Julius’s face lit up. “I will. As soon as he can be moved, I will take him home. The king of Syria has invited me to visit him and I will take Cleopatra there. Then Crete, perhaps, or Cyprus, Greece, and home at last. We will stand in the forum in a Roman summer and I’ll hold the boy up to the crowd for them to see.”

“There will be a struggle ahead if you still intend a dynasty, an empire,” Brutus murmured.

Julius shook his head. “Not now, Brutus. Can’t you see it? The legions are loyal to me and the Senate will be handpicked. Whether they realize it or not, the empire is already begun. Who is left to resist my claim, after all? Pompey was the last of them.”

Brutus nodded, his eyes dark with thought.

An hour later Sosigenes came bustling out to them, surprising the guards. The man was beaming as if personally responsible for the events of the night.

“You have your son, Caesar, as I said you would. Will you come in?”

Julius clapped a hand on his shoulder, making him wince. “Show me,” he said.

Brutus did not follow and was left alone to spread the happy news to the legions that had gathered outside in the dawn.

Cleopatra lay on her bed with the hangings tied back to give her air. She looked exhausted and dazed, with shadows under her eyes. Her skin was pale and as Julius rushed over to her a slave girl dried the perspiration from her skin, dabbing gently with a cloth.

There were many others in the room, though Julius didn’t notice them. Cleopatra’s breasts were bared and against one was the baby he had hoped for, the tiny face lost as it pressed against the yielding flesh.

Julius sat on the bed and leaned over them, ignoring the slave girl as she moved away. Cleopatra opened her eyes.

“My beautiful queen,” Julius murmured, smiling. “Sosigenes said it was a boy.”

“The old fool is very proud of himself,” Cleopatra said, wincing as the baby clenched her nipple in its gums. “You have a son, Julius.”

Gently, he reached up and smoothed a tendril of hair from her forehead.

“I have waited all my life for you,” he said to her.

Tears filled her eyes and she laughed at her own reaction. “I seem to cry at the slightest thing,” she said, then grimaced as the baby shifted once more. For an instant, her nipple was revealed before the hungry mouth found it and clamped on, sucking busily. “He is strong,” she said.

Julius looked at the tiny figure half concealed by cloths. Fresh from the womb, the baby was wrinkled, his skin a shade of blue that faded even as Julius watched. A smear of blood lay on his head, mingled with hair as black as his mother’s.