Pharaoh Read Online Free PDF Page B

favorable. Now to the matter of the army.”
    “Which army is that?” the eunuch asked, and Kleopatra wondered if Caesar would simply take this idiot by the throat and rid
     them of himwithout further delay. But Caesar was patient, exercising, she supposed, the mercy upon which he so prided himself.
    “The army that is encamped at Pelusium, commanded by General Achillas; the army that you were prepared to turn against the
     queen. I sent a message to Achillas, a message composed with the cooperation of the king, demanding that the army be disbanded.
     Achillas’s answer was to murder the messengers. You will now send to Achillas and tell him that if he does not disband his
     troops outside the city walls, I shall summon every Roman legion from our eastern territories and turn them against him. Is
     that clear?”
    “Amply, Great Caesar.” Pothinus spoke with an expression of consternation on his face, as if he were suffering from acute
     dysentery.
    “And the king and the princess Arsinoe and yourself shall not leave the palace until it is confirmed that the army is no longer.”
    “I see,” said the eunuch.
    “We are outnumbered here, but that will not be true for long. And may I remind you that the forces of Pompey the Great had
     us outnumbered five to one at Pharsalos. So do not become excessively confident in your greater numbers. I am not toying with
     you. Rome will be obeyed at any cost to you.”
    Pothinus nodded. Throughout the discourse, Arsinoe had kept her fingers tightly clenched around her brother’s wrist, squeezing,
     Kleopatra suspected, whenever the boy moved to speak. What was she plotting? And how would she execute her plans? One thing
     was certain: no Ptolemaic woman would sit idly and let her Fate be dictated by a man, foreign or familial.

    Julius Caesar’s vanity saved their lives.
    Though he had not much hair, his visits to the barber were frequent and regular, and he preferred a good Greek barber to all
     others, or so he claimed. He liked the way the man took time to heat and moisturize the face before removing the stubble with
     a razor, and he also liked how the barber let the thickest part of his hair grow longer than the rest, using the volume to
     cover his ever-receding hairline. He confessed all this to Kleopatra, who declared that Rome would never reach theGreek standards of Beauty because what they treasured in life was not beautiful.
    “I don’t know why I suffer your insults,” Caesar told her. “You are just a grandiose girl.”
    “Perhaps because you know I am right,” she said.
    They were snuggled in bed, falling into a deep, postcoital sleep, when the fighting broke out. Kleopatra heard the clash of
     swords and the rumble of men’s battle cries coming through the window, startling her from the beginning of a hazy dream. Before
     she could articulate a thought, Caesar was up and dressed and telling her to neither worry nor leave the room. She thought
     of General Achillas at the head of the army, the preening, swarthy commander who had once tried to entrap her into a sexual
     liaison with him in exchange for protection against her brother and his regents. How she would like to see Caesar bring this
     man to his knees in defeat.
    Luckily, when Caesar had been to the barber a few days earlier, the man had whispered in his ear as he leaned over the bowl
     of steaming water: “General, I shall pretend to clip the hairs from your inner ears so that I may whisper to you. There are
     things you must know.” And Caesar, intrigued, gave his permission, though he was privately mortified that anyone might think
     he had unsightly ear hairs that required removal. The barber informed him that Pothinus and another eunuch, an army commander
     named Ganymedes, had sent to Achillas demanding that he march his army of almost twenty thousand men into Alexandria in secret
     and launch a surprise attack on Caesar and his small legion of two thousand. It was only a matter of days