Pharaoh (2 page)

K
leopatra looked out the window at the scene that had greeted her all the mornings of her days before her flight into exile.
There was little in the Royal Harbor to suggest Julius Caesar’s occupation of Alexandria. The pleasure vessels of Egypt’s
Royal Family rocked lazily at the dock. The morning fog had lifted, revealing a sky already white with heat above vivid blue
waters, and she was grateful that she was no longer breathing the deadening summer air of the Sinai.

Could it have been just yesterday that she was in the middle of that great blue sea, stowing away on a pirate’s vessel to
sneak back into her own country? She had dressed herself as well as she could without her servants, knowing that the last
leg of her journey would be a rigorous one, and that she could not be recognized when she arrived in the harbor of Alexandria.
She had let Dorinda, the wife of Apollodorus the pirate, help with her toilette, fixing and bejeweling the locks that had
been neglected while she was in exile. She would have done it herself, but her hands shook with anxiety; she had fought with
her advisers, rejecting their claims that it was too dangerous to reenter Egypt, and now she was faced with the task of using
stealth to slip past both her brother’s army and the Roman army to meet with Caesar.

Dorinda produced a silken scarf of spectacular colors and tied it about the queen’s waist, making an impressive show of her
young
strong figure. Kleopatra looked in the mirror and wondered if, in the woman’s hands, she looked like a queen or a prostitute
in training. But that was a look that men liked as well as the royal demeanor. Perhaps Apollodorus might try to pass her off
as a prostitute being taken to the mighty Caesar. Whatever got her into his quarters and whatever kept her there under his
goodwill would do.

The queen allowed the woman to kiss her hand, giving her a pair of heavy copper earrings and a bar of silver for her personal
purse before Apollodorus helped her lower herself to the small boat that awaited them just outside Egyptian waters. Dorinda
put on the earrings and shook them wildly, jiggling her extravagant body as she waved good-bye.

Now it was just Kleopatra and Apollodorus in the small vessel. She wondered what might happen if they faced adverse winds.
Would she have to row like a slave to get them to shore? No matter. She would do whatever was necessary and dream that it
was an adventure, like when she and her girlhood companion Mohama fantasized their important participation in political efforts.
She did not know at the time that such dangerous intrigues would someday be the reality of her waking, adult life. How she
would love to have the company of that beautiful brown Amazon-like woman now. But Mohama, along with the rest of Kleopatra’s
childish fantasies, was dead, all victims of the political realities set in motion by Rome and its determination to dominate
the world.

Apollodorus completed his duties at the sail and settled down next to her.

“What do you suppose moves this man Caesar?” she asked. Apollodorus was a pirate, an outlaw, a thief, yet Kleopatra had come
to value him as a sharp interpreter of human nature. But the pirate allowed that he could not figure the man, so paradoxical
were the reports of his character. Talk of his cruelty and his clemency were mixed. In the war against the Roman senators,
Caesar had spared almost everyone. He had captured Pompey’s officers in Gaul and let them go. Some he had seized as many as
four times during the war, and each time freed them again, telling them to say to Pompey that he wanted peace.

“If you submit to Caesar, he spares you. If you defy Caesar, he kills you,” said the pirate. “Perhaps that is the lesson Your
Majesty should take into the meeting. The towns in Greece that opened their gates to him have been rewarded. But the poor
inhabitants of Avaricum-they
are with the gods now-were turned over to his men for a drunken massacre. Merciful, cruel, I cannot judge. A complex man,
but I am sure, a great man.”

Suddenly it was dusk, and the pirate drew her attention to the harbor. In the fading sunlight, she saw the familiar Pharos
Lighthouse, the landmark of her youth, and one of the great hallmarks of her family’s reign over Egypt. The tower was bathed
in diffuse red light that lingered as the sun sank behind her into the depths of the Mediterranean. The eternal flame in its
top floor burned vigilantly. The imposing structure that had served as a marker of safe harbor for three centuries was the
genius of her ancestor, Ptolemy Philadelphus, and his sister-wife Arsinoe II, and now it welcomed her home. This was not the
first time she had approached her country from the vantage point of exile. But it was the first time she had returned to find
a flotilla of warships in a V formation pointing dangerously toward her city.

