Papyrus 5.26
A decade after Amani returned from Jerusalem, Cleopatra would rid herself of her younger sister, Arsinoe. It was murder by proxy. Marcus Antonius proved his loyalty by dragging Arsinoe from the temple of Artemis in Ephesus and killing her upon its steps.
Ephesus, the city where Cleopatra and her father fled after Rome.
The temple of Artemis was designed by the legendary Deinocrates. There had been a temple before, but an arsonist destroyed it; by happenstance, he did so on the day Alexander the Great was born. The arsonist hoped the act would make him infamous. The Ephesian government tortured and executed him and by law decreed his name should be lost to history.
His name was Herostratus.
Deinocrates, the builder of the new temple of Artemis, is most famous for designing Alexandria, which history tells us was a work built from nothing. History is lies. Even so, he has to his credit both the temple and the funeral pyre of Hephaestion.
Do you know Hesphaestion?
Hear me. When I returned from Cyprus and considered the remembrance I would build for Dio, I knew it had to capture the same zeal of the greatest love stories of history. That brought me to Alexander and Hesphaestion. Alexander loved him above all others, and upon Hesphaestion's death, Alexander had Deinocrates design the greatest funeral pyre the world has ever known. He made the pyre of thirty rooms held up by palm trunks. He stacked these rooms six levels high and decorated each level in its own theme with ornate carvings and coatings of gold.
While the pyre burned, they extinguished every sacred fire, everywhere.
Dio never said, but I'd always thought Hesphaestion inspired his own tradition. I could not build a pyre to equal it, but I did own Dio's house. He had left it to me and Amani, and Amani had never returned from Cyprus. So, in memory of our love, I burned his house to the ground.
On most any other occasion, I would have been banished or killed for such an act, but I approached the matter with care. I alerted Pharaoh of my intentions and outlined the planned precautions to keep the fire from spreading. The day of the fire, every water cannon in the city showered my neighbors.
They were not happy, but neither were they harmed.
Andros worked by my side through it all, and when we finished, we turned our attention to remembering Amani. Since the house had been as much hers as mine, I again chose it as the location for the memorial. We built the semblance of a metal man, affixed it where the house once stood, and scratched into its metal shell the story of Rhakotis.
I had fulfilled my promise to Ma'nakhtuf and could almost sleep at night.
Amani left Jerusalem.
She traveled by land to the Nile, approached Alexandria by boat, and docked at the lake harbor outside the southern wall. A brown tangibility loomed over the city. Even the water on which she'd sailed lay hidden beneath a murky and dull film. The air tasted funny, and the sky had lost its brilliance.
After six years, where were the wonders I had promised? She perused Brocheon--the Royal quarter--bought herself a mug of beer and chattered up the local and lonely for gossip. She asked about Cyprus and the annex. The entire city knew of Philostratos’s adventure reclaiming lost books for the Library. It had something to do with the Egyptians. Philostratos had carved the history into a metal statue and stuck it where Dio’s house used to be. None of it made much sense. There were rumors, for those who listened to such things, that the books were a hoax, blank scrolls meant to bolster Pharaoh’s fading popularity. People said they used that knowledge to build monstrosities of warfare, but who had ever seen such devices as what they stored along the harbor front? Fabrications such as these could not possibly work.
Rumors said Pharaoh was ill and rarely seen. After beheading Berenice, he made Cleopatra his co-regent, but in truth, he ruled alone. When the day of his death did come, Cleopatra was to be married to her brother, who was now almost ten.
Amani finished her third beer and left for the Egyptian quarter. Smoke-belching factories replaced the gardens outside the Serapeum. As evening drew near, a whistle blew, impossibly long and loud. The doors of the factories opened. Crowds shuffled out. Crowds shuffled in. The doors closed.
Black dust covered the men, and when she bumped against them, the dust clung to her in patches. Close up, she could see better. There were women workers among the men, young and old, dressed in the same short tunics. Amani moved with the crowd until she reached the houses where your family lived.
They came to welcome her in a nighttime celebration of food and song. They passed around the beer. She drank, and it played with her head. Let it be. For a time, she had thought she would never be this way again.
Your family ushered in Iras, whom Ma'nakhtuf had once blessed, now a woman Amani’s age. She had with her niece, who clung to her as if they were mother and daughter.
Iras sat and held her niece's hands while the little girl hid against her knees. Family packed the small room and filled the street, but Iras was the only one brave enough to voice her interest in Amani's journey.
“Were you not scared of sea monsters?” she asked.
Amani remembered crocodiles and a sinking barge from long ago. “My nightmares are full of them.”
“And yet you went.”
Amani smiled. Other things frightened her more.
“I supposed there were no monsters, but I was still afraid for you,” Iras said. “Truth is, I fantasized about your life, but I'm glad to be spared its horrors.”
“Would it be right to say I feel the same?”
Voices called out in the night, and Iras turned. For the first time, Amani saw the scars that twisted the right side of her face.
Iras caught her staring. “I'm deaf in that ear, an accident in the factory.”
“I'm sorry.”
