Queen of Kings - Maria Dahvana Headley [91]
Augustus awaited them, already dressed in ceremonial garb, his gilded laurel crown gleaming on his head. Agrippa stood beside him, rigid with discomfort.
“You will be positioned around the emperor,” Agrippa said. “Each of you will defend him from his enemy.”
“From Cleopatra,” said Augustus.
“From Cleopatra. My men will be positioned all around you. The circus will be filled with them. There will be no danger. She is one woman.”
Agrippa turned his gaze to Chrysate.
“You will bring the illusion,” he said.
“He is no illusion,” Chrysate replied. “He is the queen’s husband.”
“You will use Antony to attract Cleopatra to us,” said Augustus, and smiled, though his lips wobbled. He did not wish to let them see his nervousness. It would be done soon.
“And how do you propose to destroy her once she is captured?” Usem asked.
“That is not for you to know,” Agrippa said, and Augustus shook his head.
“No,” he said. “Some things are better kept secret.”
19
Above the arena a pale moth fluttered, tempted by the torchlight. The moth twisted, stretching its antennae, batting itself about on currents of wind, floating suspended and desiring over the chaos of the crowd.
Hundreds of thousands of people were gathered there, chanting and shouting, and the heat of their bodies called up to the insect. Outside the walls of the arena, more people pummeled each other, pushing themselves up onto the hills in order to look down into the circus and see the animals and fighters.
Below the moth, each torch looked like a glorious lake of fire.
It swept itself closer, hovering over the starry earth.
The passages below the city were dark, despite the torchlight. Holding her breath to avoid inhaling the too tempting smell of blood, Cleopatra pressed herself against the clammy wall of a slender passage. She could feel every stone through the thin tunic she’d worn, imagining herself more easily concealed if she appeared to be one of the animal tenders.
Still, she received some suspicious looks. There were few women below the ground, and the queen had an unearthly glow about her skin.
“What are you, lady?” a manure sweep stammered, and fell to his knees in worship as she passed him.
She broke his neck for the question and threw his body into a bundle of straw. She could not afford screams.
The bestiarii occupied special quarters, and the queen smiled as she passed them. The gladiators caged there were chained until needed. Some of them would be permitted to kill the beasts they fought, provided with weapons or with hobbled opponents, and others would be sent naked before Rome to be executed by beasts. Something in their looming mortality pleased the dark parts of her heart. The parts that were not her own.
She heard the bears, smelled their ripe odor. The crocodiles were familiar, caged in a muddy pool to keep them wet. The quarters for the wild cats smelled of goat meat.
In Egypt, to kill a lion or a cat of any kind without the proper ceremonies would be death to the murderer. Here, things were done differently. In Rome, the animals were not gods.
Or maybe it was simply that the Romans did not know that they were.
In the air before the queen, a pale feather floated downward, caught in an unknown current.
The feather of Maat, she thought convulsively, though the better part of her mind knew that it was nothing more divine than a goose feather. Cleopatra could hardly ask for assistance from Maat. The Goddess of the Weighing of the Heart, of Truth, and of Justice kept chaos—isfet—from reigning. If the heart that had once belonged to Cleopatra were weighed now, she knew it would fail the test. Sekhmet was Maat’s opposite, desiring a world of blood and violence. The scales would drop, and her heart, leaden, would be given to the Eater of Souls, who crouched beneath the scales, lion-haunched, crocodile-jawed, fangs shining. Still, Cleopatra whispered a word of blessing to Maat, for whatever little good it might do her.
There was too much death in her memory. Caesarion, leaping from the platform, his neck breaking in the hand of