Cleopatra nodded impatiently. “Yes, I met him when I was with Caesar, and Mark is ridiculous—all swagger.”
Iset winked. “That will be used in our favor.”
Chapter three
In the temple of Serapis in the Egyptian neighborhood of Alexandria, Cleopatra’s brother, Ptolemy, lounged nude watching the orgy of Greeks and Romans. Drums encouraged hips.
A clothed Egyptian priest stepped up to him. “The gods will be horrified.” Like all Egyptians he wore black eye makeup to give him cat eyes.
Ptolemy dismissively waved the priest off with his hand. “It’s the proper way. The crops will grow more fertile now if much seed is spilled. Athena likes seed. The Greeks do it best.”
The priest stayed. “But in an Egyptian temple?” He looked around at the tall walls decorated in colorful paintings of papyrus plants and lotus flowers, and hieroglyphics. “For this fertility you bring on, like this, I fear only the crocodiles will grow larger.”
Ptolemy said, “This city has always been for the Greeks and it was a mistake of my forefathers to let others in. This temple looks foreign and weird. I shouldn’t have left the palace, for this. This is horrible.”
The priest warned, “Don’t offend the gods.”
Ptolemy waved him off again. “They should have kept Egyptian temples out of Alexandria. It only makes people worry about the savage Nile.”
“But we’re in Egypt.”
“Egypt, back there, with Africa,” Ptolemy rudely gestured south, “is merely its farm. Those ignorant people face a river, not Rome.”
To the Romans, Africa was the name of the land west of Egypt while Asia was the land east of Egypt. Ptolemy always dismissed everything beyond the main neighborhoods of his Hellenistic enclave of a city.
Hellenism was a time in Greek history from Alexander the Great in 323 BC to Cleopatra in 30 BC. During this period Greek culture flourished throughout the Mediterranean. It thrived most at Alexandria in Egypt.
The priest spoke cautiously, “The gods see all of this as one land.”
Ptolemy picked his nose.
The worried priest added, “We have a desert full of sins today. Isis has so much to forgive us for.”
Ptolemy yelled at the orgy, “Do it like you mean it! Don’t insult Athena! She knows what’s in your heart! We’ll have no sinning here! You’re all atrocious!”
The priest added, “And the gods will certainly punish us for how your sister was denied a proper burial.”
“She’s jackal poop by now.” He laughed. They watched a man grow more frenzied as he tried to get himself to climax again. “And to think she’d told everybody she was Isis.”
The priest remained grim. “The goddess requires chaste and gentle attention.”
Ptolemy insisted, “Cleopatra needs no funeral. She needs no afterlife. She took all she’s getting from this life.”
“But the gods! You must retrieve her body and lay it to rest properly or we’ll all be cursed!”
Ptolemy took a sip of beer. “We were cursed before. Now she’s gone. I’m sure the jackals really did eat all of her. Now go hump a whore so the Nile flows even richer. Oh I forgot. You have no testicles.”
The priest glared at Ptolemy’s.
As he lounged, Ptolemy stretched his legs. “They say my sister gained her evil powers by biting at many men. But then she had the face of a crocodile so biting was in her nature. Only hungry biting. But she was never fed. Where are her powers now?” He gulped the rest of his bowl of beer.
The priest backed away.
Ptolemy’s witch, Sorceress Thrace, slinked up to him. “Do you think I look wonderful? Like a magical bird of youth? A phoenix with new feathers?”
He glanced at her. “I don’t care how you look. I keep you around because you say you’re the most powerful witch.”
“I am. I am an outcast from a land most wild. The Balkan Mountains are wild and far.”
He shrugged. “So I suppose you can boast about that.”
“But do you like how I look today?” Sorceress Thrace slid her hand down the back of her bald head. “And I see you are already excited by the crowd. Take your excitement out on me.”
“No.”
“I am always one step ahead of you, ready to please you.” She took his hand. “Let us talk about the orgy.”
