Memoirs of Cleopatra (1997)

by Margaret George

  I was flailing about, my arms completely ineffectual. I sank again, then somehow got my head out so I could breathe. I could not feel anything solid beneath my feet. Then my swirling arms succeeded in keeping me on the surface, and instantaneously I sensed how to coordinate my legs so they could assist in buoying me up.

  "You're about as graceful as a hippo on land," teased Mardian. "Stop thrashing so much! You're going to attract sea monsters!"

  "You know there aren't sea monsters!" said Olympos. But I saw his dark eyes watching me carefully.

  I was able to paddle around without worry of sinking. The water had been unexpectedly vanquished as an enemy. Now it was just something warm and tidal. I felt lightheaded with relief and surprise. Surprise that the dreaded moment had come at last and I had survived it, and surprise at how easily it had happened.

  As the sun was setting, we returned to the dock and tied up the,boat. Our wet clothes clung to us, and now I could see the beginning of the differentiation between Mardian and other males. Olympos, at almost fifteen, was more compact and muscled; Mardian had shot up, but his limbs--both arms and legs--seemed disproportionately long. And he did not have the beginning of the musculature that was revealed on Olympos; Mardian's shoulders remained thin and slight.

  Olympos returned to his home in the Greek section of the city, thanking us for the outing. Behind us the sun was setting, and Mardian and I sat on the harbor steps.

  The sun made a shining red path across the gentle waves, and the ships at anchor were reflected in the flaming reflection.

  "You never swam before, did you?" Mardian asked quietly.

  "No," I admitted. "But I had meant to learn. It was time." I hugged my knees and rested my head on them. My wet clothes were chilling me a bit, but they would soon dry.

  "It is no accident that you did not know how to swim," he persisted. I wished he would stop. "You must have gone out of your way to avoid it."

  He saw too much! I merely shrugged. "I had no one to go out with," I said lightly. "My older sisters were too grown up, my younger one too far behind me."

  "Oh, I imagine you could have found a way. If you had wanted to." He paused. "It seems that you find a way to do whatever you wish." There was admiration in his voice. "How did you dare just to jump in like that? Weren't you afraid you would sink?"

  "Yes," I admitted. "But I had no choice. It was the only way."

  "Then you must have wanted to," he insisted. "Because you didn't have to. By the way, you did very well. The first time I tried to swim, I sank three times!"

  "I wanted to, because I had to," I said. "My mother drowned out here-- in this very harbor."

  He lost his color. "I knew--she had died. I did not know how. I am sorry."

  "I was with her."

  He lost still more color. "And you . . . remember?"

  "Only colors, tastes, noises. And the loss. And that water caused it."

  "Why did you not tell Olympos? He would never have forced--"

  "I know that. But the truth is . . . how much longer could I live in Alexandria, a sea-city, unable to venture out onto the water?"

  He bowed his head, choosing his words carefully. "May all the gods preserve our city in that glory," he finally said. "In her independence."

  "May my father the King return and take command." There--I had said the forbidden words. Was anyone listening? "In the meantime I must keep faith. And tackle all fears, everything that would cripple or compromise me. Fear of the water, for an Alexandrian princess, is a grave handicap."

  "So you banished it." He seemed very impressed.

  "Not without hesitation," I admitted. No one must ever know how much.

  * * *

  It was good to have friends who lived a safe and uneventful life, because in our children's palace quarters it was anything but that. The four of us were guarded and watched constantly, and doubtless everything suspicious we said or did was reported back to Their False Majesties. I, as the eldest, had the most freedom, but was also the one likely to incur the most criticism. Arsinoe, true to her fretful and spoiled nature, constantly tested the guards and caused trouble in little ways--ways that seemed designed merely to get attention for herself, since they served no other purpose. It struck me as very stupid, for the best way to behave around enemies is unobtrusively.

  The two little boys, Ptolemies both, were too young to merit much watching, as they played in their adjoining rooms. There was no treason in them, no plots, just balls and wooden toys.

  Age began to work against me, calling attention to my impending adulthood--and potential as a political tool--as nature began to reshape my body. All my life I had been slight, with arms and legs that had little meat on them, and what there was, I ran off with all my activity. My face, too, was long and thin, my features fine as children's always are. But at about the time Father left for Rome, subtle changes started in me. First I stopped growing taller, and as if in response to that, the food that would have gone into added height now filled out my arms and legs, and plumped out my cheeks. I stopped being sticklike and became softer all over. At the same time, my muscles became stronger, so that I could finally wrench things out of sockets that had been too difficult for me, move furniture that I could not before, and throw balls farther.

  And my face! My nose, as if it had a will of its own, began to lengthen, and my little lips expanded, until I had a large mouth. The lips were still nicely shaped, curved and fitted together pleasingly, but they were so . . . wide. The face looking back at me from polished silver mirrors was rapidly becoming an adult's. An adult face, which might harbor adult thoughts. Treasonous thoughts?

