Egypt's Sister: A Novel of Cleopatra

by Angela Hunt

  I dipped my head in a polite bow. “Chava.”

  Peering down his nose, Amphion took my measure in one glance and seemed to find me lacking. “Helios,” he asked, a note of exasperation in his voice, “where did we find this one?”

  “On the farm.”

  “That might explain the dirt under her nails. Go at once, girl—”

  “Amphion?” Domina’s voice startled all of us. Coming into the garden, Atia pulled her veil from her hair and released a tinkle of laughter. “Be kind to that one—she reads, writes, and delivers babies. She is going to deliver Octavia; then we can hire her out as a midwife.”

  “She is literate?” Amphion looked to Domina, but she had already wandered away. When he frowned, I intuited that he did not want anyone encroaching upon his responsibilities.

  “If it please you—” I began, keeping my gaze lowered.

  “Silence.” He cut me off with a stern look. “You will not speak unless directly addressed. You will not look up unless asked a direct question. And you will never, ever, look your mistress or a superior slave in the eye. Do you understand?”

  “I apologize.” I kept my head down. “But until this moment, I did not know one slave could be superior to another. Are we not all property and owned by the same woman?”

  Silence simmered between the three of us for a moment, then Helios laughed, breaking the tension. “She has a point,” he said. “Just because one slave has more responsibility than another does not make him a free man.”

  Amphion’s scowl deepened. “Go with Helios,” he said, jerking his head toward a room at the back of the house. “He will set you to work.”

  Helios took me to the kitchen, where the cook was choosing vegetables from a boy who struggled beneath the weight of a produce basket.

  Helios tilted his head. “Do you cook?”

  “Not well.”

  “What do you do?”

  “I can spin wool and embroider,” I told him. “I read, write, and speak Greek, Aramaic, Latin, and a bit of Egyptian. And I have studied midwifery.”

  He nodded, scratched his head, and gestured for me to turn around. I did, moving slowly, and when I had finished, he clicked his tongue against his teeth. “First, we get something to fatten you up,” he said, his voice heavy with weariness. “Then we scrub the dirt from the back of your neck and give you a decent tunic. When you are fit to be seen, we will ask Domina how you should spend your days. But know this—in this house, the slaves are always well-groomed and clean. Any slave who does not keep herself tidy will be sent to the farm or the slave market.”

  He pulled a folded square of linen from a shelf in the kitchen, then gave me a small loaf of bread and pointed the way to the bathhouse.

  Helios was not jesting when he said he would have someone scrub the dirt from the back of my neck. I had just settled into the steaming bath when another slave entered the room and smiled at me. “The butler sent me,” she said, kneeling at the side of the pool. “He said I am to scrub your skin until it is pink.”

  I instinctively recoiled when she picked up an instrument that looked like a blade.

  “This is a strigil.” She held up the instrument for my examination. “Do not worry, it is not sharp enough to cut. It is used for scraping dirt off your skin.”

  Relaxing slightly, I lifted my hair from the nape of my neck and settled on the stone seat in the pool. “I am Chava.”

  “I am Sabina.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  The girl shrugged. “Five years? Six? This”—she waved a hand to indicate the bathhouse—“is my domain. I keep the water hot, the towels clean, and a strigil at hand.”

  She dipped the blade in the warm water and began scraping it over my neck. “I have a rinse to clean your hair, and a brush to scrub beneath your nails.”

  I peered at her from beneath the fringe of my damp hair. “I can clean myself, you know.”

  “Next time you will,” she answered. “But this time, we will make certain you meet Helios’s standards. He is meticulous, that one.”

  Gradually, I relaxed as she scrubbed my skin and worked a pumice stone over the soles of my feet. I could almost close my eyes and pretend I was home, where Nuru had performed these duties for me.

  Sabina kept up a steady stream of chatter as she scrubbed, probably to ease my nervousness. I learned that she liked her work, that she had come from another household where she had been required to look after children, and she liked her new position better. In the course of talking about the other slaves, she mentioned one name more than once.