He pulled his hand out of hers. “What does being an outcast really have to do with being a witch, really? And how is a witch not like a priestess?”
“You want to talk about my beauty and the orgy.”
He angrily repeated his question.
Sorceress Thrace explained, “A temple priestess should feel like a mother in her safe home. A witch should feel outcast, homeless, weird and dangerous. And men often desire weird dangerous things from afar… the unusual things of life.” She winked. “Men like to gamble.”
Ptolemy looked away from his witch. “Desire the weird? Not me. We’re all from incest in my family, back to Macedonia. We do things the familiar way.” He stood. “I want to get back to the palace.” He regarded the rows of hieroglyphics. “This is horrible.”
~
The next morning, Cleopatra entered the kitchen of the underground snake temple and asked Iset, “What is sleep without dreams? All magic must begin with dreams. If I’m to have strong magic…”
Iset reached up to make sure her jar-shaped wig was situated correctly over her head. “Calm down.”
Cleopatra glared at the clay pot of wheat paste. “I don’t think I could eat that.”
“We don’t live like queens down here.”
Cleopatra wrung her hands. “I’m too upset to eat anyway. How can I get a throne back without magic? I thought I had so much new magic but this happens—no dreams at night! That’s a disaster! Cast a spell on me to help me dream again.”
Iset said, “From now on you only get the magic you need.”
Cleopatra insisted, “I need dreams! Everybody does! Everybody needs that magic.”
Iset shook her head. “That’s not what you need anymore.”
Cleopatra asked, “At least give me the dream of the black cat. You have more than enough power to give anybody that dream, being as powerful as you are. That’s such a small spell. If I can dream of the cat she’ll give me magic in my sleep.”
Iset licked at a large wooden spoon. “What was the last thing you remember dreaming when you still lived in the palace?”
Cleopatra answered, “A wolf was chasing a desert hare. The hare didn’t have a chance.”
Iset explained, “Maybe it was about the Egyptian gods. Anubis is the wolf god. He is the god of mummification and the afterlife. He protects tombs. He’s like a guard dog.”
Cleopatra doubted. “I was being chased by death? Or protected in death by Anubis?” She held up her hand and wiggled her fingers. “But I’m not dead...”
Iset asked, “Who is the hare?”
“It felt like it was me. I woke up so terrified that night.”
“Did the wolf capture the hare in your dream?”
Cleopatra winced. “I awoke when they were still running. I awoke because I was afraid of being caught. And forthwith I was obviously caught. And I lost my throne.”
Iset explained, “The hare is often a sacred messenger. The hare is the goddess of the otherworld.”
“Underworld?”
Iset looked off in thought. Her eyes went wide. “No. That is rather ordinary. The otherworld, a place in the desert between life and death, and it’s neither life or death.”
Cleopatra surmised, “The undead?”
Iset glanced up. “This temple is under the shifting blowing sands of desert where the living and dead meet. It’s always unsettled. Valleys are exalted and hills are made low. The natural order is chaos. Things are always indirect. To ever leave this place again you must go through that otherworld. To find the green gardens of the living again you must follow the locust swarms.”
Cleopatra assured her, “I know how to use the
sun to find my direction. I can navigate any desert.”
“The sun does not move in the otherworld. You must follow the locusts from dune to dune or you will go in circles. Then the devils will come to you… all that has been born and has flesh sings of death.”
“That’s nonsense.” Cleopatra impatiently sat at the table and imperiously flicked aside a thin red snake. Other snakes scrambled. “You know that my dreams have nothing to do with afterlife preparations. What are you keeping from me? I’m not ready for the otherworld yet, or the underworld. I’m getting my throne back in this world! Everything I do is for the throne of Egypt.”
Iset didn’t answer but began to sing as she stirred the gruel, “Follow the locusts. Follow them to the gardens of life. Make barren all that was green.”
Cleopatra lost patience. “I’m running out of time and you’re making a breakfast and I’m not even hungry. I’m sitting in a kitchen and kitchens are not for queens.”
