Gold of the Ancients

by Graham Warren

  “Well, then we have no option,” Kate said. “We must get in and get them out today, so that they can head for Luxor. There Rose will be protected and treated.”

  Alex agreed with Kate’s sentiment, though he pointed out that freeing Rose and his father still left the problem of ancient gold which was being stolen in large quantities. The general feeling was that once they had rescued Rose and Quentin, then Cleopatra could have all the ancient gold she wanted. Kate was the most vocal, but Emmy and Cairo were very much of the same view. Alex knew that it was up to him to enlighten them, but as food had just arrived, it could wait until after they had eaten, otherwise another meal would go uneaten.

  Chapter 36

  -

  That Changes Things

  Alex put his knife and fork down and took a decent gulp of tamar-hindi. “There are a few things that I would like you all to know.”

  “Make it quick, because we have a rescue mission to plan.”

  “We do, Kate, but … oh, I don’t know, this is all so crazy.”

  “Look, you might as well accept it. She wants us both dead, so we need to get in and out of there just as quickly as we can.”

  “She might want us all dead,” Emmy added in a very serious tone.

  Upon hearing this Cairo choked on his food. He had actually finished his ages ago; it was their leftovers he choked on.

  “She does not want to kill any of you … just me!”

  A joint exclamation of ‘What!’ came back at him from stunned faces.

  The canvas overhead started to flap. A light breeze was now coming in from the sea, though unlike yesterday there was not a whitecap to be seen, only gently rolling waves, exactly as it should be.

  “Cleopatra wants me dead for what I know about her.” Now aghast looks peered back at him. “Not before last night …” He stopped and then started again. “I did not know that I knew what …” He could not find the right words. “Look,” he said in exasperation at his own inability to explain, “I found some things out last night that I think you should know, but if I tell you what I know … then if she ever finds out, she will also want to kill you!” A far from perfect start, but he conveyed the message.

  “I’m listening,” Kate said in an attitude of ‘this must be good or forget Cleopatra as I WILL hurt you’.

  Emmy was much gentler, “Please, Alex, do tell us what you know. We are all in this together, so we must work as a team.”

  Kate took the ‘must work as a team’ as a sideswipe at her. She was about to put Emmy straight on a few facts.

  Alex, seeing that Kate was about to explode, interjected. “Not now, Kate, we cannot–”

  “Alex,” Emmy said firmly, though with great restraint, “I can fight my own battles, though the only battle we should be fighting is with her down there.” Emmy pointed down to the sea before looking Kate straight in the eyes. “You see my eyes, well, they are, whether you like it or not, looking at a friend. You took what I said personally, and for that I am sorry, because I meant what I said about working as a team, though you did not enter my mind as I said it. Cleopatra is formidable. So formidable that even the mighty, red wine drinking Ramses is too afraid to come up here and meet her.” Emmy had found her voice!

  “You knew?”

  “Of course, Alex. It is all rather obvious.” From the expressions on Kate and Cairo’s faces it was anything except obvious. “The only reason Ramses is not here, is because he is afraid!” Emmy did not look away; she did not take her eyes off of Kate for a second. With eye to eye contact she addressed Kate directly. “Unless we all pull together we have no chance of surviving this. We are not ancients … we bleed, and we can, and will, die!”

  “I say we stick as team,” Cairo said nodding furiously. “She down there, horrid woman.”

  Alex broke the silence which followed, though only after Cairo finally stopped nodding his head. “Emmy, can I ask how you know Ramses is afraid of taking on Cleopatra?”

  “I don’t really know,” she admitted, now that she felt tensions had subsided. “It is more of a feeling. I have so many little things which go around in my mind.”

  “Little mind,” Kate muttered, unable to keep her attitude in check.

