Cleopatra's Moon

by Vicky Alvear Shecter

  Ptolly stopped rocking, looking into my eyes with what seemed like a desperate desire to believe my explanation.

  “Truly,” I said, smiling. “We have overburdened the servants. That is all.”

  Ptolly blinked and put his thumb in his mouth. He had resumed some of the habits he’d had as a baby, which confused me. When I had asked Olympus about it, he told me that sometimes young children who had lost much went back to a time when things were better and safer. He told me to be patient and that he would outgrow it.

  Still, it disturbed me. I took his hand away from his mouth. “Come, let us play the finger game you love.”

  “The Little Papyrus Stalk?” he asked with the sideways smile that always reminded me of Tata. I nodded, making sure he wiped his wet thumb on his tunic before I began. I sat forward to block Alexandros as my twin quietly opened the curtain to peek out. I sang a little louder as I heard him gasp.

  This little stalk bent in the wind …

  This little stalk went for a swim …

  This little stalk opened to the sun …

  This little stalk said, “Let’s have fun!”

  And this little stalk cried, “Yes, yes, yes,

  I will be the scroll for all your best puns!”

  Ptolly giggled as Alexandros closed the curtain and sat back. I stole a look at his pale and bewildered face. “Again, again,” Ptolly commanded.

  Alexandros caught my eye, then turned to Ptolly. “Oh, that is a baby’s game,” he announced with false cheerfulness. “Here, switch with me, sister, and I will show Little Bull a war game that is much more fun.”

  “Yes, yes, switch! Switch!” Ptolly cried. “Is it a fighting game? Will our fingers battle like Achilles and Hector? Can I be Achilles? Please?”

  I slid under while Alexandros climbed over me. We tried to be careful, but we still unbalanced the litter, forcing one of the bearers to stumble, the carriage to sway, and all of the men to grunt in an effort to right us again. My hand trembled as I paused at the opening of the curtain. Twisted shadows on the bright linen looked like the reaching arms of ravenous monsters.

  Open it! I commanded myself. Alexandros wouldn’t be able to keep Ptolly’s full attention for long. I carefully pulled back the curtain. My breath caught.

  “Do not look, young princess,” one of the bearers whispered. “It is a crime against the gods.”

  But gods be with me, I could not look away. On each side of the wide avenue as far as the eye could see, crucifixes bore the bodies of the dead and dying — a gruesome colonnade of misery and death. Most were unconscious, but a few moaned and begged for release. Faces swam into my recognition as I fought a wave of nausea: Mardian, Apollodorus, the young man with the brilliant brown eyes who handed our crowns to Ma’ani-Djehuti and Amunet … all with the anguished, agonized expressions of the tortured. Octavianus had crucified all the witnesses to our crowning ceremony — not just the head priest and priestess, but every person who had been in the room with us. I swallowed hard and closed my eyes, almost overwhelmed as I pictured the suffering of the frail old priest and the proud Amunet. I prayed that they were not suffering still.

  Alexandros forced a loud laugh with Ptolly as a wave of wails rushed our way. I opened my eyes again and poked my head farther out. Another shock: slave traders whipping men, women, and even children as they herded them onto what could only have been slave boats. I clenched my teeth in order not to cry out, my eyes stinging. Our people — Greek Alexandrians, native Egyptians, and Jews — raped, robbed, and now enslaved. This was what Mother had been trying to prevent.

  I closed the litter curtain, trying to control my breathing. Now I understood why Octavianus sent us along this route — he wanted us to see this. I fought another wave of nausea. His message was clear: The crowning ceremony never happened. And if we ever spoke the truth, slavery or worse would be our fate.

  “Isis protect us, for we are at your mercy,” I murmured.

  “What did you say, Klee-Klee?” Ptolly asked, using his old nickname for me.

  “Nothing,” I said, trying to smile. “I am just tired.”

  I closed my eyes and silently sang Amunet’s last words to me, like a prayer: Agents in Rome … bring you back … will find you … trust Isis.

  Zosima stood behind us on the deck of the Roman transport ship, sniffing back tears as the sailors prepared to set off. Nafre, Ptolly’s nurse, had run away before we boarded. She had told Zosima that she would not — could not — live among the Romans she hated and feared so much, even if it meant breaking Ptolly’s heart.

