Kleopatra

by Karen Essex

  On the river, Kleopatra rose early. In the darkness of her cabin she would light a small saucer of oil and carry it above to watch the soft commencement of sunrise on the water. She liked to take the fresh morning air before the sun’s punishing heat beat down upon the boat like a metal worker at his trade, forcing her back into her quarters where she would lay languid and depressed until the heat lifted. In fact, she found that her early mornings on the deck were necessary to survive the rest of the day.

  Hephaestion often joined her, but this morning she was alone except for a few solicitous members of the crew. She had encouraged Charmion to remain below so that she might have this time to reflect and pray, and to strategize. She longed for her bedroom at home, with its windows opening to the fragrant sea air from the Mediterranean, and for Alexandria, with its palm trees, its parks, and its temperate climate.

  Neither the queen nor her Prime Minister had been prepared for the extent of suffering that drought and famine had wrought upon the people, who depended on the annual inundation of the Nile when she blessed the crops with another fruitful layer of silt. This year the life-giving waters did not come. The Mother of Egypt, who nursed those fecund shores with her milk, this year withheld nourishment from her children. And the children of Egypt, confused, hungry, frantic, unable to imagine a way to survive other than the one they had known since time out of mind, went into a panic.

  Everywhere in the countryside, people had deserted their villages. The mud houses on the riverbanks, once inhabited by farm families, were left cracked and empty, drying to dust under the eternal pummeling of the sun. Priests of some of the Egyptian cults had fled to Alexandria, leaving their shrines and temples unattended. Fellahin, starved, angry that their own portions of the very crops they had raised were taken from them and sent to feed the city population, had taken over the temples and other holy buildings, taking for themselves and their children the meager provisions left by the priests.

  When the queen’s boat stopped at the villages that lined the river, Kleopatra encountered their anger, for to them she was just another of the well-fed Greeks for whom they presently starved. Everyone knew that the government controlled the Nile. Its river workers and engineers measured the height of the water and kept record of it, built the canals that brought water to the crops, manned the water-wheels, the dams, the dikes. Some people believed that the government of the Ptolemies was purposefully diverting water from their lands. Kleopatra did not shy away from the people’s wrath but talked to them in their own language and told them to be angry at those who levied the edict. Sometimes she met with success, leaving the village with the loyalty of whatever local regime had remained. But sometimes she failed. One man had looked her in the eye and said, “When I am fed, I will have the strength to direct my anger with more wisdom.”

  The native people who lived along the river had resorted to trickery and to the old forms of magic to provoke the gods. Even before sunrise, Kleopatra heard drumbeats imitating thunder, tormenting the deities into sending the rains. She had seen old men gather dust from the temple floors to scatter over their dying crops. “They must feed the frail ones who have been left behind,” said the only priest who remained at a village they visited. “The young and the strong have left for territories where they believe there is food to be had.”

  This morning, the light of the ascending sun revealed a tableau of human misery. Women, pale and thin, bathed naked in the river, an ancient way to entice the river gods to make the waters rise. In the fields, emaciated peasant women—also naked—manned the plows of their crackling brown fields, pausing to stretch their arms to the sky, offering whatever was left of their bodies to the unseen Almighty. The queen wondered what god would succumb to seduction by these bony, sorrowful women. Small groups of fellahin and their children gathered in the shallow waters of the river to give whatever pathetic offerings they had to the river god. A little boy bravely flung his wooden toy into the river. A woman threw ears of discolored corn to the silent god, who had no inclination to heed these abjurations. Others bared their chests to the sky, beating their pendulous breasts, begging the sympathy of the mother goddess, from whose abundant fertility all life sprang forth.

  Kleopatra could endure the pantomime of tragedy no more. She put her head in her hands and hid her eyes from the sight of the wretchedness.

  “I am depending on the loyalty of a starving and dying people,” she said to the tall man who appeared at her side. “If I wish to fight my brother with the bones of the dead, this is where I should raise my army.”

  “Today we will reach Thebes,” said Hephaestion. “And you will see your friends at Hermonthis.”

