The Memoirs of Cleopatra (66 page)

“I know. You could not control the heavens. And so many have been saved, it seems a miracle in itself.”

“The fleet—the beautiful fleet—a shambles!” He shook his head.

“We will build another.” I grieved for my lost fleet, my pride, my hopes. And under it, the disappointment that I would let Antony down, that I could not keep my word, although it was the gods who had prevented me, not men. Antony had made it across the Alps in winter, and I could not seem to escape from Egypt.

“I think we are near Paraetonium,” he said.

The western border of Egypt, a lonely, sunbaked outpost.

“I suppose I was overdue to see it,” I said, attempting to lighten his spirits. “I should see my kingdom from west to east, as well as north to south.”

“There is not much to see here, unless you like scorpions,” he grunted.

The journey back was a sad one. Merchant ships had to come and fetch the survivors and gather up the debris. Some of the ships could be patched and sail slowly back to Alexandria later. But it was a quiet, sober party of survivors who disembarked on the quay of the capital.

And it was with agitated regret that I had to write Antony and tell him the devastating news—not to expect our help.

The summer came, a time that should have been happy with planting, harvesting, and laden cargo ships plying the seas. But in Alexandria we were tense with waiting. We were defenseless now, stripped of our legions, our fleet destroyed. I began rebuilding it, beginning with an “eight,” so that the flagship at least might be afloat before we were invaded. There was nothing standing between Egypt and the assassins now; they could march straight through Judaea and down to our borders. I also began raising my own army; it had been foolish to rely on the Roman troops. But that, too, was a slow business. Men are not turned into soldiers overnight.

The story can be told quickly. Lepidus remained behind to guard Italy with three legions, and Antony and Octavian took twenty-eight to face Cassius and Brutus with their almost equal number. The site chosen by fate for the battle was near Philippi, in Greece. Octavian fell ill, as usual, in the midst of the preparations, and had to linger behind while Antony marched the legions and set up camp. The tactics of the assassins were to hold back and refuse to give battle, knowing that the Triumvirs were weak in supply lines and would run out of food as the weather worsened. Antony, realizing this, tricked them into battle as Caesar would have done, by building a causeway across a marsh to pierce their defense barriers. This lured Cassius from camp to counterattack, allowing Antony to charge into the camp and plunder it. In the meantime, Brutus’s troops had attacked Octavian’s camp and overrun it.

The gods entered this battle as surely as they had the war in Troy. Caesar visited both camps with signs and spectral appearances. In Octavian’s, a dream warned him to rise from his sickbed and not remain in his tent on the battle day, and so he obeyed and hid in a marsh. Caesar appeared to Brutus the night before the final battle and foretold his end. I imagine that the Caesar Brutus saw was robust and healthy, not slain, and by that Brutus knew he had failed in his deed: that Caesar lived on, stronger than ever.

When Brutus overran Octavian’s tent and tried to capture him, the bed was empty. Cassius, meanwhile, had been routed by Antony. As a relief force from Brutus followed him, Cassius mistook them for the enemy—the gods blinded him. Assuming that Brutus had already been captured or killed, he did not wait, but killed himself immediately.

What a victory for the Triumvirs, for Cassius was a better general than Brutus. The assassins had lost their best man.

Brutus retired, brooding, to his tent, and Octavian emerged from the marsh. Brutus would have waited for winter to do his work for him, starving out his opponents, but he had little control over his troops. Brutus never knew how to lead men, and now the restless soldiers forced a battle on him the morning after Caesar appeared to him. Antony and Octavian won, greatly helped by the lack of morale in Cassius’s soldiers, who had been broken by their commander’s loss. Brutus killed himself, and the characters of Antony and Octavian were clearly distinguished by how they treated his remains. Antony covered the body reverently with his purple general’s cloak, but Octavian yanked it off, then cut off Brutus’s head and sent it back to Rome to lay at the feet of Caesar’s statue.

