by Karen Essex
Kleopatra longed for home, where the two of them could once again bathe together in her smooth marble tub with her body servants pouring hot water on Antony’s shoulders while he made dirty jokes that sent them into giggles. Sometimes, if they spoke no Greek, he would make Kleopatra teach him what he wanted to say in their own tongue, which would shock them and make them laugh all the more.
Their lovemaking had made them very hungry, and they dressed quickly for dinner, Kleopatra sending a servant ahead to the kitchen to warn of their arrival.
“You have a visitor waiting for you aboard ship, sir,” the girl said to Antony. “General Canidius Crassus has only just arrived.”
“Bring him to our table,” Antony said. “Thank the gods he is safe, but what is he doing at Taenarum?”
Canidius was already seated when Antony and Kleopatra entered the dining hall. He jumped up when he saw them, his face and his hair showing signs of neglect. He had obviously cleaned himself very quickly for the encounter. Kleopatra noticed that there was dirt under his nails, and his usually immaculately shaved face was covered with stubble. Outside of the battlefield, she had never seen a Roman officer of his rank enter the presence of his commander in so disheveled a state.
When Antony saw him, he walked faster, leaving Kleopatra behind. She rushed to keep up with him.
“What on earth has happened to bring you here?” Antony asked without greeting Canidius. “Canidius, have you deserted the men?” The alarm in his voice escalated with each word.
Canidius did not seem to want to answer the question. He looked at Kleopatra with wild eyes. “Your Majesty,” he whispered hoarsely.
“What is it, Canidius? Are you ill?” Kleopatra asked.
Antony showed no concern for Canidius’s condition. “You’d better speak up,” he said.
Canidius stood straight to his full height, which still put him inches shorter than Antony. Looking up into his commander’s eyes, he said, “Sir, I . . . I barely escaped with my life. I am here to inform you that the land army was intercepted on our way to Macedonia by a column of Octavian’s negotiators. Sir, at first, the men wanted to kill them, but they were Romans, and familiar to so many of our officers. So the men voted to hear them out.”
Canidius stopped talking as if waiting for some miraculous reprieve from having to deliver the rest of his message.
“Finish the story, Canidius,” Antony said. It was as if Kleopatra felt all the energy around Antony’s body freeze. She wondered if fear could make the blood cease to flow, because the room was suddenly very cold.
“After listening to General Octavian’s offers of Italian land grants and large sums of gold, delivered by our fellow Romans in the sweet and longed-for language of peace, all but a very few went over to him.”
Brundisium: the 20th year of Kleopatra’s reign
It was the easiest thing he’d ever done, easier than his examinations at school, where he’d never been regarded as a brilliant, or even better-than-average student. Easier than military training, which required more physical stamina than he’d been given at birth. Octavian found that manipulating the minds of others was easier than any other human endeavor he’d had to tackle. Caesar had had all kinds of gifts he employed to astonish others-he wrote books and poetry, conquered nations, made great speeches, bedded perhaps thousands of lovers. But Octavian didn’t seem to need to do any of these things to get what he wanted. He simply had to turn people’s minds in a direction that followed his ambitions. All the hard work of his uncle, all the posturing and soldiering of Antony, was really unnecessary. All one had to do was change people’s beliefs. Even the slaughter of battles past now seemed superfluous. Once the mind-that most rigid human aspect-flexed itself, physical reality altered immediately. Who would have thought that the mind, which was not a physical thing at all, which was located nowhere, which one couldn’t touch with one’s hands, would have turned out to be more powerful than corporal reality? How ironic, he thought. If one could gain control over the intangible, the tangible fell under one’s control immediately.
The whole world had been behind his enemies, and now, thanks to the way he had altered their image in the minds of their allies, the whole world had turned on them. Except for an obstinate few, those who had followed Antony and Kleopatra across the world, who had heralded them as gods, saviors, emperor and empress, were now against them. They had changed their minds, or rather, he had changed their minds, and now everything was different. Octavian laughed. He would probably never have to take to the battlefield again. Henceforth, all combat was to take place in the mental realms, where he now believed he excelled above all men.
