The Egyptian Royals Collection

by Michelle Moran

  “What is that?” Alexander asked fearfully.

  “The evocatio,” Charmion whispered. “Octavian’s soldiers are calling on our gods to switch sides and accept them as the rightful rulers.”

  “The gods will never abandon us!” my mother shouted, frightening Ptolemy with her rage. He buried his head in Charmion’s lap as Mother stood. My father’s blood stained the blue silk of her gown; it soaked her chest, her arms, even her braids. “Downstairs!” she commanded. “If they try to break down the door, we will set fire to every piece of wood in that chamber!”

  We left my father’s body on his litter, but I turned to be sure he wasn’t moving.

  “He’s gone, Selene.” My brother was weeping.

  “But what if—?”

  “He’s gone. And the gods only know what’s happening to Antyllus.”

  I felt a tightening in my throat, as if the air I was breathing suddenly wasn’t enough. At the top of the stairs, my mother handed daggers to Charmion and Iras. “Stay here and watch the windows,” she commanded. “If they force their way in, you know what to do!”

  My brothers and I followed my mother’s bloodied steps to the first floor. Outside, soldiers were beating on the door and pressing their faces, one by one, to the grille.

  “Stand behind me,” my mother instructed.

  We did as we were told, and I dug my nails into Alexander’s arm while our mother approached the door. There was the muffled sound of voices as she appeared before the grille, and then a man on the other side of the door told her to surrender. She raised her chin so that the vulture’s carnelian eyes would look directly at this Roman soldier. “I will surrender,” she told him through the iron bars, “when Octavian gives me word that Caesarion will rule over the kingdom of Egypt.”

  We moved closer to the door to hear the soldier’s reply.

  “I cannot give that assurance, Your Majesty. But you may trust that Octavian will treat you with both respect and clemency.”

  “I don’t care about clemency!” she shouted. “Caesarion is the son of Julius Caesar and the rightful heir to this throne. The Ptolemies have ruled over Egypt for nearly three hundred years. What do you propose? To have Roman rule? To burn down the Library of Alexandria and do murder in the streets of the greatest city in the world? Do you think the people will stand for it?”

  “Your people are already falling over themselves to show deference to Caesar Octavian.”

  My mother reeled back as though the man had slapped her from the other side of the door. “He has taken Julius’s name?”

  “He is the adopted son and heir of Gaius Julius Caesar.”

  “And Caesarion is Caesar’s son by blood! Which makes them brothers.”

  I had never thought of it this way, and as I moved forward to glimpse the soldier’s face in the window, a man’s arm caught me around the waist, and I felt the cold tip of metal at my neck.

  “Mother!” I screamed, and before Alexander could leap forward to defend me, a line of soldiers descended the stairs from the second story. They had come through the open window. Two held Iras and Charmion, and a third held Ptolemy by the arm.

  My mother unsheathed the dagger at her waist, but a broad-shouldered Roman caught her wrist in his hand while another man unlocked the door.

  “Let go of me!” My mother’s voice was a sharp warning, and although she had no power to command Roman soldiers, once the man had disarmed her, he freed her wrist. He was built like my father, with well-muscled legs and a powerful chest. He could have snapped her arm if he had wanted to. I wondered if this was Octavian.

  “Take them to the palace.” His words were clipped. “Caesar will wish to see her before he speaks with the people of Alexandria.”

  My mother raised her chin. “Who are you?” she demanded.

  “Marcus Agrippa. Former consul of Rome and commander in chief of Caesar’s fleet.”

  Alexander looked across the chamber at me. Agrippa was the general who had defeated our father at Actium. He was the secret behind every one of Octavian’s military successes, and the man our father had feared above any other. His face was round, and although I knew from our father’s descriptions that he was already thirty-one or thirty-two, he looked much younger.

  “Agrippa.” My mother caressed his name like silk. She spoke Latin to him, and though she knew eight languages flawlessly, her words were accented. “Do you see this treasure?” She indicated the leopard skins on the floor, and the heavy chests wrought from silver and gold that nearly obscured the rugs from view. “It can be yours. All of Egypt can be yours if you wish. Why give it to Octavian when you are the one who conquered Antony?”

