The Memoirs of Cleopatra

by Margaret George

  “They told me I would find you here.”

  I barely heard the voice; it was low and came from the portico. I turned to see a black outline, someone standing, leaning an arm against the column, black against white.

  “Who intrudes upon me?” I demanded. I wanted no human beings in this sacred space.

  He removed his hand from the column and walked toward me, still just a black bulk, moving deliberately, slowly….

  “You do not recognize me?” Antony’s voice framed the words in sorrow and disappointment.

  He was alive! He was here, refuting death itself! I ran to him and flung my arms around his neck, which I had thought never to do again.

  The black-sailed ship…the sarcophagus…the speechless funeral…all the tormenting images I had wrestled with gone, shriveled like the wraiths of imagination they were. His breath was warm, his flesh solid—this was no ghost.

  “O thanks! Thanks be to all the gods!” I cried. He, too, had defied their orders, and now he lived and was here. He had turned his back on the Roman dictum.

  “I had to see you again,” he said. “I could not leave with our parting as it was.”

  He bent down and kissed me, holding me to him fiercely. My soul sang at his touch, at his restoration.

  “I cannot hold you close enough,” I said. Above us Isis looked down, her face expressionless.

  We would return to the palace. He would see the children. How happy he would make them! They would not face the loss I had, that hot, still day in the harbor. I would tell him of all the preparations, the news.

  “And now I can bear it,” he said, pulling away from me. “To have parted properly is fitting.”

  “I do not understand.” Surely he had not come all this way to…I turned and looked at Isis. Was all this her will, a cruel trick?

  “I will live here, but not with you,” he said. “I am no fit company, no longer worthy to reside in the palace. I will dwell in solitude, in a small house—the meaner the better—on the harbor, awaiting the inevitable approach of…the victor.”

  “But—” I searched for words. This fit no pattern. It made no sense, answered no requirement of honor. “Surely you have some other purpose! Why did you return, then?”

  “I told you—to see you.”

  “But you will cause me great pain. How can I live in the palace, alone, knowing you are in the city, refusing to come to me? And the children! How can you explain—how can I explain—to Alexander and Selene that their father is here, but will not see them? They are frightened, confused! They need you!” What madness had entered him?

  “I am no longer Antony,” he said. “It is better that they do not see me. Let them remember me as I was. Let them cherish the medals—mementos of a great soldier! Not this man—not this man!” He extended his arms, brushing them down over his chest, then holding them out in resignation.

  “You are their father!” I said sternly. “Children care less about medals and honor than you imagine. They crave only the life and presence of their father or mother.” My mother, sinking beneath the waves, abandoning me…but she had not done it on purpose. “You are cruel!” When he still stood unmoving, I cried, “The gods will punish you for this! Deliberate cruelty is unforgivable! You couldn’t help Actium, but this is your own doing! And you will pay for it!”

  He was not to return to the palace, but turn his back on it and on us, letting his quarters remain empty…never to act as husband and father again.

  “Antony died at Actium.” His voice was low.

  “What is standing here, then?” He looked real enough to me.

  “A shadow, a dark double.”

  “Then let it come to us.”

  “It is not worth the having,” he said.

  “If this unfeeling man is the remnant of Antony, then you have spoken true!” I cried. “This is not Antony, who was above all kind and generous! This is more like Octavian! Has he taken you over? Hardened you into a version of himself?”

  “Let me depart in peace!” he said. “Remember me as I was!”

  “It is impossible. Whatever our last glimpse of someone, that remains with us. Oh, Antony—” I held out my arms to him. “Come back with me. Let us stand together, wring some last pleasure and victory from our days—”

  But he had turned away, his cape trailing out behind him, descending the temple steps.

  I bent my head over the base of Isis’s statue and wept. He had invaded my interview with the goddess, returned from the dead, teasingly, only to depart.

  What shall I do? What shall I do? I implored her.

  Let him go, she answered. Now there is only you. You, and I. I will not flee, or fail to uphold you in your need. Give yourself to me. Your need of mortals is over.

