Egypt's Sister: A Novel of Cleopatra

by Angela Hunt

  “What kind of work might she want?”

  “Hard to say,” Berdine said, turning back to her pot. “But she has frequent need of a scribe. And someone to keep accounts. There’s plenty of work to be done with figures. Or, given your looks, she might want you to warm her son’s bed. But do not worry about such things—for now, your job is to rest and get well. Time enough later to find your place in the household.”

  I closed my eyes against a sudden rush of tears. How could I make her understand that my place could never be among the slaves?

  “There now,” she said, turning back to me. “Time enough to sort all that out. Right now you need to rest and regain your strength. So sleep, little one, and let my potions do their work. You’ll feel better in a few days.”

  I nodded, yielding to her entreaties, but the rough caress of a burlap blanket did nothing to put me at ease.

  After several days under Berdine’s care, I grew strong enough to leave my sickbed. Berdine suggested that I learn my way around the orchard and vineyard as I strengthened myself with daily walks. “The women here work as hard as the men,” she said and settled a kettle onto the fire, “and if you do not do your fair share, Triton will sell you to the next trader who passes by.”

  The thought of standing for another auction made my stomach sway, so I determined to regain my strength as quickly as possible. I also wanted to explore every hidey-hole and bramble on the estate. If I ever needed to hide, I’d have to know where I could safely conceal myself.

  Barabell, a slave from Gaul, waddled under the weight of her unborn baby as she gave me a perfunctory tour in elementary Greek. Pointing to a simple villa of plastered stone, she said, “There is villa for Domina. She comes not much.”

  “So I have heard.”

  Barabell pressed her hand to the small of her back and moved forward. Behind the house, next to a small vegetable garden, we found the animal pens. “Pigs and sheep,” she said, flapping her hand at two separate enclosures. “Pigs for eating. Romans like pigs. The sheep for cutting hair. Romans like wool.”

  Though I did not eat pork, I had owned dozens of woolen garments, yet I had never seen a living pig or sheep except at a distance. I counted at least twenty pigs in the pen, most of them happily wallowing in mud or rooting around in the dirt, and about the same number of sheep. The sheep were messy, their long hair caked with mud and broken twigs.

  “Cletus care for animals.” Barabell pointed to a man with short, curly hair. He gave me a narrow-eyed look that seemed to pluck at my tunic, so I turned away.

  “There.” Barabell gestured toward an area filled with what appeared to be mounds of clay. “Hives for bees. Do not steal honey. Triton flog, then sell to mines. No one wants to work in mines.”

  I silently absorbed the warning and said little as Barabell continued. “Well,” she said, pointing to a round circle of rocks, “and barn—keep hay and food for animals.”

  She stopped and regarded me with a weary look, then propped a hand on her swollen belly. “Each day, eat one meal. Each year, one tunic. Old tunic to Berdine, she make blankets. If you run, you be caught and marked.” She held up one finger, blew on it, then touched it to her cheek and made a hissing sound.

  “Branded?” I whispered.

  “Yes. And wear iron collar always. No escape here.”

  She looked across the field, and I saw that she could have been a lovely woman. Strands of copper-colored hair had slipped from the knot at her neck and pasted themselves to her rosy cheeks. Large green eyes dominated her face, and her features, while smudged with grime, were as delicate as any noblewoman’s.

  I prodded her when she fell silent. “Anything else I should know?”

  She gave me a sidelong look. “You not talk like slave. But you obey like slave. You must.”

  I nodded in rueful acceptance, at least for the moment. “You need not worry about me.”

  Her upper lip curled. “You have fancy talk. Let us see fancy work.”

  When Triton told me that my first job would be to help Berdine, I imagined the work would be easy—after all, slaves only ate once a day, so only one small meal had to be prepared. Then I learned that Berdine did far more than cook.

  Aware that I was unaccustomed to hard labor, Berdine did not demand much of me in those first few days. She allowed me to follow her around the property and become familiar with the tasks associated with each area. She also urged me to learn the names of the other slaves.

