Kleopatra

by Karen Essex

  Kleopatra would never have such a face. It was her most vivid thought. Already her nose was too big and her eyes, though hot with intelligence, were not large nor dramatic enough to compensate for that feature.

  Two sailors took in the plank. Clodia disappeared and the ship left the dock.

  Glum at her own prospects, Kleopatra lowered herself upon the table and went to sleep.

  “If I had been a weaker man, I would have wept at the sight of the familiar faces.” Kleopatra hopped upon the lap of her father, dodging the goblet Archimedes put into his hand. “Let me tell you a tale of betrayal and revenge.”

  They were men he had trusted. Men he had made rich by his generosity. Men with whom he had hunted, dined, whored. Harpalus, the mathematician to whom the king had given a large stipend to come to the Mouseion and study. Lycus, the philosopher Auletes invited to the palace time and again to discuss theological issues. Icarius, the importer of spices, who was just awarded a monopoly on nutmeg and cardamom. Nestor, the whoremonger of the Fayum, who provided the Royal Brothel with some of its most unusual talent. The admiral Periander, whom Auletes suspected—but could not be sure—was one of his bastard sons by a court governess. How else did the ingrate think he got the officership so young?

  “Daughter, I almost wept to see who had deserted my cause and joined with Berenike and the eunuch. But I knew that I had no time to waste in grief. Ascinius went before me and his men followed close upon the rear. Quietly, we entered each cabin. I pointed at the traitors I recognized, and in the blink of an eye, they were done, just like that. Still asleep, the most of them, but I picked each of the condemned up by the scruff of his nightshirt and said, “This is my final gift to you, traitor. Give my regards to the ghost of my wife.’ And then …” The king slid his hand across his neck. “We did our business and then vanished as if into thin air. The others aboard are still asleep, the lazy bastards. What a surprise awaits them when they awaken.

  “The One Hundred are now down to sixty,” he continued, stroking his cup. “How lucky are the twenty cowards who deserted to hunt gold with the pirates. Traitors though they be we cannot begrudge them their lives. The gods decide who stays and who goes, eh?”

  “What is happening now, Your Highness?” asked Archimedes. “Should we not flee this location before we are found out?”

  “No, no,” said the king, nonchalantly. “Clodius has it all planned out. We mustn’t interfere. Open the shutters here and behold what he has wrought.”

  From the open window, they saw a man kneeling on the dock, frantically waving his arms at the ship that carried Clodia, the beautiful Lesbia, to Delos. He beat his chest, appeared to curse the heavens, and then threw his body flat upon the rough wood of the dock and beat its boards with his fist.

  “Who is that crazy man on the docks?”

  “That is Caelius Rufus, the thief who stole the jewels of Clodius’s sister. Clodius told him that she wished to reconcile with him, and as a token of sincerity, she had a very heavy purse to leave with him,” laughed the king. “So he is a little sad to have missed her boat. Now, observe the genius of Clodius in action.”

  Hammonius emerged from the ship of the One Hundred with a Greek sailor who pointed at Caelius splayed upon the dock and yelled, “There he is, the one who murdered the Alexandrians. Grab him.” Stunned, Caelius sat up, having no choice but to submit to the sailors, who took him into custody.

  Suddenly, like a deus ex machina, Clodius appeared.

  “Now watch,” said the king. “Clodius shall say that Caelius is a gentleman and a nobleman and demand that he be released to his custody. And Clodius, being Tribune of the People, shall be obeyed.”

  The sailors let go of Caelius, who fell into Clodius’s arms, leaning against him, weeping.

  “And to think, Father, the Romans always accuse the Greeks of being devious,” Kleopatra said.

  Days later, to the delight of the king, the philosopher Dio mysteriously died of poison. But Auletes’ pleasure, like most of the joy in his life, was short-lived. The very next morning, Pompey came to the king with a very solemn face. “You are always welcome in my home, my good friend,” said Pompey. “But for your own safety and the safety of your daughter, I must insist you leave.”

  “But what of my cause? I have not even had an opportunity to speak before the senate, and as far as I know, no one has solicited their support on my behalf,” he said pointedly. “I have no country. I have nowhere to go,” he wailed.

