It's the Ides of March -- commemorate it by buying Hand of Isis! :)

Seriously, though -- this morning I rewatched on YouTube one of the older versions of Caesar's eulogy -- young Marlon Brando as Marcus Antonius giving Shakespeare's immortal funeral oration. Several readers have asked me, "How do you go about writing characters who are so iconic, so well known, without the ghosts of all past portrayals of Caesar being there for comparison?"

The answer is that they are there. One of the differences between writing Hand of Isis and Black Ships is that we are much more familiar with Cleopatra, Julius Caesar and Marcus Antonius than with any of the characters in the Aeneid. So the challenge becomes how to do something fresh and different with them while staying true to what we know about them from historical sources. One thing I did was to put them in different situations, to choose to show different scenes than the iconic ones. Rather than the expected scene between Cleopatra and Julius Caesar in Alexandria, with her delivered to him in a rug, I gave the screen time to this one instead.

This was the first scene written in Hand of Isis, back in 2005, and it's one of my favorite Caesar bits. In which Cleopatra sends Charmian to talk to Caesar in Alexandria while they are his prisoners, hoping that Charmian will find an opening they can use.



This villa, like so many, was built to catch the sea breezes. In better times, doubtless it was a lovely place to set out couches and little tables, and dine in the sea air, with the soft scents of the garden below. There were no couches or tables now, only a sentry at each end of the building, the cressets unlit, as they would interfere with their night vision over the shaded garden. Still, the waning moon was bright enough that it hardly mattered.

I walked out to the rail and took a deep breath, clear and cool, like drinking moonlight.

I was not alone. His hair was a loose cap of silver, and he stood by the rail as well, some little way away, looking out over the garden. From the other side of the villa we should have been able to see Pharos and the sea, but this side looked the other way, toward the Mareotic Canal with its long lines of barges, bringing the grain of the Black Land endlessly to the sea. It was Caesar.

“Who’s there?” he said sharply, one hand dropping to his waist, to a dagger I did not see. Romans have assassins too.

I stepped out into the bright moonlight, my open hands held well away from my sides. “It is only I, Imperator.” My white himation shone in the darkness. No assassin would wear such.

His hand stilled. “You are one of her handmaidens,” he said. “I’ve seen you. Charmian, is it?”

“It is,” I said, inclining my head. I wished he did not know my name. It was better to be anonymous, a shadow behind Cleopatra. But then, Caesar noticed such things. "I did not mean to disturb you." I looked away. "It's only that it's so close in the villa, and I felt if I did not get some air I should scream."

"That would hardly do," he said with a strange half smile, the left side of his mouth pulling more than the right. "I expect it would alarm people."

"It would," I said.

He lifted my chin with one hand. “You have the look of her." His hand was warm, and he turned my face as though it were some work of art.

“Ptolemy Auletes was eclectic in his tastes,” I said. "We were born the same year."

“Her sister as well as her servant? Interesting.” The Roman raised one eyebrow. “You are loyal to her, then?”

“Would I tell you, Imperator, if I were not?” I asked. “Surely you cannot expect naiveté from someone who serves Cleopatra Philopater? If we were any of us naïve we should be long since dead.” His face was very near mine, and the moonlight made each wrinkle a deep gravure, but his eyes were bright as stars, light reflecting. It seemed that I had dreamed this once, or perhaps that I dreamed still, sleeping beside Cleopatra and wondering how I should speak with Caesar. It was that sense of dream that made me bold. "She is the Living Isis, Her hands on earth. You must put her on the throne of Egypt. It is what she was born to do."

"No doubt it's what she wishes," Caesar said dryly, releasing my chin with the same unminding caress one would use for a cat. "Your mistress has many estimable qualities."

"Does she fascinate you, Imperator?" I asked.

“As she means to?” He turned, one eyebrow rising again. “You can tell her yes, of course she does.” He looked out over the garden. Somewhere out there in the night the river was flowing beneath the stars, the Nile rolling ever seaward, as it always had and always would. I said nothing, just waited for him to drink his fill of the night. “The pyramids are two thousand years old,” he said. “So they tell me. How old are your gods?”

"Do you care for gods, Imperator? I didn’t think Romans put much stock in such.” Certainly Gnaeus had not, and I had not known so many others closely. They seemed a supremely practical people.

“I am a priest of Jupiter,” he said lightly. “Or had you forgotten?”

“I did not know,” I said. “Perhaps there is some small flaw in our intelligence.” I came and stood beside him at the rail, looked sideways at his face. “Do you believe in pothos, like Alexander? Fata, leading you by the hand?”

“It’s a foolish man who scorns Fata,” he said. “I don’t think even my enemies have called me foolish.”

“No,” I said. “That’s not the thing they’ve named you.” Rebel, traitor, tyrant, a man with no regard for law, a man who would be king -- all those things had been said and more. But no man had called him foolish, at least not in a very long time. But what did he believe? If any man knew that, they did not speak of it.

Caesar looked vaguely amused. “And does Cleopatra wish a second Alexander to swoop down upon her enemies like a plunging falcon? To raise new temples in her honor? A royal wedding and a Caesarid dynasty?”

“You have named it, not I,” I said, but a shiver ran down my back.

He laughed, a pleasant enough sound. “She wishes to know these things. Why does she send you to ask me?”

I must gamble. The stakes were too high not to. “Because you will tell me,” I said, certainty in my voice.

“And why will I do that?”

“Because you have known me for a thousand years. I have died in your service. I have saved your life when your enemies sought you, and I have killed a man across your funeral bier.” I held his eyes, and in his face I saw it again, the funeral cortege making its way down a mountain road. “We carried you to Memphis in a coffin of gold and laid you among the sacred kings, beside the bulls of Serapis until your city was ready. You may not remember, waking, this side of the River, but I think that you do know. I think you know much more than you pretend.”

Caesar tilted his head to the side, his face unreadable. “Strange,” he said quietly. “You look Greek, with your fair hair."

"I am all Egypt," I said. "Egypt as she is now, Black Land and Red Land and City together. You have come home to your place, Imperator, and she greets you as a lover long absent and much missed. Do not scorn Fata, or the words of the gods."

“Now you are the voice of a goddess, not a slave?”

“We are all more than we seem, Divine Julius, the Son of Venus,” I said. “Are you not descended from Venus through that Trojan tossed over sea and land by the enmity of Juno, until at last he came to Italian shores and took up his long destiny?"

He threw his head back and laughed, long thin throat exposed. “I should take this then as a caution against sparring with Cleopatra. If the handmaiden is so practiced in arms, I should beware your mistress!"

I inclined my head. “Perhaps you should. But you have not answered my question.”

“Nor will I. Now,” he said, and smiling walked away.

I waited until he was gone. He had answered. I knew what I had come to find out.