  Katep, who had begun boarding behind me, had been stopped. “No half men!” a soldier announced. “Orders from Caesar.” Katep glared at him and moved to board anyway. Two soldiers grabbed him and pulled him back onto the dock.

  “Unhand him!” I cried without thinking. “He is a sacred servant to the crown!”

  All went quiet and then, to my dismay, the men burst out laughing. “There is no crown!” they hooted.

  One soldier bent down to glare into my face. “Let me tell you something, you little half-breed spawn of a whore,” he spat at me. “We Romans do not take orders from conquered natives, let alone little girls.”

  The same soldier straightened and called out to the men dragging Katep away. “Wait,” he bellowed. “He might be fun! Some of us might enjoy passing him around!”

  More laughter. The men holding Katep began pushing him back and forth roughly. Gods, I have made things worse! I could not bear it if Katep was hurt on my account!

  “Let him go!” the captain called from above us. “We don’t have time for this. I need you two to help my men load that.” He pointed to a marble obelisk on rollers pulled by a team of donkeys. The soldiers released Katep with a final shove. Katep stared at me, dazed.

  “Go!” I mouthed at him in Egyptian. “Please, go!” His face crumpled — in shame? Defeat? Guilt? — as he turned away from me. It was the last I ever saw of my loyal friend and guard.

  We tilted our heads back to stare up at our Great Lighthouse as we sailed out of Alexandria. Our beloved Lighthouse, symbol of our family’s legacy, grew smaller and smaller until the whole of it slid under the horizon, leaving just a wisp of black smoke to wave good-bye. Only then did my brothers turn away.

  But I stayed, staring into the empty expanse of ocean separating me from everything I had ever known and loved. Mother’s dagger — Katep had found it for me — bit into my side as I took a deep breath.

  Perhaps I would use the dagger against my enemy someday, as Mother herself had tried.

  “I will not give up, Mother,” I swore in Egyptian. “I will be like you. I will bide my time and strike, just as you did when your enemies tried to push you off the throne. I will reclaim my destiny and our Egypt.

  “Genestho,” I added in a whisper, savoring the sound of Mother’s own directive on my lips.

  PART II: ROME

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  In What Would Have Been the Twenty-first Year of My Mother’s Reign

  Still in My Eleventh Year (30 BCE)

  The almost two-week journey was a blur of Ptolly’s tears, seasickness, grief, and worry. When the small brick lighthouse of Ostia, Rome’s southwestern port city, came into view, I gasped at the ugliness and chaos of the overwhelmed wharf. I had thought all harbors were as beautiful as Alexandria’s, with its swaying palms and white buildings that sparkled like crystals in the sun. But from the sea, Ostia looked like a dung pile crawling with roaches. I grasped both my brothers’ hands.

  “We … we must always remember who we are, no matter what they do to us, no matter where they take us,” I whispered, remembering Mother’s last instructions to me. “We must swear never to let them part us.”

  When neither Alexandros nor Ptolly responded, I squeezed their hands. “Vow it, please!” I urged them. “To be together, always!”

  “I vow it,” each of my brothers said, their voices as low and miserable as the port looked.

 
Stepping onto the dock in Ostia, I wondered if we had somehow stumbled off Chiron’s boat and into Hades’ dark domain. It seemed a damned place, dirty and dingy and packed so tightly with sweating, stinking dock men, workers, travelers, and hawkers that Roman guards had had to threaten people with their swords to carve a path for us.

  Word must have spread of our arrival, for people began crowding around us. “Is that them? The whore’s children?” they cried. “They shoulda drowned them! I spit on them!”

  I kept my chin up, pretending I did not hear their insults as soldiers ushered us away. Even so, I had trouble breathing in the hot, fetid air. All wharves smelled fishy, I knew, but Ostia was on a scale altogether new. It was as if we slogged through the gelatinous belly of some enormous, rotting sea monster. When a hot gust of wind blew the stench in our faces, we gagged.

  “Ah, the reek of Ostia’s garum vats,” one of the soldiers said from behind us. “Now I feel like I am home.”

