Steampunk Cleopatra

by Thaddeus Thomas

Led by his eldest two sons, Marcus and Gaeus, the envoy arrived with few ships and only a hundred men. Lucius Septimus stood with Cleopatra as she received them. Amani stood beside me at the reception and sat with me at the dinner. Cleopatra headed the dinner alone; her father's seat remained empty.

  Marcus and Gaeus were young politicians; soldiers who carried ranks that surpassed their years and ability, as was often the case for men with powerful families. They were spoiled but not helpless, fat with indulgence but not untrained.

  Marcus spoke. “The former governor, Aulus Gabinius, sent your so-called Gabiniani against the wishes of the Roman Senate. It is time for them to come home.”

  The room fell silent. Lucius's eyes narrowed.

  Cleopatra remained poised. “We are all in debt to your father's predecessor and were relieved to see him cleared of the charges set against him. Our relationship should be mutually beneficial, and I hate to see a governor suffer because of us.”

  Amani flinched ever so slightly. She had not missed the threat. It was a bold move against a Roman politician, even one with as complicated a reputation as Bibulus. He was Caesar’s opponent, the proconsul whom the people silenced with their feces.

  “You will find Alexandria exceeds its rich reputation,” Cleopatra said. “Indulge yourselves, and we will determine our ability to answer your father.”

  Marcus and Gaeus thanked her and played the role of satisfied representatives as the wine continued and the music played. Gaeus drank freely; Marcus remained cautious and reserved.

  Amani returned to Moira's rooms. She had her choice of all Alexandria, yet lived there, among the books and experiments. The projects in the workroom had changed from when she first arrived and now focused on power sources other than coal and gas.

  Over the last several months, Amani had put her plan into place. Cleopatra had stopped the coal and gas shipments. Teams retrofitted the factories to move away from steam-powered technology to automatons of entertainment for the Wepet Renpet parade. Amani hired Rhakotians to run the factories and institute humane work standards. The Serapeum stored what they built, and, when appropriate, we made room for more by shipping the overflow to Thebes.

  Urban drew up alongside her as she stared at the workbench, deep in thought.

  “They'll refuse,” Amani said. “This is their home.”

  Moira slouched through the doorway, leaned her frame against the wall, and watched them from sunken eyes. Her voice was raspy and weak. Amani made no effort to hear.

  “The Gabiniani have grown comfortable and powerful,” Urban said, interpreting for his beloved. “They're wild, often lawless, and will not easily give up the lives Ptolemy granted them, especially now that they're the keepers of Cleopatra's greatest secret. They will expect her to stand with them against the emissaries, but if she does, Rome will turn against her.”

  Moira rasped again.

  “What does Cleopatra plan to do?” Urban asked.

  “I don't know.”

  Moira lurched forward until she hung inches from Amani's face.

  Amani saw the shape of her skull beneath the skin. She leaned against her, hugging her gently as if she were holding an ancient scroll on the verge of disintegrating with age.

  “Peace, child,” Moira whispered. “You will save Cleopatra, yet. The people will know her as their savior and benefactor. You've robbed Cerberus of his fuel, and when the war comes, as you have said it must, Cleopatra will be ready.”

  “It's not meant to be a war with Rome,” Amani said.

  “From wherever war comes,” Moira whispered, “we will be ready. Now, you see the danger in this present moment. So, tell me. What are our weaknesses?”

  “There is no right decision.”

  “She will anger either the Gabiniani or Rome.”

  Amani nodded.

  Moira held her gaze. “Which would be the worse of the two?”

  Papyrus 6.10

  Amani did not like Lucius Septimus. He made accommodations for her being a woman and Egyptian, but that only made tolerating him harder. Any kindness he showed in respect of her position would not be granted to another like her. If that had always been true, it had never been so obvious. She hated Lucius because he was, on the surface, what she had to assume others were underneath.