“These are not Egyptian vessels,” she said, noting their flags. “Some are Rhodian, some from Syria, some from Cilicia.”

“All territories from which Caesar might have called for reinforcements,” said Apollodorus.

“Warships in the harbor? What can this mean? That Alexandria is already at full-scale war with Caesar?” asked Kleopatra.

“So it appears. And now we must get you through Caesar’s navy and the army of your brother’s general, Achillas, before you
can have a conference with Caesar. I do not know if my contacts at the docks can help us in these circumstances. As Your Majesty
is well aware, in wartime, all policies change to meet the dire times. I’m afraid that our simple scheme of disguising you
as my wife may not serve us in these hazardous conditions.”

“I agree,” she said. Her heart began the now-familiar hammering in her chest, its punch taking over her body and consuming
her mental strength, pounding away at her brain. No, this cannot happen, she said to herself. I cannot submit to fear.

Only I and the gods may dictate my Fate.
Not a heart, not an organ. I control my heart, my heart does not control me, she repeated over and over until the thud in
her ears gave way to the benevolent slurp of the placid waters, calming her nerves as they slapped haphazardly against the
boat. She put her head down and prayed.

Lady Isis, the Lady of Compassion, the Lady to whom I owe my fortune and my Fate. Protect me, sustain me, guide me as I make
this daring move so that I may continue to honor you and continue to serve the country of my mothers and fathers.

When she looked up from her
prayer,
she saw that they had drifted closer to the shore. Trapped now between the Rhodian and the Syrian flotillas, she realized
that she must take some kind of cover. How could she have so foolishly thought that she could just slip into the city where
she was known above all women? She must do something quickly to get herself out of sight.

She shared these thoughts with Apollodorus.

“It is not too late to turn around, Your Majesty-” he offered.

“No!” she interrupted him. “This is my country. My brother sits in the palace as if he were the sole ruler of Egypt. Caesar,
no doubt, is in receipt of my letter, and he awaits my arrival. I will not be shut out by these maritime monsters.” She raised
her hands as if to encompass all the vessels in the sea. “The gods will not have it, and I will not have it.”

Apollodorus said nothing. Kleopatra made another silent plea to the goddess. She stared into her lap waiting for inspiration
to descend upon her. She was for a moment lost in the intricate pattern of the Persian carpet that the men had thrown aboard
the boat at the last minute for the queen to sit on. An anonymous artisan had spent years of his life stitching the rows and
rows of symmetrical crosses into the silk. Suddenly, she pulled her head up straight and focused on the rug, mentally measuring
its dimensions. Its fine silk threads would not irritate the downy skin of a young woman, should she choose to lie upon it.
Or to roll herself inside of it.

The sun cast its final offering of light. Her companion’s square rock of a body sat helplessly waiting for the decision of
the queen as his boat drifted precariously close to the shore.

“Help me,” she said as she threw the rug on the floor of the boat and positioned herself at one end.

Apollodorus stood up and stared down at the queen, who lay with her hands over her chest like a mummy.

“But Your Majesty will suffocate,” he protested, stretching his palms out to her as if he hoped they would exercise upon her
a modicum of reason. “We must leave this place.”

The sun had set, and the boxlike form that hovered above her was only a silhouette against a darkening sky.

“Help me quickly, and do not waste our time with questions,” she said. “Julius Caesar is waiting.”

When the squatty Sicilian entered Caesar’s chamber to announce that he had a gift from the rightful queen of Egypt to lay
at Great Caesar’s feet, the dictator’s soldiers drew swords. But Caesar simply laughed and said he was anxious to see what
the exiled girl might smuggle through her brother’s guards.

