The Memoirs of Cleopatra (97 page)

“I suppose that makes sense,” said Antony. But I could tell he was far from convinced. “I will go later. After I can present the Armenian king in chains in a Triumphal procession.”

“Yes. That will dazzle the Romans. They love Triumphs. And so far Octavian has not been able to claim one.” Now I must change the subject, and quickly. “I am needed in Egypt. I must return soon.”

“Yes.”

“What are your plans? Will you come, or stay here with the troops?”

“If I could only rebuild my legions, I would mount the attack on Armenia as soon as possible. But it is already March, and there is no way I could be ready to campaign this season—it’s such a short one in the mountains. And then there’s Sextus on the loose, roaming here with his three renegade legions. I dare not march east and leave my back unprotected.”

“So you must lose another year,” I said. “Another year canceled out by other people.” First Octavian’s dallying, now Sextus’s. How maddening it is to be caught in the grip of faraway events, when you cannot either surmount them or ignore them!

“Sextus must be dealt with,” Antony insisted.

He was right, of course. And the truth was that Antony needed to regroup after last year, to revive both his army and his spirits.

“So you will remain here?”

“For a few more weeks,” he said. “Then I will probably be able to oversee my responsibilities from Alexandria.”

“Hurry,” I said. “Your city has missed you.”

“Alexandria is wherever you are,” he said, taking my face in his hands—one still bandaged and the other normal—and looking at me.

My preparations for departure were almost complete, and I would leave in deep gratitude that Isis and the two gods of medicine—Asclepius and Imhotep—had returned Antony’s hand to him. It had healed nicely, the tube and stitches long gone.

Then it came, the letter from Rome, announcing that Octavia was on her way to bring help to Antony: cattle, food, the ships left over from those he had lent Octavian, and two thousand of the best Roman soldiers, handpicked from Octavian’s prize guard.

A pleasant messenger—Niger, a friend of Antony’s—had brought the letter. I was forced to entertain him and ask polite questions about the journey, trying to find out exactly where Octavia was now. The answer was, almost to Athens with her cargo. There she would await instructions from Antony.

“And what will those instructions be?” I asked Antony as we prepared for bed. “I am sure she will obediently do whatever you ask!” Oh, why had he not divorced her already? Why had I not insisted on it? My mistake!

“I could use the soldiers—”

“This is comical,” I said. “Your two wives both sailing to you with aid and comfort. It’s a miracle we didn’t collide on the high seas.”

“She isn’t my wife,” he said lamely.

“Why? Have you divorced her? And I remember that Rome ignored our marriage announcement completely. I don’t exist as your wife—not in their eyes.”

“Oh, I am tired of this!” said Antony, flopping back on the bed.

“Then end it!” I said. I wanted to add,
As you should have done long ago
. But I must not nag. Not now. “Send her back.” That would convey a loud message.

“But the men—”

“The men are an insult! He owes you four legions, and what does he do but send this little token as a bait—or as a means of bringing you to heel! They are attached to Octavia, hooked to her, so you are supposed to swallow the entire thing, like a fish. ‘Be good, Antony, and perhaps I shall let you have more’—that’s what he’s saying! Is that what you want—to be his subordinate, dance to his tunes? I tell you, it’s an insolent challenge! Two thousand men when he owes you twenty thousand, and only in a package with his sister—the extension of himself.” I glared at him. “You said it was like having Octavian himself in your bed!”

“Yes, yes.” He was staring up at the ceiling.

“Well, do as you like,” I said, and I meant it. He must decide for himself. “I am returning to Alexandria. You must board a ship for either Athens or Alexandria. They lie in opposite directions.”

I turned on my side and pulled the covers over my shoulders. My heart was beating fast, but it was only because, like all irrevocable choices, this had descended fast and unlooked for. Yet it was welcome, in some mysterious way. Now it must happen; at last he must sail either north or south.

It was unlike me, but I would say nothing further to sway him either way. It must be entirely his own decision, originate in his own heart. Otherwise it would mean nothing.

The next morning a cheery letter came from Octavia, announcing her arrival in Athens, and signing herself, “Your devoted wife.” The day after that, Olympos and I boarded a ship for Alexandria.

As he had when we arrived, Antony stood on the shore alone, watching us.

I waited, although of course I told myself I was not waiting. I busied myself with all the work that had accumulated in Egypt in my absence, especially since the seas had reopened. Already trade that had been repressed by Sextus had sprung back full force and healthy.

“There is no doubt that Octavian did the world a favor by getting rid of him,” said Mardian. He held a report in his hands detailing the amphorae of oil dispatched in April. “Every time someone dips his bread in oil, he can give thanks to Octavian—for both the bread and the oil. It matters not whether he is in Greece, Cyprus, or Italy.”

I glumly had to concur. Even we in Alexandria were reaping the benefits; our merchants’ ships could go wherever they liked now.

“Here’s proof of the expanded trade,” Mardian said, lifting something out of a box. Flailing legs and a wrinkled neck strained and struggled. “Two tortoises from Armenia. The King sent them. He said he knew we had a zoo, and hoped we did not already have some of these.” He rotated the creature in his hand. “He said their blood does not freeze and they can sleep in the snow with no ill effects.”

