The Memoirs of Cleopatra

by Margaret George

  “But—how will we get there?” Practical Mardian.

  “We have the royal barge, have we not?”

  “Yes—a huge vessel, visible from miles away!”

  “They will not come looking for us on the Nile. They are content to hold Alexandria. If we wish to dislodge them, it is from Alexandria that they must be ejected. We must attack them.”

  “You have taken Alexander to heart.”

  “Of course.” I smiled. “We will double our speed on the Nile by adding rowers to help out the downstream current. When we reach the Delta, we will take the easternmost branch of the Nile, then leave the barge and follow the line of the old Necho canal over to the Reed Sea and the Bitter Lakes. We will cross there.”

  “Avoiding the highway between Egypt and Gaza that passes along the coast.”

  “Yes. They are sure to have it guarded at the fort of Pelusium. But this way we will slip around behind them.”

  It would be several days before the official announcement even reached Thebes or Hermonthis. We would set out as soon as possible.

  But the high priest surprised us. He appeared at the chamber door, his staff in hand. “During the night I had a dream,” he said. “I fear that some evil has come to Egypt. I sought to warn you.”

  “Your dreams tell you true,” I said. “Indeed, a messenger has just arrived.” I explained the situation. “Therefore we will depart as soon as is seemly. I do not wish to alarm the people.”

  “Stay with us another night, then,” he said. And we did, glad of an excuse to rest a bit before the task confronting us.

  After the evening sacrifices had been made to the new bull and to Amun, the priest blessed me and my entire household. “As a parting gift, I wish to give you a part of us. Take our servant Iras with you. She has become dear to us, and therefore it is a sacrifice to give her up. She will be a living reminder of us. She is also”—he smiled—“more useful to you than a poem or a necklace or a blemish-free goat.”

  I was very pleased for I was already surprisingly fond of Iras.

  As I was being escorted ceremonially to my barge early the next morning, he pressed a paper into my hand. “So you will know,” he said. “It begins.”

  When I unfolded it and read it, I saw that an order had gone out to Upper Egypt from the Regency Council: All grain and foodstuffs that could possibly be spared were to be sent directly to Alexandria. No provisions were to be shipped anywhere else, under pain of death. They meant to starve me out.

  I laughed and tore the paper into bits. Too sure of themselves, they had miscalculated. Fools. They could not touch me in Gaza. And when I had ousted them from Alexandria, I would have a feast to end all feasts on the food they had stored. Yes, I and my followers would dine for seven nights running on dates, figs, melons, pancake bread, radishes, cucumbers, ducks, and geese. Simple fare, snatched from the mouth of an enemy, is more satisfying than any feast of dainties.

  We were unhindered in our journey downriver. The rowers strained and sweated to keep the boat moving as fast as possible. The current was sluggish because of the low water. Whenever we did have to stop, we found the people friendly and on our side. News had traveled faster than I expected, and people had already heard about the coup in Alexandria. Nonetheless they professed their loyalty to me, and wished me good fortune.

  When we neared the sacred site of Heliopolis with its sturdy obelisks, we knew we were approaching the place where the Nile splits. The green was beginning to widen as we entered the fertile area. We steered the boat onto the eastern, Pelusic branch of the Nile, and rowed toward the rising sun.

  This was the part of Egypt that was least Egyptian, because foreigners had come in this way for thousands of years. The Israelites had settled here, and the Hyksos had followed them.

  We had gone some way when we saw the remains of the old canal on the eastern bank. The stone entranceway, guarding the lock, was still there, but there was no need of gates or watchmen. Everything was overgrown with climbing weeds and reeds. Here we must abandon the barge and set out along the canal’s path on camels or donkeys. As we climbed up over the levee, I saw the few stagnant pools of water, choked with lotus, that were all that remained of the waterway. For a moment I felt overwhelmed by the task of keeping a country going: Everything molders, falls into decay; everything needs constant patrolling and repair, and that takes men and money. Upkeep, not conquest or expansion, drains us dry and makes us collapse into our graves as rulers who accomplished nothing memorable. Who wants as his only epitaph, “He kept the canals clean”? Yet they must be kept clean, almost offhandedly, while we pursue greater ends.

