Steampunk Cleopatra

by Thaddeus Thomas

  Steampunk Cleopatra

  Thaddeus Thomas

  For my Family

  Contents

  Introduction

  1. The First Papyrus of Philostratos

  2. The Mystery of Rhakotis

  Papyrus 2.01

  Papyrus 2.02

  Papyrus 2.03

  Papyrus 2.04

  Papyrus 2.05

  3. The House of Ptolemy

  Papyrus 3.01

  Papyrus 3.02

  Papyrus 3.03

  4. The Hills of Rome

  Papyrus 4.01

  Papyrus 4.02

  Papyrus 4.03

  Papyrus 4.04

  Papyrus 4.05

  Papyrus 4.06

  5. The Myths of Cyprus

  Papyrus 5.01

  Papyrus 5.02

  Papyrus 5.03

  Papyrus 5.04

  Papyrus 5.05

  Papyrus 5.06

  Papyrus 5.07

  Papyrus 5.08

  Papyrus 5.09

  Papyrus 5.1

  Papyrus 5.11

  Papyrus 5.12

  Papyrus 5.13

  Papyrus 5.14

  Papyrus 5.15

  Papyrus 5.16

  Papyrus 5.17

  Papyrus 5.18

  Papyrus 5.19

  Papyrus 5.2

  Papyrus 5.21

  Papyrus 5.22

  Papyrus 5.23

  Papyrus 5.24

  Papyrus 5.25

  Papyrus 5.26

  6. The Heart of Africa

  Papyrus 6.01

  Papyrus 6.02

  Papyrus 6.03

  Papyrus 6.04

  Papyrus 6.05

  Papyrus 6.06

  Papyrus 6.07

  Papyrus 6.08

  Papyrus 6.09

  Papyrus 6.10

  Papyrus 6.11

  Papyrus 6.12

  Papyrus 6.13

  Papyrus 6.14

  Papyrus 6.15

  Papyrus 6.16

  Papyrus 6.17

  Papyrus 6.18

  Papyrus 6.19

  Papyrus 6.20

  Papyrus 6.21

  Papyrus 6.22

  Papyrus 6.23

  Papyrus 6.24

  Papyrus 6.25

  Papyrus 6.26

  Papyrus 6.27

  Papyrus 6.28

  Papyrus 6.29

  Papyrus 6.30

  Papyrus 6.31

  Papyrus 6.32

  Papyrus 6.33

  Papyrus 6.34

  Papyrus 6.35

  Papyrus 6.36

  Papyrus 6.37

  Papyrus 6.38

  Papyrus 6.39

  Papyrus 6.40

  Papyrus 6.41

  Papyrus 6.42

  7. The Seventh Papyrus of Philostratos

  About the Author

  Also by Thaddeus Thomas

  Early in the twenty-first century, Israeli archaeologists uncovered seven papyri written by an official in King Herod’s court. Although the papyri mention him writing to a family in Alexandria, this is not that letter. Rather, these are his thoughts and recollections as he considers what he should say. He appears open, honest, and desiring forgiveness.

  Should these documents prove authentic, they may grant new insight into the early days of a great and mighty ruler, a woman who faced Rome in all its glory and won.

  1

  The First Papyrus of Philostratos

  The 18th Year of the reign of Ptolemy,

  father of Cleopatra

  (September 23, 61 BCE)

  I wish I could say the world forgets as it grows old, for then I might still claim my innocence. Such delusions have long since shattered, the first crack appearing on the night I traveled across Alexandria to negotiate for Amani's education. I would sit with her grandfather, and the light of a lamp would flicker across his wrinkled face--black as the onyx floors of Pharaoh's palace, a Pharaoh no less Greek than myself. I would ask his price, and he would answer.

  His price would be history.

  As the broad Canopic Way carried me west, Alexandria rose in alabaster insulae, private homes, and temples. A fire burned in a warehouse by the harbor, and water cannons released great arcs and beat back the flames. I ordered my escorts to stop, and we watched the inferno drown. Against the black sky, the smoke turned white, the spirit of a dead fire.

  Amani’s grandfather lived in Rhakotis, the Egyptian quarter, near the city's southern wall, alongside the stadium and the Serapeum. We had built the Serapeum upon the city's only hill, and, from its steps, I saw the remains of the warehouse. Beyond it, the Lighthouse of Pharos still blazed, its flames licking at the lips of heaven. I looked away to the south and our moonlit fresh-water lake.

  Soon, Theodotus welcomed me beneath the Serapeum’s red-roofed agora. Beyond this sheltered rim, the moon lit the shrine of the city's guardian god. Farther still, stairs descended into the library's subterranean passages.

  Theodotus, his shoulders wide and strong, offered me a basin of water, a stool, and his compassion, which I appreciated. He and I suffered indignities only eunuchs understood. I could not serve my purpose before Amani's grandfather while damp and smelling of urine.

