Egypt's Sister: A Novel of Cleopatra

by Angela Hunt

  A compliant slave, one born to the life, would not have done what I did next, but my feet were accustomed to freedom. I climbed the remaining steps and pounded on the door. I heard movement from within, then stood with both hands on my hips.

  A hulking man opened the door, his face red, his tunic splashed with blood.

  “What have you done?” I shouted, pointing to the two corpses on his stairs. “You will be held accountable for this!”

  I was thinking of his accountability before HaShem, Master of the universe and defender of the poor and helpless, but he was clearly thinking of something else. Though his eyes flared when I began to shout, by the time I finished he had turned and moved away. “A moment,” he called, leaving me to blink in the lamplight and wonder what he could possibly be doing.

  He returned with a bag in his hand—a bag of coin, I realized, when I heard metals clinking against one another.

  “I did not know,” he said, lowering his head, “that the slave belonged to Octavian Caesar. I reacted in anger when the babe was born dead, and afterward I learned to whom the slave belonged. Take this to him with my apologies. If he desires more, have him send word, and I will pay.”

  He closed the door, leaving me speechless and holding a bag of blood money.

  By the time I woke the next morning, the full story had spread throughout the area and reached our household. Sabina had delivered a beautiful baby boy to the blacksmith’s wife, already mother to three girls, but the cord had wrapped around his neck during delivery. The father burst into the birthing room as Sabina worked on the stillborn child, trying to encourage him to breathe. The man yanked Sabina away from the infant, cut her throat, and dragged her out of the house so swiftly no one could intervene. His hysterical wife screamed that the midwife belonged to Gaius Octavian Caesar, so by the time I arrived, the blacksmith was prepared to pay.

  I gave the money to the doorman when I came in and then went straight to bed. After hearing the missing details from another slave, I went to the room where Dominus was working and rapped on the door. “Enter.”

  Still dazed, I gave my report of what had happened and gestured to the bag of coins on his desk. “I see you have already received recompense for Sabina’s life.”

  “Yes. Thank you for bringing it to me.” A smile flashed briefly over his lips. “A lesser slave would have taken the money and run, but she wouldn’t have gotten far.”

  I blinked at him. A woman would have to be a fool to run with so much coin—she’d be beaten and robbed before daybreak.

  I drew a deep breath. “If you have any questions for me—”

  “None,” he said, returning to the parchments on his desk.

  I thought—hoped—he might remark on Sabina’s courage and valuable work, but he seemed to have already forgotten the matter.

  “Sir—” I hesitated, carefully choosing my words—“should we not send someone to pick up her body? She should be cared for and buried—”

  “She was a slave, not a person of significance.” Octavian shuffled through the pages on his desk. “She has probably been thrown into the Tiber by now, so you need not concern yourself.”

  “Will you take no action against the man who killed her?”

  “Why should I? He has paid his debt.”

  He looked up, a smile lighting his face. “That reminds me—you will be the first to hear my news. I am getting married.”

  “Sir?”

  “A lovely lady called Scribonia. We will have the wedding here, within the month. Send Amphion to me, will you? I expect we have a lot of work to do.”

  He waved me away with a flick of his fingers, so I left him, reminded once again of how unimportant slaves were in Rome. Yet I was not discouraged, for another of HaShem’s names overcame my sorrow: El Gmulot, the God of Recompense.

  Justice might not be meted out in this life, but gentle Sabina would not be forgotten, and her death would not be unavenged.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  During the summer of my fifth year in Rome, Dominus married Scribonia, a dignified, serious woman. The lady was several years older than Octavian, but she had powerful connections that would be useful to him. The wedding was a simple affair, yet the house flooded with highborn people ranging from senators to foreign kings.