Thank the gods for Dellius’s love of luxury and his malleable loyalties. Dellius had changed his mind on his own. He had escaped to Octavian right before Antony led his ships into the gulf and had betrayed Antony’s plan. If he hadn’t done that, Octavian wondered if he would have had the prescience, the presence of mind, to use Antony’s actions against him. Had Antony’s plan been made obvious only by his actions, and not by Dellius’s treacherous whispers in Octavian’s ear, Octavian did not think he would have been given the enlightenment to do what he did. If he had watched Antony fight only to escape and re-marshal his forces in Egypt, Octavian would have sighed and waited out another year, anticipating another war and wondering how on earth he was going to feed one hundred thousand men through a long winter in barren Greece, whose fields and crops had never recovered from the last Roman Civil War. It would have been a year of stealing goats and lambs from sobbing shepherd boys, of taking bread from the mouths of old ladies, not to mention solving the food shortage in Rome itself. But Dellius’s betrayal had gifted Octavian with Antony’s clever plan, and Octavian was able to swiftly rewrite that plan in his own words.
All he had to do when Antony’s navy fled the Gulf of Ambracia was to tell the captured men that Antony had abandoned them in favor of Kleopatra; that all this time they thought they were fighting for their great Roman general when in reality, that general was no longer in control of his senses but enslaved-body, soul, and penis-to the ambitious queen. All this time they thought that Antony lived for the loyalty of his men, would sacrifice himself to save the very least among them, but that was myth. Had he not demonstrated the truth about his unquenchable lust for the queen when he left his own men to die in battle in the gulf so that he could remain in her company? What kind of man-what kind of Roman man-would behave in so thoroughly uxorious a manner? He realized that most of the men had no idea what the word “uxorious” meant, so he forced himself to be crude and say “pussy-whipped,” and they all snickered.
When he saw how successful he was in quickly changing their minds about their general, he sent messengers to Antony’s army, which was marching under Canidius Crassus’s leadership to Alexandria. Octavian’s negotiators met up with them after just a few days of being free from Antony’s charisma. After Octavian’s offers of gold and land, and with Canidius shouting, “Men! Keep your wits about you!” at their backs, Antony’s army marched in the direction of Octavian’s camp.
Once the bulk of the army fell to Octavian, the rest was child’s play. There was only one remaining problem. There was no land in Italy, and there was no money to pay the soldiers the exorbitant promised amounts. Soldiers without pay often turned to the first man who dangled gold in front of them. Given a little time, that man would once again be Antony. As it was, they had started riots in Italy when their demands were not met immediately, and even Agrippa could not quiet them. Instead of pursuing Antony to Egypt to solidify his victory, Octavian had to sail to Brundisium, order the confiscation of all the land and the wealth of Antony’s allies, and distribute it to the senior veterans. The rest he quieted by making personal oaths to them that they would soon receive their due. To assure them that he was serious, he put his own lands up for sale, but only after Maecenas assured him that no one would be foolish enough to buy them.
Octavian would have to act very quickly, while h
e still had the advantage. Land in Italy would have to be bought from its rightful owners. There was nothing left to confiscate from anyone who could be clearly called an enemy. He would not risk another civil war by confiscating the property of those who were now coming over to his side. Money would have to be doled out quickly, before the soldiers found a new master or returned to their old one. Time was now of the essence, and there was no time to invade lands, levy taxes, or rape temples. There was only one place in the world where that much money existed in a single, graspable heap. And it was in that direction that he now turned all his attention.
