Kleopatra (12 page)

“You sacrificed yourself?” Kleopatra asked.

“It was no sacrifice. They had the food.”

Over the next several days, Kleopatra watched Mohama at work while considering her usefulness. Though she was not an Amazon,
she looked like one, if the renderings Kleopatra had seen on vases and tombs were accurate. Perhaps she also possessed some
of the skills for which the women warriors were known—skills Kleopatra’s sister and her new companions had perfected. Berenike
was older, taller, and meaner than Kleopatra, who worried that her sister’s new Bactrian companions might be assassins.

Kleopatra confessed these fears to Mohama. The next day the slave produced from the folds of her garment a curved dagger with
an ebony handle inlaid with small pieces of polished ivory. “I have brought the princess a present,” Mohama said, holding
the gift in front of her. “A Samartian dagger.”

“I knew it!” Kleopatra cried, taking the weapon. “You
are
an Amazon. The Samartians are the descendants of Scythian men and Amazon women. They are the best knife fighters in the world.”

“I am not a Samartian, but got this knife from a Samartian soldier.”

“Stole it, you mean,” said Kleopatra, searching Mohama’s face to see if the insult wounded. The girl shrugged. “No, the soldier
wanted something from me. I gave it to him in exchange for the knife.”

“What did you have to give him?”

“Nothing I cannot afford to lose time and time again without losing a thing.”

Kleopatra did not know how to respond. Mohama blithely went on. “There is trouble everywhere in the city. The Royal Family
is not safe, not even inside the palace. And you might not even be safe from your own sister. If you will allow it, I will
sleep on the floor of your chamber next to your bed. But you must sleep with this under your pillow. Whoever enters your room
will have to kill me first. Perhaps while he wrestles with me, you can cut his throat. I will show you how.”

“Splendid!” said Kleopatra.

Mohama handed Kleopatra the dagger and told her to lie on the pillows and pretend to wrestle with an opponent underneath her.
The princess dropped down, carefully holding the dagger with her right hand. She flailed her arms into the pillows, jabbing
the dagger into the cushions and kicking with her legs. Suddenly she felt a large foot between her shoulders. Her arms were
paralyzed. Mohama grabbed her hair and pulled her head back. She reached around and traced her finger across Kleopatra’s throat
in a slow, taunting motion. She put her lips right up to the princess’s ear and whispered in a hot breath, “There, enemy of
the crown. Your head is no longer part of your body.”

Kleopatra’s heart pounded. She could not move. She could not breathe. It seemed a very long time that Mohama held her body
prisoner, hurting her, pulling her hair, straining her neck. She felt powerless to say anything. Finally, the girl released
her, helped her to her feet, and straightened her garment. Kleopatra folded her arms around herself, protecting something
she could not name.

“Now I’ll be the enemy and you be yourself, coming to our rescue.” But Kleopatra was frozen. Mohama picked up the dagger and
handed it to her.

“If one is to fight, one must be brave. Take the dagger, but please do not use it on me.”

The warmth of the handle sent an energy through Kleopatra’s body. She felt as if she had awakened refreshed from a long nap
and was ready to play. “Yes, I am ready. I am ready to strike a blow against the enemy,” she cried, raising the dagger into
the air.

“The princess is too full of glee. Killing is a sober business. Perhaps we shall practice without the dagger until you have
more skill. I am only a slave, and my neck is not worth very much, but I like it.”

Kleopatra giggled and put down the dagger. As Mohama knelt on the pillows, the princess put her foot in the middle of her
back, forcing her down. With the full force of her weight, Kleopatra jumped on her back. Mohama’s arms flew out to the sides,
leaving her in a crucified position. The princess tried to pin her arms down, but before she knew what was happening, they
had rolled off the pillows and Kleopatra’s back was against the cold tiled floor, Mohama straddling her with her arms pinned
above her head.

“There is much for you to learn, Princess. Luckily, you already have the heart.”

Kleopatra went straight to the Domestic Supervisor and demanded that the desert girl Mohama be made her personal attendant.

On Meleager’s advice, the royal party had left Alexandria before dawn, while the disgruntled mob were still cozy in their
beds. Kleopatra knew the trip would be rigorous, but she did not hesitate when Auletes proposed “a little hunt in the Delta”
to get away from the dangers in the city, particularly when she learned that Thea, pregnant again, would remain at home.

The party formed a long caravan, cutting an intrusive swath through the hush of the marsh. Carriages of hunting dogs—greyhounds
used for chasing hare and the bulkier Indian hounds that worked by smell and by sight for tracking big game—all barked at
once, as if in competition for a prize. Twelve carriages followed the king’s party; three carrying body servants to the royals
and the Kinsmen; two full of cooks and their helpers; two loaded with heavy pots and pewter plates and utensils for feeding
the party; and four hauling tents, bedding, and other supplies of the camp. The final, ornate carriage housed the king’s mistress
and her women, who in accordance with court decorum would remain sequestered waiting for the king’s possible visit.

One dozen of the king’s personal guards flanked the royals and their attendants. Auletes rode a sleek Greek-bred steed, the
kind he preferred over the Nisaean and Arabian breeds, which, though superior in strength and endurance, had large heads that
interfered with the precise throw of the spear. Away from the city, the king seemed to forget his urban woes entirely.

