Father, I have sent this same letter to many places. Please, I beg of you, don’t give up! I have heard of your frightful ordeals in the command tent from Cicero, who was here but has now gone. That Labienus! Cicero told me.
He arrived with Cato and a thousand recovered wounded troops. Then Cato announced that he would take the soldiers on to Africa, but that it was inappropriate for a mere praetor to command when a consular—he meant Cicero—was available for command. His aim was to put himself and the men under Cicero’s authority, but you know that old bag of wind better than I do, so you can imagine what his answer was. He wanted nothing to do with further resistance, troops or Cato. When Cato realized that Cicero was secretly bent on going back to Italia, he lost his temper and went for Cicero with feet and fists. I had to drag him off. The moment he could, Cicero fled to Patrae, taking his brother Quintus and nephew Quintus with him. They had been staying with me. I imagine the three of them are now squabbling in Patrae.
Cato took my transports—I have no need of them—and set sail for Africa. Unfortunately I had no one I could give him as a pilot, so I told him to point the bows of his ships south and let the winds and currents take him. One consolation is that Africa shuts Our Sea in on the south, so he can’t help but fetch up somewhere in Africa.
What this tells me is that the war against Caesar is far from over. Resistance will crystallize in Africa Province as the refugees all head there. We are still alive and kicking, and we still own the seas. Please, I beg you, my beloved father, gather what ships you can and come either to me or to Africa.
Pompey’s answer was brief.
My dearest son, forget me. I can do nothing to help the Republican cause. My day is over. Nor, candidly, can I face the thought of the command tent with Cato and Labienus breathing down my neck. My race is run. What you do is your choice. But beware Cato and Labienus. The one is a rigid ideologue, the other a savage.
Cornelia, Sextus and I are going far, far away. I will not say where in case this letter is intercepted. The two Lentuli, who have accompanied me until now, will leave me before I reveal my destination. I hope to elude them here in Attaleia.
Look after yourself, my son. I love you.
Early in September came the time for departure; Pompey’s ship slipped out of harbor without the knowledge of the two Lentuli or the sixty refugee senators. He had taken three of the triremes but left the other nine to be sent to Gnaeus in Corcyra.
They called in to Cilician Syedra briefly, then crossed the water to Paphos in Cyprus. The prefect of Cyprus, now under Roman rule from Cilicia, was one of the sons of Appius Claudius Pulcher Censor and very keen to do what he could to help Pompey.
“I am so sorry your father died so suddenly,” said Pompey.
“And I,” said Gaius Claudius Pulcher, who didn’t look sorry. “Though he’d quite gone off his head, you know.”
“I had heard something of it. At least he was spared things like Pharsalus.” How hard it was to say that word “Pharsalus”!
“Yes. He and I have always been yours, but I can’t say the same for the whole patrician Claudian clan.”
“All the Famous Families are split, Gaius Claudius.”
“You can’t stay here, unfortunately. Antioch and Syria have declared for Caesar, and Sestius in the governor’s palace at Tarsus has always inclined toward Caesar. He’ll declare openly any day.”
“How is the wind for Egypt?”
Gaius Claudius stiffened. “I wouldn’t go there, Magnus.”
“Why not?”
“There’s civil war.”
9
The third Inundation of Cleopatra’s reign was the lowest on record in a land where records of the Inundation had been kept for two thousand years. Not merely down in the Cubits of Death: eight feet, a new bottom for the Cubits of Death.
The moment Cleopatra heard, she understood that there would be no harvest this coming year, even in the lands of Ta-she and Lake Moeris. She did what she could to stave off disaster. In February she issued a joint edict with the little King directing that every scrap of grain produced or stored in Middle Egypt was to be sent to Alexandria. Middle and Upper Egypt were to feed themselves by irrigating the narrow valley of the Nilus from the First Cataract to Thebes. As every grain of wheat and barley grown in Egypt was the property of the Double Crown, she was fully entitled to issue this edict—and to exact the punishment for any transgression by grain merchant or bureaucrat: death and confiscation of all property. Informants were offered cash rewards; slave informants were offered their freedom as well.
