The Memoirs of Cleopatra

by Margaret George

  A statue of you, Isis, can never be mistaken for that of any other goddess. You always hold the timbrel, the sistrum, in one hand and the long-spouted pitcher filled with Nile water in the other. Your gown is always tied with the knot sacred to you, a mystic knot. In this great shrine you also have the cobra headdress, and beneath your feet is a crocodile. And upon your face is the most perfect smile, emblem of that vast love you have for all of us.

  For a long time we all knelt in silence. Then a group of women began beating on their breasts, uttering loud wails of the “lamentations of Isis.” They poured out their troubles to you—their ill husbands, their ungrateful sons, their rebellious daughters, the ache in their knees, their ovens that would not bake the bread properly, their rat-infested grain supplies. Anything, no matter how important or petty, was presented to you in confidence that you could make it right. One by one they crept forward and left their offerings at your feet—flowers, bread, jars of honey, garlands of flowers. I crawled on my hands and knees to present the milk.

  “ ‘I am all that has been, and is, and shall be,’ ” intoned the voice of a priestess, speaking for you.

  The very words spoke to my heart, and I gazed on your face. You seemed to be younger than I, but I knew you had endured all that any woman ever can. You had finished the journey I was just setting out on. You had been wife, and widow, and mother.

  “I am she called God among women.” The voice went on.

  “I overcome Fate. To me Fate hearkens.”

  “I am the one of innumerable names.”

  Your face took on an unutterable beauty to me, and I adored you.

  I remained at your altar a long time, asking for help in the coming ordeal of childbirth, and in guidance for Egypt. Gradually the rest of the worshipers departed, and by the time I felt the glory of your presence fading and I began a return to the ordinary, I was almost alone. Only a very few women remained, and two in particular were making their way so slowly to the door, I wondered if they were crippled. Yet they stood straight enough, and their gait was normal. As I came closer to them, I saw that one was blind, and feeling her way along, while her companion helped her. Then I noticed that she was not blind in the usual way, for she kept rubbing her eyes as if she expected light to flood into them.

  “Have you asked Isis to restore your sight, my sister?” I asked.

  She quickly turned toward me, as if she could see me. Her companion, I saw now, was a young girl, most likely her daughter.

  “Yes, I have asked,” she replied. “Every day I come and ask. But the fog remains.”

  “I pray that Isis, the Great and Compassionate Mother, will help my mother,” said the girl. “I will not give up hope.”

  “I am not used to being blind,” the mother said, as if apologizing. “Perhaps if one is born with it, then…but to suddenly become someone else, and have half the world taken away from me…as well as my work! The skills of a blind person take years to develop. It is not as if I can do what other blind people do! I cannot carve, I cannot play a musical instrument, I cannot serve as a royal food taster.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I worked as one of the silk-looseners.”

  How unfortunate! That type of handiwork, in which a skilled needle-woman loosened the fabric of silk we received from Arabia to make it stretch farther and be more transparent, needed keen eyesight. Perhaps the job had cost her that sight.

  “How did this happen?”

  “The war!” she said. “In the fighting, it seems there were fires everywhere. Alexandria is nearly fireproof, the buildings being stone, but there was plenty of loose material to be set afire. When one of those pitch-soaked torches landed right in my textile shop, I threw a rug over it to smother it and dove on it to keep everything from going up in flames. The smoke from it—it’s a very nasty kind of thick, oily smoke—got in my eyes. The next day—no more sight.”

  The war. This one was particularly terrible because it had taken place not on a battlefield, but within city streets and people’s homes.

  “I will take you to my physician. Perhaps he can help. Are there others you know who were injured, have lost jobs, means of living?”

  She drew back. “Why should I go with you to your physician? I have no money to pay! Who are you?” She sounded indignant.

  I pulled aside my veil. “I am Cleopatra, your Queen, but also the devotee of Isis. I will help her to help you.”

  They both looked terror-stricken.

  “Is not Isis the champion of women? And I, as her daughter, am also your champion. I wish to help women who have suffered here in Alexandria. Come with me to the palace,” I said.