Alexandria: the 21st year of Kleopatra’s reign
May the first, from the city of Hera on the isle of Samos
To: Kleopatra VII, Queen of Egypt
From: Gaius Octavian, Son of the Divine Julius Caesar
Madam,
It has been many months since our engagement in the Gulf of Ambracia, and I have waited long to hear from you. I am in receipt of your letter offering to open negotiations. I realize there is much you have to offer. But I am afraid I cannot negotiate with you until you demonstrate that you are ready to live up to the title the senate once conferred upon you, Friend and Ally of the Roman People. There is but one method of accomplishing this: Surrender Marcus Antonius to the nearest representative of the Roman government, or send proof of his execution. May I suggest my lieutenant Cornelius Gallus in Cyrene to serve as our intermediary in this matter? Once you have dispatched Marcus Antonius in whatever way you deem appropriate, we will begin to forge our alliance, which we might make in the memory of my father and your friend, the Divine Julius Caesar.
Signed and sealed, Octavian, Son of the Divine Julius Caesar
Kleopatra crushes the letter in her hand and holds it to her stomach. How many blows can one deliver in a short message? It is the first open declaration of his long-held agenda; he wants Antony dead. She never believed that he would share power, and now she sits with confirmation of her intuitions in her lap. Octavian waited until he was in Samos, standing on the same soil where she and Antony had held the celebration of their armies, to answer her letter. She regrets now sending the missive at all, but she and Antony had agreed that they must pretend to negotiate while they strengthen themselves for confrontation. Perhaps Octavian sees through their plan and that is why he offers a response steeped in arrogance and innuendo.
It feels to Kleopatra as if eight years and not eight months have passed since that impossibly gray day on which Antony sailed back into Alexandria. When he found out at Taenarum that he had lost his army, he refused to come home with her, sending her away on her own vessel. Kleopatra knew that Antony would have to mourn such a disaster in private. No man would let a woman see him in such grief, especially not Antony. She said all the things she knew to say-that he had saved her and the treasury; that with that money they could rebuild an army even greater than the last; that Octavian was broke, and when his soldiers figured out he couldn’t pay them, they’d come back over to Antony, the general for whom their hearts beat. She recited this litany of hope and left. After all, her first concern was to get back to Egypt flying the flags of victory before word of what had happened reached her people.
Weeks later Antony returned, not as she had with her sails high and her ships garlanded, but creeping into the harbor in silent defeat. Immediately, he locked himself in the house on the promontory named after the misanthrope Timon. When she went to him, he explained what had happened during their weeks of separation. He had sailed to Cyrene, where he had stationed five legions under Caesar’s man, Lucius Scarpus. He had believed in what she said, that they could quickly rebuild, and he was looking forward to rallying the legions. Besides, he needed to wipe his mind clean of the summer locked into the gulf and the surrender of his foot soldiers. He always had liked Scarpus, and he looked forward to long drunken evenings in which they would relive their glory days as young soldiers under Julius Caesar. But Antony and his fleet were not allowed to dock in Cyrene. He came under attack as he sailed into the harbor, soon receiving word that after the legionnaires heard that Antony had abandoned his men at Actium, they executed Scarpus and put themselves under the command of Octavian’s man, Cornelius Gallus. When Antony heard that, it had taken three men to stop him from thrusting his sword into his belly.
Abandoned my men? Abandon my men? Antony landed in Alexandria chanting the phrase. He repeated it a thousand times, whispering it as a question to the gods, screaming it at Kleopatra, laughing to himself at this awful misreading of his actions, this slander upon his character as a man and as a soldier. He had shut himself up in that solitary villa, his only companion the erroneous idea of his betrayal. He punished himself with liquor and loneliness and living with the shame of what the whole world thought he had done. And thanks to Kleopatra and her misguided attempts to revive his manhood, he was able to spend months mortifying himself between the legs of whores.
