Pharaoh

by Karen Essex

Yet she did not know whether her country was in fact occupied or not. Caesar acted like a guest who had made himself overly comfortable, rather than as a hostile commander who had entered the city with his standard raised, immediately engaging in a skirmish with the Alexandrian army. Kleopatra did not care what version Caesar put forth of the story. She believed he had entered her city with the intention of taking it. He had thought it would be easy; she was sure of this. He had just defeated Pompey and was confident of his invincibility. But he had underestimated the Alexandrian hatred for all things Roman, the old Greek and Egyptian pride that the city’s citizens still carried in their very veins. They did not lay down their arms for the exalted Roman general. Far from it.

  Now Caesar and his men were virtually barricaded inside the palace walls, so angered was the mob at his presence. Yet he did not act at all like a prisoner.

  “General, I am unclear over certain issues. Are you at war with my brother or not?”

  “Why no, of course not. I’m a friend to the Crown, as is all of Rome. I’ve told you: I came to Alexandria merely to chase down my former ally and old friend, Pompey, whom I had had the unfortunate task of defeating in Greece. I did not even wish to be at war with Pompey, but it seemed that no one could agree on whose policies would predominate in Rome. I came here to reconcile with Pompey, to bring him back to Rome and to his senses, and to make him see that the greedy senators who had incited him to go to war with me were acting in self-interest, rather than in the interests of either Pompey or myself.

  “But your brother’s eunuch, Pothinus, had already taken care of the issue for me. Upon my arrival, he presented me with Pompey’s head.” Caesar turned away as if to hide his sadness from Kleopatra.

  “I may be at war with Pothinus,” he said, as if working out the scenario for himself. “I may be at war with your brother’s army but not your brother. We shall see what unfolds in the coming days.”

  How could a man be so casual about war? she wondered. Perhaps it was from a lifetime of waging it. And yet he seemed equally calm and dispassionate about everything, even those things that usually provoked the extreme emotions-debate, negotiation, money, sex.

  They were interrupted by a knock. One of Caesar’s men entered, not the least bit embarrassed to disturb the morning intimacy between their commander and the queen of Egypt. How often did they come upon such a scene? she wondered.

  “Sir, so sorry to disturb you, but the boy king is speaking to an assembly of malcontents at the palace gates. He’s torn off his crown and thrown it into the crowd. He is shouting all sorts of insults about the queen. He’s getting them all whipped up out there. Shall we remove him?”

  “No, no,” Caesar said wearily. “Give us a moment. I’ll fetch him myself and bring him in.”

  “We can handle it, sir,” said the soldier.

  “Yes, but I’ve got a way with him,” said Caesar. “Besides, I shall make a little speech to the mob. I’ll tell them their queen is back, and that Caesar shall ensure peace in their kingdom.”

  “Have the wine sellers discount their wares to the crowd,” Kleopatra suggested, remembering her father’s old ploy for placating his people.

  “Excellent,” Caesar replied.

  “As you wish,” the soldier said. Bowing courteously to Kleopatra but not meeting her eye, he left.

  “My brother has always been a nuisance,” Kleopatra said, leaning on her elbow.

  “I imagine he has,” Caesar replied. “Not to worry. He shall be made to understand.”

  “General?”

  “You may call me Caesar, my darling young queen, and I shall call you Kleopatra.”

  “Caesar. Do be careful.”

  “Never worry over me,” he said, waving his long fingers in the air, fanning away her concerns. “It isn’t necessary. No one shall be hurt. At least not yet.”

  How cunning and stupidity could so seamlessly coexist in the same body, Kleopatra did not know. For here was her old adversary, the eunuch Pothinus, white lead rubbed into his wrinkled skin to make him appear both young and fair. His technique had failed on both fronts, and now his small dark eyes peered out from the perimeter of the thick circle of kohl and at the young queen, who did not shrink from his venomous gaze. Here was the man who had driven her from her own palace and into the treacherous heat of Middle Egypt and the Sinai, the man who had her brothers and sister in his thrall. He had been clever enough to drive Kleopatra away, but foolish, too. He did not understand that in cutting her off from the security she’d known all her life he had enabled her to find the depth of her determination and her strength. She had departed from him an adventurous and clever girl, and returned a woman of unstoppable resolve.