  It was sunset before I left the temple; the rose reflection of the red glow on the horizon coated the columns, threw slanting rays across the floor, bathed Isis’s face in living hues. The tide had receded, and ugly black rocks revealed themselves, nibbled by the waves.

  I was exhausted, as if I had fought a mighty battle. I dreaded returning to the palace, to all the questions and scrutiny, but unlike Antony, I would make myself face them.

  My arms ached from the brief embrace, bringing forgotten sensations back to me. The feel of his lips on mine—now I must forget them again, and forget them in anger and disappointment. Better for me was the parting in Paraetonium! I hated him for this surprise, this titillation. And I could never forgive him for wounding his children so. Even the Roman way would have left me with more respect for him! Then I would have been sorrowed; now I was shocked and betrayed.

  Heart, we must forget him utterly! I told myself sternly as I marched back to the palace. How to face Mardian and tell him…?

  I need not have worried. It was Mardian who had spoken to him, had told him where to find me. He was waiting anxiously.

  “Did he…?”

  “Yes!” I cried, anger and sorrow struggling like gladiators within me.

  “And where…?”

  “He has gone off to—I know not where! He says he will live alone—not coming to the palace. Oh, Mardian!” I embraced his comforting bulk. Dear Mardian, my stalwart, ever-constant friend.

  “He is a broken man,” he said. “Don’t judge him too harshly.”

  “But the children! How can he—?”

  “He is ashamed to face them.” He guided me back into his most private room. “He has had another blow.”

  “What?”

  “He did not tell you?”

  “No. He said nothing, just a sort of formal farewell.”

  “Ah.” Mardian gestured for me to seat myself on one of his soft couches.

  As I did so, sinking into the welter of pillows, I felt profound relief. I had been standing for hours. “What has happened to him?” I cared terribly. I wanted to protect him against any more lashes.

  Mardian picked up a slender glass pitcher and, without asking, poured out a sweet drink of honey and fresh-pressed grape juice for us. He handed me a goblet, and I took it gladly. “Scarpus arrived a few hours ago,” he said. “It seems that Gallus and his men finally reached Cyrenaica, where Scarpus’s former legions were waiting for them. They joined forces, and Antony decided to go to the camp and make a personal appeal to his former soldiers there. He would stand outside the gates and address them.”

  No! What a humiliation! But that he would undertake it showed he was not beaten yet.

  “But what happened?”

  “Scarpus was standing with him, and as he told it—it was pitiful. Every time Antony raised his voice to speak—and you know how he has trained it to carry great distances—Gallus gave the order for the trumpets to sound and drown him out. It went on and on like that for hours. Finally the day ended, and Antony had to depart unheard.”

  An actual shaft of pain shot through me. Enough, enough! I begged Isis. Lay no more upon him!

  “And then he came here,” I said.

  “Apparently so.”
/>   This last blow must have unhinged him. He could only crawl here in shame—like a dog seeking a safe place to lie down and die. Oh, if only I had known this when he was standing before me!

  “He did not relate this to you?” said Mardian.

  “No.” He had probably felt there was nothing to relate. O Antony! “No, he said nothing.”

  “What did he do, then?”

  He looked at me. He kissed me. He said farewell.

  I shrugged. “Muttered a lot of nonsense about living alone, watching for Octavian—” Now I felt tired, defeated. I, too, sought a safe place to lie down. I did not want to return to my rooms, where the children would come in, where Iras and Charmian would be. I understood how Antony felt, if only fleetingly. “Mardian—may I be your guest tonight?” I did not have to explain it to him.

  “I would be honored,” he said. “It has long been prepared.”

  As my chief state minister, his quarters rivaled mine in size and, I daresay, surpassed them in sumptuous appointments. He had an eye for beauty and the means to indulge it; the customs officials were well versed in his tastes, and whenever a cargo of Syrian pearl-inlaid tables, Indian camphorwood chests, or Coan silk bed-hangings put in, they invariably set aside a sample for him. The result was a series of rooms dripping with decoration, with no empty spot on wall, floor, or table. The only exception to this was his workroom, which was as spare as a hermit’s cell.