  “Garum?” I asked. “The cooking sauce?”

  The Roman did not answer, but Zosima made a snorting noise beside me. “In Rome, they make it from rotting fish parts,” she said under her breath. “They leave fish intestines out in the sun for weeks until they melt.”

  We walked farther up the quay toward the barge that would take us up the Tiber and into the city. The crowds thinned out as people scurried toward the back of our procession to cheer the Roman soldiers who had begun to disembark. I heard sporadic clapping and cheering for the “heroes of Rome.”

  Heroes? They think they are heroes? They are nothing more than barbarians whose brawn has made them bullies of the world….

  “Shhh,” Alexandros said. “Some of them may understand you.”

  I had not realized I had been muttering out loud. I tried to cover my embarrassment with outrage. “Look at them,” I hissed. “Do you really think any one of these uneducated barbarians has learned the language of our ancestors? I bet not a one speaks Greek! There is little risk they will understand me.”

  “Still,” he said. “We are in enemy territory. We must be careful. Our only weapon is silence and the appearance of acquiescence.”

  Everything about the Roman countryside seemed dark and ominous. The light was not as brilliant as it was in Alexandria. Thick, dark cypresses and pointed pines loomed over us like soldiers at attention. When we reached the city itself, rough cobblestone roads snaked off in a tangle of dark and twisted alleys and byways. I thought back to Alexandria’s straight, clean, wide streets, how the Canopic Avenue stretched so wide, multiple teams of charioteers could — and sometimes did — race from end to end. I thought of our rustling palms, of fresh breezes from the sea, and sighed.

  From the Tiber River, we trudged to Octavianus’s compound on the crest of the Palatine Hill. Ptolly gripped my hand as we looked upon our new home, a seemingly humble house facing the street. “Is he going to be here?” he asked for what felt like the millionth time, his face crinkled with worry.

  I shook my head, repeating the reassurance. “No. Octavianus is still in Egypt.”

  We stopped in the front courtyard as a mob of children raced toward us. The sight chilled me, as I was used to formal, ritualized greetings with adults. Why wasn’t Octavia meeting us first? I craned my neck, looking for the woman who had given her oath of protection to Mother. We had learned earlier that Livia, Octavianus’s wife, was traveling, thank the gods.

  “Is he tata to all of them?” Ptolly whispered.

  “In a way,” our escort said. “Only that pretty blond-haired girl is of his blood. But because his sister does not have a husband, he is in charge of all of her children too.”

  My heart thudded with anxiety as the children reached us. I looked at their hands to see if they carried rocks or sticks they might throw at us. To my surprise, they were smiling.

  “Welcome, welcome,” they chanted in Latin. “We have been waiting for you all day!”

  The oldest boy, a handsome blue-eyed youth of about fifteen, smiled and said in careful Greek, “As the eldest son of Gaius Claudius Marcellus and Octavia, sister of Caesar, we welcome you to the family. Oh, and please, call me Marcellus!”

  His smile was so warm, so genuine, I couldn’t help but smile back at him. I had probably not smiled in weeks.

  “No fair!” the youngest girl said in Latin. “We do not know what you said! We have not had as many Greek lessons as you!”

  Marcellus turned to her. “Tonia, we have gone through this before. They do not speak our language. We must help them —”

  “We speak Latin fluently,” Alexandros interrupted him. “Our father, you may recall, was the great Roman general Marcus Antonius.”

  Marcellus raised his eyebrows. “Your Latin is impeccable! This will make it easier for everyone.”

  “Hey!” the little girl named Tonia said. “My father is the general Marcus Antonius too!”

  A pretty golden-haired girl who looked about a year or so younger than me stepped forward — the one the Roman said was Octavianus’s daughter. “We already told you they have the same father, Tonia!” she snapped in a bossy voice. She faced us, her bearing proud. “I am Julia, only child of Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus of the House of the Julii.”

