Egypt's Sister: A Novel of Cleopatra

by Angela Hunt

Her eyes flew up at me like a pair of frightened crows, then she pulled her hand away and playfully slapped my arm. “You should not tease me, Chava.”

  “I am not teasing. We were at dinner, and I heard a voice no one else seemed to hear. Best of all, He spoke to me about you.”

  Urbi gave me a quick, distracted glance and attempted a smile. “Did He say I would be beautiful? Did He say I would be queen?”

  I deepened my smile. “HaShem said my friendship with the queen lay in His hands, and that we would be together on your happiest day and your last. And that I would bless you.”

  I grinned at her, thrilled to share such a wonderful foretelling, but Urbi’s face did not reflect my joy.

  “Your friendship with the queen,” she repeated, her voice hollow. “What if He was talking about Berenice?”

  I frowned. “Why would HaShem talk about her? I have no friendship with her. I do not even know her.”

  “And you will be with me on my last day? You have just given me a reason to never see you again.”

  I stiffened, momentarily abashed. “I am sure HaShem did not mean it that way. You’re not about to die.”

  “How do you know?” Her brow wrinkled as something moved in her eyes. “The Ptolemies have been known to kill their brothers and sisters. How do you know Berenice won’t murder me?”

  “Because . . .” I grasped for any reason available. “Because your father is coming home.”

  “He won’t arrive for months. She has plenty of time to kill a princess.”

  I sat perfectly still, stunned by the taut expression on Urbi’s face. She had never revealed this fear, but clearly she had often thought about the danger of being so close to the throne.

  “I won’t let anyone kill you.” I straightened and propped my hands on my hips. “If I have to, I will sneak you out of the palace and you can live with us. No one would ever think to look for you in the Jewish Quarter.”

  Annoyance struggled with humor on her face as she glared at me. “You are a foolish, naïve girl,” she said, bending her knees. “But I am glad I have you.” She hugged her knees and lowered her head, then abruptly lifted it. “My happiest day?” She arched a brow. “I wonder when that will be.”

  “Perhaps when you marry,” I suggested. “Or when you have your first child.”

  She leaned forward and peered through the open doorway, her eyes bright with speculation. “Wouldn’t it be tragic if my happiest day was also my last?” She lowered her gaze, her long lashes shuttering her eyes. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it were.”

  “You cannot think that way, Urbi. I am sure you will have many, many happy days—and as your best friend, I plan to be there for all of them.”

  “Swear to it?” She turned as her eyes searched mine. Then she caught my hand and peeled back my fingers, revealing my flat palm.

  Breathing in the fragrance of incense, I stared at her, uncertain of her intentions.

  “Forever friends,” she said, an odd, faintly eager look flashing in her eyes.

  As I nodded, she pulled a short blade from the girdle at her waist and gripped my left wrist. I pulled back, but before I could break free she lifted the blade and swept it over my palm, slicing the skin from above my thumb to the end of the curving lifeline. I caught my breath as the blade stung my flesh, but I knew better than to cry out.

  Then, imposing an admirable control on herself, Urbi opened her left hand and made the same cut on her own palm. She held it up as blood dripped from the red arc and stained the silk sheet beneath us.

  “Forever friends,” she repeated, pressing her bleeding cut to mine. She locked her fingers around my hand. “You are blood of my blood, and heart of my heart.”

  “Blood of my blood,” I echoed. “Heart of my heart. Friends forever.”

  We sat without moving as our blood mingled, then she drew me close in a fierce embrace.

  “If your father asks,” she whispered, nodding at my blood-slicked hand, “tell him you cut yourself on one of my swords.”

  I opened my mouth to protest, but she was already off, hurrying away to recite for a tutor or pay a dutiful visit to her older sister.

  I pulled a wide ribbon from my hair and wrapped it around my bleeding palm. Only then, after Urbi had gone, did I feel the pain.

  Chapter Three

  My feet tapped a jittery rhythm as my slave wound a length of hair around the heated calamistrum, a gift the king had brought from Rome.

