Keeper of the Flame

by Tracy L. Higley

  Caesar turned to her, eyes narrowed. “I have heard about the Alexandrians. They have a tendency to”—he seemed to grope for an inoffensive term—“assert their opinions most forcefully, do they not?”

  She tried to smile. “Alexandria is filled with Greeks who live at the crossroads of foreign cultures. Their philosophy and their experience of the world gives them rightful cause to be opinionated. Their freedom gives them confidence to voice those thoughts.”

  The crowd outside the palace was growing vocal. Caesar wrapped a hand around her upper arm and drew her from the window. She pulled from his grip. “They will remember that I am still Queen of Egypt.”

  “Let us hope so.” Caesar went to the door, leaned out, and barked a command to the legionary that stood guard. When he returned, his jaw was set in a hard line.

  Now this is Caesar the Conqueror. The nervous twitch in her stomach settled a bit.

  He crossed to the desk, his attention there, but his words were for her. “I hope that I have not made a mistake in backing you, Cleopatra.”

  She rubbed at the back of her neck. “My brother and his leeches will destroy Egypt. Better to rid the land of them now, no matter how difficult.” She hardened her voice and played the moment well. “It is the only way to give Rome what she deserves.”

  Caesar glanced up at her, a shrewd look of knowing on his features. But his only comment was, “Hmmm.”

  Cleopatra spent most of the morning at the window, halfhidden by the gold silks, her eye on her city. Her father’s chamber window was only three stories above the gardens, but even from here, she could see southward across the uniform grid of streets, each cell having its front on the street, with the privacy of gardens and fountains within.

  From her perch she could see the dazzling white marble colonnades of the Street of the Soma, where Alexander’s body lay along with other Ptolemaic kings. The street led southward, from the Gate of the Moon at the Great Harbor behind her to the Gate of the Sun at the south of the city. And beyond that, the flashing waters of Lake Mareotis winked in the sunlight, where shiploads of grain sailed northward to the Great Harbor, and returned with their hulls full of foreign treasures.

  But it was not Lake Mareotis, or even the beauty of the city, that captured her attention today. It was the growing horde of Alexandrians that formed along the Canopic Way, the east-west thoroughfare that was the heart of the city, where merchants and philosophers both plied their wares and their ideas. It was here that Ptolemy’s screams of betrayal were taken up and passed along, until the street was clogged with people, and the daily sounds of the market replaced with the noisy shouts of protestors.

  “My soldiers are trained to quell unrest,” Caesar said when the sun grew high and her skin damp. “You have nothing to fear.”

  She did not turn. “I am never afraid. I am only thinking on how best to sway the people. With proper rhetoric, any situation, no matter how uncivil, can be turned on its head.”

  He chuckled. “Spoken like a true Greek.”

  At that, she did turn and let her anger find its way into her voice. “But I am Egyptian as well. Do not forget that, Gaius Julius Caesar. I am a daughter of Isis.”

  He bowed his head. “A philosopher for the Greeks, a goddess for the Egyptians.”

  “And an ally for Rome.”

  His eyes found hers, and again, an awareness passed between them. In less than a day, she had found that they understood each other perfectly.

  A mighty pounding at the door startled them both, and a soldier pushed into the room. “General! The mob has organized.”

  Caesar reached for his leather and mail body armor and slid it over his head. “How long?”

  “Minutes.”

  “The First Cohort?”

  “In place, and given instructions.”

  Cleopatra hurried to Caesar’s side, but stepped back again when he brandished his dagger. “What is happening?”

  He sheathed the dagger. “It begins. Your brother’s eunuch has convinced the mob to storm the palace.”

  She swallowed and looked to the window. “They are coming for me?”

  Caesar tightened the straps at his ankles. “For you. For me. For anyone whom Pothinus has accused.” He straightened. “Stay here. My legion will have the situation under control within minutes.”

  She snorted. “Stay here? Who do you think I am?”