  Berdine kept saying the farm was not large, yet it seemed huge to me, with most of the land being devoted to the vineyard and olive grove. I never thought I would find beauty in country property, but the surrounding fields were a colored quilt, each square painted in a different hue. I had grown up with the blue of Alexandria’s sky and the white of her stone buildings, but on the farm I was surrounded by earthy browns and the emerald and gold of trees, vines, crops, and grasses. Though Egypt greened with life after the inundation, for most of the year the land around Alexandria was arid and brown with little variation.

  Fortunately, Berdine said, the grapevines and olive trees required little of us except during the harvest when every slave pitched in to help. “On harvest days,” she assured me, “we will all be too tired to eat.”

  Triton kept us busy doing the work that kept us alive. When he returned from the market with grain—from Egypt, I realized with wry satisfaction—Berdine and I had to grind it, mix it, and bake it into the rough loaves we ate every day. Vegetables from the garden supplemented our meager diet, and unless one of the men caught a rabbit or several pigeons, rarely were we offered meat. When one of the sheep died from a mysterious illness, I hoped we might boil the carcass and have mutton for dinner, but Triton declared the meat unsafe and ordered the animal burned.

  Each sunrise we stepped out of our mud huts and reported to the vilicus. I counted fifteen slaves on the farm—not a huge number, but enough to keep the place running.

  Berdine told me our domina owned another villa in the country, a home the family visited far more often. “It is their place for relaxation and pleasure,” she said, grimacing as she turned the stone mill that ground our grain. “And Domina keeps more slaves there—many more. There are slaves to tend the gardens and fish ponds, slaves to clean the lake, gardeners, bird keepers, gamekeepers, and fish minders. The house is large, so they bring slaves from the city—the doorkeeper and the keepers of the kitchen and bedchambers. The master has his ornator to dress him, his tonsor to shave him, and his calceator to care for his feet. The mistress brings her dresser and hairdresser, plus a woman to draw her bath. The children also have slaves, and they travel with the family in their own litters, carried by a matched set of Cappadocian slaves in uniforms.” She chuckled. “Dominus even has a nomenclature who walks with him and tells him the name of anyone he cannot remember.”

  “You mentioned a dominus,” I said, “yet you refer to Domina as if she runs the farm.”

  Berdine nodded. “Domina is a widow who married again, but the farm is hers, as is the country villa. So yes, we have a dominus and domina, but we answer mostly to her.”

  “And the dominus?”

  “We stay out of his way.” She smiled. “He is a good man, but quiet. I think he stays out of Domina’s way, too.”

  I used the scoop to collect the ground grain and poured it into a bowl. “How do you know so much about the city house?”

  A dimple appeared in her cheek. “I was a cook in the familia urbana,” she said. “Then the vilicus asked me if I wanted to be in charge of the women at the farm, and of course I said yes . . . because I had come to love Triton, you see, and he was going to the farm.” Even at her age, a blush brightened her cheeks when she spoke of her lover. “So we came to the farm and have been here ten years.”

  “Is our domina a good mistress?”

  Berdine nodded as she sprinkled more grain over the mill. “She is a kind woman and a good mother to her son and daughter. I enjoy being left alone to work, bec
ause sometimes I can almost pretend Triton and I are free.” She gave me a guilty smile. “On other days, I wish Domina came here more often so she could see what we need. Sometimes I think she forgets about us. And on a farm, the slaves should not be left unprotected.”

  “Unprotected from what?”

  “Raiders. Thieves.” She gestured, directing me to pour the ground grain into a clay pot and cover it with a lid. “Triton would fight to defend this place, and perhaps Cletus, but if a group of raiders came here with villainy on their minds, how would we defend ourselves? Sometimes I worry. And then I wish Domina gave us more of her attention.”

  I listened intently, eager to learn all I could about the place. If I were to get back to my family, I would have to escape. I had never been particularly brave or an eager risk-taker, but since my life had taken a sharp turn into unexpected territory, perhaps it was time to change.

