Steampunk Cleopatra

by Thaddeus Thomas

  Ptolemy sat and beckoned us to him.

  “I'm not often frustrated,” he said. “I am pressed to imagine what could cause you to decline my offer, especially at the cost of everything for which your charge had trained. In the end, I took you at your word, that your love for the Library had choked out all reason. Have you now changed your mind? Have you come to plea for that which you threw away? Don't think to prey upon my sympathies. I warned you that you would not have one without the other, and on that, I will not be swayed.”

  “We present ourselves humbly before Pharaoh and understand and accept your decision. We admit to its wisdom. Our cause today will not seek to change your mind.”

  Ptolemy coughed. “It won't?”

  “No, my lord.”

  “Then, why are you here?”

  “You've seen the evidence of Amani's clever mind,” I said. “With proper training, she could be a true asset to Egypt, Alexandria, and Pharaoh. I ask permission to be her tutor.”

  Ptolemy frowned. “You do not seek permission.”

  I resisted the urge to answer him and waited. Beside me, Amani held my hand but said nothing.

  “You do not need my permission,” he said. “What you need is my command. Your headmaster will balk at her remaining in the Library, and you come to me to override his concerns.”

  As smart as Amani was, it never occurred to me to wonder if she understood what Ptolemy said or if it bothered her. I didn't ask myself how much she knew about the world and the many ways people are cruel to one another.

  “Pharaoh is insightful and wise,” I said.

  “And you seek that I do this for the good of Alexandria.”

  “I do,” I said.

  Pharaoh turned his attention to Amani. The smile he gave her felt sincere, with more than a hint of warmth. “You've been waiting here a long time, haven't you?”

  She nodded.

  “You want to study in the Library?”

  Again, she nodded.

  “Speak to me child,” he said. “I am deciding your future and wish to hear your voice. Is this what your family wants for you?”

  “My parents,” she said.

  “Yes?”

  “They died for this,” she said.

  He reared back. Amani looked at him. Her lower lip stuck out in a pout, but she did not cry. Pharaoh looked at me, and I knelt before Amani and took her hands in mine.

  “In the riots?” I asked.

  She nodded.

  “I lost someone that night, too,” I said.

  “My grandfather says the last thing they did was add my name to the list.”

  “She deserves proper training,” Ptolemy said, “and with it, she could outdo the Macedonian scholars. People like Arius might think it enough that I've sought Egyptians to join the entourage. To take this step may be too much. Any honor I've brought to my wife's family will be lost if it causes an insurrection.”

  Afterward, I would never ask Amani if changes we made, like the choosing ceremony, were good or bad. I would not talk to her about Semat's family, nor compare it to her own. Such things never occurred to me, and maybe that was because it wasn't my life being affected. Society hurt me in other ways. To secure a certain type of work, I had to lose part of who I was. I thought of that, but not of her.

  “We wish Pharaoh a long and happy reign,” I said.

  He turned his attention once more to Amani. “Would you like to stay for tonight's feast?”

  Amani forgot herself and bounced on the balls of her feet. “Yes, if you please.”

  He looked back at me. “I will grant what you wish, but not in the way you wish it, and, this time, you will not deny me.”

  I bowed. “We are honored by Pharaoh's generosity.”

  Amani followed my example.

  “Amani will claim the place that is rightfully hers in Cleopatra's entourage, and you, Philostratos, will accept the position offered.”

  I almost spoke but held my tongue. Amani looked at me, and I knew she felt me tremble.

  Pharaoh leaned forward and pointed as if condemning me to death. “This is my decree and my decision. From this point forward, you are Cleopatra's head tutor.”

  I nearly fell off my knees. Amani gasped, but it quickly became a squeal of delight. I stared up at Ptolemy. In that moment, I wanted to believe him a capable ruler and a good, decent man, and I almost succeeded. The idea of being conscripted into being his advisor had left me dead inside, but, as a royal tutor, I would have the luxuries of the palace plus the depths of the Library, keeping my identity as a scholar and growing in my prestige within the Museum. On top of it all, I would continue to work with Amani. Emotions that trembled along my chest and through my lungs, as if I’d breathed in a stranger’s weepy joy and been unable to breathe it out again.

