The Memoirs of Cleopatra (109 page)

“I suppose the Romans would say I am just returning to my primitive, bestial origins,” I said. “Or perhaps I go to indulge in sensual orgies. And I must not forget my jewels.”

“You must not wear your silver into the water!” said Mardian. “It will tarnish.”

I laughed. “Not you, too! I was only joking. I have no intention of taking to the waters with jewelry on.”

I would take Charmian and Iras with me. They had little pleasure of late, and would benefit from the health-giving waters.

Now, looking back, I know it was the last time I was ever to sport and play in Egypt, a free creature, with no one watching. It had been so when I was a child, but less so lately. The court in Alexandria was not private, and was always a stage. But the waters were always waiting, patiently, and if I did not seek them it was my own fault. Later I would be unable to seek them, long for them as I may.

The thick stone columns of the grotto soared to the roof of the cave where the waters bubbled out. Inside it was hushed and solemn, and the sunlight, diffused and gentled with blue, washed over the walls. The warm water spilled out into a wider basin, and from it, over a lip into a still lower pool. Where it originated inside the cave it was hot, but in flowing out, and then into lower pools, it cooled to the same temperature as the body. So, when I submerged myself in it, I had no sense of my arms or legs ending and the water beginning; it was all one. I was floating and moving in a pillow that was myself.

How restorative it was!—although not at once. My nerves were so jangled that when I first lay in the water and began to move slowly through it, I was impatient to get to the other side. Reaching it, I clung to the rim of the pool, letting the gurgle of the outflow wash over me. What an odd smell it had; how smooth it made the skin feel. Back I went a second time, then a third. By the fourth or fifth time I felt calm, as if whatever suffused the water had penetrated below my skin, subtly soothing me. The water was tinged a blue-green, different from the ocean, different from the Nile. Whatever magic mineral was within it must impart that tint.

Back and forth, back and forth…the rhythm of it lulled my thoughts, letting them uncoil like a serpent coaxed from his basket.

Serpents…the temple of Re, and old Ipuwer…had the snakes been caged now? Or did they still play freely on his floor? And his prediction, about Egypt and its gods…long ago, the Kandake and the cobra. Her promise to stand by Egypt against Rome, her warnings about Rome…what would she think of Antony? Could there be a good Roman in her opinion, or were they all bad? Would she join us against Octavian, or just remain aloof?

Rome. Why could we not just secede from the empire? Why could the eastern half not just drift away on its own? Were we in the first stage of that? Perhaps, when all the smoke of talk and shield-thumping was done, that was just what would happen; the east and the west would float in opposite directions, just as Charmian and I passed one another in the cloudy water, lazily.

I would be just as happy to let it develop so, but Antony’s roots were Roman. And Caesar’s son—how could he ignore Rome? Still, it would be better to turn their faces away and forget it.

But birth and obligations would not permit it.

I sighed. Under the bright Egyptian sun, held in the loving waters, it all seemed very simple.

I lay on a shelf of warm rock beside the pool, and let myself be rubbed with thick towels, down to my fingertips and toes. Each muscle was kneaded, pressed, caressed. A lotion, as thin as milk and smelling of crushed lilies, was dribbled onto my back and then smoothed around my flanks and shoulders. I felt it was transforming me into ivory, whitening my skin and making it sleek. I sighed, and pillowed my face on my forearms. The delicious scent, the warmth, the relaxed tingle of my skin—all made me sleepy and suspended my thoughts.

When I awoke, it was twilight. The hours had disappeared, and I was restored.

There was only one thing missing from the mineral spring, and I vowed to supply it. We needed sunken columns in the water, so we could swim around them and rest there, like mermaids or sea nymphs.

In Alexandria my world had changed in only the few days I had been away. A letter had come from Antony: Octavian had replied to his charges, refuting them all. It was a stinging rebuke and an open challenge.

I stared at the letter, blinking. So. It had begun. Octavian moved swiftly, decisively, once he made up his mind. He was casting Antony and the mask of the Triumvirate aside; he was strong enough now not to need them to hide behind.

How fortuitous that I had already built the extra hundred ships!

