Kleopatra

by Karen Essex

  “Throw the Roman-lover to the bulls!” someone shouted. His plea was echoed by another row of citizens. “To the bulls! To the bulls!”

  The row of troublemakers pelted the royals with eggs that smashed against the Kinsmen’s shields, a slimy yolk dripping in front of Kleopatra’s sandaled feet. A swarm of navy uniforms of the king’s troops fell on the upstarts, clubbing them with their weapons. Kleopatra saw the soldiers dragging the pummeled bodies of the rebels out of the bleachers. The king brushed off his purple robes and straightened his blond headpiece, trying to regain his composure. But the General, still in his Satyr’s gear, informed the royals that to be safe they must return to the palace.

  Kleopatra allowed herself to be hustled away under Archimedes’ cloak. Looking back, she saw five hundred scythes reaching for the sky, capturing the hot brilliance of the sun god, Osiris. But she did not get to see the moment when his earthbound brother, the bull-god Dionysus, went peacefully to his Fate.

  FIVE

  To: Gnaeus Pompeius, General

  From: King Ptolemy XII Auletes

  My good friend, the gods have presented an opportunity for you to repay my recent act of loyalty. My support of your cause did not meet with the approval of my people. Today I stood within the palace walls listening to the demands of the mob outside—demands to end all diplomatic relations with Rome. The people fear our complicity, fear that I shall invite you to share my throne. My family is confined to the Inner Palace, where we depend upon the loyalty of the Royal Household Troops to protect us. On several occasions, fires were started at the gates. Rumors of an assassination plot against me abound.

  Therefore, I appeal to you, my good friend, to come to my aid as I most recently came to yours—quickly and without hesitation. We must demonstrate the ruling Government of this nation has the support of Rome. Surely the mob would prove no match for a Roman legion, men trained at your own superb hands. To ensure the continuing safety of your most loyal ally, please respond in haste.

  “I am ten years old. I am sick of Meleager’s dull histories,” Kleopatra said adamantly. “It is time for me to study philosophy and mathematics. I also wish to increase my knowledge of Roman politics so that I might better serve the court of my father.” She stood cross-armed before the king. Though she knew that the sweet approach would have worked better, she was not in the mood to be saccharine. Her father was in constant danger, and she had to prepare herself to come to his aid. She knew a fair amount about the mechanics of the Roman government, but she needed to know more if she was to fulfill her ambition to be his adviser and diplomat. Thea was queen, Berenike was older, and the king now had two sons who, according to centuries-old custom, would inherit the throne when he died. But none of these possessed either Kleopatra’s intelligence or her loyalty to Auletes.

  “Besides, Father,” she said to the distracted king, “you know that I want nothing more than to study with the scholars at the Mouseion.” Long before she apprehended that institution’s importance in the world of scholarship, she would sit in the courtyard with Charmion and watch the men of learning in their billowing black robes huddle together like carping crows, arguing about the secrets of the universe. The newest addition to the Mouseion’s roster of scholars was one Demetrius, a harrowingly thin Greek philosopher who had recently taught in Rome. A neo-Platonist with secondary expertise in Roman law and literature. A man who might facilitate the fulfillment of her ambitions.

  “Well, why not? They’re all on my payroll over there.” The king sighed. “And the gods know how much it takes to keep them fed and happy. Apparently luxury and erudition are necessary companions.”

  “If the young princess is to study with the philosopher Demetrius, we must also offer the opportunity to our elder daughter,” said Thea.

  Kleopatra clenched her arms together waiting for her sister to reply, but Berenike said, “No thank you. I’ve seen the man. He looks like one of the bats who haunt the home of the dead.”

