was near.
They descended into a wide, flat plain where thousands of men loitered amidst a collection of tents. Sol explained that the men were soldiers—Syrian, Nabataean and Egyptian mercenaries who had been hired by Queen Cleopatra with what remained of her wealth. They were her only chance against her husband-brother’s much larger army, which was stationed in the nearby town of Pelousion, preparing to strike.
They came to a halt beside a large cowhide tent, and Sol leaped to the ground. ‘We have arrived. This is where we must part.’
‘Arrived where?’ asked Wen, taking his hand and jumping down beside him.
He flashed her an enigmatic grin, then motioned to the tent. ‘Go inside and wait. The Queen’s attendants will find you when her council concludes. No matter what happens, you must never address the Queen directly. You must wait until she speaks to you. Now go.’
‘You are not going to accompany me?’
He laughed. ‘The fate of Egypt will be decided in that tent.’
‘Do you not wish to learn it?’
‘The less I know, the better.’
‘I do not understand.’
He shook his head. ‘I think you do understand. You only pretend not to.’
He does not wish to be implicated in what is being decided, Wen thought. ‘Sol is not your real name, is it?’ she asked.
‘No, it is not,’ he said, smiling like a jackal. ‘Good for you.’ He bent and kissed her hand. ‘It has been an honour, Wen-Nefer. Perhaps we shall meet again some day.’ He gave a deep bow, then jumped back into the carriage.
‘Wait! You cannot just leave me here!’ she yelled, but he was already rolling away.
He might not have seen her at all: the colour of her shabby tunic matched the colour of the sand and her hair was so tangled and dusty it resembled a tumbleweed. But the group of guards escorting him to the Queen’s tent had grown larger as they passed through the camp, cramping his stride, and slowly he’d made his way to the edge of the entourage. As he passed by her, his thigh brushed her hand.
A shiver rippled across his skin. He wondered when he had last felt the touch of a woman. In Gaul, perhaps. Troupes of harlots always followed Caesar’s legions and, as commander of Caesar’s Sixth, Titus was allowed his choice from among them.
Not that he was particular. Women were mostly alike, he had found. Their minds were usually empty, but their bodies were soft and yielding, and they could provide a special kind of comfort after a day of taking lives.
Or at least—they had once provided him with such comfort. Now, after so many years of leading men to their deaths, even a woman’s soft touch had ceased to console him.
The woman drew her hand away, keeping her gaze upon the ground. She was obviously a slave, but she was also quite obviously a woman—a woman living in a desert military camp where women were as rare as trees. He wondered which commander she would be keeping warm tonight.
He had a sudden desire that it might be him.
There was no chance of that, however. As Caesar’s messengers, Titus and his young guard, Clodius, were under orders to deliver Caesar’s message to Queen Cleopatra, then return to Alexandria immediately. It was dangerous for Romans in Egypt, especially Roman soldiers. They were viewed as conquerors and pillagers, and were unwelcome in military camps such as these, along with most everywhere else.
As if to underscore that point, the guard nearest Titus scowled, then nudged Titus back towards the middle of the escort. There, Titus’s own guard, Clodius, marched obediently, his nerves as apparent as the sweat stains on his toga.
As was custom for sensitive missions such as these, Titus and Clodius had switched places. Clodius was playing the role of Titus the commander and Titus the role of Clodius, his faithful guard. This way, if Cleopatra chose to keep one of them for ransom, she would keep Clodius, whom she would erroneously believe to be the higher-ranking man, leaving Titus to return to Caesar.
‘Hello, there, my little honey cake,’ said a guard somewhere behind him. Something in Titus tensed and he turned to see one of the guards standing before the woman, pushing the hair out of her eyes.
She was not moving—she hardly even looked to be breathing—and was studying the ground with an intensity that belied her fear. Clearly she was not offering her services to the man, or any other. Titus almost lunged towards the man, but he was suddenly ushered into the tent and directed to a place at its perimeter. The offending guard entered soon after him and Titus breathed a sigh of relief, though he puzzled over the reason for it.
He tried to put the woman out of his mind as his eyes adjusted to the low light. In addition to the guards, there were several robed advisors spread about the small space, along with a dozen military commanders and men of rank. They stood around a large wooden throne where a pretty young woman sat with her hands in her lap.
Queen Cleopatra, he thought. Titus watched as Clodius dropped to his knees before the exiled Pharaoh in the customary obeisance. ‘Pharaoh Cleopatra Philopator the Seventh, Rightful Queen of Egypt,’ announced one of the guards.
To Titus’s mind, there was nothing Egyptian about her. She wore her hair in a Macedonian-style bun and donned a traditional Greek chiton with little to distinguish it from any other. She was surprisingly spare in her adornments and quite small of stature, especially compared to the large cedar throne in which she sat.
Still, she held her head high and appeared fiercely composed. It was an admirable quality, given that she was a woman. In Cleopatra’s case, it was particularly admirable, for her husband-brother Ptolemy had made no secret of his determination to cut off her head.
‘Whom do you bring me, Guard Captain?’ asked the Queen. ‘Why do you interrupt my war council?’
‘Two messengers, my Queen,’ said the head guard. ‘They come from Alexandria. They bring an urgent message to you from General Julius Caesar.’
The Queen exchanged glances with two women standing on one side of her throne. The taller of the two bent and whispered something into Cleopatra’s ear. The Queen nodded gravely.
Cleopatra was known as a goodly queen—one of those rare monarchs who actually cared about the people she ruled. Before her exile, it was said that she had done more than any of her predecessors to ease the lives of the peasants and to honour their ancient traditions.
Now that Titus finally beheld her, he believed that that her goodness was real. Her face exuded kindness, but also an intelligence that seemed unusual for one of her sex. She smiled placidly, but her eyes danced about the tent, never resting.
Still, Titus was careful not to venerate her. She was a woman, after all, and naturally inferior to the men who surrounded her. But even if she were a man, he would not make the mistake of supporting her rule. He knew the dangers of monarchs. One would spread peace and justice, then the next would spread war and misery. Kings and queens—or pharaohs, as they called themselves here in Egypt—were as fickle as their blessed gods and they could never be trusted.
There was a better way, or so Titus believed. It was a vast, complex blanket, woven by all citizens, that protected from the caprices of kings. They had been practising it in Rome for almost five hundred years and Titus understood it well, for his own ancestors had helped weave its threads.
Res publica.
Though now that glorious blanket was in danger of unravelling. When Caesar had crossed the Rubicon with his Thirteenth Legion, he had led the Republic down a dangerous path. Generals were not allowed to bring their armies into Rome. Nor were they allowed to become dictators for life, yet that was exactly what the Roman Senate was contemplating, for Caesar had bribed most of its members. There were only a few good men