The Memoirs of Cleopatra

by Margaret George

  “It is meant to satisfy a Pharaoh. I have been assured that they really floated about like this.” Yes, they had lain on couches in the shaded cedarwood deck pavilion; they had been cooled by long-handled jeweled fans, should the winds not oblige; they had run their hands over gold-leafed rails. “Come.” I led her to the pavilion, where we sank down on the cushions.

  A servitor, dressed in the kilt, collar-necklace, and headcovering of ancient times, appeared, as in a dream, to bring us cool drinks.

  We cast off, the rowers pulling silently with their silver-tipped oars, and rocked gently on the warm water.

  The sea, the sea was what made Alexandria great. It brought the riches of the world to our doors, and gave us power. I must rebuild our fleet straightaway. As it was, we were powerless to defend ourselves except with the Roman legions that Caesar had posted here. But should they leave—or turn against us at the bidding of some Roman master, one of the assassins, perhaps…

  The bright day seemed all the more tantalizingly bright for being so unsecured.

  My spirits had soared for the first time that day, but by evening, like birds flocking back to their trees, they swooped and fell again. Was I never to be free of this shaded mantle that descended on me? Just as Caesar’s love for me had enveloped me, now its absence, and his loss, provided an equally dark cloak that wrapped itself around me, at any time, but most particularly when the light of day faded into night.

  I stood watching the stars come out. Venus had appeared first, of course, but one by one the others became visible, taking their assigned places in the constellations. Just so we had stood watching together, here on the roof garden. Just so he had named Orion, his favorite constellation, and recounted the story….

  The sky now seemed hard and empty in spite of all the familiar stars. I turned my back on it and forced myself to go to my work desk in the adjoining room, where a pile of treasury ledgers awaited me. At times the figures blurred before my eyes, and it was not because of the flickering of the oil lamps.

  Always, even as my mind became absorbed in the additions and subtractions, there lurked that other, that melancholy, just beyond the line of my vision. So I was not unhappy when a servitor announced that Epaphroditus had come to discuss some business. It was a relief to be interrupted.

  He was all apologies about the late hour.

  “It does not matter,” I said, putting down my papers. “As you can see, I was working. Work hours never cease. And the evening is a good time for them.”

  Out in the warm Alexandrian night, there were people walking the streets, singing, laughing, drinking, while their Queen was shut up in a room with her ledgers.

  “Then we are two of a kind.” He smiled. “My wife does not appreciate my continual working, but she enjoys the fruits of it.”

  It was the first time he had ever permitted a personal remark to pass his lips. So he was married. Did he have children? But I would wait for him to tell me.

  “I have the final reports about the contents of the three new warehouses, built to replace those destroyed in the fire. We have installed shelves that are narrower, so that no inventory will be hidden. It also makes rat control easier.” He handed me the papers proudly.

  I waited. It seemed an odd errand for him to come on, at this time of night. He could have sent the papers at any time with a messenger.

  “I also wanted to report something I heard from one of the captains who arrived today.”

  So. I was right. “Yes?”

  “This is not official, merely what this man heard. But it seems the assassins have had to leave Rome. Where they will go is anyone’s guess. Caesar’s heir has come to Rome to claim his inheritance, and has been rebuffed by Antony. It seems Antony treated him with rudeness and tried to scare him away, because he did not want to admit that he—Antony—had spent most of Caesar’s money.”

  The money! Yes, Antony had obtained it from Calpurnia, to keep it safe from the assassins.

  “But the young man has not gone away. He has enlisted Cicero on his behalf, and is making a ruckus. Antony will have to come to terms with him. In the meantime, no one seems to be ruling in Rome.”

  Antony should have known better than to treat Octavian with contempt. The younger and less secure someone is, the more he has to be flattered. “So they are preoccupied with the chaos there?”

  “For now,” said Epaphroditus. “But will the assassins eventually flee to the east and set themselves up here? That is the danger.”

  “I wish they would, so we could kill them!” I said.

