Kleopatra (50 page)

Outside, in the darkness, Kleopatra did not see any members of her staff and retinue. The rear entrance of the palace was
deserted except for a small caravan of merchants delivering food and supplies to the kitchens. The confidence drained from
her body like melting ice. Which wagon was she supposed to approach? Where was Hephaestion? Where was her escort? Had they
deserted her at the last minute?

The guard at the top of the platform eyed them suspiciously. Kleopatra did not wish to meet his glance. She could not be certain
that he was not the same soldier who had rescued her from the mob on the day she and Mohama had gotten caught up in the incident
of the murdered cat. Almost eight years had passed since that day. Surely the guard had moved on to another post.

Her eyes did not adjust as quickly as she would have liked, nor had the sun begun its ascent. She grabbed Charmion’s hand
as if she were still a little girl. Out of the darkness, a large man grabbed her elbow and whispered for her to follow him.
She could tell by his cloaked physique that he was older, perhaps as old as her dead father would have been. Sixty, perhaps.
Stout. Greek. He wore a low-brimmed hat. He led her to a wagon and helped her and Charmion into the rear seat. Soft hands.

The soldier on the platform called out. “Where are you going, girls?” A friendly, flirtatious question.

The man quickly answered, “I am giving them a lift. They wish to buy the first fish brought into the market today. By orders
of the eunuch Pothinus, who adores fresh cod.”

The soldier laughed and waved them on. The other wagons, five in number, with horses and camels now attached, pulled in line.
So this was her party. She herself had not suspected a thing.

The old man waved to the guards as they passed through the palace gates. The wagons followed. How would they pull this off,
she wondered, leaving the palace walls with so many of the possessions of the monarchy—livestock, wagons, and, presumably,
copious supplies of food and weapons hidden under the blankets that covered the wagons? Yet no one stopped them, no one questioned
why a caravan was leaving the palace at dawn.

“Hello, Kleopatra,” said the old man in a taunting voice, reviving her fear.

“Hello,” answered the queen, puzzled. He sounded so familiar, and yet she was certain she did not know him. The man removed
his cloak and hat, turned around, and looked at her.

“Hammonius!” Her old friend, her father’s faithful man, his most loyal and crafty agent. “Oh, I am so thrilled to see you.
How is it that you were able to disguise yourself from me?”

“You were not expecting me. And it is dark. I would not have recognized you save that I was told to expect you and a lady
slightly smaller than yourself, the unforgettable Charmion, to be at that door at precisely this hour.”

“No wonder we had an easy escape,” Kleopatra said.

“That’s right. The guards are accustomed to seeing my wagons deliver goods to the palace.”

Kleopatra dared not look back at the palace. She looked ahead. The sky cracked open at the horizon, giving birth to an unfathomable
luminescent pink sky—auspicious weather for their cause.

“Dawn flings her glorious robe across the earth,” said Kleopatra, her spirits lifting with the sun’s golden orb that peeked
over the white buildings of the city.

The caravan exited the southern gates of Alexandria, quiet, unharmed. The soldiers hidden in Hammonius’s wagons emerged from
under the tarps and raised their faces to catch the warmth of the morning sun. Outside the city, a small troop of foot soldiers
and cavalry fell in with them. Words of encouragement poured from those who had chosen to cast their lots in with the queen.
Kleopatra removed her disguise, standing to greet all who joined her.

Hephaestion, emerged from a wagon and now on his horse, had done a magnificent job of spreading the word of the queen’s defection.
It was a small band of soldiers and supporters, but it was a splendid beginning.

Hephaestion trotted to the queen’s wagon.

“Are we prepared?” she asked.

“We have good men with us, and good men who have remained behind and will work for us on the inside.”

To the south, at the dock at Naukratis, a ship awaited Kleopatra and her supporters. Hammonius left them, making plans to
communicate with the queen regularly. “You shall hear from me, my dear girl, my darling Majesty. I shall send Archimedes to
you at the appropriate time. He is with me always, now. I have ruined his life by introducing him to the business of export.”

“I am very sad not to see more of my cousin at court,” Kleopatra said. “Is he well? I am certain that his letters to me were
intercepted by my brother’s monsters.”

“He is well. But I hate to go anywhere with him.”

“Why?”

“Because all the ladies gather around him and ignore me.”

“I would like us all to return to happier times,” said Kleopatra, remembering the days when Hammonius and her handsome cousin
would come to court and regale them with stories of Roman intrigue. “But I understand his reluctance to truck with the prevailing
order.”

“He was your father’s man. But he is your Kinsman, and now that you require his services, he will be your man. Do not worry.
He has become rather a genius at gathering information. Almost as good as myself. But not quite so. Not yet.”

Kleopatra stood at the ship’s plank and greeted her supporters, thanking each one for joining her. As they set sail for Thebes,
Kleopatra descended to her quarters to check the condition of her belongings. She held her breath as she opened the latches
of her trunks. Relieved, she saw that everything was in its place, which reinforced that those to whom she entrusted her life
were unconditionally loyal. No one but Charmion, Hephaestion, and the queen herself knew of the treasures hidden in her personal
luggage. She had learned from her father at a very early age never to leave home without ample money.

On the river, Kleopatra rose early. In the darkness of her cabin she would light a small saucer of oil and carry it above
to watch the soft commencement of sunrise on the water. She liked to take the fresh morning air before the sun’s punishing
heat beat down upon the boat like a metal worker at his trade, forcing her back into her quarters where she would lay languid
and depressed until the heat lifted. In fact, she found that her early mornings on the deck were necessary to survive the
rest of the day.