  “My lord?” I asked.

  Warmth grew in his smile. “Do for the princess as you have done for this child, and you will serve me well.”

  2

  The Mystery of Rhakotis

  It is hard to remember a time before Amani, but some memories I cannot lose. After a lecture on the body's circulatory system, a young man from the Jewish quarter approached me. He joked about the lecture making his heart pound, which was horrid and still made me laugh. He was beautiful and clever, and he came for me often after that, and I would look for him even when he didn't. His name was Amnon.

  We dined in the Royal quarter, in the homes of friends. My favorite nights were spent in the company of Dio, an older philosopher, trained both in body and mind. Where Amnon was clever, Dio's intellect challenged me.

  One evening, Dio mentioned his connections with Plato’s Academy in Athens. The food and the rest of the company phased away, even Amnon. The world’s great centers of knowledge and learning were places of magic.

  “I must have read every book the academy could possibly have,” I said, “but I’ve always dreamed of going. Once, their masters would have come here, but those days are gone. We’ve cataloged every word ever written, but these halls used to house the most brilliant and curious minds the world had to offer.”

  “Until the pharaohs became jealous of your fame,” Dio said.

  Amnon caught something in his throat and coughed. “Be careful. It’s not safe to criticize the Ptolemies.”

  “Indeed,” Dio said, “even if it is truth.”

  The concern in Amnon’s voice barely registered. All I could think of was walking among the groves where Plato once walked.

  “I’m going to do it,” I said. “I’m going to Athens.”

  Amnon glanced at me, and I could see the fear in his eyes. He had no intention of leaving Alexandria. We had the largest Jewish population outside of Judaea. The world was not a safe place for a gay Jew, but he knew the dangers of Alexandria. The world beyond could not be trusted.

  “I mean, one day, perhaps,” I said. “We have the Library of Alexandria, after all. What more could there be?”

  We stayed the night in Dio’s house, and, the next day, Amnon was caught in the middle of a massacre. Bodies lie in family clumps, all of whom had answered Pharaoh’s call for an Egyptian child to be Cleopatra’s companion. Some, including Amnon, disappeared entirely. The world supposed him dead.

  I shut myself away in the Library until I thought the silence of my grief would kill me. On the fourth day, Dio came; I threw my arms around him and wept.

  Amnon had kept a room in the Jewish quarter on the dividing wall, and upon his death, Dio arranged to take over the lease for eight weeks, on the condition that neither he nor any other gentile would live there.

  Seeing Amnon's private things tore me apart. That first day, we never managed to say a word, and for an hour I sat on the balcony, breathing the open air as street traffic passed four stories below.

  Dio brought me back to his home and gave me a bed and a room. In the morning, we sat in his peristyle garden under the shade of a date palm and watched a duck glide across the fishpond. A blue lotus nodded at its passing.
>
  “Why did you rent Amnon's room?” I asked.

  “My good friend Antiochus has worked hard to blend the teaching of Aristotle into the Academy, and if I were a good Alexandrian, this should have pleased me.” Aristotle had been Alexander’s teacher. “But I have a fondness for Plato’s forms. Everything we know in life is a symbol of the heavenly ideal, and thus I believe in the power of symbols. They hold more meaning than mere words can manage. All the thoughts we don't know we're thinking, the ones that stir unseen beneath the surface, symbols are their language, and in them, we find ourselves and the hidden mechanizations of those behaviors we call both character and personality.”

  “I don't see the connection between that and the room.”

  “There isn't one yet, but there will be,” he said. “We're going to build it, a symbol of his life and our grief, right there in the heart of his most private space, where he thought thoughts he never once shared and where he dreamed dreams he kept even from himself.”

