Cleopatra Confesses (5 page)

“The only way I could meet Pompey’s demands was to borrow the entire amount from a Roman moneylender. To repay six thousand talents, plus all the interest due, I must order everyone in Egypt to pay much higher taxes. The people will hate me for it—they are already overburdened. I have to convince them that I did what is best for our country.”

I still do not understand. Why would my father give away so much of Egypt’s treasure? I ask him quietly, “What did the Romans give you in return, Father?”

“Julius Caesar promised to leave Egypt alone, and the triumvirs will continue to recognize me as the pharaoh. I have Caesar’s word, though I am not sure I can trust him.”

My father puts his head down in his arms and begins to weep. I have never seen him so distraught. I want to believe that my father really has acted for the good of our country, but I wonder if the people of Egypt will be as understanding. Some are sure to believe he did it only to keep himself in power.

We have been talking for so long that the stars have begun to fade. I creep close and lay my hand lightly on Father’s shoulder, but he shrugs it off. “Leave me, Cleopatra!” he groans, and obediently I tiptoe away.

Chapter 6

F
ESTIVAL OF
I
SIS

It is winter now, and the winds sweeping in from the sea are bitter. Father has been back in Alexandria for four months. Today, the Festival of Isis, I am eleven years old. At the banquet honoring the great goddess of fertility and motherhood and also of magic, Father calls upon me to be recognized by our guests. I stand by his side and smile and even manage to say a few words in praise of Isis, though I am not at ease speaking before a large crowd of people who would rather be talking among themselves or enjoying the dancers. When I have finished my brief speech, Father announces his plan to begin a journey by royal boat up the Nile, stopping at towns and cities to greet his subjects and to make offerings at the temples of the gods. He intends to go as far as the First Cataract, where the river is shallow, the bottom is rough, and huge boulders block a boat’s passage. My sisters and I will accompany him,
and most of the members of the court present at this banquet will join the party as well.

“We will all enjoy a journey to warmer places,” he says. I understand that the real reason is to show himself to the people and remind them that he is their pharaoh.

Preparations begin at once for our large entourage—as many as a hundred noblemen and their wives and servants—to set out near the end of the fourth month of the season of Emergence as the crops along the river are nearly finished ripening. The journey will be a long one, likely lasting through the four months of Harvest, until summer begins, and perhaps even longer.

I am delighted. I have never before traveled with Father. I had begged him to take me with him to Rome, but he refused, saying, “A voyage of this kind is no place for you, Cleopatra. You are too young to be faced with the dangers of sea travel.” I was only nine then. But now that I am eleven I wonder if he would consider me old enough to accompany him on such a voyage, if he decides to make another. I long to travel to distant places, but in fact I have seldom been outside Alexandria.

Arsinoë is excited too, so long as her monkey will be allowed to come with us. But our disagreeable older sisters pull long faces.

“Four months on a boat! It will be too boring,” Berenike complains.

“Unbearably dull,” Tryphaena agrees. “We have much more interesting things to do here in Alexandria. Don’t we, Berenike?”

The two exchange glances, and I wonder what they are plotting. “No doubt you look forward to the journey, Cleopatra,” Berenike says archly. “Father will surely want to have his precious jewel to display wherever he goes.”

“I am not his precious jewel!” I retort, and immediately regret allowing her to see how easily she can annoy me.

I have not seen much of my older sisters since Father returned. The royal palace compound is large and sprawling, with many separate parts, and we each have our own small palaces, our own servants and tutors and bodyguards. My sisters certainly do not seek me out. Father expects us to attend his dinners when he entertains guests—that is nearly every night—and we manage to be polite when we meet there. But it will be much harder to keep my distance from my sisters on a boat, even one as large as the king’s.

Neither have I seen much of my father during these preparations. He spends most of his days with Antiochus and his other advisors, and at night there are the banquets. We have had no more private conversations. In less than a month we are ready to embark on our journey up the Nile. Perhaps now he will have time for me.

P
ART
II

T
HE
N
ILE

On the river, during my eleventh year

Chapter 7

T
HE
R
OYAL
B
OAT

Before we leave Alexandria to begin our journey, my father, my sisters, and I climb a hundred steps to reach the beautiful golden-roofed temple built to honor the god Serapis, protector of the city. Set on the highest point in Alexandria, the temple houses the statue of Serapis, brought here from Greece by the first Ptolemy. The enormous statue with curly hair and beard has a basket of grain on its head; at its feet sits the snarling three-headed dog, Cerberus, a frightening figure that sends Arsinoë to huddle close by my side. We leave our offerings—mine is the blue-glazed figure of a hedgehog—and descend the stairs. Our bearers are waiting to carry us in our chairs to the royal boat, which is anchored in Lake Mareotis, south of the ancient city walls.

When my sisters and I were still young children, Father gave us each a boat just large enough to carry a princess and a small
entourage of servants and oarsmen. I have sailed on these calm lake waters many times on my own little boat. But this is the first time I or any of my sisters have been a passenger on the king’s vessel.

The king’s royal boat is an awesome sight, built of rare cypress and cedar brought here from Lebanon. It is some two hundred cubits long and thirty cubits wide—a cubit being the distance from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger—and gilded from end to end. It will take me days to explore it all.

