Pharaoh (59 page)

She is in the middle of the first meal of the day when she hears the news. She has awakened refreshed and without fever for
the first time in many days. The sun is already bright, which means that she has slept long and hard, dreaming of her father
and the ritualistic dances to Dionysus that he used to perform for family and friends. In the dream, her father wears a transparent
sheath so that his audience watches his ample flesh as it dances with him. The audience is Kleopatra and a roomful of Roman
soldiers-some whom she recognizes as the dead from the battles in Greece. She does not wish to see them, for even though she
is a child, all
that has happened in her life has already passed. She tries to concentrate on her father’s agile movements as he sways his
large body in time with the pipes, but the Romans keep distracting her.
No one dances unless he is drunk, they
mock. Her father does not hear them and continues dancing as if in a
trance,
the false curls of his hairpiece shimmying down his back as if he were a young maiden. But she, a little girl of ten, is
all too aware of the ridicule. She looks for Antony, the only Roman who might make them understand that her father is not
drunk but reverent; not mocking the god but honoring him. But Antony is not there.

She shakes off the dream quickly, more quickly, she knows, than if Antony had appeared. She has already dreamed that he still
lived, and upon awakening, her sadness was so great that she took medication and went straight back to sleep hoping to find
him again. But this morning, her face is cool and her feet and hands are warm, sure signs that she has mended. Her chest is
ugly and bruised but not swollen. She calls for her breakfast and it is delivered not by Charmion but by some silent servant
whose name she does not know. She dismisses the girl and has taken the first bite of an orange when Charmion enters the chamber
and asks her to stop eating.

Still chewing the pulp, she is told that Charmion has been visited by the old philosopher, Philostratus, once a great lecturer
at the Mouseion, and now a bent-over fellow with a long white beard and a mind half gone. He has spent the morning with Arius,
who let it slip that the son of Julius Caesar and the elder son of Marcus Antonius have both been mysteriously murdered. By
whom, the philosopher could not say. But he had been told by Arius to deliver these two items to the queen: a moonstone worn
about the neck by Antyllus, and the medallion of Horus the falcon-god, which Caesarion wore always, even to sleep. Charmion
slips the items into Kleopatra’s hand, very cold against her skin as if they had long been removed from the warm flesh against
which they had once rested.

Kleopatra puts her hands to her mouth and vomits the small bits of her food. The remaining contents of her stomach quickly
follow. She is grateful to be ill again, to have the acid burn in her throat take away the pain in her heart. Charmion cleans
the mess from the queen’s hands and tray and tells her that she must collect herself. There is more. The old philosopher said
that Arius, a former tutor of mathematics, asked him to convey one equation to the queen’s lady: five minus two equals three.

“I asked him to
repeat
it, for he is half mad these days. And he did, three times,
angry
with me as if I were one of his students who had not studied his tables.”

Kleopatra pushes the quilts away from her legs. “We have very little time,” she says.

For once, Charmion does not question Kleopatra, does not spout the usual precautions over health. Health is no longer an issue.
She gives the queen her hand, helping her out of bed. Kleopatra is dizzy as she stands, and pauses a moment to shake off the
blackness that tries to take her over. “Get Iras right away.”

“Will you dress for mourning?”

“There is no time for that. I will have plenty of time to mourn when I am dead. But we must accomplish one final masquerade
before that happens.”

Charmion leaves without asking why she is being sent-a first in some thirty years. Alone, Kleopatra can review her choices:
She might keep herself alive to see the rest of her children die. She might continue to wait out Octavian on the chance that
he is not demonic enough to slaughter little children, nor stupid enough to parade a woman in chains before his fickle populace.
She might end her life and save her youngest three-perhaps. She realizes that she no longer has any guarantees for her actions.
What animal is as unpredictable as he? There is none; even the earth’s fiercest creatures act savagely only to save themselves.

So many have disappeared now, and she wonders if they are waiting for her to join them; if Antony, missing her, has petitioned
the gods to hurry their reunion. She cannot watch as more who are her life go to their deaths. With each death dies hope.
How many times has she said that hope is an expensive commodity, borrowing from the historian Thucydides? Until today, she
has not realized its cost.

The robes of Isis are heavier now that she has lost so much weight and strength, and she is relieved to be lying down in the
litter. The dress is of many colors-blood red like the sun in late afternoon, yellow as on a clear summer day, and white as
a winter moon-and its pleats fold
out from her like the rays in the crown of the sun-god Helios who lies fallen on the beach at Rhodes. The mantle alone must
weigh several pounds. Black, fringed, it hangs on her chest like a shield, embroidered at the hems with glittering moons and
stars that catch the flashes of light intruding into the dark carriage through heavy brocaded curtains. Everywhere on the
dress are fruits and flowers, the earth’s beautiful bounty made manifest by the grace of the goddess, the mother of the earth,
the queen of the moon, the daughter of the sky, the giver of life itself. When she stands, she must walk carefully to balance
the big bronze orb of the crown that sits on her head, hugged on either side by snakes wrapped round golden ears of corn.
But this is the final performance, and she will not falter at the end.

She has announced that she is making a last visit to the tomb of her husband before she is taken to Rome. The physician Olympus
reported to Octavian that the queen was too ill to walk and had to be carried to her final communion with Antony, lest her
weakened condition prevent future travel. Her small procession includes Charmion and Iras, and servants carrying decorations
for his grave-garlands, a goblet of his favorite wine to pour as a last libation, and baskets full of flowers and grapes to
lay on top of his gold sarcophagus. They follow her litter on foot, along with the ubiquitous Roman guard. She has heard that
Octavian laughs at her constant surveillance, saying that the queen must be quite satisfied now; that she always wanted a
Roman army at her side.