  Still with that frightened look, they obeyed.

  Olympos examined the woman’s eyes, but pronounced that the damage might indeed be permanent. He prescribed a twice-daily wash of rainwater mixed with an infusion of an herb he obtained from an Arabian shrub. I told her that she and her daughter could remain in the palace during the treatment, and that if her eyesight did not return, I would find new employment for her.

  “Why have you taken this woman into your care?” asked Olympos. “The city must be full of ones exactly like her!”

  “Yes. Isis opened my eyes to that. I would like to find a way to help all of them. They suffer as the result of the war—a war fought on my behalf. It is the least I can do.”

  “You continue to surprise me,” he said dryly.

  But it was my child who had the biggest surprise for us all. In the middle of the night, not more than twenty days after my conversation with Olympos, I was taken with a violent onset of pain while I was sleeping. It jolted me awake, as if I had been struck by a heavy object. I lay flat on my back, wondering what had happened. Was it a dream? Just as I was drifting off to sleep again, another bolt of pain struck me. I gasped and sat up, panting.

  The flames in the lamps I always kept burning in the chamber were steady. All seemed so peaceful, so quiet. Outside I could hear a gentle sound of wind, but on this June night all else was tranquil. It seemed an aberration to be visited with pain at such a time.

  Just as I was thinking this, another wave hit me. Trembling, and breaking out into a burst of sweat, I rang the bell for Iras and Charmian, who slept nearby. I had to ring a long time before they heard me; it was, as I said, a night for sweet sleeping.

  “I think—my time of childbirth has come,” I said, when they arrived. I was startled, and a little frightened, to find how much effort it took me even to speak. “Get the midwives!”

  I was taken on a litter—oh, how it bounced!—into a chamber that had been prepared for this. There, on a low chair, hung twisted ropes that I could grip on to; beside it were stacks of linen towels and sheets, and washbasins. They stripped me naked and I was taken with shivering, even on that warm night, until they covered me with a sheet. All the lamps were lit, and I braced myself against the arms of the chair. The midwives stood about, murmuring and attempting to make all this seem very normal. To them, it was. I was profoundly grateful that I had obtained them so far in advance.

  The pains increased; Iras and Charmian took turns wiping my face with scented water. I hung on to the ropes and arched my back. I did not want to cry out, no matter how high the pain mounted. I felt hot rushes of water pouring from inside me, and heard one of the midwives say, “The waters have broken!” Then I lost track of time. The pain seemed to be its own world, and it enveloped me and I felt myself always trying to mount it, as I would try to climb up a slippery ball that kept rotating and throwing me off. Finally there was a crest to the pain, and I felt enormous pressure, and then—it stopped.

  “A son! A son!” they were shouting.

  There was a loud, quavering wail.

  “A son!” They held him up, his red legs flailing, his chest heaving with the exertion of crying.

  They wiped him off with the warmed, scented water and wrapped him in fresh linen. They placed him on my breast. I could see only the top of his head; it was covere
d in fine dark hair. His little fingers flexed and uncurled, and he stopped crying. I felt his warmth against me, and I was flooded with joy—and exhaustion. Against my will, I closed my eyes and slept.

  It was midmorning before I came to myself again. I saw the reflections of the seawater dancing on the ceiling, moving in little white jumping patterns, and for a moment I just lay and looked at them, stunned. Then I remembered everything.

  I struggled to sit up on my elbows, and saw Charmian and Iras and Olympos at the back of the chamber. They were speaking in hushed tones. Outside the sunlight was so bright it hurt my eyes.

  “My son!” I said. “Let me see him again!”

  Charmian bent down over the royal crib, an elaborately carved box on little feet. She picked up a wrapped bundle and brought it over to me. It looked too small to have a human being inside it. I pulled away the linen near the little red face. He looked like an angry, wizened, sunburnt old man. I laughed.

  Olympos hurried over to my bedside. “He is small, but he will live,” he pronounced with satisfaction. “Eighth-month babies often do not fare as well.”