  “I shall take up your cause when the time is right,” replied Pompey. “The senate is rather distressed with you, my friend. A date was set to hear the grievances of the Alexandrians, but when the time came, not one man showed up. It was then discovered that twenty among them had been brutally murdered, and that they had fled Italy. No one has spoken of charging you with this crime, but Rome is thick with the notion that you are responsible. It is being regarded as an act of tyranny.”

  Kleopatra said nothing, but thought of the tyranny of Julius Caesar, of Clodius, of Pompey himself. What hypocrites were these Romans, doing anything they liked and then hiding behind Republican ideals when it was politically convenient.

  “The timing is not good for you,” Pompey continued. “The senate is nostalgic for a more democratic time. The ways of a monarch are feared here. I’m afraid the senate is not in the mood to favor you. We must wait for a more auspicious time.”

  “My usurping daughter sits upon the throne. I have no country! Where am I to go? Am I forever banished from my kingdom?”

  And I, too? wondered Kleopatra. Perhaps she would not grow up to be a queen as predicted, but would live with her father herding goats on some uninhabited patch of land in an inhospitable sea.

  “Your Majesty,” interjected Archimedes. “Perhaps there is a safer and more neutral place where you might wait for the tide to turn in your favor. Leave Hammonius here to attend to your business and remove yourself to calmer waters.”

  “Your young Kinsman is right,” said Pompey. “The Egyptian question is always a topic of debate in the senate. But now is not the time to force the issue one way or another. Remember the fate of your brother, Ptolemy of Cyprus.”

  With that ominous reminder, Pompey excused himself on the pretense that his wife waited for his presence in the garden, where they were to take a tour of their spring flowers. “May the gods be with you, my friend,” he said. He kissed the hand of the princess. Kleopatra knew they would not see Pompey again, that he would avoid them until they were packed and gone. She imagined him sneaking a look to make certain that they rode away from his villa and were gone for good.

  As soon as Pompey quitted the room, the king let out a long, slow, frustrated growl. “These Romans have taken everything from me and given me nothing in return but a debtor’s certificate. I may as well be a dead man. I am nothing without their assurances. I will not go until I have satisfaction!” insisted the king.

  Kleopatra thought her father sounded like an obstinate child who demanded a thing that would be harmful to him, but a thing he wanted anyway.

  “Your Majesty, there is a rumor about that your host is organizing a group of thugs to do street battle with Clodius,” whispered Hammonius. “There is a man, Titus Annius Milo, an undercover associate of Pompey, who has just purchased a team of well-trained gladiators. It is said that he will use these men against Clodius’s mob. The city streets are already rife with violence. Get out while you may.”

  “We must go somewhere where we will be safe, Father,” said the princess. “Pompey was either threatening us or warning us. I do not know which. But I would very much like to leave Roman soil.”

  “My dear child, the entire world rests upon Roman soil,” said the king dryly. “We shall go wherever you like. I leave it to you and your Kinsmen. I am going to withdraw myself now and enjoy the warm and cold plunges of the Roman bath while I still may.”

  The king swiftly departed, leaving the princess and her advisers to watch his bulk sway from thei
r presence, his great ass waddling like a goose.

  “What shall we do?” Kleopatra turned to Archimedes. She hoped her cousin would offer a solution.

  “You are one day to be queen, my cousin. Perhaps the decision should be yours.”

  Archimedes’ eyes twinkled at Kleopatra. She thought he might be teasing her again, treating her like a child. She would not offer a serious idea if he was going to strike it down with laughter. She said nothing, waiting for him to reveal that he had been joking.

  He looked at her impatiently. “Now come, let us put our rather brilliant heads together.”

  FIFTEEN

  The air is alive with the breath of the gods. Can you not feel it on the inhale?” The king took in a great swallow of air, puffing out his chest. He exhaled like a horse, blowing his lips and neighing.