  Emmy chose to ignore the comment. “I still cannot understand all that my ancient memories are trying to tell me, but when I saw Rose - oh the beating she has taken, you really would not believe it, Alex - that was when it clicked for me.” A tear trickled down Emmy’s face at the thought, whilst Cairo nodded slowly and with such a sad face. “We all know that Gadeem loves her more than anything in the world. We all know that he has protected her from Cleopatra. He knows all too well what Cleopatra would do if she ever got hold of Rose. We have Ramses’s Bast and Rose held against their will, yet neither Ramses nor Gadeem lift a finger. They are frightened of her!”

  “They cannot enter Cleopatra’s palace. It was built after their time,” Kate said in such a way that ‘stupid’ was underlining her statement.

  “True, yes, but this could have been stopped long before either of them were taken down there.”

  “This not helping to free them.” Cairo was looking down and wiping his face on a napkin as he said this; possibly wiping away a tear at the thought of Rose.

  “Do you want me to tell you what I now know? It WILL put you all in danger.”

  “We said yes, how many more times do you want us to say yes before you tell us?” Kate’s anger was becoming general and Cairo started to slide under the table.

  Alex put a hand out and stopped his downward motion. “Emmy is right–”

  “Oh, yes, side with your girlfriend. I should have known it would come to that.”

  Alex immediately stood, stepped around the table, took hold of Kate’s arm and took her away from all the tables. He let go of her as they stood by the metal railing which surrounded the roof restaurant.

  “What! You are going to throw me over now? Get rid of your problem by tossing me down there?”

  Alex took a couple of deep breaths before he put his arms out and hugged her, taking Kate totally by surprise. As he did he said softly in her ear, “Don’t do this to yourself, Kate. Not now, not ever.” He released his hold, turned and started to walk back to the table.

  “Alex?”

  He stopped, turned and took a step back. He must have looked nervous.

  “Don’t worry, I am not going to hit you,” she managed to say before she broke down. Alex hugged her again. “I am so lost. I don’t know what I am doing.”

  “Are you trying to tell me that this is all Greek to you?”

  She immediately pushed him away, smacked him, and dried her eyes as she walked back to their table with purpose.

  Alex had not meant it the way Kate had taken it. He had said it without thinking as it was a saying he had grown up with. As the words had left his lips he heard the inappropriateness of the sentence. “Perhaps I will not apply for that UN position after all,” he thought to himself jokingly as he stepped back to their table.

  “Anyway, what I do know,” Alex said a few minutes later, and after the waiter had delivered four more really cold tamar-hindi to their table, “is that we cannot expect any help from either Ramses or Alexander.”

  “We knew that!” Kate just could not help herself.

  “Yes, but you do not know why? … It is vital that you know why.” Kate gave him a look, though it was somewhat milder than some of her looks. “Let me start with Alexander.” He had their full attention. “I did not know this before last night. Until then I had always thought of Cleopatra as being a Ptolemaic Queen of Egypt. Part of the Ptolemaic dynasty which started directly after the time of Alexander.”

  “Get to the point.”

  “Let him tell it his way, Kate,” Emmy said.

  “The point is, and get ready to drop your jaws, Cleopatra's father is a direct descendant of Alexander the Great's top general. She is Macedonian, just as much as Alexander is.” He paused to let the point sink in. Jaw
s did indeed drop, because they each knew that Alexander was Macedonian first and Greek second, but to them Cleopatra was Greek through and through.

  “So,” Kate said quite slowly, “if blood is thicker than water, this would mean that if Alexander came to help us, he could risk a very humiliating defeat.”

  Alex said excitedly, “I think he would, considering Cleopatra’s reputation for wrapping men around her little finger.” Alex was thinking of his ancient relative, Aryamani, a far from stupid man, and more famously Marc Antony and Julius Caesar, both Romans, who were putty in her hands.

  “I can see where that would be a problem.” Emmy paused as if waiting for Kate to pounce, though on this occasion it did not happen. “Alexander would not know with any certainty how his army would split. It could be along nationalistic lines, in that he and Cleopatra are Macedonian Greeks whilst Ramses is Egyptian. It could also be that that a decent proportion of his army could split to support Cleopatra because of blood ties … along family lines. Whichever way it split, the balance of the afterlife would be changed forever, and not for the better. Alexander has no option except to keep out of this.”

