The Memoirs of Cleopatra

by Margaret George

  “A little of this, a little of that,” Ipuy replied.

  “In other words, a mixture of gossip and business,” I said.

  Mereruka smiled. “Is there any business without gossip?” I liked him, this broad-faced man from Upper Egypt. I could not imagine that he would ever be tempted to leave this place of his birth; his family had probably lived here since the time of Ramses II.

  “No,” I admitted. “Business is just a reflection of a man’s personality, and his personality is what lends itself to gossip. We talk about a man’s over-fondness for wine, about his fight with his brother, not about the way he keeps his ledger books.”

  “Speaking of wine…” Mereruka nodded to the servant to bring a cup for me. I could make out the blue-green glazed goblet in the jumping light of the torches, and the tall young man holding it.

  I reached out and took it. The cup was cool in my hand. There was some lovely workmanship in the pottery of this area. How unusual it was for me to be sitting among what felt like friends, to have someone say, “Speaking of wine…” instead of the usual formulas we use at court. They did not know the prescribed phrases and rituals—thanks be to all the gods!

  “Tomorrow we must begin the evacuation,” I said. I must admit I hated to spoil the carefree mood, as we sat around the garden pool, with the shadows of fish moving in the shallow water. I could smell the lush fragrance of the lotus in the pond, and overhead the palms were rustling tenderly. Yet I could also hear a chorus of frogs, calling to tell us the river was almost here.

  “Have all the arrangements been made?”

  “Yes,” said Ipuy. “And the mud bricks for building the new dwellings and storehouses are all dry now. The livestock has been moved already. We have laid out a road that will serve well enough to pass the goods along. I am afraid that the only safe place to build will be on actual sand.”

  “As for the granary…” Mereruka let his voice trail off. “When it runs out…”

  “We have, of course, guards to prevent people from stealing it during the transport,” said Ipuy quickly. “But even with rationing, it will not last more than three months.”

  “The crown will procure the necessary supplies,” I assured them. I would import it from anywhere I could find it—paying exorbitant prices, no doubt. I would have to take the money from the fifty-percent import tax on olive oil. If that was not enough, then I would have to use the thirty-three-percent tax the government received from figs and wine. That would severely drain the royal treasury. But I could not turn my back on them, saying, “Starve, then. I know you are doing it to get out of paying your grain taxes.” Some Pharaohs and Ptolemies might have done that, but I could not.

  What would Caesar think of my decision? In Rome they were more accustomed to supporting the poor; thousands of people received free grain.

  What matter, what he would think? I must do what I must do.

  Upstairs, in what served as the royal bedroom—vacated by Mereruka—I made ready for bed. A coolness pervaded the quarters—a vent on the roof served to capture the north wind and funnel it into the room. The bed was low, and made of woven reeds. I would lie on my back, my neck resting on a carved wooden headrest. Pillows were unknown here; perhaps they became too inviting to vermin in these villages. At least a headrest was clean and cool.

  At the beginning of the journey I had wondered if I could ever sleep this way, but now I had become accustomed to them. They even seemed to induce odd dreams, as if spirits could enter more easily into my head as it hung suspended above the flat surface of the bed.

  I peeled off my wet gown and draped it over a stubby little peg on the wall. It would dry swiftly during the night. I changed it for a sleeping garment of the sheerest material Egypt afforded—silk that had had its threads stretched. It was like wearing a mist. The blind woman had presented it to me—her finest work, before losing her sight. That sight had not returned, and I had found work for her ears and her good practical sense instead: she settled disagreements among the servants, hearing complaints from both sides. I wished there were more I could have done for her, I thought, marveling at her skill in fashioning the garment.

  I lay down and put my neck on the slightly curved headrest, pointing my feet toward the dark corner of the room. I felt as if I were lying on a sacrificial couch, waiting to be received or rejected by…what god? An angry monster, like Molech of the Ammonites, or a lover like Cupid? I shivered a little.