  “I’m afraid we are going to find the temple of Sarapis deserted, the sacred bull with his ribs showing, and the people gone.”

  “Let us pray that it is not so,” said Hephaestion. “The high priest Pshereniptah has promised us shelter and all of his power to add strong men to our army.”

  “If there are strong men in the Thebiad, they are the only ones left in Egypt,” said the queen cynically.

  When Kleopatra landed at Hermonthis, no phalanx of healthy, hairless priests lined up respectfully to meet her. Instead, the crowd gathered at the dock hurled angry words and epithets as the royal ship slid into harbor. Kleopatra saw the fists waving in the air like flags and dropped her head into her hands.

  “Another angry mob, waiting to indict me,” she said wearily to Hephaestion. “Another crowd to be won over. I am too hot and too tired. Perhaps we should wait until dark and then dock.”

  “Look again, Your Majesty,” answered the eunuch. “Their shouts are directed at that Egyptian man, the one who appears to be the supervisor.”

  The uniformed Egyptian bureaucrat watched stiffly as workers wrapped in layers of white gauze against the hot sun loaded tall barrels of what looked like grain onto a barge. The area was cordoned by twelve armed guards whose faces remained stiff and mean as the people called them by their given names, and also by other epithets.

  “Traitor.”

  “Coward.”

  “Puppet of the Greeks.”

  Two of the soldiers threatened the taunters with their swords, and the people backed off. The queen watched them mutter as they reluctantly retreated.

  Kleopatra’s small band of soldiers disembarked slowly, under intense scrutiny from the guard on the dock. The men walked heel to toe, forming a tense procession, like a pack of wolves huddled to ward off a common enemy. The queen and her retinue followed the men. Meeting Kleopatra on this very same platform was a frowning Pshereniptah and his wife, whose Egyptian name defied pronunciation. Kleopatra had met them during the ceremony of the bull and was grateful to see familiar faces.

  “Do you remember me, Your Majesty? I am the one you called Happy Kettle.” That is what the queen had called the woman in Greek, for that is what her name meant. Happy Kettle knew enough of the Greek language to be pleased with a special pet name given to her by the queen.

  “You look well, if unhappy, my friends,” said the queen. Both the priest and his wife were gaunt in the face, but neither appeared to have suffered too much physical damage from lack of food. The woman had purple circles under her dark eyes, unusual for the Egyptian complexion.

  “Your Majesty, who could feign happiness in such times?” said the priest. “Who knows the wisdom of the gods? I apologize that no one is here to meet you but myself and my wife, but so many are dead and the rest have gone. And now what little food remains must leave us today, just as you are coming to grace our city.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Kleopatra.

  “Your Majesty, the soil here is particularly fertile. We did not have a full crop this year, but, with the blessing of the god, we managed to harvest enough grain for our own people to survive. We might still survive the year if we were allowed to keep our portion of the crop. But, you see”—he turned his placid brown face to the barge—”what remains of our food leaves today for Alexandria. The p
eople in the city feast while we who grow the food must starve. They are leaving us nothing. Nothing.”

  Happy Kettle turned her face away from her husband so that the queen would not see her tears. The priest continued. “In some villages, the people have resurrected the custom from the. Old Time of sacrificing a young virgin to the river god. We have not seen this kind of desperation in our lifetimes, nor in the lifetimes of our fathers and their fathers’ fathers.”

  “Can we not stop this travesty?” Kleopatra said to Hephaestion.

  The priest leaned as close as he dared to the queen in order to whisper to her. “I know why the Nile does not rise, Your Majesty,” he said solemnly. “When god is pleased with Pharaoh, the river rises. When god is pleased with Pharaoh, god gives us his gifts. God is not pleased with the boy Pharaoh.”

  Though her command of the native language was excellent, Kleopatra sometimes found the Egyptian manner of explanation utterly abstruse. But she knew what the priest meant. The people would believe that a proper pharaoh—a conduit between the deities and the people—would be able to protect them from such a disaster as drought.

  “How do you know this?” Kleopatra asked.

  “Because the god Sarapis, who loves the Egyptians and the Greeks equally, has told me. And I have spread his message.”

