Cleopatra Confesses (16 page)

“Perhaps you could give her some perfumed wax to hold to her
nose,” Charmion suggests, and I struggle to smother my laughter. Charmion is the only person who can make me laugh like this.

She asks then, as she always does, if I have any news of Father, and I tell her that I have not. I never do. My father does not write to me or send me messages, and I sometimes wonder if he ever thinks of me. Thinking of him now puts an end to my amusement. I realize he may never be able to return, I may never see him again, and our dream of ruling together may be finished.

I play my proper role as princess at the celebration of the queen’s marriage, along with Arsinoë and the little Ptolemy princes. Charmion is among the dancers at the banquet. While another musical group is performing for the happy couple and their guests, I slip out and find Charmion. The night is hot, even with the breeze from the sea, and her smooth skin is covered with a light sheen of sweat.

“That idiot!” she mutters, glaring in the direction of my sister’s new husband.

“What?” I ask.

“He—he
grabbed
me!” she sputters, and I remember how he behaved toward the women and girls on the Nile boats. “I pray that he does not decide to get himself a handful of
your
tender flesh!”

“Something else to beware of.” I sigh. “As if we didn’t have enough already.”

Eight days later, Seleucus is found dead, strangled with Berenike’s necklace. The queen does not deny that she ordered the murder of her husband, whom she describes as coarse and vulgar.

There is no pretense that he “vanished.” She does not speak of him again. No one does.

Chapter 30

A
RCHELAUS

More than a month has passed since the marriage and the murder of Prince Seleucus. Berenike frightens me more than ever. I avoid her when I can and force a smile when I cannot, but I am never at ease. Sometimes I arrange a stealthy meeting with Charmion, but each time requires us to find a new and secret place, and I am reluctant to put her at risk. I wonder if I will always live in fear. I am growing thin. Sleep does not come easily, though Irisi and Monifa have moved their beds to block my door. There are no limits to what Berenike will do. She is nineteen years old. Where does she find the strength of will for such things?

Then, only months after doing away with the unfortunate Seleucus, Berenike chooses a new husband, Archelaus, son of the king of Pontus in Asia Minor. She arranges another brilliant celebration, and her supporters rejoice, apparently forgetting
all about the ill fate of Seleucus. Archelaus is rough and shaggy looking, laughs at his own jokes like a braying donkey, and spends his days out hunting, but he is not boorish like Saltfish Monger. His first official act as king is to banish Bubu. Archelaus objected to the baboon’s presence in his bedroom. I applaud his decision. I think it might even be possible to like this man, and I hope that Queen Berenike likes him well enough not to have him murdered like his predecessor. One can never be sure.

I understand why Berenike decided to marry Archelaus, but I cannot begin to understand why Archelaus agreed to marry Berenike. Does he worry, as I do, that each meal might be his last, or that he will go to sleep one night and fail to wake up the next morning?

But already the queen has a problem. By the time I mark the fifteenth anniversary of my birth, word has reached Rome of events in Alexandria: that Tryphaena and Titus have ceased to exist, that Seleucus is dead, and, most seriously in the view of the Roman triumvirate, that Berenike has married Archelaus without consulting them. Rumors again swirl through the royal quarter. Even Demetrius, who usually ignores political matters, has talked with his friend the philosopher Dion of Alexandria. I persuade my tutor to tell me what he knows.

“Queen Berenike is sending Dion as ambassador to Rome with a delegation of a hundred men,” he says. “Their mission is to persuade the triumvirate that all Berenike has done is for the good of Egypt.”

“Does Father know about this?” I ask him. “The two murders—three, counting Titus—and the new husband?”

“Most certainly King Ptolemy has been informed.”

“What will happen now?”

“We must wait and see. The king is in exile in Rome. Even if he knows exactly what occurred, he can do nothing.”

This is far from reassuring. There is not one powerful person on my side.

And so we wait, and what we learn before a new season begins is that Dion of Alexandria is dead, murdered on the orders of my father. Likewise, many members of the delegation, those who were not bribed or somehow threatened into silence, have been killed. Hardly any of Berenike’s delegates return alive to Alexandria.