  “With what? The Roman legions here? What if they took command of them themselves?”

  “I have thought of that,” I said. “What Egypt needs now is a strong navy. I must start to build one up. And I can see that the treasury will permit it.”

  He smiled, pleased and surprised. “Good.”

  “I would like to discuss the procurement of the long timbers with you soon,” I said. “I know you deal with the Syrians.”

  “Indeed.”

  He seemed such an enigma—this cultivated man, immensely resourceful, of limitless energy, with his two names.

  “Madam, you seem very dispirited,” he observed. “Forgive me if I speak out of turn. May I help?”

  I was so startled I could barely keep the surprise off my face. But at the same time I was touched and grateful.

  “Not unless you can turn time backward, erase events that have already happened.” But I said it gently, wistfully.

  “That is beyond man’s power,” he said. “Only God could do that, and he does not. But he does provide consolation. Our scriptures are full of questions that we put to him, and he answers in verse. Betrayal, and loss—they are all there.”

  “Teach me,” I said, feeling like a child before a particularly erudite tutor.

  “In our main book of poetry, there is one that says, ‘Mine enemies speak evil of me, When shall he die, and his name perish? All that hate me whisper together against me: against me do they devise my hurt. Yea, mine own familiar friend, in whom I trusted, which did eat of my bread, hath lifted up his heel against me.’ ”

  Yes. That was exactly the way it had been, with Caesar and his “friend.”

  “ ‘For it was not an enemy that reproached me; then I could have borne it. But it was thou, a man mine equal, my guide, and my familiar friend.’ ”

  The hateful Decimus, his kinsman, named one of Caesar’s heirs—who had lured him from his house to the Senate!

  “I must acquaint myself with your holy book,” I said. “It seems to have much of mankind in it. It can ease sorrow by acknowledging it.” Not like the philosophers who wished to deny it, or tried to avoid it by advising anyone embracing his wife to think only that she must die, so that when she did, he would have lost nothing.

  “We were sorry to lose Caesar, too,” said Epaphroditus. “It will be a long time before the Jews can count such a man among their friends again.”

  Yes…I remembered the sight of the Jews, keeping a faithful mourning by the funeral site for days.

  “He confirmed our rights to the free exercise of our religion, including the right to send the yearly Temple tax unmolested from other countries, he gave us back the port of Joppa, which Pompey had taken, he stopped the abominable practice of ‘tax-farming,’ which bled us dry, and he exempted us from military service, since it would require us to break our dietary laws and work on the Sabbath. Yes, he was our friend. We lost our champion, just as you did.”

  “Perhaps he was good to you because he sensed you valued it,” I said. I knew how unappreciated he felt most of his gestures were. It was comforting to know that others felt deprived and bereft in this horrible aftermath. “What will happen to Judaea now?” I wondered out loud.

  “That will depend on who succeeds Caesar in Rome,” he said. “And how successful young Herod is in outsmarting his enemies in Judaea. Antony and he are old friends from the campaign with Gabinius to restore your father to the throne; He
rod helped him with troops and supplies. Would he help the assassins now, if they came east and demanded it? Hard to know. He’s a clever young man, but the politics of survival in that region are going to be tricky.” He paused. “Personally I prefer Herod to his rivals, because he is the only one with the sense to see that a zealot-led country is doomed. He divorces his religion from his politics. But the others…” He shook his head. “They will not stop until Judaea ends up completely subjugated and smashed.”

  “How odd, to have religion run a government,” I said. I could not imagine the highest contest in the land being Zeus versus Serapis versus Cybele.

  “We are different,” he agreed. “That always makes it hard to predict what will happen to us, in the short or the long run.”

  The wind was starting to stir the curtains dividing the room from the terrace. Outside, the golden lamps in houses were being extinguished. It was getting late, and people had retired. I should let Epaphroditus return to his home. He had done me a favor by coming to me privately to report the news from Rome, but it was far past business hours. Yet I found that every remark he made aroused my curiosity and led me to ask another question.

