Chapter Twelve
t took two cycles of the moon for the rest of Caesar’s troops to arrive in Alexandria, during which time war had broken out across the city.
The crusade wasn’t what I had expected. I’d had romantic ideas of warfare, in many ways believing it to be a larger version of a gladiator match, where two opposing forces would battle until someone surrendered.
But war was not romantic. It smelled of blood, piss and shit. The tactics were barbaric, underhanded and nothing like what I had studied with my tutors.
The nobility who supported Arsinoe and Theos’s cause had armed their servants with blades and sent them to ransack Alexandria. Caesar and I had in turn dug trenches and erected mantlets around the city’s walls, barricading ourselves from their onslaught.
In the early days of the siege, life on Antirhodos continued much as before.
The fighting was too far away for it to affect me.
On the rare occasions I went into the city to see the progression of our defences, I would return to the palace dazed as though waking from a nightmare.
By the time I had got to the throne room, with our maps and charts, the war had become a senet game once more—a distant thing, though there was no winning this game, no matter the outcome.
Either I lost Egypt, or I lost my siblings.
As the crescent moon shone in the sky for the second time since the battle had begun, the impact of the siege had started to bleed across the bay to the island.
The food was the first to go.
“There’s not enough meat to feed them.” My lions prowled in their cages before me.
I could see the ribs beneath the skin of the lioness closest to me.
Another pawed at the ground where a streak of dried blood had stained the stone—the only remnant of their last meal, which had been some days earlier.
An errant cloud floated over the sun, casting the menagerie in shadow. It suited my mood.
“They will not survive,” I said to Caesar sadly.
The rest of the cages in the menagerie were empty; we had let the hippos and crocodiles free in the bay and released the cats and dogs into the city. But the lions’ hunger would drive them to the people’s throats, and there had been enough bloodshed in the city.
Caesar didn’t mock me for the care I gave to the animals. “Let me send a ship down the coast and release them there.”
“It’s not possible. The bay is surrounded. We’d only be sacrificing capable sailors and soldiers.”
He knew that, but I believed he would have done it if I’d asked.
Caesar had been true to his word—as he always was—and stayed to help me regain my throne.
The moment Arsinoe and Theos had sailed away, he had sent word to every soldier and ship from Crete, Petra, Rhodes, Syria and Cilicia.
Nine Rhodian warships were the only ones to have arrived so far, but they weren’t enough to break through the blockade.
One of the lionesses growled low in her throat, her eyes glittering as she watched me. I wrung my hands in guilt.
“You see the smallest one, with the silver patch of fur on her paw? I captured her when I was twelve years old. She had been abandoned by her pack and was wounded right there, where the fur has grown back grey.” I had been hunting with Father and Arsinoe—who had both made many kills that day.
I, on the other hand, had come up short.
I was not as skilled with the bow as my sister.
“It would have been an easy kill,” I continued. “But when I took aim, she lifted her head and looked at me. She wasn’t scared; if anything she was defiant.” I laughed. “Father was not happy when I returned to the litter with her bound and alive. But he let me keep her here.”
Caesar looked around the menagerie. The only thing that thrived here now were the plants, growing wild and free without servants to tend to them. The air was thick with the smell of the orange pomegranate flowers pouting towards the sun.
Show me your home, Caesar had said. Every day, when the sun reached its highest point, we would walk together to a new part of the island. Most of the time the walk would invigorate me; time alone with Caesar was always exhilarating. But occasionally, like today, I would become morose.
“There are very many cages here—you must have had an impressive number of animals,” Caesar said.
“Yes. Some were sent from our neighbouring allies as gifts, others I caged from hunting trips.”
“But no aviary?”
“No,” I said. “I will not cage a bird. It would be like binding a lioness’s legs together. A bird must be allowed to fly.”
I thought of Arsinoe then. Oh, sister, had you been in a cage for too long?
“You care for many things, Pharaoh.”
Does Caesar mock me now? But no, he watched me with curiosity. “It is my duty to care for many things.” Even if sometimes I felt that I did not have the capacity to hold so much feeling in my chest.
Caesar moved closer to me. “Let me ease some of the burden. I will do what must be done.”
