Cleopatra's Moon

by Vicky Alvear Shecter

  The servant recoiled, eyes wide. Everything slowed. I saw a grinning Alexandros bring the goblet to his lips. Remembered the sting of Mother’s slap when she had knocked a poisoned cup of wine out of my hands … And I knew.

  “No!” I yelled, grabbing at the goblet and upending it. But I was too late. He had taken a big gulp.

  Alexandros’s eyes widened in surprise. “Pax, sister! I would have shared some with you.”

  I looked up, but the servant had run off. I turned to Alexandros, trying to contain my panic.

  “What?” he asked.

  Perhaps I had been mistaken. But then Alexandros began to cough and clear his throat. “Falernian never burns like that,” he muttered, his voice sounding raw.

  I jumped up in alarm. Alexandros continued coughing, his face turning red. I must have screamed. Zosima came running. Alexandros was having a hard time catching his breath between coughs.

  “Get the medicus!” I yelled at Zosima. But somebody had already sent for him. The medicus yelled at a servant to bring salted water, then grabbed my brother’s chin and tried to get the concoction into him. In his agitation and panic for breath, Alexandros pushed the medicus away with his forearm. “You must!” the physician commanded, drenching the front of Alexandros’s tunic. My twin’s face was red, the cords straining in his throat as he struggled. The medicus’s assistant held his arms behind him as the doctor forced a cup of the briny water into his mouth.

  I found myself alternately trying to breathe for my brother and holding my own breath in fear. The physician reached for another cupful, but Alexandros turned to the side of the bench and began to vomit.

  “Good,” the doctor said. “Good.”

  He tried to steady Alexandros, but my brother was bigger than he was. Alexandros ended up on the ground on his knees, still retching. Zosima brought a cool cloth. I knelt next to him and dabbed his sweating neck and face.

  “More!” the medicus yelled, and his servant sprinted away with the empty clay jar.

  When Alexandros’s spasms stopped, the medicus forced him to take more of the salted water. This time it didn’t take half as much to make my brother sick again.

  A crowd surrounded us. I heard Julia’s voice. “Alexandros!” she wailed as she ran past everyone and almost knocked me over to get to him. “What has happened?”

  The medicus murmured something to her.

  “Poison? Somebody poisoned him?” she cried.

  The word made it too real. My hands trembled. “How do you know?” I hissed to the doctor. “And how did you know to come out here so quickly?”

  “A servant,” he said. “Ran to tell me that there had been an accident with the wine.”

  “An accident?”

  “Yes,” he said, not meeting my eyes. “That the wrong person drank it.”

  The servant said Domina sent me the wine to celebrate my good news. A cold fury grew in my stomach. Why? Why would Livia do this? And why now when we were leaving her accursed home anyway?

  My limbs began to shake, but I stayed near Alexandros. The doctor purged him another time and instructed the servants to carry him to Livia’s sickroom. I could barely breathe. Gods, not the room Ptolly had died in!

  A weeping Julia was led away by one of Livia’s freedmen. I trailed after the doctor. “Will he recover?” I asked. “He only took one swallow….”

  “I need to see the cup he drank from.”

  I ran and picked it up from the dirt where it had fallen. The medicus sniffed it and made a face.

  “Is he going to be all right?” I asked again.

  “Well, we purged him fairly quickly, which will help. But …”

  “But what?”

  He looked at my horrified face, then said, “He didn’t get very much in him and he expelled it pretty quickly. And the fact that he is young and strong …” He trailed off, following Alexandros to the sickroom.

  Fear turned into rage, and I trembled with fury. I would kill Livia with my bare hands, I swore as I marched toward her tablinum. Bursting through the door, I came at Livia, and she jumped back.

  “You!” I growled through gritted teeth. “You dare try something like this now?”

  Livia looked at me, her eyes wide. “Selene, what —”

  “You meant that poison for me, but now Alexandros lies convulsed —”

  Somebody behind me took in a gasping breath. “Alexandros?”