In the end, Brutus and Cassius had driven their cursed daggers into their own entrails, as was fitting.

Thus were Mars Ultor—Mars the Avenger—and Caesar himself satisfied on the field of Philippi.

The world outside us had been rearranged, but for Alexandria, life continued protected and isolated, and for the rest of Egypt, even more so. Only we in the palace were connected with the tides of the times.

After my long, soaking exposure to seawater, compounded with the wind and scorching sun, Iras pronounced my skin ruined.

“The salt has injured it, and then the sunburn has made it like leather—that is, where it is not peeling off,” she said, shaking her head. Olympos concurred, saying I looked like a fortune-teller from the Moeris Oasis.

“Tell us our future,” he said, cocking his dark head. “Who will control the entire world, and how long will it take?”

“I am no fortune-teller,” I said. “At least about politics.”

“What about personal things, my Circe? Can you tell if I will marry Phoebe?”

Olympos had fallen in love, a startling thing, given his sarcastic personality. Like most skeptics, once he had capitulated to love, he was acting the fool.

“If you ask her,” I said. So far he had not, relying on her to read his mind.

“That would be going too far,” he said, laughing.

“You will never marry, my lady, if you don’t repair your complexion,” said Iras. “Now, in Nubia, where the sun is even crueler than in Egypt, we use the milk of asses to bathe in and save our skin.”

“I would recommend oil of almonds,” said Olympos. “Easier to come by.”

“How many asses have to be milked to provide enough?” I asked. “Surely we have enough!” The idea was oddly appealing to me. Olympos raised his eyebrows.

“I promise to try the almonds next,” I assured him. But my mood was darkened, because of Iras’s comment in passing. To marry…Mardian had been strongly urging it.

I lay in my shallow marble tub and soaked in the asses’ milk, rubbing it into my arms and legs and patting my face with it. My toes looked odd, sticking up out of the white liquid. A sandalwood screen veiled me from the view of Mardian, who was pacing about the room. I found baths boring, so I had kept myself entertained by having others, disembodied voices, to talk to.

“My dear madam,” he was saying, his voice higher than usual, because he was frustrated. “Your subjects are most anxious about it!”

“I have already provided them with an heir,” I said stubbornly. “There is now a co-ruler with me. Even the Romans have recognized Caesarion.” I had just issued a new series of coins with our reign emblazoned on them.

“Caesarion is only five years old,” said Mardian. He was standing as close to the screen as permissible. “Life is uncertain—for all of us. If he does not attain maturity, the line will end with him. And do you plan to mate with him? It would seem so!”

I cupped some of the milk in my hands and let it run down over my arms and shoulders. “Don’t be vulgar,” I said.

“But, don’t you see—there
must
be more heirs, and you Ptolemies mate only with each other, so—what other conclusion can the world come to?”

“I do not care!” I said angrily.

“Yes, you do. You must. You must face this problem!”

“Not now.” I lowered my face into the milk, shutting my eyes.

“Yes, now. You are already twenty-seven years old. Soon to be twenty-eight,” he reminded me portentously. “The Ptolemies have on occasion taken up with foreigners. Was not your grandmother a Syrian?”

“Yes,” I said. However, my grandfather had not seen fit to marry her. “But whom do you suggest I marry?”

“Well, Octavian is unmarried, and—”

“Octavian!” I cried. “Octavian! What an unappetizing suggestion!” I stood up and called for Iras. I wanted to get out of this bath and look Mardian straight in the eye. Iras came quickly, bringing towels and gowns. Swathed, I stepped out and glared at him. He looked genuinely puzzled.

“I only suggested a Roman because you clearly aren’t prejudiced against them as so many others are.”

“Caesar was different.” Caesar defied categories; his true category was more than mortal.

“Octavian is handsome,” he said lamely. “And powerful.”

I recoiled at the thought of him; then the memory of what I had seen through the window at the Regia came back to me. Clearly he had a lascivious side to his nature, as out of place in the rest of him as a butterfly in winter. “Oh yes. I grant you that.”