  “Yes, he is a month early,” I said. Then I realized that Caesar had barely missed seeing him. I felt a double disappointment that it had been so close. I looked carefully at the little face staring back at me with unfocused, hazy blue eyes. “I think it is impossible to see a likeness in a newborn’s face, regardless of what people claim. I have never seen this face before!” I smoothed the fuzzy hair growing on his head. “Nevertheless, I can say, he isn’t bald, like his father!”

  How pleased Caesar would be when he heard the news! How thrilled I felt to be able to present him with the one thing no one else in the world had been able to give him for so long, and which was unobtainable to him through all his conquests of land. I must get the word to him at once. But I did not even know how to reach him; I had received no message from him since his departure.

  “What will you call him, Majesty?” asked Charmian.

  “A name to blazen forth both sides of his inheritance,” I said. “Ptolemy Caesar.”

  Olympos looked startled. “Do you dare to bestow the familial name of Caesar without permission of that family?”

  “I do not need permission from that family! What have they to do with it? The leading member of that family is the child’s father. It is between him and me,” I said.

  “Did he agree to this?” Iras asked quietly.

  “He told me it was entirely up to me what I named him.”

  “But he probably did not assume you would appropriate his own name,” said Olympos. “He probably only meant he didn’t care if it was Ptolemy or Troilus.”

  “Troilus?” I gave a hoot of laughter, but it was so painful I stopped abruptly. “Troilus!”

  “A fine name, from the great story of Troy,” said Olympos, with a smile. “A fitting heroic name. Or how about Achilles, or Ajax?” We all laughed. But then Olympos continued, “I am not sure you have the legal right to use the name Caesar. There are many rules about it in Rome—”

  “I am the Queen of Egypt! Sink Rome and her laws! Gaius Julius Caesar is the father of this child, and it shall bear his name!” I shouted.

  “Calm yourself,” said Iras. “Calm yourself. Of course it shall bear his name. He would not hear of it otherwise.”

  “You will force him to recognize the child, then,” said Olympos. “You will put him to the test with this name.” His voice was full of admiration.

  He did not understand. What he said was true enough. But I wanted my son to bear the name of his father. It was as simple as that.

  “He will not fail me,” I said quietly. “He will not fail him.” I kissed the top of the baby’s head. But Olympos had put fear in my heart. I knew that in Rome, a father must formally acknowledge his child. Would Caesar do that?

  The next few days were days beyond happiness. That simple word cannot begin to convey the joy, the ecstasy, that filled my being. I felt as light as a feather from the wing of a falcon, and it was not just being delivered of the weight and bulk of the baby, but the exhilaration of being still mysteriously united to him. The baby was entirely himself, but he was always and forever part of me, as well. As I held him, and nursed him, I had the overwhelming conviction that I would never be alone again.

  I knew, intellectually, that that was not true. We were not one person, and there is no way another person can keep you from that ultimate aloneness that we all fear. Yet it felt that way to me; I felt complete at last.

  Olympos did not approve of my nursing him. He said it was demeaning, and I should find a wet nurse. I promised to do so in a little while, but for the first few weeks, while I watched and wondered where Caesar was and what he was doing, I needed to hold my son close to me every few hours.

  Every day little Caesar—for the people of Alexandria nicknamed him Caesarion, “little Caesar,” thus skipping all the legal niceties and going straight to the heart of the matter—changed. His little face stopped glowing fiery red, the wrinkles smoothed away, and his eyes grew rounded and lost that odd, slitted, stretched look of a newborn. Now the game of looking for likenesses could start in earnest.

  My features are strong ones. My nose is long and my lips are very full, as full as any of the lips carved on stone statues of the Pharaohs. (Note that I said the Pharaohs, and not their wives, who had dainty faces.) My face is long and thin, and the full mouth helps to offset it, but by itself it is, truthfully—too large. Caesar’s features are the opposite; they are all very fine, for a man. In our child, surprisingly, it was the fine features that triumphed over the more prominent ones. Caesarion favored his father, not me. That gave me great happiness.

  I decided there must be some way I could celebrate this birth, some way despite Caesar’s absence to salute it in an official way. No parades or public festivals; they were too ephemeral. I wanted something substantial, something lasting. I would issue a coin commemorating it.

