I looked at Cleopatra across the way. Had she ever met Rupa? I thought not, and there was nothing to indicate that she realized who was kissing her sister's toe while all Rome watched. But on her face was a frown as dark as her sister's smile was dazzling.

Ganymedes, reaching Arsinoe and seeing that she was in no danger, fell to his knees beside Rupa. Awkwardly, because of his chains, he bowed deeply and kissed the princess's other foot.

The crowd became even more jubilant.

The lictors yanked Rupa to his feet. I held my breath, fearing the worst, but the lictors only threw him back into the crowd, where he sent spectators tumbling in all directions, like a boulder hurled from a catapult.

The lictors reached for Ganymedes. Flailing against his chains, the eunuch managed to thwart them and remained on his knees, abasing himself before Arsinoe.

"Spare the princess!" someone shouted.

"Yes, spare the princess!" cried others.

The cry quickly became a chant: "Spare the princess! Spare the princess! Spare the princess!"

"But what about the eunuch?" shouted someone.

"Kill the eunuch!" came the answer, followed by a roar of laughter.

This was added to the chant: "Spare the princess, kill the eunuch! Spare the princess, kill the eunuch!"

Ganymedes was finally pulled to his feet and shoved forward, with blows from the lictors' rods to speed him along. On his face was a look of both triumph and despair. Arsinoe, her head held high, the smile still lighting her face, resumed her mincing forward progress.

The princess passed from view, and the long file of lictors paraded before us, but still the chanting continued: "Spare the princess, kill the eunuch! Spare the princess, kill the eunuch!"

By some magic of group mentality, the crowd spontaneously split the chant between the two sides of the triumphal pathway. Those opposite the Capitoline Hill shouted, "Spare the princess!" Those on the other side responded, "Kill the eunuch!" The two sides competed to see which could yell the loudest. In the middle of this deafening crossfire came Caesar in his triumphal chariot. The chants roared back and forth, like volleys from rival catapults.

"Spare the princess!"

"Kill the eunuch!"

"Spare the princess!"

"Kill the eunuch!"

Caesar looked vexed and confused, and doing a poor job of trying not to show it, much as he had appeared in the Gallic Triumph when his soldiers teased him for his youthful liaison with Nicomedes. I saw him lift his gaze to the dignitaries' box and exchange a look of consternation with Cleopatra. These two should have been sharing the afterglow of the crowd's reaction to the golden statue of the queen; instead, they were being subjected to acclamations for Arsinoe.

Up in the stands, we were all on our feet, and my own family members had joined in the chant. Fortunately, we were on the side calling to spare the princess; I doubt that my wife, daughter, or daughter-in-law would have joined in calling for the death of Ganymedes, but Davus might have done so, and the bloodthirsty slave boys would not have hesitated. I myself remained silent.

As if trying to make sense of the crowd's fervor, Caesar ran his eyes slowly over the reviewing stands, looking from face to face. He saw my family, chanting with the rest; he saw me, standing silent. For an instant, his eyes met mine. He had no way of knowing that it was my adopted son who had set off the crowd's reaction.

The triumphal chariot eventually passed from view, followed by rank upon rank of veterans from the Egyptian campaign. Infected by the crowd's enthusiasm, even the soldiers took up the deafening chant: "Spare the princess, kill the eunuch! Spare the princess, kill the eunuch!"

"Oh, Rupa!" I whispered to myself. "What have you done?"

XIV

"Rupa, what were you thinking? You could be dead right now! The lictors could have dragged you up to the Carcer along with those wretched Egyptians and dropped you into the Tullianum, and we would never have seen you alive again!"

The sun had set. The moon had risen. Occasionally, here in my lamplit garden, I could hear snatches of music and revelry from the Forum, where the feast that followed the triumph still continued, with endless Egyptian delicacies on offer. But I was in no mood to eat and drink. Every time I thought of the terrible risk Rupa had taken that day, my blood ran cold.

"But, Papa," objected Diana, "what did Rupa do that was against the law?"

"I'm pretty sure that a citizen is not allowed to interrupt the progress of a triumph."

"He didn't interrupt it. He took part in it! People do that sort of thing all the time. They run onto the path to taunt the prisoners, or to get a closer look at some trophy, or to plant a kiss on a soldier's cheek. We've all seen such things. Unless Caesar has passed some law against kissing a girl's toe-"

"Rupa embarrassed the dictator!"

"I'm pretty sure that's not against the law, either, Papa. Caesar's not a king. We don't live and breathe at his pleasure."

"Not yet," I muttered.

"And nothing untoward happened. The lictors came running, they threw Rupa off the pathway, he disappeared back into the crowd, and that was the end of it. Apparently, Caesar doesn't even know it was Rupa who saved the princess."

"Saved the princess!" I uttered the statement incredulously, amazed at the enormity of it. Arsinoe had been spared, and Rupa was the man most responsible for saving her. "A foreign-born freedman does not go about thwarting the will of a Roman dictator and nullifying a death sentence ordered by the Roman state. Such things do not happen!"

"But apparently they do, Papa."

"It was a mad act."

"I think it was terribly heroic," insisted Diana.

"So do I," said Bethesda.

The two of them converged on Rupa and planted kisses on his cheeks. He had been frowning and staring at the ground while I lectured him, but now he smiled and hugged himself. All my admonishments were for nothing.

"Besides," said Diana, "Rupa acted purely on impulse. There was nothing deliberate about what he did. He couldn't possibly foresee the outcome of his actions."

I was not so sure about this. In earlier days, Rupa and his sister, Cassandra, had been street performers in Alexandria. He was not an actor, just a mime, playing burly silent parts; nevertheless, he must have learned how to anticipate and manipulate the reactions of an audience. Bowing before Arsinoe and kissing her foot had played adroitly upon the crowd's sentiment, and the result had been just what Rupa desired. At the conclusion of his triumph, Caesar had bowed to the will of the people; criers announced that the princess would be spared and sent into exile, while Ganymedes and the other captives were duly executed.

I gazed hard into Rupa's unblinking eyes. His wits were on the simple side of average, that was certain, but because he was a mute, and brawny as well, had I underestimated his native intelligence? He might not possess the verbal capabilities of a Cicero, able to sway a jury with well-chosen words, yet he had proven himself able to rouse a multitude with a single, bold, perfectly timed gesture.

"Besides, Papa, you wanted to see Arsinoe spared, just like everyone else. Admit it!"

"The poor girl!" Bethesda shook her head. "An Egyptian princess, at the mercy of those Roman brutes-terrible!" More than ever since our return from Egypt, my wife loved to play the part of the cosmopolitan Alexandrian appalled by Roman barbarity.

"Poor girl?" I threw up my hands. "Arsinoe is a conniving royal brat, responsible for hundreds, maybe thousands, of deaths back in Egypt. She put one of her own generals to death! She's a viper, no less than her sister."

"Even so, Caesar had no business threatening to execute the child, just to show off," insisted Bethesda. "It did him no credit. It made him look bad, parading that poor girl in chains."