  “So this not all about ancient gold.”

  “No, Cairo, it is about power.”

  “That what I tell you many times!”

  “Yes, you did.” Alex looked around the restaurant. There was now not a spare table to be had. Italians mostly, who had come to Alexandria for its famed antiques markets. “It is partly because of Alexander that Ramses will not come here. It has nothing to do with ancient ground.”

  “He related to Alexander … can’t be?” Cairo asked of Alex.

  “No, of course not. It has much more to do with Ramses not wanting to fight Alexander.”

  “But he fight Cleopatra.”

  “As Emmy just said, Alexander would be forced to take sides. He had a devoted army when he was alive. Then, nothing could have persuaded them to desert him, but right here, right now, we are talking about the afterlife. Thousands of years of history are interacting at the same time. I bet Gadeem could not even work out a plan to solve this. Definitely not one which had any guarantee of success!”

  “And you mention Gadeem, why?”

  Alex was reluctant to answer Kate. Gadeem had been on his mind quite a lot recently. He was Ramses’ greatest planner, as well as his greatest friend.

  “I repeat. And you mention Gadeem, why?”

  “Sorry, but that is something I must keep to myself for the moment.” Kate went to object. “No, Kate, I do not have facts to work on. Even if I am right, then it will be something that is between Gadeem and me. It will have no effect whatsoever on what we must do today.”

  Kate gave a slight grumble, but she knew from Alex’s tone that there was no point in pursuing this line of questioning.

  Emmy asked, “But you can tell us why Cleopatra wants you dead, can’t you?”

  “Yes, I can, but you are not going to believe this. I didn’t at first. It still takes some getting my head around. Dad is so wrong.” Quentin, Alex’s father by adoption, was the world’s foremost authority on Egypt when it was under Greek rule.

  “How he wrong?” Cairo asked.

  “On so many levels, but what would you say if I told you that Cleopatra never gave birth … ever?”

  “Everybody know she have son, Caesarion.”

  “Are you convinced of that, Cairo?”

  “Yes!”

  “Then I suggest you listen, that you all listen to what I have to say, because until you hear everything it will not become clear.” Alex received non-verbal reassurances. “I am just going to say it as it is. Cleopatra never ever gave birth. Her sister, Arsinoe, was the one who became pregnant for her.”

  After a short period of stunned silence Kate asked, “How did that work? That is a stretch even for your wild imagination. Oh, Marc Antony, I love you, here, make my sister pregnant.”

  “Hold that thought, though look at it like this. Oh, Marc Antony, this room is far too bright. I shall blow out the candles and return to your arms … or my sister will!”

  “Okay, granted, men are stupid, that could work.”

  “It would work, Kate, and it did work, because that is exactly what happened. Cleopatra’s children are actually Arsinoe’s children.”

  “You said children. Did she have more than one?” Emmy asked.

  “At least four, possibly many more.”

  “And Arsinoe gave birth to them all?”

  “Yes. That is why she went away to live in the temple.”

  “But the priests must have realised she was pregnant. She wouldn’t have been able to hide that for long.”

  “Emmy, the family were thought of as gods. Cleopatra told everybody that she was Isis on earth.”

  “Isis, our Egyptian god?” Cairo asked.

  “Yes, the very same. So when Arsinoe claimed that she was carrying the seed of the gods, how could the priests deny this? Anyway, priests, they’re always corruptible. They were being paid well and living in luxury, so they would willingly support her claim that the gods had taken the child once it was born.”

  Emmy wanted to support Alex, but she also needed the certainty that what she was hearing was in fact correct. “But, surely, even if that were true, and I do believe you, Marc Antony and Caesar were no fools. Okay, yes, they were foolish, but even they would know if she was pregnant or not.”

  “Would they, really! When the journey to Rome and back would often take more than a year.”

  “What did they do … walk!”