  “Hurry, Nuru—I cannot be late.”

  “I do not want to burn my fingers, my lady, or your neck. So if you would please hold still . . .”

  I bit back my impatience and gripped the sides of the bench by my dressing table. Father might have already begun his lecture, and he would not appreciate his daughter rushing late into the room. If the royal children could make it to an appointment on time, he often reminded me, surely his fourteen-year-old daughter could.

  Nuru smiled as a perfectly formed curl slipped off the narrow end of the calamistrum and dangled before my earlobe. “If you’ll give me a moment to sew it to the other braids—”

  “No time,” I told her, leaving the bench to search for my sandals. “I must be away.”

  I found my braided sandals beneath the bed and slipped them on. Straightening, I ran my hand over the elaborate braids at the back of my head, then left the room, pausing only to check my image in the reflecting pool. Two ringlets danced in the breeze—Urbi would certainly tease me about those, but at least I looked presentable. My white chiton was spotless, and the blue himation artfully draped around my torso and over my shoulder. My nails had been scrubbed and my face washed. I looked as I should when entering the presence of royalty, so no one, not even Father, could upbraid me about anything but my tardiness.

  I took a deep breath and signaled one of the slaves, who stood at the doorway. Understanding that I needed an escort, he joined me at once, and walked before me through the wide street that separated the Jewish Quarter of Alexandria from the Royal Quarter. He paused at the gate to the sprawling palace complex.

  “I know the way from here.”

  Dismissing the slave, I spotted my friend Acis, one of the Egyptian guards, and waved. Acis lifted his chin, then moved to a side entrance, where he held the gate open long enough for me to slip through. I hurried down a path that led to the children’s chambers. Only four royal children still lived in Alexandria—Urbi and Arsinoe, the youngest sister, as well as the two boys, Omari and Sefu. When one of them became king—if one of them ascended to the throne—he would take the name Ptolemy, inherited from the Greek general who had assumed control of Egypt after Alexander the Great’s death.

  I entered a building, turned a corner, and heard the baritone rumble of my father’s voice. I waited a moment before tiptoeing into the chamber, hoping he had turned away from the door.

  Fortune was with me. My father had indeed turned away, surrendering the room to Urbi, but she had not missed my entrance. Her brown eyes widened as I slid onto a settee, and an elegant brow lifted in unspoken rebuke.

  “Master”—she turned to my father—“I seem to have lost my thought. Would you present my charge again?”

  I glared at Urbi, then turned a smooth face to my father, who was frowning in my direction.

  Urbi had not forgotten her topic; she never forgot anything. She asked for guidance only because she wanted to direct my father’s attention to my untimely arrival.

  I waited, lips pressed together, until my father shifted his attention to Urbi, then I thrust my tongue toward her. Though her expression did not change, she placed her hand at her side and wagged a discreet finger in my direction.

  My father bowed his head. “Princess, I charged you to debate a question of daily life. Is it more preferable to live in the country or in the city?”

  Urbi inclined her head in a regal nod, then lifted her chin and addressed her audience—her tutor, her three siblings, her attendants, and me.

  Schooled in the art of rhetor
ic and communicative gestures, she raised her left hand and swept it from right to left, gracefully including all of us listeners. “Life is pleasurable no matter where one lives, for what beauty does the grave hold? And the afterlife, though it may be sweet, is but a dream and cannot be adequately described. Life in the country is restful, for nights are filled with sounds of the wilderness and heralded by purple sunsets over the western mountains. Who can deny the majesty of the cliffs near the Valley of the Kings, or the beauty of the shimmering Nile during the inundation? But life in the city, Alexandria in particular, is equally grand. The city radiates with the greatness of its founder, the man buried at the city’s heart, and no people in the world are as brave, resourceful, or as creative as Alexandrians. Where else do Greeks, Egyptians, Romans, and Jews dwell in harmony? Has any other city our lust for life? Has any other city a wonder like our library or our towering lighthouse? Has any other people such a thirst for the pursuit of knowledge? No. Though living in the country may be preferable to living in a small town, Alexandria provides life at its finest, more perfect than any man can imagine.”