Blue, blue, blue—as brilliant and deep in color as sapphires, the sea around Ephesus gleamed in the sun. And on it rode my fleet, its tall masts reflecting brokenly in the waves, its gilded sterns and bronze rams coating the water in reflected metal. Like an army, which ranged from generals to foot soldiers, the ships under my command went from the heights of my flagship, the
Antonia
(what else?), to low Liburnian galleys whose oarports barely cleared the water. I had left no gaps in the fleet, no size or type unrepresented. It must prevail; I could leave nothing to chance.

The sea, and ships—once again they loomed very large in my life. Once again they carried more than my person on them, they carried my fate.

There were two hundred of them, and Antony was rounding up more from everywhere: the remnants of the old fleet of Sextus, the seventy ships returned by Octavian, the ships of Rhodes, Crete, and the Roman squadrons stationed at Cyprus.

“It will be the largest fleet ever assembled!” Antony said in wonder, as he shaded his eyes and, standing at the harbor of Ephesus, saw the ships riding at anchor, awaiting his inspection.

“Should we use it to take the offensive and attack Rome while Octavian is away?” It seemed a perfect opportunity. Rome was unguarded, its would-be master far away in Illyria, the people still undecided about him. Antony had many supporters there. If we sailed, and landed with a large army…

“No,” said Antony decisively. “The sailing season is past.”

“Yet ships sail even in winter—sail, and reach their goals, too. For such a prize, it might be worth the risk.” Rome was there, a luscious red apple, hanging heavy on its bough, awaiting a hand bold enough to snatch it.

“What is my justification?” he asked. “War has not been declared.”

“Who shall decide when it is declared? You—or Octavian?”

“My troops have not yet arrived,” he said. “Canidius has not come with the sixteen legions, and I am awaiting another seven from Macedonia. The client kings are only just now on their way here. All I have is a small force.”

“Could you not get a message to Canidius to hurry? Or to send the best legions on ahead?”

“The effort would be too patched together. All the ships are not even here.”

“You must move with speed. Strike swiftly with a small force, and they will count as many times their size with the element of surprise.”

I felt in my bones that now was the moment, uniquely presented to us almost as a gift. Genius was knowing when to grab.

But Antony shook his head. “I cannot invade Italy with foreign ships and soldiers. The whole land would unite against us.”

“What you mean is that you cannot invade Italy with me at your side.”

“Yes. That is precisely what I mean. It would not be tolerated—no, never. Unless you would consent to stay behind—”

“Impossible. I would have to be there from the beginning, else I would always be seen as a usurper.” What I could not say was that if he left me behind, it would be too easy for Octavian to offer him glowing terms if only he would disavow me. It had happened before. I hated myself for not trusting him, but he had such an innate desire to please people, and Octavian was so devious and persuasive.

“You will always be seen as that,” he said unhappily.

“After the fact, people may find me more palatable,” I said. “The truth is, they liked me well enough when I lived in Rome! No name-calling then; no talk about my being foreign. They knew I was more civilized and cultured than they were. Even Horace and Vergil came calling. They will do so again. But first the battle must be won!”

“It will be,” he insisted. “But I must wait for Octavian to come to me. He must be the aggressor. We will draw him away, far from his base of supplies. The farther, the weaker he will be. His vulnerability lies in his poverty. He cannot afford to pay his troops; his very army may collapse soon. He is desperate for money; he will have to disband his Illyria legions and make provision for them out of an empty treasury. Fighting a faraway war is the most expensive venture he can undertake. Just transporting the troops and providing for them in the field may be beyond him. They will mutiny, and at home there will be unrest.”

It was sound, and reasonable. But Octavian had a way of coming up with inspired, short-term solutions that bought him time.

“How far away do you plan to lure him? I won’t have him in Egypt!”

“Greece,” said Antony. “Greece is just over the line that divides our jurisdiction. He will have to cross the line to attack us, and that will make him clearly the aggressor.”

“Who cares about the legality? Everyone knows this is a civil war. What difference does it make who is labeled the aggressor? And who is to do the labeling?”