“Accidents happen. They just move in more workers. Our elders speak out. The people protest, but the accidents continue.”
“Does no one listen?”
“No one ever has, but I was lucky; many don’t survive. Now, I help with the children and style hair, when they’ll let me.”
Amani noted the ornate designs woven into the wigs of all the women and a few of the men. “They're beautiful.”
Iras kissed her niece's forehead. “Were you serious? You've fantasized about living with the family again? I didn't think people in palaces fantasized about anything unless it's more power.”
Amani watched the crowd as they ate and drank and sometimes sang. The party continued outside, where drunken family members pulled neighbors into the celebration. A fire roared in the street. Laughter echoed off the walls.
“I guess we fantasize about what we don't have,” Amani said.
Later, when the party had faded to drunken whispers, they sat together on a roof. The city swayed before them. Amani could taste the air and feel it in her eyes, and Iras told the story of Dio’s funeral pyre and the metal man inscribed with a new history.
“Half that house was to be mine,” Amani said.
Iras laughed, but the sound held surprise and loss, not humor.
“They've turned it into a park now,” Iras said. “It's supposed to be beautiful.”
Amani dangled her legs over the edge of the roof and squinted through the black mist to the dim lights of the city beyond. “What Philostratos wrote, do you know what it says?”
“By heart,” she said. “Many of us do.”
“But you've never seen it.”
“Other than the palace, it's the most powerful district in the city. We don't have access.”
Amani turned her attention to the harbor and the royal palaces. “Half of the park belongs to me. They will not erect a monument in honor of my people, on my land, and keep us from it.”
There was a long silence before Iras answered. “If you go before Pharaoh now, you take your life in your hands, and there are issues we face more important than any monument.”
Amani saw Iras in profile, the scar hidden.
“We're adult
s now,” Iras said. “We can't forever chase the fantasies of our childhood.”
“Is the history and knowledge of our people a fantasy?”
Iras gestured to the black smoke. “The fantasy was that it would change anything for the better.”
“It still might.”
“Because you're here?” Iras asked.
Amani was slow to answer. “If I'd never gone to the palace, none of this would have happened. I was the price for grandfather learning the history of our people.”
“You can't blame yourself for this.”
“I enjoyed the luxuries. I can bear the burden.”
The fire from Paphos lit the sky a sickly orange. The library reflected its polluted glow, as if on fire. Somewhere within, beyond the reach of her people, were the books that remained.
For a third of her life, she had hidden herself away in Jerusalem, studying the science of her people, and now she had brought it home.
6
The Heart of Africa
Covered litters clogged the streets. The armed men wore no uniforms, and the litters bore no royal insignia. This was Cleopatra's idea of traveling incognito.
I pulled the curtain aside, peered out into the day-lit street, and searched my memories of that night ten years earlier when I met with Ma'nakhtuf. Much had changed. More people had employment outside of fishing. In the country, everybody farmed, but here, people needed a trade. Soon, more factories would provide that trade. I wondered if Amani would have been pleased.
We were five litters and a hundred soldiers. Behind us, people filled the street and stared. The gates closed. A gust of wind peppered me with sand.
Squat stone buildings and obelisks covered the land. A sphinx stared at us. It had once occupied the center of the Necropolis, but as the tombs extended westward, the beast had crept forward through stone grasses. We would soon take the easternmost bones, three hundred bodies by my estimate, and move them west. The sphinx would pounce.
I stood beside Cleopatra. The priest, Numenius, waited nearby. Two others stood farther off, Pothinus and Achillas. Popularity left Achillas, Pharaoh's advisor, answering to Pothinus, the tutor.
“We'll need to build another wall.” Pothinus stood before Achillas, but could not hide him. Though short in stature, Pothinus secreted beauty and charm like poison.
“We cannot rush the cleansing ceremonies,” Numenius said, his face drawn, his back bent. “The more tombs you disturb, the longer this will take.”
“Or get more priests,” Pothinus said.
Cleopatra shielded her eyes. At eighteen, her features still clung to the softness of youth, but each year made her more angular. She had a burgeoning intensity that made people welcome her kindness and fear her wit.
This explained why Pharaoh chose three ministers for his son. When the boy became pharaoh, Pothinus and Achillas would help Theodotus rule, and it would require all three to match Cleopatra. Pharaoh knew it. So did Theodotus. The other two were still learning.
“I still say we should move more tombs,” Pothinus said. “Once we’ve installed the first three factories, we’ll need three more. If we don’t move them now, we’ll be back to finish the job later.”
“The people will need results before we move more tombs,” Cleopatra said.
“We could have discussed this in the palace,” Achilles said.
“Let the city see us.” Pothinus lifted his chin to some unseen audience. “It shows compassion.”
“We came in secret,” Achilles said.
Cleopatra cut them off. “We're here out of respect and cannot take such things lightly.”
“Theodotus stayed behind,” Achilles said. “He's the clever one.”
Pothinus sneered as if Achilles had insulted him. “There's an opportunity here. The factories are about strength, and Alexandria needs to trust the strength of her rulers.”
