Pharaoh (6 page)

Kleopatra put her hand over her belly. It was no larger than it had been a month ago, but now she felt a new energy stirring
inside. Her hand tingled as she stroked the smooth skin. The muscles were so firm that she worried that her womb would be
too tough to house a tender baby. Would they give way when the child started to grow inside her? She would rub creams and
ointments into her skin and coax the muscles to stretch as much as they could to make room for the child, the new emperor.

Kleopatra lay back down on her bed, reconciled to spending the day indoors. It seemed to her that protecting herself from
falling off her horse in the heat of a battle, or from the knife of one of her brother’s assassins, was the very least she
could do while the future of the world nestled quietly inside her womb.

Arsinoe lacked Berenike’s height, which was a problem. Berenike had been as tall as most men, if not taller, and she had not
had these infernal large breasts that were good for keeping the attentions of men but got in the way of shooting. Still, when
Arsinoe pulled back the bow, its string cutting through the leather glove and into her fingers, she saw the target as if it
were the only object in the world. In that moment she was not a human at all but an isosceles triangle of bow, arrow, and
princess, with the arrow in a straight line to infinity-only infinity was cut short by the black target before her. She released,
falling forward slightly, easily hitting her mark. It would have been easier if she did not have to hold her bow six inches
from her chest, diminishing the strength with which she fired. But she had slapped her right breast many a time to the point
of bruising, and she did not want to suffer the injury again. It was not form that mattered in the end, but the completion
of one’s intention.

Ganymedes handed her another arrow. He was slim for a eunuch, probably because he had trained in the military from early boyhood
and kept up a strict regimen of swordsmanship and exercise at the gymnasium. He was young still, perhaps thirty, and he wore
his hair long and curly like the Greek boys of earlier times whose lovers immortalized them in statuary. He had no facial
hair save eyebrows, and was fair enough to be called effeminate. To assume that his character followed suit would have been
an unfortunate mistake.

Arsinoe thought him rather beautiful, far more attractive than her pudgy brother. Every night that horrible creature, the
image of their late father, came to her room, and she rolled up her nightshirt and let him suck her nipples and rub against
her until he spilled his filthy seed all over her thighs. Then he would fall asleep and she would clean her legs and pray
to the gods to kill him, until, mumbling prayers to the underworld, she drifted off into fitful dreams. But he was king, and
if he were to die a sudden and mysterious death, the little one would probably be no better. Arsinoe prayed that Ptolemy the
Younger would stay long in the nursery, that she would not have to let more than one brother at a time suckle her breasts
and feel between her thighs. There was no ridding herself of either of them, at least not yet. Berenike would have slain the
elder one in his sleep or castrated him, dealing with the consequences later, but Berenike had been executed because of such
impul
sive moves. At least now Pothinus was dead, and if Arsinoe decided that she could no longer bear her brother’s nocturnal visits
or his silly outbursts in which he pretended to rule the nation, the absence of the eunuch would make it easier to get rid
of the boy king. As it was, the boy’s outrage over the execution kept him ranting without cessation, and though he was slightly
less interested in making Arsinoe play with his penis, he still relied on her day and night to be the audience to his tirades.

Kleopatra was her biggest problem. But by bedding down with the old Roman general, something she had probably dreamed about
since girlhood, her older sister was sabotaging herself and committing political suicide, thus creating one less impediment
to Arsinoe’s rule. The mob would undoubtedly drag Kleopatra out of the palace and slay her in the streets. She had been a
Roman-lover like their father since she was a small child. When she was away with the now-dead king in Rome, bribing those
monsters to put them back on the throne, Arsinoe and Berenike would make puppets out of their images, shooting them with arrows
until it looked like the Parthian army had come through and emptied their whole pouches into the effigies. Then the two princesses
would fall on the grass and laugh until they were sick to their stomachs. Berenike would wait until Arsinoe had no breath
left in her body. Then she would cover her with kisses and touch her in all the secret and wonderful places that their idiot
brother seemed incapable of finding. Arsinoe would lie in reverie until Berenike got bored and went to her grown-up women.
She missed Berenike terribly, though she would like to do those same things now with a man. Not someone disgusting like her
brother or the eunuch or the elderly Caesar, but one of the young soldiers who stood guard over the royals, one who had a
lean, strong body and handsome eyes. She saw no chance of this at present. She was closely watched day and night. Even in
the future, when she would finally escape to head her army, she would still be expected to remain chaste until she chose a
husband. It would have to be that way to preserve the monarchy, unless she, too, chose to sell herself out to another creepy
Roman with lupine teeth. She had spurned the advances of the snake, General Achillas, though he was handsome almost beyond
compare. When he approached her and suggested an alliance based on sex in exchange for his protection, she felt the spirit
of Berenike rise
up inside her and she slapped him across the face. “I shall leave you to your brother’s charms, then,” he replied, and she
knew that if she did not act first, he would eventually make her pay for what she had done. So she made a plan.

She would choose the next king-not one of her brothers, not a conniving military man like Achillas who sought only power,
but some beautiful Greek prince like Seleucus, the handsome Graeco-Syrian whom Berenike had chosen and who had died in battle
against the Romans. Together, and in memory of Berenike and all that she stood for, he and Arsinoe would break this ridiculous
custom of brother-and-sister marriages that kept the entire world laughing at them and their bizarre ways. Kleopatra only
thought
she was exercising her will and having it her own way. She was merely a Roman’s whore, and if that’s not how she saw herself,
then she was not being realistic. Arsinoe would be different.

