Pharaoh

by Karen Essex

  Three short knocks on the door was the signal. Arsinoe covered her head, said a last-minute prayer to the goddess, and wrapped herself in a long shawl. She and her most loyal man, the High Priest, would slip away into the night and take a boat for Cyprus, where the governor would give them shelter, at least until the Romans found out where they were. Then-who knew? If necessary, she would disguise herself as a palace slave and scrub the governor’s floors until the proper time when she might once again raise support to win back her kingdom. As long as whichever Roman was calling the shots was in her sister’s grip, she was not safe.

  She opened the door. The High Priest was in the custody of two Roman sentries whom she had never before seen. One was taller and stockier than the other, but the shorter one had his sword drawn and looked meaner. The priest could not meet her eyes. The shorter of the Romans grabbed her arm gruffly. “Your friend here has given you up in exchange for his pardon,” he said.

  “That is untrue, Your Highness,” the priest insisted, still not able to look her in the face. “We are both sentenced to die.”

  “But only one of you will,” the Roman countered. “Isn’t that interesting?”

  He pulled her arms behind her back while the taller, silent one tied them with a coarse rope.

  “What are you doing?” she screamed, trying to pull away from them, falling forward into the priest, who leapt backward as if she carried the plague. “What are they doing to me?” she demanded of him, but he shied away from her.

  “I won’t be a part of this,” he said to the sentries, walking away. But the shorter sentry grabbed his arm and jerked him to a stop.

  “You are a part of this, whether you like it or not. You defied the orders of the triumvirs of Rome, you sided with the assassins of Caesar, and now you will pay for it.”

  The priest stood still and looked at Arsinoe for the first time, summoning up his dignity. “Your Highness, I will have the privilege of dying with you.”

  “No you won’t,” said the taller Roman, breaking his silence. He spoke as if he regretted his words, whether because he did not like what he had to say, or because he did not like what he was ordered to do, Arsinoe did not know. But he spoke evenly and bitterly. “We are under orders to spare you. Someone-who knows who?-has pleaded for your life. Perhaps your position at the temple has saved you.”

  “But you will witness the death of the one you call the queen of Egypt,” said the other. “And you will remind yourself of your part in her demise. You are a holy man. You should have delivered better advice.”

  The Romans pushed Arsinoe and the priest down the hall, torches on the wall making black shadows on the floor ahead of them, and into the brisk night air. Arsinoe’s shawl fell to the ground and she stopped, looking at one Roman and then the other to retrieve it for her. “You won’t need it where you’re going,” the short one said.

  The priest picked up the shawl and wrapped it around Arsinoe’s shoulders. “If you die tonight, you die the rightful queen of Egypt,” he whispered in her ear. “And if I live, I shall spend the rest of my days making that known.”

  “The rightful queen of Egypt lies in the arms of Marcus Antonius, Imperator of Rome,” said the short guard. “If you had better sense, you might have been in her place.”

  Arsinoe looked about her, but there was no one there to meet them but the columns of the temple precinct, so beautiful by day, but now stony sentries to her disgrace. She thought of Berenike at the moment of her death. What did her sister do but look with scorn, hatred, even pity, at those who condemned her, right up to the second when the sword met with her neck? Arsinoe would make Berenike proud. She would not disgrace the memory of her sister by showing fear to these Romans. They might take her life, but not her dignity.

  She walked right up to the short Roman and stared straight into his eyes. “I prefer death as a lover to a Roman,” she said.

  He swept his right arm across his chest to backhand her in the face, but the taller guard checked him. “Stick to the orders,” he said. He turned Arsinoe around and marched her forward. “You’re just dragging things out.”

