Cleopatra Occult (8 page)

Cleopatra made the children repeat back to her what she had said.

She continued, “Isis is also the one who oversees the underworld of the dead. Isis will always care for you, no matter how deep you may end up in the lower caves of Hades, which is a place you could be headed to any day now. Most of you will be dead by next year. Some of you even sooner… maybe even tonight. And I’m sure you all already have worms.”

After a few hours of lecture, Cleopatra was called to the dark smoky kitchen. A cook, while chopping eight different types of carrots, asked her if she knew herbs.

Cleopatra said she did.

She told her a list and sent her back out to the garden. Cleopatra ignored the children and gardener, and intently searched for certain plants. The meal was served when the master and lady of the house returned from the colosseum. They were excited about the deaths of gladiators, talking loudly about the guts that were strewn about.

After the meal, everybody but Cleopatra fell asleep, since Cleopatra had poisoned the food. She pulled the outer robe and headscarf off the lady of the house, took the lady’s hairpins and sandals, pursed gold coins, and walked out the back gate.

Heading for the harbor suburb of Ostia, but while still in the narrow western streets of Rome, she stopped at a temple to Poseidon to ask for safe passage to Egypt. The eternal flame blew out. The dozens of vestal virgins turned to her, pointed at her, and yelled, “Vampire! Vampire! Vampire!”

Cleopatra retorted, “I am Isis!”

They yelled louder.

Cleopatra insisted, “I had to put them all to sleep! I know my poisons! They will wake up with terrible bowels, which is all.”

“Death! Death! Death!”

“Its poison was only enough to have killed their worms and that needed to be done nevertheless!”

The vestal virgins jumped about in a mad frenzy. “Vampire! Vampire! Vampire!”

“You make no sense! Only Isis can judge me!” Cleopatra left the temple and hurried down the street to the harbor town.

Chapter eight

Phaedra walked along the southern coast of Sicily in the province of Caltanissetta until she came to series of beach campfires. She offered the gathered people a story in exchange for food. “I know the true story of Medusa.”

A washerwoman waved her off. “Who cares.”

Phaedra said, “It matters to me. I know it’ll become a part of the story of my own life.” She put her hand on her heart. “I just know it.”

The washerwoman pooh-poohed her, insisting, “Medusa was beheaded by Perseus who gave the head to Athena so she could turn people into stone. Athena had made Medusa anyway, in the first place, because Medusa got raped by Zeus in her temple. That story will have nothing to do with you. Not ever!” She pointed toward the sea. “Go find your own fish.”

Phaedra argued, “No, no, that’s not the true story at all. Perseus really had nothing to do with any of it. Medusa was added to his story to try and help him have a more exciting story.”

The washerwoman asked, “How would you know the real story?”

Phaedra grinned and blushed. “By the gods I once had it in a dream.”

The washerwoman laughed mockingly.

Some of the men said they wanted to hear the dream version of the story and promised to pay for the tale with a whole cooked fish.

Phaedra took a deep breath. “Medusa was born of two great magical sea snakes from a bygone time when there were magic serpents in the sea because the land had just sunk into the sea. But Medusa was an egg first. The serpent egg washed up to the shores of Greece. The shell was as beautiful as the finest marble stone so Athena blessed the egg and declared that from it would hatch a beautiful woman. Medusa hatched and came to Athena’s temple to thank her with a dance. Medusa was beautiful in her magical serpentine grace. So Zeus raped Medusa. Athena became so angry at Zeus that she gave Medusa back her serpent blood. If anybody saw the snakes on her head they’d turn to marble. Forsaken, Medusa jumped into the sea and swam through the seven sunken cities of Atlantis to try to find her parents to ask them to break the spell with their powerful sea snake magic. When Athena noticed that Medusa was searching for her parents, she gave Medusa the blood of a desert snake. Medusa had to flee the water and find a desert to reside in, and there she is to this day.”

A man asked, “What does that have to do with you?”