“This is a mistake, sir,” said the captain of his guard. “These people are ready to take advantage of your good nature.”

“Then they, too, shall learn, shan’t they?” he replied.

The pirate lay the carpet before Caesar, using his own knife to clip the ties that bound it. As he slowly and carefully unrolled
it, Caesar could see that it was a fine example of the craftsmanship that was only to be found in the eastern countries, the
kind he had so envied when he was last at Pompey’s house in Rome. Suddenly, as if she were part of the geometrical pattern
itself, a girl rolled out from its folds, sat up cross-legged, and looked at him. Her small face was overly painted, with
too much jewelry in her thick brown hair, and a meretricious scarf tied about her tiny waist, showing off her comely body.
The young queen must be a woman of great humor to have sent Caesar a pirate’s little wench. She was not precisely lovely,
he thought, but handsome. She had full lips, or so he assumed under the paint. Her eyes were green and slanted upward, and
they challenged him now to speak to her, as if it was Caesar who should have to introduce himself to this little tart. But
it was the pirate who spoke first.

“Hail Queen Kleopatra, daughter of Isis, Lady of the Two Lands of Egypt.”

Caesar stood-a habit, though he remained unconvinced that the girl was not a decoy. She stood, too, but quickly motioned for
him to sit. Surely only a queen would have the guts to do that. He took his chair again, and she addressed him in Latin, not
giving him the opportunity to interrogate her, but telling him the story of how her brother and his
courtiers had placed her under house arrest and forced her to flee Alexandria and go into exile; how her brother’s regents
were representative of the anti-Roman faction in Egypt; how she had always carried out her late father’s policy of friendship
with Rome; and how, most importantly, once restored, she intended to repay the large loan that her father had taken from the
Roman moneylender, Rabirius, which she must have guessed was the real reason that Caesar had followed Pompey to Alexandria.

Before Caesar might reply to her speech, the queen said, “Shall we converse in Greek, General? It is a more precise language
for negotiation, don’t you agree?”

“As you wish,” Caesar replied. From there, the conversation was held in her native tongue and not his-not that it mattered.
He spoke Greek as if he had been born in Athens. He admired her ploy of simultaneously demonstrating her command of his native
tongue while diminishing it in comparison to the more sophisticated Greek language. There was no pride like that of the Greeks,
and this girl was obviously no exception.

But she had great charm and intelligence, so Caesar pledged her restoration, in accordance with her father’s will and the
nation’s tradition. He would have done so anyway, but now he could do it with pleasure. Not only would it please the young
queen, it would also irritate Pothinus, the dreadful eunuch whom Caesar despised. For Kleopatra’s part, she pledged a great
portion of her treasury that he might take with him back to Rome to satisfy Rabirius. A relief, he assured her, to have that
clacking old duck paid and off his back. Kleopatra laughed, remembering the sight of Rabirius’s great waddling ass as he was
chased out of Alexandria.

“I do hope you are enjoying our city,” Kleopatra said. “Are we occupying you as satisfactorily as you occupy us?”

Caesar felt he had no choice but to laugh. He told the girl about a lecture he had recently attended at the Mouseion, the
center for scholarly learning that he’d heard about all his years. She had studied there herself, she said, and in her exile
what she most had longed for was not her feathery bed nor the kitchen staff of one hundred who prepared for her the finest
meals on earth, but the books at the Great Library, and the visits of scholars, poets, and scientists who engaged her mind.

Now secure that she was once again at home and in charge, she relaxed in her seat and called for wine, stretching her thin,
shapely arm over the back of the couch and stretching her small sandaled feet in his direction. Caesar was startled at the
way she so easily issued commands in his presence, but it was her palace, after all. Before he knew it, however, they were
discussing the philosophy of domination, and he was drunk and praising Posidonius while she disputed every point.