!”

Cæsar laughed aloud. The Egyptian Hathor-Venus was perfectly enchanting.
When she made these wild remarks her upper lip lifted over the pearls of
teeth, and her under lip drew in indescribably but deliciously.

But could she ever present the dignity of a Goddess-queen? Might she not
always slip tumbling down into a girl’s little absurd spites and
laughters? He longed to probe and assure himself. That would not be so
desirable.

“And you are not a born old maid? No—no, I never thought you were,” he
said with reassurance. “You don’t look like that most despicable thing
on earth—a withered virgin.”

“You see, I—I must have a child. It is required of me,” she said
gravely. “But to go back, O Cæsar, I feel that if I had your support I
might even triumph over Ptolemy, Arsinoë and Potheinos, and reign as
sole Queen in Egypt! And the return I could make! You don’t realise me
yet. How can you when I was tumbled at your feet like a bushel of corn?
But if you saw me in majesty, in the robe of Isis— Of course it’s
always a pity I am so small! I could make more of it if I had the figure
of an obelisk!”

Even then he was not swept away, beautiful as was her face in moonlight,
wooing as were her sweet eyes. An Empire in Rome, a subservient Egypt;
there was where his thoughts fixed and grew. She was as yet incidental.

He heard in silence but with a look at her that encouraged confidence.
Besides, it was most interesting to see how far her own wits would carry
the girl. He was trying the edge of the sword he believed she might
prove to be.

“Speak, goddess!” was all he said.

Her eyes glittered in moonlight as she turned them on him.

“Cæsar! On the day I left Pelusium, I had an omen. Standing looking out
over the sea I saw a dove pursued by a hawk, and lo! a royal eagle
killed the hawk and the dove sheltered in the palace windows. Was not
that a great omen, and I coming to you?”

“A great omen, Isis. And it shall be fulfilled.”

“Now, mightiest of the Romans, you shall hear my dream! You, Dictator in
Rome; I, Queen of Egypt. I will choose a Roman husband, or rather you
shall choose for me. Our armies, our fleets, shall strike together, and
we will conquer India, and her kings shall walk chained with gold in our
triumph; and, since you have no son by your wife Calpurnia—you have no
son that I could marry, have you?—my son shall inherit the power of
Rome and Egypt and be a greater Alexander. Now, what do you say to
that?”

It was chilling. His son indeed! But she showed nothing. He flung his
hands across the table and caught both hers, forcing her to face him.

“I say—_O dea certe!_—goddess confessed! A great dream—a grand dream,
with only a few differences that I should not count. I say—I, the
descendant of the Roman Venus through Æneas her son—that I ask no
better than to be true partner and servant in the counsels of the
Egyptian Venus. Rome and Egypt together, twin stars in an unchanging
heaven! No, I have no son; not one, at least, that counts. There are
some who owe their being to me, yet I cannot put them forward. But I
must have one whom I can raise on my shield in the sight of the world,
crying to the legions: ‘This child is born of Divinity. Salute him and
set him on the throne of Alexander and more.’”

His enthusiasm, partly calculated (but that was beyond her perception),
kindled her.

“Magnificent!” she said in a voice low and intense with feeling. “Oh,
how I understand! But _my_ son—mine! Shall they stand side by side in
the day of the Gods?”

He ventured no further at the moment, but skilfully deflected her
thoughts:

“The first thing is to seat you alone on the throne. What a ridiculous
thing is this notion of the Egyptians to wed a beautiful girl to a
miserable boy, and her brother!”

“It was always done!” Cleopatra said seriously. “It concentrated
interests and kept the divine blood pure. But Ptolemy is absolutely
impossible, the veriest little brat, squealing for the moon and venomous
as an asp. What did you think of him, Cæsar?”

“Naturally I saw that myself. But we must go slowly and consider the
prejudices of the ignorant. First, you must be reconciled with him—”

She stared and pulled her hands away with grieved eyes.

“Wait, you darling lovely wisdom, you will soon see! I, as representing
the Roman Republic, must reconcile you both; and you must be civil to
the eunuch, giving him hope that I have rebuked you into meekness. I
will give some great gift of territory to conciliate the Alexandrians.
What will please them best?”

“The island of Cyprus!” she answered promptly, and with keen interest.
“We have always wanted that. It was our own.”

“Be it so! Lulling them into security, we will seize the city and the
harbor. And then—then—”

“What?” she cried with clasped hands.

“We will not hang the eunuch and his King, but put the rope where they
can hang themselves; and then—Venus-Hathor shall be sole ruler in
Egypt, and may she be gracious to her poor general and worshipper!”

“You mean it, noble Cæsar? You are not luring me to ruin?”

“Divine Isis, no. The Gods protect their own. But when I have done all
this, what will you give me? What is the reward?”

She looked at him doubtfully—like a very young girl feeling her way in
much hesitation. What would he ask? Something beyond her riches to pay?
Some derogation of power which might leave her poor indeed?

“I wish Apollodoros were here,” she faltered. “I should not be alone.
Your eyes, your wisdom, draw me. I may pledge away something that may
make Egypt the slave of Rome. You see things I cannot. I cannot—I
cannot! Are you practising on me?”

He was indeed, yet with a half-sincerity. Every moment she won him more.
Indeed she and her riches and power summed up and comprised all his
earthly wishes. A passion of possession increased on him, for with her
the world’s orb lay in the hollow of his hand. Without her, doubt and
failure very possible and terrible. Was he too old? Was the rod broken
in his hand, or could he rekindle his own flame at her magical youth?
Again he captured the hands.

“Venus-Hathor, you are as old as the ages and have all the wisdom of
your sex, but you are also most divinely young. What need have you of
Apollodoros? You have an instinct compared to which his knowledge is
child’s play. See, with me, O Beautiful, that our stars are one! See,
with me, that together we conquer, apart we fail. I ask nothing but your
friendship. Nothing!”

“I see, I see!” she panted. He noted the quick rise and fall of her
bosom beneath the thin veil of silk. It throbbed like a bird.

“But my son and your son! Foolish talk for a foolish girl! Do the Gods
count age and youth when they take counsel together as a God and Goddess
do now?”

He paused and released her hands with dignity.

“You shall be free to choose. Queen, I have possessed many women; many
have loved me; but in all this world I have never had a friend of your
sex, because I have not met my mate—one who can think high thoughts,
act with courage and decision, free of the tattling, petty jealousies
that disfigure women. Tonight I think I have met her. Can she grant me
her friendship?”

She dropped her head on crossed arms, bewildered almost to stupor. She
had never thought of this. She a chit of a girl, he the greatest of the
Romans! His age, his terrible reputation with women! But at his age that
surely must be dead ash? His Roman interests as opposed to her Egyptian
ones, the magnificence and power of the man! How could such an unequal
friendship be possible? Oh, for Apollodoros! She began to fear that he
would sweep her off her feet and, unaided, she might pawn away all her
future of royalty. But friendship, friendship with a great man who could
understand her—this was her dearest dream.

While these thoughts tossed through her mind he rose and stood by the
open window, his arms folded on his breast, looking down on the harbor
where moonlight played like white fire on the unruffled mirror of the
sea. It was an hour of divine stillness, for man was gathered to the
bosom of nature, and from the dreaming ships no sound disturbed the
ecstasy of night. The moon was full on his face, and, looking unseen
through her fingers, she watched it for some answer to her questions.

It had a stern beauty that her soul, quick to worship the beautiful,
could comprehend. His vices had left no disfiguring imprint on the clear
cold lines, and at the moment he looked austere as a priest in the
service of divinity. Of his power none could doubt; the world knew that
history, and trembled. His refinement, the distinction of his manner
attracted her delicately balanced nerves. But truth, fidelity—what had
these been in his past life to promise any disinterested friendship to
which she could trust? She, who was to give such royal gifts, what could
she hope in return?

She lifted her head and looked at him in desperate appeal.

“Cæsar—most noble Cæsar—I cannot tell. If you were true friend to me I
could be to you, I know that. But I am not only Cleopatra, the girl; I
am Egypt, the Queen; and Rome devours all and has never been our friend.
Don’t be angry because I am bewildered. A few days—a few! I want your
friendship, but tell me to what it binds me. And if I am your friend
what—oh, what gift have you for me in return for my trust? For it is
said of you that you compel all men and women to do your will, and I am
free Queen in Egypt!”

He replied calmly, still looking at her trouble over folded arms.

“I will be your friend, true and steadfast. We are both God-descended.
Should we not trust one another? For a gift—I will give you the brain
and sword of Cæsar to work for you, whether we are together or apart.
And more. I will choose you a husband—the noblest Roman of them
all—and he shall bring the power of Rome for his bride-gift. And more.
You shall be Queen of Asia as well as of Rome and Egypt. What is to
prevent it? And yet more. Your son—”

She rose to her feet and moved from the shadow into full moonlight. He
saw her eyes rapt on his in a white ecstasy.

“He shall be King of the World. I swear it. I, Cæsar!”

He stretched his hand and clasped hers as one man clasps a brother. The
thought in his mind was, “I must not frighten her. She is young. I must
not be too hasty.”

He dropped her hand.

“We must now consider many matters. Sit there and fix your attention.
Tomorrow will make or mar you for life. But I and Rome are at your back
henceforth.”

They talked until the sea turned gray to a gray dawn. Business and
statecraft only, and beneath a moon of lovers! Nothing more.

Next day it was announced by Cæsar to the King Ptolemy and the eunuch
Potheinos that the Queen had returned and was in the Palace; and, not
only so, but that she had come as a suppliant, acknowledging her
transgressions against the Roman Republic and her brother and
co-monarch. They must all meet, said Cæsar gravely, and a public
reconciliation take place, which the wisdom of Potheinos would cement
and guard. Thus and thus only could the royal freedom of Egypt be
ensured and the murder of Pompey forgiven.

Marvelling greatly, Potheinos assented. If indeed the wayward daredevil
of a girl were tamed by dread of the Roman Republic, he might find her a
more useful tool than the detestable Arsinoë or the pettish boy. For any
and all of the three he cared nothing. He needed a tool and a royal one.


                               CHAPTER IV

On the next day, to the young Queen, seated in the smaller chamber of
audience with Cæsar in a chair beside her, entered the young Ptolemy,
followed by Arsinoë and Potheinos; and this was done purposely that they
might be made to present themselves before her as inferiors. And they
knew it.

It must be owned, and was even confessed by their own rebellious hearts,
that the girl Cleopatra looked her part. For she wore the robe of the
Goddess Hathor, a stuff of transparent weave, disclosing her beauty as
if she swam in clear water, and, holding it about her loins, a girdle of
hanging strings of emeralds from the mines of Zabarah clothing her to
the knee with green fire. On her breast she carried the outspread
vulture wings of the Mother-Goddess Nout, also in mighty emeralds, and
she was crowned with the moon-disk held in horns above her brows.

So had she sat when Cæsar entered her presence, and the majesty of her
amazed him; for where was the laughing, frightened girl of the bundle?
Gone on the wings of night, and in her stead the pale young Queen of
Egypt, glorious in splendor, stately and apart as the Divinity incarnate
in her fair flesh.

How could even his experience guess that in this part, as in all, she
was complete, the central figure of the picture set in her own mind of
the Queen of mighty Egypt receiving her rebels with mercy in one hand
and justice in the other?

He might indeed have feared the golden bird escaped out of his hand but
that as he entered and halted on his foot, amazed at the glory of her,
she looked down at him and smiled a wicked brief smile that disclosed
the tips of her teeth and no more. It was the smile of the Alexandrian
street urchin—the donkey-boy, let us say—and brimming with perfect
understanding. A wink had served her Goddess-ship no better. She
relapsed instantly into the statuesque, and Cæsar, reassured, occupied
his diligent brain in attempting to reckon the enormous value of her
emeralds in talents of gold while the approaching steps were heard.

When young Ptolemy entered and beheld her Majesty seated, and the
Dictator beside her, the haughtiness he had prepared fell flat as the
sail of a galley taken aback. He halted in dismay, and looked irresolute
over his shoulder at Potheinos. The little shrew, Arsinoë, alone
preserved her courage. She had been too much behind the scenes of that
Goddess-pose to offer it any incense. Outstepping the others she walked
on and planted herself before the Queen.

“So you have come back, sister, after running off with yourself! And how
did you travel? Not in your state galley as becomes a Queen, but in a
bundle on the back of Apollodoros. So they say in the Palace! Holy
Serapis, and why?”

The venom in her pale eyes and lips matched the uræus on the brow of
Ptolemy, and Cæsar watched with inward amusement to see if the crowned
girl could keep her dignity in the face of such provocation. Not a bit
of it! Like a spring released she was on her feet in an instant, the
glittering emerald drops shaking green fire about her.

“You taunting chit, you whey-faced fright, be ashamed before Cæsar! Sit
down and hold your tongue! What are you? Nothing! Come, Ptolemy, sit on
your throne if you have the spirit of a mouse! He won’t eat you!”

The boy leaned back upon Potheinos who propelled him forward. His face
was gray with fear. To see the sister he dreaded suddenly returned and
seated beside Cæsar was a portent that blew all his dreams of
sovereignty away with the sands of the desert. He collapsed into his
equal seat with Cleopatra, but Cæsar observed the shaking hands on its
arms and was assured that he had backed the right claimant.

He rose and waved his hand for peace, and the Queen fell once more into
sublimity and the statue, while the voice of the Roman Republic made
itself heard.

“King of Egypt, your Majesty has driven your sister into exile and
raised an army against her. What excuse can you offer for this to Rome,
the executor of the will of your father, the King of Egypt? He appointed
you joint rulers.”

“Excuse?” the boy panted, in an ecstasy of rage and fear. “Am I not King
and—”

“Is she not Queen?” asked the inexorable voice of Rome.

“She is Queen, but no man alive could rule with her. She is a vixen, a
liar,—she wins all hearts away from me! When she goes out in the
streets the people shout and bow and worship. She wheedles and bedevils
them, and when I go nobody cares a snap of the finger for me. It is not
fair—not fair!”

Cæsar smiled inwardly. Certainly the boy had very little chance of
popularity compared with the exquisite girl. A child might see that with
one gulp she could swallow him. The only surprise was that she had not
made a mouthful of him before. His survival was due no doubt to the arts
of Potheinos. But aloud Cæsar replied coolly.

“Your Majesty’s wisdom will be to use the charms of the Queen as weapons
in your own cause, and that can only be done by a full reconciliation.
Hear now the will of your father—both King and Queen—and respect it!”

He produced from a box beside him, splendid with green
mother-of-emerald, a roll of papyrus, and read aloud the part concerning
the children of the late King. It was clear and definite. Wedded, they
must rule together, sharing equal powers. Cleopatra, rising in token of
respect while it was read, bowed a gently submissive head. Ptolemy sat
pouting and fuming, Potheinos scowling behind him. What good could the
Minister augur from the calm contempt of the glance she had shot at him,
her evident elation and excitement? Not for nothing had he studied every
changing expression of her face and longed to still it forever into the
rigidity of death. He too had not realised the beauty of her; seeing it
daily, and no charm of it all turned his way, he had seen nothing in her
any more than in Arsinoë, except a greater intellect, pertness, and
obstinacy. Now—knowing Cæsar’s amorous histories, as they were told
down either coast of the Mediterranean, a most terrifying possibility
dawned upon the mind of the slave-minister. He clenched teeth and hands
and waited.

Cæsar rolled the document and enclosed it carefully in the splendid
box—the young queen resuming her seat.

“Your course is clear. There must be instant reconciliation or the wrath
of Rome. You, King, must disband your army and swear in my presence
honorable treatment to your co-sovereign. You,” turning to the Queen,
“must swear the same. In all things, as your husband, equal sovereign,
and brother, you must honor the King and treat him with needful
deference. Your promise?”

She rose to her feet and laid one slender hand on the box containing the
will of her father.

“By the great God Serapis, honored in this city, and by the Goddesses
Isis and Hathor whose incarnation I am—I swear to rule in equal love
and confidence with my brother, the King of Egypt.”

“It is well,” said Cæsar gravely. In his white toga, bordered with a
stripe of purple, he had a royal air according well with his high
distinguished features and the cool disdain of his expression. Secretly
this enchanted the girl, accustomed from the cradle to crawling
flatterers, diversified only by the spites of her brother and sister and
the virulent hatred of Potheinos. But she stared rigid at the marble
wall, though her pulse fluttered like a bird’s as the fold of his toga
swept her foot. He turned to the King.

“Your oath. Swear to disband your army on the instant, and to rule in
love and confidence with the Queen, obedient to the will of your father
and the guardianship of the Republic.”

The wretched boy, his dream dispersed, sprang to his feet in one of his
hysterical furies.

“I am lost—I am lost!” he screamed like a girl. “The witch has got you
as she always gets all men. I am no more King of Egypt. Swear? I will
die sooner than swear. Here—take this and give it to her as you would
give my head if she asked it!”

Wild tears raining down his cheeks, he tore the uræus crown violently
from his head by the fillets and, flinging it on the marble, rushed
sobbing from the room, to cry his wrongs aloud in the crowd of
sycophants and soldiers who filled the outer audience chamber. A hoarse
roar arose outside, and Potheinos, running as if for his life, followed
the boy without a look behind him.

“You have done it this time, sister!” said Arsinoë through white and
tightened lips, and rising, not without dignity, walked slowly after the
two. Presently she turned, lifting the golden curtain with one thin
hand.

“You have got your way as you always do. See how you like it when the
fruit ripens! And to your face I tell you, Cæsar, that the man who
trusts Cleopatra is a fool, though he call himself a King and wise!”

The curtain fell, and Cleopatra brought her eyes from the sculptured
marble and fixed them timidly and tenderly on Cæsar.

“I did what you told me!”

“Loveliest, you did!” he answered but without enthusiasm. The sullen
roar outside alarmed him. A loud violent voice could be heard haranguing
from one of the windows. There was a hurrying tramp of feet in the
street. He should be with his soldiers or himself haranguing that
Alexandrian mob proverbially so fierce and fickle! What time had he for
a girl’s arts? Instantly, as ever, she caught his mood, and was cool and
queenly—a true daughter of the Gods.

“Go, noble Cæsar, and persuade these fools of their folly. I will stay
here. Who dare touch Cleopatra the Queen?”

But how dared he leave her among enemies? The people who loved her did
not know of her return; they would side with the King who was in view,
unless they beheld their own liege lady. In the same flash both saw the
necessity. She thrust her hand into his.

“Quick! I’ll go with you. I’ll speak to them from the window. Come!
Come! Run!”

She ran for it now, dragging his older and more laggard steps after her
until her young fire winged him to speed. Together they tore into the
great audience chamber, now empty except for a few slaves crowding the
windows; for all Ptolemy’s friends had stormed down into the streets
with him and the eunuch to inflame the inflammable populace with tales
of Rome’s tyrannies and the King’s wrongs.

Without an instant’s hesitation Cleopatra flung aside a slave from the
nearest window and thrust her head and half her body into the blazing
sunshine, with a crowd thick below. She hailed them, her clear voice
ringing like a clarion through the hoarse orator’s shout in the street.

“Men of Alexandria! I am here. I, Cleopatra the Queen. Rejoice in my
return!”

All heads turned upward to the glittering vision in the opening. Her
strings of emeralds fell over the white wall, burning in sunshine, and
blazed, but no brighter than her face—all rose and light and dancing
beauty. There was a sudden dead silence below, Ptolemy and Potheinos
huddling back against the palace. Were she to incite her lovers—for the
crowd was little less—to tear them to pieces, who could tell the end?
The Alexandrians could be wolves, then and later. Again the silver cry:

“Men of Alexandria, the noble Cæsar stands beside me, laden with gifts
from the Republic for my happy people. He brings in his hand the Isle of
Cyprus, our heart’s desire. He brings the remission of my father’s debts
to Rome. Oh, happy day! Oh, happy people!”

A thundering roar of applause went up, startling clouds of doves into
flight. It echoed over the harbor and from the mighty Pharos.

The boons she promised were the two first objects of Egyptian
policy—they removed the great causes of hostility to Rome. The quick
girl knew it; swept on a billow of passion she thrust her hand behind
her and dragged Cæsar forward.

“Here is the mighty Cæsar who has done this great thing. And more, men
of Alexandria, more! He has reconciled the King my brother to me, and
together we shall reign in love and confidence. Come up, my brother,
beside me, where all can see you, and let our faithful subjects know
that war is over and a golden peace and prosperity begun.”

Flushed and glowing, she stooped above them, arms out, almost seeming as
though she could fly through the air to the embrace of her beloved
citizens. It was simply magnificent—no other word matched the case—and
Cæsar knew it and glowed also as he stood saluting beside her. The sea
breeze blew her light garment about him, the perfume of her presence
enwrapped him, stimulating to a blaze emotions he had thought chilled
with years. He would not speak aloud—the honors should all be the young
beauty’s as she deserved. But his eyes thanked and praised and loved her
as he saluted and waved his hands to the populace.

“_Ave_, Cæsar! _Ave_, Cæsar!” they roared and shouted to the face serene
as a cut gem above them. And the thundered applauses and cries for the
divine Cleopatra-Isis followed and would not cease.

What could the wretched Ptolemy, the miserable Potheinos do? Not an eye
turned on them—all were fixed on the vision above them, dazzled,
entranced. A cry was stimulated for Ptolemy, King of Egypt, and, by the
advice of his friends, the boy was taken inside and pushed up the marble
stair, that he might show himself with his triumphing sister. Potheinos
followed, gnashing his teeth. The witch—the devil! What had she not
done? Who could stand up against her? Cyprus? The remission of the
King’s debts? O Jupiter-Amen, O Serapis! What gifts to such as she! The
Roman was in her snare and the legions of Rome at her service.

But there was nothing to be said. If the Gods play a man false he must
knock under, and today they had visibly taken side with beauty. Up the
stairs they stumbled, and Ptolemy was thrust into the window with his
sister—Cæsar making room for him. It was not an impressive appearance.
Pale and sullen, the tear-marks still on his pinched features, “King of
North and South, Lord of Two Lands,” he did not look the part and had no
inspiration with which to play it.

“The little owl!” said a voice audible from below, and was then drowned
in some half-hearted applause as the Queen took him by the hand and
presented him. But the drama was over then, and she turned away,
dropping it, to face the viciously pale Arsinoë trembling with jealous
passion.

“You have your way again, sister! Take it and see where it leads you,
into the den of the Roman wolf!”

The beauty eyed her with good-humored disdain. She could afford to!

“Foolish Arsinoë! You don’t know that it is you who shall be ruler of
Cyprus! I have Cæsar’s promise. And you spit at me like a wild cat!
Silly girl! Why can’t you grow up!”

The patronage was inimitable and again Cæsar laughed in his heart. The
Queen was absolutely enchanting. She glowed like a jewel. She rayed
light like a star, and for courage and readiness, and golden passion in
speaking—Gods, how she had moved the crowd and with what simple urgent
words! The right—the absolutely right ones! The other two and their
followers gathered in knots talking. She led the way into the small
audience chamber and Cæsar followed, more stirred in soul and body than
friend or enemy could have believed. She had given him Egypt in that
moment at the window. He knew it. But whom should he leave there to keep
his fires alight while he went hunting down the trail of his ambitions
to Rome? Whom—when this bright young thing had forgotten him? The heavy
curtains fell behind them. They were alone, and she turned and faced him
radiant.

“Did I do it well, most noble Cæsar?”

For answer he caught her jewelled hands and pressed them first to his
heart and then most passionately to his lips, there holding them and
feeling the blood beat in blue veins. She stood dismayed, delighted,
trembling. Her soft voice broke almost in a whimper.

“You are satisfied?”

“Satisfied?” And still he could not speak for kissing her hands. Would
it move her? Had his old power deserted him? Would she draw them away
presently and eye him from a cold distance?

She came a step nearer.

“Noble Cæsar—” the words faltered on her lips, and still he said
nothing, but kissed her hands and the slim wrists above them where the
throb of the pulse told him she felt—but what?

“Cæsar—if you go—I shall be killed. Potheinos will never forgive.”

A pause. He looked up, and at last—“Would I leave you?” The words were
little. The look said all. Policy and passion met and clasped each other
in his heart, but for the moment passion so much the stronger that her
voice was the only one heard by Cleopatra.

Very softly the little Queen said:

“I am only a girl. If I had you to guide me—” And again, “_Must_ you
leave me? Oh, Gods, if you could stay!”

It was the melting mood now, and he snatched at it.

“Does the Queen desire it?” His eyes on hers.

“She desires it.”

There was a pause. He raised her hands, holding them against his heart.

“Loveliest, does the woman desire it also?”

The woman! and she who knew herself but a callow girl. The woman!—and
this from the greatest man in the living world to a girl as cold as
snow! No worship of any abstract chastity stood in her way. She had no
moralities; but his warmth chilled her as warmth inevitably did. She had
played her part well just now at the window. Surely she could play this
of modesty shot through with unconscious invitation. For what else was
she a woman—with an empire to gain?

She raised eyes of a most lovely timidity to him, drowned in dark
lashes. He could only see a gleam like sun-amber between them.

“Noble Cæsar, I— Stay, oh, stay!”

It was a cry. He flung his arms about her and caught her to his breast,
snatching her lips to his as a man long famished for the ambrosia of
Olympus.

She drew herself almost primly away, looking on the ground. “Mighty
Cæsar. My brother has not yet sworn his oath. Must he not? And he and I
are wedded. And you— Is there not Calpurnia?”

Old men are quick to flame and cool. It chilled him. He drew apart with
an angry flush.

Within ten minutes the King had sworn with bitterly compressed lips and
a darted glance of hate at Cleopatra. But to her last question Cæsar had
made no answer. It offered difficulties serious enough to freeze the
warmest kiss.


                               CHAPTER V

That night Cleopatra lay in the curious room especially sacred to her
moods.

It was not very large, but lined with richest rose-porphyry marble
against which the beauty of the Queen shone like a white star. The roof
was supported on porphyry pillars with Hathor-headed capitals of
intricate carving in honor of the human Hathor-Venus whom the room
enshrined, and about the walls ran a broad frieze of decoration painted
on white plaster, smooth as pearl, the figures in colored outline. Here
were departed Pharaohs with their slim queens behind them making
offerings to rigid deities, naked save for the outline indication of a
stiffly projecting garment, bearing lotuses in their hands, themselves
adored in turn by lines of worshipping slaves and conquered enemies.
Here stood the father of Cleopatra with hands uplifted to the Gods, and
beside him his inscription in hieroglyphics:

“Ptolemy living for ever, beloved of Isis and Ptah.”

Here also was herself, a slim nude outline in Egyptian red, making
offering to her Mother-Goddess, a lotus in one hand, the sistrum of Isis
in the other, attended by a band of girl-musicians. Beside her was her
own inscription:

           “_Neb taui. Qlapetrat tchettu-nes Trapenet._”

“Lady of Two Lands. Cleopatra. Called is she Tryphena.” A girl might
well feel herself a goddess in the midst of it all. But, except for
purposes of state and, as it were, a full-dress decoration, Cleopatra
loved neither Egyptian art nor what it signified. All her tastes were
light, graceful, Greek, tempered by the luxury of the Orient.

This mingling of tastes appeared in her surroundings. Costly rugs from
Persia strewed the marble floor. Golden hangings from India, with alien
Gods staring almond-eyed, closed the spaces between the pillars, and,
most incongruous of all, broad low Oriental divans heaped with gorgeous
cushions stood everywhere in case the whim might urge her to lie (unlike
the stiff figures on the walls) and rest with the most abandoned grace
and enjoyment. A mongrel room in spite of all its exotic charm.

A chamber wherein, like Alexandria itself, the civilizations had met but
never blended. Indeed they jostled. Here on the night of the
reconciliation Cleopatra lay on a divan of rose-purple and gold, with
Charmion kneeling beside her combing out the long beautiful hair, so
closely braided in the daytime about the Queen’s small head. Charmion
loved that hair as she loved its owner. It was delight to her to feel
the silken waves slip smoothly through her fingers, to perfume, to braid
it. She combed mechanically now, however, listening enthralled to the
day’s adventures.

“And when Ptolemy swore, I saw the flash of hate in his eye meet that of
Potheinos. They will murder me when Cæsar sails to Rome.”

“But, my Queen, you must keep him. Surely—surely—”

“And that brings us to the point!” said Cleopatra. “Stop combing,
Charmion. I want to put my arms under my head. And listen to what I have
to say.”

She folded her arms beneath her head and stretched herself to the full
length of her toes. That made her feel taller. A cool night wind blew
off the sea, therefore she lay like naked pearl on a great fur of black
leopards from the Northland, and so closed her eyes luxuriously under
the veil of black lashes.

“Charmion,” she said slowly, “you are wise in love. You have had many
lovers. Tell me now this: Can a young woman really love a man
older—_much_ older than herself?”

The kneeling girl suppressed a smile, knowing very well the nice point
involved. She kissed the arm that lay on the fur beside her and answered
with caution.

“My Queen, I have never done it. The young men were always too
engrossing. Yet it can certainly be done. Even were an old man fat,
bald, amorous—there might still be his purse. One might fall in love
with his money.”

“I have too much of my own. Try again.”

“Otherwise—quite certainly it might be possible! Look at the Roman
scandals we feed on—and even here they tell me that before we came back
the young and beautiful in Alexandria have sighed for Cæsar.”

Silence. Charmion continued:

“If the old man were a great warrior, lean still—that is
necessary—beautiful as a stern God might be, wearied and saddened with
overseeing the world— If the touch of his hand were favor, his glance
honor, then certainly—”

“In short, if he were Cæsar! Then what would the wise Charmion say?”

Her eyes were still closed. The God-Greek flowed softly from her lips,
indeed one might think she did not care the toss of a copper coin for
the answer. Yet beneath lowered lashes she had an eye on Charmion,
bright as an arrow’s point. Charmion waxed enthusiastic.

“To my eye he sets all youths in the shade. Oh, his air of command! I
have come acquainted with a young captain of his legionaries, certainly
a most beautiful young man, with close-curled golden hair and blue eyes
(however he came by them!) and, O Gods! to hear him talk of his
Commander-in-Chief—his ‘imperator’ as the Romans call him. Oh, it was
fine—fine! This afternoon, instead of praising my ankles, which are not
to be despised, and my bosom, which is better, he held me with wild
romances of Gallia and Britannia and other barbarian countries, and
Cæsar’s genius in them all—a God more than a man—until at last I said
‘Hold! or you will make me love him!’”

The Queen laughed. She knew her Charmion.

“Naturally he would stop!”

“Lady of Two Lands, he went on—praising Cæsar—until I said: ‘Would
that my Queen could hear! She loves a brave tale like a brave man.’ And
he said: ‘Then let her hear them from Cæsar!’ I own I thought the advice
excellent.”

There was a pause. One of the lovely-voiced slave girls in an adjoining
chamber was singing low, shaking the sistrum softly in accompaniment,
with the aim of driving away evil influences. It filled the pauses with
wooing delight.

“And my Captain spoke of the future also!” said Charmion. “He told me
there is no question in Rome but that Cæsar will rule the world. People
are sick of the Republic and its fusty catch-words. A Republic is as
dull as ditch water and as corrupt—every myriad hand extended for a
bribe. An empire is all grace and beauty and dignity—a place for great
men and lovely women—and all the arts come to pay their court. In a
Republic every low-born publican has his ambition to be Dictator—Gods,
the corruption! In a monarchy there is a settled Dynasty. We know that
here!”

Cleopatra still listened with apparently closed lashes, peeping however
all the time at Charmion’s eager face from their ambush.

“Send Iras to call Apollodoros!” she said languidly. “Let him come in
haste.”

In a few moments he came, bowing low, and kneeling beside the black
leopards and his white liege lady upon them.

“Goddess, I am here.” He knew right well the title pleased her. Besides
it was hers.

“Apollodoros, I wish to talk of Cæsar. Charmion fills my ear with his
praises. What is your word now you have seen him—and listened no doubt
with those wise silent ears of yours?”

“My word is this— But first,—shall Charmion go? These things are
secret.”

“Charmion is true as my heart’s inmost fibre. She shall stay.”

She laid warm lips to her Queen’s hand. No wonder she loved her.

“Then, Lady of Egypt, in seeing Cæsar I have seen Power. She has always
perched on his standards, an eagle tamed. For all the Gods’ sakes,
capture the man, seize him, make him yours; for he is to make the title
of imperator from that of a general to that of the World’s Ruler.”

She opened her eyes and sat bolt upright now with arms about her knees
and no pretences, and looked him hard in the face.

“Cold truth, Apollodoros! Am I beautiful? Since you know I cannot do
without you—no, not for one day!—you need not spare either my frowns
or blushes. Don’t beat about the bush.”

He looked her over exactly as a merchant values rich jewels displayed
for purchase. Such was the wish of her Majesty.

“Divine Hathor, counting feature by feature I have seen women more
beautiful. Yes, it is true. Certainly more sensually seductive, for
sometimes your coldness is like ice in your eyes, and, for awhile,
passion is the first lure with men, but also the most swiftly wearied.
It is so common that every woman not repulsive has her little grain of
that potion to administer. But you have not only beauty in more than
fair allowance, considering your Queenship, but charm! Oh, praise the
Gods—and more especially the Goddesses—for this divine gift! You are
all things to all men, and in each perfect. I have seen you wise as age,
gay as childhood, frank, impudent, modest, wooing, shy, imperious—I
have seen nothing that you are not and cannot be, and all with such
charm that a man cannot take his eyes off you and is eternally eager to
know what you will be at next. You have an infinite variety! If a man
left you he could not match you. Queen, among milky chains of pearls in
your treasury, there is one great rose-pearl from India. If we lost a
white pearl there are others, but if _that_ were stolen—the Gods
themselves might take millions of years to tint another. Exquisite lady
I—there is none like you!”

This dithyramb might have melted snow, and the more so as she devoutly
believed it true, and that it was as natural to her to act her part
beautifully, grave or gay, or majestic, as to any boy on the Athenian
stage. What she was behind it all she had never herself been able to
make out, and certainly it was an interesting question. But now she was
bent on cold business, of which her beauty was but the preliminary.

“Allowing this—let us now speak frankly, Apollodoros. Cæsar wants me,
as I do not want him. I shrink and my fingertips curl from it. But I
need him. I cannot see how to do without him. Am I to give myself to
him? Is this your counsel? I see the advantages. But tell me this with
candor. What will my people of Egypt say if their Queen is the mistress
of the husband of Calpurnia?”

That indeed was a facer, and the dark brows of Apollodoros knitted in a
hard knot over it. True, divorce was a fashionable diversion in Rome,
and Cæsar had already divorced Pompeia on the highly convenient ground
that Cesar’s wife must be above suspicion. And, though Calpurnia was
chaste, suspicion may attach itself to the chastest. But divorce must
mean the return of Cæsar to Rome, and in Rome are many beauties
and—Cæsar was still Cæsar! It would not be possible for the Queen of
Egypt to be merely the amusement of Cæsar’s holiday hours; nor could it
serve the political turn that Apollodoros, Cleopatra, and Cæsar himself
had in view. Yet if the political necessity did not suffice the amatory
bond must be added. The difficulty was great and urgent.

He answered very seriously.

“Great Lady, it is a poser. Would, oh, would that her guardian Gods
would take Calpurnia to themselves now! Her life is a misfortune. But
since she lives—all I can suggest is that a man so great as to break up
the Roman constitution (which he will certainly do) may well be allowed
a wife in his Roman Empire and one in the free Kingdom of Egypt! For his
you must be, look at it how we will! Why not a wife in Egypt?”

“But not exactly its Queen!” she fired at him with one of her lightning
flashes. “There are moments when you are a fool. And at present I am one
also. Cæsar wants me, even passionately, but don’t I know that once he
is off to Rome I shall lose my influence? All men are like that.
Charmion says so and she knows love like a book. How are we to bind the
man? No—I see the question in your eye. I am not in love with him. I
don’t even know the meaning of it. But perhaps I am slightly intoxicated
with his greatness and power, for I don’t feel quite the same
indifference as with the rest of them. I think that even if he were
thirty years younger he still would not move me. He is too cold, too far
apart, thinks too much of himself. Too like his own bust in fine marble.
Very flattering, of course, to be able like Pygmalion to make the marble
breathe and kiss—but other people seem to have been beforehand with me
there. Still—I am proud to attract him. When he kissed my hands today I
felt two inches taller, though I hadn’t a thrill of the yearning that
prompted him to do it. And then—an old man’s love is like dead leaves
alight—quick flame, and—pouf! out again. They can’t keep it up. I may
give myself for nothing. Can I hold him? You should know.”

Too true. Apollodoros looked at her thoughtfully. Then his eye
brightened.

“There is in a little street off the Street of Canopus a most
extraordinary man just arrived, a priest from up the Nile. He is
journeying from near the Libyan desert to visit those wise men of India
whom we call Gymnosophists, and he goes tomorrow to Berenice to sail
with the galley known as _Meri-ra_. He is said to be over a hundred and
fifty years of age, though that I do not believe, and to have wisdom
unspeakable. Will your Divinity take counsel with him? He is said to
behold past, present, and future as if it were a picture—which is
really more than can be said for the royal astrologers, who let us in
most terribly about Potheinos the other day.”

“An Egyptian?” asked the Queen of Egypt.

“A wise Egyptian.”

That persuaded her. The wisdom of the Egyptians was no phrase forty
years before Christ. The people and their rulers _knew_, and what they
knew they respected.

“A priest, of course,” she said seriously.

“A priest of the ancient temple of Osiris at Abydos, and now, seeing the
end of his life approaching, his will is to die where in India the wise
men have perceived a most clarifying vision of truth. He would join his
wisdom with theirs. He is known as the Light on the Horizon.”

“Call him, and with haste!”

Apollodoros rose and departed.

During the hour that elapsed Cleopatra, aided by Charmion, performed
certain purifying ceremonies enjoined upon the divine rulers of Egypt
when they should desire to touch hands with the mysteries. She bathed
her body in Nile water, kept apart for that purpose. Perfumed incense
was burned before her in a receptacle shaped like the canopic jars which
hold the viscera of departed royalties in the close age-old heat of
their tombs.

Offering flowers before the domestic shrine in her small and beautiful
oratory, she recited, standing, a most ancient Egyptian prayer for truth
and purity of purpose:

“Hail, ye Four Gods who convey truth to the God of the Universe, who
will sit in judgment on my wickedness and virtue, who feed on truth of
heart. Do away my evil deeds, and remove all barriers between you and
me. Let me pass through the secret doors of the other world in peace and
return in wisdom.”

Deep silence followed. It was the first time she had performed the
ceremony and what to expect she knew not. Could her straining heart hear
any response in that enormous silence? She waited, now prostrate on the
marble, hands stopping her ears from all worldly sounds. None was
audible, but, purified, she rose and awaited the Light on the Horizon.

When the old man appeared before the Queen, marshalled with reverence by
Apollodoros, his head was covered with drapery and his face invisible.
He halted by the pillars of the Hathor and saluting with outstretched,
upraised hands addressed the standing Queen.

“To the Four Gods you have prayed, and in my heart they answered: ‘If
the heart is pure, come! for we have done away all wickedness and put
away all sin that clung to the Queen.’ If the soul is clean, through the
secret doors shall you pass and return with wisdom, having touched on
Union with The One.”

Thrilling to the strange response, she took her seat on a chair of ivory
and ebony and he stood before her.

Her talk with Charmion and Apollodoros had been worldly if no more. With
this man came another influence that flowed from his presence like the
rising of a tide unhurried but unlet, and filled the chamber with
silence. Outside her windows lay the great sea in a great moonlight and
the noises of the city were as remote and harmless as the murmur of bees
in a distant hive. Apollodoros and Charmion knelt, as was their custom,
and bowed their heads, as the old man drew the drapery from his head
with delicate veined hands. He disclosed a remarkable face of true
Egyptian type, fine, firm features and eyes of aged and serene beauty
fixed on the Queen.

“Royal Daughter, royal Mother, favored of Amen, what would you know of
his servant?”

She turned aside and shot a question.

“You have told him nothing, Apollodoros?”

“Nothing, Divine Lady. It was not permitted.”

“Then I too will tell nothing!” said the girl, with a flash of her own
audacity. “If the Gods know, let them declare the truth. If they cannot,
what are they to me?”

The old man stood before her, leaning on a staff of ebony, smiling a
little as at a child’s pets and whims.

“It is not the right approach, Royal Daughter, yet be sure the Gods you
challenge can answer, and I am instructed. I have heard your voice call
in the vast—‘Shall I give my body to Cæsar that he may beget a son who
shall rule the world with his power and mine? Shall my kingdom increase
and be mighty if I do this thing and shall I, ruling Cæsar, sit upon the
throne of the world?’”

He spoke with such quiet, such a lack of assumption that she, used to
the gorgeous involved ceremonies and haughty priests of the strange
concourse of Gods worshipped in Alexandria, was not impressed.
Simplicity was beyond her and, like most ignorant people, she mistook it
for poverty of wisdom, not knowing that Truth goes naked and beautiful
through the Earth. Insensibly to herself her tone was touched with a
queen’s pride.

“That is what I wish to know, but I can scarcely think—”

“In these matters one does not think. Thought is no avenue of approach
for the one to the One. It is a bridge broken in the Abysses. Union is
needed, Royal Daughter, and if there is not union there is great and
terrible danger, for the eyes may see falsely and in a distorting
mirror. And a man may be terribly misled even to his death and ruin
because he sees what is not.”

“If the Gods cheat,” she said, a strange bewilderment numbing her
senses, “if they juggle like men, I will not see. I want the truth.”

“A man or woman can have only as much truth as they can take, and lies
if they can take none. The Gods do not cheat, and any man who knows the
merest approach to the unseen can loose you as I do. _But_ it may be he
would not warn you. Once more and solemnly I warn you that when you are
loosed you will see only through the window of your own truth and
purity. If those are flawed the sight is flawed also, and that is why it
is a peril of perils to meddle with these inner and secret matters.”

His eyes had a compelling power. She looked helplessly about her, but
her two attendants knelt like statues, rigid, with hidden faces. She
pushed Charmion angrily with her sandalled foot, but the girl never
stirred. She was marble-still. She struck Apollodoros lightly with her
hand. No breath—no movement. There was a dead silence while she
revolved the matter in her mind. Could she dare the ordeal? Was she pure
to present herself in the presence of the Pure Gods who bestow vision?
Literally, she did not know. She had no means of testing herself, but
every day and all day round her people bought soothsayers and had their
fortunes read and horoscopes cast, and tampered lightly with the
inscrutable. And why not she? After all, whatever it was, she need not
be guided by it unless she wished. There was nothing to be afraid of,
and fear was not her besetting sin.

“Shall I go or stay?” the old man asked patiently.

“Stay, I will see.”

“Royal Daughter, I have warned you. There is danger. The air whispers
with it now. Permit my departure.”

“I tell you, I will see!”

“We are alone,” said the Light on the Horizon, “for in this man and
woman the gateways of perception are closed. Fix your eyes on mine while
I speak the word of Release.”

She heard a whispered and mysterious word and knew no more of the room
in the Palace of the Lochias. It had fluttered away like a gossamer on
the wind. In a great sunlight she saw the Capitoline Hill in Rome. The
Capitol loomed up before her. She stood within the stately place and
before her were the seven venerated statues of the ancient Kings of
Rome. She knew them from many a picture and tale. But now an Eighth was
added. She beheld the statue of Cæsar among them—King of Rome, crowned
and throned. It passed.

She stood in the Senate, a ghostly figure unseen, unheeded by all those
urgent busy politicians, and, in a spectral world of her own, looked and
listened. On a throne of gold in the midst sat Cæsar, in his hand a
sceptre of ivory, his head embraced by a crown of golden laurel leaves.
But more and greater,—voices worlds apart from her, but audible, hailed
him in ghostly clamor as “Jupiter-Julius,” and she beheld his deified
statue set up with the inscription—“To Jupiter-Julius, the immortal
God,” while his priests worshipped before it, and the Romans invoked
him, still living, as a guardian genius. The blood rushed to her heart.
The intoxication of power beat along her veins like strong wine,—The
God-King of Rome, and she the Goddess-Queen of Egypt! In the sleep of
vision her hands moved, struggled and clenched, as though to grasp the
splendors seen by her eyes.

It drifted and passed, and fresh sight took its place. She beheld a
glorious temple dedicated to the Roman Venus, the ancestress of
Cæsar—the Venus Genetrix—and there—there in the awe of its inmost
marble heart, there in the midst of the Romans, she beheld her own
statue exalted as the Goddess of Love and Beauty. She herself, hailed by
the worship of Rome as loveliest and most divine, deified as Cæsar
himself was deified: his immortal consort, with him, recognised by the
will of the people as native to the stars, their God-begotten rulers!

An awful pride swelled the bosom of the young goddess as she saw. In
Egypt such was her title and she had gloried in their belief, but now
for the first time trust in her own divinity possessed her. It is a
strong draught for humanity to drink, an intoxicating cup for any woman
to handle. In that wild vision the earth diminished to a little globe
like a child’s plaything. She caught it in her hand and looking down
upon it laughed, herself crowned with the moon and stars, and beside her
stood Cæsar laughing also, on his head the sun’s disk as, in the temple
of Amen-Ra, the God sits crowned. There came a roar of thunder, a
rushing together as of heaven and earth and darkness—black impalpable
darkness, and she knew no more.

Her eyelids were leaden. Chill and weight like death oppressed her
limbs. It seemed that she struggled back to life through black and
bitter waters, and climbing a steep shore sank exhausted. Again she knew
no more. Rest and quiet followed and after a time, whether long or short
she could not tell, she opened her eyes and saw Charmion and Apollodoros
kneeling beside her, themselves newly awaked from the sleep of
personality. They had seen, had heard nothing. She radiant, rejoicing,
strong, sprang to her feet, poured out her tale of glory to the two she
knew she could trust, all warnings forgotten, headlong as a torrent
rushing to the sea.

“But where is the man?” she asked halting suddenly in her triumph. “I
will give him great rewards and he shall be near me always to be my
guide. The Light on the Horizon?—No, but the Sun at his Zenith!”

The palace was searched for him, the city also, but in vain. Only in an
hour a writing was brought to the Queen in the Demotic characters used
in common life.

“To the Lady of the Two Lands greeting and obedience. When in the day of
her need she desires light on a dark horizon let her remember and recall
Thothmes the Egyptian.”

She clapped her hands with a cry of delight.

“I would not have lost that man forever for all the emeralds in my
treasure-house. Be very sure that I shall recall him. And now,
Apollodoros, go quickly and bid Cæsar to sup with me in the lesser
chamber of Kings—he and I—that we may talk of great things. If he can
fill my hands with what I want it would be miser’s work to refuse him
what he wants in turn. Especially as I have little enough value for it
myself.”

Never in her life had she felt harder, firmer, more self-certain than in
that glorious moment. Her way lay clear before her.

So the great Roman came with a pride that out-matched her own, and rare
wines and splendid meats were set before them, served in gold, and all
about he saw such splendors as were not known in Rome, the outpouring of
the boundless wealth and power of the most ancient monarchy in the
world. It was not lost on him. It was oil on the fire of ambition which
was the altar-light in the temple of his great heart. For men worship
gods many and strange, and the God of Cæsar was Power, cast in his own
image.


                               CHAPTER VI

When the tables were removed the two were alone, and Cæsar knew well, as
did the girl, that the great and inevitable moment of life was upon
them. As they sat together in the window commanding the starry sea—the
water-way to Rome—she told him her vision with a pride and exultation
not to be concealed, and the blood crept up his pale cheek and another
fire was lit in him that warmed his chilling blood and rekindled the
more ethereal fire of youth until his eyes shone like her own.

“The man was a great prophet,” he said, “and worthy of riches. Alexander
the Great travelled always with his soothsayers and was guided by them
in his decisions. And it is very certain that the Gods are good to those
who resemble them in power and majesty, and, dying, we shall leave great
names and our divine kindred receive us in starry homes.”

“Great talk!” thought the young Queen, “and if I could love him—! Yet
after all, what is love? A flash in springtime and gray ashes after.
That is how it always seems to me. There are things far more
interesting—pride, ambition, power, majesty and the life that flows
from them, a life as fascinating as a tale told by a great story-teller.
And, because he can give these, this great man who shall fulfil my
destiny is more to me than any young lover and most truly better for me
than any other, though he is old.”

So with sweet eyes she wooed him, and the fluttering of white hands and
all the glow of her desirable youth, and laughing she told him gay tales
of the doings of her Alexandrians, both men and women, and he laughed
and applauded, never having met a woman so seductive as this and she a
young Goddess and a Queen!

“And you give yourself to me?” he asked later, in the voice of the
Master who knows the inevitable answer.

“I give!” she answered with her honey-sweet low laughter having in it
the very song of running streams and fresh bird-music at dawn. She
looked down, then in his eyes and added:

“But for your sake and mine, most royal Cæsar, the gift must have no
spot upon it.”

Another pause and she descended from the queenly manner to the
colloquial with the odd and sudden change that was not the least of her
enchantments.

“You see it doesn’t do at all for girls to be talked about wantonly. It
ruins Queens, and as for goddesses—I know a good many stories are told
about them, but only after they are safely pedestalled in heaven, and
then it really doesn’t matter. Besides a goddess has generally two
personalities, and what she does in one doesn’t affect the other, which
is convenient. There is the Heavenly Venus, and the Venus of the stews.
The Chaste Diana and the Diana who kissed Endymion, and others, and you
can worship which you please. But, as for me, I have only one self, and
if that gets soiled I have nothing else to wear. Besides I have to rule
in Alexandria where, if you make a slip, the place rings with laughter
and pasquinades. They pierce even the immortal Gods with ridicule. So
what I ask is this—tell me what canopy can you raise between me and the
rain of scandal in Rome and Alexandria if I do what you wish—and what
_I_ wish!” she added with the glance provocative in which she excelled
when she chose.

His brow was furrowed in a moment. It was really a question of terrible
importance for his own sake, which affected him far more than hers. Not
that the most enthusiastic Roman could have protested that Cæsar had a
rag of reputation to lose in such matters—but there was Calpurnia. And
to deal with Calpurnia he must return to Rome before matters had gone
too far with Cleopatra; for, if she should bear him a child, that
child’s birth must have no spot upon it—no, not even the suspicion of
any degrading circumstance. There his own very tarnished record must
never stand in the way. And if he went to Rome now, the golden, the
immortal chance might not wait patiently for him. Who could guarantee a
fitful girl’s fidelity against the attack of an ardent lover?

Cleopatra’s anxiety was quite in another strain, but each with his own
they sat and looked at each other in silence tinged with dismay and with
a quite insufficient force of driving passion on either side to force
them to take obstacles in a flying leap.

“I know little about Rome but it would be impossible in Egypt,” said
Cleopatra with irony. “One may be a goddess, but I have never found it
help when things go really wrong. When the ortolans are a cinder or one
has a cold in one’s head one may crucify the cook and curse the sea-wind
but the unpleasantness sticks. Indeed I sometimes think one’s godship
makes one even more furious with Fate. And _now_ what are we to do?”

“I incline to defy Fate, to trust divine Fortuna, the most fascinating
divinity of them all. She has stood by me hitherto. Let us throw our
dice! The Gods love a cheerful gambler.”

