Pharaoh (41 page)

C
harmion held the bowl for the queen as she leaned over and retched. Kleopatra thought that she was immune from seasickness,
but she had never traveled on such tumultuous seas so soon after giving birth.

Ptolemy Philadelphus, so named after his great ancestor but called Philip by the family, had inherited his father’s size.
He was the biggest of Kleopatra’s four children, ten pounds at birth, with a head wider than a discus. She thought she would
die as she pushed the future prince into the world, calling upon every god to hurry the process, and when that failed, putting
expletives in the place of prayers. The reluctant baby remained in the birth canal, so she began to talk to him in a panting
and desperate voice, assuring him that he would one day be king over all that he saw if he would only agree to come out into
the world and see it. Through the lancing pain, she explained to him who his ancestors were, from which gods he was descended,
and of his father’s great deeds of war and soldiery. It seemed that only when she promised him that he would inherit the entire
world empire from his older brothers that he made his appearance. As he crowned, the midwife exclaimed, “What a head the future
emperor has! And what hair sits upon it!” The baby was born with Antony’s brown curls in place on his giant head as if he
had already visited Antony’s barber. He seemed to have inherited his father’s
appetites, too, because he howled from the moment he was born, all the way through the ritual cleansing, until the wet nurse
was dragged out of her bed and he was in her arms and at the tit.

Kleopatra was still exhausted from the delivery and heavy with milk when she received Antony’s desperate message. Her breasts
were rock-hard and full of pain. She demanded to nurse the baby herself to get rid of some of the milk, but the midwife assured
her that she would be encouraging its production. Better to suffer the pain for a week or so until the body got the message
that the milk was not needed. It had been three weeks, and the body was still resisting the message, as much as it resisted
healing its lower half from the excruciating delivery. The other three births were, if not exactly painless, then at least
expedient. She had healed quickly, and was on her horse in two weeks’ time. She did not know if the trouble this time was
caused by her age or by the baby’s size, but the factors mingled to make a very difficult experience-one that she could not
afford at this crucial juncture.

Antony’s message was simple and to the point: One-third of the army is dead; the other two-thirds require clothes, shoes,
and food. Please come at once to Leuce Come on the coast of Phoenicia, north of Tyre.

Did he think she was a magician? How was she to produce food and clothes for sixty thousand men
at once?
And what chink in their battle plan had
created
this disaster so early in the war?

Nonetheless, she pillaged the supplies of her own army, of her own estates and granaries, of the country’s factories that
produced leather and woolen goods. She had three ships loaded with the effects, and coaxed her beleaguered body onto a fourth.

Thank the gods that there was no protest against her actions in the city, even though her subjects would be footing the bill
for Antony’s failure. Her careful strategy had worked. When Antony had returned to Alexandria after their reunion in Antioch,
she had married him in a grand ceremony in the style of her ancestors. Except that this time, it was no brother or cousin
or fat Ptolemy at her side, but Rome’s greatest general. The Alexandrians celebrated wildly after the ceremony, matching the
queen’s new husband’s Dionysian capacity for wine goblet for goblet. The wealthy sent Antony fabulous gifts of gold, jewels,
statues, and manuscripts of his favorite poets and philosophers. The poor
offered him the tops of their heads in solicitous devotion. They loved Antony anyway, ever since he had marched Gabinius’s
army into Egypt twenty-one years ago to restore Kleopatra’s father. They remembered that he had convinced the king to spare
many of the Egyptian rebels, and was merciful in victory. For all that, Kleopatra could not be certain that her subjects would
be behind his war effort, especially since she would have to tax certain goods and luxuries if she intended to finance it
through to total victory. Therefore, he must be, if not king, then at least the queen’s consort, a king of sorts who was perceived
as fighting as much for Egyptian interests as the interests of Rome. Kleopatra believed that her marriage to him, as well
as his public acceptance of their children, would make a convincing case for this.

