“Who is it we seek?” Agrippa asked him, for the hundredth time.
“The body of the queen,” he said. That it was a living body, he did not add.
The emperor instituted blockades on the roads and river, announcing that the body might have been transported by a solitary woman, smuggled out of Alexandria, but he knew that she would evade any such measures. What need had such a creature to travel by land and water? She could as well be traveling in the sky, taking flight like a sacred falcon or, more appropriately, like a vulture.
“Bring the children,” he ordered. He had them under guard, deep in the palace, and now he thought they might know something he did not.
He pressed his back against Cleopatra’s golden throne, cursing the discomfort of his position. The twins, when they came, unnerved him.
The boy looked down, as was proper, but the girl tilted her head to look at him. She was the image of her mother, black hair rippling down her back, though her lips held none of Cleopatra’s sensuality. The girl’s mouth reminded him of Antony’s, drawn tight in a moment of petulance, and below her lips was Antony’s own cleft chin. Cleopatra Selene’s eyes were large, black pools, also inherited from her father, who’d used his limpid gaze to seduce half the wives in Rome.
“Where is your mother?” he asked her, abandoning the canny line of questioning he’d prepared. Her glare discomfited him.
The girl spoke in an unknown language, a torrent of bewildering, crackling sounds. She then looked at him as though he ought to understand everything she said.
“Interpreter,” he called. It was ridiculous. Surely, someone had been aware of this problem before now and failed to alert him of it. Perhaps the girl was simple.
She took a step closer toward him, and involuntarily he drew back. She seemed to be taking his measure.
“There is no need for a translator. Our mother is dead,” Cleopatra Selene announced in Latin, her voice unexpectedly deep and rasping. “I am surprised you do not know where she is, as we were informed that you’d buried her.”
What fool had told them the details of their mother’s death? He’d ordered them sequestered. It would not do to have them grieving their parents and blaming him for their deaths.
“Where is my brother?” the boy asked, speaking unexpectedly. The girl put out her hand to silence him.
“Ptolemy is sleeping in our bedchamber,” she reminded him, and then turned back to the emperor. “Do you not speak Egyptian?”
“Of course not,” he said. “I am Roman.”
“As is our father, but he can speak the tongue of our people. How is it that you do not?”
“I’d like to visit Rome,” Alexander Helios interrupted, his eyes bright. “I’d like to train in the army.”
“I will take you to Rome,” Octavian told him. “In exchange for information.”
“We do not wish to go to Rome,” Cleopatra Selene interrupted. “We will await our father here at the palace. He is traveling, and we would not like to leave without his knowledge. He will grieve over our mother’s death, and we will comfort him.”
A stroke of luck. She did not know everything.
“If you tell me where your mother is,” he tried, “I’ll let your father live.”
The girl smiled a nasty, vindicated smile.
“So you are a liar as well,” she said, this time in Greek.
Octavian straightened his spine and put on his most regal air.
“Do not question me,” he said.
The girl laughed, a short, harsh bark, and continued in Greek.
“My brother doesn’t study when the tutor comes and so he cannot speak any language but Latin. He does not know that our father is dead. I heard the slaves talking, while everyone else slept. I do not wish to stay in Egypt. The people will kill us.”
Octavian was taken aback. The girl no longer looked like a ten-year-old, but like a full-grown woman, and it appeared that she was attempting to negotiate with him.
“Ask him where Caesarion is,” the boy whimpered, and his sister pinched him.
“He is dead,” Octavian said, resigned. “He was a traitor to Rome.”
The boy looked shocked. The girl did not, though Octavian caught her face wavering for a moment.
“A traitor? He isn’t a traitor. He’s the son of Julius Caesar! Our mother says he is as good a man as his father,” cried Alexander.
“He wasn’t a man,” Octavian said. “He was a boy.”
“Then why did you kill him?” Alexander asked. His eyes were wide and disbelieving.
“I did not kill him. He was killed in battle. No more of that. This is war.” The boy’s eyes were leaking tears, and Octavian felt disgusted.
“We will not need to be killed in battle,” Cleopatra Selene informed him. “I will go with you to Rome. I will walk in your procession, behind her body. Is that not what you are planning? My mother’s body displayed with the asps that killed her? I will salute you as my emperor. My parents loved each other more than they loved anyone else. My mother planned to live forever with my father, but she did not plan anything for my brothers and me. They forgot about us.”
The girl’s lip wobbled slightly, the first real indication of weakness Octavian had seen. She was nearly the same age as his own daughter, Julia. A child.
“What do you know about living forever? Did she consult with a magician? A witch?” Octavian asked. He could not help himself.
“I know nothing of my mother’s whereabouts, but perhaps I know other things,” she said, giving him a steady look. “My mother did nothing to keep us safe. She left it to me. I will give you my allegiance, and I will tell you what I know, if you will protect us.”
A small movement caught Octavian’s eye, a flutter in the tapestry. His heart rattled against his ribs. He leapt from the throne and dashed across the room, sword pointed into the fabric, at the spot where he knew she would be. He stabbed through it and blunted his blade against a stone wall, seeing only a rat disappearing into a crack therein.
