Pharaoh (34 page)

How many sets of gold and silver plate, with bejeweled goblets to match, would have to be given away as souvenirs of the evenings?
Last night, at the end of the third feast, Kleopatra had surprised her Roman guests with her most extravagant gift yet. She
had produced litters made of ebony, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, cushioned with the down of
baby geese and draped in red and gold silks, to carry each Roman guest home. She had told each guest that she was making a
gift of his litter. He was welcome to keep it as a token of her friendship. But as they were Romans and terribly cruel and
greedy, she had to make a point of telling them that the Ethiopian torchbearers who lit the way home were to be returned.

It seemed they would never tire of her hospitality, and why should they? For she was undoubtedly the most lavishly generous
host they had ever seen. She had heard stories of the opulence of the court of Darius the Persian, but she believed she may
have outdone him. Tonight, having given away the crates upon crates of precious cargo she had brought from Egypt, she spent
in excess of one talent on rose petals, which were presently being strewn over the dining floor so deep that they cushioned
the sandal. It was a more delicate touch than the Romans might appreciate; yet they seemed to grow more accustomed to Graeco-Egyptian
refinement with the passing of each night.

For the past three evenings she had sat with the Imperator, picking at her food while he gobbled great masses of his, sipping
her wine cautiously and trying to keep up with his massive appetites, all the while bargaining for her kingdom. He had surprised
her by immediately putting her on the defensive. There were those who said that she had not been a victim of a storm when
she set off with her fleet to send him reinforcements in the war against Caesar’s assassins, but had invented the problem
so that she would not have to take sides in Rome’s civil war.

She could not believe that he dared suggest such a thing, and turned on him with a fury that was not contrived. “How can you
think I would conspire with Caesar’s murderers? Three times Cassius demanded my support, and three times I turned his messengers
away, even when he threatened to march on my city!”

“I was sure that was the case,” he said. “But I did want to put to rest these rumors.”

“Why would I come to the aid of the men who thrust the daggers into my son’s father? Their victory would be my son’s death.”

“I understand, Your Majesty. There is no need to get angry with me.”

She dismissed everyone from their table so they could talk alone. Antony’s men, accompanied by her ladies-in-waiting, took
chairs on the deck of the vessel, where they could continue their drinking and flirtations by the light of her lamps.

“We made a pact, Antony, do you not remember? A pact between the three of us. You affirmed it once again after Caesar’s death.
Or were you just serving up words to pacify me?”

He smiled and took her hand. “The New Triumvirate. The triangle of power. I do remember, Kleopatra, and I meant every word.
And so did Caesar. Of course, I have had to join a
Roman
triumvirate in the meanwhile. To keep the peace, you understand.”

She did not know if he was mocking her. “How much has changed in the triangular configuration, Imperator? One angle, two angles,
or all three?”

“Caesar is dead, and conditions have changed. Let us just say that new actors are assuming leading roles. We must go with
the times, Kleopatra, but that is no reason to forget the original plan. To continue with our little theatrical metaphor,
the words remain the same, but take on new meaning when performed by new artists.”

“If two players remain the same, that leaves a third role to be cast. Do you think your new partners might fill that role,
or do you think they wish to recast the entire production?”

“They may wish for an entire new cast, particularly one of them, the younger one, who wishes he might rewrite the very words
the actors say. But he may not. I won’t have it. I do believe that once the little fellow reconciles himself to his subordinate
role, he will be satisfied and will read the lines written for him. And then you and I might simply continue with the plan
we made with Caesar. I see no reason not to carry on his ambitions. It would be a tribute to his greatness to subdue Parthia
in his name, and to honor the alliance he made with you.”

She did not know this Octavian, this new corner of their triangle. She did know Lepidus. The man was not a leader, but was
willing to throw his money and his troops behind whoever he believed would prevail. Octavian’s motivations were less clearly
defined. He was young, one and twenty, and physically unimpressive. But that did not mean that he could reconcile himself
to a world in which one of the three most powerful people had a rich kingdom in a strategic location, and a son who was also
called Caesar.

