The Memoirs of Cleopatra (85 page)

The farther south we went, the warmer it got, so that by the time we reached Dendera, even though it was only February, it was basking-hot at noon. I had kept my word to Caesarion, and was taking him to see the temple where he was represented as a full-grown Pharaoh. It had taken eighteen months for the carving to be completed, and it had taken almost that long for him to become proficient in Egyptian. The bargain on both sides had been fulfilled.

Now, as I stood beside him at the railing of the boat, I thought that it was a good idea for us to have come away together. It was also good that he see something of Egypt beyond Alexandria. He had been as enthralled by it as I had been when I first escaped up the Nile. In only a few months he would be ten; it was time for him to explore a new world. He had watched the land sliding past, green-fringed palm trees bristling by the riverbanks, oxen in the fields, the long stretch between the pyramids and Dendera, the first of the temples the Ptolemies built.

“I can see it from here,” he said, pointing toward a massive sandstone structure, a bright golden color against the endless dun sands and soil.

I remembered the voyage when my father had taken me to other temples, which he had helped build and embellish. Now I was aware of repeating the cycle. It was supposed to make me feel old, to see a son growing tall and being trained to follow in my footsteps, but instead it felt entirely right and natural. His coming adulthood did not threaten me. I was thankful that I had an heir, with two more children behind him.

He all but bounced off the boat, running down the gangplank, rushing past the dignitaries lining the banks. He wanted to see himself, an artistic version of himself, up on the walls.

“Look! Look!” he cried, dragging me by the hand, while he hunted for the carving. The entire outer wall of the temple was filled with representations of divine processions and earthly figures carrying offerings in them. “Where is it? Where is it?”

I pulled him to a halt. “You are going in the wrong direction,” I said. “It is on the southwestern corner.” We turned that way, passing gigantic gods and goddesses on the walls high above us. I stopped at the corner and pointed up. “There we are.”

Looming over us were two outlined figures, in ancient Egyptian costume, holding incense and offerings in their outstretched arms. They were at least twenty feet high; standing directly beneath them as we were, we could not see their heads clearly.

“We must step back,” I said, and we went quite a ways across the hard-packed earth to a vantage point.

“That doesn’t look like me!” was the first thing he said.

“No, of course not. It’s just a representation—all Pharaohs are made to look the same.”

He studied my profile. “And she doesn’t look like you, either.”

“No. It’s a standard queen. You see, there’s a certain way a queen of Egypt is always supposed to look, and so she’s depicted that way on statues and paintings. So everyone knows exactly who it is.”

“And you don’t wear clothes like that, either. And I certainly never wear a transparent kilt!” He laughed. “I think the double crown is so big it would snap my head off.”

“Yes, crowns can be very heavy. At least that kind can be. So we only wear them ceremonially. When you are crowned at Memphis, you’ll have one if you wish. But by that time you’ll have a very strong, heavy neck, because I intend to live a long time.” I cocked my head. “This is the wrong time of day to see the carvings—not enough shadow. We should come back at sunset.”

“They’ve made me as tall as you,” he said proudly.

“Well, you almost are. You are tall, like your father.” And he had kept the resemblance, with the same broad face and keen, deep-set eyes.

“My father,” he said quietly. “It makes me sad that I can never see him.”

“Yes, it makes me sad too.”

“Well, at least you
have
seen him, and can remember. He died before I was old enough to have memories. Did he really look like the bust in my room?”

I nodded. “Yes. Roman art is quite realistic. It is a very good likeness. But, you know, if you learned Latin, you could read his works. His writing was famous. In that way you could come to know him; people can speak to us through what they write.”

“But it’s just about battles and marches; it isn’t about
him
.”

“His battles
are
him.”

“Oh, you know what I mean! He didn’t write essays or speeches, like Cicero. That’s easier to see someone in.”

“I think he did write them, but I don’t know if they were published. They may have been among his papers after he died. If so, then perhaps Antony still has them—or knows where they are. He took charge of everything in the house…afterward.”

“He probably left them back in Rome, and Mardian says he’ll never go back to Rome again, that Octavian has shut him out and won’t
allow
him back.”

“That’s a lie! He can return whenever he wishes. But why would he wish to, before he’s defeated the Parthians? After that, he can go to Rome as ruler, and shut
Octavian
out.”

Caesarion shrugged. “Mardian said that Octavian called him back to Italy and then refused to meet with him. Mardian says that it set Antony’s Parthian campaign back by a whole year. Mardian says that’s probably what he wanted—Octavian, I mean—”

“Mardian does like to talk,” I said lightly. “It’s true that Octavian begged Antony to come and bring ships to Italy to help in the war with Sextus, and then changed his mind. But it has not cost Antony any time in Parthia. His general Bassus has beaten the Parthians out of Syria and back over the Euphrates again. Now the real campaign can begin.”

“Good. I think he must be ready to fight at last.”

“Did Mardian also tell you that Octavian has been beaten time and again by Sextus? He all but drowned in trying to fight him; half his fleet was wrecked in the Strait of Messina. Scylla on her rock almost devoured Octavian himself; he barely managed to wash ashore and crawl to safety.” But he somehow
always
managed to crawl to safety, I thought—crawl, rest up, and gather his forces.

“No, he didn’t,” Caesarion admitted.

“Octavian’s losing is getting to be a joke,” I said. “The Romans made up a verse about him: ‘He’s lost his fleet, and lost the battle, twice. Someday he’ll win; why else keep throwing dice?’ ”

“You seem to know a great deal about him,” said Caesarion.

“I make it my business to know,” I said.

Someday he’ll win; why else keep throwing dice?
I shivered, even in the warm sun.

“Come,” I said, steering him in the direction of the anxious, hovering chief priest. They wished to honor us by a meal, held under a shaded trellis.