  When the banquet ended, Cleopatra, Lucius, and I retired to her palace to discuss the situation. Amani, having gone to see Moira, had delayed in joining us.

  “The demand for all the Gabiniani is a bargaining strategy,” I said. “They'll settle for less.”

  “They'll get none,” Lucius said.

  During the discussion, I took it upon myself to debate Lucius. Cleopatra had to remain aloof, with a perceived neutrality. If I made Lucius my enemy, Alexandria would survive, but Cleopatra needed his support.

  “If we send them away empty-handed,” I said, “who will come next, and will there be any room left to negotiate?”

  “And if they came demanding you?” Lucius asked. “This is our home now. We serve Pharaoh and him alone. Rome has no claim.”

  Framed in the palace window, Amani waited for the swinging bridge to come around and allow her onto the island.

  Cleopatra drew our attention with a motion of her hand. “Whether the world knows it or only the people in this room, I am pharaoh. You've sworn to serve me. Will you trust my judgment in this?”

  “I offered my support,” Lucius said, “because I thought I understood your judgment. To revise one is to revise the other.”

  I had to fight myself to resist an outburst. It could have only been the same for Cleopatra. He had threatened her, she who was both pharaoh and queen, and we could do nothing about it. We had chained ourselves to his destiny and he to ours. Those chains could not be broken now.

  “You understand well her wisdom and her intellect,” I said, “and wisdom does not act or answer hastily. Pharaoh will consider her options and act as she must.”

  Lucius looked to the door as Amani stood before it and took that as his cue to leave. “It's best to keep your voice down when you call her pharaoh.”

  Amani stepped back to let him pass. Cleopatra sat still on the couch, contemplating.

  “I know what we must do,” Amani said.

  “We're glad to hear it,” I said. “Every option is fraught with danger.”

  Cleopatra called Amani to sit with her, but her voice had none of its usual warmth.

  Jittery, Amani sat. “You won't like it.”

  “There is nothing to like,” Cleopatra said, “but give your counsel. I am ready.”

  “It's time to tell the regents about Pharaoh.”

  I felt a sickness in my stomach, but Cleopatra remained poised.

  “Have you considered what we are to say?” she asked.

  “You know what you will say. You've rehearsed it to yourself for months. If you have too many variations to choose from, I suggest you give weight to our having outwitted Rome and brought stability to Alexandria in a time of uncertainty. Act as if you've done them a favor, and, if they disagree, force them to explain why. You secured our future, and now you are ready to share that future with your brother. In the end, whether or not they like the situation will be irrelevant.”

  When we were in agreement, Amani left us to find the emissaries.

  Gaeus staggered out of a brothel and past a musician and a dancing woman. Marcus paused in the doorway and watched, his face serious even as his eyes traced the lively colors.

  Amani lingered in shadows down the street, Iras at her side.

  Gaeus, noticing his brother's delay, turned back, stumbled into the arms of the woman, and danced with her. A few clumps of people gathered in the lamplight to watch and laugh.

  Iras rose from the stoop she had used as her stool so she could better watch the debacle. “They're living it up.”

  “They'll get themselves killed before the night's over,” Amani said.

  Three Gabiniani brushed past Marcus on their way out. Amani did not know the
ir names, but there was no mistaking what they were. One spoke, but Amani could not make out the words.

  “Syria,” Marcus said. “And Rome.”

  The man spoke again.

  “Each and every one of you,” Marcus said.

  The men turned back, their eyes assessing Marcus. Gaeus broke away from the dancer. Amani and Iras drew casually closer.

  The three Gabiniani were tall, tall, and short, and though not fat, they would have been in better shape six years earlier when they marched against Pelusium and Alexandria in the name of Ptolemy. For their night on the town, they had donned wigs. The short one had lost his, and, as Gaeus turned away from the dancer, the short one took the woman in his arms. The gathered crowd cheered to see the spectacle continue.

  His tall companions eyed the crowd. “You don't need us,” one said.