  I had already begun to formulate a plan. To get back to Alexandria, I would have to reach Rome and secure passage on a ship. I had no idea how it could be done, but I knew I had to try.

  Though I proved clumsy with a shearing blade and was terrified of the huge pigs, I demonstrated my worth to Triton and Berdine the morning I picked up a spinning wheel. Apparently none of the other women were skilled at spinning, but I’d watched Nuru spin by the hour, and the technique wasn’t complicated. Besides, sitting in one place reminded me of all the afternoons I had listened to Urbi’s tutors with embroidery in my hands. “I am good at sitting still,” I told Berdine, “and I am good with thread. Let me spin, and I promise you won’t be disappointed.”

  Doubt glimmered in her eyes, but when she stopped working at midday to see how I was doing, she found a ball of tightly spun thread, a good morning’s effort. She unwound a length and rolled it between her fingers, then grunted in satisfaction. “’Tis a bit rough for fine sewing,” she said, “but you are bound to improve. And you cannot be worse than the other girls.”

  I felt my shoulders relax. For days I had been trying to demonstrate some skill that would earn the others’ respect. If I proved useless on this farm, I might be sold and transported even farther away. This place, rough as it was, seemed safe enough. The men kept their distance, though Cletus looked at me from time to time in a way that lifted the hair at the back of my neck. Berdine and Triton were in a contubernium, or unofficial marriage, and so were Barabell and Darby. Each of the couples lived in their own home, leaving the rest of the men in one hut and we women in another.

  Whenever I looked at the couples—Berdine and Triton or Barabell and Darby—I thought slavery might be more bearable if one had a companion. At night, I soothed myself to sleep by imagining that the soft sounds of breathing belonged not to several women, but to a beloved man. The formless shadow beside me always wore Yosef’s face.

  After proving myself capable of producing something of worth, I set out to learn about the area around the farm. I learned that the property lay near the city of Neapolis, south of Rome and just north of a seaside resort called Pompeii. By listening to the men talk about the market at Neapolis, I calculated that it would take a day to walk to that city, and another seven days to reach Rome—provided all went well. The Via Appia ran along the coast, so the journey would be smooth as long as I did not run into soldiers, bandits, or slave hunters.

  My escape would be easier, I realized, if I had someone with me. We could not only keep each other company, but one could stand watch while the other slept. We might even do a bit of role playing, if we could manage it. With the proper garments, we could pretend to be a noblewoman and her slave, or a mother and daughter, and avoid looking like two runaways. But which of my fellow slaves would want to risk the danger of failure?

  At midday, when we gathered outside Berdine’s hut to receive our bread and a bowl of whatever garden vegetable she had boiled, I studied the other women and wondered if any of them might be persuaded to run for Rome. Barabell would not—with her baby due at any time, she was in no condition to escape, plus she seemed truly attached to Darby. “They are mates,” Berdine had told me, “in all ways but legal. Domina could sell either of them if she wanted, but she’s not likely to as long as they’re breeding. That baby could be another pair of hands to work the farm, and more hands are always welcome.”

  “Babies would be more welcome if they came without another mouth to feed,” Triton groused, but Berdine ignored him.

  “I am looking forward to having a babe around the place,” she said. “It has been a while.”

  Doreen, a tall red-haired Gaul who spoke little Greek or Aramaic, might be persuaded to run away, but I wasn’t sure I’d be able to communicate the finer points of a successful escape. We couldn’t simply take off; we would have to be wily and clever. Could she pass as anything but a slave? I doubted it.

  Melleta, a Greek woman, handled everything to do with the vines. Every day she went into the vineyard and studied the rows of plants, running her hands along the twisted branches and adjusting the wooden supports as she looked for signs of leaf roll or beetles. Berdine said Melleta had worked in the vineyard since childhood, and she knew every vine by heart. I had thought she might be convinced to escape the farm, but after watching her work the vines, I doubted she would leave the plants that had become her life’s work.