  And now the fool thought that he might defy not only Egypt’s queen but Julius Caesar as well.

  “The king does not wish to be a prisoner in his own kingdom,” Pothinus said to Caesar. “It is unnecessary and unseemly.”

  The boy king sat sullen in his chair next to Arsinoe, letting his regent speak for him. Arsinoe, too, exercised tight control, showing no emotion over the proceedings. Days earlier, Caesar and his men had gently removed the boy from the crowd he’d gathered in front of the palace. Ptolemy had been midway through a temper tantrum, throwing his crown to his subjects, denouncing Kleopatra as the traitor who would sell the nation out to the Romans and Caesar as the dictator who would murder the king and make Kleopatra sole ruler of Egypt. Caesar had instructed his soldiers not to harm the boy; he knew that Ptolemy had no mind of his own, that his emotions were easily whipped up by Pothinus.

  “My dear fellow, who knows who is a prisoner of whom in these strange circumstances. To some minds, Caesar is prisoner of the Alexandrians.”

  Kleopatra had become accustomed to Caesar’s manner of referring to himself in the third person, but it never failed to startle her ear.

  “Because if Caesar steps into the streets, he is attacked by this mob that you cannot seem to control. And Caesar does not wish to make war on your mob.”

  “I am quite certain that if Great Caesar wished to leave Alexandria, the mob would cooperate,” the eunuch said. Kleopatra wondered how long Caesar would tolerate this fool.

  “Ah, but Caesar does not wish to leave Alexandria just yet,” the dictator replied in a most pleasant tone. “Not only is his business here incomplete, but Caesar is prisoner of the northern winds which do not make sailing favorable. So you see, Caesar is a prisoner here on your shores. But you, my friend, are also a prisoner, though you may not choose to acknowledge it. However, if you set foot outside the palace gates, my soldiers will enlighten you. And the queen is also prisoner, is she not? We are all happy captives, and I suggest we make the most of it.”

  “By returning to Egypt, the queen defied a royal edict. She must suffer the consequences.”

  “The queen is the government itself, whereas you are an appointee. Do not forget that.” Caesar maintained his agreeable demeanor, and Kleopatra noticed that the more sanguine he sounded, the more menacing he became. “Here is the will of Rome: Queen Kleopatra and her brother King Ptolemy the Elder shall rule in concert. I am their protector and adviser. As a show of my good faith, I hereby return the island of Cyprus to Egyptian rule. The princess Arsinoe and the prince Ptolemy the Younger shall be its governors. As soon as the winds are favorable, they shall depart for those territories with a Regency Council selected by me.”

  Kleopatra and Caesar had plotted this the night before. She knew she would never be safe as long as Arsinoe was in Egypt. Dynastic tradition forbade two women to be in power at the same time, and so the only way to deal with one’s sisters was murder or exile. Kleopatra explained to Caesar that Arsinoe must go if ever there was to be peace. She told him how their sister, Arsinoe’s mentor Berenike, had raised an army against her own father, for which she was eventually executed. Arsinoe had spent her girlhood in Berenike’s shadow. Did they have to wait until the girl took the inevitable action? It was not in Arsinoe’s character to sit placidly
by while Kleopatra and Ptolemy the Elder ruled the kingdom.

  “If I were dead, Arsinoe would marry our brother and be queen. She would be unsensible if she did not try to have me killed. Besides,” Kleopatra told him, “Arsinoe and Ptolemy have been sleeping together since they were children.”

  “Interesting,” he replied. “We cannot have you dead, now can we?” Then Caesar had said that just as he had once banished the senator Cato to Cyprus to get rid of him, so he would now do the same with Arsinoe and the younger brother, who was presently a child of eleven, but who would soon become the same kind of nuisance as the present king.

  “And we shall do it under the guise of goodness,” Caesar had said. “A gesture of friendship and goodwill between Rome’s new dictator and the Egyptian monarchy.”

  “May it be the first of many,” Kleopatra had replied, and then she had walked straight across the room to Caesar, straddled him in his chair, and had him make love to her in that position.

