The Memoirs of Cleopatra (17 page)

“I’ve been betrayed!” he yelped. “Betrayed, betrayed!” Then followed a paroxysm of weeping.

Two burly Roman soldiers, the sun glinting off the brass on their breastplate straps, ran out of the palace after him, grabbed him from behind, and dragged him back into the palace.

My blood felt chilled. I had just had an unrehearsed—and therefore all the more revealing—demonstration of who held the real power here. Common Roman soldiers had laid hands on the King of Egypt, and treated him like any naughty village boy. I must not lose Caesar’s favor, lest they do the same to me.

Behind me, Pothinus was still trying to talk. “Forgive him, he is…unpracticed in ruling,” he whined. “He cannot hide his feelings.”

Caesar was standing, one lean arm resting on the back of a chair. He had not bothered to go over to the window to see what would happen to Ptolemy. He knew what would happen. He just looked at Pothinus, and it appeared that he was not going to bother to answer him.

“Shall I decide to allow him to be your co-regent, most exalted Queen?” he asked, in that deadly quiet public voice I was becoming accustomed to. But it was not the voice he used in the dark of the night.

“I prefer not,” I said.

“But your father’s will wished it so,” Caesar persisted. Was he teasing me? What did he mean to do? “And did you not take as your title ‘Cleopatra, the Goddess Who Loves Her Father’? Then, of course, you should honor his wishes. Would you care to proceed with the marriage to Ptolemy?”

The thought of yoking myself to him in any way was politically repellent; yet that was nothing compared to the possibility of his ever touching me as Caesar had. “I could not bear it,” I said.

Ptolemy was led in, crying and scowling. The two soldiers supported him by his bony little shoulders.

“Ah! The bridegroom himself!” said Caesar. “Come, dry your tears. It is not fit to weep on your wedding day.”

His tears dried up in surprise. “Wh-what?” he sniffled.

“It is my judgment, as executor of the late King’s will, that we must abide by the terms of it. You will marry your sister Cleopatra and reign as joint monarchs in time-honored fashion.”

He couldn’t be doing this! How could I have trusted him, or hoped for justice from him? Had all my impressions of him been wrong? Now it seemed he was as devious and cruel as the rest of his countrymen. I was stunned.

“And then, together, you will raise the money you owe me. As you may recall, I have assumed responsibility for collecting what the late King still owed the Roman Republic.” He nodded matter-of-factly.

That man! So he
was
just greedy, after all. “You cannot be both judge and beneficiary,” I said coldly. “Choose which way you will be satisfied—either as high judge or as debt collector.”

He shot a look at me. His eyes were flat and betrayed not anger but resolution. “I will be satisfied both ways, as it pleases me. So make yourselves ready for your marriage, under whatever form you choose, and then we shall have our reconciliation banquet.” He waved his hand at Pothinus. “Prepare for it. It should be a huge fete, held in—what was that hall with the gold rafters and the porphyry columns?—and serving at least two hundred guests. Do all the things you Alexandrians excel in. Dancing girls. Acrobats. Magic tricks. Gold plate. Rose petals on the floor. You know what better than I. Yes, the people must see that we all embrace and love one another.”

They stood as if they had been mummified, as stiff and wrapped as Osiris.

“Well?” said Caesar. “I have told you what you must do.”

The mummies bent their heads and withdrew.

I whirled around to Caesar. “How could you? I thought we were allies!” I was intelligent enough not to scream,
You even called yourself my husband!
Had he forgotten that? But I knew Caesar did not forget.

I felt angry, betrayed, seething. I had had only hours to bask in the momentous thing that had happened in the night, and already it was gone. And for what? So I could be made a new sort of prisoner?

Sternly I took myself in hand, one part of my mind speaking to the other. You came from Ashkelon, risking your life to gain an audience with Caesar, I reminded myself. And you succeeded. You had a private interview with him, and he agreed to set you back on the throne and enforce his will on your brother and his band of pathetic advisors. They seemed so wily and formidable, but now that Caesar is here, they are swept aside like schoolboys. They are nothing. I have got what I came for—political security. If I wanted more than that after meeting him, then I was a fool.

