Queen of Kings - Maria Dahvana Headley [13]
“You’re certain?”
“It was Antony,” the boy insisted. “He fell to his knees when I told him the queen was dead.”
The man shook his head, and the boy wondered if he was angry. He turned and led the boy back to the tent where he’d first received his assignment.
A slight, light-haired man sitting on a three-legged stool waited there. He appraised the boy with pale gray eyes.
“Your messenger has returned,” the boy’s guide said tersely. “I would not have had it done this way. Antony was outnumbered. It was only a matter of time.”
The gray-eyed man lifted his chin and shot a fierce look at his general. “Do you question my honor, Agrippa?”
Agrippa did not answer. He looked steadily at his cohort for a moment and then turned on his heel and left the tent. The boy nervously watched him go.
“I did not ask for your advice,” the boy’s benefactor called after Agrippa.
His expression changed as he looked at the boy. “You’ve delivered my message to Antony?”
The boy blushed with pleasure at having completed his mission successfully.
“It is done,” he said.
“Good,” said the man, and winced slightly. He closed his eyes for a moment. “Good.”
6
There was a sharp clattering from above, rocks being thrown against the window bars. Cleopatra jolted up from where she was kneeling, the knife still clutched in her hand. Who was coming for her? Antony? Or Octavian?
Charmian ran down the stairs, her face pale.
“Your husband is here,” she whispered, her voice panicky. “His men have brought him.”
Brought him? What sort of phrase was this? He’d lead his men, not be led. And why did he not come through the passage?
“Tell me what the matter is!” Cleopatra snapped, gripping the girl roughly by the shoulders.
“They’ve carried him here on a stretcher. He’s covered.”
Cleopatra was already running up the stairs to the window, her heart pounding in terror. This was her fault. She should never have let him go back to battle. She’d known better, after what she’d witnessed at the window the night before. Antony’s gods had left the city, declaring the war a loss. There’d been an invisible celebration as Dionysus departed through the center of Alexandria, his procession unseen but raucous with trumpets and harps, the beat of dancing steps, drums, and trills.
In the room behind her, Antony had stretched out his arms to her.
“What are you doing out of bed?” he asked.
“Looking at the moon,” she said. “Full and golden. A good omen.” She did not say for whom.
“We will win this war,” she told him, thinking of Sekhmet, imagining herself more powerful than any omen. “We will win this war.”
“Come back to me,” her husband replied, getting up from the bed as if to see for himself what drew her attention, but she pushed him back. They made love as though time had stopped, as though they had no battles to prepare for, no danger in the morning, no end to nights like these.
Cleopatra had sent her beloved out into battle unprotected and now she was paying for her arrogance.
She threw open the barred shutter, her body leaning out the window, a target for any archer. Antony’s personal guard was below. She knew the men well. And there, on a litter, covered in a cloth—
Cleopatra felt herself swaying. There was a bloodstain on the sheet, the crimson spreading on the ivory ground.
The leader of the guard looked up at the queen. Cleopatra could see the grief on his face.
“There was a false message,” he said. “He believed you killed yourself, and he sought to join you.”
“Is he dead?” she whispered, scarcely able to make the words leave her lips.
Antony’s hand rose to push aside the cloth that covered his face and chest.
“Not yet,” Antony said. His face was gray with suffering, his hand bloodied where it pressed the wound.
Cleopatra clenched her teeth to keep from screaming. How could this have happened? Had she followed her original plan, had she not stayed, thinking to tame the gods, she should have been beside him shipboard, the green and silver sea, the coast of India, their children safe in their beds belowdecks.
“I come