Pharaoh
Page 1
Copyright © 2002 by Karen Essex
All rights reserved.
WARNER BOOKS
Hachette Book Group
237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Visit our Web site at www.HachetteBookGroup.com.
First eBook Edition: August 2002
ISBN: 978-0-446-55962-1
Contents
Copyright Page
Part I
Alexandria: the 20th year of Kleopatra's reign
Alexandria: the 3rd year of Kleopatra’s reign
Alexandria: the 20th year of Kleopatra’s reign
Alexandria: the 4th year of Kleopatra’s reign
Alexandria: the 5th year of Kleopatra’s reign
Alexandria: the 20th year of Kleopatra’s reign
Rome In the 6th year of Kleopatra’s reign
Alexandria: the 20th year of Kleopatra’s reign
Rome & Alexandria: the 6th year of Kleopatra’s reign
The city of Narbo in Gaul: the 6th year of Kleopatra’s reign
Rome: the 7th year of Kleopatra’s reign
Part II
Alexandria: the 8th year of Kleopatra’s reign
Syria: the 10th year of Kleopatra’s reign
Ephesus: the 10th year of Kleopatra’s reign
Alexandria: the 10th year of Kleopatra’s reign
Rome: the 11th year of Kleopatra’s reign
Alexandria: the 20th year of Kleopatra’s reign
Syria: the 15th year of Kleopatra’s reign
Alexandria: the 20th year of Kleopatra’s reign
Phoenicia: the 16th year of Kleopatra’s reign
Rome: the 17th year of Kleopatra’s reign
Alexandria: the 17th year of Kleopatra’s reign
Ephesus: the 18th year of Kleopatra’s reign
Samos: the 19th year of Kleopatra’s reign
Patrae: the 19th year of Kleopatra’s reign
Alexandria: the 20th year of Kleopatra’s reign
Actium, the coast of Greece: the 20th year of Kleopatra’s reign
Actium, the coast of Greece: the 20th yearof Kleopatra’s reign
Brundisium: the 20th year of Kleopatra’s reign
Alexandria: the 21st year of Kleopatra’s reign
Author’s Coda
Acknowledgments
ALSO BY KAREN ESSEX
Kleopatra
Bettie Page: Life of a Pin-up Legend
coauthored with James L. Swanson
Pharaoh is for my daughter, Olivia Fox,
who for most of her life has had to share her mother
with the queen of Egypt Kleopatra’s Genealogy
Part I
Alexandria: the 20th year of Kleopatra's reign
T queen stares at the phalanx of whores as if she is about to execute a normal rather than deplorable duty of state. Silent, tense, confused, they await her inspection and her command.
Charmion, the weary sergeant, the old warhorse long attached to an unpredictable commander in chief, has herded them to Kleopatra’s chambers in utter silence. A great feat of intimidation, the silencing of a gaggle of whores. But that is the way with Charmion, who executes every duty with a diligence unanimat-ed by emotion of any kind. She retains an implacable expression even while carrying out the bizarre wishes of the sovereign to whom she has sworn her life. An aristocratic Greek born in Alexandria, Charmion is not tall, but casts the illusion of towering height. Her bearing shames the carriage of a queen, even of the queen she serves. Though she is fifty-one, her sallow skin is smooth. Three wrinkles, delicate as insects’ legs, trace from the corners of her brown-yellow eyes. Her mouth is full, a burnt color, like a river at sundown. Two tributaries, both southbound, run from her lip-locked smile, tiny signals of age, a result of the anxiety she suffers over the queen’s behavior.
Unlike the queen, Charmion dislikes all men. Wordlessly, she has endured Kleopatra’s relations with Antony with lugubrious countenance, as if she has suffered all these years from an intense constipation. Antony, charmer of maidens, actresses, farm girls, and queens, never elicits a smile from the woman. In her youth, the queen heard, Charmion had bedded with other women, though she could never confirm the rumors. Of Caesar, and of the queens relations with him, however, she had approved, though her sanction was expressed only by absence of criticism.