Octavian could barely keep from screaming. Egypt was that wall, full of cracks, and Cleopatra could be in any one of them. The queen could be on her way to Rome. He might arrive home in triumph, crowned with laurel, and find her awaiting him in his own bed, his wife and daughter murdered and their blood staining her hands.
“I will protect you,” Octavian managed, even as he wondered why he felt compelled to make promises to a child. And what did he propose to protect her from? What foes did she have? It was he who was in danger.
“Then I will kiss your hand,” she said, and a moment later, he felt her lips brush his fingertips. “It is settled. We will be Romans. You will want to find our tutor, Nicolaus the Damascene. He knows what she summoned.”
Octavian felt his heart shudder. Summoned. He’d suspected it was something like this.
“You asked if she consulted with sorcerers,” the girl said. “I do not know the answer to that. I do know she consulted with scholars, and she practiced a spell to summon a goddess to our city. It was meant to be a secret, but our tutor helped her. If you can find him, you may find her.”
“She is not missing,” Octavian said. “She is dead and buried.”
The little girl looked at him.
“Then why are you so afraid?” she asked.
21
Cleopatra pulsed with fury and grief, with guilt and despair, and most of all, with rage. Her empty heart was a hornet’s nest.
The Romans had taken both of her loves. She remembered the songs she’d sung to Caesarion in the womb. She remembered the feel of him suckling at her breast. Cleopatra twisted, her body pounding with visions of destruction. Of revenge.
You are mine, said the voice in her head, a whisper now, a voice that sounded like her own.
“I am yours,” Cleopatra said aloud.
She would tear Rome to the ground. She’d make the streets run with blood, pile bodies wherever Octavian walked, in the Forum, in the Circus Maximus. His wife, his ge
nerals, his sister, his friends. Would the citizens scream in the streets, saluting their brave emperor, killer of children? She’d fill the temple of the vestal virgins with blood. All the gods of Rome would bow to her. All the leaders of Rome would beg her mercy, and she would not grant it. Antony and Caesarion would be avenged. They would be avenged.
All around her, during the execution, she’d sensed the goddess, felt her bloody smile, heard her rumbling breath, but she couldn’t see her anywhere. As she fell to the ground, as her child was murdered, she’d realized that the goddess was not in the crowd but inside her own body.
Cleopatra could feel her, furious, blinding in her desire. She could not tell what part of these feelings were her own and what part belonged to Sekhmet.
She hungered now, so desperately that had there been blood pooled on the stones, she would have lapped it up. As the stars appeared and she healed from the damage done by the sun, her strength increased. A tongue of fire made its way up her spine, licking at her like a lioness, rasping away any resistance she had left.
Feed, her body commanded, and she would not deny it. There would be no more forgetting what she had done. Her eyes were open now.
There were people sleeping behind easily entered windows, her body told her. There were people drunk in the streets, easily harvested. She stopped herself, with effort.
She did not know enough about what she had become. The sun had thrown her to the earth, weakening her, breaking her power. It was only luck that the Romans hadn’t found her there, lying in the dirt, and brought her back to their prisons.
She must learn what she was. She must understand how to control it. She could not afford to surrender completely, to lose herself in hunger and fury.
It seemed a thousand years ago, those metal bowls, the lighting of incense, the scrolls. Sekhmet’s order, Nicolaus had said. In Thebes, there was a temple to the goddess. Priestesses to the old gods. A place where she might find knowledge.
Cleopatra did not plan to leave her enemies for long. Just long enough to put them at ease, to make them think themselves safe.
She’d once felt safe.
A soft sound made her spin, searching the darkness for soldiers, but all she saw was a dog wandering the open area, its ribs visible, its nose pressed to the ground. It raised its head and looked toward her with a dry whine. She would not kill an animal, not now.
No. This was a city full of Romans, and she could smell them, feel them, and hear them everywhere.
This was a city of betrayers, too. Her son had been under the protection of one of them. At least she might avenge herself on him.
She picked her way over the cobblestones, watching bats flying about the sky, listening to birds shrieking their hunting calls. Eventually, she stood at the Museion’s gates. With one leap, she was over them and inside the courtyard.
Another few steps and she stood outside an open window, inhaling the history of Rhodon, Caesarion’s tutor. The scent of libraries, of languages learned and forgotten. The scent of gold, of promises, of ambition.
A lantern flickered in his window, and the man packed his bag, preparing to leave for Rome. Cleopatra stood in the dark, watching him for a moment. Rhodon’s robes were finer than they had hitherto been. She saw a gleam of gold beneath his linen and the ruddy flush of good health on his face. Her son’s sacrifice had made him rich.
When he stepped out into the courtyard, his step jaunty, his jingling bag slung over his shoulder, she was waiting for him.
An hour later, east of Alexandria, she slipped into a seaside bar, listening to the jokes and shouts of drinking men.
“A felucca?” she called, showing only her arm from out of her cloak, having veiled the rest. In her hand, she held a piece of gold, stolen from her victim. Cleopatra’s own face was printed on one side with her name. The reverse was Antony. They’d laughed when they saw them for the first time. She’d thought him far more handsome than the coin would suggest, and he’d felt the same about her image, though her profile had conveyed power.