  The canal had followed a natural canyon, and we made our way along its rim. Once this had been fertile farmland, and I could still see the traces of field boundaries. But when the water vanished, so had the crops. The desert, with its dry scrub and pebbles of a thousand sizes, came right up to the trail.

  The canal had been about fifty miles long, connecting the Nile with the Lake of Timsah, one of the Bitter Lakes, which fed into the Red Sea. The port nearest it was Cleopatris, but it was on what was called “the foul gulf” because it was so treacherous with reefs and vegetation.

  “That is near where we will be crossing,” said the captain of my guard. “The Sea of Reeds will let us wade across, if the winds are right.”

  “Like that legendary Egyptian who took up with the Israelites?” asked Mardian.

  The soldier looked puzzled. “I don’t know who you mean,” he said. “But this crossing has been known since ancient times. It can be treacherous, so we must watch our footing.”

  “Moses,” said Mardian. “That’s who it was. It’s in that book of Hebrew legends. Moses is an Egyptian name; it has something to do with Thutmose.”

  The captain was not interested. “When we get to the banks of the Sea of Reeds, halt and we will test the waters.”

  “In the Moses story,” insisted Mardian, “the waters were so deep, all the army was drowned.”

  “They can be deep,” admitted the captain. “Let us pray today is not one of those times.”

  Glittering from afar we could see the waters, waiting for us. They were flat and a cruel shade of blue, indicating they were stagnant and filled with bitter salts. The reeds and vegetation in them would be different from those living in fresh water.

  As we finally reached the banks, I smelled the foul odor of slime and decay. I could see oily rings around the stalks of the reeds; a dull sheen reflected the sunlight upward. Yet there were birds in the thickets, twittering and flying from stem to stem.

  “The water is passable!” announced the captain with elation, as his scouts reported back to him. “The guides will lead us! We will hire reed boats, and have the beasts led across riderless.”

  And so we did. And I sat in the rocking little boat made of papyrus stalks lashed together, which was buoyant only up to a point, and the foul water seeped in all around me. We had to push through the tough, stringy roots and reeds and blades of the vegetation, which slapped our faces and cut our hands. And the stench! I thought I would vomit from the gases that were stirred up in our passing. When I put my hand into the water to grasp a stalk to steady us, it emerged with a coating of oil and foul salt.

  Never had banks of sand looked so pure and clean as when we reached the other side at last! It had been only about two miles, but it was the most unpleasant two miles under the Egyptian sun, of that I was sure.

  The rest of the journey was tame. We made our way across the thirty-five miles of sand separating the tip of the lake from the open Mediterranean, until we could see that sea, intense blue that reflected the sky, with its white waves also reflecting the clouds. Then we made sure to keep well away from the well-traveled road that ran alongside the coast.

  Gaza, the former land of the Philistines, was easy enough to reach. And in the rich city of Ashkelon I found welcome, supporters who were only too willing to take up arms against the usurpers. The word went out that Queen Cle
opatra was raising an army.

  11

  Night; hot, windy night. I lay in my tent unable to sleep. I had my army, and we were camped just outside the borders of Egypt, near where we had passed months ago. I now had almost ten thousand men, some Egyptian and some Nabataean Arabs. They were good fighters.

  But my brother—or Achillas, rather—had more troops. He had what was left of the old legions of Gabinius as well as fresh Egyptian soldiers that he had been able to recruit. They were camped just opposite us, occupying Pelusium, the fortress that guarded the eastern borders of Egypt. We could not get past them, nor could we take Alexandria by sea, because they had closed the harbor with underwater chains and guarded it by fleet.

  Two months. Two months now we had been facing each other across the sands, and I had been barred from Alexandria for a year before that. I was well supplied from Ashkelon, and they from Egypt. How long would we sit here? Who would strike the first blow?

