Kleopatra

by Karen Essex

  “May the gods preserve her, if the gods are so generous in the afterlife to those of lowly birth. I do not suggest obliterating the memory. Memories, unlike mortals, do not die.”

  “When did the crones make this prediction?”

  “At the time of your birth.”

  “Does my father know? Does Thea know? Is that why she tried to poison me?”

  “The ladies entrusted me with their knowledge because my mother served them. When you were a small child you caused Thea such trouble that the women were afraid she would do something to you if she knew the destiny the gods had written for you. That is why they suggested to the king that I enter into your service. But the king does not know what the crones foretold. The crones do not reveal to men the visions that come to them.”

  “But why?” asked Kleopatra

  “Because that is their way and that is their tradition. They do not trust men, even kings, with this kind of knowledge. Men make sport out of tampering with the will of the gods.”

  “There is something else, Charmion.” Kleopatra recalled the image of her ancestor, Ptolemy I Savior, sitting stone-faced on his horse. She told Charmion about the dream. The path in the thicket of the Delta. The lion. The king. Not her father, but the great man. The youth who had conquered the world. And her ancient grandfather, the young king’s best friend and companion and general and perhaps half brother. The one whose sharp, aggressive nose she wore on her face. “Ptolemy shot me but I didn’t die. Before I knew it, I was flying above them.”

  Kleopatra did not realize that she had begun to cry. She put her head in Charmion’s lap, letting the woman caress her hair.

  “Do you not see the meaning of the dream, child?” Charmion raised her by the shoulders and held her face in her small, cool hands. With one thumb, she wiped the tears from under each eye. “The eagle is the symbol of the House of Ptolemy. In the presence of Alexander, Ptolemy selected you to head his house. Ptolemy reached beyond the grave to inform you of your destiny.”

  The weight of Charmion’s interpretation sat heavily upon the trill. She massaged her brows and the ridge of bone above her eyes to get rid of her headache. “You are making me afraid, Charmion.”

  “You will know fear. But you must never let it stop you from fulfilling your destiny. Fate marks us all, but its mark upon your life is stronger.”

  The girl had stopped crying but her chest still heaved. Mohama was dead, Thea was queen, and Kleopatra was terribly afraid. She would be less afraid if she could lean on Mohama’s chest and feel her strength—Mohama who had no fear, Mohama who had sacrificed herself to a life of slavery so that her brothers, scavenging food for the family, might escape. Mohama who fought the faceless enemies in the dead darkness of desert nights. Who had spilled the insides of a man who tried to do her harm. Why had Fate chosen Kleopatra to rule a kingdom and the fearless Mohama to be born into a savage desert tribe, only to die at the age of sixteen? What flawed immortal power, what deus ignotus, was responsible for such miscalculations? Kleopatra felt so small, so inadequate, to assume the role that Charmion said was hers.

  But Destiny was final in her judgments. Kleopatra’s girlhood was over.

  Kleopatra held her tears at the beginning of the ceremony when a small goat was sacrificed to the god on behalf of the maiden, when Auletes asked the god to take to his bosom the brave girl Mohama who had loyally served the House of Ptolemy and who had more than once risked her life to save a princess.

  The king had ordered the captain to dock at Athens, where he sent off all the unnecessary hangers-on, using expense as an excuse but secretly meeting with the steward, who gravely crossed off the payroll those of questionable loyalty. Only a few personal attendants, the steward, and the Kinsmen would accompany them to Rome; the rest were free to stay in Athens or to return home. But servants who had cooked and served food on that particular deadly afternoon would be turned over to a slave trader and sold in the markets at Delos. “A harsh punishment for so many undoubtedly innocent people,” he explained to his daughter. “But the message must be sent that the king and his family are not to be harmed. And that is that.”