  A hermit’s…as spare as Antony’s, now?

  “I believe in keeping only the pertinent papers to hand,” he explained once. “All the rest of the clutter just confuses the mind.”

  “How, then, do you live in all this?” I would have found it stifling. I must have space to breathe, and to rest my eyes.

  “Ah, once outside the workroom, I find my senses need caressing,” he said.

  He led me down a corridor, past rooms glittering with treasure like a merchant’s den, and to the very last chamber, a corner one that overlooked both the sea and the palace gardens. I could see my mausoleum from the window, and Isis’s temple, too, violet against dark blue in the deepening night. They made me shiver. There were the steps where Antony had walked away. Where was he now? I looked in vain for any movement in the shadows beneath the portico.

  “Here, my dear, you may stay as long as you wish.” He indicated the chamber, its cushioned benches overflowing with embroidered throws, the enormous bed enveloped in filmy curtains.

  “You know you are safe saying that, for I must be back in the audience chamber by morning,” I said. I reached up and touched his smooth cheek.

  He laughed. I had always liked his laugh, and now found it as familiar a friend as he himself. “But you need not, if you do not wish to. I can attend to it.”

  “I know that.” He had turned out to be that rarest of things, a cherished friend who was also the best person for a high position. “But I will be there, you know. I do not shirk.” I turned toward the bed. “You have provided so much here, I feel negligent in planning only to sleep.” My eye had caught the piles of scrolls, the paintings, the game boards of inlaid ebony, the musical instruments, all waiting for the guest.

  “I can send a singer in to lull you to sleep,” he said. “I have a very fine one, from Lycia—”

  “No. Silence will be sweeter,” I assured him. I waited a moment. “I went to Alexander’s tomb today,” I finally said. “Do you remember—?”

  “When we first met there? Yes. You thought I was hogging him!” He laughed, that lovely laugh.

  “Mardian, it was different today. He wasn’t different, but I was, the world was—never go back there!”

  “Well, I haven’t been in many years. You know how it is—when you live someplace, you never see the famous sights, except when you’re a child and get taken there. I daresay—”

  “No, I mean it! It was oppressive, frightening.” I wanted to explain it to him—or perhaps to myself.

  “You’ve never been frightened of anything, as long as I’ve known you,” he said stoutly. “And now you say a tomb has unnerved you?”

  “No, not the tomb itself, just…the end of things.” It was more difficult to put into words than I expected. “Don’t return there, I beg you.”

  He shrugged. “I was not planning to.” His hand swept around the room. “Now, here, I have provided pillows stuffed with the down from baby swans’ necks….”

  I lay on the bed, my head sinking into the plump pillows—sacrifice of the young swans—my view of the chamber misted by the thin blue silk curtains drawn around the bed. How secure I felt here, how protected by the layers and layers of luxury. Perhaps that was what they were for, to cushion Mardian against the outside world. Perhaps that is all money ultimately does—cushion us against the world, smooth out its rough texture for us.

  To have a friend like Mardian at a time like this was a healing balm. I, like Antony, needed a restorative place of withdrawal, but I would not linger here. Just for tonight…just for tonight…Dear Mardian. He never failed me.

  The shadows thrown by the three suspended oil lamps made patterns on the walls, and it was easy to see people in them, profiles, stories. The shades…the shades of Hades…how alive were they, what did they remember, what did they feel? I would soon know. Even to be a shadow on a wall, like these, was better than to be nothing. I did not want to be extinguished, did not want to die. Thinking about it so carefully ahead of time made it worse, but to be struck down suddenly was no better. As men we think, and garland our deaths with thoughts, like flowers bedecking a tomb. To be robbed of that opportunity is to die like a beast. Still…the beasts do not poison their last hours with morbid thoughts, so which is preferable?