  “What kind of symbol?”

  “You will find it when you stare into the depths and ask yourself what was most personal about the connection between you. As the great man inscribed above his door, ‘Summoned or not, the gods will come.’ It will take time, and while we figure it out and while we grieve, you'll be a guest in my home.”

  Over the next four weeks, we never left the house. We fasted; we feasted, and we drank ourselves drunk. In the fifth week, I stole a human heart from a medical class in the Museum. We placed it in the center of Amnon's bed and covered the floor in flower petals.

  “It's more morbidity than romance,” I said.

  “Don't worry about what other people would think,” Dio said. “This is what is truest about you connecting to what is truest about Amnon. No one else matters. No one else will see.”

  We stood ankle-deep in blossoms and watched shadows mark time. The human heart bothered me. It was meant to represent both my love for Amnon and the day we met, but it would have offended his religious sensibilities. I knew that and did it, anyway.

  To respect Amnon, his landlord, and whoever would rent the room after, I planned to remove the heart and burn anything it touched. We would even pay a Rabbi to cleanse the room. For now, I allowed myself the freedom to scream.

  The process proved healing, and then Amnon came home, much less dead than we had supposed.

  After that, I saw Dio often. The Library was still my world, except for those nights when Dio would lure me away. He made me feel whole and loved and convinced me that I not only could step beyond the walls of the Library, but I needed other people if all my learning was to mean something.

  We walked through the Royal quarter, and the sounds and smells awakened me. The night’s rhythm, sensual and serpentine, could not hide Alexandria's dangers, but it exposed her beauty. In the air, we tasted the commingling of smokey feasts.

  “More than once,” he said, “you talked of going to the academy. Is that still your desire?”

  I nodded.

  “If it pleases you,” he said, “I’ll take you there. We'll rent a room, and you'll study with great men.”

  I was conscious of each breath, as if, without concentrated effort, I would suffocate.

  His voice covered me like a blanket. “I so much want to see your eyes in those moments when your world expands.”

  “See my eyes now.”

  A laugh burst from him, faded into tears, and passed just as quickly. He looked into my eyes and kissed me.

  I held tight to Dio’s arm and teased him. “Could Athens match an evening like this?”

  “Nothing could equal any single moment with you,” he whispered.

  I laughed. “Tell me what curiosities they teach.”

  His face flashed a moment’s solemnity, and I knew I had offended him. “You are a consumer of knowledge,” he said, “but knowledge is a responsibility. It must be used well in the honor of those who first discovered what we accept as truth.”

  I promised I would always do so. From an old street vendor, he bought us broad beans wrapped in flatbread and two mugs of beer.

  “What responsibility do you suppose I mean?” he asked.

  “The ethical application of what we’ve been taught.”

  “The degree to which such a thing exists is debatable,” he said. “The ethics of society and the ethics of the ideal rarely match. Robbed of absolutes, a man’s eternal disposition is at the mercy of the measure by which his heart is weighed.”

  “Certainly, we know good and evil. Even if society demands evil, even if we justify it and call it good, in our hearts, we know.”

  “Perhaps and perhaps not.”

  “You talk as if no certainty exists,” I said, “but there is one responsibility we know to be ethical and good.”

  “One?” he asked.

  “What we have learned must be passed on to the next generation, so those who come after us know what has come before.”

  “You feel comfortable with the idea of teaching in the Museum?” he asked.

  I took another bite to avoid the need to reply. One day, I would hold a reputation as the greatest extemporaneous speaker of my generation, but then, I still clung to my need for preparation and the safety of pen and papyrus over the dangers of the crowd.

  “I may have a suggestion more suitable to your nature,” he said.

  Without knowing his answer, I felt comfortable in his care, physical, emotional, and intellectual. He understood the inner me in ways no one else ever had, and, if he said he knew what suited me, I believed him.

  A few weeks later, I emerged from the museum and ran to Dio's home. A servant let me in through the front gate, and I begged her not to announce me. She smiled at my excitement and said I could find him in the back courtyard.

