Kleopatra

by Karen Essex

  It was after lunch. The royal party and companions had removed themselves to the deck to take advantage of the afternoon sun, as if they were traveling on one of the sumptuous Nile barges to which they were accustomed and not a ship that was presently tossed about on the more turbulent waters of Poseidon. Oars were in; sails billowed in the crisp oceanic breeze.

  Kleopatra and Mohama were at a game of dice under a white cotton canopy set up on the deck of the ship. The king had been given a marble dice set by a Roman guest at court and was encouraged to perfect his game in preparation for the visit to Rome. The Romans were mad for the game, he was told, and that fact alone intrigued the princess. She had taught Mohama to play it and was often furious because the girl’s luck exceeded hers. They had many observers, Kleopatra knew, because Mohama had chosen to wear a dress of sheer linen through which the men could clearly see her large brown nipples made erect by the sea winds.

  “It is your turn to roll, and I am standing here waiting. I am out of patience,” Kleopatra said petulantly. “You have no qualms about keeping me waiting. I am going to have you flogged.”

  “I live in fear of that command,” said Mohama. Slyly she looked about her to see if she still had the attention of her admirers. She did. She reached into the bowl of cherries and with an extreme amount of time given to the selection, plucked another and held it above her open mouth.

  “If you do not roll I am going to strangle you,” said the princess. She was tense. Her father had moved them from Rhodes with alacrity, shuffling them—barely packed—aboard the ship. Hearing the news of Thea’s usurpation, he had quit talking to anyone, but spent his days muttering into the ear of Hekate, who patted his hand and poured his wine and allowed him to rant while she sat in silent dignity against his angry patter. He had kept his distance from his daughter, who wondered if he had begun to doubt her loyalty, too, though she had never pretended to like or to trust Thea. Perhaps the king did not like that Kleopatra’s judgment had proved more acute than his. In time, she trusted, he would allow her to be close to him again. Of this she was sure. Nonetheless, she felt less than settled.

  Mohama picked up the rolling cup, shaking it back and forth in the rhythm of her chewing, her hips swaying.

  “This is not dance. This is dice. You have eaten two thousand cherries! I am going to turn my back on you right now and go to my cabin!”

  Mohama gave Kleopatra a smile of concession and threw the die, her eyes following the six-sided marble pieces as they rolled down the table. When they landed, her eyes bulged and she clutched at her throat.

  “Three!” said the princess gleefully. “You lose.”

  Mohama fell forward onto the table, chin hitting the wood with a loud clump. A dark bile spewed from her mouth onto the gaming board. Kleopatra watched Mohama’s eyes roll in her head before it fell to the side. She tried to propel herself away from the spew but seemed to have no strength. She screamed. The king heard his daughter and pushed himself away from Hekate, arriving at the table as Mohama fell to the hard deck. Charmion rushed to the princess, trying to turn her head away. Kleopatra fought against Charmion’s embrace and yelled to her father to help Mohama.

  The Royal Physician and his man in attendance uncurled Mohama’s arms from her belly and stretched her out on the floor. Her eyes rolled helplessly and her limbs were limp, a sweat bubbling on her brow. She was delirious, trying to speak, but was not in control of her tongue. A foam gathered around the opening of her mouth. Charmion again tried to turn the princess’s face away, but Kleopatra would not desert her companion. She broke from Charmion and knelt at Mohama’s feet while the medical men propped open her mouth and stared into her throat.

  The physician looked not at the princess but at the king and said, “What did she eat? Who prepared her last meal?”

  Kleopatra put her hands to her mouth. “The cherries,” she whispered through her bloodless fingers. The assistant fetched the bowl of cherries, carefully picking it up as if its contents could jump out and injure him. Gingerly he carried the vessel to the doctor, who squeezed two cherries between his fingers, slowly bringing them to his nose. He crushed a few more, inhaled their essence, and then shook his head as if to confirm what he suspected. He sent his assistant below to gather his supplies, among which, he said, was a chemical antidote to the poison he believed she had ingested—deadly little red berries whose liquid would easily be disguised in a cherry.