“But prefer a cheerful winner, I have noticed,” said Cleopatra,
grievously disturbed in mind. “It is all such a tangle that but for the
vision I would—”

But she snapped that sentence in two. She must display no pets and whims
to the Great Lover, the man with whose fortunes her own were so
inextricably enwound. If only visions would be a little more indicative,
measurable! She had seen just enough to whet her appetite, but not a ray
as to the cooking of the dish. She permitted Cæsar to caress her little
hand and rewarded him with glances from down-dropped amber eyes which
effectually concealed the thought resurgent every few minutes: “If only
he were not so old, perhaps it would be easier. Even if I do embark on
the adventure he may easily die before we get through! And that nuisance
of a Calpurnia!”

Suddenly with the flash of an inspiration she said aloud:

“Let us consult Apollodoros. I never yet knew him fail in a difficulty.
He could and would untie the Gordian knot if I asked him.”

She clapped her hands and in ten minutes Apollodoros stood before them
in the deep humility which he thought proper to assume before Cæsar. No
observer of men like the mighty Roman could fail to see and enjoy the
subtle power that shone in those deep-set Sicilian eyes of the Queen’s
secretary. Hand in hand with his evident devotion to the girl he had
served from a child, it was a weapon of war to be cherished and honored,
and Cæsar was one who knew the worth of such weapons alike in war and
peace. None better!

The Dictator drew a nobly cut gem from his hand and placed it on the
hand of Apollodoros with a few words yet more precious.

The case was stated, Cleopatra twisting a string of great pearls about
her fingers in nervous irritation while she spoke, not thinking it
needful to mention that the subject was not entirely new to Apollodoros.
Cæsar supported her with a few grave questions, and the secretary
listened in abysmal silence. When all was ended he took a moment for
reflection—his face like a brown mask of meditation. Then, at last, and
with extreme modesty, he spoke.

“Divine Lady and most august Cæsar, great is the difficulty, yet rightly
considered, in the light of the customs of Egypt, it disappears, and
becomes indeed a source of strength to the mighty triumph of your joint
fortunes. I speak, subject to the approval of your great wisdoms. In the
ancient City of Thebes on the banks of royal Nile stands the House of
Amen in the Southern Apt, and in it the magnificent Court of Amenophis
the Third, and from this through a doorway is attained a chamber
pictured after the same manner as in the chamber of Cleopatra, but with
the Birth Story of Amenophis the Third. And thus it is. In the first
series is a conference of Gods and Goddesses, concerning the birth of
the child who shall rule Egypt. In the next the Queen-wife holds
converse with the great God Amen, and, in the script beneath, the
Divinity declares that he himself is father of the child to be born of
the Queen. He, and not the King. In the next the Queen is informed of
the God’s gracious intention. In the next the Goddesses breathe the
breath of life into the Queen and she conceives. In the next the birth
of the royal child and his reception on the knees of his Divine Father
the God. In the last, the child, now King, seated on his throne while
the Gods make recognition before him. August Cæsar, you are
God-descended. The people of Egypt would most easily recognise in you
the divine consort of the Queen were that announced on the expectation
of an auspicious birth. She is herself a goddess, which makes it easier,
since like seeks like.”

He folded his hands meekly and was silent. Hope flashed from Cleopatra
to Cæsar and back.

“Wonderful, wonderful, most astute Apollodoros!” she cried, clapping her
hands until the great rings clashed. But the light faded presently for
Rome had been forgotten.

“And in Rome?” asked Cæsar with doubt reflecting itself on the face of
Cleopatra.

“In Rome also the idea of divine descent is familiar,” returned
Apollodoros, “and if the Queen’s vision is fulfilled, and a temple
erected in Rome to Jupiter-Cæsar and to the Queen as Venus Genetrix, I
think the difficulty disperses. The child of such a union must be
divine. Cannot be otherwise! Romans will allow for our customs.”

There was perhaps a little sober triumph in his glance responsive to
Cæsar’s smile of stern approval. To that swift mind the words opened up
vistas of gorgeous and immortal triumph. With every phrase Cleopatra
became dearer and more indispensable. Yes—reigning in Rome and
Alexandria as God-King and Goddess-Queen the world was theirs and their
son’s. There must be no concealment. The union must be surrounded with a
kind of grave glory. He saw, he saw it all!

“To the wise Apollodoros I tender a gratitude which does not forget its
friends,” he said slowly. “To Cleopatra, the Queen, my devotion. For the
present this must remain a profound secret between us three. Not a
whisper, not a breath must escape while the Queen’s consort Ptolemy
still lives.”

But when Apollodoros departed, exalted so that his feet scarcely seemed
to touch earth, the lover was still preoccupied. It was no slight to the
girl whose gaiety, grace and audacity enchanted him, but simply that
schemes crowded upon him with every turn of events, and she had come too
late into his life to make any ineffaceable impression. She saw it and
was not displeased—life was too interesting in the larger issues to
victimise her by feminine spites and jealousies for long,—and the more
Cæsar reflected the greater would be her future. He interested her far
more deeply from that point of view than from the erotic.

Again she caught his mood, and sat beside him, her two young hands fresh
as rosebuds, clasping his veined and aging hand most tenderly. She
leaned her head against his shoulder in a quiet as deep as his own. His
mind was on her brother, Arsinoë, and Potheinos. Between this day and
his return to Rome that group must be dispersed and extinguished. For
his purposes the consort of Cleopatra must be removed from his path and
she reign alone. But all this must be done with extreme caution, and for
how long could he delay in Egypt? His lieutenant, Mark Antony, was
writing that he was needed—needed urgently in Rome. “An absent man,
even though great as Cæsar, is soon forgotten,” he wrote. “Return, most
honored, most fortunate!”

Fortunate indeed, and his chief glory of fortune centered in the slight
girl, whose sweetness would have turned his head dizzy in earlier years,
who stirred him even now to delight.

He put his arm about her and drew her closer. Their lips met in a kiss
that was a pledge.

Then he rose slowly and reluctantly.

“There is one thing, beloved and beautiful. Because Apollodoros is right
you must, when the time comes, go up the Nile and visit your cities and
make offerings in the most ancient temples. And I must go with you.”

“It is true,” said Cleopatra thoughtfully, “and I must build a temple to
Isis at the ancient Hermonthis. I had thought of this, but it really
seemed rather absurd that I, who am Isis, should build a temple to my
own divinity. It is all rather odd, I think. But as she is the
Mother-Goddess I see it will have to be done, especially now we have
settled to have a child. The temple will be expected of me.”

“Isis is much worshipped in Rome too,” said Cæsar, and was silent. He
could not make up his mind whether he quite approved the extremely
business-like and capable way in which the girl was handling their
romance. It was his mistaken belief (one common to his sex) that women
are more developed on the romantic side than men, and he felt her to be
startlingly clear-headed. It had its conveniences, especially to a man
who had long sailed out of the Torrid Zone, but yet— Never mind! He
would teach her, and if he could reach the mischief in her long eyes she
would prove an apt scholar.

“And now may the Gods bless the day that brought me to Alexandria. Sleep
well, beloved, and dream of the mighty future. And now I go.”

She looked at him with golden-amber eyes under midnight lashes. They lit
her small face with subtle meanings.

“And _must_ you go, most noble Cæsar?”

Caught in the dash of her audacity his face flamed into youth. For a
moment she beheld the young Cæsar, beautiful, triumphant, the delight
and despair of the loveliest whom he chose or rejected. His arms clasped
her, the innocent brave girl who had dared so much for him! That night
he did not leave her. She woke in his arms, conquered or victorious as
the mysterious future would disclose.

In two or three weeks a whisper started on its journey through
Alexandria to travel up the Nile, to permeate the ancient kingdom of the
Pharaohs. It was to the effect that, in the person of Julius Cæsar,
Jupiter-Amen the great God, worshipped under differing names in Rome and
Alexandria, yet the same, eternally the same, had come to visit the
young Goddess of Egypt, even as in ancient days the Gods had walked with
men and fathered them for their own divine designs. The wits of
Alexandria might laugh, and they laughed unmercifully and with a gay
impropriety extremely characteristic of the times and life of the
swarming city of the Delta; but the simple and pious people of the Nile
country and beyond heard with awe as the rumor travelled farther and
farther, gaining glory as it left Alexandria and realities behind. Oh,
that they could behold their divine young ruler! Oh, that if there were
to be a heavenly child it could be born in their midst! Would she not
come, that offering might be laid before her feet and those of the
God-incarnate consort?

And Cleopatra, closeted with Charmion and Apollodoros, was equally
accessible to the wit of the one and the pathetic faith of the other.

“They are a horrible people these Alexandrians, but it really is very
amusing!” she said, wiping tears of laughter from her eyes as she laid a
paper on her knee. “They have got Cæsar to the life. Just that
immaculate air of ‘I came. I saw. I conquered!’ which I am sure he
retains even in the bath. Still, the one thing you never can conquer is
wit! If he could laugh at them as I do! but he never could. Never in
this world! He takes himself so dreadfully seriously as a divinity.
There, Charmion, burn that writing, and you, Apollodoros, take care that
none reach him. Yet, for the Gods’ sake, let me read it once more. Just
that middle bit.

         “Poor little Goddess! When the amorous God
         Descended to her from his blest abode,
         She might have hoped for some less withered bliss,
         A little mild excitement in a kiss!
         O Hercules, Apollo, where were you?
         Is this the best Olympus now can do?
         Sure, here and there a shining golden curl
         Would have impressed our Alexandrian girl.
         But bald! And nose in air!—alas, poor lass!
         ’Tis _Time_ has come to town with scythe and glass.”

She laughed till the room rang and then said more seriously:

“Have a hint given them to shut up, Apollodoros. If Cæsar were to see
that, they would learn that when wasps sting they die, and I couldn’t
save them, though I never mind what they say of me. Heigh ho! I often
wish he were younger. It gives the whole thing a touch of the
ridiculous. Or even if he were older! A great silver beard like Homer’s
gives a godlike majesty and hides a lot of absurdity. It is elderly
middle age that is so absolutely impossible. What on earth will the
people up the Nile say when they see the divine Jupiter-Amen beside me?
They are such simple religious people. I hate to think what a shock it
will be.”

“They will say he is the omnipotent Cæsar on earth and a God on Olympus,
and I am sure your Sacredness will remember what is due to him—for your
own sake!”

“Certainly the Gods must hang together;” Cleopatra retorted
incorrigibly, “they will get precious little incense if they don’t; and
I mean that up the Nile Cæsar and I shall win all hearts. Was I born
yesterday, Apollodoros?”

He smiled and was silent. No one knew better that her impulses could be
dangerous.

With all his own heart he wished that Cæsar were younger, less
impenetrably mailed in self-belief and dominance. He yielded nothing to
the Queen now he had won her, did not allow her for one moment to
suppose herself the light and lodestar of his life, talked of blended
interests but never of blended hearts. Always a gentleman—but one more
than a little chilled with age, warming his hands at the fire of
ambition now that love’s was dying out into ash. Also his doubts were
returning. He needed a steel-true comrade, and for how long would he
please a brilliant young woman who took worship as her right? Already he
found declarations fatiguing. Suppose, most horrible suppose, that some
day she fell in love with love instead of ambition! What then would
happen? He thrust the thought fiercely from him and believed himself
still the perfect lover—with a difference!

The same fear had occurred more than once to Apollodoros—to whom the
Queen could allow herself the luxury of candor. He groaned aloud as he
pictured her driven on a wind, a gale, a hurricane of passion. Where
would Cæsar and his ambition be then? And Egypt? And as yet no hope of a
child. Were that to be it might forge a bond unbreakable. If not— Alas
for Cæsar’s gray hairs and touch-me-not manner!


                              CHAPTER VII

But love between two greatnesses such as Cæsar and the young Queen could
not be all thornless roses and raptures such as lesser folk may hope for
an hour.

There was Potheinos ceaselessly exciting the Alexandrians against Rome,
and therefore covertly against Cleopatra; there was the young Ptolemy,
sulking, and Arsinoë watching her sister with eyes of smouldering hate.
And, lastly, the Egyptian forces raised by Potheinos were still under
arms and clamoring for their royal Ptolemy. Tangled threads to weave
into the robe of sovereignty desired by the lovers!

And one fine morning when they waked to a new day of perplexities their
bird had flown. Arsinoë, with something of the audacity of her lovelier
sister, had escaped to the army and would very likely be proclaimed
Queen and all the rest of it, on the ground that Cleopatra and Ptolemy
were prisoners of the Roman!

“A pretty kettle of fish!” ejaculated Cæsar with a face as long as his
arm, when Apollodoros gravely presented the news. “Who would have
thought the withered little virgin had it in her!”

“If they do proclaim her Queen at least they cannot make her
Venus-Hathor!” said Cleopatra sourly. “That would pass even their folly
and invoke the sure anger of the Goddess! No one likes to be
caricatured. I told you, Cæsar—and you, Apollodoros, that there will be
no peace while Arsinoë lives. Ptolemy is a donkey, but she has something
of the spirit of our race in her mean little herring of a body. Suppose
she marries Achillas—their commander!”

“The Princess has already plotted the murder of the noble Cæsar,”
submitted Apollodoros, “and the freeing of her brother and the eunuch.
It appears to me that in any case a seat in Paradise is preparing for
the young King.”

“And how have these secrets reached you, wise man?”

“Through the palace barber—a person of excessive timidity and with ears
as long, and collective, as a donkey’s. He is here, there and everywhere
like a fly. My best and most trustworthy scout, great Cæsar! There is no
question but that the rumor of the divine consort has stirred them all
to a desperate throw. Now, what shall be done, most Magnificent?”

Cæsar reflected but a moment.

“Potheinos was the murderer of the noble Pompey. Why have I borne with
him so long? I might well deserve the just indignation of the Republic
if I let him go further. Send me the officer of the guard.”

Cleopatra did not pale when the stern young man stood before his
imperator, stiff and one-purposed as duty herself.

“Surround the chambers of the eunuch with a guard, and let the head of
the murderer of Pompey be at my feet within the hour.”

She had never heard that voice before—and it struck the certitude of
success in her. When had Cæsar failed? How was it possible that he
should ever fail?

Very much within the hour, the plottings of Potheinos were done forever,
and a vast hoard of ill-gotten treasure was added to her own. That
matter dismissed, Cæsar addressed her, again with the fixed purpose and
rigid lips which awed her. Apollodoros, standing behind her, brightened
as he spoke.

“Your brother. We cannot murder him. He cannot live. I have considered,
and, if you doubt, remember, my Queen, that all kingdoms wither and die
beneath a divided rule. What I say is for the good of Egypt—which is
yours! I shall send Ptolemy from the Palace to join the Egyptian army.”

“Gods!—and why?” breathed Cleopatra. “Surely he will be their
inspiration! Let us keep him prisoner!”

Apollodoros shaped “Silence!” with mute lips. He saw. He understood.

“I must fight the Egyptian army, Queen of Egypt—and surely their King
should be with them? The Thirty-seventh Legion joins me in a few days
with men and supplies—and then—and then, if Ptolemy is with his army
. . .”

He said no more, as indeed what need was there? The wretched Ptolemy,
heart-stricken by the death of Potheinos, his one support, perceived the
deadly purpose of Cæsar and pleaded and struggled to be retained as
prisoner in the Palace. The slaying of Potheinos was just—he knew it.
If he himself were thrust out of the Roman protection, forced to face
Cæsar in battle. . . .

He would have thrown himself at his sister’s knees, but Cleopatra was
ill—invisible. So they told him. And Cæsar’s steadfastly reiterated
reply was only:

“It shall never be said I kept your Majesty a prisoner. I restore you to
your army. Go.”

What the Gods will is done, no doubt, on earth as in heaven!

In a few brief days the Egyptian army, routed, was fleeing before the
Roman legions. Many of the fugitives fled across the Nile, young Ptolemy
among them; and when the overweighted boat which carried the King of
Egypt sank, and buried him and his pitiably brief story in Nile mud, it
ended a life matched against too heavy odds to hope even for one ray of
happiness or glory.

The triumph of Cæsar! The joy of Cleopatra! She reigned sole sovereign
of Egypt. Arsinoë was a prisoner, helpless and hopeless, and there was
none to say her nay. Surely the Gods had guided her into her alliance
with Cæsar! There might—there _must_ be more than political value in
the belief that deific inspiration dwelt in his breast and hers.

Crowned with roses, beautiful with triumph, she waited in her Palace
chamber as he came riding into Alexandria at the head of his legions,
splendid in steel, the Roman helmet disclosing the keen intelligence and
beauty of his aspect. “A terrible fighting face!” the cowed populace
whispered as the rows of soldiers tramped through them onward to the
Palace. Perhaps it was not all so ill, the Alexandrians thought. At
least the Queen would have a _man_ if not a god for her consort, and the
power of Rome harnessed to that of Egypt.

So too thought Cleopatra.

He had never seen her more lovely than when, still wearing his helmet,
he entered that beautiful and silent chamber sacred to their love and to
the moment they could speak together before the great banquet claimed
them—the triumph for their friends and those they hoped to conciliate.

He noted with surprise that she wore the robe of Isis, the wings of the
Mother-Goddess outspread on her bosom.

“The way is clear!” he said, standing to make his announcement, as if in
the presence of the Roman Senate. “The Queen’s enemies are scattered.
She reigns alone.”

She fled to his arms like a dove to her refuge.

“Did I not see the omen, my King of Kings, as I came down from
Pelusium?—the dove rescued by a mighty eagle? O heart of my heart, the
gratitude—the love! What shall I do for you—how reward you? Yet I
can—I can! Yourself will own it. The son of all our hopes,—the King of
the World, shall be! The Gods have heard my prayer. Come up with me into
the true Egypt and thank them.”

Even in Cæsar’s great life that was one of the mighty moments. His stay
in Egypt with its ancient beliefs and royalties had rooted and watered
in his powerful mind the belief that he was not as are other men. And
small wonder! He had come all but unattended to Alexandria, and on a
very different errand—the destruction of his rival Pompey. He had
thought to leave it in a few brief days. But the spell of the Nile had
caught him. In the lovely Macedonian Queen he had found his tool and
siren, and lo!—that world also was at his feet, and in his hand the key
of the vast and mysterious East. Could he return to Rome with this to
lay before the wondering Romans surely the Roman Kingship would be his.
What could they deny to their invincible Cæsar? But for himself—
Vanity! ashes in the mouth!—having no son to leave it to, no dynasty to
found. But now—but now—the Queen of Egypt promised him that greatest
of all the gifts of Fortune, a divine child to sit on the Roman throne,
to rule in Egypt, to be Emperor of Asia, and, with all this, most truly
of the World also. He clasped her in a silence more eloquent than any
speech, so tense that it startled her, and looking up she saw tears in
his eyes and a quiver like a prayer upon his lips. It was too much—too
great a gift from the clenched hand of Fate. There was no obstacle. Her
foolish little consort was dead. She was free to hail the greatest of
the Gods as her child’s father.

She flung her arms up in a rapture that all but excelled his own.

“The vision, the vision!” she cried. “O Light on the Horizon, O Sun that
nears its zenith! Clasp me, mighty Cæsar, restrain me, or I shall go mad
with joy.”


                              CHAPTER VIII

Years later that voyage up the Nile hung the gallery of the little
Queen’s memory with many pictures, most wonderful and beautiful.

The royal boat was made ready and even Cæsar’s reticence was amazed by
its splendors. Luxury supreme reigned on board—shaded chambers for the
Queen and her ladies, rooms of audience, stately colonnades, a roofed
garden of delicate exotic flowers and plants, shrines for the worship of
Venus-Hathor and the Roman Bacchus. No preparation for magnificent
leisure was absent, and no lack of wind could halt the Queen’s progress,
for the vessel was propelled by many banks of oars. And the luxury of
ornament! The rooms were panelled with rare aromatic woods of Asia,
sweet-smelling cedar and almug trees, and upon the polish of these were
laid friezes of gold-leaf, and on these were depicted the triumphs of
the greatest of the deified Egyptian Kings.

With the Queen and her now openly announced consort went a fleet of four
hundred ships filled with Cæsar’s legionaries and the soldiers of the
Queen. Not only was the royalest pomp desirable, but he would take no
chances for the precious lives now in the hollow of his hand for safe
keeping. He surrounded her with tenderest observance. Both knew that
longer than the birth of the child he dared not linger from Rome. He
must go there to build their mighty future. But meanwhile he would give
her memories so sweet, so binding, that they would safeguard her love
for him until he could call her to Rome to set the seal on his
achievement.

He succeeded. He half won her heart and her gratitude wholly. Those were
happy days. Her condition, if it lowered the brilliance of her sparkle
and audacity, made her more gentle, more submissive, gave new sweetness
to her eyes—the tenderness of a wife, the tremor of a girl about to
face the terrifying issue of motherhood and depending wholly upon the
devotion of the man who had brought her to the danger and would be her
support in agony.

“If she should die—if I should lose her!” he thought, and often not
selfishly, but with a kind of terror of the black midnight that must
engulf his age if that brightness were withdrawn.

She lay one day on her couch, covered with great tapestries,
gold-embroidered and splendid, looking incredibly small and pale, filled
with the forebodings natural to her condition, and overweighted with awe
of the greatness of the Egypt she had never known till now. Against the
still but powerful current they were oaring upwards slowly to the city
of Abydos, the city of Osiris, consecrated by the passionate devotion of
ages to the God of Light who was also God of the dark underworld and the
shadowy armies of the dead—the most awful place in Egypt, for there
Osiris himself lay buried.

“I will not land. I dare not!” said Cleopatra, shuddering as the shore
loomed in sight. Cæsar sat beside her, watching with profound interest,
for to him she had rehearsed the stories that clung like bats in the
darkness about the mysteries. He withdrew his eyes from the shore and
looked at her with a smile.

“My little Queen shall land where and how she will, and not otherwise.
Talk no more of these evil things. Talk of our great future and I will
tell you how Rome shall resound and ring like smitten brass when you
come to shine and glitter there, bringing my son to me.”

But still her face was pale and her lip trembled.

“Who escapes sorrow—and under what sky? And Calpurnia? Will she also
rejoice when I come with my son to Rome?”

“Calpurnia? You need not fear her, you little fool. You who never really
fear anything! The Gods have done too much for you to deserve distrust.”

“But Calpurnia?” she persisted with a kind of languid melancholy. “Often
I tell myself she has the first right to my beloved. And the Roman
people—will they bear to see her slighted?”

“They will bear what I please,” he said austerely. “But Calpurnia is a
Roman—she will never flinch from a duty—she is of the greatly enduring
type. I know her. When I consider difficulties she is not among them.”

“Difficulties? And what are they now?” She raised herself on one arm and
looked in his face anxiously.

“Not women. Men! There are men in Rome who grudge to see me rise, and I
am not perfectly certain that in Mark Antony, my right hand, I have the
man I should. He is as brave as Achilles, and yet—”

“I have often wondered about him and thought you must trust him deeply
that you leave so much in his hands. Describe him to me, beloved. I love
to hear of men.” She lay back again with a long sigh of content, her
arms beneath her head, black lashes laid on cheeks a little paled but no
less lovely.

He thought with a thrill of pride that even his glory would not suffer
when he presented this young Queen captive of his bow and spear to the
critical world of Rome. How they would talk—how discuss her in the
great villas by the Tiber and elsewhere, where ladies, many of them
intimately well known to him, congregated to prepare the daily dish of
highly flavored scandal! Her name would be tossed like a ball above the
crowded streets, in the baths, in the hall where the gladiators gathered
and laughed over every item of their masters’ loves and hates.

Yes, there would be scandal and gossip; but when she came in all her
glory, loaded with riches, radiating charm, what could there be but envy
of him and of her, and wonder—wonder all the time! He knew well that
apart from beauty she had her air of unrivalled distinction, unmatched
in Rome, the Greek grace of bearing and lissom elegance in which the
stately Roman women were less proficient than they wished. It was not
without bearing on the case that Rome owed nearly all her arts but that
of architecture to Greece, and the Queen would be as eminently the
fashion as the last drama or the group of Apollo in pursuit of Daphne
which had set the town ablaze last year.

He looked at her, studying the impression she would make. Her expression
was not deliberately haughty—never! That was quite unnecessary and she
knew it. It was an atmosphere about her which proclaimed the highest
descent, the careless habit of command, the absence of any
self-assertion, more clearly than if a band of trumpeters had shouted it
before her. It said, but with the utmost finesse, to other women:

“Yes, you are all very well. You are even, let us say—more beautiful
than I. But are you not rather— Is there not a little too _much_ of you
in every way? I have no rights to assert. All stand aside for me, for I
am I.”

What she represented was subtle and final. One could get no nearer than
that. But he rejoiced in it, and not only in that but in all the
circumstance that surrounded the Queen. Every day he realised more fully
the dramatic importance of this, and how it must aid a climbing man who
meant to rule the world and stave off assassination until he could
attain it.

“But Mark Antony?” she questioned, yawning a little. “Charmion, fan me!
Isis, how hot it is! He is young?”

Cæsar winced a little. So that was what she thought of most importance!
Like to like! It acidulated his description of his General-in-charge.

“He is mature,” he said with slightly tightened lips, “and of fine
stature and appearance. In my own mind I call him the Gladiator. He has
their faults and virtues. Brave to an extreme, with the courage of a
charging bull. Good-natured, genial, a little stupid—as genial people
mostly are! Entirely unable to resist any temptation whether in the form
of wine or women. Let us say an overgrown boy. Judge whether I can leave
our affairs in such hands a day longer than I must!”

“Faithful, I suppose?” she asked with some interest.

“That depends. If the beautiful courtesan Cytheris set herself to
extract a secret from him between two draughts of Falernian I should be
sorry for the secret! . . . But who is this venerable man approaching on
that strange boat?”

Cleopatra raised herself upright and stared over the side in alarm. She
caught at Cæsar’s hand in an access of nervous terror.

“Oh, tell the slaves to row fast, fast! I dare not—I will not land
here.”

The order was given, but the rowing ceased, as though a spell had
fallen. The overseers of the benches of oars themselves stood
motionless, whip in hand, issuing no orders. All faces were fixed on the
approaching boat.

A strange boat indeed, platformed and decorated to represent the sacred
boat of the Solar Disk. In it, surrounded by young priests with
professionally serious faces, stood an old man in the magnificent
ceremonial robes of the high priest of Abydos, already bowing toward the
royal vessel in honor of the presence of the living Gods, Cleopatra and
Cæsar.

“Halt!” she said in a terrified whisper. “No, I dare not pass him by. It
is the High Priest of Osiris—the greatest in the eyes of the people.
What he says is law for me as for others.”

He helped her to rise, himself too ignorant of the ways of the land to
interfere, and in a moment more the visitor was received on deck with
profound reverence by every Egyptian, profound curiosity by every Roman.
For in every Roman mind the great priests of Egypt were gifted with
supernatural powers. What mighty marvels might not now be done to
delight the Queen?

A curtain was lowered to exclude the majesties of the interview from
lesser spectators, and within that enclosure the High Priest stood after
salutation, leaning on his great staff ciphered with hieroglyphs and
speaking his mind as the great with the great. He was himself descended
from a King of the Fifth Dynasty and bore his name.

“It is fitting that the Divine Cleopatra should make offering in the
mighty Temple of Osiris built by her great predecessors on the throne,
and that the Divine Consort should accompany her. Tonight when the
eternal stars keep watch, come, Lady of Egypt, and make offering for
yourself and the unborn God.”

The occasion struck a new string in the high-strung nature of Cleopatra,
responsive to every note of terror or beauty. Her vessel lay for the
first time between banks awful with the glorious and silent temples of
the mightiest period of Egyptian wisdom. There was heaviness in the air,
a dead and oppressive destiny heaped on the present by the actions and
faiths of peoples unknown and vanished, yet still potent for good and
ill. Alexandria—how different! There she had often jested with her
intimates, Charmion and Apollodoros (but he refuses to recognise that
comedy), at the cowheaded Hathor, the jackal-headed Anubis. Who could
expect any modern person to take such manifestations quite
seriously—and amid the irreverent brilliancies of the town of a
comparatively latter-day person like Alexander the Great? Three hundred
years since he died, and what was that compared with the immense and
terror-striking antiquity represented by Abydos? She could hardly
breathe the air for the weight of ages upon it; its dead dreams brooded
upon the sands and the temples already beginning to feel the touch of
decay, the ruining of time. She had heard that the spirits of the dead
are powerful and from them nothing is hidden, and the belief became
credible here in their all but visible and tangible presence.

“I will come, most noble Sahu-Ra,” she said, faltering. “I had no other
thought, but my condition pleads for your pardon if I am weak. And by
him who sleeps at Abydos I entreat your intercession for me and for the
King unborn.”

He made a gesture with his hand, turning away.

“You shall not go. I swear it!” Cæsar said sternly as the boat made for
the shore.

“What, and face misfortunes I dare not name, if I disobey? No, my hero
shall come with me, and all be well. I am no coward.”

But yet she was pale as the Nile lilies.

When the orange sunset had died over the sands of the Arabian desert the
stars came out lamping low and brilliant, the more so because no moon
lit the world.

“The Egyptian serving girls say that on this night she shines in the
Under World, and, because the dead fear light, they troop to our night!”
said Charmion fearfully as she bound her Queen’s head with the fillets
worn by the ancient rulers of Egypt when they visited the Sanctuary of
Sanctuaries. “Is it well my Queen should leave the brightness and safety
of the royal boat for those dark temples?”

“Is it well that the Queen of Egypt should pay her duty in the holy
places? And should you hinder me, Charmion? Give me courage, if I
shrink. And I do shrink. Abydos is a place of awful memories.”

Poor Charmion cast about for reassurance, trembling for her beloved.
Presently her face brightened.

“Royal Isis—the Goddess Isis incarnate in you has nothing to fear from
her brother and husband, the mighty Osiris. Oh, this is a place of good
omen for you—of happiest omen! All the gifts of the God will be laid in
your hands. And more—was not the Light on the Horizon, who foretold all
good for my dear Lady, a priest of the Temple at Abydos? What but good
can come from that happy place?”

Joy dawned on the little pale face. Woman-like, queen-like, she had
forgotten the warning, and remembered only the good.

“My own Charmion, how right you are! It is true. For this good thought,
kiss me!”

She moved slowly to the curtain and Charmion held it aside, following
her to where Cæsar waited. He looked at her in astonishment. She wore
the ritual dress and insignia of the Goddess Isis, copied faithfully
from the most ancient pictures,—a dress stiff, archaic, not in itself
so much beautiful as strange with a strangeness that set her apart in
divinity.

A white robe was loosely girded about the waist and flowing to the feet
from the girdle, gemmed with amulets of Isis. On her head were golden
horns supporting the disk of the sun and springing from the throne of
Osiris, all wrought in gold. This rested on the close-fitting vulture
cap, the bird-head pointing greedily forward, the blue wings covering
her ears as though to shut out all earthly sounds. In one hand she bore
the feather of truth, with its lotus capital. In the other, the ringed
cross of life, symbolising immortality. It was no dress to set off
womanhood or beauty, nor had it been chosen for that purpose. Every
detail represented a vast cosmic symbolism to the minds of those who
saw, a terrible solitude of dignity, leading the thoughts to the
innermost of the mysteries.

In this strange dress, claiming eternal majesty, her small pale
humanity, the delicate features a little sharpened by approaching
maternity, touched Cæsar as never before. It was the first instant of
their connection which had awakened any emotion of pity. She had run him
through the gamut of every other emotion but not that of tender
simplicity. The little creature—bearing the solar disk on wearied
brows, the cross of immortality in a hand so slender!—what could she do
when he had left her alone to deal with her divinity and her unruly
kingdom, and her child? If he could stay! If she could come with him! He
longed for it—that he might shield her in his arms.

It passed as quickly as it came, but that moment had been all that his
brilliant life had ever given him to know of the heavenly Eros. Of the
earthly he knew more than enough. Yet it left natural tenderness behind
it. He held his arm about her as they sat in the boat, and supported her
as, preceded by torches, her litter marched to the Temple of Seti the
First, the crowd on either side making reverence and murmuring in an
unceasing monotone of adoration:

“The Goddess comes to worship the God. O earth, be silent!”

At the entrance all fell back, and only Cleopatra and Cæsar entered the
vast hall, supported by pillars, where the High Priest and two others
standing behind him waited rigid as images.

And as they stood, the High Priest, leaning on his staff, pronounced a
greeting:

“Hail to the living Isis, justified before earth and heaven! Let her
approach the altar of her lord Osiris, and be received by him as a wife
by her husband, making the declaration of purity.”

The priests turned, and, conscious of a strange upbearing power, the
Queen followed them, Cæsar walking behind her, kindling to the
indescribable emotions roused by the vastness and silence. Awe floated
in the air like an inaudible but thrilling vibration and catching the
imagination of the man tuned him into the key of the occasion. He felt
and bore himself as should the consort of the Queen.

But at the entrance of the next hall, the priest’s raised hand halted
him.

“Here none may enter but the priests and the holy Isis. Holy is it and
most holy! Here stand, Great One, and see, but set no foot over the
threshold lest the thunder of the God break loose.”

Cæsar looked anxiously in the face of Cleopatra but she made no sign.
Her eyes were fixed on the altar of black marble seen small in the
immense length of the hall. A flame of fire, pure white and pointed,
burned steadily and unwaveringly upon it and was the only light in the
great and shadowy place. Darkness itself would have been less
awe-striking.

“If harm come to the Queen—!” he said, his attitude a menace.

“What should hurt the Queen in the halls of her own divinity? Stand
back, Roman, back!” the old man answered sternly. She was already moving
forward as though drawn to the flame. Cæsar stood before the threshold
in deep dread, fearing to invoke some mysterious danger if he followed,
every nerve trembling with dread of the unknown.

Thus, followed by the priests, she approached the great altar of black
marble supporting the silent image of Osiris, in black marble also,
crowned, but bandaged and stiff, a mummy, the dead but living God,
holding the symbol of life immortal—and beside him a high-raised empty
throne of black marble, as though for an equal God.

The High Priest now preceded her, turned, and standing before the image
faced the Queen.

“Osiris hears. Let the Royal Wife, the Goddess, make declaration.”

With courage, she raised her hands in salutation and began:

“I have come before thee. May I not be turned back! May my members be
renewed by the sight of thy beauty. Because I have worshipped may I
reach the land of Eternity!

    “I come before thee pure, bearing thy son Horus in my body.
    Give peace and protection to thy sister, thy wife.
    Set thy Child Horus upon the throne of the Two Lands.
    Hail, Osiris, Lord of the dead and living.
                            Homage!”

She prostrated herself before the Osiris, then rising, guided by the
priest’s hand, ascended the empty throne of black marble beside him,
and, as she did so, sitting motionless as the marble image, a rattling
of sistra was heard, and from all the chapels poured in hundreds of
priests filling the sanctuary, while mysterious lights in the roof and
great columns sprang into life, flooding the scene with radiance.

A strong-voiced male chant broke from the men, drowning all else in
waves of deep sound:

“O Lady of the Beginning, Lady of the Emerald, shine before our faces!
Come in peace, thou who art Hathor the Lovely!
Come in peace, thou who art Isis the Hidden!
Hathor is the Lady of the turquoise, great in the Land of Egypt!
Isis is the Lady of the Emerald, great throughout the world.
Hail, thou hidden God born in the flesh of her body!”

There was a sudden and dead silence, and then, terrifying and
magnificent, broke out the thundering shout:

              “Shine, O Golden One! Hail! Hail! Hail!”

The lights were suddenly extinguished—only the radiance from the altar
flame fell on the tense pale face of the human Goddess adored by her
priests. They could be seen—dim shadows like a darkness on the ground.
She rose with outstretched hands to pronounce the ritual words, and even
as she did so the light on the altar fell and was not, and a great
thunder overhead rolled like the denunciation of the Gods.

In the blinding darkness a moaning wail broke from all the prostrate
figures, and through it pierced the cry of the High Priest:

“Not in ten thousand years has the light died. Not since the hand of the
holy Isis lit it in Abydos. O Queen, go forth! The God rejects your
child and you! Go, go, go!”

There was a frightful silence. Cæsar in an agony of fear for the Queen,
helpless in the darkness, pushed forward with the instinct to reach and
guard her, and so set his foot over the holy threshold.

As he did so frightful thunderings broke out again, with darting
flashing lights among the columns. A hedge of priests invisibly opposed
him, steadily ranked.

“Here it is death to enter. Behold the lightnings of the God!” they
shouted. “Do not dare to enter!”

Amid thunderings and lightnings terrible to hear and see, the mass of
men parted, and four bearing the Queen as if dead in their arms came
slowly down the pathway. The High Priest followed, his face white with
fear. He made a wild gesture of abhorrence.

“It is doom; it is doom! Never has such a thing been! She is not of our
blood. The God rejects her. Flee from the Holy Place, O unhappy!—taking
her also. For the face of the God is set against you as a hedge of
spears!”

The priests broke into a run, carrying her as though to have done with
the accursed thing, Cæsar perforce running with them, himself wild with
mingled fear and anger, conscious that it was a flight most ignominious
and dangerous to the Queen’s honor.

The litter was reached, and they laid her in it, then turning fled to
the temple entrance where the High Priest waited towering above the
tossing groups of his priests.

Marvellous to tell, the night was still and starlit as when they
entered. The thunder had ceased. Only the people prostrate and
face-hidden along the way testified to the past terror. Furious and
shamed, Cæsar shouted aloud:

“If this matter is told abroad not a man of you shall live. I will smoke
out this hive of wild hornets until not one stone is left on another to
tell the tale of the trickery and sedition of priests!”

And still the High Priest cried above the throng:

“Go! Go!”

And the people lay in dead silence like ghosts in the night.


                               CHAPTER IX

When, on board the royal vessel, Cleopatra returned to life, she pushed
her disordered hair aside, and, pale as death, wild-eyed, sent for
Apollodoros.

“Go instantly. See the High Priest Sahu-Ra. Ask him in what I have
sinned. Take with you my emerald crown and the armlets of fine emerald
and offer them. Entreat him that he come and give his blessing to me and
my child. Oh, Cæsar, do not delay him!”

For Cæsar would have drawn him aside to consult on the possibility of
the whole episode being trickery with some dark and terrible priest-plot
behind it. Yet even if it were, so mighty was the power of the priests
over the Egyptian people that none could dare affront them, and her
method of conciliation might be the safest. Cæsar stood back, perplexed.
Again she cried to Apollodoros:

“Most faithful, say to him that the Light on the Horizon, a venerable
priest of his temple, foretold me all good. Why then is the face of
Osiris set against me and my child?”

Apollodoros, himself utterly confounded, fully realising the danger,
delayed not one moment. Cleopatra, leaning through the curtains, saw his
boat rowing swiftly to shore, and sank back sighing on her cushions. She
kept a troubled silence. Cæsar was a great man, none greater, but what
could he know of the dealings of the Gods of Egypt with those of their
own people?

In a very short time Apollodoros knelt before her again, himself quaking
at the news he had to bring.

“Lady of Egypt, the doors of the temple were barred as if in the day of
battle, and from a pylon a priest looked down and bade me begone. I
showed the great emeralds. I cried aloud to him, but none answered.”

At that extreme of insult her spirit kindled to fierce anger. She sprang
to her feet like a raging goddess.

“Then, if it be so, and the God of Abydos rejects me, I appeal to the
ever living Gods of whom I myself am one. And in Hermonthis I will build
myself a temple to Isis. And if the Egyptian Gods reject me I will honor
those of Rome and they shall protect me!”

They calmed her as best they could, fearing the consequences, and at
last, with the amazing elasticity of her strange nature, the impression
dimmed on her mind; it became a dream of the past night and the very
next day the joyful images of the sunny future and the triumph to be had
effaced it. She could even jest with Cæsar on the trickery of the
priests and the vast and hidden chambers where great engines for
contriving the stage thunders might so easily be hidden. But they left
Abydos with the utmost speed and continued their journey up the Nile
with pomp and music and feasting to the rulers of the various nomes
through which they passed.

“Yet, it is observable,” said Apollodoros in great anxiety to Charmion,
“that in all the holy places the priests hold aloof and there is no
question but that the people shrink from us at their order. The priests
do what is needed. They acknowledge the divine union and the divinity of
the child to be; but nothing more than is ritually required of them. In
Alexandria it matters little, for there no man believes in anything but
gain, but in this ancient and mighty Egypt it is another affair and of
my two eyes I would give one to know the meaning. I fear very greatly
that in their hidden knowledge they have foreseen harm from the alliance
with Rome through Cæsar. Oh, that I could know, but the priests are
secret as death. Eventually this may ruin the Queen.”

To Cæsar, Cleopatra said little or nothing about the episode at Abydos
when it was past. For her plans it was of the utmost importance that the
magnitude of her riches, power, and the devotion of her people should be
stamped on his mind, and it was bitter to her that he should have seen
her rejection for in all things she desired that he should realise her
consequence as an ally. They little knew how unblinded were those clear
Roman eyes, that acute brain.

So the days and months went on to the great day which should bring to
life the divine child who for earthly reasons also might be expected to
possess more than a ray of piercing intelligence. Apart from all
pretensions to deity, the child of Cæsar and Cleopatra should accomplish
much on the royal stage where the throne awaited him.

And when it dawned the frantic rejoicings of the city showed that the
Gods had been great in giving. On the breast of the Queen lay a
man-child fair and beautiful, strong-limbed and bright, true heir to his
father and mother, wielder of the sceptre of the world.

Lifting him in weak arms with joy and pride unbounded, she presented him
to his father:

“I have called him Cæsarion and he shall live to make your name greater
even than it is now. I say that he shall carry the name like a banner
over Europe and Asia. Receive him as the noblest of gifts, and thank me
also, for—I have suffered!”

She had all but died in the battle of life-giving, but pride rushed to
her white cheek in scarlet as she spoke.

As Cæsar took the child in his arms a strange tenderness suffused his
heart, the more so because the very next day he must leave these two, to
fight their battle and his own in Rome. Already the galleys waited in
the Harbor of the Happy Return, straining like hounds at the leash.

“I swear that there shall be no deed undone, no thought unthought to
place him where he should be. And of all that I have, the best is his.
And for this gift which has changed the face of the world to me, I thank
my lady and wife.” He could scarcely say less, but the last word was
precious to her for it constituted the acknowledgment of his position as
Divine Consort, and the assurance that that was the attitude to be
observed in Rome. Surely every word and event bore out the flashing
pictures of glory which she had beheld with the sight given by the wise
Egyptian—the Light on the Horizon.

In parting he clasped her to his breast, saying:

“Guard this great charge I have given you. Be wise in Egypt for his sake
and mine. Take counsel always with the wise Apollodoros. Amass great
riches that they may always be at our disposal. They are the sinews of
war. And when I send for my Queen to Rome come with glory that they may
say the Sun indeed has risen in the East. And now may all the Gods be
good to you and Fortune blow my sails full for Rome.”

Weak and craving at the moment for some more personal word she clung to
him, shedding a few tears.

“And Calpurnia, Cæsar beloved?”

“Calpurnia is _my_ affair, and you shall not suffer!” he said in a
cooler tone, and disengaging himself. “And now, is there more to say?”

“No more!” she answered, piqued that the obvious vows and protestations
which really were a matter of common courtesy, if no more, should be
forgotten.

“You will follow my counsel?”

“Faithfully. Have I not my child to think of?”

“Then farewell, happiest and most beautiful; and when I send, come
quickly.”

It was over. Lying by the great window looking out upon the harbor and
the Pharos, in a short while she saw the oars of the fleet, loaded, by
the way, with Egyptian treasure, dip at the given signal, and the sails
run up and expand their wings to the fair breeze. Like oaring swans they
followed their leader, leaving the strange solitude on empty waters that
the passing of a ship bequeaths to a deserted harbor. All Alexandria was
on the quay, applauding and waving. There were few who did not realise
the magnitude of Cæsar’s errand to Rome. But Cleopatra did not watch for
the figure of Cæsar and her last glimpse of one beloved. In silence she
lay with the small Cæsar in her arms thinking strange thoughts—clearly
shaped and resolute for a girl so young. The immediate impression of
Cæsar’s personality had passed from her with the last sight of his face,
and she felt power within to shape life and bend it to her will for
herself and the child.

When it was permitted she sent for Apollodoros and showed him the face
of the prince like a rose on the pillow beside her.

“Here is the fruit of our policy, most faithful, and now we are alone to
deal with it, you and I. Cæsar is gone, and the Gods only know whether
to death or life, to glory or defeat. Even now I hesitate whether to
dare all with Rome or to fall back into Egypt and make myself one with
my own people. It is a great decision whether to win the priests back
and stand by the Gods of Egypt, or to trust the Roman deities and go
forward.”

Kneeling he fixed brooding eyes upon her, eyes full of doubt and
foreboding.

“There is now no turning, divine Cleopatra. We are as surely bound to
Cæsar as he to us and all is staked on his fidelity. The Gods are good
to us in giving this child. It is a strength here and in Rome. But, O
beloved Lady, do not speak lightly of the Gods of Rome any more than of
the Gods of Egypt. It is in my mind that all gods are one, and the names
we give them, but disguises they use to steal nearer to the hearts of
men. Certainly they protect the truth-teller and justice-dealer, and the
name of a righteous king is dear to them.”

“It is true. But, alas, the disguise they wear is so thick that we never
see them, never know them till too late; and there is nothing easier to
forget than a god, if it were not a lover! I have half forgotten Cæsar
already, should have wholly forgotten him, if it were not for ambition.
For the child is mine, mine, and I will make him great. What is a father
to a child? For my part I wonder the Gods should have troubled to create
such an irrelevance! It is the mother—it is the long nine months that
count, the jewel shaping into color and fire in the dark. But I will
affront no god, though I wish that Isis and all the rest of them had not
made me so cold and lonely in my heart that I can never give myself
wholly to any one—no, not even to Charmion and to you. I long to love,
I die to love, and I can see nothing in it! Life is my lover—of that I
never weary; and to use men, to set them alight is a part of life, but
no more.”

She laughed, throwing herself back on the pillows. He thought she had
never looked so human, or showed so little of the cold elf-like
strangeness which came like bright cold glass between her and any
approach from outside. However well she feigned love and submission, he,
at least, could always decipher her; but now, for awhile, her struggle
for life and young motherhood had given her an exquisite delicacy of
coloring, and her manner a soft languor more attractive than the boyish
frankness of the past. She clasped the child, her bright intricate eyes
softened with a haze like tears as she studied the little face of the
Ruler of the World.

That mood too was thrown aside when she gave him to the nurses, and talk
passed into the best means of conciliating the priests. She gave orders
for the building of the temple at Hermonthis, and especially that she
herself should be depicted on its sacred walls in company with the God
Amen, and that a splendid constellation of gods should appear, assisting
at the birth of her child. All the time she was vehemently wishing that
the Goddess’s tastes were not so extravagant, and what, she asked, could
there be to please any one with a ray of womanhood about her in a dull
old temple and the eternal chanting of tedious priests? “Of course there
may be something in it I don’t grasp, and if so it may be a good
investment. There are times when I believe in my own divinity, but many
more when I don’t. It may be easy enough to give oneself airs when the
people shout ‘Hail to the Goddess,’ though I often think them fools for
their pains; but just now I nearly died in childbirth and there was very
little of the goddess about me then. And look at Arsinoë—I suppose she
must have a divine particle in her if I have, but none the less she will
have to walk in Cæsar’s Triumph in Rome, loaded with golden chains and
loathing her life. It’s rather a poor show being a human divinity.”

She laughed aloud. The humor of that thought was never far from her.

“A divinity—I! Well, I hope my fellow gods will remember this poor
immortal in Rome, for otherwise I shall never see Egypt again. Gods! the
nest of enemies waiting for me! Calpurnia! Octavian, Cæsar’s nephew,
whom the birth of this child has ruined! All Cæsar’s light and heavy
loves! Think in how many paths I am a stumbling block.”

She laughed again; then sighed.

“Well, good-bye to Cæsar for the present. I never loved him—he was too
cantankerous and took himself too seriously. But, all the same, it was a
good time and I lived every hour of it. I have downed Ptolemy and
Potheinos. Arsinoë is a prisoner. Did Cæsar use me or I him? And which
will it be in Rome? For now the Roman adventure opens.”


                               CHAPTER X

The affairs of Cleopatra and his son fell into the background of Cæsar’s
mind soon after he left Alexandria, for along the Mediterranean were
several little wars which needed the hand of the All-Conqueror, and even
on reaching Rome he was compelled to leave it almost immediately to
exterminate the remaining friends of Pompey in North Africa. But, on the
whole, this suited his plans, for, go where he would, Victory followed
him like a figure chained with gold in the Triumphs of Rome; and he
returned, haloed with glory, more than a year after he had left Egypt,
exalted in the eyes of the Romans to a position almost more than mortal.

The delay had given time also for splendid rumors to precede him of the
Egyptian amour. They exaggerated the magnificence of the Queen, her
beauty and political importance, his own unique and miraculous position
as her Divine Consort and father of the succeeding Pharaoh. Egypt was
far enough away to make any marvels credible, combined as the stories
must be with the acknowledged mystery and antiquity of that strange
country. From time immemorial the Greeks and Romans had looked to it as
a sacred wonder, and Cæsar’s adventures there added more brilliant rays
to the glory that now encircled him. To be sure these rumors lost
nothing in the hands of Mark Antony, his general, whose own interests
required that Cæsar’s should flame resplendent in the sky.

Behold him in the gardens of Cæsar’s magnificent villa across the Tiber
paying a visit of ceremony to the forsaken Calpurnia, a visit which her
warm dislike of Antony could have dispensed with, and only endured as
obedience to Cæsar’s commands.

She sat in an arbor of trees by the lapping of the river, shaded by
interwoven branches of leaf and blossom from the ardent sun, enjoying
the coolness rising from the wandering water. No longer a very young
woman, she still possessed the marble stateliness of beauty which Cæsar
could not dispense with in his wife. She had also the air of having
lived in the midst of great events and being equal to them—a
close-lipped and reticent dignity necessary to a woman who must take her
place in an utterly dissolute society and hold herself above the muddy
path with sufficient skill to avoid giving offence.

Cæsar must have a wife above suspicion, but she must also strengthen his
party, increase his popularity, help to dispense his vast hospitalities
and carry an air of sober and benign grandeur through it all. Women must
not feel she censured their debaucheries, though she did not share them.
They must be able to say:

“The kind Calpurnia. The dear Calpurnia. A pity she is so strait-laced
for herself when she is so sympathetic and lenient for others!”

They did not know that she held the daily promiscuous drunkenness and
gluttony in abhorrence, apart and austere as a cloistered nun, a born
mystic and worshipper in the new faith of the Egyptian Isis, which was
taking steady root in Rome. There before the Mother-Image of the Divine
Mother, the childless wife of Cæsar found a mystic peace through which
his infidelities and ambitions sounded far off as the murmur of distant
waters. He had never intruded them on her in Rome. So, as women will,
having lost what she valued most, she replaced it with what she could
best gather to her desolate heart. She looked with wincing distaste at
Mark Antony as he came through a long pergola of roses forming a vista
which concentrated light and shade on his remarkable person. To her he
represented all the vices of Rome, all that had made a desert of her
life and left her lonely. Each and every one of them found their
apotheosis in Antony.

His very swagger bruised her. Two slaves attended him, one fawning with
his purple cloak in case of need; the other strutting insolently behind
him with the air of the spoiled favorite.

He was a big man shaped for heavy strength and power, of great height
even among the tall Romans, a man who would be corpulent in later life
and was massive now. He had a thick throat based on broad shoulders,
powerful jaws belied by the curve of beautiful sensuous lips, low
forehead and aquiline nose, the beak of the bird of prey, with a spring
of plentiful hair from the brows lying in curling masses heavy as marble
over his finely moulded head. A splendid personality, brimming with
over-abundant life, a very creditable representative of the mighty
Hercules; for that, and no less, was the descent he claimed.

