Steampunk Cleopatra

by Thaddeus Thomas

  The crowd stirred, with none admitting a failure in foresight.

  “The master of the house believes you might never meet with the Senate,” Amani said, “and while you wait, you are vulnerable.”

  “The law,” Urban protested.

  “Rome is lawless,” Amani said, “and there's no one to save you but yourselves.”

  “What do you suggest?” Urban asked, and he was looking at Amani.

  “I see only one path ahead,” Amani said. “Take me to Ptolemy.”

  The men grumbled.

  Dio cried out. “Suicide!”

  “Take me to Ptolemy, and we will present two arguments. The first is yours. Tell him Berenice's plan. If he acts as she's foreseen, she wins.”

  “And the second argument?” Dio asked.

  “That's mine to make,” Amani said. “I hold a secret, something Berenice knows but Ptolemy does not. In it is the hope for another path to power, one he can take without falling into Berenice's trap.”

  “What is this secret?” Dio asked.

  Amani held his gaze. “I cannot tell you.”

  The men moved closer; she felt the threat of their presence, but Urban pushed back against them and stood as her guard.

  “She offers an alternative when no one else has,” he said. “We respect that, and you will respect her.”

  The crowd pulled back.

  “We will consider the suggestion,” Dio said, “but debate is not closed simply because one voice has spoken. We may yet find another way.”

  The men murmured in agreement, if without confidence.

  Urban bent down to whisper in her ear. “You've done well. Now, go. The men are ashamed, but when the embarrassment passes, they will act.”

  The decision-making drew long, and Amani suffered from a headache. The lady of the house alerted Dio that Amani was returning to her bedroom off the Mezzanine. She was asleep when the delegates sent for a representative of the Senate, and she was still in bed when the representative arrived.

  Dio knew where she lay, and yet he took the Senate's representative to the mezzanine for privacy. A servant brought wine and food, and they sat with their backs to Amani, talking about nothing of relevance, as if they were old friends. As far as she knew, they might have been.

  The visitor seemed old to Amani, although much younger than Dio. She supposed him to be thirty, and he carried with him the assumed nobility of wealth and power. Dio called him Crassus, and they spoke often in terms of the man's father, also named Crassus, and of Caesar and Pompey. Amani soon wondered if Crassus had come as a representative of the Senate or the political allies of Ptolemy.

  “Bodies fill the Tiber,” Crassus said. “Blood stains the Senate floor. You could not have come at a worse time. I cannot promise when the Senate will hear you.”

  Dio presented himself as a confident orator making his rebuttal, not a desperate man seeking salvation. “But you understand our lives are in danger; there can be no delay.”

  “We are all in danger,” Crassus said. “That is the present state of Rome.”

  The conversation steered away from the hearing before the Senate, although Amani could not tell when the change happened or under whose lead. Perhaps both men conspired to corner one another into arriving at the same conclusion: a meeting needed to be held with Ptolemy.

  “I'm certain Pompey can arrange a meeting,” Crassus said. “He has only Egypt's best interest at heart.”

  “I'll go and a few with me,” Dio said. “I ask for an escort of Roman soldiers, one whose loyalties lie outside your father's circle of friends. Our soldiers will remain positioned outside Rome, ready to escort the delegates back to Ostia when the time comes.”

  Crassus took his time in responding, and Amani imagined he was calculating Dio's capacity of knowing what soldiers answered to whom. We had covered this in our lessons, Amani and I. The transition from farmer-soldiers to professional soldiers brought a shift in allegiances, as it was not the Republic that made the promise of provision after retirement. The generals made that promise, and to them their soldiers held allegiance.

  Whatever Crassus believed, whatever Dio tried to persuade, Amani knew the truth. They could not know the allegiance of the men who would escort them into the Alban hills.

  Amani stepped out onto the Mezzanine. Crassus rose to his feet as if she had come armed with a sword, but Dio never flinched. He introduced her as Cleopatra's companion and one whom the chosen delegates would escort into Ptolemy's care.

