The Memoirs of Cleopatra

by Margaret George

  With sadness I saw the tumult in my beloved city, lying helpless now before an invader, its gates thrown open, its citizens running in panic. And I was powerless to help it; all my life, dedicated to keeping it safe, has been spent laboring in vain to prevent this hour. My alliances, my plans, my stratagems, my sacrifices had staved it off but not stopped it.

  Why delay any longer? Why behold this grisly spectacle of failure any longer? I was resolved to do it now; suddenly death was welcome. I spun away from the window and motioned to Charmian and Iras. But Charmian was pointing to something outside, and her face was rigid.

  “Yes, it is pitiful,” I told her. “But do not torture yourself by watching any longer.” I took her hand.

  “Madam, it is—see where they are bringing him,” she whispered, pointing our hands together in the direction of an odd little procession.

  Far to the right, on the path from the palace, men were carrying a litter with a sprawled body on it, and a knot of attendants clustered on both sides.

  Even from this distance, I could see that the man—it was a man—was covered in blood, but lived. He did not have that limpness that betokens death.

  “O my friend, it is—it is Antony,” said Mardian, his voice strained.

  Yes, it was. Had he been carried from the battlefield? Had he wished to lie here with me, today? In a hot gush of relief, I poured out my thanks to Isis that I yet lived. I would have missed him, had I steeled myself only a few minutes earlier.

  He was trying to sit up, but did not have the strength. The whole front of his tunic was bathed in blood, and it was dripping off the litter and staining the ground. The armor was gone.

  One of his attendants banged on the door, but I cried from the window, “We cannot open it now, lest Octavian storm inside and take the treasure. But the window—can we not use that?”

  There were ropes still dangling from the unfinished upper masonry, and we lowered them to fasten to the litter. It was a long way to the ground, and I wondered if we would have the strength to haul him all the way up. He was a heavy man, his body now was almost dead weight, since he could not haul or help us pull.

  He looked so weak, lying there, the blood bubbling up from wherever the wound was, his face pale and his words coming only with difficulty.

  “Courage! Courage!” I cried, to strengthen him, as we four strained to pull the ropes and hoist him. None of us had enough strength, and it was grueling. Inadvertently we banged the litter against the wall over and over again, and each time I could see the pain chase across his face as he was jolted on the stone.

  “Oh, hurry,” he begged in so low a voice I could barely hear it. The sun was beating down on his blood-smeared face and cracked lips, and flies, attracted to the blood, were plaguing him. He was too weak to lift his hand and ward them off.

  That hand, which had always been so strong…too weak now to wave away flies.

  With a surge of determination, the four of us together yanked the ropes up and got the litter to the windowsill, where we lifted it over and set it on the floor.

  “Oh, my dear—do not die without me!” I heard myself saying, as I threw myself on his chest, which was sleek with blood. Now I was covered in it, too, but I wanted to be. I took the palms of my hands and smeared my face, my neck, with his blood. Then, without even knowing it, I tore the top of my gown open and stripped myself of it, covering his chest with it. The blood soaked right through it.

  “My lord, my husband, my emperor,” I whispered by his ear. “Wait for me!”

  I knew nothing could save him; the wound was mortal. He could barely speak.

  “How did you get this?” I asked, laying my hand over the wound. “How did it get through your armor?”

  “I—I myself,” he said. “No enemy but Antony. Antony only conquers Antony.”

  “My brave Imperator,” I said, and only he could hear me. I bent to kiss him. His lips were already cold.

  “Eros—” he whispered. “Eros—”

  “What of Eros?” I only now noticed his absence.

  “He failed me.” Antony attempted to laugh, but it was so painful he could not. “He—disobeyed his instructions. When he was to have killed me, and I turned away, he killed himself instead.”

  How horrible! And left Antony to dispatch himself.

  “Oh, my dear—” I cradled his head in my arms. This was not the noble end we had planned, but messy and painful and inelegant.

  “Some wine—” he asked faintly.

