by Karen Essex
“And if that happens?” asked Kleopatra.
“Allow me to pose this question: Who will help us if Caesar defeats Pompey? We have done nothing to cultivate Caesar. Everyone knows Auletes is Pompey’s ally. What will become of Egypt if Caesar and Pompey come to blows and Caesar prevails? It is hardly an impossible scenario. All Rome fears it. What will Caesar do with Pompey’s friends and allies, particularly those who, like your father, owe thousands of talents to the Roman moneylenders? It is not pleasant to contemplate.”
“So what must we do?”
“We do not have control of the treasury, so we must go to your father and convince him to send a portion of the money owed to Rabirius. We don’t want Caesar coming here and taking the money by force.”
“Where do you propose we get this money?” she asked. “Those who are against my father will rise up again if we raise taxes.”
“That may be true. But whom would you rather confront? The opponents of Auletes or the ten-legion army of Julius Caesar?”
“We will never really appease Rome, will we?” she asked. She had vowed that she would find a way out of this, had promised the lady Artemis, spilt the blood of the lamb, and made her covenant with the unseen powers of the earth and sky that this would not be her Fate, this fretting and groveling over the demands of Rome. But how to avoid it? Roman boots had trampled over half the earth. Why should Egypt be any different?
“Your Highness, I do not mean to induce melancholia. I believe the native people will support whatever you do. The king has made many improvements in the country since his reinstatement.”
“They always support us until we take food from their mouths,” she answered curtly, fuming over the memory of Rabirius’s tyranny over Alexandria, his long curls matted with pomade, his feet turning outward like a duck when he walked. He cut an altogether ridiculous figure for one who had caused so much harm.
Even worse than Rabirius’s drain on the treasury was Gabinius’s legacy to Alexandria. After Berenike’s trial and execution, Gabinius had gone back to Rome, leaving behind his army of mercenaries, allegedly to protect the king, but really to protect the interests of Rabirius. Undeterred by the reestablishment of the king’s authority, the Gabinian soldiers went on looting the town at will. The men made Alexandria their personal whorehouse, raping the native women wherever and whenever they pleased. When threatened with punishment, they simply laughed and replied that they were now the law. For six months they had conducted a reign of terror over the city.
“I am utterly beholden to Rabirius, that miserable scrod,” the king would grumble, searching for a solution. “And Gabinius, the pirate, whose army of cutthroats will be at me if I move against Rabirius. What can I do? Without those two criminals, I would never have been able to return home, and they are never going to let me forget it.”
To appease Gabinius and Rabirius, Auletes had been forced to appoint Rabirius to the high position of Minister of Finance, giving him access to Egypt’s revenues and her treasury. In return, Rabirius used Egypt as his playground and her resources as his toys.
It was the then sixteen-year-old Kleopatra who finally outsmarted them. She was not about to be intimidated by the preening fool, the man Cicero once disparaged in a speech as a “thieving dance-boy in hair curlers.” She had Auletes put Rabirius on watch. They discovered that he had lowered the wages of the workers in every government-owned factory and kept the remainder of the money for himself. He stole the workers’ share of the goods and loaded it on ships sent back daily to Rome. He had become the most despised man in Egypt. But he was still a friend of Julius Caesar, and he still had the support of the Gabinian soldiers.
One day in her bath, Kleopatra had an epiphany. Suddenly, she was furious at the dashing cavalry officer who had made such an impact on her. All at once, the plan by which Antony had used her father and her country unfolded. He had promised Gabinius’s army wealth if they crossed the desert. He took the credit and the glory for leading them into a victory. Undoubtedly, he also took a large sum of money from Gabinius for his services. And then he absented himself to make it possible for the soldiers to steal whatever they pleased.
So that is his game, thought the princess. She felt humiliated that she had been taken in by his good looks and seductive ways. She and her father and the mission to restore him were no more to Antony than to any other Roman—an opportunity to line their pockets with Egyptian gold.