He meant kill the lions. But I wasn’t ready yet.
“The cages were empty for many years before I was born,” I told him. “Father cared not for animals, and so as a child I became queen of this small area.”
“Small? My kingdom in the Suburra could fit into it ten times over.”
“I thought Rome was a great republic, not a kingdom,” I teased.
He shook his head. “The Republic is nothing but a name, without substance or reality.” Dangerous words, but only the lions were our witnesses.
“And you its king?”
His lips parted as if to say “yes,” but then he shook his head. “I was only king in Suburra.”
He took me to the Suburra neighbourhood once, years later.
His childhood home was wretched and abandoned, much like the district it stood in.
He wasn’t ashamed to cry when he looked upon it: “My mother would be heartbroken to see it. This was my schoolroom.” He pointed to a broken window, beyond which I could just make out a shelf of dusty books.
“She was the one who schooled you?”
“Yes,” he said, an old grief crossing his features. “She taught me everything: philosophy, Latin, astronomy. But most of all she taught me dignity.”
Dignity was the trait Caesar valued most. His eventual assassination would be the greatest humiliation. He would have preferred to die by his own blade over that of a traitor’s.
“Et tu, Brute?” But it didn’t happen like that.
Forgive me; the lines between the past, present and future have blurred over time. Let me return to the menagerie.
“What news from your scouts this morning?” I said to Caesar. He leaned his elbows on the stone wall of the lions’ enclosure, his profile in shadow.
“The false pharaohs have amassed twenty-two ships, but half of them are still being repaired in the harbour.”
Arsinoe and Theos were recruiting more and more Alexandrians as the siege wore on. Their rumour-mongers were swaying the tide of the war to their favour.
“They have the skills of the fishermen, so it will not be long before those ships are seaworthy,” I remarked.
“It is time to strike,” he said slowly, knowing his words themselves would be a blow.
Without the full force of our allies, we were limited with what offensive tactics we could use.
Fire, Caesar had said, day after day. But I was reticent to light the spark of violence. Until that moment we had been reactive only—they were my younger siblings, and I could not shake the memories of their youthful faces from my mind.
I had been with Arsinoe when she had walked for the first time, her fat little legs tottering behind me as she chased me through the vineyard.
As for Theos, I had been at his birth. My father had sent me to attend my mother in the birthing chamber.
I had been excited until I realised the toll it would take on her.
I would forever remember the relief on my mother’s face, her contortions finally ceasing as his body slipped from hers.
“How many men will you send?” I asked.
“Ten or fifteen. They will travel without uniform, under the light of the moon.”
“My brother and sister, do we know where they reside?”
“We believe they are camped beyond the city, but we cannot be sure. There is a possibility they are aboard one of their allies’ ships.”
If I gave the order, they might die. But as I looked at the emaciated lions, I realised there was no world in which we all survived.
“Let it be done,” I said.
Here. Here is where I began to harden. I recognise it now, the callousing of my heart. Sentencing a soldier to death was one thing, but my siblings? That was a torture altogether too painful to bear. I had to armour my heart to withstand it.
Caesar nodded grimly. “As you wish, Pharaoh. And the lions? I will do it.”
“No, this is a task I must do alone.”
I sent for my bow.
I didn’t cry as I loosed the arrows.
—
That evening we dined together, alone. Caesar recognised that I needed distracting. The operation to burn my siblings’ ships was commencing that night. Our meal was simple fare: lentils and bread.
Despite the battle that raged beyond the palace walls, these quiet moments were some of my favourite times during the life I’d led in Egypt.
“Sometimes I forget about the war,” I said quietly to Caesar.
We had been discussing the merits of Eratosthenes of Cyrene’s work, giving me the barest of glimpses of what my life would have been like had I been a scholar.
It had been some time since I had longed for that life, but the wanting never truly went away.
Much like the great loves of my life, the need became a part of me.
“It is a blessing to have this respite,” Caesar said.
My gaze had drifted to the window and the city’s outline beyond.
Caesar’s hand reached out and rested on mine.
It wasn’t the first time he had held my hand. The gesture was small but enough to reinforce his interest without being overbearing.