The response was immediate and frantic. In March the Queen thought it politic to issue a second edict. This one assured those possessed of Letters Regnant exempting them from taxation or military service that their exemptions would be honored—on the sole condition that they were engaged in agriculture. The whole kingdom outside Alexandria had to be driven to grow in the most painful way, by irrigation minus Inundation.
The letters of protest flooded in. So too did requests for seed grain and remissions in taxes, neither of which the Double Crown was in a position to grant.
Worse than this, Alexandria was in ferment. Food prices were spiraling, the poorer people scraping money together to buy food by selling their precious few possessions while those better off began to hoard both their money and their non-perishable foods. The little King and his sister Arsinoe smirked; Potheinus and Theodotus, assisted by General Achillas, went far and wide through Alexandria commiserating with the simmering citizens and suggesting that the shortage was a ploy of Cleopatra’s to reduce the more seditious-minded elements among the people by starving them out of the city.
In June the trio struck. Alexandria boiled over; a mob set out from the Agora to the Royal Enclosure. Potheinus and Theodotus unbarred the gates, and the mob, led by Achillas, stormed inside. To discover that Cleopatra had gone. Nothing daunted, Arsinoe was presented to the mob as the new Queen and the little King spoke fair promises of improved conditions. The mob went home; Potheinus, Theodotus and Achillas were content. But they faced severe difficulties. There was no extra food to be had. However, power seized had to be defended and retained; Potheinus sent a fleet to raid the granaries of Judaea and Phoenicia, secure in the knowledge that the war between Pompey the Great and Gaius Caesar was occupying so much attention elsewhere that a few Egyptian raids would go, if not unnoticed, certainly unpunished.
One difficulty loomed very large. Cleopatra had vanished. While ever she was free, she would be working indefatigably to ensure the downfall of little King Ptolemy’s palace cabal. Only where had she gone? All the dethroned Ptolemies took ship and sailed away! Yet nowhere on that huge waterfront could any of the cabal’s spies discover the slightest evidence that Cleopatra had sailed away.
*
She had not sailed away. Accompanied by Charmian, Iras and a gigantic, black-skinned eunuch named Apollodorus, Cleopatra left the Royal Enclosure clad in the clothes of a well-to-do Alexandrian lady and riding on a donkey. Passing through the Canopic Gate scant hours before the mob stormed the palace, they boarded a small barge at the town of Schedia, where the canal from Lake Mareotis behind Alexandria flowed into the Canopic arm of the Nilus Delta. The distance to Memphis, which lay on the Nilus itself just before it fanned into the Delta, was not more than eight hundred Greek stadia—a hundred Roman miles.
Memphis had again become the most powerful nucleus of worship in Egypt. Centered around the cult of the creator-god Ptah, under the first and middle pharaohs it had contained the treasure vaults and the most august priests. From the time of Pharaoh Senusret it sank from favor, superseded by Amon in Thebes. Religious power shifted from Memphis to Thebes. So did custody of the treasures. But with the fluctuating fortunes of Egypt after the last of the truly Egyptian pharaohs had died out, Amon too declined. Then came the Ptolemies and Alexandria. Memphis began to rise again, perhaps because it was much closer to Alexandria than was Thebes, the first Ptolemy, a brilliant man, had conceived
the idea of bonding Alexandria to Egypt by having the high priest of Ptah, one Manetho, carve out a hybrid religion, part Greek, part Egyptian, under the godhead of Zeus-Osirapis-Osiris-Apis and an Artemis-Isis.
The fall of Thebes occurred when it rebelled against Ptolemaic rule during the time of the ninth Ptolemy, called Soter II in the inscriptions and Lathyrus (which meant Chickpea) by his subjects. Chickpea massed his Jewish army and his shallow-drafted war galleys and rowed down Nilus to teach Thebes a lesson. He sacked it and razed it to the ground. Amon suffered terribly.
However, the three-thousand-year-old priestly hierarchy of Egypt knew all there was to know about looting. Every pharaoh who had been laid to rest surrounded by incredible wealth was a target for tomb robbers, who went to any lengths to plunder the dead. While Egypt was strong these bandits were kept at bay; after Egypt became the prey of foreign incursions, most of the royal tombs were denuded. Only those secretly located remained unpillaged. As did the treasure vaults.