  “We will know very soon if we have saved her,” he said. The assistant returned with a box of vials, and the doctor pointed to the one to be unsealed. With a small knife, the assistant delicately cut open the wax seal and poured the liquid into the girl’s mouth while the physician massaged her throat.

  Kleopatra sat rigid, refusing all hands that offered to help her up. Mohama had ceased to move. Occasionally her foot would twitch ever so slightly, giving the princess a moment of hope in the midst of her fear.

  “Who has done this thing?” demanded the king, standing over Mohama’s inert body.

  Kleopatra raised her face to her father, letting the tears stream down her face. “The cherries were placed in front of me, Father. She is from the desert and had never had cherries before entering our service. I gave them to her because there is no fruit served at the table of the servants.”

  The king scoured the observers with his wide, angry eyes. “Whoever has done this shall die,” he said to no one, to everyone.

  The princess realized the king’s meaning. “Father, were they meant for me?”

  The king raised his beefy fists to the heavens. “Dionysus, god of all that is of the earth, god of the trees, of the vine, of the crops that we eat. Mighty Poseidon, god of these waters upon which we sail. You have spared my daughter but taken from her a loyal companion. Deliver into these hands—the hands of your faithful servant—the lying whore behind this evil deed.”

  A billowing cloud masked the sun’s rays, and the light about the ship grew dimmer. No one issued a sound. The sea seemed to come to a dead calm in answer to the king’s words.

  “Do you see the skies darken?” shouted one of the Kinsmen. “The gods have heard the king. Someone shall die for this crime.”

  The king lowered his fists, satisfied that he had been recognized by the deities, but this did not pacify him. He began frantically barking orders: Arrest the cooks. Imprison the serving staff in the cargo. Cast the fruit on board into the ocean. Take the princess to her suite.

  To Charmion: Do not leave my daughter.

  To the doctor: Do not lose the girl.

  The girl. It was as if for a moment all had forgotten Mohama. Kleopatra looked back at the still body of the dark young woman, whose rich color had begun to drain from her face. Her hair was strewn carelessly about her sweaty face like a Medusa. Another Libyan, Kleopatra thought, who made a game of tempting men.

  The physician put his ear to Mohama’s chest. He took her wrist in his hand and held it there. “The girl is dead.”

  Kleopatra crawled to the body of her companion, reaching her arm out to touch her face, but before she could complete the gesture, she was lifted into the arms of one of her father’s men. The physician’s two attendants raised Mohama. Her torso hung limp in the middle as they picked up her shoulders and legs in the flat parts of their forearms like a funereal sacrifice.

  The princess screamed Mohama’s name as if the invocation would rouse the girl. She put her face into the chest of the Kinsman and prayed, harder than she had ever prayed before. Harder and with more desperation.

  Who has commanded this evil, O Holy Mother? Only you can tell me. I offer you everything I have. I offer my life to your will. Only tell me who it is who wishes me dead so that I may stay alive to serve you. I am a small, motherless girl, and my father is only sometimes wise and sometimes foolish. I have no companion now to watch over me. Enlighten me. Enlighten me.

  The goddess did not reply. Kleopatra was alone, crying into the tunic of a Kinsman as he carefully carried her down the stair
s and into the dank stateroom below. She had believed in the goddess, believed in her own ability to summon her, but now the goddess had deserted her. Perhaps it was her Fate to have died, and the goddess was angry that Mohama had taken her place in the underworld. She cried harder still, praying again, bargaining and reasoning with the deity. Oh surely Lord Hades is pleased with such a beautiful one as Mohama? Surely she is a more fitting companion to him than I, a mere child? Mohama is more beautiful than Persephone herself.

  Kleopatra turned her face away from her Kinsman, relieved not to be breathing his musky scent. She inhaled deeply, taking in an effluvium as familiar as it was unexpected. Out of nowhere, from the salty air of her empty cabin, her nose was filled with the unmistakable scent of lotus oil.