Charmion has dressed the prostitutes herself, forcing Iras, the temperamental eunuch, Royal Hairdresser to the queen, to weave tiny jewels and trinkets of gold into their locks. For a prim woman, she possesses a talent for seductive costume. Knowing the Imperator’s inclinations, she has chosen many large-breasted girls. On the most obscenely endowed, she has encased their sumptuous glands in loosely woven gold mesh so that the nipples, rouged to an incarnadine red, appear trapped in an elegant prison, eager for release. “Antony shall enjoy that,” thinks the queen.
The courtesans regard their monarch, wondering what kind of queen, what kind of woman, sends prostitutes to her husband, much less approves their comeliness before she allows them to go to him. The queen, nervous, reading their thoughts, attempts to cover her trepidation with characteristic chilling authority. She rises to scrutinize her troops who are wrapped not with the armor of war, but with the luxurious weaponry of seduction. Reddened lips, slightly parted. Little invitations. Nipples: crimson, erect, acute, like hibiscus buds against stark white skin. Bare, nubile shoulders soft as dunes. Teasing one, an auburn tendril; grazing another, a crystal earring, sharp as a dagger, threatening to stab the perfect flesh. Luminous, kohl-rimmed eyes; vacant eyes, eyes without questions. Eyes that do not accuse, do not interrogate. Eyes that know how to lie. A naked belly and then another, larger, stronger, with a garnet chunk-or is that a ruby?-tucked in the navel. And of course, the prize-the female motherlode, coy, apparent, beneath transparent gauze. Some shaven, some not. Good work, Charmion, she thinks. Like all men, her husband craves variety.
A detail: long fingers, slender toes, adorned with rings, jewels. Excellent. Ah, but not this one. “She must leave,” the queen says sharply, not to the half-breed beauty before her with fat, choppy hands, but to Charmion, who waves the girl out of the room. Antony, connoisseur of the female form, dislikes “peasant digits.”
“Have we more?” she demands of her lady-in-waiting, knowing how thoroughly prepared she is for any situation, any disaster.
“Yes, Your Royal Grace. There are twelve alternates in the antechamber.”
“Bring me two thin girls. Boyish. Young, please. Two waif-faced pretties without inhibition.”
With a nod, Charmion leaves the room, returning with twin girls of thirteen, draped in the simple robes of a Greek boy, with one small breast peeking from the fold. The androgynous creatures curtsy low, remaining on the ground until the queen passes them, rising only at the snap of Charmion's fingers. Compliant in nature, schooled in ritual. That should please her husband. A fine mix.
“Yes, I believe we are complete now. Twelve in all.
“Ladies,“she says in her most imperious voice. They stand at attention, but only Sidonia, the voluptuous red-headed madam of the courtesans, meets her gaze. “Marcus Antonius, my husband, my lord, proconsul of Rome, commander of the armies of the eastern empire, sits alone, inconsolable, gazing over the sea. He is despondent.
“I do not explain myself to the highest ministers in my government, much less to court prostitutes. But you, ladies, are the foot soldiers in my campaign. No longer are you mere vessels of pleasure, actresses in the erotic arts, receptacles of spilt semen. Today you are elevated. Sacred is your cause, urgent your mission. At stake is the Fate of Egypt, and your Fate and my Fate. At stake is no less than the world.”
Now the ranks stare at her in disbelief, for what queen makes an army of whores? Puts the Fate of her kingdom in the
hands of a dispatch of painted strumpets?
“You must revive my husband. It is as simple as that.”
One of the girls, the one with the tough stomach and bejeweled navel, struggles to stifle a giggle, but Sidonia sees the stern raised eyebrow of Charmion arched in warning. She slaps the girl, who crumples to the ground in tears. Sidonia bows apologetically to the queen, kicking the girl with a sandaled foot, reducing her cries to a choked dog-whimper
The queen is amused but remains nonplussed-a countenance at which she excels, thanks to her apprenticeship with the late Julius Caesar. “Tonight, ladies, you serve one of the greatest men in history. His courage is legend. His conquests span the world. His loyalty, his heroism, unparalleled. But he sulks alone in his mansion by the sea. The mighty lion cringes and licks his wounds. He must rally. He must become a man again. And we know, ladies, don’t we, what makes a man a man?”