  “Mardian mentioned, almost offhandedly, that you do attempt to predict what will happen to you—that you have books of prophecy, and expect a deliverer, or a messiah. What is that?”

  He looked almost embarrassed. “The sacred writings of one people are apt to provoke ridicule when recited to an unbeliever.”

  “No, I truly want to know. To what was he referring?”

  “Over the ages our beliefs have changed,” he said. “We never believed in an afterlife—we had our own version of Hades, Sheol, a dark place where shades wander. Nor did we think of the ages as a story, marching forward to some preordained end. But some of our newer writings have begun to see life as continuing after death, of the soul’s survival—and the body’s, too—and events proceeding to some great change. The agent of this change will be the Messiah.”

  “But who is this Messiah? Is he a king? A priest?”

  “It depends on which prophecy you read. Zechariah, one of our prophets, speaks of two messiahs—one a priest, and one a prince from the line of our great King David. Daniel calls him the Son of Man, and says there is only one.”

  “But what does he do?”

  “He ushers in the new age, one way or another.”

  “What new age?” I asked.

  “An age of purging, of judgment, followed by a golden age of peace and prosperity.”

  Peace and prosperity. That was what we had in Egypt now—if Rome would allow us to keep it. “That is what I wish for my people, and my land.” I looked at him sharply. “Do you believe these prophecies?”

  He smiled. “I do not trouble myself with them. I have found that if you have urgent daily business to take care of, the dreams of what may happen seem to recede. I don’t disbelieve them, I simply have no need of them. They do not answer any lack in my own life.”

  “There are also prophecies about a woman savior,” I told him.

  He grinned at me. “Ah. So now I see. You are wondering if you are she, and unaware of it?”

  “No, but I wonder if any of the people see me as that.”

  He thought for a moment. “It is possible. But you would have to study those writings for yourself. I am not familiar with them.”

  I sighed. “They are scattered writings. I know one is called the Oracle of the Mad Praetor, another the Oracle of Hystaspes, and there’s something called the Potter’s Oracle. Then there are many uttered by different sibyls. I shall have to have them copied at the Library and study them.”

  “If you look hard enough, you are sure to see yourself in them,” he warned. “That is the way of prophecies. They expand and contract and always fit the situation at hand. Like fortune-tellers and astrologers.”

  “You don’t believe in them either?”

  “That they may have some knowledge, yes. That it can be partial, and deliberately mislead you, makes them dangerous. That is why our God has forbidden us to have anything to do with them. Moses told us that God said, ‘Do not practice divination or sorcery. Do not turn to mediums or seek out spiritualists, for you will be defiled by them.’ ”

  I thought of all the astrologers and fortune-tellers attached to my court. It was a good thing I was not bound to follow this Moses. Then I had a sudden remembrance. “Is not Moses the one who led you out of Egypt? Someone told me he had absolutely forbidden you to return. So why are all the Jews of Alexandria here? It seems you obey about the astrologers, but not about Egypt.”

  He laughed. “Now, if I wanted to be difficult, like some of our legalists, I could argue that Alexandria is not ‘in Egypt’—she is called Alexandria ad Aegyptum: Alexandria-by-Egypt. But I find such arguments tiresome and cloyingly clever. The true answer is that we disobeyed, as we have a habit of doing.”

  I laughed. “Like all subjects,” I said. “I must count myself lucky that my subjects have not been as rebellious as your people.”

  “Indeed.” He bowed. “Your Majesty—”

  “Yes, I know. It is late, and I have kept you too long. A poor reward for your diligence in coming to me after hours. Pray, go now.”

  Clearly relieved, he took his leave. After he was gone, I stood for a long time at the window, gazing out at my sleeping city. Was there anything to these prophecies? What did they say?

  As I lay down and rested at last, I knew he was right: the idea of them was dangerously seductive…both for the ruler and the people. But I still wanted to see them.