  The king had also ordered the body of Mohama to be given to the sea-god, whom he wished to please by sending such a lovely young girl to his waters. But Kleopatra vetoed his idea and insisted that the girl be given a traditional funeral. She argued strenuously that Mohama had saved her life and was replacing her at the side of Hades. “Only the gods know for certain who took the life of Mohama. If there is any possibility that our Lord Dionysus interceded in a threat upon my life and substituted the life of Mohama, should he not be properly thanked? Should Mohama not be given up to the god whom the king serves? After all, Father, you do carry the god’s name.” Kleopatra felt like Antigone, arguing for the rights of the dead, but hoping that she would not share that young woman’s fate. Inwardly, the king was not as anxious as he appeared to get to Rome, and so he relented. “The funeral shall take place at Athens,” he said. “And we shall all attend.”

  Now Kleopatra steeled herself, stepping forward to place upon Mohama’s corpse a locket the girl had admired. She held her tears when she saw the edges of the white linen wrapped around Mohama’s body take to the flames from the torches. She concentrated on the dwindling fringes of the cloth, silently praying to Zeus, the only Greek deity terrible enough to have made an impression upon Mohama. Kleopatra had once fantasized that the Almighty would reward Mohama’s affections by choosing her to have one of his children as he had chosen many beautiful, tempting mortal women in the past. It would have been a great game with them, pretending that Mohama had been impregnated by the Olympian, and not by some soldier with whom she had mercilessly flirted. But as Charmion had pointed out, the games of her youth were over.

  Tearless still, Kleopatra watched the hot flames engulf her companion, taking the smell of the burning flesh into her nostrils, letting the heat scorch her cheeks. It was time to cultivate the Stoic control of the emotions associated with great men. If one believed the philosophers, it was not a way to avoid pain, but the key to a life of Virtue and enlightenment. Perhaps that was true, but Kleopatra was surprised that the suppression of tears did not alleviate her grief.

  The mourners dispersed, leaving the workers to finish the final details of the business of death, and the king’s steward, a spare, finical man, to pay the Athenian priest. Kleopatra interrupted the transaction. “I would like to have a monument erected in honor of the deceased.”

  The steward asked the king, who wearily replied, “Negotiate a fair price for the stone. I have had a very long and trying week. I am returning to the ship.”

  “Here is what I wish the inscription to say,” said Kleopatra. ‘“Stop traveler and read what is written. Here lie the remains of Mohama of the Libyan Desert, a Lady-in-Waiting who met an untimely death by poison. She is here honored by the Princess Kleopatra of the Royal House of Ptolemy.’”

  “Lovely,” said the priest, taking the money from the steward. “I shall have the artisans chisel the letters immediately.”

  “Splendid,” replied the princess, who did not trust the narrow-eyed priest. “I shall return in three hours to admire their work.”

  “Kleopatra, I am certain that the king wishes you to rejoin him aboard ship,” whispered Charmion. But Kleopatra allowed that they did not sail until morning, that they were attended by two of the king’s bodyguards, that they had a carriage for hire for the entire day, and therefore, that there was no reason to spend the day on a cramped ship when the city of Athens might play host to them. Reluctantly, Charmion sent word to the king that the princess’s party would not return until sundown. “Do not make the mistake of thinking you can turn me into another Mohama,” Charmion said, and Kleopatra laughed for the first time in many days.

  They spent the day touring the markets, and ate a satisfactory meal of fish, spinach, and olives in one of the town’s finest inns. But when the sun threatened its western descent, they returned to the si
te of the memorial, only to see that the inscription had not been engraved properly. The artisans, apparently confused and hurried, did not name the princess Kleopatra of the Royal House of Ptolemy as the benefactor of the monument. Rather, she was recorded as “the little Libyan Princess.”

  “What is this?” Kleopatra demanded.

  “The Athenians like to call all those from the land of Egypt Libyans,” said Charmion.

  “We shall have it corrected for the princess,” offered one of the bodyguards. “The princess must have satisfaction.”

  “No, let it remain,” said Kleopatra. “I think Mohama is delighted that I have been immortalized as a Libyan.” She turned away from the epitaph and into the last rays of the setting sun. “I shall never again have such camaraderie, shall I?”

  Charmion winced, and Kleopatra regretted her words. She realized that Charmion was jealous.