By the time Ptolemy Chickpea tore Thebes apart (looking for the treasure vaults), those vaults were back in Memphis. He was desperate for money; Chickpea’s mother, the third Cleopatra, was Pharaoh, but made sure he was not. She loathed him, preferring his younger brother, Alexander, whom she finally succeeded in putting on the throne in his place. A fatal act for Egypt. After Alexander murdered her, the two brothers warred for the throne. When both were dead, Sulla the Dictator sent Alexander’s son to rule Egypt. He was the last legitimate male of the line, but not capable of siring children. His will bequeathed Egypt to Rome, and Egypt had lived in fear ever since.
*
Cleopatra came ashore on the west bank and rode on her ass to the west pylon of an enclosure half a square mile in extent. It embraced the temple of Ptah, the house in which the Apis Bulls were embalmed, a conglomeration of buildings devoted to the priests and their varied duties, and numerous smaller temples established in honor of long-dead pharaohs. Beneath it were honeycombs of chambers, rooms, runnels which proliferated as far as the pyramid fields several miles away. That part of the labyrinth entered from the embalming house of the Apis Bulls held the mummy of every Apis Bull which had ever lived, as well as mummified cats and ibises. That part of the labyrinth entered from a secret room within the temple of Ptah itself contained the treasure vaults.
The Ue’b came to meet her, accompanied by his reciter priest the cherheb, his treasurer, his officials and the mete-en-sa, who were the ordinary priests. Not five Roman feet tall and weighing no more than a talent and a half, Cleopatra stood there while two hundred shaven-headed men prostrated themselves, their brows pressed against the polished red granite flags.
“Goddess on Earth, Daughter of Ra, Incarnation of Isis, Queen of Queens,” said the High Priest of Ptah, getting to his feet in an expertly managed, gradually lessening series of additional obeisances while his priests remained prostrated.
“Sem of Ptah, Neb-notru, wer-kherep-hemw, Seker-cha’bau, Ptahmose, Cha’em-uese,” said Pharaoh, smiling at him lovingly. “My dearest Cha’em, how good it is to see you!”
The only item of apparel which distinguished Cha’em from his underlings was a necklace-collar. For the rest, he shaved his head and wore nothing save a thick white linen skirt which began just below his nipples and flared gently to mid-calf. The necklace-collar, the badge of office of the High Priest of Ptah since the first Pharaoh, was a wide gold plate extending from his throat to the tips of his shoulders and down to his nipples like a pectoral. Its outer border was studded with lapis lazuli, carnelian, beryl and onyx in a much thicker, twisted gold band which was fashioned into a jackal on the left side and two human feet and a lion’s paw on the right side. Two zigzagging courses of heavy gold connected the lapis nipple studs with his throat. Over it he wore three carefully distributed necklaces of gold rope which ended in carnelian-studded discs; over these he wore six more necklaces of gold rope which ended in even-sided jeweled crosses, three lower, three higher.
“You’re disguised,” he said in Old Egyptian.
“The Alexandrians have deposed me.”
“Ah!”
Cha’em led the way to his palace, a small blockish building of limestone painted with hieroglyphs and the cartouche of every High Priest of Ptah who had ever served the creator-god who made Ra, who was also Amon. Statues of the Memphis Triad of Ptah flanked the door: Ptah himself, a skullcapped straight human figure wrapped in mummy bandages to his neck; Sekhmet, his wife, lioness-headed; and the lotus god Nefer-tem, crowned with the sacred blue lotus and white ostrich plumes.
Inside was cool and white, yet vivid with paintings and ornaments, furnished with chairs and tables of ivory, ebony, gold. A woman came into the room at the sound of voices; she was very Egyptian, very beautiful in that expressionless way the caste of Egyptian priests had perfected over the millennia. She wore a black wig cut to bare the tips of her shoulders, a tubelike under-dress of opaque white linen and a flare-sleeved, open over-dress of that fabulous linen only Egypt could make—a transparent, finely pleated.
She too prostrated herself.
“Tach’a,” said Cleopatra, embracing her. “My mother.”
“I was for three years, that’s true,” said the wife of Cha’em. “Are you hungry?”
“Have you enough?”
