Pharaoh (40 page)

He did not sit but dropped his hands and stared at her. “I wonder what you might have done under the circumstances, Kleopatra.
You, who hold paramount your ambition to preserve your throne for yourself and your children. I wonder what you would have
done if you found out that the person you trusted the most had broken that trust over her own ambitions.”

“I know what I would have done, Imperator, because that is precisely what happened to me. And yet here I sit willing to negotiate
again with that person.”

Antony took a deep, exasperated breath. “There is no winning an argument with you. I won’t explain myself, then. I won’t tell
you the horror that Fulvia’s actions brought down on our friends and allies. Poor woman. I won’t go into that at all, how
her defeat broke her courage and how my anger murdered her. All right. That’s extraneous here. And I won’t go into the story
of how I was manipulated into marrying a shy, smiling Roman matron as part of a peace treaty. Do you know what peace means
to the people of Rome, Kleopatra? Do you know how
many years our conflicts have gone on? How many of our friends and relations we have watched die? My grandfather was murdered
and beheaded, my stepfather executed, my mentor Julius Caesar assassinated. How many faces across the battlefield have I once
called friend?

“The world yearns for peace. I believed that by my alliance with Caesar’s nephew, and by my marriage to his sister, that I
could bring peace. I believe it no more.”

“What do you believe now?”

“I did nothing that you would not have done to secure your own future and position and that of your people. I have seen the
risks you are willing to take. And you have told me of the difficult decisions you have had to make. ’In matters of state,
let your blood run cold.’ I did not invent that phrase, Kleopatra, but I took your advice, believing that you above all persons
would understand.”

“I see that you know me too well, Imperator, and that is my own fault. You seem to know me through and through, and yet I
do not even know where your alliances lie. I do not know this heart of yours that you speak of so freely.”

Antony paced, hands on the belt that was slung low on his hips. She noticed that he did not wear a sword. “I have reason to
believe that my partner and ally plans to betray me, has betrayed me, and works to sabotage the war against Parthia. As part
of our agreement I promised him one hundred and fifty ships to fend off Pompey’s son Sextus in the Mediterranean. I delivered
the vessels before I left Rome. Octavian, for his part, promised me twenty thousand troops, four legions, for the war. He
has yet to deliver despite all my demands. It’s clear that he’s trying to weaken me. Either he cares not for his sister and
turns a deaf ear to her pleas for peace between us, or she is in league with him at every turn. I have no way of finding out
the truth, and so I have decided that the question is moot. She does not matter. Marriage to her has secured no peace and
no loyalty. I sent her home so that you and I might resume our former strategies, everything we planned when Caesar was alive,
and everything we planned after his death.”

He finished his speech and waited for her reaction, but against all desire to question him more, she remained silent and solemn.

“Do you accept?”

This was no drama staged for her benefit, Kleopatra could tell. For
Antony the actor always had a spirit of play about him. This Antony, the Imperator, was the straightforward soldier, the plainspoken
man whose authenticity won the hearts of his men. Though she had no guarantee that he would not again change his mind, she
also knew that he was correct on one point-she would have acted as he had if presented with the choice. She had turned her
back on Archimedes after he had gone into exile with her and prepared her for war against her brother. She had had no choice,
but she knew that the gods would eventually exact a toll, and they had, when they sent Antony back to Rome and gave him a
fertile and beautiful Roman wife. After Caesar’s death, she had had little choice but to align herself with Antony, and she
had little choice now. Stability for the kingdom superseded all other matters. And so it was with Antony. He had decided from
his broad range of options that she was the best choice for alliance. She tried to suppress the hope and the swelling of victory
that rose up inside her, but after so many years of desolation and uncertainty, she found that her Stoicism broke down entirely.
Still, she must not appear so vulnerable. She tried to look as stern as possible.

“I have issued my request, Imperator. I accept your terms only if you accept mine.”

Antony looked again at the map. “It is premature, Kleopatra, but given the circumstances, I accept. It will be difficult to
explain to my colleagues what I have done.”

“Imperator, you have no colleagues. You must get used to that notion. When we are victorious in Parthia, you will have no
equal.”

Antony knelt beside Kleopatra and took her hand. “No equal but you.”

She did not resist.

“Now come, tell me about my children. Have they inherited my fine appearance?”

“I have told you that if you wish to know of your children, you must come to see them for yourself. They are most curious
about you.”

His face lost the worried look that he had worn into the meeting and he smiled at her, looking once more like himself, or
the self that she had held in her mind the last four years.

“Then go home and prepare for my arrival.” The old smirk returned. “I must be well cared for before I go off to war.”

