In Thrall to the Enemy Commander

by Greta Gilbert

  She was completely awake, utterly spent, and her ka floated on a river of light. She had lived her whole life never daring to dream of the joys he had shown her and now she could not rid her mind of him. Was this another facet of freedom? Or was this something sweeter still?

  She stood and crossed to the table, and poured herself a cup of wine. There was so much she did not know about Titus—so much she longed to learn. Where did he live in Rome? What else had he seen of the world? What did he wish for and dream of in the night?

  Who was he really?

  She searched around the room, making a game of discovering his things. There was his gladius in its golden sheath, there his tunic, there his helmet so blue and bright.

  Do not cling to him, Wen, she warned herself.

  He had shown her another world—that was true. But that did not necessarily mean he wished for her to reside with him in it. A familiar sadness settled over her and at last she began to feel the heavy tide of sleep.

  She glanced about the room one last time for something—anything—to remember him by, settling her eyes upon a brazier near her feet. Balanced near its copper edge lay a half-burned scroll. She pretended that the small, discarded document contained the answers to all her questions about him.

  It did not matter that she could barely read whatever was written upon it. Some day far in the future, she would unroll the scroll and pretend that it told the story of their brief, beautiful love. She picked it up and tucked it into her sheath, then curled up at Titus’s side.

  * * *

  When she awoke again, the sun was shining through the coloured windows, staining the bed cloth with its riot of colour. Wen heard the calls of the morning birds and the rumbling of carts in the courtyard below. But the sound of Titus’s breaths was absent and the room was stiflingly still.

  She sat up. He was nowhere to be seen. She scanned the large chamber, searching for signs of him—his red cape, his tangled toga, his strappy leather sandals. She found nothing. It was as if he had completely disappeared.

  Then she spied the note lying on the table.

  She put on her robe and returned to Cleopatra’s palace, arriving in the Queen’s living chamber just as Charmion was arranging the Queen’s hair.

  ‘Who might that be hiding beneath that lovely white carpet?’ jested the Queen. She met Wen’s eyes in the reflection of her mirror.

  Wen removed her heavy veil and gave a shy smile. ‘It is I, Queen. I have returned from my journey.’

  ‘Was it a walk in a garden?’ asked Iras.

  ‘Or a skip down Canopus Way?’ asked Charmion.

  ‘Or a race at the Hippodrome, perhaps?’ asked the Queen, searching Wen’s expression.

  ‘It was a flight through the air,’ said Wen, ‘over the endless blue sea.’

  Iras swooned, falling on to a nearby couch. ‘I believe you, Wen, for never have I seen a woman so flush with beauty and light.’

  ‘It is true, Wen,’ said the Queen. ‘You are glowing.’

  ‘Without your encouragement, I would not have gone to him at all. I owe you all a debt.’

  ‘It is I who owes you a debt, Wen,’ said the Queen. ‘Your advice has proven quite effective so far, both in politics and...other things.’ Wen searched the Queen’s eyes and thought she detected their own kind of glow.

  ‘But where is Titus now?’ asked Charmion.

  ‘I do not know,’ said Wen in despair. ‘I fear he is gone.’

  Wen removed Titus’s letter from beneath her belt and handed it to the Queen. ‘My reading skills are poor, my Queen. I do not know for certain.’

  The Queen unfolded the parchment and began to read. ‘Dear Wen, as I write this I am watching a goddess at rest. She is sleeping so very peacefully on my bed. I worry that if I blink I might discover that I have only imagined her. The name of this goddess is Wen and I worship her most ardently. She is the most beautiful, intelligent, magnificent woman I have ever known.’

  ‘Oh!’ cried Iras.

  The Queen grinned, then continued. ‘I hope she will understand why I cannot say goodbye. I fear that if I wake her, her kiss will have the power to keep me here, when my duty calls me away. Ptolemy’s army marches on Alexandria and I must recruit an allied force so that I may keep my goddess safe. I promise that I will do so and that I will return. Truly, Titus.’

