Kleopatra

by Karen Essex

“They are not paid to think.”

  Meleager tried to modulate his voice. “I must urge you to choose another Syrian. The Roman Gabinius is soon to be rewarded governorship of Syria. He may wish to be involved in your selection of husband.”

  “He will be denied that privilege. I have already told you my position on the matter. I expect Archelaus within the month. Please make arrangements for the accommodations for his men.”

  Berenike stepped over the body of Seleucus, turning her back on him so fast that her dress fluttered behind. The three women followed, leaving the corpse of the dead prince for Meleager. Little Arsinoe—how old was she now? Seven?—skipped behind the mad queen and her cutthroat entourage.

  It had all been done so sloppily. He himself had planned the disposal of the queen and the philosopher. After speaking to Demetrius and hearing his guilty tirade about his betrayal, his “mistake,” Meleager realized that the adultery was a godsend—that he could have both of them eliminated and make it appear that the philosopher, in a moment of forlorn remorse, had murdered the queen and had then gone back to his chamber and taken his own life. It would have been so neat. No untidy, unexplained details. No one to blame but the dead.

  But Berenike was one step ahead of him. She came to him, eyes blazing with passion and madness, and told him that she had solved all their problems. She had killed them both. Now there was only Auletes and the little troublemaker who stood in their way. But do not worry, she had taken care of them, too. The sister of one of her women had been taken aboard Auletes’ ship as a scullery maid. Before she left she was given a special cargo. A little something with which she might season their food.

  It might have all worked out even then. There was only one problem—the queen was mad. Meleager, who had given his life, his very manhood, to the goddess, had been directed by that mysterious deity to arrange for a lunatic murderess to sit on the throne.

  Meleager fell prostrate on the cold floor of his apartment, his nose flat against the tile, ignoring the fact that he lay next to a dead man. “Why have you forsaken me, Lady?” he sobbed into the floor. “Why have you done this thing?”

  What use was it to ask the gods the question they inevitably refused to answer—why me? He cried for what seemed to be a long time. Finally, in the chaos of his memories, he saw a pattern emerge, an order, perhaps. Not his order, but a Higher Order. So what if he did not like or approve of the outcome? The goddess was under no obligation to make everything turn out in his favor. He was but a grain of sand in the desert, a minor player in a drama that began long before he was born and would continue long after he was forgotten. He did not have the whole picture; he saw only a few tiles in the mosaic. The Ptolemies, Egypt, Rome. The goddess had commissioned him to make certain that Berenike IV became queen. He had done that. So what if he, too, had paid a price?

  He had come to the end of his service. As soon as he realized it, a great relief settled over him, like a warm bath after a long ride in the desert. It was as simple as that. The complexities he had pondered and woven all added up to this one thing. He had been given a Divine mission to see Berenike queen and he had completed that mission. What happened now was neither his concern nor his responsibility.

  So that when he went to his private box of carved ebony from the Numidian forests and extracted the dagger, he did not waste even a moment in regret. He had lived an extraordinary life. He called for his servant to draw a bath; while his man fixed the temperature of the water, Meleager would write a letter to his mother.

  He had already suffered the worst imaginable pain and survived. This time would be easier. He would be efficient and effective, just as he had been in all facets of his life. He had played his part with dignity and, if he did say so himself, exemplary aplomb. It was time to bow out and let history take its course.

  Auletes, Hammonius, Archimedes, and the princess met with the Tribune of the People in his home on the Palatine Hill, because Clodius could not be received in the home of Pompey. It was just the four of them. That was the arrangement. No weapons, no bodyguards. No one entered Clodius’s house armed. Kleopatra was allowed to come because there was no time to argue with her, and because Auletes was afraid Clodius and his men would exchange private information in their own language.