  Caesar gave her a look—from the black wig with the rearing cobra affixed to her head, to the jeweled sandals beneath her chitôn. The question hung in the air between them, the question of who held control. With a slight smile, he turned his back to her and stalked from the chamber.

  Cleopatra inclined her ear to the window once more, listened to the rising chant of her city, and then followed the Roman.

  It begins.

  Six

  Sophia awoke in her own bed, unsure of how she came to be there after falling asleep at her letter last night.

  She burrowed deeper into the plush bedcoverings, unwilling to face the day. Cleopatra’s visit had left her restless and discontent with her life. Where are you this morning, Cleo?

  But the plight of the scholars finally drove her from her bed. She rinsed her face with water from an engraved bronze basin beside her bed and paused to breathe in the scent of a jar of cut roses. When she had dressed, she called Ares. He appeared in moments.

  The letter was there, rolled and sealed, upon her desk. Ready to deliver to Pothinus, to beg the aid of Ptolemy XIII in rescuing the scholars from Roman interference.

  “Here”—she said, pressing the sealed papyrus scroll into his hand—“deliver it to Pothinus. No one else.”

  He frowned and tapped the scroll against his bottom lip. “And where do you suppose I will find him?”

  Sophia clenched a fist at her side. “Do you expect me to take care of all your other tasks, too? He will be about the palace somewhere. Find him!”

  Ares nodded. “I will try.”

  He slipped from the room, but she called after him. “No one but Pothinus! Do not come back without delivering it!” She slammed the door and turned to the room. She should pray for Pothinus to help her.

  She crossed to her wall niche shrine to Isis, bent the knee, and forced her eyes closed before the marble alcove that housed a small statue of the goddess. Isis loomed over her, with her headdress of cow’s horns and solar disc.

  Isis, speed Ares to Pothinus.

  She lifted the small terra-cotta lamp she kept burning in the niche and touched the tip of a stick of incense to the wick that floated in olive oil. The incense smoked and caught, then burned off to a powdery yellow. The spicy scent overwhelmed the niche, and she pulled away.

  Aloud she intoned a familiar prayer, then added her own. “Isis, protect the best minds of Alexandria, the future of Egypt, the future of the world.”

  Her voice came back to her from the rounded recess, hollow and dead, reminding her of the echo when one spoke in the empty chambers of the lighthouse’s Base.

  Is it only an illusion of emptiness? Does the goddess hear my prayer? Sosigenes was always speaking to her of his One God. She tried to push away the doubts he had planted.

  The incense flickered and extinguished. She held the tiny piece to the flame again, too close. The flame licked her finger, and she jerked away. The incense fell to her tunic and left a scorched hole. She licked her finger, then took a small alabaster jar from the wall and poured a tiny drop of wine over her burned fingertip.

  A burn is a small sacrifice if it will please the goddess. And yet, the action felt as empty as her voice.

  A swoosh behind her startled her from her cramped position. “Ares! Must I whip you to secure your obedience?”

  He was out of breath. “I have left to deliver your message and been turned back, mistress.”

  She stood, tightening her fingers into her tunic. “The whole city has fallen?”

  Ares held out her message, still panting. “Not fallen, no. But there is much commo
tion, and the Roman soldiers are barring entrance into the city from our island.”

  “A riot?”

  He swallowed. “They are saying it is because of Cleopatra.”

  She crossed the room and gripped his arm, ignoring the scroll. “Speak! What has happened to her?”

  “She is in the palace. She has secured the Roman’s support.”

  Sophia breathed and released Ares.

  “Ptolemy is screaming of betrayal, and the city is forming a mob to attack the palace and rid us of the Romans.”

  Sophia turned away. “Fools. All of them. They would put a child on the throne, with those who care only for their own wealth sitting behind him. When they could have a true queen.”

  “What shall I do with the message, Abbas?”

  She snatched it from him. “Perhaps it shall not be necessary. Cleopatra’s influence may be all the help we need. We shall wait.”

  Ares left her. She returned to her desk, to yesterday’s labor charts shoved aside so long ago, and tried to concentrate. But the charts were to be interrupted again.