  The changes took me by surprise; I had never watched anyone's looks alter as they matured. I suppose I had always pictured a miniature version of an adult when I thought of someone's childhood. Our unpleasant tutor, Theodotos, would have kept the same looks, in my mind, but shrunk down tiny. Now I would see what I was truly going to look like; I had to watch myself being reconstructed day by day. I was most anxious for the answer, because I had got used to myself one way and now would have to see myself another.

  Of course I wanted to be beautiful, because everyone wants to be. Failing that, I wanted to be at least pleasant to look at. But what if it was worse? What if I turned out to be ugly? It seemed so unfair to have started out one way, in one category, and then, at twelve or so, be reassigned to another.

  I had overheard a merchant once, talking about his wife's expected child. Someone asked him what he hoped for, and I had assumed he would say that the child be healthy, or that it be clever. Instead--I shall never forget it!--he said, "If it is a girl, I just pray she won't be ugly." I always wondered if it was a girl, and if she was ugly.

  So I peered anxiously in mirrors (when I knew no one would catch me), trying to divine the future in my face.

  My breasts and waist started changing, too. At first it was just a hint that things were different, but after Father had been away for a year, the changes were unmistakable. I wished my breasts would*stop growing, for that was the most telltale sign of all. I had to wear looser and looser clothes, and even took to wearing a tight garment underneath to squash myself down whenever I had to see my queenly sisters; I wanted to look young and innocent as long as possible. But in my own quarters I could not bear to wear the binding garment; it was terribly painful.

  I had no "wise woman" to help guide me in all this. If I had had a mother . . . but she might have been too shy to discuss it. What I really needed was a bawdy nurse or attendant. The male guards placed on me by my sisters would definitely not serve the purpose.

  Had things been normal, I might have been able to talk to those very same older sisters. But they were Ptolemies first and women and sisters second and third.

  And then it came, the great dividing line between childhood and womanhood. I became capable of bearing children, that summer I was twelve and Father away for over a year now. I was prepared for it; I did not think I was dying or any of those th
ings that ignorant girls sometimes do. I knew well enough what had happened, but still it was a momentous change in the way I thought of myself. Never again could I feel there was little essential difference between me and other children, boys and girls alike; that the category "child" applied to us equally and was the most important designation, the most descriptive term, that fitted us all.

  Now I would have this element--this fundamental, awesome element-- to me for the rest of my foreseeable future. Marriage ... I could be married, they would say I was ready. I could be sent away from Egypt! I might have to make my home in a foreign court, wife to some prince. Have children . . . worry about them . . . and the cycle so short, myself so recently a child. . . .

  The possibility frightened and threatened me as nothing else had--not my sisters' illegal rule, not the Romans, not even the cruel water in the harbor. It was nature that had done this to me, not another person, and nature could not be pleaded with or dissuaded.

  Only Isis, my kindly guardian and wise guide, could understand. During the first days after the great change in me, I spent hours in the temple by the sea, looking at her statue.

  She was all these mysteries taken together--womanhood, wifehood, motherhood. Little wonder that women adored her; she personified all their aspects. I could only beg her to protect me in this voyage into the unknown, the frightening land of adulthood, of woman, that lay before me.

  Chapter 6.

  Partly to stave off these thoughts, partly in rebellion against the role nature was assigning me--without my permission!--I determined to form a group composed of people of my own choosing. I would call it the Society of Imhotep, after the legendary physician and master builder of Old Egypt. In order to belong, someone had to be interested in Old Egypt, of what lay far back both in time and distance. They had to wish to study the Egyptian tongue, and learn the old writing; above all, they had to feel the spirits of those long departed, and listen to what they might want to whisper to us.

  A surprising number of students from Mardian's class wanted to join, as well as both boys and girls who were the children of various palace officials. I suspected it was because a princess was leading it, but as time went on that was forgotten. No one stayed in the group unless he or she was genuinely interested, because we worked so hard that the fainthearted fell away. We wanted to be able to read the inscriptions on the old monuments by ourselves.

  One of the great inducements of belonging, though, was that the group, and its outings, had to be secret. Why? I suppose because children--and I was determined not to relinquish my childhood without a fight--love secrets, and it made us feel important and daring. In a palace rife with spies, we took pride in having our impenetrable secret society. (It never occurred to us that no one considered our doings weighty enough to spy on. Also, time and complacency had made my sisters relax their vigilance toward me.)

  So for the next two years, while Father's exile stretched on and on, we sneaked contentedly around Alexandria, studying the ancient language as contained in the scrolls in our great Library, occasionally having a recital of poetry in Egyptian. We also--extremely daringly, we thought--went into the Jewish Quarter and observed their synagogue, the largest in the world. (Was everything in Alexandria the largest in the world? To me, at the time, it seemed so.) So large was it that a man had to be stationed midway down the auditorium to signal with a flag what part of the ceremony was taking place, as those worshipers in the back were too far away to see or hear.

  Alexandria had a very sizable Jewish population; some said there were more Jews in Alexandria than in Jerusalem. That always puzzled me, since their great leader Moses had led them out of Egypt long ago, and they were ecstatic to be delivered. Why had they wished to return? In the Greek translation of their holy book--written here in Alexandria--it said that their god had forbidden them to return to Egypt. Why did they disobey?