  After punctilious deliberation, Kleopatra had chosen the Lydian city of Ephesus as the location to wait for their future to unfold. She had remembered from her history lessons that Herodotus had praised the Ionian founders for settling in places that had the most beautiful climate and scenery in all the world. She knew that they would be welcome there. The city had burned to the ground on the night of Alexander’s birth and had been rebuilt by the great Ptolemaic queen Arsinoe II and her first husband, Lysimachus. Kleopatra had heard that the city rivaled Alexandria in temples, museums, libraries, and brothels, and was alive with foreign and Greek peoples, merchants, holy men, seers, prostitutes, and scholars. Not to mention, as Hammonius pointed out, that the ancient temple of Artemis, the city’s most famous attraction, was also a world bank in which the Ptolemies had stashed a goodly sum of their gold.

  Auletes was so pleased with Kleopatra’s decision that he told her with a wink that she would henceforth rule the kingdom. “What a pleasure to ride through the streets without fearing for your very life. If I never see Rome again I shall remain a happy man.”

  Auletes had not again mentioned the incident at Puteoli. It was as if the memory of the slayings had vanished along with the lives of the dead. “My dears, we shall not be lazy here,” he said, patting the white slender hand of Hekate. “We shall spend our days attending the lectures at the academy. Why, we are in the birthplace of Herakleitos. The home of Artemis. Ah, back to civilization.”

  “Rome!” sighed Hekate. “What a terrible place. There is not even a theater. Not one. A disgrace.”

  “Pompey has plans to build a theater,” said the princess. “He told me so himself.”

  “Pompey has many plans,” said Auletes. “But Pompey does very little. Thank the gods for Clodius. No wonder Pompey despises him so. And no wonder Clodius hates him.”

  “Men of action inevitably look with disdain upon the lame,” Kleopatra said.

  Overwhelmed with affection for the princess, the king leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. She could not recall when he had done such a thing, when he had been so joyful, and she felt a twinge of conscience. The king had no idea what conspiracies were at that moment forming in the mind of his blossoming adolescent daughter.

  She was taking a chance with her father’s goodwill but she believed it worth the risk. Charmion was in on it, in on one of her schemes for the first time. Charmion had been through the rites years before and did not approve of one so young participating. But Kleopatra reasoned that it was better for her to enter into the Mysteries now, before her time came, when the coupling would cause no child to be born. It would not do for a future queen to have a child sired by a masked Bacchant undoubtedly not of royal blood. The family dynasty did not need more bastards, and unlike when the men sired them, women doing such a thing was met with inevitable disgrace.

  “But you are thirteen,” argued Charmion. “You must wait until you are older.”

  “I do not wish to risk impregnation.”

  “There is never any cause to fear impregnation if one is careful. I will give you a small device to insert to protect you from such a thing. You know about these things, Kleopatra. Why do you use such faulty reasoning with me?”

  “I am myself deified, and the daughter of the living god on earth. I do not believe you should stop me.” A different approach. She spoke with complete assurance but held her breath. Charmion rarely fell for intimidation tactics. Yet she sensed the woman’s vacillation. Charmion welcomed anything that would closer align the princess with the gods, but she feared that she was too young to participate in the frenzied ritual and the random coupling that followed.

  “Then why are we not asking the permission of the king?” Charmion asked.

  “The king fears for my safety, that is all. He would heartily approve of the journey to religious enlightenment. Besides, no one may be initiated after the age of twenty.”

  “That is seven years away.” Charmion’s eyes narrowed. “I know why you are doing this thing.”

  “I am doing this thing because I cannot do it in Alexandria. There I am a princess and I represent the goddess Isis and such a ceremony would be fraught with meaning. Here in Ephesus, I may remain anonymous and demonstrate my devotion to the god.”

