Pharaoh (32 page)

K
leopatra let the great palm leaves offer a rhythmic respite from the deadening August air along the Syrian river. The barge
moved slowly, as if its prow must slice the heat itself to navigate the way. She closed her eyes against wisps of hot breeze
that escaped into her garments, cooling her skin. Sweat would not do, not at this crucial time when she must appear to be
above such mortal vulnerabilities. A goddess, Charmion had insisted, does not perspire. At the last moment, as they were leaving
Alexandria, packing the treasures, the gold and silver plate, the gilded couches, the jewels, the great trunks of costumes
designed and sewn in a hurry by dozens of Royal Seamstresses, Charmion had had the brilliant idea to include the Cupids-twenty
boys under the age of twelve, armed with palmetto leaves as tall as themselves and painted in bright and variegated colors,
with which they fanned the heat away from the queen.

Preparations had been hasty but meticulous. She had waited a very long time for this moment when she would again meet the
man who had emerged victorious from the struggle over the power relinquished in death by Caesar.

Rome’s civil war was finally over. Cassius and Brutus had met Antony and Octavian in a final confrontation at Philippi in
Thrace, where Antony commanded the army and Octavian showed his true character.
A novice in battle-and a coward as well, Kleopatra suspected-he was chased out of his camp by the enemy, and barely made it
to the safety of Antony’s encampment. There he feigned illness so that he would not have to engage in any confrontations.

Antony led the army to an overwhelming victory against the assassins, and both Brutus and Cassius committed suicide. Antony,
in the manner of Caesar, draped his own purple cloak over Brutus’s body and gave him a proper burial. But before the body
could be interred, Octavian had its head severed and sent to Rome to throw at the foot of one of Caesar’s statues. Upon hearing
of her husband’s disgrace, and perhaps in anticipation of the humiliation she would incur upon Octavian’s return to Rome,
Porcia, Brutus’s wife, also committed suicide. Kleopatra was saddened to hear of Porcia’s death, but also believed that she
was not wrong in her estimation of Octavian’s character. It was reported to Kleopatra that Octavian had played cruel games
with his political prisoners at Philippi, forcing a father and son to choose which of them would die, making them draw straws
for their lives. The father sacrificed himself for his son, but the son, distraught at seeing his father die, committed suicide.
Antony and most of the men, it was said, were sickened by Octavian’s twisted behavior.

Kleopatra could not understand why Antony, after leading his army to so clear a victory, did not claim the entire empire for
his own; why he continued to share power with Octavian and Lepidus. Octavian’s character was apparent, and Lepidus was not
a leader of men. She wondered if Antony’s sense of loyalty worked to his detriment, and she hoped that when they met, she
would be able to mine his thoughts and discover his motives. He had always seemed to her a straightforward man. Or did he
only appear to be that way?

It was a more formidable Antony Kleopatra would face in the Syrian city of Tarsus: He had taken as his portion of the empire
Macedonia, Greece, Asia, and the kingdoms of Asia Minor, and Syria, leaving Octavian Italy and Lepidus Africa. Then he had
traveled to Ephesus, where he summoned the leaders of all his nations and instituted extraordinary financial and trade policies
that would enable the territories to prosper despite the large amounts of money and resources extracted by Brutus and Cassius.
For his leadership, Antony was deified by the people of Ephesus, who called him the New Dionysus, the same
title that had been held by Kleopatra’s father. The Ephesians proclaimed him God Manifest, son of Ares and Aphrodite, and
Savior of all mankind. He was also called the Giver of Joy, for his good nature and goodwill, and for his love not only of
his soldiers, but of all people. He appreciated their cultures, attended their theaters and lectures, engaged in dialogue
with their philosophers and scientists, and praised and patronized their poets. Thus, Kleopatra could not help but to notice,
while Octavian went back to Rome calling himself son of the Divine Julius, Antony went to the east and became a god himself.