  We went fishing in the papyrus marshes of Mareotis, the great lake that extended all along the back of Alexandria and then many miles to the west. Another time we got permission to visit one of the lesser embalming shops that clustered like flies outside the western walls of the city, near the tombs. Although Egyptians no longer had the elaborate monuments of former days, people who could afford it still preferred to be embalmed. Greeks had traditionally been cremated, but here in Alexandria these customs, like so many others, mixed, and many Greeks sought the embalming table of Anubis. The shops were busy, and on the day we went, the jolly proprietor had three mortal remains to make ready for the journey to the west.

  "It should properly take seventy days," he told us. "Forty for the natron-drying, and then there is the wrapping, and--but now we have a quicker service. Everyone is in such a hurry now. Especially the Greeks. The pace of Alexandria extends even to her dead."

  He showed us the various styles of coffins; many were covered with hieroglyphics, and I was proud that I could read much of it.

  Oh, we did many other things--we collected perfumes and unguents, which Alexandria exported. There was Balm of Gilead, crushed and incorporated into a jelly; a perfume from Mendes called "The Egyptian" that had balanos oil, myrrh, resin, and cassia; one called "Metopion" that had oil of bitter almonds scented with cardamom, sweet rushes from the sea of Gennesareth, and galbanum. Oil of lilies was strong, and combined with other oils and fats to make a popular ointment. We tried to make our own by melting fat and adding crushed roses and a few drops of lotus dew, but it did not smell very strong. The perfumers of Egypt have no equal in the world, and they guarded their secrets well. No shop admitted us to look on as they worked.

  All these preliminary activities were leading up to what we really hoped to do: visit the pyramids. They were situated not far from Memphis, where all the branches of the Nile come together and the Delta ends. It was a long journey from Alexandria, some hundred Roman miles down the Canopic branch of the Nile. We should have asked permission, and notified someone. We knew that, even at the time. But such is the nature of children longing for adventure that they would rather die than invoke the safety and protection of an adult. And it gave me such pleasure, for once, to give them the slip.

  Of course it was necessary to have an adult along, and Mardian's uncle Nebamun, a low-ranking chamberlain at court, reluctantly agreed to take us, but only because he wished to return to Memphis himself and see his relatives.

  We told our attendants that we were to be going away, on a safe, quiet visit to see the Nile as it began its flooding. Living in Alexandria, we were not on the Nile itself, but some fifteen or twenty miles from its westernmost branch. My chamberlain, who was in reality my keeper (the guards having grown more lax as time went on), deemed it proper, and harmless enough, for me to go. Quietly, all over the palace grounds, the other five young, stalwart explorers were saying the same thing, and their attendants were likewise agreeing.

  We set out in the early dawn, being driven in three royal chariots down the broad street of the Soma until we reached the docks of Mareotis. The docks were busy; fishing boats had already made a run on Mareotis and were unloading their catch. Other vessels, which plied their way bringing the produce of Egypt, by way of the Nile, were crowding in and awaiting their turn to dock. Wine from the vineyards of Mareotis and the Delta, dates, papyrus, precious woods and spices from the lands of Punt and Somalia, porphyry from the eastern desert, obelisks from Aswan--all converged on the lake docks of Alexandria.

  Nebamun had hired a small boat to take us all the way to Memphis. It was large enough that we could sleep on it, for it was several days' journey there. The prevailing wind at this time of year was in our favor, blowing exactly the way we wished to go, south against the current.

  We set sail eastward over the lake, just as the sun was rising. He--Re, the glorious sun--was emerging from the papyrus thickets and the rushes that bordered the shore, green and bristly. The early breeze swept across the water and filled our sail. We sailed straight toward Re.

  It was late in the afternoon before we reach
ed the far side of the lake, where the canals connect to the Nile. The boatman cast a look at the sky, and indicated that we should drop anchor, sheltering among the reeds and the huge, cup-shaped leaves of the bean plants. It seemed a holiday sort of thing to do, and so we agreed.

  I awakened once in the middle of the night, hearing the gurgle of the water gently slapping the sides of the boat, the rustling of the papyrus stalks all around us, and the cry of a night heron somewhere in the thicket. I had never slept so well on my gilded bed in the palace.

  With the dawn, mists rose from the swamp as if they were night-spirits fleeing. As soon as Re appeared, they scattered. We were soon on the Nile, or what was called its Canopic branch.

  One of our school exercises was to memorize all seven branches of the Nile, and all educated Egyptians can do so: Canopic, Bolbitinic, Sebennytic, Phatnitic, Mendesian, Tanitic, Pelusic. They fan out from the main Nile and (to an ibis flying over them) have the shape of a lotus flower blooming from a stalk.

  The Canopic Nile is small. Date palms and vineyards dotted the fields surrounding it, where all was moist and fertile, with the lush greenness that comes only with living things; the malachite in the palace inlays and the emeralds that glowed in bracelets were dull beside this. Green is the most precious color in Egypt, as it is so hard-won against the desert.