Pharaoh

by Karen Essex

  She did not resist.

  “Now come, tell me about my children. Have they inherited my fine appearance?”

  “I have told you that if you wish to know of your children, you must come to see them for yourself. They are most curious about you.”

  His face lost the worried look that he had worn into the meeting and he smiled at her, looking once more like himself, or the self that she had held in her mind the last four years.

  “Then go home and prepare for my arrival.” The old smirk returned. “I must be well cared for before I go off to war.”

  Alexandria: the 20th year of Kleopatra’s reign

  Asunrise meeting with the War Council. Kleopatra searches the room for the one face whose presence will have meaning, but that face is probably snoring into the ear of a whore. She smiles at the irony. She has absolutely no control over the man whom the Romans claim she controls utterly. The faces before her, however, are full of optimism. Canidius Crassus, most faithful Roman friend, and Hephaestion, most loyal Prime Minister, update the queen on the progress of the plan to escape by the Red Sea. I do not wish to escape, she wants to scream at them. I wish to fight. They have every possibility of raising an even larger army than the last time, but Antony is not up to the effort, and Kleopatra knows that the majority of his Roman soldiers-especially the commanders crucial to victory-will not go up against another Roman army for an Egyptian queen. Blood, after all, is blood, and sometimes, in the course of human history, prevails even over money. This, Kleopatra believes, is one such circumstance. She has money to pay, but the Romans have been facing one another on the battlefield for so many years now, since Sulla’s days, long before Julius Caesar crossed that little Italian river, spilling Roman blood on Roman swords. Kleopatra has walked through the ranks of the soldiers herself-despite the objections of certain Roman officers who cannot bear to see a woman in power-and has spoken to them in their native tongue. Some have been fighting all their lives and are old men. They want money, land, peace- all the things promised to them by Julius Caesar, but he did not live to settle his debts.

  And so Kleopatra lets her advisers tell her of the lightweight ships being constructed for her escape. They will be loaded onto massive trailers-also being con-structed-and hauled by an army of slaves a mere twenty miles to the Red Sea, where the queen and her family and entourage will sail away. But sail where? she asks them.

  Do not lose sight of your goals, Your Majesty, they tell her as if she is a child who must be reminded of her lessons. She needs no reminder of what she has done. Once again, she has tried to protect herself and her family. She has taken great pains to strengthen her alliance with the king of Media. They have made a secret negotiation, which Antony does not know about. But the queen realizes that she must have a fallback position. She will never quit Antony, but he shows every sign of quitting himself. And what is she-some slave girl who is supposed to offer herself up for sacrifice when her ruler dies? No, she will prevail, even if Antony graduates from the oblivion of alcohol and sex into the oblivion of suicide. She will escape to Media, marry the king, and together they will crush the Parthians and found a kingdom that will sweep from Egypt to Arabia to India, the empire envisioned by Alexander An empire that in the coming years might challenge Rome and win. Media has only one demand to solidify the alliance: execute Antony’s prisoner, the king of Armenia, whom the king of Media hates for many reasons, not the least of which is that they share the same name, Artavasdes, and he is sick to death of the confusion. Shall it be done, Your Majesty? asks Hephaestion. But he is the Imperator’s prisoner, she answers, trying to uphold her husband’s authority. Shall we ask him, then? Hephaestion politely asks. She sends to Antony for permission to execute the prisoner and receives a scornful reply. Kill whomever you like. Why not start with me? The War Council falls silent, pitying her, she is sure. She sighs, signs the death warrant, and sends Diomedes, her secretary, away to put the deed in motion.

  She spends the rest of the day in image-making. She takes her morning meal in the Common Room at the Mouseion. Throughout her life she has taken comfort in this house where knowledge is mined and dedicated to the Muses. She enjoys breaking bread in the company of the men of learning as she has done from time to time since she was a girl under their tutelage. It is the custom of her family not only to patronize, but also to maintain a certain intimacy with the scholars. Could Eratosthenes have included such colorful stories of Arsinoe III in his autobiography, which her own children still read, if that great queen of the past had not dispensed with queenly formalities and invited him to share in the contents of her mind? No, this is the manner in which her family indulges its passion for liter ary and scientific matters. And now, at this crucial time, it is important to uphold all traditions, to maintain the semblance of normality.