  Sleep was now lapping around me. I could feel the edges of my thoughts blurring; this long day was finally ending. Antony. My children. There was still so much to be done. But that was tomorrow. Tomorrow…

  Sometime in the middle of the night, the wind rose and pushed past the fastened windows, stealing even into the corners and warmth of the bed. A winter storm—one of the last, for winter was waning. Hearing the sound of waves stirred to madness outside, I was again at Actium, again a prisoner of the water. I sat up, brushing aside the the curtains and letting the cold touch my skin.

  The water. The water. That sound, the same inimitable sloshing that had surrounded me at all the crucial times of my life. The Alexandrian harbor, the muffled boat ride west to Caesar, the journeys to Tarsus and Antioch, and then Actium—all turning points, all somehow connected with water, with boats. How many more boats were waiting to decide my future? There was the boat on which I planned to send Caesarion to India, the last-stand battle against Octavian in the harbor, a riverboat to take my story south to Philae and Meroe…and possibly a boat to flee to safety, with Antony. More boats. More water. But there was one boat I would never board: a boat to Rome, as a prisoner. No, rather than board that boat, I would be on the one ferried by Charon, across the river Styx.

  Fate by water. Death by water. How odd, for the Queen of Egypt, a desert country, to have her destiny decided, over and over again, by water.

  I told the children that Antony was in Alexandria, but was “unwell”—a truthful enough statement. I had been told where he had located himself, in a small house on the west side of the harbor, and I knew that from his window he could see the lights of the palace, could see the royal harbor with the gilded ships riding at anchor. He apparently shuffled around during the day, keeping to himself, barely eating, spending long hours at the window, staring out to sea. He kept his sword always about him, and once again I had to awaken each day wondering if a sad-faced servant would approach the palace, saying, I bear sad tidings….

  His sarcophagus stood ready in the mausoleum; of pink Aswan granite, it matched mine. That is less portentous than it sounds, for mine had been waiting for years. More immediate than that was the growing pile of treasure heaped in the largest chamber of the marble-and-porphyry building. A large area had been smeared with pitch a
nd carpeted with tinder, and on that a pyramid of cinnamon, pearls, lapis, and emeralds rose from a base of ivory tusks, gold ingots, and ebony bars. I had carefully overseen it, making sure that the treasures were ordered in such a way that the greatest number could be packed into the smallest space. They would burn, burst, melt, once the pitch was torched, and Octavian would be deprived of money equal to all his legions’ debt. I would use it to bargain for Caesarion’s throne, and, failing that, for the joy of seeing it elude Octavian’s grasping hands. It was not all of my treasure, but enough of it to give Octavian pause. Only a madman would not try to prevent its loss. And Octavian was no madman; he was a deal-making businessman.

  In order to gain concessions, one has to have something to bargain with. It never failed to amaze me how many people—otherwise intelligent—fail to grasp this simple fact. They rely on sentiment, mercy, decency, when nothing but money or force will carry any weight. Well, we had lost the force at Actium, but we still commanded money.

  “Now, pack those pearls tighter!” I ordered the workmen, who were pushing the pearls into bejeweled sacks and stacking the sacks onto the pyramid—a misshapen replica of the ones standing in the desert. “We want as many as possible!” This depleted almost my entire store of pearls: the prize ones from the Red Sea, the small ones from Britain, the oddly swollen and outsized ones from the seas beyond even India. They were vulnerable to heat, and would explode in a fire, sending slivers of iridescence all over the room. Once before I had invested my pearls in a desperate venture for Egypt—I smiled as I remembered the wager with Antony—and now they would serve again.

  “Good!” I rubbed my hands together in approval. There was something fascinating in this projected, profligate destruction. Something grand. “And the emeralds?”

  They indicated some sacks lying lower in the pile.

  “Oh, we need more than that!” I said. Was that all? “Perhaps you will have to add turquoise to them to swell their ranks.” Yes, why not? Blue and green together. Earth and sky. Are we imitating nature? I laughed giddily.