  Thus, the next morning, and every morning thereafter at nine o’clock, Demetrius was escorted to the palace. Though the Mouseion shared the same quarter of the city with the palaces and the Library, it was still too dangerous these days for a member of the Royal Family to venture outside the palace walls, even with a guard. Demetrius’s black robes hung limply on his wraithlike frame; his hair, as sparse as his flesh, dangled against his scaly scalp. Despite his frangible appearance, Demetrius was a diligent soul, patient enough to read and discuss the dialogues of Plato with a ten-year-old girl. Kleopatra expressed her desire to study Roman history, but the tutor assured her that the young mind must first be steeped in the Great Works, writing of the highest quality embodying the Greek ideals of Virtue, Beauty, Truth, Knowledge, before embarking on the corrupting influences of works written in the Latin, conceived in “that cesspool of a city.”

  Though she longed to gather knowledge that would help her assist her father, she contented herself with Plato, becoming particularly intrigued with the Meno and the problems it posed about the efficacy of teaching Virtue. She could not figure why some people—Charmion, for example, and perhaps this scarecrow before her—seemed inherently virtuous and so willingly did what was right and proper while others—herself included—had to battle their natural tendencies to achieve the Greek ideal. At least she was better than Berenike and Thea, who did not even engage in the war.

  “Might you teach me Virtue?” she asked Demetrius as they stood in the palace courtyard before a pond with lotus blossoms like welcoming hands.

  “As Socrates demonstrates, Virtue is divinely inspired. All Knowledge—and surely Virtue is a form of Knowledge—is already known by the Immortal Soul. It cannot be taught, but must be remembered by the mind.”

  “I do not follow.”

  “Socrates observed that if Virtue could be taught, then all educated persons would be virtuous. Clearly that is not the case.” Demetrius’s cheekbones were so close to his skin as to make the slightest smile look like an act of torture. The princess beamed. “Might you direct me in the remembrance of Virtue?”

  “Does your royal and Immortal Soul have the will and desire?”

  “It does, Demetrius. I know it does. I shall remember Knowledge and thereby gain Virtue.” She closed her eyes tight, attempting to recall the lost Knowledge of the Soul, but all she could hear was the sharp chirping of a sparrow. “I am getting nothing just yet,” she said slyly. “But it will come.”

  “I believe it will require some time and meditation, Your Highness,” said Demetrius. “The wings of wisdom are not necessarily swift.”

  “That’s enough for today.” Kleopatra looked up at the clear, cloudless sky. “How I wish I could go for a ride.”

  “Your Highness, sometimes you seem utterly dedicated to your lessons, but at other times you are entirely distracted.” Demetrius put his hands on his hips to demonstrate his displeasure.

  “I am dedicated to my lessons, Demetrius, but I do suffer from a strange condition.”

  “What is that?” The philosopher looked skeptically at the girl.

  “Knowledge arouses something in me that I cannot name.” She had noticed this disconcerting feeling and did not know what to do about it. She only knew that these days, when ideas coalesced in her mind, she could no longer just sit and contemplate. She felt something that was either excitement or anxiety or both, and only physical exertion would rid her of the feeling. “It makes me want to get up and go somewhere or do something.”

  “What do you mean?” asked the philosopher. “You must not run away from Knowledge. You will never have an extended thought if every time you learn something new you have to run to the stables.”

  “Remember yesterday, after we finished reading Sophocles’ play Philoctetes?”

  “Yes. Not two minutes after you read the last line, you were out of the library and begging your father to let you go riding. Impatience is intellectual suicide!”

  “Well, I was just so elated that everything turned
out for the best, that Philoctetes did not have to spend the rest of his life in pain and alone on that island, that I just wanted to celebrate with a gallop in the fields.”

  “I do not follow your logic,” said Demetrius.

  “I felt a spirit rise up inside me. And I just had to get it all out.” How to explain to this austere person the exuberance she contained within her small body? How to explain to him—pale skin, brittle bones, all mind—that as much as she loved her studies, she also loved the freedom of the outdoors, and was always torn between the two? That in these long days of confinement inside the palace walls, she was bursting to get away?

  “I am not in control of myself at these times,” she said, face flushed. “I was entirely out of sorts with the grim atmosphere in that room. I had to escape. I wanted my pony.”

  “Perhaps you would prefer that we study the great poets at the stables?”