  The Queen returned the letter to Wen with a mischievous smile. ‘You have entranced him, my dear. I would have expected nothing less.’

  ‘Oh, Wen, are those not the most beautiful sentiments a man has ever written?’ gasped Charmion.

  Wen glanced down at the looping Latin script, puzzled.

  ‘What is it, Wen? Why are you not delighted?’ Cleopatra asked.

  Wen stared in wonder at the Queen. ‘You are able to read Latin?’

  The Queen’s eyes grew big in the copper mirror. She turned to look Wen in the eye. ‘You have found me out, Wen. I should have known that you would.’

  ‘But, my Queen, why did you ask me to be your translator?’

  ‘Because I needed you to be part of my ruse.’

  Wen struggled to understand, but emotion clouded her thoughts. She had been tricked. By the Queen herself. Duped. ‘I needed to appear not to understand Latin,’ Cleopatra explained. ‘It is how I was able to spy on Caesar and know his true mind. You have been a necessary part of that ruse, Wen, and I am grateful.’

  Wen tried to understand. Still, something about the Queen’s explanation did not ring true. ‘But why...me?’

  The Queen started to answer, but there was a sudden shriek from the courtyard below, followed by a chaotic rustling. Wen followed the Queen and her handmaids to the edge of the balcony and peered out. Three large, fiery balls had landed in the bushes, their flames already travelling up one of the trees.

  ‘It has come,’ said the Queen. ‘My brother’s army has arrived.’

  The fireballs were followed by a rain of arrows and the people of the Royal Quarter rushed indoors while Caesar’s legion hastened to douse the flames.

  ‘Do not fear, Sisters,’ said Cleopatra. ‘And listen while I tell you a secret.’

  The Queen retreated to her couch, where she calmly explained that Caesar’s preparations for war had begun many days ago in secret. ‘There was a reason he was in a hurry to give the feast,’ she said. ‘That very night, while the citizens of Alexandria clustered at all the temples and feasted on free bread and beer, and while all Alexandria’s nobles and landholders made merry in the banquet hall, Caesar’s soldiers had quietly moved much of the city’s grain within the walls of the Royal Quarter.’

  Wen listened in wonder. As the city’s residents feasted and revelled, their Roman occupier was stealing their grain.

  ‘That is not all, My Sisters,’ continued the Queen. ‘The day Caesar sent his messengers of peace out to meet with General Achillas, he finished constructing dozens of catapults and ballistas for our defence. They are being positioned as we speak. They were constructed and stored in secret in Caesar’s villa.’

  What was more, Caesar had spent the past few days constructing an elaborate military buffer zone outside the Royal Quarter wall. He had destroyed all buildings lying within fifty cubits of the wall and the materials were used to construct several maze-like fence structures riddled with hidden traps.

  ‘There is a reason he is called the greatest General in the world,’ Cleopatra said in triumph.

  Wen felt reassured by the Queen’s words, though she sensed the fear behind them. She also noticed what the Queen did not say. She did not say that General Achillas was relentless and clever, though he was well known to be. Nor did she say that Caesar could hold out for ever.

  * * *

  The days passed. The women watched and waited. Some nights, Cleopatra would go to Caesar’s rooms and not return until morning. ‘We are safe and protecte
d, Sisters,’ she assured her women. ‘As long as Caesar lives we shall be safe.’

  More days passed and no aid arrived. Caesar’s barber found a scroll addressed to General Achillas written in Pothinus’s own hand. His treachery finally proven, Caesar had Pothinus beheaded.

  Not that it helped matters. Ptolemy’s soldiers were entering the harbour late at night, stealing the royal warships one by one.

  When Caesar discovered the scheme, he remained calm. ‘Whoever controls the harbour, controls Alexandria,’ he explained to the Queen.

  The next morning, the residents of the Royal Quarter awoke to the thick smell of smoke coming from the harbour. That night Caesar had deliberately set Alexandria’s entire military fleet ablaze.