Phaedra continued, “I’ll find Medusa someday for myself and before I get to her desert, I must travel up a river. First I must go to a faraway harbor where I’ll see a ship with a large wooden statue of a hawk at the front of it. Six strong men will grab me and take me aboard where I am raped by a very snooty young man. And I am hurt so I just want to crawl away and sleep alone but the horror continues because then something happens so the ship can no longer sail and there is a sudden attack by terrible monsters with terrible teeth. There is blood in the water! I watch but I can’t do anything, I can’t run. That’s what I always dream. And it’ll come to pass. It leaves me feeling dread and worry. I’ll always feel ungrounded and jittery until it comes to pass. Then I’ll be able to finally see all that it really was. Aren’t dreams odd?”

The washerwoman had become respectful. “That is some story. You had all that in a dream?”

Phaedra humbly nodded. “By the gods it just went on and on. I have it again and again.”

The washerwoman said, “That must be true somehow, then. I felt my skin tingle as you told the tale. You told some truth that only comes in dreams. Come drink my wine. It is best.”

~

The next day, as Phaedra sat on the beach at a port in Gela, she met Octavian. He looked relieved to see her. Then he puzzled. “What happened to you? Why are you in Sicily?”

She wearily stood. “Oh Pegasus! Mark Antony and I were lost at sea!”

“You look safely landed, to me.” Octavian took her to a cart that was selling bread by the slice. “Any sign of him?”

She sadly shook her head. Tears came to her eyes as she put her hand on her heart.

“Oh he’s alive, I’m sure. I’m not so lucky to be rid of him yet. I bet his jealousy for me is keeping him alive, if anything. Hate is very powerful.”

Phaedra said, “Oh no, Mark thinks of you like a brother. He told me that when I first met him on the road to your villa.”

Octavian looked doubting. “He’s only kind when he owes me money. Why did you leave my villa so quickly with him? Did you take to the sea with him willingly?”

She said she had.

Octavian pressed, “He didn’t kidnap you?”

“No such intrigue. He was too nice but that was all.”

Octavian nodded. “He’s always had such bad luck with his endeavors with ships. But that doesn’t mean he actually drowned—not enough to be dead. In all of his sea battles he spent all the time of the fight floating around like a harmless piece of wood.”

Phaedra wondered about that.

“Oh yes.” He chuckled. “Once, as Mark led the charge in the Tyrrhenian Sea, as he jumped from his ship to the ship of the foe, he missed. He floated for two days until he bumped into an island of Corsica.”

She dabbed at her eyes.

“Don’t cry.”

Phaedra knelt on the beach and scooped up sand in both hands. She watched it slowly flow from her fingers. She said, “Tears on my fingers, sand through my hand. Is impermanence now grounded? Did time take him to land?”

“What witchcraft is that?” 

“I do feel as if he’s alive. But how? The sea is so very cruel and deep.”

Octavian looked up to the sky. The air was full of gulls. “The gods toy with men like Mark Antony. He’s the perfect type of man to give them many laughs. And the gods seem kinder to you. They’ve given you to me.”

“The gods? They gave me to you? Oh my Pegasus!”

He nodded.

Phaedra stood again, brushing sand from her knees. “Being a Roman citizen does have its advantages when traveling.”

“The luck is all mine. I don’t know what I would have done without you. Bluff, I guess. I’ve done that plenty of times before. But I’ve also gambled away my purse that way.”

Phaedra was baffled. “How could I be of any real importance to you?”

Octavian told her, “I need your expertise as a merchant. I’ve gone out on a limb… until you, until now.”

“Oh, you don’t need me.”

“Now that Mark has lost half my cargo, and who knows when he’ll pay me back, I do need you this frugal hour.”

Phaedra didn’t believe him. “A man of your importance shouldn’t have to need anybody.”

Octavian divulged, “It’s rather fun, actually, shipping contraband about for quick cash.”

“You need quick cash?”