Caesar was standing, leaning on the handles of the chair, his head bent. I saw that the top of his head was balding. Amun in the daylight was no god. And I no goddess, just a woman who wanted a man in the oldest of all ways, but it was new to me.

“And so we are,” he said.

It took me a second to realize what he was answering—my secret cry, as well as my spoken words. “Then make me sole Queen!” I said. “Why must I tolerate
him?
”

“It is not for long,” he said. “But for now it must serve.”

“Why?” I cried.

He looked at me, a long, searching look. “Cleopatra—how I love the way that name sounds on my tongue!—you know why. And you know that legalities must be followed, if only to be discarded later.”

“So there must be this public reconciliation?” I knew I sounded as pouty as Ptolemy, but I could not help it.

“Yes,” he said briskly. “You and Ptolemy will be proclaimed joint monarchs, the army can be demobilized, Pothinus can be disposed of—” He stopped as if he had just remembered an insignificant fact. “Did I tell you I banished Theodotos? That was his reward from me.”

Banished…swept away…in the twinkling of an eye…. Yes, he did swat people as I had swatted the fly in my tent. And he did not even get a mess on his shoe. Just a wave of his hand and the person disappeared. Forever.

I laughed out loud with joy.

“Now, that’s my Cleopatra!” He crossed the room swiftly and took me in his arms. “And no—Ptolemy will never be your true husband. I am he. As I promised.” He kissed me, bending down to reach me. “We are alike, you and I,” he said in so low a voice I could barely hear the words. “I know it; I can feel it. At last I have found someone who is exactly like me. I do not think I ever want to part from you. We are two halves of a pomegranate, and each section fits perfectly together.”

I clung to him. I believed his words, because I wanted to, and thought I understood their true meaning.

The banquet was in readiness. Pothinus had followed Caesar’s orders, and had prepared a feast for all the court dignitaries: the chief scribes and librarians, the state treasurer, the priests of Serapis and Isis, the commander of the Household Guard, the envoys and courtiers, the most celebrated court physicians, poets, rhetoricians, scientists, and scholars. The gold-covered rafters indeed gleamed their distinctive mellow sheen in the lamplight, and the floor was covered in rose petals brought by sea from Cyrene, where the best roses grow. Wherever you stepped, the drowsy sweet scent was released in the crushing underfoot.

I had gritted my teeth and allowed an abbreviated wedding ceremony to take place in the upper chambers of the palace, on the roof where the sea wind whips in. Ptolemy and I had gone through some words that officially linked us in marriage, in a formula invented by the palace. We were witnessed by Caesar, Pothinus, Arsinoe, and the younger Ptolemy. I mumbled the words, hoping thereby to make them invalid. As soon as it was over, I hurried away to dress myself for the banquet.

Now Caesar could never accuse me of not doing my part, I thought. The loathsome thing is done.

Charmian was still in the palace, waiting faithfully. I had not realized how much I missed her until I saw her familiar face, and heard her humming as she folded silk mantles and tunics in the room that held my wardrobe.

“Your Majesty!” she cried, a thousand questions on her face.

“Charmian! Oh, Charmian!” I said, rushing toward her.

She continued staring, suppressing a laugh, and then I looked down at the dusty gown I still wore.

“I have had no opportunity to change my escape clothes,” I said. “I came by boat yesterday, and gained secret entrance to the palace.”

“Everyone knows,” she said. “It is said—but oh! how thankful I am that you are here, and safe! The last few months have been dreadful. They have strutted and swaggered all over Alexandria, the happy trio with their puppet, and proclaimed you dead.”

“They are no longer a trio, but a duo,” I said.

“Caesar has—?” The question hung in the air.

“Banished Theodotos,” I said. “He will not trouble us again.”

“And you have seen Caesar?” she asked delicately.

“As ‘everyone knows,’ ” I said, quoting her, “I had myself smuggled into his chambers inside a rug.”

She burst out laughing. “He must have been shocked!”

“He did not show it,” I said. “And now—oh, but it is too long to tell. Later. Now I need to be dressed as a queen, for the banquet that is being staged below. Make me beautiful enough to give a kingdom to.”

Make me beautiful enough to love
, I meant. But with Caesar, it was always kingdoms and crowns and possessions. Love, if it came at all, must follow only in their wake.