  I tossed on my folding camp bed. The strings underneath creaked. My hair was damp on my forehead, and when I slept, my dreams were vague but disturbing. The hot wind puffing in through the net around the door was like a feverish lover’s kiss—or what I imagined a lover’s kiss to be. I knew of them only from dreams, from poetry, and from my own imagination. The lantern flickered. On the other side of the tent, on her pallet, Iras moaned and stirred. There was a sighing sound as she rolled over.

  It was the middle of the night. Everyone slept. Why could I not? I shut my eyes again. More hot puffs of wind. I felt as though someone were standing at the entrance to the tent, lifting the net, stepping in. I started awake—or was I dreaming? I seemed to see a tall woman, holding a cornucopia. The emblem of our dynasty? She was silent. I could not see her face. Yes, I was dreaming. For in a moment a real visitor came, and the sound as he lifted the tent flap was entirely different.

  “Mardian!” I recognized his blocky shape.

  “Shhhh!” He bent down and crept over to my bed. “Something terrible has happened,” he whispered. His voice was shaking.

  I sat up and put my arm around his shoulder, then I murmured, “What? Spare me not.”

  “Our country is shamed before the world. O Egypt!”

  “What?”

  “Treachery! O treachery!”

  “In the name of Isis, stop lamenting and tell me!”

  “Ptolemy has slain Pompey!”

  “But how?” was all I could say in my shock. Little Ptolemy, with his tiny sapling arms, slay mighty Pompey?

  “They set upon him, it was lies—” He broke off suddenly. Iras was awakening.

  “It is all right. You may speak in front of her.” I had come to trust Iras completely, and to rely on her serene good judgment.

  “The defeated Pompey was making his way to Egypt.” Mardian decided to begin again.

  In all my own troubles, I had forgotten about the Roman ones. But during the time of my exile, Pompey and Caesar had met in full battle at Pharsalus in Greece. Caesar had won, but Pompey had escaped with his life and a handful of men. I had known that, but had not cared. Rome and its woes paled before my own.

  “He meant to raise another army. He was coming to Egypt to regroup his forces; as Ptolemy’s guardian—for so your father’s will named him, he claims—Ptolemy owed him that loyalty, and a base of operations. But they knew he was doomed, and so they wanted to be rid of him.”

  “Continue,” I said. “How did you learn this?”

  “A deserter from Ptolemy’s camp just arrived. I think he speaks truth. They will bring him to you in the morning, but I wanted to tell you first.”

  Dear, loyal Mardian. “I thank you.”

  “This man was watching from the beach. He saw what happened. Pompey was murdered by Achillas and two other men who were rowing him to shore, within sight of his wife on the warship. They stabbed him and cut off his head before her eyes!”

  Pompey—who had treated me so kindly as a child, whom I had met and gazed on in wonder—now beheaded! We had talked of Alexandria, and I had promised him, We will guard it for you, and it will always be waiting for you.

  And when at last he came, my evil brother and his men had given him a hideous welcome; they had given my promise the lie.

  “They are beasts,” I said. “It is beasts, not men, that I contend with. Then I myself need have no pity for them.” I shuddered at the thought of them. Calling them beasts was an insult to animals. Then I had a sudden thought. “What of Caesar?”

  “Their killing Pompey was to forestall Caesar coming to this part of the world. But they did not understand the likes of Caesar. Caesar came in hot pursuit of Pompey, following so swiftly that he arrived with very few troops. Our informer heard that Theodotos presented Caesar with the severed head and Pompey’s signet ring, thinking to earn his approval. Instead Caesar wept, then raged at them.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “Caesar is in Alexandria, so this fellow says. He has settled himself in the palace. He does not seem eager to move on.”

  “But what is he doing there?” Why was he lingering? Was Ptolemy with him? Caesar was a politician as well as a soldier. Might he become Ptolemy’s next “guardian”?

  “I do not know,” said Mardian.

  Iras spoke for the first time. “As long as Caesar is there, Ptolemy does not rule,” she said. “That is in your favor.”

  “It can never be in one’s favor to have a strong power occupying one’s home. It would be like a lion coming into this tent and deciding he wished to sleep on this bed,” I said.