The living Hercules, his flatterers called him, and it was in
acknowledgment that he wore his purple tunic girt close to his huge
thigh, and a heavy sword swinging beside it. Altogether he presented a
highly impressive appearance, which did not in the least attract the
lady of the villa. Her lip curled with dislike as he drew near, relaxing
only into the smallest pinched smile demanded by civility.

Seeing her, he performed a carelessly good-natured salutation for,
having no influence with Cæsar or others, she counted little with him.
The two slave-girls behind her watched with interest. He was invariably
interesting to women.

A seat was placed for him in the shade at a respectful distance from the
great lady and he proceeded to make himself comfortable with
considerable care.

“It is a hot day, most noble Calpurnia, and this garden is like the
tepidarium in the baths. It makes a man sweat horribly and I have a
thirst which—”

She gave the order for wine cooled with snow, in a voice which might
have chilled it sufficiently, and when it stood beside him eyed it with
an air of aloofness which forbade any suggestion that she should share
it.

“I have this day a letter from Julius Cæsar, noble Calpurnia, and he
charges me to tell you that he returns to Rome within a few days of my
receiving it. I offer my felicitations.”

“And I accept them.”

There was a pause. Then very coldly and distinctly she asked:

“Is there news also of the Egyptian?”

There could be no concealment on that point. Rome had rung with it since
the beginning of the amour, and it really required no delicacy of
treatment even with Cæsar’s wife. As to the slaves, who cared what they
heard or thought? Besides, were not he and Calpurnia talking Greek, just
as elegant people later were to glide into a foreign tongue when they
wished to baffle the vulgar? She had really asked as coolly as she might
have done about her husband’s health.

“As a matter of fact she is no Egyptian, noble Calpurnia. She is a
Greek—Macedonian, for choice. I think it is only out of their pretty
little spite that our ladies call her the Egyptian.”

“I have no spite, either pretty or ugly,” Calpurnia replied. “Is the
child living?”

“So they say. A boy.”

“And Cæsar, who will run a mile if he hears a child squeak!” said
Cæsar’s childless wife, smiling frostily.

“He has run farther than a mile,” Antony reminded her. “It is a good bit
farther from Alexandria to Rome. But it is said—”

The “but” arrested her as she pulled a white rose to bits. She stopped
and looked at him with cold Roman eyes under level brows.

“He returns to her?”

“By no means. His plans require his presence here. But they say”—he
cast a side-long glance—“that she is following him to Rome.” In his own
mind he said: “Amusing to see how Lady Decorum takes that!” It was a
thing he himself had hardly thought possible. Calpurnia was one of a
great family, and such an affront actually under her classic nose—no
chance intrigue, but a woman of rank far exceeding her own, with the
position of a wife, and a son to flaunt in the face of Rome—Gods! what
a set-out! He would never have dared it with his own extremely capable
Fulvia, though he had left nothing else undared. But then Fulvia had a
masterly way with her which Calpurnia lacked. She might even have flown
at him, claws out like a Fury. Whereas Lady Decorum took it as the
gladiators take a sword in the heart, unflinching and silent.

“Do you hear what the woman is like? The heavy Oriental style, I
suppose.”

Antony laughed, one of his jolly ha-ha shouts!

“Hercules, no! A Greek, noble Calpurnia. Slight, beautifully made,
straight little nose, golden eyes, brown hair dashed with gold, a
scapegrace madcap as ever lived. A daring, racy girl. Uncommonly
amusing, they say.”

“You seem,” said the lady, tapping with her foot, “to have gone to some
trouble to find out all you can and acquaint yourself with her general
effect. Why?”

He laughed with the careless good temper which made him the idol of the
soldiers and of friends as reckless as himself.

“Pretty women are pretty women all the world over. Can’t think of
anything else when they are about. Nothing so interesting as an amour.
And especially a divine one.”

“Divine?” Her large gray eyes opened on him in surprise.

“Why, yes. Cleopatra is Isis-Venus, or Venus-Isis, according to which
mood is topmost at the moment—the respectable or the disreputable. I
fancy Venus comes first generally with her. But an Egyptian queen is
always more or less divine.”

A thrill had run through her body at the beloved name of the Goddess—a
shudder at the mockery. But the subject held her.

“And do people believe it?”

“Naturally—in Egypt. And who can disprove it? Every charming girl is an
incarnation of Venus, if you come to that. And she is also a queen and
beautiful, with temples built in her honor and rows of priests to hymn
her. The Divine Cleopatra is a lady to reckon with, and that is why
Cæsar has mixed himself up with her.”

Some inward compulsion drove her on, even with this coarse gladiator.
“But is she beautiful, noble Antony? The centurion who brought the last
news from Egypt saw her pass in her chariot. The sight was magnificent;
her tunic, as it were, of emeralds, but her face pale and she was very
slender. No Goddess. She sat very gravely.”

He laughed uproariously. “Goddesses only smile in a solitude of two. But
we shall see when she comes, and that will be soon.”

“I believe she will never come,” Calpurnia said haughtily. “You differ
from me? Graciously explain why?”

“Because it is a part of Cæsar’s ambition that she should come. She sits
at the gate of the Orient that Alexander the Great once forced open
though it shut with a clang when he died. And this woman is Queen not
only of Egypt but of armies, ships, a bottomless purse. Did Cæsar kill
young Ptolemy and make the Princess Arsinoë prisoner to amuse the Queen?
No, but for some deep gain of his own. Her beauty is only the sauce to
the dish.”

She was dead silent; new fears and ideas rushing upon her brain. Antony
rose massively.

“No need to fear the Macedonian. Cæsar uses us all as he will. She will
play his game like the rest. I bid you farewell and go to make my
preparations with his friends.”

When he left her the iron had entered her heart. She had never dared to
believe the woman would follow him to Rome or that he would permit it.
She could not believe it even now—her brain tossed like meeting seas
when she tried to force herself to face the thought, and all it would
entail upon her of a misery wholly new and untried. For awhile she
succeeded in convincing herself.

But in two days’ time another visitor arrived at the villa—Antony’s
wife, the redoubtable Fulvia, borne in her litter of ebony and gold
along the garden ways with two richly dressed slave girls before and two
behind. Calpurnia knew her before the curtains were undrawn, by the
large foot, sandalled and bound with golden thongs, which first made its
appearance.

Next came the strong, well-modelled face surmounted with a labyrinth of
stiff curls dispersed with the utmost and most laborious art above a
forehead which should have been that of a ruler of men, and quite
certainly held Antony as a subject. Calpurnia took her by the hand as
she descended and they performed an embrace and greeting more political
than sisterly.

“Noble Fulvia, how the dressing of your hair becomes you! That Armenian
slave is worth her weight in gold. I wish I had her like!”

“Noble Calpurnia, your beauty is beyond improvement by any
hairdressing.”

So like Fulvia! A clumsy compliment that you could take either way and
never be sure which she meant. Was ever woman so maladroit? But the
hostess smiled kindly and sent for the most fashionable sherbet of fruit
juice and wine, and little delicate cakes sprinkled with poppy-seed, and
the talk ranged fast and free over society, Fulvia’s dagger (as her
intimates called her tongue) striking right and left with devastating
candor while Calpurnia followed with the healing balms. It infuriated
the younger woman at last:

“If it were not for your well-known chastity one would say you were far
too lenient to debauchery. One has to endure the laxity of morals that
the wars have brought about, and indeed all the old Roman manners are
gone and the younger generation of women are simply harlots in word and
deed. Have you heard of the behavior of Caia—and what Lucilla’s husband
said in public?”

“I hear so little in these quiet gardens. The birds’ songs deafen me to
scandal. Poor Lucilla—poor Caia! They are both to be pitied.”

“I wonder, noble Calpurnia, whether you will extend the same charity to
the Queen of Egypt when she comes. It will be a lesson to every wife in
Rome if you do.”

“I can imagine nothing more unlikely than her coming,” the other
replied, a little pale about the lips. In those two days she had
reasoned herself into perfect security. Cleopatra would never have the
hardihood to follow her lover to Rome, nor the patience to forgive his
open amour in Africa with the beautiful Eunoë, wife of the Mauretanian
king. Why should a royal woman bear such an insult? No—that patience
was only to be expected from wives. Besides she had the son she needed,
and why should a beautiful girl trouble herself further with a wearied
old debauchee? Calpurnia had slept well with these thoughts for company
and the divine Isis had moreover vouchsafed her a dream of peace. No,
Cleopatra would not come!

Fulvia gave a laugh as irritating as salt on a wound.

“Would that you were right! We have enough scandals here of the
home-grown variety. My very heart compassionates you. But Antony had
news last night from a centurion of the Seventh Legion that her ships
have been seen off the Italian coast. He describes the woman as
possessing the very girdle of Venus. No man can resist her.”

“I had not heard she was so beautiful,” said Cæsar’s wife, with
quivering lips, still clinging desperately to composure.

“Beautiful, yes. In the best Greek type. But yet quite a new style, and
will set all the fashionable fools mad to copy her. She sticks at
nothing. Will disguise herself in a hundred ways and ramble through the
city with her lover, whoever he may be at the moment, like a perfect
daredevil, seeking adventures. She has the courage of a man and a wit
that stings like gadflies!”

“Coarse, common, then,” said the sad Calpurnia.

Fulvia heard a gleam of hope in her voice and pounced on it like a hawk.
“Coarse, common? Venus, no! Not a bit like Antony’s beloved Cytheris,
the actress. _There’s_ commonness, if you want it! No. She can say the
sharpest things in the most innocent way and freeze you with her royalty
next second, and it is always a queen amusing herself with the ways of
the vulgar. They say her palace is the most enchanting place in the
world and perfectly scandalous, and since no one has ever known a great
lady behave like a harlot and still retain the most _perfect_
distinction every one is mad to see her. Our Roman vices are vulgar in
comparison.”

“I have no doubt the noble Antony is interested,” said Calpurnia
gravely. Fulvia laughed harshly:

“You are vexed. I have distressed you, best Calpurnia, I who am your
friend! Naturally _you_ would not be amused with her vagaries. Let us
talk of the new show. They say there is a gladiator from
Germania—Vespasia and Julia are mad about him already—a big
golden-haired brute of a man—”

A woman slave came rushing through the pergolas, her long hair flying
behind her. She dropped on one knee before the ladies, gasping for
breath. “Domina, great Cæsar landed two days since, and he will enter
Rome this afternoon. It is said the Senate will meet him without and
attend him to his house in the city.”

Fulvia rose instantly: “I will leave you to your preparations. The Gods
grant you a happy meeting with Cæsar.”

She was gone, the litter scurrying off through the roses as though the
bearers were hurrying to see the show. Calpurnia was alone, but for the
women behind her, exchanging significant glances above her braided hair.
They both knew more Greek than was supposed.

“Leave me. I wish to be alone; and tell the slaves to make ready to take
me to the city. Let them be ready in twenty minutes by the water-clock.”

So this was to be the end of it. In spite of all her religion she had
been conscious of a very human thrill of pleasure when the story of his
amour with the lovely Eunoë reached her, because this often repeated
infidelity to herself would at least be a new experience for the Queen
of Egypt. For all her divinity and magnificence she would have to learn
Calpurnia’s lesson. People said how perfectly she herself had taken this
new escapade, but that was the real reason—Cleopatra! And now—when she
had thought that the anger of the Queen would keep her in Egypt, she was
coming and bringing her son!

That was the agony—oh, her barrenness, her barrenness! She sank on the
turf, weeping, raging, digging her fingers into it as if to cling to
something to secure herself from being swept utterly away on the rushing
tide of passion, a pitiable sight for gods and men.

But the storm was brief. Twenty minutes she had allowed herself by the
water-clock. In fourteen she rose and, kneeling by the fountain, bathed
her face and eyes. She gathered three peerless red roses and fastened
one in her bosom with the brooch which commemorated Cæsar’s victories in
Gaul. The other two she carried in her hand, burying her face in them as
if to enjoy their rich perfume, and so paced beneath the blossoms with
the serenity which she considered became a Roman lady equally in the
presence of joy or ruin.

“I have seen her make more fuss over the misfit of a peplum,” said
Galfreda, the slave from Germania, to Porcia the Latin.


                               CHAPTER XI

Yet after the first moment of meeting and strained attention to what the
great man might condescend to tell her of his adventures, divinity was
not the impression left on the mind of Calpurnia. It was age. His
features would be imposing to the end, but they had grown harsh,
aquiline, haggard, nose projecting sternly over a hard mouth, lips
thinned to a locked line of secrecy enclosed in the sharply cut brackets
of time. The furrows between his eyebrows were dug into trenches giving
a look of perpetual anger like a pouncing hawk, the cheeks so hollow
that the bones jutted beyond the full-face line. He had by no means the
air of the thriving lover of a queen—rather it was the old man who by
instinct and habit holds his attention fiercely fixed upon his business,
because it is an obsession but no longer a pleasure.

Of his year in Egypt and the following battle in North Africa he gave
only the political side, mentioning Cleopatra from that angle alone as a
factor in the harnessing of Egypt to the Roman power. His wife felt
leagues of distance between them in his measured coolness. So, thinking
with intense bitterness, she listened for what seemed to her hours and
still the quiet voice continued, she hardening her resolve to snatch at
the inevitable moment when it came and force him to realise that she too
counted and must be reckoned with at his peril. Sometimes she lost
herself in such thoughts but caught him up again later with fixed eyes
on his masking face.

“You will no doubt have heard,” he was saying austerely, “that I am to
hold a magnificent triumph here. Every curiosity which can tickle the
palates of the Romans will march in the procession. It will last four
days and will surpass anything seen as yet. The Princess Arsinoë, in
golden fetters, will walk in the procession also. And the Queen
Cleopatra will be here to behold it!”

Calpurnia stared at him bewildered. Then it was upon her! But yet—it
was impossible surely! A protest was wrung out of her.

“What?” she said, locking her hands until the bones hurt. “Will the
Queen see the humiliation of her country in her sister, see Egypt
represented as dragged in triumph at your chariot wheels? Surely she
will never be witness of such a frightful humiliation!”

Cæsar turned his pale eyes coldly on her. The color had bleached from
them in the years of his absence.

“You don’t understand. You are mistaken. Arsinoë and the others were
rebels against the Queen. Helped by the Roman power she struck them
down. She comes, rejoicing in her restored dignity, to triumph with us
over the traitors.”

“And will the young Arsinoë be executed at the end of the Triumph? And
will her sister see it?”

An execution of prisoners was a common finis to a Triumph and Cæsar took
the question as a natural one, ignoring the implication.

“Possibly, but not probably. The Queen may express some wish for mercy.
She and Arsinoë travel in the same fleet. She is compelled to be here
because her presence will show the Romans that Egyptian sentiment is
with us. And this is very vital to the plans which I come prepared to
discuss with Mark Antony.”

The confusion in her mind almost overwhelmed her with terror. She who
had been so calm seemed now to be driven by the torrent of events into a
madness like their own. She had climbed painfully from her griefs into a
difficult serenity and yet the beginnings of her struggle were upon her
again. For at least it was something left to be the wife of Cæsar, the
greatest lady in Rome. None of his open and cruel infidelities could
strip her of that honor, and she knew she had borne it worthily. And now
that too was crumbling. In all things she must be eclipsed by the
brilliant Queen, the mother of his child. In all the wide Roman world
there would be nothing left for the childless wife but almost certain
divorce and obscurity, and if she had dreamed that her religious faith
would bear her above her disgrace she was the more deceived. It burned,
it stung, as it might have tortured the veriest worldling.

Urged by great terror, her lips dry with fear, she said hurriedly,
stupidly—she who had meant to choose her words with such careful
dignity:

“There is a child. Whose is it?”

“You refer to the child of the Queen? His name is Cæsarion. He is my
son.”

There was dead silence in the beautiful chamber. The floor was paved in
a rich mosaic with the story of Medea, the cruelly forsaken wife of
Jason. In a chariot drawn by winged dragons she was blown on a gale
across a wrathful sky to her vengeance on the two who had betrayed her.
She leaned forward, her face a mask of hate.

Calpurnia’s eyes rested on it and the omen rang hollow in her heart.

He looked at her indifferently.

“Is the bath prepared?” Knowing what she suffered, he knew that
mastership must come first. Afterwards, if she could learn her lesson,
would come the rewards of submission. He rose as if to go.

But for long habit of self-control the torrent would have broken from
her raging. She must speak, would have died if she had not, but she kept
the outward quiet of the great lady though her voice was dry and hard as
a loose wire.

“Then what is to be her position when she comes? Your wife? And mine?”

She had risen and stood leaning one hand on a sculptured marble table as
if to support herself. He looked at her coolly.

“I am very glad you ask these questions. They clear the air, and I am
entering on a very difficult and confused stage of my career. You can
give me little help, but such as it is I want it.”

A pause. She could not have spoken to save her life. What would he ask?
His coolness gave her the sense that she was a foolish unreasonable
woman—an obstacle in the way of events which mattered supremely. But
she would hold her own. The life of society in Rome had become so
atrocious in debauchery that whatever the vices of the plebeians they
would snatch at the chance of expressing their snarling hatred for their
masters, and Cæsar’s insult to his wife might be made to arm his enemies
to the point where if she could not be honored she might be feared. But
nothing could be read in her down-dropped eyes and he went on:

“The help you can give me is that of behaving reasonably and with
courtesy to Cleopatra. And my reason is this: I have projects too great
to be mentioned, which Egypt opened to me. All my doings there were
conditioned by that necessity. The Queen comes here with the same ends
in view. Surely it would be unworthy in you to spoil great purposes
which will lift yourself to the highest honor, for the sake of an
imbecile’s jealousy. Do I look like a lover?”

He too had risen and faced her across the table. The light fell on his
face and showed it ravaged and weary and old, but it did not touch her
in the least. Men were men, and the past too full of bitter memories for
her to take any word of his at its face-value. She stood sullenly
silent. She had always been sacrificed to his pleasure or ambitions.
Unless she resisted now the last humiliation was upon her. She gathered
herself together at last, trying to master her fear of him, while he
waited with perfect nonchalance, drumming his fingers absently on the
table.

“What do you mean to do with me? And with yourself?”

Poison, or the knife, was not very far from a recalcitrant wife, she
knew, but the Roman ladies were also beginning to recognise the force of
such arguments with recalcitrant husbands. He knew what her question and
unspoken threat meant as well as she, and brushing it aside came
straight to the point.

“We should not be enemies. Why have you never complained in the past and
why now? Let us understand each other.”

It flashed out of her like lightning.

“Because I could despise the other women. Who were they that they should
touch the pride of Calpurnia, daughter of Piso the Consul? I thought of
them little more than of your former wives. But this woman is a queen.
She is adored as a goddess, young, beautiful, the greatest woman in the
world. And she has borne you a son. She must have loved you.”

“I think, never,” he said seriously. “I think I can scarcely flatter
myself on that conquest. She was not even in love with love. She is the
most singular young woman, sexually cold, inordinately proud, humorous,
ironic, and of a most burning ambition. She did not think, nor did her
very clever secretary Apollodoros, that I saw through it, but I did. It
was represented as a flaming passion. But experience with women is a
useful commodity, and women have loved me and I know. She needed a son,
too, after her brother’s death, that she might have what they call in
Egypt a consort on the throne. Therefore, she gave me her body exactly
as she heaped my galleys with treasure, and to the same end.”

“And what is the end?” his wife asked breathlessly, her throat dry as
husks. It was the first time she had had a look beneath the surface in
any one of his amours and it caught her with a more than dramatic
interest. Her face was like a white flame before him. He saw the effect,
noted it, and went on.

“The end is that I should be Emperor of Rome and of the world, that I
should marry her and she be Empress of the World and our son Pharaoh in
Egypt and Roman Emperor with all that the title will mean when I have
done with it.”

“And you tell _me_ this? And I?”

“The thought in my mind is that you should be my wife in Rome and
Cleopatra in Egypt. That is quite possible, and Antony, who entered the
city with me, tells me that that idea has flown round Rome and met with
much approval. There is no question but that the Senate would pass a law
making it possible. The Senate! In a few weeks each word _I_ say will be
law! But as to Cleopatra, my aim will be in every way to raise the
notion of her power, wealth, and divinity here. Every action of mine
shall build up her pedestal, because it will be my own also. Now do you
understand? I do you the honor of addressing you as a reasonable being,
instead of a fool full of malice. Am I to be rewarded?”

She did not hear the question—she had always lived among great policies
and burning party questions in which men’s and women’s lives were as
worthless pawns in a game they themselves could not understand. After
her husband’s triumph over Pompey in Egypt, and in Northern Africa on
his way back to Rome, such great enemies as Scipio and Cato had
committed suicide, owning themselves vanquished, and fifty thousand of
their supporters had perished in the battle that ruined them. Certainly
he had cleared the stage for his own appearance as supreme ruler. But
what tortured her was the doubt as to her own position. Had he any
regard for her—any tenderness at all in his heart for his wife? Was it
in truth only an alliance of policy with the brilliant Queen of Egypt?
If she could see! If she could know!

“Have you no love for her?”

She got out the question at last with dry lips, salt-tasting with a few
bitter tears which had distilled without her knowledge from eyes fixed
on him as if to light up some truth in his own.

“What is she like?” she added. She would judge by his answer.

“I have told you. Ironic for so young a woman. All nerves and quick
replies and changing moods of wild merriment and desponding sadness. A
shadow, an omen, sends her highest hopes to Tartarus. A sunbeam revives
them. I think her dangerous to work with, because of this instability. I
should much prefer your calm. But she has the position which makes her
indispensable. Love her? Again I say, look at me! And I have the world
on my shoulders. Call me Atlas rather than Cæsar.”

It was true. His weariness was heavy upon him. What could she think?

“But she is a woman!” she said, faltering.

“Yes—a woman. But more a goddess. She is Isis in Egypt. Her thoughts
are not those of other women. I was conscious of it often.”

Was he deceiving her deliberately, or himself partly deceived? Had the
spells of Egypt seized their noblest prey as age and sickness pulled him
down? Who could know? But she thrilled to the beloved name.

“Isis! You cannot think it true. A mere woman!”

He turned from her impatiently.

“She is not a mere woman. She is a young goddess. There are things you
cannot understand. Egypt is Egypt.”

Could it be possible, she thought, that the stories of gods assuming
human shape could be true? At the shrines one heard such things
filtering in from the Orient through Persia—and—yet—Egypt? Could it
be possible that even a portion of the Goddess for her own divine ends
had condescended—Impossible! But—such things had been known. They were
a part of the Roman faith as well as of the Egyptian. Some laughed at
them, but others believed heart and soul. Isis, the mysterious! Her
resolution was loosening already under the spell of his calm
reasonableness and the almost equality with which for the first time he
treated her. His very voice was a spell, clear, low, with a deep
resonance and magic that might break forth in power to subdue all
humanity to his will. When had he failed? And what he said harmonised
with her own beliefs! He saw, noted, and added:

“It is for you to choose whether you will be the partner of my counsels
and hers and rise with us to magnificence, or pose as the wife betrayed,
scorned and despised. I know which I would choose, but women are women.
For you I will say you have always hitherto acted as a Roman wife should
do. If you refuse your part I shall respect the past though I disown the
present.”

His calm was conquering. She collapsed into defeat with the last word.
There was relief even in defeat and yielding.

Who would have known Calpurnia, the serene, the dignified, in the pale
woman with tempestuous tears raining down her face, stretching out her
hands blindly to her husband. Again he might have said—“I came, I saw,
I conquered, in a victory not less difficult than that of Zela,” but
there was no trace of exultation in the calm with which the conqueror
took the shaking hands into his and held them as if for reassurance.

“You will not regret it. You shall share my plans. And first, it will be
necessary that Cleopatra shall occupy my villa by Tiber. She must be
surrounded with every magnificence. We will remain here and visit her
when necessary. Laugh aloud when the foolish women call her Egyptian.
She is pure Macedonian Greek and must not be thought of as Asiatic.
Express your satisfaction in her coming and the glorious gifts she
brings for you. Act as though you respected her and my alliance with
her. She has the wit to repay you in kind. Thwart the waspish
domineering Fulvia who holds Antony up to public ridicule by her
behavior. Cause them to believe her the goddess she most truly is. On
her rests the fate of the world.”

“I will do it. I will do it!” she sobbed, clenching his hands as if
broken in the soul-strain. “You are my master. I will obey.”

He leaned forward as if to kiss her on the cheek when a noise crashed in
the atrium, Antony bouncing in from the street, burly, gay, half-drunk
with the excitement of Cæsar’s return and the great game beginning.

“Where is the Divine Cæsar? Where?” they heard him shouting to the
laughing slaves. “Make way for the first of his subjects!”

His great voice rang through the rooms. They could hear the answering
laughter of the slaves. No one feared Antony unless the battle-lust was
on him.

“And when the lovely Egyptian Queen comes loaded with gifts—splendor,
wealth, for every fortunate slave in great Cæsar’s household, you will
all be plutocrats, every man Jack and woman Jill of you! Pearls for
these pretty ears—”

They heard the squeak and scuffle of an escaping slave-girl from
Antony’s boisterous embrace.

Calpurnia dashed her eyes dry, shuddering at the coarseness intruded on
her deep intense feeling. It jarred her every nerve. Cæsar laughed
aloud,—

“The great overgrown boy!—a true descendant of the rollicking amorous
Hercules! Go, wife, all is well between us. Send Serapion the
Alexandrian to tell me when the bath is ready.”

She glided away like a shadow as Antony leaped in almost breathless with
excitement. With a vine-garland about his knotted curls, flushed and
handsome, he would have been the Roman Bacchus to the life. As it was,
he was Antony, the darling of the legions, and none on earth like him.
His familiarity with Cæsar was in itself a miracle to petrify the
beholder. Cæsar! Who else than Antony would have flung his fingers in
that august face with a frenzied gesture of inquiry.

“How does the old girl—I mean the noble Calpurnia—take it?”

The Dictator’s face relaxed into a smile that made the wrinkles about
his mouth deeper.

“Like a sensible wife and an ambitious woman. She will play her part.”

Antony sat himself on the marble table and swung his legs to and fro.

“Good. Excellent! All the Gods grant that I learn your secret with women
some day, and master Fulvia! She’s as sour as a choke-cherry and as
obstinate as an Iberian mule with forelegs stuck out before it. They
always master me, the darlings—and if they were worth it— But what I
came to say is this: That devil Cicero must be flattered and overwhelmed
with gifts by the Queen, or his pen will be a sword against us. He is
stirring already like a snake in the grass. Write him a letter, most
noble Dictator, about his fame having reached Egypt and outshining the
Pharos—now, now! before the other side gets him! Take the bath first
and then—at him! And I am to meet the Queen and escort her to Rome.
Venus Aphrodite send that I don’t fall in love with her, since she is
meat for my master.”

Master! That was the title with which Antony had paid his homage and
affection to the man now bestriding the narrow globe, who was to make
him a king also, wallowing in gold and jewels, as though any wealth
would stretch to his vast expenses, his terrific lavishness and
generosity, his wild amours! But without that prospect it was certain
his career would have the rapid end of a meteor. He had worn out even
Roman patience with his debaucheries and waste. His only asset was their
liking—no more popular man in Rome—and that was his surety with Cæsar;
that and his personal courage and gift of brilliant flamboyant oratory,
so useful at a pinch to stir up the soldiers and color the world with
rainbows until the phantom beauty passed in rain and storm.

Yes, there was only one Antony, and Cæsar must have him!

“Go, meet the Queen!” he said, smiling. “Go in splendor—your best
Hercules manner! Take a great guard with you. Treat her as the greatest
of sovereigns visiting the greatest of cities. She has gifts for you
also, and Cicero has been considered. Announce to the young goddess—for
such she is—that my trans-Tiberine villa is at her disposal with all
its slaves. Lay the homage of Rome at her feet. And meanwhile have the
plebeians excited to frenzy with stories of her beauty and magnificence,
and also of my Triumph to come. She has her own instructions.”

“I go,” said Antony, yet lingered. “Great Master, is she so beautiful?”

“She has the beauty,” said Cæsar with austerity, “which requires a high
taste to appreciate it to the full. It is not the sort that has mastered
you in Cytheris and a hundred others. It is beauty with a something of
the unearthly in it and requires an answering divinity to capture it.
Now go. And remember the Queen is a goddess.”

“Hercules!—I never had a taste for ghosts and lamias! Well—I am off to
my job. Take your bath, Divine One, and rest. You look uncommonly tired.
There is a fine show of gladiators tomorrow—one a Numidian—a marvel
with the net. That would refresh you. No tonic like blood to an old
soldier!”

“Old”—the word he loathed. Cæsar did not smile as he turned away and
Antony made his noisy way to the street.


                              CHAPTER XII

Cleopatra entered Rome with a magnificence hitherto unbeheld even at
those glorified circuses, the Roman Triumphs. The setting had been a
problem to which she had given her keenest wits, for the display was by
no means to convey the notion of uncivilized Asiatic profusion to the
Roman mind. It was to symbolise the utmost that Europe could do; the
truest Greek elegance based on the subject and limitless resources of
Asia. Cæsar’s agents had not been backward in spreading the knowledge,
and it was well known in Rome, that the Alexandrian merchants were
princes among their kind and that this was chiefly because from the Red
Sea they had opened a broad trade route to India, not by the old march
of Alexander the Great across deserts, mountains, and through dangerous
peoples, but by the straight sure way of the sea.

The sea! Cæsar divined from his own experience in war and from what
Cleopatra and Apollodoros had told him in secret that on the sea lay the
future of the World Empire which he beheld with visionary eyes as the
cloudy towers and battlements of a new sovereignty hitherto undreamed.

And now the Romans should have ocular proof of the millions of money
poured into the lap of the young goddess by the trading of her merchants
with the mysterious golden East. They were not to behold a supple and
subservient ruler coming to lay her tribute before their feet in the
seat of their own power. Far from it. They were to realise that for
Cæsar’s purposes of Roman glory here was a great independent monarch
prepared to act with them if so the Republic should choose, and that in
their possible alliance with her lay the future prosperity of Rome. But
they were also to know that the hard won and slowly built civilisation
of Greece and Rome was not to be menaced by a grossness of Orientalism
flooding the relics of republican simplicity. They talked of
republicanism still, though the idea was dead.

In this programme Cleopatra herself was leader. Her own instincts would
invariably guide her rightly in matters of taste, unless she were
deliberately playing to a gallery which must be conciliated on very
different lines. Here, the part suited her pride as well as her sense of
fitness. Rome still labored under a sense of inferiority to Greece in
matters of taste. All distinction in the lighter forms of art came from
Athens. The most skilled actors, dancers, artists in dress, in all the
minor and some of the greater beauties which embellish life, were Greek.
They had reached a technique to which the blunter Romans could never
aspire. That was allowed.

Therefore, she would come as a Greek queen ruling in Egypt—the
advance-guard, as it were, of the irresistible march of European
conquest upon the jewelled lords of Asia.

The Senate had decreed a public reception of welcome to the Egyptian
Queen. They would greet her with Cæsar at their head. If there were some
who grumbled at homage paid to Cæsar’s mistress—a woman who would so
inevitably swell his dangerous power—none could grumble at the enlarged
avenues of commerce which she would open to them. And Rome needed
commerce. The process of consolidating Europe into an empire by force of
arms had been as costly as glorious.

Therefore when her _cortège_ approached the city all Rome lined her way
both within and without. Her ships had debarked their cargoes of
magnificent possessions. Rumor had flown before her to Rome trumpeting
the glories of thrones, beds, tables, of rare Eastern woods and ivories
set with jewels which lesser sovereigns might wear as adornments. Piled
and guarded on the beach by Egyptian soldiers, chests innumerable of
glorious Eastern stuffs and garments hitherto unknown had been seen by
envious eyes, chests also of spices, of confections and preserves of
fruits and foods the very names of which made strange music in Roman
ears. Metal-bound cases were said to be loaded with such gems as the
western world had never glimpsed, and all these treasures were conveyed
across Rome through the glorious gardens of Cæsar’s pleasure villa on
Tiber and placed in strong-houses especially built and guarded. The
waiting, staring crowd never wearied of their pleasure in seeing the
torrent of riches pour into Rome. It made the poorest itch with a sense
of coming ease. What a lady and queen! What could be too good for such a
benefactress? Lucky Cæsar—wicked old dog! but all the same more power
to him if he had captured the liking of a woman who could pay for all
the Roman wars and not know she had done it! The spirit of morality
slumbered to the lullaby of tinkling gold.

And now the litter, following the procession of Indians and Egyptians
magnificently dressed and armed, was advancing. A litter of gold and
ivory set with rosy jewels, curtained with rosy silk woven with threads
of pure gold like a splendid sunset, it approached the open space on the
Capitoline Hill where the Senate awaited it. No eye might see the Queen
until that moment. But in the litter of equal splendor which followed
hers was a sight on which all Rome might glut its eyes and speculations,
for there, displayed to all beholders, sat two nurses, one a fair Greek,
the other a swarthy Egyptian, and in the arms of the Greek sat, looking
about him in baby astonishment, the little Cæsarion. Shouts of delight
and interest rose from the crowd.

“Gods, he is like his father! Do but look at the bold chin, the
alertness of the eyes. We shall have another Cæsar to fight for us when
this sits among the stars. Look at the little fellow! He holds Asia like
a toy in the clutching of his hands.”

So it ran along the lines, densely packed with eager sightseers, the
women shrill in the baby’s praise. The health of him! The little strong
arms and legs! Many times the nurses held him aloft that all might see,
and Cleopatra’s cheek brightened in her litter as she heard. Yes—her
weapons were strong. Cæsar had done well in choosing her for his ally.

By the place where the Senate would receive her, was set a stand where
the most noble Roman women might see and greet the foremost lady of the
world. They sat in ranks, the stately Julias, Claudias, Pompeias and
many more, and among them Fulvia in purple tunic caught with gold fibulæ
on the shoulders, her sharp eyes fixed on every movement of her Antony
who, having dismounted, marched now by the royal litter at the head of a
glittering guard of soldiers nearly as warrior-like in appearance as
himself. “Had he seen Cleopatra? What had he thought of her?” Already a
faint spasm of jealousy stirred in her domineering heart lest the
newcomer should be yet more beautiful than report made her. For if
so—Antony! Oil to fire! Had he ever resisted beauty—or even mere
womanhood, short of the absolutely repulsive, in his life? She turned
her eyes on Calpurnia leaning forward pale and dignified in her white
himation as it was now the fashion to call the draped tunic. She smiled
kindly, bending her head here and there to the lesser ladies who sat
about her, but, so thought the shrewd Fulvia, scarcely conscious of what
she said, so steadfastly were her eyes fixed on the swaying approaching
litter, curtained and mysteriously guarding its secret like the unbudded
petals of a rose.

The soldiers fell back into groups surrounding standards blazing in
gold, displaying Egyptian devices mysterious with gods and goddesses in
stiff hieratic attitudes of guardianship and benediction about the
Queen, and against the background of these magnificent soldiers advanced
the Queen’s women, Charmion at their head. Then indeed a murmur of
admiration rose from the stand and from all who could see.

They were all clothed in Greek robes but of such stuff as the eyes of
the Roman women had never beheld. Perish the thought of their stiff
silks and dull woollens for ever after! These happy creatures wore woven
silver light as air, lifting on a breath and as transparent, shot
through with sunset blues and green and rose, faint miracles of color,
evanescent as the changing hues surrounding the sinking sun, and
mingling into the same nameless perfections. Every woman had been chosen
for her midnight beauty, dark locks, breaking into curls or
satin-smooth, all bound with the threefold Greek fillet—green, blue and
rose jewels set in filigreed silver. One wore her black tresses falling
below the knee braided with pearls and pearl tassels which swept the
ankles; others with the noble Greek knot emphasising the loveliness of
deerlike heads. The stiff-tiered curls of the Roman women were heavy and
bewigged beside this new sculpturesque beauty before them.

They waited, graceful as the Graces, long dark eyes looking from
drooping lashes in amazement at the huge concourse gathered to greet
their Queen. Only the eyes moved. Otherwise they were fair statues
wrought in silver.

The Queen. Her eunuchs, splendid in the gorgeousness of parrot dyes
which became their degradation, stepped forward and slid back the rosy
curtains, as the women fell into two groups. The head of the litter, a
novelty in Rome, was raised, and Antony came forward in purple cloak and
bare head with a purple fillet about his curls, to aid the Queen.

She rose, with a great semi-transparent veil of gold that drifted about
her hiding her from head to foot. Even in the calm of the summer day it
lifted light as thistledown to each movement. And so at last the
long-desired stood before the assembly, but as yet unseen.

“She is not tall!” cried Fulvia’s eager whisper in Calpurnia’s ear. “She
lacks majesty. A woman so slight should never be a queen. She has not
the presence to carry off her royalty!”

But not a word did Calpurnia hear. What vanquishing charm did that veil
conceal? It folded round lines of slenderest grace. A sculptor would
have worshipped its lovely folds, sheathing the lily-bud of a woman. But
her face, her face!

A deep breath of suspense ran through the crowd as Charmion and Iras
lifted each one side of the veil and drew it backward, holding it behind
her and exposing the Queen unveiled to all eyes.

The golden Queen! The Orient had clothed her in gold, supple and flowing
as water, that swept away from her slender shoulders in lines of the
most exquisite period of Greek art. What need a queen care for fashion!
She made her own, reverting to the days of Phidias and Praxiteles. None
so beautiful has ever been imagined or can be, concealing and disclosing
the flower-form within. Her bronze hair, broadly rippled like the sea in
a calm, was parted over perfect brows and knotted behind, a fillet of
pearls binding it and supporting the weight; and on the calm of her
white bosom lay one matchless pearl, no less ivory white than her face
and bare arms and bosom. Golden and white, like a lily unsheathed, she
confronted them untroubled by all the amphitheatre of gazing eyes fixed
on her and her only.

Again Greece triumphed. There were women present of more opulent and
obvious beauty, but who had that white and slender distinction, the
chiselled nostrils, the delicate lift of the haughty upper lip in the
faint smile with which she looked about her, the perfect and careless
ease with which she stood alone and lovely? Lovely, yes, but with a
something beyond loveliness, regal—or could it be divine?—which set
her apart from the Roman women, as though she were lifted on an altar
with lights and incense burning before her.

Even as the thought flashed into many minds two men of Egypt stepped
forward and placed at her feet two mighty golden censers resting on
lions’ claws, the thin blue spirals of incense rising about the hem of
her golden robe. Two more, standing behind her, suddenly swung out and
up enormous peacock screens, spread outward like wings of glory, forming
a background of jeweled bronze and green and ruby and blue and gold,
barbarically magnificent. She stood, a slender winged Psyche, against
it. So indeed a goddess might stand reflecting back the sun-rays,
unafraid and equal.

An intaken hissing breath of wonder and admiration rose about her, all
marvelling alike at the grace and royalty of the girl. It deepened and
became vocal and a great cry arose of “Cleopatra! Cleopatra! Hail to
Isis, to the Egyptian Venus! Hail! Hail! Hail!”

With infinite grace and dignity she looked about her, gravely but
graciously, saluting with slightly raised hands—a moment that never
would be forgotten in Rome; then fixed her eyes on the Senate.

They advanced majestic, Cæsar leading them, strange thoughts hidden
within. All there knew his relation to Cleopatra. Not one present but
hoped to see his or her own personal account in it. And she? Would she
have forgotten? Would she care at all to see him again outside the
climbing path of ambition? And the child? His son. As yet he dared not
look that way, nor dared he lift his eyes above the folds of her robe,
but the blood rose in his cheek like a youth’s as he approached the
veiled figure, saluting, with the bowing Senate behind him.

Then in the stately phrases suitable to the occasion, he began his
oration.

As the first word fell from his lips she raised her head and looked him
in the face with young and smiling eyes—eyes of friendly and happy
memory that all might see—the girl irrepressible in the queen, and sent
her smile raying over the grave Senate. An inimitable touch, for the
instant after she composed herself again into the gold and ivory statue
half veiled in incense, her peacock wings unfurled behind her.

But all had seen her human and liked her the better. All but Calpurnia,
swift-eyed to detect charm and fear it. By her very look Cleopatra’s
secret bright glance placed her in a moment and detected Cæsar’s wife.

The welcome ended. Would she command the secretary who stood behind her
women to make her reply? No, not she! Then would their ears be greeted
with barbarous inflexions of Greek-Egyptian Latin from herself,
offensive to patrician ears? Again, not so. She waved a slender hand
with the orator’s gesture, poising on the ball of her right foot like a
goddess alighting for an instant, and spoke. Which was the sweeter and
purer, the silver voice or the words it uttered, the audience could not
tell. It was too brief—the smile that winged it was too swiftly resumed
into the Queen’s calm. She spoke of her joy in visiting the greatest
city of the world. (“Yet I would that all the noble persons here present
could see the royalty of my own Alexandria! Let them come as guests most
welcome!”) She spoke of the great future in the joined forces of Rome
and Egypt for the uplifting of the barbarians into civilisation. Not a
word—not a word which could implicate Cæsar or express too binding a
hope. All was grace and majesty, but, with the unexpressed air of a
woman conscious of her worth yet leaning on a mightier power than her
own, most infinitely flattering to the hard and arrogant Roman pride.

Perfection! The pride of Cæsar swelled within his breast as she ended
amid thunders of applause. He was justified—justified here in the
sacred places of Rome. This indeed was the weapon placed in his hand by
kindred gods!

But it was over. She made a sign and her women folded the veil about the
shining figure. It was as though rare music had ceased and left the air
poor and empty. As she re-entered the litter and the rose folded its
petals once more about her, great cries and shouts rang like the brazen
beating of a gong, the plaudits of the people.

“Hail to the divine Cleopatra. Hail to the young goddess. Hail to
Venus-Hathor. Hail to Isis the Divine Mystery.”

And amid such shouts and rejoicing she was borne in triumph to the
palace gardens of Cæsar by rolling Tiber, an embodied victory, radiant
and supreme.

That evening after dusk he came to her, alone. That was due to the past,
to his own wish and to hers, but it would have to be very carefully
considered what form their further meetings should take. He had told his
intention frankly to Calpurnia and she had received it with strained
acquiescence, knowing well that her only hope lay there.

To his amazement, arriving at the villa, ushered with all state due to
the Roman Dictator into Cleopatra’s presence, he found the grave
Apollodoros obsequious at the door to meet him. Behind him Cleopatra in
her white tunic, again the Greek girl he had known in Egypt, with arms
outstretched running gaily to meet him.

“Glad—oh, but my heart is glad to see you, my friend, my friend!” she
cried flute-voiced as she ran. “Was the year long to you as to me? But
tell me first of all—you who know all—did I do well today? Oh, what
did they say—what did they say? Don’t lose a word. I die for praise!”

Nothing to complain of in cordiality warm and heartwarming. Then all was
well; she had not slipped from his grasp. Yet one would have supposed
she would have wished to meet him alone, that she might curve her
crescent-moon slenderness against his breast, her lips on his as long
ago in Egypt. Some cold regret stirred in him for a moment.

“Go, Apollodoros, and return, bringing the women with the divine
Pharaoh.”

The child was that indeed—the consort of the Queen his mother on the
throne of Egypt.

As Apollodoros disappeared she flung her arms about Cæsar and straining
upward laid her cheek against his. She diffused the fragrance of youth
and health about her in every gesture, and never had age seemed to him
so pitiful, so helpless, as reflected in the clear brightness of her
brown eyes, translucent as forest pools in sunshine.

“He is as like you as like can be! How should it be otherwise? Did I not
tell you it must be? And strong and beautiful as a bright bird! But you
are wearied, noble Cæsar. I see it in your eyes and your pallor, and
even in your beloved voice I heard it. Oh, preserve your strength for
our victory and our child!”

This irritated him, and less than ever could he control his temper. It
leaped out in little spurts and flames harmful enough to his plans, for
even the good-natured Antony found it difficult at times to accept these
jars with patience. He drew back, and she realised instantly that she
had said the wrong word and hurriedly repaired it.

“But your divine strength can never fail. The Gods are behind and in us.
But look—who comes!”

Bearing between them what was shaped like a huge seashell of thinnest
plates of mother-of-pearl two women slowly approached and set it on the
marble table between them. In it, amongst draperies hued like the heart
of a shell—faintest pearl-pink—was the year-old Cæsarion, sleeping
angelically, one baby fist curled like a rose-leaf at his rosy lips,
strong and fair and beautiful, dreaming the little unshaped vaporous
dreams of babyhood, different indeed from those of the father and mother
who stood with clasped hands above him seeing less his childhood than
the crowns of the world on the soft unwrinkled brows.

“May I touch him?” said Cæsar, hushing his breath before the innocent
sleep. She motioned “Yes” with her lips and he stooped and kissed the
warm cheek with strange shame and joy upon him—shame that any should
see him moved from his stately reserve, joy that there was this to fight
for. He had never imagined the Queen so lovely as, bending toward her
child, she gathered him with one arm into that fragrant nest of her
bosom, he sleeping still.

“I love him. I love him!” she said, looking up into Cæsar’s face with
beaming eyes—the glow of young motherhood haloing her every look and
gesture. “For him I played my part today. For him I have come across the
seas.”

“For me also, most beautiful?”

“Doubtless, and for our great dream. I love splendor and power and to be
a great queen. Even for _this_ (she touched the child’s face with a
feather-light finger) I could not forget _that_! Well—take him away.
You have seen my treasure and yours.”

It was characteristic that the mood maternal passed with the passing of
the pearly shell. Her quick brows were concentrated next minute on the
tale that she and Apollodoros must lay before Cæsar of events in Egypt,
the treasures amassed, the concentration of public opinion on the
Egyptian-Roman alliance.

With Apollodoros at her elbow, and the keen face before her, her clear
brain spoke and composed all he must know into the smallest compass, for
she saw the fatigue in his eyes.

“And the priests—we judge that they too are favorable to the interests
of Rome, noble Cæsar. From Abydos—you recall the trouble at
Abydos?—they have sent offerings and gifts and blessings to the Divine
Child, and I cannot now understand, nor can they, why the omens were
dark and terrible when we lay there. It is in my mind and theirs that
possibly the God resented the intrusion of the Divine Consort into his
sanctuary, for I am Isis and Isis is his. And from the Temple of Osiris
built by Mer-en-Ra in the ancient days came a most glorious oracle
declaring that you should shine like the sun alone in the sky with two
stars beside you—doubtless myself and Calpurnia. She should not hate
me. But tell me of her. I saw her today—a calm face and beautiful, like
the bust of a noble lady crowned with olive leaves—and no more
expression in her eyes!”

“Did you hate her?” Cæsar asked in jest.

“Hate her—no! Why should I? Does she hate me? She should not, if she
cares for the only things that matter. _Does_ she hate me?”

“So little that she has made you welcome in her beloved villa and
gardens. But be kind to her when she comes to see you. I will tell her
of that oracle. I too—” he checked himself suddenly.

“I will be kind. But certainly she has no reason for jealousy. I do not
steal your heart, your great heart is set on higher things than women.
But we fight together like Castor and Pollux, arm by arm in a great
battle. She should love me. But women don’t love me—except my
waiting-women. Well, you shall see. I will win all Roman hearts, and for
my part I am willing indeed for the plan you wrote of that she should be
your wife in Rome and I in Egypt.”

Should he not rejoice that she was so ready for an equal division? It
was true political wisdom and yet—had he been Antony, glowing in the
very prime of his summer, strong and glorying in his strength, would a
girl of twenty-two have been so willing to share him with another? Even
Fulvia required consolation when he was rambling the olive groves with
Cytheris, the beautiful courtesan, in his train!

He winced before the thought. Too poignantly it recalled Antony in his
glitter of armor and manly beauty, marble if it were not for the gay
glances and significant smiles to the fair women bending from the
tribune to laugh into his eyes. “Hercules!—the very Hercules! He would
have been a royal husband for the Egyptian girl! What a pair!” Had
Cleopatra heard or guessed? He would test her.

“And Antony? Did you talk with him as he brought you up to Rome? And
what did you think of him? You often asked me of him in Egypt!”

She frowned slightly over that problem.

“I wished to like and trust him. Like him I do, as one likes an
overgrown oaf of a handsome man. Trust him I never could. He is a
babbler, a boaster. He trumpeted Hercules in one of my ears and Bacchus
in the other until I wished—the Gods forgive me!—that the one had
choked him with his wine, the other brained him with his club. Be very
cautious, noble Cæsar, that you tell him nothing that can spoil us if he
chatters.”

“Trust me to know what is right!” said the great man, irritable, yet
vanity salved by her verdict. After all, she had the wit to prefer
brains to brawn!

But when he was gone, and Cleopatra sat alone with Apollodoros her
verdict would not have pleased him so well:

“How he is aged! How fearfully aged! Oh, Apollodoros, the Gods send that
he lives six more years! I ask no more, but that I ask with prayer and
sacrifice. For if he die my dream of a world empire dies with him. I can
rule it if I get it—with you behind me—but without him I cannot get
it. We must conserve his strength. It terrifies me to look at him!”

“I too fear greatly!” said Apollodoros, “though these lean haggard men
are often wiry and enduring. But can he rule his temper—wear the
smiling mask among his enemies and friends? Would that it were Antony we
had to deal with. That big handsome talker could be ruled by you and me,
my Queen, like a slave—a sword in the hands of the skilful. The old man
is suspicious and angry now, doubting of his own powers—a most
dangerous ally for us. Again, would that it were Antony, and we in Rome
as we are! I find the soldiers worship the ground he walks on.”

“Antony!” she echoed, and fell to musing—her fair face propped on her
hand. Then, with an ebbing voice—“Impossible! And yet—”


                              CHAPTER XIII

As the days passed the anxiety of Cleopatra and Apollodoros
strengthened, and with reason. True, Rome was full of rumors, which her
coming had kindled, that the time drew near when Cæsar must shine, sole
sun in the firmament, as Royal Ruler of the Roman world. The title was
hard to choose, for something in the Roman spirit revolted at the name
of King. That had been tried long since and carried painful memories.
There was however the loud-resounding style of _Imperator_ or Emperor,
applied to the Commanders-in-Chief of the Roman Armies. How would it be,
suggested the friends of Cæsar, to confine the title of _Imperator_ to
one, to make it hereditary, and to offer it to Cæsar’s acceptance, thus
making him perpetual Commander-in-Chief of the world which Rome must
rule? That suggestion found favor in the eyes of the masses and classes
alike, but even this did not overtake Cæsar’s rapidly towering pride.
Was not his own name good enough to be both imperial and hereditary, he
asked aloud and in public places—Cæsar! He had covered it with dazzling
glory, what better style could there be for any world ruler who should
succeed him? The word itself should signify empire. The Cæsar, Kaiseros,
Kiseres, later, Tsar, they tried it in all the subject languages of
Rome, and found it good. It would wear well. Future ages would
acknowledge it royal, and it had the merit of conveying the military
spirit on which Rome was founded. The thought of his little Cæsarion
swayed his mind in considering it, and Cleopatra approved it with glee,
for the touch of fine arrogance delighted her. Thus Gods and Rulers
proclaim themselves to an attentive world.