  Pothinus must have imagined what had gone on between Caesar and Kleopatra behind closed doors, and yet he refused to accept the verdict that their relationship cast upon his own Fate. Kleopatra’s father had taught her to recognize whom the gods favored and align herself thus-ly-not out of self-interest, but in recognition of the supremacy of the Divine. The gods were with Caesar. That much was clear. And Caesar was now with Kleopatra. The final step to this equation, to any thinking person, particularly one who had studied logic and mathematics, must be clear. But Pothinus and Kleopatra’s siblings chose to ignore this fact, for they made no move to cooperate.

  “You mustn’t send Arsinoe away!” said Ptolemy. “She is my sister and cherished chancellor, though she holds no formal office.”

  For the first time, Kleopatra realized that it was not necessarily the bonds of either family or sex that held Ptolemy to Arsinoe. He was afraid, and rightfully so, that without her, he would be even less of an obstruction to Pothinus’s exercising complete control over Egypt and her resources. Arsinoe, on the other hand, probably comprehended this completely and had been using it to compensate for her unfortunate placement in the family’s hierarchy.

  “Dearest Brother,” Arsinoe said, “if my duty to country lies at Cyprus, then go I must. We shall not let it separate us in spirit.” Ptolemy moved to correct her, but she silenced him by taking his hand. “Now is not the time to discuss the issue. It is a private matter between us, and we need not consume the general’s time with our familial arrangements.”

  How shrewd was this girl, Kleopatra thought. Berenike would have challenged Caesar directly, no matter what price she had to pay. Thank the gods that Caesar had agreed to remove Arsinoe from Kleopatra’s kingdom. And thank the gods that Berenike and not Arsinoe had been the firstborn daughter. The eunuch Meleager who had attached himself to Berenike had been a genius conniver. He was dead now, slain by his own hand when his machinations failed. But Kleopatra shuddered at the thought of Arsinoe and Meleager combining their efforts to take over the throne. What a powerful team they would have made. As it was, Arsinoe’s present regent was less adroit at disguising his intentions than was his charge.

  “Great Caesar, I fear that your efforts to reconcile the family have had the opposite effect,” said Pothinus, his voice full of false concern. “I fear you do not understand the intense blood bonds that flow through the veins of this family. See how you threaten the welfare of the king? As his regent, I simply must protest.”

  “Caesar has taken your protestations into consideration. But the fact remains. The princess and the younger prince set sail as soon as the winds are favorable. Now to the matter of the army.”

  “Which army is that?” the eunuch asked, and Kleopatra wondered if Caesar would simply take this idiot by the throat and rid them of him without further delay. But Caesar was patient, exercising, she supposed, the mercy upon which he so prided himself.

  “The army that is encamped at Pelusium, commanded by General Achillas; the army that you were prepared to turn against the queen. I sent a message to Achillas, a message composed with the cooperation of the king, demanding that the army be disbanded. Achillas’s answer was to murder the messengers. You will now send to Achillas and tell him that if he does not disband his troops outside the city walls, I shall summon every Roman legion from our eastern territories and turn them against him. Is that clear?”

  “Amply, Great Caesar.” Pothinus spoke with an expression of consternation on his face, as if he were suffering from acute dysentery.

  “And the king and the princess Arsinoe and yourself shall not leave the palace until it is confirmed that the army is no longer.”

  “I see,” said the eunuch.

  “We are outnumbered here, but that will not be true for long. And may I remind you that the forces of Pompey the Great had us outnumbered five to one at Pharsalos. So do not become excessively confident in your greater numbers. I am not toying with you. Rome will be obeyed at any cost to you.”

  Pothinus nodded. Throughout the discourse, Arsinoe had kept her fingers tightly clenched around her brother’s wrist, squeezing, Kleopatra suspected, whenever the boy moved to speak. What was she plotting? And how would she execute her plans? One thing was certain: no Ptolemaic woman would sit idly and let her Fate be dictated by a man, foreign or familial.

  Julius Caesar’s vanity saved their lives.