  Ares startled her with his knock, and she yelled her permission to enter. “Can you not give me a moment’s peace?” she mumbled, still bent over the charts.

  “News from the city, mistress.”

  She whirled on him. “From the queen?”

  He shrugged. “I would not know.”

  She squinted her annoyance and took the scroll he held out. She broke the seal and unrolled it quickly.

  Sophia, I was unable to make good on my escape, I am afraid. I have only a moment here before they confiscate my books and writing instruments. The Romans will set me aside, to rot in one of our city’s own prisons. Do what you can. A discovery of momentous import is at hand, and we cannot allow it to be lost.

  Your faithful Sosigenes

  Sophia thrust the scroll from her, letting it drop to the table. A moment later she was digging her formal himation from a chest and thrusting it over her head.

  “You are leaving?” Ares’s shock rippled through his voice.

  “I will go to see Cleopatra.”

  Ares slipped to the table and picked up Sosigenes’s message. Sophia felt a flicker of annoyance at his presumption, supplanted by a glow of pride. Only in Alexandria were even the servants educated in language and writing. It was truly the center of learning.

  She threw the himation’s corner over her shoulder and shoved a pin through the fabric. It was for Alexandria that she now fought.

  “He is an old man,” she said to Ares. “With weak lungs. He will not last a week in a cell.”

  “Can you not wait until the mob returns to their homes?”

  “No. I cannot wait. Who knows what these Romans might do, especially if they feel the city is rising up in defiance.”

  Ares smiled in suppressed amusement. “It is good to see you take care for someone.”

  Sophia grabbed her letter to Pothinus and secured it beneath her cloak. “I thought you were taught to read. Did you not see in Sosigenes’s message that he has some new discovery? That is all I care about!”

  “Take some kind of protection, Abbas. I will find you a dagger, a short sword—”

  “I have all the protection I need, Ares. My voice and my reputation.” She slipped her sandals on and ran a hand over her clipped hair.

  Ares scratched the back of his neck. “If anyone could wound with her voice and her reputation, it would be you, mistress.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “What does that mean?”

  He bowed and extended his hand toward the door. “Only that I am glad to see you well protected.”

  She took to the lighthouse ramp with speed and descended to the Base with Ares at her heels.

  Out the lighthouse’s arched entrance, she stopped only a moment before the two towering statues of Ptolemy II, each dressed as a striding Egyptian Pharaoh with a short skirt and striped nemes on his head. She tried to take some strength from the lighthouse’s patron, then fled down the flight of steps to the bottom of the Base. The causeway that led from Pharos Island through the two harbors was seven stadia long, and so named the heptastadion. It was a stadia wide as well, with a bridged pass-through at its top and another at the bottom to allow ships to sail from one harbor to the other. It would take fifteen minutes to walk it. She could have taken a chariot, but it had been years since she had done so, and she knew it would take precious time to ready the vehicle.

  She reached the far end of the heptastadion, her heart pounding at her pace already. The warehouses that stretched along the docks seemed empty of workers today, as though the heart of the city had sucked them all into itself, before the soldiers had massed to block entrance. They roamed the streets in seeming chaos, but Sophia quickly saw the pattern in their formation.

  They were ready to take the city by force.

  She pushed through the line of uniforms, ignoring their shouts. She must get to Cleopatra, get her to release Sosigenes.

  “You there, man!”

  She blinked at the voice and paused, but then pushed on. The city beyond boiled like a stew of angry Greeks and Egyptians, Romans and Jews.

  “I said stop!” A soldier was in front of her then, pilum across his chest, barring her way. He was young. A boy really, with the barest sign of stubble on his chin. He wore full battle armor, from his helmet to his metal apron strapped with dagger and pugio. He lacked only a shield to be ready to wage war on innocent citizens. “No one enters the city until Julius Caesar gives admittance.” His words faltered at the end as he took in her gender.