  I had been anxious as the day approached, afraid that Mark Antony and Cleopatra might appear, but they did not. Later I learned that Antony had been in Sicyon with his wife, Fulvia. The woman had fallen ill and eventually died, but Antony left her without even saying good-bye. He and Octavian were at odds over some issue regarding troop movements, and war between them seemed inevitable. But their legionaries, reluctant to fight fellow Romans, compelled the two men to make peace.

  One of the wedding guests did cause my heart to beat faster—Herod of Judea had come to Rome and visited Palatine Hill to congratulate Octavian on his marriage. From a safe distance, I studied the Judean ruler and eavesdropped on as many of his conversations as possible. I could not forget that Asher and Yosef had fled to Judea, so they might be affected by anything this Herod might do.

  During my eavesdropping I learned that Antigonus, a son of the high priest, had offered to pay the Parthian army if they would help him recapture his lands from the Romans. A battle ensued, Jerusalem was captured, and Antigonus named as king of Judea. The battle forced Herod and his brother Phasael out of power, and they had been named as tetrarchs by Mark Antony. So after Phasael was captured by the Parthians, Herod fled to Rome to ask for help.

  “You see why I had to come,” Herod told one of the wedding guests. “My family has been destroyed. Rather than be tortured and disfigured, my brother Phasael took his own life by smashing his head against a wall.”

  “A bloody land, Judea,” the guest replied.

  Herod offered a vague smile. “Is Rome any less bloody? Your Julius Caesar was stabbed numerous times by his friends, was he not?”

  The guest’s face deepened to the color of the wine in his glass, then he muttered something and wandered away.

  I held a pitcher of wine and lingered near the doorway, studying the man who desired to be king over Judea. Was he the sort of leader Asher would support? Or would my brother be fighting for Antigonus and the opposition? I knew little about Judean politics, and in that moment I yearned for my father. Though any of these Roman men might be able to explain what had happened in Judea, only Father would understand which king was devoted to Adonai . . . or if any of them were.

  Later that night, after I had been summoned to Agrippa’s room, I sat on the edge of his couch as he attempted to explain what was happening in Judea, still home to thousands of Jews.

  “To understand Judea,” he said, pushing a stray hank of hair away from my eyes, “you cannot ask about what happened last year. You have to ask about what happened a hundred years ago, or even five hundred. Those people have long memories.”

  I smiled, knowing I had a far deeper knowledge of Judea than Agrippa realized. “I know a few things,” I admitted, “but I am confused about this Herod and his brother. Are they good men? Are they righteous?”

  Agrippa shrugged. “Who is truly righteous? And who can judge? Shouldn’t we leave that to the gods?”

  “Absolutely.” I smiled. “Though I am sure my master believes he has the right to judge men.”

  Agrippa grinned, conceding my point. He reached for my hand and tenderly pressed his lips to the scar across my palm. “You do not really want to discuss Judea, do you?”

  The touch of his lips sent an unwelcome surge of excitement through me. “I do.”

  “We could do other things to pass the time.”

  I gave him a reproachful look. In truth, I had grown fond of Agrippa and looked forward to our time together. When we were alone, he treated me like the gentle lady I had been reared to be, and I felt like myself again. He never forced himself on me, and even in public he never ordered me about.

  But what could become of this friendship? As Octavian’s se
cond in command, Agrippa had risen to the pinnacle of social status, so he could never marry a slave, or even a free woman. Such things simply were not done. So I could become his mistress, yet . . . I could not.

  Esther and Bathsheba had no choice when taken to their kings’ bedchambers, and Samson had visited prostitutes, as had Judah, one of the twelve patriarchs. But Samson and Judah suffered consequences for those visits, and Solomon, the wisest man on earth, advised his son to flee the wanton woman.

  I did not want to be the wanton woman in Agrippa’s life. I cared too much for him.

  Just when I made up my mind to be no more than a friend to Agrippa, I could hear Urbi calling me a fool. “Why do you deprive yourself of pleasure?” she would say. “Give yourself to him! What difference would it make?”

  What difference, indeed?