The Triumph of Cæsar had also given immense satisfaction to the Roman
world, and much popularity to Cleopatra. During four gorgeous days it
drew breathless crowds to the streets to see the Victor hailed in his
own city. As conqueror of Gaul, followed and surrounded by great
elephants, he ascended to the Capitol. As conqueror of the Egyptian
rebels he appeared on the second day, with the wretched Arsinoë loaded
with gold fetters and followed by an image of the dead Potheinos led
along the streets to swell his triumph, Cleopatra looking down upon her
from a tribune with strangely mingled feelings of triumph and shame to
see a princess of Egypt trailed through the jeers of a Roman mob. She
won much applause by her intercession for her sister later with Cæsar.
African animals swelled the triumph, giraffes nodding their slender
heads high over the shouting populace.

On the third day was celebrated the conquest of Pontus, with a huge
tablet borne before Cæsar, carrying his famous boast—“I came, I saw, I
conquered.” And on the fourth, his victories in North Africa. And each
day Cleopatra, quivering with joy and pride, saw the swelling of his
party and her own. He filled the eyes, the ears, the thoughts of Rome
until it seemed that nothing but shouts of “Cæsar,—Cæsar!” filled the
air, seconded here and there by shouts of “Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt,
Cleopatra!”

Of Calpurnia little was heard. She made no hostile party nor any gesture
of defiance, which was all to the good. But Apollodoros, who permeated
Rome like the very spirit of inquiry, brought news that in spite of the
dazzling reception and Calpurnia’s acquiescence many leaders of opinion
in the Senate and among the great ladies thought her cruelly used by
Cleopatra’s presence.

“And I that have done everything to please her!” cried Cleopatra in
frank amazement, to Apollodoros and Charmion kneeling beside her. She
spoke with all the want of comprehension which very clever people often
exhibit to the stupid. “The woman must be a fool! Does she think I am in
love with a man as old as Rameses the Great? The Gods preserve me from
such bad taste! Go and tell her, Apollodoros, that I want no man. I want
empire and to spread the bounds of Egypt. Why doesn’t she come and see
me that I may open her eyes? And yet—I suppose Cæsar’s vanity would be
up in arms if I did. He is as full of vanity as I when I was sixteen.
Oh, men, men! How much easier it would be if there were no such thing as
sex!”

“It would be dull,” said Apollodoros. “Your Majesty would have
re-invented it. But I wish indeed that Calpurnia would visit you. There
are things she could tell us that we must know. It is vital that we
should be able to gauge the life of Cæsar, for, depending on him only,
we are lost if he dies. From a priest of the Roman Temple of Isis I have
heard in the deepest secrecy that Calpurnia has said he has strange
seizures, reputed to be divine possessions, and that he has sworn her to
dismiss all others when this happens so that he and she only may know
the revelation of the Deity. There may be much behind that! The priest
overheard it in her prayers to Isis. If my Queen could but win her it
would be worth a mine of jewels! See now! She is a devotee of Isis. Send
her a message in your character of the goddess!”

His eager eyes searched her face. She laughed carelessly; shrugging her
shoulders. Calpurnia failed to interest her.

“Does omnipotence cover a woman’s jealousy? I think not! No, tell her I
am in love with Antony—whom I have seen twice and never alone—and she
may come. Not otherwise. However, bring her with any story you choose,
and I will do my best.”

She turned away, then turned again in another mood, eyes limpid and
kind.

“You are right, my true Apollodoros. It is of consequence and I will do
my best indeed. Tell her I have heard of her devotion to the Great
Goddess and earnestly desire to see her. And I will win her!”

It was by invoking Cæsar that he gained an audience of the greatest of
Roman ladies, for it had become important to Cæsar that Calpurnia should
make some decided sign of amity. He reflected ironically that if the
Senate were to pass the law permitting him two wives they should at
least present a united threefold front or become supremely absurd.
Therefore to Calpurnia he expressed his wish. She yielded instantly, and
received Apollodoros, a deep insatiable curiosity mingled with her
obedience. To her amazement he assumed the tone of one who bears a
message from an Immortal.

“Lady, the Divine Queen, she who in Egypt is Isis, desires your presence
that she may talk with you on matters of high moment. Not as a woman
talks with a woman, but far otherwise.”

He stood silent before her, adding nothing. Such was the message. She
agreed at once. The next day was appointed.

She came with her slaves about her, nobly attended, full in the eyes of
Rome, knowing that all faces turned, every tongue wagged when the wife
of Cæsar set forth to visit the Queen of Egypt. But two considerations
upbore her; her devotion to the goddess with whom the other might have
some mysterious unity, and the will of Cæsar to which she had pledged
her obedience. Therefore she went with more than common dignity, with
visionary eyes fixed on her inward dream, wondering what strange gates
would open now in her strange life and whither they would lead her.

The Queen received her with Apollodoros only in attendance. She wore a
simple himation of white with a girdle of silver. No Venus-Hathor for
that occasion, but Isis, calm, apart, and pure.

“It is very odd,” she said to Apollodoros, “that though I am a queen and
a great one I am also, and more, an actress. I feel every part I
undertake to the tips of my fingers and can’t imagine anything else for
the moment. It makes things very interesting and yet—can one be
entirely truthful either with oneself or others? And how much or little
does it matter if one is not? This is the very queerest world that mad
Gods ever imagined! Probably it is the Divine in me which laughs at its
absurdities!”

Thus it happened that Calpurnia, with heart beating like a bird’s under
her girdle, saw a slender young woman advancing down that long chamber
(how changed since she had known it!) clothed in vestal white, without
shimmer of jewels, viewing her with eyes as calm and direct as her own.
Devoid of all pretension, grave, reserved, so observation declared
her,—full of serene intelligence. She saluted the visitor as an equal
with exquisitely deferential courtesy, causing Apollodoros to set her
chair beside her own.

“Noble Calpurnia, I have desired very greatly to meet you,” said the
silver voice. “I know the circumstances are strange and few of the
coarse hearts about us would believe that I could seek a friend in you.
Yet I do—I must. I am young, in a strange land, many enemies around me,
and yet all Cæsar’s vast plans are bound up in my person. Oh, that I
might have your counsel!”

Strangely different indeed from her expectation was the grace with which
the girl put herself at her feet. She had looked for ill-hidden pride
and arrogance. Stories were flying round of Cleopatra’s contemptuous
comments on the city and scornful comparisons of it with the glories of
Alexandria and Egypt. She had been much too wary for any folly of the
kind but the impression existed and had influenced Calpurnia. The sweet
melancholy of the young Queen’s voice and soft entreating eyes were
potent against it and the rigidity of Calpurnia’s attitude relaxed a
little though her eyes still watched.

“If you would treat me,” the girl pleaded, “as a woman who, though
divine, has a difficult part to play here on earth! Consider, noble
Calpurnia!—my brother and sister did their best to murder me, and yet I
have entreated for the life of Arsinoë. They drove me from Alexandria.
But for Cæsar I should have been dead two years ago, and what could I be
but grateful? And how could any woman fail to realise the grandeur of
his ambition? He saw Egypt in me, and the Orient. I saw Asia in him and
more. Was it wonderful that we should join hands? In the ancient Temple
of Isis built by Mer-en-Ra, the Great Goddess declared in an oracle none
may question, that hand in hand we should mount the throne of the world
and Cæsar shine like the sun with twin stars beside him, yourself and
Cleopatra the Queen.”

“This I have heard from Cæsar,” the wife answered, hesitating. “But the
child?”

She had thought it would be impossible to speak with the Queen, and
behold! it was so easy that her new fear was of saying too much.
Cleopatra looked at her with gravely shadowed eyes:

“You do not understand Egypt, most noble lady. The Queen must have a
consort. My brother was dead. It was also needful that I should have a
son God-descended as were the Pharaohs. And I too am a goddess. I am
Hathor-Venus. I am Isis.”

Calpurnia trembled. It was bewildering to hear this beautiful girl
announce herself as the Holy, the Unapproachable. Could it be true? Did
she herself believe it? Calpurnia had never been able to persuade her
brain that Cæsar believed even in his own divine descent until his
entanglement with the Egyptian Queen. Then, at once, the notion of
divinity took root in him. It budded, it blossomed and the older and
more wearied he grew the more he was assured that Godhead was his. It
was almost incomprehensible to her, yet might be, for who knew the
strange ways of the Gods? But the Queen recaptured her brooding
thoughts. Certainly her people accepted her as divine, and Egypt was the
land of wonder and mystery—all the world knew that! Who on earth could
tell what was true or false?

“Who else could I choose than Cæsar?” Cleopatra asked with gentle
insistence. “And my hope being accomplished what else is he to me than a
friend in a great and terrible enterprise? Why should his wife not be my
friend also and aid us?”

Even Apollodoros who knew better than most what might be expected of his
Queen was astounded at her consummate mastery of the part she had
allotted herself. And there was truth in it also. It had the right ring!

“If I could trust you!” hesitated the Roman. “If I could believe!”

“You can trust me indeed. What have I to gain?”

If Calpurnia had had her wits about her she might have made a fairly
long list of objects Cleopatra might have to gain, but none occurred to
her at the moment. She made a faint affirmative gesture and Cleopatra
leaning forward touched her hand with delicate cool fingers.

“Lady, our oracles have declared for certain victory. You cannot doubt
when I tell you that the holy image of Isis in Hermonthis inspired the
Chief Priest with a divine dream in which he saw Cæsar enthroned, and
afterwards a god among the Immortals. That future nothing can change,
but what I would know is this. Has he himself had any inspirations and
possessions of divinity which you have seen? What have you known to
fasten your own belief to ours?”

She fixed compelling eyes upon Cæsar’s wife, holding her hand. Calpurnia
answered trembling, looking upward with something of a child’s belief in
her eyes, wearied and half extinguished with pain.

“It is true. I have seen things so strange that I could never believe
them if told. I will tell you. You have the heart of a queen and
goddess. Why should I not trust you? He has seizures of which he will
scarcely speak even to me. They come suddenly like the influx of a God.
He is struck to the earth and struggles, fighting with his arms and feet
as though against an unseen foe, the veins in his temples swell so thick
that you might think they would burst, and all his face is dark with the
rush of blood. He utters cries like a dying man—terrifying, most
terrifying to hear! And then suddenly the possession departs and he lies
unconscious, still and exhausted. It is Isis, the great Goddess, who
desires to see her worship spread throughout the world. I know it! I
know it! For he declares that in these possessions bright lights shine
and great visions are revealed to him of splendors and majesties divine
and unspeakable to which he will attain, and that in the end he will sit
enthroned, a very God.”

“Marvelous!” said the soft voice beside her. “Indeed, noble Calpurnia,
you are privileged as one divine yourself in seeing such inspirations.
Then is it revealed to you also that he shall rule the world?”

“I believe no less!” said Calpurnia solemnly. “And it is because I
believe this that I have put aside all jealousies and distrusts and have
come when you desired to see me.”

Cleopatra clasped her hand again.

“You have done well; and let it be the token of our union that you wear
this—my sister!”

There lay a box on the table beside her, enriched with gold wrought into
filigree like lace. She opened it, drawing out a chain of rubies glowing
with the very spirit of all roses that have ever bloomed or shall bloom
in the gardens of earth—or of Paradise. Indeed it gave forth their
perfume also, having one ruby hollowed and containing a drop of the
magical oil or essence of roses in its glowing heart. Perfume and color
exhaled from it most royally as it swung in the hand of the Queen.

“Bend your proud head, my sister,” she said with her smile of sweetness,
“and wear what I was given as a token of the utmost happiness and good
fortune that life can offer. My merchants brought it from India, a
worthy jewel for a great queen. Take it, and my friendship. Tell Cæsar
we have met, yet, since he trusts you above me, do not tell him that I
have heard the story of his inspirations. I have no jealousies and I
shall go the more proudly and securely because of this great news. When
you have more, send; or come and tell me that I also may rejoice.”

The other promised, startled at the richness of the jewels, yet soothed
and comforted by the mysterious calm of the young Queen. She rejoiced
that she had spurned the pettiness of a woman’s jealousy, and so risen
into aërial heights where the approval of the Great Goddess would meet
her face to face. She would have kissed the hand of Cleopatra who,
drawing it away, kissed her instead on the cheek.

When Calpurnia had left the villa by the river she remembered too late
how little she had learned from the Queen of the inner heart of the Isis
worship of which she wished to learn so much. But now—she fingered the
glowing rubies about her neck—they knew each other. There would be
great opportunities. She caused her slaves to stop by the famous Isis
temple, daily more crowded with worshippers, and knelt a long time
before the image of the Mother of Mystery brooding over her child. The
air with which Cleopatra had met her seemed an earthly reflection of
that soft abstraction. And she had once hated—had feared her! Love
based on the divine is immortal, she thought; hate passes like a dream.

The reflections of Cleopatra and Apollodoros when left together were
very different.

“That was easy,” she said, “and I know it was necessary, yet I hated to
use her. I think she is a good woman. But no one should be so nakedly
innocent. It is positively indecent. It is only her dignity which
protects her from contempt. What do you think, Apollodoros, of her
news?”

“My Queen, I did not think—I _knew_. What Calpurnia described was a
well-known sickness—a dangerous and terrible disease which fills me
with dread. It is known as the falling sickness. The Greeks call it
_epilepsia_, and though it does not kill immediately it works havoc in
the brain—”

Cleopatra interrupted, pale with fear.

“Gods, will he go mad?”

“Not in a crashing moment. But there will be a hiatus here—or there,
gradually, like the fretting of moths in a rich garment. It explains
much—his fits of temper; his overweening belief in his divinity. It was
told me in the temple yesterday that when he was lately contradicted in
some trifle he cried aloud with oaths: ‘Men should look upon what I say
as the word of a God!’ This is not reasonable—it is the disease that
speaks.”

Again she interrupted with passion.

“Then he must marry me instantly. For if he died—what of Cæsarion? His
nephew, Octavian, a gawk of nineteen, is his natural heir if he leaves
no lawful son. Apollodoros, this is frightful news! We must act
instantly.”

“Would it be possible for you to win Octavian?”

“His first act would be—will be, sooner or later—to murder Cæsarion,”
she said hopelessly. “And besides he is cold, cruel, dull and vicious as
a beast, though so young. He is nothing to Cæsar except that his blood
counts for him. No, Apollodoros—pray to all the Gods that he live for
six—no, even four years, and I can achieve my will. If he dies now—But
he must marry me here, now! Help me, I beseech you!”

He reflected a moment, she watching him with eyes of frantic strain and
eagerness. Before her swam her ruining dream, drowned in darkness and
weeping rain.

“I see two things as instantly needful: First, that we should have a way
of escape if Cæsar dies in one of these fits of _epilepsia_, for it is
more than possible that if this happened the treacherous Romans would
seize and imprison you, sending Octavian or another to rule in
Egypt—and the child’s life they would value no more than a fly’s. The
ships must be ever ready for flight. But meanwhile you must make this
house a Paradise for Cæsar. Give him rest here from all his cares.
Laugh, jest, feed him with faith in his own divinity as lamps are fed
with oil, for tranquillity and self-confidence avert this disease. Do
not draw him to you again as a lover—he is too old—yet never tell him
your reason. Feign illness if needful. And above all, thrust, thrust
forward with all your strength the moment of his accepting the crown
which the Senate must offer. We must use gold like water, smiles and the
favors of a Queen like oil and balsam, to smooth and urge and help
matters on, for time is our enemy.”

While he spoke she had listened but with an undercurrent of her own
thoughts also. When he ended she sprang up, glittering, kindling to the
emergency as she had always done.

“Right, my true Apollodoros. I will do it all. But there is more—there
is Antony!”

Without a word more he understood. Antony, Cæsar’s sword, the idol of
the armies and of Rome. The gallant General, the enemy of Octavian—the
man with every qualification to carry her through to triumph if Cæsar
fell. Antony, the slave of women—and yet their ruler by virtue of his
gross masculinity which they could never understand but adored. The
Bacchus, the Hercules of their delight.

“But _could_ you, my Queen?” said Apollodoros, and a whole history of
doubts and fears charged the question. Could her delicate beauty and
clear cold intelligence charm the man who had found his mates among the
coarser sort of Roman women—patricians who were frequenters of
gladiators and actors, themselves gamblers, lewd, loud, matching his
tastes in word and deed. These and the shameless Cytheris and her like
had been to his taste. There were no delicacies of apprehension in his
mind any more than in his big florid person. For a moment in spite of
all policies, something in the man shuddered and revolted. His little
laughing Queen!—must she stoop so low to conquer a throne so high? And
could they wholly trust this Antony? Apollodoros had heard much in Rome
of his ill-timed drunkenness, the part of Bacchus played with a realism
which did not always forward his ambitions, spending the days in sleep
or wandering about with crazed and aching head, lowering himself to
attend the feasts of actors and jesters. Oh, for a man to match the
little Queen, with her abstemiousness—indeed there was a touch of
austerity in the girl, absurd as it might seem—her dogged devotion to
her purpose, her wit and charm! Given a man in health to second her, or
merely a brave man of decent life, and she herself might create and rule
an Empire for Rome. If only she were not Greek! The Romans would never
endure the rule of a Greek. Therefore, a man must be found; and who but
Antony?

Before his thought had reached its goal, she had decided. She laughed
aloud at the doubt.

“Long ago I told you, Apollodoros, that if my brother and Potheinos
drove me out of Egypt I could dance for my living on the Roman stage.
And so I could! I am a born actress. I can be all things with all
men—and women. You have seen me clear, swift and cool with Cæsar. You
shall see me coarse, luxurious, sensuous with Antony. But so far—and no
further, until we know whether Cæsar lives or dies. I will be a bird
flitting just out of reach until the Fates answer the Sphinx’s riddle of
life or death. Charmion!”

She called loudly, clapping her hands, and the girl came with a quick
gliding step along the mosaic floor to throw herself at her Queen’s
feet.

“Oh, it was great, great, my own beloved Lady. You played the Roman
woman as an angler plays a fish. Who can stand against you? And now,
what orders?”

“Tomorrow fill the small banqueting room with roses, roses. See that the
feast, though not too long, is such as the Gods might wish to linger
over. Order the wines—and among them the Syrian wines we brought from
Egypt. They will be new here. Set out my Indian cups of gold and
emeralds. Send slaves to bid Antony to sup with me, and send also to
Cicero the writer at his house on the Palatine Hill and bid him come and
feast with the Queen of Egypt.”

“And gifts—gifts!” Apollodoros eagerly interrupted.

“Great gifts—each suited to the man—and jewels for their wives, Fulvia
and Publilia. For Cicero also my ivory Sphinx with eyes of beryl—green
as the Cat-Goddess’s of Bubastis. And for my dress, Charmion—oh, gold
and glory and splendors. Make me a radiant shining goddess. But not out
of reach—near as Diana when she curved to kiss Endymion. Forget Isis.
Remember only the melting Diana.”

Charmion nodded importantly. She saw in her mind’s eye a girl all white
and silver and crystal glitter, the moon’s slim crescent half hidden in
the vapor of her hair, little hands, unjewelled, moving delicately but
irresistibly, as if pleading for freedom while they surrendered.
Cleopatra read her thought in her eyes, clear as dark sea-water, and
shook her head, laughing. She patted Charmion on the shoulder:

“No, not yet. And Antony would never see or understand. Wealth,
emeralds, lures, smiles. Queenliness with possibilities of mischief in
the background, and above all—youth—youth.”

Suddenly she sighed.

“This Rome—this Rome, is so great, so stubborn, so male, that it forces
even a great queen to play the courtesan for its favors! I hate the
Romans— But who can stand against them?”

She dropped her chin upon her hand and fell into melancholy thought.


                              CHAPTER XIV

She had her way, how could it be otherwise? The learned Cicero would
never have chosen the Bacchic Antony as a fellow-guest—he had a
personal hatred for him and his excesses. But how refuse the flattering
invitation of the loveliest queen in the world? How refuse the prospect
of a distinguished invitation to Alexandria there to shine supreme among
crowding intellectuals? How refuse the inevitable gift of jewels to
adorn the lovely young Publilia his wife? He affected to jest at the
invitation with some of the leading men who visited at his house next
day.

“I am to meet Antony, the butcher, the prize-fighter, at the Queen’s
banquet! She is innocent indeed of Roman politics to invite us together,
but I am told she is a very royal young woman, and her young innocence
is refreshing. Besides I have no wish to offend Cæsar at the moment.”

Therefore he went—eager to see for himself the inside of that very
singular establishment—but with every hair bristling in case the
detested Antony should be aggressive.

It was, however, an evening of enchantments. Cæsar himself was not
present, but the Queen, with Apollodoros behind her chair, though young
and fresh as the Roman spring, with cold dawn-roses in her cheeks, was
also glorious as a galaxy of winter stars. Above her transparent robe,
through which white limbs gleamed half-hidden as in running water, she
wore the famous dropping girdle of great emeralds clothing her in green
fire from waist to knee, and round the white column of her throat and
lovely curves of her young bosom chains of emeralds yet more
magnificent, surely the alembic of all the green that spring lets loose
in torrents upon the happy world. Emeralds held the weight of her hair,
they shone on her little hands. Over the couch on which she reclined at
the banquet were thrown draperies of silk sewn with pearls and emeralds,
and those for Cicero and Antony were not less splendid.

This had its effect, yet might not have very greatly moved the sardonic
orator but for two other considerations. One was the quelling of
Antony—which could not but be gratifying to an enemy. The big man was
on his best behavior, uncertain how to adapt himself to the unaccustomed
company, and it was evident that the girl puzzled him and that like the
fly in amber he was wondering how on earth he found himself in such
society. The foods and drinks were exquisite—entirely to his taste—but
the talk marched on altitudes where he found the rarity of the air a
little difficult to breathe. For there came the second pleasure for
Cicero, bald and bland in the sunshine of royalty.

The Queen of Egypt, in homage to his gifts and her own tastes, spoke
chiefly of the marvels of architecture in her own country, of the
glorious rolls of papyrus in the Museum Library containing the wisdom of
ages, the history of Egypt for centuries, and of the learning of the
philosophers and scholars of Alexandria.

“But there is not one,” she said with enthusiasm, “who would not thank
the gracious Gods of Egypt if the illustrious Cicero condescended to
visit us, and shed the light of his learning and oratory on the happy
citizens of my city!”

Her cheek flushed delicately through its lovely pallor, so great was her
eagerness on this head, and Cicero smiled and bowed while Antony
glowered in silence. Such a fuss about a dull old orator who lapped up
flattery as a cat swallows cream! If _that_ was the sort of woman Cæsar
chose for a sweetheart, he himself was very sure she would bore him
blind in a week. She was pretty though, certainly pretty, and looked
almost alarmingly high-bred—a true patrician. And, Hercules!—what
emeralds! They would pay all his debts and leave something over for the
expenses of Cæsar’s popularity-campaign. Her voice was pretty too—low,
clear, with shadows in it that one listened for. But none of your clever
women for him!

She was detailing a plan to Cicero for inviting orators and writers of
renown to fill temporary lecture-chairs at the Museum, for the
instruction of the Alexandrian pundits. There was a fund, it appeared,
from which large emoluments could be drawn for such gracious visitors.
It had been set aside by her grandfather.

“My Alexandrians are so quick-witted that it is a delight to lecture to
them, I am told. And myself—my tastes lie that way, most noble Cicero,
though care of my kingdom draws me in another. But you do not eat
generously. Is the food not to your taste?”

“My stomach is not strong,” replied the much-caressed author, “and
though the gracious condescension of the Queen warms it, I must be
vigilant. I am liable to attacks of nausea.”

She leaned forward with grace and placed her own untasted cup before
him. It was of gold embossed with a design of a Pharaoh loosing his
arrows against his enemies, towering in his chariot above the pigmies he
destroyed.

“This Syrian wine is a cordial recommended by the greatest of Egyptian
doctors. It cured my father, the King, of a malignant dyspepsia which
tortured him. And if the flavor pleases you, noble Cicero, your slaves
shall carry back a case of the wine to your house. I ask but one grace
in exchange—your promise to visit me in Alexandria.”

“Great Queen, it is given,” answered the happy orator, sipping the
generous wine all rosy in the cup. “And I thank you for your solicitude.
The wine is comforting and has no acidity. It is mellow as sunshine.”

It was another sort of sunshine to his enjoyment to behold the popular
Antony lying unnoticed on his couch, eating and drinking as best he
could without special honors. Not that the Queen ignored her guest. He
received the honors due and would have been welcomed into the talk if he
could have taken his share in it. That museums and lectures and
antiquities were not his interests was no fault of the Queen’s. She had
done her best.

“She and her orator!” said Antony in the sulky deeps of his heart. “I
would have the Egyptian know that here sits a man who can stir the
people with oratory while Cicero sets them all yawning. When _I_ talk
the legions march. When _he_ talks the lily-livered patricians applaud
and go home and forget him. And a girl of that age to chatter about
fusty old pyramids and mummied Kings! She might as well be a mummy
herself, for all she’s so pretty—the little pale pedant—and drinking
water tinged with wine! Give me a good hearty girl, with plenty of color
in her cheeks, that likes a joke and her fill of drink. The unlucky
Cæsar! No wonder if he goes a little daft with _that_ stuff always
clacking in his ear!”

He drank the more to console himself and with the deepest appreciation
of the Syrian vintage.

It was earlier than usual when Cicero rose to depart, satiate with food
and flattery of the most delicate and artistic, bearing in his hand the
cup from which he had drunk—a queen’s gift indeed. She had told him in
words sweet as the honey of Hymettus that no lips—not even her
own—must henceforth touch the cup honored by his illustrious use, and
when he would have refused looked in his face with eyes of such melting
beauty, so winning in their frank young admiration of greatness, that he
could but accept, tingling to his very finger tips with pleasure. He had
promised that somehow or other she should hear him when next he
delivered an oration. She had also despatched Charmion to bring a
strange foreign box of silk brocaded with silver peacocks displaying
their fanned tails, and opening it revealed a many rowed necklace of
golden flowers interspersed with rubies set in golden flies and
shells—a treasure of great value, having been, as she explained, the
property of the ancient Queen Ta-usert. The earrings lay with them, the
hoops and flies glowing with rubies. No modern jewel could match its
price, for it had been rescued from the age-old tomb.

“Take these to the lovely Publilia with the hope of the Queen of Egypt
that they may adorn ears and a bosom as much more lovely than the Queen
Ta-usert’s as report speaks them. Would that I might see such beauties
for myself! And for the noble Cicero, this—the only thing on earth
wiser than himself!”

Unwrapping many folds of silk within a silver box she disclosed an
exquisite model in ivory of the Sphinx, gazing right on with calm
eternal eyes—eyes of green beryl which gave an air of sinister wisdom
to the fixed gaze. It was a gift after his own heart, and he flushed
with pleasure in taking it from those fair and royal hands.

“A banquet to be remembered, great Queen, whose generosity and intellect
outshine even your beauty that is a world’s marvel!” he said, his cold
blood hurried and alert. “And if you will permit the visit of the
grateful Publilia—” with much more to the same effect. She knew and was
right in knowing that the golden tongue of Cicero would be raised in her
praise next day in and out of season. Another success to her score!

But when the purple curtain fell behind him she turned to Antony
stretching her arms widely as a yawn, as if to relax a wearying strain.
She sighed like a tired child.

“A great man indeed! And if I were not so young! but queens must be
every age to match their guests. Noble Antony, permit the slaves to fill
your cup and me to shed fifty years of age and grow young in your
company. And, oh, fill mine also. My throat is dry with learning. Taste
these dates and apricots from Egypt. They have a flavor of their own.
Will you too come to Alexandria? Ah, we have dancing girls there—in all
Rome you have not the like. There are Nubians, black-haired and eyed,
with skins of dusky softness, who dance the lascivious dances of the
dead peoples, strange and seductive to see. But such things do not
interest great generals.”

“They do—they do!” he cried, eagerly holding up his cup. He forgot that
what brimmed Cleopatra’s was water tinged with wine. He forgot
everything but that he was alone with a lovely girl who talked of the
very things that stirred his blood. Yes, down the Mediterranean he had
heard of those desert dances. Men breathed quicker in speaking of them.
“I have heard,” he continued, “that the dancers of Egypt would stir the
blood of Stoics, but I never dreamed that such could be seen in queens’
palaces.”

“Not they!” she said with her little secret smile. “But I will tell you
a secret of secrets—that is— Yes, if you will swear on your cup never
to reveal it!”

He swore, loud and eager. She looked down; the curves of her lashes
lovely.

“Well—this for truth! The Queen of Egypt does not always remain shut in
her palace like a mummy in a golden coffin. No. When night puts on her
jewels, and the light of the Pharos streams out over the harbor, I have
known the Queen to slip into a room wherein are locked up disguises many
and skilful. There are the all-concealing robes of the Syrian women.
There are coverings for the face which only allow the eyes to be seen—
And are not all women’s eyes exactly alike, most noble Antony?”

He protested eagerly that none equalled those eyes of golden amber
veiled in a gloom of black curled lashes. She cut him short, laughing,
and clapped her hands. Apollodoros entered, and stood behind her couch.

“Mine? Oh, mine, though known all over Egypt with the crown above them,
are unknown when the rest of my face is hidden. You shall see some day!
But my waiting woman Charmion puts a disguise upon me; it may be a
woman’s—we have known it even to be a youth’s, for, stripped, I am as
light as Hermes poised on a cloud—and, having done this, she disguises
herself, and the wise Apollodoros becomes a mime or juggler or what not,
and we run out into the streets of Alexandria gay as children let loose.
The sights we see! No—but I dare not tell you!”

Leaning forward, he entreated. She drew back looking down and smiling as
if at memories, Apollodoros grave as death behind her.

“No. There are things a woman may not tell except to—not to guests,
however honored. But indeed some of our sights are wonderful. There is
the Nubian dancer whom we call the Pearl, because she is dark as night.
Her dancing—Apollodoros, it is for you to tell the noble Antony.”

“Is exceedingly provocative. More cannot be said before the Queen,”
answered Apollodoros, with a seriousness that covered vast reserves.

“And yet she has seen it!” roared Antony. “Ha, ha! I like these sweet
prudes who will see and never tell. And hear? What has she heard, wise
man?”

She looked back at her watch-dog, finger on lip, and replied herself:

“Love tales most wonderful—that set the blood dancing as to the song of
a mighty music-maker. Oh, the adventures, the passion, the beauty! The
story-tellers sit at the street corner or in chambers where the people
crowd to hear them. What have you like this in Rome? You are a stern,
heavy people—with exceptions! But there is no city like Alexandria.
There life flies on butterfly wings and roses have no thorns. Come and
see us, and Charmion and I will disguise you and we will take you
between us to hear the stories and see the juggling which outdoes the
miracles of the Gods, and—”

“And the dancer—the dancer!” shouted Antony, now extremely warm with
wine.

“There _I_ cannot take you,” replied the Queen primly. “It would not be
a royal entertainment. But if you asked Apollodoros—”

Her eyes laughed at him distractingly under the black lashes, though her
mouth was grave. Reading those shooting eyes he gulped his wine and
stretched his great hand for hers.

“Loveliest—”

She rose instantly, veiling them into candor limpid as a child’s.

“Noble Antony, I have drunk more wine than I should and my poor head
swims. Otherwise you had never heard the story of the Queen’s rambles,
which I trust to your sworn secrecy. But if I find you trustworthy,
there is more— No, Apollodoros must drink with you—not I!”

When he left the villa a new Cleopatra had dawned on Antony’s astounded
vision. The little vixen—he had not thought it of her! But how
infinitely seductive and significant had become her small face, welling
out golden light from those great eyes. What meaning in the infinite
variety of expression! She had suddenly revealed herself as of the most
absorbing interest—as good to watch as the best Greek drama imported
and paid for by Cæsar’s bottomless purse to win the hearts of the
people. Not an actress like Cytheris—but a child of grace and innocence
whose face reflected every emotion of her heart. Of course she was
curious—of course she wanted to know things they would withhold from
her if they could. Girls were like that even if they _were_ queens! They
had their natural emotions like everybody else. She must have learned a
good deal from Cæsar, unless he kept his knowledge to himself.
Apparently he had; her naughtiness was innocence incarnate.

So he sat in his litter, swaying back to Rome, charged with a whole new
set of speculations. Hercules! She was clever! She had made Cicero—that
old plebeian reared in a fuller’s shop and bearing the contemptible name
of Cicero—Chickpea!—Here the wine entangled the order of his
reflections—Well, that plebeian Cicero, into thinking her a wiseacre
like himself, when all the time—

But he was nodding asleep in the litter long before he reached his
angrily anxious Fulvia and put about her sunburnt throat the Queen’s
gift, a chain of milky pearls, which did not set it off to advantage.

“We have done well!” said the Queen to Apollodoros and Charmion. “But
for the Gods’ sake let me rest now! For Cæsar comes tomorrow.”

Events went swiftly after that banquet, for Cleopatra and Apollodoros
held the threads in their own capable hands and where Cæsar wearied they
did not. But he never guessed he was guided. He believed himself to be
only seconded—a very different matter—and daily he leaned more and
more on the girl who had awaked the passion of divinity in him and
returned it in rays of inspiration. Her talk took on a new tone. She
dwelt on high mysteries, the vast intentions of kindred gods for the
spread of his power in a world-monarchy.

How could a republic please the Gods, who desired to set an earthly god,
partaking their nature, to be their vice-regent on earth? And look at
the hideous corruptions of the Republic, the bribery, the base lust for
money! He knew better than most how purchaseable were the Senators, how
low and sordid the aspirations of the people. They needed a ruler, wise
and stern. So she spoke daily—not long and tediously, but with a
skilful touch here and there. And the relief was untold of escaping from
Calpurnia’s grave and melancholy company to the brightness and gaiety of
Cleopatra’s talk—gold embroidered on a background of earnest purpose.
She felt with him—she understood as Calpurnia never could! It must be
the royal, the divine blood in her! The courage, the gallantry of her
appealed to him more every day—a fit mother of kings!

At her instigation, propping his own purpose, he became more of an
autocrat daily. He took upon himself royal prerogatives, he assumed the
character of a ruler both royal and divine. He became the hereditary
Commander of the Romans. And to whom would the title descend? To the
cold Octavian, with his unnameable vices? No. Of that he never had a
thought. To the child sleeping like a pearl in his rainbow shell—the
little Cæsarion, child of god-protected and inspired parents. So the
intoxication of divinity strengthened on him, and the lust for a crown.

Even in his own home Calpurnia aided the cause by her deep and constant
belief in the will of Isis—a portion of whose infinite being was
incarnate in the intellect and power of the Queen.

Thus he was driven on every side, and the hopes of his party in Rome
grew under these inspirations like gourds in a night. Their ambitions
were boundless, and fear and even caution were left behind.

There was only an angry suppressed muttering among a few of the Senators
and in obscure corners of the city when Cæsar placed a statue of himself
in the Capitol—the heart’s heart of Rome. That might have passed, so
great was his power now, but that he set it beside the seven royal
figures of the ancient kings of Rome—himself the eighth in that august
company. And what had been the motive power? Cleopatra’s vision in
Egypt!

“It must be done!” she said, embracing his knees with her arms as she
knelt before him. “When the Light on the Horizon gave me sight, did I
not see your image among the Kings? And can the Gods err? And you, being
one of them, _Imperator_ and divine, can you err? Set it there, most
royal Cæsar. Be fearless. Assume the King’s dress. Sit on your throne in
the face of all men. I have seen with my eyes, and I am Isis, and I am
Venus, and what I say is truth!”

So beautiful, so inspired was she at the moment that any man might be
excused for succumbing to her radiant influence. Yet Apollodoros knew
well and Cleopatra knew also that in the days of Egypt he would scarcely
have gone so fast and far. Like the rich garment fretted by a moth, to
which Apollodoros had compared it, the magnificent intelligence of Cæsar
was yielding slowly to the inroads of disease. He became very difficult
to deal with, and caused many anxieties at the villa—anxieties that
threw Cleopatra more and more into the company of Antony—as indeed she
desired. Sometimes the great man halted obstinately before some step
which all his friends saw to be vital—such a step as his marriage to
Cleopatra, which indeed Calpurnia would never have opposed, and which
Cleopatra struggled for daily with every weapon of courtship and
seduction and reason. But as yet she failed, though backed by Antony and
the men deepest in Cæsar’s counsels. It would affront the Roman people,
he said, and nothing would budge him from that position. As yet.

Hers strengthened daily. All but the most conservative of the great
Roman ladies were enchanted to visit her and carry away the beautiful
and inexhaustible gifts she lavished on them. The banquets and wines and
the Queen’s charm drew not only the women but the great men of the
Senate, the rich men of great descent who stood aloof from
politics—each and all she caught in her glittering golden net of smiles
and pleasures. But for Cæsar, she could have enjoyed her life supremely
at that time. Success tingled like warm wine in her blood—delicious
hopes spread rainbow wings about her. But he was a heavy anxiety and all
depended upon him.

His temper was ungovernable—and just when the most perfect control and
suavity were needed. Could she ever forget the dreadful day when at the
banquet he started up and flung his wine in the face of Cicero because
the orator had ventured to disagree with him over what had appeared to
Cleopatra to be some nonsense concerning the proper manner of declaiming
a peroration. And Cicero, whom she had won, who frequented the villa now
like a tame sparrow, sprang up in a fury and rushed from the house,
mortally wounded in his inordinate self-esteem, while Cæsar remained
behind pale and raging at “the vain old fool—the insensate ass,” as he
called him, “who can do nothing but praise and magnify himself to all
eternity. He who should worship at my feet!”

“He should, he should, divine Cæsar,” cried Cleopatra, almost distracted
with despair at seeing her work so wrecked and for a nothing. “But, oh,
throw a little oil on the troubled waters! The man has a pen, a
tongue—”

“I also!” growled Cæsar. “What can he do to me? You have not heard the
news? Today it was decreed that a temple should be erected to me—as
Jupiter Julius—and in the temple of Quirinus my statue will stand with
the inscription: “To the immortal God.” A college of priests is to be
established in my honor, and that swine Cicero knows this in every
detail and yet dares—_dares_ to dispute with me on a matter of
oratory!”

He was so furious, so human, bristling with such rage and scorn that for
a moment she was on the verge of wild unpardonable laughter. The
God-idea had so often wrestled in her own brain with the knocks of
everyday life, and come off badly worsted, that she saw the humor of it
and was mostly content to wear her deity like a decoration nowadays and
put it off and on with her Isis or Hathor headdress simply as a
political weapon. Abroad Cæsar must take it seriously, for political
reasons, but it was almost terrifying to see with what ghastly gravity
he began to take it in private.

Would that he with equal good sense would use his deity only for a
weapon until the proper time came to assume it among the stars with his
equals! Could all this be the sign of incipient madness? The brooding
fear in the eyes of Apollodoros was ever before her.

She was on her knees in a moment beside him in terror.

“Cæsar, beloved, divine—you know best—you know all! Yet with great
pains I had won Cicero and all through Rome his voice was loud in my
praise. It has come to this, that everywhere the Romans are expecting
our marriage and saying that only so the greatness of Rome can be
accomplished and her Empire spread through the world. Let me win him
back—let me! Not putting you in the wrong but saying that a momentary
illness—”

“Illness? And I Julius-Jupiter! Woman, you talk folly. This house he
never enters again. Do the Gods need old Chickpea to accomplish their
purpose? But listen—you have often spoken of our marriage, and the time
is near—near! What then, Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt!”

Cicero forgotten, she sprang to her feet rejoicing, hands clasped in
delight beyond all speech, radiant, transfigured, Beauty herself at the
moment, raying joy upon him in dazzling beams.

“Yes,” he continued, “I have given orders for a temple in honor of Venus
Genetrix, the goddess beloved of Romans from whom I am descended. And
whose statue do you think shall stand in the inmost heart of her shrine
as the Goddess of Love and Fertility?—whose but Cleopatra’s—the
Hathor-Venus of Egypt, the mother of Cæsarion!”

She put her hands before her face almost overwhelmed by the glories that
broke upon her. So the Light on the Horizon had seen it, she also with
the eyes of her spirit, and now it was to be made actual before the
world.

“And that being done, the Senate shall issue the decree for our
marriage!” said Cæsar. “You have thought me delaying. I, inspired by the
divine wisdom, have chosen my time with perfect certainty. Calpurnia has
accepted my decision.”

Yes, Calpurnia would make no difficulty. Drunk with the God-idea, she
worshipped daily at the temple of Isis, and saw in each step taken along
the road to glory the manifestation of her will.

When Cleopatra, wild and laughing with triumph, flew to give the news to
Apollodoros he received it with gladness not unmingled with fear.

“It is good, Majesty most beloved, good. Yet walk warily. The brain
swims on the heights, yet never is there so much need for care and
patience. Forget not these my words spoken with deep solemnity. We draw
near the goal, yet there is Cicero—and more, infinitely more—there is
Brutus!”

She stared at him in complete bewilderment.


                               CHAPTER XV

There was Marcus Brutus. To Cleopatra, walking on the heights, the
existence of a young man whose austere Republicanism made him unpopular
in a Senate much fallen from the grace of the early Conscript Fathers,
could not seem of much importance. She knew his name because, under the
influence and researches of Apollodoros, she knew the name of every man
of importance in Rome; but that he should shadow her royal sunlight
would have seemed as impossible to her as that the Great Pyramid of
Chephren should fall and overwhelm her in its ruins. She thought of him,
when she thought at all, as a promising young friend of Cæsar’s who
might be developed into a useful understudy of important parts in their
plans.

Six months later Apollodoros entered and, dismissing even Charmion,
repeated his warning.

“There is Brutus!” he said again, “and clouds gather heavy in a sky of
storm. It is Cæsar against the Republic.”

“Brutus! And why Brutus!” she exclaimed. “Let us ask him to a banquet
and give him great gifts. Is not Portia his wife—the daughter of Cato?
She has come—after your first warning I invited her with Calpurnia and
the two came and to Portia I gave earrings and bracelets of amber set in
gold. Charmion remembers—a thing all sunlight and honey. Surely that
won her?”

“Marcus Brutus has been bidden, but he has never come. That caused me to
inquire at a source where all is known, for there Calpurnia is in the
hands of the priest of Isis and what she knows she tells!”

Cleopatra laughed gaily.

“You cannot frighten me, Apollodoros, now that our hands are all but
closing on victory. The temple in my honor stands completed, and you
yourself know how all Rome shared in the noble festivities and
worshipped before my statue. There is certainly no divinity more popular
than Venus in Rome! And I am a good second.”

“It could not escape popularity,” he answered with quiet irony, “seeing
that Cæsar banqueted twenty-two thousand Romans at his own cost. To me
it has always appeared that by such lavishness empires are destroyed,
not built. But true candor is the obedience due to beloved kings, and my
royal Mistress shall have it from her secretary.”

She thanked him with eyes and smile, always at their best and truest
when they fell on the man who would have served her with his life—whose
life indeed was service.

“Speak!” she said. “Did you ever speak, Truest, and I not profit? Tell
me of Brutus.”

“In a moment—for first—have you not noticed, royal Lady, that the
Roman women of the great families come here no more?”

She meditated a moment.

“It is true. Ungrateful cats! And I who have given with both hands. But
why? And does it matter?”

“It matters as an index of storm. The women themselves are nothing.
There is much talk in the great houses. I have spies in all the most
important. They say your condescension ill disguises the haughtiest
arrogance, and that if Cæsar were ever absolute King you would treat
them all as slaves. They say that you have subjugated Calpurnia and
Cæsar alike by magic arts of Egypt, and that you are a witch—a
night-sorceress. These men, Brutus and his friends, are staunch
Republicans, and they call Cæsar the murderer of the State. His life is
in great danger.”

Her clear eyes laughed untroubled. She gave no thought to Cæsar.

“I always was a witch—from the time I knew my right hand from my left.
Remember I was born to wear the girdle of Venus. But these heavy Roman
women—what have they to grumble at? I have spared their lovers!”

“Queen, you have not. They say you have gone like a love-philtre to the
head of every man who frequents this villa.”

“It is the Syrian wines,” said Cleopatra with sparkling eyes. The
stories highly amused her. They were evidences of helpless
irritation—no more. But Apollodoros did not laugh.

“And there is much pity for the Princess Arsinoë. The Romans say she
should have been set free and treated as a royal lady. Not
understanding, they condemn you for cruelty. And there is also Cicero.
He comes no more since Cæsar’s insult.”

Her eyes darkened like a sunshiny sea under sudden cloud.

“I know. I did what I could. We wrote him a letter, you and I,
Apollodoros, that should have softened the heart of a Minotaur; I sent
gifts— What does the brute say now?”

“I have seen a letter from Cicero to Atticus. He wrote: ‘I detest the
Queen; and the voucher for her promises, Apollodoros, knows I have good
reason for saying so. What she promised were all things of the learned
sort, and suitable enough to my character, such as I could avow in
public. But she is untrustworthy as a quicksand, and her insolence is
what I cannot recall without a pang!’”

“Holy Serapis!” ejaculated Cleopatra, and too stunned for more she
collapsed into silence. Shock, however, was only a temporary dam to
speech, for presently the torrent flowed free.

“That wicked old man was as near in love with me as man could be. A
touch—one touch, if I had willed it, and he would have forgotten his
Publilia in my arms. But I have had enough old men to last me for a
myriad incarnations. Ungrateful old villain! The least he could do would
be to return the gifts I threw before a vulgarian who did not know how
to receive the condescension of a queen.”

Apollodoros waited with respectful patience until she had raged herself
to a finish, then resumed:

“But Brutus. My Queen, I have made great researches there. He is the son
of Cæsar by Servilia. He knows it and loathes his father at heart, for
were he his true son— Think for yourself the glories we have allotted
to the baby Pharaoh Cæsarion. All these would be the possession of
Brutus had Servilia his mother been an honest woman and Cæsar’s wife.”

She stared at him aghast. Here indeed was a motive that might well
sharpen a man into a sword. And Brutus was no fool. He spoke and wrote
well, she knew, and posed as a high and austere Republican. Here then
was the key to that high Roman virtue.

“Men make me sick!” she muttered viciously. “Is there any truth
anywhere? But what is he to gain by injuring Cæsar? Surely he knows,
with all the world, that he has his favor securely and may hope for the
highest offices when Cæsar rules the world?”

“There is Cæsarion,” Apollodoros reminded her, “and can two suns shine
in the one sky? He means to enlighten Rome himself with his pure
radiance. He denounces Cæsar as debauched with Asiatic luxury, unfit to
rule, drunk with Egyptian spells. And he is listened to!”

“I don’t care. I believe him to be powerless. I believe—”

“Cicero is at his back,” Apollodoros reminded her again. “I had rather
have that grave young man on our side than Antony, for all his
popularity. There is a great plot afoot of which as yet I do not hold
all the threads. But I go now to see the great sport of the Lupercalia
Festival, and the offering of the crown by Antony to Cæsar who, as you
know, presides in the Forum. If that goes off as it should, I shall fear
Brutus the less.”

“Take me with you!” she cried, starting up eagerly. “I will paint my
eyebrows and stain my face brown and wear black Roman curls as I have
done so often in Alexandria. Who can tell then what woman laughs under
my hood? But, Apollodoros, I hate this offering of the crown. This
festival of the Lupercalia is a time of buffooning and obscene jokes,
and Antony is the last man to offer the crown. He is a buffoon always—a
handsome fool. Cæsar is too great, too dignified, to take a crown so
offered. It is the Senate—the Senate should come with humility to
beseech his acceptance.”

The face of Apollodoros gloomed.

“So I think. And had Cæsar’s brain been clear as in Egypt, he would have
scorned the notion! He to sit in the Forum with a crowd of unwashed
plebeians, and take an actor’s mock crown from the hands of Antony!
Folly, folly! It is playing into the hands of the plotters. But we spoke
in vain, you and I. Stay at home, great Lady, and do not see what will
grieve you!”

But she would not hear. A sense of urgency was on her that winged her
feet and thrilled in her blood like wine. After all, the Gods knew— It
might prosper. The Alexandrians would have laughed themselves hoarse at
such an offer. But the Romans—who could tell!

When she stood with Apollodoros in the stateliness of the Forum, jostled
by the eager crowd, no human eye could have recognised the one or the
other. He wore a wig of gray flowing hair, after the manner of the
affected philosophers; gray hair hid his mouth and chin. His face had
the sallow yellowness of the Levantine peoples. He had used the art
known in Egypt of thickening the nostrils with adhesive wool inside,
entirely changing the character of the most prominent feature. It
coarsened the face indescribably.

For the little Queen, the mass of black hair dressed in stiff Roman
curls was almost a sufficient disguise, overweighting her delicate
beauty—but the lips were brightly painted with cerise and a deep
sunburnt tan hardened with crimson on the cheek-bones desecrated the
pearly oval of her face. Lines at the corners of the eyes, etched in by
Charmion’s skilful hand, added ten years to her age; and bosom and hips
padded under her drapery finished the disguise. A stout, not uncomely
matron, very much to the Roman taste, addicted to the prevailing fashion
of paint and with a flamboyant taste in hair decoration was all that
remained of beauty that moved the world as the moon cold above them
draws the swelling tides.

So they stood, huddled in the crowd, as inconspicuous as any other two
in the vast assemblage.

The Lupercalia was the feast of fertility, of the human, animal and
vegetable rage of reproduction which yearly sweeps the world in the
Spring. In Rome it had become to a certain extent civilised into
comparative decency from its grosser beginning, though strange crude
ceremonies survived of which it was difficult to explain the meaning—so
old, so lost were they in the dim past of the building of the Roman
world. Nominally, they were in honor of a god—Lupercus—whom no one now
adored, whom no one valued to the worth of a penny, but who in ancient
days was celebrated by savage shepherds with lusty rites in fields and
woods. He appeared to be a remote foreshadowing of Pan in his grosser
aspects, and that was all one could say. But his feast was popular
enough, for it gave room for a good deal of fun of the rough and ready
sort, dropping easily into obscenity not very severely rebuked on the
great day.

And the manner of the celebration was this:

A goat and dog were sacrificed, and the blood dashed over two strong
young men, who cut the skins into thongs. Armed with these thongs they
went tearing through the streets, striking every woman who put herself
in their way with the fertilising thongs of Lupercus that she might bear
strong children to the State, and so making their way to the Forum they
were received with joyful pomp by the great man who presided, being
honored themselves as instruments of the God’s fruitful power.

Now Antony, a consul this year, had put himself forward as wielder of
one of the strange implements, with a purpose behind the fun and
buffoonery which had not been made public—the offering of the crown to
Cæsar when the people were flushed with drink and merriment. His method
was always to meet the people halfway in their rude tastes. “Feed with
them, drink with them, laugh with them, and you can take them where you
will. Stoop to conquer. Embrute yourself that you may lead the brutes!”
He had forced the plan upon Cæsar, half unwilling, wholly unfit now for
argument. He had beaten down the opposition of Cleopatra supported by
Apollodoros, and now his foresight was to be put to the touchstone.

Coarse merriment filled the air of Rome, but it was with hearts very far
removed from the tempestuous joking about them that Cleopatra and her
secretary set themselves to watch the event, posing as foreigners common
enough in the great and wicked city, the melting pot of the nations.

Apollodoros asked a few questions from a puny Roman citizen whose elbow
was inextricably wedged in his ribs.

“And what are these rods called, noble Roman, with which the young men
strike the women who desire offspring?”

“They are called februa, good Greek, and hence this month receives its
name of February. It is a charm never known to fail—if proper
conditions are observed afterwards! And certainly, considering the
history of the noble Antony, it is to be supposed he could administer as
much active virtue to the februa as most!”