But now Antony’s penance is over. His sorrow left him months before at winter solstice as he and Kleopatra made love listening to the prayer songs of the Feast of the Nativity of the Sun outside their window. Now he has taken a fleet of forty ships to Paraetonium to block a reported attack on Egypt by that same Cornelius Gallus. His real mission is to win back the legions that fell to Gallus. Antony is convinced that he can change their minds, that he will send operatives before him just as Octavian had done. Those offers, combined with the very sight of him, will win back his five legions. He will need them because the monster who calls for Kleopatra to slay her own husband is reported to have left Samos and is headed for Judaea, where the traitor Herod will undoubtedly furnish him with whatever he requires to march into Egypt. Antony does not believe Herod will capitulate, but Kleopatra knows that Herod has hated her for years, calling for her assassination, trying to slander her to Antony behind her back. She has told Antony this, but she does not press the point. She avoids argument these days.
She is sure that Herod sabotaged her backup plan to escape Egypt by the Sea of Reeds. The Nabataean king Malchus intercepted the ships Kleopatra was carrying over land to the sea. He burned them in retaliation for the concessions of land he had to make to Kleopatra so many years ago. Herod has his own problems with Malchus, but she doesn’t imagine that would stop the two of them from uniting to connive against her. Easy escape to the east now seems improbable. Betraying her husband, impossible. She has abandoned the plan to escape to the king of Media. She would have done so if Antony had not made the vow to fight back, but now he has.
If Antony is successful in Paraetonium, then what? He will sail back with his reclaimed men and they will repel Octavian, or perhaps scare him from marching on them at all. If Herod hears that Antony is empowered once more, he will remain true. It is a guarantee that Herod will end up on the side of the winner, for that is the game he plays, even if it means putting off his plans to destroy her.
Enough rumination. She must go about the business of the day as if no threat is upon herself or her country. A queen must carry the burden of the future in silence. She asks Iras to apply cosmetics to her face today, not to enhance her beauty as in days past, but to cloak any seepage of her feelings. The smooth pale color he rubs into her hard cheeks is a mask behind which she might shelter her fear.
She has no adviser at present in whom she confides entirely, not even her husband. She alternately protects him, and protects herself from him and what he might do if he relapses into the old melancholy. She is not entirely sure he will not. Hephaestion still looks at her dead straight in the eye and says, In matters of state, let your blood run cold. Hephaestion is not sure she should not do what Octavian urges. Survival is all, Your Majesty, he tells her. Only those who are alive may negotiate a future. The eunuch does not understand that the loyalty he feels to the queen is the same loyalty she feels to Antony. As long as Antony is devoted to their cause and to her and the children, she will remain loyal to him. If Charmion and Hephaestion had their way, Kleopatra would slip him t
he dagger as they made love. She knows that it takes all Charmions restraint not to poison Antony’s meals.
There is no giving up, of course. The next morning she takes her children on her rounds to the departments, explaining to them that someday they will rule this great kingdom, and they must know its every detail. She does not tell them of the latest plan that is forming in her head-her plan to secure the throne for these four curious and intelligent faces once and for all. She knows she must not reveal her agenda to them or to anyone else, not even Antony, for he would surely stop her.
Caesarion listens to every word his mother tells her ministers, instructing his scribe to take notes on everything she says. He will study her methods, he assures her, so that when his time comes-long into the future, Mother-he will run every aspect of the kingdom with the efficiency she has taught him. “I am more given to reading philosophy than to reading the accounting of our industries, Mother, but given enough time, I shall train myself to be no less diligent a man of business than you.”
She gathers all four around her. All operations require careful supervision, she tells them. “Generally, the ministers are out to line their pockets with gold skimmed from government revenue, but it is possible to find good men. My father-your grandfather, may the gods rest and keep his soul-taught me to factor the costs of human nature into all business transactions. Do you understand me?”
All four faces nod in agreement. They are good and dutiful children. She knows that Caesarion would rather be with his scholars reading Lucretius, that the twins would rather be wrestling in the courtyards, that the little one has no idea what his mother is talking about, but looks at her with agonizing seriousness so that he might be thought attentive and smart.
“When is our father to return?” Selene asks with a sad face. “I miss him.”