Colleen McCullough - Antony and Cleopatra

‘You could, Glaphyra,’ said Antony, suddenly feeling jovial, ‘but it wouldn’t get you anywhere. Pack your things. I’m sending you back to Comana tomorrow at dawn.’

The tears cascaded like silent rain.

‘Oh, cease the waterworks, woman!’ Antony cried. ‘You will get what you want, but not yet. Continue the waterworks, and you might get nothing.’

Only on the third evening at the third dinner aboard Philopator did Antony mention Cassius. How her cooks managed to keep on presenting novelties eluded him, but his friends were lost in an ecstasy of edibles that left them little time to watch what the couple on the lectus medius were doing. Certainly not making any amatory advances to each other and, with that speculation dead in the water, the sight of those gorgeous girls was far more thrilling – though some guests made a greater fuss of the little boys.

‘You had better come to the governor’s palace for dinner on the morrow,’ said Antony, who had eaten well on each of the three occasions, but not made a glutton of himself. ‘Give your cooks a well-deserved rest.’

‘If you like,’ she said indifferently; she picked at food, took a sparrow’s portions.

‘But before you honor my quarters with your royal presence, Your Majesty, I think we’d better clear up the matter of that aid you gave Gaius Cassius.’

‘Aid? What aid?’

‘Don’t you call four good Roman legions aid?’

‘My dear Marcus Antonius,’ she drawled wearily, ‘those four legions marched north in the charge of Aulus Allienus, who I was led to believe was a legate of Publius Dolabella’s, the then legal governor of Syria. As Alexandria was threatened by plague as well as famine, I was glad to hand the four legions Caesar left there to Allienus. If he decided to change sides after he had crossed the border into Syria, that cannot be laid at my door. The fleet I sent you and Octavianus was wrecked in a storm, but you’ll find no records of fleets donated to Gaius Cassius, anymore than he got money from me, or grain from me, or other troops from me. I do admit that my viceroy on Cyprus, Serapion, did send aid to Brutus and Cassius, but I am happy to see Serapion executed. He acted without orders from me, which makes him a traitor to Egypt. If you do not execute him, I certainly will on my way home.’

‘Humph,’ Antony grunted, scowling. He knew everything she said was true, but that was not his problem; his problem was how to twist what she said to make it look like lies. ‘I can produce slaves willing to testify that Serapion acted under your orders.’

‘Freely, or under torture?’ she asked coolly.

‘Freely.’

‘For a minute fraction of the gold you hunger for more than Midas did. Come, Antonius, let us be frank! I am here because your fabulous East is bankrupt thanks to a Roman civil war, and suddenly Egypt looks like a huge goose capable of laying huge golden eggs. Well, disabuse yourself!’ she snapped. ‘Egypt’s gold belongs to Egypt, which enjoys Friend and Ally of the Roman People status, and has never broken trust. If you want Egypt’s gold, you’ll have to wrest it from me by force, at the head of an army. And even then you’ll be disappointed. Dellius’s pathetic little list of treasures to be found in Alexandria is but one golden egg in a mighty pile of them. And that pile is so well concealed that you will never find it. Nor will you torture it out of me or my priests, who are the only ones who know whereabouts it is.’

Not the speech of someone who could be cowed!

Listening for the slightest tremor in Cleopatra’s voice and watching for the slightest tension in her hands, her body, Antony could find none. Worse, he knew from several things Caesar had said that the Treasure of the Ptolemies was indeed secreted away so cunningly that no one could find it who didn’t know how. No doubt the items on Dellius’s list would fetch ten thousand talents, but he needed far more than that. And to march or sail his army to Alexandria would cost some thousands of talents of itself. Oh, curse the woman! I cannot bully or bludgeon her into yielding. Therefore I must find a different way. Cleopatra is no Glaphyra.

* * *

Accordingly a note was delivered to Philopator early the next morning to say that the banquet Antony was giving tonight would be a costume party.

‘But I offer you a hint,’ the note said. ‘If you come as Aphrodite, I will greet you as the New Dionysus, your natural partner in the celebration of life.’

So Cleopatra draped herself in Greek guise, floating layers of pink and carmine. Her thin, mouse-brown hair was done in its habitual style, parted into many strips from brow to nape of neck, where a small knot of it was bunched. People joked that it resembled the rind of a canteloupe melon, not far from the truth. A woman like Glaphyra would have been able to tell him (had she ever seen Cleopatra in her pharaonic regalia) that this uninspiring style enabled her to wear Egypt’s red and white double crown with ease. Tonight, however, she wore a spangled short veil of interwoven flowers, and had chosen to adorn her person with flowers at neck, at bodice, at waist. In one hand she carried a golden apple. The outfit was not particularly attractive, which didn’t worry Mark Antony, not a connoisseur of women’s wear. The whole object of the ‘costume’ dinner party was so that he could show himself to best advantage.

As the New Dionysus, he was bare from the waist up, and bare from mid-thigh down. His nether regions were draped in a flimsy piece of purple gauze, under which a carefully tailored loincloth revealed the mighty pouch that contained the fabled Antonian genitalia. At forty-three, he was still in his prime, that Herculean physique unmarred by more excesses than most men fitted into twice his tally of years. Calves and thighs were massive, but the ankles slender, and the pectorals of his chest bulged above a flat, muscled belly. Only his head looked odd, for his neck was as thick as a bull’s, and dwarfed it. The tribe of girls the Queen had brought with her looked at him and gasped, near died inside for want of him.

‘My, you don’t have much in your wardrobe,’ Cleopatra said, unimpressed.

‘Dionysus didn’t need much. Here, have a grape,’ he said, extending the bunch he held in one hand.

‘Here, have an apple,’ she said, extending a hand.

‘I’m Dionysus, not Paris. “Paris, you pretty boy, you woman-struck seducer,”’ he quoted. ‘See? I know my Homer.’

‘I am consumed with admiration.’ She arranged herself on the couch; he had given her the locus consularis , not a gesture the sticklers in his entourage appreciated. Women were women.

Antony tried, but the stripped-for-action look didn’t affect Cleopatra at all. Whatever she lived for, it wasn’t the physical side of love, so much was certain. In fact, she spent most of the evening playing with her golden apple, which she put into a glass goblet of pink wine and marveled at how the blue of the glass turned the gold a subtle shade of purple, especially when she stirred it with one manicured finger.

Finally, desperate, Antony gambled all on one roll of the dice: Venus, they must come up Venus! ‘I’m falling in love with you,’ he said, hand caressing her arm.

She moved it as if to brush off the attentions of an insect. ‘ Gerrae ,’ she growled.

‘It is not rubbish!’ he said indignantly, sitting up straight. ‘You’ve bewitched me, Cleopatra.’

‘My wealth has bewitched you.’

‘No, no! I wouldn’t care if you were a beggar woman!’

‘ Gerrae! You’d step over me as if I didn’t exist.’

‘I’ll prove that I love you! Set me a task!’

Her answer was immediate. ‘My sister Arsinoë has taken refuge in the precinct of Artemis at Ephesus. She is under a sentence of death legally pronounced in Alexandria. Execute her, Antonius. Once she’s dead, I’ll rest easier, like you more.’