  “Philostratos,” he said, his arms crossed as he perched on his cushioned bench. “Do we unjustly praise you? If it were pearls that poured from your mouth, what would be my benefit if you don’t speak on my behalf?”

  I paused in my undressing, aware of his unflinching presence. “They called you Chrysostomos, not me.” We worked as scholars and Masters of Rhetoric, but the Library’s headmaster had banished Theodotus to the annex as punishment for being argumentative--a strange crime, considering our specialty was debate.

  He lowered his chin and smiled, looking up at me from beneath a browless forehead. Usually, he preferred a wig, but now he ran his hand across his shaven head, a flirtatious move. He intended to remind me that his body was without hair: head, face--genitals. I chose, instead, to think of the lice that required we shave so severely.

  “Philostratos is no longer your name,” he said.

  Had my parents harbored ambitions for me beyond castration and the palace? My name meant lover of the military, which suggested a different course, just as my life suggested a third. If I were born for the military and made a eunuch for the palace, I had chosen the Library for myself. I was a scholar.

  Theodotus’s name meant god’s gift, a sweet thought if meant as gratitude, less so if it were a dedication of the man to some particular god. We were men of intellect and speech, and though the Serapeum doubled as a temple and an annex to the Library, it was not the temple we cared about.

  Before his fall from grace, they called him golden mouthed--Chrysostomos--as if they knew the future as I know it now. To me, this is a time long passed. Who was Theodotus? The time was to come when he would assassinate one of Rome’s greatest generals with these four words: Dead men don’t bite.

  “Philostratos is no longer your name,” he said. “You’ve not earned its violence. You are Philadelphos, brother. Let Pharaoh love his troops, and you rally your books and men. Unless--is your scroll still curled and seal unbroken?”

  “You know I live with Dio.” I stood and smoothed the tunic down my legs. The feel of it pleased me. The night air caressed my arms and kissed my cheek. “It is no crime if neither of us lives up to our names.”

  Theodotus walked into the open air, toward the shrine. “Perhaps, but I am not sacrilegious. Come, pay homage.”

  I felt in my pouch for a coin and surprised myself by the clattering of wealth around my fingers. Theodotus stopped at the shrine of Serapis to light a fire. I stared up at the statue, a human-like god who sat in brooding contemplation. Serapis was an amalgamation of the gods Osiris and Apis,
but he was Greek in appearance. Alexander the Great gave Egypt to his general, the first Ptolemy, who created this vision of Serapis to be the guardian of Alexandria and to unite Greeks and Egyptians. Two hundred and fifty years later, we gave little thought to unity.

  I dropped the coin. The cup dipped beneath its weight and then rose at an angle, depositing the coin into a slot in the shrine wall.

  Beneath the floor of the temple, counterweights rose and fell, synchronized by ropes on spools dotted with pegs. As the spools turned, the pegs released the ropes at measured intervals. The ropes manipulated levers connected to the metallic skeleton over which artists had built the statue.

  As a master of the Library, I knew all of this, but when the cup took my coin and Serapis turned his head to look at me, I still felt a chill. Serapis rose from his chair, his skin aglow with the reflected light of the fire, and his gaze turned to the tubes that lined the outer edge of the shrine's roof.

  Serapis struck a tube with his scepter. The same rope system chose the direction and tube at random unless an operator manually overrode the peg-and-rope programming. Distracted by the spectacle, I'd failed to notice if Theodotus had intervened.

  The selected tube slipped from its perch and slid along a track until it fell into the gold cup and reset the system. Serapis sat, one hand still clinging to his scepter; the other rested upon the three-headed dog, Cerberus.

  I retrieved the tube. It held a note written on papyrus.

  You've earned the ear of the palace, it said. Speak.

  “It is only wisdom, Philosophos,” he said.

  I stared at him, frowning. “The palace doesn't interest me.”

  “You've always believed yourself free of politics, but even you must see that is no longer possible, not after today. Don't fear the palace; embrace it. With your talents, you could be a royal tutor, and there is no greater influence on the seat of power than the teacher of the one who sits upon the throne.”

  I had no answer for him, not because I had failed to foresee the argument, but because any answer would trigger a debate. Secrets were better kept in silence.

  He saw I had shrugged off that line of discussion and moved to another. “I'll go with you to visit the old man.”

  “I'd rather go alone.”

  Judgment darkened his eyes as he put out the fire. “Would I embarrass you? I thought us friends.”

  “There’s no reason to go out of your way.”

  “You’re bringing him good news, although why you left the girl behind is a mystery. Cleopatra could have spared her this one night.”

  I looked away. “It’s not what you assume.”

  Theodotus stared at my pouch, and I could almost hear him remembering the clatter of coins. “You're going to pay the family.”

  “As a manner of honor.” I was pure in those days, an innocent.

  “If the princess wants Amani, her grandfather has no claim,” Theodotus said. “You're too sentimental. They'll exploit such a weakness in the palace. Offer the old man nothing. With the girl's parents dead, he'll be relieved of a burden.”