A
sunrise meeting with the War Council. Kleopatra searches the room for the one face whose presence will have meaning, but that
face is probably snoring into the ear of a whore. She smiles at the irony. She has absolutely no control over the man whom
the Romans claim she controls utterly. The faces before her, however, are full of optimism. Canidius Crassus, most faithful
Roman friend, and Hephaestion, most loyal Prime Minister, update the queen on the progress of the plan to escape by the Red
Sea. I do not wish to escape, she wants to scream at them. I wish to fight. They have every possibility of raising an even
larger army than the last time, but Antony is not up to the effort, and Kleopatra knows that the majority of his Roman soldiers-especially
the commanders crucial to victory-will not go up against another Roman army for an Egyptian queen. Blood, after all, is blood,
and sometimes, in the course of human history, prevails even over money. This, Kleopatra believes, is one such circumstance.
She has money to pay, but the Romans have been facing one another on the battlefield for so many years now, since Sulla’s
days, long before Julius Caesar crossed that little Italian river, spilling Roman blood on Roman swords. Kleopatra has walked
through the ranks of the soldiers herself-despite the objections of certain Roman officers who cannot bear to see a woman
in power-and has spoken to them in their native tongue. Some have been fighting all their lives and are old men. They want
money, land, peace- all the things promised to them by Julius Caesar, but he did not live to settle his debts.

And so Kleopatra lets her advisers tell her of the lightweight ships being constructed for her escape. They will be loaded
onto massive trailers-also being con-structed-and hauled by an army of slaves a mere twenty miles to the Red Sea, where the
queen and her family and entourage will sail away. But sail where? she asks them.

Do not lose sight of your goals, Your Majesty, they tell her as if she is a child who must be reminded of her lessons. She
needs no reminder of what she has done. Once again, she has tried to protect herself and her family. She has taken great pains
to strengthen her alliance with the king of Media. They have made a secret negotiation, which Antony does not know about.
But the queen realizes that she must have a fallback position. She will never quit Antony, but he shows every sign of quitting
himself. And what is she-some slave girl who is supposed to offer herself up for sacrifice when her ruler dies? No, she will
prevail, even if Antony graduates from the oblivion of alcohol and sex into the oblivion of suicide. She will escape to Media,
marry the king, and together they will crush the Parthians and found a kingdom that will sweep from Egypt to Arabia to India,
the empire envisioned by Alexander An empire that in the coming years might challenge Rome and win. Media has only one demand
to solidify the alliance: execute Antony’s prisoner, the king of Armenia, whom the king of Media hates for many reasons, not
the least of which is that they share the same name, Artavasdes, and he is sick to death of the confusion. Shall it be done,
Your Majesty? asks Hephaestion. But he is the Imperator’s prisoner, she answers, trying to uphold her husband’s authority.
Shall we ask him, then? Hephaestion politely asks. She sends to Antony for permission to execute the prisoner and receives
a scornful reply. Kill whomever you like. Why not start with me? The War Council falls silent, pitying her, she is sure. She
sighs, signs the death warrant, and sends Diomedes, her secretary, away to put the deed in motion.

She spends the rest of the day in image-making. She takes her morning meal in the Common Room at the Mouseion. Throughout
her life she has taken comfort in this house where knowledge is mined and dedicated to the Muses. She enjoys breaking bread
in the company of the men of learning as she has done from time to time since she was a girl under their tutelage. It is the
custom of her family not only to patronize, but also to maintain a certain intimacy with the scholars. Could Eratosthenes
have included such colorful stories of Arsinoe III in his autobiography, which her own children still read, if that great
queen of the past had not dispensed with queenly formalities and invited him to share in the contents of her mind? No, this
is the manner in which her family indulges its passion for liter
ary and scientific matters. And now, at this crucial time, it is important to uphold all traditions, to maintain the semblance
of normality.

The queen is given a nervous reception. Rumors of her desertion of Antony and of their cause have spread in her city. She
does not announce her arrival, but bounds into the room unaccompanied as she did when she was a girl, bursting in on their
quiet conversation. Upon her entrance everyone jumps out of his seat, a few dropping bread to the ground, and young Nicolaus
spitting out his milk in greeting her. Mouths full, hands shaking, they stand long after she sits, until she gently commands
them to take their seats, trying to restore an atmosphere of casual dialogue. She uses the opportunity to calm them by relating
the actual events of the battle at Actium, and assuring them of her many plans for ultimate victory. She realizes that she
should have done this weeks ago; undoubtedly they have been ruminating among themselves about the consequences of the battle.
She imagines that many of them are already arranging new posts for themselves at Rhodes or Athens, while others are wondering
how long it will be before they are kissing Octavian’s ring. She is sure the letters to their Greek colleagues begging for
the specifics of the battle at Actium have been sailing out of the port since the day she returned, if not before. No one
adores the details of failure or the pleasures of gossip like an intellectual.