And now I stood at the entrance to the great ceremonial hall, my back against the cool panels of ebony. I was so weighed down with pearls from the Red Sea that I felt enveloped in a glow of moonlight. They were woven skillfully in my hair by Charmian, and draped over my neck, and the largest and most prized of all hung from my ears, swaying whenever I moved my head. I was swathed in Sidonian silk that was almost transparent, and swirled around me like a mist. On my feet were sandals of braided silvered leather. I stood still and breathed deeply, and as I did so I could smell the lotus scent Charmian had rubbed in the bends of my elbows and in the spot on my neck where the vein throbbed. All day long my body had felt different, serving to remind me that what had happened was real—and irreversible.

Musicians, grouped in a corner, gently strummed the strings of their lyres and piped soft melodies on their flutes. The sound echoed against the polished stone walls.

The tramp of boots. Soldiers were coming. The Household Troops, or Caesar’s? I watched as uniformed men entered from the entrance on the far side of the hall. I recognized the Roman cloaks and spears.

In the middle of them was Caesar. But he had chosen to wear the costume of a Consul of Rome—a white toga with a broad purple band at the hem—rather than that of a general. He must have just spent time with the barber, for his face was shiny and freshly shaven, and his hair trimmed. To me he was as stunning as Apollo, though I could see he was not young, not large, and weighted down by the world he carried with him.

Let me help you carry it
, I thought suddenly.
It is too heavy for one man
.

They approached me, and Caesar stepped forward. I saw him staring at me, and knew that in his eyes I must appear transformed, an altogether different creature from the dispossessed one he had met in secret.

He held out his hand and I took it, wordlessly. Together we walked to the large ceremonial table, made from a section of the trunk of an enormous tree from the Atlas Mountains, and balanced on elephant tusks. He did not look at me all the while, but I could feel his attention. Finally he leaned toward me and whispered, his breath moving one of my earrings, “This has been a very long day, and I feel I have met you over and over again, in guise after guise. Which is real?”

I turned my head, not lowering it but moving it most royally. “And I have seen many Caesars,” I said. “Which of those is real?”

“After the banquet you will know,” he said. “And then after that, you will know yet more.” His keen, dark eyes appraised me. “Child of Venus,” he said. “You are fair!”

“Are you not also the child of Venus?” Supposedly Caesar’s family was descended from Venus on his mother’s side.

“Yes. As I told you, we are alike, both having that goddess’s nature.” His breath was warm on my ear.

Just then Pothinus approached, walking slowly toward his assigned place, his stiff linen robes refusing to accommodate themselves to his fat body. He looked like an exercise in papyrus folding. He had greased his ringlets and wore enormous, boxy earrings that stretched his earlobes painfully.

Behind him came Ptolemy, dressed as an ancient Pharaoh. And behind them, making a slow and stately entrance from the far end of the hall, came Arsinoe and young Ptolemy.

All heads turned to gaze at Arsinoe, at her graceful, almost undulating walk, and her shimmering silken gown. Her dark hair was swept up on her head, in the old Grecian style, and Helen of Troy could not have been more beautiful.

I watched Caesar staring at her. His eyes had widened, and although he did not move at all, I sensed his alertness. They had been together in the palace, Caesar and eighteen-year-old Arsinoe, for at least two weeks before my arrival. What had happened between them? The fact that neither betrayed any recognition of the other meant nothing. Arsinoe was beautiful in a way that ate at one’s insides with either desire or envy, and Caesar…I knew his nature now.

She was taking her place on the royal couch, smiling with her smooth, tinted lips. Her bright blue eyes were drinking in Caesar, then fluttering in a most obvious manner, almost a parody of flirting. I hated her.

Caesar gave the welcome after the hall had filled with the hastily invited, and puzzled, guests. I also addressed them, and Ptolemy put in a few high-pitched words. Then Caesar rose again, and cried, “Let us all wear the garlands of gladness and celebration, for now we proclaim that all is peaceful once again in the land! Queen Cleopatra and King Ptolemy have consented to live in harmony and to rule as one!”

He lifted high a garland of lotus, cornflowers, and roses, and draped it around his neck. “Rejoice with them!” I was deeply grateful that he did not proclaim the “marriage.” I sensed he would do that only if absolutely pressed to make further concessions.