Queen of Kings - Maria Dahvana Headley [3]
His heart swelled with pride as he felt the small purse clenched in his fist. He’d receive the other half of his fee when the message he carried was delivered. The assignment had been pure luck. They’d grabbed him by the shoulder as he was returning from the countryside, where he’d been visiting a friend without his mother’s knowledge.
Outside the city walls near the hippodrome, the Romans waited in their tents, and inside the city, the soldiers who still served Antony milled about, drunk with defeat, crowding themselves against all of the other civilians.
It was all the boy could do to keep from being trampled as he made his rushing way through the Jewish quarter near Cleopatra’s Palaces and into the Greek portion of Alexandria. He flew past the Museion, where the scholars could be seen bending over scrolls, still at their work despite the fall of the city. There was the scholar who tutored the queen’s children, standing in the middle of the courtyard, arguing with one of his cohorts, both of them red-faced and waving their hands in the air. The boy wondered if the physicians were still working in the Museion’s buildings. He’d heard glorious stories of dissections, corpses smuggled in through hidden doorways, blood pooling in the stones of the streets. It was a thrilling thought.
The boy made his way through the center of Alexandria, where the markets were transacting business, as though this were not a city under siege. There was money to be made on warfare, and soldiers, even in defeat, thirsted. The boy dashed past the tempting stalls, the soothsayers and the makers of toys, the sellers of toasted nuts and the dancers stamping their feet and flinging colored scarves in the air.
He gazed longingly into a brothel, pushing his chin into the doorway and inhaling the scent of perfume.
“You’re bad for business, boy,” said a scowling courtesan, and smacked him smartly on the ear, escorting him back out into the street.
The lighthouse still shone on Pharos island just offshore, and the boy grinned up at the glowing white limestone facade of Alexandria’s marvel. It was said that the light harnessed the power of the sun, that it could be directed to shine onto enemy vessels far out on the water, causing them to burst spontaneously into flame. The boy wondered why the lighthouse had not been directed to destroy the Roman ships that way. Perhaps there had been too many of them.
At last, the boy arrived at the alley in the Old City that would lead him to his destination. It was easily recognized, guarded as it was by armed legionaries, the only soldiers in the city who were not drunk, and the only people in the area who were not Egyptian.
A legionary appeared in front of the boy, his arms crossed over his chest. The boy looked up to meet the man’s eyes.
“I have an urgent message,” he said.
“What message?” the soldier asked.
“I cannot speak with anyone but the general, Mark Antony,” the boy said.
“Who sent you?” another soldier asked.
“I come on behalf of the queen,” the boy replied, reciting the words exactly as he’d been instructed. “I serve Cleopatra.”
2
Twelve hours earlier, Mark Antony poured wine for all his servants and soldiers, toasting their bravery and bidding them good fortune if they chose to leave him, and a good fight if they chose to stay for the final battle.
As the whores arrived to comfort those who had wartime wages, Antony walked the streets of Alexandria, making his way back to the palace, past the guards and slaves, past the sad-faced statues of former rulers, kings and queens, princes and conquerors. Past the bedchambers where his children slept, innocent of the coming fall. Antony looked in at their faces, those of the twins and of his youngest son. The two eldest children, one his and one his wife’s, had already been sent from the city. What would become of them? He dared not think of it. It was not the Roman way, to kill royal children, or at least it had not been thus far. He did not wish to think that things had changed