  “It's war,” Marcus said, “and you are soldiers. This is your purpose.”

  “And victory is yours,” said the man, “but there is something here more powerful than any ten thousand men.”

  Gaeus laughed. “Not even an elephant...” Whatever thought would have ended his sentence, he lost it and turned his attention to the short man who had taken his dance partner.

  “Don't let them hide it from you,” said the man. “Come, we'll show you.”

  “Ten thousand men?” Marcus scoffed.

  “Come,” the man said. “See.”

  Whatever their intent, whether to reveal the technology or attack the emissaries, Amani had to do something. She told Iras to find Cleopatra, and then she ran, crying out Marcus's name. She threw her arms around his neck. “There you are. I thought I’d missed you.”

  “You did.” He pushed her aside. “I’ve had my entertainment.”

  “You represent your father well,” she said.

  He paused, wanting to hear more.

  “There was talk of you when I was in Jerusalem. They said you were magnificently gifted and equally beautiful, and for once, the rumors do not lie. In a world of bitterness, that is unusual, and we have all had our share of bitterness. Your mother died when you were young, as did my parents.”

  “As do many in this world,” Marcus said.

  “I've spent time in the house of Cato,” she said.

  Marcus's jaw set tighter.

  “As self-disciplined a man as I found him to be,” she said, “I've heard his daughter is formidable in her own right. Is she more to you than your brother's mother and your father's wife? If not, I think we again have much in common, as I grew up in the home of Cleopatra and under the governance of her stepmother, the queen.”

  Marcus glanced at his brother and stammered, “Porcia is a good woman.”

  “Her father holds a tight rein on what is considered good.” Amani felt guilty for the tactic she planned to use.

  “She's a damn volcano of goodness,” Gaeus said.

  “I suspect this trip was her idea.” Amani studied their faces, and in the glances the brothers exchanged, she could see she was right. “She would think the Gabiniani belong to Rome, even when they've been dedicated to the service of Egypt for so many years. The men retired from Roman service, and your father understands that, but he bends to her will and sends you here on a mission he knows can't succeed. This is not Rome's wish. It's not even your father's. There is no sanction behind your arrival, only a wife's scolding, and when you return without men upon whom Rome has no claim, it will not be your dishonor, but hers. Your father knows; he has always known; it could not end in any other way.”

  Marcus stared at her and let loose a whispered, drunken laugh. “You'd have us go back empty-handed?”

  “This very night,” she said, “as if your lives depended upon it.”

  He laughed again and sauntered off with his new friends.

  Papyrus 6.11

  Night competed with the lighthouse. Like embers scattered from the fire, lights burned in the island and the harbor-side palaces--torchlight, for gas had become precious. The short soldier hurried away. The tall ones put their arms around Marcus and Gaeus. Their laughter echoed across the water.

  The short soldier returned, and they gathered coal from a warehouse. Gaeus studied a chunk as if it meant something. The laughter of the others rose.

  They moved down the harbor. Fallen coal traced their path like shadows made solid. Amani snatched them up and followed.

  At their command, the doors of the warehouse folded open to a dark interior. Halos flared as the men lit torches and lifted them high. Marcus and Gaeus crept forward, their mouths agape.

  Amani left the harbor path to sprint behind the buildings.

  Hydraulics engaged and shifted in pitch. The warehouse doors stood open; the lift rose. Torchlight danced upon the water’s surface. The waterfront felt deserted. Where Gabiniani stood guard moments before, there was no one. Amani crept into the warehouse. Tortured hydraulics screamed in her ear. She felt along the lowest level of machines, searching for something she understood.

  The hydraulics hissed to a stop. Now she could hear their voices.

  “...move on their own. Some practically think for themselves.”

  “And these?”

  “Handheld weapons to make bows obsolete. Every war won before it's started.”

  She opened a hatch and dropped in fuel.

  “Can you imagine the Parthians?”

  She pulled the lever to strike the flint and start the fire. Nothing happened.