Now, with his prestige beyond compare, Kleopatra was sure that Antony was turning his energies to completing Caesar’s great
mission of conquering the Parthian empire, of settling the vast half of the eastern world for Rome, and toward Kleopatra and
the role she would play in his plans.

In the eyes of the world, he had taken Caesar’s place, and so she must acknowledge that. She must impress him in a manner
larger and more grand than she had done with Caesar. Antony did not possess Caesar’s nonchalance, but delighted in worldly
things. She would dazzle him, demonstrate to him everything she might offer with her alliance- including herself. She had
not forgotten his insinuations; in fact, in the absence of any sexual companionship, they had become part of her daily reverie.

Antony was married, true-and not to a passive political pawn like Calpurnia. Fulvia was beautiful and brilliant and had shown
forceful political sway. Her likeness was stamped into Antony’s coinage, and as far as Kleopatra could tell, no living Roman
woman had ever before had that honor. The Roman senators said snidely of Fulvia that her ambition was to rule those who ruled.
Finally, Kleopatra thought, she had a formidable rival. And yet was she? A Roman woman who could hold no official role in
her government? Whose fortune, no matter how vast, was safeguarded by male relatives? Who had virtually no legal rights? Fulvia
could not cast a vote in her country, while Kleopatra’s very word was law in hers. Let Antony experience a woman of real power.
Then would he be so satisfied with his wife?

Julius Caesar had seen the possibilities in a union between himself and the queen of Egypt, and Kleopatra was certain that
Antony, a quick study, had already calculated what union with her was worth. Had the
three of them not made their secret alliance while Caesar was alive? Antony’s ambitious plans were made obvious in every move
he made, and Kleopatra had been following those moves carefully. In the eastern territories of Rome’s empire he had issued
coins with images of himself as the sun god, whom the entire Graeco-Egyptian world worshipped as the ultimate Divine Ruler,
so that each hand that passed the coins spread news of his ascension. The golden rays that haloed his head, the eagle of Zeus
at his feet-looking ever so much like the Ptolemaic eagle, Kleopatra thought-told the whole world that as the new god came
east, he would bring to the people all the riches that man and nature might offer.

But crucial to the distribution of those promised blessings was access to the riches of Egypt. And to procure those riches,
this new beneficent god would have to position himself with that country’s queen. Let him come, thought Kleopatra. I look
forward to the negotiation.

For almost three years, Kleopatra had not been touched by the hand of a man except for the tiny one of her five-year-old son
when he reached out for her. Archimedes had remained in Alexandria to advise and serve her, but he refused to come to her
bed. Knowing his pride, she had withheld the invitation for months on end while she mourned the loss of Caesar, both personal
and political. She had attended with a widow’s restraint to her son and to her duties of state, casting aside all human emotions
and focusing entirely on the good of her people. She had brought brilliant physicians in from all over the world to administer
to those with the plague; she had made a trip down the Nile with engineers to redirect waters to dying crops; she had redistributed
the grain crop so that the people in provinces whose harvest yielded nothing did not starve. She had staved off the demands
of Caesar’s murderers while attempting to send aid to Antony and his allies. And she had sat in meeting after meeting with
Archimedes, more aware every day that she was staring into his mournful brown eyes for some sign of, if not forgiveness, then
understanding, watching the curve of his beautiful lips as he spoke, wishing to put her arms around him and make amends for
the suffering she had caused him. But as soon as she confessed her feelings-one year after Caesar’s death-he stopped her flow
of lovely words.

“Kleopatra.” He held up one admonishing finger as if to shush her.
“It is over. I lost you once, and I will not risk repeating the episode. I cannot be your king, and I refuse to be your plaything.”

“But Cousin, I can marry no one. My brothers are dead, and any choice I make at this juncture is fraught with political implications.
As you told me once so many years ago, if we cannot be married, then why can we not be together as a man and a woman should?
Why must we deny ourselves that pleasure? That love?”

But he looked at her stony-faced and said without a trace of humor, “You can command many things of me, Kleopatra, but even
you cannot command my penis to rise.”