  Kleopatra finished her speech, thoroughly pleased with the reasoning and delivery. The truth, however, was closer to what Charmion guessed: The women of Ephesus were enthusiastic devotees of Dionysus, and the only time they captured Kleopatra’s imagination was when they spoke in furtive tones of the mad Bacchanalian rites. Normally, they were very dull. When she was made to, she kept company with the Greek women in the home in which they stayed while they quietly attended to their chores. Spinning. Spinning. Spinning. Supervising the kitchens. Spinning again. Adorning themselves. Taking exercise. The isolated lives of these Greek females, away from men, from the city, from the pulse of the Greek marketplace, bored her to distraction. But when the talk turned to the god and to the Mysteries, their voices quickened, neck muscles quivering, hands fluttering like leaves in the cross-winds. With eyes wide, the women would look over their shoulders to see if husbands—lords, masters, and interlopers—lurked about listening to the secret ways to worship the god. For it seemed that once men were older, once they were given the key to enter the wider world, they let go of their devotion to the god Dionysus, and it was left to the women to serve him. King Ptolemy XII Auletes was an exception. But he was not simply the god’s keenest advocate; he was the god. And, being more histrionic than most members of his sex and a musician, too, he was more inclined than most to serve Dionysus.

  Now his daughter discovered the wellspring of his faith. She observed the excitement in the women, and she wished to know the cause of the stimulation. And she wished to participate in the anonymous coupling that followed. She was weary of her own ignorance of that mystery. She was young, but was she not precocious in all other aspects of life? What is so special about the Mysteries? She asked one of the women as she watched her busy fingers at the loom. The woman stopped what she was doing. “Child,” she mouthed through rounded lips, “it is the essence of life.”

  When the time came, Kleopatra loosened her hair and ran barefoot through the night and into the cavern with the others. The cave was dark and lit with torches, making shadow figures above her. The damp coastal air, acrid inside the holy place, hung about her like a wet second skin. A goat with horns was tied to the altar, jumpy with the presence of the others and the premonition of its destiny. Kleopatra stared into its nervous yellow eyes. She had already drunk too much wine from the bowl that was passed around the circle of initiates, and she felt light in her body but heavy in her head. She was frightened. This was no place of worship such as her father had built in honor of the god, no elaborate, painted room in a palace. This place was primeval and hidden from sight, the kind of place where an uncivilized thing might transpire and no one would stop it.

  A Maenad crone with tufts of silvery hair placed a tortuously woven crown of ivy on Kleopatra’s head, making her even more aware of her tingling scalp. She drank a bowl of foul-smelling liquid, a mushroom broth meant to give her better communion with the god. It
was like drinking mud; that, or some fluid of the dead, something not meant for human consumption. The vile substance mingled with the wine in her stomach. She belched up a putrid combination of the two.

  A cramp snaked its way through her intestines and made her double over. She felt her ears close to sound, as if a gate inside her head had dropped, shutting out the world and locking her inside her body. She wondered if the god punished his followers—inquisitive mortals wishing intimacy with him, wishing to know the secrets that lurked below earth’s surface, the mysteries that made flowers bloom and vines grow.

  Time passed, or did not, and Kleopatra became aware again or her surroundings, of the voices of the Becchants invoking the name of the god in a hollow chorus that sounded as if it came from a deep tunnel. The sound became song and then became pure sound again, neither word nor name, but a hum that gained power as it merged with the echo of the cave and the bleating of the goat. Kleopatra joined the chorus, chanting the name of the god time and again, letting her sounds converge with the whir around her, becoming one with the others, an isolated princess no more, but now reduced to a dizzying vibration.

  “His name is the Word.” The priestess made the initiates repeat the phrase over and over. Kleopatra moved as they moved, around and around the fire, around the bleating goat until the hum became motion. But she could feel nothing. She heard the high pitch of the animal’s cry and then saw the blood spill. Someone pushed her from behind. She fell forward, and the incarnadine liquid of the animal warmed her toes. Hands patted red prints over her dress, over her face. She yelled and continued to yell, spreading the warm liquid over her body.

  Then she was running. No longer in the shelter of the cave but in the dark blanket of night. Running with the women, their hair loose and trailing behind their fleeting bodies like trains of a gown, their only cosmetic the goat’s blood. Running barefoot, naked skin electrified by the shock of wet grass. Slowing as the grass turned to sand, slowing, slipping. Suddenly the cold water of the sea ticked her ankles, her knees, her neck, until she was immersed, fighting against the water to follow the torches the women held high above the waves. And laughter. So much laughter. Not echoing now as in the cave, but loose and dissipating as the sound of their fervor hit the diffuse ocean breezes.