  “Yes!” I cried, glancing at Octavia’s horrified face. I turned back to Livia. I would reach for her neck. I would squeeze the life out of it. “What is the poison? Tell me now, or I swear I will tear your heart out with my teeth.”

  Livia looked confused and angry. “What have you done?” she asked.

  “What have I done? You are the one …” But then I realized she was not looking at me. Her narrowed eyes were on Octavia.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  “Tell me, Octavia!” Livia yelled. “What have you done?”

  “She … she seduced my Marcellus!” Octavia spat. “The whore’s daughter thought to bewitch my son just as her mother bewitched my husband! She would destroy him like her mother destroyed Antonius. I would not have it! Not again!”

  I stared at her, uncomprehending. Livia’s face was red with fury. “So you tried to poison the girl? In my own home? They are leaving! Marcellus is marrying Julia this afternoon! Isn’t that enough for you?”

  Still unbelieving, I turned to Octavia. “You … you poisoned my brother?”

  “It was meant for you! The spawn of a whore who seduced my Marcellus. You deserve to die, you slut, you evil child of a she-monster!”

  Livia sat, her face ashen.

  “It is your turn to suffer now like I suffered at the hands of your mother,” Octavia continued, her face twisted with hatred. “All of Rome, feeling sorry for me, witnesses to my humiliation, discarded and overthrown for a whore queen. She stole my Marcus!”

  A chill ran down my spine. She used to refer to Ptolly as “my little Marcus” because of his uncanny resemblance to Tata. And he got sick soon after he told her he wanted her to stop….

  The room grew hot as I struggled to breathe. “By the gods, please tell me you did not poison Ptolly. Did you?”

  “I was going to, but you stopped me,” she answered, her normally graceful features contorted in a grimace.

  “What?”

  “I had the poison in my hands, ready to give it to him, when you came in. I was watching him sleep, do you remember? He looked so much like Marcus when he slept.”

  My heart hammered in my chest.

  “But you said you would give it to him when he awoke. What a gift from the gods!”

  “No!” I cried. “I … I never gave it to him!” I remembered then — I had Zosima get rid of it because I thought Livia had made it from her secret nursery of poisons.

  “Yes, but the gods took him anyway, proving they favored me.”

  “You would have killed Ptolly simply because your husband chose my mother?” I shook my head, turning toward the door. I needed to be with Alexandros.

  “My brother should have killed all of you in Egypt,” Octavia said, moving to block me. “Instead I had to be reminded of your mother every time I looked at your face! Even the guards in the Tullianum couldn’t free me of the burden.”

  “That was you?” A flash of memory: the soldier saying it was “Caesar’s lady” who ordered our execution. I had thought he could only have meant Livia. “But you swore to my mother that you would keep us safe!”

  She cackled. “Never! I wanted you destroyed.”

  “That was me, Selene,” Livia said. “I am the one who gave my oath to protect you.”

  I looked at her. “But Mother said she had received a sworn oath from Octavia….”

  Livia looked flustered, her color high. “I did not think your mother would believe me, the wife of her conqueror. She knew of Octavia’s reputation for kindness. It seemed like the best choice at the time.”

  So we lived th
anks to Livia, believing all the while that the “loving,” lovely Octavia had spared us.

  “You have the blackened heart of Set, the Evil One,” I growled to Octavia in Egyptian, making the sign against evil. Her eyes flickered with fear. I turned away from her, facing Livia. “Alexandros … Please, you have to help him.”

  “I have some knowledge of herbs. I will consult with the medicus,” she said, sweeping by me and leading me out of her tablinum.

  I took one last look behind me, into the twisted, triumphant eyes of the woman all Rome worshipped as the model of piety, goodness, and virtue.

  Despite the poisoning, Livia insisted we leave for Ostia that afternoon as planned.

  “You cannot expect us to move Alexandros in this condition!” I argued when she came to see me in the sickroom. My twin’s breathing was labored, his lips almost white, his body covered in a thin film of clammy sweat.

  Livia looked pale and drawn. “I cannot guarantee your safety here, do you understand?”