The king’s boat lacks nothing. A palace built on the smooth wooden deck has an open area sheltered from the sun by striped awnings. The dining hall, its walls hung with crimson silk and its floors tiled with polished stone, is large enough to seat about two hundred guests. Trees and flowering gardens line the paved walkways, and bright-colored fishes dart about a reflecting pool. There are shrines to the great goddess Isis and to Father’s favorite deity, Dionysus. Each of us has our own large apartment with quarters for our servants. My trunks of clothes and jewels are already in place. Demetrius and the other tutors who accompany us share quarters. Father says we must continue our studies, though I am sure my sisters will avoid it if they possibly can.

Dozens of luxurious small boats decorated with pennants and flowers are fitted out to carry the noblemen and their wives. Cooks and servants and the musicians and dancers who will entertain us travel on smaller, crowded boats. Barges manned by oarsmen will tow the royal boat through the canals and pull it when the winds are not strong enough to drive it upstream against the current.

The oarsmen bend their backs to the rhythm of a muffled drumbeat. The boats cross the lake and enter a canal leading
to the Canopus, the most western of the seven branches of the Nile that stretch like fingers northward toward the sea. Soon we are in the great swampy river delta, where men are cutting down tall, feathery papyrus reeds and loading them onto rafts. Wading birds stalk through the reeds on thin, naked legs. Geese and ducks rise into the air on a whirr of wings, and boys propel little papyrus boats through the shallow water with long poles and shoot at the water fowl with bows and arrows. Crocodiles with dark bronze backs glide by, only their green eyes glowing above the surface.

Arsinoë, watching with me, shudders. “I’m afraid of them,” she says, pointing at the crocodiles, and I put my arm around her shoulders to comfort her. She seems so young and innocent, lacking our older sisters’ hard outer shell and inner selfishness and pride.

Then Demetrius summons me to my studies. “You must not waste your time simply gazing at the scenery, Cleopatra,” he says. “We shall concentrate on mathematics, the area where I find you to be weakest.”

He is wrong about that; I am not weak in any area. But I enjoy mathematics and do not protest.

Before darkness falls, the royal boat and the long line of boats traveling with it are maneuvered into a quiet cove for the night. Lamps are lit. Baskets of prepared food are hauled by ropes and pulleys from the kitchen boat to the serving pantry next to the royal dining hall, and Demetrius seizes another chance to improve my mind.

“The compound pulley was invented by Archimedes of Syracuse, the greatest mathematician who ever lived, and a Greek!”
my tutor informs me. “Have I not been telling you, Cleopatra? With one hand and a compound pulley, he once moved an entire ship, loaded with men and armaments. Tomorrow you will make a drawing of a pulley to show how it works.” Then Demetrius adds somberly, “Archimedes was killed by Roman soldiers during the battle of Syracuse, even though their general had given orders that the great genius must be spared. Another incident showing that Romans cannot be trusted.”

But Father must surely trust them
, I think to myself. If he did not, he would not have promised to give them so much of Egypt’s treasure—would he?

I have begun to be concerned about my father’s decisions. We are traveling in great luxury, but already I have seen signs of the poverty in which many of our people live. Does Father give any thought to them? Is he worried? It would be unthinkable for a daughter to question her father’s authority, and even asking Demetrius for an opinion was unseemly.

And so I keep my thoughts, as well as my questions, to myself.

Chapter 8

P
ROMISE AND
W
ARNING

In the evening of the first day as the royal boat drifts at anchor in the quiet cove, we feast on roast duck with crackling brown skin, rice from the Orient fragrant with spices, custard sweetened with honey, and fruit so full of juice that it drips down my chin. As he often does, my father waves his hands to dismiss the musicians and reaches for his flute. Tonight he is playing two short
auloi
at once. He dances as he plays, eyes closed, as though he is in a trance.

Most of the guests ignore him, but one who does not is a man named Seleucus. I cannot imagine why my father has invited him on this journey. Seleucus is Syrian and claims to be from a royal family, but he is extremely crude. Behind his back, people call him Cybiosactes, “Saltfish Monger,” hardly a flattering epithet. He was given the name for his offensive odor—probably he does not bathe. His voice is loud. “Play on,
Auletes!” he shouts. Worse, he has a way of pressing himself up against any woman who happens to catch his eye. I am too young for him to bother—thank the gods!—but I have heard rumors that he wants to marry one of my sisters, whichever one is likely to succeed Father and become Queen of Egypt. It makes me laugh to think that Tryphaena or Berenike could end up as the wife of this smelly oaf!

The noblemen and their wives begin to drift away, my sisters disappear, and even the repellent Seleucus takes himself off. Father does not seem to mind. He plays not for their enjoyment but for his own. At first his tunes are lively; then, as the night wears on, the music becomes melancholy and subdued.

There is a sharp chill in the river air, but I stay on deck, listening. Monifa brings a fine woolen robe and drapes it around my shoulders, whispering as she does, “Come to bed, Cleopatra.”

“I’ll come later,” I murmur. “I want to stay here with Father.”

The torches have burned low. Most of the light comes now from a nearly full moon. My father stops playing and leans on the boat rail, staring down at the silvery light shimmering on the black water. The sails are furled, and the wind moans softly in the ropes that hold them. The waters of the Canopus lap at the sides of the boat. Wrapped in my woolen robe, I go to stand close beside my father. He sighs and puts his arm around me.