  The city's aqueduct system fed water through the wall where a sand and reed pond filtered the stream before it passed over heated plates and cascaded into the pool where Dio stood, naked and smiling up at me.

  I shrugged off my tunic. “It's official.”

  He lifted a glass of wine and pointed for me to fill my own. “Do you know which girl you'll be tutoring?”

  Stairs led me into the water. “I haven't met her, yet, but she's from the Egyptian quarter.”

  “So, it's done.” He pulled me to him.

  “Though I feel as awkward as a newborn fawn, they have me for two years, and when I’m done...”

  His lips tasted like wine. “Tripping and sunny like the buck himself, we must go to Athens.”

  We, the new tutors, met our charges in a banquet room in one of the harbor-side palaces. Tradition allowed for Greek companions from powerful families, and, certainly, nothing we did here would change that. Pharaoh wanted something extra for Cleopatra, something in honor of his wife. All the girls were Egyptian, but only the little child assigned to me had dark, Nubian skin and a wide, inquisitive face. Her name was Amani.

  I began Amani's training in the subterranean hall of Alexandria's Royal Library. The Library was the place I loved best in all the world. In bringing her there, I showed her more than the collected knowledge of the world. I revealed the innermost part of me or tried to, anyway. My choice of locations declared that this was what drove my curiosity and left me awake at night pondering the universe and times past and future.

  “Ptolemy himself was an illegitimate successor to the throne,” I said, “and was living far away when they called him back and made him Pharaoh.” He was living in Cyprus with his younger brother who was also named Ptolemy. He came to Egypt and was made Pharaoh, and his brother became King of Cyprus.

  I started sleeping in Dio’s bed more often than my own, and he guided me through the early days of being Amani’s tutor. When he sat and spoke, I had my own master teacher, and Athens would have to work hard to top the experience of being his student.

  “There’s prestige in the Academy,” I said one night in bed, “but I’ve been trained at the Library of Alexandria and now personally by you. I co
uld remain here, just as happily, forever.”

  He pulled me to his chest and lay his chin against the top of my bald head. “What Alexandria once had was the envy of the world, but learning could never be fully centralized. Knowledge was more than books. We are engaged in the intercourse of intellects, and for that, we need a variety of people and a plurality of vision. We used to have that here until we grew fearful and isolated. Going to the Academy is about following the tradition of Plato, true, but it is not a question of whether one is better than the other. They are different, and that’s why you need to go. Without that difference, we stagnate.”

  Papyrus 2.01

  When Amani had her first meeting alone with Cleopatra, they stared at each other over a low table set with juices and other delicacies. Cleopatra lounged. A necklace with a single pearl hung from her neck as a reminder of her station.

  “Tell me something fun,” she said.

  Amani pouted in thought, and I realized my training would have to include social graces and the art of conversation.

  But then she told a story:

  There was once a falcon, pursued by a lion, and the lion’s eyes shone like the moon. The falcon thought herself safe, for she could fly off to the horizon at great speed. The lion, however, could always see her. No matter where she went, he always knew where she was, and he always followed. She crossed the Nile, and he crossed, too. She flew to the mountains where the Nile was born, and he climbed after her. At last, she grew tired, and the lion caught up to her. 'Stop,' she told the lion, and the lion stopped. 'Do not eat me,' she said. 'I am the goddess Amesemi, and if you spare me, I will forever protect you and your land.' The lion approached very close, until his whiskers tickled her cheek. 'Igod, do not wish to eat you,' he said. 'I am the god, Apedemak. Marry me, and I will fight for you and your land.' The falcon looked at the lion and saw that he spoke the truth. He had pursued her out of love, not hunger. 'If we marry,' she said, 'our lands will be joined and become so great I could no longer see their fullness from the clouds.' The lion made no reply until the sun set and the crescent moon rose. 'Marry me,' he said, 'and you will watch over our land from atop the moon.'