  A cup was brought to him, and he managed, with our help, to raise himself a little to drink. “Octavian comes,” he said. I had to strain to hear him. “You must not trust anyone about him, but an officer named Proculeius. Deal with him.”

  “Deal with him! There will be no dealing; I will not linger on in this world.”

  So he thought I might survive after all? His hopefulness was touching. He had kept it to the end.

  He grasped my hand in his. With my other hand I beat and tore at my breasts in grief. He tried to take it, too, and stop me. But he did not have the strength. “Please,” he whispered. “Do not pity me for this last turn of fate. Remember all the good fortune I had, for many years, and that I was the most powerful and illustrious man in the world. And even now I have not fallen ignobly.”

  “Yes,” I said, through my tears. They were blurring my vision of his face, while he still lived and his lips moved. “No. You have been given an honorable death. The gods granted you that one last gift.”

  I could feel the grip in his hand slackening, and he gradually, reluctantly, released mine. His eyes closed and he seemed to concentrate all his strength on a series of gasping, heaving breaths—each causing more blood to spill out of the chest wound. Then they shuddered to a stop, and he ceased breathing.

  “No! No!” I cried, willing the chest to move again. But it did not, and the hand fell away and slid down to lie upturned at his side. The fingers, curling in that half-circle, just as they had when he slept….

  His lids were shut, and the long eyelashes locked together: the beautiful long lashes that I had teased him about, now holding the lids down to cover the starkness of death, to veil its indecency.

  Antony was dead. The whole world rolled away.

  “Madam—madam—” I felt someone pulling on me, trying to separate us. I was almost stuck to him by the blood. I did not want to leave, be taken away. I clung tighter.

  “Dear friend,” said Mardian. “You must. He is gone.”

  I refused to let go, and they had to pry me away, and Mardian carry me in his arms down the steps, leaving Antony on his litter, alone.

  “No—” I said feebly, reaching back.

  “He can have a proper funeral,” Mardian said. “But that must wait. Have you forgotten Octavian? He must be nearly here!”

  Octavian. What did I care for Octavian? I cared for nothing now, just to lie in the sheltering arms of Mardian, my oldest, truest friend, and cease to think. The world had shrunk down into a dried black husk, and Antony was lying dead, alone, up there….

  I clutched his arm, wordlessly. Or did I speak? I do not know. Only that in the swirl where I almost felt my spirit leaving my body, floating silently and secretly up the steps and back to Antony, there to join with him and flee from all the blood and foulness of this hour, I was suddenly dumped onto the floor. Mardian had flung me down before the great doors.

  He pushed me toward them, his hands on my shoulders. “Look out there!” he demanded.

  No. I cannot face all this now. Not in such immediate succession. But he is relentless, guiding me toward the grille.

  Swarms of people. What people? What matter? I feel so weak, I grab the bars to enable me to stand. There are shadows across the grass. Hours have passed, hours when Antony took his slow, painful leave of this world. It was a time beyond time; how odd that real time stole past, outside. I do not want to reenter it. I want to stay in this timeless, seasonless, unchanging place of stone and sealed doors.

&nb
sp; “Madam,” said Charmian, by my side. She wiped my face with a scarf, and it came away red with blood. “Courage!”

  Now time snaps into place again, like a band on a pulley, connecting everything. Now I see people outside. Roman soldiers. Not ours. Others. Octavian’s.

  There are hordes of them, striding across the grass, across my palace grounds, lounging on the steps of Isis’s temple. They are drinking from their water bags, peeling fruit, laughing. It is a holiday for them: the obscene holiday of victory, now beheld by the vanquished. Is any taste so bitter in all the world?

  “Look where they come,” Mardian whispered. And I could see a company of officers striding purposefully toward us. Was Octavian among them?

  No. I would recognize him anywhere, even across all the years. He was not there. One of them separated himself and approached our doors. He was a tall man, dressed as a staff officer; not even a general.