  Tomorrow this village would begin its move to higher ground, and my ceremonial part in it would be done. Then I would go on to another village, and then another…all up and down along the Nile. Then back to Alexandria, to news of the wider world.

  Here it is so easy to forget it even exists, I thought. Families like Ipuy’s have seen the Pharaohs, the Nubians, the Persians come and go, and it probably made no difference to them who wore the crown of Upper and Lower Egypt. The rest of the world—Assyria, Babylon, Greece—was as meaningless to them as an old woman’s tale.

  I felt a wave of envy pass over me in imagining it. They had existed in a warm green bosom, protected from any intrusion. There must have been a time when my mother provided a similar enclosed little world for me, where everything flowed placidly and predictably. But the most telling thing was that I had no memory of it. It had not lasted long.

  Odd as it sounds for me even to recount, I felt a great longing at that very moment to see her once more, to talk to her, to touch her hands. Why then? I cannot explain it; I can only wonder that the yearning swept over me while I was lying alone in an upper room in the night in a remote village in the heart of Egypt, some nineteen years after I had last been held in her arms.

  In the fuzzy golden light of the early morning we saw that the line of sticks that had been planted at the edge of the river was now barely visible; the Nile had widened another five or six feet. It was time to seek higher ground. All was in readiness. The past faded for me in the morning light, and my memories and lost desires dissolved into a haze swallowed up in the needs of the present.

  I was upon the river for almost two months. We went as far up as Aswan, in some ways retracing my journey with Caesar. From the deck of my boat I saw the temple where his features had been carved onto the shoulders of Amun; and when we arrived at the First Cataract I could glimpse the Temple of Isis where we had exchanged our vows—of what, I am not sure. But I did not go into the temple. Forgive me, Isis. At that time I had the thought that I would never go into it again, never stand in that place again, without him beside me. I imagined he would be returning to Egypt many times.

  Yes, I imagined many things, dreamed many things—which have all been denied me. But then I believed that if you wanted something badly enough, you could will it—if the gods allowed.

  Alexandria again. How white she looked from afar! How huge! How populous! How gleaming, set against the aquamarine waves of the Mediterranean—so utterly different from the brown and green of the Nile villages. My Alexandria!

  The palace. Or rather, the palace grounds, with all the many palaces and temples and parade fields…it seemed an abode of the gods, as if no mere people could live there. I had seen how ordinary people lived, with their whitewashed mud-brick houses, their little walled gardens, their tiny ornamental pools. I suddenly felt like an explorer in a strange realm as I entered into my own palace, my own apartments. The halls, how long and polished…the doors, taller than even a giraffe would need to pass through them…and then, as always happens, it became familiar again and I could no longer see it through the eyes of a stranger. Why, there was the same old ebony cosmetic chest, with its ivory geese inset near the handle, but in seeing it I was also seeing all the other times I had seen it, and so it was part of myself….

  I shook my head to clear it. Home again, that was all it was; home seeming alien for a moment. I wondered how long one would have to be away before it would never seem like home again. Ten years? Twenty?

  There was a letter from Caesar, written while he wa
s in Rome. It had taken almost two months to arrive. It was short, and impersonal, like his Commentaries. I could expect no love letters from him, nothing on paper to brood over or cherish. “Greetings to the most exalted Majesty Queen Cleopatra of Egypt,” it said. “I am pleased to receive news of your son’s birth.” My son’s—not our son’s! “May he live and prosper and have a reign of blessed memory.” Did that mean he assured the continuance of the Egyptian throne? That Rome would guarantee our independence? “May his name be great in the annals of your history.” His name! Did Caesar know about his name? This letter had perhaps been written before mine, announcing and explaining it, had reached Rome. “I find myself beset with problems here in Rome to be taken in hand. I allow myself only a few days in order to do so, for I am bound to set sail for Carthage to carry on the last battle against the rebel forces of Pompey. They have gathered in North Africa and I must pursue them.” How like him not to reveal any of his strategy. The gods could only guess how many eyes had read these words before they reached mine. “When all is done, I will send for you, and I pray your duties in Egypt will yet permit you to leave for a little while and come to Rome. Your—Gaius Julius Caesar.”

