Queen of Kings - Maria Dahvana Headley [68]
It was as though Antony had fled her at Actium and gone back to Rome, leaving her to burn.
Cleopatra threw the pages to the ground, furious. She would not wait here, in this library, in this poet’s house, no matter what Nicolaus said.
An old city filled with temples. A city filled with people. Her children and her enemy awaited.
9
Augustus spilled his drink, startled by the sound of someone in the hallway. He’d raised his glass as a weapon, thinking to smash it in the face of the intruder, when Marcus Agrippa’s face, grim as ever, appeared in the doorway. Augustus leapt to his feet and embraced the man.
“It’s been six months since Thebes,” he said, nearly overcome with relief. “I thought you were dead, or worse.”
“What would be worse than death?” Agrippa looked at him irritably. “My men have been from end to end of the world on your orders, and I still do not know why. I have three magicians for you. I might have recruited three legions of warriors in the same amount of time.”
“Magicians?” Augustus grimaced. “I can find magicians in Rome.”
“Witches,” Agrippa amended. “Sorcerers. Whatever you call them, they are all the same kind of creature, and nothing I trust.”
“I wish you’d brought them more quickly,” Augustus said.
Agrippa sat down opposite him and leaned over the table.
“Just as I wish you’d tell me what you plan to war against with witches. This is not the Roman way. Are we threatened by Parthia? Scythia? You need not fear them. We have legions, ready to serve, here in Rome and more abroad.”
“It is not Parthia,” Augustus said.
Agrippa was somewhat relieved. Campaigns in Parthia—notorious for its archers and lack of ready forage—had taken many lives.
“Scythia, then?”
“Neither is it Scythia.”
“What is it that threatens us? Long-haired Gaul? Britannia? Is it something sprung of Oceanus, something we’ve never seen before? We can fight anything, be it monster or man. We are Romans!” Agrippa wiped the sweat from his forehead and poured himself a drink.
“Yes,” said Augustus wearily. “It is something we’ve never seen before.”
Agrippa drained his first cup of wine, recoiling at the aftertaste.
“I assume you know your wine is foul,” he said, and served himself another cup, taking only one sip before he grimaced and poured it out, shaking his head. “Is it peace that frightens you, then? I grant you, it’s unusual, but Egypt is conquered, and Rome is fortified against any enemy.”
Augustus looked at him with a pained expression on his face. He shook his head.
“You know me, Octavian,” Agrippa said, his voice softening. “You’ve known me since we were boys. Do you not trust me enough to tell me what is wrong? You’ve not been right since we took Alexandria, since the business with Antony. I have forgiven that. It was wrong, but it is long since finished.”
There was a moment in which Augustus thought he might tell his friend everything, but it quickly passed. He was the emperor now. There was no one he could truly trust, not even his closest associates. He’d learned that much from Caesar.
“My name is Augustus, not Octavian. I am no longer the boy you knew. See that you remember that,” Augustus said coolly. “Bring me the witches.”
Agrippa looked at him for a bewildered moment, and then left the room, shaking his head. Augustus poured himself another cup of wine, and with it, theriac. He felt the ingredients edge into the back of his mind. His fingertips tingled.
The first witch presented to him was a tall, slender, white-haired woman with silvery, slanting, wide-set eyes, her fingers gnarled at the knuckles, her lips pale and thin, like those of a fish. Augustus could not tell her age. She might be seventy or a hundred. She was clearly agitated, and in chains.
“Her name is Auðr, and I found her myself in Germany,” Agrippa said. “The villagers there relied on her to bring babies, but she came to them over the water, from the frozen lands where nothing lives, and they swore she had other talents.”
“A midwife?” Augustus barked, disgusted.