“So I have gathered!” Apollodoros said seriously. “That may be well. The
Gods favor devout servitors. And is this great figure seated on the
throne the Divine Cæsar? I understand you worthy Romans have hailed him
as a God.”

“No less!” said the little Roman, “but for all his Godship and
magnificence I would not take a year’s lease of his life. Jupiter-Julius
he is, but his face to me appears like death; and only see the lines
about his mouth! Ah, we shall miss him when he is translated to the
stars. A great man, a very great man! Would he might live and rule us!”

“Would you have him marry the Egyptian queen?” asked Apollodoros
humoring his bent.

“That would I. Ay! A handsome young woman that has already proved she
has no need of the thong. And loaded with gold and jewels and a fine
kingdom at her back. Let him have two wives, say I, or twenty or a
hundred, so it brings good to the State. More power to him! Why, we have
had nothing but good from Egypt. This Egyptian Queen’s astronomers have
even regulated our calendar so that we no longer have the months and
festivals tumbling head over heels over each other as before. I praise
Cæsar for this,—and the woman also!”

Cleopatra smiled with painted lips red as cherries. A man after her own
heart! But looking upward to where Cæsar sat, stiff as a golden idol on
a golden throne, that heart misgave her. He was death-white, a parchment
white that looked as though no blood circulated under the stiff and
wrinkled skin. Evidently making a strong effort, he kept his eyes open
and a fixed smile on his lips, but more than once amidst the noise of
the impatient multitude gathered in the Forum she saw his eyelids drop
heavily and he sat there in robes of burnished gold, rigid as a lifeless
image, eyes closed as in pain too deep to be borne. It sent red shoots
of terror darting along her veins. The Gods avert her sickening dread
and send that all might go well in the great test to come.

A roar, a swelling roar drawing nearer and nearer, the shouting of the
multitude, yells of laughter, great cheers that echoed along the narrow
streets. The runners were coming—Antony and the young Flavius. Louder,
louder it drew near, and Cæsar, opening his eyes, steadied his hands on
the arms of the throne and prepared to play his part. Deafening tumults
of applause and yells of laughter as the crowd parted, pushing a
shrinking or bold-faced woman forward here or there to receive the
fertilising stroke, and the two runners were in sight, puffed and blown
with their race, striking furiously here and there with the februa.

Antony led the race, almost naked, his powerful limbs dripping with
sweat, his eyes almost starting out from a face flushed scarlet with
running and yelling. Thrusting the crowd right and left he flung himself
before the throne of Cæsar.

“Hail, great Lupercus. Hail, God of plenty and joy, of fruitfulness in
the house, the fields and the wild woods! Hail and be gracious to your
worshipping subjects.”

His breath sobbing in his throat, he could scarcely articulate the
words. Turning, he beckoned to his associate. Flavius, a boy of twenty,
fleet-foot as a faun, stepped forward and handed to Antony a royal
diadem of golden leaves woven with laurels, and Antony raised it above
his head crying in a great voice:

“Crowns for Kings! And what crown that the Roman Imperator does not
honor by acceptance? Take this, Divine Cæsar, the sovereignty of the
Roman World, and on this great day crown yourself, to the joy of all
your faithful Romans.”

He turned to the crowd, still holding the diadem above his head.

“Shouts and praises for the Roman Imperator!”

Strained, fixed, in a panic of fear and hope, Cleopatra almost wavered
as she stood, and Apollodoros passed his arm about her in a momentary
terror lest she should fall. She pushed it aside and stood rapt,
ecstatic. It was coming—it was coming! Monarch in the face of Rome!

The crown trembled in Antony’s strained and brawny hands. Where were the
shouts?

Shouts, yes,—applauses, yes. But not the thunder of universal
acclaim—far from it I Bands of men stationed here and there made what
noise they could, others were silent; some made uncouth sounds
expressing disapproval.

“Unanimous! Unanimous!” Antony shouted, almost drowning the dissenting
voices in his own roar.

“Take it, great Cæsar, and with it the homage of myriad Romans and
barbarians!”

Cæsar had risen, paler, if possible, than before. His fingers itched for
the diadem—it was as though his life trembled in each laurel leaf. But
he dared not. Not in the face of those half-hearted shouts—that
undercurrent of doubt and dismay! Not possible—not possible. His hands
flickered towards it and fell back weakly on his bright robe. Then with
a mighty effort he collected himself.

His haughty features were haughtier than ever with inward anger and
shame that must pass for disdain. His voice rang shrilly above the
silent crowd—all upturned and eyes.

“Have I asked for a crown, young man? Do Cæsars demand honors in return
for services? I am Imperator of Rome, I have served the Roman people.
That is enough for me!”

Now indeed thunders of applause broke out and beat in great waves of
sound all round the Forum. That was their Cæsar, the great, the
Republican, the Roman! Half bewildered Antony tendered the diadem again,
pretending to regard the approval as given to the crowning. Instantly it
dropped to sporadic shouts raised here and there, belated in a
wilderness of silence. The people would not have it. Ominous cries were
raised far and near. Furiously Cæsar pushed the thing away and the
episode was over. The chance was lost.

“Carry the diadem to the Capitol,” his voice rang out over the
assemblage, “and inscribe upon the calendar that this day the people
offered me the crown and that I twice refused it. What will have I but
the will of the Roman people?”

Thunders of applause again stormed the Forum. Their God, their ruler,
their Cæsar, was true to himself and to them. What more was there to
say!

Half sobbing for shame and furious anger, Cleopatra clung to the arm of
Apollodoros, as Antony, gathering his wits together, caught up his thong
and resumed his character of the God’s forerunner.

“Come, young Flavius, come! Let us do our office. Let us fill the
cradles of Rome with laughing boys and lovely girls!”

As they struck on either side the crowd opened again, leaving Cleopatra
and her secretary for a second in the open space. They shrank back, but
in that moment the thong of Antony had fallen lightly on her shoulder.
She looked up in anger and disgust, and he shouted all unconscious:

“Go home, good woman, and rejoice in the sons and daughters I give you
for the greatness of Rome. Oh, the sad face! She weeps because noble
Cæsar has refused the diadem. But the day will come—will come! Now,
Flavius!”

They sprang like hounds unleashed from the Forum and so into the streets
of Rome scattering jests of the broadest about them as they went.

As Apollodoros guided the Queen through the press he whispered in her
ear: “Brutus has been at work here—he and Cassius. They are the brain
and hand of the plot against our hope. The fool Antony to give him the
chance! Come, let us get out of this license!”

“Loathsome!” she said, shuddering. “Loathsome, to see the royal dignity
buffooned away. Come, let us go!”

That night Cæsar spent at the villa—a night to be remembered.

Almost exhausted by the events of the day it was yet necessary that he
should see Cleopatra and explain to her the new complexion put upon
their affairs by this rejection. It was wormwood to him—bitter as death
to announce his plans so far defeated that he must postpone their
fulfillment, and, seeing his failing face, a look from Apollodoros over
his shoulder warned her that feel what she would, suffer as she might,
she must play her game now with the utmost tact and courage if she were
not to be discarded as a tool broken in the instant of trial.

Antony followed him, sobered and refreshed after his violent day. He too
must be present to hear the words of the Imperator. But his gaze was on
the face of Cleopatra. He regretted the failure, but he had done his
best and it might have immense and unforeseen effect on his own
interests.

With the paint washed from her face, whiter than any lily, and shadowed
eyes, there was still courage in her, the young determination to make
her way to the goal cost what it might. If the marriage, the Empire,
must be postponed for a month or two she would bear it, but no more. It
had become as clear to her as to Apollodoros that the race they were
running was with death, and the stake the life of Cæsar. She sat on a
lower seat beside him, watching intently.

His head had fallen upon his breast as if with weariness unspeakable,
and there was dead silence in the lamp-lit room until he raised it and
spoke in a voice thick with exhaustion.

“You all know that my heart was not in the exhibition of today, but
tests are useful and the test has shown that the time is not yet. Has
any one of you a word to say against this?”

Silence. Cleopatra opened her lips, but what was she against Cæsar and
Antony! They knew the Roman people. She dared not speak. He continued,
his stern features white as a cameo against the purple curtain that fell
beside him:

“For many years I have laid stone upon stone to build the fortress of my
royalty. With public shows, feastings, bribes, war and glories, I have
bought the people, who have always been for sale and always will be. I
have bound my friends to me. I have conciliated my enemies. And it
appeared that the time was ripe for my royalty. But today has proved it
is not. False stories have been spread that I desire to make Alexandria
my capital instead of Rome.” Cleopatra drew a deep breath. “It has been
said that because Egyptian astronomers have reformed the Roman calendar
that I desire to make Italy Egyptian. I must prove that this is false. I
must give Rome some gift greater than any hitherto to bind her to me.
She is a hard mistress and the price of buying Republicans is high.”

Dead silence. What was there left to give? Gallia, Iberia, Germania,
Britannia, Egypt—his gifts had been royal!

“I will give them now the kingdom of Parthia, with all its riches and
all its splendors, and having given this there is nothing left in the
world for them to desire but the kingdoms of the Orient, and to that
Parthia is the road.”

Antony sprang to his feet.

“Parthia? But that is a three years’ campaign! A three years’ absence
from Rome!”

Three years! Cleopatra, pale as ashes, lifted her eyes in mute despair
to Apollodoros where he stood beside the curtain—a servant, yet high in
the counsels of his lords. His face was indecipherable, his eyes fixed
on the mosaic at his feet.

“Three years!” Cæsar repeated inexorably. “With Parthia and its loot in
my hand they shall take all my will for the Gods’ will and they shall
know what I know, that Parthia is the gate of India and of the whole
world.”

“If they had even the brains of swine,” said Antony violently, “they
would know now that the true key of India is Alexandria and the great
sea. What is Parthia beside it?”

Cæsar smiled bitterly.

“Very true, but they are possessed by the dead ghosts of Alexander the
Great’s over-land conquests, and Rome does not understand the sea. There
is no way but this. Being so, we must all face the hardness of
necessity. I go to Parthia. I leave Antony in Rome to tend my interests
and I will put my friends in all the high places of government that they
may keep watch and ward for me. And for you—”

He turned to Cleopatra and the words faltered on his lips. Apollodoros
looked up suddenly, keenly. She put out her hands, speechless, to fence
herself as if from a blow.

“The Queen must return instantly to Egypt and guard my son and our
interests there. For three years.”

She rose to her feet stumbling over the hem of her long white robe,
veiling her agony, with an arm across her face like a victim who sees
the torture before him and will not see. She would have spoken, but
could not, and they watched her in dead silence. Not even Apollodoros
could fathom that ruin of hope and pride.

“The Gods are too great for men!” she said at last, in a stifled voice,
that scarcely reached them from beneath her arm. “I should have known.
The Light on the Horizon—the Light on the Horizon!”

She went out alone, her face hidden, her robe trailing behind her.

None stirred.


                              CHAPTER XVI

Day followed day in dull succession while the young Queen made ready to
return to Egypt. Great were the preparations for her stately departure,
for there must be no hint of defeat or even of disappointment. All must
be taken as some high decree of Cæsar’s for the Roman good, in which she
acquiesced as absolutely at one with his inspired hopes and ambitions.
That was the view spread through Rome, and there were many whom it
deceived and some whom it did not; among them Brutus, Casca and Cicero,
who knew very much better what to think. For Brutus was in Cæsar’s
confidence and though, even to Brutus, he would not speak of the Queen’s
despair, it was easy for the younger man to read the sense of failure
and bitter disappointment weighing upon the mighty soul of Cæsar. But he
had no pity; it only hastened the plans of the conspirators. If in
addition to the services he had rendered the Republic he should lay
Parthia at her feet no earthly power would hinder his attainment of
royalty. It had taken all their cunning, all their plotting even to
delay it, and it was clear to them now that they must act swiftly or
never. Deep subterranean currents were bubbling and flowing beneath the
fair surface of events in Rome at this time.

But who can tell the despair of Cleopatra, cast down from her hope,
ambition itself ruining beneath her feet? The very sight of her child
was an unbearable bitterness. She had given her youth, beauty, and
reputation—all the royalty and splendor of her glorious kingdom—to
Cæsar, and what had it brought her? Nothing. She had kindled the fire of
her bright charm to warm an old man into passion—and he left her as
easily as though she had been an Alexandrian courtesan worth an hour’s
amusement and no more. There she was unjust to him, but who could see
clear in that hour of immense failure? His pride, thwarted in its most
sensitive point, forbade him to discuss feelings and motives with her or
with any one. He wrapped himself in reserve as in a mantle and went
coldly forward with his own preparations for the Parthian campaign,
avoiding her as much as possible. It was even made plain to her that her
stay at the villa was mischievous at the moment, and a great urban house
was found for her—no longer must the roof of Cæsar shelter the mother
of his son.

There Calpurnia came one day, veiled and secret with an urgent word to
say. The Queen received her, as always in the presence of Apollodoros,
and the meeting between the two was strange indeed.

“I will not see the woman!” she had said to Apollodoros. “She is his
wife. Here, in Rome, I am his deserted mistress. She shall not triumph
over me. I am still Queen of Egypt.”

“See her, beloved Lady,” he answered eagerly. “She knows things we do
not, and when is not knowledge power?”

So they met, Calpurnia huddled in a black veil, Cleopatra with a mask of
cool indifference to hide her shame.

Calpurnia saluted her at a distance, and, being invited to sit, stood
clutching the back of a chair.

“I would not have come, Cleopatra, knowing the pride and anger that must
burn in your royal soul, were it not that things terrible and urgent
must be said between us. Forgive me before I speak.”

Anger was impossible. Her face was livid; great rings of darkness
surrounded heavy eyes and her lips were pinched and dry. In the weeks
since they had met she had thinned to a shadow, quivering with nerves,
her hands trembling; a pitiable sight.

Cleopatra, no less pale, swept her with a haughty glance, herself burned
to the soul with insult from the horrible difficulties of her position.
Not by a word, a sign, would she show this to the Roman woman. She spoke
in a measured voice, slightly satirical, veiling misery under hard
crystal indifference.

“I cannot tell why you have come, and to the Queen of Egypt. Rome is not
the world, and it concerns me nothing now. I go to my own country. Let
Rome go its own way; I, mine.”

The other put out beseeching hands: “Queen, when I heard of the Parthian
campaign my heart failed me for you, for myself and Rome. Look at Cæsar!
Can he live to face it? None but myself knows how he is broken under the
inspiration of the Goddess. It is too much for flesh and blood. No—we
are denying the Mighty One. We have not faith. I have had supernatural
warnings and dreams, and the omens are terrible. Do not fly from Rome.
Have patience and in obedience to the holy Isis all will be well.”

She did not move Cleopatra who, in spite of early training and the
personal connection, could not see what Isis had to do with Cæsar’s
breach of trust. It might seem strange to accuse the conqueror of the
world of want of courage, but that was her estimate of him. Audacity, a
dazzle of daring, would have done all and at least kept her respect for
him.

“For my part, the sooner I am out of Rome the better,” she answered with
chilly precision. “There is no direction in which I have not been
cheated and betrayed. I have cheapened my country, fed every day with
false promises, and now he takes his own way without a thought of me and
my son and I am fleeing in disgrace, my reputation ruined. As to the
campaign in Parthia, I believe not one word of his intention. It is a
ruse to get rid of me until Egyptian treasure and ships and men are
available again.”

Calpurnia beat at the air with her hands in despair.

“No—no, you are a great queen. His hopes are in you. But that is not
it. The omens! Something dreadful is at hand, and it may be you can
avert it—you and the wise Apollodoros. Last night after he had eaten
his meal,—not having spoken, and dark with brooding, the seizure came
upon him. He fell at my feet as if fighting for life, the blood running
from his bitten lips and tongue, staining the foam upon them. And he
cried aloud—‘O Isis, Goddess of the Egyptians, have pity on me. Grant
me my life, grant me my crown, and I will fill your temples with
sacrifices and you shall be mighty in Rome and throughout the world as
on the Nile. Hear me—O hear!’ And I looked for an answer, and, as I
looked, the image of Isis with the child Horus in her arms fell, without
hand touching it, from the shelf where it stands; and it was broken
before my eyes.”

Silence. What could Cleopatra say? Her own wrongs burned in her heart,
consuming all else, and what were the pale dreams of a devotee to her
flaming wrath and shame?

Wringing her hands, Calpurnia spoke, sobbing like a spent runner.

“And in the night I heard a crash that should have awakened Rome, but no
one stirred. And I sat up, wet and cold with the sweat of terror—and
again it came, and again! Three fearful times! And this morning Cæsar
went to do sacrifice and a goat was slaughtered, and when the priests
inspected the entrails they recoiled with terror, for the beast had no
heart—none, and yet had lived! These are fearful omens. And a
slave-woman woke screaming in the night, saying she had seen multitudes
of men burning in a great flame.”

Even Cleopatra shuddered. These were fearful omens indeed. They
betokened the direst misfortune, but to whom? At the moment she felt
that she could bear mishaps to the Parthian campaign with the utmost
equanimity. They might indeed throw him back on her and resolve him to
strike the one bold blow which she was convinced was all that was
needed.

Apollodoros interposed.

“Great Lady, what would you have my royal mistress do?”

That plain question reduced emotion to reason. Calpurnia turned to him
haggardly and with more calm.

“Wise Sicilian, I would have her do this: Throw all her weight and
influence against the Parthian campaign, and take Cæsar with her to
Alexandria until this dreadful imminent danger is past. There in
Alexandria wealth may be collected—there he is the Royal
Consort—there, in peace, he can propitiate the Holy Isis in the land of
her love. There his friends can join him, and, if the Parthian campaign
must be, let it begin from there and not from here, where some deep plot
against him is stirring. Do this, great Cleopatra, and your name will
ring down the ages as the savior of Cæsar and his glory.”

At the moment Cæsar’s glory was troubling Cleopatra much less than the
question of how she herself could escape from her dilemma without
ruinous dishonor. She looked coldly into Calpurnia’s sunk and reddened
eyes.

“You are a strange woman! Have you no jealousies? But you are right. I
do not want your husband. I want strength, and he has none. Nor wisdom.
Did he ever listen to me except in the matter of winning over Egypt?
Never. In a few days I shall have seen the last of Rome, and may the
Gods of Egypt grant that I never see it again!”

As the words left her lips the purple curtain was lifted and Cæsar stood
before them, worn, old, a most pathetic figure, but with unconquerable
fire burning in his eyes. Dream,—folly, it might be, but there was more
than a touch of the God-like about the man in the withered body and the
clear flame of the spirit bright above its ruin.

“I have heard the last words of Cleopatra and Calpurnia, and I say this:
Let the omens be what they will I go forward, and as for flight to
Alexandria—_I_ to sink into an Egyptian Pharaoh, _I_, who will be King
of the World! Keep to your spinning, women, and leave me to my sword!”

Calpurnia covered her face. Cleopatra stared at him hardily. She had
learned by this time that Cæsar could fail like others, and words meant
nothing to her now. Apollodoros stood forward to voice her thought.

“Great Cæsar, Roman Imperator, hear my words. My Queen has put in your
hands her most precious self, her son, and Egypt, with all that is in
that glorious and ancient land. What has she had in return? Dangerous
absence from her kingdom, scorn from the Romans, plundering of her
treasures, failure, failure, in you who were once so great. She returns
the poorer by a dream, the richer by experience. There is no place for
you in Egypt. You have been tried and found wanting. But because you
were once our friend I give you this warning: Beware of Marcus Brutus.
The danger foretold by the omens centres in him. Beware—and again
beware!”

A flame of fury swept over Cæsar’s face at this plain speaking, but he
controlled it and laughed aloud.

“Brutus? Choose your man better, Apollodoros, the Sicilian! He has his
ambitions, and I know them; but he loves me—he will have the grace to
wait until the breath is out of this withered body. As for the
Queen—she is young and impetuous. If she had patience to wait until the
Parthian war glutted Rome with gold and riches, she would see my every
promise fulfilled. As it is—she must take her way—I mine. For the
child’s sake I regret it.”

“For more than the child’s sake, I regret it,” she answered, her light
figure dilating with scorn and anger. “I believed in you and have been
deceived. The Gods grant I am in time to retrieve my mistakes and yours.
Go, Calpurnia, I bear you no ill will. You did what you could. Go,
Cæsar, and remember when the last day is upon you that if you had struck
like a man, instead of doubting like a coward, you and I had sat side by
side, rulers of the world. But I will rule it still. When you are dead
and forgotten I will live and triumph. I swear it by the Holy Isis of
whom I am part. Go, Roman—I have done with you!”

She flung her hand out with a gesture of cruel rejection and pride, and
so stood fixed like a Pythoness in the act of prophecy. He would have
answered, but Calpurnia clung weeping to his arm and dragged him to the
door, and the Sicilian stood behind his queen with scorn and repulsion
in every line of his face. Something seemed to choke in the throat of
Cæsar; it was as though youth and hope, and the phantom of Divinity
itself, bade him farewell with Cleopatra. He went slowly out with bowed
shoulders, and the curtain fell behind him.

That day Calpurnia spent prostrate before the image of the Mystery, but
no answer was vouchsafed.

She rose as the sun sank in a wan March sky washed in with silver rifts
revealing immeasurable depths in inky clouds. As she entered her house a
faithful old slave-woman met her with a word to say:

“Great Lady, the Master sups at the house of Marcus Lepidus—who came
here to take him. And before he went I heard the man say to him:
‘Dolabella has disputed with me today as to what sort of death is the
best. What is your thought?’ And Cæsar replied smiling: ‘That which is
unexpected.’ Lady, it is a fearful omen. Wise men do not speak of the
dark God. He is too great. And Zosime, the Greek slave, has let fall
from her hand the treasured glass cup of the Master which he brought
from Egypt with his own image upon it and it is broken into diamond
dust. The Gods pity us!”

That was the cry in the heart of Calpurnia also. She was weak with
fasting; all day she had not eaten, and she wavered as she walked; but
she put the woman aside and would hear nothing. She said simply:

“The Gods know best. We know nothing,” and so went on.

She was asleep from exhaustion when Cæsar returned, her mind, even in
dreams, a confusion of unspeakable fears and doubts; and he did not wake
her as he lay down beside her, nor, warmed with wine, excited with the
great events of the past days, could he himself sleep, but lay staring
out into the dark, seeing bright passing pictures of the past and future
form upon it in a bewildering haze of colors and disappear to rekindle
in confusion. The house was deadly still—quiet as the inside of a
grave—the mind of each man and woman away on its own mad ghost-hunt in
the wild land of dreams; and the streets also at last were silent—the
heart of Rome stilled in the vast darkness.

Suddenly a thundering crash—like that of an earthquake roaring upon its
prey—and every door, every window, in the secluded chamber sprang wide,
breaking up the silence into horror, the darkness into the pale staring
of the moon, cold and remote but full in his face. Shuddering, he
dragged at the arm of Calpurnia and could not wake her. She lay tossing,
contorted in the coils of some dream of horror, sobbing, groaning, her
hands clenched in each other, beyond his reach.

Then, rising, standing in bleaching moonlight, Cæsar, unshaken by fear,
invoked the immortal Gods with hands extended upward:

“For what I have done amiss, pardon. For what is to come, courage.” And
so, returning to his bed, slept.

But in the morning Calpurnia all pale and aghast, revealed her dream:

“Let me be brief, for words will not bear the horror. I held you in my
arms a murdered man, blood running from every wound in your body. For
the holy Gods’ sake, for the sake of the love and submission I have
always shown you, do not leave the house today!”

He struggled for a laugh.

“The Senate meets today, and at the home of Lepidus I heard that the
debate turns on matters of the utmost consequence to the Parthian
campaign. I cannot be absent. Let me go, woman. I never knew you a
coward. You shall not make me one.”

“In the temple of Isis yesterday evening the most aged of the priests,
one who lives in the sight of the Gods, took me apart: ‘Wife of Cæsar,’
he said, ‘take this for truth and tell it to him as you value your life
and his. Let him beware of the Ides of March.’ This is the day. Hear
me—by your mother’s life, I entreat, if I myself am nothing!”

Her anguish was more than her words. It was dreadful to see. It moved
him a little. Perhaps his own great weariness may have helped, and the
gloom as of a blinding mist, in which men walked spectral coming and
vanishing silently along the streets, may also have moved him.

“If it will satisfy you, cause a sacrifice to be offered, and, if the
omens are then unfavorable, I will stay within—for this day only.”

On the wings of terror she flew to give orders. Let the beast bleed that
Cæsar might know his fate!

Terrible and most terrible was the report when it came. Warning, woe,
and destruction were foretold in the body before the priests. Let Cæsar
accept it or take the ruin!

Worn out, he agreed and was about to deny all audience to visitors when
Albinus, a man of importance and a friend whom Cæsar trusted, pushing
aside those slaves who would have withstood him, hurried into the atrium
hot with haste and excitement. The traitor, the liar!

“Come, Cæsar, delay no longer; the Senate sits and great honors are
preparing themselves for you! While you supposed that all was going
wrong, because of the folly of Antony on the Lupercalia, your friends
were at work, and it is going better than right. The Gods are good to
you. You are to be decreed King of all the Provinces outside Italy and
may there wear the Imperial diadem! Only in Italy must the Republican
farce be kept up a little longer, until the asses of plebeians weary of
it. Come, mighty Cæsar, come!”

But again Calpurnia threw herself between them.

“Cæsar, my dream, my dream! I see his hands dripping with blood. He is
luring you into the snare. Cæsar, Cæsar!”

With the name bursting in a cry from her lips she fell like one dead
before him, and, the women surrounding her in terror, she was carried
away into the inner room.

“Her dream?” said Albinus with a smile of scorn on thin lips. “So she
dreamed some misfortune, I suppose, as women will! And you listen, and a
crown in the balance! Well—have your way!”

He paused a moment, and looked about him.

“A rich house, yet not worthy of Cæsar, King of the World. But I will
tell the Senate that they must wait until the dreams of Calpurnia are
more fortunate. Bid her fast tonight instead of feasting, and she may do
better. Or come at least and postpone the business until a more
fortunate day. Why insult the Senate and your friends?”

And still Cæsar hesitated. The omens weighed upon him more than the
dream of his wife.

“I will go,” said Albinus. “The man who does not seize opportunity is
scarcely a King for the Romans. Farewell, Cæsar, and may Calpurnia dream
pleasantly this night.”

He went toward the door opening on the street, and without a word Cæsar,
gathering up his mantle, followed; without a word the other led the way,
knowing that resolution trembled on a balance which a touch either way
might send flying upward.

So they walked through the narrow streets, Cæsar a little behind,
advancing toward those buildings where the Government of Rome had its
sittings.

And as they did so the aged priest of whom Calpurnia had spoken stood on
the edge of the people drawing aside to let the great man pass, and,
seeing him approaching through the heavy mist that rose from Tiber and
overhung the city like a pall, he leaned forth and looked at him very
earnestly, and Cæsar, willing to relieve his own soul by a jest, said to
him:

“Hail, friend! What have you to say? The Ides of March are here and no
harm done. Go, tell it to Calpurnia.”

And the priest said low and trembling:

“The time is come but not gone,” and slipped back among the people like
one terrified, and the crowd drew in its breath hissing like a great
snake for fear. So he went on, and two men who knew of the plot tried to
get near and alarm him, but could not, because the people thronged about
him, to kiss his hands or to shake their own in his face, according as
they loved him or hated.

In that hall which contained the statue of Pompey which Cæsar himself
had set up, willing to have old feuds forgotten, sat the assembly, and
as he entered the whole Senate rose and saluted the Dictator, standing
to honor him as though he were already a king. And there was a great
silence, of awe and expectation.

He looked about him for Antony, but he was not there, Albinus having
fastened on him outside to keep him in talk while the murder was done
inside. For his was a ready dagger; and he, Cæsar’s right hand.

Afterwards, when people who were present tried to record the facts, they
could give no clear description, least of all the butchers! Some of the
plotters gathered round the back of his chair; some approached as if
they would second the petition which Tillius Cimber presented to the
Dictator on behalf of his exiled brother, following him to the chair
where he took his seat, the Senate reseating itself as he sat.

He drew up haughtily as they importuned him, rejecting the petition,
waving them angrily away at last. Then, in a flash, Tillius Cimber
seized him by the toga, dragging it from his neck. The signal—the
signal! Instantly, Casca leaped upon him with his dagger, wounding him
in the throat, and Cæsar, writhing aside, caught the knife and gripped
it, shrieking “Casca!” his cry more a beast’s despair than a man’s,
drowned in the yell of Casca to his brother for help in his devil’s
work.

Dagger points flashed about him wherever he turned, and fierce eyes
above them. Hemmed in on all sides he met blows at his face, at his
eyes. Driven here and there, a wolf at bay, he was trapped in the hands
of all, for all must share the guilt. A sight of horror! This way and
that he turned and doubled, defending himself desperately and in vain,
flung back upon the daggers, dripping blood from ghastly wounds; and
none came to his help, no, not one! The very Senate slunk away, sick and
crawling with fear and shame. Brutus held back, eyes in a narrow glare,
hands trembling, toppling on the edge of the precipice of crime, daring,
not daring—Yes, daring at last! For the others urged him on! Then in a
rush, seeing all in the blaze of hell’s lightning, he struck at Cæsar’s
breast and murdered gratitude itself in the blow.

Now peace came to Cæsar and remembrance of high things. Flung against
the base of Pompey’s statue, he dropped his dagger, and looked the
traitor in the face:

“Brutus—And _You_!”

And with that dying cry, he covered his face after the manner of the
great Romans, that none should see him pass, and so fell dead.

They rushed in upon him, stabbing blindly, cutting one another in a mad
fury of fear, until at last the quivering of the massacred body ceased
and all was still.

They fled to their lairs for safety.

Now when the news was carried to Calpurnia she threw her hands above her
head and fell on the floor, and for two nights and days she spoke no
word, going down as it were into the dark of death with Cæsar. And when
it reached Cleopatra she stood stock still, the red blood flushing up
into her pale cheeks; and she said:

“The Gods,—the dreadful Gods!” and again: “Who shall stand before
them?”

And Apollodoros said nothing, watching her; and at last she said:

“Send for Antony in hot haste, and until he comes leave me to myself
that I may pray to all the Gods of Egypt, for this is the hour of
victory or defeat.”

So she turned trembling away.


                              CHAPTER XVII

But neither on that day nor for a week could Antony come to the Queen,
for Rome was tossing like a raging ocean, and the murderers had fled,
fearing the wrath of the Senate and the vengeance of Cæsar’s friends. It
was Antony, Antony everywhere, consolidating his power, gathering up the
reins dropped from the dead hand, hailed, by all but the assassins and
their party, as the rising sun, heir to the power of Cæsar. Calpurnia
sent for him and confided to him the possessions of Cæsar, to hold in
trust until his will should be opened. Word came that Octavian, the
nephew of Cæsar, was riding like the wind on his way to Rome. But none
as yet knew the mind of the people, and still the body of Cæsar lay
unburied in the quiet of the Forum, and men and women went and came
silently about it and over Rome fell a great awe.

Apollodoros passed in and out through all the crowds and suspense,
hastily continuing the preparations for Cleopatra’s flight, for so it
must be called. He went in fear for her life those days, for who could
tell that the murderers might not turn upon her next, declaring that it
was she who had destroyed the republican in Cæsar. Also the Senate might
hold her as a hostage for the obedience of Egypt. Many dangers hovered
about them in those dark days of March. Once he gained an interview with
Antony—an interview of a moment, which left him trembling:

“Tell your Queen this—that her life hangs on a thread unless I can win
the Romans. Bid her keep to the house, hide herself, despatch what
treasures she can secretly to the ships, for within the next day the
world may crash together in ruins and destroy us all; but when I can—if
I live, I will come to her.”

At long last he came, graver and more manly than she had seen him, but
with an air of exultation like that of the winner at the games; and so
he was brought into her presence and taking her hand kissed it, and
seated himself at her command.

“The Queen may go in and out at her pleasure now. Rome is won!”

She clapped her hands like a girl.

“And how?”

“By eloquence, great Lady—eloquence, though I should leave my praises
to others! When the time of the funeral was set, I went to the Forum,
and there was the crowd waiting about Cæsar, and I carried in my head
the provisions of his will, for I knew they would go hard with Brutus
and his cut-throats. And so, seeing the moment had come, I flung up my
hand and spoke. Not ill, as I think!”

“No, divinely well, great Antony!” cried Apollodoros, “for I was there.
Gods, how you touched them!”

She turned eager eyes from one to the other, questioning:

“No modesty! Tell me, noble Antony. Hush, Apollodoros!”

The big man sprawled in his chair, thrusting out his legs as if weary,
his head lolling on the cushions of purple silk.

“I would you had heard it, Cleopatra, for you are all fire and light;
you too could speak if you would. Well—I hailed them as friends and
Romans—_they_ Romans, the scum! And I told them how Cæsar loved
them,—Cæsar—that saw in each one of them a necessary evil! And that
praise moved them so much that they stood blubbering round like the
fools they are. And then I told them how Cæsar had left to each Roman
citizen three hundred sesterces in money, and to the Roman people the
great gardens and estates of the villa on Tiber and—”

“Good Gods,” ejaculated Cleopatra, “that Paradise to those swine! Well
might Apollodoros say his brain was touched!”

“I have known that for some time. But the will was a stroke of policy in
case it should be read in his lifetime, and it all served our turn very
well. They blubbered like children as each thought of walking with his
fat wife and squint-eyed children in the gardens of the great! And then
I reminded them of how modestly Cæsar had refused the crown when I
offered it twice on the Lupercalia. Thanks be to Mars he did, for it
gave me a noble text to discourse from! And then I held up his bloody
garment stabbed through and through, and then I gave them my best
oratory.”

“And marvellous it was!” cried Apollodoros with enthusiasm. “I wish
beyond wishing that my queen had heard it, for never was such eloquence.
The people wept and sobbed—O glorious, most glorious!”

Antony smiled modestly.

“It was really not so bad. Let Cicero mock at my ‘Asiatic style of
oratory’ as he was pleased to call it. It certainly served my turn and
cooked his goose on that occasion! _He_ could not do the like! They
simply whooped with emotion. If the murderers had been in Rome we could
have despatched them one and all to keep Cæsar company in the land of
Shades. I own I should like to see that good young Republican Brutus
with a dagger in his throat! However—to make a long story short, the
people tore up the benches, railings, everything they could lay their
hands on, and made a glorious pyre, and they spread a purple cloak and
laid Cæsar upon it, and poured oil, and lit it, and the blaze went up in
a roar—and so, an end of Cæsar. It was an immense relief to their
feelings. Oh, the people—the people! How I despise them, yet knowing
they must be courted for awhile. Not but what I get on well enough with
them when they know their place. Hercules!—when I called Brutus an
honorable man, and my eyes cast up to heaven, they were great! They
would have lit the pyre with him for a penny. They tasted the irony!”

“They don’t trouble us much in Alexandria as yet. That pleasure is
reserved for republics,” she said, with a lift of her lip, “and the more
I see of the Republic the more poisonous I think it. Well, there is an
end of Cæsar, and what next?”

Her whole heart was still burning from what she considered the betrayal
of her hopes. If she felt any pity she would not show it. Pride and
policy alike forbade it, and moreover she knew her man. Beauty in tears
would please Antony only when the tears were shed in his own honor. The
laughing Queen for him. She had proved it already.

“What next?” he said with his jolly laugh. “It would puzzle a woman of
any less than your wit to understand that! Why, to make friends with
Brutus and his murderers until the day of vengeance comes along! The
Senate is all for peace and politeness now. They say we have all been
wrangling too long. But you may guess what the peace will be worth! One
thing more—” He hesitated, looking at the girl under his handsome
eyelids to see how she would take it. “In Cæsar’s will, made recently—”

She took it with all her subtlety, anticipating him:

“I know. No mention of me and my son. Am I right?”

“Right, Queen of Queens!” said Antony, immensely relieved. Cleopatra was
much too pretty and powerful a person to be wounded. “And I blush to
tell you he leaves nearly all to that beast Octavian, as vicious a young
brute as lives, and makes him his official heir also. The rest between
two other nephews. Calpurnia is rich otherwise.”

Apollodoros ground his teeth in silent rage. The money was nothing.
Cleopatra’s wealth could have bought Cæsar’s and half Rome. But no
mention of her or of Cæsarion!—no acknowledgment! One might well call
it treachery, were it not that the reason was so plain. With that belief
in his own divinity which Cleopatra had fostered, he had counted
certainly on coming through the Parthian campaign in triumph, and had
thought it better not to tie his hands. Until then it would be no harm
to hold a rod and a promise over Cleopatra. All must depend upon her
good behavior in his absence. Well, he was past caring now that he had
ruined her.

But, whatever wrath and scorn they might feel, the whirlwind must not be
let loose before Antony. The eloquent eyes of the Sicilian warned
Cleopatra, and hers responded. Who could tell that the one Roman was
more trustworthy than the other? He was the less bound to them.

“I see!” she said composedly, “and though I regret it as you do, noble
Antony, I know Cæsar’s difficulties, and who would accuse the dead?
Alas, he was old and his health breaking, and he had not the heart to
face the difficulties. So he chose Parthia as the least difficult, for
he was ever a soldier!”

“True, wisest and loveliest of women. We will not blame Cæsar. But tell
me now and frankly: Is treasure needed? For with what is in my hands of
Cæsar’s I can give what I will to the wife and son of Cæsar—for wife
and son you two are to me. Have I not heard Cæsar say it times out of
mind?”

She laughed her lovely laugh, low, sweet as the dove’s note in the warm
swaying of green leaves.

“Money, most noble Antony? I have not touched the fringe of my treasures
for Cæsar. I keep them for a better than he—the man who shall rule the
world with me. For—Cæsar’s dream was not murdered with him. It lives
and moves here!”

She struck her hand lightly on her breast, smiling into his eyes,
knowing she had dazzled him. She had indeed. That a person could be
offered money, could refuse it, could possess so much that the offer was
beneath contempt, raised her high in the eyes of Antony, the
incorrigible spendthrift. He looked at her with a new respect.

“I have money for my friends also!” she said proudly. “Have the golden
streams of Egypt run dry, Apollodoros?”

He shook his head, laughing aloud.

“I think not! And now, what has the noble Antony to offer? It is certain
that since the little Pharaoh is a baby the man who will put forward his
rights and act as his regent and supporter will—deserve well of the
Queen his mother.”

Antony raised his hand, his eyes fixed and shining. He had thought—for
so she had willed he and all the world should think—that she had given
a girl’s passion to Cæsar. He had anticipated a mourning widow that
day—a girl with every hope crushed, every joy scattered, terrified,
doubting where to turn for help. A man might make his own terms there!
True, it had seemed that a girl might not remain eternally inconsolable,
but here and now she would be helpless. Having found her very far
otherwise, his heavy handsome face brightened with complete
understanding; not understanding of the woman’s heart, but of the
Queen’s position.

“Why then,” he said eagerly, “you will see my difficulties. If I do not
conciliate the murderers they will throw themselves into Octavian’s
arms, and he will forgive them his uncle’s death—apparently for the
peace of the State—and I shall be blotted out—crushed!” He made a
final gesture with his big hand. “But if I join with them I can dare
Master Octavian to his face, and I will proclaim in the Senate that
Cæsarion was the lawful son of Cæsar. Never a better stick to beat
Octavian than that! If indeed the Queen will work with me—will have
patience and understanding, why then indeed!”

His laughter said the rest. He was in earnest. One could read his
good-humored genial expression as one never could read Cæsar’s
close-lipped reserve. The happy Hercules! That was what she had called
him to Apollodoros. That was how she saw him still.

She sprang to her light feet and caught his hand.

“Together we will work, O most noble—most brave—most wise Antony, and
if you need money, I am no beggar! Oh, the delight of youth! I am myself
again. Cæsar’s age lay like ice upon me. How could I laugh or be myself
with that deathly cold ever upon me? The old to death! The world to the
young!”

And now the amazed Antony beheld the Queen of Egypt in another of her
myriad-minded moods. She flung her hands above her head, she whirled on
tiptoe about the room in attitudes of the wildest grace and abandonment
tossing her arms as though they shook the sistrum. White feet twinkled
through the folds of her robe, a lovely bosom panted beneath the cestus
that crossed it. Then suddenly she halted, rigid, a perfect pose of
flying beauty, and laughing collapsed into a chair.

“Gods!” cried Antony, “if any Greek dancer could match that—!”

“They couldn’t! How should they?” said the laughing Queen. “You forget,
most noble general, that I am Venus and Hathor and Isis, and a few other
importances in one small body. And just now I am like the earth released
from winter and blossoming in spring. And what can you say that I don’t
understand? The Gods, my relatives, fashioned the inside of my head as
well as the outside. Do you think me blind? If Octavian takes possession
of Cæsar’s power, you are nothing. But if you support Cæsarion, with me
behind you, Cæsar’s dream may come true, with a better man than Cæsar in
the seat of the mighty. And now let us drink to our success and offer a
libation to the spirit of the dead, and forget him!”

Wines were brought in in goblets of glass banded with gold and gems, and
they splashed their libations in wine like blood upon the white pavement
of mosaic. Then raising their cups the two drank to wealth, to glory, to
success, to all they needed to realise their dream. And at the last
Antony filled a brimmer and tossed it off “To Beauty.”

“That I must not drink, for I am Beauty—I alone!” said Cleopatra
demurely.

He began to think that this was true.

When he departed lit up with new enterprise and courage, Cleopatra still
in a blaze of excitement struck her hands together triumphing.

“I have won him. Not as a lover yet, but that will come. He shall be
besotted on me, as Cæsar never was. But even now he will do what we
need.”

“Do not be too sure—too hasty,” Apollodoros said in a deep note of
warning. “We must not trust him too far. He is in the hands of women,
and until you are the one woman go with caution. But you said and did
wisely in every look, in every gesture. I watched you with pride. The
Gods indeed guide their royal daughter. Now let us keep our heads cool
and judge him as we prove him.”

He stopped a moment, then looked at her with eyes keen as stars.

“My Queen, is there anything in the man that touches your heart?”

She replied with careless candor:

“Nothing. He is a great big hulking good-humored gladiator. No more. I
have never seen the man for whom I would sacrifice a lock of my hair if
it were not to gain my end.”

“Then that is well!” he said with relief. “For this is not a man to
love. He is one to watch with clear eyes, to use, to discard when he
drags one into danger. But love!”

His tone said much. She looked at him with bright-eyed curiosity.

“Love—what is love, Apollodoros? Have you known it? Tell me, you who
are instructed!”

He answered evasively, looking upon the ground.

“Once long ago, great Qlapetrat!” (using her Egyptian style). “A bitter
God, salt as the sea, sweet as life, dark as death. Winged and his eyes
are stars.”

“Winged?—all love is winged to flutter from one flower to another!” she
said carelessly.

“Winged for the heights and abysses. Wings wide as the sky. The greatest
of the Gods!” answered Apollodoros, still looking downward.

She put it aside, returning smiling and full of hope to the uses they
must make of Antony.

“But we began on the wrong note here!” she said seriously. “I was
clouded, damped, eclipsed by Cæsar. He shall come to me down the
Mediterranean and I will outshine Cytheris on her own ground. That is
the only way with a man like Antony. And now let us be off, back, back
to Egypt—but before we go let us tie Antony to the cause! Rome chokes
me with its blood and sullen furies. To Egypt!”

“To Egypt, Qlapetrat!” he answered.

And before she sailed, her will was done, and Antony was Autocrat of
Rome. The cold Octavian, loathing and distrusting him, was still
compelled to seek his friendship for a time and smother his resentment
until it might burst safely into flame. And Antony, avoiding the mention
of Cleopatra, declared in the Senate that Cæsarion was true son to
Cæsar; and, though the eyes of Cleopatra haunted him and came between
him and other women, he dared neither see her nor bind himself to her
interests, for his Fulvia watched him, lynx-eyed. But Apollodoros knew
his mind and Cleopatra waited smiling. And she left Rome like a great
Queen, and with her ships and her child sailed back to Alexandria,
hating Rome and the Romans but having left her mark upon it and struck
at the very root of republicanism in her use of Cæsar.

So, uniting with Octavian, Antony at the battle of Philippi defeated the
murderers of Cæsar, who one after another received the reward of their
wickedness; and first of all Cicero followed Cæsar to the Dark Land, and
after him came Cassius, and Brutus the traitor, who killed himself,
fearing to face Antony.

And as time went by the face of Cleopatra faded in Antony’s mind and
other women renewed their temptations, and it might have seemed that she
was forgotten; but she and Apollodoros waited with patience until Antony
had made himself not only the greatest of the Romans but the greatest
man in Asia Minor, having the highest military reputation in the world,
now that Cæsar’s sword was dust. Kings sued at his doors, and the wives
of Kings used their beauty as a price to buy his favor. And Antony now
in times of peace and leisure, happily settled out of reach of Fulvia’s
tongue, became the very slave of luxury, surrounded always with a rabble
of actors and dancers and all the harlotry of Asia, becoming daily less
of a Roman and more of an Asiatic. And still Cleopatra waited. And again
and again she refused to send a message.

“But the time is nearly ripe, Qlapetrat!” said Apollodoros. “And from my
spies about him I read his character and see in him our very weapon,
provided always that you have no love for him; for if love comes and
blinds you to his follies, then Egypt is lost and ruined, and Rome the
world’s mistress. He has the grace of good-humor, of easy forgiveness to
others and repentance when he himself does amiss. But he is too easy,
too wanton in merriment to hold his dignity, and he permits
familiarities that degrade him and is the very prey of flatterers—”

“And that is how I have won and shall win him!” said she, laughing. “If
he were a Stoic—”

“No, but it is a great danger also!” Apollodoros said gravely. “Still,
we have no one else to serve our turn, for he is the greatest of the
Romans and his word runs through Asia Minor. It is true that Octavian
divides the world with him and is mighty in Rome, but with your heart
and brain of tempered steel we may do well and trample Octavian down,
for he and he only is rival to Cæsarion the son of Cæsar. But if the
fire of the heart melt the steel of the brain—”

He stopped. She laughed aloud.

“I love the friend of Octavian? You dream, Apollodoros. If I had loved
the man should I have waited? As for Antony, he may say, ‘I have had an
affair with the Moon, in which there was neither sin nor shame.’ I am
not sure that he shall ever have another.”


                             CHAPTER XVIII

So at last it was late summer and the mighty Antony, in his headquarters
in the great and ancient city of Tarsus, cast his memory back to
Cleopatra. Across the sea to Alexandria like a winging sea-mew his
thoughts went flying to the little Queen. Sweet and gay he saw her, a
frail boat dragged in the wake of Cæsar’s mighty galley, and yet capable
of reasserting herself very strangely in her spring to freedom the
moment he lay dead in the Forum. To what new and enchanting aspects of
her character had that opened the eyes of Antony! And yet he had been
obliged to let her slip just at the moment when there might have been
the very developments he most appreciated. There had been several
reasons for that. The press of great events had been too strong for any
love-preoccupation, and in Rome the legend of Cæsar and Cleopatra had
grown and assumed luxuriant proportions. She was the Eastern Siren, the
woman who embodied all the luxury, the voluptuousness, and shameless
licence and charm of the Orient. They never remembered her as a Greek.
No, she was the enervating spirit of Oriental luxury who would, if she
could, break down the austerity of the Republic into slavish obedience
as she had broken Cæsar himself down into slavish obedience to her
spells. Indeed her reputation in Rome was very evil. It paid the great
writers and orators, it had even paid Antony, to represent her as a
siren seated at the doors of the Orient weaving her spells and charms in
gold to ensnare the austere integrity of the West. It was therefore very
much safer to avoid such dangerously delightful society. So she had
slipped out of Antony’s mind. Egypt was quiet and the Queen made no
sign; perhaps she had forgotten him, though women did not readily forget
the Roman Hercules! Well, if so, no need to trouble about her. There
were plenty of other women to amuse his abundant leisure.

But one day he was compelled to remember her, for a rumor reached him to
the effect that the Queen of Egypt had been giving some assistance in
money to the party of Brutus. Nothing could be more unlikely, but still
where there is smoke there may be fire, and he had reason to know that
money was plentiful with her. If not in the past, she might in the
future be lavishing her gold just where she should not; and when one
came to think of it the woman might have resented his desertion of her
cause and his friendship with Octavian, the supplanter of the little
Cæsarion. Affairs in Asia Minor were always ticklish, and Egypt, wisely
treated, might have a useful word to say in the matter; and as to her
reputation, the affair of Cæsar had more or less blown over, and he
himself was now so great a man and so far out of reach of Octavian’s
claw that he might afford to choose his own company. Besides, and this
was the finishing stroke to his resolution, he wanted money as much as
any one of earth could want it. That was Antony’s chronic condition, and
it was acute at the moment. It decided him to command her presence,
through an emissary.

Cleopatra and her strange secretary! It would be interesting to see them
again. But the lady must learn that the Autocrat of Asia Minor was no
longer the Antony whose fate had quivered in the balance with Cæsar’s.
She must acknowledge herself honored by his notice. She must come
submissive, and with no mistake about their relative positions. Dellius,
his chosen ambassador, had imagined a large-limbed beauty, darkly and
richly shadowed with dusky veiled eyes above lips with the damask and
perfume of the rose. Her bosom must be imperially orbed, her languid
gestures bespeaking indolent command, every glance a sensuous
invitation, in a word the Circe of story, the ruin of men. He knew, he
had seen many such in the court of Antony. He went resignedly, prepared
for a new sultana dangerous to Antony’s renown as a man of war.

As it chanced, his galley made the Pharos much earlier than had been
expected,—early in the morning of a bright-blowing spring day, flying
in from a wide-tossing plain of blue edged with crisp lines of foam.
Landing and looking about him in surprise and delight at the glorious
city unfolding before him in brilliant sunshine, splendid in marble and
wide and royal vistas, Dellius made his way toward the Palace of the
Lochias, attended by his officers, one bearing the customary gifts sent
by a sovereign to another.

“But we shall not see the woman so early,” observed Dellius, magnificent
in Roman helmet and breastplate, to his second in command. “They say
that in Rome she never rose until after the midday meal, being drunk
with her Syrian wines and the smoke or juice, I don’t know which, of
some poisonous Indian plant which induces lascivious dreams. But
Apollodoros the Sicilian is said to rule her and be her paramour, and
him we may see.”

“For my part,” said the other, “I hope she will refuse to cross the
water, for if she is handsome as they say she may have influence with
Antony, and the Gods know he is drunken enough as it is. It would be
more to the point to get Fulvia to Tarsus and have some sensible cold
women about him to stop his unbuttoned gaiety.”

“True enough! Queer to look about us and think that here great Pompey
met his end and greater Cæsar fell a victim to Cleopatra! And all looks
so fair and open in the morning gold. Really one would say a man could
make out a healthy life enough in that wind-swept palace with the sea
tossing before him. But who is this?”

It was Apollodoros advancing along the way to meet them with a few
brilliantly dressed slaves in attendance, his own dress simple in the
extreme. He saluted and his “Hail, great Romans!” had nothing either
assertive or cringing about it. He met them as equals and turning led
them toward the white magnificence of the palace, with a few graceful
words on the beauty of the day and the welcome he rejoiced that it had
given them. The impression he made must always be favorable, owing to
the calm intelligence of his face and the reserved dignity which
strengthened upon him daily.

“But we cannot hope the Queen will see us at this hour. She will be
still abed,” said Dellius. “All Rome knows of her Majesty’s habits.”

Apollodoros smile subtly:

“These things are said in Rome, I know. But—the Queen had her own ways
there and here, and, being a queen, has no need to alter them to suit
others.”

