Antony and Cleopatra by Colleen McCullough

So I let it slip that late April is the time of year when we pull all the ships out of their sheds, go over them for leaks, and exercise them and their crews. What a fortunate chance! I said. Ready to go instead of struggling for ages to mend leaky ships.”
    And he is not yet six years old, thought Sosigenes. This child has been blessed by all of Egypt’s gods.
    “I don’t like that ‘we,’” said the mother, frowning.
    The bright, eager face fell. “Mama! You can’t mean it! I am to go with you—I must go with you!”
    “Someone has to rule in my absence, Caesarion.”
    “Not I! I am too young!”
    “Old enough, and that’s enough. No Tarsus for you.”
    A verdict that ruptured the essential vulnerability of a five-year-old; an inconsolable sorrow welled up in Caesarion, that pain only a child can feel at being deprived of some new and passionately wanted experience. He burst into noisy tears, but when his mother went to comfort him, he shoved her away so fiercely that she staggered, and he ran from the room.
    “He’ll get over it,” Cleopatra said comfortably. “My, isn’t he strong?”
    Will he get over it? wondered Tach’a, who saw a different Caesarion—driven, split, achingly lonely. He’s Caesar, not Cleopatra, and she doesn’t understand him. It wasn’t the chance to strut like a child king made him hunger to go to Tarsus, it was the chance to see new places, ease his restlessness at this small world he inhabits.
     
     
    Two days later the royal fleet was assembled in the Great Harbor, with Philopator’s gigantic vessel tied up at the wharf in the little annex called the Royal Harbor.
    “Ye gods!” said Dellius, gaping at it. “Is everything in Egypt larger than in the rest of the world?”
    “We like to think so,” said Caesarion, who for reasons known only to himself had developed a habit of following Dellius around.
    “It’s a barge! It will wallow and sink!”
    “It’s a ship, not a barge,” said Caesarion. “Ships have keels, barges do not,” he went on like a schoolmaster, “and the keel of Philopator was carved from one enormous cedar hewn in the Libanus—we owned Syria then. Philopator was properly built, with a kelson, and bilges, and a flat-bottomed hull. He has loads of room belowdeck, and see? Both banks of oars are in outriggers. He’s not top-heavy, even from the weight of the outriggers. His mast is a hundred feet tall, and Captain Agathocles has decided to keep the lateen sail on board in case the wind’s really good. See his figurehead? That’s Philopator himself, going before us.”
    “You know a lot,” said Dellius, who didn’t understand much about ships, even after this lesson.
    “Our fleets sail to India and Taprobane. Mama has promised me that when I’m older, she’ll take me to the Sinus Arabicus to see them set out. How I’d love to go with them!” Suddenly the boy stiffened and prepared for flight. “There’s my nursemaid! It’s absolutely disgusting to have a nursemaid!” And off he ran, determined to elude the poor creature, no match for her charge.
    Not long after, a servant came for Quintus Dellius; time to board his ship, which was not the Philopator . He didn’t know whether to be glad or sorry; the Queen’s vessel would undoubtedly lag far behind the rest, even if its accommodations were luxurious.
    Though Dellius didn’t know, Cleopatra’s shipwrights had made changes to her vessel, which had survived its seagoing trials surprisingly well. It measured three hundred fifty feet from stem to stern, and forty feet in the beam. Shifting both banks of rowers into outriggers had increased the space belowdeck, but Pharaoh couldn’t be housed near laboring men, so belowdeck was given over to the hundred and fifty people who sailed in Philopator , most of them almost demented with terror at the very thought of riding on the sea.
    The old stern reception room was turned into Pharaoh’s domain, large enough for a spacious bedroom,