  She lowered her head and placed her hand on her chest, signaling that she had finished.

  My father stood. “Very good.” His eyes glowed with quiet pride. “You could have added a few more gestures, however. Always remember that the hands can speak as powerfully as the mouth. Do we not use them to demand, promise, summon, dismiss, threaten, supplicate, express aversion or fear, question or deny? Considering what to say is not as important as considering how to say it.”

  Urbi dipped her head, acknowledging my father’s advice, then assumed her seat at the front of the room.

  Father’s eyes lit on me. “Chava. Perhaps you would present a eulogy for us.”

  I rose and folded my hands. “A eulogy for whom?”

  “For—” he tilted his head, doubtless searching for a name that would not remind the royals of recent trials—“for Ptolemy. The first.”

  I took my time walking to the open space before the royal children’s seats. I had not mastered Egyptian history and cared little about the man who had served Alexander and cheated the conqueror’s son out of his rightful inheritance. But the first Ptolemy was the ancestor of these royal children, and Ptolemies had ruled Egypt for three hundred years. They built the city Alexander designed, so perhaps I could summon up a measure of respect.

  Would that Father had asked me to give a eulogy for Simon, Joseph, or any of the patriarchs. Those I knew as well as I knew my father’s face.

  I walked to the center of the open space, straightened my spine, lifted my chin, and curled my hand into a discreet circle to avoid distracting my audience with what Father called my tendency to “accent phrases with flapping fingers and wild gesticulations.”

  “What can I say of Ptolemy?” I said, strengthening my voice so it reached the slaves in the back of the chamber. “What can I say of the man who was a schoolmate to Alexander the Great and followed him from the kingdom of Macedonia to conquer the world? Without Ptolemy’s writings, we would have little knowledge of Alexander and his exploits. Without Ptolemy’s cleverness in bringing Alexander’s sarcophagus to Egypt, we would not have the founder of Alexandria entombed among us. Without Ptolemy’s wisdom and foresight, we would not have an outstanding library that is envied by the world.”

  I glanced at my father, who had arched a brow. Immediately I realized that I had failed to emphasize a single point with a gesture, a severe oversight. How to distract him from my mistake?

  I shifted to a Jewish perspective, an addition that would surely please him. “In Ptolemy, we see the fulfillment of what the prophet Daniel foretold to King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon.” I lifted my right hand high, like a prophet about to deliver a word of warning. “Nebuchadnezzar was the head of gold, ruler of the world. But after him another kingdom rose, the kingdom of the Medes and the Persians, the chest of silver. The Medo-Persians were defeated by the belly of bronze, the kingdom of the Greeks, and years before Alexander’s birth, the prophet Daniel foreknew that Alexander’s empire would not pass to his son, but would be divided to the four winds of heaven—four generals, one of whom was Ptolemy, whom we mourn today.” With my closing words, I lifted both hands and gracefully crossed them over my chest as I bowed my head—a gesture, I hoped, of respect and reverent mourning. I held the pose until my father cleared his throat.

  “Thank you, Chava. Princess—what did you think of Chava’s eulogy?”

  Urbi lifted her chin. “I approve it.”

  “Why do you approve it? How did you find her delivery?”

  Urbi’s dark gaze met mine. “Impactful.” The corner of her painted mouth rose in the hint of a smile. “I was near tears at the end.”

  Father closed his eyes, then turned to Omari, Urbi’s junior by eight years. “My prince—have you an opinion on Chava’s eulogy?”

  The boy, barely six years old, shrugged.

  “You have no opinion?”

  The prince glanced at me, then grinned. “She is very pretty.”

  “Thank you, Prince Omari.”

  The youngest royal son, adorable four-year-old Sefu, piped up. “I think she’s pretty, too.”

  Father bowed his head. “Thank you, Prince Sefu.”

  Father turned to me, his mask of patient forbearance disappearing. “In spite of these royal compliments, you have disappointed me, Chava. Instead of telling us of Ptolemy’s many accomplishments, you talked about prophecy, about his forefathers, and about the history of Alexander. It was not the best eulogy you could have improvised.”