  My duties! If only he knew how demanding they had been, and were not over yet. He would send for me to come to Rome—“for a little while.” Did he say that to reassure me that he would not demand I leave my own duties for him? He recognized that I was not simply a woman free to leave. Or was he warning me that his own life in Rome was so demanding that he had little time to spare, that his behavior in Egypt was never to be repeated? And he had signed it “your” Caesar. Let spies see it and murmur!

  I was content. All would be well. It would not have been wise for him to say more, and at this time there was nothing more he could have said. We both had battles yet to fight, and much that needed repair in our homelands.

  I stood in one of the great government warehouses on the docks. It was a huge building, almost as big as a temple. Row upon row of amphorae—fat, rounded ones that contained olive oil—lay in their straw beds. They looked like a gathering of especially short, affluent citizens, and that was just what they were. Each jar, imported from Italy, Greece, or Bithynia, swelled the coffers of my financial office. Merchants were required to pay a fifty-percent tax on imported olive oil. Since Egypt did not grow enough olives, that meant much of it was imported. And Egypt ran on olive oil. It was what everyone used to fuel lamps, and what we used in cooking. There were other oils—castor and sesame, croton, linseed, safflower, and oil of bitter apple—but they were of limited use, and none could compare to olive oil.

  This collection of amphorae represented enough money to aid in the relief of ten flooded villages. I would have to multiply it by hundreds. But so be it.

  “Good Majesty,” said the official in charge of the warehouse, “I trust you see how well I have provided for storage. It is always cool in here, thanks to the high roof and the vents, which let the sea breezes circulate at all times. I have never had an amphora turn rancid on me! Unless it was improperly sealed, of course. Never liked the ones with sheep’s fat and clay in the stoppers.”

  “I require your books as to the duties collected on these shipments,” I said. “I am most impressed with the order and tidiness here.”

  “The owner sees to that,” he said. “He is most diligent. I think if even one mouse were caught in here…” He winced. “That is why we have so many cats.” He gestured up toward the sacks of grain stored on the other side. It was only then that I saw all the cats, perched like statues of Bast everywhere.

  Mice. Yesterday’s dispatch had reported the beginning of a plague of mice in Upper Egypt. Yes, relief would be needed. The tax money must be surrendered.

  I dreaded the bookkeeping. I have a good head for mathematics, and enjoy playing with figures—up to a point. But I was in sore need of a minister of finances. Mardian could not serve as both chief minister and financial official.

  “Who is the owner?” I asked. He must be a maniac for organization.

  “Epaphroditus, of the Delta section of the city,” he said.

  “The Delta? He is a Jew, then?”

  “Yes. His Hebrew name is Hezekiah.”

  “How is his ability to keep figures and accounts?”

  “It is outstanding, Your Majesty. He can straighten out the most tangled records. And I have never known him to make a mistake in his additions and subtractions. He is scrupulously honest. He makes sure his merchants scrub out their scales at the beginning and end of each day. And he issues the weights himself, so there can be no replacements. Once, when he found a shipmaster cheating on his inventory of tin bars, he delivered him right up to the elders for trial. Since their god, Yahweh, says cheating with weights and measures is an abomination to him, you can guess what happened to that shipmaster. There have been no false inventories since.”

  “If I wished to send for this—Hezekiah—?”

  “First, you would not be allowed to address him as Hezekiah. Gentiles must use his Greek name.”

  I left determined to interview this Epaphroditus. Perhaps his Yahweh would have provided me with just the person I was seeking to fill the post of financial minister. When we are ready, the gods send what we need.

  Hezekiah—that is, Epaphroditus—pronounced himself willing to meet with me. He was very busy, he said, but perhaps could spare an hour in midday just before the upcoming celebration of the dying of Adonis.