  “And who is this Duran,” I asked, giving her a sly smile, “that you should mention him in every other sentence?”

  A flush rose from her neckline and colored her cheeks. “Is it so obvious? He works in the stable and I adore him.”

  I smiled, amused by the thought of love flourishing in even dire circumstances. “Does this Duran return your adoration?”

  “He does.” A smile trembled over her lips. “We are hoping to earn our freedom so we can marry. But even if that day never comes, it is enough that we are together now.”

  I made a small sound of agreement because I did not know what else to say.

  “Have you ever been in love?” Sabina asked.

  “I might have been,” I admitted. “My father was always bringing young men to the house—bright and handsome. I always felt I was meant to be something other than a wife, but one man—”

  “His name?”

  I smiled, recalling Yosef’s face. “His name does not matter, but he said he would always wait for me.” My smile faded. “I do not believe he is still waiting. Even love’s patience has a limit.”

  Sabina crouched beside me, her eyes filling with pity. “You must open your heart to someone else. Love is everywhere.”

  “Even for a slave?”

  “Why should slaves not know love?” Her words were convicting, but she spoke them gently. “It would be easier if I did not love Duran, but then what joy would I find in this life? Because I love him, and I know he loves me, I love being part of this household. I love being where he is, and I would follow him anywhere. And who can say? Perhaps you will find someone to love among the slaves in this house.”

  “But—” I stopped when a man in a slave’s tunic entered the bathhouse. He halted at the threshold, his eyes roving over my submerged body, and the smile he gave me was nothing less than lecherous.

  “Thanatos!” Sabina snapped. “You should not be in here.”

  “I smell of horse,” he said, turning his head to sniff beneath his hairy arm. “The mistress has sent for me, but she will have me whipped if she catches a whiff of the animals.”

  “Wait outside,” Sabina commanded.

  I froze as images from the farm flitted through my mind. The men who attacked us had been brutes like this one, and they had smelled of animals and sweat and feral living. A man like this one had almost caught me—

  “Chava?”

  Shivering, I closed the curtain on my dark memories and met Sabina’s gaze. “Yes?”

  “He is gone.”

  I looked behind her and saw only empty space. Only then did I feel my shoulders slump and realize how tense I had been. “Who was that?” I asked.

  Sabina sighed. “Thanatos, the stable master. He is a crude sort.”

  “I am surprised Domina would keep a slave like that. Or that Helios would let him into the house.”

  “He usually confines himself to the barn,” Sabina said. “But he has always made me uneasy. He is always staring at the girls, and once he tried to—well, it is a good thing Helios interrupted when he did.” She stopped scraping and looked at me. “We slaves have no legal recourse if we are ill-used. Most masters do not want to hear about our troubles. I have heard of girls becoming pregnant and then being sold because their masters thought a big belly spoiled their beauty.”

  I looked away as my face burned. I had heard Urbi dismiss slaves for the same rea
son, and at the time I thought her reasons sound.

  “Stay clear of that one,” Sabina said, scraping my skin again. “And do not ever think you can snatch a nap in the barn. Better to curl up on the hard kitchen floor than to let your guard down near Thanatos.”

  She swished the strigil in the water, then picked up a sponge, dipped it in a basin of cool water, and dribbled it over my shoulders.

  “If all the male slaves were as gallant as Duran, this would be a perfect place.” She stood and picked up a folded piece of linen, unfolded it, and held it up.

  I stepped out of the pool and into the large square, wrapping the linen around me. “What would you do if Domina sold Duran?”

  Sabina shrugged. “Why should I worry about that until it happens? That would spoil all the joy I feel today.” She pulled a clean tunic from a basket. “Here,” she said, handing me the white garment. “Sometimes Domina will want you to wear something more festive, but we wear these tunics every day.”