  Thea Thea Thea. The name pounded like a drumbeat in Kleopatra’s head. The goddess had not abandoned her, but had sent her an irrefutable sign: Someone in Alexandria had sent an emissary to poison the young royal who would one day grow up and oust Thea and her offspring from the throne. Who could it be but Thea? And yet, Thea had convinced Berenike as of late to wear the scent, too. So fitting. As far as Kleopatra was concerned, the two had always had the same smell. And now it appeared that they were in collusion. It was more than likely; it had seemed so to Kleopatra for as long as she could remember.

  She had always known that they hated her and would hurt her, though she had not known how, and she had not known who would be sacrificed in the process. I will see the two of them dead, she told herself, and I will whisper the name Mohama in their ears as they die.

  What could he have done when the queen approached him? At first Meleager believed she had foiled his carefully laid plans, but soon he saw the wisdom in going along with her scheme. Another gift from the goddess, another significant stone in the structure of that intricate architecture he had designed to make Berenike queen. Once again Fate had intervened, showing him the supreme wisdom of the gods, master conspirators divinely gifted for plotting the destiny of the world. Luckily he had always been a religious man.

  “I no longer see any use for the king,” Thea had said one morning over breakfast. “Do you?”

  Meleager did not believe what he was hearing.

  “He is gone, is he not? And the kingdom functions as well as when he was here. Better even.” The glazed look of victory on Thea’s face chilled Meleager. “He is not missed by his people, nor by the queen, nor by her advisers. Not even by his children. The only one who could possibly have missed him accompanied him on his treasonous mission to Rome.”

  “Your Majesty, you surprise me,” said Meleager, swallowing his bread. It sat like a stone in his throat. “Pardon my silence, but this is hardly the conversation I anticipated.”

  “The king is off once again selling his people to the Roman oppressors. I foresaw this, and I have been building support,” said Thea, a wide but close-lipped smile making wrinkles on her smooth cheeks.

  “Among which parties, if I may ask?” inquired Meleager, trying to speak slowly and calmly while his mind absorbed the new information.

  “The Greek philosopher who has been so loyal to the king has become … how shall I say it?” she said coyly, twisting the lone stray lock of her hair and averting her eyes from the eunuch’s skeptical stare. “My ally. In intimate conversation, he admitted to me that he had always admired my position on the Roman question, and had always doubted the king’s solicitousness to those barbarians.”

  “Demetrius?” The eunuch could hardly believe what he heard.

  “He taught in Rome. He knows of their barbarous ways firsthand. In dreams, the god showed Demetrius that the king was not fit to rule, but that I possessed the qualities necessary to unite the great and diverse people of Egypt under Greek authority and to repel the advances of the Romans if necessary. Though the king would never believe it, the god favors women.”

  The eunuch knew that it was not nocturnal visions, but nocturnal visits from the queen that had changed the philosopher’s allegiance. “How interesting,” he said, stalling for time. How could all of this have happened without his knowledge? Under his nose? Meleager tried to conceal his surprise and his concern. Demetrius had been marked for extermination along with the queen. But now, was that wise? Was it timely? How much support had she garnered? How many had fallen to her cloying ways? His mind raced with the possibilities for using this new turn of events to his advantage. To Berenike’s advantage. Whom else had the queen seduced? The Vizier? His own General? How many others had been taken in by her lewd charms?

  How often had he watched the emaciated Demetrius walk with the king and the small princess in the palace gardens? Why is it that so many men allowed coital bliss to alter their loyalty? The eunuch went over the events in his mind one more time. Demetrius and Meleager were the formal representatives of the king. The queen, already believing she had Meleager’s loyalty, had seduced Demetrius, or so she claimed. Now she must believe that no one stood in her way.