  “You mean that the boy king does not please the god?”

  “Until the boy is deposed, the god will not bless us with the waters of the river. The ones who starve the people must be punished.”

  “Is the god pleased with me, Father?” Kleopatra asked quietly, aware that the support of the people of the district hung precariously on his answer.

  “The god sent you to us. Just as you led the procession of the sacred bull, so shall you restore the waters of the Nile.”

  Kleopatra was about to tell the priest that she did not know how to control the flow of rain when she stopped herself. She turned to Hephaestion. “Prime Minister, I now issue a new policy concerning grain raised in the Thebiad, to be implemented immediately.”

  “What does Your Majesty have in mind?” he asked.

  “The food must stay. That is all. Go to that well-fed Egyptian whose scribe stands at his side. Undoubtedly he is the district officer here. Tell him that the queen demands that the shipment remain at the dock.”

  “He will say that the Greek military governor of the nome will have his head if he does not obey the edict from Alexandria,” said Hephaestion.

  “You may answer that the queen will have his head if he does not obey her command now.”

  “Your Majesty,” began Hephaestion in a low voice. “You are bringing trouble to these people.”

  “How can I worsen their condition? What is worse than slow starvation?” She waved to the captain of her guard. “Follow me. If anyone makes a move against me, you know what to do.” She turned on her heel, leaving Hephaestion with his mouth agape and no choice but to follow her.

  The district officer’s tense face slackened into a look of surprise as the queen, the Prime Minister, and her guard approached him. He looked to either side of himself to make certain he was the destination of this regal assemblage.

  He stood stiff and frozen and then found refuge from the queen’s determined stare by bowing to the ground. His guard followed his example, all falling to one knee. The agitated crowd of onlookers, too, quieted and fell into the submissive posture.

  “Stand and face your queen,” Kleopatra said, speaking to the district officer in Egyptian, not for his own benefit, for all district officers were well versed in Greek, but to make herself heard by his men and by the spectators. He raised his face and then came to his feet. All others remained on the ground.

  He was younger than she had anticipated, perhaps not even thirty years old. He must have been very smart to have risen so quickly in the provincial bureaucracy. His face was set in the stern features of an older man, one whom experience had hardened. Yet there was a dreamy quality in his small, dark eyes. Perhaps it was that they were shaped like teardrops, round and then sharply upturned in the corners.

  “I am Kleopatra, Lady of the Two Lands of Egypt, daughter of Ptolemy XII, descended from Alexander the Great, who many hundreds of years ago conquered this land and made it his own. I am your sovereign queen.” The man fluttered his eyelashes at the young queen. He moved to bow again, but the queen interceded. “Remain standing. And listen to me. Command the dock workers to unload the food on the barge.”

  He stared at her as if he did not comprehend her words. He was not a man given to think for himself. She looked past him and saw the ubiquitous royal edict nailed to the dock: No one may do as he likes; everything is organized for the best of all concerned! Kleopatra tried to remain patient.

  “What is the matter, District Officer? Do you not speak Egyptian?” she asked slyly.

  Several of his men stifled snickers. The man looked imploringly at the queen.

  “What is it you wish of me, Your Majesty?” he asked in a low, reverential voice, hoping that she would issue any request but the one she had previously uttered.

  “I wish you, command you, to take the food off the barge. The food remains with the people who grew it. The food does not go to Alexandria, where there is already plenty of food. Command the workers to unload the food. Quickly, or we shall all be here in the darkness, working by the light of the moon goddess.”

  “Your Majesty, I am under direct order from the military governor. The penalty for disobedience is death.”

  “That is understandable,” she said. She saw his chest sink with a sigh of relief. She prolonged a stare into his upturned eyes. Then she turned to her captain.

  “Kill him.”

  The captain drew his dagger. Several of the district officer’s men stood, not knowing whether to defend their superior against the queen’s orders or to watch as the captain killed him. As the district officer’s men moved, so did the remainder of the queen’s guard. Within seconds a palpable tension encircled the assembly. The captain looked to the queen for final confirmation of her order. The queen folded her arms. “You men look rather well fed considering the circumstances,” she said.