  Crassus fumbled with his chair. “It's not wise to surprise a man in Rome these days, child. You might not escape unscathed.”

  “I have a suggestion,” Amani said, “if Dio would allow.”

  Would he object? He was the leader of the delegates, and Crassus was the son of one of the most powerful men in Rome. Egypt honored their women better than the Greeks. Would Dio see her only as a woman, a child, a girl?

  In Alexandria, she had others to help her fight. Here she stood alone, and in that lonely moment, she felt pride bubble up within her awkward discomfort. She struggled to find words for what the pride meant. She was her own woman, entering the world of power, yes, but there remained something more. Something ineffable.

  Even if Dio turned her away, she felt she had already won.

  “Please,” Dio said.

  “We do not mean to insult our guest,” she said. “Not only will we be happy to have your father's soldiers escort us, we will express our gratitude and debt to you and your father before all of Rome.”

  For a moment Crassus looked bewildered, but Dio smiled.

  Rome offered no safety. For those who wished to see the delegates dead, opportunities abounded--anonymous, deniable opportunities. If the delegates denied the elder Crassus that deniability, then his alignment with Caesar and Pompey no longer mattered. Ptolemy’s political bedfellows might wish them dead, but that death would not come upon this journey. Shouldering the blame in both the Senate and Egypt would bring no profit, not when patience offered other means.

  Amani and Dio would be safer than if they traveled with their own troops, but, once in Pompey’s villa, either Amani convinced Ptolemy to find victory in mercy, or these men would die.

  Her sense of pride faded into an icy dread.

  Papyrus 4.02

  Near the Porta Capena, Amani watched a man die.

  Dio, Urban, and their host led her out into the street. They needed only to reach the pomerium where Crassus’s men would be waiting. Several of the delegates walked with them, surrounding them like a human barrier.The enormous morning crowd grew denser as they walked. Men jostled into one another. Then one of their members stopped. He stood silent and among swaying among the moving throng, and then he fell. Blood pooled on the paving stones, and sunlight glistened off a knife’s blade.

  Amani looked into the eyes of the killer, and he looked back at her. The crowd crushed against her. She tumbled to the ground. Men stepped on her in their terror. A pulsating pain gripped her knee and rippled along her leg. Hands plucked her up.

  Urban and Dio carried her to the Circus Maximus. A series of shops occupied its outer wall. Few remained opened, but a woman in a bright toga stood outside the doorway of a brothel, beckoning passers-by to come inside.

  Urban laid Amani in one of the brothel's tiny rooms. Amani begged them not to leave. Urban smiled at her and hurried out. Dio stood at the curtained doorway.

  “We’ll pay the people here to watch after you until we return,” he said. “It won’t be long, I promise.”

  Amani sat up. Pain shot through her leg. “If they find me...”

  Dio was gone.

  The room smelled of sweat and the smoke of the lamp. She tried to be brave, but she had been brave for so long she had nothing left. All she could do was lie and wait.

  The owner peered in at her. “Your friends did not pay enough for you to die in here.”

  His eyes traced her, assessed her worth. He sneered and left.

  She tried
to believe the killer had not followed her, but she sensed him coming. She felt it in her chest, and the feeling grew until she thought her ribs would crack.

  He was there.

  Every voice was his. Every footfall, his. The air tasted of his breath and reeked of his sweat.

  A man pushed aside the curtain and stepped inside, not the one she’d seen, but, like him, his face was bushy-bearded with traces of red among the black. Amani assumed he was a confused customer. At any moment, the owner would direct him to the proper bed.

  The curtain swung closed behind him. The lamplight flickered off the dull metal of his blade.

  “I'm a friend of Cleopatra, princess of Egypt,” Amani said in Latin.

  He pressed his knife to her throat. A wet trail of blood ran . She gripped his wrist and felt only the strength of his forearm.