  She stared him down, using the surprise. “I am a personal friend of the queen, and she has called for me at the palace. Let me pass.”

  He snorted. “A personal friend of the queen, you say?” His voice rose.

  Another soldier drew close and her soldier turned to him. “The old woman here says she’s the queen’s best friend. Shall we let her through?”

  Old woman. She was barely old enough to be the boy’s mother! Was she such an old woman already?

  “Of course!” The other soldier laughed. “Perhaps we should escort her there ourselves!”

  Sophia opened her mouth to call down curses on their heads, but she was saved the trouble by the sudden escalation of shouts in the street beyond. Both soldiers turned, then ignored her to run to the fray.

  She followed them.

  Hundreds of Alexandrians thronged the Canopic Way through the Beta district. The granite-paved street was wide enough for two chariots, but today was filled with shouting and shoving citizens, fists raised in angry protest. Rows of Roman soldiers marched in furious succession, shouting orders and obscenities in turn.

  Sophia followed in the wake of one centurion, toward the royal Alpha district. Ptolemy XII’s massive palace loomed ahead, with its two enormous sphinxes on granite platforms, guarding the entrance.

  She could move no faster than the mass of people who smelled of cooking spices and sweat. The odor mingled itself with the sun reflected from the white marble buildings, and a sharp pain knifed at her temples.

  The chaos took her breath away and made her long for the quiet isolation of her lighthouse. The blurring white of himations, the bobbing dark heads of the city’s Greek and Egyptian residents, the shiny metal and brown leather of the Roman soldiers, the shouts in Greek and Latin and Egyptian and Hebrew—all swirled and buzzed around her until she felt dizzy and sick. She bounced from one person to the next, stumbling and struggling to keep her balance.

  Like a goose in the crowded harbor, tossed around in the wake of a dozen ships.

  She raised her eyes and looked northward, to her lighthouse watching over the city. Unlike the goose, she could not take flight. She moved ever closer to the palace. Not much longer.

  And then a pinch of her elbow and a harsh whisper drew her up short.

  “Is this Sophia, descended from her dark tower?”

  She half-turned her head, though she recognized the spiteful voice. “Pot
hinus.” Her hand went to her waist, where the message she’d written him hid under her clothing. “I did not expect to see you in the city.”

  He bowed. “Nor I, you. But of course you have heard that your student has returned.” He still spoke into to her ear, pressed close by the crowd. “I did not realize your affection ran so deep. To risk this violence . . .”

  “I have come for the good of Egypt.” She pulled the scroll from her waist. They were nearly touching now, and she tried to pull away. “Here, you must read this. The Romans—”

  “Any harm the Romans cause is well aided by your young queen.” Pothinus looked over her head, distracted by the mob.

  “Pothinus, I ask you to put former animosities aside, for the good of the city.”

  He smiled down on her, and the expression seemed strange on his face, as though it creased the skin in unfamiliar ways. “Why Sophia, I have no animosity toward you. In fact, your husband and I were the closest of friends.”

  Someone fell against her and cursed. “Then for the sake of my husband, you must do something for the Museum.” She pressed the scroll into his hand and he nodded once. The crowd shifted, carrying him away from her. She watched him go, watched him speak to many he passed, and realized that he was helping to incite the violence, not quash it.

  She could not tell if it was his words, or simply a shift in the mood of a fickle crowd, but the tension seemed to tighten around her. There was a momentary hush to the random shouts, as though the people held their breath for something far more dangerous. Sophia held her breath as well and looked to the sphinxes.

  Accusations erupted into swinging fists. A collective yell went up from the crowd, and they moved as one toward the palace. Sophia was caught up in the swell, like a piece of sea grass carried on the tide toward the shore.

  The soldiers responded. Pila were lifted high above heads, smashed down on the worst offenders. Screams of pain and fury shredded the air. Men dropped at her feet.

  Ahead, a centurion barked orders to his legionaries. He held the short vitis, the grapevine staff that signaled his authority. It was Bellus, the Roman who had invaded the sanctity of her lighthouse.