  But Agrippa narrowed his eyes. “Are you proposing that I betray Caesar with you?”

  “I am saying that, with me, you would be accepted as Pharaoh, by the people. There would be no war. No bloodshed. We could reign as Hercules and Isis.”

  The man holding my arm chuckled softly, and my mother’s eyes flicked to him.

  “You are asking Agrippa to betray Octavian,” he said. “You might as well ask the sea to stop meeting the shore.”

  Agrippa clenched the hilt of his sword. “She is desperate, and doesn’t know what she’s saying. Stay here with the treasure, Juba—”

  “Juba.” My mother said his name with as much loathing as one word could carry. “I know you.” She stepped forward, and Juba unhanded me. But there was nowhere for me to run. The mausoleum was surrounded by Octavian’s soldiers. I stood next to Alexander as our mother advanced on the man who wore his black hair longer than any Roman. “Your mother was a Greek, and your father lost his Kingdom to Julius Caesar. And now look.” Her gaze shifted from his leather cuirass to his double-edged sword. “You’ve become a Roman. How proud that would have made them.”

  Juba clenched his jaw. “If I were you, I’d save my speeches for Octavian.”

  “So why isn’t he here?” she demanded. “Where is this mighty conqueror of queens?”

  “Perhaps he’s looking over his new palace,” Juba said, and the suggestion robbed my mother of her confidence. She turned to Agrippa.

  “Don’t take me to him.”

  “There is no other choice.”

  “What about my husband?” She drew his gaze toward the top of the stairs, where my father’s body lay illuminated by the afternoon sun.

  Agrippa frowned, perhaps since the Romans did not recognize our parents’ marriage. “He will be given a burial that befits a consul.”

  “Here? In my mausoleum?”

  Agrippa nodded. “If that’s what you wish.”

  “And my children?”

  “They will be coming with you.”

  “But what … what about Caesarion?”

  I saw the look that Agrippa passed to Juba, and I felt a tightening in my chest.

  “You may ask Caesar yourself what will become of him.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  MY MOTHER paced her room. She had changed from her blood-stained gown into one of purple and gold, colors that would remind Octavian that she was still Queen of Egypt. But even the new pearl necklace at her throat didn’t disguise the fact that she was a prisoner. The red plumes on the helmets of the Roman soldiers waved in the breeze outside every window, and when my mother had tried to open the door to her chamber, soldiers were posted there, as well.

  We were hostages in our own palace. The halls that had rung with my father’s songs now echoed with the gruff commands of hurried men. And the courtyards, where evening was beginning to fall, were no longer filled with servants’ chatter. There would be no more dinners on candlelit barges, and never again would I sit on my father’s lap while he recounted the story of his triumphant march through Ephesus. I pressed closer to Alexander and Ptolemy on my mother’s bed.

  “Why is he waiting?” My mother paced the room, back and forth, until it made me sick to watch her. “I want to know what’s happening outside!”

  Charmion and Iras implored her to sit down. In t
heir plain white tunics, huddled on my mother’s long blue couch, they reminded me of geese. Geese who don’t know that they’ve been penned for slaughter. Why else would Octavian be keeping us under guard? “He’s going to kill us,” I whispered. “I don’t think he’s ever going to set us free.”

  There was a knock, and my mother froze. She crossed the room and opened the door. “What?” She looked at the faces of the three men. “Where is he?”

  But Alexander scrambled from the bed. “It’s him!” He pointed at the man who was standing between Juba and Agrippa.

  My mother stepped back. The blond man with gray eyes wore only a simple toga virilis. Although extra leather had been added to his sandals in order to increase his height, he was nothing like the man my father had been. He was thin, fragile, as unmemorable as one of the thousands of white shells that washed up daily along the shore. But what other man would be wearing the signet ring of Julius Caesar? “Then you are Octavian?” She spoke to him in Greek. It was the language she’d been born to, the language of official correspondence in Egypt.

