Pharaoh (57 page)

The day is almost over but the funeral procession has yet to end. It is longer than a mile, he is told, and is led by the
entire priesthood of Dionysus. Maenads are trailing the priests, beating their breasts and singing the name of the god and
the name of Antony. Kleopatra, in the blood-red robes of Isis, rides on Antony’s own chariot, driven by an unknown man wearing
the mask of Osiris. Even in defeat, she does not tire of representing the two of them as Egypt’s greatest divinities. Arius
tells Octavian the meaning she conveys: Osiris is the true and original king of Egypt, the husband of Isis; the god who founded
and was benefactor of the great cities of the eastern lands; the god who was murdered by his evil brother and was resurrected
by Isis’s own hand. Yes, Octavian says in reply. Her meaning is most clear to me. But that is hardly all. Antony’s golden
coffin follows the chariot, drawn by his two favorite white horses, and it is said that when Antony’s soldiers see the Imperator’s
steeds, they weep openly. The entire affair is a parade of tears, the sobbing Alexandrians falling in with the procession
and following the body all the way to the mausoleum by the sea. The queen, by all accounts, is as pale as milk, a regal pharaoh,
and does not shed a tear, but plays the role of silent, suffering widow without a flaw in her performance.

The day after the funeral, the petitions begin flowing in.
Save the queen. Save the Royal Family. Have mercy on the queen. Here is money in exchange for the queen’s life, for her continued
right to sit upon the throne, for the safety of her children.
In the gods’ names, some fool sends two thousand talents in exchange for not defacing her statues, arguing that she had merely
been the pawn of Antony.

Octavian sits on Kleopatra’s bed, the sharp beak of the Ptolemaic eagle pointing down at him. How did she sleep in this room
without fear that an earthquake would shake the eagle from his perch and spear her in the gut? Yet the mattress is the largest
he has ever seen and the softest upon which he has lain. Her quilts are of the finest white silks,
and the linens fragrant from careful laundering. He thinks of Antony,
brazen
enough to make love on this bed where kings and queens have slept, fearless of the beast above-and of the woman beneath him.

Disconcerted, he walks to the window, which opens out to the Royal Harbor. Even in summer’s stillness, the air is fresh. The
Royal Barge with the golden prow, much discussed in Roman gossip, is not within view. He will track it down in the next few
days and perhaps take a short cruise down the Nile, just as his uncle had done, before returning to Rome.

The Kleopatra Question weighs heavily on his mind, much as the Egyptian Question has troubled the Roman senate for a century.
What to do with her and with this nation so rich that he would never entrust its government to any of his colleagues? Every
Roman consul, every member of the senate, has always known that sending even the most honest among them to be the governor
of Egypt was an open invitation to corruption. Look how its riches, embodied in its extravagant queen, had seduced both Caesar
and Antony. How might he, Octavian, be different?

He will never set eyes upon her, that much is certain. No matter how many letters and gifts she sends begging him to sit down
and negotiate with her. No matter how many rich Greeks and Egyptians and eastern princes intercede on her behalf. She is a
Medusa-lay eyes on her and your life is over. She does not turn men to stone, but into her slaves. Caesar used to say,
Someday you will meet her, nephew. Her voice in any of the tongues she speaks is music to a man’s ear.
It is music he will never consent to hear. The woman is dangerous, empowered by some demon goddess, and further enriched
by her money and the position of her nation upon the earth. The perfect gateway from east to west. The natural intersection
of the world’s trade routes. The combination of her resources and her womanly gifts is irresistible. Though she is no longer
young, she had Antony bewitched until the last. And she still has her subjects in her thrall. He will not risk himself under
such circumstances.

But what to do with her? Now that he has her money, he has no further need to keep her alive. But what would the reaction
be to executing a woman? Unthinkable. Her golden statue still stands in the temple of Venus where his uncle had placed it.
Still there are Romans in the city, in the senate, who sing her praises, who talk of her intelligence and gen-

erosity and of her beauty and stateliness. In Alexandria, the letters he receives accent her great love of her people; her
queenly benevolence; her illustrious lineage. Even the king of Media is sending gifts in exchange for kindness to the queen.
Kleopatra has already destroyed two great Roman men. He will not be the third, and if he has her executed or condemned in
any way, her death would surely bring him down. Maybe not immediately, but eventually.

What to do, though? Risking her continuing rule is out of the question. In time, she would just find another man, some fat
eastern king with a formidable military and treasury, and seek her revenge upon him. Artavasdes of Media is probably a candidate.
And there are others who would prefer conspiracy with an Egyptian queen to domination by himself. Mithridates, that old enemy
of Rome, had fathered a hundred bastard sons, all with money and armies now, each holding sway. Kleopatra might align with
any one of them, or marry her daughter off to them in exchange for their armies.

He has kept Antony’s letter rolled up in the pocket of his cloak. He reads it one more time, feeling the disdain rise. What
arrogance! First, sending a missive that equates himself with Herakles, and then having the audacity to remind Octavian of
the sorry fate the poet Euripides gave to the mythical king who did not shelter Herakles’ offspring. A double effrontery!
Pity the fools who love the words of poets and playwrights more than the cold, hard facts of reality. As if Octavian would
be stupid enough to put a child of Antony on the Egyptian throne when he would not trust even the most loyal of his men with
the riches of that kingdom. Why, he might not even trust Agrippa in such circumstances, and Agrippa has already shown his
loyalty a million times over. Any of Antony’s children’s faces would soon bloom into Antony’s likeness and remind any number
of people of Antony’s ambitions.