She arrived in her father’s office barely dry. “Father, you are going to secure the loyalty of the Gabinians.”
“But how?” asked the king, wearing his most bemused, defeated expression.
“How do the Romans secure their soldiers? They give them land and money. You must give each man a parcel of land, the size according to his rank and his record. And you must encourage them to stop raping our women by giving them permission to marry them. If you provide what the Roman generals provide, they will be beholden to you as they are to their own commanders. For all the boasting of the loyalty of Roman soldiers, they are bought and paid for like any other men.”
“My child, you are an oracle,” said the king.
The Gabinians readily accepted the king’s offer of housing and money, and several announced their desire to be married to women of the city, both Egyptian and Greek. Like all other immigrants since Alexandria’s inception, they, too, were eager to be seduced and assimilated into her promise.
Shortly thereafter, the factory workers rose up against Rabirius and ran him out of town. Kleopatra would never forget Rabirius bursting into the Royal Reception Room—pomaded hair stringy around his fat, wet face, his ridiculous painted robe stained with perspiration—begging for protection from “the filthy Egyptians.” They had greeted him at the gate of the linen factory where he had come to pilfer a portion of the goods; armed with knives and clubs, they attacked him. “I was hit on the shoulder with a terrible stick by a dirty little man,” Rabirius had exclaimed, “and I have bruises. Bruises!” Kleopatra had giggled when he lifted his short robe to reveal an ugly purple knot on his thigh, stifling her laughter when Hephaestion calmly offered to shelter Rabirius in the jail until he could escape Egypt on the next boat to Rome. Without alternative refuge, Rabirius had reluctantly agreed to live in prison for several days. The last Kleopatra saw of him was his fat bottom swaying contemptuously as he lumbered out of the room.
Though the menace himself was gone, Rabirius’s legacy remained. Hephaestion collected reports from each of the forty-two metropoli: Every state in the nation had been ravaged by the years of revolt and the recent visit of the Roman army. The young men are dead from the war, the eunuch explained. Taxes continually rise to pay the debt to Rome, and the food and merchandise produced have been stolen either by the army or by Rabirius. With implacable calm, Hephaestion informed the king that while his restoration had stopped the war, it hardly had benefited the people.
“Why do you trouble me with these things at a time when I should be merry?” The king scowled, his lower lip puffy like the underside of a caterpillar.
While Auletes pouted, Kleopatra absorbed the realization that her father’s kingdom would have to be won not just once but time and again. With the optimism of a child, the king was always satisfied with small gains, as if history had not imprinted upon him the lessons of his own experiences; as if the Romans would forgive such a substantial debt. As if his own subjects did not despise him and would suddenly stop searching for any reason to send him off into exile again. Next time, she might not be so lucky. She might be murdered in the palace, left behind by her father to face the mob, or even be asked by the leaders of the city’s tribes to betray her father, at which point she would become their puppet queen until they could rid themselves of her, too.
Kleopatra persuaded her father that he must act quickly to solidify his claims on the throne by restoring the temples and monuments of the gods that were pillaged by the Roman soldiers and by Rabirius. She told him firmly, reciting to him as if he were a
little boy, the same words he had spoken to her in her youth: The Egyptians honor those who honor their gods.
“But I have just returned to my kingdom,” he had said. “Must I leave it so quickly?”
“Father, all of Egypt is your kingdom,” Kleopatra had replied, and then handed him an itinerary carefully made by Hephaestion. The king was to travel down the Nile, leaving behind hefty donations to the temples as a reminder of his beneficence.
While Auletes was away on his mission, she and Hephaestion came up with a number of ways to compensate for the iniquities visited upon the people by Rabirius. The farmers were to receive a more favorable division of their corn crop; the duty on Lycian honey, adored by Egyptians and Greeks alike, was lowered from fifty percent to twenty-five; conditions were improved for the workers in the Nubian gold mines. Kleopatra and Hephaestion worked many long days and nights to bring to fruition these improvements. The strategy had been impeccable. The priests at Karnak, a powerful political force in Middle Egypt, had expressed their gratitude by commissioning native artists to depict Auletes in Pharaoh’s dress vanquishing his enemies.