  “You do not understand, Demetrius, for you are like Charmion. You are all mental faculties.”

  “I suppose it is bred into the blood,” sighed the philosopher. “Here, let us sit on the bench and rest ourselves.” He waited for Kleopatra to sit down on the knobby cypress bench and then lowered himself slowly to sit beside her.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The women of your family have always been obsessed with horses. At the Olympic games two hundred years ago, the queen of Egypt annoyed all the other horse tamers with her superior steeds. She and her sisters were the great equestrians of their day—much to the chagrin of the Spartans, who tried to have them eliminated from the contests.”

  “You sound like Meleager, obsessed with Ptolemaic history,” she said. “How do you know these things?”

  “Because I am a scholar, which I suspect you shall never be. Pity, too, for you certainly have the mind for it. The spirit, though, is rebellious.”

  “You insult me, Demetrius. I wish to be a scholar.”

  Demetrius cracked a wry smile. “A noble wish, Your Highness, to be a philosopher queen. But I fear that a life of action is your destiny.”

  “Espionage is a costly business, Your Majesty.”

  Hammonius took Kleopatra on his knee, knowing that the girl’s attachment to him would strengthen his position and weaken the will of the king. A large Greek man in his forties, Hammonius wore his prosperity on his stomach. His robes were of the most expensive linen; his cologne, as fine as the exclusive effluvium made for the king. He had made his fortune by taking advantage of the Roman craze for Egyptian goods. By special arrangement with the king, he purchased merchandise manufactured by the government—and little else was produced in Egypt, owing to the state’s monopoly on industry—at a special price. In return, he spied on the Romans for the king, bribing them with the king’s money in exchange for information and favors.

  “What am I supposed to do? Roman senators cannot be bought for single coin or a cheap bauble.”

  “I realize this,” replied the king, annoyed. “But must we be so generous?”

  Kleopatra hoped her father would not deny the merchant. Demetrius was now allowing her diligent study of Latin, and she dreamed of a day when she might apprentice with Hammonius, learning how to ingratiate herself to Roman insiders and reporting the information back to Auletes. Then it would be she and not the twenty-two-year-old usurper who would sit beside the king and whisper into his ear.

  “These are critical times, Majesty,” said the bearlike man. “The Romans are desperate for money. Their treasury is bankrupt from waging war all over the world, and there is a terrible grain shortage to feed their armies. They need money and they need it now or they are going to find themselves in the middle of another rebellion.”

  “I know, I know, Rome has once more turned her envious eyes upon the Egyptian treasury,” lamented the king.

  “As if we do not have enough problems at home,” Thea said. “Will news from Rome help us when our own people kill us in our sleep? Perhaps we should spend more money finding out the date and time of our assassinations.”

  “The rebellion at home makes the intelligence operations abroad all the more crucial,” Hammonius said slowly, as if to a child. “Only a greater power will subdue the insubordination.”

  “Of course, of course.” The king sighed, regarding the list of expenditures Hammonius presented. Thea pointed her nose at the paper but did not look at it. “Still, this is an awful lot of money.”

  “Majesty, have you traveled abroad lately? Do you keep up with the price of things?” Exasperated, Hammonius bounced Kleopatra on his knee as if she were an infant. “Do you think it is easy to get an audience with a Roman senator, even if he knows you are going to offer him a substantial amount of money? These things are very delicate. Sometimes I have to wait in the Forum all day long until I “accidentally’ run into the man I am after.”

  The king moaned. The queen turned her face away from the discussion. Kleopatra moved herself to Hammonius’s other knee, which was not bouncing.

  “Many say that this new alliance between Julius Caesar, Pompey, and that rich fellow Crassus is not going to last. This Caesar is a cutthroat whose ambitions know no bounds. He, or at least the men close to him, must be cultivated; it would be fatal to ignore him. Alliance with the wrong party would mean—with all due respect and sincere wishes for your health and long life—a guaranteed loss of the throne.”