  She whispered, “Please.”

  He leaned in close to her. A single burst of air escaped from his lips, and he lingered there, wavering, his eyes staring into hers, a little wider than before and no longer focused. He collapsed, struck the side of the bed, and toppled to the floor.

  Urban stepped over the corpse and clamped his hand around Amani's wound.

  Dio knelt beside her and kissed her forehead. Her eyes fixed onto his, and she hoped he could read in them the question she feared to ask.

  “You're okay,” he said. “Don't move.”

  Why didn't he want her to move? What was wrong with her?

  “This had nothing to do with us,” he said.

  Nothing? The killer followed her inside. The streets were full, and he followed her.

  “The soldiers will wait.”

  Her mind screamed that there had to be a connection, a cause, a reason. The world could not be so cruel to let them flee focused threats into random violence.

  But then, if this bloodshed was about Rome and not the delegates, it made sense her connection with Cleopatra had not saved her. Ergodic certainty had placed the blade to her throat without direction or cause.

  Given enough time and the right circumstances, the world would die and for no other reason than being there.

  Papyrus 4.03

  The volcano's remnant peaks presented views of a distant sea to the small troop on horseback, and Amani turned from faraway waters to the cascading buildings of Pompey’s villa, built along the slope like a rockslide, interrupted.

  It felt a long way from the violence in Rome.

  Dio and Urban announced Amani's arrival, and as servants returned, having delivered their message, Amani could see Cleopatra on the terrace of the final building, waving and dancing on tiptoe. The villa's gates opened to welcome them.

  Amani did not have to climb to the top of the villa. Cleopatra came down to her and threw her arms around her, crying out in wondrous disbelief that she had come to Rome. Amani dropped her cane to hold her, but, though she wanted to weep, she felt removed, as if a great distance still lay before her.

  She leaned into Cleopatra's embrace.

  Ptolemy provided a room at the lowest level where Amani could convalesce. The villa was more like a small community of homes, and voices drifted from the buildings above. Amani had yet to see anything but her level, and it was every bit as big as Concivius's home. The upper rooms, balconies, and mezzanines that branched off the grand, hill-climbing staircase remained beyond her reach.

  Amani avoided her reflection in the mirror as Cleopatra worked a complicated weaving into her wig.

  “Look at this mess,” Cleopatra said. “No one loves you as I do.”

  “I should be with the others.”

  “We've been apart nearly a year,” Cleopatra said, “and you would leave me for a room full of old men? I would have thought you missed me.”

  “Their lives are in danger.”

  “There are always lives in danger,” Cleopatra said, “and it seems, more often than not, it's mine. I didn't want to leave you. I swear I didn't. If we could have been certain Dio was helping us escape, I would have, but we half expected to be led to our execution.”

  “I should be with the others.”

  Cleopatra stopped working on her hair, pushed aside the mirror, and sat down opposite her. “Why? What would you tell my father that the others cannot?”

  For a moment, Amani could only think of how much older Cleopatra looked now. Her face had become more angular, especially in the chin and jaw, and her body had the budding hints of womanhood that Amani still lacked. They had spent an eternity apart, but Amani didn't feel she had changed so much. Cleopatra was growing up, while Amani was only growing taller.

  “Don't be mad at me,” Amani said, “but we've kept something from you. It was once only a dream, but there's a possibility it's become so much more real since then.”

  “What could you possibly be talking about?”

  “There's another way to bring you home to Alexandria,” Amani said. “Please, I need an audience with your father. The others will try to convince him on my behalf, but they will fail. His mind cannot be closed to what I have to tell him, and, if they speak in my stead, it will be.”

  Cleopatra considered her for a long moment. “I'll speak to him, but I insist on being with you.”

  Amani nodded.

  Amani heard movement on the stairs and limped across the alae to the grand hall. She choked back tears as Ptolemy approached. He had left the delegates, as was wise and necessary. They could never report her words to Rome.

