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The spring reeds had put forth their shoots weeks and weeks ago by the time that our cell door opened and a cheerful, sunburnt Titus stepped in with our gruel. However, his happy grin vanished when he saw us. It had been a week since my battle with Apep in the Dream World, but three days since our last meal.
The night before, in spite of the assurances of the gods, we had lain on the dirt floor side by side with our hands clasped. We had begun to recite the Book of Going Forth to one another, certain the end was surely coming for us by morning or the next evening. We no longer had the strength to fight our foodless days. Now, even with a friendly face before us, we were too weak to see anything but the looming horizon of the Lands of the West.
Mudjet gave Titus an anemic smile but could not lift her head from the wall she rested it against. I gathered what felt like the last of my will to raise my own head from her lap.
"Welcome back, sir. Has Apollodorus wearied of our company already?” I managed to gasp out before laying back down glassy-eyed.
––––––––
I do not know how much time passed after he left. I weaved in and out of consciousness, occasionally stirred by Mudjet's erratic breathing. It was dark enough for torches when he returned, though I did not bother to open my eyes. I knew the measure of his footfalls. I could sense the presence of others, and I attempted to care, but I could not summon the strength to do so. None of it mattered because I was going home to be with the gods.
There was a cool hand on my forehead and a sharp, clever voice near me muttered in disgust, "Gods defend us..."
The voice made me open my eyes. I blinked the cell back into focus and found Caesar's angular face looking into mine, his deep eyes glittering in the low light.
"I'm going to take you to the palace so a physician can examine you,” he said steadily, to make sure I followed his words. I had expected him to speak in the same stinging tone he had used to swear at the gods, but instead his voice was gentle. “Do you think you can hold onto me, Your Highness?"
I nodded, and made a feeble gesture to Mudjet.
"Titus Manlius will take care of your maidservant,” he assured me. “Come, my lady."
I raised my arms like a sleepy child and clasped them around Caesar's neck. He slid his arms under me and tensed himself against the ground before picking me up off the floor. The abrupt altitude disoriented me, though I worked to keep my head from spinning as I craned about to see Titus hoist up Mudjet. Assured she was safe, I laid my head against the Consul's chest and closed my eyes again in resignation. I listened to the thump of his heart through his tunica, almost smiling at my surprise that it beat just the same as any other man’s. For all the months he had been here, ostensibly in the luxury of our land, he still smelled faintly of sweat and horses, like a general in the field. It was comforting. The smell of him, and the fact he had found me were signs he was not so entirely in my sister's thrall.
We walked briskly out into the evening air and I was overwhelmed by the cacophony of familiar scents that floated towards me. I had almost forgot what the air outside our cell smelled like. When the scent of incense wafted to us, I knew we had made it into the palace. However, with the perfume was mixed a sour note I could not quite place. A slight disharmony that ingratiated itself into the very stones of the complex, unaccountable to everyone inside, manifesting to the multitudes of slaves and servants as a slight sense of unease. But I recognized the footprints of the heka for what they were.
I heard a worried voice rush upon us. "Consul Caesar, what are you doing? Does the—”
"Never mind that,” he said, the sharp voice of command returning, vibrating from his chest into my ear. “Go find me a physician."
The feet scurried away.
We kept moving through the main portico, the men's feet echoing on the sandstone floors. We turned several corners, eventually stopping in an unoccupied chamber where Caesar lowered me gingerly onto a couch. I thought I would be completely engulfed, so deep and soft the cushions felt. Titus set Mudjet onto another couch and I watched him carefully drape a silk shawl over her. Satisfied, I raised my eyes up to Caesar, who stood scrutinizing me with an expression drawn in anger, though who was the target of his displeasure was uncertain.
"Thank you," I whispered, still far too exhausted to be apprehensive in my homecoming.
"I think we both know that's probably a bit premature, my lady," he answered, the lines in his face softening somewhat.
The physician arrived and began his inspection. He listened to the fluttering of my pulse and peered in my mouth while Caesar stood to the side watching, arms crossed. The physician pulled out some vessels and had started mixing liquids when my sister stormed into the room, her hazel eyes flashing. Through my half-opened gaze, I saw how heavily her pregnancy hung on her now. She still maintained her heady air of authority, and on the surface, she remained fair to look upon in her characteristic way. And yet there was a tightness around her mouth and glint of something I could not name in her eyes. She must have been straining her heka to keep up appearances.
"What do think you are doing?" she demanded, her face flushed in anger, her heka giving the atmosphere of the room a leaden feel. Underneath the foreboding, there was also a cruel kind of levity in the air, as if the heka was savoring its mastery of the Black Land.
"Trying to keep the girl alive long enough to get her to Rome as something other than a corpse," Caesar replied with annoyance. "Did you think I would not find out about this?" he added.