  38

  Day followed day in the splendor of high summer, and I gradually mastered all the accounts, ledgers, and reports that had accumulated awaiting my return. It was the Egyptian month of Epeiph, and the month of Quintilis, now officially called Julius, in the Roman calendar.

  From what my informers told me—for by this time I had established a few listening posts in Rome—Brutus was incensed. He was especially infuriated because, while he himself had to stay away from Rome for his own safety, the Ludi Apollinares, games that he as praetor was required to sponsor, were going take place right in the middle of this newly named month. The honors would accrue to Caesar, but the cost would be borne by Brutus.

  Then I heard that Octavian, as if to snub Brutus’s efforts, was holding games right afterward to celebrate Caesar’s victories—the Ludi Victoriae Caesaris—and he was doing it at his own expense, to show his “father’s” love for his people. He was also demonstrating his own loyalty, since the officials in charge of putting them on were too cowardly to dare.

  But before any reports came to me about either set of games, I had yet another misfortune. I lost the child I was carrying, the last legacy from Caesar.

  In its particulars, it was like the birth of Caesarion, only the child was too small to live—it was only halfway to its time of normal birth. I was forced to lie abed, dosed with pennyroyal and draughts of red wine. It was not my body that needed cosseting, however, but my spirits.

  Farewell, and farewell, I thought, holding tightly to the pendant around my neck. Now there will never be a new thing between us; our life together is frozen in the past.

  Gone, gone, and gone, I repeated to myself, lying on the bed, and each word was like a hammer on my soul. Gone forever.

  Everyone was very kind, hovering around me. Charmian and Iras anticipated my every wish, Mardian came with jokes and riddles, Ptolemy wrote some stories that he insisted on reading to me, and Epaphroditus had some of his scriptures copied out for me. They all dealt with loss and fortitude.

  I particularly liked one that went, “Thus saith the Lord, A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation, and bitter weeping; Rachel, weeping for her children, refused to be comforted for her children, for they were not.” For they were not…sad words, sad thought, true thought.

  The nights were hot, my chamber stifling. They moved my bed out onto the terrace, where sea breezes blew and I could see the stars. I would
lie and look up at the blue-black bowl that arched over me, thinking of the Egyptian belief that each night the goddess Nut, stretched across the sky from east to west, swallowed the sun, which traversed her body to be reborn each dawn. She was always depicted in gold, lying across a deep, rich, blue sky.

  It was artistic fancy. The stars were not gold, they were a cold, fiery white, and the sky was inky. And the nights I lay outside, the moon was dark as well.

  Then the anticipated rising of Sirius, the star that had been below the horizon for seventy days, took place. A brilliant spot of light, it signaled the first day of the new year and announced that, far away to the south, the Nile too would begin to rise. The year was cycling, moving relentlessly on.

  I could hear, far below me and outside the palace grounds, the shouts of excitement as Sirius was sighted, and the noisy celebrations began. Even to the Alexandrians, the rising of the Nile was life-bringing, as it was necessary to produce the grain the city exported.

  How bright the light of the Lighthouse was tonight! They must have stoked it up with extra fuel—how long a trail the flames were making! Then I suddenly saw that it was not the Pharos at all, but something else behind it, something in the sky.

  I flung off my light coverlet and went to the edge of the roof, changing my angle of vision. Yes…it was a brilliant light, hanging all by itself in the sky, low, so that it was almost even with the top of the Pharos. But it was not a star—it had a long tail.

  A comet! There was a comet in the sky!

  I had never seen a comet, but I somehow knew that was what it was. It was beautiful, unique. The tail trailed off in little twinkles that looked like glowing sparks; the head hovered protectively like the hood of a divine cobra.

  At once a strange sensation passed through me, a jolt of recognition. It was Caesar, taking his place in the heavens, among the gods. And also, at this very time, rising to show me that he would never leave me, would always be with his true wife and fellow divinity, and take my part from heaven. He would not suffer our son to be kept from his inheritance. He would fight for it with me, more powerful now in the heavens than ever he was on earth, where he was hemmed in by little men and his own mortality.