The news appalls me. Why did Father do this? I understand his anger at Berenike, but was it necessary to kill Dion, one of our leading scholars, and so many delegates? My father’s actions seem senselessly, terribly cruel. Many other loyal subjects are shocked as well.

“The murders have created a scandal in Rome,” the bitter survivors report. “King Ptolemy has been forced to flee once more, this time to the temple of Artemis in Ephesus.”

The temple of Artemis is known to be the most sacred place of sanctuary in the world. I know from my study of our maps that Ephesus is a long journey from Rome—and a long way from Alexandria.

“Do you think my father is planning to come home to Egypt?” I ask Demetrius.

My tutor shakes his head and lifts his shoulders in his familiar shrug. “Only the gods can answer that, Cleopatra.”

Chapter 31

B
UCEPHALA

Many things have changed since my father was forced into exile three and a half years ago. I am fifteen, old enough to rule Egypt alone and capable of ruling well. Only Queen Cleopatra Berenike stands between me and the throne—and she knows that as well as I do. Yet she and her husband, Archelaus, rule without any apparent opposition. Everyone is afraid to anger her. But my time is coming, I feel sure, and so I watch and wait. One day soon Berenike is certain to make a serious mistake. Maybe even a fatal one. And I will be ready.

With Archelaus at her side, Queen Berenike seems less interested in what I do, and I have become bolder. Surely the queen’s spies have informed her of my visits to the harem to spend time with Charmion and her mother, but so far she has not interfered.

Charmion humors me with lessons in the dances she performs
for royal banquets. “You have a talent for this, Cleopatra,” she assures me, “though you will never perform in public.”

“Only in private, someday, for your husband,” adds Lady Amandaris, who is as wise as she is elegant. “But your truest talent, like your greatest beauty, is in your intelligence and your charm.”

“Charm?” I ask her. “I know what intelligence is, but please explain charm to me.”

Lady Amandaris is mixing the ingredients for perfumed oils, and she pauses to consider her answer. “To listen well, to think quickly, but to speak with just the right amount of wit, in order to amuse without wounding.”

“Unless your intent is to wound,” Charmion interrupts.

“But that, you see, is no longer charming,” her mother reminds her. She offers me a sample of scented ointment for my hair. “Princess Cleopatra, you will learn in time that you have a wide range of ways of speaking to achieve your desired ends—whether it is one man in particular you wish to charm, a whole army, or an entire nation.”

Conversations like this are but one reason I hate to leave the harem to return to my lonely palace, where Monifa and Irisi do what they can to calm my restless spirit. The other reason is that here, with Charmion and Lady Amandaris, I feel that I am loved and accepted for who I am—not as a princess, but as a young woman.
This
is my true family.

With Father far away and her beloved Nebtawi long dead, Arsinoë seems forlorn and often tags along after me. I make it a point to spend more time with her. She is thirteen, no longer a child. It is possible that she will someday become a beauty.
We now have little in common but our blood ties, but I try to change that.

I begin to take Arsinoë with me when I go out to the royal stables. Nebibi, the stable master, helps Arsinoë onto a horse he has chosen for her, just as he used to help me. He shows her how to grip the horse with her knees. But she is stiff and clumsy, and the horse does not respond the way she wants. “Wretched horse!” she cries, pounding its flanks with her heels.

Nebibi brings another horse, but the results are no better. “I would do very well if I had a horse just like Bucephala,” she insists, and she whines until I give in and allow her to ride my little mare. Suddenly, she finds that on Bucephala’s smooth back she can ride like the wind. Nebibi and I watch in amazement. I am not surprised when Arsinoë decides that she wants Bucephala for her own.

“You must learn to ride your own horse,” I tell her. “There is an entire stable of well-trained horses. No doubt you’ll soon find one that is perfect for you.”

Nebibi leads out one horse after another, but the only one that pleases Arsinöe is my Bucephala. She begs me to give her my mare, but I am unwilling to part with it. Arsinoë is a stubborn, willful girl, and she coaxes, wheedles, bribes, and threatens me whenever she sees me. But I do not give in.