Every whore smiles. For all their differences-the queen of Egypt and courtesan slaves-they share the same intuitive knowledge. What every woman knows. What every woman uses.
“I am aware that there is gossip. And I am aware of those who spread it. They will be dealt with. As for you, you are to let all those who visit your chambers know that your queen sailed home into the harbor of Alexandria flying the flagsof victory after the war in Greek waters. You are to say that the Imperator, my husband, is your most virile and demanding client, that you have heard with your own ears and seen with your own eyes his plans for victory against Octavian, the fiend who will terrorize our world if his ambitions are allowed to go unchecked. As you know, I do not allow soldiers to have their way with court prostitutes, politically convenient as it would be at times. The Roman army, should it descend upon our city, will not follow these rules. I encourage each of you to meditate on the Roman reputation for cruelty and degradation to conquered women and then imagine your Fates, ladies, in the event that the Imperator does not overcome his depressed condition and refuses to defend you against the Romans.
“Therefore, you shall succeed splendidly in rehabilitating the manhood of my husband and you shall spread with conviction to every man, minister, artisan, and soldier alike who enters your bed that the great Antony fights a war the way he makes love-with vigor, with passion. That his prowess in the sport of war is excelled only by his prowess in the sport of love. Let the word spread to all corners of the city, and let it be heard by sailors who will take the tales to other ports. I know you have the power to convince. I requested not only the most beautiful of you for this mission, but the most intelligent. The most shrewd.
“As you are cunning, I shall make you a bargain. If you do your job to perfection, you shall be given your freedom after Octavian is defeated. If you fail and my husband remains in his tower sulking like a baby, you shall be put into the fields to harvest the crops, or sent to the Nubian mines. Let me be plain: If you betray the throne, if you are heard uttering one word about the Imperator’s melancholia, if rumors of his ill-humor are traced back to you, if you do not follow my orders to the letter, you shall die, or wish you had.”
The smiles fade. To Charmion: “They may go.”
Alexandria: the 3rd year of Kleopatra’s reign
Kleopatra looked out the window at the scene that had greeted her all the mornings of her days before her flight into exile. There was little in the Royal Harbor to suggest Julius Caesar’s occupation of Alexandria. The pleasure vessels of Egypt’s Royal Family rocked lazily at the dock. The morning fog had lifted, revealing a sky already white with heat above vivid blue waters, and she was grateful that she was no longer breathing the deadening summer air of the Sinai.
Could it have been just yesterday that she was in the middle of that great blue sea, stowing away on a pirate’s vessel to sneak back into her own country? She had dressed herself as well as she could without her servants, knowing that the last leg of her journey would be a rigorous one, and that she could not be recognized when she arrived in the harbor of Alexandria. She had let Dorinda, the wife of Apollodorus the pirate, help with her toilette, fixing and bejeweling the locks that had been neglected while she was in exile. She would have done it herself, but her hands shook with anxiety; she had fought with her advisers, rejecting their claims that it was too dangerous to reenter Egypt, and now she was faced with the task of using stealth to slip past both her brother’s army and the Roman army to meet with Caesar.
Dorinda produced a silken scarf of spectacular colors and tied it about the queen’s waist, making an impressive show of her young strong figure. Kleopatra looked in the mirror and wondered if, in the woman’s hands, she looked like a queen or a prostitute in training. But that was a look that men liked as well as the royal demeanor. Perhaps Apollodorus might try to pass her off as a prostitute being taken to the mighty Caesar. Whatever got her into his quarters and whatever kept her there under his goodwill would do.
The queen allowed the woman to kiss her hand, giving her a pair of heavy copper earrings and a bar of silver for her personal purse before Apollodorus helped her lower herself to the small boat that awaited them just outside Egyptian waters. Dorinda put on the earrings and shook them wildly, jiggling her extravagant body as she waved good-bye.