She held the coin tightly in her hand, letting the image of Antony’s face press into her flesh. In better days, she’d traveled to her beloved in her own golden barge, a purple silk sail stretched above the ship, and the sides fitted with silver oars. Now, she was reduced to hiring a rickety felucca with a drunken captain.
A man approached her, his eyes gleaming for gold, and she withdrew it into her cloak.
“You will take me to Thebes,” she told him. “Immediately. There will be more when we arrive.”
She saw him smirk at his fellows, telling them wordlessly that he’d love to take a woman aboard his vessel. To Thebes? Hardly. Thebes was days away. They’d have to proceed east along the Mediterranean, to the Canopic branch of the Nile. He’d take her a few miles down the river and see how long it took her to spread her legs.
Every man in the bar had similar ideas; she could hear them echoing.
She strode across the dock and leapt into the small, wooden vessel, accompanied by the captain and his single crewman.
The moonlight soothed her injured skin, healing the remainder of the wounds of the earlier sun. She put her face up toward the stars and felt their cool radiance as the ship set off. A cat wound itself around the rigging and stalked toward her, purring as it approached. She stroked its golden head and looked into its clear, yellow eyes. It gave a small cry and leapt into her arms.
Within moments, she’d settled herself into the vessel, though she could not afford to sleep as deeply as she had before her burial. With the dawn, she would conceal herself belowdecks, wrapped in her cloak. The vessel was sun-tight enough to suit her, and she would know if the men sought to harm her there. The motion of the water rocked her to sleep, and she dropped into blackness, losing track of time and place, dreaming of the Underworld, of Antony taking the form of a falcon and soaring up into the light, of the Beautiful West stretching before her.
All ships searched by order of the Emperor!”
The shouts woke Cleopatra from dreams of heaven, tears running down her cheeks, and she nearly cried out. She pressed her back against the ship’s side, panicked. They were looking for her. They’d stretched a chain across the Nile to block the passage of any vessel.
There were several dozen soldiers on the shore, all armed. Battlehardened, for the most part, but young and excitable. Romans. She kept herself still.
“Are there passengers aboard this vessel?”
The captain of her ship answered in the affirmative. “A woman, traveling alone.”
“Have her show herself,” one of the legionaries commanded.
The other soldiers laughed raucously.
“Have her show everything!” one yelled. “By order of himself, the Emperor of the World!”
“Lady?” the crewman asked, pulling aside the curtain Cleopatra had drawn to protect herself from prying eyes.
There was no one there.
The legionaries searched the ship but found only a tangle of linen, a rough cloak, and a small silver box of what seemed to be dust.
Beneath the water, the queen of Egypt waited for them to depart.
Her hair streamed in the current as she laid the flat of her hand against the hull of the ship, feeling the smooth grain of the wood. Soon enough, she told herself, she would be back on board with Antony’s ashes. She did not like leaving them, but she had no other option. She’d slipped into the river as the soldiers came toward her hiding place.
All around her, fish coursed through the water, their mouths gaping as they consumed tiny living things. She could feel each of their bodies, their scales shifting as they moved, their gills opening and closing silently. She could feel the crocodiles as well, slithering from the banks and melting themselves deep into the teeming waters. A yellow eye opened beside her, and she felt the corrosive friction of the beast’s skin against her thigh.
She’d slipped into the dirty water only out of desperation, used to the pure, rain-filled cisterns beneath the
city of Alexandria, but now she stretched in pleasure. She had not recognized the life that filled the Nile, the tiny creatures and the large, the plants and sands and scents of faraway places. She began to silently raise her head above the level of the water to take a breath, but the boat rocked with legionaries boarding it, and the wooden hull struck her skull. She was driven downward, inhaling burning fluid, her lungs protesting, gagging, but as she sank, something began to change in her body.
Her eyes widened under the water, and she felt her nostrils close. She felt her spine thrash and elongate, her throat stretch endlessly. Within moments, her shape was that of the river itself, long and narrow, limbless and yet pliant. Her bones fit together like a perfect necklace, an articulated chain, and each motion heralded the next.
She slithered past the legs of a legionary who’d entered the water to hold the rope detaining the felucca.
She let her midsection appear above the surface, lashed her tail for a moment, and felt them nervously wielding their swords, trying to predict her next position.
“Serpent!” they shouted. “Serpent! Onto the bank!”
22
Two hours later, the felucca’s captain and his crewman hunched over a table in the captain’s quarters, counting the coins they’d gained from their missing passenger. She must have leapt from the ship and been eaten by a crocodile, stupid thing. She’d have been better off staying aboard. The Romans had been too fearful of the water to reboard the vessel after seeing the serpent, and so they’d waved it on. Now the felucca was on its way past Damanhur. No matter what the captain had planned to do with the woman, it would have been better than jumping into the Nile. Who knew what she’d been running from? The legionaries weren’t seeking her, surely. They were looking for a dead body, and there were certainly no corpses aboard the felucca.
“That, or any oddity,” the leader of the legionaries had muttered. “Any feminine oddity.” They did not seem to have any more specific description than that.
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