Antony and Cleopatra. Colleen McCullough

      ‘Don’t argue, Caesarion. If necessary, I’ll have you taken to Memphis under guard.’

      ‘That will look good to our subjects!’

      ‘How dare you be insolent to me!’

      ‘I am Pharaoh, anointed and crowned. I am son of Amun-Ra and son of Isis. I am Horus. I am the Lord of the Two Ladies and the Lord of the Sedge and Bee. My cartouche is above yours. Without going to war against me, you cannot deny me my right to sit on my throne. As I will when we receive Marcus Antonius.’

      The sitting room was so silent that every word mother and son uttered rang around the gilded rafters. Servants stood on duty in every inconspicuous corner; Charmian and Iras were in attendance on the Queen, Apollodorus stood in his place, and Sosigenes sat at a table poring over menus. Only Cha’em and Tach’a were absent, happily planning the treats they were going to give their beloved Caesarion when he arrived at the precinct of Ptah.

      The child’s face was set mulishly, his blue-green eyes hard as polished stones. Never had his likeness to Caesar been so pronounced. Yet his pose was relaxed, no clenched fists or planted feet. He had said his piece; the next move was Cleopatra’s.

      Who sat in her easy chair with mind spinning. How to explain to this obstinate stranger that she acted for his own good? If he remained in the Royal Enclosure he was bound to be exposed to all manner of things beyond his ken – oaths and profanities, crudeness and coarseness, vomiting gluttons, people too hot with lust to care that they coupled on a couch or against a wall; goings-on that carried the seeds of corruption, vivid illustrations of a world she had resolved her son would never see until he was old enough to cope with it. Well she remembered her own years as a child in this selfsame palace, her dissolute father pawing his catamites, exposing his genitals to be kissed and sucked, dancing about drunkenly playing his silly pipes at the head of a procession of naked boys and girls. While she cowered out of sight and prayed he would not find her and have her raped for his pleasure. Killed, even, like Berenice. He had a new family by his young half-sister; a girl by his Mithridatid wife was expendable. So the years she had spent in Memphis with Cha’em and Tach’a lived in her memory as the most wonderful time of her whole life: safe, secure, happy.

      The feasts in Tarsus had been a fairly good example of Mark Antony’s way of life. Yes, he himself had remained continent, but only because he had to duel with a woman who was also a monarch. About the conduct of his friends he was indifferent, and some of them had disported themselves shamelessly.

      But how to tell Caesarion that he wouldn’t – couldn’t – be here? Instinct said that Antony was going to forget continence, play the role of Neos Dionysus wholeheartedly. He was also her son’s cousin. If Caesarion were in Alexandria, they couldn’t be kept apart. And obviously Caesarion dreamed of meeting the great warrior, not understanding that the great warrior would present in the guise of the great reveler.

      So the silence persisted until Sosigenes cleared his throat and pushed his chair back to stand.

      ‘Your Majesties, may I speak?’ he asked.

      Caesarion answered. ‘Speak,’ he commanded.

      ‘Young Pharaoh is now six, yet he is still under the care of a palace full of women. Only in the gymnasium and the hippodrome does he enter a world of men, and they are his subjects. Before they can talk to him, they must prostrate themselves. He sees nothing odd in this: he is Pharaoh. But with the visit of Marcus Antonius, young Pharaoh will have a chance to associate with men who are not his subjects, and who will not prostrate themselves. Who will ruffle his hair, cuff him gently, joke with him. Man to man. Pharaoh Cleopatra, I know why you wish to send young Pharaoh to Memphis, I understand—’

      Cleopatra cut him short. ‘Enough, Sosigenes! You forget yourself! We will finish this conversation after young Pharaoh has left the room – which he will do now!’

      ‘I will not leave,’ said Caesarion.

      Sosigenes continued, visibly shaking in terror. His job – also his head – was in peril, but someone had to say it. ‘Your Majesty, you cannot send young Pharaoh away, either now to finish this, or later to shield him from the Romans. Your son is crowned and anointed Pharaoh and King. In years he may be a child, but in what he is, he is a man. It is time that he associated freely with men who do not prostrate themselves. His father was a Roman. It is time he learned more of Rome and Romans than he could as a babe during the time when you lived in Rome.’

      Cleopatra felt her face afire, wondered how much of what she experienced was written on it. Oh, bother the wretched boy, to take his stand so publicly! He knew how servants gossiped – it would be all over the palace in an hour, all over the city tomorrow.

      And she had lost. Everybody present knew it.

      ‘Thank you, Sosigenes,’ she said after a very long pause, ‘I appreciate your advice. It is the right advice. Young Pharaoh must stay in Alexandria to mingle with the Romans.’

      The boy didn’t whoop with glee or caper about. He nodded regally and said, gazing at his mother with expressionless eyes, ‘Thank you, Mama, for deciding not to go to war.’

      Apollodorus shooed everyone out of the room, including young Pharaoh; as soon as she was left alone with Charmian and Iras, Cleopatra burst into tears.

      ‘It had to happen,’ said Iras, the practical one.

      ‘He was cruel,’ said Charmian, the sentimental one.

      ‘Yes,’ said Cleopatra through her tears, ‘he was cruel. All men are, it is their nature.’ She mopped her face. ‘I have lost a tiny fraction of my power – he has wrested it from me. By the time he is twenty, he will have all the power.’

      ‘Let us hope,’ said Iras, ‘that Marcus Antonius is kind.’

      ‘You saw him in Tarsus. Did you think him kind then?’

      ‘Yes, when you let him. He was uncertain, so he blustered.’

      ‘Isis must take him as her husband,’ said Charmian, sighing, eyes misty. ‘What man could be unkind to Isis?’

      ‘To take him as husband is not to yield power. Isis will gather it,’ said Cleopatra. ‘But what will my son say when he realizes that his mother is giving him a stepfather?’

      ‘He will take it in his stride,’ said Iras.

      Antony’s flagship, an overlarge quinquereme high in the poop and bristling with catapults, was bidden tie up in the Royal Harbor. And there, waiting on the wharf under a golden canopy of state stood both incarnations of Pharaoh, though not clad in pharaonic regalia. Cleopatra wore a simple robe of pink wool and Caesarion a Greek tunic, oatmeal trimmed with purple. He had wanted to wear a toga, but Cleopatra had told him that no one in Alexandria could show the palace seamstresses how to make one. She thought that the best way to avoid giving Caesarion the news that he wasn’t allowed to wear a toga because he wasn’t a Roman citizen.

      If it had been Caesarion’s ambition to steal his mother’s thunder, he succeeded; when Antony strode down the gangplank onto the wharf, his eyes were fixed on Caesarion.

      ‘Ye gods!’ he exclaimed as he reached them, ‘Caesar all over again! Boy, you’re his living image!’

      Knowing himself tall for his age, Caesarion felt suddenly dwarfed; Antonius was huge! None of which mattered when Antony bent down and lifted him up effortlessly, settled him on a left arm bulging with muscles beneath many folds of toga. Behind him Dellius was beaming; it was left to him to greet Cleopatra, walk at her side up the path from the jetty, looking at the pair well in front, the boy’s golden head thrown back as he laughed at some Antonian jest.

      ‘They have taken to each other,’ Dellius said.

      ‘Yes, haven’t they?’ It was spoken tonelessly. Then she squared her shoulders. ‘Marcus Antonius hasn’t brought as many friends with him as I expected.’

      ‘There were jobs to do, Your Majesty. I know Antonius