Now it was just Kleopatra and Apollodorus in the small vessel. She wondered what might happen if they faced adverse winds. Would she have to row like a slave to get them to shore? No matter. She would do whatever was necessary and dream that it was an adventure, like when she and her girlhood companion Mohama fantasized their important participation in political efforts. She did not know at the time that such dangerous intrigues would someday be the reality of her waking, adult life. How she would love to have the company of that beautiful brown Amazon-like woman now. But Mohama, along with the rest of Kleopatra’s childish fantasies, was dead, all victims of the political realities set in motion by Rome and its determination to dominate the world.
Apollodorus completed his duties at the sail and settled down next to her.
“What do you suppose moves this man Caesar?” she asked. Apollodorus was a pirate, an outlaw, a thief, yet Kleopatra had come to value him as a sharp interpreter of human nature. But the pirate allowed that he could not figure the man, so paradoxical were the reports of his character. Talk of his cruelty and his clemency were mixed. In the war against the Roman senators, Caesar had spared almost everyone. He had captured Pompey’s officers in Gaul and let them go. Some he had seized as many as four times during the war, and each time freed them again, telling them to say to Pompey that he wanted peace.
“If you submit to Caesar, he spares you. If you defy Caesar, he kills you,” said the pirate. “Perhaps that is the lesson Your Majesty should take into the meeting. The towns in Greece that opened their gates to him have been rewarded. But the poor inhabitants of Avaricum-they are with the gods now-were turned over to his men for a drunken massacre. Merciful, cruel, I cannot judge. A complex man, but I am sure, a great man.”
Suddenly it was dusk, and the pirate drew her attention to the harbor. In the fading sunlight, she saw the familiar Pharos Lighthouse, the landmark of her youth, and one of the great hallmarks of her family’s reign over Egypt. The tower was bathed in diffuse red light that lingered as the sun sank behind her into the depths of the Mediterranean. The eternal flame in its top floor burned vigilantly. The imposing structure that had served as a marker of safe harbor for three centuries was the genius of her ancestor, Ptolemy Philadelphus, and his sister-wife Arsinoe II, and now it welcomed her home. This was not the first time she had approached her country from the vantage point of exile. But it was the first time she had returned to find a flotilla of warships in a V formation pointing dangerously toward her city.
“These are not Egyptian vessels,” she said, noting their flags. “Some are Rhodian, some from Syria, some from Cilicia.”
“All territories from which Caesar might have called for reinforcements,” said Apollodorus.
“Warships in the harbor? What can this mean? That Al
exandria is already at full-scale war with Caesar?” asked Kleopatra.
“So it appears. And now we must get you through Caesar’s navy and the army of your brother’s general, Achillas, before you can have a conference with Caesar. I do not know if my contacts at the docks can help us in these circumstances. As Your Majesty is well aware, in wartime, all policies change to meet the dire times. I’m afraid that our simple scheme of disguising you as my wife may not serve us in these hazardous conditions.”
“I agree,” she said. Her heart began the now-familiar hammering in her chest, its punch taking over her body and consuming her mental strength, pounding away at her brain. No, this cannot happen, she said to herself. I cannot submit to fear.
Only I and the gods may dictate my Fate. Not a heart, not an organ. I control my heart, my heart does not control me, she repeated over and over until the thud in her ears gave way to the benevolent slurp of the placid waters, calming her nerves as they slapped haphazardly against the boat. She put her head down and prayed.
Lady Isis, the Lady of Compassion, the Lady to whom I owe my fortune and my Fate. Protect me, sustain me, guide me as I make this daring move so that I may continue to honor you and continue to serve the country of my mothers and fathers.
When she looked up from her prayer, she saw that they had drifted closer to the shore. Trapped now between the Rhodian and the Syrian flotillas, she realized that she must take some kind of cover. How could she have so foolishly thought that she could just slip into the city where she was known above all women? She must do something quickly to get herself out of sight.
She shared these thoughts with Apollodorus.
“It is not too late to turn around, Your Majesty-” he offered.
“No!” she interrupted him. “This is my country. My brother sits in the palace as if he were the sole ruler of Egypt. Caesar, no doubt, is in receipt of my letter, and he awaits my arrival. I will not be shut out by these maritime monsters.” She raised her hands as if to encompass all the vessels in the sea. “The gods will not have it, and I will not have it.”