  “Don’t you know any Latin?” Juba demanded.

  “Of course.” My mother smiled. “If that’s what he prefers.” But I knew what she was thinking. Alexandria possessed the largest library in the world, a library even larger than Pergamon’s, and now it would all belong to a man who didn’t even speak Greek.

  “So you are Octavian?” she repeated in Latin.

  The smallest of the three stepped forward. “Yes. And I presume you are Queen Kleopatra.”

  “That all depends,” she said as she sat down. “Am I still the queen?”

  Although Juba smiled, Octavian’s lips only thinned. “For now. Shall I sit?”

  My mother held out her hand toward the blue silk couch with Iras and Charmion. Immediately they stood and joined my brothers and me on the bed. But not once did Octavian’s gaze flicker in our direction. He had eyes only for my mother, as if he suspected she might grow wings like those on her headdress and take flight. He seated himself while the other men remained standing. “I hear you have tried to seduce my general.”

  My mother threw Agrippa a venomous look, but didn’t deny it.

  “I’m not surprised. It worked on my uncle. Then on Marc Antony. But Agrippa is a different kind of man.”

  Everyone in the room looked to the general, and although the power of kings rested on his shoulders, he glanced away.

  “There is no one more modest or loyal than Agrippa. He would never betray me,” Octavian said. “Neither would Prince Juba. I suppose you know that his father was King of Numidia once. But when he lost the battle against Julius Caesar, he gave his youngest son to Rome and then took his own life.”

  My mother’s back straightened. “Is that your way of telling me I shall lose my throne?”

  Octavian was silent.

  “What about Caesarion?”

  “I am afraid your son will not be able to take the throne either,” he said simply.

  Some of the color drained from her face. “Why?”

  “Because Caesarion is dead. And so is Antyllus.”

  My mother gripped the arms of her chair, and I covered my mouth with my hands.

  “However,” Octavian added, “I will allow them a burial with Marc Antony in the mausoleum that you have prepared.”

  “Caesarion!” my mother cried, while Octavian turned his eyes away. “Not Caesarion!” Her favorite. Her beloved. There was heartbreak, and betrayal, and a mother’s deep anguish in her voice, and that was when I knew the evocatio had worked. The gods had really abandoned Egypt for Rome. I wept into my hands, and my mother tore madly at her clothes.

  “Stop her!” Octavian rose angrily.

  Agrippa held her arms, but my mother shook her head wildly. “He was your brother!” she shouted. “The child of Julius Caesar. Do you understand what you’ve done? You’ve murdered your own brother!”

  “And you murdered your own sister,” Octavian replied coolly.

  My mother lashed out with her feet, but Octavian easily avoided her wrath.

  “In three days, I will sail with you and your children to Rome, where you will take part in my Triumph.”

  “I will never be paraded through the streets of Rome!”

  Octavian gave Juba a sideways glance, then rose to depart. When he reached the door, my mother cried out. “Where are you going?”

  “To the Tomb of Alexander, the greatest conqueror in the world. Then on to the Gymnasium, where I will address my people.” He turned, and his gray eyes settled on me. “Shall your children come?”

  I ran from the bed and fell to my knees at my mother’s feet. I wrapped my arms around her legs. “Don’t send us with him. Please, Mother, please!”

  She was shaking uncontrollably. But instead of looking down at me, she was watching Octavian. Something seemed to pass between them, and my mother nodded. “Yes. Take my children with you.”

  “No!” I cried. “I won’t go.”

  “Come,” Juba said, but I wrenched my arm from his grasp.

  “Don’t make us go!” I screamed. “Please!”

  Ptolemy was crying, and Alexander was pleading with her.

  At last she threw up her hands and shouted, “Go! Iras, Charmion, get them out of here!”

  I didn’t understand what was happening. Charmion pushed us toward the door, where my mother embraced Alexander. Then she came to me, touching my necklace and running her hands over my hair, my arms, my cheeks.

  “Mother,” I wept.