  She bowed and apologized for being unable to kneel.

  Ptolemy dismissed the apology. Cupping her chin, he encouraged her upright and took her into his embrace as if she were his own.

  “You've come a long way, child,” he whispered. “I'm proud of you.”

  Amani stiffened. She loved his words, but he had never spoken to her this way before. She remained in his grasp until she felt his arms relax. “I am your servant.”

  “I'm told you're the creative spark behind this meeting. Your friends have sought to assure me of your wisdom, but they forget I have raised you since you were eight. I have seen what you can do.”

  Amani felt her chest tighten. “I have been underfoot for many years.”

  “Never,” he said. “If my troubles with Berenice have shown me anything, it's that I have too often neglected the children in my home.”

  He led the way into an inner courtyard and sat in a stone chair. The court gathered before him, with Amani at their lead, all standing.

  “Bring the girl a bench,” Ptolemy said. “She need not tire her leg on my account.”

  Amani wanted to protest but only thanked him. As the others helped her lower herself upon the bench, Cleopatra took a position beside her father.

  Piece by piece, Amani outlined Berenice's strategy. Ptolemy's lips pulled thin. “Am I left at an impasse? It would be better to fail by action than inaction.”

  She had come this far and now hesitated, wrestling again with the same questions which had haunted her for days. What she planned to do now, would it betray her grandfather and her ancestors? Would it betray me?

  She had answers and had repeated them to herself in every quiet, thoughtful moment, but the questions remained.

  “There is another way,” she said.

  The world waited. She looked to Cleopatra.

  “You're safe,” Cleopatra said. “You're family.”

  “There's something Pharaoh doesn't know,” Amani said. “Philostratos had hoped to tell you everything when he returned from Cyprus, but that never happened. It falls upon me to tell you now, and I must begin by reminding us all of what matters most. Pharaoh desires a return to his throne. The delegates want a secure and prosperous Alexandria, and, the Egyptian people, we desire credit for our heritage and hope for our future.”

  When she faltered, Ptolemy put his hand to his chest as an oath. “You were wrong to keep anything from me but take courage. You have brought it to me now, and I pledge that no harm will come to you.”

  “You are generous, but I d
esire so much more than my safety. I want what my people would want if they knew the truth.”

  “What truth?” Ptolemy asked.

  She asked for privacy, and Ptolemy dismissed his court, leaving only himself, Cleopatra, and their most trusted bodyguards.

  Amani gave him Cyprus. She gave him the annex.

  Papyrus 4.04

  When Amani was strong enough to make the climb, she rested in the shade of a vine-covered trellis and awoke to a view of the caldera-born lake. Each day, she had shared her knowledge of the secret annex, sometimes with Ptolemy, sometimes with Cleopatra, and each day her injured leg strengthened. She had triumphed over the stairs to the second building and finally the third, and there she found lake-view gardens built upon a terraced slope.

  Today, Dio sat nearby, and Amani felt he was waiting, though appearances suggested he had committed himself to indexing the clouds. He noticed she had stirred and turned to her. “If you don't mind me saying so, you seem lonely.”

  “While I slept?” she asked.

  “I don't mean just now,” he said.

  The truth of his accusation tugged at her, emotion snagging her with its hook. “Every option betrays somebody.”

  “Philostratos was always a means to this end,” Dio said, “and he would tell you no different. He equipped you to fulfill your position, not to take you from it. There is no betrayal here.”

  “You loved him.”

  “I love him, still,” he said. “Do you?”

  She closed her eyes. “As a father.”

  “Good,” he said. “Then I know you shall find each other one day, and that is important, for he and I shall not. I'm too old for another journey upon the wine-colored sea. I don't expect to return to Alexandria, but, given the chance, I'll travel one last time to Athens and teach the young men at the Academy. It's a proper place to die, and my soul will rest among its olive trees.”