  When I had pulled the linen tunic over my head, she nodded, tied a rope belt around my waist, then ran her fingers through my tangled hair. “You will do very well here,” she said, smiling, “if you learn to relax and enjoy the place. Others have not been nearly as fortunate.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  That was how I came to find myself living in the seat of worldly power. As HaShem would have it, a great deal of that authority emanated from a home in which I was one of forty slaves who served five people.

  The eldest member of the household was Lucius Marcius Phillipus, an aristocrat who claimed descent from the royal line of Macedon, the same line that had produced Alexander the Great and Cleopatra. Lucius spent his days meeting with visitors who called on him for political favors and expert opinions. As Atia’s second husband, he had little to do with her adult children who sprang from a different marriage. Unfortunately, he died not long after I joined the household.

  After Lucius’s death, Atia became the authority in our home. Our domina was fond of reminding visitors that she was descended from the Julii clan, whose members traced their lineage to the years before the founding of Rome. She was also great-niece to the late Julius Caesar, and mother to Caesar’s heir, Gaius Octavius.

  Octavia, Atia’s daughter, had married Gaius Claudius Marcellus, another man who seemed content to let his wife handle the family affairs. Gaius Marcellus was at least twenty-five years older than his bride, who expected their first child around the turn of the year. Though I suppose Octavia and her husband could have set up their own household, they preferred to live with Atia—perhaps because Atia’s house was large and elegant, or perhaps Octavia wished to remain close to her mother and brother. In any case, Atia and her grown children were as close as a fingernail is to the quick.

  Nineteen-year-old Gaius Octavius was Atia’s son and, due to Caesar’s bequest, arguably the wealthiest man in Rome. When he began to call himself Gaius Julius Caesar Octavian, he could also boast of wielding the republic’s most powerful name. While he was of average height, slender and physically unimpressive, I found him to be reasonable, studious, and admirably cautious.

  As I worked in Rome, I learned lessons I would never have learned in Alexandria. At home, I had been sheltered and spoiled by my association with Cleopatra. I had lacked for nothing, and whatever I wanted appeared simply because I asked for it.

  But in Rome I learned practical lessons. From my fellow slaves I learned how to work hard, please a master, and value freedom. The Romans took their slaves for granted as I once had, but hours of eavesdropping in out-of-the-way corners alerted me to the tumultuous state of the world beyond my master’s home. The nobility tended to forget that slaves had eyes, ears, minds, and opinions.

  In those days Rome was not yet an empire, but the Roman republic was on its deathbed and gasping.

  While slaves like Sabina seemed content to keep their heads down and do their work, I had been reared in a place where politics mattered a great deal. As I went about my daily duties—cleaning, serving wine, whatever I was asked to do—I could not ignore comments and whispers exchanged by family members. Through Atia, her husband, and her children, I learned what was happening outside the Octavii family.

  Since Caesar’s death, Octavian and Mark Antony had been involved in a struggle for power. Power required arms, and Octavian had won three thousand legionaries to his side by promising each man two thousand sestertii, more than twice their usual pay. When the Senate refused to make the payment, Octavian marched eight legions, cavalry, and auxiliary soldiers into Rome. Worried that his mother and sister might be taken hostage by Antony’s forces, he had his family go into hiding—with their favorite slaves to care for them, of course. I remained with others at the house, to wait and watch the drama unfold.

  When Octavian led his army into the city, the cheering citizenry elected him to supreme governance of the republic. He met Atia and Octavia at the Temple of Vesta, where he kissed them and made a sacrifice to the gods. A vulture swooped down and appeared to endorse his sacrifice, and the people took it as a sign that young Octavian had not only inherited Caesar’s name and fortune, but also his power.

  After attending her son’s celebration, Atia came home, ate a light supper, and went to bed. When her handmaid went in to wake her the next morning, she found our mistress dead.

  A steady stream of visitors came to the house to pay their respects. The women came with undone hair, the men with unshaven faces. The guests gathered in the atrium, where Atia had been laid next to the reflecting pool, and bent to kiss her cold lips.