  Arsinoe squared her shoulders, looking ahead. At the end of the courtyard, behind the sacrificial stone, stood a Roman centurion. Arsinoe could not quite make out his features, but saw that he was a large man, standing with his feet apart, making a long triangle of his legs. Was she to be sacrificed on the same stone where animals were offered to the goddess? No trial, no witnesses to her death but these barbarians and the betrayer of a priest? The sentries pushed her forward, out of the shadows. It was then that she recognized the face of Helvinius, his smile broad, and his sword drawn and gleaming in the light of the moon goddess along with his straight, white Roman teeth.

  Alexandria: the 10th year of Kleopatra’s reign

  Kleopatra wondered if, true to the philosophers’ warnings, her reason and intellect would die an expedient death-by-drowning in pleasure. “I’ve succumbed to you, Imperator,” she told Antony, “mind, body, and kingdom.”

  “And I to you, Your Royal Grace,” he answered.

  They had just made love-again-in her bath. When they finished, she moved to go to her bed, but Antony called for dinner. “At midnight?” she asked.

  “Time must subordinate itself to a man’s desires,” he said. “That is all there is to it.”

  She hoped the cooks had obeyed her orders to have fresh and sumptuous meals ready to serve at all hours of the day and night. Antony was completely unpredictable in his appetites. The only guarantee was that he would have them. Where, when, and for what was always a surprise. Kleopatra had never seen a person with such passion for work and for life. Antony spent the major part of his days preparing with his military staff to march on Parthia. He took meeting after meeting with cavalry officers, weapons specialists, siege builders, and mapmakers, attending to the tedious details of assembling a war machine.

  In the afternoons, Antony did not rest, but demanded to be entertained either with sport, lectures, theatrical performances, or sex-and sometimes those pursuits in combination. Before dinner, he met with visiting dignitaries and heard their concerns. In the evenings, he and Kleopatra gave long dinners for Alexandria’s wealthiest and most interesting citizens and for the Romans in Antony’s entourage. The Alexandrians adored him, calling him the Inimitable Liver, a man whose love of life knew no bounds, who lived with style and passion, who literally gobbled up experience, both visceral and esoteric. He was cherished in the city for his generosity, his sense of humor, for his love of all things Greek and Egyptian, and for the fact that he had made their queen a partner in his enterprises. Those who had watched her father grovel before Roman leaders were amazed that their queen was not only financing a large portion of Rome’s war with Parthia, but was clearly orchestrating its strategy with the Imperator. After their guests would leave-often at dawn-Antony and Kleopatra would take horses from the stables and ride into the wild country south of the city, just as she had done so many years ago with the desert girl, Mohama. After a brisk ride, Kleopatra would sleep a few hours while Antony bathed and began his day, catching fifteen-minute naps between activities. Though he was tireless, he was caught more than once falling asleep during a presentation by one of his staff.

  This evening, they ate alone in one of the small dining rooms where her father often shared a late dinner with one of his mistresses after he had supped with his wife. Antony lay on the same couch of purple silk that Auletes had so loved, and ]Kleopatra marveled at the symmetry of things, that both men who had singled her out to share their power loved lounging and eating in this small room. Antony cut a figure more pleasing to the eye, however. His bronze skin was pink from the bath and his face flushed with hot food and warm, spicy wine. His months away from war and dining in royal style had put some bulk on his body, but Kleopatra still found him beautiful. Somehow, each pound added more masculine appeal. Kleopatra sat in the crook of his body, curled against his thighs and facing him. Occasionally, after
a sip of wine, he pulled her to him and kissed her with hot, well-seasoned lips.

  “Of all the philosophies I have studied, Imperator-the Platonists, the Aristotelians, the Epicureans, the Stoics-none recommend this sort of indulgence in the passions,” Kleopatra said, licking her freshly kissed lips. She picked up a tiny pheasant wing and nibbled at its delicate flesh.