Hephaestion often joined her, but this morning she was alone except for a few solicitous members of the crew. She had encouraged
Charmion to remain below so that she might have this time to reflect and pray, and to strategize. She longed for her bedroom
at home, with its windows opening to the fragrant sea air from the Mediterranean, and for Alexandria, with its palm trees,
its parks, and its temperate climate.

Neither the queen nor her Prime Minister had been prepared for the extent of suffering that drought and famine had wrought
upon the people, who depended on the annual inundation of the Nile when she blessed the crops with another fruitful layer
of silt. This year the life-giving waters did not come. The Mother of Egypt, who nursed those fecund shores with her milk,
this year withheld nourishment from her children. And the children of Egypt, confused, hungry, frantic, unable to imagine
a way to survive other than the one they had known since time out of mind, went into a panic.

Everywhere in the countryside, people had deserted their villages. The mud houses on the riverbanks, once inhabited by farm
families, were left cracked and empty, drying to dust under the eternal pummeling of the sun. Priests of some of the Egyptian
cults had fled to Alexandria, leaving their shrines and temples unattended. Fellahin, starved, angry that their own portions
of the very crops they had raised were taken from them and sent to feed the city population, had taken over the temples and
other holy buildings, taking for themselves and their children the meager provisions left by the priests.

When the queen’s boat stopped at the villages that lined the river, Kleopatra encountered their anger, for to them she was
just another of the well-fed Greeks for whom they presently starved. Everyone knew that the government controlled the Nile.
Its river workers and engineers measured the height of the water and kept record of it, built the canals that brought water
to the crops, manned the water-wheels, the dams, the dikes. Some people believed that the government of the Ptolemies was
purposefully diverting water from their lands. Kleopatra did not shy away from the people’s wrath but talked to them in their
own language and told them to be angry at those who levied the edict. Sometimes she met with success, leaving the village
with the loyalty of whatever local regime had remained. But sometimes she failed. One man had looked her in the eye and said,
“When I am fed, I will have the strength to direct my anger with more wisdom.”

The native people who lived along the river had resorted to trickery and to the old forms of magic to provoke the gods. Even
before sunrise, Kleopatra heard drumbeats imitating thunder, tormenting the deities into sending the rains. She had seen old
men gather dust from the temple floors to scatter over their dying crops. “They must feed the frail ones who have been left
behind,” said the only priest who remained at a village they visited. “The young and the strong have left for territories
where they believe there is food to be had.”

This morning, the light of the ascending sun revealed a tableau of human misery. Women, pale and thin, bathed naked in the
river, an ancient way to entice the river gods to make the waters rise. In the fields, emaciated peasant women—also naked—manned
the plows of their crackling brown fields, pausing to stretch their arms to the sky, offering whatever was left of their bodies
to the unseen Almighty. The queen wondered what god would succumb to seduction by these bony, sorrowful women. Small groups
of fellahin and their children gathered in the shallow waters of the river to give whatever pathetic offerings they had to
the river god. A little boy bravely flung his wooden toy into the river. A woman threw ears of discolored corn to the silent
god, who had no inclination to heed these abjurations. Others bared their chests to the sky, beating their pendulous breasts,
begging the sympathy of the mother goddess, from whose abundant fertility all life sprang forth.

Kleopatra could endure the pantomime of tragedy no more. She put her head in her hands and hid her eyes from the sight of
the wretchedness.

“I am depending on the loyalty of a starving and dying people,” she said to the tall man who appeared at her side. “If I wish
to fight my brother with the bones of the dead, this is where I should raise my army.”

“Today we will reach Thebes,” said Hephaestion. “And you will see your friends at Hermonthis.”

“I’m afraid we are going to find the temple of Sarapis deserted, the sacred bull with his ribs showing, and the people gone.”

“Let us pray that it is not so,” said Hephaestion. “The high priest Pshereniptah has promised us shelter and all of his power
to add strong men to our army.”

“If there are strong men in the Thebiad, they are the only ones left in Egypt,” said the queen cynically.

When Kleopatra landed at Hermonthis, no phalanx of healthy, hairless priests lined up respectfully to meet her. Instead, the
crowd gathered at the dock hurled angry words and epithets as the royal ship slid into harbor. Kleopatra saw the fists waving
in the air like flags and dropped her head into her hands.

“Another angry mob, waiting to indict me,” she said wearily to Hephaestion. “Another crowd to be won over. I am too hot and
too tired. Perhaps we should wait until dark and then dock.”

“Look again, Your Majesty,” answered the eunuch. “Their shouts are directed at that Egyptian man, the one who appears to be
the supervisor.”

The uniformed Egyptian bureaucrat watched stiffly as workers wrapped in layers of white gauze against the hot sun loaded tall
barrels of what looked like grain onto a barge. The area was cordoned by twelve armed guards whose faces remained stiff and
mean as the people called them by their given names, and also by other epithets.

“Traitor.”

“Coward.”

“Puppet of the Greeks.”

Two of the soldiers threatened the taunters with their swords, and the people backed off. The queen watched them mutter as
they reluctantly retreated.

Kleopatra’s small band of soldiers disembarked slowly, under intense scrutiny from the guard on the dock. The men walked heel
to toe, forming a tense procession, like a pack of wolves huddled to ward off a common enemy. The queen and her retinue followed
the men. Meeting Kleopatra on this very same platform was a frowning Pshereniptah and his wife, whose Egyptian name defied
pronunciation. Kleopatra had met them during the ceremony of the bull and was grateful to see familiar faces.

“Do you remember me, Your Majesty? I am the one you called Happy Kettle.” That is what the queen had called the woman in Greek,
for that is what her name meant. Happy Kettle knew enough of the Greek language to be pleased with a special pet name given
to her by the queen.