Now, for the first time in many years, an air of calm rested over both the city of Alexandria and the country of Egypt. Rabirius had been prosecuted in a Roman court and fined for his excesses in Auletes’ kingdom and for illegally holding office in a foreign government. Yet the parasite was still trying to collect his blood money.
“Well?” Hephaestion’s modulated but firm appeal interrupted her contemplation. Kleopatra suddenly felt as old as her father and just as worn. The enormity of their problem settled over her like a shroud. “Let us request a formal meeting with the king. We can do nothing in this matter without his permission.”
The king had already taken his supper and was seated in the gaming room with Hekate at his side. At his feet were two boys who looked like, but were not, twins. With skin that was not brown or black or fair but instead pale yellow, they were wrapped in shiny red triangles of cloth. Their faces had the same angular three-sided shape of their dress. They sat cross-legged on the floor, shoulders touching, each leaning against one of the king’s calves. He stroked their fine, silky black hair as he sat staring into space. Hekate sat very erect, pretending either that they were not there, or that she did not object to their presence. Kleopatra found herself torn between irritation at her father and concern at the ashen color of his face.
She began gently, though in a firm tone. “Must we discuss the affairs of the kingdom in the company of such unfamiliar faces?”
“Oh, do not mind them,” said the king. “They speak only some singsong language that no one understands. Not even you, I’ll wager. They do not care for official business and such.”
“Very well. Hephaestion has read to you the demand letter from Rabirius?”
“Yes, yes,” said the king curtly.
“And what action do you recommend?”
“Send him some money. Or if you would like to meet Julius Caesar, do not send him some money.” The king laughed at his joke. “For myself, I should like to meet Caesar. I hear he is a splendid conversationalist and an art lover. I should like to play my flute for him.”
“The doctors recommend that you do not play anymore, Your Highness,” said Hekate quietly. “It takes away your wind.”
“Nonetheless, I would happily play for Julius Caesar. Perhaps he would forgive the debt if I enchanted him.”
“Father, I do not wish to meet Julius Caesar under such circumstances. Hephaestion believes we must send Rabirius a payment, but only after we have gathered support from the people.”
“Do what you wish,” Auletes said. “You are queen.”
Kleopatra looked at the Prime Minister and shook her head. So this is what it had come to. Her father had lost his mind and he no longer recognized her. “Father, I beg your indulgence. You are king. I am your daughter. There is no queen.”
“No queen?” Auletes replied as if he had just been given startling news. “We shall have to remedy that. I thought I had married you.”
“Father, I am Kleopatra. I am your daughter, not your wife.”
“I once married my daughter.”
“Yes, Father, that was Thea, the daughter of your wife and my mother. I am neither your first wife nor your second.”
Kleopatra tried to conceal the alarm in her voice. She looked at Hekate, who lowered her eyes. What was she to do? Her father was no longer her father but some madman who did not even know her. She felt the protection she had enjoyed all her life as his most favored and loyal daughter drain away like water out of a tub, leaving her empty and alone.
“You are how old?”
“I am almost eighteen, Father,” she said.
“Already eighteen years old? Very well. As of tomorrow you are queen.” He shrugged, saying to Hephaestion, “Draw up the papers. Bring them to me in the afternoon.” And then to Hekate, “Oh, I am tired. I want to be carried to my bed.”
The queen held the coin between her index finger and thumb, admiring the favorable way the craftsman had dignified the prodigious profiles of herself and her father. Was there any possibility that her face was as lovely as it looked on the coin? She feared not; she had too often held a mirror to the side of her face and appraised herself from that angle. But the artist had managed to capture the intelligence in her eyes, the dramatic levity of her cheekbone, and the enticing, upward curve of her lips. In the thirtieth regnal year of King Ptolemy XII and the first regnal year of his co-regent, Queen Kleopatra VII, it read. Cheek to cheek, they stared forward, as if into the future.