“I would like to make an offer to you, Imperator. To establish the strength of our alliance, I suggest you set up your eastern
headquarters in Alexandria. I shall furnish whatever you require for the war on
Parthia-men, ships, food, horses, saddlery. You may even take a legion of Egyptian whores if that is what your men need on
the campaign. But your permanent center of operations in my country will let the world know of our partnership.”

“I have always regretted cutting short my visit to your city all those years ago. It’s a splendid location to organize the
campaign. Done. It’s so easy to be magnanimous with you, Kleopatra, when you offer so much in return. What else?”

“I would like you to ask the Roman senate to recognize me for my efforts to help you in the civil war, and you must ask them
to recognize my son as the son of Caesar.”

“That will require a little more finesse, but I don’t see it as a problem. Is there anything else, Your Majesty? Because I
have a few additional demands of my own.”

She hesitated. She had promised Hephaestion that she would not return to Alexandria until Antony had agreed to eliminate her
sister.
In matters of state, let your blood run cold.
Hephaestion had used those words again when they spoke of this or any difficult matter. It was not always easy to allow one’s
blood to run cold, but Hephaestion’s philosophy had always proved right. Yet it was not so easy to ask for the demise of one’s
own blood. But Egypt was full of malcontents ready to back a rebellious rabble-rouser’s claims to the throne. Renegade Ptolemies
always found supporters in one region or another, with one faction or another. Between the Egyptians who hated the ruling
class, and the Greeks who loved to take sides, someone like Arsinoe could always find enough support to cause grave trouble.

But, like Caesar, Antony was loath to execute a woman.

“I am a generous man,” he said, “and determined to follow my mentor’s example of mercy.”

“May I point out to you that Arsinoe urged the governor of Cyprus to join with Caesar’s assassins in the civil war. The two
of them, along with the high priest of Ephesus, who is sheltering her now, have repeatedly declared Arsinoe the true queen
of Egypt. Would even Caesar have been merciful under such conditions?

“I don’t think you fully apprehend the danger. Arsinoe is not like some Roman citizen who happily changes allegiance with
the shifting tides of power. She’s a traitor, a deceiver, and the daughter of Thea, the
traitor who usurped her own husband’s throne while he was in Rome pleading for his kingdom.

“Are you aware,” Kleopatra continued, pacing the floor with her argument as if she were prosecuting a case, “that Arsinoe
turned on both Caesar and myself in the Alexandrian war, slipping out of the palace against Caesar’s orders, and joining with
the eunuch Ganymedes against Rome’s attempts to restore order to the Egyptian throne? She had deceived our brother, Ptolemy
the Elder, into thinking she was his ally, all the while conspiring against him. And she used her younger brother as her agent
against me until the Prime Minister did away with him.

“She will not rest until I am dead and she is sleeping in the state bed,” Kleopatra concluded. “Some evenings, I feel her
menace in my dreams, as if she is already testing out my mattress for her back.”

“It seems to me she is merely a spirited girl, powerless but vocal,” Antony replied.

“Do you so underestimate the power of a woman’s voice?” she asked. “I hear that in Rome, those at the highest levels of government
and society cling to your wife’s every utterance.”

She thought she might have insulted him, but it seemed impossible to insult this good-natured man, who relished a good laugh
at himself even more than he enjoyed taunting others. He smiled at her words and leaned very close to her. “And men of all
nations cling to yours. But what man would not want Her Majesty’s sweet breath whispering in his ear? It may be soft and perfumed,
but it causes shivers and quakes in every crook and cornice and shaft of a man’s body.”

She merely smiled. She had grown accustomed to Antony’s coarse innuendoes. He was the type of man-open, lusty, exuberant-who
could get away with such things without seeming insulting.

“Even when that sweet breath carries a request that the man considers unpleasant?”

“Especially so. The paradox of a bloody demand transported by something so sweet confuses the senses.”

“I am most sorry to have confused the Imperator,” she said.

“I am most delighted to have experienced the confusion,” he replied. “May it be the first of many.”

