Julius could only stare from one to the other. In creamy marble, he saw the features of the queen staring down at him. The statue held a boy child in her arms and looked outwards in pride. It was an expression he knew well.

Cleopatra saw his upwards gaze and smiled. “This is Isis, Caesar, mother of Horus, whom she holds.”

“With your face,” Julius said wonderingly.

“The temple is a thousand years old, before Alexander came here. Yet she lives in me.”

He looked at her as the cats rubbed themselves against her legs.

“My son will be a god, Julius; your son. Do you understand now?”

He did not say that the face of the statue was fractionally different as he studied it. The woman in stone was a little older than Cleopatra, and as the first shock faded he could see the line of the jaw was different. The eyes were wider spaced and yet . . . it was astonishing. She nodded, pleased with his reaction.

“Will you pray to her, with me?” she said.

Julius frowned. “If she is in you, how can you pray?” he asked.

Her teeth showed as she grinned. “So very blunt, Roman. I should have expected it. It is a mystery, is it not? I carry the flame hidden in flesh, yet she is still there. When I travel the dead path, it will be a return, not a beginning. Understand that and you understand me. It would please me to have you pray to her. She will bless our son and keep him safe.”

Julius could not refuse as she gazed at him. He knelt and bowed his head, pleased there were no other eyes to see him do it.

The scribes’ quarter of the royal palace at Alexandria was almost a town in itself, with thousands of scholars working within its walls. After the destruction of the great library, the lamps were lit all night and day as the written works of masters were brought in from all over Egypt and Greece and copied with painstaking care.