  The house was encircled by guards, soldiers armed as if for war, who interrogated the king’s party upon arrival, checked the men for weapons, and then, at the command of the host, stepped aside so that the royals might walk under the great arched door and into Clodius’s vestibule. The house was neither as new nor as splendid as the home of Pompey, for it was a smaller city house built in the days when the empire of Rome had not extended so far and Roman patricians were not yet enjoying confiscated treasures from around the world. But it contained an impressive collection of Greek statuary and pastoral floor mosaics of Italian farm life that Kleopatra found charming. Compared to Pompey’s villa, it seemed old-fashioned, almost quaint. Nothing about the surroundings betrayed the power of the head of household.

  “How is it that you have brought a child to our meeting?” Clodius inquired. He stood to greet his guests and then offered them seats on divans draped with worn tapestries.

  “My daughter is my chosen heir,” said the king, letting himself fall into the stuffed cushion of the sofa. “It is our custom to rule king and queen, side by side. The princess Kleopatra is being tutored in the ways of monarchy. She speaks many languages, including your own. She is a valuable diplomat.”

  Clodius bowed to Kleopatra but the amused look on his face remained. He looked smaller than the other Romans she had met, and was fairer of complexion. His Greek was precise and impeccable. For all his reputation for terror, he was one of the cultured greeklings so despised by his fellow Romans. Yet beneath his curly coiffure and his childlike straight white teeth, Kleopatra sensed the demon that drove him.

  “What specifically might I do for you, Your Majesty?” he asked the king after food and drink were delivered to the guests. “After all, you are the guest of Pompey the Great. What might I do that that good man cannot?” he asked in a mocking tone.

  Auletes did not intend to go into his problems with Pompey, for he was all too aware of the tension that existed between the men. “A delegation of traitors has docked at Puteoli and intend to speak out against me and my cause. I want to be rid of them before the senate gives them a hearing. Despite the friendly mask they wear at present, they are the tools of a deeply anti-Roman faction. You will serve me, yourself, and your own country if you do away with them.”

  “As tribune, I am here to serve the Roman people,” replied Clodius. “Give us a minute.” He sat quietly for a while, occasionally raising his eyebrows, breaking an impish grin, and tossing his shoulders about. The king did not know what to make of this, but Hammonius put his meaty hand up, a signal for the king to surrender to Clodius’s idiosyncrasies. Finally Clodius took a deep breath as if he were coming out of a trance.

  “Your Majesty, I have spent the last days in meditation upon another cause. I believe we might join our purposes and deliver a double thrust upon those who so vex us and our loved ones.”

  “Let us hear your thoughts, my good man,” said the king.

  “It seems to me that we are both caught up in matters of protecting our families. You are preserving the throne for your daughter, the future queen, and I am in the midst of a delicate situation concerning my beloved sister, who has fallen upon hard times.”

  “Go on, man, go on.” So close to the promise of action, Auletes could barely contain his anticipation.

  “My beloved sister, Clodia, has had the misfortune of becoming the obsession of the rabid poet Catullus. He has written pornographic poems explicitly describing his sick fantasies about her irreproachable person.”

  Could it be true that Clodius’s sister was the muse of Catullus’s erotic poetry? And if so, was Clodius the brother with whom she had the notorious incestuous affair? Kleopatra felt a wild elation but contained it; it would n
ot do to reveal her love of Catullus’s poems to the brother of the revered and then scorned Lesbia. Kleopatra’s mind seized onto the idea that she could use this encounter with Clodius to catch a glimpse of the renowned beauty—or even of the poet himself.

  “How does a poet fit in with my needs?” the king asked impatiently.

  “Oh, the poet has nil to do with it, really. No one pays attention to him. But you see, my sister was cursed by the gods with an inordinate beauty, too captivating for mere mortal men to endure. One look at her and they seem to go mad. “If only I could turn them to stone,’ she cried to me only yesterday. “Then they could not harm me!’” Clodius fluttered his eyes as his voice took on the shrill high pitch of a female.

  Clodius had the attention of the king, who waited patiently for a revelation that would unite Clodius’s complaint with his. “My sister was taken in by a lying dissolute, Caelius Rufus. She gave him an astounding sum of money and all of her jewelry so that he could promote himself politically, but instead he sold the jewels to pay his gambling debts.”