I could sense the heka trying to press itself upon him, yet it was as if Caesar carried an invisible shield to deflect its advances. Lost in the fog of my sister's magic, I did not have the presence of mind to be rightly afraid of one who could hold against a heka alone that the gods of Egypt had struggled to overcome for a single night.
"She is my sister, she is my concern! Not yours!" Cleopatra shot back, her voice surrendering the bare amount of restraint she had possessed when she had entered. The air in the room stilled to the weight of a boulder.
"Gods and men, woman! If you don't want her for the triumph, that's fine by me. It matters not. But if that’s so, just cut her throat and be done with it,” Caesar remarked coldly. “The northern barbarians wouldn't drag their kin through an end like this. At this rate, I will have to delay my departure until she is even capable of standing!"
"She is a traitor!” my sister shrieked, balling her fists in frustration. “I will not coddle her simply because you feel pity for anything with breasts and pretty eyes!"
"We have barely wrestled control of the city back," he ignored her taunt, his voice full of dark anger. "I will not jeopardize that because you want to torture the child. Can you imagine what the people will do if they find out you've been starving their so-called goddess? They'll ransack the palace and string you up to be food for the vultures!"
My sister glared down at me, our eyes meeting. I thought about how easy it would be for her to kill me with her bare hands, that very instant. I imagined her slim fingers — so like my own — closing themselves around my neck. Or perhaps she would take the Consul’s suggestion and cut my throat with the dagger I knew she had carried in her bodice since Damianus’ murder.
We looked at one another, her eyes alive with anger and power, and mine? Mine lit only with the flickering light of indifference. She could do as she pleased because I could no longer resist her, and perhaps that is what stayed her hand as we watched each other beneath the fiery attention of Caesar. Her mouth twitched in repugnance at my frailty and growled with displeasure as she flounced out of the room.
With her departure, the air in the room grew sweeter once more, though the ominous hint of malice remained. For a moment, Caesar’s burning eyes followed her trail, impatience pulling the muscles of his face rigid. But then without warning, he looked back to me. I was startled to see his displeasure ebb away to reveal an emotion I could not put a name to at first, though I recognized the slight confident turn of his mouth that showed he understood that he had carried the argument with my sister and he, as usual, relished the victory.
The physician at my side hesitated. "Am I treating these women, sir?” he asked.
His question drew back the Consul’s attention from my face and he nodded curtly. "Do what you must. If the palace servants won't grant any requests you might have as you work, seek out one of my men. They will assist you." He then turned on his heel and stalked out the way Cleopatra had gone.
"Do not alarm yourself, my lady. We shall have you well again soon enough," the physician said to me solicitously, though with a nervous glance toward the hall outside of the room.
I smiled painfully. "Oh, that? We are the House of Ptolemy, sir. That is nothing to us.” My discomfiture stemmed not only from my weakened state, but also because I had belatedly identified the sentiment in Caesar’s eyes. Had it truly been affection, or were my weary eyes deceiving me?
––––––––
For another half-month, Mudjet and I were like infants again, learning to eat, learning to walk. We had been imprisoned for only a couple of months, but we had been allowed no exercise and our muscles were deteriorated as much from captivity as from poor diet. Every day, we were given a little more to eat, and bit by bit, our stomachs remembered how to consume it. We practiced hobbling back and forth, one on either arm of Titus until like newborn colts we remembered how to run. Once our strength began to return, we spent many afternoons tossing balls to one another and more than a few times we were admonished by various passing eunuchs to soften our laughter.
"Just as in the old days, my lady," observed Mudjet with a gleeful lob of the ball.
I pushed myself into the air and caught her throw handily. "Indeed. Except now instead of being reproved for being unladylike, everyone deplores our gallows humor. We are abidingly creatures out of joint with our circumstances, dear." I threw the ball back.
Mudjet sidestepped quickly to retrieve it, and paused. "Are you afraid?"
"Yes,” I admitted. “But waiting is worse. I have probably built it all up so much in my dreams that nothing they actually do is going to be all that shocking. I only wish they would allow me to see Ptah one last time."
She nodded. "Better our untempered hearts on our sleeves than cowering in the dirt again."
"No more cowering. We take the lessons of Sekhmet into our kas and meet the Fates straight-backed."
––––––––
Even once we regained our health, Titus remained at our side, undoubtedly to keep away my sister’s malevolent retainers and lackeys. He became an easy friend, his naturally buoyant personality lifted by the adventure of being a young patrician on his first campaign away from home in a land as enticing as Egypt.
I found myself looking for my other Roman friend, Quintus, in the young Titus, but the latter was younger in more ways than one and more earnest. Less ironical than my Gabiniani lieutenant. Mudjet and I had seen things that would make the pleasant tribune’s hair curl. I had done things that would chase his spritely courtesy to me from his face. And yet we were comradely with each other all the same.