Iset feigned surprised. “You’ve never been in one before?”
“No! The closest thing would be my laboratory at the palace.”
Iset looked at her pot. “I am stirring in a spiral. A careful spiral. A path isn’t a straight line. A spiral lets you continually come back to the same place, through time, and see deeper truths.”
Cleopatra stood as she huffed with impatience. “You’re doing magic now? Here? But this is a kitchen. I’m a queen!”
Iset ignored Cleopatra’s emotions. “The kitchen is the best place to begin a magic spell. The kitchen is the best place to end a magic spell. The strongest magic has its roots, seeds, flowers and straw in the kitchen.”
Cleopatra looked at the room in condescension. “But it’s all so mundane.”
“So.”
“So?” Cleopatra insisted, “Magic is supposed to be occult… hidden! Magic is supposed to be for queens, priestesses and witches… not the common maidservant.”
Iset smiled at the fire. “Long before the first temple was ever built, the hearth was the sacred altar to all the gods where every prayer was made. Many witches are now the maidservants in the shadows. Their dark smoky kitchens give them great power.”
“What I want is what I need. I’ll never need a kitchen. I want my throne!”
Iset swirled her wooden spoon in the air. “It is now lost in the spiral and labyrinth of the Minotaur. To slay that beast you must first jump back into the game.”
Cleopatra insisted again that kitchens weren’t for queens, and left the room to pray at the large red statue of the seven headed snake.
Alone, Iset opened a clay jar and pulled out a living baby rabbit. She swallowed it down whole.
Chapter four
Leaving Rome in her wooden wagon, the iron-shod wheels clanked loudly on the basalt pavement of the Appian Way. Phaedra said to her maidservant, Circe, “I love the feel of the rocks that make up the road. I can feel the ground. I feel grounded.”
Circe argued, “They make us jiggle.”
They passed several crucifixions—the Roman capital punishment for slaves, traitors and thieves. Phaedra finally commented on them, “Hanging in limbo between heaven and earth. Life in suspension. It is so oddly ungrounded. As a display and symbol it is mad with contradictions about life and divinity. The symbol of the hangman is sometimes discussed in the temples.”
“I don’t think they think of themselves as a symbol right now.”
Phaedra answered, “Everything is a symbol if you want to look at it that way… even the hanging of thieves.”
Circe said, “I’ve heard that in Egypt there’s wolves that were once men that run amuck in the desert and they only kill the thieves. They use magic to judge men’s hearts. They know who to attack and eat because they were cursed by the gods for stealing from tombs. We could use that here.”
“Egypt is a strange place. I wonder if the thieves know to stay out of the desert, then.”
Where the road split off, Phaedra turned their wagon to head up the north road to Tarquinii. Circe stopped her and pointed the other way. “Truth be told, I feel we should go that way.”
In a great valley before them they could see a vast ancient cemetery. Phaedra asked, “You afraid of going through that?”
Circe frantically waved her hands before herself. “No, no, I don’t care about the tombstones. There’s something else. I feel we should go the other way. I feel it all over my body!”
Phaedra flipped a coin but it fell out of her hand and landed on its edge between bricks of the road. “We can’t both be right.” After they discussed Circe’s inexplicable feeling, Phaedra reluctantly gave in to her. She turned around and they traveled east.
They arrived at a large old inn called Three Taverns. Phaedra sat beside Circe at one of many long communal tables. As they were eating bread dipped in fish sauce, a thirty-year-old Roman man swaggered up and stood opposite her. He placed a bowl of olive oil on the table. “This is good with it too.” Though not wearing armor, and his chest was bare through a sleeveless tunic with an open front, he was dressed like a rich warrior.
Phaedra sat up straight. “For us?” She glanced nervously to her maidservant.
Circe said to her, under her breath, “Don’t mind me.”
He gave a manly nod to Phaedra. “Yes you are very beddable.”
“Pardon me?”
The man gave a crooked smile. “I mean beautiful.”