“They say that Alexander preferred the Indian hound to the Molossian. He took thousands of them from the palace of Darius
in Persia,” the king proclaimed over the din of the dogs to Demetrius, invited as a reward for his excellent instruction of
the princess. “Demetrius, today you shall see my Indian hound Aura in action.”

“Father named her after the dog of Atalanta,” Kleopatra said to the philosopher.

“O virgin goddess, great huntress of the Calydonian boar, look kindly on our expedition!” Auletes cried. “O handmaiden to
Artemis, bless our weapons, open the scents of the wilds to our dogs, point our spears and bows to the heart of the kill,
and cause no man and no animal to suffer needlessly in our endeavors. We shall lay the slaughter on your altar and consume
the flesh in your holy name!”

Demetrius’s skinny frame jostled in the saddle, his lips frozen in a half-moon smile. The princess knew he cared neither for
life outdoors nor for spilling the blood of an animal outside the sacrificial ritual.

“It’s in my blood, my friend,” the king exclaimed. “The Ptolemies have been inveterate hunters, dating back to Ptolemy the
First, who hunted with Alexander.”

“Ah, that most legendary hunter from time out of mind,” said Demetrius, indulging the king as he had learned to do. “There
was no greater hunter but the god Herakles.”

“All my ancestors were great hunting men. That is, except Potbelly, who refused to hunt. “We hunt dancing girls,’ he used
to say.

The king raised his right arm to the sky as if sanctioning the westward movement of the marsh fowl that flew overhead. “I
like dancing girls myself,” he said, winking at the philosopher. “But there is no greater thrill than to be face-to-face with
the hot tusks of the wild boar. When I was ten years old, I read about Alexander’s single-handed slaying of the lion, and
from that time on, I could not get enough of the hunt.”

Kleopatra took the opportunity to interject. “Father, you raised me on the same tales that you read when you were a boy, and
yet you refuse to allow me to participate in the pleasures of the big kill.”

“The princess is tortured by the constraints of age upon her person, Your Majesty,” Demetrius said.

“But surely Alexander hunted with his father when he was ten,” Kleopatra argued.

“Be patient, my little one. You will not be a child all your life.”

Kleopatra was alone in the thick of the woods, dressed in a pale green chiton, feet and calves laced tightly into coarse leather
hunting boots. She held the same style bow as the Bactrian girls and felt the weight of a full pouch of arrows on her right
shoulder. The muddy, narrow path under her feet was imprinted with fresh hoofprints big enough for her to walk in. A large
tree had toppled over, its uprooted trunk staring at her like a tombstone. On it grew an odd fungus that looked like a cluster
of amethysts, an offering of jewels bursting from something long dead. She dared not touch it though she was curious about
its texture.

Leaping from one hoofprint to the next, she came to a giant elm—more mountain than tree—with gnarled roots like dragon toes
clinging determinedly to the ground and high branches that disappeared into the hidden skies. Under this timber, a lion stood
victoriously atop the hunting net that had been laid to ensnare him. His head and paws were over-large, his body sinuous,
his mane puffed, his eyes watery and ferocious. The beast was surrounded by a young man with the crest of a king on his hunting
tunic and five Kinsmen on horseback. The king and the beast played a staring game, each entranced with the other’s unshakable
gaze.

The princess recognized her ancestor. It was he, whose mummified corpse rested in the glass tomb in her city—the city that
bore his name. He was with his Companions, those men of history and legend who had loved and served the king from boyhood—Seleucus,
Lysimachus, old Antipater, the treacherous Cassander, and beak-nosed Ptolemy. Alexander was splendid—muscled, proud, beautiful.
He was not, however, very tall. Kleopatra loved him even more for being short. All her life, she had wished that she could
go back into ancient times and know him. She lately had come to believe, in the romantic way of young girls, that he would
have been her perfect and true mate, and that history had botched their union. She thought, if only he knew me, I would be
his and he would be mine, though Demetrius tried to spoil her fantasy by insisting that Alexander was a devout catamite. Yet
here he was, sent to her, she was sure, by the gods.

“Cousin,” she said, stepping between the king and the beast.

Alexander replied courteously, as if he had known her all his life. “Cousin, step aside.” He addressed the creature. “Beast,
lord of animals whose entrails were fed to Achilles by the Centaur to make him strong, prepare to die.”

Alexander raised his spear, and the animal leapt like a comet, its belly suddenly Kleopatra’s sky. The king tumbled off his
horse as he thrust his spear into the lion’s gut. He landed on top of the beast, its great paw swiping his face, leaving a
bloody stripe.

“Kinswoman, help me,” he pleaded, his face and body soaked in the thick, incarnadine red that flowed from the beast’s wound.

Kleopatra reached behind for a quiver with her right, but her pouch was empty.

“Grandfather,” she said to Ptolemy. “An arrow to save the king!”

From his hunting pouch Ptolemy took a gold-tipped arrow. He placed it in his bow and aimed not at the lion, but at the princess.
She struggled to pull away, but her legs were like stone columns planted deep inside the earth. She folded herself into a
ball as the arrow escaped Ptolemy’s bow. With a sickening crack of her spine, she lost the feeling in her body.

Then she was aloft, looking back at the scene as if through a red-colored glass, her vision narrow now, but intensely focused.
Alexander had one foot on top of the lion, whose life gushed out of the deep wound, seeping back into the earth. Ptolemy raised
his empty bow to her in a salute. As she soared away, she realized that she was no longer the princess Kleopatra but an eagle.