“I used to scoff at the tales told of the Gabiniani back home,” he said to us as Mudjet sat massaging my calf muscles to build their resistance up once more. “What land could be as wonderful as that of Romulus and Remus? But now that I have seen Egypt, I think I begin to understand.”
“The Black Land is lovely,” answered my companion, “but — I know, my lady, it will hurt a bit—” she said, interrupting her own thought at the mewl of pain I had made at one of her exertions, “—but I think what has really captured the heart of our dear Sir Titus is the company of Egypt,” she finished with a wink in his direction.
“Naturally, Lady Mudjet,” Titus said with a laugh. “I should be envied by all my brothers for passing my days here in such excellent company! Because of the queen’s rumors, they think I mind a bratty child, when in fact I enjoy the conversation of the finest lady in the East and her equally noble companion!”
I wiped a bead of sweat from my temple as Mudjet changed the direction of her manipulations. “Oh dear, do not let the Queen hear you say as such, sir!” I said, smothering the small gasp of pain that flew up from my stomach. “She would still not need very much poison to finish me off presently.”
“I don’t know, my lady, the peasants say that you are a goddess. Even a weakened deity might prove very difficult to kill,” he answered.
I made a dismissive gesture. “I thought the Romans had more sense than to listen to idle gossip.”
“Hardly, Your Highness. There is nothing my people love more than a juicy rumor. We mock the Alexandrians for their loose tongues, but secretly we are no better.”
“We shall have to remember that when we leave for Rome,” said Mudjet pretending to make a note of his information.
The tribune had learned to adapt himself to our morbid humor, so he chuckled along with us. “I live to be your cultural ambassador to Rome, dear Mudjet.”
“Indeed, there is much you can tell us, sir,” I said imperiously, while laughter leaked from my eyes. “We should hate to appear like bumpkins before the cosmopolitans in the capital.”
“Yes!” chimed in Mudjet. “I would simply die if the cut of my tunica was wrong while I burned at the stake!”
“Or if my hair was not done up in the latest knot,” I countered. “After all, all of Rome will see it.”
“Little demons,” said Titus affectionately in return. “It is a wonder we ever got the better of you, Your Highness. I doubt the immortals are as fearless as you.”
“Oh, I am afraid of everything, Titus,” I answered, stretching out my legs as Mudjet finished working on them. “I have simply taught myself to not spend what little time I have left fretting over a fate that cannot be changed.”
He grew serious. “You think there is no hope, then?”
I gave him a sardonic glance in return. “Do you know of any vanquished general who has survived a triumph?”
“I suppose not,” he replied guiltily. “Yet it is unnatural to see one so young submit to death so easily.”
“I do not want to die, but this is also Egypt. All the Greek rulers in the world cannot change the preoccupation this land has with death. I have lived all my life in the shadow of the afterlife.”
“I confess this is something I still find unnerving about the Egyptians.”
“Foreigners think we are in love with death,” Mudjet answered him thoughtfully. “It is not like that. We simply know that death is only a journey to another part of life. The journey is arduous and dangerous, yet life is often those things as well. In death, we are reborn into just another life, yet it is a life reunited with those we love in the light of the love of the gods. How can we be afraid of such a destination?”
“That is why there are always tears at a funeral here, but there is also always dancing,” I finished.
He nodded, then his face lit up. “Now dancing I understand! Come, Your Highness! I must teach you some Roman dances to show off when you arrive!”
He pulled me to me feet and spun me through a country dance until I was gasping for breath from laughing rather than pain. Making sure I was steady enough on my feet, he twirled me from one side to the other, and as I turned I thought I caught a figure out of the corner of my eye. I whipped my head around violently enough to cause me to momentarily stumble into Titus.
“I’m sorry, my lady!” he cried, immediately contrite. “I shouldn’t have moved so quickly! Are you all right?”
I did not answer at first, my eyes straining to see through the shadows under the portico. But if there had been someone there, they had gone.
I gave my attention back to the concerned Titus. “No, I am fine. That was mere clumsiness on my part.” To break the moment, I pulled Mudjet to me and handed her off to the young tribune. “You should take Mudjet instead. She has always been the more admirable dancer.”
I pushed them together playfully and the pair spun off in the same wild little dance, their laughter echoing around the courtyard. I walked over to the portico and peered behind the long row of columns. Naturally, they were empty. I shook my head, angry with myself. If I was going to hear the voices of the gods, I might as well be mad enough to see things that were not there as well, I thought as I turned to rejoin Mudjet and Titus.
––––––––
One night in the earliest blush of summer, we sat in our room, Mudjet mending the thong of a sandal and I with a scroll on my lap, reading. It was then that Caesar reappeared in our doorway. The last weeks had left me with the impression he had been avoiding us since he had rescued us from prison, most likely because Cleopatra wished it so and he was too busy to pick a fight with her over a condemned prisoner.