  He came closer and closer, until the vision of him was distorted by the grate and the nearness. I saw a big, sunburnt nose, saw the beads of sweat on his face. A banging. He was hammering with a sword handle on the door.

  “Queen Cleopatra!” he yelled, only a hand’s breadth from my ear. The loudness was painful. “Come out, and yield yourself to us!”

  The volume of the voice and its very nearness were startling. I could not answer, could not find my own voice. Must I speak to the outside world?

  “We know he is dead! We have his sword, taken from his side by his guard, Dercetaeus. This, the very one he used to kill himself!” I could see the flash of the sword, recognized it. Its blade was coated with blood.

  Anger swept through me; good clean anger. That sword—it belonged to Antyllus, or Alexander—not to this gloating enemy.

  “Give me that sword!” I demanded. “Do not befoul it with your touch!”

  He stepped back, startled. It was not the response he had expected.

  “And so I shall, when you open the doors,” he said.

  “Never! I will die in here, and my treasure along with me. Your master knows well enough what I have promised. I gave him the opportunity to forestall it, but he chose not to. Now he shall pay the price—the treasure of the Ptolemies will go up in smoke, an offering to the gods,” I yelled through the door. I was surprised I had such strength left in me, at this hour.

  “You wrong my master,” he said. “You must not impute such cruelty to him. Harm yourself? No, he will not have that!”

  “Yes, he would pamper and preserve me to parade me through the streets of Rome in his Triumph. His trophy. Never!” He would keep me like a sacrificial animal, until time for the offering.

  “No, no! He only wishes you well. Do not deny him the opportunity to show what he is made of.”

  “Who are you?” I demanded.

  “My name is Gaius Proculeius.”

  Proculeius. Antony had said to trust him. But why?

  “I have heard you spoken of,” I said cautiously.

  “In what manner?”

  “That you are trustworthy.” But I was not sure of that; Antony often trusted where he should not.

  “For that, I thank you.”

  “If you are trustworthy, then relay to your master, for one last time, my absolute condition: that he bestow the kingdom of Egypt on my children—Caesarion or Alexander as it pleases him—and spare the others as well. That being done, the treasure is his, yes, and my person, too, to transport where he will.”

  I did not mean this, for I would never walk in Arsinoe’s footsteps. But the treasure—ah! the treasure—he could have in exchange for my children’s lives and inheritance. He could make do with a statue of my person for his procession.

  “He only wishes you well,” Proculeius insisted.

  “He wishes my treasure well, that is all,” I said. “Tell him what he must do to obtain it, and that I will not be dissuaded.”

  “Trust him,” said Proculeius. “You cannot imagine how generous and kind he can be. Only grant him the opportunity to show it!”

  “The day grows late,” I said. “Take my message. Or, by all that’s holy, such a fire will fill the night skies from my burning treasure that Octavian will not need a lamp to read by!”

  He bowed quickly and left, clutching the sword. The sword that I longed to open the doors for, reach out and grab.

  “Well,” said Mardian. “That was quite a performance.”

  I sank down on the cool floor. “Oh, Mardian. It is hopeless. Whatever assurances he gives me, I can never believe them. I am a prisoner in here for the few days I have left. Regardless of any message from Octavian, I am bound to destroy all this, and myself as well.”

  I had failed; failed to secure even the promise of the throne for my children, and all I could do now was destroy the treasure in spite. I longed to do it; end it all now. My misgivings had flown. I had no desire to live on, to see even another sunrise over this soiled world.

  “But if Octavian came in person, would you believe him?” Mardian asked.

  “No. All this is just playacting. He would say what is necessary to lay hands on the treasure. I would do the same myself. I understand him, as he understands me.” As the noble Antony had never really understood either of us, being made of different, and finer, material. “No, there is no remedy but death; death to shut out the failure that is ringing in my ears, deafening me.”

