Page 77 of Cleopatra

No matter how much time I spent trying to regain what had been, I knew that the city would never be the same. Like bone that had knitted back together, it would be imperfect, but stronger than before.

I felt myself begin to sway and Archibios was there by my side. He didn’t touch me—to lay hands on a pharaoh without permission was a grave sin—but his hands hovered by my back, to catch me if I fell.

“Pharaoh, are you well?”

I nodded, my eyes closed. “Yes, just exhausted. I spent the night in the new hospital.”

It wasn’t a building yet, just a collection of canopies, but it had already seen a steady stream of visitors.

“You must protect your own health before that of others, Pharaoh. How fares the babe?”

My hands went to my stomach protectively and I smiled. “Due soon.”

“It is good they will be born during peacetime. War is no place for a baby.”

“No, especially one who is the heir of Rome and Egypt.”

Archibios grew pensive, and I could see a question brewing on his lips.

“Ask,” I said. “We have spent too many years together to be shy in the face of curiosity.”

He returned my smile, but he still hesitated. “I…I have heard what the Roman courtiers are saying…that Caesar will not claim your child as his own. That he intends to return to Calpurnia in Rome.”

I sighed. It wasn’t the worst rumour to have reached my ears in recent times, and in some ways, it was a relief to hear of something so tame.

“I care not for the talk of Romans in my court.”

Archibios grimaced at the sharpness of my tone and I continued more gently, “My child is the heir to Rome and Egypt, no matter who claims otherwise. My word is the law.”

I clasped my hands together to stop them trembling. Archibios’s enquiries had triggered my fear that Caesar would yet abandon me.

But then I saw him stride across the courtyard and all worries fled my mind. Dirt and sweat streaked his body from his efforts helping the labourers haul in stone.

He saw me looking and smiled. Caesar was not one to smile quickly or often, but when he did, it was as though the sun shone on my brow.

Ten days after the war was won, he had left Antirhodos in the middle of the night and I had woken up alone, the sheets beside me unslept in.

“Where is he?” I knew I sounded like a desert fox, screeching for my mate. My usual measured disposition was fraught under the strain of the pregnancy.

“No one knows,” Charmion said gently. “He went with a small group of his most trusted soldiers.”

I paced the length of the island, waiting for Caesar to return. My swollen ankles ached, but my anger needed to be exercised.

When I saw his ship on the horizon, I waited by the dock, seething.

“Where did you go?” I said as he disembarked.

“My queen.” He lowered a kiss to my brow and frowned when the creases there did not ease.

“Where did you go?” I repeated.

He smiled faintly, as though he was enjoying the heat of my anger. It only incensed me more.

“Julius, where did you go?”

His soldiers were unloading a crate behind him, and he stepped back so I could see it.

“I went hunting.”