I forced myself to speak my words, rather than growl them. “Our rulers are well trusted. I will not have you suggest otherwise.”
“You're not hearing us,” Achilles said. “The city worries about a boy pharaoh. He must have the credit.”
“He’s had nothing to do with this,” Cleopatra said.
“But he is pharaoh,” Pothinus said.
I stepped forward. “Not yet, he isn’t.”
“Soon.”
“Cleopatra will be queen, and she's already co-regent with her father,” I said. “This is her work, her credit.”
“You make the argument for us,” Pothinus said. “She is co-regent and a known quantity. Besides, it is not the same.”
“What is not the same?” Cleopatra asked.
“You will be queen. There is still only one pharaoh, and a pharaoh requires strength.”
Papyrus 6.01
Amani watched the caravan work its way down the quarter and through the wall to the Necropolis. The great doors closed upon the Black quarter; it was a name she had heard used by her family. Rhakotis, the Egyptian quarter, had become the Black quarter. It was not so called because of its people; only a fraction was of Nubian descent. The smoke that billowed from the factory chimneys discolored walls and left the streets coated in grime. The effect was everywhere in the city, but worse in Rhakotis.
During the years of Amani’s exile, she had imagined metal men patrolled the city and jewel beetles dotted the sky. In reality, other than the smoke and grime, little had changed. Families strolled along the streets as entertainers jostled for their attention. It seemed so normal.
Instead of impossible machines moving about the streets, Alexandria now had foreign soldiers--the Gabiniani--forces left behind by the Syrian governor. They were mostly Gauls, but the long mustaches and bushy hair of legend were all shaved away.
She stood outside the Museum and stared over the botanical gardens at the Library. Somewhere in there would be the surviving books. In Jerusalem, she had written everything she could remember from the books she read in Cyprus. Memories had come in jumbled passages, out of order, written in the middle of sleepless nights across six years. When the time came to leave, she chose not to bring the books with her, nor the machines she had saved or the experiments she had conducted. She had secreted them away so she could return to this place and the family she had left in our hands.
She turned back to Rhakotis and the room she now shared with Iras. In the morning, she made herself ready for the factory. Iras had arranged for her to take the place of a sick cousin.
Shifts were twelve hours long, six days a week. She thought she knew the noise of their machines; the steam hammers’ thunder pounded through the quarter night and day, but she learned to better appreciate their volume within the closed doors.
The workers worked quickly and exhausted themselves to keep up with the machines. Many of the workers were children, and she watched as the tiniest one crawled into hot and deadly machines to pry loose clogged materials. Supervisors berated workers who fell behind and fined them for delays. The children, they beat. No safety measure except the workers’ wit separated them from death. At night, they worked by candlelight.
Amani explored each of the factories, filling in for the sick and injured, until she became known to the supervisors, and, through them, gained access to the machines’ inner processes. She tinkered with their settings and reduced the belching smoke. Failing machine worked properly in her care. With the goodwill of the supervisors on her side, she developed systems to protect the most vulnerable works.
Each day, she anticipated discovery. Cleopatra would hear of her efforts and send for her. She lay awake, exhausted, wanting to sleep but preoccupied with her thoughts. Preeminent among them, what she would say when Cleopatra called.
Then, on the day of the eclipse she had predicted so many years before, Theodotus was at the factory to greet her when she arrived.
He looked tired and wore a fake beard that lulled from his chin like a black tongue. “I had to be sure it was you.”
“Am I me?” she asked.
; “Philostratos is going to cry.”
He led her out of Rhakotis to the palace, where he spoke to a palace guard who then escorted her to a chateau between Lochias and the mainland palaces. There she waited.
Pipe-fed gas lamps burned freely, as they had in the tunnels of the Cypriot Library. Otherwise, the chateau echoed the motifs of the palace she remembered. The mixture of the two felt like something out of a dream, as if this were the waiting room outside eternity, and her heart would soon be weighed.
Theodotus peeked in the door, said something to a guard, and then took a seat at the writing desk. In three years, Julius Caesar would sit at that same desk.
“Where have you been?” he asked.
“Is this an official interview? You're not introducing a stranger. Cleopatra knows me.”
“Cleopatra did not send me.” His words were simple but carried meaning. “Ptolemy is sixty-three. His journeys have aged him, and he does not plan to live forever. His eldest son will replace him one day, and I will be co-regent with him.”
“You know this,” Amani asked, “or is it an assumption?”
“The plan of succession is in place. There will be three of us guiding the young pharaoh. Don't see me as the mere tutor you once knew; that would be a mistake. I am a voice of power in today's Alexandria, and I have asked you a question. It's been six years. Where have you been?”
Amani resisted a smile. For a man of power, Theodotus was certainly puffing himself up. But that made her situation more precarious, not less so. Insecure men were volatile in their need to prove themselves.
“I brought what machines we could save to Jerusalem, and I've studied them.”
“You gave our machines to the Jews?”
“I’ve given nothing to anyone,” she said.
“Anyone? You’re telling me you’ve spent all that time studying in secret?”
“I am.”
Theodotus's smile turned genuine and found itself in his eyes.
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