  “But —”

  “I will send the healer’s best medical slave to attend to Alexandros. The medicus has already purged the poison and given him the herbs he thinks will help. There is only the waiting now….”

  I did not know what to say. We were being hustled out of Rome like meat gone rancid. Sitting beside Alexandros’s sickbed, I pressed my forehead to his shoulder, closing my eyes in despair. Why was this happening?

  “I am sorry, Selene,” Livia said. And to my surprise, I believed her. I believed that this was not how she had wanted things to end.

  The journey to Ostia was slow and painful. I refused to leave my brother’s side, so I rode next to him on the back of an ox-driven cart normally used to transport lettuce. Alexandros, in and out of awareness, did not seem to notice his surroundings even when he was carried onto the Tiber barge. I stood guard over him, clutching my dagger — Mother’s — hidden in the folds of my belt, as if somehow I could cut the poison out of him.

  At the Ostian harbor, the captain of the transport ship stopped us when he saw servants carrying Alexandros on a medical litter. “No! Absolutely not,” he cried. “We cannot board someone this sick. It is a bad omen!”

  I was too tired to respond. The medical slave handed him a scroll bearing Livia’s seal. The captain’s sun-leathered face paled as he read the note. Nobody dared disobey Octavianus’s wife. He allowed us to board, grumbling and cursing the whole time.

  I descended into the belly of the boat with Alexandros, to a small, dark room normally used for storage. The captain did not want us on deck, where all the sailors and passengers lived and slept, because he feared Alexandros’s condition would spook his sailors. Despite the heat and darkness, I was grateful for the privacy.

  I sent Zosima and the healer-slave above deck. I wanted to be alone as I prayed for my brother’s life.

  The ship rolled and creaked as sailors barked orders and threw thick ropes on deck. The rowing drum began as slow and low as the thudding of a dying beast’s heart. Other sounds drifted in: the pounding of feet as sailors raced to their positions. The rhythmic slaps of large banks of oars in unison. The sharp cries of seabirds looking for scraps.

  When I could no longer hear the cacophony of the Ostian harbor, I relaxed.

  “We succeeded, brother,” I whispered. “We have finally left Rome behind us!”

  But he had slipped away from me, his ka already on its journey to reunite with Ptolly and the rest of our family.

  I could do nothing but hold him as I wept, lost, once again, in an ocean of grief.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  ON A ROMAN SHIP TO AFRICA

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

  Still in My Sixteenth Year (25 BCE)

  I stared into the swirling waters that took my brother’s body.

  “Come,” Zosima said. “Let us go back down to the compartment, where it is safer.”

  But I would not, could not leave. My hands gripped the sides of the ship. I beseeched Poseidon, in the name of Anubis, to preserve his wrapped body so Osiris would recognize him in the afterworld. So Alexandros’s ka would know where to settle. So I would see him again. I prayed for hours that Anubis would save this son of Egypt.

  As the time passed, Zosima created a makeshift tent over my head to protect me from the harsh sun. The Roman sailors continued to avoid me in fear.

  “The witch has bewitched herself!” someone whispered as he passed. “That is why she does not move!”

  The glare and glitter of the sun blinded me — but I wanted to be blinded. I wanted not to see, not to hear, and not to feel. Zosima tried to get me to drink water or wine, to eat, to return below. Anything. Something. I heard her murmurs and pleas and attempts to distract me as if she were a mosquito droning in and out of range.

  What if Juba had been right all along? Should I have stopped fighting and become a Stoic like him — calmly accepting the misery that the gods pushed my way? If I had not tried to align with Marcellus, would Alexandros still be here with me? But then I grew confused. Juba had taken action — and now he ruled Numidia. The irony! He got Numidia back when he had never yearned for it. And I would die alone in the deserts of Mauretania.

  All that day I stood, keeping vigil for my lost twin. The sky turned indigo, then black with the night. I struggled to breathe as I imagined Alexandros all alone on the ocean floor. The dark waves looked like the quivering coat of some giant restless beast, a monster that swallowed my brother, that devoured all my dreams.