  The queen is given a nervous reception. Rumors of her desertion of Antony and of their cause have spread in her city. She does not announce her arrival, but bounds into the room unaccompanied as she did when she was a girl, bursting in on their quiet conversation. Upon her entrance everyone jumps out of his seat, a few dropping bread to the ground, and young Nicolaus spitting out his milk in greeting her. Mouths full, hands shaking, they stand long after she sits, until she gently commands them to take their seats, trying to restore an atmosphere of casual dialogue. She uses the opportunity to calm them by relating the actual events of the battle at Actium, and assuring them of her many plans for ultimate victory. She realizes that she should have done this weeks ago; undoubtedly they have been ruminating among themselves about the consequences of the battle. She imagines that many of them are already arranging new posts for themselves at Rhodes or Athens, while others are wondering how long it will be before they are kissing Octavian’s ring. She is sure the letters to their Greek colleagues begging for the specifics of the battle at Actium have been sailing out of the port since the day she returned, if not before. No one adores the details of failure or the pleasures of gossip like an intellectual.

  She sees that she has surprised them with her extraordinary good humor. They have been listening to the servants’ stories of Antony’s condition, and they must have expected to see her in that same state of mind, particularly after hearing rumors of her “defeat.” They behave toward her as one acts in the presence of sick persons and the recently widowed. Cautious and overly solicitous. She smiles at young Nicolaus, who is spied wiping the spilt milk from his beard, and then at old Philostratus, a teacher of her youth. He is grateful. He has probably been waiting for a private audience, such as in the old days when she would solicit his advice. But these days, she finds his grand speech-making and pithy way of speaking otiose and unnecessary. She has little patience left for aphorisms. But Philostratus is old; he reminds her of the days when her father was alive, when she had the king and his authority to depend upon, and her affection for the philosopher returns. She forces herself to show courtesy to Arius, one of Caesarion’s tutors whom she neither likes nor trusts. But she tolerates him for Caesarion’s sake. The son of Caesar appreciates Arius’s work categorizing schools of philosophy into logic, physics, and ethics. The boy has inherited Caesar’s intellect, but not his cool judgment. Ah well, did Caesar not patronize that vain fool, Cicero, who betrayed him so many times, who vocalized his objections over Caesar’s ambitions until the senators took up their daggers? Caesar had placed the intellectual discourse the two shared above loyalty, and Kleopatra senses that their son shall do the same. How to gift someone with the ability to judge character? She wonders if such a thing can be taught. She wonders if she, too, has fallen short in this area by aligning herself with the man who sits in his mansion by the sea, whose once great virility as a warrior and conqueror now shows itself only to paid courtesans.

  Kleopatra finishes chatting up the philosophers and leaves them so that all might prepare themselves for the ceremony at noon, the idea for which sprang to her mind as she sailed into the harbor of her great city. First, she gave orders as they dock
ed that poets be paid lovely sums to write songs of her victory and glory. The first men off the ship swiftly carried her wishes into those quarters where such tributes might be efficiently written. Another idea occurred to her as soon as she and Antony received news of some of their soldiers’ defection to Octavian. At that moment, she watched every muscle in Antony’s face droop, his chest sag, his arms hang limp at his side as if he were a sick monkey and not the commander of the greatest army the world had ever seen. And she knew in that moment that she must hurry the cycles of Time. For Time would surely dictate that the sons usurp the power of the father. Antyllus and Caesarion are young men, fourteen and sixteen, but no younger than Alexander when he squashed whole cities that his father, the great warrior King Philip, had not been able to subdue. Perhaps the combination of Antyllus’s confidence and effrontery and Caesarion’s sharp intellect might combine to make the leader their father could no longer be. The two are more than brothers; they are two sides of a great personality, like the twin souls of Plato. There is never a conflict between them; together they comprise a whole and great man. The blood of Caesar and the blood of Antony mixed with the blood of Alexander and the Ptolemies. How can they fail? She has explained all of this to them at length. They eat up her words with the enthusiasm of young men, each eager to assume the mantle that their mother is placing on their young and strong shoulders. Antyllus, courtly and brash, promises the queen that he will lead his father’s men to victory in her name. He kisses her hand, and then stands over her as if she were his own little mother and kisses her forehead, and she wishes for a moment that things were different and that she could start all over with this young man’s courage and energy propelling her plans. Her own son, King of Kings, is gracious, accepting the Fate that was assigned to him when his august father coupled with his regal mother. He does not even smile, but bows formally, the long arm of Caesar sweeping out from his body like the branch of a young tree in the wind.