After that, she left him alone, hearing the rumors of his exploits with the women of Alexandria, who were most anxious to
experience this beautiful man rumored to have once been the lover of the queen.

“Many women are paying for what you did to him,” Charmion admonished. Not that Charmion wished for Kleopatra to have chosen
Archimedes over Caesar. She wished that Kleopatra had never entered into the affair with Archimedes at all. Kleopatra sighed.
She supposed that she must allow Fate this episode of irony. She had, after all, broken his heart.

Though Kleopatra was making her way to the most important political negotiation of her life, the scent of sensuality hung
in the air. It had arrived with Antony’s first letters, delivered by Quintus Dellius, a scholarly man who was nonetheless
a hedonist of infamous pluralistic sexual tastes. Antony’s choice in messenger was not lost on the queen. He might have had
any somber diplomat deliver his demands, but he sent Dellius, whose every sentence was laced with sexual overtones. “The Imperator
would
delight
in your presence at Tarsus. He wishes to share in the same
favor
you so graciously and wisely showed to Caesar. Unlike Caesar, he is a man in his
prime,
and able to return that favor tenfold.”

Kleopatra accepted the offer to meet with Antony in Syria, and then sent his messenger to the Alexandrian brothels, from which
he did not emerge for one week. He would return to Antony intoxicated and confident that the queen of Egypt was, so to speak,
in Antony’s pocket.

Then she made him wait. She was scheduled to appear immediately,
but she did not like the idea that anyone, even Antony, could summon her. If she rushed off to meet him, she would be playing
right into his hand. He would have her alliance, her resources for his war on the Parthians, access to her army and her navy,
and her body-for she was certain he would demand to take Caesar’s place in her bed. And she would have-what? The privilege
of giving him all those things. So she waited and she made preparations to meet him on terms that were her own. He may have
been proclaimed the New Dionysus by the people of Asia Minor, but she was unimpressed. Her own father had held that title
for most of his life, and he did not have to win a war to earn it. She had been consorting with gods-on-earth all her life.
She herself was the earthly representative of Isis and Aphrodite, and the lover of the mortal man who was descended from Mother
Venus. Not to mention the mother of his son. She would go to this New Dionysus, but not as a beggar holding out her hand for
the favor of Rome, all the while opening her legs for him. She would to go him as his equal. If he was Dionysus, then let
him negotiate with Aphrodite, the Greek Venus, the Mother of All Life and Creation. The significance would escape no one.
Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Syrians, all who saw her would know that she, living incarnation of Lady Isis, had come to meet
with the conquering god-Osiris to the Egyptians, Dionysus to the Greeks, Bacchus to the Romans-in a sacred union not only
of nations, but of man and woman, of god and goddess, to spread peace and beneficence over the earth.

“It shall be the greatest event the world has seen,” she told Charmion as they hastily sketched the costumes for the dressmakers.
As she made her plans, she felt herself shed the widow’s sadness, along with the constant pain she endured from Archimedes’
rejection and from his renowned conquests of other women. For the first time since Caesar’s murder, she felt truly alive.

In a month’s time, she orchestrated the entire spectacle. The Royal Barge, dormant and in storage since her Nile cruise with
Caesar, was refitted with a golden stern, the oars dipped in silver, and new sails made, not in traditional nautical white,
but in deep, royal purple.

“I want my vessel to be a celebration of light,” she told her engineers. “By day, it should capture the power of the sun with
gold and silver and reflect it back to the people, and by night, I wish to dazzle every eye
with my lamplight.” She could take no chances on her hour of arrival. If the sun was already set, she would not grope her
way up the river in darkness, but sail into the port at Tarsus like fire in motion. The light must seem as if it was the sacred
illumination of the gods. For it must be made plain that when Antony and Kleopatra reveled together, it was a divine celebration
of peace and cooperation not only between two nations, but between all nations and all peoples. It must be emphasized and
understood that the gods themselves sanctioned, indeed arranged and orchestrated, this alliance-that the union of Aphrodite
and Dionysus on earth would bring security and prosperity to all those who honored it.