“Unlike Antony’s men!” So the King sought to avert punishment by such paltry presents. He was truly stupid.

Mardian was stroking the turtle’s head, and it seemed to enjoy it; at least it stopped struggling. “A tragedy,” he agreed. “And now the…situation with Octavia.”

“Yes. She sits in Athens, surrounded by her bait. Octavian sent her; it could not be her doing.” Of that I was sure.

“How do you know that?” Mardian frowned.

“Even if she wished to, he never would have permitted it unless it furthered his own aims. Besides, she has no thoughts, desires, or plans of her own!”

The weak creature was content to be married how and where her brother decreed, to be ordered about like a slave. What good was all her scholarship, then, and her vaunted lofty character?

“Everyone in Rome praises her,” said Mardian cautiously. “And they say she is…beautiful.”

“I’ve seen her. She isn’t,” I said. “People say the most ridiculous things! That’s because it makes the story better, and the competition sharper between us. I and my eastern wiles against the virtuous beauty of Rome.” I knew that was how it was perceived, and there was no remedy for it. As I said, people like dramatic stories and elemental conflicts.

“Antony will have to decide,” I said. “And I will do nothing to help him make up his mind.”

“My dear, if you have not done enough already, then it will never be enough,” said Mardian.

I had spoken bravely to Mardian in the daylight, but at night I lay awake and felt much less sure. The truth was that common sense said Antony should return to the fold of Rome. His eastern venture had failed; he ought to put it behind him as a lost cause. He possessed that unusual, chameleonlike quality of fitting in anywhere. In his purple general’s cloak and helmet he was pure warrior, in his toga he was a Roman magistrate, in a Greek robe he was a gymnasiarch, in lionskin and tunic he was Hercules, and in vine leaves he was Dionysus, an eastern god. Unlike me, he could be all things to all people—it was his gift and his charm.

Now he could easily resume the Roman mantle, take the hand of his Roman wife, and sail back to Rome. The east had not answered his dreams; very well, there were others for him elsewhere. Octavian would welcome him back, his errant past forgiven. They would never mention me, as a mutual embarrassment.

The west was sure for Antony. All I could offer was a struggle to build a wide eastern alliance and eventually an equal partnership with Rome. That, and myself.

Yet I wondered about a woman like Octavia. If I had been deserted, my husband publicly marrying someone else, bestowing lands on her and putting her head on coins, I never would want him back—or at least I would never take him back, no matter how much I wanted him. And to chase after him—I would be ashamed even to think of it!

Bending the knee to Octavian entailed great humiliation—even for his “cherished” sister. How much more for his fellow Triumvir?

And as day after day went by, I grew used to the waiting. It became part of me.

Mardian even set himself the challenge of finding literary references to “waiting” and “patience,” seeking help from the librarian of the Museion.

“Homer says in the
Iliad
, ‘The fates have given mankind a patient soul,’ ” he ventured one day.

“That is so general as to mean nothing,” I said. Indeed it was; plenty of men had no patience at all.

“ ‘Patience is the best remedy for every trouble,’ wrote Plautus,” he offered another day.

“Another generality!” I scoffed.

“Here’s an obscure one, then,” he said. “Archilochos wrote, ‘The gods give us the harsh medicine of endurance.’ ”

“Why should it be from the gods?” I felt argumentative. “Sappho understands it better. She says, ‘The moon and Pleiades are set. Midnight, and time spins away. I lie in bed, alone.’ ”

“Ahem,” Mardian demurred. “Why do you want to torture yourself by reading Sappho?”

“Poetry consoles me at the same time it inflames me,” I said.

“You should know better,” he sniffed. “It’s poison for the soul!”

Another day he presented a paper from Epaphroditus, who had found a quote from the scriptures of his religion. “He quotes from a scroll called Lamentations, and it says, ‘The Lord is good unto them that wait for him, for the soul that seeketh him.’ ”

I laughed. “It isn’t the Lord I’m waiting for.”

“My dear, I give up. Inflame yourself with Sappho—or whomever you like. But it isn’t helping!” He looked very stern.

I read poetry only late at night, when Charmian and Iras had retired, when the curtains in my room were gently stirring. The night stretched out before me, and the words from people centuries dead seemed to carry an authority that the words of the living never did. They did console; they whispered; they made me feel thankful that—whatever the pain of it—I was alive, while they, poor wretches, were dead.

That was what they told me: that was what they warned me of.

It was during the day that I expected to receive the news. That was when ships docked and unloaded, when land messengers arrived. So late at night, as I half-lay, half-sat, on a couch on my roof terrace, watching the moonlight sliding on the harbor waves, indulging myself in poetry and Arabian candied melons, I barely looked up as one of my lowliest chamber attendants brought me a letter.

“Leave it here,” I said, waving my hand toward a mother-of-pearl bowl that I used for unimportant trinkets. I was too involved in the delicious verses of Catullus to stop; they were as high-flavored and (I suspected) as unhealthy as the candies. I was thankful I had learned Latin after all, the better to partake of his agonies and yearnings.

How un-Roman! That, in addition to his “inflammatory” ideas, made him even more forbidden.