  “If you'd spent time with Amani, you'd know she is no burden.”

  Eighteen years after Amani’s death, Octavian took Alexandria, and Cleopatra killed herself. Her handmaids, Iras and Charmion, followed her example, taking their own lives in the same room where her body lay.

  We had with us Arius, who had been Octavian’s teacher. As an expression of his love for Arius, Octavian spared the city, but a death sentence still lingered upon some, including me.

  Years earlier, Octavian had declared war against Egypt with the murder of Sosigenes, another of Cleopatra’s tutors and advisors. Sparing me might have appealed to his sense of balance, but he learned of my claim to have studied in Athens at Plato’s Academy, since discovered to be untrue. For this, he marked me for death.

  I saved my life by pestering Arius until he spoke on my behalf.

  “A wise man saves a wise man, if a wise man he be,” I told him, although I confess it was persistence and not elegance that saved me. I harried him until Octavian, pitying Arius, spared my life.

  I left Alexandria and journeyed to Herod, hoping to piece together the years Amani had lived in Jerusalem, and that's where I am now, old and gray and serving in Herod's court.

  I have been here five years and know all that can be known about Amani's life. She may remain a mystery to the world, but it is time her family heard the truth.

  It is time I pay my debt.

  When Amani was six years old, I took her to the Museum—literally, the Shrine of the Muses--and its Royal Library. The Library’s adjoining buildings, accumulated across the centuries, rose several stories high. Scholars from all over the world had once come to study, teach, and discover. The Museum’s glory had diminished in recent generations, but she remained both the envy of every civilized nation and the joy of those who knew her best.

  The most ancient of the Library’s buildings was now the northwest quarter, which abutted the horticultural gardens and faced the harbor. Two bold and grand staircases cascaded underground to meet in an expansive chamber. Interspersed with strange hieroglyphs, figures of ancient gods decorated the chamber’s main wall. Arched windows high above let in streams of light, and the white walls sparkled. As unused as the area might be, we never left it neglected.

  “This is the oldest part of the Library,” I said, “and we have no idea what it's for.”

  “The oldest-oldest?” Amani asked.

  “The very oldest,” I said, “dating back to the very first Pharaoh Ptolemy.”

  “Was it for very old books?”

  I smiled, shook my head, and sent her to explore. On the north side, across from the stairs, were several doors but only two rooms. All the doors but one opened into a large room full of ruined machinery.

  The last door, the westernmost door, entered a room where a metal arm held a great wheel.

  Amani stared. “No one knows what it does?”

  “It does nothing, anymore.” I extinguished the last wall lamp and led her back into the main hall.

  I sat on the floor to teach. Amani stood. I had won the job of training her for two years, to prepare her for Cleopatra’s choosing ceremony. As small and innocent as she was, the responsibility intimidated me. I took a deep breath and smiled at her. A dark Egyptian of Nubian descent, she was a wiry wisp with skin like a starless sky. She had a broad face and big eyes; pretty, but not so beautiful as to shame a princess.

  “There are always two rulers,” I said, “one male and one female. We educate them equally to carry the weight of leadership alone if the other is ever unable.”

  “What do you think the machine does?”

  “Don't give it another thought,” I said. “Marriages aren't always brother and sister. Often, they're cousins.”

  “The male Ptolemies are named Ptolemy,” I said.

  She was about to say something, bit off her words, considered what I had said, and asked, “What are the girls called?”

  “They can have any of three names: Berenice, Cleopatra, or Arsinoe. The current family has used all three, and, if the fourth child proves to be a girl, they will repeat one.”

  “I know other names,” Amani said. “I know lots of names.”

  “They know many names as well,” I said. “Pharaoh Ptolemy has six.”

  “They call him the Flutist,” she said.

  For a moment, I thought to argue with her, but in the end, I only urged her never to say the name; not to Cleopatra, not to anyone.

  She agreed and, I thought, considered the issue at length. “Who built the machines?”

  I ignored the question. “Berenice is co-regent and the legitimate successor to the throne. Her mother was the queen, and though Cleopatra and Arsinoe are the daughters of Ptolemy's wife. Their mother was never queen.”

  “Why? Will Cleopatra be queen?”

  “It seems unlikely, but it's not impossible. Ptolemy himself was an illegitimate succes
sor to the throne and was living far away when they called him back and made him Pharaoh.”

  “They didn’t care that he was ill?”

  “Illegitimate.”

  Amani nodded.

  “It’s complicated.” I took a breath. “The city asked Ptolemy to return because the legitimate sons were dead.”

  Amani's eyes narrowed. “Dead?”

  “It's a good system, and you must learn it well if you are to be chosen as a companion to the princess.”

  “Is Berenice's mother queen?”

  “Again, it’s complicated.” I considered my wording. “When the queen could not give Pharaoh a second child, they reached an agreement. Pharaoh divorced her. She would no longer be queen, but he made her co-regent with her daughter. That freed him to marry again.”