  Living among Gentiles had proved my father right—the Gentile world did operate by different principles than we who followed Adonai. The Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans considered sensual pleasure nothing more than an enjoyable act, and I had heard some Romans encourage prostitution, calling it a useful deterrent to adultery. The concept of loving one’s wife was considered quaint, and kissing one’s wife in public was apt to produce a scandal. But a man could regularly visit brothels with no repercussions. So long as an adulterer or fornicator restricted his attentions to the proper classes, no one cared. Free boys and free women were out of bounds, but any noncitizen or slave could be taken for a man’s pleasure without guilt or shame.

  Marriage had more to do with celebrating Roman ideals than love. Only citizens could marry citizens, and to wed a foreigner was unthinkable. A union between a Roman citizen and a foreigner—like Julius Caesar and Cleopatra—would never be accepted by Roman society. Marriage was designed to produce Roman families and sturdy Roman children, a guarantee for Rome’s future success.

  I knew I could never marry Agrippa, but something in me hungered for his touch. I looked at him, stretched out on the couch, handsome and smiling and waiting for me to come into his arms. I wanted to go to him . . . but surrendering would cost me dearly. I would forfeit a measure of self-control and self-respect. Before HaShem, who saw everything, I would demonstrate that I cared more about my personal desires than obedience to Him.

  And that I could not do.

  “Agrippa.” I whispered his name, enjoying the feel of it on my tongue. “I do not know if I can make you understand, but I choose to live a holy life before my God.”

  “I know about the Jews and their law,” he said. “And I know it is impossible for you to follow that law here. You cannot rest on the seventh day, you cannot keep kosher because you must eat what is set before you.”

  “It is true that I cannot do all I want to do,” I said, “but when given a choice, I try to make the righteous choice.”

  A muscle clenched in his jaw. “Then I must leave you for a while,” he said, rising from the couch. “I am not a eunuch, Chava. And when you are near me, I—”

  I lifted my hand, cutting him off, and moved away from the doorway so he could pass. I would not embarrass us both by having him tell me where he was going; I knew the weaknesses of Roman men.

  I stepped aside as he draped his toga over his shoulder, then he walked swiftly past me and left me alone.

  After he had gone, I lifted my gaze and wondered if I was being unfair. By allowing myself to love him, by indulging in this pleasurable friendship, was I doing him a disservice?

  “Am I, Adonai?”

  I heard no answer in the quiet night, only the unexpectedly swift beating of my heart.

  A few weeks after Octavian’s marriage, his sister Octavia, now mother to two daughters and an infant son, lost her elderly husband Marcellus. Seeking a genuine peace with his co-ruler, Octavian approached Antony about marriage to Octavia. If Antony married Octavia, Octavian proposed, they would renew the Triumvirate for another five years, cutting the empire in half: Octavian would rule over the west, including Gaul, and Antony would oversee the east. Lepidus, whose role had shrunk until it was nearly insignificant, would retain control of Africa.

  At Brundisium, a city in southern Italy, Octavian and Antony entertained each other by giving banquets. Octavian’s banquet featured the best in Roman fashion, and Antony played the host in Egyptian style, complete with painted eyes. The party then moved on to Rome, where Antony and Octavia were wed. They rode into the city on garlanded horses as if they were celebrating a military Triumph—which, I suppose, they were. The union resulted in peace.

  I watched the newly married couple with a sense of impending doom. I genuinely liked Octavia because she was a good mother and a kind person, but the reports about Antony had not impressed me. The gossips insisted that Cleopatra was madly in love with Antony, but I knew better. Urbi loved Egypt more than anything. I believed she had been catering to Antony, doing whatever she must to keep him interested, to keep him on her side. Because he could take her kingdom away with a word.

  Even Agrippa admitted that something sinister hid beneath Antony’s affability and his love for fun and games—a cold and ruthless will, coupled with an inability to empathize with others. “I have seen his ruthlessness,” he told me one night. “He can be cold and utterly without feeling when he is pressured.”