  Canidius has promised that he would have the Imperator dressed and propped up for the occasion, and on this point, he has delivered. Antony appears, shaven, oiled, costumed in a general’s magnificent purple, and-for all who do not know him as intimately as the queen-sober. Kleopatra cannot look at him without her heart sinking. His fine features are drowned in bloated flesh. His eyes-eyes that she once had to discipline herself to look into because they caused such a shudder in her body-stare straight ahead in a flat brown gaze. Two withered mushrooms have moved in where the bold eyes of a hawk used to be. He takes his place next to her. I know why you are doing this, he says. You have forced my hand, she replies. I would rather uphold the father than the sons. But the father is gone and has left a beggar in his bed. He says nothing in reply.

  The weather is mercifully cool for a September day. The sea breeze participates in the ceremony, dancing in through the windows in the gymnasium, ruffling the toga virilus, the robe of manhood that is presented to Antyllus by his father. Caesarion lowers his head to accept the pharaoh’s crown from his mother, signaling his true coming of age. And in a singular moment the two boys make the elusive transformation into men. And that is that, Kleopatra thinks as she sees the joy on the faces of her subjects at the sight of the vigor and virility that will lead them into the future. Youth is hope, and her people lock onto that hope in the face of every wild rumor being circulated about town that Antony is finished. Her plan is working. The people ignore the father’s slump and paunch for the potent, erect posture of the sons. Before he turns away from her to return to his debauchery, Antony takes his wife’s arm. Give me time, he says. You are not very good at that, Kleopatra, but that is what I need. Despite herself, she feels the thrill of hope, of the possibility that he will become again the man he was not six months prior when they celebrated the execution of their plans for a Golden Empire at Samos. How could the soul of the man disappear so quickly? She wishes to carry that hope with her, but though his voice is sincere and sounds like Antony, his eyes are pools of death. She smiles gently, pats his hand, and walks away.

  Phoenicia: the 16th year of Kleopatra’s reign

  Charmion held the bowl for the queen as she leaned over and retched. Kleopatra thought that she was immune from seasickness, but she had never traveled on such tumultuous seas so soon after giving birth.

  Ptolemy Philadelphus, so named after his great ancestor but called Philip by the family, had inherited his father’s size. He was the biggest of Kleopatra’s four children, ten pounds at birth, with a head wider than a discus. She thought she would die as she pushed the future prince into the world, calling upon every god to hurry the process, and when that failed, putting expletives in the place of prayers. The reluctant baby remained in the birth canal, so she began to talk to him in a panting and desperate voice, assuring him that he would one day be king over all that he saw if he would only agree to come out into the world and see it. Through the lancing pain, she explained to him who his ancestors were, from which gods he was descended, and of his father’s great deeds of war and soldiery. It seemed that only when she promised him that he would inherit the entire world empire from his older brothers that he made his appearance. As he crowned, the midwife exclaimed, “What a head the future emperor has! And what hair sits upon it!” The baby was born with Antony’s brown curls in place on his giant head as if he had already visited Antony’s barber. He seemed to have inherited his father’s appetites, too, because he howled from the moment he was born, all the way through the ritual cleansing, until the wet nurse was dragged out of her bed and he was in her arms and at the tit.