Did Antony expect him to be that naive? Or to demonstrate even more naiveté and name king the boy who claims to be the only
son of Julius Caesar? Octavian does not even believe that the creature is Caesar’s son, so he will not show him any courtesies
that he might extend to an actual blood relative. Kleopatra could easily have become impregnated by another and passed the
child off to Caesar as his. Caesar had been so troubled by his lack of a male heir. Kleopatra is conniving enough to have
arranged the whole thing. But the boy has been told from birth
that the blood of Caesar flows in his veins, along with the blood of Alexander and the Ptolemies, and the gods, and whoever
else Kleopatra could think of to make him more illustrious. Would such a boy rule with Octavian as his regent? Only until
either he or one of his associates got the idea to use his alleged lineage to raise an army.

There is simply no way to honor the queen’s requests; no way to allow her to go into exile in a foreign land, and no way to
let her children-living reminders of her and Antony-to retain their kingdom. But she will never tire of asking, and already
the entreaties are becoming tedious.

Perhaps he might have her secretly killed, an assassination with a prearranged culprit. He searches his mind for a way to
arrange this, but no one save himself wants her dead. She has lost the war, and all of her allies have come over to him. She
has pleaded for peace. She is imprisoned, and even worse, ill with a fever from lacerating herself in grief over Antony’s
death. There is no one whom he might credibly blame. It would always come straight back to him. There is no sense in taking
a risk and sanctioning some feeble plan that would come back to haunt him. Oh, it was tiring, this mental energy spent on
the issue of the queen and her family. But there has to be a way to get rid of her with no consequences to himself. He is
learning to be a patient man. He will wait. Surely, a satisfactory alternative to letting Kleopatra live will occur to him.

“It is very painful to receive the son of an old friend in this condition, dear Cornelius.” Kleopatra pulls her dressing gown
over her chest, hiding the inflamed blotches that wound once-perfect skin. She worries that despite the poultices applied
by the physician Olympus, the infection will leave scars across her breasts, ugly tears that look as if she has been mauled
by a wild animal. That animal is herself, a lonely caged beast whose mate has perished and whose children remain hidden from
her. She has made herself ill, or circumstances have made her ill; she has trouble deciding which, for she who is unused to
illness of any kind both resents her body for its betrayal and blames the creature who has taken over her city, her country,
her very chambers.

“Who would not become ill in such circumstances?” Charmion has asked again and again, trying to relieve Kleopatra of the self-inflicted
anger. And Kleopatra always has the same answer-Julius Caesar. Why can she not better emulate her mentor? She whispers to
him late at night when she is alone and unable to sleep, but his voice is thin. Perhaps he is angry or jealous because she
talks to him about Antony.

“Caesar had the dropping sickness,” Charmion counters.

“Yes, but it did not destroy him.”

She is under house arrest, relegated to a room in the palace to which she once assigned lesser guests. She sent a letter requesting
her personal belongings, but only one appeared-a golden throne with eagle-clawed legs, sent, she believes, as a mockery of
her situation. As if to defy her to sit upon it in her wretched condition. The monster sleeps in her bed, dines at her table,
commands her staff, bathes in her marble tub. Selene and Philip, she is told, remain on the island with the crones, but they,
too, are under guard. She has asked numerous times to see them and has been refused. In time, she is told. Now she does not
want them to see her, not like this. She has heard nothing from Caesarion, and prays that he is making his way to India. No
matter what her fate, he has enough money to live for the rest of his life however he pleases. Alexander should be well on
his way to Media. Antyllus has taken sanctuary in the Mouseion, and Kleopatra assumes that Octavian will take the boy back
to Rome to live with Antonys relatives. These are her assumptions, patched together with the small bits of information that
slip into her room with her meals, none of which she can eat. She has not taken food since she heard that Hephaestion, offered
his life in exchange for serving Octavian, replied that the suggestion was beneath his dignity and was put to death. She herself
is teetering between choosing to live or to die, and Charmion knows this. She tears tiny bits of food with her fingers and
tries to put them in Kleopatras mouth as she did when the queen was a child. And, as if that stubborn child has returned to
take over the queen’s body, the food is met by clenched lips.

Kleopatra cannot decide if the fate of her children will be a happier one if she lives or if she dies. She receives no answer
to her requests to know if they will be allowed to inherit the throne, to know if they will even be allowed to remain in the
country. She has made the ultimate
offer in a letter sent two days ago-my life in exchange for the children inheriting the throne. To this, she has had no reply

And here is Cornelius Dolabella, the son of the man whom Caesar had admired and Antony had not. Dolabella the father was a
charming profligate, perhaps too much like Antony himself, whom the latter had accused of committing adultery with his wife,
Antonia. Caesar, always one to gossip, had told Kleopatra that Antony made up the charges because he despised Dolabella, and
because he wanted to get rid of Antonia so he could finally marry his longtime lover, Fulvia, while she was widowed.

Dolabella the son looks to be the handsome scoundrel his father was, a man who loved Caesar, deserted him in death, and then
found his way back to Caesar’s cause, falling on his sword rather than being captured by Caesar’s assassins. Young Dolabella
had fought with Antony against Octavian, so the only way he is standing here, head still connected to body, is if he is as
adept as his father had been in changing loyalties. He must have declared fully and unequivocally for Octavian, so that whatever
he says will be a message. Undoubtedly, he has been carefully selected for this mission.

She intends to meet his deceptions with her own dissembling, but Kleopatra can barely meet the son’s eyes without crying.
He is perhaps thirty years of age, and until a few days ago, she would have passed for his contemporary. Now she cannot look
into a mirror. Her face is flushed with fever scattering a web of tiny red veins over her smooth cheeks; her eyes, swollen
slits, looking terribly like her father’s after he had taken ill. She has lost weight, and her long, queenly neck is scrawny
and chickenlike. Her hands, only weeks before the same as in her youth, are lined with waterways of thick blue blood vessels,
the skin cracked from fever’s dehydration.