Octavian looked pained. “I always need cash. I’m tired of waiting for the taxes from all the farmers on my lands. And that isn’t
quick
cash. But anyway, I traded a pile of Greek furniture for a much bigger pile of Persian furniture that went through Syria and ended up in Sicily. Since we’re at war with Persia it’s all verboten in Rome. But if I switch it with an even bigger pile of Hindu furniture while I’m in Alexandria I make even more profits.”

Phaedra asked, “What would Hindu furniture be doing in a Greek city in Egypt?”

“Alexandria has a huge Hindu population, although the furniture might have been made by the people of Moses. Alexandria has the biggest Jewish population in the world and they’re some of the world’s greatest craftsmen. Rome is fussy, of course, they’re the most sophisticated there. So I’ll bring that back to the Roman market where it’ll be far more fashionable and fetch ridiculous prices.”

“You sound like you have a complicated plan.”

Octavian smiled. “The best plans are. They’re far more fun that way.”

Phaedra asked, “What do you need me for, for your plan? You don’t need me to tell you what an Egyptian chair is. Everybody knows that.”

Octavian explained, “Yes, Egyptian chairs are obvious. I really don’t know enough of the differences between Syrian, Jordanian, Persian, Israeli and Hindu chairs. Not really. Selling to the Roman market requires the greatest sophistication.”

“Chairs are culture?”

He nodded. “Chairs and pots and shoes, most definitely.”

She admitted, “My father traded in olives. And I don’t even know about those. I wasn’t ever there when he traded them.”

“Just the same, when I land in Rome I’ll have you pretend it’s all your things and my ship was only out of gallantry. Roman law prevents the aristocracy from profiting as if it were the merchant class.” He pointed south. “I’m going to Alexandria first. I hope you’re in no hurry. I don’t approve of women on the high seas but right now we have no choice. You can’t stay here.”

Phaedra also gazed across the sea. “You must love Alexandria.”

He twitched. “Damn Alexandria! Damn the Greeks! They’re just there to make money for Rome. The empire is just there to nourish Rome. The empire is to dress up Rome with the world’s finest.”

Phaedra glanced down at her faded incomplete Roman dress.

He noticed. “We’ll buy you new things at once.”

“But I have no money—when I first fell into the sea I took off all my gold jewelry and threw it to Poseidon as an offering. It worked. I don’t think you have any money either, it’s all tied up in chairs.”

“Oh I always have some money. I just need more, and the cargo is all a game along the way, anyway. I never know when I need to raise an entire army in a day’s time for my own personal protection, and that takes a deep pocket full of cold hard cash. So I always have money.”

Phaedra grinned. “I like you. You’re so smart.”

“I know the language of illegal business and old education.”

“That’s best, don’t you think? What could be better?”

“What could be better?” Octavian darkened at the thought. “I’m jealous of Mark Antony. He is a poet—at least with women anyway. He’s such a natural at it he doesn’t even realize he’s doing it. But otherwise he doesn’t have any class. He’s just Caesar’s most excellent puppet.”

Phaedra frowned. “I do hope he’s still alive.”

~

In Sicily, As Cleopatra walked along the great Messina seaport, Mark Antony called out to her, astonished, “Cleopatra? You’re alive!”

She grinned with relief. “Mark Antony!”

Mark looked her up and down in an exaggerated manner. “You’re not a mummy in the desert.”

Cleopatra raised her eyebrows. “Why would a mummy be wayfaring?”

“No, dead. They said you were dead.”

She looked down at herself and pulled out on one side of her gown.

Mark admitted, “I was expecting to bring your mummy back to Rome to put you on display.”

“You would do that?”

“Not that I’d want to.”

“Another time, perhaps.”

He looked around and laughed. “I’m supposed to be dead too. I was lost at sea but washed up. And I was with a great witch named Phaedra. I’d
thought
she was great. I thought she’d seduce the elements and control the wind and gently blow me to my destination in a happy song. I was wrong about that.”