“The Senate,” he said. “I want to be seen as the innocent party.”

“After the battle is won or lost, the spineless Senate will say and do whatever the victor orders it to. It will declare Agrippa to be Helen of Troy if it’s told to. Forget the Senate, and concentrate on the battle!” Why could he not see the Senate for the powerless thing it was?

“We won’t attack,” he said stubbornly. “We will wait to be attacked. We will use our huge fleet to prevent Octavian from ferrying his troops across, and cut off supplies to the few survivors who manage to get here.”

“You surprise me,” I said. “You are a land general—the finest one living. To rely on the fleet is—unexpected. Agrippa is on the sea what you are on land; he may not tamely submit to the scene you have written for him.”

“He won’t have any choice,” said Antony. “He cannot change geography. The fact is that Italy is west of here, and he will have to cross the wide Ionian Sea to get within striking distance of us. And we will be waiting, fresh and fit. We can afford to wait, and let the damaged and demoralized enemy come to us.”

Waiting was not my favorite mode of action, or Antony’s. In some ways waiting was much more demanding than a quick strike, since it involved keeping an army motivated and in good condition through months of inactivity. And Antony’s army was now made up heavily of non-Romans, as a result of Octavian’s blocking his recruiting privileges in Italy. How loyal would they be to a Roman general? How fervently would they follow him? I did not like it. But I was overruled. I tried to tell myself that he had more experience in the field than anyone else, and that had to outweigh my misgivings.

At first he had been morose about Octavian, with the peculiar sadness that comes in feeling betrayed. The sudden personal attack had left him stunned. My arrival in Ephesus found him sunk in agitated gloom.

The beautiful city was lost on him. I found it to be most pleasing, with its formal harbor reception gates and broad street leading from the docks toward Mount Pion, where the city wrapped itself around the base. Lovely houses climbed up the slopes, and the section of the city that lay on the flat ground near the harbor had an impressive commercial agora near the theater, while the administrative center of the city was located higher up the mountain. Best of all were the fields surrounding it, uneven with craggy rocks and hollows, pierced with tall cypresses, their dark green almost a living black punctuating the landscape. And always there was the shining sea, shining with that glowing sunlight that reflects and diffuses here as in no other spot on earth. Islands and peninsulas swam in the magic water.

I would persuade him to go beyond the city walls with me and sit on the hillside, warmed by the moss on the rocks, and watch the clouds racing in the enormous sky, recorded in shadows on the changing sea.

Then he would forget his melancholy, losing himself in the hypnotic passage of patterns in the sky, soothed by the stillness unbroken except for the bells of goats foraging in the crags.

“Ah,” he said, taking my hand, “sometimes I think I would be happy in banishment—if I were in a place like this, with you beside me.”

We did not take enough time to look up at the sky as we went through our days. It is a common enough failing, but I wondered why. Why do we so persistently look down at our feet?

“I would not care to be banished,” I said. “Banishment means never to touch foot on your home shores again.”

“Perhaps we are too attached to home,” he said. “Perhaps it would be pleasing to rove forever.”

I was not happy to have left all the children behind for—how long? Banishment was not for me. I was too rooted in Egypt. Yet as I looked over at him, I knew he spoke the truth for himself. He was at heart an ordinary man who had been called to an extraordinary position, and sitting in the fields, looking at the sea and sky contented him well enough. Perhaps at base he simply did not desire to rule Rome—or desire it enough to make it come about.

To rule, to prevail, you had to want it above all else, to know that nothing less would satisfy. It was very bad when your rival felt that way and you did not.

“To rove happily, you must never look back on what you have left behind,” I finally said.

Ephesus was where his personal journey to power had started, when he came there after Philippi, flushed with success, being hailed as Dionysus for the first time. Now it had all come round again, and another beginning was beckoning. But for now he sat on the hill with the herds of goats and watched the clouds pass overhead.

One morning in Ephesus I had seen it: the imposing, eight-sided tomb that reared up beside the most heavily traveled street. Shoppers from the lower agora brushed by it, hugging their baskets to themselves, as did officials from the upper town, striding purposefully past. It seemed to partake of all the life around it: women rested on the steps circling its base, children played around it, and old men leaned their bent backs against its sides. “Meet me at the Octagon,” was a popular saying.