She was right. After the marriage ceremony, the new names of their twins were announced-Alexander Helios and Kleopatra Selene,
Brother Sun, Sister Moon-and the subjects cheered wildly. The meaning was not lost on anyone, for the boy, Alexander, was
not only the namesake of the greatest king who ever lived, but now he was also Ra, the Sun itself, the divine force that made
crops grow, that warmed the cities and the fields, that obliterated the frightful dark chill of Night and illuminated the
earth. Kleopatra Selene carried the weight of her mother’s name and that of all Queen Kleopatras who came before her. She
was also the moon goddess, the force that shed light into the dark night and was keeper of all the mysteries of the world.
Antony’s enemy, the Parthian king, called himself Brother of the Sun and Moon. When Kleopatra got the idea to enhance the
children’s names, she and Antony had laughed at how their children’s new monikers usurped that power and bested it.

After the celebrations, when they were alone, Antony made a great ceremony of his own giving her his wedding gift, a strand
of gigantic creamy pearls from the Caspian Sea that hung to her navel. She claimed she had never seen pearls so large, and
he said that none existed, that oysters had obeyed his command to mold themselves into pearls worthy of a goddess’s neck.
He demanded to see them as he had imagined them on her when he bought them. She asked him to place them around her neck, but
he would not do so, and made her guess how he wished her to model them. She teased him with different coiffures and gowns
until he scolded that she was not quite as smart as she appeared. Only
then did she slowly let her dress fall to the ground. She stepped out of it, and he placed the jewelry over her bare neck.
He ran his fingers down both strands all the way to her belly and stopped there. He cupped her stomach in his hands.

“Again?” he asked, smiling, disbelieving.

“Yes,” she answered.

He pulled the pins out of her hair and smoothed it around her shoulders. “You are as fertile as the Nile itself, Mother Egypt,”
he laughed. He picked her up, put her on the bed, and made gentle love to her-not his normal way, but out of fear and respect
for the baby growing inside. Every night thereafter, he would put his lips to her stomach and talk to the baby, apologizing
that he would be off to war when the little creature came into the world. He told the baby stories of gods and goddesses,
of war, and, in case it was a boy, he said, dirty stories of nightlong orgies with prostitutes. “A man must know these things,”
he told Kleopatra.

“And what if it is a girl?”

“Then she will be haughty like her mother and turn a deaf ear to me.”

Kleopatra did not turn a deaf ear to Antony’s stories but let them be a catalyst to her own desire-and her desire for this
man never ceased. She did not let his four-year absence fester like a wound but let it heal in the passion of their reunion.
She had even consulted Hephaestion, though he was not one to discuss personal matters. But this matter transcended her heart;
her kingdom and the future of her children depended on Antony’s maintaining the level of trust with which she endowed him.

“I know that you consult me as a political adviser and not a philosopher, Your Majesty,” the eunuch answered. “But I believe
that the life you are making with the Imperator is a calculated risk with acceptable odds in your favor. Besides, Your Majesty
seems, how shall I say it? Happy?”

She
was
happy, happier than she’d ever been. Everything contributed to her growing affection for Antony: his playfulness with his
young children; his loyalty to anyone to whom he gave his word, be it a fine shoemaker whose station he promised to improve
or king of a nation; his light sense of humor as he sped through his day readying the very high-

est and the very lowest of his men for war; and finally, his unwavering vision of an empire that united all the peoples of
the world.

Before he set out on his long march to Parthia, he and Kleopatra issued a coin with both their images. On one side, it was
dated in the traditional way, the Fifteenth Regnal Year of Queen Kleopatra, and on the other side, it was dated the Year One.
It was meant to signal the first year of a Golden Age of Joint Rulership between the Egyptian queen, who was the dynastic
successor of Alexander, and the Roman general, who was the king’s spiritual scion.

“The foundation is laid, my darling,” Kleopatra said when they were shown the impression of the coin for approval before it
went to the Royal Mint. “Our empire will celebrate the highest and best in all the civilizations of the world.”