“Well, what else does a woman want?”

I laughed. “I admit they are good basics. But I would like a heart to go along with them, a sense of life and joy.”

“Then I take back what I said. You will have to look for a non-Roman.”

Iras brought out a jar of almond oil. “If you will just lie down here…” She indicated a couch draped with thick towels.

“Later.” I needed to finish talking to Mardian. “I know you have a good point. But…” How could I tell him how little interest I had in it, how even my dreams were curiously dry and sterile? He, as a lifelong eunuch, could never understand the fluctuations of passion—how it could be a madness in one stage of life and then disappear, evaporate, like a dry streambed, in another. I remembered my times with Caesar, but my nature then seemed a curiosity to me now.

“Perhaps you should consider a prince from Bithynia or Pontus,” he went on, oblivious. “Someone younger, who would worship you and do whatever you wished. Never make any demands on you, but exist just to…to satisfy you.” He blushed.

“You make me sound sixty, not twenty-seven,” I said. I tried to imagine it, and found
myself
blushing.

“Kings take pretty concubines, so why should you not?”

“Little boys don’t appeal to me.”

“I didn’t mean
that
young, I only meant manageable.” He paused. “I have heard that Prince Archelaus of Comana is a brave soldier and well educated.”

“How old is he?”

“I don’t know. I can find out!” he said brightly.

“You do that.” I decided to humor him. “And one other thing—forgive me for changing the subject—is it true about Lepidus?”

After the battle of Philippi, it seemed that the official Triumvirate was turning into an unofficial Duovirate. The world was to be divided like a cake, but only between Octavian and Antony.

“Yes, a new report came in just this morning. I left it on your worktable, with your secretary.”

“Just tell me.” I drew the silk robe, made of many colored scarves, closer around me.

“They suspect—or
claim
to suspect, which is different—Lepidus of going behind their backs and being untrustworthy. Therefore, when they divided the Roman empire between them—and let us call it that, for it is an empire by any measure—they have ignored him.”

“Who got what?” I asked.

“Antony is hero of the day; his prestige stands highest in all the world,” Mardian said. “He has taken the best parts—all of Gaul, as well as the entire east. He will be master of our part of the world, and presumably carry out Caesar’s plan to subdue Parthia.”

“And Octavian?” How had Octavian allowed that? But the man lying sick in his tent or being carried about in a litter could not dictate terms to the soldier-hero.

“He has only Spain and Africa, and two onerous duties to fulfill: He must settle the veterans in Italy, finding land and money for them, and he must pursue Sextus, the pirate son of Pompey. Thankless tasks.”

Thankless, but demanding. They should tie Octavian’s hands for a long time. I smiled. This was not what he had bargained for.

After he had gone, I allowed myself to stretch out on the couch while Iras massaged the sweet oil into my skin. I closed my eyes and gave myself up to the scent and the sensation.

“Madam, do you think to follow his suggestion?” Iras whispered. “Your skin must be restored to its perfection before you meet any princes!”

“I only said it to please him,” I murmured. The perfumed oil and the rubbing were making me drowsy. “It would take more than a pretty prince to…to…” My voice trailed off.

To awaken that part of me that slept a winter sleep, I thought. Perhaps it had slept so long it had died quietly, without a murmur of protest.

Mardian enjoyed himself thoroughly, searching the world over for suitable candidates for my hand. He came up with Idumaeans, Greeks, Paphlagonians, Nubians—including the Kandake’s own son—Galatians, and Armenians. Just to vex him, I had made a list of essential characteristics. I figured that the chances of someone meeting them all was remote. He must be at least twenty, he must be a head taller than I, athletic, good at mathematics, speak a minimum of three languages, have lived abroad, play a musical instrument well, know Greek literature, know the sea and sailing, and be descended of a great royal house. Those were my minimum requirements, I said. Poor Mardian!