“We manage, Daughter of Ra, even in these hard times. My garden, has a good canal to Nilus; my servants grow for us.”
“Can you feed my people? There are only three, but poor Apollodorus eats a lot.”
“We will manage. Sit, sit!”
Over a simple meal of flattish bread, some small fish fried whole and a platter of dates, all washed down with barley beer, Cleopatra told her story.
“What do you intend to do?” asked Cha’em, dark eyes hooded.
“Command you to give me enough money to buy myself an army in Judaea and Nabataea. Phoenicia too. Potheinus was talking of raiding their granaries, so I imagine I won’t find it hard to enlist good troops. When Metellus Scipio quit Syria last year he left no one of ability behind—Syria has been left to its own devices. Provided I avoid the coast, I should have no difficulties.”
Tach’a cleared her throat. “Husband, you have something else to discuss with Pharaoh,” she said in the tone all wives develop.
“Patience, woman, patience! Let us finish with this first. How can we deal with Alexandria?” Cha’em asked. “I understand why it was built in the first place and I admit it is good to have a port onto the Middle Sea less vulnerable and mud-plagued than old Pelusium. But Alexandria is a parasite! It takes everything from Egypt and gives Egypt nothing in return.”
“I know. And didn’t you train me for that when I lived here? If my throne were secure I’d be remedying that. But I have to make my throne secure. You know that Egypt cannot secede from Macedonian Alexandria, Cha’em. The damage is done. Were I as Pharaoh to leave it and govern real Egypt from Memphis, Alexandria would simply import massive armies and move to crush us. Egypt is Nilus. There is nowhere to flee beyond the river. It would be so easy, didn’t Chickpea demonstrate that? The winds blow the war galleys from the Delta all the way south to the First Cataract, and the Nilus current speeds them back. True Egypt would become a slave to Macedonians, hybrids and Romans. For it’s Roman armies would come.”
“Which leads me, Goddess on Earth, to a most delicate topic.”
The yellow-green eyes narrowed; Cleopatra frowned. “The Cubits of Death,” she said.
“Twice in a row. This last one only eight feet—unheard of! The people of Nilus are murmuring.”
“About the famine? Naturally.”
“No, about Pharaoh.”
“Explain.”
Tach’a did not remove herself. A priestess-musician of the temple .and the wife of the Ue’b, she was privileged.
“Daughter of Ra, it is being said that Nilus will remain in the Cubits of Death until female Pharaoh is quickened and brings forth a male child. It is the duty of female Pharaoh to be fecund, to pl
acate Crocodile and Hippopotamus, to prevent Crocodile and Hippopotamus from sucking the Inundation down their nostrils.”
“I am as aware of that as you are, Cha’em!” said Cleopatra tartly. “Why do you bother telling me things you drummed into me when I was a girl? I worry about it night and day! But what can I do about it? My brother-husband is a boy and he prefers his full sister to me. My blood is polluted by the Mithridatidae, I have not enough Ptolemy in me.”
“You must find another husband, Goddess on Earth.”
“There is no one. No one! Believe me, Cha’em, I’d murder that little viper in a moment if I could! And his younger brother! And Arsinoe! We’re famous for murdering each other! But the line of the Ptolemies has shrunk to the four of us, two girls, two boys. There are no other males to whom I might give my maidenhead, and I will not couple in Egypt’s name with any but a God!” She ground her teeth, an unpleasant sound. “My sister Berenice tried! But the Roman Aulus Gabinius foiled her, preferred to reinstate my father. Berenice died at Father’s hand. And if I’m not careful, I’ll die.”
A thin ray of light came through an aperture in the wall, dust motes dancing in it. Cha’em spread his long, thin brown hands out, fingers splayed, to make a shadow on the tiled floor. He put one hand over the other and made a rayed sun. Then he removed one hand and made the other into the shape of the uraeus, the sacred serpent. “The omens have been strange and insistent,” he said dreamily. “Again and again they speak of a God coming out of the West… a God coming out of the West. A fit husband for Pharaoh.”
Pharaoh tensed, shook. “The West?” she asked in tones of wonder. “The Realm of the Dead? You mean he is Osiris returned from the Realm of the Dead to quicken Isis?”
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