“Very true,” said Dellius disagreeably, “and yet—”

Apollodoros looked him straight in the eyes.

“My Queen is not only queen but goddess in Egypt. Goddess in Rome also,
where the people worship in the temple Julius-Jupiter raised in her
honor. Probably the noble Dellius has himself worshipped at that altar.”

“All men worship Venus, great Apollodoros, but deities go in and out of
fashion in Rome. I cannot say whether the temple is still frequented or
no.”

After that light clash of swords the party went slowly on their way,
discoursing of Antony and the subject Asiatic kings who did homage at
his court in Tarsus.

“And my errand is to bid the mighty Cleopatra to come also and do homage
to Antony and hold counsel with him over the affairs of Asia Minor in
which she is concerned.”

Apollodoros turned eyes of calm surprise upon the haughty Roman.

“Great queens do not cross the seas to visit, much less to do homage to,
generals, even when as successful as Antony. Curb your presumption,
Roman. Such is not language for the divine Cleopatra’s ears.”

Dull anger blazed up in the Roman’s eyes. The Roman soldiers had so
acquired the habit of command that they regarded all other races as
slaves.

“You dare!” he cried aloud to Apollodoros, halting and turning on him.
“Then know that the Princess Arsinoë, who has taken refuge in the temple
of Diana at Ephesus, may yet be set upon the Egyptian throne by Antony,
as a more obedient slave of Rome than Cæsar’s harlot!”

A group of men were working near by at the great blocks of stone which
built the sea-way to the palace. Apollodoros shouted aloud in the
Egyptian tongue and with their mallets uplifted they sprang like wild
beasts on the Roman and his companions, and in a second held them
pinioned and at Apollodoros’ mercy.

“I might bid them heave you all into the deep blue water beside us!” he
said sternly, pointing to where the fish swam below in pellucid deeps,
“and it would be bare justice. What guest insults a host in his own
house? But the host has a duty also. Ask my pardon and you shall go on
and see the face you are not worthy to look upon.”

Pride struggled with a sense of shame, but at last decency conquered,
and Dellius, flushed purple, made his brief apology, briefly received.
His arms were loosed and, crestfallen, he followed to the palace.

Enfolded in vast courts they came upon a garden—surely the very garden
of enchantment, with blossoming groves and shaded walks and green spaces
where fountains scattered tossing lights amongst trellised roses. To men
fresh from the salt and barren beating of the sea it appeared the very
haunt of nymphs, most beautiful, palms touching frondage with acacias,
unknown flowers starring the grass at their feet, gray doves cooing warm
notes in sunny boughs. They halted almost in fear of the silent
loveliness, so poignant and strange was its spell, with blossomed
branches above them, and clear running of streams into a winding lake of
white marble where the sacred nenuphar swayed in the shade over its
sleeping leaves, the golden fish darting among piped stems.

And, as they halted, arose shrill-sweet cries and laughters, and a group
of girls came running down a green alley tossing a ball as they ran
fleet-foot, white robes girt up to the knees like those nymphs who run
hunting in moonlight woods with the Goddess Diana. So lovely was the
sight, so swiftly their white feet glimmered in green grass, that for a
moment the Romans feared, thinking they were caught indeed in a spell of
Egypt and beheld those dangerous maids whom no man but he who is virgin
as themselves may see unharmed—the companions of that goddess who
shines alone in unclimbed skies.

“Gods, what is this?” said Dellius in a quick underbreath, halting to
see the bright ball flung from hand to hand and the swift interchange
and play of white limbs as the girls leaped at it. One flung it far,
another missed, and it ran bounding along the turf to where the men
stood half-hidden in leaves. The nymphs froze into loveliest groups of
startled wonder, gazing like deer on the turn to fly. One only stood
forward.

“It is the Queen and her maidens. Advance!” said Apollodoros, and lost
in amazement the Romans went forward, steps muted on velvet turf. What
could Dellius think, what believe, as he bent his knee and beheld “the
harlot of Egypt” in the cool girl who watched his approach gravely. At
first he scarcely thought her beautiful, so did she differ from his
image of a lascivious, dark-browed woman who disgraced the Egyptian
throne. In troubled surprise he stared, thinking the handsome dark girl
who stood at her shoulder must be the true Cleopatra.

But when she spoke he knew and needed no assurance. The marvellous voice
famed through the world, sweet as the morning lilt of birds, fresh as a
May-breeze—that was the laughing Queen and no other! The lips, curled
pink rose-petals in the warm ivory of her face—the golden-amber eyes,
sad and a little ironic, hair framing white brows with goddess-wings of
bright-touched bronze. Cleopatra, the one, the only! How sweet, how
sweet among flowers, with blossomed trees behind her, her fair breast
heaving softly, thoughts of wonder and disdain flitting across her eyes
like birds in golden skies! You will perceive the man rhapsodised
already! But that was the manner of men lesser and greater than the
Roman soldier, for all the world knows she had the trick of awaking
longings she would neither understand nor quench. It was far more her
manner of ruling than her sceptre.

As he stood dumb before her Apollodoros came forward:

“Great Queen, this man, sent by Antony the Roman with a message from
Tarsus, has permitted himself to speak foul words of you, words vented
from the very cess-pits of Roman filth, here in your own happy kingdom.
Your orders?”

There was no flush upon her smooth cheek, but she stiffened in a moment,
and the girls fell back from her as if the sunshine had chilled
suddenly. Her eyes still held him but now with power and hard as steel.
They gripped his fear like claws.

“And what were the words?” said the young Queen slowly.

“He has called the divine Isis-Hathor of Egypt the harlot of Cæsar.”

Silence.

To what would she doom him? He began to stumble in his speech.

“If you can dare to answer my murder to Antony. Ambassadors—”

She laughed aloud.

“If you can dare to answer your insult to Antony when it is told him—
Take the man, Apollodoros, bind him hand and foot and cast him to the
crocodiles in Mareotis. What is such an ambassador to me?”

He stood stunned, ash-pale in the sunshine, hearing the beating of
death’s wings about his head. The girls stared open-mouthed, but
unconcerned save with cruel curiosity. The guard of Egyptian soldiers
closed about the man. She raised her hand and spoke to his fellows in a
voice clear as the clash of steel.

“Return to Antony and tell him that if he sends such ambassadors again I
will indeed come to Tarsus but with my bronze-beaked ships, and my men
to guard me. And tell him this also: I would have been his friend; he
knows it, but if he chooses me for an enemy, so be it!”

Dellius trembled, not indeed from the fear of death, but because he had
betrayed the purpose of his general. He fell on one knee, his hands
raised as to a goddess.

“I do not pray for life. Let me die—it is just—but send no such
message to the Imperator Antony, for what I did was my own and not his.
I am not fit to live.”

As she turned from him a child’s clear cry rang out and a boy of four
trotted out of the thick boughs, followed by his nurse and running
through thick grass to his mother. Reaching her he clung to her knee and
she stooped and swung him up, pressing him against her slender bosom and
laying the velvet cheek to hers. A lovely sight.

“It is the child of Cæsar. It is Cæsarion,” muttered the Romans. “Gods!
How like! It is the Dictator.”

“The man—what has he done?” asked the boy seriously. She pressed his
little face into the curve of her throat.

“Don’t look, my treasure. Such men hurt the eyes. He is vile. He has
thrown mud at the Pharaoh, my little one!”

“Mud?” said the child, amazed, looking down at the white garment, that
scarcely hid his little golden body. “It has not soiled me. He shall not
be thrown to the dreadful beasts. I say it and I am Pharaoh.”

A great silence. Dellius crawled along the ground on his knees and
catching the small hand kissed it.

“Hail, son of Cæsar, true son of a mighty father! Hail, Queen, mother of
Cæsar’s child! And now—I am ready for death.”

She looked down at him with the eyes of a goddess remote and unpitying
but just.

“My consort-king has forgiven. I forgive also. Take your life and know
that though Cæsar is forgotten in Rome he is still a God in Egypt, and
his wife and son divine also. Go, make offering in the temple of
Jupiter-Amen and ask forgiveness of the God for your blasphemy.”

He stumbled away, head bowed and tears on his cheek. She had won the
Roman utterly and knew it as she always knew the hearts of men.
Afterwards, alone with Apollodoros and Charmion, she clapped her hands,
laughing:

“That man at all events will believe no more in the witch of Egypt. It
was better than well that the Pharaoh ran to my knees. And he will carry
my praises to Antony; and I will go, and in such magnificence as the
world has never seen, for the time has come!”

He would have dissuaded her at first but she would not listen.

“No, Arsinoë is a danger. Neither I nor the child is safe while she
lives with her venom hidden behind shut lips. _She_ a priestess of
Diana!—the bitter withered little virgin! No—but the lurking shrinking
Queen of Egypt as she hopes and believes! I will go and ask her death of
Antony. And there is more, much more! He has forgotten but I have not.”

“Nor I—nor I!” said Apollodoros, throwing himself on his knees at her
feet. “Antony is not Cæsar. He is a man swept away on the river of his
lusts. He is passion’s slave.”

“Then mine!” said Cleopatra. “He is at least a man. Cæsar was a selfish
old dotard. Antony shall play my game, not I his. Cæsar used me for his
own ends. Antony shall not.”

But still Apollodoros pleaded.

“Even in Rome I doubted, but now, power and licence and drink and women
have eaten into the very fibre of his resolution. See how he has treated
us already! Let us not commit our priceless things to his care—and
least of all yourself! For you are Egypt—what strength has the
child?—and if you are lost—O Queen, have pity upon yourself and the
child!”

She pushed him from her with her little foot, laughing, and he stooped
and clasped and kissed it.

“Have pity! Have pity! You to be the half-wife of this man as you were
of Cæsar! Fulvia will thrust a dagger into your throat, and all the
Romans mock. Have done with them, my Queen.”

So it went on. At last she rose, still keeping to her purpose, but
conceding a little to his fidelity.

“We will go, as I said, in splendor; and if among the men assembled I
see a better than Antony, he shall be my man, for a man I must have to
guard Cæsarion and me; and you shall judge Antony and tell me your mind.
And I will listen, I promise that. Never fear that my brain will stumble
over my heart. My affections—if you can compliment them with the
name—are like the women employed by Cicero to worm out his enemies’
secrets. Oh, I am a monster like the Sphinx—half woman and half beast!
God? How can I tell? But have no fear. His hulking beauty is nothing to
me. I will charm him first by my sex, and hold him after by my mind.”

“A woman once given—” began Apollodoros.

“Given? I have never given myself, and since the birth of Cæsarion, this
has been inviolate.” She tore aside her robe, unveiling breasts white
and cold as marble. “My womanhood is a weapon, and I desire the man’s
desire, but nothing else. I have lain in a man’s arms and borne his
child, but I am a virgin. When will men learn that the gift of the body
is nothing—the soul all. Go, you are wise, but I am wiser.”

So Dellius, his life spared, haunting the palace and the Queen like a
dog, when permitted, saw with stunned amazement the preparations for her
voyage. What was any splendor he had seen compared with the wealth so
lavished? The inmost secrets were kept from him. None but those in her
inmost confidence saw her own ship or heard a word concerning it. Over
that hung a mystery.

But the Queen herself he saw often, though mostly at a distance, and he
grew to think her the most beautiful and divinest of women. For that was
her power, of which none other had the secret. She grew upon men as dawn
broadening into day until she dazzled them body and soul; she was the
true elixir of enchantment, and there was not one who could either
describe her magic or disown it, indecipherable as a sound or a perfume,
and her own.

But Dellius and his companions were sent to prepare Antony for her
coming, and that they might not see the final sights of the pageant. And
when he reached the presence of the Imperator and saluted, standing
before him, Antony lying on a silken couch, crowned with roses, hot with
wine, asked him first:

“Will she come?”

“She will come.”

And second:

“What is she like now? I remember her in Rome, white and—was she
beautiful? I forget. But there was a something. One had to look at her.”

“There is a something. One must look at her.”

There was a pause.

“Well?” said Antony. “What more?”

“Nothing. What more should there be? You will see.”

Already the ships of Cleopatra, sails filled with a southern breeze,
oars dipping in tune, cut the blue marble of the sea, running swiftly to
Tarsus. And Destiny sat on her prow like a sea-mew and watched.


                              CHAPTER XIX

The great and ancient city of Tarsus lay beneath the Taurus Mountains
beside her river Cydnus. A beautiful city, rich and learned, for there
was the most famous school of oratory in the world, one to which the
most brilliant men of the time journeyed to learn the profitable trade
of swaying an audience by the arts of speech where a clever sophism or
quick retort might be worth a fortune. But fortunes of quite another
sort could also be made at Tarsus, for it was a mighty mart, second only
to Alexandria. Ships plied from there up and down the Mediterranean
unloading costly goods, all the magnificence of the Orient brought in by
ocean fliers from Alexandria. It had also a great land traffic.
Damascus, said to be the oldest inhabited city on earth, with Antioch,
contributed raiment of gold flowered with silk, the delight of the
luxurious Roman women, garlands of golden leaves set with gems, huge
jars and beakers and cups rough with carvings. Thus it had its sailors’
quarters down by the docks and its great gardens and palaces where the
rich merchants and the wealthy of all sorts lived in the enjoyment of
almost Asiatic luxury.

A wonderful town overflowing with riches and the sights and sounds of
far lands, and behind the bustle of the markets the quiet groves
surrounding the Halls of Learning, fountains splashing, gray doves
cooing in peaceful shades. Before her the river Cydnus broadening into a
lake, a blue dream of peace.

Tarsus, for all she was a seaport, had the air of an island city, for
the five-mile-long river was her highway to the sea.

To luxurious Antony the city of Tarsus summed up all delight. He was the
mightiest of the three men who now ruled the Roman world as a
Triumvirate. Octavian was remarkable, Lepidus negligible, but the fame
of Antony rang over the Mediterranean like a brass gong and other men
crept about like ants beneath his feet.

Everything about his personality was on the great scale which attracts
the notice of the world, including his vices and follies. But he was
lovable with it all, in his lavish spontaneous outbursts of generosity,
even with his foes, though that was as capricious as all else. Who but
he would have draped his own purple cloak for a pall over the hated
Brutus when his body lay unfriended? Who but he would have run himself
into low water that he might heap his friends with gifts or remit the
conqueror’s levy for his soldiers on a vanquished people? The earth and
the kingdoms thereof laid themselves at the feet of the great
good-humored giant, propitiating, flattering and getting very much their
own way with him when he was too lazy to object. Roused, he could be
terrific, but that happened seldom when wine and women abounded.

And Tarsus, as the home of oratory, had much opportunity of flattering
that distinguished orator, Antony, and of offering its pleasure with
both hands for his acceptance.

There drifting through languid golden sunshine went groups of beautiful
women garlanded with flowers, the light breeze blowing about their feet
transparent folds and garments woven in strange looms; lovely faces
mingling the beauties of the Orient and Mediterranean. All day the sound
of flute and cymbal stirred the perfumed air. All night the rosy lamps
lighted an ecstasy of revelry until the sun harnessed his golden chariot
in the east and the mountains glowed with incredible fires in the dawn.

There Antony held his Court and had no will to leave it, and of all
places in the world it was probably the worst for such a man as he.
Better the stern Roman camp, the terrible discipline of the legions,
hard food, careworn nights and days, than that soft enervating luxury,
his only care to vary his pleasures lest they should become nauseating.
And indeed there were times when the eternal sweetness cloyed; the soft
submissive women, watching his eyes like slaves, irritated him to rage,
and the eternal sunshine weighed like lead. What can we find worth doing
when the worst we can do is done? The question of the ages, the riddle
that not even the sad Sphinx can answer, was beginning to loom before
him in beautiful Tarsus, old in wickedness and the skilled mysteries of
enervating delight.

Now on a certain day, breathlessly hot, with skies of flawless blue, the
watchers by the docks far down the river signalled that a great fleet
was making the harbor—ships of Egyptian type gloriously painted and
decorated as though some noble person were aboard. One sailed hidden
among the rest, and the watchers imagined that women must be on board,
so carefully was it guarded. They were evidently for the river and the
city of Tarsus.

Dellius sped with the news to Antony and it was hastily resolved that
when the fleet cast anchor in the lagoon before the City the Triumvir
should enthrone himself in the great market place, surrounded by his
retinue, that the Queen landing from the ships might thus be made to
approach him in the manner of a supplicant.

“The peoples of Asia Minor shall know that Egypt also is subject to the
Roman Power!” said Antony, and Dellius agreed, reserving in his own mind
the thought that there is another Power to which the gods themselves are
subject, and that it might be at this moment incarnate in the fair
Egyptian. But who could tell? The Triumvir was satiated with the beauty
of women—satiated with all the pleasures the Earth had to offer. It was
possible that not even Cleopatra might tickle his jaded palate.

So the ships with oar and sail made their stately way up the river, and
the people crowded down from terraced vine and wheat fields to see the
sight, gallant and bright as a picture on the blue crystal of the river.
Magnificent indeed it would be when the Queen of Egypt landed with her
retinue to do homage to Rome! Would she be carried in a splendid litter?
Or stand in a flying chariot like the Pharaohs of old? Or walk beneath a
golden canopy? What was the manner of the woman Pharaoh of Egypt?

And Antony sat in the market place beneath his canopy, a magnificent
table of black wood inlaid with mother-of-pearl from Damascus at his
elbow, spread with fruits and wine cooled in ice, and at his feet the
Greek mime Charmides to pass the time with tales of love until the Queen
should come in sight. With vanity that was as open and natural as a
child’s, he had done honor to his guest by the most cunningly devised
apparel to set off what he considered his type of manly beauty. He
represented the Roman Bacchus, clothed in a short tunic of white, golden
sandals on his feet with thongs wound about and up the legs and on his
head a garland of ivy and vine-leaves. He had somewhat outgrown the part
since Cleopatra and he had met in Roman days and was now more heavily
built, massive, the great jaw fleshy, the muscles on his bare breast no
longer rippling free, but clothed in fat. Yet the eyes were bright and
genial still, the lips smiled and the cleft in the broad chin was the
very signature of Venus. He felt a gently warm curiosity as to how
Cleopatra would bear herself toward His Magnificence now—the little
Queen, as he used to call her. What had she done with her liberty since
she escaped with it from under the cold shadow of Cæsar, as a man flees
from the shadow of a mountain into sunshine? Lovers, lovers, without
end, no doubt! That piqued his curiosity a little. But Dellius either
had observed nothing or would not say.

“Why the immortal Gods doesn’t she come?” he asked pettishly at length,
for the shades were deepening in the market place. “You said they had
cast anchor an hour ago. Is there no sign of landing?”

A boy fled to a point of vantage, and reported: “None,” but that many
boats had put off from the shore with fruits and vegetables for sale.

Antony considered. A crowd had crammed the market place hoping there to
secure the most perfect view of the royal beauty whose fame rang round
the world, but wearying of the long delay they had melted off and were
scurrying down to the piers to see what they could. The picture was
spoiled.

“May the Gods spur her!” said Antony resignedly. “One might think time
was of no value! Well, it isn’t of much. I suppose the woman is painting
her face. Is there anything to see down there?”

“Noble Triumvir, may I not go?” asked the impertinent Charmides. “You
aren’t listening to the story and folks say the Queen’s ship is worth a
day’s journey to see—all gold and purple sails and silver oars. Why
can’t I go?”

“Take your worthless carcass off for all I care! You grow duller every
day,” yawned Antony. “I shall go to sleep. Fan me, somebody! And waken
me when the woman lands. Cheeky jilt!”

Fans began their rhythmic waving. He leaned his head back and slept with
wide open mouth, the ivy wreath lolling on one side and the shadows
lengthening as the sun sloped westward. In an hour he woke and looked
drowsily about him, then suddenly sat bolt upright.

His immediate retinue stood or sat about him in a state of appalling
boredom, and the market place was empty. Not a mouse stirred.

“Gods! What’s gone with the Queen?” he cried in blank astonishment and
slipshod Latin.

“Apparently she does not choose to come ashore,” Dellius answered
nervously. “Not a soul has landed and we are evidently expected to make
the first move. Your orders, great Triumvir?”

They were not forthcoming. Antony sat, twisting his fingers through his
tightly curled hair, considering.

Certainly Rome must require her due in obedience, but yet a woman was a
woman, and with Antony very much a woman. Perhaps the Queen might be
wearied with the voyage.

Reflecting, he dispatched Dellius to invite her to dinner with him in
the cool of the evening, and took himself off to his quarters a little
huffed.

But Dellius returning, not having been vouchsafed a glimpse of the
Queen, reported that her Sacredness would prefer that Antony and such
grandees of Tarsus as he might consider eligible should dine with her on
board her ship.

“And now, shall I go or not?” said Antony. “It may be a plot to get me
at a disadvantage. That young woman learned in Cæsar’s school, and there
was precious little he didn’t know.”

Dellius stood in unhelpful silence. He was wondering whether her eyes
were still as like amber with sunshine swimming in golden depths, and
whether there was still that little dimple among the blue veins of her
wrist.

“The question is,” said Antony as gravely as an owl, “what would
Octavian do in my place? Yet after all Octavian is an ass. Why should I
think of him? I believe I shall go. Why not? Let her know.” He lounged
away laughing.

When the sun set behind the western slopes of the mountains a violet
dusk dropped like dew from skies fading into night. The citizens
strolled along the water’s edge admiring the smart outlines of the ships
grouped and screening the ship of the Queen so that it was hidden as
behind a curtain. They stood and sat, listening to the strange speech
and songs borne across still water, for that was all they could know of
the strangers, none of whom had landed.

And now the first stars glimmered and the moon floating upward showered
unveiled glory upon the water. It was an hour of enchantment. Music
broke forth—the sound of Phrygian flutes and lutes with women’s and
boys’ voices angel-clear among them. And, as if at a signal, the ships
sprang into blossom and fruitage of many colored lamps, glorious to
behold, reflected in quivering lines of light in deep water. The oars
dipped silently as a swan’s webbed feet and, to the sound of music, the
Queen’s ship, disengaging itself from the rest, began to move slowly
toward the quays.

The whole city lined the water-way to see that wonder moving dream-like
through the dusk—a wonder stamped upon the world’s imagination once and
for ever. There was no sound among the watchers, for every sense was
concentrated in sight, breathless and absorbed as the moonlight
strengthened and she drew nearer—nearer.

A golden ship—glittering with gold from stem to stern. Gold embossed
into a garland encircled it like the girdle of a woman. The sails of
purple silk hung motionless in calm, but silver oars dipping
rhythmically to the sound of music urged it slowly onward to the
meeting. It glittered and glimmered with constellations of lights. Some
hung in great branches of clustered grapes, jade-green and purple; some
upborne in chalices of lilies; some shone from the hearts of roses. They
swung from the masts, they gleamed through the sails, they wreathed the
ship; she moved with unearthly pride and beauty, a fairy ship between
sky and water. There is nothing more aërial in all the dreams of earth
than a slowly gliding ship, and this came onward divine. But chiefly the
splendor of light concentrated upon the high-raised golden poop where
shone a golden canopy starred with lights like galaxies of planets
converging upon a sight so exquisite that never a man or woman who saw
could forget it in the poorer years to come.

For, beneath it upon a couch—no, rather an altar of beauty—lay the
Queen, bare-bosomed, girt about the waist with a girdle of great rubies
breathing fire as she breathed. A garment of gauze, transparent as fine
air, swathed and disclosed her lovely limbs from waist to little rosy
feet. Embracing her head was the trellised golden crown of Venus, and in
one languid hand the goddess’s own sceptre, a thornless bough of roses.
Yet all the magnificence was as nothing compared with the living beauty
and grace it enshrined as she lay amid her roses with smiles and shining
eyes and motions of her little hand, waving a salutation to the
spellbound crowds upon the quay. The goddess herself revealed at last,
most beautiful and gracious to her worshippers!

No men were visible. The fairest of her women, disrobed as sea-nymphs
and graces, were stationed at the ropes and rudder, and about the Queen
grouped little naked cupids waving curling white feather screens to
diffuse the sleepy perfumes of incense, dimming the lights into mystery
which made her beauty unearthly as the apparition of a divine being.

Suddenly the crowds broke out into a thundering cry:

“Hail to the heavenly Venus who comes to visit Antony the Roman Bacchus
for the good of Asia! May their revels be fortunate!”

And as Antony, followed by Dellius and his officers, stepped aboard,
great veils splendid with silver peacocks and peonies fell from the
masts, hiding the meeting and feasting from the ravished eyes that lined
the shore. Only the lights shone through the rifts and a celestial
harmony of lutes and flutes and silver voices was left to enchant the
night. All else was memory.

But Antony, led with due honor to the poop, could scarcely steady his
senses amid the besieging glamour. The strong perfumes assailed them,
the witchery of the music, and even before he reached the Queen’s
presence she had conquered. He could no more have uttered a rebuke to
her face than he could have thwarted an immortal nymph in her pleasure.

The old spell that had assailed Cæsar’s mightier mind was on him now.
Could it be possible that in himself and in this incomparable beauty
there was indeed something far removed from grosser humanity and allied
with Godhead? And if it were so, what might not be possible? It seemed
he trod on air and might have scaled the clouds.

Outside the crowds still shouted their greetings to Venus and Bacchus,
and the sight within strengthened its powerful enchantment with every
step he took. And he, the man least of all qualified to resist it!

The breathing music ceased as he reached her mysterious golden couch,
and she raised herself slightly on one elbow and extended a swan-white
hand.

“At last!” she said with a little sigh like the pleasure of a child, and
sank back on rosy pillows, smiling.

As Antony kissed that hand he was aware in the very marrow of his bones
that this was a new Cleopatra, one he had never seen in Rome, one
entirely unknown to Cæsar. It was a woman hitherto checked in the
blossoming of love and beauty but now breaking loose from all restraint
in the very kingdom of Eros. If she had spoken thus, it could have been
no more plainly revealed than in the thrill of her hand in his large
grasp and under the fire of his lips. Her eyes, languid in long lashes,
betrayed it in swimming moisture, the throb of her bosom above its
rubies uttered it in every visible heartbeat. Before him lay adorable
loveliness and grace, the prize of the conqueror.

Why had he not known in Rome? Why had he left her for the worthless
support of Octavian? Could she ever forgive him? That banquet—in his
long record of indulgence and waste, Antony had never seen its equal.
With his help she descended from her couch and led the way, hand in hand
with him, to the floating palace where all was prepared and the tables
set for happy guests. There stood golden dishes fretted with jewels, the
walls hung with royal embroideries from Damascus, the floor strewn with
roses, netted with silk to form a perfumed carpet into which the foot
sank as into velvet.

“And all these things are yours—yours,” she said, smiling to the
Triumvir whose couch was next to hers. “When we have feasted I give it
all to you. Everything is to be a memory of the visit of Venus. Accept a
thing little worth for the sake of the—the friendship which gives it;
for long, long ago we were friends in Rome.”

“If I had only known then what I know now!” he said with eyes fixed on
her. “Why did you hold yourself away then, most beautiful?”

“Because I was Cæsar’s. What is a woman worth who has no fidelity? But
thoughts fly free, and even then— Do I not remember it even now that
you have forsaken my wisdom—and I am wise indeed!—and have forsaken my
cause also for the friendship of the treacherous Octavian.”

“But not to your loss, loveliest!” he said eagerly. “Have I ever done
anything to hurt your cause? Nothing. Octavian—”

“Let us not talk of Octavian. His very name sours the wine,” she said
with the gay laugh he remembered. “I should not have spoken of him. Let
us eat and drink and forget the mummy at the feast. That as you know is
a custom of Egypt. Tomorrow my ships hoist sail for home and we may
never meet again. Be happy while we may.”

“Tomorrow? Not tomorrow!” he cried. But she shook her fair head and
pressed him to eat strange dainties he had never known. The wines of
Egypt brimmed her golden cups. They too were strange to him. A sense of
vaporous unreality dimmed all his senses as though the exquisite Queen,
the golden ship, the lovely servitors who surrounded them, might melt
like the smoke of colored mist dissolving into the darkness of night,
leaving only a memory that would be a pang forever. From what mysterious
wonder-world did she come? To what would she return? That ancient Egypt!
He knew what spells it had woven about Cæsar. For Cæsar, like the man in
the fairy tale, who discovered the underworld, had also undergone some
mystic change, had eaten strange foods and drunk sweet poisons and
returned never again to live as a man among men, his very blood changed,
his very heart beating to another measure.

The other guests talked quietly among themselves. They knew their place
too well to intrude. It was as though he were alone with the Egyptian
Queen.

Afterwards on the shining deck they were truly alone, for the others
begged that they might see the wonders of the ship, and the attendants
crouched out of hearing in groups that might have inspired a sculptor.
Then the Queen on her golden couch beneath the shaded lights talked more
openly with Antony, who sat beside her, eyes glowing on her beauty.

“But you have been cruel!” she said, resting a light hand on his. “When
I was alone in Rome with Cæsar dead and in terrible fear and danger I
turned to you. I said, ‘Antony loved Cæsar; he is brave, wise and noble,
a man of men. He will see that in union with me, mother of Cæsar’s son,
Queen of Egypt, lies his own glorious future!’ You came, you saw it
then, O greatest of Romans. You announced in the Senate that Cæsarion
was Cæsar’s true heir. You conquered the murderer Brutus at Philippi,
and then—when all my hopes were blossoming, you made friends with the
vile Octavian and forgot me.”

“Who could forget you, most lovely?” stuttered Antony, clasping the
little slender hand. “It was you who forgot me. You fled to Egypt. How
could you let me go? You sent no message. What can a man do?”

She sighed.

“It is weary, weary work speaking of such things, and yet life compels.
But ask yourself this: Will not Octavian betray you and make himself the
tyrant of Rome the very instant he dares?”

“As certainly as I sit here. But a brave man takes the chances. Life is
a gamble. I gamble on victory; he also. The Gods only know the winner.”

“But I who am a goddess know the winner also, if Egypt and gold are on
your side,” she said, with a little laugh like the dropping of diamonds.
“And it was to tell you this that I came to Tarsus. A long voyage for a
Queen!”

“Was it worth it—was it worth it?”

She understood his tone very well, and smiled with mischief.

“Did you think, mighty Triumvir, that I came because you commanded me—a
little too roughly for such a Queen as I? No, indeed! I had but to stay
in Egypt and what could you do? You have enough on your hands here in
Asia Minor, and the Egyptian Sphinx is strong. I came for two reasons.
One you shall hear and not the other.”

The wine was mounting to his brain. He tried to steady himself. His
voice sounded thick and unreal in his ears—like that of another—a man
who had struggled once to escape her strong toil of grace, but now
entangled felt the bonds winding slowly and surely about him.

“I will hear both, both,” he stuttered. “For what am I a man and
Triumvir if I am not obeyed? For what are you a woman if I may not crush
resistance out of you in my arms?”

She breathed with her lips against his ear:

“Bend your high head this way. That too may come when you have seen the
worth of my first reason, as Cæsar saw it. He knew that with my Egypt
and his military genius he and I could rule the world. And you who are a
greater soldier than ever was Cæsar do not see it. Oh, foolish, foolish
Antony!”

“That is true. That is true,” he said thickly. “I will learn. Shall I
come to Alexandria to see the treasures of the Queen? You are right.
What was Cæsar to me? He scourged the legions with fear of him, but me
they love.”

He covered her wrists and hands with kisses, burying his hot face
against them.

“Shall I come to Alexandria?”

She flung her light feet over the side of the couch and stood straight
and slight as a lance before him, looking him in the face. The languor
of the goddess had vanished—she was quick and keen as a brave boy on a
war-horse. Oh, the changing moods of her! She laughed aloud as she had
often laughed upon danger.

“Yes. Come to Alexandria and see me as a great queen inspired by the
Gods who are my kin. Did you think it was to charm your eyes that I came
as Venus? No, indeed. Far from me be such folly! It was because in Egypt
I _am_ Venus, and where I come power follows and Fortune is my slave. I
am no woman; the puddle of mortal blood does not stagnate in my clean
veins. I am fire and air! I am divine!”

She threw one light hand into the air laughing into his eyes. He stared
at her dazzled, believing in her belief, and it is not too much to say
that for the moment she was in truth divine. There was a silence.
Suddenly she relaxed, covering her face with her hands.

“Go,” she said in a whisper, “lest I tell you the second reason. Go.
Cleopatra is a queen but not always queen of herself. That reason you
shall not hear.”

He shook off the fumes of the wine and rose to his feet, a splendid
Hercules in height and strength and the sensuous beauty of his face. Her
crowned head did not reach his shoulder as they stood together, but in
spite of his look the mastery was in her eyes, not in his.

“I will hear that reason if I die to hear it, either now or in
Alexandria.”

He flung a great arm about her, and though she writhed herself free her
face did not forbid him. Leaning downward he kissed the warm pearl of
her shoulder so passionately and roughly that the red blood flushed it
to answer his lips.

“You shall hear it in Alexandria.”


                               CHAPTER XX

Alexandria. When the golden argosy of Cleopatra returned from Tarsus it
carried what she believed to be the talisman of power, the heart of
Antony. His last words were that he would follow and that their great
alliance of interests must lead to one nearer and dearer. The time
seemed short, even to her fiery ambition, before the swift prows of his
ships cut the blue water, flying southward, white-winged after the
delicious Queen. In Alexandria, in her city of palaces, he found her,
sweeter even than his memory, wooing and wooed.

And then began a time of enchantment; such delight as in all his
sensuous life he had never tasted. The gaiety and grace of life in
Alexandria, with the little Queen to rule the revels, were such as none
of the heavy extravagance and dull profusion of Rome had prepared him to
understand. The Romans must spur themselves brutally along the pathway
of pleasure where the Alexandrians danced light-footed, with the gusto
of happy children added to the wit and subtlety of practised Epicureans.
Of the two cities Alexandria was probably the more wicked—but how
infinitely more lovely! It had the full grace of simplicity, except
where a whim took the Queen to dazzle Antony’s senses with a
magnificence which left Rome gasping behind. She could do that also
beautifully as she could do all else, and if she thought it “Roman”—in
other words, tasteless and vulgar—that fact was not disclosed to her
lover.

But the crown, the cream of Alexandrian achievement, was the famous
Society of Inimitable Livers which she had formed, a society where all
that was most patrician, elegant and witty in the great city was banded
under her own leadership to solve the problem of enjoyment. It was the
most exclusive club in the world and accordingly the world rang with its
eccentricities and successes, its daring and shameless grace. The winged
rumor of it had blown as far as Rome where immediately all the
fashionable and dissipated men and women of the patricians, flavored
with a strong mixture of actors, dancers and the like, formed a
semi-secret society of enjoyment to match, to which they gave the name
of The Happy Spendthrifts. They met at each other’s houses, they drank
and diced and revived the orgies of a more brutal time with a
conscientious fidelity which should have been very amusing, and was not.

For what were the clumsy pleasures of the heavy Romans compared with the
gaiety and grace of the Alexandrian Inimitable Livers headed by the
brilliant little Queen? She had everything to back her, climate, the
most splendid city in the world, a gay people, capricious and
intellectual, boundless wealth and her own quick-witted delicacy of
perception and distinction to shape it all. The Greek in her could beat
the Roman at the game of enjoyment any day.

Dressed as peasants, the Inimitable Livers would disperse after a feast
through the city seeking adventures—men and women alike—bound by oath
to assemble at the palace at a given hour—each with an adventure to
record, a terrible forfeit awaiting the Inimitable who could not amuse
the assembled club; and the stories told were such as fled round
civilisation on wings of mirth and protest, until half the Happy
Spendthrifts of Rome, not to mention the literary men, were prepared to
set out for Alexandria and Paradise, if they had not been afraid to face
the Queen whom they had abused when she graced their own duller city.
And moreover there was no room for them among the Inimitable Livers. It
was a very small society, very chosen; and wit and beauty, not rank and
wealth, were the qualifications. What could wealth matter with the
Queen’s bottomless treasury to back it all?

Hand in hand she and Antony would scamper through Alexandria, he a burly
farmer, she a wisp of a Greek dancer; and one of the most successful of
the nights was when, on the pavement of a moonlit street, the Queen of
Egypt danced to an open-mouthed and fascinated circle of her loyal
subjects who thought none the worse of her and very much the better for
the exquisite grace of her dance, though they had far too much sense to
reveal the fact that they knew it was the divine Hathor who honored them
with an exhibition of her skill in the most prized of their arts.

“They never guessed you were not some Myrrha or Lais,” panted Antony,
racing down a side street beside her as she sped toward the palace,
running like a deer and springing over the shadows.

“Didn’t they though! There was not a man or woman there but knew me! Ah,
they are patricians, my Alexandrians—even the plebeians! It would not
have been manners to applaud the Queen, but they shouted for the
dancer!”

“Hercules! It is an astonishing and delicious city. A man can enjoy life
here!”

Life! It could hardly be called life out of Alexandria. There was not an
Inimitable Liver but understood the noble art of enjoyment and shared
his or her triumphs with the rest. They rode and hunted furiously on the
verge of the desert, the Queen riding astride like a boy—fearless,
reckless, until Antony quaked for the light flying figure and all it
meant for him. There were picnic parties on sleeping seas drifting
between blue sky and bluer ocean, to the sound of lutes and flutes so
sweet that it seemed the Nereids of the deep sea must float upward to
match their beauty against the lovelier women laughing beneath the
glittering canopy of the Queen’s barge. There were delightful fishing
scenes, her vessel swaying indolently in the harbor, when all plied
their green rods and all had luck but Antony, who did not shine as an
angler. There was the famous day when, piqued by the laughter and skill
of the rest, he caused a brown Egyptian boy to dive and swim snake-like
under the water to impale a prosperous fish upon his hook. Could
anything escape her quick eyes? She saw, but said nothing and silenced
the Inimitable Livers with a quick finger on her lip. Next day when
Antony drew up a heavy hook in triumph two ponderous dried and salted
fish appeared above the surface. The roars of laughter! The applause! In
a few weeks the Happy Spendthrifts were cudgelling their thick Roman
brains to catch the secret of eternal merriment, and could not. And the
Banquet of the Pearl! There indeed the Happy Spendthrifts owned
themselves worsted. A dispute had arisen among the Inimitable Livers as
to how much could be spent upon a single feast if one concentrated one’s
wits upon it. Antony, with memories of Rome and a purse emptied in such
pursuits, gave it as his considered opinion that one might spend
twenty-five thousand pounds sterling on a dinner for twelve that would
include oysters from Britain, nightingales’ tongues from Sicily, and so
on through a ponderous bill of fare, and would also allow for the cost
of golden cups and dishes. Gods, how the Queen and the Inimitable Livers
applauded. Twenty-five thousand pounds!—but that was nothing! nothing!
Cleopatra laughed until bright tears of mirth stood in her eyes.

“But, great Triumvir, this feast before us cost fifty thousand, and I
will undertake it shall cost a hundred and fifty thousand before we
leave the tables!”

Antony roared with laughter. Impossible! He would wager—what would he
not wager that such a thing could not be! How could it?

Again how she laughed! How the Inimitable Livers to a man and woman
backed their royal lady! What she said she could do, she could! Rome?
What was Rome and its feeble efforts to Alexandria, the abode of Gods
and Pharaohs and every fashionable folly that made the world blush and
wonder? Rome was a _parvenu_; Alexandria a patrician.

With distended eyes he watched as a cup was set before her, containing a
little vinegar. Was it to be a charm, a magic? Would she turn the cup
into a solid ruby? Was that where her riches came from? It had come to
that pass that he could believe anything of Qlapetrat, as her Egyptians
called her. The company reclining upon their couches sat up to see the
triumph.

From her little ears swung two enormous pearls, globed wonders of the
deep, with shell-pink lights playing about their milky beauty. One of
these she laid in the vinegar, a smile playing about the corners of her
lips, while Antony stared spellbound. A long pause while she stirred it
slowly with the stem of a rose which lay beside her. Suddenly—

“Look, noble Antony, look! It is dissolved! Is not this a Queen’s drink?
Already I have almost touched the cost I wagered, and when I dissolve
the other—”

She showed him the cup, holding the liquid pearl. “To your good health I
drink it!”—and tossed it off with a wry face at the vinegar. What could
he do but snatch her hand with the second pearl, forbidding such wicked
luxury, and own himself a conquered and humiliated Roman, while the
Inimitable Livers applauded frantically? It was a joke and a costly one,
but, apart from the magnificence of the surroundings, it was no aim of
Cleopatra’s to set the fashion of coarse and ostentatious luxury except
in so far as it humored Antony. She had the Greek taste which knew what
must be omitted instead of added, to achieve perfection. And Antony,
satiate with gold and gems, was compelled to own the beauty of her
banquets after the Greek manner, with services of porcelain and cups of
ivory, and the festooned garlands of Athens rather than the massed
profusion of trodden and trampled flowers which were the Roman and
Persian fashion, their glory bruised and martyred under the feet of the
feasters. Such a time of enchantment seemed to him like a dream of
immortal bliss. Surely thus and thus only the Gods must dwell on
Olympus, glad and forgetful in a heaven of beauty. She had even awakened
his interest in things of the intellect. Drama, the theatre, had always
moved him. She developed this into pleasure in the sources of tragedy
and comedy. Carefully chosen debates and orations by philosophers from
the Museum, who could be trusted to blend instruction with amusement so
cleverly that instruction disappeared in brilliance, became one of the
amusements of the Inimitable Livers, who had their fashionable
philosophers in attendance and considered them as necessary as their
favourite hairdressers and jewelers. Nor was religion neglected. The
mysteries of Isis were exceedingly the mode, and the more so with
Cleopatra as her living representative. It would be discourteous to the
Queen to leave the worship of the Goddess uncultivated, since devotion
to her implied a compliment to royalty.

Exquisite days to Antony, with the certainty that the Queen’s love would
make this Paradise his own for ever.

And yet— In that cup also was one bitter drop, hardly to be
comprehended by himself. There had begun for him the strangest new
experience. She possessed him utterly. For the first time he tasted the
bitter draught of passion not only sensuous but involving the deeper
sources of life. All his days it had been easy to love and ride away,
secure that wherever fate took him there would be soft embracing arms,
lips sweet for kisses, all the allures of the flesh. That seemed as
necessary and natural a part of life as breathing and if in song or
story another love was hinted, terrible, tyrannical, lord of life and
death, he would laugh, thinking its existence a sickly dream of poets
and women, one that could never concern a man whose business was the
mastership of the world.

And now he was its slave. How should he explain or endure the strange
thing that had befallen?

She terrified and enchanted him. Terrified, because, though he possessed
her body, believing that that meant complete surrender, she never
surrendered. Held in an embrace that should have made her one with him,
she was always herself—not his, not him, out of reach, unwon and
unsubdued. Surely she loved him, he thought, but not in the way he
craved, not his way but her own, a torturing sweetness that burned him
with unquenched thirst and left his lips parched. She gave all
physically and withheld everything else.

Once he would not have cared. What did one ask of a woman but beauty? In
that night of stars when she surrendered once and forever, as he
thought, he felt himself the conqueror. He flaunted his conquest to her.
She was his slave, sharing intoxication and doubling it. Now she would
watch his eyes with sweet obedience, putting forth anxious lures to
bewitch him and hold a wavering fidelity. Half amused, half pitying, he
would see her quiver at the thought of a rival, beseeching his grace
with pleading hands and lips. He knew as well as most men how women will
cringe and submit to any indignity and cruelty if only they may keep a
slipping hold on the lover to whom they have given all. They were always
subject—weakly rebellious sometimes, but subject,—that was his
creed—and that this white large-eyed slip of a woman should differ from
the rest was unimaginable. Why hide his triumph? The Queen was unqueened
and he was king.

But the very next day after that supreme surrender she was still
unconquered, cool, inscrutable, laughing, equal; the perfect comrade but
a bad lover, half driving him to guess that her passion was a concession
to him rather than to any necessity of her own. There was a stinging
virginity in her that he longed to abase and could not. Maddening!
Certainly she protested in phrases of intellectual beauty like all songs
and stories that she loved him, but he was inclined to suspect that was
drama in which the brain took more part than the centres of passion. He
must console himself with the belief that love mixed with brains is as
much improved by the blend as anything else, and meanwhile her vows were
a delicious music.

What charm of words, what art of love was unknown to her? She strained
his senses almost to breaking point of rapture when she chose. But
always next day she had recaptured virginity and was as quick-witted and
eager in any political matter or discussion of literature with some
intolerable old pedant of a philosopher as in his own arms. She took
love, wore it charmingly, then immediately laid it aside as she might
her diadem, and turned with equal or surpassing interest to something
else.

In a word, she was self-sufficing where he wished her to be merged and
submerged in a passion for him.

The garden of Circe indeed, but no languid lady of enchantments such as
he had hoped for and would have wearied of in a day. A busy and
intellectual little Queen, full of interests as a hive of bees, quickly
sensitive, fluid as water flowing into any channel open to her,
magnificent when that suited her part, careless of dress as a boy when
she had better things to think of. She sometimes infuriated him so that
he longed to crush the very life out of her in his mighty arms if only
he could crush her into his being and incorporate her maddening remote
sweetness with the throbbing blood beating in his own veins.

As they walked hand in hand in cool gardens musical with sea breezes,
glimpsing the innumerable laughter of blue water through airy rifts of
leafage, he tried one day to express some of that thwarted longing. If
he could make her tranquillity understand his unrest she might soften.
He would try!

He had spoken, and, absorbed in some keen thought, she had not even
heard.

“You don’t know what love is. You have never felt it!” he said sharply
and suddenly, dragging his hand away.

“Gods!” she said in blank astonishment. “Love? What about it?”

The beginning was not promising. A dark flush swelled into his face. He
spoke cruelly, violently.

“When I saw you in Tarsus you were Venus, drowned in love, shedding it
about you like fragrance. You were love itself. And I thought that when
we were lovers you would set yourself to me, cling to me, live and die
for me, kiss my feet, and now you are cold as the snows of the
Apennines.” She looked up at him laughing impertinently, provocatively.

“Was I cold last night in the garden pavilion?”

“No—you yielded yourself as one gives toys to a child that one half
despises—to keep it quiet. You have the arts of love but not the soul
of it. You do that well as you do everything else, but your heart—where
is it? I have never known. You are not my slave. It is indecent in a
woman.”

It was masterfully unreasonable, but she was neither perturbed nor
angry. Her lips twitched with laughter.

“Indeed I am your slave. What more can I do? Think, my beloved! Rumor is
shouting through Rome and down the Mediterranean that I am your mistress
as I was Cæsar’s. They call me the Egyptian sorceress. Oh, the liars!
Cæsar captured me. He took me by force. And you also captured me. I
hadn’t a word to say for myself. Egypt and I are at your feet.”

He kicked the grass before him moodily, avoiding her bright unconquered
eyes.

“Little they know! I also thought that about Cæsar, but I can tell you I
changed my mind when I saw how little you cared for his death. Calpurnia
cried her eyes blind. _You_ made eyes at me.”

“Calpurnia was his wife,” she reminded him. “I wonder what has become of
her, poor thing! As to making eyes at you—doesn’t that prove I had
fallen in love with you even then? That was why I went to Tarsus. That
was the second reason I would not tell you. Unreasonable Antony! I run
after you in a golden ship with all the world watching; I accept what
Rome calls the position of your mistress and have them all calling me—I
won’t say what, but very bad names. And both you and they call me
indecent. With a difference!”

“I can’t explain it,” he said with passion. “You always get the best of
it in words. I know you live in some secret cold corner of your own
heart and if there is any god on that altar it is not I.”

She wound herself softly against him.

“Poor Bacchus, poor Roman Bacchus! But indeed you would be on my altar
if I had one. I know too much about the Gods, being one myself, to be
perpetually on my knees. But you know I love you, passionately,
tenderly, devotedly. Do you ever see me spend a look upon another man?
Even goddesses have been known to. But not I.”

He thrust her away.

“You respect Apollodoros more than me. You trust him, but never me.
Sometimes I would rather all the rest should go and you would treat me
like a man and not a child—stuffing me with sweets!”

She dragged him to a seat and curving upward from his knee kissed his
mouth exquisitely, forcing his head back that she might smile into his
eyes. Apollodoros indeed! One does not compare a mere lover with the
friend of a lifetime. But the lover was not to know the real estimate of
his value, and had his uses. Therefore, she dealt out sweets to him,
kisses under which he closed his eyes, shuddering for rapture.

“That, and that, and _that_! Now don’t you believe? And see this little
warm place under your chin—such a strong chin, with the cleft in the
middle—the very place for a kiss. Yes—you are a god indeed, strong and
beautiful and my own. See, behind your ear where that beloved curl lies
and must be lifted for the kiss. No, I will kiss it too. The strong
clean scent of you goes to my brain like wine. Do I not love you? Oh,
you blaspheme against me—and I a goddess!”

It was perfect while it lasted. He sat, accepting adoration, bathed in
bliss, but already her eyes were careless even while she shed her kisses
here and there like flower-petals. She was trying to solve the problem
of charming the man and yet not charming him too much, for she had found
his weakness and knew that whatever he loved he could not leave until he
had crushed out and extracted the last drop of sweetness. He must not
unlove her but he must certainly leave her if her goal was to be
reached. She felt the atmosphere cloying and not a little tedious
sometimes. And while storms were brewing in Rome and Asia Minor, when
swords were rattling in their scabbards and the thunder of trampling
legions began to be heard in dim distance, to be condemned to talk of
love and kisses filled her with nervous impatience that it could not
seem worth while to disguise but for the fact that Antony was the sole
weapon to her hand and must be led through his senses, as one tickles a
donkey with carrots under his nose. Men! They filled her with alternate
amusement and disgust. They let such stupid follies stand in the way of
things which really matter! Even Cæsar—his temper and vanity had cost
him his life, and her her heart’s desire. And as for Antony! Words
failed her.

So, sitting upon his knee, she kissed him, almost finding it in her
heart to wish that he had the brutal callousness of Octavian if that
would send him to his right place in the forefront of the battle.

“I am doomed to work through men who never see what I see!” she said
despairingly to Apollodoros when she returned to the palace, having seen
Antony catered for, the wine-cup by his elbow, and the famous Nubian
dancer to show off her paces until he should dispose himself to sleep.

“One could forgive them if it only concerned the glory of Egypt, but it
is for their own world-wide dominion. It is Rome. Cæsar saw it but had
not the strength to strike. Oh, those frightful days in Rome!”

“He was a dying man, my Queen. He saw but could struggle no more. This
man will fail us. I saw it—I warned you. Your very self will strangle
your hope, for he is besotted on you—but not on your true self who
would drive him like the cry of a trumpet if he could but know. No, but
on a low sensuality, and if he leaves you another woman will take him
until drink kills him body and soul.”

“Yet he had his uses,” she said with darkening eyes. “I am rid of
Arsinoë at long last. Today I hear he has had her slaughtered in the
Temple of Diana at Ephesus. If I have gained no more, that is a great
danger averted. The Romans could always have used her against me.”

“Thanks be to the holy Isis and all the Gods of Egypt! There was more
venom and determination in the little body of the Princess than in ten
ordinary women. A burning sore is healed.”

She sighed, looking at him with melancholy.

“True. But, oh, the toil to be faced if I am to sit on the world’s
throne with Cæsar’s son for heir. If I lose, Egypt will be a province of
Rome. Either Octavian or I must rule the world, and it is life and
death; for if he wins he must murder Cæsarion, and if I, I must
slaughter Octavian. Oh, gods, the weariness—the weariness!”