She flipped it again, catching it in the cup of her palm and bouncing it a few times. No one, she was sure, would notice her handiwork, her alchemy, except the foreman at the Royal Mint. And he was a reasonable man.
Once Kleopatra’s joint rulership with her father was made official, she requested that the government issue a coin with the images of her and her father to announce to his subjects that his daughter now ruled at his side. But Hephaestion brought her the grim news that the treasury’s supplies of bronze and silver were severely diminished, due to the extortion of Gabinius and the machinations of Rabirius. There is simply not enough metal, Hephaestion explained, to issue coinage at this time. The supplies are almost twenty-five percent lower than in previous years. Perhaps later, he said, when we have solved some of our financial problems. She did not like the way that her first command as queen had been summarily dismissed. That evening in her bath, breathing the aromatic steam, skimming her hand over the oil-slicked surface of the warm water, Kleopatra came up with the idea. She leapt to her feet, almost losing her balance on the slippery marble floor of the tub and startling the bath attendant. She allowed herself to be wrapped in a towel, dancing, almost, in bare feet while she reviewed her inspired idea for possible flaws. They would issue the coins, but with less bronze, twenty-five percent less, to be exact. She brought the plan to Hephaestion the next day.
“How can we do that, Your Majesty,” he asked, “when the coins are weighed for their worth?” He looked at her as if surprised at her naiveté; as if she were a child with an unreasonable demand who had manufactured an impossible, silly solution just to get her way.
“It is simple. We will stamp the worth of the coin on the coin itself. Just as we stamp our image, we will imprint the worth of the coin directly into the metal. Then no one will be able to contest the worth. It will also save considerable time in the trading process. No one will have to weigh anymore. They will know what the coin is worth because we will tell them.”
“But that has never been done,” he replied politely.
“Precisely. Then there is no law against it.”
The man looked astonished, but whether in admiration of her or fear that she had lost her mind, she could not guess. She continued, “A coin of forty drachmas will be stamped forty drachmas. But it will weigh thirty. In this way, we will make a full twenty-five percent profit on every coin we issue. The surplus can be used to
make a payment to placate the scoundrel Rabirius.”
Hephaestion did not answer, but rubbed his palms together slowly as if he were praying on the idea. “It has never been done before, but it shall be done now,” he said, offering her his characteristic modest smile, as if a broad grin would crack open his unlined skin. “Your Majesty, the gods enlighten you. I hope you are aware of that gift. I believe you are specially blessed. I shall remember to honor that as long as I am in your command.”
“I am aware of the goodness of the gods,” she said. “But if you really wish to please me, you should offer me a more extravagant smile.”
Thus edified and feeling terribly like a queen, Kleopatra went into the Royal Vaults and extracted her mother’s ring of the Bacchant, a heavy, gold-sculpted rendering of the god, naked and at his most manly and beautiful, his tousled curls capped with an ivy crown. She liked wearing the ring of the last true queen of Egypt, as she liked to think of it, and to have that link to a mother whose voice, features, and demeanor she could not recall, even in dreams. Perhaps the ring would please the ailing Auletes, bringing back pleasant memories of his first wife, whom he had lost not long after his daughter was born. In the past month, the king had forsaken his sexual indulgences as well as his duties and had taken to his bed Kleopatra visited her father daily; sometimes he knew her, sometimes he mistook her for others long dead.
Hekate hovered over Auletes day and night, holding his hand for hours and hours as he lay gasping for breath, laying soothing herbs and presses on his forehead. When the king did not show improvement either in mind or in body, Kleopatra called a meeting of the physicians and demanded to know why they could not revive her lather, who was not an old man.