Arsinoe placed the proffered arrow into her bow and pulled back with all her might until her arm quivered. The eunuch came
behind her and placed his arms over hers as if helping with her form. He took the weight of the stance from her, and she felt
herself relax, only to tense again from having a beautiful man, even if he was a castrated one, embracing her from behind.
He whispered, “The uniform of one of the Roman pipe-boys will be in the trunk in your chamber. At the hour of midnight, put
it on and be prepared to leave.” Arsinoe’s bow arm started to shake again. “You will not be alone,” he said. She felt him
pull her arm back until it hurt.

“Release,” he ordered, and the two of them let go at the same moment and hit their mark.

Kleopatra watched the spider’s tiny jaws devour the leg of some long-dead insect. She could not discern what the thing had
been, so crumpled and distorted were its small remains. She had never observed a spider’s activities from this angle at this
proximity, and she found herself mesmerized by the creature’s persistent, rhythmic chewing. She was grateful for her acute
eyesight. The spider was perched upon his elongated legs, negotiating his bulbous body this way and that so that his
repast need not be disturbed when the dead thing shifted. He would not know impatience, Kleopatra thought, admiring the way
he kept coming at his prey one way and another without any acknowledgment of discouragement or fatigue.

Caesar’s long legs were stretched out in front of him, feet crossed at the ankles. Ptolemy the Elder sat opposite him, twisting
a fold of his linen robe with both his hands. Kleopatra completed the triangle, sitting adjacent to the two men, continuing
to watch the spider gobble his victim on the corner of her brother’s chair while he sat unaware of the arachnid’s valiant
efforts inches from his arm.

The war-for now they were clearly at war, but with and against whom was still slightly unclear-had gone on for weeks, with
Caesar waiting patiently for reinforcements to arrive. He was certain that he would not be disappointed, despite some messages
from Rome’s eastern client kingdoms that few Roman troops could be spared because the Parthians would not let up in their
attacks on Syria. Their best hope for reinforcements lay with Antipater of Judaea. “Pompey had such trouble with those Jewish
warriors,” Caesar had said earlier that morning. “They
resisted
him and frustrated him terribly. He repaid them by forcing them to side with him and against me in this recent war. I believe
they will not let me down this time. After all, they do need to make amends.”

“I wonder if they are a different race from the Jews with whom we have lived in peace here in Alexandria for so many hundreds
of years,” she had asked, amazed at her arch tone. “They are almost thirty percent of our population. Perhaps we know better
how to
embrace.
And to think we have done so without the wisdom of your Posidonius.”

Caesar did not argue with her; he never did. She could not bait him into a good Greek-style dialogue. He treated her as if
she were a precocious child whose sarcasm amused him in his dotage. That’s one way of diminishing my power over him, she thought.
She knew that despite the fact that he did not exhibit the typical male ferocity in bed, he took great pleasure in coming
to her every night for lovemaking, which was followed by a long conversation until they fell asleep, naked, she on her back,
he curled about her, his breath on her forehead like a soft wind.

They were able to spend lengthy amounts of time together because
General Achillas had kept with his strategy of enforcing the siege on the palace quarter, attacking Caesar’s troops if they
attempted to venture beyond the barricades. It was only a matter of time before he ordered an attack on the palace itself
The only thing preventing this, Caesar concluded, was the fact that the king was held hostage.

It was a little awkward, however, the king’s forces fighting against Caesar while Caesar both befriended and imprisoned him.
But Caesar did not allow him to think he was a hostage. He would take long walks with the boy through the palace gardens,
asking him for his opinions, and telling him that only together might they resolve this dreadful crisis. When Ptolemy was
so bold as to inquire over Caesar’s relations with his sister, Caesar simply looked at him and asked,
Are you not a man?
He declared to the boy that he was protector of all the children of the dead King Ptolemy Auletes, and not until harmony
reigned among the heirs themselves and the heirs and their subjects would he, Caesar, get a good night’s sleep. He was awfully
sorry that he had had to execute Pothinus, but the eunuch was damaging the situation by claiming that Caesar was no friend
to Egypt, that he intended to make Kleopatra its sole ruler, and worse, that he intended to annex Egypt to Rome’s empire and
institute a policy of extracting exorbitant taxes from its population. Ptolemy had reluctantly accepted Caesar’s action, and
had almost stopped trying his sister’s patience by complaining about it.

Caesar, too, had made it plain to Kleopatra that she must reconcile with her brother. She did not know if he really meant
for this to happen, or if he had a larger plan that he would eventually reveal to her. She did apprehend that her bedroom
relations with Caesar did not figure into his political policies. She had once thought otherwise, but now she was forced to
sit in this room with her tedious brother and pretend anticipation of the day when the two of them might rule as king and
queen, brother and sister, husband and wife. The dictator of Rome had his own agenda, independent of hers. She did not believe
he would make concessions to her unless her ambitions were in accordance with his own. She could not figure if he was engaging
in a bit of political dissembling by pretending friendship with the king, or if he merely intended to dally with Kleopatra
until the war was over and he could safely return to his larger business of conquering the world in the name of Rome. Would
he really leave her alone in Egypt with her brother? Didn’t
he know that as soon as his ships left the harbor, Ptolemy would have her assassinated and make Arsinoe his queen? And if
Caesar knew that reality but was ignoring it, would he think differently when he discovered Kleopatra’s secret?