  “And so they do not,” he said, nonchalant. “Their goal is detachment from all that one lives for-food, drink, friendship, war, love. I studied with them myself in Greece, and I am proud to say that I could not be argued out of my desires. One crumpled up old sophist called upon me to ’confess’ my wicked desires and rid my soul of their torment. ’I’ve no desire to rid myself of my desires,’ I told him. ’I adore my desires, and they me.’ ”

  “But do you not think that extirpation of the passions is crucial to rational decision-making?” She was goading him, of course. She loved the time she spent with Antony, hunting, riding, feasting, laughing, making love. She had not had even a glimmer of such fun since her youth. She was not about to abandon these pursuits in favor of philosophical restraint. But was it possible to continue to live life on this grand and relentless scale, recklessly gobbling up time and experience?

  “How bookish you sound, Kleopatra. It’s very erotic.”

  She knew by the lascivious look on his face that he meant what he said.

  “Don’t flirt with me, Imperator. You’ve already used me up this evening like the commonest of whores. You’ll get no more play from me.”

  She smiled at him, grateful that her strategy to lure him to Alexandria had paid off. When he had made love to her at Tarsus, she had been entirely swept away by the experience, taken over in a way that had never before happened to her. She had worried that she would not be able to hold her own with this man, who could obliterate her very consciousness with the ferocity of his sex. It was intoxicating, but it would not do to become just another of Antony’s whores. She remembered fretting over the same problem in those days with Archimedes when sex was new and overwhelming. But it was even more so with Antony. She had no power over him as she had had with Archimedes. She must not become so vulnerable that she was in Antony’s control. Politically, she was dangerously close to that fact. If she succumbed so utterly to him sexually, she would be lost.

  On their last evening together in Tarsus, he had insisted on entertaining her in his quarters, taking up the challenge to match her in lav-ishness. When she arrived, he announced that because Her Majesty had bought up all the food and luxuries in the region, his staff was forced to prepare a simple Roman meal. They ate together in smaller company than on previous nights, and when he dismissed his few guests and presumed to carry her off to his bed, she protested that she was weary and would leave to prepare to set sail before dawn. If he desired the pleasure of her sexual companionship again, she suggested he make haste to Alexandria as soon as his business in Syria was brought to a satisfactory conclusion. This time, she left him stupefied, and there was no report of his calling for whores.

  It was a risk, but she had taken it and it had paid off. Here he was, indulging his feral Roman appetite at her table as he considered what she said about the dichotomy between philosophical reason and sensual passion. He sucked the last of the fat off a bone, washed it down with a long swig of wine, and wiped his hands on a napkin before reaching for a cluster of purple grapes. “You’ve forgotten the Cynics,” he said.

  “Ah, the Cynics. Do you ascribe to the philosophy of the Cynics, Imperator?”

  “I seem to care little for money except to lavish it foolishly on others. Isn’t that one of the virtues the Cynics sought to cultivate?”

  “Yes, but that was only to realize that there is no value in material things.”

  “And so I realize it. There is no value in material things, so we may as well throw them away as enjoy them. What does it matter in the end? Yes, I do believe I am an exemplar Cynic.”

  “Yes, my darling, you are its most perfect paragon. Did Diogenes not say that Herakles was the model of the perfect Cynic? A simple soldier who lived hard and trained hard?”

  “And do the people of your nation and mine not say that I am a great likeness to the god?” Antony turned his face upward so that Kleopatra could admire his fine profile.

  “Oh yes, but you are far from a simple soldier, though you fool others with that persona. And secondly, I hate to tell you this, but Diogenes was mad.”

  “He was not. He simply rejected rules and regulations so that people who love such things thought he was mad. They always do, you know. Those who love rules simply cannot abide those who do not. We frighten them.”

  “But Crates, his disciple, was surely mad.”

  “No, he wasn’t mad. He was a clown, a performer who taught wisdom through comedy.” Antony poured Kleopatra another cup of wine and held it to her lips. “Here, have some more. You are entirely too moderate.”

  “Yes, moderate in the Aristotelian sense,” she said. “It’s no accident, but part of my philosophy.”