  She gave me a challenging look, but Marcellus jumped in to present the others. Twelve-year-old Tiberius, dark-haired, somber, and with a handsome face marred by pink acne, nodded at us. His eight-year-old brother, Drusus, smiled more warmly. They were Octavianus’s stepsons by his second wife, Livia. There were two pretty girls a bit older than me, Marcellus’s sister, Marcella-the-Elder, and her younger sister, Marcella-the-Younger. They both smiled shyly. Finally, Marcellus introduced our half sisters, Octavia and Tata’s daughters, Antonia-the-Elder, nine, and Antonia-the-Younger, six.

  “Wait!” Ptolly laughed. “How come all you sisters have the same name?”

  “We take the name of our father,” Antonia-the-Elder explained. “All girls do.”

  “You can call her Antonia and me Tonia,” the younger girl said.

  I stared at them, trying to control my sense of disbelief. Did the Romans dismiss girls so absolutely they did not even bother to give them individual names? They had to take their father’s names — even if there was more than one daughter?

  “And you are?” Julia prompted me.

  I started. “My apologies,” I said. “I am Cleopatra VIII Selene, daughter of Cleopatra VII and Marcus Antonius. This is my twin brother, Alexandros Helios, and our younger brother, Ptolemy XVI Philadelphos. We are of the Royal House of Ptolemy.”

  An awkward silence followed. I had not meant to be so formal. Ptolly broke the tension with an appeal directly to Tonia. “Call me Ptolly,” he said. “Do you want to meet my cat?” The little girl rushed over and they chattered excitedly as Ptolly guided her to the cart where Sebi and our other cats peered out of their wicker cages.

  “Come,” Marcellus said. “You must be tired from your journey. Oh — here is Mother!”

  A woman emerged from the courtyard. Octavia. Our enemy’s sister. Father’s Roman wife. I had heard she was beautiful, and she was. Golden hair, light eyes, smooth skin, even features. Her hair had been elegantly arranged in a complicated but graceful topknot and decorated with thin lilac ribbons. She wore a tunic under a long sleeveless gown, which the Romans called a stola. It seemed like an excessive amount of clothing in the heat, especially since the stola was made out of wool. We, like most Egyptians, preferred finely woven linen.

  Ptolly and Tonia raced to her. He stopped right in front of her and beamed with Tata’s famous sideways grin, and Octavia put a hand on her chest, her eyes wide and her mouth gaping.

  “Gods,” she said. “You are the very image of my Marcus.”

  My Marcus?

  “Hello!” Ptolly said. “I am Ptolemy XVI Philadelphos, but I am known as Ptolly or Little Bull.”

  Octavia crouched down to his level and smiled back, her eyes moist. “Hello, Little Bull. I am Octavia, your new guardian. I was
married to your father. And you are the spitting image of him!” Ptolly grinned wider.

  “Mama, he has a cat! They all have cats!” Tonia said. Octavia nodded, but she seemed to have difficulty pulling her attention away from my brother.

  “Mama! Cats!” Tonia repeated petulantly.

  “Yes,” Octavia finally said, though she did not remove her gaze from Ptolly. “Rome’s rats will not stand a chance now, will they?” She straightened and looked at Alexandros, and her face softened again. “Yes, I see Marcus in you as well.”

  Then she turned to me. Something — surprise? — flickered over her face. But when I blinked, it was gone. “Welcome,” she said, smiling, her eyes softening with kindness. I thanked Isis for how different she seemed from her evil brother, and that we were meeting our protectress before facing Octavianus’s wife — the woman who would ‘manage’ us as his property.

  Octavia touched Alexandros on the shoulder. “You must be tired and thirsty. Let us get you out of the sun where we can bring you something cool to drink.”

  I noticed she did not look at me again. I felt hurt and relieved all at once. On the one hand, it did not surprise me that Octavia seemed more interested in my brothers. Some women, I knew, took more to boys and men, and I was glad for Alexandros and Ptolly — especially Ptolly — for it meant they would be on the receiving end of her kindness. But I also felt anew the loss of Mother, her faith in me, her strength and certitude that I was like her and would one day rule like her. A surge of loneliness and longing for her burst so strongly in my chest, I almost stumbled.

  Before we could step into the atrium, horses’ hooves thundered behind us. Alexandros and I exchanged looks. Roman soldiers? What if they had changed their minds and decided they would execute or enslave us after all?