  In the fire, part of the Library ignited and Cleopatra wept as she watched great tongues of flame destroy what she had always held so dear.

  ‘What matters most is that we are alive,’ she told her sisters, as if trying to convince herself. ‘Is that not true?’

  Wen nodded, though she recalled what the Queen herself had taught her: that there was a difference between being alive and living.

  Wen thought of Titus every day. She studied each of the words he had written to her, imagining the large, gentle hand that had fashioned them.

  She envisioned him crossing the sea in some small, fragile boat, his hands gripping the oars as he and his small entourage journeyed to find help.

  She went to the Royal Temple of Isis and made the requisite prayers and offerings, begging the Goddess to keep him safe. She watched the Lighthouse, trying to take heart. The flame is not yet extinguished, she observed. He will follow it back to me.

  The weeks became months. Their morale declined along with the royal food stores. Ptolemy’s troops were endlessly creative and every day they found some new way to threaten the men defending the wall of the Royal Quarter. A battle was fought in the harbour and Caesar emerged victorious. But while Caesar controlled the harbour, Achillas had the city and his army would not relent.

  The next day, a rain of fireballs plunged into the Royal Quarter in numbers greater than Caesar’s men had yet seen. Apollodorus looked ashen as he stormed into Cleopatra’s living quarters.

  ‘Come with me now—by order of Caesar.’

  The Queen and her women gathered their belongings and followed Apollodorus below the palace, where Cleopatra’s royal bath house stretched. It was a labyrinth of massage rooms, steam rooms, hot pools and lounging areas that had not functioned since the siege.

  ‘You will be safe from any fires here,’ explained Apollodorus.

  They made their camp around the large cold-water pool and waited. They spoke softly, straining to hear what was happening above.

  Iras lit several candles and they passed the time with games of chance. First they played senet, then rods and cones, then on to dice. ‘Will I be killed by my husband-brother?’ the Queen asked the dice morbidly. ‘Two for yes, three for no.’

  It was no use. They could not cheer themselves up, or escape the growing fact that Caesar was losing. Nobody said what everyone was thinking: that these might be the last moments of their lives.

  Wen had never allowed herself to wish for freedom, but now the desire invaded her body like a fever. She began to loathe the walls that surrounded them and the guards who kept them inside. She knew that their captivity was for their own safety, but safety did not seem so very important any more. She thought about what Titus had said about freedom—that it could never be given, only taken.

  Iras and Charmion joined Apollodorus on a mission to retrieve food from the palace kitchen. After they had gone, Wen approached the Queen. She was sitting at the side of the pool, letting her legs dangle in the cool water. ‘May we speak, my Queen?’ Wen asked, feeling the tickle of boldness in her stomach.

  ‘Of course, Wen, sit down.’ She patted the concrete edge of the pool, and Wen took her seat.

  ‘I come to you with a request,’ Wen began. ‘A rather large request.’

  The Queen was watching Wen curiously. ‘Yes?’

  Wen’s throat felt dry. She had practised this moment a hundred times in her mind, but now none of her carefully selected words would come to her. ‘Queen Cleopatra, I wish to tell you that I am indebted to you and will always be so. My life began the day you brought me from the brew house and I wish to serve you for all my days.’

  The Queen nodded solemnly.

  ‘I may be uneducated,’ Wen continued, ‘but I know what I observe. I see the care you have for the people of this great kingdom and your reverence for its ancient culture. You have treated me with the same care. Indeed, most days you seem more like a sister to me than a master.’

  Wen hesitated, fearing that she had given offence. But Cleopatra only smiled, encouraging Wen to continue. The words began to pour forth. ‘That is why I ask that you release me from bondage. I will remain in service to you for all of my days, but I wish for it to be of my own free will. And if I am to die, I wish to die a free woman. My Queen, I wish for you to set me free.’

  Wen closed her eyes, unable to meet the Queen’s gaze. When she dared open them again, the Queen was lunging to embrace her. ‘Oh, Wen, you make me so proud!’

  Wen almost choked with her surprise. ‘Proud?’

