Antony and Cleopatra by Colleen McCullough

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. They are not content to live on equal terms with women.” 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 to 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 hopes to meet some Alexandrians.”
    “The Interpreter, the Recorder, the Chief Judge, the Accountant, and the Night Commander are eager to attend on him.”
    “The Accountant ?”
    “They are just names, Quintus Dellius. To be one of those five men is to be of pure Macedonian stock going back to the barons of Ptolemy Soter. They are the Alexandrian aristocrats,” Cleopatra said, sounding amused. What, after all, is Atticus if not an accountant, and would any Roman of patrician family scorn Atticus? “We have not planned a reception for this evening,” Cleopatra went on. “Just a quiet supper for Marcus Antonius alone.”
    “I’m sure he’ll like that,” said Dellius smoothly.
     
     
    When Caesarion couldn’t keep his eyes open, his mother