  It began to grow dark outside. We lit lamps, which we had had the foresight to bring in with us, along with fruit and wine. We could hold out in here a long time. In the flickering shadows, I looked up the steps, half hoping, expecting, to see Antony lurch down them. Himself, or his shade?

  Mardian saw me, and reached out for my hand. “You must not. You must not go up there.”

  “Only for a moment—”

  “Not in the darkness. Not now.”

  A commotion outside. More banging on the door. I rose and went to it. A new face was pressed against the grille. Flaring torches illuminated it.

  “I would speak to the Queen!” he cried.

  “Who would?” I demanded.

  “Cornelius Gallus,” he replied.

  Gallus. The poetry-writing commander who had taken over in Cyrenaica, after Scarpus’s troops had deserted. So they had sent a general this time.

  “The famous General Gallus,” I said. “Have you brought your verses? Have you written something celebrating the fall of Alexandria?”

  “Put up your spite, lady,” he said. “I come in peace—Octavian, my gentle friend and yours, offers his hand in bond of brotherhood.”

  “He may be your friend, but he is not mine,” I said.

  “You wrong him….” And more in this vein; on and on. Nothing was said, nothing offered. Just words. Words to lull and delude me.

  And then…and now…How it happened, and happened so fast, I cannot reconstruct. I was talking, speaking through the grille…. I heard the honeyed words, detected the poison beneath them…

  I am weary of him. Let him go away. My feet ache. And then, a clatter from above. From where Antony is…

  Crazy with excitement, I turn, cry, I knew you would come back….

  Did I really? Had I been waiting for him to stand once again, come back to life, seek me out by the force of will and desire, stronger even than death itself? Or is it just the madness that grips us in the wake of final, absolute death?

  Someone is bounding down the stairs, his face and form in shadow, and even as I turn to face him, he grabs one of my arms.

  This is not Antony’s touch. So—I must end it. I pull my dagger from my waist, and odd the thought that floats through my mind: Pity it cannot be the snakes, no time for the snakes, only the knife. And I am sad about it. I have failed here, too.

  A hard hand wrenches it away from me, twists my wrist so hard it stings. I hear the dagger clatter on the floor, hear a harsh intake of breath.

  Then, “What else is there?” And I am being shaken so hard my teeth rattle, and what is left of my gown smacked and felt. “No p
oison, then.”

  Never has anyone laid such rough hands on me, treated me so.

  “I have her!” he shouts. “It is safe now!”

  Two men follow down the steps and rush to the door, pulling back the bolts, sliding them out. They fling the door open, where Gallus is standing, smiling.

  “Good work, Proculeius,” he says, stepping inside.

  Proculeius. The one Antony told me to trust. Thus he was betrayed, again.

  “Yes, very clever, Proculeius,” I said. He continued to hold me, and Gallus stared, wide-eyed.

  Only then was I aware that I was still half naked; the whole upper part of my garment I had torn off to cover Antony. And my skin was all smeared with dried blood, Antony’s lifeblood.

  “O piteous sight!” Gallus said. “So this is the fatale monstrum, before whom Rome quaked?”

  “She still has plenty of fight in her, sir, do not be deceived. I disarmed her of her dagger just in time, and shook her to be assured there is no poison on her person.”

  “Well done,” Gallus said. He removed his cloak and draped it around me, but I shrugged it off. I did not want anything of his to touch me.

  “It must be so,” he said. “I was but following my orders.” He did not sound joyous. “Unhand her, Proculeius.”

  I felt him release me. “So you deceived me with words at one door while you stole in upstairs?” They must have seen where Antony had been taken in. Perhaps there were even telltale smears of blood on the wall. Now they had besmirched even that, by following in his wake.

  “We only sought to prevent you harming yourself, in your present state of mind,” Proculeius said. “It was Octavian’s concern for you.”

  “Concern for the treasure, you mean.” I glared at them. “You might as well see it,” I said. “Come, look.”

  I led them around to where it was heaped. They followed close on my heels, expecting that I was leading them into a trap. They gave me great credit for wiliness.