  Clodius squinted his eyes and rubbed his palms together. “I went to him to demand my sister’s money, but I found him in his usual morning stupor. He cowered in the corner and wept, “Oh Clodius, please do not hurt me. I am but a poor man. Clodia promised me I could keep the jewels. She really did. You know that I would never do anything against yourself or your family.’” Clodius used the same shrill voice in imitation of his sister’s lover.

  The king simply stared at the Roman.

  Clodius resumed his masculine voice and began to lay out his scheme to do away with Auletes’ enemies, wreak vengeance upon Caelius Rufus, and murder the philosopher Dio who stayed in the city, the guest of the wealthy knight Lucceius.

  “Here is what we shall do,” said Clodius, his eyes staring into space. “Next week Clodia is to make her annual sacred pilgrimage to Delos. And from where does the ship leave? Why, Puteoli, of course. Now do you see it, Your Majesty?”

  Clodius would lure Caelius to Puteoli with promises of a last minute meeting and reconciliation with his sister. “But alas—he shall arrive just in time to have missed her boat. Meanwhile, we will have disposed of your enemies. Then, when Caelius arrives, we shall frame the murder on him.”

  Clodius jumped to his feet and did a little hopping dance before the king. “And that is just the beginning!”

  Auletes turned to Archimedes. “I feel as if I am trapped inside the strange plot of one of Menander’s comedies.” He loudly cleared his throat. Kleopatra could see that he had wearied of listening to the complexities of Clodius’s plot. Auletes came to his feet. Automatically, Hammonius and Archimedes joined him.

  “Surely you aren’t leaving?” asked Clodius with a hurt look on his face. “Don’t you want to hear the rest of the plan?”

  The king shook his head. “For the gods’ sakes, man, just kill them.”

  With those words, the king left. The stunned members of his party apologized to Clodius and fixed when and where they would deliver the money. Kleopatra followed her father out of the house, wondering if her father had completely ruined her chances of meeting Catullus’s muse. But the king simply got into the carriage that had brought him to the house, sat himself down, and fell asleep.

  FOURTEEN

  How do you like adventure when it is not merely play, Cousin?” Archimedes teased, the mirth in his brown eyes cutting through the morning’s damp chill. Kleopatra resented that his good cheer came at her expense and she glared back at him.

  “Is riding a horse three days through this endless Italian fog such a great adventure, Cousin?” retorted the princess. “I have had more excitement in the marketplace of Alexandria.”

  She was very tired and cranky and regretting that she had argued so passionately to be present. They had arisen long before dawn, having spent the night at a tawdry inn usually frequented, Hammonius said, by criminals and soldiers. The beds were hard and the meal inedible. Breakfast was a piece of bread taken on horseback. The lower part of her back ached. With each bounce of the horse his backside collided with hers, causing a pinch of pain in her sacrum. Though they had slowed their pace because of the fog, she longed to dismount and sit on a soft cushion. The soggy air made her colder than she ought to be. She craved a warm cup of weak wine and her own bed.

  It was past daybreak but a murky haze still hovered over them. The torches of the bodyguard fractured the shroud of darkness, cutting a shadowy path along the empty highway. Though she could smell the salty ocean air, she could not see as far as the shore. They were told that the road would take them all the way to the port at Puteoli, but in the engulfing fog, the road appeared to pave itself a few feet at a time as the torches revealed it.

  The entire scheme had been finessed with Pompey’s blessing, but without him knowing of Clodius’s involvement. Kleopatra noticed that in the months they had stayed with Pompey, he had put on a considerable amount of weight. She had ceased to blush in his presence. Still, though, Julia frolicked before him like a nymph and, nightly, he fell into her ocean. Auletes explained to Pompey what would transpire, carefully eliminating the name of the architect of the plot. Pompey listened patiently as if weighing the king’s words carefully. “I know nothing about it,” he finally replied, giving his dispensation.