  “Mohama was a servant who made a better life for herself by caring for your safety,” Charmion said slowly, choosing her words carefully. “She was loyal. I approved of her because she had the skills to protect you. I never approved of her ways with men.” Charmion said the word as if she had just swallowed rancid oil. “But I suppose that is the way with women of low birth.”

  “Say what you will of her. I shall always remember to judge a person by strength of character, not status of birth.” Kleopatra spoke deliberately and sincerely, as if delivering a last-minute memorial address for her friend.

  “Like Spartacus, whom you so worshipped as a child?”

  “Yes, like Spartacus,” Kleopatra said defensively. “I do not fault myself for admiring the courage of the slave Spartacus. Just as I know that not a day will pass that I will not miss my companion Mohama.”

  “Many days will pass, Kleopatra. You will have greater challenges to meet and greater losses to bear than this one.”

  “I do not wish to lose anyone else,” said Kleopatra. They were alone now, and she let the first tears fall for Mohama.

  “I will be there with you,” Charmion promised. “You will never have to bear your burden alone.” She held Kleopatra by the arm and guided her toward the carriage, away from the monuments to the dead.

  TWELVE

  Kleopatra woke as the earliest light of day crept through closed shutters. It was her custom to awaken at this time, while most of her family slept considerably later. She liked the morning sun, liked the softness of its first colors as it rose on the eastern side of the palace. At that hour, she and Mohama would scamper down the stairs, through the great hall, and out the palace doors past the yawning guards to see the sun come up from her favorite spot, the wall that overlooked the king’s stables. Sometimes they wandered into the stables and talked to the boys feeding the horses, and then exercised the animals in the ring. Sometimes Kleopatra exercised Persephone herself, and sometimes the girls rode their horses along the cataracts into the wild, uninhabited riverbeds to the south of the city gates.

  She opened her eyes only to realize that she was not at home. She had passed her twelfth birthday on the tumultuous waters between Greece and Italy, tossing about in the dark cabin while Charmion, stiff as a pylon, suppressed her own illness and kept watch over her by the light of a smelly oil lamp. The trip across the Adriatic had been all torrent and turbulence; the royal party spent the voyage in their quarters, ill and praying that the blustering winds were at least pushing them faster in the direction of the shore. The king, to the annoyance of captain, crew, entourage, and his daughter, reiterated to anyone within earshot, “I hope this weather is no indication of what I shall confront in Rome!” But no one had the authority to silence him.

  Finally ashore in Brundisium and grateful to be on solid ground, they rented several carriages for the journey to Rome, traveling through Italy’s most desolate landscape, stopping on the first night at a ragged inn. Hungry from many seasick days, they were anxious for dinner upon solid ground, but were served tough, indigestible rabbit, and then given bug-infested mattresses for the evening’s repose. Three grimy days enclosed in a carriage, sleeveless arms stuck to the leather seat, jostling along the carpet of huge stones that formed the wide swath of the Appian Way, Kleopatra’s only entertainment was wondering what the road had looked like when it was lined with Spartacus and the crucified rebel slaves. “But there is not even a trace of Spartacus now,” she said sadly to Charmion, who replied, “Thank the gods.”

  On the third day, the party climbed the hill to Pompey’s suburban villa, where the gates were thrown open, revealing a winding road with tall shade trees planted symmetrically, hovering protectively over the hard-packed dirt. Workers in short mud-colored tunics peppered the manicured grounds, raking, weeding, and trimming the long tongues of grass that rolled like the evening tide up to the massive-columned house. The royals were met at the door by a Greek houseman and were informed that Pompeius Magnus and his bride were presently at another of their homes and would return within the week. He escorted them through the vestibule and into a cavernous atrium, where they walked over a mosaic of the founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus, being suckled by the she-wolf. The princess was given a suite of rooms, the largest chamber for herself, a smaller antechamber for Charmion, and a still smaller cubiculum for their two attendants. She was shown the indoor pools, the baths for the women, the warm room where she was to receive her oil and massage, and the cold room where she was to recover after the ritual before exposing herself to the air. Finally, she was walked through the walled gardens—Pompey’s pride—and then allowed to retire to her rooms. She sat primly, watching herself in the mirror as Charmion brushed the knots and dust of travel from her hair, and, disguising her knowledge of Latin, listened to the slaves—who thought she and Charmion were Egyptains—fussing about the room and gossiping about the scandalous sexual displays of their master and his new child bride.