  “Shh.” She put a finger on my lips, then took Ptolemy onto her lap, burying her head in his soft curls. I was surprised that Octavian waited so patiently. “You listen to whatever Caesar says,” she told Ptolemy. “And you do as you’re told, Selene.” She turned to my twin brother. “Alexander, be careful. Watch over them.”

  My mother stood, and before her face could betray her entirely, Charmion shut the door, and we children were alone with our enemies.

  “Walk next to me and keep silent,” Agrippa said. “We go first to the Tomb of Alexander, then on to the Gymnasium.”

  I held one of Ptolemy’s hands in mine, and Alexander held the other, but it was as if we were walking through a foreign palace. Romans occupied every room, sniffing out our riches to fill Octavian’s treasury. The carved cedar chairs, which had graced our largest chambers, had disappeared, but everything left was being taken. Silk couches, cushions, ebony vases on towering silver tripods.

  I whispered to Alexander in Greek, “How does he know these men aren’t stealing things for themselves?”

  “Because none of them would be so foolish,” Juba responded. His Greek was flawless. Alexander’s eyes were full of warning.

  For the first time, Octavian looked at us. “The twins are handsome children, aren’t they? More of their mother than their father, I think. So you are Alexander Helios?”

  My brother nodded. “Yes. But I go by Alexander, Your Highness.”

  “He is not a king,” Juba remarked. “We call him Caesar.”

  Alexander’s cheeks reddened, and I sickened at the thought that he was speaking to the man who had killed our brothers. “Yes, Caesar.”

  “And your sister?”

  “She is Kleopatra Selene. But she calls herself Selene.”

  “The sun and moon,” Juba said wryly. “How clever.”

  “And the boy?” Agrippa asked.

  “Ptolemy,” Alexander replied.

  The muscles clenched in Octavian’s jaw. “That one’s more of his father.”

  I tightened my grip protectively on Ptolemy’s hand, and as we reached the courtyard in front of the palace, Agrippa turned to us.

  “There will be no speaking unless spoken to, understand?” The three of us nodded. “Then prepare yourselves,” he warned as the palace doors were thrown open.

  Evening had settled over the city, and thousands of torches burned in the distance. It seemed as though every last citizen of Alexandria had taken to the streets,
and all of them were making their way to the Gymnasium. Soldiers saluted Octavian as we approached the gates, with right arms held forward and palms down.

  “You can forget a horse and chariot,” Juba said, surveying the crowds.

  Octavian stared down the Canopic Way. “Then we will go by foot.”

  I could see Juba tense, and he checked the sword at his side and the dagger on his thigh. He was younger than I had first assumed him to be, not even twenty, but he was the one Octavian trusted with his life. Perhaps he would make a mistake. Perhaps one of my father’s loyal men would kill Octavian before we sailed for Rome.

  We waited while a small retinue was gathered, some Egyptians and Greeks, but mostly soldiers who spoke Latin with accents that made them hard to understand. Then we began the walk from the palace to the tomb. Every dignitary who came to Alexandria wished to see it, and now Octavian wanted to pay obeisance to our ancestor as well.

  I wished I could speak with Alexander, but I kept my silence as I had been instructed, and instead of weeping over my father, or Antyllus or Caesarion, I studied the land. Perhaps this will be the last night I will ever see the streets of Alexandria, I thought, and I swallowed against the increasing pain in my throat. On the left was the Great Theater. I tried to remember the first time my father had taken us there, climbing with us to the royal box that was erected so high it was possible to see the island of Antirhodos. Beyond that was the Museion, where my mother had sent my father to become cultured, and professors had taught him Greek. Alexander and I had begun our studies there when we were seven, walking the marbled halls with men whose beards fell into their flowing himations. North of the Museion were the towering columns of the Library. Half a million scrolls nestled on its cedar shelves, and scholars from every kingdom in the world came to learn from the knowledge stored inside. But tonight, its pillared halls were dark, and the cheerful lamps that had always lit the porticos from within had been extinguished. The men who studied there were making their way to the Gymnasium to hear what would become of Egypt now.