  “I mentioned the library.”

  “But you did not mention the museum or Ptolemy’s love of learning. You gave us little feeling for the man himself.”

  A line crept into the space between Father’s brows as he looked from me to Urbi, then he shook his head. “I will never understand why HaShem makes one woman beautiful and another woman clever. But who am I to question His doing?”

  He stood and bowed to the royal children. “That is all for today. I will meet you again tomorrow.”

  The two princes scampered away while my father pulled his robe more tightly around him and slowly left the chamber.

  After bathing and changing into a clean chiton, I smoothed a few stray hairs and went into the triclinium, where our slaves had prepared the table for the Shabbat meal. The light that usually flooded this room had dimmed, reminding me that the sun was balancing on the western horizon. Time was fleeting.

  “Hurry,” I reminded the kitchen slave as she set two challah loaves on the table. “The sun sets.”

  After covering the loaves with linen napkins, I lit a strip of papyrus in the kitchen cook fire and brought it to the table, lighting the candles. My father and Asher had reclined on their couches and watched in silence as I waved my hands over the candles to welcome the Sabbath.

  I covered my eyes. “Barukh atah Adonai, Eloheinu, melekh ha’olam, asher kidishanu b’mitz’votav v’tzivanu, l’had’lik neir shel Shabbat.” Blessed are you, Lord, our God, sovereign of the universe, who has sanctified us with His commandments and commanded us to light the lights of Shabbat.

  Father and Asher replied in unison: “Amein.”

  Leaving the candles and challah on the table, I picked up my himation and draped it over my hair and shoulders, then followed Father and Asher out of the house. The synagogue was a short distance away, and already the street was crowded with neighbors on their way to the Sabbath meeting.

  After greeting several of our friends outside the building, I slipped inside and found a seat among the women. An older woman whose name I couldn’t remember squeezed my arm as she sat beside me. “And how is your father today?”

  “He is well, thank you.”

  “I am eager to read his work. I am also eager to discuss my nephew with him.” She crossed her spotted hands and chuckled. “Lavan is a fine young man and would make a good husband for you. How old are you now?”

  I tried not to wi
nce. “Fourteen.”

  “A pretty girl like you without a mother at this age—” The woman tapped her tongue against her teeth. “Do not worry, my child, we women of the community will watch over you. And we have all agreed that you and Lavan would make a good match.”

  I chewed my lower lip and glanced at the men’s section, hoping to catch Asher’s eye. He would help if I shot him a look of distress. If I behaved as if I were about to panic, he might even hurry me away from this place—

  At that moment the rabbi stood and the room grew silent. The woman next to me pulled her veil over her head as we said opening prayers, and though she smiled and winked at me as we prayed, she did not speak again of her nephew.

  We sang psalms, a young boy recited a passage from the Torah, and then the rabbi stood again. “I call for the elders,” he said, lifting a folded material that looked like fine linen. “Take the four corners of this chuppah, and make it a tent of blessing.”

  I leaned forward, interested in this deviation from our usual service.

  “And now,” the rabbi called, smiling, “I ask all the wives and widows to come stand beneath this tent as we pray a blessing for you.”

  I gasped in pleased surprise as women around me stood and walked forward, many of them visibly moved by this unusual gesture. When they had gathered beneath the makeshift tent, the men began to pray, their heads bobbing as they lifted prayers to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

  For an instant my heart ached to stand beneath that tent, to hear the voice of a husband begging heaven to shower me with blessings. But I did not want to be a wife, and why should I? HaShem had already told me that I would be a blessing to a queen, so I would need to remain at her side. From her happiest day to her last. Always.

  I swiped away an embarrassing tear as the prayers ended and the women returned to their seats, their faces lit with an unearthly glow. I thought I managed to look content and happy, but the woman who had been sitting next to me handed me a linen square to wipe my eyes.

  “You are ready,” she whispered, nudging me with her elbow. “I will speak to your father soon.”