  The king signed the invoice and gave it to his scribe to take to the royal bank for a withdrawal. Hammonius followed the scribe, bowing solicitously to the king and his entourage, pleased with his negotiation.

  “I do not know who is more dangerous to our welfare,” said the king. “The Romans, or the people I pay to extract information from them.”

  Kleopatra returned to her rooms for her customary two-hour afternoon nap. It was believed that a young princess must not expose herself to the hottest part of the day. Kleopatra rarely slept during this time, but sat on her bed and read poetry, or played with her dogs on the floor, teaching them to do tricks. The girl could not wait until she was thirteen, when the nap would be cut to the traditional thirty-minute adult respite. When she complained that she no longer needed these baby naps, as she called them, she was told by Charmion to enjoy the luxury of a long midday rest while she may. Nonetheless, she was unable to sleep. She lay on the floor with her brindle greyhound, Minerva, tracing with her small fingers the long brown stripes across the dog’s rib cage.

  Kleopatra knew she had every attribute of the perfect spy. Already she had command of many languages, even the native tongue, though every one of her ancestors had declared it inscrutable. She could tell stories, true or false, and make even the most skeptical listener believe her. She could ride a horse as well as a man, as well as her sister Berenike. She did not get ill in the stomach when she traveled by boat or by carriage, and this, she gleaned from Hammonius, was a most important quality. The king did not favor those prone to the travel sickness. She feared virtually nothing, except that her father would lose his kingdom. Most of all, she desired adventure, but she was always under the watchful eye of someone, usually Charmion, who warned her constantly about the dangers in the streets. None of the royals left the palace anymore. They were afraid, even Berenike, who spent her days in the nursery with the five-year-old princess, Arsinoe, teaching the child to shoot the small bow Berenike had used as a child.

  Of course, they did not possess her skills. What use would Berenike or Thea be in an intelligence operation? Face-to-face with an Egyptian rebel, what could Thea do but beg for her life? Berenike would fight and be killed, and what good would that do the kingdom? Kleopatra was different; she could help her father in ways that were entirely impossible for either her self-serving stepmother or her savage sister, ways that would demonstrate to Auletes that it was she who deserved to rule at his side.

  The Egyptian girls who did the light household maintenance upstairs, many of whom were Kleopatra’s age and size, were furnished with crisp, white uniforms from the palace supply. Just
yesterday, Kleopatra had wondered what she would look like in one and had threatened the native servant Sekkie with fantastic stories of torture until the girl agreed to bring her the plain cotton dress of the cleaning ladies and a colorful scarf to turban her head. Sekkie’s family had served the Royal Ptolemy Household for many generations, longer than anyone could remember. Her mother was the palace’s Head Laundress. Her brothers polished the great copper kettles in the kitchen while learning how to carve meat and fowl, jobs they would grow into upon entering manhood. Sekkie was terribly afraid of being caught by her mother, who had warned her children that there was no room for mistakes while in the royal service.

  Sekkie knocked three times—the code they had agreed upon—and slinked into Kleopatra’s room, looking both ways down the hall before she entered.

  “I am going to reward you for this,” whispered Kleopatra as the girl handed her the bundle. “I am going to make certain that you are promoted to my personal body servant.”

  “Then what you said yesterday is no longer true?” asked the girl gingerly.

  “What did I say yesterday?”

  “That you would have me tortured and killed.”

  “I said I would have you tortured and killed if you did not help me,” Kleopatra corrected her, slipping the cotton gown over her head. “But you have helped me, and therefore I am going to reward you by having you promoted. You see, if I am to be my father’s spy, then you are to be my spy. Do we understand each other?”

  Sekkie reluctantly nodded her head.

  “How do I look?” With her tawny coloring, the woven basket she carried, and her gift for the inflections of the native speech, she was sure she could pass as a servant. Sekkie took a few cleaning towels from her pockets and tucked them into the belt at Kleopatra’s waist to make her look more like one of the upstairs maids.

  “You could pass for my sister,” Sekkie offered boldly.