  Was he being facetious? The Jews held all such festivals in either pious horror or sophisticated ridicule, depending on whether they themselves were pious or sophisticated. And his haughty reply indicated that he was one of the Jews who disliked Ptolemaic rule, even though the Jews as a group had helped Caesar in the recent Alexandrian War. I determined to pay this no heed. It was the man I was interested in interviewing, not his beliefs and prejudices.

  When he arrived—punctually—at the appointed hour, I was shocked to see what was probably the handsomest man I had ever beheld, outside of statues and works of art, stride into the room. What had I expected? I suppose a molelike creature who spent all his hours peering at weights, inspecting measuring pans, and scrutinizing the ledger books. Maybe he did all these things. But he still had riveting blue eyes, as blue as the waters surrounding the harbor rocks, as clear as the purest sunlit shallows. His lionlike mane of hair, black and shiny, framed his face like a classic portrait of Alexander. Ruby-red robes made the entire picture arresting.

  I just stared at him. “I thought you would be old!” I blurted out.

  “I am forty-five,” he replied, his Greek perfect and seemingly from Athens itself. “Perhaps that is old to you, since you are only twenty-two…most gracious Majesty,” he added carelessly.

  He did not look forty-five. “Epaphroditus,” I said, “is your name? How did you come by it?”

  He looked amused. “My mother gave it to me, Your Majesty. I fear she had read too many poems and books. It means ‘lovely.’ ”

  I certainly was not going to make the obvious comment. He probably had gone through life enduring it. “And what does Hezekiah mean?” I asked. “You should know that I speak Hebrew,” I added.

  “Oh, do you prefer to conduct our business in Hebrew?” he asked. I had to look in his eyes to see that he was teasing; his voice had not betrayed it. “Hezekiah means ‘strength of God.’ ”

  “No, I do not care to hold our discussion in Hebrew,” I said. “Mine is good enough for following diplomatic conversations and set speech formulas, but, as you undoubtedly know, your Greek is perfect.”

  “They said you knew Hebrew,” he said. “I was surprised. Why did you learn it?”

  “I like studying languages. I seem to be gifted in them. And, as a queen, I find it a great advantage to be able to forgo translators as much as possible.”

  “A wise decision. People always interject their own emphasis and select words that may reflect their own leanings.” He paused. “For example, if I had said ‘betray
’ their own leanings, rather than ‘reflect,’ it would give a different shade to the words.”

  “Just so. Now, Epaphroditus—”

  I went on to explain my needs. I would require help right away; before relief measures could be begun, the records would all have to be in order.

  “That is a full-time job, Your Majesty,” he answered with no hesitation. “I already have one. Several, in fact.”

  “Could you not take this temporarily? This is an emergency!”

  “What, on an hour’s notice? Do you have any idea of my responsibilities? The harbor would have to shut down if I suddenly abandoned my post. Then what would happen to your revenues? Find someone else.”

  “Please! Help us, even just to review the books. I will find someone else to do the rest.”

  All during this conversation, he had remained standing. His robes fell in straight folds down to his feet, which were clad in expensive gazelle-hide shoes. He was so perfectly contained, so still.

  “And no,” I continued. “I certainly do not expect you to take it from this hour forward. But I want the best person in the kingdom to direct one of its most important jobs. It never fails to grieve me—I would say ‘amuse’ if it were not so vital—that subjects want their rulers to be wise, humane, and honest, but then wish the most incompetent and stupid ministers on them! They complain all the time that their ruler surrounds himself with second-rate people, but if a first-rate person is tapped, he hurriedly makes an excuse and runs back to his family business. You have no one but yourselves to blame, if your ruler’s ministers are inferior.”

  “I am not the only man in the kingdom who can run a business effectively,” he said stubbornly. “And perhaps an Alexandrian is not the man to oversee affairs for all of Egypt.”

  “Money is money!” I said. “A drachma is a drachma, whether in Alexandria or Aswan!” The truth was, he did not want to be connected to my government. “It is not that you are an Alexandrian, but that you and your people disapprove of my rule. I know you dislike me!”