The Memoirs of Cleopatra (130 page)

“He did not relate this to you?” said Mardian.

“No.” He had probably felt there was nothing to relate. O Antony! “No, he said nothing.”

“What did he do, then?”

He looked at me. He kissed me. He said farewell.

I shrugged. “Muttered a lot of nonsense about living alone, watching for Octavian—” Now I felt tired, defeated. I, too, sought a safe place to lie down. I did not want to return to my rooms, where the children would come in, where Iras and Charmian would be. I understood how Antony felt, if only fleetingly. “Mardian—may I be your guest tonight?” I did not have to explain it to him.

“I would be honored,” he said. “It has long been prepared.”

As my chief state minister, his quarters rivaled mine in size and, I daresay, surpassed them in sumptuous appointments. He had an eye for beauty and the means to indulge it; the customs officials were well versed in his tastes, and whenever a cargo of Syrian pearl-inlaid tables, Indian camphorwood chests, or Coan silk bed-hangings put in, they invariably set aside a sample for him. The result was a series of rooms dripping with decoration, with no empty spot on wall, floor, or table. The only exception to this was his workroom, which was as spare as a hermit’s cell.

A hermit’s…as spare as Antony’s, now?

“I believe in keeping only the pertinent papers to hand,” he explained once. “All the rest of the clutter just confuses the mind.”

“How, then, do you live in all this?” I would have found it stifling. I must have space to breathe, and to rest my eyes.

“Ah, once outside the workroom, I find my senses need caressing,” he said.

He led me down a corridor, past rooms glittering with treasure like a merchant’s den, and to the very last chamber, a corner one that overlooked both the sea and the palace gardens. I could see my mausoleum from the window, and Isis’s temple, too, violet against dark blue in the deepening night. They made me shiver. There were the steps where Antony had walked away. Where was he now? I looked in vain for any movement in the shadows beneath the portico.

“Here, my dear, you may stay as long as you wish.” He indicated the chamber, its cushioned benches overflowing with embroidered throws, the enormous bed enveloped in filmy curtains.

“You know you are safe saying that, for I must be back in the audience chamber by morning,” I said. I reached up and touched his smooth cheek.

He laughed. I had always liked his laugh, and now found it as familiar a friend as he himself. “But you need not, if you do not wish to. I can attend to it.”

“I know that.” He had turned out to be that rarest of things, a cherished friend who was also the best person for a high position. “But I will be there, you know. I do not shirk.” I turned toward the bed. “You have provided so much here, I feel negligent in planning only to sleep.” My eye had caught the piles of scrolls, the paintings, the game boards of inlaid ebony, the musical instruments, all waiting for the guest.

“I can send a singer in to lull you to sleep,” he said. “I have a very fine one, from Lycia—”

“No. Silence will be sweeter,” I assured him. I waited a moment. “I went to Alexander’s tomb today,” I finally said. “Do you remember—?”

“When we first met there? Yes. You thought I was hogging him!” He laughed, that lovely laugh.

“Mardian, it was different today. He wasn’t different, but I was, the world was—never go back there!”

“Well, I haven’t been in many years. You know how it is—when you
live
someplace, you never see the famous sights, except when you’re a child and get taken there. I daresay—”

“No, I mean it! It was oppressive, frightening.” I wanted to explain it to him—or perhaps to myself.

“You’ve never been frightened of anything, as long as I’ve known you,” he said stoutly. “And now you say a tomb has unnerved you?”

“No, not the tomb itself, just…the end of things.” It was more difficult to put into words than I expected. “Don’t return there, I beg you.”

He shrugged. “I was not planning to.” His hand swept around the room. “Now, here, I have provided pillows stuffed with the down from baby swans’ necks….”

I lay on the bed, my head sinking into the plump pillows—sacrifice of the young swans—my view of the chamber misted by the thin blue silk curtains drawn around the bed. How secure I felt here, how protected by the layers and layers of luxury. Perhaps that was what they were for, to cushion Mardian against the outside world. Perhaps that is all money ultimately does—cushion us against the world, smooth out its rough texture for us.

To have a friend like Mardian at a time like this was a healing balm. I, like Antony, needed a restorative place of withdrawal, but I would not linger here. Just for tonight…just for tonight…Dear Mardian. He never failed me.

The shadows thrown by the three suspended oil lamps made patterns on the walls, and it was easy to see people in them, profiles, stories. The shades…the shades of Hades…how alive were they, what did they remember, what did they feel? I would soon know. Even to be a shadow on a wall, like these, was better than to be nothing. I did not want to be extinguished, did not want to die. Thinking about it so carefully ahead of time made it worse, but to be struck down suddenly was no better. As men we think, and garland our deaths with thoughts, like flowers bedecking a tomb. To be robbed of that opportunity is to die like a beast. Still…the beasts do not poison their last hours with morbid thoughts, so which is preferable?

Sleep was now lapping around me. I could feel the edges of my thoughts blurring; this long day was finally ending. Antony. My children. There was still so much to be done. But that was tomorrow. Tomorrow…

Sometime in the middle of the night, the wind rose and pushed past the fastened windows, stealing even into the corners and warmth of the bed. A winter storm—one of the last, for winter was waning. Hearing the sound of waves stirred to madness outside, I was again at Actium, again a prisoner of the water. I sat up, brushing aside the the curtains and letting the cold touch my skin.