  The king caused great anxiety among his men by insisting that he witness the deed. “I am spending a great deal of money on this,” said Auletes. “I wish to see the faces of the traitors before they die. I shall call upon the gods to take them to the bowels of Hades—away from the company of poets and philosophers and lovely women and into the depths of eternity where they shall live among the shades of criminals and slaves.” At that moment, Kleopatra began her own campaign to accompany the men on their grim purpose, a campaign the king immediately squashed. Kleopatra did not relent, but created for Auletes fantastic scenarios of her own vulnerability should his mission go awry, leaving her alone among the Romans. “I am your heir, Father,” she said. “What might they do to me if you do not return and your clandestine purpose is discovered?” She laid the argument out logically as Demetrius had taught her to do, pointing out the sequence of events that might lead to her demise. If anything happened to the king, she would be left in the hands of Pompey, who was the enemy of the man who had designed Auletes’ grim mission. Would Pompey take revenge upon her for her father’s alliance with his most egregious rival, Clodius? Auletes regarded her skeptically, but she added, “One thing is certain. If the mission is not successful and my father does not return, I shall certainly not be rewarded.”

  Finally, Archimedes interceded. “I will take full responsibility for the princess’s safety, Your Majesty, if you allow me the privilege. I will lay down my life to protect her.”

  Kleopatra could not stop the squeal that escaped her mouth. She threw her arms around her cousin’s neck.

  “Let us hope it does not come to that,” the king said, relenting.

  Kleopatra released her cousin and turned to thank her father, but his disapproving stare stopped her. She had forgotten that she was no longer a child, and it was unseemly for her to have behaved this way.

  “You will not regret changing your mind, Father,” she said, suddenly somber.

  “It is never too early to learn the lessons of power.” Auletes sighed. “But you, young man, are responsible for her safety. Her safety—but your duty to the princess stops there,” he added pointedly. He looked at his daughter to see if she took the warning, too. She bowed her head to her father.

  Now the king was resplendent in his alertness. He rode ahead of his men and his daughter with a small guard arranged by Clodius, who assured them that they did not want to travel Italy’s roads unaccompanied. The assassin, Ascinius, rode behind them dressed in dark clothing that matched his cimmerian countenance. He did not utter a word. Clodius had warned them not to be deceived by his bleak demeanor; his methods were impeccable and his loyalty beyond reproach. Kleopatra reckoned him a man to
be feared.

  Just when she thought she could no longer hold herself erect on the horse, they arrived at the docks. The royals were quickly sequestered inside a shack built for the dock master and his family, who had vacated for the day by order of Clodius. The hut smelled of fish and sea rot.

  “But we will see nothing from here!” protested Kleopatra. “And the odor is putrid.”

  Her father’s quiet glare silenced her. She perched herself atop a wooden table under a small round hole from which she could look out.

  “There is the vessel to Delos,” explained Archimedes, pointing at a small sailing ship. Kleopatra wished he would put his arm around her shoulder as they looked together to the sea, but he did not. “And there is the ship of the One Hundred.” It was a larger boat, with tall sails and, below in the gallows, long slits for oarsmen to propel the craft should the winds fail them.

  From the small opening Kleopatra witnessed the unfolding of Clodius’s great scheme. She watched as Clodius kissed a cloaked woman before she turned to board the ship headed for Delos. Her disappointment at not seeing the face of the beauty overtook her and she tried to escape the careful watch of Archimedes and sneak out the door, but he caught her and sent her back to her roost. Moments later she was gratified when the infamous one turned as she reached the deck to wave a final good-bye to her brother, revealing the notorious features that had dazzled so many.

  Clodia’s womanliness could not be restrained by her bulky travel clothes. She was graced with perfect proportions. The full mouth, red from the sea wind. The high cheekbones and dark slivers of shiny onyx eyes. The elongated neck and full chest tapering into a dainty waist. Long legs hidden under a skirt that protected her from the sea air. The luminescent skin—flawless, at least from the distance, but what woman has driven men to ruin without the feature of a perfect complexion? The dainty wistfulness as she waved a languid hand at her brother. Most of all, the nose, small, pinched to aristocratic perfection, resting indifferently in the middle of her face without interrupting the grace of her other features.