  A gust of wind whipped past me like a slap, droplets of sea spray stinging my skin. I looked at the rising moon, only three-quarters full but laying a blanket of silver on the undulating black. Isis, I ask you, why? Why have you spared me? Living with all this grief was a worse punishment than death. What “wisdom” was I to glean from the horror of my lost family?

  But I got no answer. I stared into the moon’s face, examining its marks, lines, and crags like an augur inspecting a sacrificed lamb’s liver. I closed my eyes and smelled the scent of roses, the Goddess’s sacred flower. I felt her presence. My soul reached out to her like a babe raising its arms to be picked up. Help me, I beseeched.

  You are not your mother, Isis whispered.

  The world grew silent — a strange sensation, for only moments ago the air was thick with the sounds of waves splashing against the ship’s hull and the wind snapping the thick linen sails. I focused on the words the Goddess had whispered in my ears. Then I grew enraged.

  That was the great wisdom — the great comfort — the Goddess had to offer me? I laughed even as tears coursed down my cheeks. I did not need a reminder of my failures, ? Great Mother of All! If I had been my mother, I would have saved my brothers. I would have known what to do to reclaim Egypt.

  No, the Goddess said then. Your mother did not save your brothers. Your mother lost Egypt.

  I looked up into the brilliant face of the moon, confused.

  You are not your mother, Isis murmured again in the wind.

  I shook my head. Of course I was not my mother! Mother had been brilliant and effective. She had allied with two of the most powerful men in Rome to save her crown and her kingdom’s independence. She had succeeded for decades. I tried aligning with Marcellus and failed miserably, and my attempt to come to rule in Egypt ended with Gallus’s murder and the senseless death of an initiate of the Mysteries.

  Mother had power and control over her life, even as a young girl. I had neither. And when she lost her power and her kingdom, she took control over the only thing left to her — her death.

  My heart quickened at the thought. Control over her own death. Power to choose death on one’s own terms. In my initiation vision, the Goddess asked me to make a choice. Was that the choice she had meant? I paused, holding my breath at the thought. I could do what Mother did.

  I could end my life.

  Yes, that made sense! I could end my life on my own terms, leave with dignity, just as she ha
d. I could slip into the cold water, fill my lungs with wet blackness, and rob Octavianus of his last triumph over me, just like Mother.

  The ship roiled as I grasped the rail more tightly, Mother’s knife pinching into my waist as I bumped into the wooden sides. I heard frightened murmurs, feet running. The wind whipped the sails so hard, it sounded like a slap.

  You are not your mother….

  “I know that!” I yelled as I fought to keep my balance on the deck. Why did she keep saying that? There were more startled murmurs from the night crew of men on deck who heard my outburst. But I did not care. I felt rage crawling up my center like a vine choking a tree at the Goddess’s inanely obvious words.

  Where is your power?

  Gods, what a question! Another nonsensical echo of my initiation vision. The black sea roiled with larger waves as if a great beast slowly wakened. “You want to see my power? Well, here it is!” I shouted. I wheeled around, spied a small chest with a twisted rope handle, and rushed to drag it across the deck. I was nearly panting with rage and frustration. How dare Isis ask me where my power lay when she did nothing but watch as they took it all from me!

  Did they truly take it all?

  “Yes!” I raged. “Everything!” Except this, I thought. I stepped up on the grimy wooden chest and slipped off my sandals. I laughed at the gesture, as if it made any difference whether I kept my sandals on or off. I wondered how long it would take the black water to fill my lungs, for me to move into Osiris’s realm. The ship rail felt damp and cold against the tops of my thighs.

  I felt cold metal on my skin and drew my dagger out — Mother’s beautiful dagger, the one Katep claimed she had tried to use on herself when she was captured. I had always believed that she had meant to kill her captor with it, not herself. But now I knew better. She had intended on leaving us even then.

  The blade glittered in the moonlight. I would use Mother’s dagger on myself before I jumped. In this one thing, I would succeed.