Colleen McCullough - 5. Caesar

The audience chamber was not the throne room. In that vast conglomeration of buildings there were rooms, even palaces within the palace, for every kind of function and functionary. The throne room would have stunned a Crassus; the audience chamber was enough to stun Gnaeus Pompey. The architecture of the complex, inside as well as outside, was Greek, but Egypt had a say too, as much of the adornment fell to the lot of the priest-artists of Memphis. Thus the audience chamber walls were partially covered in gold leaf, partially in murals of a sort foreign to this Roman ambassador. Very flat and stilted, two-dimensional people, animals, palms and lotuses. There were no statues and no items of furniture other than the two thrones on the dais. To either side of the dais stood a gigantic man so bizarre Gnaeus Pompey had only heard of such people, apart from a woman in a side show at the circus during his childhood days; though she had been very beautiful, she did not compare to these two men. They were clad in gold sandals and short leopard-skin kilts belted with jeweled gold, and had gold collars flashing with jewels about their throats. Each one gently plied a massive fan on a long gold rod, its base more jeweled gold, its breeze-making part the most wonderful feathers dyed many colors, huge and fluffy. All of which was as nothing compared to the beauty of their skins, which were black. Not brown, black. Like a black grape, thought Gnaeus Pompey, glossy yet powdered with plummy must. Tyrian purple skins! He had seen faces like theirs before on little statues; when a good Greek or Italian sculptor was lucky enough to see one, he seized upon the amazing person immediately. Hortensius had owned a statue of a boy, Lucullus the bronze bust of a man. But again, mere shadows alongside the reality of these living faces. High cheekbones, aquiline noses, very full but exquisitely delineated lips, black eyes of a peculiar liquidity. Topped by close-cropped hair so tightly curled that it had the look of the foetal goat pelt from Bactria that the Parthian kings prized so much they alone were allowed to wear it. "Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus!" gushed Potheinus, rushing forward in his purple tunic and chlamys cloak with the chain of his high estate draped athwart his shoulders. "Welcome, welcome!" "I am not Magnus!" snapped Gnaeus Pompey, very annoyed. "I am plain Gnaeus Pompeius! Who are you, the crown prince?" The female on the bigger, higher throne spoke in a strong, melodic voice. "That is Potheinus, our Lord High Chamberlain," she said. "We are Cleopatra, Queen of Alexandria and Egypt. In the names of Alexandria and Egypt we bid you welcome. As for you, Potheinus, if you wish to stay, step back and don't speak until you're spoken to." Oho! thought Gnaeus Pompey. She doesn't like him. And he doesn't like taking orders from her one little bit. "I am honored, great Queen," Gnaeus Pompey said, three lictors to either side of him. "And this, I presume, is King Ptolemy?" "Yes," said the Queen curtly. She weighed about as much as a wet dishcloth was Gnaeus Pompey's verdict, was probably not five Roman feet tall when she stood up, had thin little arms and a scrawny little neck. Lovely skin, darkly olive yet transparent enough to display the blueness of the veins beneath it. Her hair was a light brown and done in a peculiar fashion, parted in a series of inch-wide bands back from brow to a bun on the nape of her neck; all he could think of was the similarly banded rind of a summer melon. She wore the white ribbon of her sovereign's diadem not across her forehead but behind the hairline, and was simply clad in the Greek style, though her robe was the finest Tyrian purple. No precious thing on her person save for her sandals, which looked as if they were never designed to be walked in, so flimsy was their gold. The light, which poured in through unshuttered apertures high in the walls, was good enough for him to see that her face was depressingly ugly, only the single charm of youth to soften it. Wide eyes that he fancied were green-gold, or perhaps hazel. A good mouth for kissing save that it was held grimly. And a nose to rival Cato's for size, a mighty beak hooked like a Jew's. Hard to see any Macedonian in this young woman. A purely eastern type. "It is a great honor to receive you in audience, Gnaeus Pompeius," she went on in that powerfully mellifluous voice, her Greek perfect and Attic. "We are sorry we cannot speak to you in Latin, but we have never had the opportunity to learn it. What may we do for you?" "I imagine that even at this remotest end of Our Sea, great Queen, you are aware that Rome is engaged in a civil war. My father who is called Magnus has been obliged to flee from Italia in the company of Rome's legitimate government. At the moment he is in Thessalonica preparing to meet the traitor Gaius Julius Caesar." "We are aware, Gnaeus Pompeius. You have our sympathy." "That's a start," said Gnaeus Pompey with all the cheerful lack of politesse his father had made famous, "but not enough. I am