  The crowd quieted for the reading of the will. I was about to leave the room, figuring Domina’s will held nothing to interest me, when Sabina plucked my sleeve and shook her head.

  I stepped closer. “Why stay?”

  “Because,” she whispered, “many a woman’s will has freed her slaves. I hope our mistress will do the same.”

  Could it be?

  Scarcely able to breathe, I stood in the shadow of a column and dared not look at the executor who held a scroll in his hand.

  “To her daughter Octavia, Atia leaves the country villa, all her jewelry, and her clothing. To Gaius Caesar Octavian, Atia leaves her farm, her house, the wax masks of her ancestors, and her slaves, knowing he will have need of well-trained servants in his household.

  “And to Helios, the slave who ran her household for more years than Atia cared to recall, she bestows manumission.”

  A murmur ran through the room as onlookers turned to congratulate the faithful slave. Helios bowed his head and struck his breast, a gesture of aggrieved happiness. Atia had freed one slave, but not me.

  I looked at Sabina and tried to summon a smile. “Apparently we are to serve Octavian.”

  “At least we are not likely to go hungry.”

  “That all depends,” I replied, knowing that the richest men were often stingy. “Time will tell.”

  While I waited for HaShem to open the door for my return home, I paid careful attention to events unfolding around me. I knew nothing about Roman politics when I arrived in the city, but was eyewitness to astounding developments after the death of Julius Caesar.

  Not long after my arrival, the Senate voted that a Commission of Three for the Ordering of the State would be established for five years. One of those three was Atia’s son Octavian. Together with Marcus Antonius, commonly known as Mark Antony, and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, the three men formed the Second Triumvirate—a triad of rulers to replace Caesar.

  The Senate granted enormous power to the Triumvirate. Not only could the three men repeal and make laws, they also carved up the sprawling Roman Empire, each man assuming responsibility for a specific territory. Antony took Gaul, Lepidus took Gallia Transalpina and the two Spains, and Octavian accepted oversight of Africa, Arminia, and Sicily.

  One evening I stood in a corner and waited for orders as Octavia and her husband reclined on couches in the atrium. Octavia’s belly was expanding, so I kept a careful eye
on her.

  Yet Octavia was not thinking of her baby, but of her brother. “Why would they assign Africa to Octavian?” she said. “Nothing important ever happens in Africa.”

  “You are mistaken,” her husband corrected. “Egypt and Cleopatra are Africa, and without Cleopatra’s grain, Rome would starve. Your brother has been given greater power than you realize.”

  A thrill raced through me at the mention of my old friend. Perhaps Octavian would go to Egypt and take slaves with him . . .

  The Triumvirate had problems they discussed only in private, usually in Octavian’s study. As I served honey water and melon wafers to these important guests, the three discussed how they could raise the funds needed to finance their war against Brutus and Cassius, two murderers of Caesar who were still at large. Brutus and Cassius, the members of the Triumvirate agreed, would have to be defeated to keep republican opposition at bay.

  After a thoughtful lull, Octavian leaned forward. “I have an answer—and there is precedent for it.”

  “Robbing the rich?” Antony jested.

  Octavian did not smile. “A proscription. Lucius Cornelius Sulla organized one forty years ago. He not only eliminated his political opponents, he amassed a fortune from their confiscated estates.”

  Antony propped his chin on his fist. “Are you suggesting that we kill our enemies outright? And claim their property?”

  Octavian nodded soberly. “In the name of Rome.”

  “The idea is fraught with risk,” Lepidus said. “Organized murder?”

  “Legal murder,” Octavian answered. “And I myself am of two minds about it. The nobility will not like it, for our enemies are noblemen. But the common people will cheer us, especially when we point out that many of the dead were among those who plotted the death of Caesar.”

  “If there is legal precedent,” Antony said, “and if it is for the good of the Republic, who can stop us?”

  I stood like a pillar near the doorway, my eyes lowered and my lips compressed as the three men drew up a list of their enemies. The group grew ever more excited as the candles burned lower.