“It is true,” Apollodoros said eagerly. “And oh, for a stronger than
Antony! Yet he is all we have. Defer to him, win him, for the kings of
Asia Minor are rising against Rome, and if Antony leads them we have
Octavian yet! Do not be too hard upon him, my Queen. I know well that
there is nothing so relentless as a woman with her end in view, but hide
it—hide it!”

She sat tracing patterns on the marble with a foot worthy to lie in the
breast of a god, but did not look up.

“I must hold him, but he must go, and away from me he is at the mercy of
any woman who takes the trouble to woo him. Oh, I have never been proud
of my victory there—not I! You know that. The slothful fool! Why were
_you_ not twenty years younger and a prince, and together you and I
would have fought side by side with no fool’s talk of love, but trust
and courage and brave bright things that do not sicken in the
after-taste. That—that would have been the life for me, for you are as
cold as I and care only for adventure and daring and to shape the
world’s way. Well—at all events, thank the Gods for a good friend. They
have no gift as good—no, not one. So say I!”

Not looking up she did not see the blood flush the dark fine face of the
man standing before her, nor, if she had, could she have understood. Of
the two he was very much the stronger. He remained silent and she went
on passionately:

“I ask you, what is the love of such a man worth? A handsome beast,
purring to petting. Will he forget me when he goes, or throw all up to
return to me? On which do you wager?”

“Great Queen—Qlapetrat,—the man is false, weak, treacherous on a point
of policy, yet he is yours. As to fidelity you know as well as I that a
man may share love with a hundred women and yet love one. But I cannot
foresee the future. Events are too mighty for us. What the Gods send we
must take.”

And in two weeks the Gods had sent to such purpose that even to Antony
it became apparent that to linger in Alexandria was to make a gift of
the world to Octavian, for all Asia Minor was astir and Parthia was
breaking loose on the Roman possessions in Greece. The thought of
leaving sickened him into a dull anger which vented itself on Cleopatra,
and she met that gaily, gallantly, keeping up his spirits to the last,
an Inimitable Liver in word and deed.

On the evening of his sailing they stood together by the window from
which she had looked with Cæsar on their first meeting. His arm was
about her, her head on his breast. She listened with patience to his
protestations of eternal fidelity and swift return. They were the
speeches due to such an occasion and must be said and heard. Events only
would show what they were worth.

But this she did not reveal. She clung to him in an attitude of
exquisite and loving submission, her eyes heavy with unshed tears.

“Life without you! What unpardonable sin have I committed that life
should use me so hardly? If I could come with you, heart of my heart!
You have thought me cold—The Gods know the burning agony of love in my
soul at this moment!”

“I leave my heart here!” he said, lifting her in great arms and
straining her to him. “The Gods know how I love you and the faithfulness
I swear. I will not look in a woman’s eyes, not have one within a mile
of me. And if Fulvia dies—and they say she is sick—I will come back
and you shall be my wife in Rome as here. I swear it.”

“That is true? You swear it?” she whispered, holding herself away that
she might look into his eyes.

“I swear it and may the Furies pursue me and the Dog of Hell devour me
if I am not true man and faithful to my love.”

“Then I will tell you this, which otherwise I would not tell. You go,
but our love blossoms. The Divine Mother, the Holy Isis will grant us a
child.”

He stared at her, his face flushing violently. This was a note beyond
range of the Inimitable Livers—a higher note than had as yet been
struck in Egypt. For a moment he could not speak. Huge possibilities
tossed like billows in his brain—unspeakable hopes and ambitions. Her
voice, sweet as bird-music, pierced them.

“It is a new bond where no greater was needed. You are my royal consort
here in Egypt as was Cæsar. But swear one thing to me: Swear that this
child shall not injure Cæsarion. The world is wide enough for the two,
and we shall have crowns for the giving. Swear to me, heart’s dearest!”

He swore. The boy Cæsarion had been his playfellow and comrade. It was
not in Antony to hurt him. And wild liver as he had been, wild boaster
about a strong man’s powers and rights in perpetuating his species, this
staggered him. For he loved the woman to the limit of his power and
moreover he perceived that this was a matter to shake thrones and bring
Octavian to the dust.

He covered her face with kisses protesting his grief, his shame, in
leaving her to face the anguish uncomforted.

“But I will come. May the Gods hurl me down to the lowest pit of hell if
in anything I fail you, my heart’s delight.”

She looked him solemnly in the face.

“And if you come back true to me I will love you as never man was loved
yet. I will be yours to the gates of death and out beyond, and all that
is mine shall be yours, my life and my king.”

Later, Cleopatra stood by the window, watching the sailing of the Roman
fleet. The great light of the Pharos illumined it as if it were day,
breaking the ripples into confused glory, most beautiful to see. The
ships lay silent as in a picture of light and darkness.

A sudden trumpet called from the ship of the Triumvir and instantly
shouting broke loose, with the rattling of ropes and oars, a great
tumult of sound. She believed that on the poop she could distinguish a
solitary figure with folded arms, his face turned shoreward. A shooting
star glanced through the sky and plunged into the deep outside as though
a god hurled his javelin away, having no more use for it.

She turned away herself with a bitter little smile.

Gods and men. Life seemed to be resolving itself into a fight against
both.


                              CHAPTER XXI

News poured into Alexandria true, distorted, utterly impossible; and
Cleopatra must make what she could of it for after two letters, the last
from Athens, Antony wrote no more. It was said that his wife, the
waspish Fulvia, had made some weak attempt at rebellion against Octavian
in Rome, and having failed had fled to Greece to join the enraged
Antony, who strongly objected to having his hand forced in such a
manner. For the present, therefore, Italy and Rome were vanished dreams,
and the state of affairs in Asia Minor was almost as discouraging, for
the Parthians, rising like men from sleep, were gathering to their
standards the kings conquered by Antony and overrunning the country from
Euphrates to Greece.

“But at least,” Cleopatra said feverishly to her one counsellor, “this
will deepen the hate between him and Octavian. Now that Fulvia has
mortally offended Octavian, Antony cannot betray me as he did before by
joining forces with him. This must bind Antony to me for ever.”

“These Romans—who can tell?” Apollodoros said with concentrated
bitterness. “There is no enmity, no insult they will not swallow for
gain. Pray for the life of Fulvia, adored Isis, for she is the gulf
between the two men. While she lives Octavian cannot forgive Antony.”

But Cleopatra, not so far-sighted, hampered by her condition, could not
see it. She had tasted the difficulties of the birth of Cæsarion with
Cæsar’s living wife in Rome, and had no desire to repeat the experience
with Antony. Her cry was for the death of Fulvia.

“For then he would marry me, and together we would face Octavian. Would
not one think that Octavian would make her repent her rebellion in
blood? The Gods send he may!”

And the Gods heard her prayer, but with a difference. A ship flying into
the Harbor of the Happy Return, sails strained, men dropping at their
oars (for the captain guessed the importance of the news to the Queen),
brought tidings of Fulvia’s death at Sicyon, worn out with grief and
fear and jealousy of the Egyptian Queen.

Pale and huddled together when the man was brought into her presence,
she sprang to her feet vivid and beautiful as the great news reached her
senses. It could not be true—and yet it was, it was! And now he would
return, and from Alexandria with all his ships and men they would face
the Parthians and scourge the kings into submission and confine Octavian
in Italy until the great day came for the march on Rome. From her arm
she snatched a bracelet set with great jewels and thrust it into the
captain’s hand. It was riches for life and he stared at it and the
Queen, dazzled by her beauty—for she was one whom a thought divinely
inspired, as a thought also felled her in the dust—so quick was she to
blossom or wither.

And now Apollodoros dared to hope that this wonderful event might be in
her favor. She wrote to Antony a letter most glad, most loving, calling
to mind his promises—a letter a true man might brighten like flame to
read, and then sat down to await the answer and the day of her agony.

The one came, and not the other—the Gods giving her a prince and a
princess, Alexander the Sun and Cleopatra the Moon, at the end of a
travail in which Apollodoros and Charmion thought to see her go down to
death. To the gates of death she went in agony but returned, faint as
Persephone floating up from the darkness of the Underworld. And still no
letter came down the Mediterranean, though she watched the inward sails
of every ship with a beating heart. Was it death, or treachery, or mere
forgetfulness?

One day, when she had regained health and strength (and indeed health
was her element, for she was most lightly and beautifully made),
Apollodoros came into the gardens where she sat, Cæsarion, fair as a
flower at her feet, reading a book written in the hieroglyphics of the
Egyptians, being lightning-quick to learn as became the child of Cæsar
and Cleopatra. But Apollodoros motioned him away to play with the swans
in the great lake, and knelt before the Queen in silence.

“You have news and it is bad,” she said, catching at her breath. “Is he
dead?”

“It would be better a thousand times if he were dead. That at least
would leave us free to make our terms with Octavian. Think the worst you
can, my Queen, and it is still worse.”

“Tell me,” she said from white lips.

“The death of Fulvia having removed the obstacle, Antony has journeyed
to Rome to clear himself of the guilt of her rebellion against the
Triumvir Octavian, and he has struck hands with him again.”

She looked at him for a moment with utter disbelief. Such treachery
could not be, for mere shame’s sake! Good opinion of men she had very
little, and of Antony none; and yet how could this base thing be? Then
suddenly she knew she had expected it always.

“The liar! The fool! The coward!” Her hands dropped upon her knees as if
with an immense weight upon them.

“And we trusted him!” she said. And again, after a silence, “When I
think what I gave him!” And again, while it worked in her heart! “But my
love I never gave him. From that the Gods saved me.”

And still Apollodoros knelt with eyes averted.

“My Queen, there is more.”

“What more then? Has he sold us to Octavian?”

He made a gesture repudiating that, but went on.

“The Triumvirate has divided the Roman world into three parts—Antony
taking the East for his portion—Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, and—”

“Then he will come back—he will be near and together we may strike
Octavian again, and now Fulvia is dead—”

“Octavian foresaw that also, and as a bond of his fidelity he has
stipulated that Antony should marry his sister Octavia—and it is done.”

He dared not lift his eyes to Cleopatra’s well-beloved face. He who knew
her could guess something of the rage of shame and agony that swept
through her like a hurricane—yet even he not all. To the humiliation of
the woman who had twice trusted a Roman in vain was added the shame of
the Queen who sees her utmost grace flung back in her face with
spitting.

Her position was in truth frightful; every ambition broken, her love
betrayed, displaced for a young and beautiful woman who was exalted in
her stead. She had seen her in Rome and could measure very well the
depth of Antony’s self-sacrifice in accepting that condition of the
treaty with Octavian.

For a moment the steel spring of hope and youth which had carried her
laughing through so many dangers broke. She cowered into half her size,
hiding her face in her hands, and for a long time there was silence and
the sighing of the wind in the boughs, while in a great darkness she
sent her heart through the bitter past and found no comfort.

And first she saw Octavia as she had seen her in Rome, standing among
roses in the gardens of Cæsar’s villa on Tiber. She had a garland of
roses a little too large and blowsy on her head, her white tunic
ungracefully looped to a golden chain about her waist, not a vestige of
the distinction of a great lady. But none the less a goddess’s figure,
though carried stiffly; fine eyes also, moon-browed, dark hair rippling
into a Greek knot that became her. Her face had the dull majesty of a
profile on a coin, fair of feature but with no sparkle or play of
expression, a noble landscape without sunshine—a true Roman beauty. The
Queen saw herself smiling upon her, offering a peacock fan set with
garnets and turquoises from Damascus,—the other taking it kindly and
with an awkward sincerity very unlike the giver’s gay grace.

Who could have thought then that time would make them rivals? For she
was the wife of Caius Marcellus, and Cleopatra the consort of Cæsar. And
now—oh, bitter gods who stand aside, laughing at the ignorance, the
groping folly of mortals!—now, for this woman’s sake to whom as to
herself Antony had been but a name—so great was her anguish that she
could not even take the relief of tears for the burning of shame within
her. These Romans, how they had used and felled and trampled her beauty
and pride in the vilest of abasement and dust!

For the first time in her proud young life she tasted the bitterness of
despair and most deadly humiliation. For how long Apollodoros knelt by
her motionless as the image of the Faun in the thicket, neither knew,
both sounding the deeps of a timeless grief. At last, dropping her hand
from her face, but still crouching, she looked him in the eyes.

“And to this all our plotting and skill have led us! Better for me if I
lay dead like Arsinoë—a virgin still, than the sport of those two
cursed Romans. Oh, the laughter in Rome! I can hear it. The men at their
feasts will say: ‘Let any man go to Alexandria and amuse her with tales
of empire—or less—and she is his for the taking. And easily to be left
too when a man has had enough of her! A good pliable girl! How many
children of how many fathers in the palace by the sea?’ And Antony
himself will laugh with them—the cur, the coward! Oh, if I had him
here, my dagger in his throat—the drunken beast!”

Apollodoros knew her self-torturing torment that wrung his own heart,
and had no word of comfort. Together they must endure until the Gods
relaxed their cruel sport. She sat now, her hands drooped on her knees
looking out with lost eyes over the sea. At last:

“Is there a gleam of hope anywhere? Can I strike at him—and how?”

And still Apollodoros was silent, and forgetting her own question she
stared out over the sea lost in a maze of misery.

When at last he spoke she started:

“Queen—there is hope, immense as is the ruin. Let us not strike at
him—he is not worth it. Let us still use the man until it is time to
drop him and reach the goal alone. This we can do. He will still be
within reach in Asia Minor and Octavia, the meek, the womanly, will stay
and spin in Rome, tending her children and Fulvia’s. And here we will
use him. We will drive him to our ends!” His face was cruel as he said
it—the face of a man to whom lives count as nothing in his purpose. She
answered as if from a great distance:

“And if it could be—I begin to learn that we are nothing and the high
gods use us for their purposes and drop us and go on with the game we
can never understand. What good is it if I use Antony when they are
using me? They have neither repentance nor pity. How should they when
they themselves are driven by Destiny?”

“That is no doctrine for the Lady of the World. For my part I say: Let
us do all we can while the day lasts, even if at the end we drop in the
jaws of darkness and know no more. At least we leave a name; and you,
the memory of a beauty that is the World’s Rose.”

“And am I so beautiful, Apollodoros? If I am, it has done little enough
for me. I will trust my beauty no more.”

“You are beauty itself, O Isis-Hathor, and the Cross of Life is in your
hand. You were the little laughing Queen—a thing of dawn and
dewdrops—now you are pale with knowledge, and your eyes are homes of
mystery. I feel at what I would say, and words fail me. Oh, Goddess and
Divine, have courage, for you touch upon things that endure, and you
shall be a name, a song to move the hearts of men when Antony is
remembered only because once he kissed your feet.”

“A goddess! No. A woman deserted and debased. But still a Queen—and
there is hope for Egypt still if I have none for myself. Well—let us
consider the use of Antony. Coward! He dares not write!”

They talked long while the little Cæsarion waded among the lilies in the
pool, and in the end, choosing a crescent diadem of pearls from her
great stores of jewels, she sent it to Antony with this letter:

“I send these pearls to grace the white brows of Octavia the beautiful.
She will remember me. I, her. Autocrat of the East, I would have you
know that queens have no rancors like lesser women for they are not
their own but must walk in the way marked out for them by the Gods.
Therefore do not think I wish you anything but what is most good. I have
forgotten. Here in Alexandria life is joyful and my days are winged with
delight. May it be so also with you and the bride. Your children,
Alexander the Sun and Cleopatra the Moon, are well and beautiful and
full of felicity. Therefore, in joy I bid you joy, desiring you to
remember that should the Fates decree that the help of Egypt is needed
for the good of Asia then my ships and men shall strike with you as
friends with friends.”

She listened with interest as Apollodoros, having written, read it
aloud, her slight body almost collapsing in weariness.

“Will he believe it? Is it too good to be true? He will have expected
whirlwinds of reproach, and he gets—this!”

Apollodoros smiled a small cruel smile:

“He will believe it, for he was never sure of you. And not only so—but
to speak of the delights of Alexandria is to hold out honey to the bear.
Never in the wide world such a palace of delights as the Lochias, never
such a comrade as my Queen! Give him rope—give him the dull beauty of
Octavia—and this letter. And we shall see!”

So that letter was sent to Athens, and keen-eyed watchers were
instructed to send from there daily report of what the Autocrat might
choose to do, and, lest the same watch should be set on her, Cleopatra
led in Alexandria the life of a great queen, full of wholesome delights
and rejoicings, a careful mother to her children, considering the
welfare of her people; and her name was great in the world, though the
Romans, taught by Octavian, hated and distrusted her beyond all the
monsters of legend.

They said she sat like a siren, singing behind her Pharos, and that her
mysterious charm drew great men irresistibly to her net, and that the
floors of her palace, like a witch’s cave, were strewn with white bones
of men. They told stories in Rome of her debaucheries, which were read
to her by Apollodoros, she sitting laughing to hear the frolics of the
Inimitable Livers magnified to bestiality, laughing the more because she
knew from her watchers in Rome of the vices of Octavian—“plebeian
vices” as she called them—jesting at his grandfather the money-lender.

“Octavia has that air also!” she said. “Her virtues are as heavy as his
vices. The household drudge who has not blood enough to sin. She will
drive Antony mad. Will she make his clothes as she made Octavian’s—and
as badly? Will she throw up her hands in horror when he comes reeling to
her as Bacchus, or capers on the altar of Mars in Athens? Does she talk
through her nose like her brother? I forget, for she had no breeding or
courage to speak in a queen’s presence in Rome. And now—see! she has
sent no word of thanks for my pearls. Great ladies know how to keep
manners with their enemies. She does not.”

A year went by and news came that Octavia had borne a daughter to Antony
and that little love was lost between him and Octavian. Also that in
Athens he ruled with a good-humored and drunken rule, very popular among
the commoner sort of Athenians. He had attempted to revive Inimitable
Livers of his own, under the shadow of the Acropolis, but they could not
thrive without the laughing guidance of the Queen, and their meetings
were drinking bouts and no more. And when she heard of the massive God
of Wine and Mirth in Athens, Cleopatra smiled. Even from Apollodoros
were now hidden whatever dangerous thoughts lurked in the cold
interlunar cave of her royal heart. She always smiled when Antony was
mentioned, and said little or nothing.

And two more years went by and she strengthened herself in Egypt and won
the hearts of the priests, visiting Abydos with great gifts and
worshipping the Gods and amassing huge wealth, living greatly and wisely
as the greatest of the Pharaohs, and was patiently watchful of all
things.

“It was well,” she said to Charmion, “that we did away with the
Inimitable Livers now that Antony has brought them into such disrepute
in Athens. They were too good to last, and now I am too wise.”

“Yes, those were brave days,” Charmion said, sighing. “They seem to have
taken something of youth with them. How the Triumvir loved them!”

Cleopatra smiled. “Who cares? Life passes and changes and what matter?
Where now is the Light on the Horizon? He told me of great glories in
Rome, and they came, and ruin with them. Yet I can say this—if I have
fought for my own hand I have fought for Egypt more, and therefore the
Gods might have given me better than Cæsar and Antony. Last night I
dreamed of him that I saw Octavia holding his hand and bidding him
farewell as quietly as a wife in a picture, and I thought he laughed and
I woke.”

“May we never hear him laugh again!” said Charmion, who distrusted
Antony with all her heart. “Thanks be to Isis that we are rid of him!”

“You will hear him laugh again or I am much mistaken. His mind will turn
to the pleasures of Alexandria after a long diet of Octavia. He will
come.”

And within the next few months news came thick and fast.

First, that Antony could no longer endure the virtuous dulness of
Octavia, and did not so much as trouble to hide his distaste, saying
openly to those about him that there was no place worth a man’s
endurance but Alexandria, adding, however, that he had so deeply
offended the Queen that he could never hope to see it again. And then
tidings that he had sailed for Tarentum in Italy with Octavia, there to
meet Octavian, and later that he had given her over to her brother and
that, after a friendly farewell with Octavian, he had returned alone to
Asia Minor.

“It is coming, coming!” said Cleopatra to Apollodoros.

He, kneeling before her, made his last protest: “My Queen, consider!
Three years ago the man was sinking into debauchery. He is three years
deeper in now. Is he worth the scandal, the danger, and the failure? I
say, no, for the chance of Egypt may yet come without him. He is a
mighty man now in Asia Minor, I own it; but what chance had he ever that
he did not throw away? If he writes, send no reply. That is my counsel.”

She shook her head, laughing coldly:

“Wrong, wrong, Apollodoros. He is absolute ruler of the East, and I will
make my market of him, for he owes me much. Have no fear. I know him
now, and when he has made Egypt what I desire, and provided thrones for
my children, let him go back to Octavia and lick the feet of Octavian.”

As for Antony, after so much of Octavia’s company, his very soul longed
for the brilliance of the laughing Queen. She was the only woman whom he
had never won, who had never wearied him. And she had told him with a
man’s candor that she had forgotten him and was happy. That letter stuck
in him like a barbed arrow. Happy and without him, she who had known his
worship! Happy, and in Alexandria, the one place where he longed to be,
where the art of pleasure was inimitably understood. Night and day he
had the Egyptian slave Setep beside him, that he might talk of the
Queen, that he might hear of the love of the people for their royal
beauty and laugh over the frolics of Alexandria.

At last, summoning his resolution, he wrote a letter to her and sent it
in a six-banked galley, swift and dangerous. And on board went one of
his officers, a man he trusted, with orders to invite Cleopatra to
return with him to Syria, if her reception of the letter should be
friendly. And a parching thirst raged in him to see her again and hear
her laughter once more. For her laughter was of all things the nearest
to his heart. And he gave the letter to Setep.

And Setep gave the letter to Apollodoros and he to the Queen, and when
she heard it she struck her hands together and laughed aloud, saying:
“At last we have him. Read it again.”

“Most beautiful of Queens, I am alone in Antioch. My wife Octavia I
shall not see again. Are you so happy that the past is utterly
forgotten? Yet there remains the good of Asia and since you promised in
your letter, which has since been enshrined in a casket of gold, to aid
me with men and ships when I had need of the help of Egypt, come now and
meet me in Antioch that we may talk of high things. Antony the
Autocrator.”

“Write thus,” she said slowly to Apollodoros:

“To Antony the Autocrator. Cleopatra has forgotten the past, but the
Queen of Egypt remembers the good of Asia. She will come to Antioch, not
in the Roman ship but with her own fleet and in her own time. So,
committing you to the care of favorable gods, she ends. Cleopatra the
Queen.”

When it was despatched she turned to her counsellor.

“He is now the greatest man in the world, and Octavian hated in Italy
and ruler only there. If you and I behind Antony cannot, with a touch,
worst Octavian, then we are fit only to be slaves. Do you lose your old
daring, Apollodoros? Then I have enough for both!”

Therefore, in spite of the sorrow of Apollodoros, that letter crossed
the Mediterranean to Antioch, and in a short while Cleopatra followed
it. But not with the lavish magnificence of a courtesan, as she had done
at Tarsus. Not as an abandoned Venus, but with stately and noble
simplicity, as became the royal Isis, whose robes she wore. Yet most
beautiful, for it seemed each year that passed shaped her from the
reckless fantastic brilliance of the girl into the nobler beauty of the
woman. Her eyes were deeper, more shadowed, and none could fathom the
thoughts that hid in their sun-amber. Her mouth concealed its scorn in a
great serenity, her hair was braided in a crown of bronze above brows
serenely royal. Never was a queen more great.

And so Antony saw her when he came on board and stooped to kiss her
hand.


                              CHAPTER XXII

She met him kindly but unconcerned, her quick eye noting the work of
time upon him. A handsome man still, and would be so until death, so
proud and high his features and the strong moulding of lips and chin.
His great figure towered above her with a massive strength which would
have touched the ordinary woman into awe-struck submission to male
grandeur of mind and body. Her cooler judgment set a good deal of it
down to inordinate feasting and there left it. She knew very well now
that she was immune from illusions of that especial sort and that it was
no part of her nature to be moved by the maleness of a man or to dwell
on it with passion. Life itself was her lover, and its sweetness, dash
and brilliance swept her along on too high an aërial current for any
mere male to reach. As a girl she had thought her coldness unripeness;
now she knew it for the very keynote of her being and blessed it,
believing that it must save her from the subjection which is Nature’s
usual way of a man with a maid. Otherwise, where Cæsar had failed,
Antony might have been expected to succeed, for the difference is often
all with a woman, but she had sounded her own deeps and thought herself
safe. Certainly, because she was a woman, her sense of power amused her.
It was pleasure as well as policy to excite and enrage, to take them as
far as their limits, though she herself poised winged on the edge of the
precipice when she had driven them over. This had been the case with
lesser men not worth mention in this true history; she had used their
passions as slaves—much as a prince may toy with a peasant maid and
forget her for nobler game.

Yet these women, all nerve and brain, artists to their fingertips, act
love and its emotions better than those really subjugated, and with the
artist’s delight in the drama stand superior all along the line of
attack and defence. Therefore, history (written by man) sets them down
for headlong voluptuaries when in reality they are as cool and detached
in self-criticism as the rest of their tribe. And Cleopatra,
inaccessible to all men but the two she used as means to her end, stands
pilloried to eternity as a sensualist who threw the world away for
kisses, counting it well lost. One must remember how she would have
laughed at the portrait.

On this memorable occasion Antony, being all sex, was excited, nervous,
overstrained, she perfectly cool, ready to melt or freeze as became the
moment.

He took his seat before her on the divan which, Oriental fashion,
adorned her great cabin, inwardly ravaged by the sensations of a
penitent arraigned before his judge as he looked at the cold beauty he
last remembered dissolving in his arms. It was unreasonable to expect
that she would melt after more than three years’ infidelity, yet the man
in him, still swaggering and a filibuster with women, was not without
expectation that a storm of tears and kisses might end the affair.

Instead she began the interview with placid courtesy.

“And how is the noble Octavia? I was sorry to hear that the Athenian air
did not suit her health.”

Irritation burst out of him in a growl:

“The noble Octavia is with the devil her brother, and long may he hold
her! She is with Octavian in Rome.”

She listened with admirable repression.

“Her native air will restore her to the beauty which all the world
admires. I had wished I might behold it making beautiful the diadem I
sent on her marriage. Did it please her?”

His face grew venomous.

“She never received it. Was it likely that I would see another woman in
your jewels?”

Her face was gently concerned.

“I certainly intended no offence. One does not buy new jewels for every
occasion and my stores are vast. But if you prefer it a new diadem shall
be made for your wife’s honor. The last ships from India brought pearls
of a barbaric magnificence. I might walk dripping with them like a
Nereid.”

Irritation boiled over. With Octavia’s expenses, Octavia’s close fist,
and his own reckless spending he felt the pinch of a narrow purse. One
might certainly wring gold out of the miserable people of the lands his
soldiers occupied, but after all—poor devils—that was not his way! It
was not in his nature to be cruel unless he forgot, or people stood very
much in the way. Now the longing to shatter and batter the Queen unless
she would yield almost overcame him. He turned upon her vehemently.

“You sit there as cold as a goddess boasting of your wealth and
pearls—the only person I know in the world who has no need to sell her
soul for money! You know well that was not the reason. I would have
pitched your diadem into the sea sooner than see it adorning Octavia’s
sheep’s head. It was because I loved you. And this is my reward!”

“Talk of the unreason of women!” thought Cleopatra, as she waved her fan
rhythmically with a little smile upon her lovely lips.

“It must gratify any woman to be honored by the love of Antony the
Autocrator. But it is a long way from Alexandria to Antioch and I did
not come to discuss the politics of Eros and Venus, but rather those of
Asia Minor. May I know why you desired to meet me?”

Stuttering and stumbling he conveyed the axiom that nothing really could
be done without the aid of Egypt. She smiled serenely.

“I knew that a good deal more than three years ago, but imagined that
from the union of two such giants as Antony and Octavian another line of
policy had been fixed and Egypt brushed from consideration. Are we
really of any consequence still in matters of policy?”

She had him as completely at a disadvantage as she intended. He sat in
sullen, and she in tranquil silence, as it were reviewing the position.
Suddenly he leaped to his feet.

“If you think I shall sit here and be mocked! You were as good as my
wife—”

“Not _quite_ as good!” she interjected, but he ran on unheeding.

“And the mother of my children. How dare you sit there with your pale
face and great eyes jeering at me and play-acting like a Greek
pantomime! Come here and kiss me and submit like a sensible woman and I
will tell you what I want—and take it too!”

He blustered in vain. She hinted softly that a long course of Octavia’s
submission had distorted his views of herself. That the Queen of Egypt
was not his wife, and therefore a free woman could be scarcely expected
to be as servile as she, granddaughter of a Roman money-lender. That
also infuriated him and he plunged like a bull in a net, she undulating
her fan in an untroubled rhythm.

He raged; she yawned. At last, and inevitably, calm conquered.

“I don’t in the least want to be disagreeable,” she said, “and I really
have no rancors—they only get in the way—but the facts are there and
too big to be ignored. How could I ever trust you again? You left me to
face my confinement alone, with a damaged reputation into the bargain,
and went straight off to Octavian—breaking your word of honor into
bits, among other unconsidered trifles, by marrying a plebeian whom I
would not have admitted to my palace as a waiting woman. Some women
really would have reproached you. Have I done that? I sent instead a
very handsome gift to the bride.”

He admitted sullenly that she had made no reproaches but added that her
silence and indifference had been infinitely more wounding.

“Did you expect thanks? Silence after my congratulations seemed to me
more dignified, especially as my gift passed unnoticed. And besides, my
position obliges me to be a politician, and really I can hardly take you
seriously. You spin like a top! After Cæsar’s death you were ready to
fly at Octavian’s throat. I trusted to that and spent a good deal of
money on the assurance. Round you spun again into friendship with him
and a share in the Triumvirate, and I and my money and my Cæsarion were
chucked away like garbage! Again, at Tarsus, you swerved round to me and
your promises in Alexandria towered as high as the Great Pyramid. Like a
fool—or a woman—I believed you. I made you my consort. I trusted
Cæsarion’s future to you and—I wonder how much it has cost me!”

She made a guttural note of disgust and fixed him with cool bright eyes
as he sat scowling on the divan, his arm on his knee, chin propped on
his hand.

“Do you yourself know what you want, mean, or intend?” she asked coldly,
and sat looking at him as if his answer mattered little enough.

At the moment he wanted nothing but sympathy and consolation and thought
her horribly hard and unjust. But it seemed useless to propound that
point of view, and evidently some sort of propitiation was necessary.
Besides, she hurt him. He wanted her, soft, yielding, in his arms again;
to be able to look down upon her with fondling tenderness, and be the
great man, Autocrat of the Queen of Egypt once more.

He tried to pose infallible, especially irresistible in big men who have
little large-eyed women to deal with—women who must inevitably be
yielding if taken in the right way.

“I have made grievous mistakes. None knows it better than I; and how
dear I have paid for them only the Gods know. I was very ill in Athens
and in the midst of dreadful sufferings my heart longed for my home in
Alexandria and—for the only woman who ever understood me.”

That she understood him she knew very well, but the phrase had hardly
the same meaning for them both. A flash darted into her eye but was
instantly suppressed. She sat observing his struggles gravely. He
continued:

“And—Gods, the dullness of Octavia! A woman like that should be a
Vestal Virgin instead of having tortured two husbands. Everything I did
turned her blue. She thinks Octavian a paragon of virtue, and when I
took the trouble to open her eyes (and the Gods know no one could do it
better, for I am up to all his tricks!) she cried and snuffled and— Oh,
Cleopatra, I have suffered! I thought of you and of the Inimitable
Livers, and there was Octavia always posted before me. Give me a death’s
head for choice!”

His eyes pleaded. There at least he was truthful. He had known the very
depths of boredom and the rack was preferable. She was conscious of a
seasonable relenting. A mingled sense of gratification and power took
the extremest chill off her coldness and melted the icy edge of her hurt
pride. So that was the end of that fine marriage! She had known it.
Triumph lifted its head in her like a touch of spring in winter.

But still she was silent. He flung himself on his knees before her,
burying his head in her lap like a great boy.

“Take me back, heart’s dearest, and I’ll never stray again. I have
learned my lesson—there’s no woman like you, never was and never will
be. Let Octavia go to Hades with her vile brother. I told her before she
went that I would never set eyes on her again, and she
snuffled—actually snuffled—and kissed me! If you knew what I have gone
through! And my children—I want to see them.”

“You have a daughter by Octavia,” she reminded him, austerely keeping
her fingers with some difficulty from the curls whose crisp resistance
to caresses she knew so well. After all—after all, can a man be wiser
than the Gods made him? But still she held her fingers stiffly away.

“So have I by lots of other women, and you never minded. And that child
is as like Octavia as two peas. Let me forget them one and all!” he said
pathetically. “I want to be in Alexandria. The very sight of you—my
heart was always yours! All this was policy. To win Octavian.”

Her manner softened but was still quiet and controlled. He also felt a
breath of spring in wintry air and put out a groping hand for hers but
did not find it.

“Speak to me, heart’s dearest!” he said imploringly from the refuge of
her knees.

“Yes, I will speak,” she said with quiet sadness, “but you have wrecked
my hopes so often that it is very difficult. Supposing I could forgive
you—and a slave could scarcely be expected to—what would you do?”

“Anything—everything.”

“That means nothing. Would you marry me if I wished it? I am by no means
certain that I do. But would you?”

She felt the start that ran through him. He muttered:

“Octavia.”

“Calpurnia did not stand in Cæsar’s way. Why should Octavia in yours?”

“Yes, I would do that,” he said desperately. “Of course, it would drive
her brother mad. You know that?”

“Let it!” she said with contempt. “If you are true to me you can be free
of Roman law. You need never see Rome again until you enter it as a
conqueror.”

Her very voice inspired him. All things seemed possible when she spoke
in those clear ringing tones with dauntless eyes behind them. And the
man himself was compact of courage when shown his prey and unleashed. It
was only when alone and tangled in doubts and the contrariety of things
that he blundered and slumbered. She had the initiative he wanted.

“You inspire me,” he said. “I can do everything with you. Oh, the fool I
have been!”

She gradually permitted him to hold her hand, to draw a seat beside her,
to lean his head against her shoulder, but still holding herself a
little aloof from encroachments—and so they talked until the low sun
turned the sea to glory and twilight closed about the ships in a great
peace.

When the talk was ended the Queen, playing for Egypt and Cæsarion, had
won her game, and Antony had conceded all. He had given her great slices
of territory under his rule in Asia. Her frontiers spread far and wide.
She had done well for Egypt, she thought; her name would be remembered
among the greatest sovereigns of the ancient land. A proud flush rose in
her little pale face as she heard him. There was to be a marriage in
Egypt and coins struck with their heads and inscriptions conjoined. He
stipulated that he should be King of Egypt, but she put that sternly
aside. Cæsarion was her consort on the throne. No other was possible.
Let Antony be Autocrator of the East. Gods—what a title to stir a man’s
imagination, she said. And he was subdued and promised. He must swear
also to serve the right of Cæsarion in all things. The son of Cæsar and
the Queen must come first. For the twins, lesser kingdoms to be carved
out in Asia. He swore.

“And in return I give you the help of Egypt in all your undertakings.
Money, men, and ships, and myself to back it. Myself, with all my heart
and will.”

“Your heart?” he said, and looked at her doubtfully. She seemed wiser,
more self-sufficing, further removed from him than ever. Her long robes
fell about her in shadowy folds hiding the little feet he had kissed so
often—so little that both could lie into the hollow of his great hand.
Yes, he had found the lost Cleopatra again but with a difference. He
might be Autocrator of the East, but never, never again of the Egyptian
Queen, as he had once believed himself.

“And you will love me as long, long ago?” he asked piteously. For answer
she drew a great arm about her and hid her soft lightness against him
with kisses intolerably sweet after long hunger.

Later in detailing her victory to Apollodoros she half excused herself
for that tenderness.

“He is really a very difficult person to keep up anger with. In my soul
I believe he is younger than Cæsarion. He needs to be mastered, asks,
craves for subjugation, and that fool of a woman would persist in
putting him on a pedestal and kneeling before him! Serapis, what folly!”

She added with a sigh: “At all events he will never betray us again.”

“Possibly not,” said Apollodoros. “But—”

“But what; owl, raven?” she asked, laughing nervously.

“What my Queen has said herself. He has no self-guidance.”

“Unless he is mastered, and I have him to heel like a dog. There is only
one doubt. Can I hold him? I am twenty-nine and I think the years have
not spared me. Sometimes my eyes are wearied and I guess at two faint
brackets that will come round my mouth. Is it not true?”

He repelled this with scorn. To him she grew more beautiful daily. But
even he must own that the gaiety of the girl-Queen was dimming. That
faint gray dust of time was settling a little on it.

He sighed, for of all men he most distrusted Antony, but turned
resolutely toward her.

“Royal Isis, if on my knees I implore you to let the man go, to
strengthen ourselves in Asia Minor with the territories he gives us, to
make an alliance with Herod of Judea and defy Antony and so hold our
line until Cæsarion is of age to rule—would you hear me?”

She shook her head. He knelt before her with hands joined, imploring:

“Let Antony and Octavian break each other, and let us profit by their
ruin. The looker-on may laugh and win. The Romans hate both. They will
accept the son of Cæsar, and the boy shows his father. Oh, my Queen have
pity on Egypt and yourself. Let this drunkard go. Part friends with him,
but part. Patience will give us all.”

When his voice ceased his working features entreated. The promises of
Antony weighed nothing with him. He thought the Queen mad. Never had she
seen Apollodoros thus moved and it moved her also. She hesitated,
wavered, commanded him to give his reasons in full, and for an hour they
debated while the sailors of the Fleet waited in doubt whether to hoist
sail for Alexandria or drop anchor for good in the harbor of Antioch.
Apollodoros viewed her with the despair a man often feels face to face
with the intricacies of a woman’s nature. She allowed her reasons could
hardly face the facts of Antony’s behavior. Then were they to be called
reasons? asked Apollodoros. She did not know, could not see what else
was to be done, had an instinct—and so forth, until at last he began to
doubt whether some swing of the fiery wing of passion had not brushed
her immaculate coolness and left it smouldering. That she denied hotly,
and fell back on the instinct.

“I have presentiments sometimes and feelings like ominous figures moving
in twilight. May not the Gods send inspirations after that fashion?
Besides, who else is there than Antony?”

“Ourselves, our wealth and our courage,” he answered stoutly. “What have
we gained from the Romans? Give me the order to hoist sail this
instant.”

He was at the door when she recalled him:

“It may be, best Apollodoros, that the Gods may visit me in a dream or
some omen warn me. Let Antony be told that my head aches to weariness
and I cannot see him tonight.”

For the first time in his life he looked at her with anger.

“He left you!” he said, with an edge of contempt.

“But he returned! The one reason is as good as the other,” said
Cleopatra, “and both are worthless. It is Fate drives me as it does all!
Let Fate choose this night.”


                             CHAPTER XXIII

The night came quietly down over the harbor of Antioch without sound of
feasting or revels, jewelled with stars and wearing the moon on her brow
like the Hathor of Egypt, and the Queen, leaning her head against the
window, looked out at the star-strewn ocean and pondered the counsel of
Apollodoros. And as she sat Charmion entered.

“Royal Isis, there is an Indian merchant who has come here from the city
of Balkh, having a rare gift to offer. He was on his way to Alexandria
but hearing the Queen’s ships were at Antioch he has come to lay it at
your feet.”

She wavered on a refusal, so anxious were her thoughts, but the girl
entreated:

“The man is set upon it—a great gift, royal Isis. He says it has magic
in it.”

That word decided her. Oh, for any magic light to throw a ray upon that
dark path of the future! One believed in magic, for all the wisest of
the world trembled before its powers. All, men and women, went
cautiously protected by amulets and rings and seals from the malice of
enemies or the threat of evil fortune. She herself wore in her bosom the
tokens of Isis carved in amethysts and emeralds.

The man entered, a supple Indian, black-browed and turbaned, a man of
fifty and more, age gray in his beard and the hair on his upper lip. He
prostrated himself before the Queen, touching the carpet three times
with his forehead, then rose to his knees and from his breast drew a
little packet wrapped in yellow silk, speaking Syrian fluently from long
trading in the eastern Mediterranean.

“For the living Goddess, the Queen whose greatness dims all others into
darkness, this—from her servant Gomukh.”

He peeled off the lengths of silk with delicate dark fingers, adding:

“And had I been known to carry this splendor, my life had not been worth
a pinch of dust. For it came from the temple of the Great God in the
terrible mountains of India and it holds the power of the Immortals.”

As the last wrapping fell beside him it disclosed a small chain of gold,
and attached to it a mighty black opal, midnight dark and shot with
ominous flames of color darting and interchanging their unnameable hues
in greens and blues and fiery reds, such as may be seen in the skies at
sunset and reflections of fire in black waters, but man has no name in
any speech for them for when a name is given, instantly the color is
another. And she looked at its beauty and size in amazement for it was a
square, more than an inch every way and thick as the first joint of the
little finger, smooth as the skin of an apple and pierced at one end for
a ring and chain. And she said eagerly:

“This is a great jewel. There can be no other like it. I have never even
heard of such a thing. And its virtues?”

Abasing his eyes reverently on the floor the dark man answered in
Syrian:

“Living Goddess, it has two virtues, for this is the jewel of life and
death, the black being night and death, and the flames light and life.
Passed over the face every night it keeps youth fresh as a rose at dawn,
and no woman’s beauty can wither who does this and drinks the water in
which the stone is steeped. For this reason it was given to the temple,
because men’s jealousy would not allow their women to survive them young
and beautiful when they went down to death. Also a law was made in India
that when a man died his wife should burn with him, and this was because
when this stone is steeped in wine, not water, it gives out deadly
poison, and he who drinks it dies, but it leaves no mark or harm on his
body, so that the murderer cannot be traced, and it causes death in an
instant and without pain. So the stone was a very great danger, being
handed about among women to preserve their loveliness and to end their
husbands when they wearied of them, and for safety men took it and gave
it to the God. But mark this—it must be kept from sunlight, for its
mother and home is the dark.”

She raised her hands in astonishment and Charmion leaning over her
shoulder examined the stone with awe, the merchant kneeling like a
bronze statue. And Cleopatra said:

“I am wise in amulets, for that is a part of the Egyptian wisdom, and no
ruler on earth has a greater store of them than I. But none has such
powers as this. How can I test these virtues?”

And he replied:

“Send for a mirror and a cup of water and one of wine. And if in Antioch
there is a criminal condemned to death, send for him.”

So Iras, standing by the door, ran, and while she was gone Cleopatra sat
with the black opal in her hand watching its weird and angry beauty with
delight, and, thinking it a living being with a dangerous spirit
inhabiting it, she turned to Charmion:

“I asked for an omen this night having a great choice to make, and
unless this merchant lies this jewel is the magic lord of love and slave
of death. Could there be a better omen for a Queen?”

“If what he says is true—no!” answered Charmion doubtfully. “But can it
be?”

And in a short time Iras returned with Apollodoros and, between two of
the Queen’s soldiers, a prisoner bound and condemned to death for the
brutal murder of the overseer of the bank of oars in which he rowed. He
stood there hangdog and sullen, saying no word nor raising his eyes when
Cleopatra asked his sentence.

“Crucifixion.”

“And no escape?”

“None.”

“We do no injustice then but are merciful, if this merchant tells the
truth. Dismiss the soldiers and give me the wine.”

She took the cup and sat steeping the stone in it watching it with eager
curiosity.

“For how long, fortunate merchant?”

“Until it turns rose-red. The poison remains active for eight days and a
very little suffices.”

The wine was an Egyptian vintage yellow as topaz, and as she bent to
see, it passed into a deep and noble rose color, brimming most
beautifully in the Queen’s cup. And when this was so, she held it out to
the prisoner.

“Unbind his hand that he may take. And now, man, drink, and thank the
justice of the Queen. I give you the mercy you have not shewn, and since
you serve my turn I wish you a quick passage. Drink!”

He took it in a firm hand, his face sullen and defiant, and drank
without a word, and instantly relaxed as if in a sleep, smiling, and so
slid to the ground at her feet, lying at her feet in the very image of
happy repose; and all seeing it said:

“Wonderful! Most wonderful!” as indeed it was, and the merchant raised a
dark triumphant eye to the Queen’s face.

“Can it be death?” she said, breathing quickly. “Surely it is the
gentlest sleep. Feel his heart, Apollodoros.”

He knelt and drew back the poor garment covering the breast.

“Death, royal Isis. The man has solved the mystery.”

“Then remove his body. There will be moments when I shall envy him. The
Gods are less merciful to men than I to him. And now for life.”

And, first having cleansed the stone, she held it in a cup of water,
looking steadily in the eyes of the merchant Gomukh.

“If you have lied, and this stone poisons the water as it did the wine,
then my men will tear you limb from limb and toss the bloody fragments
into the sea to feed the fishes. For my men love me.”

He smiled gravely:

“When the water glows like wine give me the cup and I will drink.”

She held the cup a moment more and with her own hand offered him what
seemed a cup of golden wine, and moreover it quivered and broke at the
brim into a lightly hissing foam. And then a great wonder was done
before their eyes. He drank and set the cup aside and raised his face to
the Queen, the light from the perfumed lamps falling on it. Before the
watchers a miracle was done. They saw youth dawn in his face, as when
night turns gray for morning. The nerves twitched and rippled; the olive
skin smoothed as if a skilled hand had erased the lines with rare oils
and unguents; the gray faded in his beard like melting snow in spring.
But most of all the change was in his eyes. No longer half sunk in a
network of wrinkles, they sparkled like jewels, elate and audacious, and
in ten minutes he stood before them a splendid young man, his
clear-skinned hands clasped in each other, nor a joint, not a vein
showing, an Indian Dionysos, light and beautiful as a Faun.

“May the Queen live for ever!” he said, laughing. “Does she think I
would sell this treasure if I did not know the mountain valley where its
like are found? It is worth all the riches of all the Kings; therefore,
keep it for royalty only and use the stone nightly as I have instructed
you. Also keep it in the dark of your bosom. Now drink!”

She could have thought the Greek Apollo, a trifle sunburned, stood
before her, so beautiful was his face, such music the harmony of his
voice.

“Drink, Venus of the Egyptians!” he said, and himself took another cup
of water and with slender fingers held the stone submerged. And, as he
did this, again it grew golden and again the light hissing of the
bubbles sounded through the air.

She drank, and the taste of unknown fruits in the golden juice brought
strange glad thoughts into her mind, at first like dreams of childhood,
bright and changing as a butterfly’s wings, and, as she drank deeper,
like the gladness of a girl such as she remembered herself in the
Lochias Palace, running and tossing her ball with others, the daughters
of great nobles; and joy bounded along her pulses like a dancer, and she
drank to the last drop and set the cup down laughing aloud for gladness
and daring.

“The mirror, the mirror!” she cried. Iras and Charmion kneeling
supported between them a great surface of polished glass set in silver
and clear as the sea at dawn, looking eagerly themselves in the mirror
to see what would happen. But Apollodoros fixed his gaze steadfastly
upon the face he loved, for to him all change was loss.

Oh, beautiful! The strong elixir sent brilliant color to cheeks and
lips, a glory of sunshine to amber eyes, kindling more gold in the
threads of her hair. The ineffable softness and innocent beauty of first
youth erased the passage of the years between eighteen and twenty-nine
and strewed the bloom of fresh flowers upon the petal-smoothness of her
fair face. No feature was changed, but all raised to the power—the
highest power, of its own beauty, as when the sun strikes leaping water
and suffuses it with rainbows, shimmering with light and color.

Charmion and Iras looked up at her awe-stricken, but the young merchant
cried out:

“Hail to the Goddess of Beauty who in India is Shri, in Rome Venus, and
in Egypt I know not what, but in all the world One. And now I depart.”

“Give him all the gold he will take!” cried the girl Cleopatra eagerly.
“Load camels for him with precious things. Take him to the treasure
vault of my ship and let him choose, and none hinder him. And take my
thanks, Merchant Gomukh, and this!”

She drew a great table emerald from her hand, splendid with green as
deep ocean water, and herself put it upon his. And as he crept from her
presence, bowing and prostrating himself, it seemed that all the young
beauty of manhood went with him and left the palace darker.

But light and shedding light, triumphant and adorable, she cried,
flinging out her arms as if to embrace the world:

“Oh, youth! Oh, joy! Could I ask a better omen? Now I can hold Antony
for ever, and how can he or any other man resist me? The ghost of old
age is exorcised and I have strength and courage to face all Fates.
Bright Gods, I worship you! Tell Antony I have a word to say to him, and
bring wine. We stay in Antioch.”

Happy madness possessed her; she heeded neither Apollodoros nor any
other, and when Antony saw her he believed he had recovered the lost
Cleopatra and rejoiced. For her beauty is a woman’s soul, and in its
life she lives. So she breathed empire and was drunk with power.

But when that story reached Rome, distorted as all was distorted that
had to do with her, it confirmed the tale of her witchcrafts and dyed
her reputation black as ink. And every Roman shuddered at her name,
remembering the fate of Cæsar and foretelling the ruin of Antony and any
miserable man who trusted her.


                              CHAPTER XXIV

Therefore, when the news flew through the Roman Empire that Antony was
in Alexandria once more, scorn and derision, fanned with the utmost
skill by Octavian and his agents, winged after it.

Octavia returned to Rome meek, uncomplaining, gathering under her wing
the son of Antony by Fulvia, together with her own daughter, and
devoting herself to all the duties of a model Roman lady. And Rome broke
into flame at the sight of so much virtue set against the black
background of Cleopatra’s vice. The witch! The sorceress! One would have
thought that the beauty and nobility of Octavia would have saved her
husband from those Alexandrian snares. The Roman anger added legions to
the cause of Octavian who had such a sister to avenge!

What scorn and reprobation could be too great for the outcasts of the
Lochias Palace?

And Antony had had the insolence to hold a Triumph in his own honor in
Alexandria—a thing never before done by a Roman out of Rome—a gorgeous
procession of legions, and elephants, and the captive royal family of
Armenia shrinking along the streets, pale, dumb with misery, laden with
golden chains, while he himself, quite in the Cæsarian manner, was the
focus of all eyes in a glorious chariot drawn by four white horses.

Rome growled like a furious wolf when the story reached her with the
descriptions of Cleopatra sitting on a golden throne to receive him, and
her children about her on thrones of silver—all raised on a platform to
command the worship of the crowd. She sat there brilliant in beauty and
triumph.

Whether it was the mysterious jewel of the Indian or rekindled hope
which had made her a flame of enchantment remained her own secret, but
she shone supreme, the very memory of her a light to shine down the ages
and extinguish lesser glories. It only inflamed the hatred of Rome where
every tongue cried that she was the most abandoned of women and Antony
her abject slave. The truth was she was a peril to Roman power, and,
being a woman, vilification must be added to the usual means of
conquest; though when the news was cried on the Capitol that at the
great banquet following the Triumph, Antony, rising, had proclaimed the
young Cæsarion King of Kings, and had allotted kingdoms like toys to his
own children by the Queen, no more was needed. Octavian smiled like a
man who sees his goal.

The tumult roared along the Mediterranean. Antony, they said, was now a
besotted fool whom Cleopatra kept drugged and drunken while she pursued
her plans for the ruin of the Roman power. As the price of her love, she
had demanded the Roman Empire, and in his drunken bouts he had promised
it to the witch as he might have given the ring on his finger. Up and at
them, for the sake of the Republic!