She sees that she has surprised them with her extraordinary good humor. They have been listening to the servants’ stories
of Antony’s condition, and they must have expected to see her in that same state of mind, particularly after hearing rumors
of her “defeat.” They behave toward her as one acts in the presence of sick persons and the recently widowed. Cautious and
overly solicitous. She smiles at young Nicolaus, who is spied wiping the spilt milk from his beard, and then at old Philostratus,
a teacher of her youth. He is grateful. He has probably been waiting for a private audience, such as in the old days when
she would solicit his advice. But these days, she finds his grand speech-making and pithy way of speaking otiose and unnecessary.
She has little patience left for aphorisms. But Philostratus is old; he reminds her of the days when her father was alive,
when she had the king and his authority to depend upon, and her affection for the philosopher returns. She forces herself
to show courtesy to Arius, one of Caesarion’s tutors whom she neither likes nor trusts. But she tolerates him for Caesarion’s
sake. The son of Caesar appreciates Arius’s work categorizing schools of philosophy into logic, physics, and ethics. The boy
has inherited Caesar’s intellect, but not his cool judgment. Ah well, did Caesar not patronize that vain fool, Cicero, who
betrayed him so many times, who vocalized his objections over Caesar’s ambitions until the senators took up
their daggers? Caesar had placed the intellectual discourse the two shared above loyalty, and Kleopatra senses that their
son shall do the same. How to gift someone with the ability to judge character? She wonders if such a thing can be taught.
She wonders if she, too, has fallen short in this area by aligning herself with the man who sits in his mansion by the sea,
whose once great virility as a warrior and conqueror now shows itself only to paid courtesans.

Kleopatra finishes chatting up the philosophers and leaves them so that all might prepare themselves for the ceremony at noon,
the idea for which sprang to her mind as she sailed into the harbor of her great city. First, she gave orders as they docked
that poets be paid lovely sums to write songs of her victory and glory. The first men off the ship swiftly carried her wishes
into those quarters where such tributes might be efficiently written. Another idea occurred to her as soon as she and Antony
received news of some of their soldiers’ defection to Octavian. At that moment, she watched every muscle in Antony’s face
droop, his chest sag, his arms hang limp at his side as if he were a sick monkey and not the commander of the greatest army
the world had ever seen. And she knew in that moment that she must hurry the cycles of Time. For Time would surely dictate
that the sons usurp the power of the father. Antyllus and Caesarion are young men, fourteen and sixteen, but no younger than
Alexander when he squashed whole cities that his father, the great warrior King Philip, had not been able to subdue. Perhaps
the combination of Antyllus’s confidence and effrontery and Caesarion’s sharp intellect might combine to make the leader their
father could no longer be. The two are more than brothers; they are two sides of a great personality, like the twin souls
of Plato. There is never a conflict between them; together they comprise a whole and great man. The blood of Caesar and the
blood of Antony mixed with the blood of Alexander and the Ptolemies. How can they fail? She has explained all of this to them
at length. They eat up her words with the enthusiasm of young men, each eager to assume the mantle that their mother is placing
on their young and strong shoulders. Antyllus, courtly and brash, promises the queen that he will lead his father’s men to
victory in her name. He kisses her hand, and then stands over her as if she were his own little mother and kisses her forehead,
and she wishes for a moment that things were different and that she could start all over with this young man’s courage and
energy propelling her plans. Her own son, King of Kings, is gracious, accepting the Fate that was assigned to him when his
august father coupled with his regal mother. He does not even smile, but bows formally, the long arm of Caesar sweeping out
from his body like the branch of a young tree in the wind.

Canidius has promised that he would have the Imperator dressed and propped up for the occasion, and on this point, he has
delivered. Antony appears, shaven, oiled, costumed in a general’s magnificent purple, and-for all who do not know him as intimately
as the queen-sober. Kleopatra cannot look at him without her heart sinking. His fine features are drowned in bloated flesh.
His eyes-eyes that she once had to discipline herself to look into because they caused such a shudder in her body-stare straight
ahead in a flat brown gaze. Two withered mushrooms have moved in where the bold eyes of a hawk used to be. He takes his place
next to her. I know why you are doing this, he says. You have forced my hand, she replies. I would rather uphold the father
than the sons. But the father is gone and has left a beggar in his bed. He says nothing in reply.

The weather is mercifully cool for a September day. The sea breeze participates in the ceremony, dancing in through the windows
in the gymnasium, ruffling the toga virilus, the robe of manhood that is presented to Antyllus by his father. Caesarion lowers
his head to accept the pharaoh’s crown from his mother, signaling his true coming of age. And in a singular moment the two
boys make the elusive transformation into men. And that is that, Kleopatra thinks as she sees the joy on the faces of her
subjects at the sight of the vigor and virility that will lead them into the future. Youth is hope, and her people lock onto
that hope in the face of every wild rumor being circulated about town that Antony is finished. Her plan is working. The people
ignore the father’s slump and paunch for the potent, erect posture of the sons. Before he turns away from her to return to
his debauchery, Antony takes his wife’s arm. Give me time, he says. You are not very good at that, Kleopatra, but that is
what I need. Despite herself, she feels the thrill of hope, of the possibility that he will become again the man he was not
six months prior when they celebrated the execution of their plans for a Golden Empire at Samos. How could the soul of the
man disappear so quickly? She wishes to carry that hope with her, but though his voice is sincere and sounds like Antony,
his eyes are pools of death. She smiles gently, pats his hand, and walks away.