  Though he had not much hair, his visits to the barber were frequent and regular, and he preferred a good Greek barber to all others, or so he claimed. He liked the way the man took time to heat and moisturize the face before removing the stubble with a razor, and he also liked how the barber let the thickest part of his hair grow longer than the rest, using the volume to cover his ever-receding hairline. He confessed all this to Kleopatra, who declared that Rome would never reach the Greek standards of Beauty because what they treasured in life was not beautiful.

  “I don’t know why I suffer your insults,” Caesar told her. “You are just a grandiose girl.”

  “Perhaps because you know I am right,” she said.

  They were snuggled in bed, falling into a deep, postcoital sleep, when the fighting broke out. Kleopatra heard the clash of swords and the rumble of men’s battle cries coming through the window, startling her from the beginning of a hazy dream. Before she could articulate a thought, Caesar was up and dressed and telling her to neither worry nor leave the room. She thought of General Achillas at the head of the army, the preening, swarthy commander who had once tried to entrap her into a sexual liaison with him in exchange for protection against her brother and his regents. How she would like to see Caesar bring this man to his knees in defeat.

  Luckily, when Caesar had been to the barber a few days earlier, the man had whispered in his ear as he leaned over the bowl of steaming water: “General, I shall pretend to clip the hairs from your inner ears so that I may whisper to you. There are things you must know.” And Caesar, intrigued, gave his permission, though he was privately mortified that anyone might think he had unsightly ear hairs that required removal. The barber informed him that Pothinus and another eunuch, an army commander named Ganymedes, had sent to Achillas demanding that he march his army of almost twenty thousand men into Alexandria in secret and launch a surprise attack on Caesar and his small legion of two thousand. It was only a matter of days before the palace would be under attack. “And he plans to have you murdered, sir. Just as he murdered the Roman general Pompey.”

  “Why are you telling me this?” Caesar asked.

  “I am a very old man, sir, and I have seen many fat and worthless Ptolemies and their eunuch advisers come and go. This lot is no different. When you throw these creatures out, I believe you will be most kind to those who helped you.”

  “You have correctly assessed the situation on all fronts,” Caesar said. While the new information necessitated immediate action, he did not act so impetuously as to leave the barber’s company without a fresh haircut and shave. Groomed, he revealed to Kleopatra what he had le
arned and what action he had taken. He had immediately dispatched a messenger to his allies in Asia Minor for reinforcements, with a special offer to Antipater, Prime Minister to Hyrcanus of Judaea, giving the Jews a last chance to redeem themselves for aligning with Pompey in the recent civil war by sending troops. Caesar knew his men could hold out against the superior numbers for a few weeks but not forever. He explained to Kleopatra that lesser numbers often worked to one’s advantage because it inevitably made one’s opponents lax. And then he sighed. “Poor Pompey.” He also reinforced the barricades around the palace quarter, denying anyone admittance or leave. “We are going to be besieged,” he said to Kleopatra. “At the right time, I shall engage Achillas in combat. But in the meanwhile, we are not going anywhere.”

  “That is as I wish, General. I want to get to know you in the extreme.”

  “By the way, you didn’t need to say good-bye to Pothinus, did you?”

  “Where is he going?” To Hades, I suppose.

  “Oh?”

  “It is the Roman custom to avoid inauspicious language. An old superstition, but customary nonetheless. Let us just say that he did live, but it is no longer true to say so.”

  Now Kleopatra went to her bedroom window, stood next to Caesar, and watched the Egyptian fleet sail into the harbor, effectively blockading Caesar’s smaller navy and cutting him off from supplies and reinforcements by sea.

  “Make use of your young eyes and count the vessels,” he said. “I believe they are seventy-two in number, more than twice what we’ve got.” Kleopatra confirmed his count and asked his strategy. “Oh, it’s all been done before,” he said. “When I’ve lulled them into thinking victory is certain, I shall entice them into combat. The Egyptians are excellent sailors, but not known for fighting man-to-man. We’ll lure them close to our boats and then we’ll board their vessels. They will be easily defeated on those terms, I assure you.”

  “You’re awfully confident,” she said. She could not yet hear the sounds of confrontation, but she remembered how frightened she had been as a child when the mob rioted against her father outside the palace walls.