  Kleopatra was still exhausted from the delivery and heavy with milk when she received Antony’s desperate message. Her breasts were rock-hard and full of pain. She demanded to nurse the baby herself to get rid of some of the milk, but the midwife assured her that she would be encouraging its production. Better to suffer the pain for a week or so until the body got the message that the milk was not needed. It had been three weeks, and the body was still resisting the message, as much as it resisted healing its lower half from the excruciating delivery. The other three births were, if not exactly painless, then at least expedient. She had healed quickly, and was on her horse in two weeks’ time. She did not know if the trouble this time was caused by her age or by the baby’s size, but the factors mingled to make a very difficult experience-one that she could not afford at this crucial juncture.

  Antony’s message was simple and to the point: One-third of the army is dead; the other two-thirds require clothes, shoes, and food. Please come at once to Leuce Come on the coast of Phoenicia, north of Tyre.

  Did he think she was a magician? How was she to produce food and clothes for sixty thousand men at once? And what chink in their battle plan had created this disaster so early in the war?

  Nonetheless, she pillaged the supplies of her own army, of her own estates and granaries, of the country’s factories that produced leather and woolen goods. She had three ships loaded with the effects, and coaxed her beleaguered body onto a fourth.

  Thank the gods that there was no protest against her actions in the city, even though her subjects would be footing the bill for Antony’s failure. Her careful strategy had worked. When Antony had returned to Alexandria after their reunion in Antioch, she had married him in a grand ceremony in the style of her ancestors. Except that this time, it was no brother or cousin or fat Ptolemy at her side, but Rome’s greatest general. The Alexandrians celebrated wildly after the ceremony, matching the queen’s new husband’s Dionysian capacity for wine goblet for goblet. The wealthy sent Antony fabulous gifts of gold, jewels, statues, and manuscripts of his favorite poets and philosophers. The poor offered him the tops of their heads in solicitous devotion. They loved Antony anyway, ever since he had marched Gabinius’s army into Egypt twenty-one years ago to restore Kleopatra’s father. They remembered that he had convinced the king to spare many of the Egyptian rebels, and was merciful in victory. For all that, Kleopatra could not be certain that her subjects would be
behind his war effort, especially since she would have to tax certain goods and luxuries if she intended to finance it through to total victory. Therefore, he must be, if not king, then at least the queen’s consort, a king of sorts who was perceived as fighting as much for Egyptian interests as the interests of Rome. Kleopatra believed that her marriage to him, as well as his public acceptance of their children, would make a convincing case for this.

  She was right. After the marriage ceremony, the new names of their twins were announced-Alexander Helios and Kleopatra Selene, Brother Sun, Sister Moon-and the subjects cheered wildly. The meaning was not lost on anyone, for the boy, Alexander, was not only the namesake of the greatest king who ever lived, but now he was also Ra, the Sun itself, the divine force that made crops grow, that warmed the cities and the fields, that obliterated the frightful dark chill of Night and illuminated the earth. Kleopatra Selene carried the weight of her mother’s name and that of all Queen Kleopatras who came before her. She was also the moon goddess, the force that shed light into the dark night and was keeper of all the mysteries of the world. Antony’s enemy, the Parthian king, called himself Brother of the Sun and Moon. When Kleopatra got the idea to enhance the children’s names, she and Antony had laughed at how their children’s new monikers usurped that power and bested it.

  After the celebrations, when they were alone, Antony made a great ceremony of his own giving her his wedding gift, a strand of gigantic creamy pearls from the Caspian Sea that hung to her navel. She claimed she had never seen pearls so large, and he said that none existed, that oysters had obeyed his command to mold themselves into pearls worthy of a goddess’s neck. He demanded to see them as he had imagined them on her when he bought them. She asked him to place them around her neck, but he would not do so, and made her guess how he wished her to model them. She teased him with different coiffures and gowns until he scolded that she was not quite as smart as she appeared. Only then did she slowly let her dress fall to the ground. She stepped out of it, and he placed the jewelry over her bare neck. He ran his fingers down both strands all the way to her belly and stopped there. He cupped her stomach in his hands.