  “But our Crates would not have approved of your restraint. He used to make love in the open air with his wife, Hipparchia, regardless of spectators. Now that’s freedom-freedom from rules, from shame, from inhibitions.”

  “What a time they must have had,” Kleopatra said. “Hipparchia the aristocrat traipsing through the streets with her lunatic, hunchback, philosophizing husband, Crates, knocking on the doors of the good people of Athens, giving philosophical instruction, or just playing pranks. Imagine having such freedom.”

  “People have freedom because they take it, Kleopatra. I thought you knew that.”

  “What is the difference between freedom and hedonism? Between freedom and insanity?”

  “Well he was all of those things. A hedonist, yes. But he merely indulged his passions; he was not ruled by them. He gave away his money and her money just to show people that simplicity and love was all. Just like myself, don’t you think?” Antony puffed out his chest and waited for her approval.

  “But it is not all, is it?” she asked. “Bring that philosophy to your senate. The verdict upon you will surely be madness.”

  “No, no, the senators all pose as Stoics, but privately live like Sybarites.” Antony smiled wickedly. “But we are not in Rome, are we?”

  Before she knew it, Antony was pulling her by the hand, dragging her across the courtyard past astonished guards and into the stables. He burst into the dormitory shared by the stable boys, who were fast asleep, rousing them from their beds, throwing them onto the floor and demanding that they shoo. The lads looked at Kleopatra quizzically as they gathered their nightshirts about them and fled their beds, and she returned their glances with equal curiosity, for she had no idea what mischief was in Antony’s head. He herded them out the door, rushing them with his arms as if they were chickens. When the last of the boys was gone, he shut the door, lit a lamp, and demanded that the queen take off her clothes.

  “Not here,” she said. Not with ten bleary-eyed stable boys at the door. She had her limits.

  “No, not that,” he said. He opened the boys’ trunks, rifling through their habits. He pulled out a short chiton and a cloak with a hood and threw them at the queen. “Put this on,” he said, as if commanding one of his soldiers. He continued to look through the trunks, lifting the clothes to himself for size. When he found a costume long enough, he began to strip. Kleopatra clutched the clothes to her body but did not move until Antony, naked and laughing, pulled them from her chest, stripped her, and dressed her in the sacklike work clothes of the stable boy.

  “Perfect,” he said, pulling the hood over her head.

  “What evil plan are you concocting, Imperator?” she asked.

  “Hipparchia.” He put the big brown cloak over himself and hunched his back, looking back at her, she thought, with the eyes of a lunatic. “And Crates. Let us go out and meet our disciples.”

  Antony stood in the open-air carriage. The night air was
warm for autumn. Stars glittered in the black sky, a celestial backdrop to his theatricality. He drank from the leather pouch as the vehicle rolled down the stone streets, spilling wine on the queen and laughing at her fastidiousness as she wiped it away and admonished him with her looks. He was more playful than her seven-year-old son, who sat for hours at his studies, his knitted brow a seriousness inherited from both mother and father. Antony, the son who had seized Caesar’s power, was like a boy who had inherited the whole world for a playground.

  “Here, stop here,” he commanded the driver. The carriage came to a halt, and he hopped out, offering his arms to help Kleopatra. His men had followed behind on foot and had caught up with them, snickering, waiting to see their general’s latest mischief. Antony leapt up the white marble stairs two at a time to the house. He knocked loudly on the door. A footman answered, and quickly drew back when he saw the large, beggarly-looking man.

  “Tell your master that Philosophy is at the door,” Antony said dramatically.

  Kleopatra put her hand over her head. “You have chosen the most serious man in the kingdom for your antics,” she said. “He will think us mad! He has no humor.”

  Hephaestion. The Prime Minister. The loyal eunuch who had accompanied the queen into exile, risking his life and reputation to secure the throne for her. The man whose motto was in matters of state, let your blood run cold. As much as she loved him and was beholden to him, Kleopatra believed that his blood ran cold at all hours of the day and in all situations.