“It shall be as you wish, Imperator. But there are, of course, considerations.”

“Of course. But I cannot see my way just yet to agreeing to proscribe your sister.”

She allowed-and very sweetly-that she respected his position. But when the evening drew to its end-just as the morning light
was coming up-she refused to let him come to her bed. “I am just a woman, Imperator, and therefore weaker than you. I won’t
be able to negotiate so well on behalf of my people if I have fallen for your manly charms.”

With one finger he tipped her chin, raising her face to meet his eyes. “That argument is best made by a man, Kleopatra,” he
said. “I doubt that any man’s charms would influence your negotiating strategies.”

She was very glad that she was exhausted, because she wanted him badly. He was thrillingly tall, broad-shouldered, and intelligent.
She thought he always smelled of sex, and she did not know how he accomplished that. Everything about him evoked the sensual
in her. She remembered how, at fourteen, she could not even look at his naked calf without blushing. Now she had the same
problem with his face, his chest, even the curly brown hair on his chiseled forearm.

But at the evening’s end, she exercised all discipline and descended to her cabin, leaving him stunned and alone. Or so she
thought. She found out that he had quickly ordered two prostitutes from the town to tend to his needs before he fell asleep
at nine o’clock in the morning, waking three hours later to hear court cases in the town’s forum.

She walked now among her rose petals, supervising their placement on the floor, the banqueting tables, the dining couches.
Each footstep released more of the flowers’ sweet scent into the room, and once crushed under heavy studded Roman sandals,
the smell would become intoxicating. She hoped that the petals distracted from the simple table settings, borrowed from a
city official’s kitchen. With a little luck, her guests, inevitably drunk, would not take them home at the end of the meal.
She did not wish to slight them, but in truth, she had not foreseen that the feasting and the negotiating would last for days,
and she’d already given her guests every plate she’d brought from Egypt. No matter, she thought. It was no time to worry over
funds, or over a civil servant’s cheap pottery. The conclusion to these events would have repercussions that could last through
her lifetime and that of her son.

All that I do I do for my son.
She said these words to herself as she strolled among the petals. There was no limit to what she would do to
secure his life and his kingdom, to see that he grew to manhood and assumed the dual mantle of power endowed upon him as a
birthright by his mother and his father. How different Caesarion’s life would be, she thought, remembering the many obstacles
she had to surmount to arrive at this moment when she, queen of Egypt, was entertaining the greatest Roman of his day Her
father had overcome his illegitimate birth, his seditious wife and daughter, and Rome itself, which had extorted so much money
from him that he began to feel it as blood draining from his very veins. He had survived his treasonous family only to have
the Romans murder him slowly and treacherously, by bleeding him of his money, his spirit, his dignity. Kleopatra had taken
up where her father left off in the family battle for the kingdom. But she had exceeded her father thus far by making an alliance
with Caesar that was based on more than the total sum of her treasury. And because she had the foresight to do this, her son
would not have to fight the battles she and her father had fought. He would have others, for no monarch of a great nation
remained in power without a struggle. But his struggles would serve a higher cause-the unity of the world.

All that I do, I do for my son, including call for the execution of his cunning aunt. If Arsinoe ever got into power, the
first target of her revenge against Kleopatra would be Little Caesar.

Whatever she must do to ensure Arsinoe’s demise, she must do and do swiftly. The girl had a way of evoking sympathy. She was
both smart and conniving. Had she not played her brothers for fools? Had she not captured the hearts of chilly Roman matrons
and turned them against Kleopatra? Had she not won the high priest of Ephesus-a man of great sway-over to her cause, so much
that he addressed her as queen? If Kleopatra had to go to Antony’s bed prematurely to get him to promise that he would end
Arsinoe’s miserable life, then she would do just that. But she must not make a miscalculation. Antony’s men joked about his
exploits with Glaphyra, the princess of Cappodocia, who had tried to boost her political position by hopping into Antony’s
bed. But apparently, Antony hopped right out of both her bed and her country, having given her no more territory to claim
other than the inches from the base to the tip of his organ. Or that was how his men laughed about it.