  Knowing Urbi’s skill at reading people, I was sure she had sensed this about Antony. In light of his recent marriage, she would redouble her efforts to charm him, please him, and turn her kingdom on its head for him, because in a single moment he might take it all for himself.

  And she possessed a ruthlessness that more than matched his.

  Those few months of peace brought another respite of a different sort—Agrippa left Rome to mount a campaign in Gaul. A couple of the other girls teased me because Agrippa was not around to single me out for attention, but I ignored their teasing and thanked Adonai that I was no longer tormented by desires I could not righteously fulfill. I missed him, but slept easier at night.

  And I had something else to focus on. Barely two months after Octavian’s marriage to Scribonia, our dominus had made an announcement: his bride was expecting a baby. I celebrated with the rest of the household but felt as if a coil in the pit of my stomach had begun to tighten. Octavian would expect me to deliver the child of his older bride, and nothing, absolutely nothing, could go wrong.

  Summer had just yielded to autumn when we slaves became aware that our dominus was not himself. He had taken to smiling for no reason, and one of the housemaids reported that he had been singing in the bath.

  I overheard several of the slaves talking in the kitchen.

  “Has he come into money?”

  “Bah! He has more than enough.”

  “Perhaps he is excited by the idea of becoming a father.”

  “He was not excited at the beginning of the pregnancy—why now?”

  “Perhaps he is in love.”

  “Who is the lucky lady?”

  I poured myself a cup of honey water and considered the question. Octavian often entertained visitors at the house, but the only guests who had appeared more than once were Tiberius Claudius Nero and his wife, Livia Drusilla. Nero was arrogant and unpleasant, but his young and very pregnant wife seemed intelligent and cheerful.

  The couple had dined with Octavian and Scribonia several times over the past weeks. The women had shared stories about their pregnancies while the men talked about matters before the Senate . . . or so I had assumed. I searched my memory, trying to recall if Dominus had engaged Livia in conversation alone. Doubtful, especially with the other two spouses present.

  In early September, Dominus announced that he would sponsor a public festival. At twenty-four, the fair-haired man was finally ready to experience his first shave. The Romans made a ceremony of nearly every “first,” and the first shave was no exception. The depositio barbae was usually celebrated when a boy was in his late teens, but our master, who had accomplished so many things while young, was determined to let the world know that his
body had finally caught up to his mind.

  I had never seen Dominus so excited about a party. He fussed over the menu, got Amphion out of bed when inspiration struck at midnight, and modeled three different togas before settling on the one he would wear. The festival was to be held on his birthday, the twenty-third of the month, and as the day approached and our master grew more restive, I wondered at his motivation. Clearly he was trying to impress someone. The public? He cared little for what they thought. Mark Antony? No, Antony was in Egypt. His wife? Scribonia did little but complain about her pregnancy. Octavian’s mother was deceased, his sister newly married and more concerned about her marriage than a party, so who did he wish to impress?

  On the day of the festival, I joined the serving women and carried pitchers of honey water throughout the crowd. Octavian stood in a shaded corner, under an elegant canopy with two women at his side—Scribonia and Livia, with Livia’s small son, Tiberius, standing in her shadow. Scribonia, who looked uncomfortable and tired, spoke little and wore a frown, but Livia sparkled under our master’s attention.

  Later, I asked Amphion for his impression of the event. “You mean the party for Livia?” One of his brows arched. “It is a good match. Though he is the most powerful man in Rome, the aristocrats see him as a provincial upstart. Livia, however, is from an old and noble family, the Claudii. If they marry, each will help the other—he will be supported by her noble forefathers, and she and her family will have access to his power.”

  “But . . .” I drew a curved belly over my tunic, reminding him that both women were pregnant.

  “Oh, that.” He laughed. “Only a small impediment, dear. Wait and see.”