  “No!” said Mardian, when he heard of it. More and more he was becoming my foremost councillor, in spite of his youth. I trusted him, and he had shown very good judgment in every task I had given him so far; his supervision of the rebuilding of Alexandria had been superlative.

  “Why not?” I was reclining on a couch in my favorite large room, the one where the sunlight came in on all four sides, and the breezes met and played within the chamber. Silken curtains billowed like a ship’s sails, and scented rushes from Lake Gennesareth rustled in their vases. Caesarion lay on a black panther skin in the middle of the floor, his eyes following the whipping movement of the curtains. I had recovered entirely from childbirth, and was bursting with energy. “Why not?” I asked again.

  “Would it not seem to be—well, conceited?” he said. “And it would raise more questions. For example, what about your husband, little Ptolemy? Would he be on the coin?”

  Little Ptolemy was like another child of mine. He had accepted Caesarion as his little brother. He never made any demands, other than to be allowed a larger sailboat to sail in the inner harbor. I almost forgot about his existence.

  “Of course not,” I said.

  “No Ptolemaic queen has ever issued coinage in her own right, alone,” Mardian reminded me. He spent hours researching just such things, and I took his word for it. “Even your exalted ancestor Cleopatra the Second would never have dared.”

  I popped a large, chilled grape into my mouth and enjoyed the sensation of bursting its skin against my palate. The thin, tingling juice squirted out. “Then perhaps I should put Caesar on it as well?” I asked innocently.

  Mardian just shook his head indulgently. He understood my humor. “Oh yes, try that. That should shake them up in Rome.” He paused. Unlike Olympos, he knew better than to oppose me when my mind was made up. “What sort of coinage are you considering?”

  “Cyprus. I shall mint a coin in Cyprus.”

  “Oh, you do tempt Rome!” He could not help chuckling. “Caesar’s gift of Cyprus was controversial. He
just gave away Roman territory. Not a popular thing to do. Of course he covered it up by saying he was forced to conciliate the Alexandrians, since he was hemmed in by hostile forces at the time. But that excuse no longer holds. After all, he won the Alexandrian War. He should have quietly taken Cyprus back. There has been a lot of grumbling about it in Rome.”

  I always admired Mardian’s astounding ability to collect gossip from far-flung places. It was as if he had an outpost in Rome. How did he do it?

  “It is the international brotherhood of eunuchs,” he once said, and I half believed him. Nothing else could account for it.

  “What else are they saying at Rome?” This was delicious.

  “That he lost his reason in Egypt, dillydallied when he should have been going about manly Roman tasks like pursuing the last of Pompey’s rebels, indulged himself with the effeminate pleasures of the Nile, and so on. It’s done wonders for your reputation and created quite a sensation: a woman whom Caesar actually changed his plans for! His veterans made up verses about it, something to the effect that ‘Old Caesar wallowed in the mud with the daughter of the Nile, and swelled her banks’…I don’t, er, remember the rest.”

  “Of course not,” I agreed. I felt my ears grow warm. I’ve often been thankful that my face does not blush with embarrassment, but only my ears. And they were invisible beneath my hair today. “Now, about the coin. I think it should be bronze. And it will show me nursing Caesarion.”

  “Like Isis,” he said flatly. He understood the significance.

  “Yes,” I said. “Like Isis and Horus. And Venus and Cupid. Cyprus was, after all, the birthplace of Venus.”

  “And Venus is Caesar’s ancestress.”

  “Yes.”

  “How a simple coin can send so many messages!” he exclaimed, nodding in admiration.

  I was posing for the coin. One of our Alexandrian artists had come to make the likeness, and I was seated on a backless chair, holding Caesarion. He kept grabbing at my hair, and I kept gently removing the hands. They were fat, soft little things, as smooth as yogurt. A baby’s hands give you immense sensual pleasure just to touch; a miracle that soon fades—like tender new leaves, like the mist of early dawn, like all new things that cannot last, but change into something more prosaic as the day goes inexorably on. Caesarion’s hands were still precious.