Phaedra narrowed her eyes. “Yes, by the gods of course you did.” She hoped he wouldn’t sit.
He lifted his legs high over the bench to sit opposite her, completely ignoring Circe.
Phaedra watched his battle skirt made up of leather straps, as she offered, “Sit then, if you must.”
He asked, “How did you keep a spot open for me? What were your powers of dissuasion?”
Phaedra look around in confusion. “I kept anyone away?”
“You must have. It’s a busy enough place and I only have here to sit, across from a feast for sore eyes. Are you a witch?”
She tried not to make any expression.
“I swear by my sword you could be a witch.”
Phaedra waved off the idea. “My witchcraft isn’t so marvelous…”
Circe kicked her under the table.
Phaedra quickly added “…just a tiny hobby. No magic was used here at all—somebody left moments before you came. Just luck. This spot at the table wasn’t empty for more than a minute. It’s all in your timing, really. Oh by the gods you’re the one who has the luck…”
He dipped more of his bread into the oil and interrupted her nervous chattering. “I should cut the small talk, we all know why we’re here. You’re fleeing the plague and have nowhere proper to stay.”
Phaedra glanced at Circe before she said to the Roman man, “You heard of it too? So it is true. This whole room must be full because everyone’s fleeing the plague.”
The man explained, “This room is always full. This is where three roads meet. They link Rome with Tusculum and Antium. So it’s always crowded. And the plague was only a few people with fevers. Some old woman with a weird old wig was crying about it, one of those old Egyptian wigs where you look like your head is stuck in a jar. But I believed her.”
Phaedra glanced at Circe again.
He continued, “But it’s a habit of us noble classes to flee the city in the summer as soon as we find excuses. I have my duties to carry out anyway. That just puts me on the road sooner.”
Phaedra looked at the thick wood beams of the ceiling. “We’re both at this same place, star-crossed.”
He laughed. “Good one.”
Phaedra put her hand over her mouth. “I didn’t mean it like that. I don’t know what I meant. It’s just a time to fill the roads I guess. How the army must hate it when we all fill their roads, on our wild goose chases, just when they probably want to race down them to whack at some mad Persians.”
He squinted at her suspiciously. He regarded the gold at her neck and wrists. “You look like a nob
lewoman. Are you really a noblewoman? I’ll put you to the test.”
She looked at his ruby ring as she asked, “A test to see if I’m noble?”
“No, to see if you are the woman for me.”
Phaedra derisively smirked. “Why would anybody be the woman for you?”
He sucked oil off his ring finger. “Indulge me. What’s your favorite song?”
She looked to the ceiling again. “Oooh… some hymn to Athena, I’m sure.”
He looked doubting.
She pursed her lips. “Who wouldn’t want some lovely song about beauty and order?”
He asked again.
She looked hard into his eyes. “By the gods, why would you want to know that?”
He shrugged his wide shoulders. “Just asked.”
Phaedra recalled, “I once heard a haunting song last year. It has stayed with me. I heard it in the forum by a couple of singing brothers. They were a clown act but they had one or two songs that pulled at my heart. The Vomitorium Brothers.”
The Roman man blurted, “Into a Swan!”
Circe asked Phaedra, “The rape of Leda?”
In the myth, Zeus lusted after Queen Leda. One day he turned himself into a swan and raped her. That made her give birth to several eggs. From one of them hatched Helen of Troy, the most beautiful woman in the world.
Phaedra was surprised. “Oh my Pegasus! You heard the song too?”
He said, “The Vomitorium Brothers really get around.”
Phaedra asked, “We both heard the same song and liked it. Does that make us soulmates to some muse?”
“I suppose. It’s rather funny don’t you think?”
“Funny that a swan would fall out of the sky onto her and rape her like that?”
He clarified, “At least it’s funny how that song got around.”
“Sure. But I’m not a lady, anyway, I must confess.”
“No, you look noble through and through, with the manners of a princess. Who are you?”
“I’m of the merchant class,” Phaedra explained.
“Nooo.”
“Yes.”
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