  The district officer did not respond.

  “Are you taking food off your own tables?” asked the queen, who knew very well the policies of her nation’s bureaucracy. “Have you no family in this region whose welfare concerns you? Were you not sired by a man and born of a woman? Did you not have cousins with whom you swam naked in the river, or sisters who depend on you for protection?” The queen addressed her questions to the entire guard. As she spoke, heads bowed to avoid her eyes and her words.

  “My brother, the boy king, and his regime do not care if your families starve, so long as they might fill their own bellies. But I will not have those loyal to me suffer. Unload the food. If the military governor insists upon starving the people in the district, I shall execute him with my own hands.”

  Though she spoke with complete authority, Kleopatra was amazed when she was not challenged. The officer sighed, and nodded to his crew to carry out the queen’s orders.

  “We have begun a civil war,” said Hephaestion. “And we do not yet have an army to fight it.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  Kleopatra regarded a small gold coin stamped with her image. The artist had rendered her face more grave, more mature than the visage she saw daily in the mirror; nonetheless, it was flattering. The nose was considerably smaller than its real counterpart, the eyes slightly larger, the lips a good resemblance to the full ones that the queen thought one of her finest features. She looked regal, imposing, and beautiful in a tragic way. If this is how the people view me, then so be it, she thought.

  “This is a most hopeful sign,” said Hephaestion. “Their decision to issue coins with your image means that the people of Askalon and the Sinai region are ready to accept you as their queen. Word will spread that you have great loyalty outside the city of Alexandria. And without using military might. Few Ptolemies, l
iving or dead, could claim such.”

  She smiled at the eunuch’s words of encouragement and returned the coin to him. They sat in a small room with narrow, shuttered windows closed against the day’s heat, in the house given to her by the people of Askalon. She had fled there after her brother and his regime had had her officially deposed. They had wiped her name from the national documents and banned the use of her coinage. To make matters worse, Pompey had issued a decree thanking her brother for his support and declaring himself the boy’s guardian. This terrified Kleopatra more than being deposed, because it might have meant that Rome recognized her brother alone as Egypt’s monarch. But the fact also remained that, at present, Pompey was not doing well in his war against Caesar, who had just been named Dictator in Rome. Caesar had already run Pompey and those senators loyal to him off to Greece, and now, according to a recent letter from Archimedes, Caesar was in Greece with his army. It was assumed that Caesar would now vanquish Pompey once and for all. Archimedes assured Kleopatra that Pompey’s decree would not carry much weight once Caesar defeated him.

  “So it is actually better that Pompey has not named himself my guardian?” she had asked Hephaestion. The eunuch simply nodded his head thoughtfully. “Perhaps,” he had said, with not enough enthusiasm to give her much comfort.

  In any case, Hephaestion determined that Kleopatra was no longer safe on Egyptian soil and arranged for her to take refuge in the small city of Askalon in the Sinai territory, which her grandfather had liberated from the Judaean kings. She was assured that its population would receive her warmly. Besides, it was a perfect location from which she might raise a host of armies from the east.

  Kleopatra’s party had sailed up the eastern branch of the Nile, and before reaching Pelusium, had abandoned the ship and stole away to Askalon, resuming their disguise as a caravan of merchants. It was an efficient and appropriate masquerade in which to enter the region. Her new home was a one-story white rambling plaster structure, shaded from the undulating sandy mounds of the northern desert by a date grove. The queen had spent many mornings wandering about the grove with Hephaestion, watching in the distance as merchants in camel-caravans, wrapped in stark white layers of gauzy cotton without a morsel of skin exposed, carried their goods back and forth over the desert. Not far from the sea, the area held little else except the turquoise mines farther to the south. The coast was dotted with villages of peasants who made a living from the fruits of the ocean. Kleopatra longed for the sight of the great green of the Mediterranean, but she was not allowed to venture so far from her headquarters. She was only thirty miles from the Egyptian fortress of Pelusium, where Alexander the Great had accepted the surrender of the Persians so many centuries before, and where her brother’s army was presently stationed.