They explained it to their children, not expecting the small ones to understand, but to begin to make them see that they were
to be a crucial part of something that was greater and bolder and more beautiful and important than themselves. Antyllus accepted
everything that was said with hawklike interest, but Caesarion, the philosopher, asked Antony if he thought it would always
be necessary to go to war to make peace.

“The strong do as they will while the weak suffer what they must. A famous expression, one that Caesar used to say often.
But it is no less true for its overuse. If we are weak, we have no power. The only way not to be weak is to be the very strongest.
And there will always be those who wish to take that power from us. So that the only way to maintain the peace that we hold
paramount is by maintaining absolute and resolute strength. Julius Caesar also used to say that there simply must be a master.
Otherwise there is chaos. Rome’s recent history is the most blatant example of his wisdom.”

“And why is it that we are to be the masters?” Caesarion asked, his twelve-year-old face as worried-looking as an old man’s.

“Because our bloodlines and our experience give us the divine right,” Kleopatra answered. “Because we uphold the principles
of Alexander that will make the world and all its inhabitants great: harmony among nations, respect for all the gods and religions
and people of the world, devotion to the Greek ideals of Knowledge, Virtue, Science, and Beauty.”

“And what will we do to make that the law of the land?”

Kleopatra wondered if Antony felt as she did, that the boy was like a tutor who was testing his star pupils. Antony answered:
“A few years ago I held a conference with as many of the leaders of the world as I could assemble. And I determined at that
time that the best and most humane system of administration in the territories of the Roman empire under my jurisdiction was
to continue to allow the people to govern themselves. Instead of imposing a Roman governor upon them-a man whose own greed
might incite him to invoke hardship on the native people-I gave the power back to the existing governments. Now they have
more incentive to remain loyal to me, and not to raise nasty rebellions behind my back. And yet they have all the force of
my power behind them should they require it.”

“It’s a brilliant system,” Kleopatra added, “and perfectly faithful to the ways of Alexander.”

“I see, Father,” Caesarion said. He had asked permission to call the Imperator his father, and Antony had replied that he
would be honored if the son of the man whom he himself called father called him such. “And what of the other man who calls
himself Caesar? Will he wish to govern this empire with us?”

Antony and Kleopatra exchanged looks. They had agreed not to frighten their children with anxieties over the duplicitous Octavian.
Besides, they hoped that when they had defeated the Parthians and had gained control of the land from the River Indus to the
western borders of Egypt, from the Sudan to the northern territories of Greece and the Balkans, that Octavian would begin
to see the wisdom in cooperating with them.

“He will be in charge of the city of Rome and the Italian lands, and those countries on the western side of the Mediterranean
Sea,” Antony replied. “Those are very far away and need a closer hand to govern them. We shall live here in Alexandria and
take care of the east.”

“I shall strive to make myself a worthy heir to your efforts, sir,” Caesarion said. Kleopatra smiled; it was the sort of thing
she would have said to her father, in the same overly earnest tone.

“Oh, come here, boy,” said Antony, grabbing the thin young man and ruffling his hair. “You are far too serious for your tender
years. Why don’t you go have some fun for a change?”

“I’d like to go to war with you, sir,” Caesarion said, straightening his chiton. “I would like to be there when you take the
ancient city of Phraaspa, where the Parthians hide their national treasure!”

“In due time,” the Imperator replied. “In due time, all my sons will be called upon to serve with me. And at that time, and
that time only, will they truly be able to call themselves men.”

“You won’t be prejudiced against me, sir, because I am not so fit for soldiery as my brother?” Caesarion said, looking at
the larger, more muscular Antyllus. “He defeats me every day at swordsmanship and in races. If I weren’t his brother, he would
kill me!”

“Let me tell you something, my boy,” Antony said. “Never was there a finer, fiercer man in battle than your father. And never
was there a thinner and less healthy man. Caesar taught us the greatest lesson of war-that a man’s finest weapon is his mind.
You have inherited that mind, and like him, you will learn how to use your physical characteristics to your advantage. I am
sure of it.”