The harvest was good, and we began to make up our losses for the year before. I was able to commission sixty new ships, as well as order the most decrepit of the dikes and reservoir basins to be repaired, and I now had twenty thousand soldiers under arms. Neither the army nor the navy was up to full strength—the Romans would laugh at them—but it was a beginning, and we surely had made progress from our low point when the fleet was wrecked.

To my consternation, Mardian’s prime candidate, Archelaus of Comana, was not disqualified from the “competition.” Mardian prevailed on me to invite him for a ceremonial visit.

“For even if it is a sham,” he said, “it will please your people. They will feel that you are at least
trying
to remedy the problem.”

Kasu, the monkey, padded forward and offered Mardian a platter of dates. She was so well trained by now, she could almost function as a servant. Mardian pursed his lips and took a long time to select the plumpest one he could. “Umm,” he said. “These must be from Derr.”

He had the true palate of a connoisseur. “Your tongue tells you true,” I said. Kasu scampered back to me, and jumped up in the chair beside me. “I forgot to add one other requirement: He should like animals, especially monkeys. He should not mind a monkey perched at the foot of the bed.”

Mardian shrugged, licking off his fingers. “Too late now,” he said. “I am sure that Archelaus will pretend to like her.”

“When is he coming?” My spirits sank at the thought of it. I never should have gone along with it this long.

“As soon as he and his family have finished paying court to Antony,” he said. “Everyone in the region, all the client kings, have to report to him, offer up their crowns, and wait for his approval and reappointment.”

I took one of the dates myself, and nibbled on it. They were sweet—almost too sweet, artificially so. “All the client kingdoms—there are a great many of them,” I said. “And each one will have to be reviewed separately. Some were wholeheartedly for the assassins, others were forced to support them. Now they will
all
claim to have been coerced. And they were stripped of money, too.”

“Antony knows that. He, of course, has to extract money as well. But at least he listens to people. The orator Hybreas of Mylasa said that if he expected them to provide ten years’ taxes in one year, he could doubtless provide them with two summers instead of the usual one. And Antony relented.”

“Where is he now?” I wondered. He had started out in Athens, that I knew.

“Ephesus. He has been holding a riotous court there for weeks, being hailed as Dionysus and even being called a god.”

“He must like that,” I said. “It’s better than Octavian, who is only
son
of a god. But the Ephesians call everybody who is anybody a god—I hope he realizes that.”

Mardian laughed. “I don’t think he cares. He’s too busy with Glaphyra, Archelaus’s mother. She seems to be—er, putting her claims before him.”

For some odd reason I was shocked. It seemed so—unfair. I pictured all the male rulers milling about, waiting their turn, while Glaphyra went to the head of the line.

“So you see, as soon as his mother has been satisfied, Archelaus will be free to leave.”

No, what he meant was that as soon as
Antony
had been satisfied, the mother could depart. I shook my head. “That may be some time yet,” I said. I should be thankful: As long as Glaphyra held Antony’s attention, I would be spared her son’s.

The court of Dionysus continued for months, with parades of a crowned Antony pulled in a grape-laden chariot, accompanied by women dressed as bacchantes and men as satyrs and Pans, wreathed in ivy and carrying thyrsi, playing zithers and flutes, crying out welcome for “the bringer of joy,” Dionysus-Antony. The shouts reverberated over all the east. He must be enjoying himself, I thought. I wondered what Octavian would have done at Ephesus? He would probably have righteously forgone the exotic trappings and indulged himself with the women secretly, after hours. He liked his pleasures to be furtive. Perhaps he liked them
only
if they were furtive.

Some six months later, a Roman appeared at my court, sent by Antony. It was Quintus Dellius, a man famed for his ability to change horses in midstream, like one of those dexterous circus riders. He had been Dolabella’s man, then Cassius’s, now he was Antony’s. I disliked him before I even saw him, therefore I kept him waiting as long as possible before admitting him to an audience.