  After Mardian had left, and Iras had lain back down, I stared at the ceiling folds of the tent. They were lost in darkness, and the jumping flames of the lantern only served to make the hidden parts of the tent seem blacker. The hot wind was relentless. The desert tribesmen had a name for that wind, for its pressing intensity. It was keeping me from thinking. All I could do was lie still and sweat. I was a prisoner in the oppressive night, shackled to my bed.

  Julius Caesar had defeated Pompey. Julius Caesar was master of the Roman world. Julius Caesar was in Alexandria, living in the palace—my palace! He was daily in the presence of my brother. Why? Why was he staying? What was his purpose?

  I would have to go there and present my case to him. Iras was right. As long as Caesar was there, Ptolemy and his nefarious Council did not rule. I could appeal to a judge over their heads. But I would have to go quickly. Every day that passed with Ptolemy having Caesar all to himself made them more likely to become allies.

  A fly was buzzing inside the tent, bumping from fold to fold. We had not used mosquito nets here, as we were not near swamps. Now I wished we had, for I hated flies. He was coming closer; I heard him approach and then saw, by the dim lanternlight, where he landed. I sat up quickly, grabbed my sandal, and, with one movement so swift the eye could hardly follow it, smashed him.

  Was that how Caesar smashed his enemies? They said he moved quickly and took his opponents by surprise. He had never lost a final battle, even when outmanned. And according to Mardian, he had come swiftly to Egypt with only a few troops, relying on surprise to win the day with Pompey. That must mean that he was now in Alexandria without many soldiers to protect him. Again the question: Why was he lingering?

  What did I know about Caesar? Precious little. Only that he was generally more popular with the people than with the aristocrats, that he had achieved his military successes relatively late, and that he was constantly involved with women, usually married women. Mardian had once told me that every fashionable divorce in Rome seemed to involve an adultery with Caesar. And his taste was not restricted to women, Mardian said; Caesar had also been involved with the King of Bithynia in his youth. He collected works of art as well, Mardian confided, and prized them above his romantic conquests.

  My heart sank. He would probably make off with some of our best artworks, then. He would strip the palace of our Greek statues and our Egyptian furniture and paintings. And that stupid Ptolemy would let him!
>
  Outside there was stirring, the first faint sounds of daybreak. I could tell the hour by a subtle shift in the way the air blew into the tent. Before long they would awaken me, and by the time the sun came over the sands, they would be bringing the informer to me to recount his tale. I was glad I had had time to prepare for his message.

  The man was Egyptian, an older warrior who had been in my father’s army before the troops of Gabinius had arrived. He looked ashamed, as deserters and spies and informers always do, even if they feel the cause of their erstwhile masters to be wrong or hopeless.

  I had prepared myself for him, wearing my most regal robes. After all, he should feel that he had deserted to a queen, not a vagabond. He prostrated himself on the ground, kissing the gravel, then lifted his head. “O great Queen of the east, my soul is yours and my body I lay before you to command.”

  Yes, as it was for others before me, I thought. Traitors might be useful, but they could never be trusted.

  It was as Mardian reported. The black deed was performed by Achillas and a Roman commander, Septimus, one of Pompey’s former soldiers. But it was at the urging of Theodotos, who had said, “Dead men don’t bite.” Loyalty, honor, and debt were all wiped out by that practical advice. And so Pompey was slain on the very shores where he had come to seek sanctuary and had every right to expect a welcome.

  His bleeding trunk had been tossed onto the sands and left there for his freedman to attempt to cremate. The poor man had been forced to go up and down the shores hunting for driftwood, and was not able to find quite enough. And so the body—

  I stopped him here. “I do not wish to know these details. It is demeaning to Pompey even to allow us to picture them. Tell me what happened when Caesar followed.”

  “I was not there. I was sickened by what I had already seen. I was watching and waiting for an opportunity to desert. I never saw Caesar. I only heard that he was in Alexandria. Theodotos had taken the…the head and ring to present it to him. Caesar punished him instead. I heard Theodotos ranting about Caesar’s ingratitude. But that was only a few hours before I left.”