  “Pick it up. Feel the weight.”

  She pulled the lever again. And again. Nothing.

  “How does it work?”

  Water. She had forgotten water.

  “You aim and pull the release.”

  She grabbed one of the canisters by the doors and ran to the harbor to fill it. It wasn't the clean water needed to maintain the machine, but none of that mattered, as long as it would work.

  “I’d love to try one. Is it possible?”

  She poured in the water. It blew back steam from the fire she'd already lit, scalding her hands. She closed the latch with her shoulder.

  “You can try, but it won't do you any good. You're powerless. It takes fuel, you see. Without fuel, they're lumps of metal and nothing more. Useless and without purpose, like two brothers from Syria.”

  She slid down into the machine where a series of controls acted like reins for the mechanical beast.

  “What do you mean calling us useless? We are our father’s representatives.”

  Her burned hands trembled before her, and she heard herself weep.

  “Did you really believe your father sent you here to do anything but die?”

  She manipulated the controls with her forearms, and the machine stood upright in a billowing cloud. With thudding footsteps, Amani walked out onto the waterfront.

  Silhouetted against the glow of their torches, the men looked down from above to see the iron beast staring back at them. She did nothing else, could do nothing else. In the darkness, she wasn't even sure what machine she had chosen, and she sat within the cage nestled into its chest, unable to make herself heard over the clamor of the steam engine. Her arms crossed before her; flesh peeled and blistered.

  She could only hope the sight of her would end the plot. The men would surrender against her greater firepower, and Cleopatra would arrive, Alexandrian soldiers at her side.

  Instead, there came two explosive blasts. One body fell, and then another. Inside the machine, Amani wept.

  The morning sun warmed Lochias, leeching away the night's chill. Theodotus and his cohorts huddled by themselves, their heads bent toward one another as if to speak but saying nothing. I stood alone.

  Only Alexandrian soldiers guarded the palace. Cleopatra had transferred the Gabiniani elsewhere in the Royal quarter. Three of their men waited in chains, locked in a side room. Lucius Septimus stood beside me, waiting to learn their fate.

  Young Ptolemy, Arsinoe, and their brother gathered with us to witness Cleopatra's judgment. They took their formal posi
tions at the head of the courtyard outside the compound.

  Cleopatra walked through bars of shade and light beneath the colonnade until she stood in the open gate. “As to the guilt of these men, there is no doubt,” she said. “All that remains is to decide their fate.”

  She made it sound easy. Yet, if she let the murder go unpunished, Rome would turn against her. If she did otherwise, she would lose the favor of the Gabiniani.

  “The voice of many say the Gabiniani have severed their ties with Rome,” Cleopatra continued. “These men serve us faithfully and willingly, but in the eyes of Rome, they are still their army and under their authority. There is no choice to be made here. Any other judgment but that these three men be taken to the governor of Syria in chains will turn their act of murder into an act of war.”

  She looked into the eyes of her brother and then his advisors. “Today, this decision falls upon me to make. My father is dead.”

  The ministers each looked as if they meant to interrupt her, but nobody spoke.

  Ptolemy looked from one to the other and then back at Cleopatra. “I’m Pharaoh?”

  “We are not ready for a war against the Romans,” Cleopatra continued. “I decree that the men be taken from this place to stand before the governor of Syria for judgment. These three are all they shall have. The rest of the Gabiniani stay here, where they belong.”

  Papyrus 6.12

  As Amani’s burn became infected, fever gripped her. Delirious, she stared at her bandaged hands without understanding, certain there could be nothing more important than freedom.

  Cleopatra lied down in the bed beside her. “You're safe. Rest.”

  Amani shivered, and Cleopatra pulled the sheets across her and lay her head against her shoulder. The touch of her cheek felt cold to Amani's clammy skin, but it calmed her and offered a center to her thinking, her very existence. She understood she lay in Cleopatra's bed in the island palace. She knew she was honored and loved.