I glanced up from my lap and gave him a bob of my head. "You honor us, Caesar."
He looked back at me with his inscrutable expression. I wondered what he was thinking of. Mudjet's eyes met mine questioningly and I gave her a minute shrug.
I decided to try again. "How may we serve you, sir?"
This seemed to prod him back to the physical room. "I am taking you down to the harbor before first light. We shall raise sail for Rome with the tide,” he said quietly, his tone diffident. “You and your maidservant may take a small bundle of personal effects each. It will be searched."
Mudjet had gone a shade paler, though I did not feel afraid. Not yet anyhow.
"Shall Her Majesty be joining our party?" I asked, folding up the papyrus on my lap.
He shook his head. "No. She is staying here to stabilize the kingdom before entering into her confinement. I am leaving you in Rome for the time being while I attend to some business in the east."
"I suppose one cannot put the Parthian cart before the Pontic horse,” I remarked to my scroll as I tied up its bindings, before glancing up at him pointedly.
He smirked. "You are a quick study, Your Highness."
"I live up to my name, my lord. We shall be ready to leave at your call."
He nodded vaguely and went to leave, but stopped. He almost appeared to hesitate, then he brusquely motioned to me. "Come. Quickly, now."
I threw a glance at Mudjet as I followed Caesar out into the hallway. He took long strides that I jogged to keep up with as we moved through the palace. I attempted to guess at our destination, though I was completely at a loss. The path he chose was an obscure one, even for this unused part of the palace, and halls were deserted. Suddenly his pace slowed and he steered me by the shoulder to an antechamber. I walked into the room and saw a small figure standing at the far wall tracing with a finger the hieroglyphics carved there.
A lump nearly trapped my voice in my throat. "Ptah!"
My brother whirled around and sprinted into my waiting arms. I held his face between my hands and we searched each other with our eyes as if to record every detail of the other.
He trembled with emotion under my touch. "I wanted to see you, but she..."
"Shh, I know, nedjes. I am so very glad, I have been brought low with worry about you."
"And me about you! I heard them whispering that you were nearly dead when they brought you out of prison. I thought you would die without me seeing you!"
"It was not so dire as all that,” I murmured. “I am better now, at any rate. Mudjet takes good care of me."
Ptah's face flushed with excitement as he gripped my shoulders. "You were so close, Arsinoë!" His eyes darted to Caesar, who stood a decent distance away studying his fingernails, pretending that he could not hear us. "Even he was worried!" Ptah continued, dropping his voice a notch. "He raged at our sister for not being able to persuade the city to give you over. And that trick you pulled with the water— I thought the legion was going to sack the palace! You were so clever that he was always thinking of you — I thought Cleopatra would go mad!"
I could not help but smile at my brother’s enthusiasm. "It is a shame I could not do more. I am sorry I could not come for you." I reached up to touch his face again. "I cannot believe how much you have grown. You look as regal as Lord Horus."
He frowned. "I do not want to be Pharaoh,” he said, almost petulantly.
"But you must, nedjes," I replied gently. "Our people need you. You are the embodiment of the love the gods hold for them, they need to know the gods hold them close even in these difficult times. They look to their King to lead them, not Cleopatra. Who will speak for Egypt to the men of Rome if not their Pharaoh?"
"I do not want to talk about tariffs and legislation with my sister's murderers," he argued, his tawny eyes glassy with hurt.
I sighed and squeezed his hands. "You must not think on that too much. I will be strong for you and Egypt there if you will be strong for me here. It will break my heart if I think you will surrender to despair when I am gone."
The sadness in him was almost more than I can bear, but at length he said quietly, "I will be a good king, so that you will be proud of me."
I leaned forward to press my head to his. "I will always be proud of you, Ptah. Pray for me in the Duat. We will dance again together in the Field of Reeds."
He threw his arms around me again and I held his feverishly warm body to mine. At last I let go and walked quickly out of the room before I could be tempted to go back. As I returned to my quarters, it was Caesar this time who had to try to keep up with me.
I paused at the threshold and without looking at him said, "I know you did not have to do that. You have my gratitude."
"I needed to make sure the boy knows his place while we are gone. I gambled on you being too attached to him to preach rebellion," he replied, with a careless shrug I saw in my periphery.
"I also know you are under no obligation to take me with you when you leave here. I am appreciative of your concern, fleeting though it may be."
The indifference in his voice was replaced by a softer tone. "And I know all you Egyptians think I'm a demon sent from the very bowels of Dis to torment you. But I am not a monster, Your Highness. The least I can promise you is a swifter death in Rome than the perverse affair it appears it will be if you remain in Egypt."
We said no more to one another.