  Through the royals had been treated with great solicitousness by the Roman staff, Kleopatra felt confined and tentative on this new place. She tried to enjoy the few luxturies that the barbarians allowed themselves, but she found they did not compare to Alexandria’s indulgences. The baths were smaller and less comfortable, and the servants had no idea how to give a decent body treatment. The foods were ill-prepared, and through the long lunches and dinners she had to endure the indecent behavior of Roman women, who, unlike the women they had met in Greece, did not take their meals with one another, but ate alongside the men, stuffing their faces with as much enthusiasm and talking just as loudly. Kleopatra had to admit that since they had left Alexandria, she had become accustomed to being the only female in the dinning room, and she liked the attention. But the worst part of a Roman meal was the entertainment, Greek poetry read to them by Roman men of the stage—highly theatrical, she said to Charmion, almost comical. No match for a Greek actor. Then, yesterday, she had shocked the servants by swimming without a garment. She had learned, through her secret understanding of their language, that they considered nude swimming the act of a barbarian woman. How is one supposed to swim wrapped in line? She wondered. She gathered that Roman women did not swim at all, but simply dipped their covered bodies in the water. How strange, and how useless, she said to Charmion. What would happen to them if they were in a wreck at sea? Would they simply drown for lack of skill? She had so longed to see Rome, to know Romans, to observe them closely and to conquer them. Now she wondered if she was too foreign and exotic a creature to win their affection.

  What were they doing here? She Worried that Cato was right, that her father was in for a crushing disappointment. Pompey had let Auletes down once before when the king had been desperate for his help. Why did Auletes think the Roman would assist him now? Perhaps the Romans would welcome an idiot like Thea on Egypt’s throne, an enemy easily vanquished. What would happen to them if the Romans denied her father?

  Kleopatra lay motionless in the bed, wishing that when she rolled to her left she would see the chocolate-colored girl lying next to her, would inhale the sweet smell of Mohama�
�s jasmine perfume filling the cool morning air. Kleopatra did not move. She did not want to see the empty space on the bed. She felt the warmth begin to flood her eyes. She would not cry.

  She rose and dressed, slipping past Charmion Still asleep in the antechamber, pausing at the portico to look out at the sunrise view of Pompey’s estate. She walked straight through the atrium, ignoring the servants who followed her, and out the door, where she picked up her pace. She ran through the arbor, laughing, skipping now, watching the light that intruded through the vines overhead play games with her sandaled feet. Suddenly the arbor was no longer there and she was exposed to the brilliant Roman sunrise, soft and diffuse, bathing her in lemons and violets. She reached her arms upward in thanks for the day and was skipping like a frenzied Bacchanalian when she realized that she had reached her destination and that she was being watched.

  Two boys stood before the tall white doors of the stable. She knew they were Persian by the shape of their dark eyes, which looked as if they were lined with natural kohl, and by the language in which they whispered to each other, speculating on her identity. Wordlessly she bid the boys to enter the stable with her. They were only slightly older and slightly taller than she. Nonetheless, she was pleased when they followed her without question.

  She paced up the aisle of stalls, peering into each compartment at the animals, but, to her surprise, seeing nothing that suited her. Why does the great man not have a good Greek-bred horse? She wondered. Why only these clumsy-looking monsters that seem bred for carrying a heavy load?

  Then she saw him. A steed so black he was purple, the color of ripe eggplant. He was all sinew and steam, with an intelligence in his eyes. They were light eyes, almost hazel, like hers. She had never seen such transparent eyes on a horse. He frightened her much more than Persephone had frightened her in the beginning. This steed was two heads taller than her ornery filly. The steam from his nostrils seemed to come from inside him, not from the collision of the chilly morning air and his warm breath. Yet she had to have him, had to tame him. Had to see if he would respond to her command.