Her only regret is that she cannot take one last look at her city, and perhaps that is best. She is as weak-or as strong-as
Antony, who did not want to leave this life, despite that he had lost almost everything. Though she has been ill, she feels
her body on the mend, and she is incensed at the irony. She has lived only to die. Isn’t that the human condition? What has
been the point of it all? she asks herself in these last moments she will have to think. What is the point of so much suffering?
So much activity? So much effort that has resulted in the opposite of her intentions?

She remembers the voice of long-dead Demetrius-was he in her dream as her father danced for the Romans?-the philosopher who
tutored her for years at the Mouseion. It is not the outcome but the effort, he would say, reminding her that there was no
quantifiable sum of a human life, no way to measure Virtue, that elusive quality that
Socrates said could
never
be taught but was remembered by the soul. Has she lived the virtuous life? Demetrius used to tell her that a life of action
and not philosophy was her destiny. How right he had been. But was it possible to reconcile a virtuous life with a life of
action? That was a question she had neglected to ask. War, politics, rivalry, lust, love. She has spent her life in these
arenas. Wars, Socrates said, were undertaken for money, and for the concerns of the body. We are slaves of the body, and we
must acquire wealth to please it. The body keeps us enchained all through life and we must look forward to death so that we
might be finally free of the body’s demands. But Kleopatra cannot agree with the philosopher’s assessment. She did not go
to war to build wealth but to preserve what was left of the world’s beauty after it had been trampled and bled by Rome. Her
kingdom she tried to defend to honor her ancestors and to secure the power of her children. And if she might choose right
now whether to be relieved of the body’s concerns or to resurrect Antony and relive the body’s pleasures, she would choose
resurrection. She would choose to wrap her arms around her children rather than free herself from the responsibility of protecting
them. Perhaps death will be the great liberator the philosopher promised, but at this moment, Kleopatra is angry that she
must make an abrupt end to this body that might have gone on enjoying the sun on her face or the air through her hair as she
rides her horse in the mornings on the Nile’s marshy banks.

But if there is any hope-that damnable word again-that the three little ones will not have the same bloody fate as Caesarion
and Antyllus, she will happily trade the pleasures she has known for the mysteries of death.

She hears her name sounded outside in cries and whispers by the people. She is grateful that she cannot see the faces. They
have come to catch a final glimpse of their queen, for word of her long journey has spread to every quarter of the city. Little
do they know that it will be entirely different than the one they believe she will be making.

At the mausoleum, she insists that she be carried inside before she gets out of the litter. She does not want her dress to
give away her plans to the guard. She listens to the guard inspect the baskets of decorations and libations and offerings
for weapons, for instruments of death, and she holds her breath. Someone makes a joke about the plumpness of the
figs, and Iras invites him to try one, but he says that no, he only wishes to split one open and lick its insides, which he
does, lasciviously, because she hears his fellow soldiers snicker. Satisfied, they admit only her and Charmion and Iras. The
litter is put down by the bearers, and the baskets are placed on the ground, and the servants and guards leave, closing the
great doors behind them. Iras helps her out of the carriage, and she is dizzy and disoriented as she stands in the room where
she held the body of her bleeding, dying husband. The treasures have been removed and little remains but for the statues she
brought in to honor Antony in death, and the golden couch upon which he died.

In Antony’s death chamber, she smells the sweet, dying roses laid on his sarcophagus days before. She sweeps them aside so
that she might look at his visage molded in bronze. His arms are folded across his chest and cannot reach out to her. She
takes the bottle of wine she has brought for the occasion and pours it over the coffin. “Are you ready for me, my love? I
am coming to you, and I do not wish to catch you in a dalliance with Persephone or any of the Nereids or Muses who have caught
your eye in the next world. Like Hera, I am a jealous mistress.” She runs her fingers over his full lips, teasing them with
wine as she had done so many times, expecting the cold cast to turn into his warm receptive mouth and take her finger inside.
She wonders who will be waiting for her, and if, in the underworld, she will have to choose between Caesar and Antony. She
wonders if all of life’s trials are continued, or if the philosophers are correct and she will be free from worldly anxiety.
Ataraxia.

“We must hurry,” Charmion says. “You will see your husband soon enough.”

Yes, time is essential. It seems that every moment she breathes, the lives of Selene and Alexander and Philip are threatened.

Kleopatra is depending upon the skills boasted by Iras that he can handle a poisonous snake. She is dubious about this, yet
she has little choice but to believe that his fascination with Egyptian snake charmers led to this strange ability. She has
taken no chances and has a vial of fast-acting poison wound in the knot of hair at the nape of her neck. But even the physician
Olympus, consulted at the last minute, admitted that no death was as swift or as seemingly painless as the venom of a
cobra. “The Egyptian executioners used to administer the bite to the condemned,” he said, “but found it too merciful a death
for a criminal.” Olympus had treated the Royal Family since the birth of Caesarion, and she did not doubt his loyalty. Even
if he had agreed to join the roster of Octavian’s payroll, it would take some time for his heart to follow his pockets. He
promised her, with tears in his eyes, that she would feel “a sharp sting, at first unbearable, but quickly it turns into numbness.
I have seen victims laughing as if drunk, so there must be a pleasantness to the venom. Soon, your eyes will close, and you
will begin to dream, quickly slipping into the eternal dream of death.”