Free Antony and Cleopatra by Colleen McCullough Page B

thin voice.
    “You were not asked.”
    “And am I asked this evening?”
    “No.”
    “Ought I perhaps send the Queen a little note to inform her that I am of royal blood, and your guest here in Tarsus? If I did, she would surely extend her invitation to include me.”
    “You could, Glaphyra,” said Antony, suddenly feeling jovial, “but it wouldn’t get you anywhere. Pack your things. I’m sending you back to Comana tomorrow at dawn.”
    The tears cascaded like silent rain.
    “Oh, cease the waterworks, woman!” Antony cried. “You will get what you want, but not yet. Continue the waterworks, and you might get nothing.”
     
     
    Only on the third evening at the third dinner aboard Philopator did Antony mention Cassius. How her cooks managed to keep on presenting novelties eluded him, but his friends were lost in an ecstasy of edibles that left them little time to watch what the couple on the lectus medius were doing. Certainly not making any amatory advances to each other, and with that speculation dead in the water, the sight of those gorgeous girls was far more thrilling—though some guests made a greater fuss of the little boys.
    “You had better come to the governor’s palace for dinner on the morrow,” said Antony, who had eaten well on each of the three occasions, but not made a glutton of himself. “Give your cooks a well-deserved rest.”
    “If you like,” she said indifferently; she picked at food, took a sparrow’s portions.
    “But before you honor my quarters with your royal presence, Your Majesty, I think we’d better clear up the matter of that aid you gave Gaius Cassius.”
    “Aid? What aid?”
    “Don’t you call four good Roman legions aid?”
    “My dear Marcus Antonius,” she drawled wearily, “those four legions marched north in the charge of Aulus Allienus, who I was led to believe was a legate of Publius Dolabella, the then legal governor of Syria. As Alexandria was threatened by plague as well as famine, I was glad to hand the four legions Caesar left there to Allienus. If he decided to change sides after he had crossed the border into Syria, that cannot be laid at my door. The fleet I sent you and Octavianus was wrecked in a storm, but you’ll find no records of fleets donated to Gaius Cassius, any more than he got money from me, or grain from me, or other troops from me. I do admit that my viceroy on Cyprus, Serapion, did send aid to Brutus and Cassius, but I am happy to see Serapion executed. He acted without orders from me, which makes him a traitor to Egypt. If you do not execute him, I certainly will on my way home.”
    “Humph,” Antony grunted, scowling. He knew everything she said was true, but that was not his problem; his problem was how to twist what she said to look like lies. “I can produce slaves willing to testify that Serapion acted under your orders.”
    “Freely, or under torture?” she asked coolly.
    “Freely.”
    “For a minute fraction of the gold you hunger for more than Midas did. Come, Antonius, let us be frank! I am here because your fabulous East is bankrupt thanks to a Roman civil war, and suddenly Egypt looks like a huge goose capable of laying huge golden eggs. Well, disabuse yourself!” she snapped. “Egypt’s gold belongs to Egypt, which enjoys Friend and Ally of the Roman People status, and has never broken trust. If you want Egypt’s gold, you’ll have to wrest it from me by force, at the head of an army. And even then you’ll be disappointed. Dellius’s pathetic little list of treasures to be found in Alexandria is but one golden egg in a mighty pile of them. And that pile is so well concealed that you will never find it. Nor will you torture it out of me or my priests, who are the only ones who know its whereabouts.”
    Not the speech of someone who could be cowed!
    Listening for the slightest tremor in Cleopatra’s voice and watching for the slightest tension in her hands, her body, Antony could find none. Worse, he knew from