And the cold and crafty Octavian, watchful and patient as a spider
sitting in the heart of her web observing the gilded dance of the flies,
heard and resolved and acted.

And first he spread through Rome, and amongst the soldiers of the
legions, reports of the magnificence of the riches of Alexandria and of
Egypt.

What a palace for looting would be the Lochias! There were beams of pure
gold across the mighty ceilings, fretted and inlaid with jewels. The
very flooring of the halls was onyx or alabaster. The chairs and divans
glittered with jewels of price brought by laden ships from India up the
Red Sea. The beauty of the slaves and their skill in all the arts of
luxury made the possession of each one a fortune. As for the luxury of
Antony and Cleopatra, it beggared all description. Of Cleopatra they
wrote that she almost sank beneath the weight of jewels, her white
breasts more displayed than hidden by the woven webs of the Orient,
embroidered in gold and jewels by the skill of Alexandrian handicrafts
men. Little else was talked of in Rome, and that was as Octavian must
have it. So, having kindled this flame, he proceeded to pour oil upon
it, and took his next step. He despatched the meek Octavia, pale and
lily-like in submissive beauty, to Athens, whence she called upon her
husband Antony to meet her and receive gifts from Octavian. And having
done this Octavian waited events.

When the letter reached Alexandria Cleopatra sat with Apollodoros in
close council. So foolish and drunken a braggart was Antony now that
those two read all letters and transacted all business before referring
to him.

“Dare we keep it from him?” she asked anxiously. “He is weak as
water—he might go to her again and Octavian murder him. The Roman woman
has probably been sent for that very purpose.”

Apollodoros, his brows heavy with anxiety, shook his head:

“I think rather that she is sent to Athens so that Antony in refusing to
join her may be accused of an open insult to a most virtuous wife. Royal
Isis, you cannot keep it from him. If he insults his wife that insult
must not come from you.”

So Cleopatra took her way to the chamber overlooking the blue waters of
the harbor which had seen such changes in her destiny. There she found
Antony in conference with a leading actor, a man named Metrodoros,
planning a masque of Bacchus for the delight of the Alexandrians and his
own. For, to her terror and wrath, all the pests of Italy, the dancers
and actors, had come down the Mediterranean after Antony, and the palace
was besieged by these impudent parasites night and day.

“And I myself will drive through the streets in a car drawn by tigers,
teeth drawn and claws clipped, and I will appear garlanded with ivy and
with a chorus of Fauns and Bacchantes, and the whole city shall
celebrate the rites of the God, and work shall cease and all be given
over to pleasure for three days and nights. And there shall be a great
banquet, where Plancus shall take the part of the Sea-God come to visit
me, and—”

“Splendid, most divine Autocrator, splendid!” cried Metrodoros eagerly.
“And we will have a chorus of unclothed sea-nymphs with him, and he
shall dance at the banquet naked, with a garland of sea-weed, and a
great fish-tail flapping behind. He is a handsome fellow, and the
Alexandrians love a joke, especially if a little indecent!”

With what difficulty she hid her rage and contempt, she only knew, but
knew also that hidden it must be for the moment. She sat down.

“Beautiful indeed, and what part is allotted to Metrodoros who is King
of taste and fancy?”

“He will be Mercury the herald, announcing the different pageants. But
sit and see the exquisite groups he has drawn for me to consider. They
are in the truest classic feeling.”

She put them aside on the onyx table. No—she must have a few words with
the Autocrator, and then Metrodoros should return.

“But it is the hour when the children expect us in the gardens for their
games. You would not surely disappoint Cæsarion and the little ones?”
urged the good-humored Bacchus.

“The children will wait. They are fishing with Charmion and their
attendants from the seawall.”

She could hardly get rid of Metrodoros, but at last it was achieved, and
Antony put an amorous arm about her and composed himself to listen in
comfort.

“A man named Niger—has arrived here, sent from Athens, and—”

“Niger? An excellent good fellow! Then we must have a banquet in his
honor. Those wild boars roasted—”

“That too shall be done. No friend of my beloved’s shall miss due honor
from me. But he brings a message from Octavia.”

Then indeed Antony sat bolt upright in uttermost amazement. Having
dismissed Octavia he had never expected to hear from her again, and her
virtuous pertinacity was astounding and unwelcome.

“Octavia? Holy Serapis!”

Cleopatra laid the letter upon the magnificent table.

“She greets you as a wife and says she brings much clothing for your
soldiers, many beasts of burden and money and gifts in abundance, and
besides this two thousand picked soldiers in splendid armor, a gift from
Octavian, to help in your campaign against Parthia.”

“Gods, from Octavian? And is she in Athens?”

He sat a moment digesting the news. His arm fell from her waist.
Cleopatra waited in hidden impatience, her bright brows frowning over
the letter. Presently he spoke:

“It there more than that?”

“Dutiful messages. Hopes. Expectations. No more.”

A pause. He sighed gently.

“A royal gift. The poor Octavia—she was always madly in love with me.”

“I should have thought the word ‘madly’ scarcely applied to any action
of Octavia’s.”

He did not even hear her, so deeply was he interested in this new
development.

“And Octavian. I will say that was a handsome notion of his—the
soldiers. They will be a splendid nucleus for my army. These tried men,
hardened and sharpened by war, are worth their weight in gold!”

Then and not till then, she turned tragic eyes upon him:

“You would accept them?”

“Gods, why not? I tell you they are worth—”

She cut across it.

“You would go to Athens to receive them?”

“Well—I had not thought—but after all, why not? The Athenians have
always been devotees of mine. I have an immense popularity there. It
might be politic.”

Her face was a mask of horror.

“You would return to Octavia? You do not see that this is a trap of
Octavian’s? O Gods of Egypt, what have I done to deserve this?”

“Hercules!—If I went, what could it matter? I should probably never
clap eyes on Octavia,—and it would be proper to receive Octavian’s gift
with respect. I only wish he would double it. But let me see Niger—and
you stay and hear for yourself.”

“I will not stay,” she cried, lightnings darting from her eyes. “Do what
you will, go where you will. You have been a fool and coward always. I
was your wife before Octavia. But be true either to her or me. To both
you cannot.”

He would have kissed her, but she fled weeping. For the first time he
had seen the tears of Cleopatra.

Of course he did not go, and his refusal blazed through Rome—oil on
fire, as Octavian had foreseen. For Octavia returned meekly weeping to
Rome, and a vote was passed in the Senate for war against the hated
Queen and the renegade Antony. And Octavian proclaimed that Antony was
drugged and no longer master of himself and therefore to make war on
Egypt was to rescue a Roman once worthy but now imprisoned in shameful
bonds. And Rome gathered her might for the struggle.

When the news of this purpose reached her, Cleopatra said to
Apollodoros:

“This is the end. The failure of Antony’s war in Parthia leaves both him
and Parthia open to Octavian. He will strike now, and he is right. I
have done my best for Egypt and Cæsarion, but the Gods are too great for
me. And in what have I sinned against them? If they would but tell us
mortals and give us a chance to amend! But they sit in the dark and
smile. Life is strange. Plot how you will, suddenly comes the
Unforeseen, the Terrible, and strikes all one’s wisdom into the dust.”

She sat with darkened eyes fixed on the ground, and added presently:

“It is as if some mad god wandered the world in idleness, striking all
hopes into nothing. What is Octavian better than Antony? And I—I am
cleaner than other women. I am temperate, wise, and chaste. I might have
embruted myself with men, as they accuse me. Whatever I am, the Gods
made me and the blame is theirs. They lie foully of me in Rome, but—you
know it, Apollodoros—I have given my body to two men only and that from
no passion but because I believed they could make me a great Queen of a
most glorious empire. That and no less was what I owed to Egypt. If I
brushed people out of my way I did right—a Queen’s right. And what is
my reward? Ruin comes on me as if I had been the vilest of women, and my
hopes break into colored dust in my hand.”

He said some reassuring words. Not now was the time to reproach her,
though there were things he might have said. But what mortal could have
seen clearer than she? Surely she might have hoped that alliance with
the two most splendid Romans—the greatest men of the time—would not
only strengthen her country but also make Egypt the ruler and Rome the
appendage; and, hoping this, could she do less than she had done? And
now the sword was shattered in her hand. She looked a broken girl—no
more than a girl—as she sat huddled in her chair, and pity choked his
words. He turned away sighing.

She recalled him:

“I have a thought. It has long been floating in my mind. Send through
the city to know whether that wise priest known as The Light on the
Horizon has ever returned from India. He held the secret of the future
and if I could have even one glimspe of light on my horizon I might have
courage to think and act. For the truth is—Antony is our ruin. If he
were a man he should kill himself, for the life is gone out of him and
he is now nothing. Oh, if I could say to him: ‘You have wantoned enough
with me; you have eaten enough of my substance; you have drunk enough of
my wine—it is time for you to go.’ I will do it if I live. I should do
it this instant, I know.”

He went out, leaving her with head dropped on her arms, alone.

In an hour it might have seemed that time had shifted back and the years
between were a dream, for she sat as before in the room of rose-porphyry
among the Hathor-headed pillows and beneath the broad frieze painted
with the worshipping Pharaohs. There she herself, a slim nude outline in
red, made offering before her Mother-Goddess. And as she sat there
beneath the images of her glories, the Light on the Horizon stood again
before her, his eyes calm as a midnight sky reflecting the image of the
Unseen in stars. Again she felt a cold breath about her like the chill
rising from deep water, stilling and freezing the quick pulses in wrists
and temples. He spoke in a voice often remembered in her dreams:

“Royal Daughter, the day is come that I foretold. Because your heart was
not pure you saw only in a distorted mirror —true, yet false. Now you
desire light on a dark horizon. What I can I will, and indeed as I sat
in a valley in India, with wild white peaks above me, a voice said in my
soul: ‘Cleopatra the Queen has need of you. Go quickly.’ And I came.”

“See for me. I am afraid,” she said, putting out her hand to grasp at
some support. Was it her own voice that spoke or a stranger’s? Already
his words had penetrated to the unknown self that crouched within her,
and it raised its head obedient. A kind of terror of that self awoke
within her. What was it? What did it do or know? It lived in her life,
yet apart. Was it that which had betrayed her in every crisis of her
fate, foiling all her will? Was what she called “the Gods” only that
lurking invisible life?

“See for me. It darkens,” she said below her breath.

“I read your thought, royal Daughter. That inner self is a spark of the
Divine and must be resumed into the Flame after much pilgrimage. You
have many lives to live and much to learn. In your busyness of mind you
forgot or did not know the Essential, and lost your way. Therefore, you
have been a wanderer in the world of illusion. You know not the Real
from the unreal and where you think you have failed you have conquered,
and what you have thought victory is defeat.”

She sighed, with closing eyelids, passive like one sinking into sleep.
She murmured faintly:

“I see defeat and nothing else.”

He answered gently as a mother to a child drowsing on her bosom:

“See!”

Her eyes closed and the inner self floated free from the trammels of the
body and was at large.

She saw the camps of Antony at Ephesus where from her great Temple Diana
looks down upon the world. She heard the clash of the subject kings of
Asia gathering to the standard of Antony, to do battle with Octavian for
the rights of the son of Cæsar. She saw her own fleet riding at the
mouth of the river, loaded with treasure, food, and all the munitions of
war. And pride kindled to flame as she saw, for Antony’s seemed a power
the world could not match, much less conquer. Her soul exulted within
her. The picture floated away as a dream at dawn, and she beheld the
sea, a wild breeze herding the waves, an ocean of peacock-blue, rough,
metallic, crisped with white. Upon it a mighty fleet, her own, the
bronze-beaked galleys terrible in weight and stately in height and
strength of sails and banks of oars. And before them the little ships of
Octavian, many but weak, ill-fitted, small sea-birds, crouching before
the eagles riding the great winds. And again her heart cried out for
pride and triumph as though it shouted “Victory!” As a dream the battle
floated away in confused cries and winds and was gone.

Quiet and darkness as in the black heart of a prison. The moon
travelling on her immortal voyage cast at last a faint gleam through
narrow windows. The pyramid built for her own tomb by the holy temple of
Isis. The faint beam moved onward resting upon a golden couch and upon
it a crowned woman sleeping with folded hands and feet. So divine was
the quiet as she looked upon her own face, so lovely the dream lying
upon it like moonlight on deep ocean that all the lures of life
withered, leaving only longing for that ineffable tranquillity. What was
the shout of victory to the sight transfiguring the closed eyes? What
the prizes of power and dominion, for which she had suffered and
struggled, to the passionless smile of knowledge? Life passed before
her, a night’s fever shot with fierce colors of illusion, nightmares of
desire dispersing in a cool dawn. And at last she knelt beside the
lovely Death, knowing it herself, released from torment, feeling life
flow above, about, within, the rising of a full tide from the unfathomed
heart of a surrounding sea.

The yearning broke in tears, soft and healing as sweet rain in spring.
They fell on the beautiful dreaming face and she laid her head on the
cold bosom craving to be drawn to its repose, sobbing against the shut
door of Quiet. And, so lying, peace enfolded her, more desirable than
any words can shape, and the Mysteries swept her with floating wings and
sight drifted from her to be lost in abysses of light.

Again the palace room was about her and to the silence she cried aloud:

“Death is better than life. Better than all victory. Oh, give me death!”

And from a great distance a voice answered:

“It is more life. It is victory. Royal Daughter, you have seen. On a
dark horizon the only light is honor, for its path is the orbit of stars
and its return in great glory.”

All was gone, light and voice and peace, and time became nothing or
eternity.

She awoke with an immense weariness upon her, weighting her limbs like
lead, covering her hopes and fears with a gray pall which made them
alike and worthless. The dark night of the soul.

Then outside she heard the voice of Antony shouting for her to come and
take counsel with him on the transport of a legion to Ephesus.

She rose slowly and went to meet him, her hands before her eyes, walking
heavily, stumbling as if dazed with vision.


                              CHAPTER XXV

As must happen when mortal and immortal touch lips, the beauty of the
vision faded into reason and speculation. What did it mean? Was it not
the favor of the Gods guiding their daughter to victory? So far as she
could analyse, and hers was an analytic mind, it left her two beliefs by
which to shape her course. The one was victory at sea, a great battle of
the ships, which would see the destruction of Rome. The other—death.
Whether sooner or later she could not tell, but, her work accomplished,
she would be gathered in great glory to the sleeping Pharaohs. Well—she
would rejoice to have done with it! Even for the prospect of victory for
Egypt she knew she had paid dear, with her own self-respect and
happiness. Life had broken all its promises—a lover, but like other
lovers, how faithless! Let it go—henceforth she would be no woman but a
mighty queen.

But there was much to endure. She must reap the bitter harvest her own
hands had sown so eagerly. It was now her Nemesis that, having taken
possession of Antony with all the dominance of a strong will over a weak
one, he was helpless without her and openly, in the world’s face,
justified the saying of Octavian that he was her besotted slave. Yet a
weakly rebellious one, with tigerish furies and fawning reconciliations;
a man wrecked and ruined by life until purpose and will had become
memories, a flawed sword, breaking in the hand of the user. When she
joined the camp at Ephesus she saw at once the dangers and terrors of
her position. She must rule and guide him. No hope was left outside, and
yet the four hundred Roman senators who had met them there—enemies of
Octavian’s as they were—cried out against her, would have none of her,
so hated was she in Rome. They were ready to support Antony and were
glad enough of Cleopatra’s resources, but raised a hue and cry against
her presence on the ground that the Roman hate destroyed all sympathy
for his cause. She must return to Egypt, leaving her men and ships
behind her, or no help from them for any of his designs. In her pride
and indignation she would have thrown up her share in the campaign but
for the sure knowledge that a deadly lethargy of sloth and drunkenness
would fall upon him when she abandoned him.

She had triumphed—how often—to Apollodoros in her power over the man,
and now it was her curse. It was torment to blush and pale under those
hard Roman eyes, in shame that they should see the ruin which had been
Antony, and call it her work. And not a Roman there but reproached him
with Octavia, her dignity and submission, the contempt that his conduct
to her had set alight in Rome. To them she was the great Roman lady,
sister of Octavian, and Cleopatra an alien with her own axe to grind. A
money-bag to be used and despised. Nothing more.

These things they said with side-glance at the little pale fierce
Egyptian Queen, and she knew that if she left him it would be their
interest to take charge of him and swing him round to Octavian and ruin
him and herself in some catastrophe of treachery. And they could do it
so easily. He might be her besotted slave but neither she nor any one
could control his madness of drink and the gradual decay of his powers.

One day, to her horror, he shouted aloud in her very presence, while
haranguing the army with all his old floridity of oratory, that when he
had done with Octavian he would establish an immaculate republic in
Rome. A republic! And Antony who was pledged to her to achieve the
monarchy of the world and of Rome! That he was half drunk did not mend
matters, for the Romans at his elbow shouted deep-throated applause.

He turned on her savagely:

“After all, part of the fleet is mine. I wish to all the Gods that you
would get back to Egypt and leave me here to manage the campaign. What
business have women in camp? You make me the world’s laughing
stock,”—and so on, in weak passions of self-assertion.

“Should I go?” she asked Apollodoros distractedly. “If you counsel it I
will. Life is horrible to me here. I sicken under every eye that falls
upon that miserable drunkard.”

He looked at her and for a moment was silent. So much that might have
been, the lost, the irrecoverable, passed through his mind. He saw in a
glimpse of illumination that the weapons they had trusted, her beauty,
charm, wealth, power, had been the very means of her ruin. What use has
a woman for the beauty that makes her a prize for kings? It had given
her a fatal confidence which compelled her to take men at their worst
and weakest instead of at their best, and they had repaid her in kind.
Of their worst and weakest they had given her. Her spell had changed the
man to the beast. Cæsar had never cared for any but his own ends, and
what was Antony! Not her fault only, the little lovely laughing Queen!
He, Apollodoros,—he had had skill, but never vision. He had seen men
always as they are, never as they might be. Some high call had been
dumb. He was too intellectual a man to have been entirely deaf to the
high moralities and philosophies discussed in Alexandria and if he had
dismissed them from his mind his excuse was extreme preoccupation with
affairs, not distaste. But suppose they were right? Suppose there was
some high way, infallibly right, which he had ignored. He shuddered
slightly, as thinking that a man more unworldly wise might have saved
her. At the moment they were on the lovely island of Samos, where Antony
had collected not only his own dancers and actors but had commanded his
subject-kings to bring their _troupes_ also; and in consequence Samos
had become a centre of the maddest dissipation, resounding with music,
buzzing with over-filled theatres and feastings and riotings which
threatened to absorb the greater part of the treasure she had poured out
for war.

“Dare I leave him? This island with its lewd debaucheries turns me
sick—and the Roman shadow drawing nearer and nearer.” So she appealed
to Apollodoros, and still he shook his head.

“He will go down to ruin if you leave him. We must get him away from
this sink of vice to Athens. Go to him now, this moment, and shame him.”

She went, too careworn and wearied to assume the arts of love which she
had begun to loathe while using them to sway him.

He lay on a couch covered with jewelled tapestries, a chaplet of
vine-leaves about his head, large, loose, dishevelled, his tunic fallen
open to the waist, disclosing his naked body. His eyes were reddened
with wine and he had the drunkard’s vacuous good-natured smile fixed on
his lips. About him a rabble of men of the lowest type of the Greek
pantomime actor, and women scarcely less vile. Beautiful, dangerous,
graceful as panthers, they crowded about his couch, fondling his hands
and face, snatching his jewels from his neck, dancing, singing, reciting
love-verses and scenes from the obscene plays to which the mighty
Athenian drama had fallen. A rabble rout indeed, as drunk with
wickedness as wine.

She flung the door curtains aside and stood there, pale with shame and
anger, her eyes darting fire, her very hair crisping like wire upon her
head in the fierce wrath that possessed her—Fate itself advancing upon
them could hardly have been more dreadful to behold. For an instant she
could not speak. This, this was what she had brought upon herself! Gods,
that she could be done with it and him!

All turned and stared with loose lips upon the stiff white figure. One
laughed aloud—a vacant laugh that loosed her fury.

“Out, out with you all, dogs and swine who feed upon the ruin of your
masters. Out, lest I call my soldiers to scourge your white skins and
wash your crimes away in blood. Out and away, parasites and slaves, or
when the sun sets there shall not be one of you living to see it.”

All beauty deserted her. Her glare was frightful, a white Fury invoking
doom. She flung up a clenched hand and it seemed that lightnings shot
from it to blast them. Her eyes were daggers.

The women whimpered; the naked, gathering up their robes about them. She
stood fixed while, crowding together, they slunk out, edging by her with
side-long eyes upon her every movement. At last the place was emptied of
its filth, and they had left her alone with Antony, risen on his elbow,
staring about him with empty surprise.

“What’s wrong? They were reciting a scene from ‘The Parasites’ and
singing like sirens. I want my beloved with me to hear. The poor
beauties! The poor players! What had they done, my Queen?” Then,
standing before him, her grief and horror broke from her like blood
pouring from a wound.

“Out with you also, who are the ruin of our cause and me! To what have
you fallen who were once so great? What man is there that does not
despise you, sunk to the companionship of such as these parasites and
harlots, creatures of your own kind, scorned by all others? Go! Or I
will have you also scourged through the fleet by my sailors, for a
wretch who is neither Roman nor Egyptian, but a slave of slaves!”

He stared at her in maudlin self-pity as she stood there, her light
figure dilated with denunciation, her eyes raining scorn. He hesitated
and trembled:

“If I had known you did not wish it, my beloved—”

“Wish it? _Wish_ to see your ruin and the gold I wrung from my people
wasted on lice like these! Wish it! Oh, Gods of Egypt! I tell you, go,
or I will drive my dagger through your foul heart. What woman can fight
the world with such a burden tied upon her back?” She sprang forward,
clenching her dagger. He flung his feet over the side of the couch,
roused at last, too unsteady to stand, but still goaded into returning
her attack, raging weakly like a woman:

“And if I am vile who made me so? Who taught me to lavish gold? Who
melted pearls for a fool’s drink? It is you that ruined me as you ruined
Cæsar. Every Roman here dins it in my ears. They say: ‘She is a witch
that kills men from her pleasure.’ They say: ‘Look at the noble Octavia
and then at _this_!’ And it is true. Out with you and get to Egypt, and
leave me here with the Romans, and take yourself and your Asiatics out
of my sight.”

What could she say? There was enough truth to wing the darts to her very
soul. She was a pitiable sight, quivering from head to heel, the tears
frozen in her eyes. He saw his advantage and gathered strength.

“What do I care for your Cæsarion and you? Take your ships and leave me
with my own people.”

“And take my money also?” she asked with bitter lips. That halted him,
but only for a moment.

“It is against you the Romans have declared war, not me. The Gods curse
the evil day when I left Octavia for you. I tell you the army will not
march; the Romans will desert me unless you leave me. You are the enemy
of Rome. They wish me to join with Octavian to crush you.”

She felt he was breaking her. She was failing. She had not said the
right things—the things that must be said, that would win him, if she
could make him understand. Quiet, quiet!—she must not rage; she could
not beat him there and the case was desperate. She must control herself
somehow and be wise.

She pressed her hands against her burning temples and forced down the
clambering passion in her throat.

“I do wrong—very wrong to reproach you. Together we must stand or fall.
You know, and I, that if you veer round again to Octavian your life is
not worth a copper coin. It is he and we now, and the world the stake.
Listen—listen to me. I spoke in anger, but you see—you know. We
cannot, we dare not waste time and money. Come to Athens. Divorce
Octavia. Then he will know the die is cast. And I will prepare the fleet
and we will fight him at sea!”

She did not come near him but still stood apart, her hands extended like
prayers. He stared sullenly on the ground, and with passion she
continued, launching winged words at a blind mark.

“The sea. Cæsar believed in it. He knew that the people who hold the sea
hold the world. And what are the Roman ships to mine and yours? We
learnt of the Phœnicians long, long ago. We are great on the sea. And
there is your fleet, too. Oh, meet him there, and we shall conquer. I
saw it in my vision—I told you, I told you! Ask Setep the astrologer;
he knows. The Gods know. The sea for us—the sea!”

Moved to agony by her own pleading she came nearer, hands stretched out,
and fell on her knees, clasping her arms about him.

“Beloved, forgive the words of a tortured woman, but see the truth.
These Roman senators, they are in Octavian’s pay. I have proof. They are
here to hand you over to him. Come down to Actium and see my ships, and
when we have beaten him at sea it is only to march on Rome. Oh, beloved,
put aside your toys for a little, a very little, and when it is done you
shall be served like a God with all your heart’s delight. You shall have
women, wealth, plays, feasting—”

Her voice choked hoarsely in her throat. If men were children one must
bribe them—she had always found that must be done. What more could she
find to promise him? Yes—

“And you shall be regent for Cæsarion and rule him and me. All shall be
your own and we your slaves.”

The fever of wine was wearing off and there was more concentration in
the look he fixed on her. He was not the man to be angry for long with
the female of his own species, and laid his great hand on hers,
relenting a little more at its damp cold.

“Poor little woman! She should trust her man to know best. I forgive
you—kiss me! Another, full on the lips. But your little head sees
things when you don’t blind yourself with love or anger, and I know the
Romans are Octavian’s friends, not mine. You are right there.”

She curled herself shuddering against him, dumb with suspense. That was
the way. One said things and drove them home, and then they worked in
him and came forth as his own. Sometimes, that is, when he was not too
drunk or amorous. He hugged her against him, proud of victory, half
maudlin with the sweetness of reconciliation.

“Yes, they would hand me over to Octavian. The only way to keep them is
success. The fleet. You have said that again and again, and the senators
say it is folly.”

“They know the danger to Octavian!” she threw in, stifling her voice
against his breast. “They want to prevent your using the weapon he
fears.”

“Very likely. They are finished traitors. Some day I will flay them all
alive. Now—I tell you what! If you will go back to Egypt like a good
little woman and obedient wife, I will take the fleet and strike at the
right moment. Is it a bargain?”

He pulled her up to him until her cheek rested on his, her mouth on the
corner of his lips. With a supreme effort she wreathed her arms about
him, embracing him with every inch of her supple body.

“And could I leave you—I who die in your absence? Oh, heart’s beloved,
do you not understand my passion and shame? It is because I have feared
you might leave me for these Greek women. It was jealousy—jealousy that
bites like a wolf! Since we landed in this accursed island I have not
slept in your arms. Tonight—let me come gliding in as long, long ago,
and then—the world may go to ruin while you are mine—mine only, mouth
to mouth.”

She flung herself along his body, covering his face with hers, and he
clasped her with strength that bruised her like a flower. Thus in many
ways she wooed him, moulding him like wax, herself in such a torture of
hidden grief and shame acting the torture of love despised, that at last
when it was over and she returned to Apollodoros she reeled as she went,
putting out her hands for support like a dying woman.

“It is done. He will fight at sea. And I—what am I?”

So the Gods, leading the Queen to greater ends through the gates of loss
and ruin, made her victorious over Antony; and though there were moods
of distrust in him, in which he accused her of desiring his death that
she might find some better man to fight her battles, preparation was
made steadily for that battle which should decide the fate of Europe and
Asia.

It was the night before, and many men sat at the feast, for whom it
would be the last their living eyes should see. And Cleopatra entered,
supported by Iras and Charmion because of the splendid weight of her
golden robe and panoply of jewels, and so, glimmering like the night
with stars, she ascended the couch by Antony’s, and so great was the
majesty of her entry that even her enemies were moved as they rose to
greet her. But Antony, still in fear of her, cowered from her eyes and
she knew distrust was lurking in his heart.

Now beside her stood a jar of Indian porcelain and she filled her cup
from it and his also, for it was the rarest wine, and she drank the half
of hers, then raised her clear voice.

“Most noble Antony, I drink to your health and victory and to the
unbroken trust between husband and wife. Pledge me from this cup of
mine, of which I have drunk the half, that all men may know we are one.
See—I dip my roses in it, for the greater grace.”

She dipped the red roses in her cup and withdrew them and set them in
her bosom. Eager for her favor, he stretched his hand and lifted the cup
to his mouth, but swiftly leaning forward she struck cup and wine to the
ground.

“You have not trusted me. You have said I plot your death! See now, and
let all see, how easily I might have ridded myself of you had such
wickedness been in my mind—I, who cannot live without you! These roses
are poisoned and had a drop passed your lips it would have been death.
Though you distrust me, know it is truth itself you distrust; for with
my own life I would shield you.”

He fawned upon her, kissing her hands, but in great weariness she rose
and left the feast, saying to Apollodoros who went beside her:

“When the victory is won—and certainly my vision cannot deceive me—I
will have done with him. I will give him riches and kingdoms, but not
myself. There is no trusting the fool—no, not for a day.”

And in the morning, burning with wrath and shame, she would not see him,
sending word only that he could count on victory because the Gods had
shown it to her, and then, so pale, so slender that the very air might
have upborne her feet, she went on board her great ship to watch the
triumph and reap the fruit of all her sorrows.

Now there was a rising wind and all the green plain of the sea was
flecked with flying crests of foam, and the strengthening breeze blew
hard for Egypt; and she said:

“How quietly the palace looks down now upon the Harbor of the Happy
Return! How sweet is home, and, oh, for the gardens and the great peace!
Would that I were there!”

And looking up at the furled sails she said again:

“Oh, that we could spread these wings like the gray gulls over the waste
meadows of the sea! For even with victory wheeling in the air I am
weary—most weary!” And two large tears formed in her eyes and rolled
down her white cheeks.

But now the ships gathered to the battle, the little swift ships of
Octavian and the great and terrible ships of Egypt and the ships of
Antony, and she said no more but stood watching; not doubting at all but
thinking thoughts which not even Apollodoros could read—silent and
dark.

And so began the greatest battle men had yet fought on sea, and mighty
things hung on it, together with the fate of Europe, but the Gods took
part with Octavian, for he was the better man now Antony was
wine-sodden, and he out-manœuvred Antony, surrounding his floating
fortresses as hornets cloud together about a horse, and after awhile the
Egyptian ships fell into a terrible confusion, being boarded and sacked
and taken like towers on land, the Romans crowding aboard them in floods
of men let loose—a frightful sight to see.

Then suddenly Cleopatra flung up her arms and shrieked through the
noises of battle and the roaring of the wind:

“The Gods—the Gods! They betray me always! And why should we go down to
ruin with these traitors? Home—to Egypt! Spread sails! Egypt!”

And the captain heard and his heart went with her words, and so thought
all the Egyptians, and the great wind took their sails and they plunged
through the ships of Antony and Octavian and made for home, breaking
through the banks of oars and hurling the rowers to death and
mutilation; and all stared upon them aghast so that the very battle
seemed to pause as the Queen led the flight, her cloak driving about her
and wild hair whipping in the gale, staring on with blind eyes to Egypt,
the salt brine dropping from them like tears.

Apollodoros struck his hands together for joy, crying:

“Now, if Octavian does but make an end of him we are free, and Egypt
shall yet be mistress.”

And Cleopatra said nothing, watching like a statue staring into a black
sky, but suddenly she put out her hand and clenched the man by the
wrist, pointing backward, for, from the ships and shouting, a small boat
made out, sail bellying and oars pulling madly like one who races for
his life, and three men were in her and one stood with his arm about the
little mast, and he did not look back to the battle nor yet forward to
the Queen’s flying ships, but laid his head upon his arm like a ruined
soul, and his boat made after the Queen.

And she said only this, in a great bursting cry:

“Who can fight against the high Gods? Death itself will not rid me of
Antony.” And so falling on the deck lay like a dead woman. Oh,
shame—for, leaving his men and hers to die, he abandoned the battle and
fled after her, lost souls, chained together forever in torment; a thing
accursed, a fallen life not worth the taking. And he clung to her still
like a beggar and with his boat hanging to her galley would not be
shaken off, though the Egyptians bared their knives at him, and so at
last was received on board, for she said, “Not even he can make my ruin
greater now.” And their disgrace was complete.

And when he asked if he might approach her she said:

“Why not? I am as vile as he and as God-forsaken. We are well matched,”
and in the end received him passively as might a woman near death to
whom life has nothing to give any more.

When they sighted the coast of Libya he went away, to wander alone
awhile, not as yet having courage to face the Alexandrians whom he had
ruined; and the Queen went on alone.

But a shout of triumph and derision loud as thunder arose in Rome and
echoed down the Mediterranean and over the world, and all men watched
breathless to see what would be the end of Antony and Cleopatra who had
lost all—rule and honor and life—at Actium, for death was hidden in
that defeat.


                              CHAPTER XXVI

Yet, being rid of Antony for awhile, even from that abyss of ruin her
thoughts plucked some salvage; and every day they hovered over the
vision of the Light on the Horizon, and she said in her heart:

“I misread it, but the words of the man were this: ‘Death is victory,’
and death the Gods themselves cannot withhold from us, and I will go
very gladly, having finished such work as is possible.”

For, having fled in the face of the enemy, though not indeed from fear
of them, it appeared to her that she must so retrieve herself that even
the Romans should not boast they had conquered her soul. So she took
counsel with Apollodoros and determined to thrust her ships across from
the Mediterranean into the Red Sea, through the canal made by Darius the
Great when he had conquered Egypt half a thousand years before. True, it
was silted up in part with sand, and here the ships must be dragged
through it, but she did not shrink from that labor, remembering the
mighty Pharaohs who had built the wonders of the Pyramids by the
unstinted toil of men beyond numeration. And she resolved to build ships
at Suez too, that with them she might show the Romans the splendor of
her courage and wisdom; for she would go down the Red Sea with her
ships, now that Egypt must be the prey of Rome, and in India, the vast,
the hidden, she would make a new empire for herself and Cæsarion, free
at last of the miserable Antony and the tyrannous Romans; and they
should know that Cleopatra was still a Queen and no slave. But there,
too, the Gods saw far otherwise, and the prowling Arabs burned her
ships; and so ended that high-hearted and marvelous enterprise, bringing
her a step nearer to the end.

Then, seeing her desperate strait, she sent Cæsarion and the others of
her children into Media, beyond the Roman power. While he lived, her
dream could not die; therefore, she sent him to sail with a great escort
for India, that he might there lay the foundation of the Empire she had
promised Cæsar. That done, she set her face toward the Mysteries, and it
seemed to her that Victory has two faces, one for the conquered as for
the conqueror. For she began to know that it is not the circumstance by
which a man is judged but the man meeting it, who determines the end,
though it is not as he would have had it. Thus she became the spectator
of her destiny and saw it in part tragedy in part comedy, conscious that
she herself would soon rise up from the theatre and depart to a new
spectacle. Further, it was revealed to her that her moods and thoughts
and the parts she had acted of love and hate and laughter and luxury
were never herself (but this she had suspected) being rather a play of
sunlight upon the deeps of a great ocean as yet unsounded; and she beat,
as it were, at the gates of death, believing that their opening would
admit her to knowledge of that self as a thing wonderful and eternal
rejecting the joys and sorrows of earth as none of its own. And she
yearned to know this self with more than any lover’s passion, counting
those years as wasted in which this great thing had consorted with her
forgotten as a captive queen enslaved but royal. Of these things she
spoke much with Apollodoros for he had in secret read and studied much
of the Indian wisdom, which regards death as a little thing or rather
the gateway to enlightenment and a new birth of adventure and
experience. Thus she received comfort not to be told in words but
desirable beyond all things which she had coveted formerly. Seeing that
Antony, who had returned and secluded himself, ashamed that she or any
should see his face, was now a broken sword and so little master of
himself that in some drunken madness he might murder her and fling his
life upon the Roman spears, she withdrew into the pyramid which she had
built as her mausoleum, after the fashion of the Pharaohs, a tomb-palace
with certain halls and a great storage place for treasure, for there she
might have safety until she could make terms with Octavian for Egypt and
her children. With her she took Iras, Charmion and Apollodoros and, as
she entered that dark house of death, she said to them: “This is the
end. I am now done with Antony, with the world, and only not with hope,
but it is winged hope and walks no more on earth.”

In the later days of July, the Roman armies advancing on the city,
Antony made a wild and hopeless sally, and drove the Roman cavalry back
upon their camp; but this could do nothing in the face of their
inevitable triumph, though he boasted like a braggart blown up with
pride, and sent his news to Cleopatra. She smiled a little but silently.

Now that night a strange thing happened, for, leaning from the high
window of the pyramid, she looked out into the star-sown night,
undeceived by this flicker of fate. And suddenly these arose the sound
of wild revelry and shouting of men and women and melody of flutes and
pipes and dancing feet and mighty rejoicing, and it came nearer and
nearer until it was beneath the pyramid, and she saw nothing though the
drunken delight deafened her ears.

Pale in the moonlight she turned to Apollodoros and the women: “Count
this rejoicing of Antony’s my last shame. Who but he would come blaring
and drunken through the dying city to celebrate tomorrow’s Roman
victory? Gods of Egypt, where is your thunder?”

But the women shrank back from the window and Apollodoros caught her
arm, saying hoarsely:

“Oh, Queen, live for ever! The Gods, the Gods justify your rejection of
the base Antony, for they reject him also. These are no earthly sounds.
The rejoicings deafen us; the revellers are below us; but we see
nothing, for we are mortal and they spirits.”

And indeed the thing was fearful, for the space below rang and swarmed
with crowds and awful shoutings and mild music and leapings, and yet
there was nothing but moonlight and shadows that did not stir. So that
she cried aloud: “What is it?” and could scarcely be heard in the din;
and Charmion the brave shrieked like a woman mad with fear, crying out:

“It was foretold. It is the divine Bacchus, whom Antony has always
served and honored, leaving the city and deserting to the Romans with
all his following, and Antony is no better than a dead man and we with
him.”

But the Queen stood like a marble image staring out upon the emptiness
that rang with dreadful noise and inhuman gladness, and though she saw
nothing her eyes peopled it with figures lovely and terrible in
rejoicing, glad at her destruction and passing on with glee to the camp
of the Romans; and she said one word and no more:

“The pitiless Gods!” And so the noise died away toward the camp, and
that night none slept of those in the mausoleum, for the dark was full
of presences and powers and all the air thrilled with the oncoming of
death. In the morning Apollodoros gave her a letter flung up to the
narrow window by a man from below, and it was from Octavian to the
Queen. For awhile she held it in her hand, lost in a dream which it
could not reach, and it was Apollodoros who took it from her and read:

“Great Cleopatra, and never greater than in misfortune, consider these
words. It is Antony only, the degenerate, the worthless, who stands
between us, and would you lose Egypt and the Roman friendship for such
as he? You are too full of wisdom and the inspiration of the Gods. Send
me his head tomorrow and there is no wish the Queen can express which
Octavian, the nephew of Cæsar, will not think himself glad in
fulfilling. And for such beauty and royalty great days open in the power
and heart of the conqueror who is also the conquered.”

He read it aloud to the last word and looked at her in the darkness of
the tomb, using her Egyptian name that he loved:

“It is easily done, Qlapetrat. A signal from this window to my watchers,
and Antony’s head is at the feet of Octavian. And this pyramid is
charged with treasures beyond reckoning for the propitiation of the
Roman. Also, I, who see, declare that you are beautiful as never
yet—more beautiful than when you bent Cæsar to your will. What then is
your answer to Octavian?”

She stood leaning against the window and laughed, but not in mirth.

“What? Shall I die as traitors die? You also laugh, for you know the
answer. Shall I trust another Roman? Shall I walk like Arsinoë in a
Roman Triumph? Shall I break faith with Antony who has never once kept
faith with me? We do none of these things in Egypt. Write!”

And he wrote this with his stylus while she spoke:

“To the Conqueror. There is one thing only not to be conquered, and what
that is you know, knowing Cleopatra. If you want the head of Antony take
the city and find it in the ruins. There is no other answer.”

And he dropped this letter to the man who waited below.

Let those who will tell of the defeat of Antony and how after it he set
sword to his own breast and wounded himself to death, and, not yet dead,
was carried to the barred door of the pyramid, that he might die on the
bosom of Cleopatra. For such a horror of shame came upon the man,
thinking of the enormous ruin that he had brought upon her and Egypt,
that he could not face the great Dark without her pity and pardon. And
again Apollodoros cried out to her:

“Do not let him in. It is a most frightful danger, for men are posted to
rush the door when it is opened. Oh, Antony, selfish and worthless to
the last, to drag a Queen and your wife to captivity!” She turned to him
laughing as she had laughed upon the letter of Octavian:

“And why not, Apollodoros? But, no—we will be discreet. I will let down
cords for him. I taught him that he could not so much as breathe without
me, and shall I send the child out into the night without a word to
speed him? You and I are old and wise—as old as the Sphinx—but Antony
is a boy. We must strengthen him.”

So they let down strong cords, and they were fastened about the dying
man, and those in the pyramid drew him up to the window, a dreadful
sight and he in the agonies of death, and he was laid at her feet
struggling to clasp her and to speak words choked with blood, imploring
her forgiveness.

And then, of her many-faced moods, the Queen presented yet another to
the watching Apollodoros, for sitting beside Antony she gathered him to
her bosom as a mother a child, and his blood dripped upon her and she
laid her cheek to his, speaking low and sweet and comforting him with
words most beautiful and tranquil and tender, and touches of her hands
and lips as if he had never done her a wrong, acting her part with such
pity as made it real in his eyes if not in hers.

“All is done, beloved, and if you were my ruin I also was partly yours.
But surely when men speak of us in the unborn years they will say: ‘They
were great lovers, and what is death in the face of such love?’ And
indeed you have been a very great man and Roman. We shall be a song and
a memory and no oblivion overtake us.”

He lifted his eyes to her dimly, saying:

“Love, I never knew you loved me, but now I know. The Gods know I loved
you—I, unworthy. Yet I was a great man once.”

And he could say no more, but lay in her arms foredone, and she held him
tenderly and weeping:

“Sleep therefore, beloved, knowing all is well.”

He murmured some words not to be heard, and at last raised himself so
strongly that it seemed he might live, saying this:

“At least I have lived, and greatly, and have tasted all the joy and
power of life, and I have loved the most wonderful of women. Also I die,
not ignobly, but a Roman, conquered only by a Roman.”

And she bent her face over him and clasped him to her bosom and her long
hair fell over him, veiling him; and so he died, she sitting bewildered,
like one awaking from a dream.

An hour later she said:

“He has shown me the way and it was not difficult. I know now that no
hatreds or scorns can pass that threshold. I have forgiven.”

Two hours later she called Apollodoros from the little room where he
waited, and she sat on the golden couch which served her as a bed, and
again and most strangely she smiled as if some thought pleased her, her
hands lying idly on her knee, and the sight of this thing brought the
hard tears to his eyes, though he hid them.

“Truest friend, in a very short time Octavian will be here to take
possession of me and my treasures. Already the Romans enter the city,
and it cannot last. A watch will be set and none can go out. Go now
while you may—”

He broke into a great and bitter cry, falling on his knees at her feet:

“May the Gods do so to me and more also if—”

But stooping she took his hand and held it lovingly:

“Hush, wise man! Am I not a goddess, and do I not know the Divine Mind?
You also. Have no fear for me, for we shall meet beneath the Wings of
the Eternal Justice, for in life there was truth between us. And depart
in peace knowing I am safe. I have the stone of the wise Indian, and
Charmion and Iras go with me. But for you I have work, and you who know
the nobleness of fidelity know there is no rest with work undone. Take
this casket of jewels of great price to Cæsarion in Berenice. Tell him I
loved and love him. His tutor is a hypocrite and coward; therefore, have
pity on the lad. To you I commit him. Tell him also where you and I have
hidden the great treasure.”

How could he refuse? Of all his obedience, of all his long fidelity,
this was the most bitter, for he had hoped to die with her, continuing
his service. And be sure, no prisoner condemned to death knows such a
pang as this man condemned to life.

But the strength of his long patience upbore him and rising to his feet
he stood like a soldier, taking the casket from her hand and hiding it
in the breast of his tunic, and, for the last time using the name he
loved, he said:

“It shall be done, Qlapetrat, Lady of the Two Lands. And now to the Gods
I commit you, saying this only: Through the worlds and the hells and the
heavens I will seek until I find you.”

She also rose to her feet:

“I will wait. I will watch for you. And now, O true, O wise, go, taking
the love of your Queen with you, and this for its token.” So she kissed
him upon the lips, still smiling, but with such a smile that, seeing, he
hid his face and falling at her feet embraced them in a passion of
silence. And those were their last words.

Below the window he looked up, hoping, but it was empty, nor did he know
that the Queen lay on her face within, thanking the Gods that she had
known him and his love, exceeding the love of lovers, since in that she
still discerned their purpose and worshipped their power who had given
her this one truth in which she also had been true.

What she had foreseen came quickly, for the Roman took her with cunning,
and the conqueror Octavian faced her in the gloom of the mausoleum, lit
with a faint lamplight falling upon her broken fortunes. Very smooth
things he promised, safety for her children, and Egypt for herself, if
she would surrender her treasures and trust to his word in everything.

“And do not fear, noblest Cleopatra, that I have even the least desire
to inflict any humiliation upon so great a Queen. Now that Antony is
dead Rome smiles upon you and all is well. Under her shield you shall
rule in Egypt.”

But she saw the fox’s gleam in his eye, the furtive spark that would not
lie with his will, and therefore she gathered up her strength to play
the last part allotted to her on earth, as a consummate player who must
win the applause of his audience:

“Noble Octavian, or rather Cæsar—for so I should call his nephew,
inheritor of his great gifts and his name—I thank you for your great
mercy and I accept your promises. I am very sick and weary and in bitter
fear of death. You will not kill me? Oh, rather a thousand times let me
walk in your Triumph, if that must be, but spare my life and let me live
in Rome under the shadow of your protection. I have no more now to hope
from the Egyptians, for they know I was led aside by Antony. But set my
Cæsarion on the throne, and he shall be obedient to you in all things.”

Her eyes were humble as a slave’s; they followed and found his with
meekness most pitiable to behold in so great a Queen. Even his hard
heart pitied her for a moment, but he rejoiced greatly, for he needed
her to swell his Triumph and, of all things, he desired the last ounce
of her treasure, and had feared that no arts could keep such a woman
from death by her own hand. She continued with little sobs:

“I would have asked for the villa of Cæsar, where I have known happy
days, but that in his liberality he left it to the citizens. Then put me
where your august will decrees; but only spare my life, for dear is life
to all.”

He redoubled his promises, assured at last that he had got her. With
shaking hand she drew a paper from her breast and tendered it:

“The list of my treasures, now yours.”

He snatched that greedily; and one of her slaves, Seleucus, who had
followed Octavian, thrust in his word:

“Great Cæsar, the Queen cheats you. This list is a lie. She and
Apollodoros have hidden ten times the treasure she reveals, but I do not
know where.”

For the last time her living wrath blazed out, and she flew at the
wretch and struck him so that he fell, and spurned him with her foot
until Octavian dragged her back, she crying:

“But is it not a vile thing that because I have set aside some few
trifles for gifts with which to gain the pity of your wife and Octavia
that this filthy scoundrel should betray me? I am fallen indeed. Yes,
good Cæsar, since it is so you shall know where to find these little,
little things—poor remnants of my glory—which I saved to propitiate
Octavia and your Livia.”

A sob choked her, and Octavian, bidding the wretch begone, yet wait for
him outside, spoke most gently and falsely, and so left her, well
satisfied that she was in great fear and that the threat of death would
quickly bring the treasure to light, and that meanwhile he had secured
her for his triumph and the delight of Rome, and then her death.

But when she was left with her women she threw up her arms and breathed
a deep breath as though to relieve an intolerable strain:

“It is done; it is done! He trusts me. Now to our work. For awhile none
will disturb us, and all is well.”

Then Charmion and Iras the beautiful took out her royal robes and the
crown of her forefathers and the jewels suitable to be worn when she
appeared before her subjects in her mightiest splendor, and they did all
swiftly and without words, knowing her mind. Also they brought a great
golden cup and brimmed it with wine and when she was fully attired she
sat and stooped over it and steeped in it the black jewel that she wore
always in her bosom, and as she did this the wine turned rose-red
beneath their eyes, and she withdrew the jewel laughing.

“Oh, the good gift! If even they entered now they could not hinder the
Queen from pledging her women nor them from drinking to her. And who can
guess the virtues of this great stone when we are dumb? But stay—they
shall not have it!”

She ran to the window and flung the stone below and, because opals are
very brittle, they saw it fly into black sparkles and vanish—a lost and
baleful star.

Then Cleopatra turned again to her women, nobly robed and sceptred, and
asked them smiling:

“Am I beautiful?” And indeed she shone like a thing divine, her eyes and
cheeks burning as though their lamps were lit for a great festival, and
all the glory of her body like a flame of fire. And Iras, kneeling,
answered:

“Most beautiful, royal Isis.”

And Charmion:

“The Gods shall rejoice in their daughter when she ascends the throne
beside them.”

And now she seated herself on the golden couch, and the vision of the
Light on the Horizon rose before her, a dream of peace; and Charmion,
setting a table before her, put upon it the cup of wine and a small
basket of figs covered with green leaves, and she tasted a fig,
lingering on the sweetness, saying:

“Among these figs there is an asp hidden, and I desired this because
they shall not know how we ended.”

And she put the fig aside and drew the little frightened deadly thing
from among the figs and laid it in her bosom, covering it there with her
hand as if to warm its cold, laughing:

“Lucky we did not trust the little cold poison-bearer! He loves the
summer of my bosom. He will not bite. But the time goes.”

Then Iras came forward and knelt:

“Majesty, have I your leave to depart?” and Cleopatra, stooping, kissed
her on the brow, holding the cup to her lips; and she drank a little,
looking up at the Queen, and instantly relaxing she slipped down softly
as if into a deep sleep, and so died.

And Charmion, coming before the Queen, knelt also, and embraced her
knees, looking up into her face with wordless love, and they kissed and
clung together like sisters; and from her true hand Cleopatra took the
cup, and, pausing for a moment, she said this, still smiling:

“Even now in the ruin of life I perceive the pledge of immortality. I
testify that the Gods have done justice, and coming again I shall praise
them, but with understanding.” And drank, and, drinking, swayed aside
upon the couch and lay.

And Charmion straightened her limbs and composed her into beauty like
that of a goddess who, sleeping, dreams peace to all the worlds, lying
in the mystery of Isis and the loveliness of Hathor and the power of
Nout; and, kneeling, Charmion worshipped the Divine in her, remembering
many things, and glad because the queen had triumphed and had passed
beyond the utmost shaft of fate. Nor did the time seem long until she
heard the steps of the Romans and rose to answer for Cleopatra.

She drank and poured what was left on the stone and as she stood she
swayed, with overwhelming sleep, and instantly the men saw and cried to
her: “Charmion, was this well done?” And she answered:

“It was well done and fitting a Queen descended from so many glorious
kings.” And she fell across the Queen’s feet and died.

The end of Apollodoros none knows, nor the secret of the treasure which
hides its cold glories in earth. Cæsarion, betrayed by his traitor
tutor, was murdered by order of Octavian, and Egypt became the kingdom
of the Cæsars, Emperors of Rome. Yet Egypt, still lost in the dream of
her tombs and her ancient glories, sleeping in the sands of her deserts,
foresees the coming of her peace and the life of her world to come. And
of all that loss and defeat and triumph and despair, none knows the
secret until the work is ended and the eyes of Omniscience behold the
woven pattern complete and beautiful.


                                THE END




                           TRANSCRIBER NOTES

Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple
spellings occur, majority use has been employed.

Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors
occur.

A cover was created for this eBook and is placed in the public domain.

[The end of _The Laughing Queen_, by Elizabeth Louisa Moresby (as E.
Barrington).]