I saw him watching the temple from his seat, his gaze always going back to the carving of himself in that strange garb. He struggled with Egyptian, trying hard not to lapse back into Greek, and the priest seemed flattered.

The drowsy noontime seemed to lay calming hands on our heads. Here, almost four hundred miles upriver, all the things I was so preoccupied with in Alexandria faded to unimportance. Here we were hidden, protected, given sanctuary. This was the true Egypt, the motherland, where Rome could not reach us. If all else failed, my children could rule here unmolested.

If all else failed…but I must not think of failure. It would be failure indeed if Caesar’s true heir, and the children of a Triumvir, had to content themselves with less than their due inheritance. And that inheritance, for better or worse, was part of the Roman world.

But, ah! How delightful it was to recline beneath the arbor, luxuriating in the dry heat, seeing the white butterflies dancing overhead. Everything here was either brown or green or white.

“Tell me about Hathor,” Caesarion was saying. “The goddess who presides over this temple.”

The priest’s eyes lit up. “She is our ancient goddess of beauty, joy, and music.”

“Like Isis?” he asked.

“Yes, only older. Although we believe they may just be manifestations of each other. And once the Greeks came, they thought she was also Aphrodite.”

How different this Egyptian-style temple, with its solid walls, its carvings, its darkened sanctuary, was from the Roman one Caesar had likewise built to honor the goddess of beauty. Both saluted her in appropriate ways. Beauty…we all worship her, we all stand in awe of beauty. It is the one god we all seem to agree upon.

“You have been most generous, Majesty, in providing for the temple,” the priest was saying. “As were your ancestors.”

“As heirs of the Pharaohs, we are honored to do so,” I said. We Ptolemies had tried to keep Egyptian religion, art, and architecture intact; Greek influence was confined to only a few cities. Some had accused us of becoming more Egyptian than the Egyptians, by taking up brother-sister marriage, decking out the temples, honoring the sacred bulls of Apis, and being crowned at Memphis. Others said it was just political guile. Perhaps it was for some, but in my own life I felt a pull toward the ancient Egyptian ways, and the old stones and gods spoke to me.

As the sun sank low in the sky, we stood once more looking at the figures on the temple. Now the lines were etched dark by shadows, and the Queen and King stood majestically tall, their elaborate headdresses towering above them, every detail of their wigs and jewelry sharp and clear.

“Here you will be Pharaoh for eternity,” I said to Caesarion. “You will always be young and handsome, always be offering gladsome gifts to the gods.”

Art allows us to do that, while life hurries us on to our crumbling ends.

We had several events to celebrate. First, there was Caesarion’s tenth birthday. Then there was the sudden marriage of Olympos to a quiet, even-tempered woman with a bent for scholarly study. There was the welcome news from Epaphroditus that our harvests had exceeded expectations—owing to a combination of a good Nile and freshly dredged canals—and our exports of glass and papyrus were booming. My rebuilt navy was almost complete, with two hundred new ships. Ambassadors from all over the east were flocking to us, courting us. I had even been able to issue new coinage with increased silver content. I had a pile of them on the table, as a proud display. Egypt was not only surviving, she was thriving.

Mardian picked one up and looked at it appreciatively. “There is no weight so pleasing as a heavy silver coin—unless it’s a heavy gold one!” He was finely arrayed in a reworked silk robe, and thick gold armlets gleamed on his forearms.

“Perhaps you’d like to contribute your armlets to be melted down,” I said, eyeing them.

He laughed and crossed his arms to shield them. “Never!”

Epaphroditus took one of the coins and examined it. “We must be the envy of the Romans,” he said. “Lately they have had to debase their coinage, since the menace of Sextus so threatens their food supply—indeed, while he ranges unchecked, their whole economy trembles in the balance.”

“Even Antony has felt the pinch,” said Mardian. “Far away from Rome, he too has had to debase his coinage.”

So Octavia’s face would beam out from a coin that was more copper than silver? Pity.

I put my hands over my own coins possessively. If Egypt was strong and prosperous, it was because of my policies and the good ministers I had.

“Ah! The bridegroom!” I saluted Olympos as he arrived. “We all congratulate you.”

It seemed odd to me that he was now married, the first of my inner attendants to be so. Certainly I had urged it on him for years, yet now that it had happened I found myself wondering if his wife would be worthy of him, would understand him. I hoped she was not as lost in her manuscripts as some women were in the kitchen. One extreme was as bad as the other. I remembered Olympos saying once, “There is only one thing more tedious than a stupid person, and that is a pedantic one.”

“Yes, I have entered the blessed realm,” he said. As a joke? “Come, give me some wine!”

“Because marriage is such thirsty work?” asked Mardian archly.

“You said it, not I,” said Olympos, taking a cup and draining it. It occurred to me that although Olympos knew an unseemly amount about that side of my own life, I would never know about his. He would never share it with me, as I was forced to share mine with him: a strange privilege of physicians. That did not stop my curiosity, though.

“Is Dorcas to join us today?” I asked. I had yet to see her.

“No, she is at the Library. Besides, you didn’t invite her.”

“That’s her imagination. Of course the invitation was for both of you.”

“I will tell her. Later.”

I wondered if he had not wanted to bring her. But all that would become apparent in time. Everything does.

“I am happy to be surrounded with all that a queen could want,” I said loudly, to get their attention. “In this I am rich. I have the best and most loyal ministers in the world, and a son of whom any mother would be proud, any queen wish to succeed her.” Caesarion first beamed, then blushed. “Pray, let us rejoice with one another.” I nodded for the servers to bring around the pitchers of wine and platters of delicacies.

At the first opportunity, Mardian whispered to me, “Some Parthians have come, asking for an alliance.”