  These ideas shot through the eunuch’s mind like random arrows in a badly planned confrontation. Rarely was he caught without a plan. Rarely did he not anticipate an event and have prepared, at least theoretically, a counterplan. Yet he sat silently while the queen revealed the extent of her deceit, trying not to give away any hint of his surprise, his horror. Listen. Smile. Raise the left eyebrow. Feign innocence. It was all so difficult. Stupefaction did not agree with him.

  “Your Majesty, I remain your servant,” he finally said. “Now and forever,” he added quickly, trying to disguise his agitation.

  He reminded himself that the game was hardly over. There would be a way to twist this turn of events in his favor. He must summon the patience upon which he had so relied in the past to get him through the difficult years. Time. Meleager had a long-standing friendship with the element of Time. In his own lifetime, the eunuch had seen events sweep across the landscape with such force as to wipe out great chunks of time. Cities that took years to erect and develop could be wiped out in a day by the right man, or by the determined act of a hostile god. What was time, really? In time, he would have his way. In time, Thea would be brought down, if not by his own hand, then by his own designs.

  “Your Majesty, where do we go from here?”

  The day after Mohama was murdered, the princess offered her theory to Charmion: Someone loyal to Thea had stolen aboard ship and acted on Thea’s orders to rid the kingdom of Kleopatra—the sole heir loyal to Auletes.

  “Why would Thea wish to see you dead and the king alive?” Charmion asked, holding the girl’s hand as they sat on the small bed in Kleopatra’s cabin, petting it as if she were still a small child.

  “Perhaps the cherries were meant for my father, too,” Kleopatra answered huffily. Charmion annoyed Kleopatra with her doubt. “Do you not see it, Charmion? Berenike is Thea’s ally, and Arsinoe and the sons are her own. I am the only one who might bring her harm, not now, but in the future. I will not be a child forever, despite what you think, and despite the way you treat me. I believe you wish me to remain small because you know that when I am grown, I shall not require your attendance. Then what will you do?”

  Charmion sat slightly more erect, a sign that she was hurt by Kleopatra’s insult. “Have you thought that Mohama might have been poisoned by one of the many soldiers or servants whom the desert girl tempted but spurned? Men are not as easily toyed with as she liked to think.”

  “Then I shall demand a full investigation. I shall demand that my father interrogate each of his men.”

  “I do not think your father would sacrifice a loyal man,” Charmion replied coldly. “He is content to believe that this was the work of the queen. You would do well to support that theory in his presence.”

  “What is your meaning?”

  “We do not know the position of Berenike, but she has always been rebellious, and she has always hung on the words of Thea. The rest are children. At present, you are the only heir whose loyalty the king need not question. Your twelfth birthday app
roaches. In not so many years, you will be of age to be named co-regent when your father removes Thea from the throne.”

  “You mean that someday I shall be queen?”

  “Long ago, the elder ladies made a prediction that I have kept from you. Until this time, you have been too young to understand.”

  Kleopatra waited for Charmion to continue, withdrawing her hand and tucking it under the covers.

  “There is but one descendant of the great Ptolemy who is destined to rule. She is still a girl, but as you say, she will not remain so forever.”

  The princess absorbed the words. “When did they say this to you? Why was I not told?”

  “If it is Destiny, it does not need to be uttered.”

  “Why do you keep things from me as if I were a child?” Kleopatra moved away from Charmion, rolling over on her side and pushing herself upright. Forgetting that she was aboard ship and sleeping on a hard bed, she let herself drop with the full force of her weight. Her bottom hit the immovable mattress with a force that made her teeth clack together. She tightened all the muscles in her body to take her mind off the fact that in her indignation she had bitten her tongue.

  “You are upset over the death of your companion. You will miss her very much. But perhaps this is the gods’ way of telling you that it is time for childish games of disguise and intrigue to be put aside. It is time for you to realize who you are and what your responsibilities will be. You must put Mohama and the adventures you shared with her behind you. That is my purpose in telling you the prediction of the crones.”

  “I will never forget Mohama,” Kleopatra said defiantly. “Not even when I am queen.” Not even when I am queen. She uttered the words in haste, and then wondered at her daring. Might it be true?