  “Sometimes, Kate, your attitude amazes even me. They had civic duties, battles to fight, provinces to visit, taxes to collect, an Empire to run. In those times being away for a year was nothing. However, Cleopatra could not lose year after year of her life by always being pregnant.”

  “You are only pregnant for nine months!”

  “Yes,” Emmy said, now riled, “but women in those times were seen as unclean for three months afterwards. You know that, Kate, so lose the attitude and listen.” Emmy had really found her voice and Alex liked it that she had.

  He felt it best to continue as the stunned silence of Kate could not last long. “She seduced men, she made them fall in love with her. That is how she became so powerful. She would have been nowhere near as successful if she was suffering from morning sickness. It really is obvious when you think of it.”

  “Then why she have sister killed?” Cairo asked.

  “Because! … Well let me take it back a bit. Arsinoe was not interested in having a relationship, though she was happy to carry a child for her sister. It gave her the attention and importance she needed, that she craved, without the emotional commitment. It had worked well several times, then, and this was Arsinoe’s undoing, she fell in love … This is where it gets complicated as there were so many things going on at this time.”

  “What time?” Emmy asked.

  “Between,” Alex had to think for a second. “Somewhere between forty-seven and forty-one BC. In forty-seven BC Arsinoe gave birth to a child that Cleopatra took for her own and named Caesarion – little Caesar. Only he was not the son of Caesar, he was the son of Marc Antony. Are you all with me so far?” They were. “Well, Arsinoe fell in love with Marc Antony, which probably came as more of a surprise to her than it would have done to anybody else. This was around forty-five, forty-four BC. She confided in Cleopatra.”

  “Bad mistake.” Cairo could see where this was going.

  “As you say, bad mistake, but the combined efforts of Cleopatra and Marc Antony managed to convince Arsinoe not to say anything, as it would bring about the death of them all and bring about an inevitable war between Egypt and Rome.

  “This held until forty-one BC when Arsinoe lost it big time. Cleopatra had Caesar all to herself, and Arsinoe and Marc Antony had been spending their nights together. One day Arsinoe went to Cleopatra and demanded Marc Antony for herself, but more than that, she demanded that which she saw as rightfully hers, Caesarion. She
wanted them to be a family.

  “This was a really crazy thing for Arsinoe to do, because one thing that Cleopatra would never accept was a demand, another was any possible loss of her power. Where did Cleopatra’s real power come from? It came from Caesarion being accepted as the legitimate and only son of her and Caesar. Anything less would, by that time, not only have ended with Cleopatra and Antony being put to death, but it may well have brought down Caesar, Rome and its entire Empire.”

  “So, Cleopatra must have told Marc Antony to kill Arsinoe. Lovers or not, I would bet he did not need much persuasion,” Emmy said.

  “Absolutely none at all,” Kate said, her anger and inner confusion having been calmed by what she had just heard.

  This pleased Emmy, so she added, “Just imagine if Arsinoe had managed to tell Caesar that the son he had fought so hard to get Rome to accept, was not his and Cleopatra’s, but hers and Marc Antony’s … wow!”

  Kate almost started talking before Emmy had finished, such was her excitement at the revelation. “Antony’s feet would not have touched the ground. He would have been put to death in the most horrible and humiliating way, all his family wealth confiscated, then he would have been struck from the records. No Roman soldier could or would accept that.”

  Alex gestured to Cairo, who made it clear that he understood, though had nothing to add. “There is obviously much more to this, but I think this shows us why Arsinoe is willing to support Cleopatra.”

  “Because, by doing so, she protects Caesarion,” Kate added.

  “But wasn’t he killed around the time of Cleopatra’s suicide?” Emmy asked.

  “That’s just it, I don’t think he was killed at all. But, before any of you say anything, that is just a feeling.” Alex pointed down to the sea, “We should be able to find out for certain once we are in the palace.”

  Cairo found his voice, “We go into Cleopatra palace?”

  “Yes, as this is much more than a rescue. We rid the world of the warlock.” Stunned looks, because what had the warlock to do with any of this? “We really did fantastically well by ridding the afterlife of him, but this left a void.”