“What is this?” I had asked the magistrate showing me his city, but in some dreadful way I already knew. Its shape was too familiar—the octagon, with its round tower supported by columns and its crowning figure. I had seen it all my life, every day: the Lighthouse of Alexandria.

“It is a tomb, Most Exalted One,” my host said, smiling nervously.

I broke away from him and examined the carvings around its base. Mourning scenes: a young woman surrounded by friends, who were clearly grieved at her passing. In the background was a huge temple.

“And what is that?” I pointed at it, letting my fingers brush over the raised surface. Recently carved, too. The edges were still sharp.

“Why, it is the great Temple of Artemis, the magnificent, the wonder of the world! Have you not seen it? Oh, Majesty, I must take you there! And to think you have not gazed on it yet! Yes, we must—” He chattered on like a gushing fountain.

“Who is buried here?” Would he tell me the truth, or attempt to cover it up?

“It is—it is—a young woman,” he said, trying to sound vague.

“And a rich one, too, I see,” I said. “Perhaps her father was a magistrate? Or a wealthy merchant?”

“Uh…yes, that he was.” His head bobbed up and down.

“I suppose a king could be described as a magistrate, and a wealthy merchant,” I said. “For this is the daughter of Ptolemy, is it not? The princess Arsinoe? And this tomb recalls the Lighthouse of her native city.” My sister, sent to this tomb by my request.

Yes, one must want power, and want it above all else, in order to prevail. One must not quail at sending a sister to the executioner, if she has proved to be treacherously aiming for one’s throne. Antony was not capable of such ruthlessness—although he had done it at my bidding. It was he who had ordered her taken from the asylum at the temple and put to death—at my request.

Now, looking at her tomb, knowing that she lay inside it, imprisoned there in death, I felt both relief (in recognizing that she would unhesitatingly have done the same to me), and sorrow at what I had proved myself capable of doing. There was also regret for any life that is so short. She had been twenty-five.

“Yes, Majesty.” He hung his head, as if somehow it had been his doing.

“She was popular here?”

“We—yes, she was popular here.” He had given up trying to put another face on it.

“Beauty wins many friends,” I said lightly. People warmed to a pleasing face; they preferred a dishonest beauty to a trustworthy plain person. You can see it even in taverns; a comely hostess serving mediocre food has many customers. Especially if she is personable as well.

I trailed my hand along the polished stone.
Arsinoe was in there
. “Hail, and farewell, sister,” I said, so softly only the dead could have heard it.

That night, in the fine house we had been given on the slope leading up to the state agora, I was quiet. I tried to pass it off to Antony as weariness, and indeed I was very tired. I had had little time to put all the kingdom’s affairs in order and make provision for my absence after Antony’s summons came. Then the sea voyage, in late autumn, had been trying. The fact that Antony, with his perennial optimism, was standing on the brink of war against Octavian was a startling relief, but it had happened so suddenly. I felt I had to hurry to him and bolster his resolve before he changed his mind or talked himself out of it, making excuses for Octavian again. But it had left me exhausted.

“What is it, my love?” Antony had asked, glancing up from his papers to see me staring uncharacteristically out into space.

“I am tired,” I said. “I think I will go to bed early.”

“Yes, I am sure you are tired. Such a journey, at this time of year! I told you, you need not come….”

“As if I would have stayed away.” I reached up and brushed away the hair falling over my forehead. Even that seemed a vast effort.

My feet were propped up on a footstool, and Antony came over to me and took off my sandals. He started rubbing my feet.

“Sometimes this will wake you up,” he said. “It sends the blood back into your head.”

At that very moment, Titius appeared in the room. Antony looked up at him, but kept holding my feet.

“Yes?” he said.

“Imperator, I have received the promise of King Amyntas of Galatia to contribute at least two thousand cavalry to our…effort,” he said smartly. But I saw his eyes fasten themselves on my feet, although he did not move his head.