  ‘You have passed the test I have put you to and more quickly and gracefully than I ever could have believed possible.’

  It was not the reaction Wen was expecting and she wondered if she had been misunderstood. ‘Do you refer to the test of serving you faithfully? The test of a servants’ worth?’

  The Queen smiled. ‘I refer to the test of freedom.’

  Wen wondered if the Queen had gone mad. ‘I was not aware of such a test, my Queen.’

  ‘You were free from the moment Sol purchased you from your master.’

  Now Wen could hardly speak.

  ‘Do you remember Sol’s words?’ Wen stared down at the mosaic adorning the depths of the large pool. It was an image of Aphrodite emerging from the sea foam. ‘He showed me a scroll. He said that it attested to my conscription by Cleopatra Philopator the Seventh.’

  ‘Conscription. What does that mean?’

  ‘Recruitment?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You recruited me into your service?’

  ‘I did. It has always been your choice. You just did not believe you had it.’

  ‘But why did you not tell me?’

  ‘I am telling you now. I have been waiting for you to ask.’

  ‘I do not understand.’

  ‘True freedom is not something that can be bought or traded or granted by another. It must be desired and then taken by the person who would be free.’

  Wen had been in the Queen’s service for a full season now—over four months. In that time, Wen had acted overly boldly, spoken out of turn, violated the rules, laughed loudly, drunk thirstily and let herself feel desire, never realising that they were part of a larger change taking place within her.

  ‘Then I am free?’

  ‘You do not sound so certain.’

  Wen was certain—suddenly irretrievably so. ‘I am free,’ she said, and the words were like a song rising up from her heart. She felt her eyes filling with tears.

  ‘You have been free since the moment you stood before me, Wen. You just did not believe it.’

  Wen swished her legs in the water, wondering if Cleopatra considered the implications of her words. ‘I know what you are wondering, Wen,’ the Queen said. ‘If I believe that you should take your freedom, then why should not everyone? My answer is that everyone should. If I did not believe that, then I would not be Greek! But such a thing cannot be achieved without the peoples’ will.’

  ‘The people must take their freedom just as I have taken mine?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you really believe that one day th
e people of Egypt will take their freedom?’

  ‘I do,’ said Cleopatra. ‘They will take it from a monarch—someone like me. They will do as the Romans did five hundred years ago.’

  ‘Do you not fear it?’

  ‘I do fear it. But I do not believe it will happen for many, many years. The Egyptians love their kings.’

  ‘And queens.’

  Cleopatra smiled graciously. ‘What will you do with your freedom, Wen?’

  Everything I have ever dreamed, Wen thought, hardly knowing where to begin. She thought of Titus’s letter. ‘I would like to learn to read Latin.’

  ‘A worthy goal!’ the Queen exclaimed, clapping her hands together. ‘We will begin as soon as we are allowed to return to my chambers.’

  ‘You will teach me?’

  ‘Of course! Now tell me, what else will you do?’ asked the Queen.

  But Wen was already doing it. She had plunged into the frigid pool.

  The Queen shrieked, ‘Can you swim?’

  Wen splashed to the surface, flailing her limbs wildly. ‘No, my Queen—but I do not care! I am free!’

  * * *

  The next day, the fireballs ceased. Cleopatra ushered Wen into the palace library, where she retrieved a large scroll from one of her shelves. ‘These are the songs of Catullus, the Roman poet. They were procured by my father when he was last in Rome. They are wonderfully lurid. I shall point to each word as I read it and thus you shall learn.’

  ‘I would like that very much,’ said Wen, watching Cleopatra unfurl the scroll. ‘Is it not the duty of a scribe or teacher to perform such a task?’

  ‘The roles and riches of this life are illusions,’ Cleopatra said with a brush of her hand in the air. ‘They matter not.’

  ‘I admire that saying,’ Wen mused. ‘The High Priestess quoted it often.’ The Queen blinked, betraying an emotion, then recovered her expression.

  The Queen knew the High Priestess, Wen realised suddenly.