  Lesley was the shepherdess, and she seemed as devoted to the sheep as Melleta was to the vineyard. Vara was not attached to any of the men, yet her eyes followed Alroy every time we all gathered together. From the flush on her cheeks I surmised that if she hadn’t yet attempted to lie with him, she soon would. Even slaves grew lonely at night.

  Kepe, who had arrived with me and now worked with the pigs, was minus a tongue and a little unsound in the mind. I wasn’t sure she could be calmed enough to pass for a typical traveler on the Via Appia.

  The girl who had arrived with me did not survive the first month. She refused to eat, rejected our attempts to comfort her, and wasted away before our eyes. She never spoke, though she cried out often during the night, and three weeks after our arrival we found her lifeless in her bed. Minos buried her in a small slave cemetery outside the vineyard.

  Minos wore his history on his face—his cheek had been branded with the letter F, for fugitīvus, and he wore the infamous iron collar around his neck, advertising to one and all that he had tried to run . . . and failed. He wore his attitude on his face as well, and with one glance I understood that he did not take to slavery as easily as some. Some slaves, like Melleta and Vara, had been born into captivity and accepted slavery as their station in life.

  But the Gauls had been forced into slavery when the Romans invaded their land and defeated their army. With hundreds of others, Barabell and Darby had been tied up and roped together, then torn from their dead and driven southward into Roman territories. They were slaves because they had been conquered, and fierce resentment simmered beneath the surface of their faces.

  I waited for someone at the farm to ask how I had become a slave, but aside from Berdine’s gentle questioning when I first arrived, none of the others seemed curious about my background. None of them was especially friendly, either, and none of them appeared to think much of my abilities when I mended the harvesting nets or attempted to help Kepe catch an escaped pig.

  And I did not blame them. As I lay in the women’s mud hut and stared at the twig ceiling above my head, I looked over the winding length of my life and realized that I had never excelled at anything except being beautiful and spoiled.

  Barabell went into labor on a cool spring day as we were preparing to mend the harvest nets. We had just spread the nets beneath a shady tree when she cried out and bent over. When she stood erect, clutching her belly, I could see that the bottom of her tunic was spattered and wet.

  “Sorry,” she called, her face flushed. “I know . . . bad time.”

  “Her waters have broken,” Berdine announced, eyeing the evidence. “I’ll take her back to the huts. Chava, bring the others back for dinner at mi
dday.”

  Berdine, whose eyes were focused on the mound of Barabell’s belly, tried to step over the huge net but caught her foot in the weave and fell, face-first, to the ground. Barabell gasped and I ran over to help the older woman. “Let me aid you,” I said, slipping my arm around her waist.

  Berdine slapped my arm away. “Don’t make a fuss.” She tried to stand, but the moment she put weight on her right foot, she groaned and staggered forward. “Can’t . . . walk,” she hissed between clenched teeth. “My ankle . . .”

  I looked at her leg, where the ankle was growing thicker before my eyes. “Let me call one of the men, someone who can carry you.”

  “The men are needed here.” She glanced around again, then reluctantly focused on me. “Chava, take Barabell and help her. Triton can carry me home at the end of the day.”

  “But you are injured! You need to put your leg up—”

  “I need to help with the mending,” she said, sliding off the olive nets. “Go on now. Get Barabell to the hut and stay with her till the baby comes.”

  I gaped in astonishment, my hand flying to my pounding heart, but another cry from Barabell urged me forward. I caught her arm and walked her down the path that led back to the huts.

  “I think big baby,” Barabell muttered between gasps as we walked. “This not easy birth.”

  “I am sure it will be fine.” I smiled as though childbearing were as easy as belching. “Babies come every day.”

  “Women die every day,” Barabell said. “You help with birthing before?”

  “No—but I have seen one.”

  I had, but only from a distance, and only because Urbi and I hid behind a curtain in her mother’s bedchamber. We had been present when the youngest Ptolemy was born, but all I could remember was the pregnant queen clutching an amulet and squatting while a white-robed priestess of Taweret uttered incantations and waved a censer.