here to ask for material aid, not expressions of condolence." "Quite so. Alexandria is a long journey to obtain expressions of condolence. We had gathered that you have come to seek our er material aid. What kind of aid?" "I want a fleet consisting of at least ten superior warships, sixty good transport vessels, sailors and oarsmen in sufficient numbers to power them, and every one of the sixty transports filled to the brim with wheat and other foodstuffs," Gnaeus Pompey chanted. The little King moved on his minor throne, turned his head which also wore the white ribbon of the diadem to look at the Lord High Chamberlain and the slender, effeminate man beside him. His elder sister, who was also his wife how decadently convoluted these eastern monarchies were! promptly reacted exactly as a Roman elder sister might have. She was holding a gold and ivory scepter, and used it to rap him across the knuckles so hard that he let out a yelp of pain. His pretty, pouting face returned to the front and stayed there, his bright blue eyes winking away tears. "We are delighted to be asked to give you material aid, Gnaeus Pompeius. You may have all the ships you require. There are ten excellent quinqueremes in the boat sheds attached to the Cibotus Harbor, all designed to carry plenty of artillery, all endowed with the best oaken rams, and all highly maneuverable. Their crews are rigorously trained. We will also commandeer sixty large, stout cargo vessels from among those belonging to us. We own all the ships of Egypt, commercial as well as naval, though we do not own all the merchant ships of Alexandria." The Queen paused, looked very stern and very ugly. "However, Gnaeus Pompeius, we cannot donate you any wheat or other foodstuffs. Egypt is in the midst of famine. The Inundation was down in the Cubits of Death; no crops germinated. We do not have sufficient to feed our own people, particularly those of Alexandria." Gnaeus Pompey, who looked very like his father save that his equally thick crop of hair was a darker gold, sucked his teeth and shook his head. "That won't do!" he barked. "I want grain and I want food! Nor will I take no for an answer!" "We have no grain, Gnaeus Pompeius. We have no food. We are not in a position to accommodate you, as we have explained." "Actually," said Gnaeus Pompey casually, "you don't have any choice in the matter. Sorry if your own people starve, but that's not my affair. Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius Scipio Nasica the governor is still in Syria, and has more than enough good Roman troops to march south and crush Egypt like a beetle. You're old enough to remember the arrival of Aulus Gabinius and what happened then. All I have to do is send to Syria and you're invaded. And don't think of doing to me what you did to the sons of Bibulus! I am Magnus's son. Kill me or any of mine and you'll all die very painfully. In many ways annexation would be best for my father and the government in exile. Egypt would become a province of Rome and everything Egypt possesses would go to Rome. In the person of my father. Think it over, Queen Cleopatra. I'll return tomorrow." The lictors wheeled and marched out, faces impassive, Gnaeus Pompey strolling behind them. "The arrogance!" gasped Theodotus, flapping his hands. "Oh, I don't believe the arrogance!" "Hold your tongue, tutor!" the Queen snapped. "May I go?" the little King asked, his tears overflowing. "Yes, go, you little toad! And take Theodotus with you!" Out they went, the man's arm possessively about the boy's heaving shoulders. "You'll have to do as Gnaeus Pompeius has ordered you to do," purred Potheinus. "I am well aware of that, you self-satisfied worm!" "And pray, mighty Pharaoh, Isis on Earth, Daughter of Ra, that Nilus rises into the Cubits of Plenty this summer." "I intend to pray. No doubt you and Theodotus and your minion Achillas, commander-in-chief of my army! intend to pray just as hard to Serapis that Nilus remains in the Cubits of Death! Two failed Inundations in a row would dry up the Ta-she and Lake Moeris. No one in Egypt would eat. My income would shrink to a point whereat, Potheinus, I could find little money for buying in. If there is grain to buy in. There is drought from Macedonia and Greece to Syria and Egypt. Food prices will keep on rising until the Nilus rises. While you and your two cronies urge a third kind of rise the Alexandrians against me." "As Pharaoh, O Queen," said Potheinus smoothly, "you have the key to the treasure vaults of Memphis." The Queen looked scornful. "Certainly, Lord High Chamberlain! You know perfectly well that the priests will not allow me to spend the Egyptian treasures to save Alexandria from starvation. Why should they? No native Egyptian is permitted to live in Alexandria, let alone have its citizenship. Something I do not intend to rectify for one good reason. I don't want my best and loyalest subjects to catch the Alexandrian disease." "Then the future does not bode well for you, O Queen." "You deem me a weak woman, Potheinus. That is a very grave mistake. You'd do better to think of me as Egypt."