One day I persuade her to accompany me to the great Library. She takes little interest in the papyrus scrolls stacked along each wall as high as the ceiling, but, curiously, she has learned the art of making the papyrus itself. When we return to the palace, she demonstrates for me how it is done, skillfully cutting a thick stalk of papyrus into thin strips, laying out the strips in a crisscross pattern, pounding them into a long, flat sheet, and finally
smoothing the sheet with a stone. She becomes so involved in what she is doing that I deceive myself into thinking she has forgotten about Bucephala.

I praise her efforts extravagantly, but nothing I say inspires her to read more than she absolutely must. And she refuses to learn to speak any language other than Greek.

“Ganymede says I don’t have to,” she says smugly. “Ganymede says Greek is all I will ever need and that all my servants will speak Greek to me. He says it is not a good use of time to learn Egyptian and all those other languages.”

My dislike of her tutor has just increased by several degrees. “When Father comes back, he’ll be speaking Latin,” I tell her. “I’m sure he’d be pleased if you could learn it too.”

“Father isn’t coming back,” she says flatly.

“Who told you that? Ganymede?”

“No—it was Berenike. She says he’ll stay in the temple of Artemis in Ephesus for the rest of his life because it’s the only place he’s safe.”

He may be safe in Ephesus, but I know Father, and I know that he will not be content to stay there for long. “Berenike may hope that’s true,” I say, “but she is wrong.”

Arsinoë regards me with narrowed eyes. “I’m going to tell her what you said if you don’t give me Bucephala.”

“Go ahead and tell her. She knows I’m right.” I am not surprised by her scheming.

Arsinoë does not like to be denied. “Then I’ll tell her that you go to the harem almost every day to see that dancer and her mother.”

She knows that she has hit her mark. Perhaps it does not matter much. Berenike’s spies are everywhere. The queen already
knows my every move. But I do not want to risk making any sort of difficulty for Charmion and Lady Amandaris.

“You may have Bucephala,” I tell Arsinoë. “Treat her well.”

I have traded my little mare for the sake of my dear friend and her mother. If anything should happen to Charmion and Lady Amandaris, I would never forgive myself. And I would truly be completely alone.

Chapter 32

T
HE
K
ING’S
R
ETURN

Father may soon come home.

Rumors fly that King Ptolemy is planning his return to Egypt, as dangerous as that will certainly be—especially for those close to him. Monifa rushes in from the marketplace with the news that Father has bribed the governor of Syria, a Roman province, to send an army into Egypt to put down any resistance to his return. “Ten thousand talents, borrowed once more from a Roman moneylender,” Monifa reports. “Everyone is talking about it.”

Ten thousand talents! Surely that rumor is false—or at least an exaggeration. How will Father ever pay it back? And what will happen if he does not?

Worse than that: The Syrian soldiers Father has hired will be fighting against his own people, and mine.

I am happy to learn that Father is coming home at last, even at
the cost of so much money, but there will certainly be bloodshed, and I worry that my father may be killed in battle. I nervously await word of what is happening and keep watch for any messengers who might arrive at Queen Berenike’s palace with news and fail to tell me. But such an important secret cannot be kept long from the marketplace. Soon I learn that the hired Syrian soldiers, led by a Roman officer, have massed outside the walls of Pelusium, an Egyptian seaport on the far eastern edge of the delta.

“No need to be troubled,” Demetrius assures me. “Pelusium is strongly fortified. It will successfully resist any attack.”

Pelusium seems far away from Alexandria, and for a short time I feel reassured. Perhaps this will all end peacefully, with few lives lost and Father safely home.

But several days later there is more news: Pelusium has fallen. Demetrius was wrong. Now the Syrian soldiers and their Roman officers are on their way to Alexandria.

Queen Berenike’s husband, Archelaus, has put himself at the head of the Egyptian army, determined to repel the invaders—invaders sent by my father against his own city! Berenike arranges a banquet as a farewell for Archelaus, and after the usual feasting she makes a grand speech about honor and bravery. A huge crowd gathers the next morning to cheer as Archelaus rides off at the head of an army of foot soldiers and charioteers. Berenike looks on proudly.

Alexandrians wait anxiously for more news. Nerves are on edge in the royal quarter and in the marketplace. I can sense the unease in everyone I speak to. At last a filthy and exhausted runner stumbles into the queen’s palace: The Syrian soldiers have reached the gates of our city. King Ptolemy is waiting offshore in his ship for Alexandria to fall to the invaders.