The water. The water. That sound, the same inimitable sloshing that had surrounded me at all the crucial times of my life. The Alexandrian harbor, the muffled boat ride west to Caesar, the journeys to Tarsus and Antioch, and then Actium—all turning points, all somehow connected with water, with boats. How many more boats were waiting to decide my future? There was the boat on which I planned to send Caesarion to India, the last-stand battle against Octavian in the harbor, a riverboat to take my story south to Philae and Meroe…and possibly a boat to flee to safety, with Antony. More boats. More water. But there was one boat I would never board: a boat to Rome, as a prisoner. No, rather than board that boat, I would be on the one ferried by Charon, across the river Styx.

Fate by water. Death by water. How odd, for the Queen of Egypt, a desert country, to have her destiny decided, over and over again, by water.

I told the children that Antony was in Alexandria, but was “unwell”—a truthful enough statement. I had been told where he had located himself, in a small house on the west side of the harbor, and I knew that from his window he could see the lights of the palace, could see the royal harbor with the gilded ships riding at anchor. He apparently shuffled around during the day, keeping to himself, barely eating, spending long hours at the window, staring out to sea. He kept his sword always about him, and once again I had to awaken each day wondering if a sad-faced servant would approach the palace, saying,
I bear sad tidings….

His sarcophagus stood ready in the mausoleum; of pink Aswan granite, it matched mine. That is less portentous than it sounds, for mine had been waiting for years. More immediate than that was the growing pile of treasure heaped in the largest chamber of the marble-and-porphyry building. A large area had been smeared with pitch and carpeted with tinder, and on that a pyramid of cinnamon, pearls, lapis, and emeralds rose from a base of ivory tusks, gold ingots, and ebony bars. I had carefully overseen it, making sure that the treasures were ordered in such a way that the greatest number could be packed into the smallest space. They would burn, burst, melt, once the pitch was torched, and Octavian would be deprived of money equal to all his legions’ debt. I would use it to bargain for Caesarion’s throne, and, failing that, for the joy of seeing it elude Octavian’s grasping hands. It was not all of my treasure, but enough of it to give Octavian pause. Only a madman would not try to prevent its loss. And Octavian was no madman; he was a deal-making businessman.

In order to gain concessions, one has to have something to bargain with. It never failed to amaze me how many people—otherwise intelligent—fail to grasp this simple fact. They rely on sentiment, mercy, decency, when nothing but money or force will carry any weight. Well, we had lost the force at Actium, but we still commanded money.

“Now, pack those pearls tighter!” I ordered the workmen, who were pushing the pearls into bejeweled sacks and stacking the sacks onto the pyramid—a misshapen replica of the ones standing in the desert. “We want as many as possible!” This depleted almost my entire store of pearls: the prize ones from the Red Sea, the small ones from Britain, the oddly swollen and outsized ones from the seas beyond even India. They were vulnerable to heat, and would explode in a fire, sending slivers of iridescence all over the room. Once before I had invested my pearls in a desperate venture for Egypt—I smiled as I remembered the wager with Antony—and now they would serve again.

“Good!” I rubbed my hands together in approval. There was something fascinating in this projected, profligate destruction. Something grand. “And the emeralds?”

They indicated some sacks lying lower in the pile.

“Oh, we need more than that!” I said. Was that all? “Perhaps you will have to add turquoise to them to swell their ranks.” Yes, why not? Blue and green together. Earth and sky. Are we imitating nature? I laughed giddily.

Was this right? Was I becoming as unhinged as Antony, unstable in this high wind of misfortune and desperate stakes? Why was I taking such mad delight in this? It was more than just the contemplated thwarting of Octavian. Destruction, sacrifice, extravagant offerings to the gods who would doom us—it was a dizzying, intoxicating brew.

“Yes, add the turquoise!” I said. “And if that is not enough, put lapis in as well.” Lapis, with its glistening gold veins, its royal hue…never would it bedeck the First Citizen,
Princeps
, Octavian, to make a Republican crown! “Lapis on the heap!” I heard high, shrill laughter: mine. The workers bent and unloaded their precious burdens, a solemn stream coming from the palace, ants preparing the great nest of treasure.

“Octavian has landed in our part of the world.” The news we had waited for—here at last.

Mardian, a rustle of red, handed me the dispatch.

I read it carefully. He had left Rome at the very earliest opportunity, and sailed back to Samos. “He does not disappoint,” I said.

Mardian nodded. “Never.”

“From here on I fear he will be quite predictable in his movements.” He would come for us, advancing slowly
—festina lente
, hasten slowly—through Syria, then Judaea, then to the eastern gates of Egypt. “We are the ones who must be unpredictable.” Let him not count on an easy victory, nor on no surprises. There was the Egyptian fleet, there were four Roman legions here, and there was the treasure-pile in the mausoleum…and there was Caesarion, almost a grown man. In fact, I realized with a start, the exact same age Octavian himself had been the last time I had seen him. Would he remember what he himself had been at seventeen? He never forgot anything.